If only I had the cash...

$20,000 USD Irish Whiskey, almost 150 years old!

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Ah... life.

I've been enjoying NYC more lately, spending quality time with good friends, and finding out new things about people and places.... Truly, this is what warms my heart and reaffirms my belief that life is so worth living and to be cherished.



Last night was good fun, with my friend Youming and his wife Alice, their roommate Ken (great name! Ha ha!), and especially Josephine and her sister Alice all coming out and having a memorable evening of late night Chinese food in Flushing.

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Woo hoo!

Democrats kick ASS!  

Even if the Democrats don't take the Senate majority,  it's still a tremendous accomplishment!   Yay!

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From the "They really think of everything" department...

THE NEW MATING CALL....

TOKYO (Reuters) - Is it a phone call, a text message or simply time to make love?

A
new mobile phone available through Japan's NTT DoCoMo can ring to let
would-be mothers know when they reach the most fertile part of their
monthly reproductive cycles.

By tapping in data on menstruation
dates, the user can program the phone to alert her three days before
ovulation and again on the day. The company warns that the calculations
are based on average cycles.

Wow.... all I can say is.... wow.

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Darn.

So close... the Mets were soooo close to getting to the World Series!


Oh well... better luck next year!

R.I.P. Nabi (1992-2006)

Nabi just passed away some 35 minutes ago. It was witnessed by myself, my sister, and my father. Our house is a river of tears right now. He fought his best all the way to the last (even slashed up my face while I was trying to move him to a more comfortable spot). I don't know if Chabi is aware yet that his brother is no longer with us.

I keep staring at his little corpse, somehow expecting it would somehow come back to life, even for just a little moment. It is, of course, an impossibility. I saw his death throes, his last defiance of death, even as he was choking in blood and spittle. I saw his eyes stare at me, eyes wide, until his soul left him and his eyes dilated to all black.

I know now why cats try to slink away and die in private. We... I robbed him of that, afraid of letting go, wanting to seem him bounce back just one more time. But it wasn't meant to be.

I can't sleep, not yet. My mother doesn't know yet, and she is in Malaysia right now. Nabi was most closest to her, and she to Nabi. She will find out in a matter of hours. In some ways, she probably already knows, via psychic connection or something....

I will miss Nabi, the orange cat. He kept us all company through several years. He was very shy, but when he came to know you, he was the loveliest and neediest cat of all. In his last hours, I played some flute for him. He practically grew up in Pittsburgh, listening to flutes played by my friend Lida, and later on, myself. He enjoyed listening to the flute, sometimes snoozing in the studio while my students played on.

He's lying there on the small leather couch-chair. We haven't figured what to do with the body yet. He's looking at me, his eyes refusing to close, even as my sister and I tried to gently guide them closed. Feisty and defiant to the end. I resist the urge to call his name just one more time, hoping for the flick of the tail that was his acknowledgement, because I know it will no longer come.

Rest In Peace, Nabi. May your next life be prosperous in whatever form it may take.

*Sigh*

Single again.... but it was very nice while it lasted.

Love is created by shared experiences and shared memories. There were lots of good ones. Maybe more will come, but the winds of fate will have to change first.

Yet another season underway...

I've been at the Children's Orchestra Society as Assistant Conductor for over 6 years now... and as I think about how the years have passed, I marvel at the changes in both the group and myself.

Sometimes the years pass quickly, sometimes they pass painfully slowly.

Each year, a group begins raw, a hodge-podge of collective experience/ inexperience, skill/non-skill, enlightened/unenlightened, some new and some older. As each year passed, those groups came together for a common goal of learning the language of music, and having a successful concert... Sometimes the journey was easy, sometimes it was very hard, but the journey was always made, and for the most part, successful.

When I think about the concerts that are done by everybody, I'm always reminded that most (as in the audience) see only the final finished product. It's exciting, and inspiring, to see young musicians do their very best. The young members of the audience may even join our programs based on the wonderful performance they've seen.

