Riding to work on my pushbike the other day, I put my foot down to keep my balance at a red light and noticed 100nt. I quite perilously bent down to pick it up in the on coming traffic. I then proudly popped it in my pocket and told myself: ‘Good on you for riding to work. Today you are even going to get paid for the experience.” Tonight somewhere between my friend calling and me buying the booze and cigarettes and jumping a taxis to get to his place and chat through the night, I lost 1000nt. It must have fallen out of my pocket. Make of that what you will.
Haydn’s ‘The surprise” ever heard of it? If you were going to use an analogy in a university application letter to some Ivy League school is that an appropriate one? I discovered it in a university application essay that I was editing. It was obscure for me but I’m not classically educated. As it turns out it was very appropriate to the topic of her facing unexpected challenges in starting a computer graphics club at Bellevue High School. If you have never heard it listen to it on you tube. It’s a perfectly mundane piece of classical music that in the introduction has this fatissmo. To the listener it sounds a lot more like a brain fade on the part of someone in the horn section. Then as if nothing untoward has happened the mundane music continues – a bump along the road. It was a good analogy so I kept the it and then wondered: What will the reader think? Is this overly pretentious or is it simply the result of a good education by which I mean a better one than mine.
I wasn’t really sure. A lot would depend on the reader and their worldliness. That might sound off the mark but I mean by it their understanding of what is common practice in Asia, education in western classics, our music, our myths, our history. They like the classical music. They seem to get a lot about what we’ve forgotten and they teach it to their kids. That I know is a gross generalization, but not necessarily wrong because of that. In fact it is quite possible the person reading the essay is of Asian decent and understands. They don’t see pretension just an intelligent analogy which they can appreciate. Perhaps the kid’s a true brainiac. Make of that what you will.
Don’t say: ‘You fucker you’ve wasted my time yet again.’
[quote=“TheGingerMan”]Hadyn: Mundane?
Perhaps some ghost of Christmas past is wreaking revenge in the form of cash, rather than denial of a cookie.[/quote]
It’s definitely a mundane piece of classical music to my untrained ear, the highlight is the surprise and that comes and goes early like Hailey’s Comet and it sounds awfully like someone tripped back stage.
What’s this with cookies and Christmas? I thought perhaps good living is paid more moderately than bad living is priced.
Being the Christmas season (for my fam and the locals in our little town in the USA) I took off work early today to assist the three generations of women under my care in holiday shopping. One of the few alterior motives I had during this endeavour was to purchase ingredients to try out a mock Irish creme recipe entrusted to me by a girl I work with. We arrived and entered the supermarket, exchanged pleasantries with old friends and went on with our shopping. After painstakingly dodging elderly women who insisted on ramming into my shopping cart and then apologizing (knowing they were giving hints to move out of the way), I decided to take a break and stop at the cheese counter. The clerk was attentive and immediate to my needs, so I chanced at a request for Reblechon. At that point, she mistakenly informed me that anyone selling cheese made with unpasturized milk is doing so illegally. After some argument with her, she changed her tone and agreed that the cheese in question needed to be aged for 60 days. I purchased a minute amount of the pasturized version she was peddling, partially out of sympathy, and finished collecting the goods for my concoction.
After a what seemed like a forever ride back to the homestead, dealing with the complaints of the other gender the entire way (a luxury car will not satisy them, so don’t buy one unless it is YOUR interest), I finally go to the kitchen to brew this bad-boy up. After some adjustment of the recipe ingredients (including Wild Turkey 101 ;-)), I realized that doubling the recipe turned into much more than what I could bottle on short notice, so I decided to bottle half and start drinking the other half.
This brings me to my point:
After consuming this delightful beverage and then reading your original post, Fox, I could not find much that connected your story about losing… WAIT JUST GOT IT! Thanks, and I hope I didn’t waste YOUR time!!! haha
And by the way, I listened to Haydn’s “Suprise”, and I think it would have been great to see you searching for your $1000 NT with that in the soundtack.
On mornings when I do not cook breakfast for the wife & son I usually go to the breakfast shop across the street for their excellent dan bing.
While waiting, although the wife will call ahead to alert them, I do some stretching and light exercise. Its very early and the street is almost deserted at that hour.
This morning, while in the prone position for a few push-ups, I noticed reflections off a disk on the ground from the light from the street lamps. It looked like an coin - What a nice find I thought.
I finished my pushing the earth away, got to my feet and picked up the shiny object - It was just a slug. Shiny and bright…but worthless.
