-ashamed of half of who I am-


I'm a lousy pianist. Can't sightread and picked up tons of bad habits that will take ages to correct. No, a grade 8 in piano doesn't really count for anything.


I don't want to be one of you--


I've seen how this organisation operates. And I don't like it at all. Where do I stand? Nowhere at all. An outcast within outcasts. You think discrimination is gone from our society? Think again. And yet I say, there are times when the system simply asks for it. I learned many things from you. All those little mannerisms that characterise one of the members. I strove to dump them out, for a purpose-


and that organisation, and its influence on me, was part of the reason why I failed in that purpose.


Now do you all see why I hate the system?


What do I have to be proud of? The fact that I'm... different?


That can't be counted upon. I'm a cellist and proud of it. It's one of the few things I've actually done correctly in my life.


There are funny moments on the job......


Mr Chan my teacher is performing Shostakovich's 8th quartet. The one HCISO played. So he comes to the orch room, sits down and practises while waiting for the next student after my lesson.


He looks at the score for a minute or so. Then he sightreads-at actual tempo too, using fingering I'd never even contemplated, and with a clarity I couldn't achieve even after a year of practising that quartet.


Then he turns around to face me. And says.


"This quartet is very difficult. How do you play it?"


Not niao. No. Noooooooooooo.


If he'd been watching the rest of us in the room while he played he'd have seen everyone's jaw drop. Seriously.


Now he wants me to play the 2nd movement of Haydn's Cello Concerto. That, practiceable. But the third I can't do. Yet.


I never seem to get bored of that concerto. Whenever I play it, I(don't know if I'm making any sense here) try to channel the melody line through my soul. As if the music were an energy that flowed through me. And in doing so, I hope to understand the music better, by immersing and surrrounding myself with it. That applies to a lot of the other music I play as well- I just wish I had more to play. Not to worry, if I get into YO that will come.