I attended Lukáš Vondrácek’s piano recital on Monday, November 22, 2010 at Weill Recital Hall within Carnegie Hall.  The recital was scheduled to start at eight pm; I bought my ticket at the box office a half hour before it started.  This is first time that I attended a recital alone and I was a little bit nervous.  But quickly my mood changed from nervous to excited when the ticket seller told me that my seat was in the front row.  When I found my seat and looked toward the stage, there was a black Steinway grand piano at center of stage. Unexpected, I realized that I had a best seat in the house. The piano was only about six feet away from me and I was able to see pianist’s fingers and facial expressions throughout the performance.

I attended the Vienna Philharmonic Orchestra’s performance of Ma Vlast (My Homeland) by the composer Bedřich Smetana on Thursday, September 30, 2010 at Carnegie Hall.  My cousin and I were sitting all the way up in the balcony. When I looked down, there were no empty seats.  The musicians came out and sat on the stage. The concertmaster came out to tune the orchestra. After they were ready, everyone started to applaud when Nikolaus Harnoncourt, the conductor, made his entrance.  I was very excited since it has been a long time since I attended a classical music concert, and I had never seen a performance at Carnegie Hall.

修練當下的力量

鑽石途徑

內容簡介

The novel Siddhartha by Hermann Hesse follows the life of a man who goes on a spiritual journey that begins in his youth and ends in old age. Siddhartha grows up the son of a Brahmin, and he masters all the doctrine and rituals of his Hindu religion at a young age. Even though he practices Om so perfectly, he feels something is missing and not connecting. He leaves home to find true enlightenment – Nirvana – which he feels that the religious leaders of his village cannot teach him. He follows many teachers, including the Samanas, Gautama the Buddha and his lover Kamala, but he is no closer to what he seeks. In the moment of his greatest despair when he attempts to drown himself in the river, Siddhartha is reconnected with Om, but this time he fully comprehends the significance of the holy word. By the end of his long journey, Siddhartha realizes through listening to the river that no one could have ever truly taught him the wisdom of enlightenment; it had to come from within himself.

The two novels The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao by Junot Diaz and In the Time of the Butterflies by Julia Alvarez intersect in a few interesting ways.  Both are stories about families from the Dominican Republic and how the experience of the “EI Jefe” regime impacted them and caused a loss of family wealth and status.  The major contrast is the difference in parenting that significantly influenced the outcome of their lives. Beli dropped out of school at a young age, didn’t know how to raise Lola because she never grew up with her parents, and therefore she didn’t know the right way to raise a child. The Mirabels raised their four daughters with family bonding of love and care, and provided them with good education so their lives turn out much more stable.