Cause of a Good Mood?

Can't remember when was the last time that I had a completely free weekday....just happens that I have one today...free from ALL students....and that sure made me VERY VERY VERY happy. I was amazed how good my mood was when I woke up this morning. It just felt unreal even though I really didn't sleep much. SO I guess sleep does not really affect one's mood as we all think it does...

My accomplishment for the morning was getting a dress, a pair of sun glasses, two Nike sporting T shirts for Clement, and a T shirt for Billy....all for less than 80 dollars....I think....I may just a talent for shopping...Maybe I should try to change my career or something....If there is a career shopping for people (maybe limited to those who have the same taste perhaps?)

Anyway....just thought it would be nice to make a note of my good mood which does not happen all that often nowadays that I am old....

The Bucket List

Watched the movie called "The Bucket List" which has Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman in it. It's a movie about what two old men did few months before their death. They met in the hospital (Jack Nicholson happened to be the hospital owner), and somehow decided to complete things on their bucket list together (a list of things that you want to do before you kiss goodbye this world).

Interesting enough....they went traveling and saw many places in this world that I wanted to see. I guess it's good to have enough money to do stuff you want in your life, but then not everyone set their goals to accomplish them. One thing also appeared to be very inspiring....Morgan Freeman in the movie said people get to be asked two questions when they go to heaven in the Egyptian traditions. 1. Have you had joy in your life? 2. Have you brought joy to others? I just thought those two are such good questions to think about when one ends his/her life.

After watching the movie I started to wonder what kinda things people want to do before they die. Do we have a list really? Do we have to wait till it's too late to think about what we want to do in life? Do we have to wait till there isn't enough time to finally kick our butts to do things on our list? Good questions to ponder upon really....

I wonder why people didn't pay attention to this movie when it was out...maybe death is never a welcomed subject?

Babies and music....what other topics can there be?

I think I must be growing real old. Almost everyone around me who is married is somehow talking about kids all the time. The married couples either have new born babies, or are planning to have the 2nd one soon. Some of my friends who married really early even have kids 5 years old already. To be honest all the baby talks drives me crazy. It just seems like when people have kids they have NOTHING else to talk about other than kids. I find the situation hard to appreciate when there is only one subject going on and on and on in conversations....Well....I guess I can't complain when I don't have one to talk about right now....but I certainly hope my life won't ever be that boring when I have kids...if that ever happens....not according to my wish at this point of course.

Compared to the norm...musicians don't tend to have kids that early....at least the established ones...1st of all to be an established musician people tend to not get married that soon. I have just reconnected with whole bunch of friends from high school (including some faculties actually), and about half of them are still not married. Only very few of the married ones actually have kids. It amuses me to see how most of the musicians I know are traveling like crazy. It's like you can't ever find a stable job for musicians. You have to travel, perform, expand your territories so more connections can be made....and then more jobs may come. I guess that is why eventually the ones who want to be stablized find themselves a teaching post somewhere...and yet even with that they need to travel somewhere else for the summer for music festivals...

I am not really sure if I enjoy listening to all the music related stories more than baby stories. Okok.....music stories and musician dramas are still more interesting....but it's just that I am out of the circle for so long I have no idea how classical musicians live their lives striving to get more known somehow....It's like you get from teaching posts at smaller schools to larger schools, then universities, and then famous Universities.....on and on and on....and then you wonder if they really love what they do.....cuz even within schools you have a lot of politics within the music environment....oh well....

The other violin teacher at my high school told me that he is coming to LA in Nov. and we should try to hook up. It would certainly be interesting enough if I meet him up since I don't think my own teacher was all that tight with him. Oh well....we will see....maybe it will never happen....hahahaha

La la la la la.....

Weather has been super hot for the past few days. Hades has been acting strange for the past week, and he threw up very early this morning. He also couldn't decide if he wanted to come up to my bed to sleep or not in the middle of the night. I ended up losing sleep cuz he was trying to get my attention several times throughout the night. I have been feeling tired and tense almost for the entire week. I am not quite sure if it's because of the weather, Hades, or just dreading for the weekend. I guess the weather is really not helping much.....

