Life and Letters

As Singapore floods and rains continuously, here in the UK we're experiencing a fog. A lousy fog in fact. And like the haze we get yearly in Singapore, the fogs here can be just as bad in terms of visibility.

As I walked to a student's house yesterday - it was her first violin lesson - i realised how hazy the word 'talent' can be. This particular student seems to have an interest in music which, when plotted on a graph, resembles a slinky spring. There are times when I think that she'll make a good musician, yet there are days when i just feel like boxing her ears. I've been teaching her for the past 2 years (piano and theory) and I wondered if perhaps she's just not cut out for music. And was i going to make a big mistake introducing her to the violin? Will it create false hopes for her parents etc? I guess i just have to wait and see to judge how well she responds to the violin.

I've been working for lots of cheese concerts these few days in symphony hall (save Trevor Pinnock's Brandenburg Concerto marathon which was brilliant). Even with cheese there's good cheese and bad cheese.. some carols are wonderfully arranged, some are just dire and makes me want to box the conductor's ears. Last night was Mozart by Candlelight which to be fair wasn't that bad. I was enjoying the concert quite a lot but one thing whihc really put me off was some of the audience's reaction to a disabled girl who obviously couldn't contro lher speech or actions. she kept making a noise which resembled a baby screaming and understandably some of the audience came up to me to enquire about the noise. I told them that there was a disabled girl in the audience down in the stalls. Some people were nice about it, yet others were just disgusted at the thought that their £100,000 ticket and night out had to be 'destroyed; by a disabled girl. If i weren't in my steward's uniform, i might have just spoken my mind and told those people that even though some people appear to be disabled, they might actually have a very musical brain. And why should we even discriminate against disabled people when it comes to music, especially when music is often said to be a universal language? It's just so sad that even at Christmas there are people around who don't think about the less fortunate people in society. Bloody hell.

Anyway, Ijust feel that this whole division in society sometimes can be extremely hazy. It's evident in singapore. People pledge that they will help the poor, but yet, the increaseing cost of living is making it so obvious that some people just can't survive in a developed country anymore. the lower income bracket people are suffering while people high up in the social ladder are enjoyingthe luxuries life can offer.

ANyway, time to do more research. t's going to be along day tomorrow rushing to London and back in time for work. Phew....