the actual job-hunting talk, however, painted a much more optimistic picture. the speaker encouraged us to aim for the career that we wanted, even if it means momentarily holding jobs in other areas. the analogy she drew between career planning and sailing was quite apt in my opinion: not planning your career is akin to drifting out in the open sea, where it is the external forces of the waves and winds that dictate your destination. with planning though, even if the winds and waves are against you, you can still tack and steer your way back on course, even if it means taking detours here and there. the part of the talk about networking was a bit scary though: she defined networking as "socialising with an agenda" O.O but when you think about it i guess it's something like exchanging favours between acquaintances; she specifically warned against "making use" of people without returning the favour.
after the talk, i went back to NJC with xiaolan and pangxin for the highlight of the day: ROCK NIGHT! :D notable bands: the last band, Good Friday, was definitely the best, which is expected since they've been around the longest. they were the only band that successfully managed to entertain the audience between songs, which is a skill that goes beyond being good musicians and is something that has to be learned as a band. and they played A7X's Gunslinger, which automatically won me over :D the teacher band, The Agent, was also good, with powerful vocals from the female singer. Rubber Band was also quite good amongst the others; i'll rank them in 3rd place (speaking strictly without friend bias :P ) the JH band wasn't too outstanding, but after all they're the JH band so i guess they still need time to develop. the SJI band did the slow songs quite well, but they dumbed down an energetic song like Highway To Hell to such a boring and lifeless rendition -.- the SJI International band, Grilled Cheese Sandwich, was also quite ok, but the lead singer was a bit crazy with all the jumping around and the self-induced high, and i can't get used to her incredibly strong angmoh accent (but that's not really a fault i guess). Alveric And Friends, the semi-external band with nicholas on bass, was a disappointment. i heard from chin before that they were supposed to play Iron Maiden's Flash Of The Blade and Metallica's Master Of Puppets, but they cut both songs away. they did play another Iron Maiden song though, The Trooper, but completely butchered it because the singer sang literally the entire song flat. their guitarist is above average, but it was drowned out by the sound of everything else. in case you were wondering, this is how it's supposed to sound like:
and their covers of Love Story and Bad Romance were quite (very) bad too. just goes to show that "external" and "good" are two very different things. still, i'd say that Rock Night was an overall success, though i'm still waiting to see Flash Of The Blade live T_T dinner/supper afterwards at Adam Road, then i met kahming on the bus on the way home :)
