Traveling between Philly and NYC this week on Amtrak to make it to various rehearsals in time: $250.

Stress endured this week: Couple years off my life.

Not freaking out, getting into a strange groove and giving probably my best performance of the Beethoven triple concerto in front of a packed concert hall, convincing even my brother and harshest critic: Priceless.

I've been sick for most of this week...the concert last saturday left me completely exhausted with the concerto first half and beethoven's 9th in the second half - when I got home that night, I could barely stand straight! - and despite taking sunday off, watching the Eagles game and playing Minesweeper (setting new personal record of 119 seconds on expert, though I broke it today again with 114 seconds :P) I still apparently didn't recover enough. My trio performance on Thursday went rather poorly because of that, I just couldn't play the simplest shifts in tune! I missed a whole lot of classes too. Apparently, there's a federal law now that requires professors to report students who miss two classes in a row to the administration - a result of 9/11. Thank goodness that the prof who told me this decided not to do so because a.) he did see me on my way to a trio rehearsal at some point inbetween the two missed classes, and b.) he just didn't think I looked like a terrorist. Of course, I had to straighten him out about the second point: "You think that's a cello that I'm carrying on my back??" to which he replied: "Well, if you are carrying a bazooka in there, that's ok, just let me borrow it for a second. I think I'm going to aim it at some administrative offices around here..." (to clarify: there's a big war going on between administration and faculty, because the faculty recently formed a union which the administration tried to declare illegal by rather dirty means).

I'm going to Vienna over winter break! Initially we were supposed to be going from 12/28 to 1/6, which would bring me back in time for my first day of teaching at the Bryn Mawr Conservatory on 1/8, as well as first day of classes at Mannes on the 10th. But good old mommy found a cheaper fare for coming back on the 10th and went for it without checking back with me...so now I have to explain to the director of the music school that I'm missing the first day of teaching because of vacation in Vienna, and I miss the first day of classes too. Not to mention jetlag adjustment...

But I am happy to see my dad and my old friends there again. Last time I went back for New Year's (two years ago), we did some crazy things...like shooting fireworks around in parks (one by accident towards an apartment building!), bar hopping all night, getting wasted (at some point, one of my friends as a joke told a random girl at a bar to come over and kiss me, which she did and I did NOT appreciate). Then the best part of that night: pretending like we were tourists (all of my friends speak at least one foreign language; I busted out my most rapid Americanized English as well as some Chinese), asking people for directions to "the best bar in Vienna" and pretending we didn't understand their attempts at answering, thus making fools out of those people. Harr harr harr...See, I can be evil too.

Wednesday I had my last concert of the semester at Mannes, a performance with my piano quartet. The concert started at noon: before that, I had my lesson at 8:30am followed by quartet rehearsal at 10, class at 10:30, back to rehearsal at 11. I didn't even have time in the morning to shower and went to school with my hair unkempt and messy (I went to sleep the night before with slightly wet hair). Though it was kinda interesting - several people (the female kind ;)) commented that I looked very "sharp" that day, and the violist in my quartet even asked me if I had my hair done by a stylist. What can I say...I'm a natural beauty. :P.

The concert went ok. Most of it felt pretty good, but at the very end of the last movement we fell apart, because, yes, the pianist didn't catch a spot where the violinist and I were taking a little bit of time. GRRRRRR! We went over that spot in rehearsals too - it's so frustrating. On the other hand, my solo at the beginning of the third movement went pretty well. And my teacher, to my surprise, came to the performance and said that he thought I did "very, very well" and that it was an "excellent performance!" You have to understand - after a whole semester of him critiquing me in lessons (you should see some of the copies of music that he's scribbled full with comments) week after week, hearing this from him felt pretty damn good.

