Tonight was the MPO performance of the movie The Godfather-live.
It’s been quite sometime that I last saw and heard a movie soundtrack conducted live whilst the movie was screened. That last time must have been in the early 2000s and it was the performance of the black and white Charlie Chaplin movie, The Kid. That was also a MPO performance.
The hall was packed tonight and I think they have a full house for this performance. And the people coming for the concerts here are all well dressed.
It is a different experience watching the movie and having the music played live. The movie features a wonderful score by Nino Rota. The love theme that plays only in the second half of the movie is divine. The orchestra played well. And of course the movie is one of the all time greats! The playing during the end credits was exceptional.
I was having dinner at Culina in KL yesterday evening. I was talking to the manager while waiting for my food to be served and out of the blue he told me that before he started working in restaurants, he was a MH flight crew member. He was flying for 25 years before he quit. He stopped flying after the MH 370 incident.
He was rostered to be on that flight but his wife was uncomfortable with him going on that flight. He had just done another MH 370 a week before and she found it weird that he got that same flight within a week. Call it intuition. So he reported sick and is alive today as a result. He quit immediately after that flight went missing. About 1000 crew members quit after that incident.
He had a good friend who also reported sick that day and was therefore also saved. But that friend carried on flying whilst telling people how grateful he was that his life had been saved because he missed that flight. Six months later he was on MH 17 and he died that day.
He was a colleague from the very early days, later our Managing Partner for 6 years and a good friend.
Yesterday evening I had a call from Kim Beng and I was informed that Pat was in ICU. His cancer had spread and he had collapsed during chemotherapy. He was on a ventilator.
I was shocked. I thought his cancer was under control. He had been diagnosed with prostate cancer a year ago but everytime we met, he seemed fine and he told me it was under control. We would talk and drink coffee whenever we bumped into each other at the courtyard. He only complained that he had to be on medication his whole life. He was still traveling, meeting people and attending events.
But according to a friend, when he saw Pat on Sunday he was weak but still in good spirits and was in fact planning a trip to Bali with this friend. But that was not to be.
The downturn was so sudden.
Pat joined the firm in 1994, just when I did. We were part of a dinner group that met once a month since the early days till about 2010. But I only got to know him much better when he became Managing Partner. We used to discuss the firm, projects and people. We talked about politics a lot. He was always responsive and helpful and always there to lend a listening ear.
One topic we discussed a lot was how we can effectively reach out and help people in a meaningful way via our Foundation. But Pat had so many things that needed his attention and it was a pity we never firmed this up.
After he was diagnosed with cancer, we spoke a lot. He sent me his reports for a second opinion and the prognosis was good. Just not sure how it went downhill so fast. He stepped down as Managing Partner only April this year.
A friend we had lunch with last year just reminded me that during the lunch, Pat was talking about slowing down and retirement. That never happened.
He was just 61. So many things he would have wanted to do in retirement but never got to do.
Strangely I am reminded that this was the same age my good friend Noris Ong was when he passed away from cancer some 15 years ago.
Rest in Peace Pat. You have done well with your family, friends and colleagues.
What a tragedy. About 270 people dead when the plane crashed just upon take off from Ahmedabad in Gujarat. It is clear from the videos the plane had lost power and couldn’t rise. After a mayday call it crashed and killed even more on the ground. So many lives lost. What could have led to a catastrophic loss of power in both engines?
And it is amazing that a single passenger survived almost unscathed when every other person on board perished.
It was just announced that Brian Wilson of the Beach Boys has died aged 82.
He had started this band with his brothers and friends in the late 50s. I know only some of their songs. I don’t know the band well but by all accounts, he was a musical genius and the Beach Boys were big in the US. When I was reading the book, The Wrecking Crew, all the top session musicians of that era were in awe of him. His musical creativity, arrangements and song writing skills were top class. The Beach Boys were big before the Beatles were known in America.
He was so mesmerized by Be My Baby and the Phil Spector wall of sound technique that he wanted to create a masterpiece. And that album Pet Sounds, was so admired for its creativity that the Beatles modelled Sgt Pepper’s after that album.
Of course in later years drug use destroyed him and the band. They completely disappeared from the scene except for one hit Kokomo in the 80s. Such a pity.
This is something we all learn in primary school. Green plants absorb carbon dioxide from the atmosphere and with water they absorb from the soil via their roots, they use sunlight to convert these 3 items into sugars and release oxygen. We need both the oxygen and the sugars to live. It is something we all take for granted because it is so ubiquitous.
But last night I was reading a book on the origins of life and there was a chapter on photosynthesis. Then I realized how complex this process actually is. It has baffled scientists over the years who have been trying to understand this process and work out the exact manner by which this is done. Even today, the detailed process by which sugars are created from sunlight, water and carbon dioxide with the release of oxygen is not understood. Much work has been done in this field because if this process can be relicated, then we can set up factories to make sugars and do the conversion ourselves without having to rely on living plants and trees to sustain humans.
