Things have not been easy lately. My cancer-ridden aunt, the one I visited this past summer, passed away several weeks ago, on October 16th. Despite knowing it was bound to happen sooner or later, I still found it difficult to cope with. She was barely 50, never smoked, never drank; she taught her piano students with great passion, and was all around a great person - strong willed, but with good heart and intentions. I felt obligated to attend the funeral: my brother and I always enjoyed being around her in my childhood, and she also had great affinity for the two of us (especially for me it seems, because of her having taken care of me so much when I was still a little kid). I debated for days whether to request a leave of absence for several days to fly to Taiwan to attend the ceremony. In the end, the decision was to miss the funeral and mourn and pay respect in other ways. Wherever my aunt is now, I hope she understands.

Whether it's partially related to this sad event or not, I've been feeling like I'm just a bit out of control these days. I'm not usually a sarcastic kind of person (well, except when with my brother), but on a few occasions lately I've caught my thoughts taking on a rather biting spin. Are years of defiant living by my idealistic ways finally catching up to me? I can't be thankful enough for having crossed paths with a person who seems to live by similar ways and understand the value in my thinking. Amazing what difference the presence of a kindred spirit makes...

Heavy snowflakes whirl
Waves of Brahms caressing drums
Dopamine rises

At long last, finally some time and motivation to write here again! Goodness, it's been 5 months since I last wrote something here...let's, uh, wipe off some of this virtual dust here...anyways, let's see what I've been up to these 5 months:

The obvious first...My three-year venture into the music world has officially come to an end: I finished my spring semester at Mannes and graduated, so I'm now a proud owner of a Master's of Music with a double major in cello performance and music theory! Not that it feels any different than four years ago when I was a proud owner of a Bachelor's of Arts with a major in computer science and a minor in music...I'm still asking myself the same question - "What now??" But, I am glad I took the time out, the things I've learned, musically or life related, have been tremendous. Yeah, this probably calls for more reflection...but another time.

A few weeks after graduation, I got a phone call from the New Jersey Philharmonic Orchestra - they needed another cellist for their 2-week tour to Korea. There wasn't much of a pay (if you can count $100 pocket money "pay" to begin with), but the free flight to Asia came in quite handy since I'd been planning to visit my relatives in Taiwan around that same time anyways. Korea was fun - except for one night where the orchestra administration apparently couldn't book rooms in a decent hotel for us and had to resort to motels, located in, ummm, the red light district...Yes, some people even had free condoms in their rooms. But, free porn! :) Anyways, Taiwan after that was pretty great too...some sightseeing, and lots of table tennis playing with my dad (who was also visiting around the same time). I also had a chance to see my cousin Johnny, whom I haven't seen in about 10 years I think. And even then, it was only for a day or so, as part of a family reunion, so bottom line is that I didn't really know him at all. But we got to hang out for a whole day in Taipei, which was fun. After the Taiwan visit, I took a little side trip to Osaka, Japan to visit my piano trio pianist and good friend Kiyomi...then it was back to Seoul, Korea for a few days to hang out with good ol' Mike Cho. The highlight there definitely was the night out in a club trying what's called "booking" - essentially you pay about $500 or so, and your group of friends gets a private room, some food, some booze, and a waiter whose job it is to spend the night running around the club looking for single women and bringing them to your room (though never against their will, and they are free to leave your room whenever they want). I suppose the idea is that it gets rid of the uncomfortable task of approaching women if you're the guy...though there definitely were some awkward moments too. But, a fun experience, nonetheless, and it's not everyday that you walk out of a night club at 6am in the morning...I got back to US soil around midnight of the 9th of July, just in time to resume my teaching at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory that afternoon, MAJORLY jet-lagged...

BTW, while in Taiwan I snatched up a new cellphone/PDA, the HTC Touch. A bit similar to the IPhone (well, primarily intended to be finger driven), except better, IMO. Man, it is tiny, it is sleek, it is HOT, and I'm absolutely in love with it. Yeah.

And after that? I moved into a new apartment with my brother, out in Forest Hills. Nice, clean, safe area, I really like it out there. Then, last weekend, on the 21st, I drove down to Gettysburg, PA, for a wedding of two fellow Swarthmore graduates (and the bride is also a fellow Mannes alum!) and saw none other than Nori Heikkinen - fellow Swarthmore '03 member, Midnight Quintet and PYO buddy, and fellow music/computer science freak/geek - for the first time in four years (since graduation)! Playing together again, plus hanging out and catching up at the dinner was great - and I learned how to waltz (yes, that's right - I, the Viennese, was taught how to dance the quintessential Viennese dance by an American with Finnish last name. Funny, huh).

Well, I think that about sums it up. Now that the fun & frolicking is over, it's time to get serious and get a job...

