a day in the life of piano monkey

first real day in banff today; getting settled, still collecting scores, putting up bits of monkey life around my home for next.. well, 19 days. how much things to do? may be a tad bit much. enjoyment factor: could be very high. grave yards: everywhere. sounds like a busy 29 days to me! hahaha. today's list included: schelomo (bloch), beethoven 4th sonata and brahms 2nd sonata. evaluation: lose the hat (oops sorry; gotta come up with way to keep hair out of face), dont cross your legs and look unprofessional (more to come about this), barber sonata outta my hands (somewhat bitterly glad). monkey must have needed that sleep last night. from 11pm or so, i just neglected the world and slept in until 925. only reason i got up was.. there was a meeting at 930. gaa. which did not start until... 10 (grrr). then more meetings. then lunch. vistas food is usually aright. except today. not very amusing, but... vicious. for some bizarre reason, it's really being unpleasant to me and my inn...

monkey's back in banff to play some more music. it's a strange thing in a sense, to be back here. so many things have changed since that time i signed the initial contract in december 2008. not only professionally but inter/intra-personally, which not only involves self but others as well. i went from having no plan, hoping that plan will fizz out and that i will be another average person with average wage, doing the average things to, well, being a monkey. calling self a monkey gives a great freedom somehow i think. just cannot take the self seriously. there will be much music playing starting tomorrow. already i have fit in a demanding rehearsal and there'll be plenty more. would i drown? i hope not! there are people who loves and believes in me which are priceless- it was great to see the old staff back, all smiling and welcoming. even when i had read the initial contract wrong and had to reprimand by showing up at the airport for 7am, ha ha. but the important thing is t...

        every year, my neighbourhood turns into a gigantic party area for the toronto pride festival. on way back home from meeting my friend cheryll all the way up north, i ran into the pride crowd. young, old. plain, dressed-up. repressed, extrovert. hetero, homo, trans, bi. supporters, onlookers. it used to run for a week, monday to sunday- this year is the first year i noticed that they have started to cover wknd to wknd (hence, 10 days). and though it gets somewhat rowdy (what would you expect in party for over a million people?), i think it is incredible that it really is one of the best festivals in canada (and in the world- and i have been the berlin love parade and san fran and nyc pride as well), not to mention more than 150 year-round and +1200 additional volunteers for the peak days (last three: fri-sunday). brought up in somewhat kosher asian culture, the issue of homosexuality has been one of the neglected one in my household. well, also probably becaus...

i cant exactly make head/tail out of the days recently. especially today. crashed. roadrash. just like the times i have met the asphalt face first while i was working as a bike courrier. but when you are on ground with roadrash, there are no questions. the reasons are obvious. days like today where one feels defeated, there are no simple answer to give out. but to lick the wound. perhaps it's the anticipation or an old realization that sometimes, things- whether good or bad, can never be quite so rigidly defined. the weight of the things- they fluctuate. for instance, that book bag on carries around, is quite light when you are starting out for the day. depending on what one packed, it even may seem lighter than usual (perhaps that new book or new 'something' that has been greatly anticipated; like new sets of pencils etc). then as the day wears one out, it gets heavier. even may cause you a pain- slouching, dragging, etc. there are good bits within today, certainly. i scor...

true, they are all measurable in this arbitrary unit of 'hours,' and we get 24 hours in a day. 12 for am, 12 for pm, usually 9-5 constituting as business hours, the standard time being UTC, Temps Universel Coordonné, a close derivation from IAT, international atomic time. UT1 included the time set at IAT and the standard deviation of the leap seconds to keep up with inexactness of the current system. for practical reasons, UTC/UT1 can be used interchangeably with to GMT (greenwich meantime)(however, uk is now in BST), and for monkey, toronto time is set in EST (UTC - 5)and soon, she'll be adjusting to banff time in MDT (GMT - 7). all the same length, essentially; once inawhile, we make up that small difference with the leap year, and then it gets real complicated. for the sake of reference, im going to be a socialist and dip into the communal well of knowledge, the great wikipedia: The Revised Julian calendar adds an extra day to February in years divisible by four, except ...

monkey's knackered. so without further explanation, here are some funny things from the city today. why/how does normal-plain-jane things get to be so hilarious when they are put into a new context? i will never know, but had a couple good laughs anyways.

