The Non-Event Horizon

gatherings and schoolmates

2009-02-01T00:50:00.000-08:00

There are reasons why I avoid large scale alumni gatherings. In fact, I think a gathering of 5 is already too much of a crowd.

These outings and gatherings used to be fun when I just graduated from high school. We were kids then, and our only job was to study hard enough to get into college. High school was still a recent memory, and we tried our best to preserve that, before everyone's paths diverged.

Then these got less and less frequent as the months go by. Many forces draw us in different directions --- our courses of study, our time spent with our special other, our jobs, etc.. Besides the obligatory "what are working as?", we are quite lost for words when we do meet up.

And I knew that would happen. I've been deliberating whether to attend my middle school graduating class reunion. The attendance numbered over a hundred, which was pretty respectable for a cohort size of over 300 students. Here was a chance to meet many long-lost friends and establish lost connections! Besides, some of my teachers would be attending, and I really wanted to see them.

But such events are both overwhelming and unsatisfying. Conversation invariably stops when one has run dry of the "what's your job?" line. The fact is that most of us do not wish to discuss our jobs and its frustrations. We are forced to because there is no better conversation starters.

Group dynamics also tend to devolve back to those days when we were still 16 year-olds. In a big group, we still tend to cluster around people we used to cluster around in school, never mind that we haven't spoken for a long time. The geeks are still geeks and the sportsmen still hang around sportsmen. We have moved on in leaps, yet so little seem to have changed when we are back in each other's company. That may not be a comforting thought if one wasn't a well-adjusted kid in school.

So I opted to give the event a miss. However, I made sure I didn't miss the teachers I wanted to meet because of my decision. Of course, there are friends I wanted to keep in touch with, but I just didn't think the occasion fits that purpose. By striving to meet as many "long-lost" friends as possible in that one session, we sacrifice the depth of our interaction with them. Worse still, the brief meeting may prevent potential communication in future because we have "had our fill" at the gathering.

I believe that friends who want to keep in touch are already doing so. Hence a massive gathering that gets everyone together does little to rekindle past friendships. I prefer to see it as a business gathering.

If I seem stand-offish, it's only because I prefer a deeper level of contact with the friends I really cherish. It is much more satisfying when one meets another to share their lives over a drink or a meal, without the time pressure of having to "move on to the next friend" or "catch up" with as many friends as possible.

music of no boundaries

2009-01-31T03:05:00.000-08:00

The composer cum guest conductor, Kuan Nai Chung (关乃忠), shared this amusing anecdote about the encore piece played at an SCO concert I attended last year.

About 20 years ago, a government body in Hong Kong that dealt with cultural affairs realized that they had some budget surplus that had better be used up in what I recalled to be a few days' time. So the composer was commissioned to deliver a work before a tight deadline. Naturally he became rather anxious for ideas. Somehow or other, inspirations of writing a short piece depicting a harvest ritual in Taiwan came to him. The piece was hastily composed in a matter of days, and became known as 丰年祭.

It then became a runaway success and was performed widely, especially in Taiwan --- an implicit endorsement of the authenticity of theme on which the piece was based on. It's popularity survives even till recent days, when it was chosen as a set piece for a school-wide music competition. One of the judges of the competition, who is a friend of the composer, remarked that he got really sick of listening the same piece tens of times. Just when he was relieved that his adjudication duties were over and he was outside the performance venue, he heard it again, played on someone's cell-phone as the ring-tone!

In reality, according to Kuan, he had never witnessed the harvest festival before the piece was composed. So he couldn't, of course, have been inspired by the music sung there. He declared that it is a totally phoney piece (实实在在的假货)!

It's funny how some popular compositions started out of modest, sometimes even disparaging, expectations (e.g. Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1).

The concert also featured a world premier --- Kuan's Erhu Rhapsody No. 4, played by SCO's concert master. For this piece, the soloist's erhu had to be tuned to G-G, i.e. the two strings were tuned an octave apart, instead of the usual fifth! The enlarged range comes at the price of fingering ease. A whole octave's worth of notes had to be played on one of the strings, and that would require much more hand position shifts. For someone used to playing on strings tuned a fifth apart, getting used to a new mental map of notes and their positions on the strings poses another challenge. The piece wasn't memorable on first hearing, even though there was some folksy sounding bits. I wouldn't mind listening to it again, for it expressed the solo instrument's niche while not succumbing to harmonic tendencies in modern Western music.

piano trio in a minor

2009-01-31T01:32:00.000-08:00

I ought to take advantage of my workplace's promxity to the local conservatory. It offers a respectable selection of solo instrumental and chamber works not usually heard at major concert venues. And most of these concerts are free!

I heard Tchaikovsky's Piano Trio in A minor at the Yong Siew Toh conservatory yesterday and have since grown to like the piece. The night's performance was supposed to be a farewell one of the faculty members, who was also the principle cellist of the local national orchestra. The violinist is from the same orchestra while the pianist, by profession, is involved in the development of a private equity fund.

It sounded like a dialogue between the violinist and cellist most of the time, with the pianist playing a background role. The violinist and cellist had complemented each other well, while the pianist seemed to lack direction and awareness. It sounded awkward whenever both the violin and cello had rests, which left the pianist naked with his shaky tempo and edgy melodic lines. It was particularly telling in the closing bars of the trio, when the piano had to conclude the piece after the strings each made their final statements. In spite of that, it was an admirable effort on the part of the pianist, who is not a musician by profession. The piece is perhaps one of the most demanding work Tchaikovsky had written for the piano.

I wonder if the seats assignment was done by a human. There were plenty of empty seats in my row, but I had to be put next to another lady. Was this another not so subtle attempt at social engineering?

on motivation

2009-01-26T03:07:00.000-08:00

It isn't extremely appealing to have to relearn the entire undergraduate physics curriculum in a matter of months. It feels like going back to grade school. Yet I can't neglect the preparation entirely. There's just too much I've forgotten over the three years away from college.

However, there's no one I know whom I can turn to if I need help. Since I'm in a working in a field with little connection with what I need to study for, my working peers are of little help.

It is not that I lack time. I consider myself lucky to be working in a lab where overtime hours are relatively rare, compared to friends in other jobs. A lot of my co-workers, including the bosses, see the wisdom of not staying back unnecessarily. Besides, a good number of them have families and kids to care for, which is a good thing because they can't get totally consumed by work and propagate unhealthy working habits. The unmarried folks don't work their butts off either. We get plenty of time to complete our tasks and no hard deadlines are set.

College was of course, a different world, not that there wasn't any similarities between that and the working world. Life never got boring. If things got monotonous, it would all end by the end of the semester. I liked how my schedule experienced a "reboot" once every semester and I never felt stuck. I was in a place where my peers motivated me just by the right amount --- not so much that I became sorely jealous, nor so little that school life became a party. I had many role models from the students and professors alike. I genuinely felt something positive was coming out from the late nights and hard work I've put in. Being in a liberal arts environment also meant I had much latitude to explore subjects outside my specialization. I felt constantly enriched. Then, life was going somewhere.

In recent years, things have become far too comfortable. Amongst my co-workers, I can hardly find someone as driven as some of my college friends, nor can I easily find people who share my interests. I no longer feel as eager to learn. I'm not feeling intellectually fulfilled. I feel I'm descending into mediocrity.

This paragraph from a book I just finished reading has a timely piece of advice:

"A good rule of thumb is that any environment that consistently leaves you feeling bad about who you are is the wrong environment. Have the courage to evaluate your job, to demand more from it, to put it on probation when it is failing you, and to terminate it when necessary. Dream job or no, you have a right to change your mind."

I need to reclaim what I've lost.

I've probably said this before: I should get off my ass and move on.

decisions and plans

2009-01-20T01:20:00.000-08:00

My grad school plans are in a mess. Much has to do with my inability to leave the company. I've registered for the April GRE subject test, but now I'm thinking of withdrawing. March's schedule leaves me with little time to catch up with work I've lost touch with for more than 3 years. So, October it is, I guess?

I've not decided if I should perform in the March concert. It shouldn't take a lot of time, now that I'm withdrawing from the GRE. If I'm performing, it will occupy all of my weekends in February.

March will be a busy month. I'll be attending night classes on weekdays. That class will end in early April. One of those weeks, I believe there's another class I'm supposed to attend during the day. Gosh.

And there's the GRE subject test in October to prepare for.

And the music exams, one in September, another in December.

Somewhere in between those months, I've got to figure out my career plan. Major ones.

I'm probably planning a trip to China in August. Major celestial event. If I don't find a travel companion, I'll travel alone.

Oh, grad school applications need to be submitted by the end of the year, if I get around to it, that is.

Wait, GRE comes with a general version too. That's yet another exam near the end of the year.

I ought to accept more invitations.

I ought to stop procrastinating...

promises

2009-01-14T03:24:00.000-08:00

I received a note, forwarded to me from a facebook friend recently. It was about the setting up of an alumni ensemble/orchestra. Someone had taken the initiative to realize a promise he made to himself two years ago, that he would organize and set up an orchestra for the former members of his high school's group.

Alumni ensembles and orchestras aren't that uncommon. My high school's symphonic band has an alumni arm, and so does a handful of bands from other schools.

Much has changed in the group that I used to be associated with. The members are more "professional" now, with many holding certifications from graded music examinations. Their morale seems high too. As an orchestra, they are even trying out pieces arranged by student members. That was something only one or two of my friends from my then orchestra attempted but never took off because of a combination of enthusiasm and expertise. I guess they were ahead of their time.

Their numbers seem respectable for a small orchestra at the moment. The present members are quite recent alumni, and their graduation classes does not include mine. I feel terribly old! They are nevertheless, looking to increasing their numbers in any ways possible.

Understandably, a lot of them hold fond memories of their experiences in the orchestra. Regretfully, I cannot say the same for my then orchestra mates. We were coerced into joining a student group --- the orchestra was a last resort, and a backwater of sorts. A number of my friends were only too glad that it all ended the day they graduated. So it comes as a surprise to us that the group we had dragged our feet to now has members who are taking the initiative to organize a group made up of alumni.

Will I take up the invitation? There's almost a 100% chance that I won't know anyone in the fledging orchestra. I'm almost certain that none of my friends from back then will have the technical ability to perform, seeing that we've been out of high school for at least 7 or 8 years. Plus, how long will the bout of enthusiasm last? While I don't hold the unrealistic hope that the group would flourish eternally, I don't want to see it fade out when the pioneering members move on to their lives outside of music eventually. I guess I'm not of the enjoy-it-while-it-lasts camp. That's quite a pessimist huh?

Nostalgia's for those young enough to remember.

yesterday's music

2008-12-01T01:12:00.000-08:00

Tonight's concert (yesterday now, since it's past midnight) featured Chinese oldies and movie music. My fear of less-than-perfect ticket sales was unfounded. It turned out to be way better than usual! Those in the audience were, on average, middle-aged folks. It wasn't such a big deal, after all, that the younger members could not get their peers to attend the concert.

Most of the arrangements were quite good, and I'm not embarrassed to say that I enjoyed some of them. The orchestra piece, I later found out, is in fact arranged by Kuan Nai-Chung (more about him in a future post), a composer I'm starting to favor. And I just love the harp cum guzheng 千言万语 solo in that piece. It was really really ethereal.

How would I feel, when I'm in my 50s or 60s to be sitting in a concert hall, listening to pieces that forms my musical diet today? Today, this may just be another concert I perform in, one with its hiccups, technical challenges and foreign sounding song titles. But what would someone from the audience say?

I don't know how it feels to be 20 or 30 years older, but something stirred in me when I heard the amateur choir, made up of middle-aged men and women, sing 南屏晚钟, the only song I recognized, with a vitality, idealism and youthfulness I never thought would come from them.

我走出了丛丛的森林
我看到了夕阳红
又看到了夕阳红...

music from the ether

2008-11-30T11:15:00.000-08:00

Presenting... the theremin, performed by Pamelia Kurstin.

Isn't that amazing? Now I'm really inspired to get one.

giving thanks

2008-11-28T11:53:00.000-08:00

The trip home from the hospital felt less heavy hearted today. I was glad to see significantly less bile liquid get sucked out from mum's digestive tract. She definitely looks better today, and seem to be in higher spirits.

If there's anything my mum's situation taught me, it is to be glad that we are able to do the things we forget we can do, such as breathing, eating, laughing and drinking. I am, of course, blessed with so much more. Much more than she can ever imagine she can have when she was my age. My life so far has been rather privileged amongst a lot of my friends, co-workers and relatives. But I don't mean life is so perfect that I'm fully content with how things are going. I just realized that there's no reason, and I also have no right at all, to mope when I have so much and I'm at the same time not trying very hard to get my future in order.

an update

2008-11-23T22:14:00.000-08:00

The themes in this post are not necessarily related.

I'll start by linking to this article from The New York Times.

The article makes for an interesting read from many levels. I'll just quote a paragraph:

“A century ago the same people who knew Schoenberg’s music knew Kandinsky’s art. There was no separation. Rubinstein used to say that at the turn of the century 25 percent of the audience played the music he was playing, and 70 years later 25 people in the audience owned his records. The responsibility is ours. It’s not the fault of technology. The person who wants to listen actively will get more out of the music than the person who just sits there waiting to be inspired.”

I guess the same can be said of many disciplines these days. How many people see the greater unification within specializations?

While I enjoy the concert experience and would gladly perform if my schedule permits, I hate being a salesperson for concert tickets. The concerts I perform in don't exactly have very wide appeal amongst my friends. I can just see them searching their minds for tactful reasons to decline the invitation when I advertise these concerts. I still can't take rejections well.

I'm becoming an instrument junkie. I've signed up for violin lessons! The first few lessons went pretty well. My teacher commented that I seem to have "played the violin in my previous life". I took to the posture quite naturally and managed to keep the bow in the same line when I bowed the string for the first time. It was quite a surprise even to myself. Some credit must go to my teacher. The string length on my full-sized violin is about 32 cm, quite a lot shorter than the 38 cm on my erhu. I need to get used to the less widely spaced stops.

If things go well, we'll have a family car next year. This means more options for stargazing locations and equipment. I should think about getting a larger scope. It looks like I'm not going dormant in amateur astronomy just yet.

I'm getting worried about the GREs. I need to absorb the entire undergraduate physics curriculum by early April next year. A lot of the content isn't very intuitive to me now. Studying for it is a distraction I look forward to, however.

about efficiency

2008-11-17T00:06:00.000-08:00

Is efficiency always a good thing?

I met up with some old schoolmates not too long ago. As usual, we had lunch and hung out. On two different occasions, two of them made an observation and followed up by remarking that it was an inefficiency. It was a familiar refrain I've heard over the years. Many of my friends are prone to use that same pitch to justify their criticisms.

I must admit that a lot of my friends hail from very similar educational backgrounds. We went to the same few secondary schools, junior colleges and graduated from universities. Most of us did science or engineering in college, which may explain why we tend to put value elegance and efficiency in solutions to real world problems.

It may have to do with the general psyche of the population that has come to demand efficiency in every aspects of their lives. We live in a habitually fast-paced society that has little tolerance for buses that arrive at intervals of more than 15 minutes. We don't take very long breaks with undecided return date. If we do stop to smell the roses, we also make sure we check our watches regularly. We know the 'right' ages to get married and have kids. We are pressured by our families and we want to be on par with our peers. Being on a small island with limited land and resources, we strive to accomplish the most out of the 600-odd square kilometres we own. Efficiency is our mantra.

Yet, I'm still not sure if efficiency's a good thing in all cases. In most cases at least, when one gets more (or the same amount) done with less effort, he has more resources left over for other tasks.

Can inefficiency lead to any good? No, I'm not looking for examples of efficient ways to do harm. Rather, I'm wondering if there are situations that are the way they are in the name of efficiency, and not obvious that sacrificed efficiency can lead to greater good.

Well, just a thought.

stepping out

2008-10-15T23:44:00.000-07:00

I feel that my life is at a watershed. Recent events have made me think rather differently about many things. I don't think 'think' is the right word. It's more like 'feel'.

Some recent family issues had made me care less about many things I used to care a lot about. I get less bothered by certain issues. It's weird. The day after we found out, I decided that I wanted to go to grad school, and complete it as quickly as I can. I'd like to start my own family during those years. I want to push forward in life. I need to put and end to my aimless days in my aimless job. I need to stop all that bumming around.

I took heed of what my colleague told me. Subconsciously, I already knew most of his observations about the state of leadership in my lab. His final message was this: if I'm not working towards where I want to go, I ought to sit up and do something about it. I may not succeed, but I won't get to regret not trying.

And I did. A little step at a time.

familiar families

2008-09-14T02:27:00.000-07:00

I attended the wake of my boss' father this evening. Like most other wakes in the HDB void deck, it was a simple affair. He passed away from cancer discovered less than one and a half years ago and left behind four children, all of whom are married and have children of their own.

During the conversation my colleagues, my boss revealed that his other siblings, their children and spouses, together with he and his wife, would travel to his parent's flat for dinner everyday. His mother, who's probably in her late 60s or early 70s, made it a point to cook dinner for her four children and seven grandchildren daily. Imagine the trouble she goes through every day!

What was remarkable was the cohesiveness of the family in this age, where extended families are a thing of the previous generation. Extended families who dine together daily has got to be a rarity here. Because increasingly, we are going down the road some societies have travel through. Families are getting smaller --- we rarely hear of four-children families these days. If couples plan for children at all, two is usually the typical number. It is also rare that working, married adults who live away from their parents, visit the latter daily, even if the latter live within reasonable travel distance. If visits happen at all, it is on weekends. The trend these days is for family units to live independently. Obligatory gatherings only happen on major festivals or anniversaries.

I've lived in an extended family. Yes, lived. In the first ten years or so of my life, I lived with my parents, younger sister, my three uncles (my dad's brothers) and my grandmother in a flat with three bedrooms. It amazes me today how we managed to share that small space. Well, I remember having to sleep in the living room, but that didn't bother me then (perhaps because I took up less space). My grandmother, who was also my caretaker when my parents were at work, prepared dinner for all eight of us every day. When I didn't have to go to school, she'd do her morning shopping at the market, with me tagging behind, always holding on to the end of her blouse so that she knew if I went missing.

One by one, my uncles got married and moved out into flats of their own. Although we had less people around, my parents got a larger house, situated near my elementary school, in which I had lived in for almost 20 years. My grandmother continued to live with us, but she did less cooking when we hired a maid to help with the housework. My uncles and their wives would come by at least once a week. Later on, when they had kids of their own, they would bring them over. My cousins and I were all young then, and it was quite a blast whenever they were in the house. Those were the days before they entered elementary school. Occasionally, we even slept over in each others' homes.