Finding a house has been kinda frustrating. I am getting tired of looking over the listing cuz it seems like everyone is trying to get houses in the same price range that we can afford. I wish we can just move to TX or somewhere that we can already buy a big house with the down payment we have in the pocket right now. Maybe moving to Africa would work...right...

Jack just got back from Egypt and I guess from his descriptions the trip was kinda fun. I guess the fun of discovering a new place is always a thrill. I have noticed that over the past 4 years or so I have always traveled to places that I have already been to. I guess I am getting more repetitive in my life as I grew older...in almost everything I do. Not so sure if that is a good trend....

speakings of repeating....I am now reading a Japanese translated novel....which happens to have pages missing and misplaced again. I wonder what is wrong with the publishers in TW which translates books. I wonder if they actually read books. It sure is annoying for the readers...and I wonder if I am just extra lucky to have encountered this kinda situation twice in the past half year. Maybe it's a sign that I should start picking up my reading in Eng and quit reading those translated books....hum...not sure...

Yeah I have noticed that I am just writing nonsense so far. I think it's the weather. Didn't feel talking much when Jack called. Told him I was gonna take a nap but then couldn't really fall ito sleep even though I am tired. Maybe I was just not in a mood to hear more Egypt stories cuz I am jealous of the trip? Oh well...Maybe I am getting the mood from Hades....We tend to affect each other in a weird way....not exactly positive...oh well...

Chicago Day 2

Ok....I was lazy and didn't bother to continue on our Chicago trip. Here is the 2nd day of the trip. We took the trolley in the morning and tried to go to the museums with the triangle line. We tried to take a photo on the trolley with the river in the back...didn't turn out too well but at least it can prove we were on trolleys for the trip. Weather started quite nice in the morning...and....I guess life is unpredictable like the weather there....

Inside of the filed museum. We went there because it was raining like crazy outside, and the observatory didn't seem that impressive to me. I think we were charged less than the regular price at the filed museum. Somehow we got a senior discount for no reason....so who was the senior? lol....

We pretended to be at places from the backgrounds and the special constructed rooms. The 2nd photo is supposed to be from New Zealand. The animals looked like real...


Outside of the museum....The arena is across the museum...

Mellenuim Park is right next to Michigan Ave. The water flowering thingy has faces on them but then it was hard to see when the sun was bright. The outside stage also looked very cool. Billy thought the designer must be the same one that designed the Disney concert hall in LA...

This is called the cloud gate, but then some people call it the bean. It looks like an egg from the side....quite cool cuz on the bean you can see the whole Michigan Ave reflected on it.


These were photos we took from the reflection of the bean.

Billy took these two...under the bean and on the side...not bad at all....

The Village is so called the oldest Italian food place in Chicago....not sure if that is really true...There are three diff. restaurants in this building, and we went to the one upstairs. I think they try to make everything "village-like" in the place...




Billy's seafood pasta + my chicken marsala.

So we decided to go to the Macy's in downtown. On the way there we were trying to take a photo outside of the Chase building...and...wind was super strong my camera was actually blown to the ground and chipped....The only cool thing in Macy's was the ceiling I guess. They did have a big furniture floor but nothing was all that interesting....

Billy really wanted to try the loop trains (which only circles around downtown) so we went to take the loop trains after dinner....

This is the bridge on our way to Sear's Towers...and It's Chicago river of course...

We ended our 2nd day at Sear's Tower. The wind was super strong that my hair looked like a black dude...

Updates?

Ok....so after seeing my viola instructor (from USC) for the gig over the weekend (By the way it's confirmed that he is out of LA phil now....I wonder if what I heard was true...oh well...), I am getting reconnected with more faculties + friends from my high school....and yes....thanks to facebook.....it's amazing....amazing how small the world really is....

1st of all I recognized the name of this concert master from IAA when I was a freshman there. Last time when I was eating with Taejia and Noriko they were talking about how he was married to someone also from IAA. He used to date this Japanese violinist when he was still at IAA, and then I think his current wife was a voice major back in IAA. He looks much older than his age now I think. I guess white people do turn older sooner. It looked like he is expecting his 2nd kid, but I didn't really ask anything since we were never that close back in school...with the age difference and all....even though we were in the same studio studying with Julia...I think...