i remember thinking at one point in this particular june that things are moving rather slow, like molasses. ooh boy was i mistaken. now im thinking: just like the good ol'boston molasses explosion, it's rolling in with a furious wave. wait, really molasses? like the stuff you make gingerbread cookies with? the stuff you put in by spoonfuls in baked beans? toast topping we are talking about? the sticky, black, thick stuff that you can squeeze out of a plastic jar, or spoon out from old fashioned glass containers? yep. in boston year 1919, a molasses tank, 15m tall, 27m diameter, holding 8,700,000 litre of sweet goo stuff, exploded. pressure, pressure pressure, then the first rivet went and the rest is history. waves of molasses, high as 4.5m high, rolling at 56km/h or 35mph. simply crushing with pressure of 200kpa. over the railways, crushing buildings, flooding up to 60cm average; men, women, horses stuck on the big black mess like.. well, flies on sticky paper. approx. 150 inj...

Green how I love you green. Green wind. Green boughs. The ship on the sea And the horse on the mountain. f.garcia lorca, a genius man said this. garcia lorca is one poet who entered my life one afternoon, by the side door. he sneaked in, like the blood spill, slowly spreading through the cracks of the floor, thick and coppery. with that metal gloss-sheen over. the bright red turning into deep burgendy as the weightless oxygen caressed its velvet surface. it was my post-1945 musicology class. the subject of the class was not lorca, but of george crumb. crumb is a master of colours and evocations. he creates these massive pictorial scores, full of flow and rhythm, of curves and movements. and though it is not obvious to even decipher his scores at first as there are so many 'new' notations- the signs and symbols that he exclusively uses for these puzzles. we even call his graphic notational chart as 'key,' like alice's 'keys' in her wanderings. as she roams ar...

i am there where you are wherever you are whenever you are if you let me and i know you will there i will be enclosed in your space belonging to no one but to you i, with the space and its own progression will melt into the fall foilage deep red of vivid red tea of a grey blue winter afternoon i will be there when you take the very next breath as a faint scent of woody richness somehow more real than the present since you know that i am there always everytime perhaps peeking into my cup simultaneously woody riches

i am somewhat skeptical when they say: we do really care about what you think, so please continue to hold, when we are done with whatever complains we are currently dealing with a high volume, we'll get on yours asap, well, kind of. where have we heard that one before: well, on customer phone lines, from banks to doctors to tech supports to anyone really. i ve been tempted many time to put it on as my greetings message on the phone and see how many people would actually leave a message after all that hassle. customer feedbacks are funny things. though it is essential, it is a pain on the butt to collect. and nowdays it seems that everyone thinks that anyone could collect quantitative data from the web (HA!), that customer feedbacks should be filed under 'ancient history' or 'ancient legacy' or even 'bad cumulative business practice.' well we all know how honest we are with our doctors (at least once you have lied to your doctor. anyone shaking their head...

yyz is having a sort of fuzzy evening. past couple days have been somewhat soggy and it finally decided to rain- well, however, with great resistance, it seems. it's been on and off raining here and there in late afternoon and evening, and now it's turning into a gigantic fog blanket that covers the pointy tips of the tall, imposing buildings of the day. monkey is back from making some sort of efforts to learn e.bloch's schelomo reduction and have decided that it'll still be there tomorrow. so. it's. all. good. this particular piece makes me laugh a little, since it is somehow soooo anachronistic. the imposed grandness of it makes me wonder what/how it would have been back in the days where the colour films first made their way to the public theater. something like ben-hur all the way back in 1959. with the great big painted posters (not printed, painted!! imagine that!!) on the side of the theater buildings screaming 'techni colours!' it's that kind of ...

  couple subjects have been floating in and out of my head today, it was a rather difficult to exactly pinpoint to one particular thought to hold on to. all kind of interconnected, however different. some a bit too private, some a bit too depressing. one a huge relief, a wonderful event. some ongoing process, some a surprise. anyhows, there is no point of listing them all. i guess i have settled into this particular thought of 'reviewing.' review what you wonder: well, no, it's not a test revision. it's certainly not a performance review. where would i start? well, i was looking into my worldly possessions (which, miraculously there's always more than youve ever thought. i mean who really needs 6 pairs of shoes? one of my mentors used to say that he's got two pairs and it's a large conflict of interest because one could only wear A pair without looking, well, retarded) but then i did. i still donno if im going to keep them or chuck some. i guess the decision...

