Medieval Marsupial Meanderings

Rick Santorum's Deevolution of Education

2012-01-26T09:02:00.002-05:00

Rick Santorum is that he's the man you hate to hate. Sure, he hasn't the kind of decorum you'd like for a presidential contender, but when placed next to Mitt Romney's plastic pandering and Newt Gingrich's calculated maneuvering, you get a feeling he says what he says because he's genuinely believes in those ideas.

The problem is that his ideas are pretty half-baked.

The first problem with this is often accurately but perhaps less than advisably explained in Latin: Post hoc, ergo propter hoc, meaning "after this, therefore because of this". It is also known that co-relation does not denote causality - or basically, a certain pattern amongst students does not define colleges as the cause.

S. Morris Engel's facetious example seems to almost parallel Santorum's:

More and more young people are attending high schools and colleges today than ever before. Yet there is more juvenile delinquency and more alienation among the young. This makes it clear that these young people are being corrupted by their education.

And this isn't even taking into account that there are plenty of people who do not define themselves as "of faith" who are nonetheless - or in certain cases, thus - entirely ethical, responsible, members of society.

The second problem is that one of the roles of a good education is to challenge your opinion, not simply to reemphasize existing ones. Even if we discount Santorum's faulty logic - itself disappointing considering he's a fairly educated man - who is that there may be fewer people of faith, but a minority with a more established faith than ever before? Said another way: if college provides a test of faith, isn't this somehow preferable to faith because we simply don't know any different?

Santorum has clearly stated his opposition towards Iran simply because it is a theocracy; one can argue that if you went to an Iranian institution, you'd probably emerge one "of faith". And the ultimate short-sightedness of people like Santorum is to not see that the separation of church and state at the end of the day serves to protect the church from the state.

In not realizing that those like the ACLU protect the private rather public nature of faith, and the true test of faith lies on Santorum himself: in having faith in young people. A faith in them to be exposed to the real world and a range of ideas, some of which match his own, and some which do not, and with discussion and debate they will each find their own path forward.

2012-01-23T09:23:00.001-05:00

Imagine yourself living beneath the waves, and hence,
You might covertly cry but fear your flatulence.
But in the other plausibility, tell me, is it art
If your tears float as bubbles, and you make waves when you fart?

Personality Tests and Musicology: the How, the Why, and Strange-Sized Boxes

2012-01-21T21:05:00.000-05:00

Over a significant part of the past year, I've observed two interesting, and occasionally bemusing, currents in social dynamics which have come across my path. One is the interest of a surprisingly high percentage of the people I know in personality tests, of the species that Myers-Briggs would belong. And the second is of a more esoteric, and in some ways more personal, conflict of ideologies in musicology.

Personality tests, say some, provide crucial clues to why people act the way they do. And the logic is fair enough; if you figured accurately - or as in this case, I simply told you - that I was an ENFJ (Extroversion, Intuition, Feeling, Judging) personality type, this may presumably lead you to predict the course of my actions. You may even read these very words and filter them accordingly; depending on your own personality type, you may decide whether any points I make make sense to you. My intuitive actions may reveal a decision-making process that either match or counter your own. In other words, and with the caveat of generalization, personality types reveal why we do the things we do.

But in recent days, I've come to think that personality types only reveal the method of delivery - the how, and not the why, of our actions. To put this in another way, it is perhaps less inevitable that you're reading these particular opinions, as it is that I've decided to pen them in this way.

Allow me to digress. I have a notebook named A Black Fat Cat, that like many meaningful things, has a unique and personal history. It's not a diary in any sense - because I'm philosophically but not particularly logically aligned against a dairy - but part of its content are thoughts in the middle of the night, the middle of the night being when I have most of my thoughts. (This being an early morning post should now give you pause.) And what I wrote recently was: "Is seriousness in content, or in delivery?"

In a sense it deals with an issue that I've faced in my struggles in producing research content, and then dealing with the resistance it faces from the hardline, and in some cases dominant strain of musicologists. I am serious about research in music, but I've also had an unusual grounding in communications, the field in which I obtained my first tertiary qualification. Some approach presentations of research seemingly having ever-present in their mind how it would look should these very words commute themselves to the esteemed pages of published proceedings. Others - with whom I am aligned - prefer to consider the audience of the day, with the idea that content may provide stature, while delivery quite simply retains one's attention. Humour, in this case and perhaps counter-intuitively does not detract from the seriousness of the research output; it simply makes sure that attention is garnered to its delivery. It comes from an understanding that it is my job to make you or keep you interested in what I do. In this regard, I think that adapting to the situation at hand is the preferable skill, and while a script or cue cards may be useful to have as a backup in case your mind goes blank, let's hope that a blank mind is not the game plan.

This of course extends beyond simple delivery. The choice of our content establishes the same approach: whether we choose to recognize research that directly relates to the performer, or whether we prefer - and some cases, for good or for ill, establish - research that exists on a more lofty and less applicable plane. For reasons that remain somewhat inexplicable to me, those in the latter category seem to be the most critical of others, in establishing a category of musicology that explains why people sometimes say, "That may be an interesting question, but really, it's just purely academic."

At one point, I considered that the concepts towards personalities and the approaches towards musicology may be parallel. And perhaps they are indeed so. Perhaps it is a simply a clash of personalities in musicologists between those who welcome the opportunity to directly connect to a room full of strangers, and those who prefer the security not only of the third person, but a topic far removed from a personal connection. But the more I mull over the like of the Myers-Briggs, the more I realise that as effective as they may be in providing a clue to one's personality, they provide little in terms of character.

And likewise, when dealing with the kind of musicologists who create barriers and attempt to place artificial constraints on how progress of thought must be - in other words, those who want to determine the boxes from which you are to choose - there are perhaps two plausible ways to consider this. One is that is simply a conflict not of ideologies, but of personalities. For whatever reason, probably beyond what even the Myers-Briggs can predict, these researchers need the security of you fitting into their personalities.

Or it could be a second plausibility: that it is less about personality than it is about character. And while it may always be easier in life to have people about you who have personality types you work best with, it comes down to character as to how people approach those who don't fit the boxes you'd like to create.

Accommodation of those who are different, throughout history of race relations, religious conflicts, civil rights, issues of gender and sexuality and political affiliation, all come down to an essential question not of which of the 16 personality types you happen to be born into, but rather what kind of person you choose to be.

Taking Debate

2012-01-10T13:04:00.001-05:00

The appeal of American politics is something like eating a lot of American food: it's probably best you don't ask why you go back for seconds. It's about the particular use of rhetoric, to be sure, but in some ways it is about a very unique and often contradictory system of politics where Democrats have a liberal social agenda but within a large government framework, and Republicans aim for limited government but a Big Brother approach to social issues.

Here are a few interesting sections from the January 7 ABC Republican debate, with the transcript available at this link.

1. Mitt Romney

"I don’t believe they decided that correctly. In my view, Roe v. Wade was improperly decided. It was based upon that same principle. And in my view, if we had justices like Roberts, Alito, Thomas, and Scalia, and more justices like that, they might well decide to return this issue to states as opposed to saying it’s in the federal Constitution. And by the way, if the people say it should be in the federal Constitution, then instead of having unelected judges stuff it in there when it’s not there, we should allow the people to express their own views through amendment and add it to the Constitution."

The idea of "unelected judges" puzzles me - the federal Constitution defines the selection process of judges. The only way it could be that you would have anything other than unelected judges would be ironically to change the federal Constitution.

The issue here is not whether you are for or against abortion rights - it's about the process of arguing a point and the larger implications towards the way the various branches of government function. It is by nature of a democracy that you don't have only judges you like; this seems like something you wouldn't have to explain to not only a potential presidential nominee but a current front-runner.

2. Rick Perry

"The idea that we allow the Iranians to come back into Iraq and take over that country, with all of the treasure, both in blood and money, that we have spent in Iraq, because this president wants to kowtow to his liberal, leftist base and move out those men and women. He could have renegotiated that time frame.

I think it is a huge error for us. We’re going to see Iran, in my opinion, move back in at literally the speed of light. They’re going to move back in, and all of the work that we’ve done, every young man that has lost his life in that country will have been for nothing because we’ve got a president that does not understand what’s going on in that region."

When you think that Iranians can move at the speed of light ("literally"!), you can guarantee I'll forget anything else you might have to say.

3. Ron Paul

"But I don’t know why a person can’t reserve a judgment and see how things turn out? You know, in many ways I see the other candidates as very honorable people, but I sometimes disagree with their approach to government."

Ron Paul's problem is not that he's not electable - it's that he doesn't look or sound electable. The actual content in the dispassionate black and white of print seems to hold more weight when the wrapping paper isn't the primary factor. And while he was talking about a specific approach to government, perhaps one of the best ways to approach government is to say that you're going to reserve judgement, and also to view your competitors as honourable people.

A World of Diversity Within a Slur

2011-10-29T03:03:00.000-04:00

The upcoming presentation - replete, if I might add, with a performance - will be of articulation in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6. This is an overview of the project, which was a component of producing the edition with Comus in the UK.

Some of us just cherish the idea that people like Mozart had everything perfectly ready in their heads and it was just a matter of putting pen to paper. Movies like Amadeus tend to create this superhuman image of the great composer, challenged only by the frustrating human confines of time and space, as it were. I am not sure if it is just that we enjoy the idea of the musical superhero - the idea of talent and of genius, and the idea that we of course need not compare ourselves to the level of Mount Olympus: not all of us are born a Hercules.

But at the end of the day, we're all on the same playing field. It's just that some run a whole lot further, and we have to think of this as inspiration rather than intimidation.

Mozart liked to shop. So do I. The idea that Bach made mistakes? Say it ain't so.

And mistakes in the 17th Century are far more interesting than those today, simply because Bach did not have the chance to just press the 'Print' button again. Even when they occurred at the start of a page, parchment was expensive, and in some cases it was necessary to just scratch out notes and write letter names for clarification:

Excerpt from the Prelude to the lute suite, BWV995

The examination of facsimiles of the manuscripts provide a singular experience in the process of research. As Robert Oliver said in regards to keeping in mind what Bach had in mind, and in reference to the manuscript: "That's what is so wonderful to sit and just look at what he wrote. That's his message to posterity. Everything he can tell is there somewhere."

The production of the Comus edition of the Brandenburg Concerto No. 6, while being primarily for the scordatura viola substitutions of the viole da gamba, provides an interesting look at the articulation markings. More specifically, it allows us a look into seeming discrepancies in the use of slurs - and how our attitudes towards these inconsistencies reflect our musical attitudes and presumptions.

Take for example this section (click on any image for an enlarged view in a separate tab):

Example 1

And the apparently "missing slurs" in this section:

Example 2

The problem of course is that we have no clear indication whether something is 'intentionally absent'. While we may treasure Henle for having pages which state "This page intentionally left blank to facilitate page turns", Bach did not have quite the luxury of saying "Don't add slurs here - it's just cooler this way".

And while I jest about Bach's coolness (though who would ever doubt Bach's coolness), it is indeed a remarkable compositional process called generic mixing. This is where a composer alludes to a different genre - or indeed, many different genres - within one work. Example 1 is within a minor modulation and it was basically a small interlude where a solo viola concerto was displayed ever so briefly. Sample 2 was within a quasi-fugal (some would prefer calling this 'imitative') section of some five instruments. Note that in this context, what some might consider to be 'missing' actually serves a purpose - in the parallel thirds that appear as part of that canonic process.

Example 3

This goes far beyond a two-instrument conversation:

Sample 4

Understanding these connections is important in preserving the intent, in my opinion. Take for example, this, from the one-time authoritative Bach-Gessellshaft edition:

Sample 5

which adds a "correction" to what is considered a missing slur (Viola 1, second beat), when this intentionally absent slur has the purpose of emphasizing the two-part quasi-fugal section:

Sample 6

Ironically, though we like to have this idea of the superhuman composer, we sometimes jump to conclusions when it comes to 'mistakes'.

The idea of internal variation is crucial in the appreciation of Bach, in my opinion, as the composer who basically took the simplest of ingredients and showed us how many flavours could appear. That perhaps is the true definition of "extraordinary": creating something remarkable out of something ordinary.

Angels, Devils, and the Mistuned Instrument

2011-09-10T23:24:00.001-04:00

This is a collection of images I plan to use for my lecture on scordatura at the Royal Northern College of Music in Manchester, titled "Angels, Devils, and the Mistuned Instrument: The Past, Present, and Future of Scordatura".

I figured this may be a way around some connection issues in uploading directly to Prezi.

1. "Tuning is too mainstream."

It was probably a joke, but it really does describe scordatura.

2. Cross Tuning

The Biber sonatas are alternatively called the "Mystery" or "Rosary" sonatas - both are correct, being part of the longer title Sonatas on the Mysteriesof the Rosary. Some say the resonances have some symbolic gesture - the Resurrection Sonata has additional, visual symbolism.

3. Diabolus in musica

Since the devil stoppedplaying the bagpipes around the end of the medieval period, the violin has beenhis preferred instrument of choice… The demonic tritone falls on the sixthsemitone above (and below) the tonic as opposed to the perfect fifth. – Janet K. Halfyard
Six being the Devil's number – with scordatura used by Mahler and Saint-Saëns to depict the Devil as a fiddler, playing to a band of witches.

4. Post-Tonal Scordatura

The use of scordatura in a post-tonal context comes in various forms. Larry Polansky decided to utilize only natural harmonics, and tune instruments to produce them fitting just intonation, rather than even-tempered tuning. A guide was constructed for the player, to know how each harmonic would veer from what one would expect.

The use of "dynamic scordatura" - the movement of a string in the middle of a performance, rather than preparing a tuning in advance, seen here in Suesse's Luft.

5. Resonant Frequencies

My research extends the use of scordatura in calibrating tuning to resonant frequencies of instruments.

Everyone has heard of a singer shattering a glass with anote to which the glass naturally resonated; the circumstances must be mostunusual, or trumpet players would cause a lot of damage. – Sir James Beaument

Basically one looks for the frequencies in which an object - in this case a musical instrument - vibrates best. From xkcd by Randall Munroe:

This has led to a model of scordatura, which will be published in String Praxis in the next week or so:

I do believe that having a model is useful in itself, but I couldn't help but note what Dilbert would say:

An Unvarnished Look at the MPO, the MPYO and Music-Making in Malaysia

2011-01-27T06:16:00.010-05:00

Malaysia has a rather odd way of celebrating excellence. In sports, where representing your country is a given part of the game (well, unless you’re from China), the government provides incentives in the shape of financial rewards, your occasional car or even a house, and eventually a Datukship. In some cases – most notably Datuk Nicol David and Datuk Lee Chong Wei – this is certainly well-earned.

However, in other fields where representing your country is distinctly not part of the game the governmental policy seems to be to wait till Malaysians have left for greener pastures and prospered, then to give them a Datukship in hopes of laying claim to a part of the fame they have achieved. Worse yet, using the term “Malaysian-born” for the ones who not only don’t live in the country, but who have opted for citizenship of another country. (And ironically, who would probably still be Malaysian citizens if the government allowed dual citizenship.) We see this in academics and scientific discoveries, and we see this in the celebration in the press of an exemplary Malaysian student in a Singaporean school, somehow without the obvious discussion of why a bright Malaysian mind would prefer to go across the Causeway. We see this more than ever in film – when’s the last time you saw Datuk Michelle Yeoh in a Malaysian production? – and with Shahrukh Khan, it seems we also want a taste of the fame of those who don’t even have a clue they’ve been given a Datukship.

And yes, this happens in the field of music as well. Don’t believe me? Just Google “Malaysian born” and see what you get.

To put it starkly: we haven’t built a proper arts academy, conservatory or school of the arts in the same way as one builds facilities for the development of sports. Instead, we wait till some other country has obtained our talent, very likely by way of having offered them scholarships, and then we ‘claim’ them with a Datukship. Something tells me that you don’t have to get a Ph.D. in order to call out this strategy for its dumbship.

I hear a voice at the back of my own head saying, “Whoa, hold on a sec, surely that’s going a bit far. After all, Petronas built this amazing hall, established the Malaysian Philharmonic Orchestra, and in more recent years put together a pretty decent national youth orchestra.” And there’s some truth in that.

But here’s the catch: when you define Petronas on par with the government, it opens up that policy to the same scrutiny you would give a country’s ministry of education. Which is quite different from whether YTL would prefer to fund the Kuala Lumpur Symphony Orchestra or the KL Performing Arts Centre; quite frankly, as a private entity and patron, YTL can do whatever it wants with its money.

If we choose to be ungracious about it, the whole MPO effort is short-sighted and non-sustainable, opting to rent an entity and label it as an achievement. Once the MPO toyed with the idea of an apprenticeship, but it seems even a rent-to-own system is asking too much.

If we choose to be gracious about it, the whole MPO effort has been akin to trickle-down economics. This all comes with the faith that when you put something there for the best, it will have a multiplier effect of sorts – one could say, a reverse approach of micro-financing. The idea is that when you inspire people by showing them the MPO’s international level, or bring together the best of Malaysian youth, somehow this will have a transformative effect on the nation as a whole.

One could say that as a concept it has some history of success elsewhere, with Dr Marc Rochester’s blog recently dealing with this to some extent. For whatever reason, however, it just has not worked in Malaysia. While we have gems of teachers like Miranda Playfair, who was known to have lessons with hours of bonus time, and Orsolya Korcsolan and Gergely Sugar, who gave free masterclasses in Penang, and Joost Flach, who has developed winds in Ipoh, we also have too many stories of MPO members who revel a bit too much in their expatriate status. There are too many stories of MPO members who circumvent the system of subsidized teaching through the organization in order to charge RM250 an hour privately for lessons which often go undertime. How many of these stories are accurate is indeterminate, but it did seem strange that a while back, it was insisted that the MPYO members provide the names of their teachers under the guise of forming some level of engagement and furthering a larger plan of music education. Being one of those teachers, I told my student that I didn’t expect even one email, and sadly my cynicism was proven correct, leading to my suspicion that it was a front for hunting down the MPO members who, for want of a better word, led to a black market in music education.

The larger point, though, is that the little island nation to our south decided instead to offer scholarships, bringing back newly-minted professional Singaporean musicians to their own country via bonds attached to those grants. And as I mentioned to Dr Marc, if both the MPO and the SSO were to face an untimely demise, there would be far more Singaporean professionals remaining, than Malaysian ones – not because of a lack of talent, but rather which magnet brought that talent on board.

The MPYO, unbeknownst to most of their members, is facing a similar issue. They can regard their orchestra as the elitist instution of their generation, or they can choose to take their new training as an obligation to not only trickle-down, but truly multiply the talents available in their hometowns. Not surprisingly akin to the MPO, there are examples of both of these, and in some circles the bad apples are indeed spoiling the bunch. In others, up-and-coming musicians are gaining the respect not only of their peers but of the generation before them. This fork in the road, above all else, will be the defining decision of today’s generation of aspiring musicians. Karma-like, it will determine how their own aspirations will be treated by those who established a foundation, well before the MPO began, and with lesser funding and far more challenges.

It comes down to this: when you build the Sepang F1 track, it doesn’t automatically make Malaysians into champion race drivers. It might work in places where the distance between Main Street and the race track are closer, and it is up to us to bridge that gap. This comes from institutions like Petronas, as well as the public in scrutinizing how their national property is utilized – and most importantly, the young musicians, deciding what their definition of talent really is: the ability to show, or the ability to share.

Andrew Filmer

On Developing the Arts in Malaysia... and Singapore

2011-01-25T09:49:00.002-05:00

I've often come across times when it seemed appropriate to compare and contrast the decisions of supporting the arts in Malaysia and in Singapore. Reading Dr Marc Rochester's recent blog post touching on that area, I couldn't help but submitting my two cents in the comments, duplicated below. For the record, it's fine if Malaysia prefers to show that Petronas can buy a great orchestra rather than that Petronas can make Malaysians as good as the ones they can rent. I don't believe in anyone owing anyone opportunities - for each and every one of us, it's about making things happen for ourselves. But if the ones who do find their own way don't find their own way back, well, look in the mirror when looking for a culprit rather than saying that the brain drain is because they somehow lack patriotism.

