2002 ~ 2006 |
THE PIONEERS
Full Cycle
Low Li Yien
At work (2018). ▶
30
He warned
us that we
will never
walk into the
cinema the
same way
again after
this class
and laughed
out loud. Well,
he was right.
I used to tell others that I dream of working in the
music industry in the future either in songwriting,
performing or sound engineering. Due to my parents’
disapproval, I did not get to study music but chose
instead to do a Communications degree because
I thought that radio and television was the closest
field related to the music industry. And that is how
I ended up studying for a BA in Communication at
Monash University Malaysia.
What I did not expect to find, however, was a whole
new dimension of knowledge that challenged my
perspective in life. The Communications programme
was not only about equipping students with job skills
related to mass communications but also trained us to
think, analyse, and have an opinion about “truth”, world
events, and the different kinds of media around us.
I remember walking into my very first class,
Introduction to Mass Communication and being told
“There is no ‘You’. We are all a product of ideology” by
Dr Patricia Goon! It did change my whole view of “self”
in relation to my world. Another quote that has stuck
with me is Dr Andrew Ng’s Screen Theories subject.
He warned us that we will never walk into the cinema
the same way again after this class and laughed out
loud. Well, he was right. Some of my favourite social
theorists includes Michel Foucault and Stuart Hall.
In 2005, we were the pioneer batch of the “In Search
of” study trip series started by Dr Yeoh Seng Guan
and the destination was Bangkok, Thailand. That trip
Taken during the ISO Bangkok
study trip (2005). ▶
was very memorable as that was the first time I went
to Bangkok. Together with other student-travellers,
we went not as tourists but as young explorers
and researchers tasked with filling up in real time a
collective blog. We had the opportunity to visit and
talk to an urban poor community in the Klong Toey
slum area, visited the Patpong red light district,
attended part of an LGBT international conference,
and went through many adventures with my fellow
student-travellers. That Bangkok study trip has a very
special place in my heart until today.
The passion and dream to pursue music did
not disappear with my newfound interest in
communication studies. In the three years of studies,
I led two lives on campus. It was communications
studies by day, and by night, I was jamming with a
group of classical music lovers from Sunway College
in Auditorium 7. That effort led me to perform with
a student amateur orchestra for a charity event. My
debut in violin playing with an instrumental ensemble
was addictive and I wanted that experience to go on
forever. Subsequently, after my Sunway music friends
had left for their twinning programme overseas, I
found myself being part of a band that played for the
Sunway A-Levels graduation ceremony led by Mr
Kingsley for two consecutive years. That experience
has helped me hone my contemporary piano-playing
skills, an add-on to my classical piano training abilities.
My career in music education started from giving
private piano lessons to a batch of students passed
down by my piano teacher’s friend. It had never
crossed my mind to be a piano teacher but, from that
experience, I discovered that I do enjoy my job. After
graduation in 2006, I was affiliated with a few music
studios on a part-time basis while also attending
teaching courses regularly to upgrade myself.