some pictures of the dogs of yyz. you know, one day, i think/hope that i will get to have a puppy. well, really, what i would like is a rescue greyhound. but having a puppy means that one is settled and commited. since this year is going to be all about banff (7 of 12 months, haha. and i dont even know how many pages of music that may be. that would be.. hmm amusing to calculate it at some point). anyways, going back to the puppies,they are stylish, cute, some daring and some just.. (raise a finger, tilt head, wait 2 seconds, then) too cute. perhaps one of these days in not too far in the future, i may be able to have a dog... well, at least hope to do so. i guess it wont be a possibility until next year at least, but whenever it happens, it will be. awesome. awe---some.   this guy was willing to sit up just for a cookie. i wonder what the owner have smeared on the cookie. depending on what it is, i think i know couple people off my head who may be willing to perform the very sam...

about to hit the basket, monkey decided to go for a short walk, which turned into a rather saga- like exploration of colours red, amber and all shades of brown to black. i like my city in the evening, where there are enough light to make things just interesting enough. any earlier, it is a mayhem and any later, it is a grave. so here are some. and ooh it does make me love the quiet evenings. where the bright days colours sleep quietly, and all you see is mere silhouette of the daytime buzz. muted, matted and sandblasted.   a random walk around kengsinton market, toronto. a new mural went up while monkey was around uk. art deco, rather mucha-like. beautiful. i bet in the daytime, it just burns in that passionate brick red. oooh passion.   a nutter skull - a la - mexican - day - of- the- deads. the post box and the passing car, apparently suppresses with flaming red.   a random wanted note in corso italia. we all wanted a good mom. haha. now, the video- is she being good or...

  i am so knackered after a jolly pint (okay well more than one. now that's progress. back in beginning of may, you would had to pay a rather handsome, large sum of money for monkey to drink a bitter. now. well. im a total toast), a good practice session (nothing like a practice post-pint. somehow, it feels so much better though it probably is sounding so much more entertaining), a good long bike ride around the town and a killer shower/bath. but somehow i have this compulsive need to make a public announcement. there are a few people in this world that i really dearly love. now, dont get smartypants on me and start asking questions such as: what is love? how do you define love? what if your definition of love is different from mine? what if it's love that hurts? what kind of love? those questions are reserved for semiotics discussion. perhaps etymology or cultural studies as well. pub talk, a general topic that gets chewed till the end. like an old piece of gum that is about t...

ahh. june. a slow month for a change (though some of you may groan in protest since i had a rather enjoyable month of may doing not much of required work but doing so much of throughly exciting activities) and it is starting to move inch by inch. the long awaited banff list have came and the assignments semi-settled, scores located, asked for, rented, printed and slowly but sure being organized movement by movement. this banff experience is really a surprise dent in my life, in many contexts really. once again, quoting pollan, one cannot just do one thing (now this quote is from his recent book, in defense of food). but for this very specific amusement, i think i will concentrate on the music aspect of it. LW is the lady who acted as a catalyst for banff bomb. not only she have re-inspired me to look at the classical music with enthusiasm, i am slowly rediscovering the wealth and legacy of this particularly rich tradition of western classical keyboard performance. by the time i was don...

the idea of poison is a funny one, really. paradoxical and amusing. deadly if potent, useless if impotent. weapon, anti-venom, medicines. pesticide, disinfectant, preservative and execution method. curative yet sinister. some strongly recognizable (those colourful rain forest frogs are deadly; trust me on this one) but some completely undetectable to naked human senses (such as carbon monoxide). where did this thread start from? well, i was cycling around annex (one of my fav neighbourhoods in yyz) and dropped by my fav used/new bookstore. having seen a rather nice shirt with 'where the wild things are' earlier today, i couldnt help it but to go take a look at children's section. and of course there was a rather precocious child arguing with her parent: mom: stop licking your hands! if you keep licking your hands after having an ice cream cone, you may get sick! child: from what mom? m: from all the dirty things on the road- remember? bacterias- c: but i cant see them? m: ...