Hello Dr Marc,

As a newcomer to your blog, I must say that your writing comes across as being not only knowledgeable and well organized, but from someone who cares about the development of the arts - and thus, best wishes to you.

I have a somewhat differing opinion about the best strategy towards artistic progress, in that I feel that it is not always a choice between a 'domination of foreign talent' and encouraging local ones. Rather, I believe the solution is somewhere in between. As you have already noted, the MPO, despite its presence in the country for over a decade, has not radically upgraded the standard of music here - a sign that the 'domination' model is at the very least, not working in this setting. Whatever might be lacking in the consistency of the SSO on the other hand, due to locally provided scholarships to the orchestra more Singaporeans have received international level training, and due to the bonds attached to those scholarships, have returned to Singapore.

Put another way, if some catastrophic event resulted in both the MPO and the SSO meeting an untimely demise tomorrow, there would be a far higher tally of Singaporean professionals than Malaysian ones who remain as a lasting product of expenditure towards national artistic development.

Don't get me wrong: much like the sport of pole vaulting, setting the bar high is a great idea. It's just that after you set the bar high, you have to make sure that the locals have a pole with which to jump.

Best wishes,

Andrew Filmer

Zoom Out, Bro

2010-12-17T22:00:00.006-05:00

I've been back in Malaysia about two weeks, and I'm getting the feeling that my trips back - two years when I lived in Thailand, two years when I lived in the States, and now when I'm living in New Zealand - are all about reminding myself of the big picture. Not the least in that I've made some really close friends in New Zealand in a rather short amount of time - still, with friends and family here in Malaysia. Sweet as.

I remember back in Indiana when a new acquaintance showed me the local mall, as if this poor thing from the Third World country had never seen one in his life, and in that spirit asked me what I thought (read: how impressed you must be!). I recall saying something along the lines of, "Well, I guess if you take this mall, double its width and add three floors, you'd get one wing of one of the malls back in Malaysia where I used to shop until it became yesterday's news when something bigger came along."

Thankfully no one in Wellington shows off Lambton Quay like it's heaven sent, which makes me appreciate its rather quaint setting. And yet Malaysia never ceases to surprise me, most recently with Straits Quay - not really for its size (when you have a mall in KL which houses within it a theme park including a seven-storey high roller coaster, it gets hard to beat), but rather that when it advertises a picture of yachts with the words "fun by the sea", it doesn't tell you that the last time you were in this area, it was the sea. Yup, we reclaim land so quickly that as my sister pointed out, at this rate, the second link from the island to the mainland will be made redundant when we run out of ocean.

On one hand, we now have a "Penang Philharmonic", which is basically the Penang Symphony Orchestra for whatever reason not being able to hold on to the name of the orchestra it sought - and was successful at - overrunning through the less-than-subtle wheeling and dealings of state politics. And you have the Chairman's message shooting itself in the foot in the first paragraph, and then acting like Barney the purple dinosaur in the last. It's almost like having Dakota Fanning in a M. Night Shyamalan movie. That is, the screaming Dakota Fanning of War of the Worlds rather than that of Charlotte's Web, and the Shyamalan of The Village rather than The Sixth Sense, if you get what I mean. On the other hand, it reminds you that music is it's own judge in the end, no matter what name you'd like to call yourself.

I get reminded that in preparation for seminars here to really keep things basic - the problem with doctoral research is that you spend that much time with a magnifying glass that you sort of lose the bigger picture. In a sense it's an unusual place that there are particularly talented music students who can't recall who wrote the Eine Kleine, and yet you can get a random gigs paying you 200 bucks for half-an-hour's worth of music. I'm not sure what it means for long-term prospects - how long I'd like to keep painting in broad-strokes in sessions on music history and music appreciation. On one hand it's fun, and it's more affective and effective (not to mention potentially lucrative) for the gigantic pool of music students who have this as a significant missing link in their education, and on the other it would take away somewhat from producing niche research which would contribute to the field, but a field that's fields away from here. Who knows, I may be able to find an interesting balance in the end, and for now, it's just nice to zoom out, bro, and have a look at the gift of possibilities.

Lecture-Recital Preview: Instrumentation in Bach's Brandenburg Concerto No. 6

2010-11-15T05:36:00.003-05:00

Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 Instrumentation on Prezi

Alright, the embedding isn't the best, and if you want to look up close, the link would probably do better. That being said, this isn't like a YouTube video - you can actually interact within the box, by zooming in, zooming out, or selecting different sections.

University Life, and the Life of the University

2010-08-13T21:30:00.003-04:00

Sometimes I think I've been entirely developed in a university Petri dish. Or rather, not one in a university, but one of universities. From growing up on the campus of Michigan State to studying in a school here in New Zealand owned and placed on two different universities, it's been an interesting time.

I seem to have this ideal of what a campus is, as a place where all ideas are welcome and the life of a university thrives around social meeting places where all great thoughts converge, then float back to lecture halls. Which happens at times, but the ideal seems to break when you get young aspiring academics defending positions not because the position is stronger but because they've spent time preparing that position. When you have students with potential and intelligence - but are just to lazy to apply it. And when you have a bunch of graduate students who are bury themselves in offices, and after a period of enculturation they're convinced that while knowledge may be infinite, the universe extends but to the four walls which surround them.

And if I'm totally honest, after living, working, and studying on half a dozen campuses, I suppose I've been guilty of all three charges at some point in my life. And I'm fairly sure I have a tendency to slip into one or more of them on occasion. It's probably a good thing that it happens too, so that when you have right sense to get back on track you're reminded that you're human, and in doing so you better appreciate the humanness in others. Maybe.

Speaking of humanness, gosh man, it's been one of those times when you just wish you knew what people were saying beyond what they actually say, ya know? Or if there really is anything between the lines. I should see if there's any definitive research on mixed messages. Ironic it would be, if there were.

I spent the first semester of this year getting all these crazy, wonderful ideas. Some of them worked, some of them didn't - the ones that did are pretty cool. Topping the list is finding a way to recreate the sound of a viola da gamba with basically what violists already have in their hands. And in doing so, also finding a way of making cheap instruments sound twice as good as they usually do, if only you could teach people to read music in more than one way. Then I've spent this semester doing all the other things that doctoral students do - preparing papers that fit the requirements of a successful conference paper submission (but don't really fit your own research), preparing a piece for its technical components rather than its musical ones (which makes me feel more like a trained monkey than a musician or a researcher). I have a neat folder of related literature for an article on Bach that actually does fit in with my overall research - a crystallization of all the important bits from dozens of sources, notes from personal acoustical experiments and after devouring a whole pile of books. With all the other things ongoing, its been on the backburner so long that it looks like I have to go back and read it again for the third time. And I swear every day it looks at me as if saying in Gollum's voice, "Master is tricksy, Master is false, Master has neglected... his... PRECIOUS!"

University mascot? Who would have guessed, eh.

Source: www.luisprada.com

Today I ended up late because I checked the bus schedule and thought it was a Sunday. Welcome to your Ph.D. work, where you may have cool ideas but you don't know what day of the week it is, and where your research slowly calls you back to Bach, the one and only Lord of the Strings.

Eulogy: May you rest in peace, as your lives resound in ours

2010-05-28T06:21:00.003-04:00

Early one morning, I walked up the Penang Free School steps to perform the hardest duty of my time in the institution that I've always cherished: I had to write a obituary for a friend who had died of cancer.

More than a decade later, I feel a sense of duty once again to write a eulogy to two others who have just fallen to this terrible disease: Mrs S. Amrik, and Leng Kavern. Both who lived up to that solemn motto of our alma mater, Fortis Atque Fidelis: Strong And Faithful.

The only reason I had the great privilege of knowing Mrs Amrik was because she got tired of gardening. She had completed a distinguished career culminating in being Principal of one of the convent high schools in Penang. And after a few months of pottering around in retirement, she decided that gardening wasn’t the thing for her and she applied to go back not into the realm of administration, but into the classroom to continue to shape minds – and lives – of yet another generation.

She was nothing short of a force of nature, not only in the sense of her impact but in the humble way in which she accomplished the great. Some of the most challenging students in the school, who routinely had issues with just about every disciplinary teacher, would sit quietly and attentively to this charming lady. She wielded no loud voice or menacing cane to achieve this – just the oft-forgotten skill of actually being interested in listening to what students had to say. Plus she picked Macbeth, and wasn’t shy in talking about its rather sordid themes of murder, incest and parricide. She realized, and made us realize, that Shakespeare had written it as a tragedy, and not as Little Bo Beep. Seeing the limitations of the classroom, she brought students to her house over the weekend to show us the video of a performance of Macbeth, and ended up talking to us about menopause and how best to empathize with people going through it.

I was the star pupil of English Literature, and perhaps she realized then that this kid “writes novels” in exams, but lacked a certain art within the spectator sport of quoting from just about any part of the play you’d like. She made it a point to have me meet someone else from my class who didn’t quite bother to quote as much as to compare Macbeth and Lady Macbeth to Bonnie and Clyde. In doing so, she started a friendship that lasts today – not long ago I played the violin at his wedding. And she also made me realize the value of relating things to images we can grasp. Looking back at my admissions and scholarship application, I now hear her voice echoing through my choice of mentioning the perception of the viola as the Cinderella of instruments.

On Teachers’ Day, you could count on there being no clear space on her table, with cards adorning every corner. When invited to give the Principal’s speech one day, instead of the usual hum-drum of work hard and succeed, she decided to tell us that life doesn’t have to be like football games where someone needs to lose in order for you to win – that the real victories are the ones we all share.

A few of us teachers and students continued to be close long after both she and I left school. We had the occasional lunch or dinner, sharing stories and discussing how our lives have continued on very different paths – from careers to weddings, politics, and memories of times shared in the hallowed halls of Penang Free School. What a thing we were granted that the last time we met, it was the largest gathering of her old students, now doctors, engineers, academics – and mothers and fathers too. We will never have another one of these again, but her voice, that charm and twinkle in her eye, will continue to live on.

Honestly, maybe I said two sentences to Leng Kavern when we in school together. I simply didn’t know the guy. But there’s something special about the class of ’96, in that no matter whether we liked or disliked each other when we were in school, years down the road we all feel a sense of brotherhood. We have a shared history, an era of the passion of Frees, winning trophies and prizes at the state-level and beyond and its unabashedly proud sense of identity. But this was also the era of our seniors’ fireworks-laden revolutionary protest of ’94 and the crazy anonymous tramp who came and pooped on tables in the middle of the night. Brothers we are, and that’s how it became news when Kavern was diagnosed with a rare form of cancer – the first of its kind in the whole of Malaysia.

And one day when Kavern realized that I happened to move down the road from him, he decided to give me a call to meet up. I was a bit surprised, because I didn’t really know him. What surprised me more was that was exactly the point why he wanted to meet up – because we were brothers of ’96 but we didn’t know each other yet. And it was about time for that to change. His blog chronicling his battle with cancer is called “ntsocialism” – from how I understand it, because he considered himself antisocial when he was younger, and how he now grasped life so very differently.

He was supported by this wonderful bunch of fellow former formmates who had known him well since school-days, who stood by his side at home and at the hospitals. They updated all of us on his condition, helped to organize meets and fundraisers. On only one small occasion was I really privileged to spend some little time in their shoes, being the only one near enough to Hospital UKM the day before of his operations.

The way to the hospital was a maze, and the hospital is a maze within that maze. When I finally found the ward, he was asleep and while waiting I had a chat with the nurses. There was something from the way they talked about him that seemed to me that the warmth of his character touched them as it did us. One of the nurses told me that when we are around he puts up a strong front within his own fears. He was always the model of positive thinking, of making the most of every moment in his life, and now he became even more so an image of bravery within struggle.

When he woke up, it was as if that instead of me visiting him as a patient, that I was a guest in his hospital! He took me on the grand tour of where he was, who his neighbours in the ward were, and onwards through the building. He walked me to the door, and only for the briefest moment mentioned his understanding of how he might not be around to talk to me in 24 hours. And how he looked forward to every moment of any celebration.

Both Mrs Amrik and Kavern led lives which had that one important element: they provided those of us who had the gift of knowing them a real meaning to that much-underestimated term: role models. I believe as much as anyone can possibly do in life, they continue to exist not just as faded memories, but as present models in life on how to take each day, seize it, and make it better for one’s fellow man. They are not just people of yesterday, but ideals for today, and tomorrow. I can think of no better aspiration for my own life, and wherever they are, I hope they know that towards this aspiration they are my inspirations. In doing so, perhaps this eulogy, is really, that you live in me.

In the Company of Music

2010-04-04T22:55:00.007-04:00

When I first started in a small Suzuki-like violin programme, I remember someone telling my mother that it was a good move as kids who stick in the programme don't end up in bad company later on. I think the actual words were along the lines of "how many violent kids do you know who play the violin?"

(Ironically, I ended up playing the viola. But that's another story.)

There's an interesting perspective to that though. That there are people who get their kids enrolled in music programmes not just for the intellectual development or just the enjoyment of sound - but because of a kind of culture that it promotes. That music kids are good kids.

The societal dynamics of how that goes on beyond childhood is entirely a new matter, of course. In the States you have high school students who proudly wear jerseys with orchestra badges, to in a way match the young American football stars with jerseys of their own. In Penang about eight years ago, there was a whole debate as to whether playing in an orchestra should be counted alongside the Scouts, karate teams, and most interestingly school bands - in the end, is the definition of a "uniformed body" simply being part of a something that promotes teamwork and hard work.

In the end, there is a kind of exclusion - being a "cool" scout patrol leader commanding his group of 15 devout followers - that somehow didn't quite apply to someone being able to play Bach from memory. I think sometimes the backlash is a created sense of elitism. That a young student grasps and displays musical initials like "ATCL" up in order to match someone else's "ATL". And in the end we lose sight of the larger picture that it matters less if you are indeed an Associate of the Trinity College of Music or an Assistant Troop Leader than what you do with the skills you possess. When I took Penang Free School's 1st Georgetown South Troop up on a camping trip, I decided to perch myself on a tree and observe, and noted a scout leader go round trying to help the loners get better integrated to the rest of the team. And at that point it didn't matter to me what initials he had before or after his name - or in a different perspective, I'm glad he soon gained the letters ATL which I think he certainly lived up to.

We in music are challenged every day to live up to these ideals of a team that is a right place for good kids that grow up to be good adults. We are challenged by those among us who actively work to break up that idea and that ideal, like those who created this blog with what seems to the the sole intent of ignorantly insulting others in the comments section. And to add cowardice to maliciousness, to do so anonymously, not taking responsibility for one's words.

At times like these I am reminded to value the times when musicians do act in ways which help their fellow man, even if it's just what to do in the break time of a long and tiring orchestra rehearsal:

It reminds me that we always have choices, small ones and big ones, and those choices make up for one's true value - one's true measure.

The Adventure Begins

2010-02-24T03:53:00.005-05:00

It all comes down to time. The accident and injury, the delay between Indiana and applying for the next step, the decision to postpone things so I could get here at the start of the Southern Hemisphere's first semester - it all has its place in some way, at the end of the day. There was enough time for me to pick up badminton from my mom, learn my dad's recipe for mashed potatoes, which has earned the approval of my flatmates, and mahjong sessions with my sister and I competing with which stuffed animal provides a better aura over our chips. There was enough time to get a real feel for where the Penang music scene is and is going, and coincidentally, enough time to read a book whose title starts with the words "Time Enough".

And it's at the right time of my life, I realized after a week here in New Zealand. As accessible the city is (I can find anything from groceries to mahjong sets within a walking distance, though some things do carry city prices), and as friendly the people are, it's the right time to be here because I'm like the chicken that took time to bake. I now know how to get straight to cooking, or to know how to navigate myself around a town - and well, for that last point it helps that I also now own a GPS. That kind of thing.

The city really is what they say it is - all the amenities you'd expect of a city with the feel of a town - I read that months ago but I didn't really get what it meant until I was actually walking through the streets, feeling the pace of people and the size of the streets and the kind of shops and cafes and hotels. It has a small touch of the charm of Chicago, but more of the feel of a place like Melbourne. The people tend to have a - well I was going to say moderate, but I think the correct word is inclusive - attitude, are really quite friendly. At the same time they aren't afraid to speak their mind and are particularly eco-conscious:

The first week has been adventurous, sometimes out of necessity as I needed to find the best places to buy things, and to test both the walk and the bus routes to get between Massey and Victoria universities in order to choose where I want my office. I settled on Massey for real academic and pragmatic reasons, though I can't say it isn't helpful to have the best fruits and vegetables as well as the Asian food store next door. That, and even the most hard-core violist would find it difficult to get lost with Wellington's clearest landmark on Massey's doorstep, the War Memorial:

And other times it's actually voluntary, which somehow seems strange for my rather sedentary tendencies (i.e. find the curry chicken paste and the bok choy and go home coz you're all set for the next three years). The Te Papa national museum will take days to completely explore, and visiting the harbour is worthwhile.

All things said, an excellent start - and am looking forward to meeting more people, especially the fellow music students, when term starts on Monday.

Met a Four

2010-01-19T12:57:00.004-05:00

Sometimes it's true that it's easy to find metaphors where none were meant to be. But at other times it's hard not to notice the juxtapositions that life puts in front of you. Like a Hong Kong sampan - right in the district of millionaire yachts:

It makes it sink in a little more when the tour guide tells you one of them (I think the one covered up) is used by the head of our Malaysian-based Public Bank:

But in the spirit of Cuti-Cuti Malaysia, we should search for meaning in our own land, but at the risk of being cynical, I do have to wonder whether when out of the holiday season, we have to be careful that our Merdeka spirit - and the Malaysian unity behind it - isn't hidden in scaffolding as well.

2010, Here I Come

2010-01-03T07:55:00.002-05:00

It's the Year of the Tiger up ahead, and since I'm leaving for the land of the sheep on the second day of Chinese New Year, I thought it good to usher in the luck of the feline.

Actually, I forgot to add this in the 2009 end-year post and it was too adorable to not share.

Ending With A Flash

2009-12-26T12:57:00.012-05:00

Well, not exactly, since when it comes to cameras I'm rather keen on natural lighting.

I've decided to finish this decade rather simply, with a bunch of assorted - or not sorted - photos. Much like life, sorted in some ways, but oftentimes not, and perhaps its best that way.

Nature is artwork, and I wish my photography better captured this.
I really like things which dangle and suspend themselves in midair.

Look carefully. There's a bug there disguised as a stick. A role model to violists everywhere.

Look closely - the sign says, "Modern Hotel". Every time I pass this I'm reminded that if something states something which should be taken as understood, something's fishy. Like "I'm a honest politician."

The view from my room, of the neighbour's massive renovations - apparently to rare dogs. Before this, the entire area now grey was a lawn, with one extra tree. Tan Dun or Steve Reich would have a field day with the sounds they make from nine-plus every morning.

Took this in Perak, where I found it ironic considering the political coup sending the National Justice Party back to "Square One". I've always favoured underdogs, especially in the case of Perak, but more than just sometimes these opposition folks have to prove they're worth rooting for.

I like many things about heritage buildings, like this obelisk-like pillar at Suffolk House.

It doesn't have any apparent use, which makes me like it all the better.

And inside, I feel like an oversized chesspiece. All it needs is a small bottle on the floor marked, "Drink Me."

Happy new year everyone. And may the flash be with you.

(Or not.)

Do Re Mi Zap Zap Zoom Zoom!

2009-12-05T22:21:00.005-05:00

I've opened the door towards using Fourier analysis (FFT - Fast Fourier Transform) in my upcoming research. Thanks to an old friend from Thailand, I managed to get freeware called Audacity late last night - and tested it with my voice:

This is going to be interesting once I get started on using it for instruments. The questions that arise are 1. how far I can use it in musicological research without needing external mathematical expertise in interpreting the analysis, and 2. how sensitive current technology is towards analyzing sounds which are pretty close to start with. One way or another, this will be an interesting adventure.

