Finding One's Place in the Sun

Margaret Throsby interviewed internationally renowned British writer and foremost authority in innovation, Sir Ken Robinson, in today's ABC Classic FM Morning Interview. What follows is the gist of what Sir Robinson had to say on imagination, creativity, and finding one's calling in life.

• Imagination is an agent that brings to mind something that does not exist physically yet


• Creativity is the practical application of imagination. It produces valuable original ideas


• Everyone is born with creativity but it gets inhibited by "assembly line" education and adult misconceptions about creativity


• IQ does not test intelligence. It only reveals the ability to do IQ tests


• "People feel that if you can't count it, it doesn't count". IQ test is a product of the Victorian bias for the scientific method


• The question to ask is not how intelligent one is but how one is intelligent


• Being in one's element means doing something that one has aptitude for. Sir Robinson offered the example of a female snooker player who lost the sense of time when playing snooker


• Watch children to find out what ticks them in order to find their aptitude


• The current education system was designed along factory assembly line that churns out finished products. A more appropriate metaphor for education is gardening. Both gardening and education are organic processes that never stop


• What adults remember about their education are their teachers. Teaching is the heart of education


• To find your aptitude, do two things: (1) Spend some time with yourself. List the things you enjoy and try to find the commonality in them and (2) Try something you have always wanted to do


• It is never too late to find one's true calling in life

A Message to Censor Du Fu At His Office in the Left Court

Way back in my undergraduate days, I printed out 300 Tang Poems, a popular anthology of 310 poems compiled by an 18th century Qing scholar named Sun Zhu. Apart from my fascination with the poetry of the Tang Dynasty (618-907), which presided over China's golden age, the other key motivation for printing out the poems was a substantial, unused print allowance I still happened to have at the end of a semester. What better way to use up the remainder of my print allowance than by printing out Tang poems?

After I got the printouts spiral-bound with a transparent plastic front-cover, I shelved the volume and forgot all about it. It had been gathering dust in my book shelf ever since, until I happened to chance upon it when casting about for something to read on a wintry Sunday evening. Flipping through its pages, I was again struck by the singular beauty of the poems. This has led me to a decision to dip into the collection at random, whenever occasion permits, and, if a piece appeals to me, present it here.

The first offering, by Cen Can, is addressed to Censor Du Fu, who himself comprised, along with Li Bai and Bai Juyi, the poetic triumvirate of the Tang.

A MESSAGE TO CENSOR Du Fu AT HIS OFFICE IN THE LEFT COURT
By Cen Can

Together we officials climbed vermilion steps
To be parted by the purple walls
Our procession, which entered the palace at dawn,
Leaves fragrant now at dusk with imperial incense.
Grey heads may grieve for a fallen flower,
Or blue clouds envy a lilting bird;
But this reign is of heaven, nothing goes wrong,
There have been almost no petitions.

City2Surf 2009

I will be participating for the second time in Sydney's premier fun run, the City2Surf, that starts at Hyde Park in the heart of the CBD and ends in Bondi Beach. The 14.1 km run will take place on August 9.

My tentative goal for this year is to shave off 9 minutes from last year's time, which was 68' 14'' (The winner, Martin Dent, did it in 41' 12''). It is a big ask. My weekly regime for achieving this goal is as follows:

• At least two easy runs to enhance my cardiovascular fitness and correct my body posture, transforming my body into a lean, efficient oxygen engine


• Trim down to my ideal running weight (which is around 56 kg)


• One fairly difficult hill run to strengthen my leg muscles, i.e. do the round trip circuit from Macquarie Park to Epping train station


• One interval training to improve my pace


• One resistance training session to boost my upper and lower body strength


• Enjoy each training session as much as possible, always keeping in mind Polar's motto: "Listen to your body".

Hadji Murad

Some thoughts on Tolstoy's Hadji Murad, which I finished reading today:

• Published posthumously in 1911, the novella tells the real-life story of the eponymous Chechen freedom fighter who defected to Tsarist Russia in 1851 with disastrous consequences.


• Tolstoy penned the novella in the twilight of his career, when his prophetic fervor had made him disown his earlier works, having condemned the art of fiction itself on religious grounds.


• In the story, Tolstoy contrasts the pious and ascetic lifestyle of the Avar leader and his followers with the dissolute lifestyle and moral turpitude of Russian army officers and soldiers.


• Battlefield manipulation of truth and wanton punishment of civilians in the story resonate with certain contemporary events. This brings to mind Ezra Pound's claim that literature is news that stays news.


• Tolstoy is unstinting in his admiration of Hadji Murad. He is savage in his contempt of Czar Nicholas I. The former is gentle, brave and noble. The latter is vain, pompous and tyrannical.


• The last word belongs to the critic Harold Bloom, who claimed Hadji Murad to be "my personal touchstone, for the sublime of prose fiction, to me the best story in the world, or at least the best that I have ever read."

Bobbin Head: Sydney's Best Kept Secret

Just half an hour's drive from Sydney CBD, Bobbin Head, located within Ku-ring-gai Chase Nationa Park near North Turramurra, is one of Sydney's best kept secrets. The scenic area boasts a rich biodiversity in a sandstone landscape dotted with pockets of rainforests, grassy woodlands and dry eucalyptus forests.

Facilities include coin-operated gas barbecues, a children's playground, fishing spots, walking trails, a cafe, a marina and a historic inn. It overlooks the placid waters of the Cowan Creek.

A mangrove boardwalk after barbecue lunch caps a fine outing for many. The more adventurous can walk up to Wahroonga or Mt Ku-ring-gai train station, which are 5 to 7 kilometres away.

I took some snaps of the area yesterday, and they are posted here for your viewing.

