3 years down. 3 more years to go!
It’s for you…
I should have trusted my gut feelings and not participate in this performance. Now, I don’t feel good when the performers are still getting the conductor’s cues all messed up two days before the performance. The overall standard gets worse with every concert. I feel embarrassed asking my friends to attend the concert because I don’t feel inspired by the pieces. I also saw her with him. There’s not much in the way of “social potential” left in the group. The elation I experienced before is gone and it’s time to move away. To looking on the brighter side, there’s one practice left before the performance.
I’m taking the grade 6 yangqin exam at the end of the year and plan to stop taking regular lessons after that. Like for my previous graded exam preparations, I’m stuck on the same two exam pieces for months and there’s not much progress. I don’t think I should stay on a piece for prolonged periods because lull weeks easily puts me out of touch. My teacher is also not very good at picking out etudes or new and interesting pieces. Seriously, I don’t really care what she was before or if she currently teaches students in advanced grades. I’d rather have a teacher who plays the instrument actively and understands it. I might engage another teacher for short term lessons in case I plan to take the graded exams in futures.
What’s next? I’ve got to prepare for the GRE in October, then the graded instrument exam in November or December. I want to find a weekend part-time job and learn a new skill. Maybe I’ll apprentice someone or volunteer my time somewhere. I want to see a segment of society that I’ll otherwise have little chance of coming into contact with. Maybe I’ll take a trip overseas later this year.
On a more upbeat note, she got my number today. It’s strange that it’s usually not me asking people for theirs. I enjoy her company more and more, and have one more reason to look forward to going to work. I like it when she gets amused but not when she mentions … . Interestingly, her accent is changing. Should that be a positive sign?
I’ve also had people asking me to attend events the past few weeks. I’ve rejected all of them. That’s lethargy.
I have the weakness of being too touchy.
I would have left soon after my work trip if not for E’s reception and the trip he planned to Jinshan. I’m quite sorry to admit that I don’t feel confident enough to converse in Mandarin with the Mainland Chinese participants at the conference. Actually, it was not my command of the language that made me hold back — it was my lack of knowledge of technical terms said in Chinese.
To be fair, I don’t think my Mandarin is that awful. The jovial bunch of Chinese roommates at the hostel even commented that I spoke Mandarin rather well and that I didn’t have an accent most of my countrymen have.
Shanghai’s not a city I’d want to return to — not for leisure at least. It feels over commercialized and crowded. Even my friend who is a Shanghainese local admits that. For the next 200 odd days, the city will be obsessed over the World Expo 2010. Countdown meters are placed at various strategic public locations, even in my conference hotel. Public reminders about social responsibility and gracious behaviours are everywhere and they usually don’t fail to mention the upcoming World Expo. I’ve watched a video clip on the mobile tv on public buses which narrates the day of a young disabled lady who cheerfully navigated her way through Shanghai city, only to be met by exceptionally courteous and public spirited people. Well, I didn’t have the luck to meet such graciousness in public, at least not outside my conference hotel.
If there’s something that will bring me back, it is the pleasant Mandarin accent and the locals’ superior command of their vernacular. I appreciate language well-spoken and unadulterated. My few days in Shanghai has provided proof that discourse at a much higher level can be conducted in Mandarin — a language that serves only utilitarian purposes in my daily life here. I would listen in silence when my roommates discuss politics, finance and academic matters. My trip to China has shown me how Mandarin really becomes alive.
The group I traveled with arrived at Jinshan beach about an hour before first contact was due to start. We rented a van that took us from Shanghai city to the small coastal town which was supposedly one of the better observation spots. These days we have to pay for things we always thought was free — there was an admission fee of 30 RMB for the beach! We paid the fee and found ourselves in the company of a beachful of foreigners who were there much earlier than we were.
I saw signs that pointed international visitors and domestic visitors to different spots. That was strange to me. Why did the authorities want to segregate the two groups? I tried to decide if I wanted to be an international or domestic visitor since I’m technically able to mix in both groups without much trouble. I hold a foreign passport, but I look just like any other Chinese on the streets. Eventually, my group decided to head to the international side.