Life as a Musician: A Very Human Music

2009-11-20T01:23:00.000-05:00

The number of things that one has to do to make music tends to distract from what it’s really all about.

We start off as students, and many of us get into this about whether we’re first clarinet or second clarinet, and whether we’ve some level of music exams that too many young people equate to actual musicianship. Then we’re at a stage when hey, this music thing could be serious, and there’s this massive planning about travelling to get high level lessons, or thinking about investing in an instrument and how much it’s going to cost and what we can afford. And suddenly you find out there’s a bow or a mouthpiece that you never knew you needed and you can’t imagine living another day without it. And then you enter university studying music, or dive straight in to the working world and you try to squeeze 25 hours out of a day which stubbornly wants to stick to 24, struggling in personal practice in that push to be all you can be while teaching or working part time to to make sure you have enough to get something to eat. You start thinking about new applications, auditions, competitions. As you get more into the industry, you realize that if you want to be involved in certain projects you’ve got to take a role in actually organizing it, and then you get into scheduling of rehearsals and booking a hall and licensing and sponsorship. And then it’s networking, meeting the right people, worrying about whether you said the right things at the right time, and self-examining which part of each of us is most useful in fitting in to this giant jigsaw puzzle.

Investments. Practice rooms. Arrangements. Scheduling. Organizing. Networking. Public relations. All these things which make up being part of making music, and all necessary in moving ahead in the world. It’s a real world, and these are all elements of that reality.

But the best parts of making music are the things that don’t really get mentioned when we think about a career path. For many it’s the parents that start us all off on some instrument because they think it’s going to good for you not so much as a future job but in developing who we are – and for some, when that money for lessons doesn’t come easy. It’s about the teacher who knows better than to argue with you wanting that exam certificate but tries to make sure that in process you get more inspired about the music itself than the piece of paper. The friend who knocks on the door of your practice room and reminds you to take a break before your arms fall off or your lungs explode. The fellow musicians who welcome you back when you return after your studies elsewhere – or welcome you in a new role as a colleague and partner. And musicians who introduce you to others and help you to find a place in their world. Sometimes because some time, somewhere, somebody did the same for them. Sometimes because some time, somewhere, somebody didn’t do the same for them, and that’s the opportunity to make the world a little bit better than the way they found it.

For every one of these very special people, there are probably a dozen backstabbing others, or more often those who are just more in it for themselves than anything else. But then, that’s exactly why we call them special.

People. At the end of the mad race for success, that’s what music is really all about.

It's All About Communication

2009-10-06T09:53:00.002-04:00

It really is, when it comes down to it. Music is a clear extension of it... there's some quote from some musician that if he could express what music intends to express through words alone, he'd have stuck to words. But since words aren't enough - he's a musician.

These days there seems to be a new ad blitz on milk products that repeat the well-worn assertion that you should drink a particular product so your kids will grow up, "big and strong". I think it's time for a new paradigm, use the fear factor and all - say, drink this dammit, or your kids will be weak and stupid!

Someone pointed out to me recently that our road signs are too polite, especially when asking us to slow down. Singapore, apparently, gets to the point: "SLOW DOWN NOW!"

Whatever people imply from road signs, I do hope that they don't take too much from our government websites. I got the following under Soalan Lazim (Frequently Asked Questions) under the Immigration Department's website:

Q : Saya telah bergaduh dengan isteri saya dan beliau telah mengambil tindakan mengoyak PMA saya. Apakah tindakan yang perlu saya ambil untuk menggantikan pasport tersebut?

(Translation: I have fought with my wife, and she has taken the action of ripping up my Malaysian International Passport. What action should I take to replace my passport?)

Sheesh!

Keeping it Moving

2009-09-15T13:27:00.008-04:00

You know those scenes in movies where the writer just can't get it right, crumples up a sheet of paper and tosses it into the trash can, where you see about a dozen other failed attempts? Well, I've been having that with this blog posting and I have to tell you, it's a shade less artistic when you click 'select-all' and press 'delete'. Some things get lost in the technology I guess.

I've been back in Malaysia since May of 2008, which makes it fairly long interim before heading to New Zealand in February 2010. There's a certain restlessness that comes from this - a lot of the musical opportunities require a commitment to stay on longer. In this industry there are really no part-time summer jobs, though there are sporadic freelancing possibilities. The MPO auditions every two years. And the local universities... well, shall we say they function in ways complex. Basically, I realized when I turned 30 that I'm in the centuries-old tradition of the wandering musician. The vagabond. The gypsy.

On the positive side though it's given me the opportunity to help fresh some old networks, and build a whole lot of new branches from them. The plan is to get some name recognition, show a bit of what you're capable of, and the next time I'm back for summer holidays have something to do. I've explored with a certain amount of success the art of organizing a one-off event, whether it's a masterclass, workshop, or seminar. The trickier thing is creating a niche where one doesn't quite exist yet. Which makes it somewhat difficult to pitch to people in the market who aren't familiar with it, which isn't that surprising: you can find out a lot easier if someone is a good musician, but it takes a lot more groundwork to establish oneself as a marketable speaker, facilitator, or presenter. To make it even more complex, there's also quite a few differences between being a good musician or a good presenter, and knowing how to market oneself.

But we do what we can. Sometimes you know someone's taking advantage of you but you keep quiet and keep going because it nonetheless doesn't mean you still can't get something positive from the situation. Sometimes you have to push those who find the idea of a fair symbiosis interesting, but have a tough time keeping a momentum going.

And once in a while you have someone selflessly supportive, and you have to make sure you live up to that goodwill. Since my return, on the top of this very, very short list is Brian Tan and all the others at KLPac.

I just wish that that list was somewhat longer, that we had a more inviting atmosphere somehow. We're looking our first real batch of people going into the field with formal training in the viola - myself from the States, Joycelyn in a year from Germany, Chin Ning a little after from Taiwan, and Jebat from Singapore. How many of them would aim for a primary role as an orchestral musician we have to wait and see, but I hope that that does not become the avenue of choice simply because the other choices aren't as stable or worse, unappreciated. I'm clearly biased, but I do hope that when the time comes, the success of music, the success of appreciating the diversity of musicians, and the success of keeping our best of them, will not lean so much on the goodwill of a few, but will really be the spirit of the musical community, particularly the way I've seen done in the Phillippines and to an extent Singapore and Thailand. Because we have to get out of this now somewhat self-fulfilling prophecy that the highest level of Malaysian classical music scene - and ends - with the limits of the MPO. And realizing that if we really, really want to appreciate music, we start with the arena of possibilities. And the celebration of the spectrum as a whole.

A Purple-Toned Celebration: Showcasing the Viola

2009-09-02T13:22:00.004-04:00

Concert programme introduction for An Afternoon of Chamber Music, Sunday, September 6, 2PM.

The viola has been called many things, from the “Cinderella” of the orchestra, to the mysteriously “purple-toned” instrument.* Those who have met the unique viola on the playing field have ranged from the world’s best violinists such as Yehudi Menuhin, Nigel Kennedy and Maxim Vangerov, to more unlikely characters like Jimi Hendrix, newly-crowned American Idol Kris Allen and the fictional Fantastic Four character The Thing.

Perhaps the magic of the viola is that just a shade more so than the signature grandeur of the trumpet or the characteristically ever-graceful harp, the viola’s triumph is in its versatility of colours in truly shaping itself to the hands and ideas of its player. Its imperfect dimensions (somewhat squashed as the ideal size for its pitch range being too long for even the best basketball players to handle) on one hand makes the player work even harder for sound colour. But on the other hand it is perhaps why the viola has been attributed as being able to convey the imperfections of humanity more clearly than any other instrument. Further, while the cello still boasts the frequency of vibration closest to the human heart, it is the viola that fits the range of the human voice.

This afternoon’s selections showcase the viola in the diversity of its roles, from a viola-only duo and quartet, to partnerships with the cello, violin, and a more traditional role in the string quartet. The centerpiece of the programme, Bach’s Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 is so rarely performed because of its challenging instrumentation focusing on the mid- and lower-range. Here we see the violas shine in a solo light as well as in the ensemble, exploring the full baroque range, celebrating the compositional genius of Bach in fugues and fluid phrases that flow from one viola to the next, and bounce back again.

Andrew Filmer

* And oddly enough, both of those descriptions came from the same violist: the world-renown Kim Kashkashian.

An Afternoon of Chamber Music - FREE ADMISSION

2009-09-01T11:01:00.004-04:00

September 6 at 2PM
ARECA Center of Performing Arts ~ 50, Peel Avenue

Programme:

W.F. Bach: Duo No. 2 ~ Tan Mei Ying and Samuel Khoo, violas

W.A. Mozart: First movement of the duo for violin and viola, arr. viola and cello ~ Joycelyn Tye, viola and Stephanie Tye, cello

A. Corelli: Arrangement of Concerto Grosso No. 8 "Christmas Concerto" for four violas: Lo Mei Yoke, Joycelyn Tye, Wong Chin Ning, Andrew Filmer, violas

J.S. Bach: Brandenburg Concerto No. 6 ~ Wong Chin Ning, Andrew Filmer, Joycelyn Tye, soloists. Ensemble: Lo Mei Yoke, Samuel Khoo, Tan Mei Ying, Stephanie Tye, Chee Hui Hui, conducted by Khoo Teng Jian.

Handel-Halvorsen: Passacaglia ~ Khoo Teng Jian, violin, and Andrew Filmer, viola

A. Piazzolla: Libertango and Por Una Cabeza for string quartet: Khoo Teng Jian and Lo Mei Yoke, violins, Andrew Filmer, viola, Stephanie Tye, cello.

At the End of the Day, A Real Lesson in Bogus Degrees

2009-08-25T07:01:00.004-04:00

I must say, sometimes these bits of investigative journalism by the Star turn out interesting results. The recent probe into bogus degrees for example. It's only peripherally interesting for me to know about the people who want to sell them (though it's interesting that Google the website of Isles International University and you get a picture of Big Ben!) - what's more fascinating is the people who buy them and then get shocked when they find out that it's not for real.

And what's their response when the little light bulb goes off (and explodes)? That the convocation ceremony was real! Not a mention whether the education was real, not once. And therein lies the crux of the issue, with people thinking that it's about certification and ceremony, and not whether at the end of the day you have a little more rolling around upstairs. There are plenty of stories about pictures of convocation ceremonies with deputy ministers (who obviously aren't too bright themselves), and money gone down the drain, but no complaints about how this could be when I spent so much time in classrooms, pouring countless hours to produce a academically worthy thesis...

You can pity them, I guess, in the sense that you pity anyone who was taken for a ride. But somehow I don't really have much sympathy for these people who essentially thought that money could allow them to cut the cue - putting their quick-and-easy degrees ahead in interviews with others who actually spent time and energy towards getting theirs. So if some of them are worried about their jobs, well, good. Because chances are if it was that piece of paper which got you the job, someone else probably deserved it more.

The real lesson though is that the letters at the end of ones name are only good as an indicator of the intellectual strength of the person. Whatever degree it is, exists as a yardstick to what one has learned, and how useful one can be with that knowledge.

One particular case in the Star:

"Vernon, who works in the hospitality sector, said that he found out about the university from a booth the institution had set up at a Tesco outlet."

Poor man. I could have told him, you can't get a degree... at Tesco.

Whaddayaknow

2009-07-29T14:35:00.003-04:00

First, in the news, an American swimmer has a wardrobe malfunction mid-dive and splits his swimsuit, effectively mooning the arena. What I found particularly interesting is that the Huffington Post's article showed a file picture of the swimmer's face instead of one from the event. Note the Post's explanation, highlighted:

News isn't the only place you learn a couple of things - some of my best teaching is done when I learn something from the process. Sometimes it's a magnification of some of my own technical weaknesses which make it a useful reminder of things to work on. Sometimes it's a newer, better way of teaching something. And today, from a rather interesting student, it was that if you twist a music stand just right, you get the small Decepticon from the second Transformers movie:

That's certainly redefining a musical "point of view".

Tick Tock. You learn some, and then you learn some more.

2009-07-20T03:35:00.006-04:00

Usually I spend each birthday writing down the same number of thoughts as the number of years I've clocked up. But this year, thought no. 1 would be that numbers aren't as important as I used to think (either that or I can't hold thirty thoughts in my head at once).

Or rather they should be less important as I make them out to be. I always aim for a round number in the balance of my bank account when I go to the ATM. The same goes for my fake money in Pet Society. I tend to adhere to keeping my practice schedules to the 12 or 6 minute-hand on the clock. Which doesn't quite apply to going to sleep, coz I usually stay up till I'm ready to downright collapse. Something else you shouldn't quite do at the big three-uh-oh.

Just finished a workshop at KLPac, for the HSBC Classics annual music festival. Made me think that we all work for different things. A lot of musicians work for the pure reason of sound, and the ability to produce it at the best level one can achieve. I personally found that the benefit I got most from the workshop was how much I learned in the research process... to have a job where the major component is that you learn, and grow - well, that's what working in academic is all about. And that's the best advertising I can find for a life in the halls of learning.

I don't know where I heard it, but getting easily distracted is a sure sign you're just not that into what you're doing, and you should look for something better. So true.

I think that the so-called talent to make music is essentially having the ability to adapt. That's how some musicians get things faster - because they're more "in tune" with what their fingers, arms, legs, lungs, lip, and whatever else are doing, all the time. Put another way, it's a positive, and selective, hypersensitivity.

If you're up to grow and develop, by the time you're thirty, you've changed certain world views enough times to know that almost every perspective has merit in some sort of way, and the best answers to most questions in life are maybe, sometimes, why not, and all of the above.

I've been inclined to think that if you listen closely enough, you can not only hear a musician's personality... but a small shadow of the quality of his or her character. Watch an orchestra's reaction when a soloist makes an error and you'll may find an interesting clue too.

That being said, having a musician with a good attitude doesn't necessarily make the music tangibly better. It just makes you enjoy the same thing, just a little bit more. And isn't that what music is supposed to be about, anyway?

You don't need to understand to accept, so says my Vietnamese friend. I've mentioned it before, and it's worth mentioning again.

People judge too much, too often, sometimes.

When we're young we like one colour, and then suddenly drop it for another. Orange, then navy blue, you know? Somewhere along the line we end up gravitating to some preference and stay there. And I think it's a pity that we do. I think life would be far more interesting if I woke up tomorrow with a sudden inspiration for purple.

They say the important things in life are small - or come in small boxes. Some of those on my list are ear-plugs, viola strings... and a cheeky grin.

Lastly, for posterity's sake, a bit of a repeat of my Facebook status. My friend asked me to describe my role as a violist in the simplest form possible. To which I replied, "I AM LOVE."

Zigzag

2009-07-01T11:47:00.004-04:00

I've been meaning to write a bit about finally making a choice as to where I'm headed next year, but I always seem either preoccupied or more likely braindead when I'm at the computer to actually get down to it. I think maybe that's why those games on Facebook are as addictive as they are - when you want to relax and not be intelligent in order to do it, there's something about scrubbing your mouse up and down to clean your pet in Pet Society. It's the whole Mr Miyagi going "wax on, wax off", I suspect.

The things you learn when you least expect it. I told a young kid today that the last time I had students his age was when I was working in Thailand, when I would often ask, "Kow cai, mai?" which meant "Understand, no?" and I sometimes accidentally slip into Thai even today. And this Malaysian kid said that I could go ahead and feel free to keep the lingo. Soon enough there was some technical issue, and I went, "Kow cai, mai?" and he replied, "Eh sai!"

In other news I've learned that in order to say, "OK", you can also go, "Zero killed". How about that.

I've also been wondering that if I were to work in Yemen, say conducting a youth orchestra, and I wanted to encourage them, would I be guilty of emboldening the Yemeni?

One of these days when I'm done zigzagging I'll post more about my plans for New Zealand. All I'll say for now is that I intend to find the most ethically admirable woolen animal I can find, and bring it to my friends, shouting, "Holy sheep!"

I Run, You Run, Iran, Tehran

2009-06-23T14:04:00.003-04:00

Americans are likely to view the current crisis in Iran being familiar with the standpoint of protesters - and how that is a right of free speech and association they have come to enshrine. Malaysians on the other hand, will find the event of particular interest simply because it's the first time it's happened at that scale for an Islamic nation.

It's one of those things where no matter how it ends, it's going to have some upside to it. Americans are going to be made particularly aware that the Iranian government and the Iranian people can be two quite separate entities. More so than after the movements in Georgia and Nepal, Malaysians are going to be made more aware that peaceful protests, especially those done in protection of proper democratic ideals, are not just Western propaganda, and that so-called "illegal assemblies" are often the voice of the people. "I have a dream" sadly doesn't resonate much in this country outside of secluded lecture rooms. But there will be something eerily familiar about the Revolutionary Guard and Iranian riot police and it will not be so easy to see the videos and pictures as protectors of the people.

It's the first time I've seen YouTube take on a "breaking news" role:

- not from the channel, but the ticker at the top of every video I checked today, whether or not it had anything to do with Iran.

The world is changing. I just hope that once the dust settles, people have longer memories.

What One Does for a Little Friction

2009-06-11T11:28:00.003-04:00

I still think my string experimentation shopping and experimentation spree once upon a time was far more caffeine inspired, but the current go on rosins isn't exactly decaf either. Curiosity, they claim, ended the feline's 9-run streak, and its that which has led me first to try the higher end "Superior" hand-crafted Colophane, which was supposed to be an upgrade from the Jade which I've always liked.

I then transfered the Jade to the violin, and used the new Colophane on the viola, which turned out to be a disaster. The viola bows in particular didn't react well - though they could produce a slightly better tone when at slow bow speeds, and when just the right amount of rosin was used, the bows were just careening off the highway with anything close to fourth gear. And for some reason the Jade on the violin just didn't match up to my old Bernadel.

Now here's where human nature takes away from life sometimes. The obvious thing was to go back to what I was using before, but the thing is I have a real life commitment to my viola compared to the violin, and the Jade, the so-called inferior rosin was in a plastic case while the new Colophane was in a hand-crafted wooden and magnetic case with the company seal emblazened twice. It took the viola a while to tell me in no uncertain tones not to aquit the book by its cover. And the new Colophane is working fine with the violin now, and the Jade was reunited with the viola... till I came across the Larsen.

So far so good. It's the first rosin I have tried - or for that matter, heard of - which has a version specifically for viola. It's not the same kind of bite that I hear the cello rosin has, but still, a good grip, without too much dust. We'll see how long this particular affair lasts... I think the last stop on this particular road will be the Andrea Bang. But for now, that will remain another journey entirely.

Talent's Just the Start

2009-05-27T12:54:00.003-04:00

I find myself being unusually hooked to Britain's Got Talent. And mind you, not only because of Susan Boyle, who kind of lost me with the recent semifinals.

Then again, that's the real test of the show - whether you can live on when your novelty's worn out. Susan quite simply wouldn't have been the world class sensation she has turned out to be if she was slim and sexy. She's been called new age parable, but once the ugly duckling turns into the swan, whatever the swan does is somehow less impressive.

I think that's what I really like about it more than shows like American Idol, or Survivor, or America's Next Top Model. There's a certain reality about it, in some ways like watching a sociological experiment in motion. After a low-key audition setting, some shine even better on a massive stage in the semifinals: like last year's winner George Sampson. And it seems that the life stories that come onto the stage matter as much as the performance itself, George being rejected, dancing on the street to earn money for petrol and dance lessons and coming back to conquer the competition. Susan's story of never-been-kissed, taking care of her mother, fulfilling a life-long dream. Most times this adds charm to the show, but sometimes people take advantage of this aspect, prime example being Eugene the Librarian's act intentionally focusing on creating a duckling ugly enough for us to vote on the mirage of a swan.