Then we grew up, and found that we had less in common than we had originally thought. My cousins came by less and less, but my uncles and their wives continued to visit grandma at my house. It is no mean feat to survive in the schools here. My cousins all had to attend classes outside school hours, even on weekends. Conversations between my mum and my aunts began to revolve around school work instead of diapers and the antics of my younger cousins. My memories of dinners with my grandma, parents, uncles, aunts and cousins are those which took place on festivals and anniversaries at restaurants. In between those years, my extended family must have stopped doing dinner at my home. Grandma only cooked rarely, for it took too much effort. She was a bit of a kitchen hazard too.

In recent years, grandma passed away, and that eliminated any purposes for my uncles' visits to my home. When I moved into a new home last year, I also dissociated myself from that last physical link to a large part of my extended family's past. We still meet for meals at least twice a year. My cousins are in their teens, and amongst us, there is quite visibly a certain amount of awkwardness and shyness at the dinner table. With the diverse personalities we have grown into, it is difficult to fathom that we were once bosom playmates.

Like how friendship takes effort to keep up and nourish when friends become physically separated, it takes even more for extended families to stay close. Some of my relatives do take the initiative to organize dinners. These don't happen very frequently, however. My father had expressed his wish to get the whole group of us on a trip back to the hometown in China where my grandma came from. An aunt had commented to me in no guised words on how we should treat each other like immediate family members. There are definitely signs that my elders do want to see a more cohesive unit.

But what is a family? The intuitive definition may differ from generation to generation. For my elders, it may encompass their siblings' families, along with their parents. It may even go further if we backtrack a few generations. For my peers and myself, it might only go as far as our parents and our siblings. Notice that I had to use the term "extended family".

Even the parent-child unit is becoming more fragmented. While it is still typical in this part of Asia for unmarried adults to live with their parents, more of us relish the independence of living away from the nest. In short, the family unit is going the way more developed societies go.

Perhaps my extended family --- uncles, aunts, cousins and grandparents included --- is lucky to have come this far. Some of my friends have witnessed much bad blood in their extended families. While I appreciate the efforts my elders make, I also wonder if it's purposeful. I do have nostalgic memories of the old days, but...are we trying to recreate that? Should we?

back from the frying pan

2008-08-10T03:48:00.000-07:00

It's no exaggeration when people say Spain is the frying pan of Europe. Portugal was cool, but the temperature in Madrid was unbearable even for me, someone who had spent a good part of his life in 30 degrees weather. I'm glad to be back. Things feel very unreal and jet-laggy right now.

Some posts have been uploaded on my travel blog. I might add more visually stimulating travel log posts when I find time.

away again

2008-07-23T04:04:00.000-07:00

Having not gotten over certain matters, I'm not in the mood to travel. However, the fact that a good part of my travel expenses are paid for has further entrenched my mentality that I should take the chance to travel extensively. It's an imposed holiday.

Well anyway... Lisbon, Madrid and Barcelona, here I come.

thoughts on an essay from "singaporeans exposed"

2008-07-20T05:54:00.000-07:00

This is an excerpt From the essay "Aunties and Uncles and Me" by Neil Humphreys in the book "Singaporeans Exposed":

"And that is the trouble with taking such pride in one's belief system. It can become too focused; too tunnel visioned and its arrogance will eventually prevent it from considering alternatives. Take the role of the family for instance. Nowhere in the world have I come across a society that puts such store in building a watertight family unit like Singapore does. Nothing fills a Singaporean parent with greater pride than watching his or her child graduate, before finding a partner and finally providing grandchildren. Indeed this could be said for parents worldwide. But in Singapore I can't help feeling that the traditional belief in the family unit borders on the obsessive. And any potential threat to it is not tolerated."

This excerpt from the essay collection reminds me of a familiar question asked at extended family gatherings here, during the Lunar New Year, for example. Well-meaning "aunties" would typically ask the unmarried ones about their relationship status, the married ones but childless ones if they are planning for kids, and mothers and fathers about their child's education. These topics are typical, and potentially awkward amongst relatives who meet only once a year.

Are people from my generation, the twenty somethings, just as obsessed? I suspect not, but I'm sure the infrequent but obligatory family gatherings do put some pressure on us. Our parents are eager to compare us with their friends' kids, like they did when we were schooling, except that it's not about exams and grades but jobs, relationship status and the marriage dates. Naturally, this rubs off us, and we in turn ask our friends and colleagues the same questions at meals, meet-ups and reunions. Like author had wrote, the same can be said for twenty-somethings worldwide. But back here, I can't help feeling that we're all pressured into living out the same scripts.

The plan is familiar and I've heard it articulated implicitly or explicitly over the years --- find a companion before graduating from the varsities, work, get married at 25-35, apply for public housing (aka HDB flats in local lingo), and move out from the parents' home. To many of us, this is the vision of the ideal adult life we have been induced to believe in since when we were young. Today, one-by-one, we see our friends and former classmates settle into this state of being. We cheer and send them our congratulations at their weddings and when they give birth to their newborns. To many of us, we don't see alternatives. The social pressure can be a source of insecurity for those of us who don't necessarily subscribe to this world-view or fall away from the time-norm. This group bear the unfortunate stigma of being a form of social "underclass", even when they are in no ways financially underprivileged.

I didn't feel it as much as when I was in the States. Things were different then, because I was amongst fellow college students who had very different life priorities. Amongst friends there, I had never felt that there was any well-articulated norm we should live out. I liked the fact that even when we don't necessarily agree in our values, we just got along out of respect for each other's opinions. Perhaps the more diverse ethnic mix prevented the evolution of a dominant value system.

Are those who don't trod down the prescribed path quite disadvantaged? I think not. Many of those I know have quite decent jobs and salaries. If there's anything we could wish for, it would be for our families and friends to refrain from subtly imposing their visions of the blissful life on us. We should lead our lives at our own paces.

about music

2008-07-14T00:02:00.000-07:00

I'm not a professional musician, neither am I an amateur who sounds very decent. Half a lifetime ago, I could never have imagined that I would voluntarily play in an amateur musical outfit in my working life. Then, I was "forced" to learn an instrument because school policy dictated that everyone had to be involved in an activity. I remember the initial regret of not choosing what I thought I wanted join, which was the school choir. My gut choice was probably formed by a mix of perceived prestige and misconceptions. Anyway, all that is history.

I can't put the concert experience to word yet, but it's just awesome playing with people and creating music. It could very well be school-day nostalgia, but I don't think that can explain my desire to go back on stage again.

My musical routine didn't satisfy me anymore when I realized that what I play will be heard only by my family and my neighbors. How ever well I play, my audience will remain constant in numbers. The whole ritual began to seem rather pointless.

I don't think many of us can remain in that phase and stay motivated simultaneously. There are several way out of the quandary. Some of us opt to take graded musical exams; some will give up on their instrument entirely; some will play so well that they get ample opportunities to perform regularly. I chose to play with an amateur group.

My recent involvement has satisfied me for a while. Notes from the concert still linger in my mind as I type. I won't forget the experience of playing in an orchestra for a long time.

moving on

2008-07-12T05:04:00.000-07:00

Is it a good sign when, every few days, you feel like you want to quit your current job?

My bosses don't give me much trouble and my co-workers are fairly easy to work with. I never had to work overtime and the pay is pretty good for a starter position. I also get ample opportunities to travel abroad for conferences. Things seem rosy on the surface.

Today was one of those days when the world grew silent and I retreated into my introspective shell. I was peeved at how my math major co-worker wrote what seemed like needless abstraction in our joint paper, turning what I understood quite intuitively into mathematical goobledygook. I was frustrated again with my boss' inability to teach concepts in clear, grammatical English. I'm displeased with the self-serving work my lab is doing, which seems to me unnecessary, inconsequential and mundane. I began to see truth in what some people outside the lab has been saying about us. I'm disappointed with the weak leadership and the lack of breadth and depth in my superiors' perspective on staff development. I'm worried about my future prospects in the lab. I'm not sure if I'm doing a good job or not and I'm a little disheartened by the rewards I'm getting. I'm wondering if I compromised a large part of my soul by choosing to work in a field where people of my academic background probably don't find themselves joining. I'm wondering if I should have been more assertive with the HR people right from the start. I don't think I'm well stretched and contributing to a worthy cause.

My job has no connection with the subject I've loved since middle school. If I seem passionate about my job, it comes from a sense of responsibility and not love.

Perhaps it's time to seriously consider moving on.

off my chest

2008-07-12T04:09:00.000-07:00

It's been close to a year and I still feel an invisible divide between me and my colleagues. They are a great bunch but our conversation topics don't get much more serious than socially safe small talk. I guess socializing through the mundane is the way things go here.

I read somewhere that those in the academia are only better off cousins of those who make their living through the arts. I started to appreciate this fact in my junior year in college. Our endeavors don't pay too much and are not well understood by the masses. Both are intellectual pursuits that don't make any direct impact on "the well-being of society". But I'd prefer to be an academic figure in the States than in Singapore. Be it in ethnicity, profession, or social background, diversity is part of the greater American landscape. It tends to be appreciated even if it is sometimes only tolerated. Academics are very much respected for what they do. Singapore's success story is one of trade. We have notable businessmen and politicians, but fairly few in the way of artists and academicians. This phenomena may be strange because education and academic success are generally highly regarded in Asian families. I guess excellence in intellectual fields only go as far as in the schooling years. Maybe it's just me, but back home here, I don't feel very proud to say that I did physics, even though I'd thoroughly enjoyed my major. Every time I have to do that, I can just see the "oh are you a teacher?" reply coming. Just a thought.

Looking back, I thought I was interested in V. Now I don't think so. She fits the bill for every guy's dream girl --- smart, caring, sweet, and soft-spoken. I bet I was quite mistaken about my initial interest because I do get nervous around her. But she's too safe. And she doesn't do her part of sharing unless prompted to. I want an independent companion. One who can stand on her own and even travel abroad alone. I don't enjoy playing the role of an all-round protector because it burdens me. I don't derive a sense of ego from that. It works for some guys, but not for me.

funding the arts

2008-06-16T03:27:00.000-07:00

In preparation for a concert in mid-July, I have been playing at an amateur orchestra for the past weeks. This is not my first time with them, for I had played in their concert at the Esplanade last year. Despite its ostensibly amateur set-up, the group has been around for a few decades.

It was through my music teacher, who plays with them, that I first got to know about the group. There are no auditions, but most players in the orchestra can play rather decently and have no problems with their scores. In fact a few of the younger one are even accomplished enough to play in concertos. There is, however, no formal attendance requirement. Membership (I'll explain this concept later) is not even obligatory. It is common for players to skip the weekly practices if they aren't free. A good number of them are students who got roped in by their friends to help out. It's completely voluntary in that sense. And then there are the more senior ones, generally in their 40s, who have been around for quite a while.

So how does this orchestra survive? This has been the question I was contemplating since a few weeks back. Rental of the practice venue and concert hall, air-conditioning, photocopying, fees for the conductor, etc... these can add up to a hefty amount. Who pays? I don't think the student players are prepared to make monetary contributions. Seeing that tickets are not usually all sold out at their regular concerts, that was a natural question.

So I asked my teacher. The group gets some sponsorship from the arts council. Ticket sales also add to the revenue, but sometimes they run into a deficit. I later also found out that they have a membership scheme, very much like the "subscribers" for more professional musical groups. These members pay a monthly subscription fee (it doesn't even add up to SGD$200 a year) and get frequent updates about the orchestra's events. The benefits are more nominal and much less sophisticated than those of professional groups. There are a good number of members who are not currently playing in the orchestra, but consistently provide monetary support to the group. This must be where the bulk of their support comes from. Perhaps coming from a Chinese taboo to not want to allude to money directly, my teacher was pretty dodgy about that last part when I asked about their funding sources.

Not long after this was made known to me, I was asked if I wanted to sign up. The subscription fee wasn't very much. It would have looked really miserly if I, as a working professional, refused to there and then. So I agreed to. It must also have come from my not wanting to be inflicted by "play for free" stigma, even though it probably won't cost more for one more person to play in there, for it every practice should "cost" a constant amount.

Actually, I found myself hesitating for a few seconds to ponder over the natural "what's in it for me?" question. Honestly, not much. It's like contributing to a charity. It's out of goodwill, with minimal or no personal returns, except that for the case of charity, there are more tangible consequences. Some time during my college days, I did decide that I would like to support the arts when I have a job, so why that hesitation?

Then I saw where this was leading to. It is the perennial problem of surviving in the arts world. Those thoughts I had are understandably instinctive for anyone. It won't affect the price of pork (as my former boss would say) if I attended a chamber concert this evening, or visited the local art gallery. It wouldn't have mattered if I bought a ticket to the independent film screening, or the theater performance. Most of us, I'm sure, can easily do without them. Unlike for charitable causes, no needy person really benefits. If I asked my friends for voluntary contributions to any art groups, the response would not be much different from mine if a well-dressed stranger approached me and asked for spare change. The cost-benefit equation doesn't balance.

The problem is more pronounced here, where arts patronage is not part of our culture. In the name of cold pragmatism, we have developed a habit of rationalising in terms of tangibles and measurables. When I asked my colleague if he was interested to attend the concert I was going to perform in, he asked for the cost of the tickets and how long the concert was going to last. Thinking that he was probably concerned that the performance might stretch too late into the evening, I gave an honest estimate of 2 hours for the concert duration. Then he said:

"Hmm... it's quite worth it! For concerts by X X Orchestra, the ticket prices are so high, and the concert lasts for a few hours. This one's so much cheaper... and the duration is about the same..."

It's a good thing that I'm not a professional musician, because I would have been very offended by that remark! Are musical performances nothing more than pay-by-the-hour jukeboxes?

Through other ticket sale experiences, I began to appreciate how difficult it was to make a living in my country if one was involved in the arts. Of course, there are various means to put bread on the table, such as teaching and freelancing, but these endeavors still depend on trading a service, or a tangible entity, for money. It is still difficult here to ask for unconditional private support for one's artistic pursuits. Most of the support artists get are therefore state-provided.

So what's in it for me when I pay for an art performance or event? How can I convince someone that these events are worthy causes? I have yet to come up with my own answer, even though I feel a genuine need to show my support.

Meanwhile, I will continue to fiddle on while the music still flows.

new sounds

2008-05-31T16:33:00.000-07:00

The Xi'an Conservatory of Music just ended their three performances here. Despite warning from some quarters that the new musical invention was yet just another fad, I attended two out of their three shows here.

The debut night, which I attended, featured vocal works, instrumental solos, and ensemble works. I was deciding between attending this and the second night as I was getting my tickets, and eventually settled for this one because there was a qinhu solo in the program.

The concert left me with a single question: how would one describe the sound of the qinhu? The major modification is in the replacement of the soundpiece with wood, rather than snake-skin. The result is an instrument that sounds more like the banhu and the violin especially at higher registers. Indeed, unlike in an erhu, it sounds cleaner and crisper at the higher notes. The orchestration for the qinhu ensemble took advantage of this by tending score qinhu parts higher than one would for erhu parts --- something I observed from the finger positions of the string players.

The orchestra was basically a western orchestra, complete with the brasses, woodwinds and all, with the string section replaced with their qinhu counterparts. Even with about 40 qinhu players in all, I found the sound somewhat thin. Naturally, I felt compelled to compare them with the erhu and violin string families. The claimed improvement of the qinhu over the erhu at higher registers was achieved --- the qinhus were clear and loud at higher registers. But it seemed to have lost some of the mellowness of the erhu, and the full bodied tone of a violin. When the performance of the erhu concerto Lan Hua Hua came on, I felt soothed by the sounds of the erhu.

The concerts had their shares of classical transcriptions. There was Offenbach's Orpheus in the Underworld, there was Bizet, Mozart and all, but nothing really avant garde, unlike what one of the member of the consultancy group wrote in the program book. There were some recently composed work too, but that and transcriptions of the Western classical music are already commonplace in the concert scene. How was there "symphonised Chinese music"? I went expecting a Chinese orchestra with erhus substituted by qinhus, but saw instead a western orchestra with its entire string section replaced by qinhus. How did that achieve a "symphonised Chinese sound"?

In the end, I was rather unconvinced. It was not a sound I take a liking to, even after hearing the qinhu solo on the first night. Still, there were some memorable pieces, such as the Meng Yu Hua Qing (梦浴华清) by composer Han Lan Kui (韩兰魁), and the other infrequently heard vocal works.

There's some wisdom in one of my friend's opinion of musical experimentations from China. On an invention named the laruan, which was meant to play the role of a cello in a Chinese orchestra, he said in a rather exasperated way: "Why don't they just use the cello?". After both night's concert, I'd say the same: "Why don't they just use the violin?"

mars occultation

2008-05-21T18:04:00.000-07:00

I was lucky enough to catch the occultation that happened two weekends ago, on May 10th, unlike most others in the local amateur astronomy community. The weather wasn't fantastic to start with, but it was good enough for Mars and the Moon to be seen through thin clouds in a pair of binoculars. Honestly it wasn't that spectacular, thanks to the clouds. The dimming of Mars took about 2 seconds, unlike the occultation of Antares I observed years ago, which saw the star blink in and out instantaneously.

That measurement can be used for a back-of-an-envelope type estimate of the angular size of Mars. Since the occultation is caused by the motion of the Moon, the angular speed of the Moon (360 deg/sidereal period) multiplied by the time taken for Mars to dim and disappear should give a pretty close estimate. The angular size, estimated from my eyeballing, is about (2 sec * 360 degs)/27.3 days, which works out to be about 1.1 arc-seconds. My planetarium program gave 5.5 arc-seconds for the angular size, so that's on the correct order of magnitude. Below average sky conditions, plus the fact the human eye can't detect a small fractional change in magnitude must have meant that the entire duration of the dimming ought to be longer.

I'm looking forward to the sigma Sagittarii occultation this Friday!

of schools and orchestras

2008-05-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

I'm back in the scene again. Stage appearance in mid-July. I'm slowly picking up the pieces at home, and at weekly practices. The calluses on my fingers are testiment to that.

The folks there are generally amicable, but I'm still anxious that I may have trouble assimilating into their already established social circles. Had I stayed on after my stint with them in March last year, I would have no such apprehension, for most of them were still new then.

I had lunch with the 'elders' in the orchestra after practice ended and got an update on the current landscape in local school and amateur orchestras. Much was discussed over lunch, from students' level of motivation in school orchestras to politics in China.

