Taking Potluck In July [Part I]

Dear Rose,

  I always tend to forget things when life flows too quickly. I should keep a diary because it is keeping all the moments that matter. Just like how fast we have come this far - accumulating four months, although I don't count by days much, but it is the days that makes me have faith in the years to come.

  Library and bookstore are places I would go, because those are gateways leading me to nowhere, but a nowhere in a world of pixie. It cures my ego, making me feel small but content; it comforts my nerves, gently put me on the ground; it stimulates my senses, put smile on my face; it brings old friends, who can speak right to my mind; it drives my imagination to parts of the world, which I have not truly seen; I found gateways to freedom. There is a gateway at the Kuala Lumpur Performing Arts Centre (Klpac), Sentul, where loads of classics and pre-loved collection of books are nicely kept - get some light drinks and snacks, grab a seat and start killing time before concert.

  Share some quotes I selected from the old book - Dictionary of Modern Quotations - J.M. and M.J.Cohen: -

• Worry is the interest paid on trouble before it falls due 

• The proper time to influence the character of a child is about a hundred years before he is born 

• The aim of education is the knowledge not of fact, but of values 

• The enemies of freedom do not argue; they should and they shoot   

• 'A philosopher is like a blind man in a dark cellar, looking for a black cat that isn't there.' 'yes ... and the difference between philosophy and theology is that theology finds the cat'

• Science should leave off making pronouncements; the river of knowledge has too often turned back on itself 

• Now deep in my bed / I turn and the world turns on the other side 

• For her there were two species: writers and people; and the writer were really people, and the people weren't 

• It is better to entertain an idea than to take it home to live with you for the rest of your life 

• Men are like wine. Some turn to vinegar, but the best improve with age 

• Whenever I look inside myself I am afraid 

• 'What do you think of life?' 'There's nothing more terrifying.' 

• Wait a minute, wait a minute, you ain't hear nothin' yet, folks [film, The Jazz Singer] 

• Evolution is far more important than living 

• Infinity is a dreadfully poor place. They can never manage to make ends meet 

• We must see time as a tool not as a couch 

• A writer's ambition should be to trade a hundred contemporary readers for ten readers in ten years' time and for one reader in a hundred years' time 

• Meditation is not a means to an end. It is both the means and the end 

• Love is always new, and the remembrance of love is the death of love 

• Life makes no absolute statement. It is all Call and Answer 

• Glamour is when a man knows a woman is a woman 

• Music was the one gift denied me, I'm afraid 

• There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning and yearning

• He is too experienced a parent ever to make positive promises 

• Life is a foreign language: all men mispronounce it 

• No brilliance is needed in the law. Nothing but common sense and relatively clean finger nails 

• When I was a boy at school I never minded the lessons. I just resented having to work terribly hard at playing [A Voyage Round My Father]

• We take no pride in prejudice 

• Do you think my mind is maturing late, / or simply rotted early? 

• Stop the World, I Want to Get Off 

• It is the overtakers who keep the undertakers busy 

• Never speak loudly to one another unless the house is on fire 

• The different between a gun and a tree is a difference if tempo. The tree explodes every spring 

•  A good essay must have this permanent quality about it; it must draw its curtain around us, but it must be a curtain that shuts us in not out 

• Women have always been the guardians of wisdom and humanity which makes them natural, but usually secret, rulers. The time has come for them to rule openly, but together with and not against men 

• For time is the longest distance between two places 

• It's the artist job to create sunshine when there isn't any 

• It's great to be great, but it's greater to be human 

• I think she must have been very strictly brought up, she's so desperately anxious to do the wrong thing correctly 

• Anyone who tells you he has discovered something new is a fool, or a liar or both 

• For every person wishing to teach there are thirty not wanting to be taught 

• Love means never having to say you're sorry 

• My real opposition is myself 

• The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not 

• I don't want to talk grammar. I want to talk like a lady 

• To be a poet is a condition rather than a profession 

• The intellectual's problem is not vision, it's commitment. You enjoy biting the hand that feeds you, but you'll never bite it off 

• An expert is someone who knows some of the worst mistakes that can be made in his subject, and how to avoid them 

• Bacon and Eggs

• Artists can color the sky red because they know it's blue. Those of us who aren't artists must color things the way they really are or people might think we're stupid 

• I know she's alive. I saw her lip curl 

• It's not a slam at you when people are rude - it's a slam at the people they're met before 

• Show me a hero and I will write you a tragedy 

• All good writing is swimming under water and holding your breath 

• Beethoven's Fifth Symphony may be Fate - or Kate - knocking at the door. That is up to you 

• The most precious things in speech are pauses 

• In music, the punctuation is absolutely strict, the bars and the rests are absolutely defined. But our punctuation cannot be quite strict, because we have to relate it to the audience. In other words, we are continually changing the score 

• An artist, like the idiot or clown, sits on the edge of the world, and a push may send him over it 

• Education is what survives when what has been learnt has been forgotten 

• What I like in a good author is not what he says, but what he whispers

•  Antoine De Saint-Exupery:-

• Grown-ups never understand anything for themselves, and it is tiresome for children to be always and forever explaining things to them 

• It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye 

• You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose  

• Pablo Picasso: - 

• The beautiful doesn't matter to me 

• You invent something, and then someone else comes along and does it pretty 

•  God is really only another artist. He invented the giraffe, the elephant and the cat. He has no real style, He just goes on trying other things 

It said wine contains 0% alcohol, I have no idea but just very curious /
thank God it was not a tempting red apple

VERY SHAKESPEARE - KLPAC ORCHESTRA CONCERT 21 - 23 JULY 2016 @ PENTAS 1, KLPAC

  The world is in celebrating Shakespeare's works trend, every orchestra, theater, studio, opera house, production, ballet, songwriter, artist etc. His well known Romeo and Juliet is my favorite romance, although I almost think the death of Romeo and Juliet couple is silly, but in the eye of pure love, I become silly too.

  The most exciting part is that I had this opportunity to play Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet music from three different composers, which is Berlioz, Tchaikovsky and Prokofiev - Tchaikovsky is one of my early favorite composer - I feel so much honored and fun to play in this program. I brought all my scores to Brett during private lesson, as we shared the pleasure of learning musicology together. "You're intelligent as a musician, some musicians are just technically strong." - Brett Stemple

  Other than that, we had the Mendelssohn's Overture and Wedding March! Wedding March! How romantic to have orchestra played it live! By the way, congratulations to my section mate, Tay Kai Yee, she got married to our clarinetist - Sometimes I feel love is ordinary and simple.
Well, the Mendelssohn's Overture brought back memories of silly sweet moments before our relationship, somehow put smile on my face. I could not question the magic of music but I know it happened in circumstances - live it, you will get it.