Questionnaire

1) When a close friend is awakened to the person you truly are, when he/she keeps silent and stops persuading after the first time. Does this mean he/she has accepted you for who you are OR he/she has decided to give up and let you go?

2) Good things come in small packages. Does it mean we should be happy with small changes?

3) In this life we don’t always understand; miracles do happen. Just not at the time we want them to. Do we have no expectations then, OR do we hang on to hopes?

4) A good person is one who will learn from his/her mistakes. If given the chance to do it all over again they would do it differently. I’m still working on that. I’m still not sure if I would go the different route. What a person does this make me?

The handsome one made it

Last night, the Malaysian cosmonaut was sent to space with everyone watching from earth. Some with awe, some with tears and some with envy. I, on the other hand, was not particularly excited with the whole event. What not, with so many other things left undone, I couldn't help myself from simply neglecting the cheering crowd live on telecast and somehow went to bed feeling nothing at all.

Woke up today and saw the big cosmonaut's face on the cover page of the Star newspaper.
I remember a few days back, they were deciding who should be the one to fly to space. Strangely so I knew it would be him. Bahh, it's always the handsome one who will make it!

Anyway, just came by to wish all Muslims Selamat Hari Raya Aidilfitri. There is much to celebrate and in the mean time, do pray that he comes back to earth safely so all tax payers can be relieved and I, can read what he has to say about his 12 days journey. Just to check if it was a life changing experience or did the moon winked at him on his way back. Maybe he would tell us how many times we have mistakenly recognized a satellite for a star. Or a star for a satellite. Who knows.

Today is also the first day of the Ninth month (lunar). So Happy Vege-fied, all Chinese people out there. Remember not to eat anything with a face for the next 8 days!

Until then, folks.
Maaf zahir & batin :)

Unsung hero of ballet

A weak late-afternoon sun filters into the empty dance studio as 14-year-old Janelle Timmermans 21-year-old Agnes K plays Bach and Poulenc Tchaikovsky at the grand piano. It's nearly 5:30 p.m. Friday Saturday, but the hallways at the National Ballet School Rising Star Ballet School on Jarvis St Jalan Perda are still abuzz.

A small crowd gathers outside the door. When the music stops, three girls gush. "I wish I could play like you," says one. "I wish I could dance like you," replies Janelle Agnes K humbly.

Here's a curious paradox: the dancer can't live without the pianist, but the pianist isn't recognized until he or she is playing on their own. Welcome to the world of the ballet accompanist, a great, forgotten piano career with its own special challenges.

"It's an underrated profession," says National Ballet School principal pianist Marina Surgan. She has been toiling away at the school's keyboards since 1978. For Surgan and 12 others at the school, this is a full-time job. For most other ballet accompanists, it's one of several part-time gigs that help put food on the table. But the demands are no less strict.

"It is an art to be a good ballet accompanist," says Surgan. You have to have a good memory, you have to know and understand the arcane world of classical ballet and its French terminology, "and you have to be able to improvise."

"You have to know the dancers' physical abilities, you have to watch," she continues. "My music gives them strength."

When she first played for dancers as a student in Moscow, Surgan didn't know what to do. "I had to learn the hard way."

This is one of the reasons that the National Ballet School now offers its week-long Musicians' Mentoring Program during the midwinter months. The other is to raise professional pianists' awareness of ballet accompaniment as a career option.

There are more to the specific steps and movements that all students of classical ballet must learn. There are six positions of the feet, five positions of the arms and eight positions of the body. Then there are many individual steps, all with French names like tombé, chassé, frappé and glissade.

The instructor calls each out by name and the dancers learn to respond by instinct – with the piano player's help. "They don't have to count the music, because it's there for them," says Surgan.

In most cases, the teachers do give the accompanist fair warning. During one two-hour class led by former National Ballet principal dancer Glenn Gilmour, Wingrove follows a handwritten plan that reads like secret code, with entries such as: "Tendus 4/4 4 + : 32 + 16 + 8 : play 4 groups."

As the dancers stretch and warm up, the pianist makes up music that delivers a particular tempo, rhythm and mood appropriate for each dance step. There is no time to think.

"It has to be instant," says Surgan, "You can't stop the class."

Like most people who learn classical piano, Janelle Agnes K hadn't been asked to improvise before. But she was is willing to try.

