The Path of Time

Dark clouds, heavy rain, a long trail of brake lights ahead of me meant I was going to be in my car for a little longer. As I was cursing the traffic silently in my heart, next thing I hear on the radio is song I haven't heard in a pretty long time. Something I could reflect from what happened at work today. Those familiar with radio songs will pretty easily pick up the song and the singer. The chorus really meant something to me. As I sat in the driver's seat slowly inching my car bit by bit in the traffic jam, I heard, "you grieve you learn, you choke you learn, you laugh you learn, you choose you learn, you pray you learn, you ask you learn, you live you learn.". It's a pretty old song and would probably be more than ten years old but still very relevant to you and me (maybe not to you but it does seem relevant to me). It may not seem as what the writer of the song wanted to mean but I think if I look at it from my life or our lives, it does say something. That...

Yesterday, I managed to squeeze out of office to go for my weekly squash sessions. It's a wonderful feeling knowing that I can go out there and play my favourite sport pitching my skills against someone better and to hopefully learning a new thing or two to improve my game.  Half way through one of my matches, the resident coach there who coaches the state junior team looks at me and says, "you are very hardworking in the court!". I tried to laugh under all the panting I was doing and replied while puffing, "I guess when you are short on talent, you just need to rely on fitness to rough it out." It was the same thing when I was training during my junior days, always trying to outlast my opponent and just keep on running until I ran my opponent with sheer tenacity. Until, eventually one day my knee gave some time before I hit the age of 21 putting my squash to a rendering hiatus for the next three years. But then again, I never really had a successful squash care...

Take a step back, look around and what you will generally find painstakingly obvious is that we are shrouded in the world's countless standards. Standards that so called sets people, brand, items, animals, etc. apart from one another. You will always find that virtually anywhere in any conversation that someone is caring, loving, not sensitive enough to care, not smart enough to excel, too quiet to ever make new friends, too prudent to take risks, and soon you'll find that the list of standards, comparable and dichotomies goes on like an endlessly playing broken recorder. These standards have become so commonly mentioned and brought up that it has become apart of our lifestyle, our very beliefs in our minds. The office is a very good place that demonstrates this. There will always be one "star" performer that everyone wants to be or look up to. I cannot deny that having someone to look up to and admire can be motivating but doesn't it give way to a proliferation o...

Ever wondered what it feels like standing in the middle of nowhere wondering which direction to head to? What to do next? How to get about the next step in your journey? Looking left and right into an empty horizon not knowing whether you will even make it through the next day. That's one of those moment I feel I am in right now. It's almost like I am in a different realm void of all reasoning and just not sure what to do next. I am looking left and right really wondering if I can make it through the next day. At one point I thought the first half of this year was probably one of the worse I have ever had but right now, I might have just dropped a step lower in the "worse" situation scale. It is even more perplexing considering I managed to get a two week break out of the country to refresh my mind and following that received some good news knowing that I have progressed yet another small step in my careeer. Put that all into an equation and I should be smiling myself...

I remember it as clear as day, the day I took my diploma exam. It was just three of us is in the exam hall – me, my teacher as the pianist and the examiner. Make it four, if you want to count in the recorder. A lot of preparation went into the exam. Preparation was as early as nine months before the exam. A lot of thought went into selecting the best repertoire of songs that could best suit my playing style and songs that I could interpret well. I can say with absolutely certainty that it is nothing like what you see on American Idol. Playing the cello is more than just singing your heart out to a million fans watching national tv. Playing the cello or any other musical instrument is about reaching out to your listener through the sounds it produces. With the ever popular electric guitar, most of the sound it produces is manipulated by the amplifier and all the other gadgets thrown in but with the cello or violin, your very fingers that press the strings and the amount of pressure you ...

As much as I hate to admit it, there are times where I am guilty of making the silliest of mistakes whether it's at home, at work or in a relationship. It can be as simple as forgetting to turn of the fire at the stove before I leave the house, or a simple e-mail to the client that is drafted incorrectly, or a as simple as forgetting to drop a loved one a sms to let them know you have reached home. As simple as all the above examples may seem, it is never too simple to make the simplest of mistakes. If you may have found yourself in such situations before, you will probably be quick to note that as simple as the mistake may seem, some people don't seem to take them likely and you may well find yourself paying a penalty tad too expensive for such a mistake. The horrible part about committing a mistake is that a mistake will always be a mistake whether it turns out to be a major blunder or a small hiccup. You probably know what I mean. To make matters worse, sometimes the more yo...