So all in all it's not always about talent. Or not just about talent anyway. I've never put much stock in talent alone, partially I suppose because I see a lot of young students with plenty of talent but no real dedication to put it to use. And there are times I've worried that a certain superficial showmanship takes over actual ability, like the two string acts which I've seen thus far: the Bond-ish group Escala and Vanessa Mae-esque Sue Son - neither of whom would have, or at least should have, moved upwards in the competition if music was the prime criteria.

Part of the cost of having a multi-angled variety show of course, is that it gets a bit diluted - as my sister rightly pointed out about Shaun Smith, he's good but he wouldn't last long in American Idol. Last year's Ben and Becky were alright, but then when a judge remarks on "perfect form" it's not exactly the microscope you might see on Dancing With the Stars. And that's not expected either - we're catering to a much wider audience, and the significance of that is that the most common denominator is one's personal story. Then only verify with talent. Cue Susan Boyle.

And for that reason I'm glad you can't break your way to the very top with just-so skills on an electric violin. You can make it half-way but so far a good heart seems to outlast other apparent body parts in the very end.

I just hope that my personal favourite this season doesn't lose out because he doesn't have as amazing a life story... and that he manages to fill a large stage as much as he did during the auditions.

Making Sense of Scholarship

2009-05-14T03:19:00.001-04:00

There will, of course, be those who think that my blog title is a little off in a grammatical sense, that it should be "scholarships" or "the scholarship". But the thing is (and yes, I can start a sentence with a conjunction too), the essence of what we call "scholarship" is not a financial grant but the spirit of academic pursuit, the chase of knowledge and fidelity to intellectual maturity. The grant many of us know as the "scholarship" is one of the ways of acknowledging that a person has displayed the potential and earned the chance at being recognized as a scholar (and at a higher level, graduate and teaching assistants). Malaysians tend to forget coveted positions like that of the Queen's Scholar, not just for the financial opportunity it came with, but the responsibility of conducting a career that gave back respect to the award.

But of course the money is important, I know that first hand. And therein lies the conflict between how these two aims not only coexist, but are on each other reliant. It is in this line of thought that I refer you to Ong Tee Keat's comments on reviewing PSD scholarships in today's Star:

Currently, Ong said, the selection is based on four criteria - merit (20%), race (60%), Sabah and Sarawak citizens (10%) and students from underprivileged groups (10%).

He said if meritocracy was part of the criteria, the students’ co-curriculum [sic] activities and interviews should not be included for consideration.

"Meritocracy means it should solely be the students’ results and not any other areas," he said.

If I could take a moment to be self-serving, there is a part of me that wishes that were true. I'd like my current applications to be entirely reliant on GPA, and there's a personal statement - the substitute for an interview - for a New Zealand government doctoral scholarship that's giving me more than a bit of stress. But I understand where Ong Tee Keat is coming from, with all these Chinese students (let's face it, he's saying it on behalf of the MCA after all) with spectacular SPM results who can't get into medicine. And he's right that on an academic level at least they probably earned the level of scholarship more so than some of those who actually got it.

The problem is that he's saying the wrong things, even if they are for the right reasons. Meritocracy does not preclude the use co-curricular activites nor the role of an interview. Leadership ability and the application of theory into practice, for which we have co-curricular activies, are important elements of a scholar. Just as interviews are important not only to assess one's communication skills but to know (especially in our memorization-based public schooling system) that one has skills of analytical thinking that match or balance with the academic results. We need to produce scholars that enter the major academic institutions of the world not to promote our great skills of memory, but to lead intellectual discussions and debates essential to thorough research.

I suspect that Ong knows this, or least he knows that results really isn't what meritocracy is about. Or rather what meritocracy is against. Meritocracy is in truth against the abuse of subjective areas like co-curricular activities and interviews to put people in who shouldn't be there.

More importantly, you can't say that meritocracy is "part of the criteria" - you either have it, or you don't, and all the criteria which any student cannot earn renders it moot.

Of course, race is the hot button when it comes to these discussions, the big taboo. But real meritocracy wouldn't even take into account Sabah and Sarawak, and even the need-basis is often not part of the picture, if someone is truly in need but has not earned the level required. If there are two people for one scholarship award, and one has more need, that's only when it should be taken into account. If there is one scholarship award and no one qualified, then it should not be awarded.

In the end it's not about seeing more Chinese getting PSD scholarships, or I should say it's not just about that. It's not about whose SPM results got them what. It's about who have already graduated from having PSD scholarships and whether they have made their country proud with their public service - that is, after all why they call it the Public Services Department. It's about making sure that whoever it is who gets these scholarships, whether it be 100% Malay or 100% Chinese prove their academic capabilities (and not just their spending abilities), their scholarship, their ability to come back with the title of scholar, proving beyond a doubt that they have given back in stature as much as they have been given in stipend.

Review

2009-05-10T09:40:00.006-04:00

It's an accomplishment for anyone to get a Trekker to say, hey, that was a pleasant surprise. By and large, surprises in Trek history stand in the category of "uh oh" rather than "oh cool". William Shatner's infamous comment to hyper-energized fans that, "For crying out loud, it's just a TV show!" was perhaps the best (or worst) example, but the extension of the franchise to Voyager, Deep Space 9 and worst of all, Enterprise at best divided the fans into niche areas. Certain Republicans say, who liked a certain interpretation of the leadership in war themes of DS9, or a more hormonal reaction of others to Seven of Nine's body-hugging wear, or more accurately the body that was hugged by the wear of Jeri Ryan. To take up that challenge of taking Trekdom by surprise was certainly not the final frontier, but certainly one which no man had successfully gone before. And so here's kudos particularly to Alex Kurtzman and Roberto Orci for putting together a screenplay which managed to change the very makeup of the Star Trek formula: that you can have all those existential questions, the exposition of self and self-conflicts, without going into a monologue. Somehow they managed to put the purpose-driven, self-discovery core into what is essentially not only its regular science fiction genre, but create a great action movie at the same time.

The actors for Kirk and Spock did well (Zachary Quinto managing to exist as the latter without much side-effects from his Heroes fame) but the one I really thought did well was John Cho as Sulu. Think about it - this is the guy from Harold and Kumar - well connecting with some comedic moments and once again with pleasant surprises in his more serious scenes.

J.J. Abrams gets his own nod simply for keeping the pace going, and not getting into the regular trap of digging too far into Star Trek folklore. He could introduce all the major characters - Kirk, Spock, Sulu, Bones, Scotty, Uhura - for the benefit of those who may not know much about Trek, and at the same time not boring those who know enough about the topic to challenge most university faculties in terms of depth of knowledge in one's specialized area. He managed to introduce Kirk's rebellious, shoot-from-the-hip nature while at the same time enhancing those already familiar with space's favourite cowboy.

His skill of juggling the seemingly impossible dawned on me when I realized that he managed to include Spock's father - iconic in his own right not only in the original Star Trek series but in reprisals later in The Next Generation - without having to drive himself into that side alley at all. In fact, he was always referred to as Spock's father (rather than to involve another specific name: Sarek) which made perfect sense to the other characters who weren't ever introduced to Sarek. Not only does this come back to what it means to have a movie - to move - but it goes one further in allowing for Trekkers and non-Trekkers to have something to talk about after the show. It's enough to act as an introduction to those new to Star Trek, and Trekkers are always keen on discussing their sometimes scarily involved knowledge of the series.

After all, it's not for nothing that I, for example, am a bit of the resident expert on all things Voyager. Never mind that I used to have the script pretty much ingrained in my head. We used to hang out at this place and I remember once at 11pm (when the re-runs aired here) friends wondering whether we should rush back to catch the show at nearby home. So they asked the cafe owner to switch to the channel for all of 10-15 seconds - with no sound - after which I could tell them about the entire episode and whether it was worth it to catch it again.

My criticisms of the film are few: Scotty was a bit over-the-top perhaps, they could have expanded the climatic scene, and the CGI while good still couldn't match some of that of the Enterprise-E. Nonetheless, like how a movie should be a movie, this review is just that - that I'm looking forward to a re-view of the show, with its spirit that with any luck will live long and prosper in more episodes of the intrepid crew.

Downright Scary

2009-05-04T15:52:00.006-04:00

I've never seen a clearer reason why teacher accreditation is necessary. I shudder to think of over one thousand people who have seen this thus far thinking that this is "B minor"... or any other minor. From a series of "Expert Village", to boot.

For those interested, she's not exactly playing out of tune as much as she's playing the Locrian mode thinking it's B minor - in a sense C major, starting and ending on B.

Nightmare.

Sigh

2009-05-01T11:46:00.003-04:00

I have to say, the crummiest thing about being down with whatever throat/cough virus this is, is missing my favourite dessert, my reason for living, the essence by which the earth goes round... see koh teng.

You can choose your own ingredients, or take a bit of everything. Mine has a particular inclination for jelly-like substances. And a couple of fruits - lychee, longan, rambutan with pineapple, and sea coconut. You can try out the stuff I tend to leave out - including red beans (I don't care for how they tend to disintegrate and change the texture of the drink), white fungus, and a papaya-like looking thing called pek kuay. There's also cincau, or leong fun, or grass jelly. I've had this on an average of once a day for the past two weeks (basically ever since I found out I had a license to wallop the stuff, with my low glucose level), and I've cemented my obsession with the following:

See koh teng is mostly sold from a van, and for my favourite dealer, I know his entire schedule from memory - covering three locations, two daily shifts, one off day. Plus I know how well his two different afternoon shifts tend to go, which affects the closing time of his evening one.
I have memorized exactly where all his ingredients are placed, and in what order, so that when I drive and stop next to his van (where I can't see what he has in front of him) I can just roll down the window and say, "One big packet, without row three."
Without a second thought I'll go out in the rain to get my daily ration of see koh teng. Right now I also head to work early every Wednesday just to pick up my packet on the way.

In the meantime I've attacked this cough thing with just about as many ingredients: Cap Ibu dan Anak, a foul-tasting mint drink, Piraton, salt water, honey-lemon tea, Strepsils, cough syrup...

Singu, pluru, aku keliru

2009-04-24T04:58:00.002-04:00

Finally got back to doing some stuff for YouTube, which I hope to upload over the weekend... and it was another reminder to go back and check some of the basics. I still have this maddening tendency not to lock up my elbow joint in off-string passages. And a little issue with my pinkie. More and more, viola playing seems to be not only getting your body to do what you want it to do, but being more aware what the heck it's doing.

I've also found out that I've been pronouncing the word "genuine" incorrectly for decades. Apparently it doesn't rhyme with swine.

Back in Malaysia, I've come to realize that most people use "alumni" as both a singular and plural term... I've known for a while that I'm an "alumnus", but the feminine version "alumna" is fairly new to me.

Also, as we know the plural for Secretary of State is Secretaries of State and by extension it's "Mentris Besar" (why it's not spelled as "Menteris" is another kettle of fish) and not Mentri Besars. Unless the MB is really really fat I guess, and nobody likes him.

And I was thinking, what about your neighbourhood jaga kereta?

You got it...

Jagas kereta.

"Die, mummy bastards, die!"

2009-04-10T08:15:00.002-04:00

I've been catching up a bit with my movie watching, and today's feature was The Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor. I knew beforehand to keep expectations low, but I didn't expect it to stoop so low as to include the line, "Die, mummy bastards, die!"

Still, a look at one of my old favourites, The Book of Lists shows us that things could be far, far worse. Thankfully this was before the era of sequels:

Robot Monster (1953)
The ultimate in sci-fi insanity, this one features robot invaders in gorilla suits and diving helmets. The producers of the film were not even sure where the strange creatures came from, as the movie appeared under the alternate titles of Monsters from the Moon and Monster from Mars. The reaction to this film was so negative that young director Phil Tucker attempted suicide shortly after its release.

What's in a name?

2009-03-31T05:59:00.009-04:00

It all started when we were on the way to KL and I realized that we passed Lembah Beringin before hitting Bukit Beruntung and I thought that in between the two would be the perfect place to put a casino. Which, by the way, they are building in Singapore:

All that construction for a place to put your chips on chance and yell "PICTURE!" in hopes that you'll make more money out of luck than out of work. By the same people who brought us Genting - that's right, Malaysians. Contrast that with the snail-like pace of the extension of the Penang Bridge, which only carries people to and from work on a daily basis - also, most would say, also at a snail-like pace.

Anyway, after that it seems that I had an inclination to note the names people tend to give places, particularly businesses.

Picking the name of an opera has potential for adding a touch of class, one would think. The bakery named La Boheme - well, I have no idea what that's about. But the one above seemed well thought out; it's charming considering it was near a butterfly expo, and the clothes on sale were distinctly oriental. The only thing is, would you buy someone a dress named after a character who commited harakiri?

Complimenting a potential customer is so yesterday. To gain an edge today you have to be original.

And sometimes being original is provocative in every sense. However, one has to be careful when deciding whether the name of a place is meant to provoke or reflect.

Here, it's hard to say whether that's what they're selling, the customers they hope to attract, or perhaps, a warning to how you'll smell after a vintage steak from 1989.

It's a tough economy and sometimes one has to look to divine intervention when looking to light up the store:

But the best sample I got was from the name of a road. Civic consciousness is always admirable, and the promotion of personal hygeine is part of that. Which includes washing one's clothes, even - or perhaps, especially - lingerie:

For those who don't speak Malay, "basah" means "wet"... and what I didn't realize at first was that "bras" is actually short for "beras" which means "rice".

Good one

2009-03-17T10:42:00.002-04:00

From the biography of violist Peter Taylor, of the Absolute Zero viola quartet:

"It is worth noting that a significant majority of orchestral musicians firmly believe that if a composer is to be any good, then he should also be dead. Deceased composers are infinitely more revered than living ones. It is hoped that, this being so, contemporary composers should do the honourable thing, take the hint, and be prepared to lay down their lives for their art - hopefully, the sooner the better."

Plenty of other hahas in all the biographies there.

Say what?

2009-03-14T02:27:00.003-04:00

A couple of interesting quotes came my way, one from a fellow YouTuber:

"i used 2 play violin but then found out im a wind instrument person"

Interesting how we find out who we are as musicians along the way, and I think most of us who stick with the viola have that story to tell. It makes for a more interesting existence than having been fed that instrument and wondering why we still play it ten years down the road. I guess playing the viola is like a a religion based on conversion. Like, you know, vampires.

And from a student of mine, when I noted that it seems that more students these days seem to exert unnecessary bow pressure:

"The world hasn't changed. It's just you."

Say Cheese

2009-03-12T02:15:00.004-04:00

I heard a while back that dentists say that the amount of toothpaste you actually need is substantially less than the advertising pics you usually see about a good glob covering your toothbrush. Around half or even less is apparently all you need - and the way that toothpaste companies try to increase their revenue is to build a perception that you need more to keep your teeth in tip-top condition to reflect the sun's rays, be friends with polar bears, and wear top hats with that little touch of debonair.

Speaking of advertising, I saw this on a website:

And all this while I might have had infidel paste in my mouth? Who would have guessed that's where my occasionally foul tongue may have originated.

I've recently had the interesting experience to test out certain, well, myths or assumptions or whatever you want to call them. Last year while attending a university conference in Evansville, Indiana, I actually tested the theory that I could sleep through an earthquake. Scalding my left hand yesterday isn't exactly the height of my career as a poster boy for the accident prone (that one I think goes to having a lightbulb blow up in my right hand a couple of years back, or perhaps accidentally ironing myself) but let me announce proudly that smearing toothpaste over the area affected actually does work.

Apparently you can also swallow an inch of toothpaste you can fake a fever long enough to get an MC. But with my record of accidents I think that's one myth I shouldn't test; chances are it'll give me a real reason to have an MC.

Set Meal, Please

2009-03-03T09:53:00.005-05:00

After the alluring Sandman, and the impactful The Graveyard Book I thought I was going to really like American Gods and well, not quite. And because it was in the same line of thought I figured I wasn't quite going to enjoy Anansi Boys and I'm being rather pleasantly surprised. Which just goes to show that, in the words of Forrest Gump, with Neil Gaiman is like a box of chocolates.

Which is only one of the various foods he likes to include somewhere in his narrative. I'm about two thirds of the way through and thus far there's been home cooked steaks, dim sum, sherry with a touch of mixed herbs, baked turkey, stew peas and rice, sweet potato pudding, curry goat, curry chicken, fried plantains, a pickled cow foot, hot chocolate, and a "really nice sort of noodly stew thing". And waxed fruit.

The problem is when I get a book I like, I tend to read a bit before turning of the lights. But when you read a well-written description of corn-based turkey stuffing, and the whole process of cooking it just right, turning of the lights doesn't actually get me straight to sleep. I've been a good boy at replacing my suppers (helped along the way by my nasi kandar boycott in reciprocation to the MACM's attack against American-connected companies) with Milo. But I tell ya, a good walkthrough of the process of baking a turkey, and no amount of Milo will distract you from the possibility of opening up a pack of Maggi mee.

And when he's not mentioning actual food, there are rather clever similes that involve lobsters or cooked goose.

I'm happy that the book's on my menu. It's just that I wish it was a little more low-fat.

Ironik, you know, terbalik

2009-02-22T12:35:00.002-05:00

As the song goes: isn't it ironic?

In other news:

If you look closely at the second line, it actually says: "Dry your head upside down for pure body and control."

So THAT's what I've been doing wrong all this while.

The whole deal with the YouTube Symphony Orchestra Contest

2009-02-18T03:42:00.003-05:00

All right, rather than explain it, I'll let you read it.

First, this:

YouTube Symphony Orchestra Contest

IMPORTANT YOUR RESPONSE IS REQUIRED BY 12PM EASTERN TIME THURSDAY FEBRUARY 12, 2009 TO REMAIN ELIGIBLE FOR THIS CONTEST

February 9, 2009

Dear YouTube Symphony Orchestra Entrant,

As the Official Judging Organization administering the YouTube Symphony Orchestra for YouTube, LLC and the London Symphony Orchestra Limited, it is our pleasure to inform you that your video submission has been selected as a potential Finalist or potential Alternate Finalist!

Please follow the link below and enter your YouTube Username and assigned Password. After entering the Username/Password, please select your preferred language option.

Each folder contains two documents; (1) an Affidavit of Eligibility (or, a Certificate or Declaration as applicable) and (2) an Entrant Agreement and Release. Please print and complete both documents and return to Jeffrey Vitale by 12PM EST February 12, 2009 using one of these three methods: 1) Postal Mail; 2) Fax; or 3) Email with Scanned Attachment.

Cool, right? Good news, right? And then after sending over the affidavit and agreement, a missing video, query and then this:

Re: YouTube Symphony Orchestra Contest
Greetings,

Thank you for auditioning for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. We received thousands of video submissions from all over the world, and congratulations on having yours accepted and considered for this global collaboration. While you were a potential candidate, only 200 musicians were selected as finalists to move ahead into the voting process of the program. However, your video will still be considered as part of our "mash up" video created for Tan Dun's "Internet Symphony" piece.

Also, once the voting process is over -- your approved audition videos will again reappear on the symphony channel for everyone to see.

Again, thank you for your participation in this unique classical music project!

Kind Regards,

The YouTube Symphony Orchestra Team

I have a "macam itu ke..." feel about it, but thanks everyone who tried to vote. I really appreciate the support.

Technical Setback

2009-02-15T08:06:00.002-05:00

Thanks to everyone who are trying to vote for me in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra contest - for some reason the video isn't appearing on the main voting site. I've contacted the administrators, and with luck that will resolve the issue. The administrators acknowledged receipt of the signed official documentation following the shortlisting, so it's either a technical problem on YouTube or there might be something else in the documents that needs to be settled. This is, of course, a setback in the sense that the longer it takes for it to be out, the less number of votes I can get - but I hope that it all gets solved soon.

On the Go

2009-02-14T02:25:00.002-05:00

Another monthly resolution ticked off. In other news (or rather, a continuation of January's resolution), voting for the YouTube Symphony finalists begins Feb 14 at 12 EST - basically Feb 15 for us here in Malaysia. One vote available per day for a week. My shortlisted entry is here, and I'd like to thank, in advance, everyone who plans to vote.

