Things to do before I'm--well, I'm already 40ish, but here's a "wish to do" list, with no particular timeline, inspired by Yv's "Things to Do before 30" list. (You young one!!)

1. Continue to learn new words, which means reading lots and looking up words every time I don't know what it means and keeping a vocab list, which I already do.

2. Read all of Shakespeare's works. I think I've read most of his major ones, but I haven't consulted a list in years.

3. Read War and Peace and go through the "top 20" list I got from one of the fellows.

4. Be able to identify all countries in Africa. Actually, in general, I need to improve my geography.

5. Gosh, I would love to do calligraphy, but no instructors here.

6. I would also love to take up violin again and learn piano, but I don't have the time to do this right now.

7. Places I'd like to visit: Cambodia, Thailand, Scotland, Mexico, Italy (without killing my relatives) and many many more places.

8. Use my manual camera more.

There's more, but I'd like to spend the rest of this evening reading. So I suppose see you in a few months, since classes start up again next week.

Note to self

If your friend tells you about his composing angst and says something about his fear of not being able to compose "something better the next time", do not tell him that "well, Mahler didn't compose anything to match his second symphony after he wrote that, and no one seems to hold it against him. . ." because it will not go over well.

The problem with taking classes whilst working full-time

. . .is that I have virtually no free time, which is why this blog has been relegated to the back burner. One of my friends once told me that he can do at most two things before he feels like he's stretching himself too thin. He made this point to explain how he couldn't have both a time-consuming hobby and a girlfriend at the same time. It was either grad school and girlfriend, or grad school and time-consuming hobby, but he couldn't do all 3 to his satisfaction. I'm starting to see his point. Well, ok, there are people like Yv who can do a zillion things. . .but I am convinced she is superhuman, b/c she studies French, Vietnamese, writes lots, reads lots, does yoga, volunteers, and on top of this, does calligraphy. I am not a superhuman, so I can juggle at most 2 or 3 things at a time. It's not that I have zero time, but it becomes an issue of prioritizing and allocating time to 6 or 7 different things I want to do.

Since I've started taking classes, I don't think I've listened to more than 1 or 2 new pieces, which I realize is dismal. And live music? I don't think I've gone to hear anything since the start of the new year, though I intend to rectify this once opera season starts back up again in a few months.

One problem is that I get back from work/classes late, and then I'm typically exhausted/hungry. I've always got homework or readings to do, which by the time I get home from work, eat, clean up, etc., typically doesn't get started till around 9 or 10 (later if I decide once in a blue moon to take my bum to the gym, since I haven't had the luxury to go running or bike into work much anymore).

Thus I've been too tired/brain dead to give anything a serious listen.

I used to think that music (mostly classical, though I guess all genres) was very high on my priority list, but I've noticed over the past six months that when I get busy/tired, it is one of the first things to go. So in econ-speak, my demand for classical music (if we use time as a measure instead of cost)is highly elastic. And here I thought it was an indispensable part of my existence.

It's no wonder I have trouble getting my non-music-prioritizing friends to get out to our concerts.

Which got me wondering--why is music-appreciation so demanding?

One of the main things for me is that it's hard to break it down. True, many forms--symphonies, quartets and sonatas break down into smaller movements, but I hate the KDFC method of listening to just isolated movements. Which means that if I want to listen to Mahler, I need to find 1+ hour, which is hard to come by these days.

Whereas if I'm reading a book, I can pretty much stop whenever I need to, and pick up where I left off. Sometimes, If several days pass between readings, then I need to read a few earlier chapters to refresh my memory, but for the most part, if I want to read Tolstoy's War and Peace, I don't have to sit down and read it in one sitting. Not that I watch them that often, but I can even do this with movies. But with music, it's the whole piece or bust. I can't listen to just movement one of a
Bartok quartet and be done with it, or listen to a piece in 12-minute snippets at a time the way I sometimes read books or listen to a radio program.

To add to this, if it's a completely new piece, or something I haven't listened to in a while, or even an interpretation of a familiar piece, I like to listen to it several times (not all in the same day), perhaps listen to a different interpretation for comparison, so then it's not just an hour we're talking about.

Of course, since I haven't been listening to much, I haven't had much to say pertaining to music. (sigh)

I have lots to say pertaining to my life, but this requires allocating time to write something coherent.

The things I learned about people who love classical music

Ok, this is probably akin to beating a dead horse, and I have more productive ways to waste my time than to devote time to this, but I couldn't resist.

So what can we say about the top 100 musical selections that 6200 voters who purport to like classical music picked this year?
-Evidently, they don't like Haydn.
-They also eschew string quartets. (Boccherini's Fandango, which isn't a quartet anyway, doesn't count.)
-They don't like Bartok, either.
-They don't like opera (and the overture to XYZ opera doesn't count)
-. . .or choral works for that matter.
-I'm fine with them liking Pachelbel, but picking it over Mozart's Jupiter Symphony? For reals?
-They also prefer Eric Satie's Gymnopedies to Brahms PC2.
-They also don't listen to anything before and after a certain date, but we already knew that.

