I started playing the guitar in Form 1. The first tune I played on the guitar was “Mary had a little lamb” and the first song I learnt was an old Christian song that went “King of Kings, and Lord of Lord’s Glory, Hallelujah…” There was only 2 chords throughout the entire song, which were Am and E. Since then, I was hooked.

My friend gave me his old guitar, on which I faithfully practiced on during my freetime, and soon, I had managed to learn the basic chords. To actually succeed in playing the F bar chord properly, I practiced for months. I begged my mum to send me to guitar lessons, but she refused as she preferred me to focus on playing the piano (which I wasn’t very interested in at that time). Anyway, I decided that I had no choice but to self-learn.

Many books and online tabs later, I finally had the chance to take lessons on how to play the acoustic guitar and electric guitar during my two years in Form 6. My teacher sifu was really one heck of a player, and I did and always will admire his playing skills. If it was not for having to further my studies in KL, I would have loved to learn more from him. He introduced me to many wonderfu guitar songs by Joe Satriani, Vinnie Moore, Eric Johnson, Steve Vai, Van Halen, Led Zepplin, Dream Theatre etc.

Sad to say, once in medical school, I did not have much time to pursue this hobby of mine due to logistics (shared hostel room and lack of equipments), time (tons of crap to study) and stamina (perpetual sleepiness due to the medical school syndrome). Now that I’m in final year, I have even less time in my hands (perhaps it’s due to poor time management) to indulge in such activities that whenever I have any free time, I would just feel like collapsing into a deep coma to run away from the forever growing pile of backlog work and studies.

Nevertheless, my love for the guitar was rekindled recently, when a friend of mine led me to discover a video of some guy playing a rocked up version of Canon in D, recorded via a videocam or something. It’s been so long since I’ve been really hooked on a song, and now, this Canon Rock tune has been burnt into my head and seems to be playing internally round the clock. On top of that, CN- is also addicted to the song, and plays it repeatedly on her stereo EVERYDAY. As the wall separating our rooms is paper thin, I would end up listening to the song whenever she does.

All the more reason why I just had to find the tabs for the song. After shrinking the font to a printable size, the tabs were 14 pages long. I would like to dream that I will be able to play the song someday, but as for now, one very glaring fact that’s thrown right into my face is that my fingers are damn rusty and I am so out of practice. Sigh. I wish I could borrow Doraemon’s Time Stopping Cloth and put medical school on hold for awhile so that I can learn up the song…

To those who are interested, go to YouTube and type Canon Rock, JerryC or Funtwo and watch the videos.