Taggish

I was tagged by my senior Frankie to list 7 of my favorite songs. It's been a long time since I really listened to anything, and my iPod had been lying accumulating dust since April. Nevertheless, there are always something reverberating back at our heads, whether we noticed it or not. The power of music - filling up empty spaces.
Songs listed below with no numerical preference - how could you rate music?

• Nagasaki no Kane (The Clock of Nagasaki) by Masafumi Akikawa

This is a requiem composed for victims of the nuclear bomb dropped in Nagasaki in 1945. Similar to Mozart's Requiem, it's extremely powerful in terms of the group of choir behind, and of course, the uniqueness of the composition itself. Songs like these sings for peace more effectively than a Nobel Peace Prize.

• Vincent by Josh Groban
  

Josh's great voice is great for songs like these - sad, inspiring and with a tinge of hope. For those unfamiliar, "Vincent" refers to artist van Gogh, hence the "starry, starry night". For an artist's son, part of me understood the struggle of an artist to fight for "what [they] are trying to say to [me] ".

• Helsinki Complaints Choir (very long)

Ever heard of a complaints choir? Basically you group a few people together, everyone contributes a complaint or rant. After that you hire a composer to put them together for a song. Helsinki seems to have the greatest number of singers, and most hilarious of complaints. Quoting some complaints - "Old forests are cut down to make toilet paper, but when I need them I always can't find them", "My flat is tiny but it eats all my money, so I'm left with no money to save the world with". A must see - "all ringtones are just as irritating" at the 2:13 mark.

• Vivo Per Lei (Living for You) by Andrea Bocelli and Judy Weiss - an Italian-German duet

Bocelli's powerful tenor finally found a matching soprano. The typical version features both singers in Italian, but I found the German soprano more tempting, because firstly you could distinguish both languages easily, and secondly because Weiss is good-looking. Heh.

• 但愿人長久 by Jacky Cheung

You'd be familiar with the Theresa Theng version, but Jacky Cheung's is a little more melancholic. The slow tempo is also more adept for his voice. In this particular YouTube clip the song is coupled with the movie "Tangshan Tangshan", a movie about the Tangshan earthquake in China circa 1976.
For those unfamilar, the lyrics is a traditional poem composed by Su DongPo on mid-autumn festival. Using the full moon as a referant, he expressed nothing is eternal in life - men experience sorrow, joy, parting, and reunion in the course of life, just like the moon waxes and wanes with the tide. However, what we could hope for is that we live long enough and send our blessings to others even though we're parted far away.

• 依然 by Chung Ling High School Sixth Form class of 2007

This is one exclusive song and clip you cannot see anywhere else. I made a junior in choir made this clip for the farewell party of Choir 2008. The song is the graduation theme of the sixth formers of Chung Ling High School in year 2007. Kudos to them for the great song.

• I Still Call Australia Home by the Australian National Boys' and Girls' Choir

The world's most expensive TV commercial deserves great music as well. Composed by an Australian expartiate, now the song is being exploited by Qantas for their commercials. Nevertheless, it's always a soothing song for overseas students and explorers. Note the World Trade Center in New York, that was back in 1998. Also, you can test how much geography is still in you by counting how many destinations featured in the 2-minute ad.
After that, watch another version featuring an entire stadium of 1200 people here.

That's all folks. Would be doing something on eating and sleeping (to quote Mdm. Hor Yee Chee's word "Chung Ling students know only how to eat and sleep...") very soon. so stay tuned.