Who are these people and where/how did they come up with this list?
Do the voters select these pieces by themselves? Or is it a preordained list?

* * *
Update: I found the methodology. The list is preordained. So that partly explains the lack of string quartets, since I don't see a single string quartet listed here.

Very well, then. This isn't a top-100 list of listener's favorites; it's a list of top-100 pieces that the classical radio station wants to foist on to the listeners.

The proper way to create a list of listener's picks would be to a) eliminate the multiple choice method, for starters.
b) If you're going to list only music from say, 1700 to 1900, then don't call it the poll for "the best musical piece of all time".
c) Since you're just asking participants to pick one piece, listing the top 100 of these selections seems like overkill. How about just listing the top 10 or 15?
d) The rankings displayed on the right and left hand sides are a bit misleading. For example, if you look at the rankings, it looks like Zipoli's "Elevazione" moved up in the ranks from a non-rank last year to #82 this year, which I think most people would interpret as showing an increase in popularity. However, in this case, given the format of the survey, this just means that this piece wasn't one of the listed pieces last year. In other words, for whatever reason, the surveyer didn't find "Elevazione" foist-worthy last year, whereas this year, they did.

I suppose it would be cynical of me to suggest that this whole poll thing is not really a "listener poll", but a way for radio stations to legitimize and validate the vapidly tuneful do-re-mi repertoire they continute to play and then pat themselves on their back for the good job they have been doing.

Crying. . .

Two things moved me to tears today.
First, I listened to MLK's speech for the n-zillionth time.

But this time, on the heels of what is about to happen tomorrow, it made me cry.

Now, I'm listening to our choir singing Pablo Casals' Nigra Sum, which uses text from Song of Solomon in the Old Testament. It opens with "I am black and beautiful". Granted, the Song of Solomon refers to a sun-darkened shepherdess, and in the original context, the words narrate a love story, but I think the text is befitting to our current context—particularly the ending:

For now the winter is past, the rain is over and gone.

The flowers appear on earth;

The time of singing has come,

text excerpted from here

The piece is sensual and quite beautiful.
Today, it too, made me cry.

Here is a recording by a decent-sounding boys choir.

The time of singing has indeed come. Fitting, no?

And now, I should head to bed, so I can catch the inauguration bright and early.

Some reflections/rambles of the past year

Happy New Year to my two remaining readers! Actually, it has been weeks since I've checked my spy meter, posted anything on this blog or visited some of the blogs I used to regularly visit, so for all I know, maybe no one reads this anymore, in which case I can make all sorts of private confessions, call people all sorts of names, etc. Though I'd be seriously amazed if anyone stops by anymore, given the infrequency with which I have been posting the last few months. Or if I'm still on anyone's blog roll.

The last 3-4 months of this otherwise good year have been absolutely nuts (hence my long posting hiatus). The classes I was taking to prep for despotic regime studies completely wiped me out. Then there were the applications to despotic regime programs. And then just when I thought things couldn't get any worse or busier--some dunderhead rammed my car into my garage and added another headache and hassle on to my already-full plate of things to deal with.

So to be totally honest, at a time of the year when everyone is usually warm and fuzzy and happy, I have been a) miserable b)really annoyed, bordering on angry (at the idiot who robbed me of my much-needed and deserved vacation and made me miss the chance to spend time with my family and ailing grandfather), c)frustrated, d)wiped out, and just very negative overall, which is another reason I haven't been posting. Why post and quash other people's holiday spirit?

But that was 2008.

I'm hopeful for a much better 2009.

So far, it has started off on a good note. I had a lovely dinner party with friends to ring in the new year, which almost made up for not getting to see my family. I spent Christmas with one of my dearest friends and spent the past few days catching up with people I haven't talked to in months (or in some cases, years). I caught up with my childhood friend Oh-boe, and "cooked" more these past few days than I did the past four months.

Classes start up again tomorrow, so I'm bracing myself for the concomitant craziness, but the one (actually, two) thing that is finally off my plate is applications to despotic regime programs. I also finally have a functional car again. I'm trying not to think about all of the rules I broke and all of the stupidity and time (not to mention more of my savings than I originally planned) that went into buying this car that I'm only lukewarm about. Perhaps The Saga of My Car is fodder for another post, but ah yes, I was talking about trying to start the new year on a positive note. . ..

But before that, some reflections of the past year.

I did not go to a single foreign country in 2008 (a troubling revelation that I will try not to dwell on, lest I start harboring ill will towards The Idiot That Ruined My Vacation Plans and Totaled My Car) or read nearly as many books as I had intended, but there were two significant things I discovered/did in 2008.