But back to the busy day that was Wednesday. After the concert, a short breather - the violinist and violist in my quartet and I went to a Thai restaurant nearby for lunch. That place was awesome! We ordered four dishes (we had four people) and ended up not being able to finish the food and only paid like $7 each. Well, I guess "only" is pretty relative - for Manhattan, at least, that's cheap. Anyhow, the food was insanely fast too - the restaurant was pretty packed, but our stuff came out in like 5 minutes. After lunch, it was back to the school - I had to do one more lesson observation for my pedagogy class. Unfortunately, the first student I was going to observe - a four-year-old beginner - was too shy to let me sit in. Even bribing him with all sorts of things didn't work - he was so scared that he started crying...Before the next student, the teacher had a little bit of time, so she, me, and another student who was there to observe started chatting. We were all Taiwanese, but again, I was told that I didn't look it; the teacher thought I was "Japanese or something." Anyways, the conversation was fun, I found out lots of info about doctor's programs in music in the area.

Butidigress, again. After the observation, I finally got home, took a nap, then it was paper writing time - a 5 page paper outlining a lesson plan for a beginner cellist that was really due two weeks ago. Finished the thing somewhere around 5 or 6 in the morning, and turned it in in class at 10! Sweet. Another class right after until 1, then went back home to take a nap; I had another class at 4, for which I had a homework assignment to do...did it on my way to school in the subway ;). After class, straight to Penn Station and catching Amtrak into philly, then the R5 out to Bryn Mawr to [The Point] just in time for a show with [John Conahan]. His new CD is coming out in February, featuring none other than me on a handful of his tracks! After the show, it was back to NYC and finally into bed.

Last day of teaching before holidays yesterday...found out that one of my students got into district orchestra!! She didn't make it last year as a freshman, but this year her overall score was 9th out of 50-some cellists who tried out and 16 that were taken. Not only that, but her solo score was the third highest!! (on the downside, this means that her scales and sightreading weren't as good. shame on me :(.) She's going to get to do, amonst other pieces, Mussorgsky's Pictures of an Exhibition and the last movement of Brahms' first symphony. I'm so excited for her!!

And my crazy piano student (the 8-year old one) has struck back with a vengeance: after two weeks of rather poor lessons due to distractions in the form of parties at either his parents' house or a neighbor friend's house, he went on a rampage yesterday, learning 4 new pieces and insisting on rehashing 4 old ones that were Holiday-ish.

I found this digging through my hard drive:

It says: my job causes me sleepless nights! :D

Ugh, a couple more days of classes left, a few homework assignments and papers...but I seem to be in holiday mode already. I did go to class this morning, but then spent almost all afternoon updating my website...I changed the coloring (you might have noticed the subtle change in background color from dark blue to white) and added a lot of [photos], mostly from [my trip to Vienna three years ago]. Visited the maker of my cello, [James McKean], then went out for dinner today with Brian (braving close to zero temperatures with wind chill) for some Mexican.

I'm probably going to head out tonight with a bunch of people in my apartment...not exactly what I ought to be doing, but it's looking to be the last night that some of my closer friends in the apartment and I can be out all together. Frank is leaving tomorrow morning, and Jonas, being an exchange student, won't be around after the holidays. *Sniff* Jonas, you shall be missed!

Today my brother came to visit since school is already over for him...the highlight of the day (well, we did like three things) was definitely our trip to Flushing, NY, home of a big Taiwanese community. It was soo awesome! We came out of the subway stop and literally the first thing we hear is two people standing on the side of the street, speaking Taiwanese. AAAH!!! That moment was indescribable...I didn't realize I missed Taiwan so much. We walked for a couple more feet - and discovered this nice bakery!! (One of my fondest memories of Taiwan is this reallly awesome bakery in Kaoshiung called Chun Fa Mian Bao Dian - I used to not be able to get enough of the yummy kinds of bread they have there). So my brother and I had to go in, and we just loaded up on all out favorite kinds of bread we could find (basically, any bread that has scallions, or curry).

