Happy New Year folks, it's 2007!

Since a brand new year has started, I'll start writing with a brand new fresh mind.

To Japanese, New Year is a special time of year in a sense that it's the beginning of a year, and there are various traditional customs practiced during this time of year. One of them is to set up one's goal for the year.

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Caterpillar

Well, I don't quite remember whether I ever had an experience of achieving them, but I'll follow the tradition anyhow this year again, and set up a couple of targets for this year.

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1.Achieve guitar skills.

I used to play a little bit o guitar both acoustic and electric when I was in my teens, though I haven't even been touching them for the past ten or so years. Last year, I came across a guitar lecturing site and that somehow seemed to bring back my rock spirit (?) again.

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2.Get this website up and running.

I guess this would be my biggest goal for a while. It took me a couple of years from the point when I didn't know what HTML actually meant, but I finally made it to the start last year.

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So from now I'd better focus on keeping it running, until the traffic increases and more people come to see it. Meanwhile, I have to do something about those adds submitted on the message board ... .

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3.Pull my life together and be a better person.

This must be the most important and also most difficult. As you might already know that I don't get along well and I'm fed up with living with my family, I am determined to pull myself together and start living my own life again.

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This time I mean it. I really really mean it. Though I think I've set up the same goal last year too ... . No. This year I'm gonna do it. I'll be safe and happy at my own place next New Year ... hopefully.

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These are the three goals I've set myself to achieve this year, and maybe it would help ( at least a little ) to make them come true, by writing it out loud where the whole world could see.

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Since I've made up my mind to brush up my guitar skills, I decided to pull out my stratocaster that my friend has left me as a memento when she left for Switzerland.

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Hey, what are these white dots on the fingerboard? Oh, boy ... . It's got all moldy. I guess I have to start from the maintenance before I even pluck a string ... . Seems like there's a long way ahead.

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Oh boy, this sure is a mess ... . My guitar must be seriously crying rather than 'gently weeping', for being left in such bad condition for years.

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The strings has turned all red and rusty, with spots of mold ( I think ) on the fingerboard that I almost mistook it for the inlay marks between the flets. The pickups were covered with dust, the black pick guard and the body surface looked whitish.

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Could this be mold too?

Well, I'll try cleaning it anyhow. And I've gotta change these strings.

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As I was feeling quite well since I had drew a Daikichi ( excellent luck, the best you can get in Omikuji ) for my Omikuji ( literally, fotune lot, a slit of paper with your fortune printed on it, something like fortune cookies only not covered with cookies ) at Hatsumoude ( visit to the shrines taken at year beginnings ), I went into a 'I'm gonna make it spick-and-span' mode.

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DIY ( do it yourself ) easy guitar cleaning, ready go. First, what I pulled out here is a cleaning cloth, you know the ones you use to clean the lenses of glasses ( you can purchase these for 100 yen in 100-yen shops ). Now wet it with some warm water, and squeeze out the water thoroughly.

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Now, put the cleaning cloth aside and let's get these strings out first. I loosened the strings and took them out to replace it later with a new set of strings, which I probably must have bought more than ten years ago. Only to discover that the 2nd B string wasn't included in the package ... .

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Ohhh, I must have used it I thought, though I couldn't remeber if I really had used it or not, and when.

Too bad, I'll have to do without it for now. But sometime soon I gotta go get a new set of strings anyhow ... .

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So I removed all the strings except the 2nd B, and started scrubbing gently on the surface of my guitar from the body to the fingerboard, and then around the pickups, all over to the pegs.

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Although how tightly the water has been squeezed out of the cleaning cloth, I had a hunch that these musical instruments are supposed to be a delicate thing. And dampness I suppose, must be something that should be avoided. So I dried it off thoroughly with a soft dry cloth, after the scrubbing.

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Now, look there. I wouldn't say it's clean as new, but it's become much better. After all the scrubbing and the polishing, my guitar recovered its shiny black appearance. Doesn't she look pretty, now. Err .. except the 2nd B string ... .

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Caterpillar

I bought a new set of guitar strings with an additional 2nd B.

I pulled out the rusty old B string and replaced it with the new one. Now, there. The guitar's ready and so am I. But what should I start with?

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I did set myself a goal for this year to achieve my guitar skills in order to be a better player, though I did not notice until now that I had absolutely no idea how to ... .

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However, I remebered that there were some exercises shown in the former talked about guitar lecture web page, and since I had that part printed out by Cow earlier, I decided to start from those exercises.

And the title of that printed out document was ' A Collection of Warm Up Exercises'.

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Well, that's just perfect to start with, isn't it? Now let me see what it says here ... hmmm, 'Exercise 1, Here is an exercise using only your left hand without any picking, to start with'.

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Oh, I see. It must be something like the warm up stretch before you actually begin the exercises. 'Hold the 6th E string with your index finger and ring finger at the same time, making sure that they're 2 frets apart.'

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... . Which fret should I start with? It doesn't say anything about the fret numbers, so I guess any fret would be all right ... . But maybe it would be better to start with the wider frets. After all, it's supposed to be something like a finger stretch.

There, now. What'd I do next?

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'Keeping your index finger and ring finger on the 6th string, now hold the 5th string with your middle finger and pinky at the same time.' Errr ... I'm not sure, but I think this must be where the fingers should be ... . Next.

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'Holding the 5th string with your middle finger and pinky, remove the index finger and ring finger off the 6th string at the same time, to place it on the 4th.'

Whaaatt??

Looks like I've bumped into a wall right from the start.

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I couldn't 'remove the index finger and ring finger off the 6th string at the same time, to place it on the 4th' ... .

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When I tried to move my index finger and ring finger off from the 6th string, the other fingers all seemed to go with it, that I couldn't keep them still pushing the 5th string onto the fingerboard.

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Hey, this was supposed to be just a stretch. This was supposed to be a warming up before actually starting to play.

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