The first is my decision to apply to despotic regime programs. Ok, whoopty doo. I realize that that in itself is not much, but it's more what it symbolizes--flux and new possibilities. I still have lots of apprehensions about this and the prospect of change it might bring about--a prospect I find both exhilarating and nerve-wracking--but I finally took the step to transform this from an abstract goal to a tangible reality. I'm on a trajectory to somewhere and something, which is a good thing. As frustrating as these past four months have been, I need to remind myself that I chose to do this. On a relative scale, four months of suffering and hardly seeing friends is a small sacrifice, if it leads to something better in the long run. (Here's hoping)

And isn't that what we're always striving for?--bettering ourselves, our lives? Finding that elusive thing that will make us happy with a capital "H"? I wish I could be happy just doing what I currently do at my (sort of) sinecure and finding other means of satisfaction via people and pursuing hobbies and reading books--and for a while I fooled myself into thinking that this is possible. I joined a choir that was challenging and fulfilling in many ways; I got introduced to a wonderful world of contemporary music and met some lovely people. . .but choir also sucked up all of my spare time, which diverted my attention from pondering The Big Life Question. Trying to figure out how to find an answer to this is what 2008 has been about.

No answers, alas, but some things I seek of myself: 1. I want to be in a different place (mentally) when I'm 40 (oh wait. I'm already 40. 45, then). I'm not sure if this is what Yv and Sage Broccoli term being "vibrantly alive", but at the very least, I don't want to feel like I'm in a rut. Perhaps I'm confounding Heraclitean flux with progress, but something always needs to be moving forward, somehow. 2. I need better balance between the various "spheres"--i.e. work, private life, friends, family, etc.--that occupy my life. Some people can fill a void in one lackluster area by focusing on the other areas, but I discovered that I'm not one of those people. I can have a great private life, family situation and fabulous friends, but this doesn't quite make up for deficiencies in other areas. The question is what to do about this. I'm not sure if despotic regimes is the answer, but now I wait and see, I guess.

Second, 2008 was a good year of discovering and rediscovering new (and old) connections. I blame Sage Broccoli for 40 percent of this. Through her, I discovered several lovely, witty, entertaining, and sensual blogs, and then friended some of the real live personas behind these anonymous internet ramblings and have subsequently gotten to know some of you via emails, comments we leave behind on each other's turf or status updates, etc. If you are such a person, know that you are part of my "highlights of 2008". I've also met some wonderful strangers both on this blog and in other parts of the blogosphere and on Facebook. Yes, Facebook. As much as I pooh pooh the touch-and-go superficiality that FB seems to foster, I have met some interesting people on it and have reconnected with people I haven't talked to or thought about in years. So here's to a year of discovering wonderful strange people (some of who might read this blog).

Last, but not least, (and still part of my discovering connections point, actually) I have wonderful friends. Usually, friendship is some sort of give and take relationship, but this past semester, I did very little "giving" and lots of "taking". Despite this lopsided relationship where my friends got essentially nothing out of me, they continued to feed me, check in on me from both near and afar, invite me to celebrate holidays with them, offer me math help, invite me over for dinners and various other things.

So here's to a better 2009 and to a year of forging new paths, connecting with old and new friends, discovering more great blogs, eating good food, and (I hope) more opportunities to listen to and discover music. A year of change, as someone put it.

It's getting late, so I shall post "My goals and aspirations for 2009" in another post. (Maybe in February.) Good night, my lovelies (my two remaining readers, that is).

My fabulously productive day at work

With abject apologies to my boss. . .

-Arrive at work before 8 a.m.
-Do actual work for 1 hour
-Talk to one of the researchers about pseudo-despotic regime programs~15 minutes. Tells me I should apply to pseudo-despotic regime programs, because they are much easier to get into than despotic regime programs.
-11:00: take a "short" break to fill out a gazillion transcript request forms (one for each of the 5 schools I attended times a gazillion programs I'm applying to).
-12:00-I'm still filling out damn forms; decide that I need to get this done and figure I'll either make up the time later today or take PTO for the time I didn't work.
-at some point, I do some real work for a short time
-2:00-I walk over to the registrar's office to hand deliver my own school's transcript requests.
-2:03-I arrive and find out that the office is closed for Thanksgiving holiday and nearly have a breakdown.
2:03 and 30 seconds-A wonderfully sympathetic staff must've seen how dejected I looked and opens the door; I explain that Princeton's despotic regime program needs transcripts by 1 December and start pleading with them. They agree to process my request.

I am eternally grateful. Beyond words.

2:05 woman behind counter starts processing my request for 12 separate orders. She says she'll do this while I wait, since some of the instructions are a bit involved. Thinking I can watch her and make sure she gets all of this right, I stick around.