The usual lament of the difficulty of roping players into the orchestra was heard. With so many student members graduating from school orchestras, there still is difficulty in recruiting players to play in an amateur set up. Having seen the attendance in the past weeks' practices, there is much evidence for that phenomena. It is no wonder that some of them, including my teacher, who convinced me to help out in the next concert, were glad that I agreed to volunteer in their upcoming performance. I may be playing in a section that will not face dire 'manpower' problems, but more importantly, they would like to establish a new circle of members who would form the core players of the orchestra, as opposed to the students members, who are in flux.

Understandably, we become more busy when we graduate from schools and transit to work or university life. The other reasons offered for the lack of amateur participation were disheartening. Those who took part in orchestras during their student days did so out of compulsion, not interest. Some become sufficiently disillusioned with other aspects, which could be inept administration or uninspiring instructors, to be turned off from the pursuit for life. The competitive shift in the education system today may be blamed too. More than once I've heard or read about schools favoring student groups that produce tangible results usually in the form of achievements in competitions. The ugly flip side is that groups that don't have results to show for get their support cut. Schools have become enterprises that KPIs everything they do. Consequently, students in school orchestras spend most of their time drilling and perfecting the few competition pieces, which leaves little time for anything else.

Also mentioned was one musician school instructor, who asked that the school kids under his charge have to take private lessons from him, if they wished to, and not from any other teachers. One of that school children happened to be my teacher's student. As I've heard from my teacher, that kid seemed quite pressured by the situation.

There was also some of the "youngsters nowadays..." refrain, but it wasn't emphasized, probably because of my presence. Someone observed that while the older (and former) regular members in the orchestra volunteered out of passion and saw it as a certain calling, some younger performers had thoughts of receiving tangible benefits out of their participation.

Even though I didn't have much of a conversation going on my side, I definitely learned a lot more about a segment of the local music scene. Hopefully, I'll start to see more interaction between myself and the others in the next sessions.

how to decide your next travel destination

2008-04-03T00:21:00.000-07:00

This post contains equations, which Blogger does not support. Refer to the permalink here.

the past, part i

2008-03-31T00:49:00.000-07:00

Before I left for my studies, I had a short stint in a unit largely responsible for the administration of our reserve forces. Work was pretty mundane actually. My workplace was in a laid-back part of the island. Walking along the long driveway leading up to the hill where my office was, one could almost imagine himself in a back-to-the-40s time-warp. This is no exaggeration, for the blocks used to be hospitals in the Second World War. Some blocks had housed British and Australian POWs, one of whom painted the Changi Murals. In retrospect, life there wasn't bad. Regimentation, if any, was minimal. I had the luxury of getting to go home everyday, much like any other office worker. It was a position my conscripted peers would envy. I had to stay overnight to guard the front gate once in a while, but it wasn't frequent. The officer in command took a rather relaxed attitude towards disciplinary matters. I don't think anyone was really stressed over the rather tedious but mindless paperwork that is the staple in such an outfit. It was uncanny that we enjoyed these privileges because of a certain amount of discrimination from the headquarters. It was sometimes said that the unit was a backwater for people whom the headquarters didn't want. We were misfits in some ways or other. On my part, I couldn't see how I could be branded a "misfit" though. The upside to that was that we got housed in a place far away from the command of our headquarters, and we took liberties with rules.

My conscripted peers generally came from very different social and educational backgrounds from what I was used to in those past 19 years of my life. I was out of the comfort zone of my high school classmates who were mostly book-types. It was not a crowd with whom I could discuss my interests with, much less understand my aspirations at that time. When I said I was going to do physics, I got asked in response: "What? Physiotherapy?". Actually, the fact that I attended high school had set me apart from most of my peers, some of whom had dropped out in middle school. I was met with clueless looks when I tried to communicate my academic interests to my peers. I'm not sure if they felt slighted in any ways, or if I had put my foot in my mouth. It was a world I had never seen. In retrospect, that contrast was striking. I was perceived to be the extremely privileged amongst my peers --- something which I wasn't conscious of. There must have been jealousy and a certain disdain meant for me then.

My duties ranged from collecting mail, printing and folding letters, calling up servicemen to update their records, and on one occasion, visiting the "un-contactables" at their homes. It was an easy life that gave me free time to study undergraduate material in advance during working hours.

I didn't think I saw any value in my working there, at that time. To be honest, it was menial work. Even the boss admitted that when he had a chat with me one day. That must have been one of the reasons for my desire to get away. As things later turned out, I had the option of leaving for undergraduate studies in a subject I've always loved. It was clear to my bosses and peers what I should choose, given that the opportunity open to me was very hard to come by, and I wouldn't be surprised to hear the same opinion if I asked the people I knew then. It was all as clear as crystal, or so I thought.

(To be continued...)

streams of subconsciousness

2008-03-24T01:49:00.000-07:00

18/3/08:

Dreamt that V had a break up. I don't think I'm that into her, but the subconscious mind is sending peculiar signals.

How much of our values and talents should we credit our parents for?

I have a friend who's depressed that he is single. He's probably single because he is clinically depressed. Ouch.

19/3/08

I hate to admit it, but I'm still in the closet as far as my past obsession goes. For those few seconds, I clutched the set of lecture notes I once used and lulled myself into a reminiscent mood. Then I slipped it into my bag and left for home.

20/3/08

Maybe I've mentioned this in a previous entry, but I'll say it again anyway. As much as one needs to accept their own weaknesses, it is equally important for one to come to terms with his strengths and talents. It's not wrong to be privileged. What may seem like a weakness to oneself could very well be the subject of envy for others. Dealing with it goes beyond superficial humility. If there's anything I'd like kids from my alma mater high school to learn, this is it.

how to have random (and not so random) wallpapers in windows xp

2008-03-22T03:38:00.000-07:00

This was on my programming wishlist: a way to randomize wallpapers so that it changes every time I login to Windows XP. There exists programs on the net that does that, but I was looking for a solution that takes a small amount of scripting on my part. Ideally, I'd like to install only the script interpreter and nothing else.

The original idea was to create a shortcut, the equivalent of a UNIX symbolic link, to the picture file I wanted to display. I downloaded Python 2.5, copied a selection of my travel photos into a directory, and wrote a script that creates a shortcut (with a fixed name) to a randomly choosen file from that directory. Then I edited the registry so that this script is run at login. I needed some way to create a shortcut from the command line. This turned out to be non-trivial since XP does not offer a straightforward command line utility that creates shortcuts. I went against my rule and used a freeware shortcut creator that I executed in the script file. From Control Panel -> Display -> Desktop, I set the wallpaper to this shortcut. That didn't work. The .lnk file was opened instead of the file that the shortcut file points to. Apparently, shortcuts sometimes aren't taken to be links to the files they point to, unlike symbolic links in UNIX.

Naturally, one can do away with shortcuts, copy the chosen file over to a fixed filename, and configure this fixed filename to be the wallpaper. I ran the modified script, and then set the wallpaper to point this file in Control Panel -> Display -> Desktop. I had my randomly chosen wallpaper the first time I did this, but it didn't change on subsequent logins! The script did what it was supposed to do --- update wallpaper file by copying over the selected image file. Windows just didn't realize the file was updated!

I did a little surfing on the net and poking around in the registry. Windows XP stores the path to the wallpaper file in the key "HKEY_CURRENT_USER/Control Panel/Desktop/Wallpaper". This file is always a bitmap, even when a jpg or gif file is assigned to be the wallpaper. So it seems like the final format of the file needs to be a bmp. This was the next discovery --- when any other graphics format is chosen as the wallpaper, Windows would convert that into a bmp and then assign the path of the latter to the key. I need a command line graphics file converter! Google didn't turn up any results for command line graphic file converters that comes with Windows, so I used ImageMagick (it might be worthwhile to find out how Windows does it). As for changing the value of the wallpaper key in the registry, the command line program reg.exe that comes bundled with Windows XP does just that.

It was not enough to merely change the key value. One has to tell Windows to load the new value. As described here, one has to run " RUNDLL32.EXE user32.dll,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters" to update the system of the changes.

Here's the Python script that does all the work. Edit the necessary lines for your paths.

import os import random import os.path

random.seed()

wallpapercurr = r"[PATH-TO-WALLPAPER]\currwall.bmp" ImageMagickexe = r'[PATH-TO-IMAGEMAGICK]\convert.exe '

wallpaperdir = r"[PATH-TO-WALLPAPER-DIRECTORY]" filelist = os.listdir(wallpaperdir) fileindex = random.randrange(0, len(filelist)-1) if os.path.splitext(filelist[fileindex])[1].lower() == '.bmp': execstring = "copy " + wallpaperdir + '\\' + filelist[fileindex] + " " + wallpapercurr else: execstring = ImageMagickexe + wallpaperdir + '\\' + filelist[fileindex] + " " + wallpapercurr os.system(execstring)

# set registry entry setregexecstring = r'reg add "hkcu\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Wallpaper /t REG_SZ /d "' + wallpapercurr + r'" /f' os.system(setregexecstring)

# refresh os.system("RUNDLL32.EXE user32.dll,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters")

Install your favorite Python interpreter, then either through the registry or the Startup folder on the Start Menu, set up the interpreter to execute this script on log in.

For amateur astronomers and people with casual interests in the night sky, this script can be easily modified to display the star map for the day. The basic idea is to have a star charting program generate star charts as graphic files. These files need to have filenames that are labeled according to the date and time they are plotted for. A star charting program that has a command line interface would be extremely useful. Unfortunately, I couldn't find one with that feature, so I went about the laborious way. I manually generated star maps in .gif format using Cartes du Ciel, and stored them in the same directory. The first time I did this, I generated enough star maps for the rest of this month. The .gifs generated have filenames that are of the format [location]-[year]-[month]-[day]-[time].gif. This script does the rest of the work. As before, some lines need to be edited.

import os import time

wallpaperdir = r"[PATH-TO-STARMAPS]\Starmaps" timestruct = time.localtime() y=timestruct[0] m=timestruct[1] d=timestruct[2] mapstring = "[LOCATION]-" + `y` + "-" + `m` + "-" + `d` + "-[TIME].gif"
#execstring that converts/copies file execstring = ImageMagickexe + wallpaperdir + '\\' + mapstring + wallpapercurr os.system(execstring)

# set registry entry setregexecstring = r'reg add "hkcu\Control Panel\Desktop" /v Wallpaper /t REG_SZ /d "' + wallpapercurr + r'" /f' os.system(setregexecstring)

# refresh os.system("RUNDLL32.EXE user32.dll,UpdatePerUserSystemParameters")
As before, save this script, configure the system to run this at startup, and you're all set!

back again

2008-03-17T00:56:00.000-07:00

Sometimes I do learn a little more about myself through my own visceral reactions. Like how I tried to divert my attention to something else, or try to change the topic when I hear about my past obsession mentioned in a conversation I'm overhearing. Is it a fear of the memory of pain, or the fear of pain itself?

I believe it's a mix of both.

results matter

2008-03-08T02:14:00.000-08:00

Time: 1:20am. Music on the speakers: Brahms' Piano Concerto No. 2 in B-flat major, op.83

The euphoria of yesterday has subsided. I'm rather pleased with the results some of my students got. One of them was probably quite elated to score the highest grade in a subject that she has been least confident of, and for which I tutored her. Another scored almost perfect score if not for the harder "extra" paper she took. I was glad enough that she did well for her core subjects, but she doesn't seem to feel the same. That I can understand, having been brought up in the same academic climate. Another didn't get top scores, and is wondering if she could even get into university. It was the first time she called me on the phone, and she didn't sound too excited. I offered my help at advising on university options and all.

In retrospect, that faithful day was for me only one important hurdle and frustration out of the many that came later. The end-result was only good for getting my foot into the next door. In the years that followed, like many of my peers, our outlooks became more nuanced and less one-sided. I wished we would realize earlier that grades aren't everything, and that accomplishments and fulfillment aren't measured by tangible metrics or constrained by whatever our social conditioning like us to believe.

I'm setting off for another trip soon. I need the break from urban crowds.

She thanked me hours after the fact, as if as an afterthought. It doesn't feel like it would end here.

a last minute concert

2008-03-02T19:41:00.000-08:00

I can't explain it, but ever since I returned from my holiday, the sight of couples on the streets don't bite at me as much as before. And it's not that my life has changed very much. The jet-lag might have temporarily sapped my energy for angsting and moping. I don't know. What's bothers me more is the noise and the throngs of humans in the malls. It gets claustrophobic and nerve-wrecking. I don't believe they want to grow it to 6.5 million when it's so bad with 4 million. I'm moving out of here eventually. The people can't really be blamed for crowding up the malls. There aren't any good spots around here to hang out in anyway. With the subway stations nearby and consumerism working its ways, most of us just hit the malls out of habit.

It was a last minute decision to hit the concert hall last night. I considered it a relief from the human hordes on a Saturday night. The pre-intermission programme saw a mix of the traditional and the contemporary. "Sha Di-er Chuan Qi" was my favorite amongst them. What were traditional Xinjiang tunes were woven into a tapestry threaded by modern-sounding harmonies. It ended the first-half of an otherwise quite traditional, staid, though rather impeccably performed programme.

My attention was drawn to the Jinghu players during the second half, which featured a Jing opera vocalist. The Jinghu players seemed slightly uncoordinated at first, but they played well enough for me to start to groove along. It's the first time I actually enjoyed Jinghu solos, and I think they got it right somewhere.

The final programme for the evening was "Nan Wang De Puo Shui Jie", composed by Liu Wen Jin. The use of a female choral ensemble added a rather refreshing spin to the music. Those few bars of choral parts, even if they were just chords, enlivened the piece enough that I was quite moved. I've never attended choral performances, but I might now. The concert ended on a jovial note with the encore item "Xi Xun Chuan Bian Zhai", a work my secondary school orchestra had performed years back.

I'm only acquainted with very few of the orchestra's musicians, and one of those was the conductor in the orchestra I was in. On stage, he appears withdrawn and full of unspoken burdens amongst his fellow musicians who are all smiles and proud at the conclusion of another well-performed concert. I became aware of some personal issues of his through an interview on TV I caught by chance many years ago. That which I can logically understand but not emphatise. I wish I knew what's bothering him now, but I don't have the right to. I think it would please him to know that I was part of an orchestra he conducted, and that he takes some credit for my support today for the music he has always been passionate about.

The jet-lag's going away, thankfully. Last night's concert pushed my sleeping hours later into the night so I didn't wake up at 2am this morning. I should feel better at work next week. And there's the star party expedition to look forward to next weekend!

to althea, from prison

2008-02-27T03:19:00.000-08:00

Stone walls do not a prison make,
Nor iron bars a cage;
Minds innocent and quiet take
That for an hermitage;
If I have freedom in my love,
And in my soul am free,
Angels alone that soar above
Enjoy such liberty.

--- "To Althea, From Prison", Richard Lovelace

back from the alps

2008-02-26T05:32:00.000-08:00

I'm back! It was a much less soul-searching trip for I was plunged into official duties the first week I was there, which left me with little quiet time. The first few days were stressful for another reason --- I was ill-prepared and had but a fuzzy idea of where in the country to spend those post-work days.

For better or worse, I didn't write (angst) much while on this trip. Since my trip to Japan last year, I'd wanted to start a blog, separate from this, which documents the things I wrote while travelling. It is not travel writing for it does not attempt to systemically log the places I've visited. It's less of the "see" and "hear", and more of the "sense". Like this page, it's really more mundane. It's a diary that happens to be written while I'm traveling more than your typical travel-diary. Pictures, if they should appear at all, will be sparse.

I expect more on that to be posted soon. My jetlagged sleeping hours are helping.

to love

2008-02-04T23:26:00.000-08:00

I got this from another blog:

"There is no safe investment. To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything, and your heart will certainly be wrung and possibly be broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact, you must give your heart to no one, not even to an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements; lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket - safe, dark, motionless, airless - it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredemable. The alternative to tragedy, or at least to the risk of tragedy, is damnation. The only place outside Heaven where you can be perfectly safe from all the dangers and perturbations of love is Hell." --- C.S. Lewis "The Four Loves"

I'm no Christian, and I haven't read the book, but I loved the way C.S. Lewis summed up some part of what has been bothering me all this while, and what I'd wanted to put across to some friends of mine. Here's another addition to my to-read list!

the job

2008-01-25T01:04:00.000-08:00

I just realized today that I like my job, but don't love it. It's a cool job, no doubt, that turns eyes in conversations. It's a sexy field and I enjoy how it puts demands on my mathematical and problem solving skills. I don't mind bringing work home or reading-up in my free time, but that's only because of my tendency to become obsessive-compulsively dedicated. I don't love my job because it is not intrinsically meaningful and interesting to me, unlike physics, astronomy or music.

It's the same with lust and love.

belated end-of-year thoughts

2008-01-13T01:08:00.000-08:00

I wrote this entry towards the end of the last year -

It's the end-of-year and I've been really pensive.

More than 4 months have passed since I started work. That's a third of a year. I don't think I can still say I'm new in the office. Soon it will be 5 years, and I another major decision would be due. Should I stay on here or go abroad for further studies? Should I stay with the same company if I choose to stay? What do I want if I went abroad? Is pursuing a 15 years-old's dream still worthwhile when I'm twice that age? Should I just further my studies, on the company's terms, within the next two years, and then serve the remainder of my obligations when I return? These questions may be premature, but I still have no answer despite having mulled over them for the past 3 years. I'll have a better sense a few years down.

I'm not quite comfortable with the way we become boxed in socially in the office, where newcomers get adopted by a group with whom they lunch with. While that is comforting in his first days, it can stifle the development of his social circle in the workplace. Given the introverted culture here, it is difficult enough to break into another social enclave once the boundaries are established.

I was just wondering if my personality here and abroad are any different. I remember being more reserved around fellow countrymen when I was abroad, consciously or subconsciously. I gather that it's a defense mechanism. Most people I know move in the same social orbits, and it can be unwieldy when word gets out on any guffaws. For the same reason, our workplace personality can be very different from the "real" us.
I was clued in on the fuss on my joining the office only in recent months. A new cubicle space was carved out for me, unlike other new hires. There was also some haggling and bargaining on what I should eventually work on. Quite apparently there's no lack of preferential treatment showered on us too, as I've observed. How can I mitigate the little peer resentment directed on us as a result of our "extraordinary status"? Having to live up to expectations can be a burden.

