Thursday, May 3

Life's great!

Singapore-MIT GAMBIT Gamelab Summer Intern Project

Life's great! I'm being sent on this fully-sponsored (with a monthly stipend of US$800) summer internship programme to MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) in Boston! OMG it's Boston; the States! A total of 30 students will be sent from Singapore to MIT for the summer internship for a total of 9 weeks starting 9th June 2007. They will also be working with MIT students on a total of 6 game-based projects. The variety of projects ranges from audio based to animation based areas where the intent is to create a playable game demo by the end of the 9 weeks attachment. The intent is to get students with a variety of skill-sets ranging from audio, animation, games design, concept design, technical implementation to production management experience to work together to create a playable demo within the required time-frame.

The students will be exposed to the following opportunities:

·Seminars provided by the MIT professors; ·Cross cultural interactions as they will be grouped in a team of 7 students, which will be a mixture of different students from Singapore as well as students from MIT; ·Exposure to the overall games production cycle as they will be expected to create a playable game demo by the end of their attachment.

"A Labour of Love" - Young NTUC Musical (May Day 2007)

I was "engaged" by Babes Condes, famous international singer-songwriter-composer-vocal coach (for Singapore Idol as well) to assist her as second keyboardist for the incidental music band for this brilliant musical which she scored for. She happens to be the mom of my coursemate Adam Shah, who's a great drummer and bassist himself =D. Together with James L, a shredder guitarist and a course junior, the 4 of us made a great band doing fill-ins and incidental music in between the scene changes. You can read more about the story of the musical by clicking on the link above. Anyway, it's not just about the 4-digit pay, I feel really grateful to Babes for having given me this wonderful opportunity to experience what it is like playing for a musical. (She had also coached Singapore Polytechnic's "Superstar the Pop Musical" cast, in which I was in, last October 2006.) You are the song that makes me sing, you'll fly a rainbow on its strings; all of my days I'm sure, you're always there for me. Babes' songs are just so heartwarming. `_~

Virtuoso Arts: Artiste & Repertoire Challenge 2006/7 Music Album

I was supposed to be the Music Director for the production of this music album - but I'm flying off to Boston halfway through the production process (see above 1st paragraph). The album's supposed to be a compilation of original songs by our artistes (who had won the Artiste & Repertoire Challenge 2006/7 - see my earlier posts if you wanna know) for commercial sale - no kidding! More details soon...

Overall, it's a busy busy busy busy month of May, as usual. 2007 will be the busiest year of my life... YET.