a day in the life of piano monkey

Spider web 1024 x 768 jpeg, note:strands have a diameter of 73 to 400 nm, courtesy of electron microscope lab, u-berkeley. a short one for a well worn knackered monkey. some cats (as cat E says) gathered at wild flour of banff to have some kaffeeklatsch and general peanut gallery thing re: life. the topics came and went as they please, nicely weaving a sticky but thin, almost invisible beautiful spiderweb. and the trick is that such conversations, as fast as it blooms, often goes as fast. like spider silk, blown in incredible wind, being flexible, it will stand. however, one wrong thing to stick on, all gone. oops. so just thought i would smear some monkey rant before it all goes. where? i have no idea. the intriguing thought was about the way things are interconnected. if molecular and subatomic theories hold true, everything materialistic in this world is made up of combination of small particles. and with this bizarre affinity (mr. salamander had some very eloquent thought on this r...

couple things from recent- well last two days really! this is new monkey residency from now till dec 12. that's really not that long is it- september is over and october will just roll on and then as you wake up sober from halloween madness, the trees will be naked and cold will hopefully roll on. beautiful cold majestic blue and grey. can't wait. inst of lloyd hall of banff center, which is what they give you as default, i asked to be located at farrally hall for some humanity. lloyd is nice but it's too professional. so quiet. all closed doors. farrally's got fireplace. no contest there really. i hope all works out alright, fire or not. monkey's gene pools turned 60 this year. both of them. as traditional koreans , they, well their friends decided to have a shindig at a local restaurant. monkey cake stuff was related to this. this was the first cake topper made for dad. flowery eh. take that dad. ha ha ha. i think it's rather nice. and that cake...

(The sharing of the cake between the Lion and the Unicorn, illustration from Through the Looking Glass by Lewis Carroll 1832-98) saturday 26 sept 2009 was a busy day. also a quasi-important day. it was my gene pools' b day celebration with couple of their friends. mom calls on thursday afternoon asking for impressive cake. for saturday. i thought she was mad. but a mission is a mission and i will get it done, teeth and nails, begging on knees or searching high and low on yelp/chowhound/brain etc whatevers. it was rather brain bursting as my dear lovely friend was still intown, with such a lovely after-glow if receiving strad baby. one cannot help be be infected by such joy. a pure joy. this lady. i tell ya. a real class. a real kickbutt fiddler. a kick butt friend. and an honest person. however, most importantly, a dearest monkey friend. anyways, long story short, i did manage to put in an order for two whole cakes from futures bakery in annex. i refused to get grocery store cake-...

it is a bloody early morning and it's that one day of the week i need to actually work. i should get my butt to the bed. but i can barely contain the excitement though im really trying to put a lid on it. oh well, i guess good news can be spread right? well so here it is. i have a good friend visiting from montreal. we met in a small festival in italy. she: violinist, me: monkey. we played mozart b major and some other ditties. it was good times. one of those few instances where you run into a person and then the world goes... click. and all the sudden, everything is infinitely better. she was studying in nyc and i was all over- states, canada, whatever. but luckily we kept in touch and things been alright despite of busy schedules, distances, whatever. anywhos, she was in yyz this time to audition for canada council instrumental bank loan program. monkey had hastily practiced sibelius violin concert and after a night of rehearsal, we went. and played. i do have to say it was a bit...

often invisible things can make or break visible things. case 1:timezones some arbitrary lines drawn on map, applied by some serious bodies of people and all the sudden: there are such things are timezones. it used to baffle my head: what do you mean we are at a different time? like birthday, the either end of the opposing time zones are.. rather similar! looking outside of the plane window as a child, hoping to see the international date line was one of the most exciting and futile thing i ever did. whenever im involved with others who are a bit far away, i am baffled that though we are experiencing things simultaneously, we do not belong in the same timezone. case 2: human connections it's not as if we are always connected with something physical. things such as spiderwebs are always connected from one point to another in rather simple manner. this corner to another. than with applied gravity, it makes a beautiful curve. sometimes the curves are too small to be appreciated from h...

the joy of applications are overwhelming at times. no matter how many of them i have done before, the one that's on the desk always looks the least interesting. every school job events you name it, they got their own agenda, their own lingos, their own deadlines (the most devastating of all) and fees (compare to deadlines it's all starting to look like peanuts). monkey was casually musing in front and randomly decided to look at deadlines of things that i wanted to get done(or may be a nudge from some deity who took pity on this oblivious being). and this includes the dreaded applications for next fall. why dreaded? well, because i thought (which was true) that since i will be filling out an application in a different education system, that there is a good possibility that i wont understand a thing. so really, i was just going to take a casual look at it, take a dramatic sigh, then move onto something even more mundane, perhaps to look up why in the world kayne west did what he...

sometimes the shackling reality breaks one's soul. to pieces that are just barely smaller than dusts. they dont blow with the wind. they stay where they fall. thought it all looked alright. just small spidery cracks. then it comes all down. like a beautifully orchestrated demolition. second look, all that is left is pieces. ceramic pieces. hard. once lived through the hottest fires. now shattered. parts significantly smaller than initial sum. it wasnt just a chance that took the first chip off. it was already cracked. a long time ago. before anyone knew. but it looked so beautiful. like prometheus it'll be back at some point, regrown, reconstructed, however, somehow less than the day before. i fell on my knees and chocked.