While I was ruminating on my "previous life" in my earlier post, I wondered what I've accomplished during those two halcyon years, within my job scope. If I've to be honest with myself.... nothing much, despite informal assurances from the bosses about how much I've done for them. Professionally, it did little for me. Personally, I've picked up things that are useful in a work environment, which then again, can be picked up anywhere. I'm fortunate to have a pretty eventful out-of-office life.

I'm headed for Switzerland on a work trip! But that means more preparations. It's stressful preparing, but the homework's necessary if I want to have the most out of the trip.

Priorities, priorities. What should I do next year? Should I continue with tutoring? I enjoy teaching, but sad to say, I only have time for half the number of students I took this year. It's a way to maintain connection with my former students. Am I taking up a foreign language? Should I do volunteer work? What's on the social front?

I've cleared out most of my room. I managed to salvage space with the addition of a loft bed from IKEA. Now I need a standing lamp. Not sure if there's space for a keyboard though. I'd really like to own one. There may even be space for a mini armchair or sofa!

I still can't forget her. There's no future, but it makes me happy just to stay in touch with her, and give her gifts if there's a chance of that. I can't live like this forever. Things have to move, in her direction, or elsewhere...

final concert of the previous year

2008-01-03T23:43:00.000-08:00

It was an all-concerto programme the Hsing Hai CO. I estimate that the average age of the soloists to be about twenty. A common problem afflicted most of the performances. In most of the concertos, I'd wished the soloist could either play louder, or have their sounds amplified by the loudspeakers. The microphones, themselves an eyesore to start with, risk hindering the soloists' movements.

I found the soloist for "Hong Mei Sui Xiang Qu" rather restrained. He was technically impeccable, but maybe just too cautious to "get it correct". Nevertheless it was an impressive achievement for him to have performed the concerto despite his relative youth. He played Zigeunerweisen just the previous weekend! The concerto might have sounded better if the volume of the soloist's microphone had been turned up.

I wasn't really paying attention during the flute concerto, so I can say much.

The orchestration sounded a little weird for the erhu solo "Jiang He Shui". I remember the same soloist perform the same piece at a recital last year. I can't remember enough to compare her playing with that last year. But it was definitely more interesting this time round. There seem to be as many different orchestral arrangements as there are recordings for concertos. This arrangement sounded overly melodramatic and "movie-music-like". The soloist also had a habit of glancing at the conductor a little too frequently --- a habit that might have arisen from her experience as a regular orchestra performer. I would have prefered a more introspective and pensive take.

Next up was the yangqin concerto, "Man Xiang Sui Xiang Qu". I had been looking forward to this since I heard about the concert! I was irked by the unstrategic placement of the microphone which was placed right in front of the instrument. It bothered the soloist enough that she had to nudge it forward. Anyway, shouldn't the microphone be placed below the yangqin to capture sound from the soundboard? For reasons I've already mentioned, the acoustics didn't do justice to the soloists. I know that she packs a punch in her playing because I just saw her perform the previous week at the mini-recital, so it is not her fault that she got drowned out by the orchestra like the other soloists. I'd prefer to hear the yangqin arpeggios rise above the orchestra's volume, even when they are only playing a supporting role. I'd love to hear her perform again.

The final piece for the night, "Kong Que Dong Nan Fei", was a pipa-erhu double concerto. It sounded more like a pipa concerto since most of the challenging parts were played on the pipa. This time neither instruments were drowned out by the orchestra. The pipa soloist really shone here. I want to hear it again! It's a pity I still couldn't find the mp3.

I've more to say about English translations of Chinese titles. Maybe I'll leave that for a later post.

thoughts for today

2007-12-27T02:34:00.000-08:00

I'd retreat into my silent shell when lunchtime conversation begins to revolve around food, eating places, TV shows, and movies. It's an amazing bunch I lunch with, no doubt about that. But I'm just not into restaurants or the best food in town. I don't watch TV nor the currently screening movies unless they are very highly acclaimed. I'm not into niche areas like anime either. Makes me a really boring person doesn't it. That may very well be true.

I miss conversations I had in college, those typical 3 am ones where you speak about matters that truly matter. And I miss people with whom you can share anything with. In college, everyone seems like they are up to something. And it's invigorating to hear people speak about their passions, be it abstract math or music, and witness that sparkle in their eyes, because that's when they are at their best. And then there are people who empathize, or people who can't but bother to listen in anyway, and not get turned off. It's wonderful speaking to them.

My problem's with the (local?) workplace conversation culture. Colleagues aren't comfortable with sharing too deeply about themselves because it reveals too much of their insecurities, and that isn't kosher career-wise. The local culture can play a part too. Maybe people here in Asia just aren't used to sharing too much about themselves outside their inner zone of comfort, i.e. their families, spouses, confidants, etc. People do want to talk about deep matters, just not in the setting of an office. For the religious, it is in their religious institutions where they seek these connections and discuss issues larger than everyday survival and other picayune, and not on secular grounds (which is quite sad, really). The more cynical view is that it's really about hiding superficiality behind safe fraternizing topics. Well, if there's anything to be thankful for, it's the great bunch I got to know. Food and movies still beat petty office politics, housing, insurances, or the Premier League anytime.

Anyway, on to another topic that occurred to me while I was waiting for the bus home today. Less than six months ago, I was just like the guys in greens. I might be playing some senseless games at my computer terminal. Or scanning visitors' IDs. Or running around setting up meetings. Tasks fit only for people in similar circumstances. Situationally, I cannot be more different now. I am not subjected to the same laws as they are. I don't make work related decisions based on the strategy of accomplishing the least in the shortest possible time. I have more bargaining power, work-wise. I don't need to play my cards with as much caution like I did (now this remains to be seen). Yet I'm able to relapse into that frame of mind any moment, right now. I can understand when they do things that don't make sense to an outsider who hasn't gone through similar experiences. I can transform into them when I don the same attire.

This thought must have been partly inspired by a friend's comment about my reasoning behind my day-off plans during this holiday season. Hmm...

recitals

2007-12-23T02:30:00.000-08:00

The Hsinghai recital today (it's yesterday as I'm typing) was a mix of the very seasoned and those new to the stage performance. Understandably, solo performances on stage don't sound as well as they do off-stage, especially for newbies, and I can attest to that!

Some performers had dresses that were different from the standard dark and white outfits. One of them was in a red Chinese one-piece (aka cheongsam). Another had worn a traditional Korean costume. The younger performers had their families in the audience. The older ones (generally in their late teens or 20s) had their friends. The cosy auditorium was filled with parents and a young crowd. I feel old already! My teacher suggested that I perform at the same event next year. I guess I could pass off as a someone younger, but my supporters can't! From past experience, this annual showcase is attended by the early-20-something-and-younger and the late-thirties-and-older (parents). My social circle falls in the large gap between these age ranges.

As with the recital last year, some of the younger performers, probably still feeling unsatisfied with their playing, failed to properly acknowledge the audience at the end of their pieces.

I had my ears focused on the yangqin and erhu pieces most of the time. The "Huang Tu Qing" and Zigeunerweisen were note-worthy, and so were the zheng items. Owing to the ages of the performers, the repertoire presented does get quite limited. I was contemplating arranging something different for myself, if I do decide to perform next year. I might even need an ensemble. Oh well, but that's only if I get technically good enough.

The Hsinghai concert will happen next weekend. I'm looking forward to hear the yangqin concerto that was on my mp3 player's "repeat" list months ago.

It's still so difficult to find concert goers...

This year's National Piano and Violin Competition has finally concluded a few Fridays ago, with finalists in the Artist category presenting a full piano concertos with orchestra accompaniment. It was my first time sitting through three full-length piano concertos back-to-back!

I don't listen to much Mozart, but I was quite taken away by the finalist who played Mozart's Piano Concerto No. 20. Though the concerto is not quite the technical warhorses which the other finalists played, I thought the soloist had injected far more emotional subtlety and deserved the first prize, never mind that his expression looked rather pained on stage.

The Grieg concerto was the second piece. Coordination problems were magnified when the orchestra was clearly out of sync with the soloist after the latter completed a piano run, on at least three occasions. I don't suppose soloists have had many rehearsals with the orchestra before a live performance. So the lack of rehearsals may the cause (but then again, professional musicians don't get much time with the orchestras when they are on the concert circuit either).

We heard Tchaikovsky's Piano Concerto No. 1 after the short interval. The soloist delivered the concerto to a rousing ovation, which made it all the more ostensible that he should take the first prize. I don't know about others in the audience, but I found myself lulled to moments of shut-eye during the concerto. It could be the result of my over-familiarity with the concerto, or an immunity to bravura, or simply fatigue on my part. Anyway, I didn't find it too exciting or "fresh". There wasn't much in the way of contrast unlike in the Mozart concerto. Nonetheless, the soloist should take credit for surmounting the technical challenge of the Romantic warhorse. I would love to see the Mozart and Tchaikovsky soloists tie for their prizes.

about writing

2007-12-23T00:12:00.000-08:00

Gems of Kundara I couldn't resist posting:

" 'Are you writing it for your children? As a family chronicle?'

He chuckled bitterly: 'For my children? They're not interested in that. I'm writing a book. I think it could help a lot of people.

That conversation with the taxi driver suddenly made clear to me the essence of the writer's occupation. We write books because our children aren't interested in us. We address ourselves to an anonymous world because our wives plug their ears when we speak to them.

...

Graphomania (a mania for writing books) inevitably takes on epidemic proportions when a society develops to the point of creating three basic conditions:

(1) an elevated level of general well-being, which allows people to devote themselves to useless activities;

(2) a high degree of social atomization and, as a consequence, a general isolation of individuals'

(3) the absence of dramatic social changes in the nation's internal life. (From this point of view, it seems to me symptomatic that in France, where practically nothing happens, the percenage of writers is twenty-one times higher than in Israel. Bibi is, moreover, right to say that looked at from the outside, she hasn't experienced anything. The mainspring that drives her to write is just that absence of vital content, that void).

But by a backlash, the effect affects the cause. General isolation breeds graphomania, and generalized graphomania in turn intensifies and worsens isolation. The invention of printing formerly enabled people to understand one another. In the era of universal graphomania, the writing of books has an opposite meaning: everyone surrounded by his own words as by a wall of mirrors, which allows no voice to filter through from outside."

--- Lost Letters, from "Book of Laughter and Forgetting" by Milan Kundera.

inadequacy

2007-12-01T10:23:00.000-08:00

15 minutes to midnight, Friday.

Too many changes. Too many things to recount. Too many distractions. I write to capture life. Not just the tangibles.

For my sole benefit, these are seeds for future topics. I don't aim to be comprehensible here!

I've moved! And now I have a room. Things are still in a mess

Dulcimer exams.

She's left my life. Almost. A check in the mail for 3 lessons too many. A heart-shaped note. I stand. I retreat into my dreams, having forgotten how to cry.

The SMSes go silent

Just started work. We're having it pretty good thus far. Whatever has happened to a 15 years-old's dream?

Orientation program.

Facebooking and Scrabulous.

On free time pursuits and working life. Directions for the new year. How to feel fulfilled.

Tutoring next year? Appreciation is the best gift for a teacher.

Travel

Recent films

Recent concerts

Street angst

...

daily notes

2007-10-29T01:15:00.000-07:00

Been really busy during and after office hours since I started work. Most of my weekday hours weren't spent at home, but I don't mind. It's hard to do much at home anyways, with the lack of privacy. For me, being on the move energizes more than exhausts.

So what came true and what didn't?

I'm glad to say that two months into my job, I've yet to develop a a sense of weariness. I still believe that I chose the right job, despite the gap between my training and what's usually expected of a new staff in my position. I'm fitting in fine.

The working hour ain't bad. There's none of that stay-on-till-your-boss-leaves shenanigan because the bosses leave on time! It's no wonder my colleagues stay on so long in the job. Most of them have been around for at least 7 years.

Things can run slow sometimes, especially when I'm dealing with HR matters, or simply getting help from people. That was largely caused by my employment status which complicates things. Hopefully it will get sorted out in time to come.

With males forming the majority, I was sensitive to any preferential help given to females in the lab. It's not as bad as I thought, but it's not going away either.

I may have misunderstood, but I didn't mishear.

work update

2007-08-30T03:21:00.000-07:00

The past three weeks have been smooth sailing. The work hours aren't bad at all --- most of my colleagues are gone from the office by the official knock-off time. The bosses have been fairly liberal with what I should read up on. I feel they're a bit too laissez-faire for my good, in fact.

My only minor gripe is the um... gender dynamics. I was never aware of this in my previous workplace, where much more complex factors come into play. Man's protective instinct kicks in when they see an opportunity for chivalry --- it's that old tale of the damsel in distress. Well, sometimes you don't even need the distress part.

Those were just unscientific, unverified, and probably untestable gut-feelings, but did I mention somewhere that I need to trust my intuition more?

Missing you...

late night thoughts

2007-08-24T23:15:00.000-07:00

Observing logs are long overdue! No, I haven't been keeping logs to myself. I just haven't been observing for the past year or so.

Several nights ago, in that semi-conscious state between sobriety and slumber, I was reminiscing the times I spent with fellow astronomy enthusiasts in college. We were part of the university's astronomy society, which was responsible for the weekly public observation sessions. The society's mailing list had over 700 subscribers (probably more now) who received announcements of observing sessions and events. Being the low-profile activity that amateur astronomy has always been, the core of the society perennially consisted of less than 10 members --- at least when I was there --- never mind that the freshman class numbered in the thousands each year. Every year there will be the enthusiastic few who would stick around at the regular observing sessions frequently enough. They were the people whom I can call up to catch a pre-dawn comet appearance at 4am. They were the first ones I'd contact whenever something unusual was sighted in the sky. They share an appreciation for the faint fuzzes we see through the scope --- objects that often leave most visitors unimpressed and unsated. They were people who didn't mind staying out in the frosty northeastern winter nights for views of the heavens. It's a blessing to have them around for an otherwise solitary pursuit.

Now that college is over and done with, I'm back in a land where astronomy related gatherings were never common until recent years. Light pollution and scarcity of land area forced local astronomy enthusiasts to search abroad for dark sky retreats. To date, I've been on several such trips, and my experiences had been nothing short of positive, if not better than that back in the States. I caught my first glimpse of the Milky Way on one of those trips, and saw the southern skies in all its glory.

But it felt different, interacting with city amateur astronomers and my friends in college. Firstly, transport issues hinder me from meeting the local amateurs on any regular basis. Even when we do meet up, it's with a different bunch each time. Most of them are working adults or students who already own scopes and mounts, and are very informed on gadgetry and equipment trading. Conversations I hear at observing sessions and on the online forum tend to revolve around topics of "who owns what", "who's trading what", or "what's hot on the market". Naturally, by not owning a scope, I am excluded from these conversations.

Perhaps I've misrepresented the fledgling local astronomy community. Perhaps it just happened that discussions on this hobby tend to be equipment related because those involved tend to be the most vocal. I've even heard the word "upgrade" used to refer to purchasing better equipments, as if to connote a rise in social status (N.B. in local parlance, the word "upgrade" is often in reference to acquisition of more expensive properties or cars). It may be the manifestation of retail therapy --- the act of buying material goods to fill an emotional void. A local film --- Gone Shopping, directed by Wee Li Lin --- has been made on this subject, and we here are known for that. But maybe, we're just bad at expressing ourselves beyond the mundane. For someone new to the hobby, we risk giving the impression that it's all about scopes and equipment.

I still miss the very educating experiences from my days in my college's astronomy society. I enjoyed talking to visitors about the cosmos, and hearing about their astronomy experiences and their lives. I enjoyed standing witness to the visitor's moments of wonder when they gasp at the rings of Saturn, or a grandiose star cluster through the scope for the first time.

I miss these priceless back-to-the-basics moments. All you need is a clear night, and some company.

free at last

2007-08-02T22:41:00.000-07:00

It was a good 718 days of my life there, no more, no less. As I've foreseen, I am really nonchalant about it when the day arrives. I guess this has to do with the unusually numerous rest days I got from my accumulated leave. What I'm feeling is far from a sense of elation. If not for the envious and cheery congratulatory banter from my peers, I might even end up feeling rather down, for no apparent reason. It's good to be around people.

I've been asking my friends and superiors the same question the past days: What advice would you offer to someone who is entering the working world for the first time? I've got some responses thus far.

Two friends I spoke to cautioned against limiting my office social circle to people I feel comfortable with. An extended workplace social network, beyond the needs of the job at hand, has its benefits in unexpected situations. You never know whose help you'll need on those days. You do not need to be on chummy terms with everyone, but at least make yourself known. Who knows, you might find yourself a potential date in one of these circles.

Be the quiet observer, but be vocal at appropriate times.

It's ok to be lax on tasks that are low in priority and value. To someone new on a job, however, all tasks should be treated with equal importance. Experience will tell which ones require less meticulous treatment.

Keep an open mind and be keen to learn. Do not act smart-alecky.

Be humble. Aloofness is and ingredient of workplace misery.

This was from a former boss, whose advice was specific to someone in my position. Sorry if I sound cryptic here (somethings are specific to the local context): We can't stop our peers from labelling, much less stop them from suggesting that we got to our positions not through our abilities, but by virtue of the label. Learn to take these in your stride, and do not try to hard to prove yourself. It takes time to get over these insecurities, and do your best in the meantime. Do what you must.

This was from the same boss: Don't be put off by the moralizing voices that stigmatize those who leave without "serving out their dues". It's your life, your career. If things aren't moving, and there's no easy way out, there's nothing wrong with calling it quits.

This post will be updated as opinions are gathered.

Is she alright? I can't stop this infatuation...

in time to come

2007-07-25T04:59:00.000-07:00

The green catalpa tree has turned
All white; the cherry blooms once more.
In one whole year I haven’t learned
A blessed thing they pay you for.
The blossoms snow down in my hair;
The trees and I will soon be bare.

The trees have more than I to spare.
The sleek, expensive girls I teach,
Younger and pinker every year,
Bloom gradually out of reach.
The pear tree lets its petals drop
Like dandruff on a tabletop.

The girls have grown so young by now
I have to nudge myself to stare.
This year they smile and mind me how
My teeth are falling with my hair.
In thirty years I may not get
Younger, shrewder, or out of debt.

The tenth time, just a year ago,
I made myself a little list
Of all the things I’d ought to know,
Then told my parents, analyst,
And everyone who’s trusted me
I’d be substantial, presently.

I haven’t read one book about
A book or memorized one plot.
Or found a mind I did not doubt.
I learned one date. And then forgot.
And one by one the solid scholars
Get the degrees, the jobs, the dollars.

