Wow. One month of the new year has gone by without any posts. Much longer than I expected. But I only have so much time. Time spent practising guitar is time away from posting. Time spent posting is time away from reading. Time reading is time away from watching youtube videos.

Anyway, I want to record that I’ve finished reading Karen Armstrong’s The Great Transformation. A more detailed review will appear when time permits.

Inspired by the movie, “I Am Legend”, the first videos I’m posting for the new year are from Bob Marley. Two very cheerful songs that really cheered me up. Incidentally, I think I only knew what the big deal about Bob Marley was after getting hooked onto these two songs, courtesy of the movie. Yeah, I’m slow I know.

Bob Marley – Three Little Birds

Bob Marley – Stir It Up

Since I’ve been tagged by Strat-o-blogster, here’s 8 random facts about me to share with you before the year ends.

I think Aesop is the most concise storyteller ever. Because I prize minimalism, he ranks among the greatest story tellers in my universe. This is the best story I’ve heard illustrating the meaning of the lesser of two evils.

I’ve had a life long interest in freaks and the bizzarre. My favourite sites on these topics are Proceedings of the Athanasius Kircher Society and The Human Marvels and unfortunately both sites have no RSS. Check out Kircher Society’s post on the self-mummifying monks of Japan and also the Voynich Manuscript (another link), which has fascinated me for the longest time.

This is a funny story from my life. When I was an exchange student in Amsterdam in 2000, we used to have lots of house parties attended by international students from all over the world. During one of the parties, my friend from mainland China, Zhang, asked me what’s the meaning of “penis”. So, I told him in Mandarin that it referred to the male sex organ. He got a shock, turned pale and returned to his conversation partner, a female Kiwi called Erika. Erika came to me and asked “Boon! What did you tell him?”. So I recounted what I just recounted here. It turns out that Zhang had asked Erika what was her favourite food and she had replied “Peanuts”. Because he didn’t understand what “Peanuts” meant, she suggested that he asked me. I laughed so hard till I had tears in my eyes when she explained the situation to me.

I love paradoxes, especially paradoxes of self-reference.

Related to paradoxes, proof and truth (all the concepts that attracted my philosophical interest), I once set a goal to understand Godel’s Incompleteness Theorems. I got to the third chapter of Herbert Enderton’s A Mathematical Introduction to Logic, which is the chapter on Incompleteness Theorems, worked through one or two sections but regrettably never completed the remaining sections.

My favourite quote is from a friend, a logician, “If you leave everything till the last minute, then you only have 1 minute to do everything!”. That’s efficiency for you. Not to mention a terribly exciting life.

I spent 10 days living like a monk when I attended my first Vipassana meditation course.

The best non-classical guitar instruction I’ve come across is from Jimmy Bruno and Tomo Fujita. For classical guitar instruction in Singapore, I would recommend Robert Luse.

Won’t be tagging anyone since I can’t think of anyone to tag right now….

See the trailer here.

I also wish to record some other events before the year ends.

This year is a year of reunion. Many friends I’ve not seen for years, such as my ex-neighbours from my teens, I finally got to meet a few months back. I also recently found an ex-classmate whom I’ve lost touch with since I was 16 on facebook. Amazing!

I bought the POD XT Live on the last day before the new Goods & Services tax was raised from 5% to 7%. It was an excellent buy. All thanks to Chris’ recommendation. Unfortunately, the POX X3 Live has just been released a few months back and I don’t use the POD XT Live as much since I’m learning jazz now and use mainly a clean tone.

I joined Jimmy Bruno’s online guitar institute. It was the best decision I’ve made so far on non-classical guitar instruction. If you have an interest in jazz guitar or would like to learn how to improvise and understand what to do on the guitar instead of just behaving like a parrot on the guitar and playing licks that you don’t know how to fit into other musicical contexts, please do yourself a favor and join Jimmy Bruno’s guitar institute. I found their vision to be an online guitar conservatory very attractive. Jimmy Bruno’s site is so good that I feel like I no longer need to buy any more guitar instructional materials given the clarity, concepts, guidance, method and syllabus that I’m getting from Jimmy Bruno. In fact, I know I’m being absolutely irrational and greedy whenever I give in to temptation to buy guitar instruction materials since Jimmy Bruno’s materials give me all that I need and takes so much time to digest. Incidentally, for the best classical guitar instruction in Singapore, please head on to Robert Luse’s website.