Our journey there saw thick morning fog enveloping the fields and vegetation. It was not a very encouraging sight. Fortunately, the sun peered through breaks in the cloud cover when we arrived at the beach. We were about to be treated to a good show, so we thought.
The partial phase went well. Low clouds were moving fast and there were enough clear patches for much of the partially obscure sun to show. I mounted the pair of filtered binoculars I brought along. The view through the binoculars was quite dramatic for one could see the silhouette of clouds in front of the sun’s disc. Those who looked through seem impressed with the view. My time spent collimating the binoculars, making the solar filters, and testing the set-up had paid off. It was one of the most comfortable and portable methods to observe a magnified image of the partial eclipse.
It seemed as if the cloud cover got thicker as time went by. This was taken minutes before totality.
There was an uproar from the beach goers when the sun and moon when behind the clouds for good, and didn’t show itself until after the eclipse.
As the clock ticked, we noticed that one side of the sky was visibly darker than the other. This was sign that totality is approaching. The birds we saw seem disoriented as they fluttered about anxiously. We couldn’t see the last bit of the sun disc’s. The surroundings just prior to totality, took on a copper sheen. It was like a sunset, yet it was also different in important ways. The darkness engulfed us in a short span of time, much unlike a sunset, where daylight retreated in various hues over hours. I thought the surroundings looked eerie in the seconds before totality. The heavy clouds had definitely helped to create the apocalyptic mood. By now, squeals and cries can be heard from those in the crowd, except that this was not an ordinary beach party. Total solar eclipses affect humans psychologically too! Now I understand why ancient civilizations feared these events.
My friends who didn’t see the eclipse couldn’t believe that it turned as dark as night. Well it did. The photo above shows just that. I had my camera flash on, of course.
During totality, some of the street lights were turned on, so it wasn’t completely dark. I believe the sky and clouds contributed to the feeble lighting we saw each other by. I’m not entirely sure of the primary origins of the light from above.
All the while I was hoping to catch a glimpse of the sun’s corona, but it didn’t happen. The sky brightened up quickly as soon as those six minutes were over. I must admit that I got a little hysterical just before totality, like a fan at a rock concert. Even without the visuals, it was an extraordinary experience. A mysterious one. I had missed the eclipsed sun, but what happened around me was just as dramatic, if not more.
I still don’t know if I would rank the eclipse in my list of the most memorable astronomical events. It belongs in a different league because it’s a remarkably different experience. I also got to better understand why eclipse chasers can’t get enough of eclipses.
Let’s see… there’s one in the Southern Pacific next year…
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.
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.
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?
Strange as it may sound, it takes effort to get used to things that were once familiar, as anyone who has lived away from his home country for a few years would agree. While he may instinctively fit into the social tapestry of his home, he also carries with him unseen mental baggages from his wearied journeys elsewhere.
The last three years or so were spent back in my home country. Mandatory military service took up the first two years. The remainder was spent in my present job. The surroundings have changed, and so have I. I had my taste of an office worker’s life in the first two years. I was fortunate that regimentation wasn’t enforced very strictly. It was one of the best vocations a conscript can hope for. It looked just like a typical office outfit, if not for the presence of uniformed officers. Some of my former colleagues worked long hours, and sometimes I wasn’t sure if that was at all necessary. Like most workplaces, petty politicking had its place, but I was able to get myself under the radar most of the time.
In contrast, my present workplace seems very different. Yet they are similar in some ways. For example, we don’t work long hours, and politicking is almost non-existent. Perhaps researchers and engineers get along with each other better?
Months back, I signed up for the GRE subject test on impulse, when I decided that ambitions aren’t the things one should compromise. I’d decided to apply to grad school. I registered for the test and began my review of almost everything I’ve learnt about physics in college. It went well the first few weeks, but I got drawn into the habit of procrastinating, and now I’m not making much daily progress. Life has gone back to normal.
And here’s what my “normal” life entails. I’d wake up before 6 in the morning and set off for work. When I get home from work, I’d feel so physically and mentally drained that I’d sometimes fall asleep promptly. Otherwise, I’ll find time to read news sites, books, practice on my instruments, etc.. Weekends aren’t that different — the same routine only becomes more protracted. Wasn’t I supposed to study?
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.
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…