But photosynthesis was essential for the creation of life as we know it because without sufficient oxygen we may not exist. Without sugars we will also die, albeit a bit later. And if all the carbon dioxide we exhale is not converted into oxygen, we will also die.
We rely on the sugars created by photosynthesis as our nutrition to live. All the plants, fruits and animals we eat all have consumed the sugars from photosynthesis. These eventually become food for us.
It is incredible to imagine how these green chlorophyll organisms somehow were created early on in the history of earth which led to the oxygenation of our planet and to give rise to life as we know it on land. And the proportion of oxygen in the atmosphere has to be just right because too much oxygen is poisonous and will kill us off. Green plants and trees maintain that balance for us to be able to live.
The more I read I begin to wonder if the creation of humans was purely fortuitous or by some divine stroke. The number of things that had to be there in the right time, place and proportions for life to exist is just mind boggling!
I met Shiv yesterday. Chris Loo, my Club 100 committee member, was invited to Shiv’s book launch, heard him speak and was impressed with him. Chris asked if we could have him as a speaker at our Club 100 gathering..
So at short notice I arranged to meet him at his Singapore home in Tanjong Rhu.
He is in his 70s and still strong and active. A pleasant gentleman. He is a well known motivational speaker. He has done business leadership and motivation talks and seminars for top organisations in the US and India. He counts some of the top companies in the world as his clients. He has also written 3 best selling books, each selling more than 10 million copies and published by Bloomsbury. We spent a pleasant hour talking. And we discussed to what kind of an audience he can be most effective.
He presented me with his books, which I am looking forward to reading. I now need to think about how I can use him effectively to reach out and help people in meaningful way!
I just started reading this book, What’s Gotten Into You by Dan Levitt. This book is about what we as humans are made up of and from where what we are made up of came from. As they say, we are made of star dust.
We are primarily composed of cells and atoms. Now every one knows and accepts this. The different chemical compounds in us makes us what we are all of which are combinations of elements.
This book is a fascinating study of how atoms were discovered. We think of atoms as the smallest known particles, but it is not the case. The books traces the discovery of what makes up atoms, the birth of the universe, the first simplest element that existed, which is hydrogen, and how from hydrogen all the other elements were formed.
Anyway I digress. I have not completed reading this book yet.
This book discusses many of the early pioneers in the field of astronomy, physics and quantum physics such as Rutherford, Einstein, Bohr and Boyle. There is also a section on Cecilia Payne. She was one of the earliest physicist and it was she who discovered that it has to be from the stars where all the other elements were created. She first noted that the earliest stars were only comprised of hydrogen and helium. Somehow from there, these elements combined to create the heavier elements.
But when she was in secondary school and before she got her scholarship to go to Cambridge, her school choirmaster was Gustav Holst, the famed composer of the Planets! Imagine having a world famous composer as your school music teacher. His music from Jupiter has been played at funerals for the royals and Winston Churchill. Can you imagine 2 famous personalities in the same secondary school. One as a music teacher and the other a student. She must have also been a good musician because Holst urged her to become a musician!
I decided to indulge myself recently and purchased a used Birkin 40 in porosus crocodile skin.
I have purchased Hermes bags for myself before. I first purchased a large sized jypsiere. I found it too heavy on my shoulders as it’s a shoulder bag. I then decided to try a medium sized jypsiere. That didn’t work too and it was still too heavy on my shoulders.
I prefer to carry my bags, not shoulder strap it.
So I came across this bag. It was in good condition with all the paperwork and as a bonus, in crocodile skin. And the size 40 is perfect for guys. The 25, 30 and 35 are too small for me. Women will not carry a 40 and even for guys you need someone with height to be able to carry off a 40.
Strangely in 1984, when Jane Birkin first asked the Hermes CEO to create a bag that she could use as a daily bag to carry all her things, thus giving rise to the birth of the Birkin, her bag was a size 40.
I now just need to find the right occasion to carry this bag!
I just finished watching this Netflix drama series. It’s a 9 part drama series set in Scotland.
A well written and captivating series. Kept me on my toes till the end. Unlike US dramas, it doesn’t depend on the characters being flashy or good looking. This featured very down to earth characters and not all of the likeable. Each with their own faults. I didn’t recognize a single actor. The screenplay was tight and intelligent.
The series is a police drama where not all loose ends were neatly tied up in the end. And although it was a 9 episode storyline, each about an hour long, it didn’t feel draggy.
It is possible they can do a follow up and they may well do so because of the very good reviews this show has received. If they do, I hope they come up with an equally compelling storyline so as not to spoil the memory of the first series.
daily musings 