The Associated Press file photo, july 26, 1950, youndong, korea. pant pant pant. much stuff since the last update. or episode. a brainsplatter. meanwhile i met up with one of my favorite persons from banff who now is in toronto (yay!!!), i have gone and came back from suburb of detroit, michigan, to meet aunt/uncle i saw may be twice in my life, trying to organize my life (such as arranging for addresses for banff move, packing boxes, banking, still need to get to laundry etc), and squeeze my brain out for an idea for dad's birthday (which resulted in buying nothing.. gawd), i dont even really know where to begin. well, let's start with family. or distant family. in korean culture, you count relationships by distances. okay so how does it work: like this! husband-wife: the bond distance is 0. because when you are together, you are together, but you may become unrelated by a simple process of divorce. so from married couple to total strangers: distance 0 to infinitely far. ouch....

optical exam (which is no longer covered by ontario health insurance): 100 contact lens order: (at least) 100 glasses ordered over web: 65 medication refill: 100 total damage: 365 it's an expensive week. however, it does make me laugh a little that my eyes are sooo bad. silly enough, if stayed as a coffee wench@$bucks, all the vision cares would have been paid for. perhaps it's something to reconsider for all the freelancers of canada to think of. dang. my prescriptions are -10.75 and -10.00. i am much convinced that if i was born as a wild animal of a sort (ie. no human post natal care etc), i would prob died on the same day i wouldve been born (i weighed measly 2.2kg. that's 4.85lbs. apparently the average weight of a baby is 7.5lbs (applies to 95% of the newborns). and i failed one of the important reflex test: sucking reflex. apparently i just didnt have enough energy to suck milk. which lead to being fed intravenously. needles all over my bold head etc. within 2 months...

nutty flutist from banff, who i dearly like, but have not had a real chance to get to know, posted something on facebook and i had to look. sometimes i read these things. sometimes i dont. i have no idea how i actually decide what/when/where to read posts, but i did. well, if you arent going to take the effort to go read this post (lazy! just highlight the url, ctrl+c(copy), ctrl+t(opens new tap), ctrl+v(paste), and you will be there)(yep, im still 'hot-key' generation. thanks to good old skull wordprocessors), i will give you a heads up. it's a posting re: el sistema, the current venezuelan effort to bring music to the masses, which eventually gave birth to the controversial and shocking band called simon bolivar orchestra. young youth orchestra. whats the big deal you may say. well, they play well. bloody well. and they engage. makes you listen. or something. you sit. watch. express. react. The Guardian's classical music writer, Tom Service, said: "It was fantast...

i have to confess that my least preferred medium of general culture is movies. i wouldnt say that i hate it, but i tend to dislike most of them- well, a lot of them. wait... i cant say 'dislike mosts' because well, just because i really do not go see a whole lot of movies. therefore, when i take that particulr point into a consideration, i cannot say i dislike, but perhaps the correct way to say it may be something close to 'indifferent/unenthusiastic toward movies.' recently monkey was hanging out with bunch of friends and acquintences. for some unknown reason, this particular crowd veered toward movies: quotations. the usual likes/dislikes. peanut gallery comments on directors/movies. associated rituals and such. funny enough, i found that i had more things to say than expected for someone who have appointed self as not-a-movie-person. in fact, in one of the longer discussions, i ended up drawing a big laughter with a oxymoronic comment: i dont like movies ->...

the red dots have been taking a long round about of a route for last couple days . the usual big window is now subjected to a temporary restrictions of size and frequency, as monkey in nyc and mr. salamander in lago maggiore equals to a quite a bit of distance. for curiosity monkey looked up how far those places are: by timezones, 6 hours and by distance, about 4,000 miles (that is the distance between nyc and turin, piemonte, italy). a human being may walk at 4 miles/hr if one is not injured and is in good health. that would be 1,000 hours, which is approximately 42 days. imagine walking constantly, like those camels from black/white movies, going on, left-right-repeat, 42 days straight. even the devil left jesus alone after 40 days in the desert. ramadan typically lasts a month (29-30 days). poor jonah had to walk around nineveh like a madman after being barfed out of a whale for 40 days, screaming god's warning msgs. moses went nutters on the mount for 40 days. buddha starved fo...

i just realized last night that i will be heading off to banff soon. sooner than i thought- am scheduled to fly right after my last sunday service on 27th. which would be 21 days. exactly 3 weeks. this summer is a weird one in a sense that every little cusp point between the major events has been a tad bit dramatic, ha ha. banff - home - uk - home - banff - home/holiday at home - nyc - (insert detroit somewheres) - home- banff. thats what it looks like. i am spending 7 months out of the year in the mountains and will have gone through at least 11 flights by end of the year. the goal is to clear off my student loans and keep sane, play well and continue to appreciate the nicer things in life, such as peeps. even when you have to drive down/back from detroit! i am rather convinced that there is absolutely nothing left there but perhaps i would be wrong. i hope so. in case you wonder WHY im heading to detroit, i am taking my grandma to a family reunion of a sort. shouldnt be more than 4-5...

monkey and PO have been roaming nyc and i cant help it but feel a bit like a miniature king-kong. it's been an interesting trip so far in a sense that i am actually travelling in a third place with another person (i am a usually a lone traveller-) and boy that brings out details that i need to think about- simple things as do we walk or take the transit to whether to buy internet at the hotel (at 10 bucks a day! gawd!! well, obviously we succumbed and now am musing on web. so much for 'sticking it out' monkey!) (but that also meant monkey may be able to catch up with mr. salamander at some point which would be... good). anyways, back to the nyc trip itself, we got through the border through yyz-lga which was less crazy than many other times i remember travelling as a student, thank god. but flying two propellers trotter was a bit noisy. but thank gawd, monkey slept through most of it. hooray. btw, did you know that matt's tomato juice contains about 48% of daily reco...