Please help me in the YouTube Symphony Orchestra contest

2009-02-11T03:42:00.000-05:00

Hello everyone,

I didn't even expect to get this far, but I've been selected as a potential finalist/alternate finalist for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra. If I make it to the second round, it will mean a sponsored trip to New York to play as a member of the orchestra in Carnegie Hall - a really great opportunity.

Part of this selection will be based on ratings by YouTube users (the number of stars at the bottom of videos). From 14-22 February, each YouTube user will be given the chance to vote once each day, and these votes will help influence who gets chosen.

If you have a YouTube account (or if you wouldn't mind setting up a free account), I could really use your help!

My entries are at: http://www.youtube.com/user/andrewfilmer. (I think the second video is the one to vote on: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CuhNU_Kq72U.)

I would like to say thank you, terima kasih and kop khun kap in advance for any support you could provide.

Cheers!

Andrew

Next Resolution, Please

2009-02-03T12:08:00.004-05:00

It came, it went, it waved bye-bye.

(Which, by the way, is the insider's translation of "Veni, vidi, vici.")

And it was called January.

Like always, before you know it it runs right past, and a month is gone. Hard to imagine that it was only a year ago that I was hauling myself back to school through the snow after 3 hours sleep for second 16-hour day. And yet it's also hard to imagine that it's slowly creeping up to a year since I've been back in Malaysia.

And while I'm not entirely pleased how much of 2008 just went by, the new month resolution plan of 2009 seems to be a rather productive strategy. I managed to get a basic grasp of soundpost setting - and just as importantly, the tools and the 3/4 violin guinea pig in order to proceed with my Frankenstein experiments. Actually it's more like being a blind violin dentist, except that if I talked to my patient, you should, well, worry. And I auditioned for the YouTube Symphony Orchestra - not the best stuff I've recorded, but I think the overall spirit, "What the heck, here goes" deserves a bit of credit. If I'm only going out when I'm perfect, I don't go out much. And one thing I've realized towards the end of January is that I really need to get out more, and in more ways than one.

Thus, my February resolution, which is to try and find a way to make this project (with Jebat, and possibly with Jocelyn if she's still in town) happen:

(Click to enlarge)

It may happen, it may not, but if it's the latter it won't be from lack of trying. To that, the idealization of giving effort it's place and not just the cynicism of statistics, I am thus resolved.

Q

2009-01-30T07:52:00.001-05:00

Well, how about that. I've been quoted on Rice Bowl Journals. :)

Words, words, words

2009-01-29T08:22:00.003-05:00

Oh, they matter, they do.

I was playing badminton today, and as always thought it rather odd that the word "love" is used for the guy who well, doesn't score. It gets a bit ironic when its, say, 17-love coz love is the last thing on that guy's mind.

Then there's "all". As in 17-17 is said to be "17-all". The thing is there are only two people on the court, which makes me wonder why it isn't "17-both".

Then there's your salad, with, what's that you say? "Thousand Island". (Though somehow when I think of how my old Jamaican roommate would say it, "Yo man, pass me some Thousand Island man", it doesn't really sound that wrong.)

There's this group on Facebook called "I judge you when you use poor grammar". Which in a strictly grammatical sense is fine, but semantics is another thing entirely. I always thought that grammar was either correct or incorrect, while "poor" suggests that grammar lies on a scale of quality.

Jebat posted something rather interesting on the history of the Titanic (and, while I'm on the subject, check this out), and I noted for the first time that the tagline of the Leo Dicaprio/Kate Winslet movie poster reads: "NOTHING ON EARTH COULD SEPARATE THEM".

Nothing on earth? As in, on land? Really? From soppy to ironic? Heh heh.

Oh, they matter, they do.

Words, words, words.

Bee Lee's Dog Came Home!

2009-01-27T20:47:00.001-05:00

At 8:30am this morning, Jinn came back to the house.

Thanks everyone!

Bee Lee's Missing Chocolate Labrador

2009-01-27T06:11:00.002-05:00

His name is Jinn, last seen in the Island Park area near the Holy Spirit Cathedral. 11 years old with white whiskers. If anyone sees him, please give me a ring, thanks.

My Chi Is Doomed But Zeus Will Save Me

2009-01-24T02:00:00.004-05:00

The prediction is dire. According to the extensive coverage of astrology in The Star, people like yours truly who bear the astrological sign of Cancer in the soon-to-be Year of the Ox are in for a tough time. Challenges in every area, from finances to education to relationships.

Then I realized - wait a sec. The Western Zodiac corresponds to the Gregorian calendar, and the Chinese one, well there's a reason why we're celebrating it now. An East-Meets-West horoscope? Like fusion carbonara koay teow shooting to the sky?

For some, I see, it's really another year of Bull.

For the rest of us, have no fear! Your chi's days are marked but dancing in a lightning storm is the key. Happy New Year folks... Gong Hey Fatt Choi, and as a bonus, sun lin fai lok too!

Perspective

2009-01-22T05:44:00.006-05:00

I like taking photographs. This, however is thoroughly unremarkable.

My instincts for
metaphor
have today, kicked whatever artistic inclinations I
may
have had out the door.

It's taken from the Penang Bridge, of these two islands. Some say we used to keep prisoners there. Some say it was a leper colony. Whatever it was used for, the point is that it was an interesting little side effect of building the Bridge. You put big chunks of concrete into the water, the water flows differently, currents push sand, sand becomes sediment, and well, how things grow from that I'm not entirely sure, but apparently it happens.

The bridge is performance. The islands are musicology. And I didn't even realize I jumped out of the car.

Old Stomping Grounds

2009-01-15T13:47:00.005-05:00

It's been a while since I've spent some proper time in USM where I did my first degree. Back then I was more commonly stomping out of the grounds than spending more time on them, but going back as an alumnus felt different. A lot of things have changed since I was my frustrated younger self - or rather a lot of things are the same but I just see them somewhat differently. In a sense somewhat dispassionately, which is also what helps me not puke when I look at the yellow stripes they've painted across the Penang Free School building. Too much love, too much frustration, it all waters down to a nice porridge if you give it enough time I guess - I certainly hope so anyway, I think we need that to survive eventually.

I actually had a fairly pleasant time at the library:

...chatting up the librarians and the lady at the photocopying center on the second floor. An ability provided with two years being both a librarian and ad hoc photocopy machine technician in Indiana University South Bend. Been there, done that, and yes, people just don't realize that if you try and rip out jammed paper of section B7 without being careful, that darn toner is gonna burn your hand off. And the paper will remain gleefully jammed.

Was relieved to know that they had the New Grove, which is going to be particularly helpful in moving along a research proposal I'm working on. The journal selection for music was a little woeful, though it was a bit of a surprise that they had an online connection to the Strad, to which I noted an article on Kim Kashkashian's mention of the viola as the Cinderella of the strings. Title? "You Will Go to the Ball". Clever.

In other cleverness, a couple of us are thinking of getting together to try out Schubert's "Trout" Quintet, which not too surprisingly, is musically inspired by the freshwater inhabitant. If it works, we'll probably meet on Saturdays, in a project we've dubbed "Weekend Fishing".

Back to campus. As I was leaving the library, I noted what Mei Ying was mentioning earlier on - that local elections were ongoing. The thing about large campuses is getting the publicity out. A common theme now looks like this:

Which I imagine is useful in getting name recognition going. The problem is that paper has a way of getting its own way (remember what I said about jammed paper?):

...which can ironically look like you just toilet-papered your school.

2009-01-12T05:05:00.002-05:00

Scattered Pit Stop Thoughts

2009-01-11T10:30:00.003-05:00

It's been the most positive and productive starts to a new year as far as I can remember. Which isn't necessarily saying much since stock in my memory aren't exactly selling at blue-chip levels. The final stage of soundpost setting arrived with the acquisition of a setter today, which means that the next time thunder roars, you may hear me screaming, "IGOR! It's... ALIVE!"

One must be careful with momentum though - with the intensity of university applications, the YouTube Symphony Orchestra project, finishing American Gods and moving the Mozart biography and getting back to practicing, sometimes it's good to take a bit of a pit stop break before I fall over. (Which I've been suspecting is where I've been headed in the past couple of days, in a slight overdrive to make sure I don't stagnate while waiting for the next stage.) Time to breathe.

While we're breathing, here behold are some scattered thoughts.

1. We used to worry so much about the magnetism of mobile phones. An old friend (thanks to Facebook, just reconnected after 12 years), used to pick up coins with her phone, and reassured her classmates that, "I switch from one ear to the next, to ensure that I fry my brain evenly." If magnetism really is so bad, it makes me wonder why we stick magnets all over our fridge... where we store the stuff we later stuff into our mouths.

2. OK the Maxis ads are really cute. The ones with the paper cut-outs. What I don't get is the line, "and you get to surf the whole Internet!" I mean, are there really deals where you only surf half the internet? (No seriously, coz in Thailand there used to be Internet cafes which would only get Thai websites, much like an intra-net.)

3. I noted with some interest Oprah's "Best Life Week" which was apparently based on her current weight crisis. Being overweight is an issue yes, but when someone who is as accomplished as Oprah - her own personal stardom and success not only financially but in breaking the race barrier, starting that school in South Africa, helping get her candidate elected President - places her weight problem on that level... I don't know if that's the best thing for a role model to do. I get a feeling there's a fat kid somewhere who is a great person to others and brilliant in all sorts of ways, who would be better off knowing that yes, he'd like to lose a couple of pounds, but while he's still on the path and on the treadmill he'd like not to let it entirely determine his self-esteem and run his life. That's my opinion anyway.

January Projects: Sound Posts and This

2009-01-01T00:02:00.000-05:00

End-Year Cadence, New Year’s Resolution

2008-12-31T04:58:00.000-05:00

Technically, in a musical sense that would work better as an end-year suspension, but somehow that just sounds like someone sitting on the pot or changing his underwear when the clock strikes twelve.

New year resolutions have this uncanny ability of magnetically attracting procrastination. The year ahead always seems full of possibility, which somehow also means that there’s enough time to leave it for tomorrow.

So this year I’m doing two things. I’m going on month-by-month goals, or if you will, resolutions. January’s is to get my university applications all in order, read a Mozart biography given to me by Orshi and Gergely, and – possibly a February goal, as you can see, I’m already ahead of myself in my procrastination – taking a couple of lessons on adjusting a soundpost. Wonder if I can recruit some people in the endeavour. Hmm.

On a “big-picture” scale though, I have a new year’s attitude. Or a new-year’s motto. It’s come in several forms, I haven’t yet settled on one yet. So far I’ve been inclined to “There’s nothing to lose in trying.”

Another, however, is “Why the heck not?”

It could very well be: “Crap, here goes nothing.”

The only thing against it would be the little Yoda in my head saying, “Try? Do. Or do not. There is no try.” But then I’ve really been more of a Star Trek sort of guy, final frontier, going where no one has gone before, that sort of thing.

Basically it’s about not discounting possibilities, and to leave all my options open. A resolution for 2009 is not just discarding the old year, it’s about learning from it, and that’s what I’ve learned best from two-oh-oh-eight. It’s everything from looking at shoes (“that’d never fit me”) to university applications and even – or perhaps especially – personal relationships. But part of having nothing to lose in trying also involves keeping expectations in check, be wary of trusting to investing too much in something or someone which or who may not turn out to be worthwhile in the end. There’s a lot to lose otherwise. That, along with a necessary optimism needed in leaving all options open and trying everything out without prejudice – will be a tightrope more challenging than any of my previous resolutions. It may indeed be a tough line to walk.

But what the heck. It’s worth a shot. I like how that sounds.

Happy new year, everyone.

Gone With the Wind

2008-12-28T09:22:00.004-05:00

The upper-grade Colophane rosin: good. Gets a nice grip on the string (i.e. better than Jade) without it being too sticky (i.e. Pirastro) or dusty (i.e. Bernadel). Comes in some really neat packaging - one shaped like a violin, another like a pocketwatch (with a magnetic closing mechanism), and the last as an octagonal box. Not exactly economical though - market price around RM90. It'll last me probably at least 4 years, though chances are there'll be a new fad by then. I'm also a little curious about the Larsen rosin.

I think I put it through a little unfair competition though: played in a gig next to the ocean, and the wind was so strong that the salt particles from the breeze ended up making the bow lose almost all traction. Nice chance to test out survival skills gained in the last two years of study though: played the entire gig with one foot holding down my stand and the other holding down the cellist's stand. A Jewish wedding in Malaysia, rather fascinating - and I thought I saw it all when a year ago I saw a groom read his vows (of his second marriage to someone half his age) from large cue-cards held up by his mother.

Five Things I've Learned This Music Camp

2008-12-22T22:41:00.002-05:00

1. When it comes to Primrose's (and I'm guessing, Michael Tree's) "not apparent" vibrato, faith isn't just a belief in things not seen, it's a belief in a thing not heard.

2. There's a quote from a friend's Facebook, which I think might be from Monty Python: "When I'm good I'll be very good, and when I'm bad I'll be nasty." That should really be the viola credo.

3. In music you'll have good days and you'll have bad days. And then you'll have days which could have been better if you weren't still hung over from the bad day before.

4. The effect of better rosin seems to continually surprise me.

5. As does the way musicians get to meet up and reconnect if not soon, then definitely somewhere down our long winding road.

Up and About

2008-12-02T11:58:00.004-05:00

I'll be away in Sarawak from the 5th to the 11th for Mendelssohn's Elijah (concerts in Sibu, Bintulu, Miri). In the meantime (and in the after-I-get-back-time too) here are some events worth a mention...

The details for the first are hard to make out, as far as I've been informed it'll help with my friend Kavern who has been fighting against a rare, 1st-in-Malaysia, brain tumour. Do support if you can.

My old classmate (actually, the only person who went to both my primary school in PJ and my secondary school in Penang) will be presenting his newest creation in KL and Penang (jom tonton? Panggil aku lah, kita pergi bersama-sama kay).

And finally, open auditions for my cousin's upcoming production:

THE EDGE

A new musical by Nick Choo, Directed by Christopher Ling
February 12 to 22, 2009 | Pentas 2, KLPac

Six people's lives are turned upside-down when someone near and dear to them decides to take the plunge – off the ledge of a building ... Suddenly mother, brother, girlfriend and three close friends are forced to re-examine their individual histories with the boy. In the process, they learn things both startling and redeeming about themselves and one another - about family and friends, love and betrayal.

The Edge was first presented as a workshop performance in July 2008 at KLPac's Indicine.

We are looking for actors & actresses to play the following roles:

Ryan (early 20s) | A closeted gay boy who tends to get melodramatic, but who isn't necessarily outwardly camp. | Voice preference: Tenor, pop edge.

Michael (early 20s) | The lead character's close friend from childhood. | Voice preference: Baritone/tenor, rock edge.

Deanna (early 20s) | A party girl, the kind who just wants to have fun with little responsibility and no commitment. | Voice preference: Soprano, rock edge.

Come prepared with a musical theatre song of your choice.
Audition Dates & Times> Monday, December 15 @ 8pm to 11pm
Auditions are by APPOINTMENT only>
Please contact SESHA on 03 4047 9031 or 016-237 4262.

Off the Presses

2008-11-27T10:39:00.003-05:00

Must say, it is a thrill to actually see it in print. Hopefully somewhere down the line, I might be able to see how the research was applied. In the meantime, onwards we go.

Geometry

2008-11-23T07:10:00.004-05:00

At the Waikiki Bar in the Taman Jaya area.
Reminiscent somehow of either a birdcage or one for catching the fishies.

Primordial Bingo

2008-11-21T04:27:00.000-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if there’s a little distribution center right before we get born. And there’s this bingo-like lottery where we get these various coupons. Like a cross between a horoscope and the Chance cards you pick up on a Monopoly board and an old-fashioned role-playing game – or for those of you who might remember, the Choose Your Own Adventure books.

These coupons on one hand involve a certain complicated kind of luck, like, “You’re gonna end up – or rather, start off – in a poor African country where you’ll have a tough time getting an education. On the other hand here, you’ll have a starting advantage in physical strength, somewhat less problems in ever getting fat, and 25 points you can claim at Counter 2.”

And then you go, hmm and proceed to the next stop and here you get a little choice about how you’d spend your points. Spend it all on Endurance/Stamina might be the way to go, and bingo, next thing you know you’re the next marathon king of Ethiopia. Cash it in Dexterity and Coordination might have been smarter if you were in a place where you could end up playing table tennis, but still if you have some points left for Entrepreneurial Spirit, you might make it starting up a custom-made furniture store.

Some people seem to get more points than others though, so there has to be a logic to that too. Like “Bingo! You start off with Shelf 1 DNA – tall, dark, and handsome. With cash to boot. You’ll find things and people tend to come your way but you might find they don’t always seem to be the ones which provide true constancy. Choose between an additional 10 points in Focus which you can pick up at Counter 2, Humility at Counter 3, or decide instead to bank on your strengths and head for the Dumb Jocks Corner on the lower basement level.”

I’m pretty sure that there ought to be a Rare Gifts Shoppe, which you get to visit if you get the pre-life equivilent of one of Willy Wonka’s Golden Tickets. Most of our gifts just seem almost magical to those who don’t have them – it’s different somehow watching Sarah Chang and knowing in a ballpark approximation what she does to get the sound she gets, than being a music-loving say, accountant. Sometimes the magic is good to have, which is all the motivation not to know everything, in a sense. It’d be even more interesting to have a particularly rare gift, like photographic memory, or really knowing when it’s going to rain, or having a particular dexterity with your left big toe. With some of them, it would be harder to build a life around such a gift, but it would be interesting to have.

I know our decisions decide where we head in this life. But I wonder if we made decisions before this life, somehow. The question, I guess, is whether it’s like octagenarians’ rounds of bingo… or a rather more lively primordial casino. Round and round me goes, whether it be luck, chance or karma bestows.

What Moves Us Up

2008-11-13T22:04:00.003-05:00

Sometimes I wonder if greatness comes at the price of a continual dissatisfaction. There's the old story of how Beethoven - I somehow suspect it was actually Tchaikovsky, but these emo-tragedy stories seem to fit Beethoven's hairdo so much better - had insomnia after a concert, saying that "the music won't leave my head!" Of course it could have been, "it should have been Moses instead" but somehow I doubt it.

It does seem that the ones who make it beyond a certain level not only have a certain kind of drive or work ethic - but a strange sort of motivation that underlies that momentum. Many of us are happy to push ourselves to reap the benefits of our efforts, but some people drive forward simply because of a perfectionist dissatisfaction that it's never good enough. Even if it's good enough for everyone else, it's not good enough for them. Occasionally you'll get someone with her head screwed on right like Midori, who, in a CNN interview said that one must realize and accept that it'll never be perfect - this, from one of the few who are said to be as consistent on stage as in recordings.

Still, one has to admire what dissatisfaction can accomplish, in a sense. Even if the actual life - insomnia and all - is hardly what we might choose for oneself. As if it were ever a choice, and not a calling.

Hmm...

2008-11-07T14:53:00.003-05:00

Found this while rereading Scott Adam's The Dilbert Principle and couldn't help thinking that one is lucky if it's only one's boss with this attitude.

What's in a Name?

2008-11-05T10:07:00.002-05:00

Apparently something, considering the scores of Obama supporters - now President-elect Obama supporters - who defused the malapropism of his middle name by adding it to their own on Facebook. So John Doe became John Hussein Doe.

Names do matter, in terms of heritage anyway. Apparently there's an aircraft carrier named after a John McCain - one of the two admirals in generations before. Hillary Clinton certainly got mileage from an already presidential surname, and we're still in an era where political dynasties have their pull, from the Kennedys and the Bushes to our own relations of prime ministers, the one time inflation is a good thing for certain peopled named Hishamuddin, Khairy, Mukriz and even Najib.