And smile above their starchy collars.
I taught my classes Whitehead’s notions;
One lovely girl, a song of Mahler’s.
Lacking a source-book or promotions,
I showed one child the colors of
A luna moth and how to love.

I taught myself to name my name,
To bark back, loosen love and crying;
To ease my woman so she came,
To ease an old man who was dying.
I have not learned how often I
Can win, can love, but choose to die.

I have not learned there is a lie
Love shall be blonder, slimmer, younger;
That my equivocating eye
Loves only by my body’s hunger;
That I have forces, true to feel,
Or that the lovely world is real.

While scholars speak authority
And wear their ulcers on their sleeves,
My eyes in spectacles shall see
These trees procure and spend their leaves.
There is a value underneath
The gold and silver in my teeth.

Though trees turn bare and girls turn wives,
We shall afford our costly seasons;
There is a gentleness survives
That will outspeak and has its reasons.
There is a loveliness exists,
Preserves us, not for specialists.

--- "April Inventory" by W.D. Snodgrass

mountaineers and physicists

2007-07-24T06:12:00.000-07:00

I wished I had more to say on this matter. With memories of undergraduate days as a physics major far behind me, I find myself short of opinions. This post had been in draft status for far too long...

More than a year after Lee Smolin’s article “Why No ‘New Einstein’?” (registration required) appeared in the June 2005 issue of Physics Today, the discussion continues on this page. Scroll to the bottom of the page for his response.

I like Weinstein's analogy between physicists and mountaineers. There are physicists, and then there are physicists. I see this amongst my fellow physics majors in college. There are the technically and mathematically deft ones. Then there are those who will keep the professors on their feet with the deep, and important questions. We also have the gifted experimentalists, and the ones who never run out of random, out-of-the-world ideas. The latter are great to have around in the nights when we'd otherwise only have our problem sets for company. Some of us are a bit of each.

I place myself in the first category, that of the technical climber. That may come as no surprise, for "technical climbing skills" are highly valued today, as Smolin had alluded to in the article. It comes as even less of a surprise if we consider the academic climate I was brought up in, prior to my college days. For middle and high school students here, one's performance at academic activities with easily quantifiable outcomes, for example, exams, science competitions, and olympiads, is generally regarded to be indicative of one's competence in the (science) subject. With elements of school rivalry and national pride mixed in, some students grow to approach these events with the spirit of competitive sports. The mountaineer analogy becomes more vivid here. Consequently, it is "technical climber type" who receive the most commendations, awards and peer admiration, and get upheld as models of success. To be fair, there are research opportunities (aka lab-rat stints, hah) at the middle-high school levels, where students get to develop scientific competencies beyond technical/exam abilities. Accomplishments in these programs, however, are not celebrated and understood quite as much by the masses. It is the "technical climbers" who derived enough confidence to further their studies in the discipline they were deemed to be good at. It is thus no accident that science majors from this land tend to be "technical climbers" who do well on exams and calculations, but fall a tad short in the imaginative and creative dimensions.

I'm not calling for a de-emphasis on the promotion of "technical climbing skills". Rather, I'm in agreement with Smolin's proposal to promote and recognise more of the valley crosser types and I'd like to see that happen at pre-college levels. But I suspect that the solution would take a shift of beliefs entrenched in our students and educators here, more so than a policy change.

Chasing shadows... I don't want to see it end in November.

20 days left

2007-07-14T05:02:00.000-07:00

I find the countdown pretty meaningless now. The sense of thrill and anticipation has

subsided. I'm not even sure if I look forward to starting work. The "right" thing to do is to make my rounds of farewell around the office, even to those whom I don't really wish to bid farewell to. And that's what N did. Kudos to him. He has good reasons to. If there's a survival skill I haven't acquired, it's faking sincerity.

Damn. I feel tempted to leave the country again.

Can't stop thinking of her. It aches whenever I realize that our paths will diverge in four months' time. It's not even about standing a chance. It's about our positions in life... and realities.

music exams and practice

2007-07-02T18:05:00.000-07:00

With 30-something days to "freedom", I figured that between now and then, I'd need to be in the office for just 8 days. It's time for me to bid farewell and show my appreciation to those who were acquainted with me either through work or otherwise.

It's been more than a year since I started taking yangqin lessons and I believe I've made decent progress. I'm fairly comfortable with how things are going currently, until my teacher got a little pushy with "persuading" me to sign up for the graded exam.

I must admit that I didn't think too hard about what I wanted out of these lessons, which started out of a gestating desire to learn the instrument since I was in school more than 10 years ago. After all, I wasn't about to enter a music competition. Neither was I depending on the instrument as my source of livelihood. I just hoped to master the instrument, well enough so I can perform in an ensemble.

Still, that was not good enough. The question remains: "How far do I want to go?"

I'd imagine it can get rather unnerving for my teacher. She sees my enthusiasm, yet I am under no pressure to "get things right". So what if I consistently fail to execute the crescendos and fermatas? I also happen to have the undesirable habit of backtracking when I stumble on notes. Better to play the wrong notes once and continue with the music than to repeat the same phrase, so says my teacher. Suggestions aplenty, but I don't really need to act on them.

I have my gripes about graded music exams. I certainly won't want to spend all my time perfecting the few exam pieces and scales, to the effect of mastering only the handful of exam pieces that everyone else had slogged over, and risk smothering any modicum of passion I still have for the instrument. Elsewhere in the world, I've met amateurs who were either self taught or coached without exams, and still play decently. I remain skeptical of the prevailing view that exams must accompany any music instruction to achieve any level of competency and accomplishment on an instrument. I'm also reluctant to lend implicit endorsement to the local music exam culture.

As much as I dislike going the way of exams, I find it inevitable that I'd have to take them, if I were to get any serious on this instrument I'm picking. For the reasons alluded to before, it will help my teacher and myself if we had very specific goals, and if these goals translates to some larger objective. She's probably asking the same questions I'm asking, along the lines of how much she should teach and how insistent she should be on me "getting it right". I'd see my preparations as opportunities to overcome major practical shortcomings, and for the first time, master solo pieces "fit for aural consumption". The Grade x certificate is really not the point.

So that's the answer to my teacher. Preparing for exams sucks time and life, but it seems like a worthy short term goal to have. Hopefully, I'll balance it against my other aspirations for the instrument. Balance is key.

memories of a film

2007-07-01T02:52:00.000-07:00

I'm feeling tipsy and plugged into music from my mp3 player...

I guess it's been a year since I attended movie screenings at the local Japanese film festival. I know this is really random, but I can't help getting reminded of the film every now and then.

Here's the story. There's this young married couple who haven't had sex since they got married, due to the wife's unwillingness to engage in the act. Otherwise, they appear typical of every Japanese family, on the surface.

The girl, thanks to her exceptional memory, is able to answer questions in quiz books on trivia facts with perfection. The guy would quiz her from books after books of trivia quizzes, and she would get all the answers right. Their conversations are practically in a routine and mundane question-and-answer mode. They seem to enjoy it nevertheless.

Things are different outside the home. The guy had resorted to various seduction tactics to get his wife into the act, to no success, and with lots of frustration. To satisfy his sexual needs, the guy had been visiting brothels. The wife (she looks better than the hookers in the film btw) is aware of this fact, having found discount tickets to the seedy joints which were left in his pockets. But she had nothing to offer him.

If I remember correctly, a relative of the girl came to stay over at the couple's home (probably her father), and let the guy in on the reason for the girl's phobic response to sex (Ok, this is the part I couldn't remember that well). When she was a young girl living on a farm, her mother had slept with other men in neighborhood while her father was out working on the land. She came to develop her phobia out of the association of the violent moans she heard from her mother, betrayal, and family break-up, with sex. This was quite a revelation for the guy. He had a better strategy for "rehabilitation" and the movie ended well... they finally made love all night in his car, parked along a deserted highway. The scenes were very tastefully shot. I reckoned it must be one of the more artful ones I've seen on screen. When all was done, the girl was quizzed on trivia the next morning, but she got the answers wrong. She had lost her ability to beat trivia quizzes.

I've watched half a dozen Japanese film at the festival last year, but this stuck. In literature and the arts, sex is never just sex. It would be pornography otherwise. The symbolisms are delicious and apt. Something in there resonated with parts of my consciousness, and still do today. Anyway, I'm too light-headed to search for the film's title and other info, so I'll leave it at this...

You're leaving?

hajimemashite! - day 0

2007-06-21T06:32:00.000-07:00

As I've alluded to in a previous post, I visited several Japanese cities (Nara, Kyoto, Kobe, Hiroshima and Tokyo) recently. Subsequent write-ups on the trip will be featured on another blog and I'll post short entries here to announce any updates over there. In recent weeks, more than a few friends have been asking for a mini-presentation on my trip. For those whom I meet fairly regularly, I'm doing up a simple slide show with verbal commentary from yours truly. For those that I don't, and anyone else who may be interested, well, this is for you. Although the travel-blog will go light on photographs, it should hopefully make up in the form of written content (which can easily mean lots of dry prose, angst, ruminations and such... hah), and any grounds that I would not cover in a verbal presentation in the interest of brevity.

I'm still sore from the minor incident at the local airport security the day I left home. It was no big deal, seriously, even if I thought the actions of the ground staff was rather arbitrary and mis-informed. Details another day, perhaps. So much for a purported highly-ranked transportation hub.

To start off on a less gloomy note, here are two photographs taken from the plane before it landed in Bangkok's Suvarnabhumi Airport in transit on 23rd May.

That was the first rainbow I saw from a plane. From the vantage point of an aircraft a few hundred meters above ground, it becomes possible to see the full circle of a rainbow. Not for this, but it looks pretty anyways. I flew out of Bangkok for Kansai International Airport in Osaka later that evening.

It's somewhat disheartening that our interaction is limited in scope, this due to no fault of ours. I'm there for a purpose you'd rather not remind yourself of. Maybe I'm not doing enough on the side of initiatives to evolve our relationship into a new realm. Can you cheer up? It's extremely telling when you're so downcast.

woohooo...

2007-06-19T04:01:00.000-07:00

Now... nearly eight months after I started taking lessons, with one prior test attempt, and the countless jittery evenings behind me, I am licensed to drive! More than once, the tester grumbled at the slow rate I was doing the road circuit items, and he had to accuse me of demonstrating that I felt hurried! But I also realized that I wasn't faulted on some grey areas. If the tester was really strict, I would have been killed. It was a tense ride around the neighborhood, and I do hope that the charged atmosphere won't be part of my future car journeys.

My instructor's cavalier confidence in predicting my test result continues to amaze me. Alright, looking back, I knew I wouldn't pass the test on my previous attempt. Things were pretty screwy and she didn't hide her opinion that I won't pass. This time round, a day before the test, she reminded me to bring my photograph, and that was the hint. Only those who have passed the test and need get their licenses made need to give their photos. Well, seriously, I might not have made it. Over tea after the test, she remarked to her driving instructor friend that one of her other student, who was taking the test after I did, would pass on this attempt. I didn't stay to find out the student passed, but I reckoned she probably did. She can't be worse off at driving than I am.

It feels like things are now moving along, almost as if the cogs have just shifted into their positions. I won't have to go for evening lessons while I'm working. I also have the option of renting a car the next time I'm overseas. For now, I need a decent car to keep my skills current. We don't own a one in the family...

coming back

2007-06-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

I'm back from my hermitage. Japan was great. It was even better to be away and uncontactable from all at home (my cellphone's frequencies are incompatible with those used in Japan). The shrines and temples were sanctuaries of the much-needed solace and peace. Inner conversations were insulated from the incomprehensible language heard in the streets and subway. All that for the hefty cost of a return air ticket and lodging in foreign lands.

Somewhere between the cities, the lenses on life a few thousand miles away were focused. Principles and directions were established.

Now is the time to live out the personal promise.

retreat

2007-05-23T03:25:00.000-07:00

It's going to be a hectic month ahead, I just realised. My driving test's in slightly more than a month's time, so I cannot afford to go on holiday for too long. If I want a two weeks holiday, and still have a week and a half to brush up on driving, then I need to leave for my holiday in a week and a half's time! To make matters worse, I haven't booked flight tickets. Actually that's not a really big concern. I've checked and found out that some tickets are still available. I've yet to ask my boss for leave. If he refuses to approve my leave, I'd have less of a tight schedule, but I'll also feel really miffed. And then there are my students, who need extra lessons during the semester holiday. The next 6 weeks will rush by really quickly.

It has been planned. I'll be in Japan for the next 2 weeks!

I need the getaway, seriously. I'd appreciate not hearing from most people I know during this hiatus. Except for the few. Thanks to the bunch of you who have deftly avoided your share of sh**. Give me a break.

the past days

2007-05-13T01:02:00.000-07:00

These few days have been great. My friends were probably taking it a little too far when they described the pain. It didn't feel more intense than a mild ache. These few days away from the mindless drivel in the office have been fulfilling. Wisdom teeth are so called for a reason. Heck, just to get away from the office, I don't think I'll mind a mild flu or cold.

I discovered an informative site devoted to Chinese instrumental music. It's rather complete --- with scores, video recordings, forums and all. The yangqin forum makes for an interesting read --- I actually browsed through all 78 pages of it! I got some good advice from there too... like raising the height of my seat, which did help my arms relax.

More than two weeks back, I attended an erhu recital which featured Tian Xiao, a recent conservatory graduate and principal zhonghu player in the SCO. He was accompanied on the piano. The virtuostic spin to the recital was unmistakeable, with pieces such as Monti's Czardas (or Csardas), Sarasate's Ziguenerweisen, and Wang Jian Ming's Third Erhu Rhapsody on the programme. Tian gave a dazzling performance of the Third Erhu Rhapsody, though I felt something was lacking between him and the accompanist. The "Song of Protest" was performed on the gao-hu sans accompaniment. While the piece was delivered coherently, I felt Tian didn't quite "get into the style". I was expecting a more melodramatic and operatic interpretation, but he sort of played the entire piece in one breath. I guess playing traditional works predisposed to a certain regional style is never easy, and that's why I wouldn't choose them for my music exam piece, if I can help it (more on that in another post).

Tian stayed back for the Q&A session after the recital. Some of the questions were fairly lengthy, but they weren't challenging nor awkward. Credit must go to the compere who took on the tricky job of translating the questions and responses into English and Mandarin. Even if her translation was a tad shaky at times, she did better than the comperes I've seen in the past. Tian revealed that he gets at most an hour of personal practice time these days due to his work schedule, which is surprising, since that's about how much practice I get every day. He also added that he practises at work too whenever he finds the time. Anyways, I was wondering... don't professional musicians get a lot of practice time? What does a typical SCO musician do during the day, besides practicing for upcoming concerts and juggling teaching engagements on the side? Well, I should have asked.

blah

2007-05-06T09:15:00.000-07:00

I don't have an answer to the "identity" question yet, but to the people who think they know themselves and me well enough to gush on about definitions and labels, at times on nationalist and ethnic proportions, I just felt like quoting this:

What if the whole deal - orientation, knowing where you are, and so on - what if it's all a scam? What is all of it - home, kinship, the whole enchilada - is just the biggest, most truly global, and centuries - oldest piece of brainwashing? Suppose that it's only when you dare to let go that your life begins? When you're whirling free of the mother ship, when you cut you ropes, slip your chain, step off the map, go absent without leave, scram, vamoose, whatever: suppose that it's then, and only then, that you're actually free to act!

--- "The Ground Beneath Her Feet", Salman Rushdie

match made

2007-05-04T12:20:00.000-07:00

April just went by without any posts. Not that there wasn't anything to write about. Between updating this page and many other free-time pursuits, I tended to choose the latter.

Many Sundays ago, I watched the free screening of the film-documentary "Match Made", directed by Mirabelle Ang. Synopses can be found at these links:

http://www.cinereel.org/article1187.html
http://www.asianamericanfilmfestival.org/2007/films-events/film-detail/?i=73
http://www.viennale.at/en/programm/filme/2011.shtml

Like most in the audience, it was the first time I witnessed the bride selection process, which can be passed off for an interview for domestic helper type work than for marriage. I watched the film with conventional local expectations on pre-marriage rituals, so it seemed alien that the 4-days proceedings following the interview should lead to marriage. As if from a script written by the bridal agency, the couple held hands, "dated", took some photographs, slept (this was explicitly communicated in Vietnamese to the girl by a member of the bride agency), and went through the customary rituals. Without the drawn-out process of flirtation and courtship that I'd come to associate with a relationship, I found it incredulous that the outcome could be marriage. It was a union out of necessity for the two oppositely gendered humans. For the 19-year old girl, it was a ticket out of poverty. For the guy, well... he was in his late thirties, and earning a decent living as a furniture salesperson, IIRC. He did ask about the girl's ability to take care of elder folks. When asked about his family, he revealed that his other siblings had married and moved out and he is living with his parent. The audience was tickled when he asked about "zodiacal compatibility" as he was screening his propectives brides. For example, he remarked that someone born in the year of the Pig was not as compatible was one born in the year of the Ox.

The film stopped short of capturing the couple in their new homes. To end off, the film reported that the man sent her back to Vietnam three months into their marriage. The crew was unable to contact either parties thereafter.

It also came as a surprise to me that two of my friends, both in their mid-20s and drawing steady incomes, should entertain the thought that they might need to travel overseas to buy brides, one day. Do they believe they are that ineligible, locally? While I can logically understand and speculate the reasons men resort to buying brides, I can never empathise with them, given my background and beliefs.

march's end

2007-03-31T18:46:00.000-07:00

all around me are familiar faces
worn out places, worn out faces
bright and early for the daily races
going no where, going no where
their tears are filling up their glasses
no expression, no expression
hide my head i wanna drown my sorrow
no tomorrow, no tomorrow

and i find i kind of funny, i find it kind of sad
the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i've ever had
i find it hard to tell you, i find it hard to take
when people run in circles its a very very
mad world... mad world

children waiting for the day they feel good
happy birthday, happy birthday
and i feel the way that every child should
sit and listen, sit and listen
went to school and i was very nervous
no one knew me, no one new me
hello teacher tell me what's my lesson
look right through me, look right through me

and i find i kind of funny
i find it kind of sad
the dreams in which i'm dying are the best i've ever had
i find it hard to tell you, i find it hard to take
when people run in circles its a very very
mad world... mad world
enlarging your world
mad world

after the concert

2007-03-25T23:30:00.000-07:00

With barely a month of practice to make up for an eight year hiatus, I inevitably screwed up the presto semi-quaver parts in the encore piece, but it was fun! I loved some of the pieces in the programme. Schedule permitting, I wouldn't mind playing in their concerts in future, if they need more numbers in the strings section. Maybe I'm new there, but I didn't sense any petty politicking. After all, power play is just senseless when everyone's part-timing and playing out of passion. To me, and I surmise, for many others in the group, practices are much welcomed retreats from their day jobs and commitments. The vibes with my fellow players were good, thanks to my instructor, who did all the introductions. I wished we had more time for conversations. Breaks and lunchtimes were usually at most half an hour long. It's too bad that everyone disappeared shortly after the concert. There wasn't time to exchange contacts. Well, at least I won't go in not knowing anyone besides my instructor the next time I play for them, and that will be in June or July. That's when I near the end of my dark journey and tread closer to the light of my "real-life". I'm looking forward to greet my new friends with higher spirits and renewed hope!

the past week

2007-03-19T04:51:00.000-07:00

It was a hectic week with its ups and downs. It's invigorating to be busy, outside the office, for once. I've escaped some shite from work as a result, and that's always a good thing.

