pressed for time
My calendar tells me I have 68 days before my Strategic Planning exam. What am I doing?!
We've enjoyed an extra couple of weeks of fine summery weather here in Toronto. Having seen this year's summer gone to bonkers, I am pleased to see the autumn that just started is showing a friendlier and warmer face.
I am so glad that my son is taking a keen interest in music. It has been two weeks since he started piano lessons. He is learning the rudimentary piano exercises, and practising how to write the various elements of written music---like the G and F clef. It all brings back memories of 20 years ago, when I first started learning solfeggio in high school. Hey, if the little boy can read and write music early, that part of his brain will make the unique connections now to allow him to make discoveries of his own and appreciate the meaning and value of music in the house throughout his childhood and adult life. It will be easier, cross my fingers, to persuade him when he's a teenager to pick his music or to show courtesy if he ever would want or feel the need to get the ghetto blaster going just to spite his parents!
I also recently bought the boy an old copy of "Chess for Children". How old? Well, I suppose it is out of print. First published 1958; 10th impression 1972. By R Bott & S Morrison. Published by Collins, in London and Glasgow. It is in great shape, for $3. The approach to learning chess is keyed to battlefields and strategies, which my son digs. Got it at the Victoria University (U of T) annual book sale. The boy wanted me to read it to him as a bed-time book.
Well, there is this guilty pleasure. The chess book is not the only book I got. There were tons more. Considering I had to lug (and pay for!) the whole shebang, I did seem not to mind at all. I don't smoke or drink (well, once or twice a week, beer or red wine), so I feel I may let loose my addictive vice for books. However, I should be pulling my hair about finding the time to read them, including the magazine subscriptions and my remaining MBA courses.
Note to self: Personal time is a non-exchangeable good. There is no market for buying and selling personal time. One only seems to "buy time" from the future by procrastinating. While time does appear infinite at both ends, personal time does not at all seem that way. My memory does not go so far. My hopes do not reach beyond today's provocations. The future approaches, the past recedes.
Carpe diem, said the man who did not have today to pluck. "Shake it," said Outkast's Andre 3000 (Hey Ya).
Another note to self: Review the film "Waking Life" (by R Linklater) on Julie Delpy's take on time inside a dream.
We've enjoyed an extra couple of weeks of fine summery weather here in Toronto. Having seen this year's summer gone to bonkers, I am pleased to see the autumn that just started is showing a friendlier and warmer face.
I am so glad that my son is taking a keen interest in music. It has been two weeks since he started piano lessons. He is learning the rudimentary piano exercises, and practising how to write the various elements of written music---like the G and F clef. It all brings back memories of 20 years ago, when I first started learning solfeggio in high school. Hey, if the little boy can read and write music early, that part of his brain will make the unique connections now to allow him to make discoveries of his own and appreciate the meaning and value of music in the house throughout his childhood and adult life. It will be easier, cross my fingers, to persuade him when he's a teenager to pick his music or to show courtesy if he ever would want or feel the need to get the ghetto blaster going just to spite his parents!
I also recently bought the boy an old copy of "Chess for Children". How old? Well, I suppose it is out of print. First published 1958; 10th impression 1972. By R Bott & S Morrison. Published by Collins, in London and Glasgow. It is in great shape, for $3. The approach to learning chess is keyed to battlefields and strategies, which my son digs. Got it at the Victoria University (U of T) annual book sale. The boy wanted me to read it to him as a bed-time book.
Well, there is this guilty pleasure. The chess book is not the only book I got. There were tons more. Considering I had to lug (and pay for!) the whole shebang, I did seem not to mind at all. I don't smoke or drink (well, once or twice a week, beer or red wine), so I feel I may let loose my addictive vice for books. However, I should be pulling my hair about finding the time to read them, including the magazine subscriptions and my remaining MBA courses.
Note to self: Personal time is a non-exchangeable good. There is no market for buying and selling personal time. One only seems to "buy time" from the future by procrastinating. While time does appear infinite at both ends, personal time does not at all seem that way. My memory does not go so far. My hopes do not reach beyond today's provocations. The future approaches, the past recedes.
Carpe diem, said the man who did not have today to pluck. "Shake it," said Outkast's Andre 3000 (Hey Ya).
Another note to self: Review the film "Waking Life" (by R Linklater) on Julie Delpy's take on time inside a dream.
posted by Luctor et Emergo at 9:10 PM
1 Comments:
My roommate’s uncle (Eugene Torre) was asian grandmaster or something like that, I don’t recall exactly which. Anyway, he had ten siblings, so his parents had to struggle to feed and clothe everybody and send them to school. But his father recognized his talent at the chessboard and tried to buy him chess books and boards without his mother recognizing. The mother got really mad one time when she found out that her husband had spent the money she had set aside for dinner on a second hand chess set. That night, she served her family a strange-tasting soup, and sat back in her chair with a grim expression. Her sheeping-looking husband ate it without complaint. And then one of the other children reached in with the soup ladle and pulled out a boiled wooden pawn. “Eat chess. That’s all you ever do anyway, see if it feeds you.” She snapped. And her son became the youngest and first Asian Grandmaster at the age of 19.
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