I get a feeling the Americans had a thing with the running mates too. You start off with Obama and you add in a Biden and bing bang you get a Bobama. Sounds like it has a tinge of Jamaica and a slice of basketball, or the kind of word you'd use when you mean Eureka! but don't quite have the Greek heritage to pull it off. That's where McCain went wrong with Palin. Somehow he ended up being a McPain, which at the very least sounded like a McDonald's ad gone somewhat sour. And I'm not talking Prosperity Burger sour either. Should have gone with Romney. McRain, Rainmain, McMan, the list goes on.

Let's face it, a rose any other name may have smelled just as sweet, but a person who's had some experience would think twice before he smells something called a bunga tahi ayam, wouldn't he?

From Good Omens: A man in search of a cause

2008-11-02T01:35:00.001-04:00

"Newton Pulsifer had never had a cause in his life. Nor had he, as far as he knew, believed in anything. It had been embarrassing, because he quite wanted to believe in something, since he recognized that belief was the lifebelt that got most people through the choppy waters of Life. He’d have liked to believe in a supreme God, although he'd have preferred a half-hour’s chat with Him before committing himself, to clear up one or two points. He’d sat in all sorts of churches, waiting for that single flash of blue light, and it hadn’t come. And then he’d tried to become and official Atheist and hadn’t got the rock-hard, self-satisfied strength of belief even for that. And every single political party seemed to him equally dishonest.

Then he’d tried believing in the Universe, which seemed sound enough until he’d innocently started reading new books with words like Chaos and Time and Quantum in the titles. He’d found that even the people whose job of work was, so to speak, the Universe, didn’t really believe in it and were actually quite proud of not knowing what it really was or even if it could theoretically exist.

To Newt’s straightforward mind this was intolerable."

Anyone up for the CUTEST cat?

2008-10-30T11:54:00.003-04:00

This cat, taken with my cousin Nick's camera, suddenly showed up last Monday, and stayed through even when everything was packed up - including the food - and only a handful of people were left.

It likes pork for some reason, but even with the best food it's just as interested in going around your legs, and if you put your hand forward it'll either jump to to pet itself on the head, or push your hand against the left side of its face. It's the only cat I've met which really doesn't mind you picking up his tail and pretending to karaoke with it. Also, its tail is long and always pointing upwards, except when it rubs against you, in which case it rubs around you. Once in a while it'll roll around on the ground, inviting one to pet its belly - but it seems to be ticklish and will quickly bounce back to all fours. It'll find a little cool spot where some rain water hadn't yet dried up, and neatly sit on it.

During the wake one of my uncles said to me and some cousins of mine that he can't stand cats that poop behind his house, and the people who just feed them without thinking of the consequences. At that very moment an aunt came out of the house with a bowl of food for the cat, saying, "Lai lai lai!"

I love cats, and I rarely use the word "love". Were I planning to stay around and if I had a place of my own, I'd adopt this cat without a second thought. If someone would like the cutest cat I've ever met, I have two days left of visits to Balik Pulau (though I could come back to see if it's still hanging around soon after). Anyone up for it? Please email me at andrewfilmer79@yahoo.co.uk or give me a call at 016-4534207.

By the way, I named it. At the time I was reading Good Omens by Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchet when the dog was named Dog.

So, as you can imagine, its name is Cat.

Upcoming Event

2008-10-27T13:33:00.003-04:00

I'll be doing the Handel/Halvorsen Passacaglia with the MPO violinist at the close of the violin masterclasses.

Official website launched!

2008-10-25T05:19:00.003-04:00

I'll still be blogging here; this is for professional purposes.
Do drop by the guestbook!

http://andrewfilmer.wordpress.com/

From the Editor of the Journal of the American Viola Society

2008-10-22T06:35:00.004-04:00

Hey viola enthusiasts!

The Fall issue of the JAVS will be out in a few weeks!

Some of the exciting articles include Andrew Filmer's article on Mozart's Sinfonia Concertante, Barbara Sudweeks's inspiring article on teaching a blind violist, the Orchestral Training Forum on Brahms's Fourth Symphony with Robert Vernon, and a fascinating approach to recital preparation with David Wallace and his article on Interactive Performance.

If you are not yet a member of the American Viola Society, please visit
http://www.avsnationaloffice.org/membership.html. It's only $21 for students to join for an entire year! (Think of all the benefits that $1.75 a month will buy you....) Extra issues of the JAVS are also available, so purchase some for your friends or colleagues!

Please contact the AVS National Office at info@avsnationaloffice.org to order extra issues.

Thanks!

David

Sorry, were you meowing?

2008-10-17T01:52:00.005-04:00

Part 1: Welcome to the carousel, please leave your brains at the door

Being away with 14- to 18-hour days tends to do a couple of things to you. One, MSN created a new system called “Live!” and promptly decided that since I hadn’t had any time to log on, I was not quite alive after all. Second, you forget what it’s like to watch TV.

I wandered into the living room and into the 21st century fad of creating sequels to anything that seems to make a buck in theatres. In some cases, considering the titles of some of the movies they’re cloning, it gets a bit ridiculous. Final Fantasy 4, for example. Or, in my case, Save the Last Dance 2. Sounds like Barbra Streisand’s 10th year on a “farewell” tour.

There were some interesting bits though, even without the commanding presence of Julia Stiles in the Save the Last Dance sequel. Like the part where the Julliard dance professor says something to the tune of “How do you know when you’ve made the right motion? The motion becomes you. You become the motion. All things disappear and all you have left is pure emotion.”

Yuuuup, I got a good laugh out of that one. If music has any parallels as an art form, this is pure rubbish. Only amateurs turn off their brains and let pure emotion take over.

And yet so often that’s how it is with life. When things are really worthwhile, one turns off one’s brains and lets emotion take over. Which is often a recipe for forgetting that there’s an open trap door while your all emotional pirouetting makes you think you’re rising to the heavens.

Part 2: Wisdom from the mouths of buffaloes

I have to admire some of these actors and actresses who get picked to do sequels. First of all, they have to realize not only that they weren’t picked for the original movie, but that for the sequel Julia Stiles probably first turned it down, or is now elevated to a new pay bracket. Second, sequels tend to have crappy lines compared to the original, and they have to read it with as much conviction as if they were decent ones. I wonder if they take medication to prevent smirking. Or incessant blinking. Or coughing up yesterday’s lunch.

Sometimes they don’t though. The new dance protagonist actually gets to throw up. If the lines that follow are any indication, she probably didn’t need to fake it. “But it’s just so tough.” Interesting enough though, the responding line by the dance instructor isn’t half bad: “It’s supposed to be tough. Otherwise it wouldn’t be worth it.”

I think that really does touch the heart of it. What really separates winners from quitters isn’t some prize at the end of the road. It’s taking up the challenge. And becoming better for it.

Of course I’m baised, but give me a little credit that I have the guts to admit it. I’ve had to deal with quitters recently, which have made things particularly complex for me. Spectacularly complex, actually. And I’ve been thinking of how at this stage of life one is more aware of our continued upbringing – no longer as young children of our parents, but how we bring ourselves up further as adults.

Let’s say someone has a bad experience with someone who treats animals badly. For a while, our Dogdar or Catdar is all of sudden hyper. We suddenly notice that some of our best friends don’t feed strays who come to the table and meow. We go on a crusade to fight for the rights of undertrodden guinea pigs being used for shampoo research, without first finding out whether their fur coats really do have a brighter sheen. We learn the difference between a chihuahua and a chili dog. And we buy stock in Hello Kitty products. Then probably later than sooner, life goes on and a certain balance is restored, but we’ll always have a extra something when it comes to people who treat animals particularly well – or particularly badly. Just a little something, a little extra. But it’s there.

And so I have a new Quittometer installed and it’s in overdrive. Smells out the scent of unrealized potential and lack of commitment like a durian in a Calvin Clein promotion. There are setbacks however – after a year of practicing till having blisters on my chin, sprains on my back and two bruised wrist bones, it’s finally dawned on me that I’m ready for my audition, and the only thing that has held me back all this while is quite simply that on a stage or in front of a camera, I try too hard. Unnecessary bow pressure creates additional chin pressure and the whole balance is off. The irony of it all should be that the secret to doing well tomorrow is quite simply: while quitters and quitting have no place, there are times when to succeed one has to quit trying too hard.

Chomp Chomp Munch Munch

2008-10-14T13:28:00.004-04:00

A friend of mine had his Facebook status as a Forest Gumpism: "Life is like a box of chocolates."

And I replied, "You never know which of them are from China."

Mixed Messages

2008-10-11T14:51:00.004-04:00

As I was on the road recently, I reaffirmed my belief in accurate advertising. Let's take a look at this:

It shows a happy baker, with his hands open wide. Like he's happy to see you, come eat my bread! Or like he's showing you - look, my hands are clean, really!

So it's not surprising that it's part of advertising a food product:

And guess what; you can even eat it on its own. How about that. Then I found this:

Cute, right? Represents vitality, life, all things natural. Right?

Wrong.

P.S. For non-Malaysian readers, "buangan berbahaya" means "hazardous waste".

Cheers

2008-10-05T15:12:00.008-04:00

In recent weeks, I've been particularly thankful for the empathy of friends and the company of good, decent people. Some of whom probably don't realize (which makes it all the more special) that the brightness of life that exudes from the quality of their personalities and the beauty of their character helps me to recognize and reclaim my own place in this spinning marble. To see a bigger picture, the reality behind mirages, to remember to stand up for oneself as much as for others. There's still a ways to go, but it's healthy to be around people who not only have the maturity and strength to think of others before themselves - but chose to exercise that hard-earned capability.

In addition, the human laugh is particularly therapeutic.

Got this from Desmond's blog:

And this one from a fellow musician (click to enlarge):

Sent it to a former professor of mine... who promptly informed me that he's used it as a final exam for sight-singing. I'm have yet to check if he really meant sigh-singing instead.

Sweet and Sour in Sound

2008-10-01T12:09:00.003-04:00

Those of you who've read my blog for a while know I'm not the type to post on pop songs. But just recently Follow Through by Gavin Degraw opened my ears while I was driving.

On the side of harmony it's your typical pop song, but in terms of lyrics the message is certainly something. It's not your typical choices of relationship-based music (I love you, I hate you, I'm gonna max all your credit cards - well, the last one is actually pretty good) and it's not your trying-to-be-different-but-failing-miserably ideas (think: "I'd do anything for you, but I won't do that" or that phone-call song about saying sorry for cheating).

What makes this particular one quite something is that there are two layers: hope, but underscored by a suspicion borne of a reality that not all dreams come true. It captures a suspended moment in time without telling you where or how it ends, and in doing so it puts the conflict of hope and uncertainty into music. It's ambiguity works for it, and you don't know if it's shadows in the current, or past experience, which causes him to worry, to wonder.

Listen to it without the video, and see if you can imagine the eyes and the eyebrows - not of the singer, but of the voice.

It makes the listener hope for that voice, and it really is, to put it simply a rather sad song. It invites empathy and gives it at the same time, which is the only way that empathy truly functions.

Violin Posting No. 23: Experimenting with the Bow

2008-09-26T12:58:00.007-04:00

There are at least three different aspects to productive practice: correction, repetition, and experimentation. The last, experimentation, is in many ways the most important of the three since it helps us to discover what we can correct and then repeat it to build it into our mental and muscle memory.

This posting will address the various ways we can experiment with the bow. Knowing the basic rules of the game, metaphorically speaking, helps us to discover how we can make the practice session a self-teaching session as well.

In the diagram below, the black line indicates the basic path of the bow and numbers 1-6 indicate some of the ways we can experiment.

1. Faster bow speed
Changing bow speed provides us with different tone quality or timbre. Generally speaking, a faster bow can provide us with a more “airy” sound especially on the lower strings. But combined with more pressure from the right hand, it can also provide strong energetic sounds.
In many cases we will be surprised that moving the bow a little faster on the upper strings improves sound – because we sometimes forget to adjust from the slower bow speeds in the lower strings.

2. Slower bow speed
Slowing the bow generally makes the sound more compact or dense, even tight and intense. In a piano dynamic, and with an even, slow bow speed, a very calm quality can be achieved.
In playing we tend to gravitate to the medium or middle – and so, just as with the highest string, we can be surprised that improvements can be made with a slower bow on the lowest strings. This is especially so for the viola’s C string.

3. Bow towards the fingerboard
For many students, bowing towards the fingerboard happens by accident. So after repeated instructions by a teacher, it sometimes becomes an assumption that playing there is wrong (even the great violist William Primrose noted this in some of his students).
There are times when it can be done intentionally and done well. For the most part playing above the fingerboard can create a whispery, transparent quality. With a faster bow speed, it can even make the sound less clear, with a rougher edge, which can be useful depending on the music. However, we can also use this part of the string to play intense triple- and quadruple-stops more effectively, allowing us to get at least three notes all at once, without rolling the bow.

4. Bow towards the bridge
Bowing close to the bridge can create a rougher, aggresive quality. In many cases (again, especially for the viola), this is not only for the character of the music, but can help sound project. A tough lesson to learn is that what you hear is not always what the audience hears, just like how most of us find listening to recordings of our own voice strange.

5. Angling the bow away
This was a common way of ending music – it is basically an extension of No. 3 (bowing towards the fingerboard). But instead of having a section played further away, it is used to end certain notes with a diminuendo. Some pedagogues have rightly pointed out that it should not be the automatic way we end every note, but in the right context, the effect can be pleasant.

6. The bow stick
The big question is where the bow stick should point – upwards or forwards? In other words should the bow “stand” straight on the string or lean towards the fingerboard? There is no one right answer, and personally I like to consider keeping my options open and letting the sound be the guide. An upright bow can sometimes give a firm, confident tone, while a bow leaning forwards can give a warmer, fuller tone. Also, leaning the bow forwards gives us the option of letting less hair touch the string, letting us play quieter without relying only on bow speed, place on the string, or finger pressure.

In addition to these, there are other options also available. These deal directly with the bow.

7. The part of the bow
Connected to bowing and bow speed is checking that you are using the right part of the bow. Method books tend to split the bow into two (lower half and upper half) and three (upper, middle, lower) parts – while also noting the extremes (play at the tip or at the frog). Sometimes trying out “just below the middle” is also useful. Remember to make sure that you are not forced to play in an uncomfortable part of the bow because of a previous section – get to the part of the bow you want to play in.

8. Tightness of the bow
...is not always the same from one piece of music to another. Much depends on how on- or -off the string you wish to play, and how well the bow bounces. The rule of thumb is to have it just as tight as you need, and no tighter. But don’t end up playing lower in the bow than you would like just because your bow is too loose.

When Things Just Aren't Right

2008-09-22T15:39:00.002-04:00

I’ve got to get down to reading Why Bad Things Happen to Good People. But at the risk of judging a concept by its cover – or at least its choice of title – the point isn’t really about good or bad, but right and wrong.

Bad things happen to good people all the time, but most of the time it doesn’t exactly stop time. Nun steps on a nail. Animal lover gets bit by rabid dog. Occasionally ironic, and always unfortunate, but not something that will shake up your world now is it.

But then something happens which disrupts one’s concept of how things should be. Priests who take sexually assault altar boys. Sacrifice of morals in the name of patriotism. And how the people you trust sometimes end up hurting you the most. Sometimes I think that the context of right and wrong is not just a question of what would be good or bad, but a question of should, and that some things are meant to be in a “right” place in our world.

I’d be more upset having fifty dollars stolen or cheated off me than five hundred dollars stupidly lost at a casino. Which isn’t exactly logical, first from the perspective of how much I’d be losing, and that in the latter case I should feel even worse for quite consciously being an idiot. And yet the fifty weighs that much heavier not because you’re worried that you’d be the target of losing another fifty. It weighs that much simply because it was wrong to have that happen. It wasn’t quite right.

Something that’s bad may not always be wrong – like losing money on cards. Stupid, but not wrong. But something that’s less than worse, could be far more wrong than right.

I used to ask myself what kind of people read Why Bad Things Happen to Good People and self-importantly think that they’re good enough – better enough – not to have bad things happen to them. Nobody’s perfect. The essence of humanity is indeed that we do err, but the point is that to err is to underline that it is a mistake, and the definition of a mistake is the quality that underlies its intent. Yes, we do bad things sometimes – but did we know what we were getting into, when we did them? In some sense it’s about how bad it is we have acted, but perhaps the greater focus is towards whether we’ve done right or wrong. And how much we’ve not only worked toward an admission of responsibility, but true accountability by actions deserving of redemption.

If we’ve chosen to be mature and had a certain moral strength to try to do the right thing – because in the end maturity and strength are essentially about the choice of what we want to be and how much we’re willing to do – then we’ve also chosen to be good people even if we have unfortunately caused bad things to happen. And what defines us as good people is that we know what’s right and wrong and don’t try to rationalize it away. And it is in this sense that the world goes upside down not when bad things happen to good people, but wrong things happen to good people – because that worldview which defines us is also what can most affront us.

I think that perhaps good people are essentially optimists, and bad people are opportunists: both basically revolve around a perspective of life either as having a certain moral order for all, or whether it’s about getting whatever you can that defines the equation. Bad people don't always start bad - in many a sad case it's more about the compromises to ethics, the rationalization that they make along the way, and eventually they're swimming in a sea of grey. As life shows its realities good people end up being closet optimists, bulwarking with a certain cynicism, a certain brand of caution. They’re not pessimists who think that we’re all headed towards the pits, but ones who still value their hope that what they think is right and wrong will be what they see when they look out the window, while knowing that they still need a window, sometimes a bullet-proof one, to keep that hope alive.

Sadly, while it keeps at bay the danger, it makes it difficult to trust others, in trying times even brings doubt to the trust that we’ve already established. The very optimism that first allowed real connections to flourish can come back to shake our very foundations.

It is the price we pay to have a belief in a system of what’s right and what’s wrong. The price being that we have to have that belief placed in doubt. For each challenge to our faith serves to let us remind ourselves why we have actively chosen that faith. And that the choice is not one which we just sign on the dotted line on day one, but one we commit to with every day we spend on the path. In the end it really is not just the destination, and not even the sights and sounds of the journey, but the distance we cover, and the scars we hold as badges of honor.

It’s just not right sometimes.

But we go on nonetheless. And damaged and limping as we are at times, by not giving in, we have hopefully become as a people more “good” today, firmer in knowing that right and wrong takes blood, sweat and tears. And maybe, just maybe, that little effort in the face of wrong, helps to tilt the world a little bit back on its axis.

Evening Hues

2008-09-14T08:14:00.003-04:00

Sunset. From the house I grew up in, in Petaling Jaya.

Supersports

2008-09-10T12:47:00.001-04:00

I miss my old Innovation Friday posts, they were my authorized – or at least rationalized – hiatuses (hiati? haiti?) from reality. In their absence, I’ll just have to lean on the indulgence of my readers – oddly enough, especially the people I’ve dated over the years who just about all seem to take my buat lawak moments with a “uh-huh” look.

In every field, innovation is essential. New designs for string instruments look like something from a house of mirrors, and the cloning of Dolly (the sheep, not the Parton) ensures that we will soon have the ability to have the literally exact same delectable lamb chop we had last week. Sports should have the same progressive spirit, and not in the sense that squash (raquetball) is not an Olympic sport, but the trampoline is. Here are just some things that could open the world’s eyes to developments in the field.

1. Two handed badminton: before you balk, remember how cool Darth Maul was.

2. Battery-operated shuttlecocks: particularly attractive for Snitch-chasing Quidditch fans.

3. Live hand grenade badminton: military issue, with every game ending in Sudden Death. I think it would do wonders for motivation.

4. I think diving needs new challenges. Let’s see you do those acrobatic stunts while scuba diving.

5. Volleyball and hockey have had their progressive moments. Now all they need is to learn from each other: beach hockey and ice volleyball.

6. Almost every ball game – volleyball, golf, football, croquet – should have a version with bowling balls.

7. Bowling with storm drains – and you have to recover your own balls that end up in the gutter.

Where Be The Children

2008-09-05T05:14:00.001-04:00

Recently I came across two blog postings that dealt indirectly with the idea of how one generation imparts values to the next.