I could kill myself for not having more initiative, for retreating into the comfort of familiar companies, for that almost pathological flaw... It had happened more than once. I do fine when dealt mediocre cards, but falter when I get the best hand. What's wrong with me?

I'll be on the roads again! That's more $$ down the drain. Now, I'm not even sure if I have enough to spend on my holiday.

Intentionally or otherwise, she declared herself out-of-bounds when she mentioned her bf at lunch today. Gah.

Maybe I'm numb to all the blood and gore they show in the theaters these days, but the chopped heads and blood in 300 looks curious and surreal. The scenes where the severed heads spent some theatrical seconds in midair gyration just looked like animated Surrealist artworks. There wasn't even disgust to speak of. Weird huh. My friend thought better of the animation shown with the ending credits. Xerxes' creatures look so fantasical, like some rip off from LOTR. Oh, and the word "freedom", when used in movie dialogues these days, inevitably reminds me of Dubya.

It feels great to be playing in an orchestra again. My intonation got better, but I'll still need to work on the semi-quaver passages. I wouldn't mind helping out in group again, but just not every week. It keeps the fingers nimble and the mind alert (I sound old).

Tutoring throws out rather interesting questions at times. My E&M has always been shaky, so I'd appreciate any ideas on this. From Maxwell's 4 equations and the Force Law (), and induced emf can arise in two ways --- moving a conductor through a magnetic field (the Force Law's at work here), or varying the magnetic field in a loop (Faraday's Law ). So the question is, what's the electrical potential in a wire loop in which emf is induced by one of these mechanisms? The suggested solution set claims the absence of any potential difference in the loop when the emf is induced by the Force Law, since only magnetic forces are at work here. The solution stops short of explaining what happens when induction arises through Faraday's Law. An electric field will be induced in this case, but since , unique values for the electric potential cannot be defined at each point in the loop. What then is the resolution to this? The problem is described in the final paragraph on this page.

gained time

2007-03-08T06:54:00.000-08:00

Gah... I feel so sick now, but it's good to stay home. I get tasked to do so many mindless things in the office that there's no time for more interesting pursuits. Well, to be fair, I can volunteer to do less mindless tasks, but I just can't develop an intrinsic like for HR after a year and a half. I still feel like a stranger in there, and I sense I get the what-are-you-doing-here look when I have to introduce myself and my major in college.

A few of us had a discussion on two different betting systems in one of the weekly lotteries here. We were debating over the winning probabilities when we spend the same bet amount in the two systems. I got bored enough to while my days away calculating the odds and the expected winnings. Maybe I'll write something up when I'm done.

I just got roped in to help out in a concert my teacher's orchestra is preparing. It's been eight years since I played in one! All these years I haven't been practising on the instrument regularly. My intonation has definitely deteriorated. I hope I don't suck too badly.

I'm still procrastinating on my holiday plans. The destination's probably Japan, if I'm rational, that is.

Let's see what's lined up for today: it's off to the doc, then I'll read the morning papers. After that... I'll practice on my instruments, research travel plans, source for "business", do a bit of reading, and finally leave for lesson.

It's paradoxical that I need to be ill to spend time more fruitfully.

clouded out

2007-03-04T23:09:00.000-08:00

It was a cloud out this morning. I got intermittent peeks of the moon after the eclipse started. Elsewhere, people had better luck. Here's a low-res shot of the eclipse in progress. I didn't get to see any more than this.

The next total lunar eclipse visible here will be in August this year.

sunday morning session

2007-03-01T06:56:00.000-08:00

Free from time pressure, Sunday mornings are the best times for observing. Any fatigue can be slept off later in the day. And I love the morning air. I got up at 4am last Sunday to observe V1280 Sco for the second time, but didn't make any manual estimates. Some shots were taken and processed in IRIS, for the first time. Here's the result (click for larger view):

The wonders of image processing... I never knew the Coolpix 5400's capable of this much. I've done no post-processing except for a 3x3 binning, which revealed the 8 and 9 magnitude stars. And I cheated a bit: I didn't take a flat-field. Well, this isn't a science image, so...

A telling sign of good (decent for urban standards) is the sighting of the 5th star in Crux. The swath of celestial real estate stretching from Crux to eta Carinae was glorious. M4, M6, M7 and Omega Centauri were revisited before I call it quits at about 5:30am.

How fortunate it is that the upcoming lunar eclipse should fall on a Sunday morning! Unless I figure out a way to shoot the moon through a scope, I don't think I'll take any photos of the eclipse.

novae

2007-02-23T23:50:00.000-08:00

It's not one, but three novae in the past month! The first was announced on Jan 24th. As I had mentioned in a previous post, I had some trouble with the finder chart. The Centaurus nova isn't very bright anyway. When it was discovered, I reckoned that it's just a bit brighter than the binocular limiting magnitude here.

Then V1280 Sco, the next to be announced, brightened to 3rd magnitude, prompting a report in SkyTonight.com. Then yet another nova got discovered, just 3° from V1280 Sco. Currently at 9th magnitude, the latest nova's probably too faint for my binos.

My attempts to capture V1280 Sco on camera yesterday didn't seem successful. The longer exposures had skies that were too bright to show stars clearly. I had to rush for work and there was no time to play with the settings. I planned to estimate its magnitude using photometry features in IRIS, if I had gotten any decent exposures at all. This morning, I ditched the camera for binos. I made my brightness estimate, and submitted it to AAVSO. The data, compiled from observers who had submitted their magnitude estimates, looks interesting. There's quite a bit of variation on either sides of 5.0 magnitude. The nova seems to be exhibiting some rather interesting short term behaviour. Ok, it could well be explained by unavoidable observational errors. In any case, I'm paying attention to the animal as far as the weather permits.

Here's the link to a shot of V1280 Sco.

clearing up and clouding out

2007-02-13T15:53:00.000-08:00

With the monsoonal cloudy spell finally over, I'm looking forward to more observing sessions. The current top target on my list is the newly discovered nova in Centaurus, now designated V1065 Cen. The chart can be downloaded here.

I printed the chart with the hope of using it at the first clear sky opportunity. The opportunity came tonight, but I spent at least half an hour figuring out the field represented in the AAVSO chart. When I was done, the sky had clouded out. This is a lesson in providing good scales, and preparing in advance for observing sessions.

I had some trouble determining the scale. Indicating 20"= 1 mm wasn't too helpful, since I didn't print at the correct resolution. After all, the gif was resized to fit the page, so 1 mm on the page is equivalent to a different angular distance. It took a while to find the resolution (300 dpi) and the pixel dimension (1100 x 1460) of the image. Do the math... and the field comes up to about half a degree across. And then it took another 15 minutes to relate stars on the chart to those in SkyAtlas 2000.0. This wouldn't be possible without a sky charting program since the limiting magnitude on the AAVSO chart is at least 12 while SkyAtlas goes down to just 8.5.

There's always tomorrow.

Quote from a single-someone on V day: February this year has 27 days.... Feb 14 does not exist.

why i shouldn't introduce myself, and rach iii

2007-02-11T04:43:00.000-08:00

Thought experiment: Suppose I meet a new friend for the first time but refuse to let him/her in on my background, e.g. the schools I attended and what I work as (with-holding my name therefore becomes necessary, in the age of the internet). How differently will the friendship work out?

In this corner of the world, it is common for people to ask new friends about their educational background, perhaps to find a connection or simply to keep the conversation going, and this irks me, because it lends oneself to existing stereotypes for people hailing from different schools. Instead of establishing connections, the social habit can set up barriers, as friends become classified according to the schools they came from. It takes effort to remove this biasing effect on first impressions. I'm not sure if I ever want to try this experiment. It sure sounds rather rude to refuse to oblige to a simple question. It can be refreshing to be recognised solely on the context of interaction rather than on one's background. I would prefer, for example, the introductory statements "Hi Peter, meet John. He's from " and "Hi Peter, meet John. He's a " to read more along the lines of "Meet John. He was playing the guitar at the party yesterday. He's a cool dude" or "Meet John. He is as interested in wakeboarding as you are."

Vladimir Feltsman performed Rachmaninov's 3rd Piano Concerto to a well-deserved standing ovation last night. Over here, standing ovations in classical music performances are hard to come by, and are reserved for the very best. This is the second time I see this happen here; the first was at Kremerata Baltica's performance at the same venue, to a smaller audience. For me, Feltsman's technique was flawless. Repeated passages were well articulated and differentiated --- the theme was never played the same way twice. Moments when the tempo slowed to a pause were heavenly. I felt I was lulled to a stop instead of being led to one. Some scenes (!) were endearing. Feltsman turned round to smile at the audience during a scurrying passage in the third movement. At a climatic turn during the same movement, he launched himself from the bench, to a few stifled giggles. The audience must have seen his more flamboyant moments last night.

I thought Collard, who performed the 1st Concerto two weeks ago, deserved a standing ovation too. I guess Rach 1 just doesn't arouse this much enthusiasm.

Rach 3 got me enamoured with classical music 12 years ago, when I was a teen, so thoroughly smitten. My eyes felt wet towards the end of the first movement, as I became aware of that fact.

angels and assholes

2007-02-08T06:01:00.000-08:00

Pardonne moi for the angst and tirade. I just had to get it out.

Who gets the better deal? The nice-guy or the bad-ass? Maybe it's a passing phase, but I like the bad-ass better. His moments of holiness are more appreciated if he is seen to have taken the effort to better himself, which can be extremely flattering when the positive behaviour becomes associated with the courtship process. The converse? Enough have been said about nice-guys finishing last.

I'm just a notch nearer my tolerance threshold for a student who again decided to cancel lesson because she forgot she had doubled booked the time slot. It's the second time I was informed of the cancellation less than half an hour to the lesson. The other annoying occasions weren't much better: I was informed on the day of the lesson. That had happened at least thrice. Lessons, if they happen at all, were often shortened by half "because she's too tired". The syllabus' screwed up too --- teaching Physics had never felt like teaching Geography before (see criticisms here -- scroll to the criticisms section, and here -- scroll to "Is Secondary School Physics in Danger of Dumbing Down?"). It's a mystery how science/engineering-type high schoolers get the necessary preparation for college. Maybe they don't. Everyone's screwed.

Some amongst us have it good. Their college education's paid for by public funds, and then they are guaranteed employment for half a decade upon graduation (some say this may not be a Good Thing). And there are those who exert certain influence over these individuals, if only through the established workplace hierarchy. It irks and disgusts me to hear of those in the latter group hold the conscience of those in the former at ransom by justifying work delegation (more bluntly, shirked responsibilities) in terms of the already spent public fund.

The pill can be swallowed a different way. There are those who evangelise their interests and assume what is good for him is good for everyone. One can therefore delegate work with an assuring feeling of having done the good deed of being interested in a subordinate's well-being and personal development. Thanks, but we don't share the same religion.

another concert

2007-02-04T06:42:00.000-08:00

My seat last night was bad. It's in the second row from the front, so the winds section, the zheng, and the harp were louder than usual for me. That's what you get for $10 and a last minute decision.

There were good passages in the erhu concerto "Nostalgia Dreams of Beijing" (aka 2nd Concerto for Erhu by Kuan Nai-Chung), but I find it hard to appreciate the piece in its entirety. It's not atonal, and it does not attempt to "break-from-tradition" just for its sake. It's also not the fault of the soloist --- he had the techniques and the individualism. I just didn't enjoy the concerto. It fared only slightly better than the composer's 1st concerto for the erhu. I was counting down to the end of the track when I was listening to a recording of the first concerto. Repeated listening didn't help either. Is it just me or the composer?

The other pieces could have been better if I had found a better seat. Guo Wen Jing's composition was written in a choral style that I found rather pantheistic (think Mahler's 2nd symphony) and novel. The pipa concerto that followed was conducted by the composer himself. It was definitely more interesting than the erhu piece. At the end of her performance, the soloist was piled with bouquets and teddy bears that were too much for her to carry. They've got to be from her students.

My suspicions were confirmed. The musicians in SCO are using staff notation scores --- at least that's true for the erhu, zheng and yangqin sections. I wonder if the switch (if there was one in the first place) from jianpu notation was painful. After all, most of the older musicians probably began playing their instruments using jianpu scores. There are three practical reasons I can think of, and I'm not sure if these are correct. First, the ease of producing instrumental scores from the main orchestral scores, which are written in staff notation. Second, the increasing tonal complexity in modern CO compositions. Jianpu notation becomes hard to read when tonality gets vague. Third, the facilitation of cross cultural musical exchange. I've always thought sight reading on the erhu and yangqin using the staff notation is extremely difficult and ill-adapted for the instruments. Now the SCO musicians have proven its feasibility. I shall try that one of these days...

rach ii

2007-02-04T04:59:00.000-08:00

The attendance at Friday's performance was better than that the week before. This I attribute to the Second Concerto's overwhelming popularity over the First, and the more pedestrian program. Okko Kamu also conducted Debussy's Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun and Brahm's 4th Symphony. I found Demidenko's touch a tad too light at times. The more pensive passages in the first and final movements tended to sound similar. At times, I was wondering if the orchestra was accompanying the piano or vice versa. Perhaps the piano's sound didn't come across that well because of where I sat. The two encore pieces fared better. The first was a brooding nocturne-like piece that I've heard on the local classical music station late at night too often. It's one of those that I'm perpetually unable to identify because I always hear it played on the radio unintroduced. It sounds Chopinesque but without all of the composer's flourishes. The girl seated behind me was sure it was Beethoven. Maybe she's right. The second encore was a playful torrent of staccatos, punctuated by Baroque ornamentations, played at presto.

I prefer Collard's performance of the First Concerto last week, despite his rather audible grunts, which were thankfully masked by the piano.

slow movements

2007-01-28T06:11:00.000-08:00

The end of the month is near, and that means it's less than half a month to my next pay day. As far as my life as a lowly slave goes, that's the only thing worth looking forward to. The pace has picked up slightly, but work is still generally unexciting. I still have no idea what I'll be doing over the next four months or so. This guessing game is b0th bothersome and tiring, not that my nonchalance about work is providing any reprieve. Uncertainty can be worse than shit.

The concert last night featured Jean-Philippe Collard performing Rachmaninov's 1st Piano Concerto. I had previously heard him at a recital in London QE Hall. His sensitive treatment of the piece was ably backed up by Okko Kamu's direction. Overshadowed in popularity by its composer's 2nd and 3rd piano concertos, I've not heard many interpretations of the concerto in my casual listening. Now I'd really like to hear the slow movement again.

Tribute must be accorded to the guest conductor Okko Kamu for the other two items. The orchestra began the evening with the expunged movement, nicknamed Blumine, of Mahler's Symphony No. 1, and ended with Beethoven's Symphony No. 1. This is the second time in recent history I've heard Okko Kamu conduct, and I'm drawn to his clean and polished interpretations, in contrast to the more brash and showy approach of the orchestra's Music Director. It's a pity that he conducts only a few concerts here each year.

A sommelier at a wine tasting talk I attend remarked that diehard wine tasters go through a cycle of preferences. They may start off liking sweet wines, then they move on to champagnes, the reds, etc.., only to return to where they have started out, and this can take over 10 years. I wonder if this can be extended to one's preferences in classical music. At 13, I started off tuning into the local classical music station because I didn't like the music selection on the other stations --- I didn't have an affinity for any music with human voice (it's less true today). I got acquainted with music in the standard repertoire. They make up, after all, most of the station's playlist. I enjoyed flashy passages, so virtuosic showpieces of Paganini easily became my favorite. Then there were some composers who "never disappointed" --- J.S. Bach, Rachmaninov and Schubert were amongst those. I identified pieces by the more melodic tunes in the outer movements of symphonies and concertos. Slow movements tended to be torturously long. My musical diet was a mix from all three classical music periods. Then I went to college... and that diet oscillated between extremes. The public library downtown had a classical music CD section and it really helped that I could borrow a maximum of 20 items. Work schedule permitting, I would visit the library every three weeks. The CDs I borrowed were reflective of my mental state. There were days when I would not think much about my CD selection, not even when some of them were of unfamiliar and esoteric music, and sometimes I went exclusively for those. Then there were days when I went back into the comfort zone of the more popular standard repertoire. I stopped listening to most Baroque music except for J.S. Bach's. I lost my ability to enjoy most of Mozart's music, except for a few of his late works. Then there was once when I got interested in 20th century composers and a few others who tried to compose atonally. School work piled up, and I found myself listening to too much Scriabin at 3am while at work on physics problem sets. At about the same time, my housemate was listening to too much Chopin, and we never really understood each other. I became interested in Ravel and got smittened by the slow second movement of his Piano Concerto in G Major. Slow movements started to make sense, and I paid them more attention since then. So that was the history of my musical preference over time, but I don't see it returning to the start yet. I wonder if the wine taster's cycle holds true for some of us.

the new year

2007-01-07T02:05:00.000-08:00

Blows dust off...

