another chamber music concert on Tuesday - David's brass quintet played, and they were really good! They definitely sounded a lot better than their previous two concerts - it was pretty impressive. I'm so proud of all the work they've done and how far they've come. They're literally the first brass quintet to ever be formed at MIT!

on another note - we're playing this AWESOME piece for MITSO next semester - Carl Nielsen's Symphony no. 3. omg, it's amazing. the first 26 notes are unison A's in all fortissimo, and then it spreads out into this really cool Sibelius-esque type symphony. The brass parts are really intense, but they sound SOO good. I'm super excited to play it - apparently David and I both listened to the piece several times yesterday haha. I just had it playing on a loop while I was at the office.

mmmm...I just made a chicken casserole with green onions, mushrooms, onions, tomato/red pepper and basil sauce, stuffing, and mozzarella cheese...but it's too hot to eat now, so I guess I'll write something in here in the meantime.

I've actually been meaning to write in this blog for a while, but I've just been either too busy or have been writing in my notebook instead. Some of the things that I want to write down just end up being things that I don't really feel like putting in my blog - I suppose I still like a bit of privacy. It's kinda weird though, how back in high school, writing in my blog used to be a daily thing..but then when college started, I just kinda left off at it - I'm not really sure why. There just used to be things that would happen every day, and I'd feel the need to broadcast it out on my blog. In college - I guess either too many things happen, or there is just a gap between those who I write about in my blog and who actually reads this blog. In high school, it was more so that people who I saw every day would read and then comment on it, because it was relevant to them. But in college - when high school friends read my blog - does it still matter to them? If I write about running through the dorm shooting water guns during one spring break when just Berry and his brother and I were around, does anyone else find it as hilarious as I do, or will it just seem relevant to those on Conner 3 (speaking of Conner3..I REALLY miss the people there. It's not as bad, because I live with Amanda, and Holly and Batya are still around, but I do miss being there. I saw Greg right before Thanksgiving and couldn't have been happier!)

Sometimes I think that some things happen, and they leave a special place in your mind/heart, but then when I try to write them down, the magic of it disappears. I'm not really sure how to describe it. I think part of it is that it's hard to write things down and convey them exactly the way you see it in your mind. It's exactly the same way with music, although for music, it's easier for me to express what it is that I want to convey. I guess I did start learning music before I really knew how to write, so that may be part of what it is.

We had our December concert for MITSO (yes, I still play in MITSO!) last Saturday, and it was a pretty solid performance. So many people from work showed up - I was so happy!!! I've never had this many people I know show up for a MITSO performance all at one time. =) The first piece sounded REALLY good (Grantham's Southern Harmony) - the brass sounded amazing, and even David thought so too. Now, string players and piano players almost always think that brass sound amazing, even when they're apparently not THAT good, so for a trombone player to say that it was good, it must be good! On the flip side, there's this one poor awful trumpet player in MITSO. And if a string player can actually tell that he's bad...well, then he's pretty bad. He does try hard though, although I still don't understand how in the world he EATS and plays his trumpet at the same time during rehearsal. We also played the Beethoven's Eroica symphony. What an amazing piece! Music is truly a gift from God, hands down...and it's one thing I'm incredibly thankful for. I remember that growing up, sometimes I really hated practicing, and I'm really glad that my parents pushed me through it until I really started to enjoy it. It's the same reason that I can't seem to tear myself away from MITSO yet. I guess I'm just so used to the whole Tuesday/Thursday 7:30-10 pm drill that it would just seem too weird to not do it - it really would be like a hole in me if I didn't have MITSO. It really is something special to be able to play music. And whereas I love playing in orchestra just for the playing itself - like Adam (our conductor) said...I'd play the Beethoven 5 more times just for the sake of playing it...it's even more incredible to stand up after playing a piece with your arm sore and sweating from every pore to see the audience standing up and clapping and smiling, too. Music is an art, a performance, and a whole lot of hard work - it's really gratifying to see the audience appreciating it. A lot of times, I still dream about soloing on either violin or piano with an orchestra, or even just playing second violin in a major orchestra - and it's one of those dreams that it's like...well, it's passed, but maybe it's all for the better. I would love to be a musician for a living, but I would be afraid that I would start to dislike it, just because it's a JOB. In retrospect, it's probably better that I'm keeping music just as a hobby for now. I guess anyways, it's too late to make that decision - but life kinda just works out the way it should, and I have to say - I'm really happy with life in general right now (knock on wood!).