3:05 An hour has passed and she has processed just four out of the 12 I need. I tell her that I need to run and ask her to process just the ones that are sent to me.
3:15 I'm still waiting for my 6 transcripts.
Meanwhile, I ask her to fill out one of the forms that is supposed to accompany one of the transcripts. She tells me she can't fill out the form, b/c my school doesn't issue class ranks. I ask her if she can just indicate that on the form and fill out the form anyway.

3:20 Still going back and forth; still waiting for the 6 transcripts; I'm losing patience and cursing myself for not bringing my linear algebra book with me.
3:30 Back at my office. Eat lunch while reading about deficits. Do some real work again for a while.
4:30 Decide to walk to my car and drive it closer, since I expect to be here late.
5:00ish-back at my office.
5:15 or so--am interrupted by an email from my dad who tells me that the institution where I did my junior year abroad 1)will not take transcript requests unless a)I show up in person, or b)I mail them a form. He claims they won't accept faxes. Incredulous, I look up the info, and sure enough, he is right.
5:30 Make a frantic call to the transcripts office in Tokyo and explain to the person that I wasn't aware of this new protocol; that I've ordered transcripts via my parents many times before, and explain that I need one of the transcripts sent by 1 December, so I wouldn't be able to mail the request to them on time.
Gracious person on the other side tells me that if I enclose a photo ID, sign it, etc., I can fax it, and then mail the forms later.
6:15 I finish filling out forms, writing a fax half in Japanese and half in English, typing out detailed instructions. I fax.
7:00 I get a confirmation slip telling me my fax didn't go through. I try again.
7:30 Fax finally gets through. I call to confirm that they received it. Marvel at how I've been here for 11 hours, of which I might've done 1-2 total hour of work. I try to get some work done.
8:00 Decide this is futile and head to car, planning to go to gym.
8:05 Decide I'm too tired/hungry to go to gym and head home.
8:35 Finally home, wondering how the hell it took 12 hours just to process transcript requests. (Granted, it was a lot of transcripts (close to 100 total) and I had to fill out a form for almost every single damn one, but still. . ..)

Meme-free zone

A quick post to say that I hereby preemptively declare this a meme-free zone.

5 more weeks of this madness, I hope. And to this madness I now must return. . . (sigh).

If classical music isn't supposed to be "relaxing". . .

Do I go listen to the SLSQ perform Messiaen's Quartet for the End of Time tonight after my midterm? The midterm that I've been studying for days for, and is the cause of sleep deprivation, and will likely drain my brain of the ability to have any sentient thoughts afterwards?

Is this a good state of mind with which to go and absorb Messiaen's magnificence?
I like what I have heard of Messiaen, but this isn't one of these pieces to go listen to when one's brain has gone to mush. (Did I also mention I don't like clarinets all that much? Though I have to admit he does use its timbre quite well in this piece.)

Because I could seriously use some "relaxation" or at least decompress for a bit after this exam.

On the other hand, I really need to buckle down and get started on applications to despotic regime programs. (Though the reality is, I won't be in any mood to do this tonight.)
Not to mention, catch up on the econ homework/readings I've blown off to study for this exam that I need to do well on to make up for my lackluster grade on my last exam.
And I could always use a few hours of catch up sleep.
And omg. Read. A book. For pleasure.

But I have also been wanting to go hear this live for a while, and if I miss this performance, I don't know when there will be another live performance of this. (As opposed to Reading. A. Book. For pleasure, which I can theoretically do anytime. If I wasn't up at ungodly hours almost every day, that is.)

If I go, I'd be admitting that I'm going to a classical music concert to decompress.

At the expense of offending those of you who think that one shouldn't listen to classical music to relax/wind down, I have to admit, I do this quite a lot. For exam #1, my calm-my-nerves piece was Brahm's Piano Concerto #2. Right now, I'm listening to Janacek's Glagolitic Mass. To calm my pre-exam jitters. (Actually, the organ part I'm listening to right now kindof echoes my jittery nerves, which is kindof cool.) So nyeh.

So maybe I will just go and catch this performance and "relax" to it, depending on my brain capacity post exam.

And now, I must run off to take that exam.

(I just typed this on the quick while getting ready to go to class, so apologies in advance if this post made no sense (my thoughts seldom do these days) as well as for any spelling and grammatical errors. I'll probably look at this and cringe later.)

The key of anti-semitism. . .

Ok, if you are composing a piece of music and you want to insert an anti-semitic* shriek, what key would you use?

Hint: It's evidently used in all of Mahler's symphonies.

????

*given that it's allegedly in all of Mahler's symphonies, I am confused as to whether an "anti-semitic shriek" is a shriek that is anti-semitic, or whether it is something that shrieks at anti-semitism. On second thought, I am just confused, period.