I had an almost-a-week-long break from work, thanks to public holidays and the flu bug, which made me realise that I prefer falling sick and staying home to turning up for work. If it's any consolation, this is the year I'm getting out of that place. It's 7 months to go, and 5 months before I fade out. I spent the past week ~~daydreaming~~ reflecting and deciding my priorities for the year. I've been too accomodating towards nonsense in the past. This habit cannot continue, not when I'm about to join the harsh world of salarymen in time to come.

all i want for christmas

2006-12-24T20:38:00.000-08:00

I'd like

$300,000 (USD)
An MP3 Player
To master the roll on the hammered dulcimer
More clear skies and less light pollution
A road bike
A sling bag
New clothes
A music practice room (or have my neighbor move, which ever is easier)
Fitness and health
More books

Item 2 isn't that expensive these days. I guess I don't know the models well enough to make a choice. A gadget good for listening to downloaded radio programs when I'm commuting is all I need, nothing fancy. It'll be a bonus if the machine had tens of GBs of storage space for mp3 backups. Item 3 takes time. It's more appropriate as a New Year resolution, but I don't want to jinx it. We all know resolutions don't work. Item 4's an uphill task. I'd really like to ride on one of those slick looking road bikes, but I'm not about to part with a 4-digit figure just for the frame. 8's for our sanity --- my neighbor's and mine. For 9, a bit more body mass won't hurt too --- yes, I need it.

Item 1 kind of vetos almost everything else, doesn't it? Well, not really. It's the price of freedom. If I had to choose the one I want most, this would be it; most of the others can be done without. This versus half a decade of unconsummated ambition, servitude and lost youth.

Happy Holidays.

memorable astronomical experiences - part 3 of 3

2006-12-20T13:24:00.001-08:00

The final entry in this series is a belated trip report of my first visit to a dark site 4 years ago. My recollections are based on my personal log, photographs, and accounts of the trip from my fellow travelers.

It was the summer of 2002 and I was back home for the break. I had discovered the burgeoning local amateur astronomy community online, attended star parties in town, and got to know the few stalwarts of the group who remain active in the local amateur astronomy circle till today. There were plans to drive up north for a 3-days-2-nights astronomy getaway. The site is situated in a rural coastal area in the state of Johor, Malaysia. Dark sky camp-outs were not new to "elders" of the group, some of whom had logged no less than a dozen stargazing trips out of the country. I decided to tag along when I realised that the school term was starting and that I was not going to see the southern skies until a year later. Thankfully, the 15x60 binoculars I mail-ordered for this trip arrived on time.

It was a diverse group that consisted of high school students, college students, working adults in their 20s, early 30s, people with scopes, people without, people who knew zilch about astronomy before the trip,... The drive to the site took 5 hours and at least 15 of us --- the most I've seen on similar trips I've gone for --- together with our scopes and mounts, were packed into two 9-seater vans. Our equipment took up more space than we did, and that was typical, so said the veterans. It would be a nightmare if we had to unload the van for customs inspection. Fortunately we didn't need to.

The ride would have been rather dreary if not for the boisterous few in my van who went into karaoke-mode during the journey. We arrived at the site at about 3 or 4 in the afternoon with ample time to set up our scopes and get sunburned. It was my first time so close to wildlife --- buffalos roamed and left droppings all over the field where we observed. Human inhabitants share the land with cattle, goats, chickens, seagulls, crabs, coconut trees and palms. We lodged at a spartan family-run beach-front accomodation less than a mile away that was unbearably hot during the day and had no warm water supply. Cellphone reception was non-existent. That was quite an experience for a city denizen who had never ventured very far from population centers!

It didn't begin well on the first night. I started observing at about 8pm. The sky was still bright and the open cluster M7 in Scorpius didn't look much different from what I would usually see in the city. The first hour of our session was interrupted by a thunderstorm that moved in as swiftly as it receded. Most were unprepared for the rain this early at night. In our frenzy, trash bags were thrown over scopes, mats wrapped up, and we retreated into the nearest shelters, our tents, which weren't designed for thunderstorms.

It didn't clear up completely after the rain, but there was enough of a clear patch to reveal the splendours of the galactic center region. Back on campus, I had glimpsed sections of the Milky Way in the Cygnus region with averted vision, but that was the first time I saw the Milky Way directly. It was confusing just scanning the Scorpius-Sagittarius region through my binoculars. I revisited the urban sky favorite M7 but it didn't stand out as much from the background stars as it did in the city. Yes, stars formed the background.

We had an owner of a 8" Mag 1 Portaball in our midst. The scope was an ingenious piece of engineering with its elegant and economical construction. The primary mirror was housed in hollow sphere resembling a cauldron, which rests on friction pads. A truss tube connects that to its cylindrical secondary mirror support. It's amazingly compact when it's all disassembled and packed up. An avid stargazer during his college days, the owner was more than willing to share views of the heavens through his scope and allow even newbies to move the scope around! He would announce his findings whenever he got to a new object. I was struck by the sight of the open cluster M4, with individual stars sharp and resolved, through the Portaball. Most of us were impressed that the Veil Nebula, an object masked by city skies, could be seen through the scope with proper filtration. The Lagoon Nebula appeared almost photographic. Same for the Trifid Nebula, where I could clearly see dust lanes, and I discovered that the Swan Nebula did resemble... a swan. It was no surprise that a line frequently formed at the Portaball throughout the night.

My 15x60 was not left in the cold. While sights seen through the modest binocular cannot compare with those seen through the other scopes, it was useful for star-hopping practice and eye-training on faint objects. Besides, I wanted to know the instrument's limits in dark skies. I revisited open clusters and globulars, including M22, M55, NGC 5723, M25, M18 etc. The Andromeda Galaxy's elongation was clear through the binoculars and its companion was barely visible. My favorite for the night was M33, the Triangulum Galaxy. Usually invisible in city skies due to its low surface brightness, it was revealed to be a diffused patch easily missed if one was not looking for it.

4am - It was time for comet hunting. I had brought along charts for comets Hoening and C/2002 O6 (SWAN). I starhopped to the Hoenig's field but couldn't confirm if the spot I saw was a faint star or a fuzz. Elsewhere, I tried for C/2002 O6 (SWAN), but couldn't convince myself if I saw it. Clouds moved in at about 4:30am and spelt the end to the first night's session.

The start of the second night showed all symptoms of a thunderstorm, but rain didn't materialize. The sky cleared miraculously at about 8pm. Venus was the evening star whose glow could be seen through obscuring clouds. ω Centauri was relatively low but still visible. M7 was easily seen with the naked eye. The Milky Way was visible even before the sky had turned completely dark. With stellar fuzzes all over, the sky looked like a huge open cluster magnified many times. I logged globular clusters, open clusters, nebulae, planetary nebulae, binocular asterisms and galaxies. Compared to the previous night, more objects were seen but I shall recount the more noteworthy ones.

Everywhere I looked, the star field looked like a page out of the photo gallery section of an astronomy magazine. It was mesmerizing just scanning the heavens aimlessly. If there was anything I could ask for to enhance that experience, it would a parallelogram mount for the binocular and a lounge chair. But a pristine night sky calls for more challenging objects. I had to make the most of the night by staying focussed --- so I thought then. I sighted the famous radio galaxy Centaurus A (NGC 5128) in my binoculars early on, but didn't remember if I saw any dust lanes. The first half of the night was spent on prominent clusters and nebulae in and around the galactic center region, for eg, M55, NGC 6352, 6397, M26, M18, M24, etc. I tried for Hoenig when Cepheus got high enough, but again I couldn't confirm if I did see it. Proceeding northward from the galactic center, I added more clusters to my log --- M2, M92, M71, M13, M15. Feeling adventurous, I decided to go for the faint fuzzies --- planetary and diffused nebulae that I would not easily see in poorer skies. The Helix Nebula was the first. It looked bright, diffused and showed hints of structure even through the binocular. NGC 246 in Cetus was an unplanned find less obvious than the Helix. At about 2am, I saw NGC 281 in Cassiopeia, easily mistaken for another Milky Way star cloud. Then there are planetaries I tried to look for but didn't see, namely NGC 7662 and M76.

My eyes felt strained and heavy by 3am and I had to take a nap. It was the first time I slept under the stars, with nothing between me and the heavens. It felt so dream-like to wake up seeing stars all around. 5am - the familiar winter constellations and stars had risen... Orion, Sirius, Aldebaran. But the stars were visibly subdued by high clouds. With the fainter stars now out of naked eye reach, the sky looked like what I'd see in a city on a good night. I just took a nap... now where had the stars gone?

I had one last task before dawn. Hoenig was a lost cause, but C/2002 O6 (SWAN) was high enough in the sky to try for. Using a star chart I prepared, I found the star field of C/2002 O6 and sighted the comet. The tail-less fuzz was unmistakeable since no other deep sky objects were supposed to be in the field. That's +1 for my comet tally and the last entry in my log for the trip.

4 years later, in August this year, I visited the same site for the 4th time, with a largely different group. In the intervening years, the dirt road passing by the site had been paved, warm water supply installed at our regular accomodation, cellphone signals now covered the area, and the southern horizon brightened so slightly at night by the nearby developing town. Ironically, I've also grown to find the ability to use a cellphone while I'm on holiday an unwelcomed convenience. Smitten by aperture fever (even binocular fans get them!), I had bought myself a 16x70 and retired the 15x60 I brought along for the first trip. With neither the financial resources to get a telescope nor the means to transport one very far from light polluted skies around my home regularly, I've stuck to binoculars and even come to prefer them over telescopes.

Sometimes, I wonder why some of us stay in this hobby when we marvel at the same objects years after years. After all, the sky doesn't change very much over the course of a human lifetime. But it just feels different, to look at M42 today, a week later, or a year later with a whole new group at a different location. I'm not alluding to the weather or seeing conditions here. What is drawing us back to the feeble beams of light that had traveled for hundreds and even millions of light years just to reach us? I'll attempt a partial answer. At a wine tasting class I attended, a sommelier remarked that their appreciation, enjoyment and consequently their review of a wine is affected by factors external to the bottle --- the ambience, the conversation, the company... It is not just about the content of the bottle. Perhaps amateur astronomy bears that similarity.

zoned out

2006-12-17T13:24:00.000-08:00

I was completely zoned out the past few days, literally --- I was living in a different time zone. My overnight shift was on Thursday night. Instead of sleeping when I was supposed to, I spent the night watching a Japanese drama series (link to the main site in Japanese) on DVD, 10 episodes of it --- I couldn't muster enough energy to finish the final episode. The scenes were touching and even if I found the drama occasionally melodramatic and the English subtitles sucky, Erika's presence made up for it. Friday in the office was spent in and out of consciousness, but never in restful deep sleep. Then I made it home on Friday night, slept from 7pm to 2am, then went back to bed at 5am and woke up at 8am on Saturday. Things are going back to normality now. The crazy things I do sometimes...

I'm off to a concert and will be working on the third and final installment of the "memorable astronomical events" series after that. It's going to be a long entry.

planetary conjunction - day 2

2006-12-11T20:27:00.000-08:00

Got up early again this morning for the second day of the conjunction. Cloud cover was pretty extensive this morning. Fortunately just enough of the east-southeastern sky was clear for a while before menacing dark clouds moved in from the south, forcing an early end to the session... and I was on time for work.

The photograph (click to enlarge) below was taken on Dec 11 2006 at 0616h LT (Dec 10, 2216h UTC). Exposure settings on Nikon Coolpix 5400: 8s, f/4.6, ISO 100. Fast moving Mercury's separated from Jupiter by a third of a degree.

The same photograph, with labels added:

planetary conjunction - day 1

2006-12-10T13:34:00.000-08:00

I woke up this morning at 5am to a partly cloudy sky. Few stars were visible except for the brightest ones. At first it didn't seem that there was much hope of seeing the conjunction. I took my time to mount my camera and 16x70 Fujinon on tripods, just in case. From the south-facing window of my apartment, Spica, Corvus and southern hemisphere constellations winked in and out of the clouds.

Things only started to look good at about 5:30am. The clearing began while I was at my computer (or was I in the bathroom?) checking out the positions of the constellations I could barely see. I returned to the window to find the entire strip of southern Milky Way constellations shining through. Centaurus, Crux, Vela, Carina... I've missed them for months. α Centauri, then barely 7° above the horizon, didn't seem any less intense than it usually was. A brief glance at Crux in my binoculars revealed possibly more than 50 stars within the area bound by the four stars in that constellation. It also helped that key stars (α and β Librae) in Libra were visible. With the aid of a sky chart program and some star hopping, I was able to aim my binoculars at the spot where the trio were expected appear from the cloud banks. 0559h... checked with the sky chart program again. The planets have risen! 0601h... Cream yellow Mercury peeked out from the horizon hugging cloud. Mars made its entry not long after.

Enough of the preamble. Here's one of the earliest photos (click to enlarge) I took. The brightest stars are Mercury and Jupiter, with Jupiter lower in the sky. Mars is at Jupiter's one o'clock position, completing the vertices of an equilateral triangle. Look hard and you'll find β Scorpii at Jupiter's 10 o'clock position, separated from the latter by about a third the separation between Mercury and Jupiter. Look really hard and you'll might see δ Scorpii sandwiched between wisps of dark clouds, to the right of Mars, and separated from it by about twice the distance between Mercury and Mars. This was taken at 0607h LT (2207h UTC) with Nikon Coolpix 5400, 4s, f/4.4, ISO 400.

And this was at 0613h LT (2213h UTC). Camera settings: 2s, f/4.6, ISO 400.

At 0621h LT (2221h UTC). Camera settings: 1s, f/4.6, ISO 100.

(I might stitch the 30 odd photos I took into some sort of time-lapse animation if I figure out how.)

I lost Mars completely from binocular view at about 7am, minutes after sunrise. For the first time, I convinced myself that Mercury and Jupiter can be seen in broad daylight.

I hope I get lucky again tomorrow, when Mercury moves closer to Jupiter. Meanwhile, it's clear skies to all on time zones west of me...

just another all-over-the-place post

2006-12-09T07:05:00.000-08:00

The three planet conjunction (involving Mercury, Jupiter and Mars) is happening this Sunday and Monday mornings. Given that the trio rises about an hour before sunrise, I have serious doubts that I'll see them. Then again, I saw Mercury barely 10 degrees above the horizon from my home twice over the past week, if that's any encouragement. So, I brought home the spotting scope my boss had kindly given away, in the hope that it might be of some help in photographing the conjunction. If the sky looks good, I might even attempt to stack video clips of objects taken on the camera, but first I need to find an adapter.

A major sunspot group just rotated around the sun's limb. Maybe I'll bring the scope back into the office on Monday for some solar observing. Time to unwrap that sheet of solar filter which I paid way too much for.

Hammered dulcimer lessons are going well, but I'm still having trouble with the roll after getting introduced to the technique at least four months ago. I can't go too fast without losing momentum to muscle tension, and I tend to stall in between notes.

There isn't much work around in the office lately. There's no doubt people are going on holidays. Part of ennui can be attributed to the yet unfinalised and imminent re-organisation. Nobody seems to know what's going on. Maybe they know more than they think they know, or they could be feigning ignorance. Anyway this phase of my life would fade away in 7 months' time, so I'm not deeply concerned. On the up side, I'm getting plenty of free time in the office. My computational number theory notes and peers make good company.

I realised that I lack confidence to bring my suspicions to conclusions in relationship matters. I'm not oblivious to going-ons around me. Events repeat themselves over and over, in different places, involving different persons, but they lead to the same outcomes. I can never articulate my interpretations with enough certainty and conviction. The signs are extremely obvious, but I tend to suppress gut feelings, choose to trivialise observations and believe the innocuous and plain. Perhaps experience confers confidence. gah...

memorable astronomical events - part 2 of ??

2006-12-02T02:41:00.000-08:00

One of the things I'd like to do in my 4 years stay at 42° N was to see, at least, an aurora display. I frequently get aurora warnings from the Aurorawarn mailing list owned by spacew.com and another Astroalert list run by Sky and Telescope. Depending on solar activity, the number of warnings issued each year can vary. In my memory, it's typically less than 10 a year. Local weather conditions would cut the actual number of observable aurora events to a lot less than the number of issued warnings. Looking back, I could have observed a total of 3 aurora displays in 4 years, but I've seen only 1 out of those 3 because of circumstantial reasons --- I missed one of them because I had to stay overtime in the tutoring center, and consequently missed a ride from a friend to a dark site. As for the other I missed... I didn't get to the observing location at the right time.

I saw my first and only aurora display on Sep 7 2002 from the observatory on campus. I saw a faint arc, rather unlike light pollution, across the northern horizon between 8 and 9pm. It didn't take long for intense green rays started to appear in Big Dipper, Hercules and Draco. Activity shifted to Perseus and below Polaris at about half past 9. Red pulses could be seen in some parts of the sky. Aurora activity died down significantly after that, but the mysterious glow in the north lingered on for a few hours. Faint rays appeared after midnight, but these were nowhere as intense as those hours before. Here's an extract from the personal log entry I wrote the morning after the display.

The auroras! I can finally claim with confidence to have seen an aurora display! J was telling me about the AstroAlert notice he received and I had missed because I did not have internet connection in my apartment. I noticed a faint arc of light in the northern horizon just when he mentioned it. They were not much different from those I had seen in April/May a semester ago, which can well be passed off as clouds. Green rays started to appear in the southwest and extremely intense, at least for me, aurora activity ensued. These certainly could not have been clouds. Two visitors stopped by and witnessed the spectacle. One of them said she was T's roommate.

I was too excited for words when I saw the aurora activity intensify. I recalled noticing some semblance of curtain-like activity in the southwest when I decided to get J and M off the scope and onto the observing deck. Seconds later when I shifted my gaze back towards the sky, the rays became so much brighter! I also remember hearing police sirens in the distance, and I wondered if they were in any ways related to the aurora.

Rays from the aurora spanned these constellations: Ursa Major, Ursa Minor, Draco, Perseus, Cassiopeia, Bootes, Serpens, Hercules and even as high as the region near Lyra! I would rate this the second best astronomy event I had ever witnessed, after the great Leonids shower of 2001. Of course, this could not have been possible without the great viewing conditions that we enjoyed tonight. The moon was in new phase, the skies were totally clear, and seeing was good.

A fruitful observing session followed. I bagged targets which I've always wanted to catch. M76 "Little Dumbbell" was one of them. The others: Saturn Nebula, M92 GC, M7x GX, and one more which I can't recall. We caught glimpses of some the early risers of the winter constellation without having to brave the frosty upstate winter. Well, it wasn't so cold tonight.

back to sleep

0450, Sep 08 2002

I continued to keep watch on aurora warnings over the years. There had been some good displays that were obscured by cloud cover, which was at times extensive enough to cover the entire N Am. I remember nights when I stepped out of my apartment to monitor the cloud cover every half hour and refreshed the spacew.com aurora sightings page every 10 minutes just to be sure I wasn't missing anything. Incidentally, shortwave radio listeners like myself get to monitor aurora activity indoors from our radio sets. For reasons I shall not elaborate here, shortwave propagation is disrupted when an aurora is in progress. When all I hear is static from the usually strong BBC Carribean transmission frequency at 5975 kHz, something is up in the ionosphere.

