Sundays..

Hey World,

Feeling a bit out of sorts at the moment. The last couple of months have been pretty odd, I've gotten and lost my training mojo a few times and just aren't feeling that 150 000% drive that I usually have. Although this might easily be attributed to my lack of sleep last night plus a couple of drinks, I think I just have to modify that aspect of my life a little bit.

Anyway, things are going well! I should be pretty busy as I mentioned before, in the next couple of months with the revue stuff, which is looking to be pretty exciting anyway, and my training's coming along nicely. I'm trying to add a few more posts to my climbing blog which will hopefully come along quite nicely in the next few.

What else... There have been a few fantastic articles on foodforthought at reddit recently, namely this one on how you measure your life, written by an economist, as well as another one written by Hemingway on the symbolism of bullfighting, which is also a really nice read.

And finally - Still rooting for the Lakers; they're having their first back-to-back of the playoffs today. Ridiculous!!! How could you expect to have a back-to-back when you've got games at home court? That's insane. This season has been without doubt the worst organized season of all time. Don't care if it was a result of the lockout, it's been silly and all of the injuries this year have proved it. Oh - and like I said as well, Pacers are gonna roll Miami. Better believe it.

Crossroads and Risk

At several times in life, it always seems like it comes down to a couple of key decisions that will really influence the degree of freedom that one will have on his/her pathway through life.

• Will I get a job after I graduate?
• Am I doing the right things in terms of the career that I'm choosing, and the pathway in which I have to be headed?
• How am I going to balance between the passion of working hard but also finding time to relax and enjoy the life which my job will be funding?

Often, it feels as if we are stuck making these decisions far too early in our lifetimes, which is a reason that I advocate people choosing their professions after they have matured from their high school state of mind. But - society doesn't seem to want us to work that way, and in certain professions, it is expected that the hours of work put in will correlate directly with "how badly you want it". 

Of course, this also reflects my parents' traditional asian view of my upbringing: work hard, do something stable, and get paid to do it. But - as I've been finding out more and more recently, it's about choosing your spots and making sure you enjoy your life as you grow up, not saving a pile of money to attempt to enjoy when your body is no longer capable of it.

Anyway, it seems like I'll be awfully busy over the next slab of year; I somehow managed to enrol myself to be the band director for an upcoming production, am starting to put in research applications for Honours (man I'm only in my first year of med school!) and still want to get out door for climbing...

And speaking of climbing, I got "the talk". The one where your parents grill you on responsibility and making sure you look after them in their old age - and the fact that you'll be unable to do that if you're a vegetable.... But come on - look at the high-risk nature of so many other daily activities... Even the chance that you'll get seriously injured in a car crash is pretty high! (Don't let me put you off driving..) All I'm saying is - if you're not prepared and you don't have the right equipment or training, then of course it's going to be dangerous - BUT, you have to control that amount of risk. Isn't that what a large part of medicine is all about?

I'll leave it there. More to come soon. :)

LAL-DEN Game 6

LAL-DEN (DEN, 113-96)

Look. Let's just say that I'm incredibly disappointed with how this series has turned out. I predicted that the lakers would win 4-2, and many of my friends thought that they'd finish with a sweep. But, like the lakers always tend to do, they just let Denver hang around and now they find themselves in a Game 7 situation which anyone could take.

Having watched only glimpses of this game, I probably can't tell you anything about how the game plan played out, etc. But, I did see this - Nuggets started the game 11-0, and when I was watching the 3Q, there was absolutely no hustle at all in the lakers. All the 50% balls were going the nuggets way - you ask me how the lakers would even attempt to put together a championship run if they got stomped so badly; the general lack of effort was disheartening to watch. In fact, even though I've been a laker fan my whole life, I am not sorry to say that today, I really felt like the lakers didn't deserve to be in the playoffs. The cocky mannerisms that Bynum has displayed all season, as well as his ill-timed, and poorly chosen words to provide motivation for the nuggets displayed how little he has progressed throughout this season. And plus, do I have to say anything at all when your top player has gastro and you have to try to ride him to win the game?!

But - I'll admit now that I've been a laker fan for life, and so I still hope that they use their one last shot to see if they can propel themselves into the second round; but if they show this complete lackadasical effort in the second round, they can except just to get swept by OKC.

Rachmanninoff Prelude, Op. 23, No. 4 in D maj

My recording of:

Rachmaninoff Prelude, Op. 23, No. 4 in D Maj (1901):

I've always wanted to do this sort of thing - get my piano posted, but to be honest I was always pretty nervous when I got onto stage. But I do enjoy playing piano and wouldn't mind posting some videos, so here's the first of (hopefully many) to come.

As many of you probably know, Rachmaninoff (1873-1943) was a composer in the Romantic Period of music. He was a composer of great talent - and both his piano concerto 2 and 3 stand as the greatest works in the piano repertoire, and certainly both lie as personal favourites. His music is also reflective of great hardships that he endured in life; the death of Tchaikovsky, a close friend and mentor, as well as harsh reviews on his compositions and complicated relationships pushed him into a depression, and often this pain is apparent in his music.

As a personal reflection of this music, it was close to impossible to get this piece to a level that I was satisfied with. In terms of accuracy, it's not the most technically difficult piece (and hence you can see my piano ability here is not the greatest); but in terms of capturing the spirit of the piece, this was the only recording I've had over the last fortnight that I've been remotely happy with. But I can say that when I was playing, I felt that sense of pain that Rachmaninoff must have been trying to express, and imagined an aching desire upon his behalf to belong.