自強街87號

If there should be a person I admire most, it must be a "he" with many talents. First, why must it be a "he"? In a ralatively conservative society like ours in Taiwan, girls have too many no-gos and even taboos for them to justify themselves to be as agile as boys. When they do, they would be considered to upstage the boys, which is usually not accepted open-mindedly in our coulture.

Besides, he is gentle and courteous, not like those chaps who know nothing but holding a 24-hour sit-in for some ridiculous political reasons, blockading the whole main traffic artery all the time. He must be a person of erudition, which refers to be adept at multiple catagories to present a wholesome and profound aspect of life. (After all, I am an enthusiast of humanism.) Language, arts (especially instrumental playing, such as piano), sports (especially golf and martial arts), logical deductive thinking, and skills of negotiation are the prime "five elements" for me to be a qualified - qulified for being worthwhile taking a trip around the journey in this life - humble human being, who dares tell others how wonderful and elaborted our cosmics might be. Last but not least, he also has an open heart; a tender mind eager to reach for his true love in his life, and he never compromises on it! How valiant a man to pursue for his true love! Only when people are surrounded by love could people understand to love. And only love is the very incentive for humans to exist in the world from generations to generations.

Lately, when Todd May, a professor of philosophy in Clemson University, flew to New York to visit his dying step-grandma, on aboard the plane made an abrupt ascending as landing in La Guardia due to a careless commuter plane landing without taking into account the clearness of the air trip and air space of other planes, which aroused an aura of 911 where the whole crew in the plane seemed as if they had been a human missile again.

This made the professor revisit his life and the meaning of death when the aircraft brushed above so closely the antenna of the Empire State Building. He began to ponder why he had fear at that moment, and why he suddenly bewared that life was so precious. He had then a vivid and strong desire and motive to survive the eminent misfortune. And he realized that we humans had so little control over lifespans and future. He smelled the prepared sneak attack ofdeath.

 My left hand is still a bit stiff now when practicing Shirley Murphy 123 as well as Egg Beater, especially the former. The main reason for this handicap may be the very likely result from the rigidness of the left hand wrist as well as the muscles of the upper arm and both shoulders. Recently, I reviewed a tutorial DVD from Peter Erskin, a famous jazz drummer and noticed two useful warm-up exercises, which can fix this problem effectively.

One is to play 8 strokes starting from whichever hand and followed by the other, then 7 each, then 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, and 1 each with all the intervals evenly and balanced made, without the accents and the hand switch being noticed, nor the connections. Then add up from 1 back to 8 again. Shift in between nicely and fluently to the speed 200 of a quarter note.

The second is to play singles, doubles, and paradiddles alternately, seamlessly, and evenly. Just in the same way as above, let no leak and accent bewared. Play consistently until an 8 note reaches the tempo in metronome 160. I know these two methods may sound sort of old  school, especially the former introduced by George Gabriel around 1968. 

I have a dream,

It's been a long while since we guys disscussed about how to get more slender, only to witness each project aborted. What a pity is this especially to see it sometimes got almost done. And we just never enjoyed a spree for what we were supposed to reach cause we didn't even take any effective initial. You might heard so many terms such as TransXXXXX, RPXX,... and so on. They all turned out to be in vain eventually, defeated by the mighty army of 'Gastralia', say, for at least 19 times, defeated by its irresistable charm and lure, its mind-inducing calling, as well as its convincing eloquence to make you splurge credibility for what on earth does you good: Is Stoic our life-time pal? Or maybe we could call on Epicurus from time to time? We always seem to teeter between dive and chic, having no idea whether iberico ham or a 'shot' of coke should be the right chaser after slurpy burger combos. Sigh, for how long do we have to suffer under such agony of ambivalence?

This time I spot with delight two motivs, strong enough to make said terms not epithets any more as they usually were. I have two friends of Fat Bob Classics. John, a nice guy, needs to practice through a slender program to see himself through, to help find his calling, and then to be put to right position our Father has long been looking forward to. Without being slender, John would be very likely to stay stagnant, impassive, as a listless sleeping lion wandering aimlessly in his infinite doldrums. Paul is the other but in totally different case to be slender desperately. It is high time for him to show off his abundant stamina for both of his venery with his immaculate infatuation and his enterprise-to-be as Motor GP pit service.