One was Marina Mahathir’s Merdeka Day blog posting, entitled Communing Over Cupcakes. She mentions that she had put her child in a national school here in Malaysia, which ended up creating a contradiction of values: her daughter came home with “racial-toned language” and Marina noted that “obviously she was being indoctrinated every day with the idea of racial superiority of only one community, hers.” She ended up moving her daughter to a private school after only eight months.

The other was of a response of a librarian who politely refused a parent’s insistence to censor the contents of his library, specifically a children’s text that included the character of a gay uncle. While putting out various reasons why a library has to be neutral to ideology in being a source of information, he noted that the child in question had returned to her mother saying that the book’s perspective was wrong. This, according to the librarian, thus indicated that a library does not have the ability to override a parent’s choice of values to impart to her child, stating that, "In other words, you have taught her your values, and those values have taken hold. That's what parents are supposed to do..."

My question: is it though?

There are quite a number of things which are illegal but hardly immoral. In a Malaysian context consider “illegal gatherings” – which under the Internal Security Act can be any group of three people and above without a police permit – versus the concepts of freedom of expression, association and dissent. Or a far simpler example: pirated DVDs (for non-Malaysian readers it would be good to point out that predatory film companies place the price of a bona fide DVD around eight times the price of a movie ticket, or enough to buy you lunch and dinner for a week). But there are probably far more things which are legal but unethical, including racist, sexist or otherwise bigoted thinking. So long as one doesn’t act too blatantly based on a discriminatory platform, one gets away with it – and if Malaysian politics has shown anything, it’s that one can get away with it even if it is blatant. But in a larger, more international context, Mel Gibson or Isaiah Washington can be bigots in their private life, and the line to cross is when those worldviews are put into destructive action.

For some reason, we don’t consider it crossing the line when these views are put into the heads of children in the home, because of the right of the parents to choose values for their children. So it’s bad behaviour to impart anti-Semitism to a cop who has pulled you over, but alright to plant those same ideas into one’s kids?

Even the best parenting does not always guarantee kids will turn out well, and the picture looks bleak with bad parenting. Sometimes I’m relieved when kids end up with a set of perspectives different from their folks – not because the older generation is wrong, but just to know that beyond individual ideologies, those of the new generation can think for themselves. Which is, incidentally, on occasion is thanks to parents who place independence of the thought over subscription to their own ideology. There’s nothing inherently wrong with Democratic kids from Democratic parents or Republican kids from Republican parents, but if one ticks the ballot box in one spot simply as family tradition, then one throws out the value of democracy. The best parenting is when parents teach their kids the value of voting rather than which party for which to vote.

I used to think that whatever the upbringing, the dawn of one’s age of reasoning, whether it be an arbitrary date like that of 18 or 21 or a rite of passage like the walkabout of the Australian aborigines, determines when one is responsible to think for oneself. But then things happen like young adults – even young parents – who become suicide bombers on public buses, or children in the African who are indoctrinated into becoming killing machines. Which makes me think that in the right rotten environment, one can be robbed of the ability to reason, to think.

Some cases are easily seen as flawed, like the case highlighted by Ellen Degeneres of the young boy who killed his gay classmate because he asked him to be his Valentine. But there are cases which are for the most part accepted in our society without much second thought – like extremely young girls dressed in complete Muslim garb. Cultural or religious integrity is one thing (and I have more Muslims in my extended family than non-Muslims) but can a 9-year old really understand that she’s covered up for a sense of modesty? Is there really that much harm in letting your neighbours know that you have a beautiful child? And Christianity is not without matters which people take for granted. First communion for Catholics, which is given out to those in Standard 3 – which, if my math is correct, also makes them 9 years of age – revolves around one of the toughest concepts of the faith which some adults aren’t completely clear about: transubstantiation.

That being said, in the end, tudungs and communion wafers are likely to do more good than harm in the sense that it is but one aspect of a shared community. The problem is that it’s hard to tell where the boundary is that so often goes trodden unnoticed… when a common cultural identity turns into when schoolchildren are either told that Catholics are better than Protestants, or that Muslims are better than Christians. There is no mechanism to ensure that either parents or institutions are kept in check – as seen by the pro-censorship mother or the national school Marina mentioned.

But with at least one open and progressive mind – whether it be a parent who notes racism creeping into her child’s life or a librarian who keeps knowledge free of bigotry, the next generation might just have a fighting chance.

A Field of Snippets

2008-08-31T10:51:00.000-04:00

There’s a field right outside my house in PJ, and there’s much to bask in terms of people watching. Snippets give glimpses into people’s lives.

There’s an old lady who doesn’t move particularly fast. But when she walks she really keeps going, outrunning both me and the Energizer Bunny in terms of keeping it going.

Her T-shirt has a logo you can’t quite make out in the front, and “Pusat Perkhidmatan Chew Mei Fun” (Chew Mei Fun’s Service Center) on the back. The “Chew Mei Fun” is a lot bigger than “Pusat Perkhidmatan,” which I’m hoping is not symbolic of the size of the political ambition over the weight of the service.

There’s a young man still in his office clothes, except for sandals, pushing around his toddler in a stroller. He’s had a full day at work and knew that he had to make the most of the remaining daylight with his young child. I sometimes think it odd that we value sunlight but spend most of it indoors. Would we be happier on the night shift?

A bunch of teenagers play basketball in their school uniforms. It’s not a full-fledged game, just going around one half of the court. Out of habit and instinct, these groups always seem to end up on the side of the court closest to the street. Which also is the side of the court closest to a big muddy puddle where the ball often ends up after missing the basket entirely. Ten plops into the mud and the necessitated use of a stick to get their ball out doesn’t seem to suggest to the teens that they might try the opposite side of the court.
But then, they do call this place “Kuala Lumpur”. Which for our non-Malaysian readers, means that our capitol city is called “Delta of Mud”. Not exactly in the same linguistic intention as Los Angeles, let me tell ya.

Some of the older generation of Indian ladies don’t view walking around a park as any less fashionable dignified as any other activity. Thus the full-length evening dress, gold necklaces, and scarves. They look surprisingly more natural in that garb than in a tracksuit.

Another bunch of youngsters kick a volleyball around, aiming to hit a tree. The tree wins.

In the morning, there’s usually a Mercedes Benz with a “P” sticker, indicating that there’s a new “Probation” driver using his or her parents’ car. But it’s usually there before nine, next to the line dancing and tai chi. Something tells me it’s the mom or dad, not the new license holder that’s parking the car. Which is a pity, coz those tai chi people really have some style.

There’s a specific bunch that only comes out when it rains cats and dogs. They play a game in the middle of the basketball court that involves being in a circle and laughing like hyenas when the ball hits someone’s head. I keep thinking that the next morning half of them are gonna get sick and learn their lesson. But they’re a resilient bunch, and someone upstairs takes more pleasure in their enjoyment of life than their lack of concern for health or common sense.

Two friends meet, walking in different directions. They stop for a moment to catch up. They would have stopped for two moments, except that one of them has three dogs who have an entirely different idea. Who’s walking who?

I pop in a set of headphones and do my thing around the field. You know how people like to hum along or sing along to music? Well, some classical musicians have an inclination to conduct what they hear. The problem is of course that other people think you’re downright weird if you do that outside. So the question really is whether your satisfaction at connecting to music by waving your arms about is overweighed by people thinking you’re nuts. And if it is, then you subscribe to the tenet that the assumptions that people create based on what they don’t know, are valid. Rather than (an albeit idealistic) perspective that diversity is not limited to understanding other people but accepting them even if you don’t understand them. Perhaps the reason why we don’t do things like wave our arms about if that totally works for us… is that we protect our own inclination to judge people who do things we don’t understand. So in a sense, not waving your arms about is as dangerous as people staring at you for waving your arms about.

I think that sort of balances things out in a lose-lose sort of situation. I figured today that if that’s the case, then I may as well have some fun in the process. Today’s joggers got a silent demo of the conducting of selections of Evita. And surprisingly enough, not many seemed to care one way or another.

Your Ears Aren't Alone

2008-08-14T13:54:00.002-04:00

I was back in the aisles yesterday, and instead of James Dobson's sneakily cheery voice, I heard Michael Jackson singing Heal the World. The whole Free Willy jazz didn't quite catch me, nor did the whole all-star show, but the actual music - just the pure, unmovienated and unstarsaturated sound - did get me. That whole album was quite something, it had the themes, it had the tunes, it had the rhythm... it had a voice that had something in the shadows that you didn't quite know why it was attractive, a sort of Mona Lisa of sound.

Then we had the whole Neverland Ranch fiasco - where the eventual acquittal didn't quite make up for the previous out-of-court settlement - and suddenly the little girl's voice intermingling with Michael's didn't seem quite as beautifully innocent as it used to.

That's unfortunate. Because ideally the music should stand on its own - if we end up liking the music based on whether we like the personality of the star, we're not really holding music up to a very respectable level. I think that was the basis of Daniel Barenboim conducting Wagner in Germany - the composer may have been anti-Semitic, but it doesn't mean that defined his music.

Perhaps that was the start of it all, Michael Jackson and songs like Heal the World and The Man in the Mirror. Somehow I don't think the greats like Mozart and Bach would have appreciated the idea of a music video determining how well we regarded their concertos. Or perhaps more interestingly, where the likes of Britney Spears would be without MTV.

Life in the Aisle

2008-07-31T13:28:00.003-04:00

I’ve always found it somewhat interesting to go grocery shopping, and I’ve never thought about why that is until today. There’s a certain representation of society right down the aisles, which intrigues those who like to observe people – those who were, perhaps, sociologists and anthropologists in some other life.

In one sense, there’s a certain shared identity. You look in a person’s grocery cart and you get a glimpse of that person’s life. Microwavables, Twisties, beer. Diapers, toilet rolls, talcum powder. Curtains, pillow covers, mugs. Plus, you’re automatically in a anonymous community once you spend more time in one aisle than the next. Take a moment to look at badminton rackets… or tap fixtures, and you have a connection to the person who is picking out shuttlecocks or a water heater. You don’t have to say hello, you don’t have to sign up for a match, which would be particularly weird with the taps and all, but you know where you are. And if there is ever a need reinforce your identity as a Malaysian, you know that just about everyone in the store is going to stop by the Maggi and Milo sections before the day is over.

You put something in your grocery cart and though you haven’t purchased it yet, you’ve marked it as your own. Someone can’t exactly decide that his watermelon is not as good as the one in your cart and trade, now can he? And yet in that sense you can leave your cart and walk around to get something else, and know that no one is going to do that behind your back – well, not here anyway. Different sort of deal if you have the last Wii in a BestBuy, but then that’s the charm of it – no one is out to sell you something they can’t afford themselves. Shopping complexes on the other hand have assistants who are promoting products they wouldn't get themselves. I'd prefer to trust the fish monger who looks like he may have eaten a fish recently.

Even the way you get around a supermarket says something. There are the meticulous who systematically go aisle by aisle - who also have a scheduled time and day for shopping. Then there are people like me, who jump, skip and hop and don't even pretend they have a plan.

Of course they'll be a return to reality as the various shopping carts race for the finish line, cut queue and with a flick of a card illustrate how capitalism still thrives. But while we're still rolling down the aisles instead of waiting in them, there's a glimpse of the parts of society we might do well to breathe in, and hold for a moment in time.

YouPot

2008-07-30T02:24:00.003-04:00

I've had a pretty good time on YouTube. There are of course those who have some sort of misdirected rage at life and use it scattering various bullets across the Net, but on the most part there are good, decent people out there.

YouTube these days has been one of my potted plants. I sorta remember to sprinkle some water on it from time to time, but my current rehearsal schedule would make regularly new videos a little out of the way. Nevertheless it's been interesting to see a couple of comments off and on from new YouTubers, and this one by far has been the most interesting:

"I am 46 and have a viola in my closet, I have not played sence the 7th grade that is almost 35 years ago, I now have 2 chidern of my own. I want them to learn. I could kick myself for not contenuing my lessions. my kids will play if it kills them"

All Facebooked Up

2008-07-21T13:00:00.002-04:00

I now proudly have people from all aspects of my life on Facebook: primary school in KL, elementary school in Michigan, secondary school in Penang, college in KL, university in Penang, work in Thailand, university in Indiana, orchestras in Penang, KL and Thailand, and a bunch of people I'm lucky to have met in between. Including some that I wouldn't have gotten to know better had it not been for Facebook itself. I'm a person who has moved a few too many times in my life, and having a networking tool is particularly useful for me - and one of the reasons why Melbourne seems a particularly attractive place to go. Plus, once in a while, I really get a laugh out of something on Facebook... and sometimes it's unintentional, like this from my Fluff Friends:

Violin Posting No. 23: Tone Production II

2008-07-18T11:59:00.000-04:00

This is a discussion on how to better improve the quality of sound. In the process, one of the additional things that will be mentioned is the use of memorizing music, and how to do so.

A. Keeping the Bow Straight - Again

Playing with a straight bow is harder than we realize. Playing a piece of music from memory is good not just because it looks better on stage, but because it allows one to focus on details like watching where the bow goes. In addition to what has already been mentioned in the previous posting on this subject it may be good to consider the following:

1. When going down bow in the upper half of the bow, you should feel that the arm is actually moving away from the rest of the body. If it feels too “easy,” chances are that the elbow is locked, and the bow is moving sideways, and away from the bridge.

2. Sometimes one can start off in the right place on an A or E string, but when heading to the lower strings, the bow can go off angle. Practice moving from the highest to the lowest strings, keeping the bow the same distance from the bridge on all strings.

B. Bow management

1. Sometimes we use a particular part of the bow for a section of the music not because it is the best place in the bow, but because the previous section led us to it. How do you realize if this is a problem? This situation is a good example: you practice an area which has a bow problem and you solve the problem – but when you play from the start you end up with the same issue. How do we solve the issue? Check the bars before and see if any of the music there leads you to start the section in the wrong part of the bow. In other words, instead of working forwards, work backwards – eg. practice a section, then add four bars before it, and then another four bars. The same practice technique has been recommended by Prof. James Dunham as way to memorize music. This is because the area we are more familiar with is always in front of us, so we always have a goal to which we can look forward.

2. Sometimes we can also get to a wrong part of the bow because we do not realize that we have to lift/retake the bow. For example, let’s say we find a section of music which has a quick off-the-string notes that sound best in the point of bow marked below in red:

Playing on the E string, there is no problem. However, if we move to the G string by just raising the arm, we find that we are in a higher section of the bow, and the same bow stroke will not work as well here. In other words, we may have to readjust the place of the bow as we move from string to string. Look at how far we are from the original place marked in red:

3. The last issue with bow management that we will discuss in this posting is bow speed. Play in front of a mirror and watch to see if there are any sections where it may help to use more or less bow. Often the case will be like this: The blue represents what would produce good, even tone production. The red is a common reality for many of us, using too much changes of bow speed to end phrases. It is also common that we end up using more bow than necessary, and we end up at the tip of the bow and need to have a wide jump to get back to the right part of the bow. This is why bow speed exercises are useful – especially ones which test how slowly you can move a bow without stopping. One recommended to me by Mr. Lim Soon Lee is to try playing an open string and watching the second hand of clock. The ultimate goal is around 120 seconds with only one bowstroke – but for most of us, 30-60 seconds is a reasonably successful result.

C. Tightness of the Bow

A very simple but helpful way to make good tone is to check the bow tightness. Very often we tighten a little too much – and in an air-conditioned room, bows can get tighter as they adjust to the colder temperature. The basic rule is that the bow needs to be only as tight as so that the wood of the stick doesn’t hit the strings. Some people do think that it makes it difficult to bounce without a little additional tightness, but I think it really depends on the bow. Experiment with loosening the bow slightly and see how we like the end result.

Concluding Comments

It is important to realize that the discussions above are overall guidelines. Sometimes we intentionally move the bow away from the bridge, and sometimes we want to move the bow faster to create certain effects - but the recommended ideas above are to avoid some of the common mistakes, and to provide a solid basis in tone production. A final suggestion: try playing a little closer to the bridge, especially for violists - something else I picked up from Asst. Prof. Tony Devroye. It may sound a little harsh close up, but it has greater overall projection.

Don't Play Play

2008-07-16T04:02:00.007-04:00

You may have heard a while back that Malaysia sent a man into space. Or, we sent a guy to Russia to be sent into space.

I heard that in celebration of Malaysian culture our ambassador to the stars brought two things onto the spaceship. Traditional batik wear... and the game of congkak. I tried to check with the government website, but got a page that it was under construction.

Now, for those who are unfamiliar with the term - congkak is a traditional game that is similar in principle to the mancala. It's a charming thing because it's easy to learn, has a certain level of strategy and one can use rocks when one has lost one's marbles. This is pic from Warisan Budaya Malaysia:

Nice, right? Now, I really do believe that if you want a budaya Malaysia you're going to start with games and the young. I personally have fond memories of congkak and carrom, especially with my Malay cousins in Batu Caves.

The thing is, like I said it's a game of strategy. You make choices of which hole to start with and depending on the distribution of marbles, you can end up with more in your "home", thus winning the game.

In space though, I imagine that there will be a much tougher strategy: finding out how to not hang on to your marbles in a zero-gravity environment. Kind of like playing beach volleyball in Greenland.

I know there's the whole Malaysia Boleh thing, but I would have thought that there was a far more logical choice of Malaysian culture. Let's think - what would be a great thing to have where things just float around? Browsing through our Warisan website might just give a clue...

The List of 29

2008-07-14T11:21:00.003-04:00

I used to write an announcement of sorts, listing the things I’ve learned or the things I believe in since the past year. A manifesto of sorts. This year the list is a little different – it’s as much things I look forward to knowing, and things I should know, as things I do know.

I’ve learned that a movement is less sweet outside of the rest of the suite. Always see the big picture.
Don’t apologize for being corny. Just don’t do it too often.
Find out why I can’t practice without a constant influx of caffeine.
Appreciate the opportunities for completely random conversations, whether or not they go anywhere.
When reminiscing, check the pulse of the audience from time to time.
Find out why I do my best thinking in the shower, and either replicate it elsewhere… or occasionally go play in the rain.
Put some time aside to listen to something that I haven’t listened to in a while.
There’s nothing wrong in being honest about having spiritual ambiguity. You can choose to believe in some things, but you can’t truly be forced to believe anything that you don't believe.
There’s joy in knowing all the things I don’t know. Where would the fun be in looking to tomorrow otherwise?
I still think 90% of pop music is absolute rubbish. The remaining 10% is pretty cool, though – and more often than not, British.
Try to be as honest as truthful. Even if it’s a real bummer to do so. Especially about what really counts.
There’s nothing wrong with being an idealist, so long as you aren’t an idiot at the same time.
Be more self-assured that not being in this box or that box is alright. If I allow people to put me in a metaphorical box, chances are it’ll be on a metaphorical street.
Let some things pass. Or try to, anyway.
Getting older means seeing things less in terms of black and white. But don’t drown in the grey.
American spelling does make some sense, so long as it doesn’t include musical terminology. Darn “quarter” notes.
Find out whether it’s a problem that I can’t find stuff I want to read to the end, and I tend to read to the end books in the often unfulfilled hope that they might get better.
For better or worse, I’m a grammatical traditionalist. And yet I have sentences like this one.
The way smoking works is that it gives you a need which it then relieves. It’s like a doctor who shoots you in the foot, puts it in a cast and drops the bill in your lap.
The one thing that is particularly dangerous for people who have quit smoking is second-hand smoke. Because I can still tell exactly what you’re smoking from one whiff. Some skills are scary, eh?
I think that the idea of having a “sensitive” musician is not an emotional thing at all – it’s about the ability – and propensity – to adapt. It’s the only way to learn without being told what to do.
The real consolation of truly tough experiences is the ability to be the ones able to console others credibly later.
Stop worrying if I need to be more interesting, or more interesting in person than online. I’m a violist, after all. Being any more interesting can be… a very… dangerous… thing.
Stop counting.
See how well that turned out?
Keep this idea alive: making Penang a more viable place for all our young musicians to return. [You might find it interesting that the original sentence read: Keep the idea of making Penang a more viable place for all our young musicians to return alive.]
Don’t feel too bad that I’ve turned from tea aficionado to drinking teh tarik and chai. Life’s too short to count on having a constant supply of lapsam souchong.
Don’t worry if I never, ever, come to like Bartok’s Viola Concerto. Just remember to learn it one of these days. Always eat your vegetables.
Learn to be comfortable, and come to terms with, keeping some things personal. Easier said than done.