Occasionally, some get discouraged, because when the season starts, it's that raw, sometimes unpleasant sound, of an orchestra that's put together anew. Rebirthing pains, if you will. Some even want to leave based on the first rehearsals... They failed to understand and take into account that what they saw before was a finished product. They weren't there when the blood, sweat, and tears were expended in each and every single rehearsal in a long season.

That's okay. The ones that do stay become better musicians.... forever transformed and strengthened and tempered by the rigors of working with many to play as one with a common goal.

It looks like it'll be a good year....

whoa.

It's been a while since I posted, eh? Have some cat pics.

A batch of newer Nabi pics

GROWL

Be wary of companies that won't let you discontinue your service online.... I had to call XM Radio to cancel my service (Gas prices don't really justify $156/year), since I also don't really listen to it much. They had an automated voice-activated computer that had none of the options I needed. Then, when I finally got a real person, they transferred my call like 4 times (one time I could swear they must have been in China), despite the fact that I specifically wanted to go to the cancellation department. When I finally got to the last guy, he tried to sell me even MORE service, either to myself or my "friends".

I think I got it cancelled... but if I didn't, and I see a charge on my card, THERE WILL BE HELL TO PAY.

Ken and QQ the Dog

I was messing around with this program called "Comic Life" that came with my MacBook... this is the first little comic I made with it. It's a fascinating program that's rather intuitive to use. This little comic is about one of my first encounters with "QQ", one of my girlfriend's dogs. Click for a larger image. :)

QQ is one of the cutest dogs I've ever met... very adorable. He is very loving of humans, as you can see.

Skater lands in a real bad way. OUCH!

These crazy kids... I hope he was wearing a cup....

Ken sez.....

"While humble, be capable. While capable, be humble."

Favorite Quotes from Theodore Roosevelt

This is some of the quotes of his that in the American Museum of Natural History...

MANHOOD

"A man's usefullness depends on living up to his ideals insofar as he can.

It is hard to fail but it is worse never to have tried to succeed.

All daring and courage, all iron endurance and misfortune, make for a finer nobler type of manhood.

Only those are fit to live who do not fear to die, and none are fit to die who have shrunk from the joy of life and the duty of life."

Victim of the Switch

I've become a Mac enthusiast once again... :) Just bought a MacBook (the cheapest one) and it's awesome. Excellent design, decent application speed, great battery life...

Installed Finale 2006d on it, works like a charm. :) At some point I'll try working with some of the GarageBand software and stuff.

PCs are still king of games, but Mac OSX... is excellent.

Fire Fart

Oh... My....

ARGH.

Installed the new Internet Explorer 7 Beta v3, but it kept crashing and crashing over and over. So after much teeth-gnashing and internet research (using Firefox... it's much more stable... ha), it turns out that Google Desktop (which I don't like all that much anyway) was conflicting with some thingamabob called mshtml.dll.

Uninstalled G-Desktop, and suddenlty everything works perfect again. Heh.

Cuteness explosion!

Cat barrage!

These are some fairly recent pictures... as you can definately see, Nabi has made a nearly full and miraculous recovery! He's subject to daily fluid injections and some pills and tonic, but other than that, he's becoming as peppy as a kitten!

Chabi, of course, is a very cute, but obese cat. No danger of that cat starving for now. :)

Back, with music video!

Sorry about the hiatus, just had a lot of stuff going on. But this is a selection from this year's JSE group. They really came through like troopers!

As far as my training goes, it had been going nicely, until the entire morning Muay Thai class caught a ringworm skin infection... I only had a tiny spot, because it was caught and treated early, but some of the other guys were not so lucky. I think it was either from one of the Brazilian Jiu-Jitsu players who also cross trains in Muay Thai, or it might even have come from one of the seminar attendees from last month's Ajarn Chai Sirusute seminar. As it is, I had to stop training for a week, and may or may not be cleared tonight to do stick drills. No hand to hand sparring for me, probably, just to be on the safe side.

While on hiatus, I've been sharpening up my piano skills! Mostly, concentrating on score-reading exercises out of the Morris & Ferguson book. I can now read alto and tenor clefs on sight combined with treble and bass clefs above or below them. It's tricky, but actually a fun exercise.

Famous repeated words, I know but... "will write more soon".