Living under …… (30/3/2003)
I start to get tired of complaining about the
poor teaching attitude of my teacher. But it seems that this is a general
atmosphere in APA. (At least in our dear department.) May be because of this
poor learning environment, people tend to practice like mad.
Last week we have Opera rehearsals in the pit
for 2 evenings. Dozens of singers, dancers and technicians on and behind the
stage, gangs of wind and brass players under us blowing hard to get the sound
out of the pit, our conductor shout in front of us… We finally wore masks
during the rehearsal on 27th night.
While I walking home fast on the street after rehearsals
or practices at night, wearing mask on my face to prevent inhaling the virus, I
saw the typical Hong Kong sky with no starlight or moonlight at all, but only
reflection of the skyscrapers from the low hanged clouds cumulated because of
the severe air pollution.
I soon paralleled this with the current war in
the Middle East. The Israelites have to bring masks wherever they go for
protecting themselves from possible bio-chemical attack from Iraq, the Iraqis
have to live with alarms, bombings, shortages of food and water, and we Hong Kong
people have to wear masks for preventing the SARS. Schools have to be suspended,
evacuated, completely cleaned. I remember the moment I have to pack and leave
in a hurry, having a week ‘holiday’ that not much people dare to go out.
The first thing I do when I arrive home is to
take off my masks very carefully with hands, and take off my shoes – without using
my hand, then wash my hand hard with soap. I wash my hair more frequently then
normal (Same as lots of other long hair people, especially girls, I don’t have
a habit of washing hair daily.) I reminded my grand parents frequently about
how to keep themselves clean – wash hands every time before then want to eat;
don’t split; wear masks when going out…
I did also something very unusual to me, which
was to help my grand mother to clean the flat. I rubbed the furniture as hard
as I could, cleaned each little piece of decoration in my room, tidied up my
desk, etc.
All I want to have is a place that I can walk
and breath freely without that unusual kind of scary feeling. And now I have a
deeper feeling of the question ‘why home can give one sense of security’.
When I was packing the stuff from my APA
locker back home, I brought the orchestra stuff, and this was not the normal
me. It’s only because I have to play the first in the ‘Fiddler on the Roof’ and
it seems that I have lots of solo passages. If the SARS is under control in
mid-May, the show will definitely go on and I have to make sure myself ready at
that time.
As my teacher’s irresponsibility in his
attitude in teaching becomes more and more obvious, I have to adjust again my
studying plan, i.e. my target repertoire in my remaining times in APA. I have
to secure my playing of the Bach no. 2 and Brahms no. 1 so that I can go on
with the chaconne and Mozart no. 5. But with the piles of orchestra stuffs, I
really feel very doubtful.
On the other hand, will I be selected for the
APA tour? Will the tour be disturbed by the war or the SARS? When actually the
tour is? Will I have the chance to go to other music festival in summer? What
pieces should I prepare for that? How much time do I have for my private
practice in the coming months? How much pieces I can work out?
How about my church life? How about my family
life?
……
Seems that I’m not an ‘atypical’ Hong Kong
people.