Superficial != Super & Special

Attended a really interesting night talk yesterday about friendship and relating to one another. Another post about friendship and you might want to ask why bring it up again? I have a lot of thoughts regarding this subject and yesterday my church friends discussed on the disparities between man and woman how they view friendship and how they can relate to one another..Man make activities to form a common ground for them to enjoy and participate before they can relate and bond..whereas woman talk, share their hearts out ^^ Oh, the usual things people endlessly debate and argue about many things on “Martians” and “Venusians”, if you what I mean

Now, the question that I would like to pose: Friendship = ?

Recently, read some things quite true about myself:

“Shallow conversation is fine for some, but you need to take the time to go deep. Shallow conversation is fine for the line at the coffee shop or a particularly long elevator ride, but all in all, it’s not your speed — especially not today. You have too much wit and charm to just skim the surface with other people. You need to take the time to go deep. Ask the penetrating questions that give people something to think about.”

Superficiality is one of my many faults and I don’t know whether it makes me a fair-weather friend. It doesn’t mean that I don’t think deep, why I do love to ponder, dream many impossible feats, analyze and observe people and things around me..I like to spend all my time with my good friends..but I’m handicapped to conjure up a nice conversation and bubbling away with my opinions..primarily it might be because I care too much what others think and feel that’s why sadly people would label me “boring”

anyways, I have a good website to share: http://verticalthoughts.org and from there, I have obtained this:

How do you make friends? How do you keep friends? Is there a formula for fostering good friendships? Here are some timeless biblical principles that work.

I will summarize some interesting points by Doug Horchak about what he personally thinks about friendship…

People need people. The apostle Paul says, “And the eye cannot say to the hand, ‘I have no need of you’; nor again the head to the feet, ‘I have no need of you’” (1 Corinthians 12:21).

Some may be reluctant to make friends because “reaching out” to others has risks. However, “reaching out” is a risk we should be willing to take. To show others friendship, we also have to be willing to give of our time. As a formula, we could say that Kindness (K) and Time (T) lead to Friendship or

K + T = Friendship!

Another thing is that we need to learn to listen. Because most people are primarily interested in themselves, they tend to have a hard time listening to others! A necessary ingredient in building friendships is being willing to sincerely listen to your friends and to concern yourself with their needs and thoughts. Be sure to also ask questions about what they are expressing to you. This shows you are genuinely interested!

Moreover we need to give compliment. I’m not talking about complimenting just to try to impress someone, but giving a sincere comment of encouragement. These days, it seems that when you compliment another person, people can mistakenly think you are being insincere just to get your way. That’s not what I mean at all!

Doug Horchak concludes by saying that “People simply want to share their lives, have someone to be with, to trust, to depend on and to genuinely listen to them.”

Therefore, I can conclude that fair-weather friends will not last from seasons of testing and hard times..and of course being superficial in everything you do makes the friendship dull and insincere..

People spend time with each other for many reasons. Like it or not, the fact is that the ones who seek out your company are NOT all your friends..no matter how friendly the may seem…Sometimes you find yourself becoming friendly with someone because you’re in the same boat, you have superficial things in common. There’s nothing wrong with that in itself. But real friendship goes deeper and often your real friends will have less in common with you than your superficial friends..Confusing? Haha

“Don’t just talk the talk, but walk the talk!”

As the yellow gold is tried in fire, so the faith of friendship must be seen in adversity. Ovid

Fly Me to the Moon

Just woke up from recharging my “battery”. Had a hectic weekend but well, I’m finally free so I don’t mind so much although had to sacrifice some of my sleep. Friday nite I went off to celebrate, watched 2 movies straight: jumper and kung fu dunk ^^ like them both although I preferred jumper.. it has lots of fascinating scenes showing off the famous places in the world..it answers my heart’s desire to be free and travel the world..fly me to the moon and let me play among the stars are the first two lines of Bart Howard’s Fly Me to the Moon…weeee can finally spread my wings and fly

Moodget

Discovered moodget and it works like a mood meter..quite cool actually but alas it doesn’t work with wordpress. At times I do wonder about the bad side of wordpress in terms of incorporating cool and nice widgets like imeem, an audio playlist and now moodget..sigh which you can do easily with blogspot. Anyways for the sake of groovy customization and the other cool stuffs wordpress do offer, I have to make do with the free version…Anyways, I have other way of doing this which is quite crude haha but who cares from this post onwards, will use the moodget as a moodmeter

On the other side of things, posted some photos on the gallery that feature my favourite violinists..but again it is temporarily messy because I have found no photo gallery widget to go with wordpress…so from time to time at least now it just a start to keep a photo log before I can actually expand it to a gallery featuring of my future travels and food review *I hope

Dream Car

Just imagine: a flash of blue streaked through the highway, screeched to a stop and do a turnaround of 360..sleek and sporty exterior defined by elegance and outstanding performance honda accord has been my dream car since I have ruled out jaguar cars because they are way too costly…but again I have to wait harbour patiently for my dream car to materialize. For more info about 2008 Honda Accord Coupe, click: http://automobiles.honda.com/accord-coupe

It reminds me of a nice pixar movie about cars and there is a scene that I like which is meaningful. The song is all about a small town being bypassed after a great change was made and the town is eventually forgotten and left to its broken state. Here’s the link if you want to listen but pay attention to the lyrics because it is meaningful: [http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ThlQ1YuY1xg]

Our Town: James Taylor

Long ago, but not so very long ago
The world was different, oh yes it was
You settled down and you built a town and made it live
And you watched it grow
It was your town

Time goes by, time brings changes, you change, too
Nothing comes that you can’t handle, so on you go
Never see it coming, the world caves in on you
On your town
Nothing you can do.

Main street isn’t main street anymore
Lights don’t shine as brightly as they shone before
Tell the truth, lights don’t shine at all
In our town

Sun comes up each morning
Just like it’s always done
Get up, go to work, start the day,
Open up for business that’s never gonna come
As the world rolls by a million miles away

Main street isn’t main street anymore
No one seems to need us like they did before
It’s hard to find a reason left to stay
But it’s our town
Love it anyway
Come what may, it’s our town.

5 Browns

Went to bookshop yesterday and the weirdest thing, grab blindly a copy of Pianist magazine without looking at the cover issue month..ended up buying december’s issue..haha Anyways, been away from the piano for so long..(not counting the teaching sessions with my students) and stopped my violin classes..I was wondering myself whether am I still crazilly passionate about music compared to my old self: self-check* didn’t buy any classical cds for so long..didn’t check any classical websites for some time..didn’t go to any concerts last few months..biggest crime: didn’t touch the piano and hardly practice my violin..maybe I’m not anymore the music guy I used to be

Now, who are these people, the 5 Browns? New food gimmicks from McDonalds to promote their new McBreakfast with yummy hashbrowns? Haha fortunately that is not the case They are all siblings, brothers and sisters which formed a formidable piano quintet, each began studying the piano from three years of age. They were the first group of five siblings to attend premiere musical conservatory Juilliard, which they attended simultaneously for five consecutive years. Here is a video on my oldtime favourite Stravinsky’s Firebird, and I guess you would love their performance on a scenic beach!