Frustrated musicians

At this evening's music seminar for our parish's choir members, I met someone who had similar dreams of pursuing music as a career but never had the means or opportunity to do so. While he went on to be a medical doctor, he continued to join choirs in order to fulfill a need to keep music in his life. I on the other hand was likewise lucky enough to be asked to be piano accompanist to a number of choirs and, as I realized lately, took out my frustrations by maintaining a growing collection of CDs (mostly classical, of course), purchasing and downloading piano sheet music to learn on my own, attending concerts and piano masterclasses whenever I could afford to (this was mainly when I was in Singapore) and getting myself my precious Yamaha P-80.

Timber!

This afternoon I could hear the annoying buzz of a chainsaw from somewhere near our office building. This went on for several minutes before it thankfully stopped. Suddenly there was a frightening crash that shook the building and rattled the grill on my windows. On looking outside my window to find what caused the crash, I saw that some grounds men had cut down one of the many palm trees lining the road across from our building. The tree was one of those that had died recently and was in danger of toppling over and hurting someone in the process.

Guess who won?

Of course I was disappointed with the outcome of the finals match between Rafael Nadal and Roger Federer at the ATP Masters Series tournament in Hamburg. But I couldn't help but laugh at the photo of both players looking like Sad Sacks while posing with their trophies. If you didn't know what the winner's trophy looks like you probably wouldn't be able to tell who won the title!
Photo credit: AP Photo/Joerg Sarbach