It'll be a while before I see my second one, now that I'm back in the vicinity of 0° latitude for an unknown number of years.

the shift?

2006-11-26T04:20:00.000-08:00

Nothing's set on paper yet, though the fog on my life after August next year has just cleared a bit. While my choice matches my ambitions, the same may not be true for my abilities. But the chance to get rewarded for doing things I enjoy is just too good to pass up. This may be the start of a new psychological phase, the inflection point. How often do you get paid to learn things like these?

memorable astronomical events - part 1 of ??

2006-11-25T23:49:00.000-08:00

I missed the Leonids meteor shower this year (why am I blogging about an astronomical event I missed, yet again?). I just felt less motivated to stay up on the wee morning of 19th Nov, knowing that the shower this year would never match up to what I saw back in Nov 2001. Besides, nobody on the local astronomy forum announced any plans of observing that morning (but someone did observe on the morning of the 18th). Not being someone who initiates events, and not wanting to fire up expectations, I stayed in bed.

There were five of us that frostly November night in 2001. We met at the observatory on campus the evening before, did some observation, and headed out to the plantations shortly after midnight. The increase in meteor count was noticeable even before midnight - an encouraging prelude to the celestial spectacle that was to unfold in a few hours' time.

Initially I spent most of my time with J identifying constellations I couldn't normally see from the light-polluted on-campus sky. A was preparing his camera for timed-exposure. The milky way wasn't visible, but the sky was then the best I'd seen. I remember that the usually inconspicuous constellation of Cancer was easily visible.

Being FOB and having spent most of my life in the tropics, I wasn't well-prepared for the cold. I dressed as I would during the daytime --- I wore a fur coat, rather airy wool gloves and socks, jeans, and sneakers --- not expecting that night time temperatures could be very different from that in the day. With the wind chill, it didn't take very long before the shivering started. A was kind enough to lend me the extra shirt he brought along, which I wrapped around my head. The end of my limbs, especially my toes, went numb eventually. I tried to generate extra body heat by jogging around rather vigorously but it didn't help much. I became worried that I'd be paying my first visit to the medical facility in the town and lose my toes to frostbite... fortunately that didn't happen. I don't know how I could have got by those freezing pre-dawn hours if not for the exceptionally clear night sky and the meteors. The symptoms are like pain --- they become bearable if you don't pay attention. In retrospect, I don't think I'd regret losing my toe for the meteor shower.

By about 4am, with Leo high in the east, it was obvious where most of the meteors came from. Each of us would alert the rest whenever we caught a bright one the others didn't see. Later, meteors became so abundant (or we were just plain tired and frozen) that we didn't bother with these exclaimations. We did a rather unscientific meteor count during that hour. Four of us faced the four compass directions and took count for a minute timed by the time signals from the shortwave radio I brought along. We added up numbers and it came to 70 meteors per minute (note: this number includes overlap counts)! While the meteors in a shower appear at smaller intensities compared to those in a firework display, meteors in a shower bring surprise, and a serene sense of awe with nature. Perhaps this is the reason I was never deeply impressed nor inspired by orchestrated firework displays.

The sky started to brighten not long after the predicted shower maxima. Having seen more meteors in a night than we had all our lives before that faithful night in November, we called it quits and headed home, with the shower showing no signs of abatement in the growing dawn.

mercury rising

2006-11-09T23:25:00.000-08:00

My solar filter didn't arrive in time for the Mercury transit, so I had to resort to projection using a pair of binoculars this morning. In that half hour before last contact, I couldn't find the planet's disc. Save for the two blurry stationary sunspot groups, there was not a hint of a moving speck.

I'd observed the previous Mercury transit in 2003, so missing this morning's event didn't cause much of a disappointment. Local conditions had always prevented me from observing a full transit. Coincidentally, my locations had allowed observation of the only last hour or so of the past three transits. The Mercury and Venus transits I caught were almost like reruns of each other --- waking up before sunrise, hitching rides from friends, hauling the Meades up to Mount Pleasant, good company, crisp morning air and fortunately, pristine summer skies.

This morning's weather wasn't too bad (for this climate) either. The sun appeared from the horizon clouds at about 7:30am, with about 40 minutes to go before final contact. Preparation is everything in this hobby, and I must admit that I was ill-prepared. I realized I needed a solar filter 3 weeks before the event, and it took some time for the international supplier to process the shipping and payment. Guess I'll receive the filter in a few days' time, after the transit, that is.

Perhaps its sheer luck that the observing windows for the past three transits were very similar, circumstantially, for my locations. I wonder if the same would happen for the next ones. Looking at the predictions, the Venus transit in 2012 would be in progress at sunrise at my current location, and will end after noon. That's better than what I've been getting. If I'm really lucky, the entire 2016 Mercury transit can be observed from here. But life tends to work in bizarre ways... who knows where I'll be then?

49 Up

2006-11-05T04:55:00.000-08:00

Today, I caught the 7th installment of the series that features close to a dozen adults, presently just a year short of the half-century mark. They were interviewed at intervals of 7 years; the first in the series was produced when they were 7. To be frank, I don't think most of their life stories, each on their own, can generate enough autobiographical interest. I felt all had come to terms with who they are, their pasts, and their mistakes. All featured, with the exception of Neil, have started families and appear at ease with who they are, notwithstanding the health problems and mid-life careers issues they face. The very unique youngsters have gone down very different paths. Yet the more things changes, the more similar they become, and it's got something to do with the commonalising experience of growing up, and old.

Here's a selection of quotes.

Jacky, refering to her 7 year old self: I mean when you look at the 7 year old.... I don't remember being cute.

Interviewer to Bruce: Do you have dreams?
Bruce: I think we just live without our dreams.

Interviewer to Andrew at 7 years old: Do you have a girlfriend?
Andrew at 7 years old: I do have one, but I don't think much of her.

Andrew, when asked about being guarded: I am guarded about being guarded.

Neil on elections: It doesn't matter who you vote for, the government always gets in.

Neil at 7 years old: I want to be an astronaut, but if I don't, I'll just be a coach driver.

I found the once homeless but now politically active Neil most fascinating. While the most of others appeared to be on the defensive and probably even hostile off-screen, Neil has things to tell, is opiniated, and seem uneasy with himself, all at the same time. Unlike the other interviewees who are well-blended into the humdrums of life, he stands out quite naturally against settling for a certain ease and sense of acceptance typical for a person his age.

John: ... I have a little pill of poison to endure every seven years.

My life don't get examined every seven years in public, and I'm glad for that. I can, however, relate to a watered-down version of that pill. I get nervous when I'm invited to attend gatherings with people I was previously well acquainted with (think school and family gatherings). Inevitably, everyone's obliged to report on how the past x years have been and what they are presently doing. For sure, everyone's expected to answer up on relationships, schools, jobs, perhaps even marriage plans and kids in a few years' time. It's great to hear from friends after so long, but I can't help but feel awkward about telling people I've not met for years my life story up till the present, just as the kids in 49 Up are uncomfortable with taking that 'pill of poison' every 7 years.

I fare better than most in some areas, and I also fare worse in other areas. Perhaps I'm just insecure with my weaknesses? Some things are not turning out the way I like them to be, and I do feel regretful for that. When these are brought up, it's like watching cars rush by, while I'm still walking on the sidewalk. The truth is, most would assume everyone's heading in that same general direction, to the same destination, but I'm hesitant. It's still a question I'd like to answer: do I really want to?

John: ... But does it have any value? That's another question.

I really enjoy meet-ups, but I also think they are futile exercises. It's that feeling that more is left to be said at the end of the meeting. I always felt we're not doing justice to the intervening years by not articulating the depth of our experiences, for the sake of brevity. Maybe I'm just quite bad at expressing myself, or just guarded, as they say in the film. It's reductive... so in that 4 hours, we make small talk, I tell my life story and you tell yours, and then we go home, feeling quite unfulfilled. Though I'd expect more, it ends up as good as any other social networking function with strangers.

endnote

2006-10-30T00:52:00.000-08:00

A pithy endnote for a film.

To see a world in a grain of sand,
And a heaven in a wild flower,
Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,
And eternity in an hour.

--- Auguries of Innocence, William Blake

an analogy

2006-10-28T20:10:00.000-07:00

Remember the progressive jpegs from the Netscape days? Over a slow (and I'm refering to speeds in the 28.8 kbs era) internet link, a progressive jpeg is displayed in stages, starting with a low resolution version of the image. Subsequent scans replace it with higher resolution versions (I ought to post an example here). If we could smoothen the transition, it would resemble the process of focussing an image through a camera lens. No nostalgia here... thanks to improved connection speeds, baseline jpegs (those that display top-to-bottom) download pretty fast anyway, eliminating the need to preview the image in stages at lower resolutions. I don't see many progressive jpegs on webpages these days.

Pardon the geekiness, but I thought this could be another (probably unoriginal) analogy of how we perceive our friends and acquaintances. So we meet someone for the first time, and ask for the first order detail. The image is a blur and we see just the most general patterns. The picture clarifies as we get to know the person. The underlying complexity get revealed. The blobs we see here and there resolve into recognisable, and possibly unrecognisable, shapes and objects. The broad solid primary color regions turn into subtle shades. First impressions change, and then we see the mushed up, the beautiful and the ugly with unmistakable clarity.

Friends of mine don't all see the same image. Most who know me stop at the level 2 scan -- the next level of resolution above the rudimentary. A handful see things a few levels deeper. It depends as much on the extent of interaction as personality compatibility and worldview. Some parts go unnoticed by most. At worst, they don't resemble anything and appear to blend into the background. I don't think anyone sees the full resolution, perhaps not even myself.

Some acquaintances think of me rather positively -- their first impressions are not usually balanced. Perhaps it's the way I look or dress. If they get a bit more time, they'll ask the obligatory get-to-know-your-background questions, where revealing your past affiliations with institutions is almost unavoidable, at least in this corner of the world. Names of mutual acquaintances may surface, with no consequence, and then they size you up and fit you into preconceived mental baskets with their friends of your ilk.

Friends get shocked when I do say or do things they deem uncharacteristic of me. Suddenly it doesn't seem so predictable anymore. The image resolves and reveals, and they glimpse the dissonances previously invisible...

random ramble

2006-10-23T00:21:00.000-07:00

I'm on a movie spree lately. With the fortnightly core screenings, EU Film Festival and Japanese Film Festival happening almost end-to-end, I feel torn. In the past two weeks, I've watched Scoop, Offside, Robocon, and A Class to Remember II and IV. I might review them if I find time.

I just had my third driving lesson. Driving a manual transmission car for the first time, I became a total n00b despite accruing more than 10 lessons on an auto-transmission car. I thought I did pretty well in the first half of the hour when I managed to keep count of the times my engine went dead due to improper clutch motions, but that was not to be... Well, it's been a while since I drove.

Reminder to myself: I need to find a local vendor for solar filters, specifically the Baader Astrosolar filter. Mercury will transit the Sun on the morning of 9 November. I may go on leave/off that day, but then again... maybe there's no need to. The transit begins before sunrise and ends at 8:08 am local time. I could arrive at office early to observe the event from inside the office. I'd then need to do some homework - confirm that the Sun will not be obstructed by buildings, check that the image quality is acceptable even through the glass window pane, estimate if I need to use a higher magnification (Mercury's angular size is about 10"), blah. Besides the mercenery benefit of saving myself a day's leave, observing from the office also makes a great outreach opportunity :)

News from Gamma Perseii

2006-10-02T00:57:00.000-07:00

This (and this) is too good to be true. How cool can this be? You're out in the middle of the city with your date and the radio talk show host gently guides you through his itinery of solar system and galactic objects, under the stately glow of the Milky Way. City dwellers won't know what they have been missing until they see it for themselves. The education and outreach potentials of this event are tremendous. The naive optimist in me is unwilling to believe that it cannot happen here - it just takes more work.

And an oddball news: TV station aims at an alien audience. I'm so looking forward to the alien rebroadcast in 2096.

The fiddlers - Part II

2006-09-30T23:58:00.000-07:00

Siu Pak Yung was featured on the second night. He played a total of three works by Liu Tian Hua - two as part of the planned program and one for the encore - all requiring a certain intensity from the performer. Siu gave himself more latitude for expression by choosing pieces that were more pensive and emotionally tense. There were some idiosyncracies in his technique, but these don't matter much to me. Compared to the pieces Min played last night, I can more easily relate to those Siu had chosen.

The orchestral works Gu Huai Xun Gen and Execution in Fall were most fascinating. Having already heard both of them the night before, I became more acquainted with them on second hearing.

A troubling chord played by the strings starts off Gu Huai Xun Gen, composed by Zhao Jiping. He is known more for the soundtracks he had composed for films, most notably Raise the Red Lantern, To Live, and Farewell My Concubine. The introduction was reminisence of the opening of Sibelius' Swans of Tuolena - full of uncertainty and mystique. The first movement, played entirely by the string section, had the quality of an adagio movement in a string quartet. I wouldn't be surprised if it was part of a movie soundtrack. The exuberant second movement depicted the return to one's homeland. Most of the fanfare centered around a second theme (which I'd also jotted in my notebook), and was carried through till the end of the movement by the wind section. The surreal never-ending cycles of celebration had to end somewhere. The inevitability of which was unfortunately confirmed when the same chord heard at the start of this piece rose like a pall of darkness over the now distant fanfare melody. And then it's back to the brooding heard in the first movement. The fanfare theme, played once by the flutes, gave a quiet reminder of the bygone days before the music draws to an end.

The other orchestral work Execution in Fall, also played on both nights, was composed by Lin Yue Pei who was in the audience. The conductor paid personal tribute to the maestro, who recently celebrated his 80th birthday. The work is based on a drama set in dynastic Chinese periods. The drama tells the story of a lady wrongly sentenced to death for allegedly poisoning her father-in-law. Traditional Chinese operatic devices and idioms were used alongside harsh dissonant chords and irregular rhythms such as 7-time and 9-time. The court calls and the maiden's cries, verbalized by the suona and leiqin, tickled the audience. The orchestra sound was pared down, often in the more introspective sections, to just that of a few different instruments played by the section principals. I remembered these as the most haunting, alarming and distressing moments.

I wonder if it would be easy to find recordings of the two works. I'd really like to have them on my playlist. Oh... this is totally random, but I can't explain why I'm reminded of Messiaen's Turangulila Symphonie after listening to Execution in Fall.

It was a good weekend :)

The fiddlers - Part I

2006-09-29T23:36:00.000-07:00

Just got back from a CO concert. Tonight's performance is the first in a series of two featuring two well-established erhu performers. I have been to Min Hui Fen's concert many years back when she performed Xin Hun Bie. It is typical of her to grace every performance with epic works. For tonight, it was the Great Wall Capriccio, a piece that has become synonymous with her name.

The concert hall was fully occupied. "Regular" concerts by the SCO don't normally see such fantastic attendance. She delivered small-scaled ensemble works before the intermission and played the Capriccio for the final piece.

One shouldn't attend Min's concert expecting surprises. Her performance was very polished and down to earth, but after the first half of the night I felt she was getting jaded after all these years on the concert track. She exuded a sort of Zen-like aura throughout. If I was seated further away, I probably won't noticed her blink. Perhaps the dainty good ol' ensemble works don't go well with bucketsful of passionate play. They require only that much, and not more.

But I felt the same when she played the Great Wall Capriccio. I see an interesting contrast in the level of energy between the orchestra performers and her in this work. She seemed like an oasis of calm in the company of visibly enthusiatic string players (some, if not most, of whom are qualified to play the concerto). My main beef was with the first movement. She sounded almost too pedagogical. If she was facing the string section, it would look like a lesson in erhu kindergarten. It's child's play to her anyway. Oh, and her glissandos usually ends a quarter tone to a semitone from the end-note. The applause in between movements was distracting too.

The evening gown she wore was the same one in her publicity photo. The encore was the same as that I heard at her previous concert and so was the rapturous applause.

No, it's not a bad performance. My palms were sore from the applauding and I thoroughly enjoyed her performance. I wondered how much of the appreciation shown by the audience was due to her reputation? And how much was out of courtesy? I felt I had watched a performance staged exactly the same way twenty times over, elsewhere in the world.

Well, not that it's a bad thing. I think I'm developing the habit of judging (and attending) music performances for their novelty that I get unappreciative of the well-established. Hmm... that's something to mull over.

stuff to do

2006-09-23T03:40:00.000-07:00

Now that the end of year exams are underway, I'll be getting more free time on weekends. For once in 6 weeks, I have Saturday morning to myself, and I'm not about to blow it off in slumberland, though blogging at 3 am in the morning is a sure step in that direction. I used to cycle to the beach on weekend mornings, but not since I started tutoring on Saturdays. I should do that this morning!

My TODO list is so filled. The long term ones include learning a foreign language and submitting variable star magnitude estimates more regularly. I need to do a bit of research on contact lenses if I'm keen to try them. Then I need to decide the Linux distro I'd use on the desktop. A home brewed manual guiding device for my camera might be interesting too.

There are so many things to do... but time is always short.

First Post (and night duty)

2006-09-06T00:36:00.000-07:00

I did my first night duty on Wednesday night. It wasn't as bad for me as the guys who did it the night before. The full 9 hour shift was shared amongst the 5 of us -- mine was scheduled to start just before midnight and end at 0140h. I'd gone through half of Murakami's "Dance Dance Dance" when I ended my duty. No better time than night duty to read a novel! So there's something good to be said about night duty! I didn't get a chance to talk to the rest since most of them were asleep when I was awake, so it was quite uneventful. My ex-boss happened to enter the building at about 10pm, and we caught up on each other's lifes (well, mostly mine). I've known him as a night worker from the days I worked for him, so it didn't surprise me to see him around at that time.

Although I didn't sleep for very long after my duty ended, I slept well, unlike my peers who complained of the cold air from the A/C. Thanks to the days spent in the frigid wasteland and the reluctant heater in my room over there, I've put my skill of minimising heat loss to good use in situations like this.

I was well aware of the lunar eclipse last night, but I have seen too many lunar eclipses to be motivated to stay up for the event. The umbral magnitude of a little less than 20% didn't convince me to leave my bed, and so... no obs report here. Some local folks took pretty decent photos. The next lunar eclipse observable from my location will happen on the UT night of March 3rd next year (the umbral phase begins at about 5:30 am local time on March 4th). I wonder if I'll stay up for that.