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Autobiography Chapter 5: Don't Go To School, Learn Music

31 December 1995

I went to Phoenix in America to study. You could say it was the period of time I developed in music. I continued to graduate to study in the tenth and eleventh year there. Due to the fact at that time I was on my own going there to study, living by myself, I didn't have many friends by my side. So I felt studying there was very boring, I wasn't in any mood to go to school. I can say with a lot of guts that, there was a period of time when I was very naughty and I once played truant.

Actually the biggest reason for why I didn't want to go back to school was because I discovered that school was nothing like what I had in mind. It was really hard for me to adapt.

I then studied at a public middle school. It had 3 thousand to 4 thousand students. They are all the part of punk. They had their hair dyed different colours. They wore punk clothing to school and some even had nose rings. That school was thoroughly a "punk" school. The teachers were even more useless. They can let the students throw things around without saying anything. May I ask how can I set my mind to studying in this place?

In fact before I went to America, I had thought about paying attention to studying. I finished high school there. And then I went to university. It's a pity the studying environment was really too bad. It was too complicated and I had the heart but just not the strength to do them.

The period of days when I didn't go to school, I used my own 100 odd American dollars to buy a cheap set of drums. Plus in the house originally there were soundproof rooms. So I practised playing drums in the house. I hit once over there, I hit once over here, slowly trying it. At last I learnt the basics of rhythm. Afterwards I used my studying time and money to learn to play the guitar.

The thing I remember the most was being with the music teacher Steve. He was really good at playing the guitar. He absolutely was a first class player. At the start, I only learnt from him some traditional musicology. For example Blues, Jazz, etc.. Only afterwards did I really start to learn the guitar. Honestly, Steve had a very deep influence on my music career. He helped a lot. At that time, besides learning from him, I learned by myself. You could say, I officially put myself into the music world. I started to fall in love with music.

Afterwards I unexpectedly heard the news, something had happened to my mother and father in Hong Kong. So I immediately hurried back to Hong Kong to see what was happening. And after my family split apart, at my father's request I went to study in Tokyo music school. At that time my father told me to go to Tokyo, it was that he felt I liked these things and in the future I might be able to use them. Now that the school was willing to accept me and according to sources it's not bad. So I was given the chance to officially learn about music.

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