Speaking of music - I am SO proud of how much my brother has matured in his piano playing. I went to his chamber music concert yesterday - he played Lutoslawski's Variations on a Theme by Paganini, and it was so good!!!! His and his piano partner definitely got the most applause, and even David Deveau was happy (and he's a really picky music professor). I can't wait to hear him play his Emerson Fellowship recital in April.

Being out of school definitely has been a good idea for me, I think (knock on wood again). I'm still busy, but lightyears less busy than before. I'm busy now to a good degree - there's enough work to keep me occupied and not bored out of my mind, but not so much work that I'm sleeping 4 hours a night and constantly stressed and pissed off. Sometimes there's crunch time, and things are due, but it's not that bad at all. More so, now I have more time to think about life in general, and really....we complain about random things day to day, like how there's not enough yogurt in the fridge or about how one person gives way too much homework or why the Dallas Cowboys can't just fall off the face of the earth, but when you think about it, we are way luckier than so many people in the world, and it's an overwhelming though sometimes. I started volunteering too at Community Servings, where we make and package ready-to-eat meals (for 3 meals a day, 7 days a week), and one time I was packaging vanilla pudding with a friar called "Bro Tim" (haha). He was telling me about how he works in prisons and detention centers (or whatever they're called) with people who either are really glad to see him there or absolutely hate seeing him there. Before that, he used to work on the streets of New York in a church outreach type program with ALL sorts of people. It kinda made me realize that...well, there are many things that we can't change, and even though it makes me sad to think about, the only thing we can do is to try to make a difference, and hopefully we can help someone in some way, even if it's not direct.
That, and to always be thankful for what and who we already have and to always wish the best towards other people.

"Bach gave us God's word, Mozart gave us God's laughter, Beethoven gave us God's fire. God gave us music that we might pray without words."

I don't think there's any better way to describe it. =)

i'm back in houston now! until august 25th...i miss everyone in boston already. not quite sure how i'll get accustomed to boston weather again - i've gotten into the habit already of wearing jackets when it's 85 degrees outside..hmmm

Sometimes I wonder if I just don't do enough, or what it is that I'm doing wrong. I still sometimes think that it's better to wall off my emotions and just be by myself, because then one doesn't risk the possibility of getting hurt.

I don't know off the top of my head when the first day of summer officially is, but that doesn't matter, because I know that today was the first day of summer in Boston. It was warm, but slightly muggy outside in the morning and then got warmer and sunnier around noontime. But that wasn't the sign of summer. I knew it was summer when in the afternoon, I was walking back from lab and felt huge raindrops start to slowly fall on me and increase in intensity and frequency as I got closer to the dorm. And the whole time, the smell in the air was perfect - it was a raw, beautiful smell of green - the smell of wet crayons, but not as if the entire box was wet - just as if it was only the various shades of green crayon in the Crayola 100 crayon box got wet and released their scent. The air was slightly heavy but not too heavy - just enough so that when the crisp rain fell on my skin, it made the perfect contrast. And then later, when I actually got inside the dorm and looked out the window, it was pouring, but with the sun still peeking out from behind the clouds. Basically, it was perfect, and I knew summer was here.

Yesterday morning I was up early and trying to do some sort of work, but I just kept thinking about various people - sometimes I like to just sit and do that, think about people who I know, especially people who I haven't seen in a while. What are they doing? What are their lives like now? Are they happy, wherever they are? I guess in particular, I think most about the people who just graduated last year or two years ago, and it occurs to me how much I truly miss them. So I tried searching for various peoples' blogs, because I'm really bad at checking blogs and always forget the URL. Luckily, Nicola had an easy website to remember, but I didn't realize it was actually her blog until yesterday, haha. Reading her blog really made me think - I actually had some of the same thoughts myself about life after graduation. After we're done with MIT, what next? I had always thought it would be awfully noble to be a biology professor and spend the rest of my life with a huge lab and papers to read and grants to write, and I thought I actually would be happy. In fact, I still think that I would be really happy that way, but the problem is that I don't love one particular subject in particular. If I was truly into my work and really wanted to just keep on learning just for learning's sake - I think that would be awesome. But (for me at least) there's really no point of doing that and going through grad school if it's a subject that I'm just lukewarm about. I often feel like professors are one of the few types of people who truly enjoy their work - or maybe that's just here at MIT, but whatever it is, it's amazing. Either that, or grad students who actually really like their work and want to go and become professors afterwards. It seems to me that most grad students I talk to are just like "Yea, I'm just going to go straight to industry afterwards," and actually, that's perfectly fine - I'm going into industry anyways. But to actually know that you want to be a professor and that you want to do academia the rest of your life - I really think that's something special.