The Horowitz Steinway

Location: Tom Lee Music, Richmond BC
Time: 16:30
Forecast: cloudy; light drizzle

Today I had the great honour of playing on Horowitz's piano, the Steinway CD314503. Vladimir Horowitz, arguably one of the greatest pianists of the 20th century, trusted no other piano but his own. If you were around for any of his performances, you would see a crane lifting his piano in and out of the building in which he was scheduled to play. Where ever he performed, his piano would follow.

Recently, this very piano was to tour the nation for anyone to see and lately it happened to be in Richmond. When I entered the room containing this piano, my eyes were out of my head. Undoubtedly, music can connect you to the past. But at my finger tips were the same keys that Horowitz played so beautifully. It was surreal.

Hand-washing workshop for kindergart'ners

Kindergarten class (x2)
Second Street Elementary School
Burnaby, BC
09:30 am

"Do any of you know what a pharmacist does?" we asked them.

"I know--I know! ... he makes--animals!" the kid in green shirt and pants exclaimed.

We broke into laughter and when the laughter subsided, one of us (but not me) said in a kindergarten-teacher-like-voice, "Not quite, but that is very close. When you get sick, you go to the doctor. But the doctor doesn't have the medicine in his office. So he writes the medicine on a piece of paper and you bring it to a pharmacist who gives you medicine. But today, we are going to teach you how not to get sick. We are going to teach you how to wash your hands."

Rainbow over Irving

How to get kicked out of a restaurant

It's been a couple months since we were basically kicked out of an Italian restaurant and told never to return. But the reason that I am reminded of this event is because this restaurant has shut down, recently having been replaced by a Chinese place.

Now, how did we ever find ourselves in such a predicament? I mean, it's not every day that someone gets kicked out of a restaurant. Getting kicked out of a club is much more common, but that's the topic of another story. I can assure you though that it had nothing to do with me.

Culture and the wheel of change

Frog on a spinning wheel, Royal BC Museum, Victoria BC

I have always been fascinated by culture. One of my good friends is Indian but I realized that over the years I didn't know that much about Indian culture (mind you, there are a plethora of Indian cultures). Most of what I knew revolved around food. I learned about saag, paneer, and alu gobi, how to say water in Punjabi because I often needed it. Then I learned about the mundir, temple, where they have a food kitchen every Sunday.

Just to be clear, we are not talking about a bacterial culture. This is not the kind of culture you find in yoghurt. Instead, we are talking about:

• something profound,
• a universal human capacity,
• an inevitable human expression,
• something that connects us to our past.

Here are some interesting facts I compiled:

• In some parts of Europe, they celebrate birthdays to ward off evil spirits.
• In the Yugar (a Chinese minority) weddings, the groom shoots his bride with a blunt bow and arrow three times. He then breaks the arrows to signify that their love will be forever.
• (Ireland) On a child's birthday, they pick up the child, turn him upside down and bump his head on the ground "x" times (where "x" = age).
• (Gypsy) Girls get pulled out of school at age 12 and marry.
• Clapping is as old as humanity itself, dating back to the Romans who clapped to show approval when gladiators fought to the death.
• (China) Wearing a green hat shows that your wife cheated on you.

Culture is an amazing thing. It may help us to define our goals and values, to foster a sense of belonging. In many ways it is like a bacterial culture. It can grow and spread, and be passed down from generation to generation. It is cultured. Like the appearance of new strains of bacteria, culture changes and fuses. The wheel of change must keep spinning.  So maybe our roots may be worth exploring. After all, they may remind us to celebrate our identities, to be part of something grand, to see how far we have come.

Winter Monarch

An experiment with pen and messy pencil crayons.

Taj Mahal

Boats and Scorpions