2ndly I saw some of my friends adding Susan (used to be my accompanist for my performances back at IAA) on their facebooks. I hesitated a little on adding her cuz she actually married my violin teacher's now ex-husband. Later on I found out Julia and her current husband both added Susan so I was like...ok...fine....I would add her too. It turned out that Susan is now living happily with Michael (My teacher's ex-husband) and they have three foster sons with 6 cats. They are still at Interlochen and she is still busy playing for people. She reminded me of many things that happened when I was there, and even told me that the postcard I gave her with cats is now still on her wall in the studio. I really have no recollection of ever giving her a cat postcard...and didn't remember much of what she mentioned until I was reading stuff she wrote. I guess I was one sweet kid back then...for her to remember that much...lol...

3rd person was a Korean guy called Jerry. He was actually in the same grade with me and played Clarinet. He used to date my roommate at the time, and it was like a big thing in the Korean circle at school. I think the reason was because my roommate was dating this composer guy before, and started dating Jerry (who was several years younger) when Jerry came to school. I am not even sure what exactly the reason was now....but I remember seeing Jerry a lot. I had no idea that he went to Julliard after IAA either. I guess he was actually a good clarinet player? He told me he was in LA up till past March. It's amazing how we got reconnected only after he left.

4th encounter on facebook, which entertained me the most, was with this guy called Christian. He not only accompanied but also taught theory at IAA. I was obviously one of his good students, and hung out with him quite a bit cuz he was at 1st dating my Eng teacher Tracy when we 1st met. Tracy was my ESL 1 teacher who forced me to jump to ESL 2 one month after I arrived the states. She was also the person who covered for me for not having 4 years of Eng when the board of teachers nominated me for the young scholar award when I was graduating. (of course I knew nothing about it when they were having the board meeting.) Tracy really had her favorite students, and I guess I was sure one of them.

Tracy's dad was the vice president of IAA, and later on turned out to be gay. I am not sure if it was a public thing or not, but then her parents got a divorce because of that I think. (By the way they had three kids in the family....I think Tracy was the middle kid). I used to have no place to go when we were having winter or spring breaks, and Tracy would either take me in at her place or just let me live at her dad's place. I think we had a lot of fun cuz hanging out with Tracy and Christian was kinda cool. Christian had a little house (cabin) right next to a lake and reading, watching movies there at night with food in front of us + snow outside was real nice.

Christian told me he is now working in U of M. I was really surprised that he actually went to USC for his degrees. He said he told me about it before I came, but again I had no memory of that whatsoever. His hometown is actually LA and he moved to Michigan when he started working in IAA. It's just amazing how he is now in Michigan and me in LA. He wished he never left LA and wants to come back to the west coast in the future. Well....he is now married to someone at Michigan...so we will see how that goes. He also told me Tracy now has a 4 year old daughter + live in Detroit....and we will see if she ever gets on facebook someday.

So...a lot of information to digest in one day....I wonder why musician circle always has tons of stories to be discovered....I think I should get going and deal with my students now. Maybe 10 years from now I will be getting weird updates from them or something...

What good does music do?

Went to the gig rehearsal last night which lasted around 3 hours. The drive was terribly bad with the traffic and took more than 1 hour for me to get to Cerritos. I basically knew nobody at the gig and saw whole bunch of old people in the orchestra. I guess most of them have been in the "gig" industry for a long time....and I guess only LA would be the best place for classical musicians to play weird concerts on contract since we have the entertainment industry in Hollywood to support all activities...

Anyway....I think I saw my viola teacher for one semester from USC at the gig too. I wonder what he was doing playing the gig. He used to play for Boston symphony and was the principle of viola section for LA phil. I have heard about various rumors about him but don't know if any of it is true. I would think playing this kinda gig means nothing to him artistically and financially. I guess there are just musicians who are too bored so they have to take jobs to entertain themselves? Most of the violinists don't even know how much the pay is really....including me....but then I am only there because I didn't want to waste another chance. Oh well....

