Hello, hello? This is your favorite cellist/programmer/multi-lingual Austrian-born Taiwanese American (apologies if you know somebody else that fits this description and you like that one better :) reporting in, live from Bryant Park in the heart of New York City, where I'm just one of quite a collection of people enjoying a beautifully radiant sun casting its rays down while occasional children's laughter interrupts the soothing sound of a flute playing the theme from the second movement of Dvorak's New World Symphony. Yes, this laptop I bought used on Ebay for less than $300 a couple months ago (PIII-700, 128 MB Ram, two batteries!, upgraded subsequently with wireless card) is paying off more and more - I couldn't imagine lugging my other laptop, weighing in at about 10 lbs and fittingly named "behemoth," around like I've been carrying this 3 pounder, and being able to be outside and still have 'net access is - well, priceless :).

Not that I would have internet access in my room today anyways, since my neighbor's router seems to be cut off from the internet. And before you raise your finger and start chastising me, I actually went to talk to the neighbor and we're splitting costs ;-P. I've even been secretly administering the router as the admin password never got changed; if it weren't for me, her wireless network would be competing with the other 6 or so networks (I kid you not!) in the vicinity that are all sitting on the factory default channel 6 and dekeing it out with each other. Dekeing...is that the word I'm looking for? or is it duking? dukeing?...negotiating. There :).

So, it's been a couple weeks again since my last entry. This past weekend we had a relatively big family reunion, with two families on my mom's side coming (including one in which I've known the kids pretty much since their birth!). That was fun, my brother and I showed one of my cousins around Swarthmore and Penn since he's getting into the college-application period now. Lots of big meals too, of course, and Monday night my brother and I took three of our cousins to the Freedom concert. All in all, very fun and amusing couple days.

I'm finally also getting to see New York a bit nowadays. I've arranged my schedule so that I have pretty much every Saturday afternoon free, which armed with a special issue of national Geographic with an insider's guide to New York I've been using to explore this place a bit.

Well, they say all good things must come to an end (I like to think a special select group of good things goes on forever!), and my laptop sure is no exception. And neither is my ability to withstand the steadily setting sun that's been burning down onto my thighs and is now blinding me to the point where I can barely see the screen... I'll conclude this entry with a quote I encountered recently:

Everybody can cry for help; but when you hear somebody making that very same plea, will you do as you would have others do to you? Will you leave no one behind?

I thought I would spend a little bit of time to reflect on my recent increased involvement with the LaRouche movement. I first got in touch with them a couple months ago, when after some sort of gig or so I was walking back to my dorm at 20th & 8th and walked by a group of people trying to drawing people's attention and money to some sort of political movement against Bush - nothing unusual in the city of Manhattan. Not terribly knowledgable in US politics (well, politics in general) myself, I was about to do the usual stunt: avoid eye contact, walk by as quickly as possible...but all the sudden I heard one of those people saying something about Pablo Casals and citing a quote by him. I guess their trick worked; once they single you out in the crowd like that it's hard to run away. So I ended up chatting with them; they introduced themselves as the LaRouche movement which basically attempts to spread the ideas and thoughts of Lyndon LaRouche, political economist, repeated candidate for presidential nomination of the Democratic Party. Yes, they did end up getting money in addition to my attention too, but they also gave me some literature in exchange that I thought would be good to read to get a little bit of a better idea about the political situation.

Like many people, though, it wasn't until recently that I started taking them seriously; that is, after LaRouche's activities in Congress helped prevent Cheney's attempt to implement the [nuclear option]. Occasional calls, usually once or twice a month, from the member I spoke to that day on the street, I found to be informative (they tended to reveal information that I didn't pick up in the news) - information about an impending economical crisis due to the bubble that the idea of homeownership has become nowadays, about political events, webcasts by LaRouche etc. But the incident with the Nuclear Option was what really triggered my curiosity.

So I went to one of their Saturday afternoon meetings - for which the format is such that usually one person will give an analysis of events of the past week which is then followed by a brief Q&A session. No doubt, this analysis was incredibly intriguing, and the speaker impressively knowledgable in a whole variety of subjects ranging from classics to history to philosophy, even music, to all of which he would draw parallels from current events. I'm told that Lyndon LaRouche is even more brilliant in this way. However - and that is a big deterrent - I was somewhat disgusted at the members' repeated use of rather low words like "devil" or "bastard" in reference to people like Cheney, Bush (in that order too - while Bush is just incompetent, Cheney is viewed as a sociopath and the more dangerous of the two).

Then there's also the LaRouche Youth Movement, which as far as I can tell is basically an organization to provide the youth of today with an alternate, "right" education that teaches them to appreciate the beauty of life, art, music, etc. Still, I'm repulsed by the fact that these people are also taught to call Bush and Cheney "sick bastards." Gives this whole thing kind of a propaganda kind of feel...perhaps I'm stepping over a line here, but reminds it does remind me somewhat of the Hitler Youth. Which is ironic too, because one of the things LaRouche has done was likening 9/11 to the Reichstag Fire that enabled Hitler to rise to power.