So while I'm looking for a full-time job (chugging along, two interviews coming up tomorrow and Friday), I've started working part-time as a web developer for a company that a college friend and classmate of mine started earlier this year - Snooth, a Web 2.0 wine review site with a social-networking twist a la facebook or myspace. It's still relatively new (the site went live in June), but it looks slick, works great, and it's constantly getting updated with new features. Check it out, and if you do, don't forget to look up user h2o1 :).

Lady Luck has smiled upon me again! This time, she's blessed me with quite a nice collection of job offers, out of which I decided to accept a job with a company in Jersey City, which means that starting in two weeks, on 9/4, I'll be commuting daily from Forest Hills all the way to the other side of Manhattan to Jersey City. And to think that only a little bit more than a year ago, I was living about a 15 minute walk away from my future workplace (albeit with rather negative outcome)!

I can't wait to start at my new job...but until then, it's full focus on my job at Snooth. Our latest developments include improvements to the Snooth Facebook Application, some search engine optimization, and recovery from two development server crashes within two days (shame be said here on our server host, who, upon noticing a hard drive failure, managed to pull out the healthy one, thus bringing down the system and losing us a few days' of work!). We've got some really cool stuff coming up over the next few weeks as well.

...at long last, the cosmic forces of fate have arranged for the trifecta of means, motivation, and muse-striking to coincide at a single point in space-time, and so I find myself sitting at my computer tipping away at my keyboard writing how at long last the cosmic forces of fate have arranged for the trifecta of means, motivation, and muse-striking to coincide at a single point in space-time, and so I find myself sitting at my computer tipping away at my keyboard writing how at long last...

So, as if that wasn't a strong hint, my mind has gone pretty deeply immersed into the world of computer science once again as I happily work away at my job. It's nifty stuff I do there, working primarily in Adobe Flex, C++, Javascript, and the occasional foray into the world of scripting languages such as Perl. Being on the infrastructure team, more emphasis is placed on well-thought-out architecture and organization rather than actual application development, which I welcome - analyzing a problem by iteratively abstracting more and more, I've found is surprisingly similar to doing musical analysis. And writing good code, to complete the circle, not unlike writing music. Contrary to what one might think, writing elegant, well-structured code feels as creative and challenging - and emotionally satisfying! - a task as writing a good fuge. Recursive functions, the continuous canons of code.

But my musical life continues as well. I don't practice as much as I'd like to, but regular engagements on approximately monthly basis with the New Jersey Philharmonic Orchestra (through which I get to play in venues like Lincoln Center and Carnegie Hall), my weekly teaching at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory (check out their new website with a nice picture of my...err, hand on the front page), and the occasional chamber music recital/concert keep me somewhat in shape. I've actually found that my playing in certain aspects has even improved - I dare say, for example, that my technical facility at playing the Bach Suite #6 - a piece as glorious as it is difficult - is better now compared to the time of my rendition of it at my graduation recital a year and a half ago! The brain is indeed a great source of mystery. The piano, too, remains as enjoyable a pastime as it has been. These days, I tend to spend my time realizing figured bass versions of Bach chorales and, of course, Brahms piano pieces.

Then, there are those days where my body just screams for some good exercise. Clearly, this has not been happening often enough lately, as my expanding waistline attests, but after having gotten over a sick spell and a few injuries (almost separated my left big toe's nail from the toe while snowboarding during the winter and consequently walked around for almost two months with a solid dark purple nail, prompting, uh, suspicious questions by my brother), I think I'm on the verge of getting back into regular exercise, which since last fall has been mostly running/working out at the gym and playing table tennis. Last Sunday, I checked out a table tennis tournament at the Fat Cat - a game club down in the village - with a friend, thinking it'd make for a good ease back into serious table tennis playing, and promptly ended up winning the tournament, including a double-or-nothing dare by the guy who organizes the table tennis activities at the club. That earned me a nice $180 - not a bad start into the new year, eh?

So, life is good. Except that my mom seems to be worried that I don't seem to be too worried about that whole marriage thing; questions like "How is your new workplace? Any nice ladies of your age?" - after the first week of work! - are a pretty good indication of that. It's not that I'm actively going out of my way of a relationship, but it's just that I'm still - and I will concede this - pretty darn picky when it comes to dating women, and these days, perhaps in light of the events of the past few years, I simply enjoy these things I do more than putting my time into trying to find a relationship with someone (and dealing with people who can't seem to be able to accept my choice of someone else or to stay single, as in one recent ugly case). I'm at peace with myself and my life, which is not something I could say about most of my (teenage & adult) life, and I think that makes for a pretty strong case.

Anyhow, enough rambling for today. This moment of cosmic coincidence is drawing to a close as my laundry awaits me downstairs, my thoughts are derailing into greater and greater incohesion, and the last thing anybody wants is for me to end by writing how I have nothing left to write about other than writing how I have nothing left to write about other than writing how I

yeah.