I wonder what classical musicians are really doing nowadays. It's not like there are a lot of audiences, and it's not like musicians always have enough good concerts to play. I have heard the classical world is dying, but then why are there so many people trying for it anyway? In this bad economy is it worth it to invest into music at all? I don't know...I guess I don't really know what I do for a living is imp after all....:p

Life is a weird thing....

Life is really a weird thing. I accidentally found out someone who was my classmate from elementary school (only one semester according to him) was visiting Chicago the same time I was there. At 1st we planned to meet up but then I guess I backed out kinda when I got to Chicago. I still remember how he told me that he went to one of our class reunions trying to find me... only to be informed that I came to the states when I was 14. I can't remember how he eventually found me and how we stayed in touch through the internet back in college....but the whole thing was just interesting.... Later on he came to the states to study for his MBA, and decided to come visit me one year from NY. I have to admit that was a little shocking to me when he told me he already ordered the tickets and would fly over for spring break. I guess at that time in my life I was not all into meeting people who I really wasn't all that familiar with in real life.

Right now when I look back, I realize that I probably missed a great deal in life not being more open minded when I was younger. I used to think anything that is through the internet is really BS. I thought it's just a fake world after all....Apparently people get to be friends with others through internet all the time nowadays. I am now able to keep track on how my long lost friends are doing, and I am even able to pick up some unusual friendships along the way thanks to this rapidly developed way of internet communications. I guess if my friend from elementary school appears in my life right now instead of almost 10 years ago, we can possibly get to know each other more. I remember feeling awkward when he came to visit back then, and that is probably why at the end I didn't really get enough urge to meet him up in Chicago.

I guess sometimes it's difficult to predict how I feel at a given moment. Maybe someday I will really go visit his coffee shop in Taichung and enjoy a cup of coffee and some nice chat. Come to think about it....it's amazing how he was staying at Ho-Ching's apartment since the apt was empty for a week. I wonder if he would be surprised that Ho-Ching already passed away since they didn't really meet each other....or did they? Ah....my memory really fails me at times....but....life is really a weird thing when you think about it....

After my sleep for merely 3 hours last night, I am still up now when it's after midnight. It's quite amazing how a tired body can sustain all the thoughts that spins in my brain...weird...indeed...

Chicago Trip, 1st Day.....

Ok...here is how we started our Chicago trip.....Of course we took the airplane 1st to fly to Chicago, and then took the free shuttle to our hotel which is Hyatt Regency at Rosemont near the O'Hare airport. The hotel looks pretty cool and similar to Bonaventure on the outside. There will be more photos of the hotel in the next blog cuz today I am concentrating on the 1st day of the trip only. :) The train station is about 5-10 min of walk from our hotel, so we took the train to downtown each day. Billy.....wanted to pretend he was doing a backpacking trip...

We took the trolley to Navy Pier. It was our 1st stop of the whole trip for day one. :) Weather was not that ideal as you can probably tell from the color of our photos....The pictures we took in front of the funny mirrors were interesting....

We ate at Joe's Bib Bop for lunch. Here are the photos taken there.

Took some photos from the 95th floor of Hancock building....Chicago really has a big downtown...

Billy took the normal water tower photo...I took the weird tree one.

There were horses in this busy district of Chicago....yeah....kinda weird...

Hersey's store was right next to the Water Towers. They had this huge version of chocolate...

This is from the Spertus museum....which is a Jewish museum that has a cooler building than the contents I think.

We went to the Art Institute of Chicago. I was surprised Seurat's painting was there...right in front of my eyes...1st photo is the floor plan of the museum.

On the street to Grant Park after we left the Art Institute...There was a small fountain with weird trees next to the institute....

On the way to Grant Park we saw this weird stand. You can just play chess with whoever wants to play from the street I guess.....and then...buildings you can see from the bridge of Grant Park.

This is at the Buckingham Fountain....

Just thought the old bus at Grant Park is kinda interesting....and yeah...Lincoln was from Illinois...

This is the famous Chicago Blues Festival which we just happened to bump into without knowing it when I was ordering tickets....

This is how we ended the 1st day. Back to our room at the hotel :)