Then, we just walked around T-town (as my brother and I have come to call it) and bought a whole slew of DVDs of chinese movies (one martial arts flick with Jackie Chan's son in it! who is apparently really famous in China these days) and classical music concerts, as well as a bunch of CDs with Taiwanese, Chinese, and Singaporean pop music. Of course, my brother and I pretty much had no idea about what is "in" at the moment, so we just asked the lady to give us recommendations. The CDs we ended up getting were: one of a band made up of 12 girls - creatively named the 12 girls band - who all play traditional chinese instruments, which I thought was very interesting. Though, I gave it a quick listen tonight, and I'm a bit disappointed; it just sounds like regular pop with some traditional chinese instruments. Maybe my expectations were too high to begin with...nowadays, how could music made solely by traditional chinese instruments possibly survive in the pop world? Anyways, also a CD of Jay Chou, a CD of this group that apparently never appears live but puts their songs online (or something like that), and another one that my brother decided to go with based on her recommendation, though I have no idea who it is. Finally, two more items - one VCD of Jackie Chan singing! And another one that I think my brother thought was the sound track to the movie Hero, but I'm not so sure because Faye Wong is so prominently featured on the cover. While we're at it, the other DVDs I bought were "Breaking the Silence", a movie with Gong Li, of whom I have some other movies that I really like); "Beijing rocks", a movie about three young adults struggling in modern Beijing; the aforementioned Jackie-Chan's-son movie; and two classical music dvds, one a Tchaikovsky Gala with performances of Yo-yo Ma and Perlman, and the other a recital by Arthur Rubinstein.

As it got late, we walked around looking for a place to eat that wasn't too shabby but also not too up-scale/expensive, then headed back to Manhattan to my apartment where we watched "Donnie Darko," a weird, weird and freaky movie that nobody seems to know (I didn't know it until Brian suggested watching it tonight). The main character in that movie has visions in which a giant human-sized bunny with a skull-like face talks to him in this freaky voice. Yeah.

In any case, now it's time to do my final paper of the year! Ah, priorities.

Oliver Hsu, reporting in live from Vienna (braving strange keyboard layouts and all)! We arrived around 10am this morning and spent most of the day at my aunt's house where the big surprise for us (especially my brother and me) was the visit of my cousin, who is 12 years my elder and having lived in Vienna until a couple years ago (at which point he moved to Taipei, Taiwan) basically watched both me and my brother grow up from our infant years until we moved to the US. Ah, so many fond memories of time we spent with him!

But I should do things chronologically, so a bit about yesterday first. Our first stop was actually Munich this year, because a couple weeks ago, right before my mom booked the plane tickets, she managed to get in contact with a long-lost friend of hers whom she has known since before my birth - in fact, they became friends because they had in common that they were both from Taiwan and pregnant at that time. That friend's son (Shyh-Horng) and I, and later my brother and that friend's later daughter (Jia-Chii, two years younger than me) all became friends, but then they moved to town in Southern Germany about 45 minutes outside of Munich. We've visited them once there I think, but then we moved to the US, and they changed phone numbers, and so lost sight of each other...until this year. So, we stopped in Munich, where Jia-Chii showed us around the city a little bit and then the two families had a nice dinner together. Fun!

Then early the next day (as in 5:45am) we had to say goodbye and headed to the aiport. Got into Vienna where my dad picked us up and gave us the good news aeout my cousin! Unfortunately, there was some bad news too...my uncle in Kaoshiung is pretty ill these days, and an old friend of my family's recently apparently attempted suicide, due to the dire financial situation he's in (the economy in Austria has been going downhill for a lot of small businesses as big corporate competitors have been pushing them out since Austria joined the EU; this year, the number of businesses that filed for bankrupcy reached a record high since Austria became an independent state again after the unification with Germany). Sad. At least, spending the afternoon at my aunt's house with my cousin cheered things up a bit.

Of course, all the events of the last couple days were overshadowed by the terrible tragedy in Southeast Asia and the evergrowing number of casualties there...it's so horrid that it feels silly to even try to say something about it. I just hope that the survivors can find the hope and strength amidst all this tragedy to keep them going. It's nice to see the rest of the world show so much sympathy; in Austria, aside from monetary support, almost all major cities have cancelled their planned New Year's fireworks and pledged to donate the money to rescue efforts instead, and the traditional New Year's concert by the Vienna Philharmonic has been shortened, cutting the traditional ending in the form of the cheerful Radetzky March from the program. Sadly, there are people who in public forums criticized these acts as being pointless because they don't save any lives etc., but I'm glad because I think these are forms of support on a level beyond the material that no amount of money can provide.