The Path of Time

The cello is a wonderful music instrument. To me, at least. I still remember the moment I held the first cello, which eventually became my very first cello. The smell of the wood, the surface of the finger board and the feel of the cello strings. Then there's the bow - a simple piece of wood with horse hair. From that moment on, I knew in my heart it was going to be a start of a very long relationship between man and machine. I am blogging via mobile while on my way for a gigue in Alor Setar. As I am on the road, it becomes a good time to just watch the road go by and have some flashback moments. I still remember clearly trying to play my first few notes. It was definitely tougher than it looked despite the fact that I already have music knowledge from learning the piano. But whe i finally got the basic notes right, the sound of the cello was simply amazing. It was bold yet gentle. It was strong yet refine. Simply amazing! Till this day, many people ask me, "Why the cell...

There was an old chap I met at the physiotherapy centre where dad visited quite a fair bit after having undergone a total heap replacement. This old chap was on a wheelchair and doing some physiotherapy workouts. I observed him for a while doing some light weights while on the wheelchair and I saw the look in his eyes. It was not that of rage, anger or despair but that of resolve. A tremendous amount of resolve to strengthen himself despite being bounded to the wheelchair for the rest of his life. As I was leaving, I had to settle the bill and this old chap rolled out with his wheelchair, panting from all the workout he was doing. I guess he had to settle his bill as well. He smiled at me and I smiled back. "Tough workout eh?" "Phew... tell me about it. Being on a wheelchair is a whole new experience for me." "What got you on the wheelchair?" "Motorcycle accident. Was riding my bike home one evening, next thing I new someone rammed me from the back. ...

It was a simple act of not accepting the cash. A simple answer of, "No, I am not going to accept your cash, keep it." It was when Jo bought a mini generator set for his uncle who suffered from muscular dystrophy. A damaging disease that literally robs you of your muscular abilities. His uncle had to survive on a life support machine to keep him breathing. Every time his housing area had a black out, his wife had to literally rush him to the hospital nearest to his home and there was very little margin for error in timing. That's when Jo decided to get his uncle one of those mini generator sets to power the life support systems if in case of a black out. The ones you see night market stalls using. Jo contacted me because my dad could get slightly cheaper prices for one of those generators. On the day we went to get the generator and took it to Jo's uncle's house to set it up and sort of just let the family members know how to run the little thing. That's when I...