[caption id="attachment_23" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Marina on the Cowan River"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_24" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="The Cowan River"][/caption]

[caption id="attachment_26" align="alignnone" width="300" caption="Another view of the Cowan River"][/caption]

My interview with Margaret Throsby

Lately, I have been diverting myself with a fanciful sport. It goes as follows. ABC Classic FM's Margaret Throsby invites me for her 10:05 Morning Interview program. As per the rule of the game, I have to name about five of my musical choices, which will be aired in between gentle grilling by the charming hostess. Usually, Throsby wants to know the stories behind particular choices. After wrestling with the seeming impossibility of the task, I come up with the followings:

1. Flute Concerto No. 3 'The Goldfinch': Allegro (Vivaldi) - This flute concerto was the first work of Western classical music that I connected to. At the time, I was trying to learn bamboo flute. For some reason, this delightful piece conjured up alpine images for me. The association has stuck in my mind. There is something lofty and ethereal about the playful dialogue between the flute and other instrument(s). (In this YouTube arrangement, the flute duets with a piano).


2. Autumn Moon Over the Han Palace - One of my friends once observed that there is melancholy at the heart of this famous Chinese classical number. To me, it is a textbook example of the traditional Japanese aesthetic ideal of wabi-sabi, which centers around the concept of beauty tinged with sadness at the transience of things. Wabi-sabi has its roots in Buddhism. Autumn moon is a recurring trope in classical Chinese and Japanese literature and arts.


3. Chanson de Matin, Op. 15 No 2 (Elgar) - I remember the exact moment when I first fell in love with this charmer. I was returning home on train from work, listening to ABC Classic FM on my mobile. I looked out the window, and it was a glorious late afternoon, with wide open skies flecked with glowing clouds. ABC FM was playing this piece, and I was entranced. This sweet music is about another sky, the inner sky. It gently explores the "lonely spaces" of the heart, in the words of the ABC host.


4. Nulla in Mundo Pax Sincera (Vivaldi) - One of the most uplifting moments in cinema (for me, anyway) is the scene in Shine (1997) in which troubled pianist David Helfgott (played by Geoffrey Rush in his Oscar winning performance) jumps up and down in slow motion to the tune of this music. The rare purity and delicate beauty of this work makes it a genuine heart-stopper.


5. Prelude from Cell Suite No 1 (JS Bach) - The great statesman, aesthete, writer and former Prime Minister of Nepal, BP Koirala, confessed to feeling the presence of god when attending Ravi Shankar's first concert in Nepal (I was lucky enough to attend Shankar's second concert in Nepal, staged at the Royal Academy Hall, Kathmandu, in which the famous Sitar maestro was accompanied by his nubile daughter Anushka Shankar, around 16/17 years of age at the time). Koirala must have felt as I do when I listen to JS Bach.

Ornament of the World

A few random notes from my recent reading of David Levering Lewis's God's Crucible: Islam and the Making of Europe, 570-1215:

• The famous 732 Battle of Poitiers, in which a Christian coalition halted an Islamic force in what is now France, may have been retrospectively elevated and mythologised as a turning point by Western historians but it was a minor, temporary setback in a skirmish at the periphery of the empire as far as the Islamic rulers in Damacus were concerned.


• Before Baghdad of the One Thousand and One Nights fame, Damascus was the Caliphal seat of the Islamic empire. Caliph Abu Ja'far al-Mansur (754 - 74) ordered the construction of Baghdad beside the Tigris "with the point of his sword". It was finished in four years. Madinat al-Salam or "The City of Peace" was rivalled only by Constantinople in grandeur.


• In the battle of Poitiers, the Christian coalition was led by Charles the Bastard, whose political and battlefield exploits would earn him the sobriquet Hammer (Martel in Latin). Martel's grandson, Charlemagne, would be crowned the first Holy Roman Emperor.


• In his role as Palace Mayor (Prime Minister), Charles Martel virtually brought down the curtain on the Merovingian line, which is now regarded as the first French royal dynasty. Charles's line was officially formalised and divinely sanctioned when his son and heir Pippin the Short successfully sought papal blessing for a palace coup, signalling the ascendancy of the Carolingian dynasty.


• Charlemagne once executed forty-five hundred defeated Saxons in a single morning after they refused to recant their pagan beliefs in favour of Christianity.


• A fierce Germanic tribe with long beards challenged the temporal power of papacy. Eventually pacified by Franks under Charlemagne, the tribe settled in a part of the continent that came to be known as Lombardy, the home of the long beards.


• The celebrated deeds of the eponymous hero of the Song of Rolland was inspired by a disastrous chapter from one of Charlemagne's military expeditions into al-Andalus. However, it was not Muslim treachery or cowardice but the opportunistic attack of independent-minded Basque partisans that trapped and martyred the archetypal Christian knight in a narrow mountain pass.


• Cordoba attained its exalted status as the "ornament of the world" under the Umayyad rule transplanted by Abd al-Rahman I from Damascus to the Iberian peninsula. Prince Abd al-Rahman I fled Damascus after losing his Caliphal inheritance in a bloody power struggle against an Abbasid usurper. His enlightened policy encouraged the famous convivencia, the civic collaboration of Muslims, Jews and Christians that resulted in an unprecedented efflorescence of arts, culture, science and commerce. Al-Andalus would turn out to be the conduit of the flow of ancient Greek knowledge preserved and enhanced by Islamic scholars to then backward Christian dominions.


• Abd al-Rahman's architectural masterpiece, La Mezquita or the Friday Mosque, had the following self-referential inscription: It embodied what came before. Illuminated what came after. The inscription could have been the motto of the Umayyad Cordoba itself.