Anyways, I have been reading a book I got from them lately, titled - ugghh - "Children of Satan." (don't you agree this is getting a bit extreme?) Again, the same kind of name-calling to all sorts of political figures, but also some very interesting information, like revealing that an alarmingly large number of members in the government are followers of Leo Strauss, a fascist philosopher who believed strongly in Nietzschean ideals of social structure. Which means, they believe that there are a select few, known as the "philosophers," who know the "truth" - that there is no God, that mankind is insignificant, etc; followed by people who are the "gentlemen" who believe in the "philosophers" but don't understand the truth; and lastl, the "slaves" who have to be controlled by the "philosophers" through the "gentlemen" in order to be able to live because they can't handle the truth; this control is established through ideas like virtues, morals, religion, which are also determined by the "philosophers" not in the people's best interest, but in their own. Scary stuff.

I find all this really interesting, but I suspect that part of that is also caused by a certain air of sensationalism...and I think the danger exists of falling into the trap and believing all this just to get the feeling of "having the inside scoop." Just as long as I recognize this, I think I'll be good, no? As long as I take these things with a grain of salt, keeping in mind that some of it could indeed be pure propaganda.

By the way, if you're interested in finding out more about LaRouche, check out [this site].

A more lighthearted entry today. After the usual ear training lesson I stopped by Bryant Park to check mail and upload the latest version of [ROCI] onto our server at Penn, then met up with Atsuro and Catherine, class of '06 and '07 at Swarthmore, respectively. Atsuro I used to play soccer with in the International Club soccer team, and Catherine I've been keeping in touch through music, if you've been following along in my journal. In any case, we ended up walking through part of Central Park to eat at a Vietnamese restaurant in UWS, then took the subway down into the financial district and walked around Wall Street, the South Street Seaport area, and onto Brooklyn Bridge. Saw this incredibly tiny dog that just kept running around and running around with sheer endless energy...then people dancing Salsa at the South Street seaport. I took some pictures with my phone, but I don't know how they came out. If I only had my trusty digital camera which I seem to have lost during the family reunion two weeks ago...Anyways, look for the pictures I took today in the [NY picture gallery].

Somewhat unrelated, but too crazy to leave out: it turns out Catherine knows the pianist in my piano quartet from last semester because she sat next to her on a flight from Japan to the US back in Winter of 2003!

What an awful day. Not only was the weather yucky, but on top of that, the car my brother and I share (henceforth referred to as "my car" :P) broke down today on our way back from Trenton (where I arrived 40 minutes late because of a bomb alarm - a left-alone bag - in the train station near my apartment) - the alternator, responsible for charging the battery while the motor is running, stopped working. We made it to a gas station near our destination (Bertucci's restaurant where we were going to have dinner with my mom and Mike Cho) and stopped to ask them to recharge the battery for us, but they didn't have a charger, and when we came out, the car was dead. Good thing we were so close to the restaurant - a quick call to Mike (my mom's phone was in my brother's hands, whose own phone was running out of batteries as well, so we couldn't reach her) and we were at the restaurant (me to gas station guy: "eh, first, we'll go eat, then we'll think about the car" - in hindsight, a good idea to get my on-the-verge-of-getting-upset brother to cool down, but I guess rather inconsiderate of the gas station's parking space).

But it only got worse from there...First, it took forever to get somebody from AAA on the line; then, the road service person got to my car just as my food came out so I hastily stuffed down a slice of pizza then drove off in my mom's car to the gas station; then, a failed attempt at jumpstarting the car (just to rule out the possibility that it wasn't a faulty alternator) and ensuing assurance the tow truck would be here within an hour; back to the Bertucci's, finishing off meal, incoming phone call at the end of the meal, but no towing truck but instead logistics difficulties between the contracted towing company and AAA, requiring me to make another call to AAA; another 20 minutes waiting on the line, clearing the problem (they didn't put down our case as a possible tow job...this after I told them that most likely the alternator is out??); dropped off at the gas station, another hour and 40 minutes of reading Plato and drinking 2 cans of Diet Pepsi from the gas station in my car until the truck finally came.

But, alas, it takes more than a broken car and spoiled meals and long waiting times in a stuffy car with bad lighting to break my spirits, so I'll conclude this entry - and this day - with a :P. Not a smile of happiness necessarily, but one of amusement at today's events and of content because the truly important things in my life remain steadfast.

P.S. I added a new section to my website: there's a new "voxie!" link on the homepage that takes you to a new blogger-powered blog that I can post to directly from my camera phone.

So the bad news...my car broke down again and we had to get it towed again. We got it back Tuesday morning, and Tuesday evening it was bad again; this time the engine just won't start up. Grrrr...Funny how like my brother's thing on Sunday was running out of battery (his cell and the car), for me today it's things braking from wear and tear in the form of the car and my legs being sore from yesterday's soccer game.