The Veil of Reflections

2008-07-11T12:37:00.003-04:00

When was doing my first degree here in Malaysia, I had a Muslim friend who did not wear the tudung (headscarf) and was ostracized by some of the more traditionalist of her religious compatriots. When I was doing my second degree in America, I had a friend who had converted to Islam and had chosen to wear the tudung… and was asked to leave her job because the customers were getting nervous because they were suspicious that she might be a terrorist.

I didn’t seem to connect the two incidents until earlier today, and my first question was: which situation was worse? Then I realized that that wasn’t the question at all. The real question is were those who discriminated here any different from those who discriminated there?

The tudung is a symbol, to be sure. And in one respect it is a statement of the person who choses to wear it or not wear it. One can wear it out of a sense of modesty, or even as a sign of solidarity – an outward sign of inward grace, if Catholics will allow me a little bit of paraphrasing. One can choose not to wear it because she doesn’t like some of the interpretations of why one wears a tudung – or that she simply views that inward grace is quite sufficient. In any thinking society, there has to be the ability to have a plurality of ideas, and personally I find either idea with merit – the only thing I’m fairly sure about is that in the end it’s a symbol, not the end all and be all. It’s a person’s character shown through actions that counts, and no piece of cloth worn or not worn will ever give or take it away.

I would further argue that the foundation of any sense of spirituality has to be a thinking society where practices are not just replicated but formed from questioning what came before. Just about every major religion has come from that basis: Jesus Christ and the priests of his day who followed the letter but not the spirit of the law, Muhammad who challenged the jahiliah authorities of his era, Buddha who left princehood in search of enlightenment – and I don’t know much about Hinduism, but I seem to recall the elephant god was gained his identity from a situation which illustrated that even the divine can make mistakes, and can rectify them. And for those who prefer to think themselves spiritiual or moral without necessarily subscribing wholesale to a religious doctrine – their very choice itself speaks of the foundation of character building as a search, a discovery… that the process of finding the answer is often more important than the answer itself – or the place the answer is housed.

Chances are it’s not the personal symbolism that disturbed certain people both in northern Malaysia and the American Midwest. I don’t honestly think that Malaysians saw my friend here as promoting sinfulness, or that Americans truly saw my other friend as a terrorist. They suspected – and feared – that the true meaning was something quite different. But I think secretly they desperately wanted to think of not wearing a tudung as promoting sinfulness, or wearing a tudung as a sign of evil.

Because by providing a different point of view, my two friends valiantly disrupted people’s extremely clung-to stereotypes. If wearing a tudung in Malaysia is not enough to guarantee purity, then life gets a little too complicated, doesn’t it? And if you can’t pick out a terrorist by her headgear, then life gets a little too grey for comfort, no? When it comes down to it, people often label others as the enemy not because they are the enemy. The label the others as the enemy so that they can pretend to be the good guys.

The discriminatory social fundamentalists on both sides of the globe would view each other as enemies, no doubt. It’s a crowning irony for these narcissists. For little do they realize that life only gets truly complicated and grey when you don’t realize you’re looking in a mirror and actively hate your own reflection.

Numbers, numbers...

2008-07-07T02:49:00.003-04:00

107 over 66, apparently. Again.

I used to use my low blood pressure to explain why I arrived late for class. As a Malaysian, of course, that was hardly necessary - chronic lateness and a penchant for Maggi mee are practically cultural fixtures, if not hereditary traits. It took some getting used to being more spot on time abroad - or trying to anyway - and returning to Malaysian Time after two years in America has a rather curious mix: I'm still late, but I actually feel guilty about it. Haiyo.

Also, I've been curious how it would be if I put the electronic blood pressure meter thing over my neck. I'm thinking t'would be a good plot element. Murder-mystery, that sort of thing. Haiyo haiyo.

Violin Posting No. 22: An Introduction to the Bowed Strings

2008-07-04T14:26:00.004-04:00

An interview for a music appreciation course at Indiana University South Bend - I used to visit the class, but now that I've graduated, this was recorded for future use. It is in two parts. The interviewer is Rebecca Hovan, adjunct faculty for flute and music appreciation - I might mention, a teacher well liked by her students and respected by her colleagues.

Politics Aside

2008-07-04T06:15:00.003-04:00

I've noted with a little apprehension that my blog was becoming political.

My housemate once asked why I was sometimes political, and occasionally activist.

My response was that the more of a minority you are, the more you tend to turn to avenues to highlight your issues.

That being said, I never wanted this blog to be too political because I enjoy the idea that it is diverse, and politics tends to be divisive. Occasionally I might have a non-partisan viewpoint, a query of why things are the way they are, but I think I'll have to make a distinction between that and more than that.

So I've started The Real Nose Newsreel, where I'll house my politics. With a little freedom to mix around languages like a true Malaysian. I've also moved my links of political links. I may write daily, or rarely, whatever works on that blog- a situation made easier by Blogger's direct RSS feeds.

And well, that's my definition of politics aside.

Old Habits

2008-07-03T15:07:00.002-04:00

I've taken to some of my old hobbies. Technically there's a difference between coin-collecting and numismatics - the latter deals with all sorts of currency, which would include collections of bonds or promissory notes. At one time I had a fascination of old paper currency, and I had started a small collection. Right before a family trip I decided the safest place for it would be in one of the many books in my house. Which was a good idea except that soon after that we moved house, and I had completely forgotten which book it was placed.

Here's a small sample that didn't go through quite as well as I had hoped through the scanner. These are the various 10 baht coins I collected during my two years in Thailand.

One Step Forward, Two Steps Back

2008-07-01T16:58:00.011-04:00

The more I pay attention to politics, the more I feel that we keep getting run over. There's a certain part of politics which is always a lose-lose situation. And the real problem is that that part is the main crux of it all: it's a popularity contest, and everyone wants to win.

Barack Obama gets a cheap shot from people saying that you can't trust him because he's a Muslim. An adamant Obama and an enthusiastic following push forward the clarification that he's a Christian. Which works for a while. Then Reverend Wright comes along.

Ten years ago, Anwar Ibrahim gets accused of sodomy. He denies the charge, and says he does not participate in what he characterized as immoral activities. He is arrested, jailed, and later his conviction is overturned. This week, new allegations arise.

What's wrong with this picture? Both Obama and Anwar - the former who is labeled liberal and the latter who self-identifies as being liberal - have missed the point. The cheap shot is not if someone calls you not black enough, not Malay enough, not Christian enough, or not Muslim enough. It's not a cheap shot because that is the real test of whether we have produced real leaders who stand up to say that hey, that question has nothing to do with what makes me a good leader. The cheap shot is when you descend to that level and defend your Christianity or your heterosexuality, and give that kind of politics the legitimacy it ill deserves.

After all, it's not as if they're saying that you're a suicide bomber or a rapist - if that's the case, then it's a different matter [and yes, in Anwar's case it may end as that this time] and by all means go out and return fire. But so far, what our champions have done is to legitimize the idea that you need Christian qualifications to the President of the United States, and that sexuality should be yet another divisive element in a country already torn by artificial class distinctions. It's not to the extent of the destruction of church and state in America, or the kind of discrimination of the Nazis, but it's certainly a step in the wrong direction. That's the risk - it's easier to see the robber of bank than a bad banker who slowly steals from your account. In that sense, it's more like one step forward, two steps back. Governments based on a twisted form of the cha-cha. How so very reassuring.

Whatever good Obama or Anwar may bring in terms of a cleaner government, had better be more than the impact they have indirectly done to civil liberties and the failure of producing a society more thinking and more mature than the one we had ten months ago, or ten years ago.

And I suspect it's not about of a lack of awareness of the big picture, but all of this because it's the only way people will let you win an election. I also suspect that they say to themselves, well, it's better for the people than letting the other guy win. That in turn is just because we the people - the vaulted voice of democracy, the foundation of freedom - no longer have the rules such that good people who stand up for the right things in tough moments may lose an election with honor and but be honored in history as a winner for sticking to principle. We the people prefer to forget them because they said something unpopular even though it may have been right. And if we applied the same principle to schools, the biggest kid gangster would run the Principal's office.

Today we have the heroes of what's left, instead of the heroes of what could, and should, be. We shouldn't elect someone just because he has exactly the same ideas as us. We had better elect someone because his or her ideas are better than ours, because that's the prerequisite of leadership. A good leader standing for elections should show the electorate the path forward, especially if that path is difficult. Instead what we get are leaders who make you sit down on the road and have a picnic, and subconsciously tell us how beautiful we are because we act just like them.

Which is fine, until the SUV comes round the bend and rolls over us both.

We weren't always like this. We had Onn Jafaar. And Tunku Abdul Rahman. They were great in achievements, but man, history showed how they absolutely magnificent they were in defeat.

Mullings on the Edge

2008-06-27T13:49:00.002-04:00

Note: opinionated article ahead. Sail with caution.

Not too long ago I was having a conversation with a couple of African American friends, one of whom was adamant that Barack Obama may be fine in ideas – but just don’t call him black. This has of course been in the realm of the media for some time, with some considering that his mother is white, others saying that his childhood in Indonesia and his schooling in Ivy League institutions didn’t give him the same perspective as most blacks. I knew I was in dangerous ground – but then again, I didn’t have “white guilt” either, and so I ventured a query: Barack’s mother is a white American, and his father is from Africa, so doesn’t that by definition make him an African American? And if we trace back every black person in America, wouldn’t everyone – including everyone in that room on that day – end up coming from Africa?

There was a brief silence. Then another friend of mine spoke up.

“I dunno about the rest of you came from, but I’m from Oklahoma.”

Everyone cracked up.

History is a funny thing. We tend to place the idea of historical fact as cold, empirical, as symbolically as it is often literally carved into stone. We like the idea that there’s precedent we can trust, that somehow we derive the wisdom of the ages if we take time to understand The Art of War. But in most cases, the use of history ranges from an extension of passive-aggressive tendencies to downright wishful – and I daresay, fraudulent – thinking. The American far right reach for the Quran not to better understand why there is an increasing cultural gap between Muslims those who cling to a Judeo-Christian lineage, but to find ammunition for their already unchanging perceptions. The same has been done – by Radio Television Malaysia during my schooldays – in comparing that religious text with the Bible. Palestine and Israel are both selective about whose birthright the land extols, and there’s never a Judean around when you need one. Not too long ago, a certain Japanese textbook put forward a controversial interpretation of World War II, and revisionist historians now put into consideration the application of the atomic bomb not to end that same war, but to show the Russians that they had the capability and willingness to blow things up. The President of Iran doesn’t believe that the Holocaust existed, and the President of the United States probably doesn’t believe that dinosaurs existed.

And the fundamental issue that underpins racial relations in Malaysia is who got there first. Hindraf. The “political tsunami”. Open tenders instead of the NEP in Penang. And let’s not forget the political hotspots of Sabah and Sarawak, whose residents just might be a little less edgy [dare I say, jumpy?] if it weren’t for a little voice in the background that reminded them that they were very first Malaysians and what the heck are these Peninsula people doing mucking around here.

On one level I get it, but on another that doesn’t entirely make sense to me. My brain, those who know me will assure you, is an elevator stuck between two floors – if you want a consistent conversation with me, it’s best we take the stairs. The part that doesn’t quite jell is that the concept of the past doesn’t quite relate to my present the way it seems to for a great many others. Maybe it’s because my family genealogy has a little twist of humour to it. In the 1970s, someone decided to find out the details of our past, and we came across an impressive kilt design, a coat of arms and the account of the last pure-bred Caucasian Filmer, who apparently was wearing a pince-nez on the battlefield of World War I, dropped it (what a surprise), and was shot dead looking for it. The family member who commissioned and reported the results of the historical search ended off with the note: “Rather daft, no?”

It’s a nice story. It’s got the authenticity of a coat of arms that you could hang on a place that’s difficult to dust, cultural apparel, and an ending that a Tales of the Unexpected Roald Dahl would have approved. And while I like to occasionally reminisce about a Welsh castle that my family once owned and that I’ve never seen (it gets better every time I think about it – the last I checked, it had a moat and satellite TV), little about it affects my present life, outside of using English as a primary language and having a thing about Western classical music. And well, I own a little harp, which is as Welsh as I get. Even with that – I heard none too long ago that the real origin of the harp was Egypt.

In almost every aspect of my life, I have been Malaysian from birth. My perspectives, no matter how Western-leaning they can be, are rooted and in relation to a Malaysian fulcrum. [And if my vocabulary might seem to suggest otherwise, I’d like to mention that the Malay word for fulcrum is “fulkrum”]. Whether it be local or American politics, I just don’t get how one makes a determination about where a relative and selective history begins, and suddenly down the line we have a very contentious issue called affirmative action. I get that if a young student who is poor, he needs a bit of boost to play on a level playing field. What befuddles me is what difference it makes who his great-great-grandfather was, and if he lost his family fortune to the divide-and-conquer British. Does it make him any poorer than the kid next door whose great-great-grandfather lost his own fortune in the Boxer Revolution?

Put in another way – for a student, if you can’t start a test with an empty piece of paper and a working pencil, how fair is the test, and how well can you trust the results?

Let me put it this way. There was a joke during a debate about whether Bill Clinton, whose policies benefited the African-American community, was the first black president. To which Barack quipped somewhere along the lines of, “I’d have to check his dancing abilities before I can be sure that he is a brother.”

Somehow I think that that sounds fair. In respectfully disagreeing with some friends of mine, if we're wondering whether Barack is black, it matters more whether Barack can talk the talk and dance the dance, than whether his great-great-granddaddy did a rain dance on the plains of the Sahara. Whoever wrote the lines for Kungfu Panda had it just right: “Yesterday is history, tomorrow is a mystery, but today is a gift – that’s why they call it the present.”

They say those of us who don’t learn from our history are doomed to repeat it. I say, we have to learn what history is first, or we’re doomed to never have anything worth repeating to others. Some story that history would be.

Perspective

2008-06-22T13:56:00.001-04:00

I'm getting back into having photography as a hobby, and have this thing for angles.

Scribble

2008-06-20T16:13:00.004-04:00

A little over two years ago, I was thinking of moving on, and the whole thing with applying for a Master's was far from being a done deal. There was a possible opening - there were a couple of entrepreneurs who had considerable success in something akin to tuition classes, but more formalized, with larger organization and oversight, and facilities that rivaled most international schools. They called me in for an informal discussion about starting up a new programme in music, that moved away from our standardized notation. Something involving colour-coding, notation based on physical positions on instruments, and playing by ear. It was an innovative idea, and it was quite tempting in my position then to tell them what they wanted to hear and teach what they wanted to teach. But I thought that the right thing to do was to articulate an honest disagreement on the grounds that the students under the programme would have to learn both systems in order for them to be able to operate outside of their new classrooms. Plus, the complications of printing all music in colour, reprinting older music and where the Suzuki programme had already gone. It was a difficult thing to say, and I didn't get a job. I did however, get into a Master's programme, so it all worked out for the best.

Just because I didn't agree with that particular form of innovation didn't mean that I think our musical notation is perfect. My guess is that it's been over a hundred years since we've made any changes - not including contemporary music notation, of course. The last change from overall notation was probably the direction of the stems and tails of notes. I have always thought that the alto clef should be revised, since the only instrument which uses it regularly is the viola, and we only go one notch below the stave. On a practical level, that's either a waste of paper or a waste of ink (the latter being the constant changes of clef). I once moved the viola notation of the Prelude to Bach's Cello Suite No. 1 down two steps so that violinists could sightread on the viola. And I thought I was hot stuff in the discovery business until I learned that what I had done had already existed a few hundred years, and was called the soprano or sopranino clef.

Here we are years later and I get a message on YouTube from a fellow Indiana U. alumnus, who happens to be involved in a project to evolve the notation system. It's called: The Music Notation Project. Always fascinating the way things revisit us, challenging us to continually fine tune our ideas. Sometimes I think that this is the nature of intellectual endeavours today: not necessarily to discover, but to link, rethink, and always be open to welcoming back an old idea.

The Chromatic Staff, from the Music Notation Project.

Stubborn Streak

2008-06-12T04:17:00.007-04:00

But not stubborn enough not to admit it.

Something in me defies logic. Those who know me will guffaw, saying that I defy logic on a frequently philosophical scale. And they may be right. But I've managed to sneak the word 'guffaw' into this post - twice - which makes it all worthwhile.

Unlike Jeffrey Archer, whose book "False Impression" I am currently perusing. Actually, the more accurate term is that I'm reading it, but 'perusing' has that somewhat Anglophile aftertaste, and I like to polish my Welsh roots from time to time. There are some words, when repeated, don't necessarily go lau hong, and I say this because like everyone else, I do have genes. Unfortunately, Archer's use of the word "limpet" is not one of them. Wind gone out already, mate. And now you're downright linguistically confused. Or you should be, in any case. Dash it if you're not.

The other little habit that Archer has - well, other than an overfocus on his time in prison - is his decision to leave details of physical descriptions a little late. So, fifty pages in, you're told that the bad guy who you figured to be an Antonio Banderas-in-Assassins type turns out to be closer to be sans hair in toto. Or the classy heroine who you figured to be the Who Framed Roger Rabbit type -

- turns out to be blond. Go back and get out your DVD of Secondhand Lions and take a gander at the deleted scenes; there's a perfect example of having to rewind and change your whole perception of things. Sounds superficial, but then I've been told I have a one-track mind.

Let's sidetrack here to a little musical joke told to me by one of the faculty back in Indiana. Silly Babbitt, serials are for kids! Get it?

Back on track. Lucky Archer still knows how to tell a story, or his suddenly blonds and his multiple limpets - plus the fact that I actually had to check up "limpet" in a dictionary and realized how long it's been since I've used something other than Wiktionary or dictionary.com - would have had me put down the book a while ago. I'm stubborn that way, which brings us back to the beginning. I tend to be hard to please as far as books are concerned (and I hear people mumbling that I'm hard to please as far as life is concerned). In recent times, I've put down just as many books read halfway as I've completed. I ditched An Equal Music, the emo-strong must-read, about three-quarters of the way through because the protaganist is a wimp and even I can't imagine thinking that the issue of arranging a chamber music concert chronologically or via the stress of changing keys is somehow life-changing. More like Bridezilla at one of the many wedding functions musicians end up in.

I'm also stubborn in sieves. I paraded the white flag of surrender at 5:30 in the morning and went to cook Maggi Mee - the mee goreng (asli!) which I oddly think is better than the real mee goreng. Which relates to reading too, because I just can't help thinking of food if the characters on the pages are chomp chomping. And I couldn't find the sieve and the water was about to boil which gave me about a countdown of four minutes to find the darn thing. The stubborn streak reared its head, which happens just about every time I look for something. I'll pick out three likely places, and when I can't find what I'm looking for the logical thing is of course to check elsewhere. But instead, I end up convinced that those three places are the most likely and I must have missed something and I end up on the merry go round rechecking the three places which are by now the three most unlikely places where the darn sieve is located. Once in a while the thing I'm looking for will actually be there hidden in the back of one of those three places, which will provide affirmation to my merry go round... instead of all those times when the darn sieve has run away like a rabbit from a gun. And while we're on this topic, "merry go round" is better said as "carousel" which Wikipedia notes "originates from the Italian garosello and Spanish carosella ("little war"), used by crusaders to describe a combat preparation exercise and game played by Turkish and Arabian horsemen in the 1100s."

Anyway that's why I'm stubborn... and random. Though I don't go streaking.

But not stubborn enough not to admit it. But just random enough to repeat it.