[quote=“zaowangyeh”]… One of the few alterior motives I had during this endeavour was to purchase ingredients to try out a mock Irish creme recipe entrusted to me by a girl I work with…
After consuming this delightful beverage and then reading your original post, Fox, I could not find much that connected your story about losing… WAIT JUST GOT IT! Thanks, and I hope I didn’t waste YOUR time!!! haha
And by the way, I listened to Haydn’s “Suprise”, and I think it would have been great to see you searching for your $1000 NT with that in the soundtack.[/quote]
You disappointed me there at the end. I thought you were really going somewhere with that. Both mine have points. The second one is profound mark my words.
[quote]…finished my pushing the earth away, got to my feet and picked up the shiny object - It was just a slug. Shiny and bright…but worthless.
[/quote]
The same could be said of a Taiwanese coin. Still you deserve better for getting up so early and working out. As AJ would no doubt agree for that you deserve a point or maybe two, but later in the day (not for him of course where upon breakfast would be fine and mighty).
I will not take your disappointment as a "Fucker…waste time. I was going into three different points that were going to stretch out and gouge your heart. But I then realized what you were getting at. No lead on bullshit, you caught a real-time revelation. I was going to go into stories about self-sacrifice and getting into tragic situations that I should not have gotten into. Even one shitty situation I had while in Taiwan. Get me that video of you and Haydn and I will resume. Damn the Irish and their creme!!
I’d have to go out and just drop 100nt and then ride past it again with my video running and hope there amongst the traffic the wind wouldn’t blow my bucks under a truck. Then I’d have to give chase to my dollars and likely create some road carnage. It would make interesting viewing but I’d doubt I’d be around to overlay Hadyn on the video, or post it for that matter.
There are two little kids in my building studying classical music. One plays the piano and the other the violin. They will play the same song over and over again and sometimes it takes awhile fro me to even know what song they are playing. Slowly it improves until it becomes a sort of tortured version of the original. I will definitely start filming the process, from outside, as I walk up the stairs.
More to the point I suppose, I have been totally gobsmacked (intimidated might be closer to it) lately by how much some Taiwanese know about western art, and I don’t mean classical art either, I mean really hip modern films and music.
[quote=“bob”]There are two little kids in my building studying classical music. One plays the piano and the other the violin. They will play the same song over and over again and sometimes it takes awhile fro me to even know what song they are playing. Slowly it improves until it becomes a sort of tortured version of the original. I will definitely start filming the process, from outside, as I walk up the stairs.
More to the point I suppose, I have been totally gobsmacked (intimidated might be closer to it) lately by how much some Taiwanese know about western art, and I don’t mean classical art either, I mean really hip modern films and music.
Yeah, it’s impressive.[/quote]
It’s a lot lot more than your average Australian would know about China.
[quote=“bob”]More to the point I suppose, I have been totally gobsmacked (intimidated might be closer to it) lately by how much some Taiwanese know about western art, and I don’t mean classical art either, I mean really hip modern films and music.
Yeah, it’s impressive.[/quote]
I wouldn’t really go so far as to call most modern Western music “art,” but that’s just me.
[quote=“Fox”][quote=“bob”]There are two little kids in my building studying classical music. One plays the piano and the other the violin. They will play the same song over and over again and sometimes it takes awhile fro me to even know what song they are playing. Slowly it improves until it becomes a sort of tortured version of the original. I will definitely start filming the process, from outside, as I walk up the stairs.
More to the point I suppose, I have been totally gobsmacked (intimidated might be closer to it) lately by how much some Taiwanese know about western art, and I don’t mean classical art either, I mean really hip modern films and music.
Yeah, it’s impressive.[/quote]
It’s a lot lot more than your average Australian would know about China.[/quote]
Boy, I’ll say.
I have been having a go at it with the more artistic types around town lately and something that sincerely irritates me is that they don’t “assume” that I would know ANYTHING they don’t about, say, for hackneyed (sp?) example, The Beatles.
Uh… excuse me but I doubt there are more than a dozen songs of theirs that I couldn’t at least hum along to, anticipate the breaks and changes, maybe sing a few (or almost all) the lines. I doubt there is anybody on this forum that couldn’t do that. Anyway, it’s been bloody odd lately dealing with that bit of weird bit of arrogance. It’s been weird dealing with the arrogance too.
And here I thought the business and engineering types were bad…
[quote]The 100nt is waiting for you in the horse road, for your picking it off. Thus, you transport it to the taxi and gift it to the chauffeur. I thinking it was the sky lord meaning to give this way.
As for the university application, I deem it excellence. I have happy emotions that you will gets acceptance inside the ivory league school and prosperity, due to you “delivery” the 100nt to the chauffeur!![/quote]
I thinking sky lord no understand me. I rides bicycle is excellence way to travel me to work and is good now I fit likes superman. Sky lord no should takes my 900nt gives this way to taxi chauffeur.