Originally written by: John Terauds (Classical Music Critic)
Revised by : The blogger

Tall buildings, narrow minds

While I was busy memorizing what Trade Practices Act 1996 (WA) is all about few days ago, I couldn't help myself from inching away to the nearby rack and unconsciously grabbing the Economist August issue with the speed of light. Most of the time such a journal would not interest me the least, what not with the large boring label that slaps across the cover page, it is just too heavy for such a light head.

Nonetheless it is still more refreshing than Employment Law to begin with. Here's an excerpt of the article that caught my attention.

"THE government of Malaysia has laid on all sorts of grand pageantry this weekend, to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the Malay peninsula's independence from Britain. There is much to celebrate. Living standards and access to education, health services, sanitation and electricity have soared during those five decades of sovereignty. The country's remarkable modernisation drive was symbolised, nine years ago, by the completion of the Petronas twin towers, in Kuala Lumpur, then the world's tallest buildings.

Yet there will be a hollow ring to the festivities. Malaysia's 50th birthday comes at a time of rising resentment by ethnic Chinese and Indians, together over one-third of the population, at the continuing, systematic discrimination they suffer in favour of the majority bumiputra, or sons of the soil, as Malays and other indigenous groups are called. There are also worries about creeping “Islamisation” among the Malay Muslim majority of what has been a largely secular country, and about the increasingly separate lives that Malay, Chinese and Indian Malaysians are leading. More so than at independence, it is lamented, the different races learn in separate schools, eat separately, work separately and socialise separately. Some are asking: is there really such a thing as a Malaysian?

The pro-bumiputra discrimination was laid down in the country's first constitution, in 1957, to ease Malays' fears of being marginalised by the Chinese and Indian migrants. These had come, supposedly temporarily, to work in the tin mines and plantations but were settling permanently and increasingly dominating business and the professions. The perks were extended greatly after race riots in 1969. Malays get privileged access to public-sector jobs, university places, stockmarket flotations and, above all, government contracts. The most notable result, as with South Africa's similar policy of “black economic empowerment”, has been “encronyment”—the enrichment of those well connected to the United Malays National Organisation (UMNO), the party that has led all governments since independence. Malays as a whole, like other races, have got richer but the gap between the Malay haves and have-nots has widened. The corruption and waste these policies engender seem to have got worse in recent years.

As criticism has grown, UMNO's leaders have resorted ever more frequently to growling that nobody should question the “social contract”. This is a reference to the metaphorical deal struck between the races at independence, in which the Malays got recognition that the country was basically theirs, while the Chinese and Indians were granted citizenship. The veiled threat of violence lurking behind calls to uphold the social contract was made explicit during last year's UMNO conference, at which one delegate talked of being ready to “bathe in blood” to defend Malay privileges and the education minister, no less, brandished a traditional Malay dagger.

The hypocritical Malay dilemma
The social contract may once have seemed necessary to keep the peace but now it and the official racism that it is used to justify look indefensible: it is absurd and unjust to tell the children of families that have lived in Malaysia for generations that, in effect, they are lucky not to be deported and will have to put up with second-class treatment for the rest of their lives, in the name of “racial harmony”. When the mild-mannered Abdullah Badawi took over as prime minister from the fire-breathing Mahathir Mohamad in 2003, there were hopes of change for the better. Mr Badawi preached a moderate, “civilisational” Islam and pledged to crack down on corruption.

Four years on, corruption, facilitated by the pro-Malay policies, is unchecked. The state continues to use draconian internal-security laws, dating back to the colonial era, to silence and threaten critics. UMNO continues to portray itself to Malays as the defender of their privileges yet tries to convince everyone else that it is the guarantor of racial harmony. One commentator this week gently described this as a “paradox”. Hypocrisy would be a better word.

The damage caused by this state racism is ever more evident. Malaysia's once sparkling growth rate has slipped. Racial quotas and protectionism are scaring away some foreign investors. While Malaysians celebrate having done rather better than former British colonies in Africa, they must also notice that South Korea, Taiwan and their estranged ex-spouse Singapore have done much better still. The economic consequences alone justify ending Malaysia's official racism. Even without them, it would still be just plain wrong."

I've always wanted to write something like that about Malaysia. This article is like bull's eye! Every word written was so precisely arranged and I would have sent the writer a congratulatory note among white lilies plus a whole roasted piglet with my one finger salute, but unfortunately there were no author's name in sight.

Anyway, no hard feelings to those who feel offended.

Negaraku tanah tumpahnya darahku....lalala~