Sunday, October 16, 2005

Of Pits, Drinks and the Viola


There are now two places on my Ultimate Blacklist - my list of places I never want to set foot in again. They are: Pudu bus station in KL and the Immigration Dept in Thailand. Pudu, for those of you who are not familar with it, is supposed to be a national pit-stop but is generally regarded as a national armpit - I mean seriously, the busses wait below the station, spewing their exhaust right up through the stairways into the station. As for the Immigration Dept, shall we just say that one learns that Einstein is right and time indeed is relative - well, it slows down anyway. The sake on the other hand, was great... and on our final order the waitress asked whether she could have one of the empty bottles back because they had run out. Hic and aligato, you know what I mean.

So, it's just a few hours till I'll be on my way back to Penang. I'm somewhat unopinionated about it, strangely enough - I reached burnout level weeks ago and I suppose I've just gotten used to working in overdrive. Still, there're two important projects to take care of in the next week, so if I don't see everyone enough, my apologies in advance.

Rather liked this:

"For about a hundred years before Berlioz, the viola had unobstrusively played the fourth part in a string quartets and the string section of the orchestra. One is reminded of a soldier's description of war - hours of boredom followed by minutes of hectic activity." Elizabeth Lawrence in Symphony Magazine.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

y should viola has the 'unobstrusive fourth part'? if viola part is in anyway boring, then cello parts of the time is probably the same, if not worse...