People talk about the Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute

Jimmy Bruno Guitar Institute

I bought these books: Karen Armstong’s “A History of Jerusalem”, “A History of God”, “The Great Transformation”, “Muhammad”, Graham Priest’s “The Limits of Thought”, Raymond Smullyan’s “The Riddle of Scheherazade”, R.M Sainsbury’s “Paradoxes”, Derek Bailey’s “Improvisation”, two volumes of Rumi’s poems translated by Coleman Barks: “Rumi: The Book of Love” and “Rumi: Bridge to the Soul: Journeys into the Music and Silence of the Heart”, “Crucial Conversations” by Kerry Patterson, Joseph Grenny, Ron McMillan, and Al Switzler, William James’ “The Varieties of Religious Experience” (which I read quickly about ten years ago), Hume’s “A Treatise of Human Nature”and some Vipassana meditation books.

I stopped before completing R.M. Bucke’s “Cosmic Consciousness” and Karen Armstong’s “A History of Jerusalem”.

I finished reading Malcolm Gladwell’s “Blink”. While reading the chapter on Kenna’s Dilemma, I found a strange link between Vipassana Meditation as taught by Goenka and its theory of sensations and Cheskin’s theory of sensation transference. See another link here on Cheskin. Both Goenka and Cheskin seem to believe that there are sensations in our bodies that we are unaware of. This causes us to be at their mercy when we react in habitual ways to such sensations. The main difference between the two is that Goenka teaches Vipassana meditation so that we can remain equanimous to such sensations after we learn to detect them while Cheskin uses such sensations to market and advertise products.

I got cheated of $100 by a hotel operator.

Sometime in Nov 07, I dreamt that I looked into a mirror and realised that I lost all my teeth. I saw this dream as a timely and mid-life reminder of my mortality, to do as much as I can before I die.

I attended a whirling dervishes performance by the Istanbul Historical Turkish Music Ensemble with Chloe on 21 Oct 07 at the Esplanade theatre.

TURKISH HISTORIC MUSIC

I went for field camp and failed my IPPT during my in-camp training.

3 classic melodies

Some where over the rainbow

Embraceable You

Like someone in love

Send in the clowns

Martin Gardner, the grand old man of recreational mathematics and puzzles, once wrote that Raymond Smullyan “is a unique set of personalities that includes a philosopher, logician, mathematician, musician, magician, humorist, writer, and maker of marvelous puzzles.”

In this delightful video, you can hear Smullyan playing Bach’s Well-Tempered Clavier, Beethoven Sonatas, Scarlatti Sonatas and Schubert’s Moments Musicauxand. Smullyan tosses out logic puzzles, musical anecdotes and near the end of the video, he also reads out passages from his books “This Book Needs No Title” and “The Tao is Silent”. Be warned though, this video is almost an hour long!

Although the eminent pianist Gunnar Johansen once expected Smullyan to ” become one of our important artists”, Smullyan developed tendonitis and could not go on to become a professional pianist.

I shall use this post to quote a passage from his book “Some Interesting Memories: A Paradoxical Life” that made me laugh:

…a man …was in search of immortality and read all sorts of alchemy books, but could not find anything practical in them. Then, he heard of a great sage in the East who was a specialist in this area, and so he went on a pilgrimage to find him. After twelve years, he found the sage and asked him, “Is it really possible for one to live forever?” The sage replied, “Oh, quite easily, providing he does two things.” “And what are those two things?” the man asked eagerly. “The first thing is to always tell the truth, never make any false statement. That’s a small price to pay for immortality, isn’t it?” “Of course,” replied the man, “and what is the second thing?” “The second thing,” replied the sage, “is to say ‘I will repeat this sentence tomorrow.’ If you do those two things, I guarantee that you will live forever!” The man thought for a moment and said: “Oh, of course, if I do those two things I will live forever, because if I truthfully say that sentence today, then I will indeed repeat it tomorrow…and so forth. But your solution is not a practical one! How can I be sure of truthfully saying that I will repeat this sentence tomorrow if I can’t be sure of being alive tomorrow! Your solution is not a practical one!” “Oh,” replied the sage, “you wanted a practical solution! No, I don’t deal with practice; I deal only with theory.”

Here’s more funny and philosophical stuff from Smullyan: a dialogue between a mortal and God on freewill.

See also this unofficial myspace page created by a fan of Smullyan.

A remarkably poignant song that I’ve loved for such a long time – Same Auld Lang Syne. A great Christmas song. Merry Christmas everyone!

Same Auld Lang Syne (live)

Leader of the band

Unfortunately Dan Fogelberg passed away from prostate cancer on 16 Dec 07. He was 56. Rest in peace. Your music has touched the hearts of many. Share your condolences here. See also the New York Times obituary.

I’m really enjoying the music by Freak Kitchen. Fair to say I haven’t enjoyed any of the newer metal bands as much as Freak Kitchen.

Raw

Nobody’s laughing

Mattias IA Eklundh Lesson

“Crazy”, the movie about Hank Garland was launched on December 10, 2007 by Favored Nations Executive Producers Ray Scherr and Steve Vai. See Steve Vai speaking about the movie in the video below.