“You Must Be Polite With Yourself When Learning Something New.”

“You Must Be Polite With Yourself When Learning Something New.”

This phrase was extracted from Eat, Pray, Love by Elizabeth Gilbert. Giovanni, Elizabeth’s Tandem Language Exchange buddy, gently told her this when she was becoming frustrated with herself for lacking the ability to find the right word in Italian to express herself (boy, do I know that feeling). When I read this quote, I stopped immediately from my reading because I must share it on my blog. It is such a wise and self-loving remark that we ought to use to remind ourselves when we become frustrated at learning.

However, I am the antithesis of Giovanni’s faith.

Maybe it’s out of impatience for every process that takes more than thirty seconds (though I am patient behind the wheels), the inability to love myself beyond merely providing the basic needs (i.e. eating and sleeping) and occasional self-indulgence (i.e. taking time to write or play the piano), the unattainable high expectations I place on myself (therefore, I am never good enough), or simply the lack of time, and therefore lacking the luxury to be patient. Even though I resolved to practice patience for one of my 2009-and-beyond resolutions, it is still not a bad idea to write about it within the perspective of learning. Writing, as you see, is therapeutic to me.

I have always been less than kind to myself, especially during a learning process. The outcome of being an inpatient learner had never been positive; I didn’t learn any faster or more effectively. In fact, more often than not, I would splatter myself with self-induced feeling of stupidity and guilt all over my already reduced ego from countless previous experiences. Einstein said “Insanity is when you do the same thing repeatedly and expect a different outcome” or something to that effect. Um, yes, I suppose I have been somewhat insane by not being polite to myself while learning.

What about Ashley? There’s no doubt that I have been applying the wrong formula to induce her to want to keep on learning. Granted, parents always mean well when we teach our children, but it is still very important that we continue to improve ourselves and catch our own mistakes. That is the only way to stop the flow of negativism into our children’s lives. Ashley is as much as our legacy as she is her own ultra-unique self. Whatever she takes on after us, I want to make sure it is a good trait.

For years, my husband and I place a high emphasis on “good manners” in nurturing Ashley. I think we’re ready to introduce her to a new theme – “You Must Be Polite With Yourself When Learning Something New.”

Faith Prevaled In the 2009 Piano Competition

If you are seeking faith, and yet unsure how to go about doing it, then read this story.

Ashley started to practice in December of 2008 for her spring 2009 competition. She received two pieces: Toccatina for her advanced classical piece, and Because You Loved Me for her advanced pop piece. The spring 2009 competition would be the first time Ashley played in advanced categories. She didn't know what to expect from her rivals, many of whom have played in advanced categories at least once. Ashley also didn't know how many people she would be playing against. To her, the meaning of playing in an "advanced category" was as vague as "julienne a carrot" to someone who'd never cooked. Although Mike and I were just as clueless as to what to expect, we knew that our guidance would be critical to her preparations. Being the loving Asian parents as we are (ohhhh yeah), for five months, we preached, praised, yelled, encouraged, threatened to stop her dance lessons and sometimes even felt despondent about the whole thing. However, despite the rigorous practice routines, we did let Ashley know from time to time that she is always a winner no matter what happened at the competition (didn't I tell you we are loving parents!).

On the first day of competition, Ashley was so nervous, I can only describe her as an acrophobia performing a sky-dive. Being the last of twelve competitors to perform only multiplied her emotional struggles, particularly because all the kids, including David Deng and Tiffany Ha from our music school (who were also first-time advanced category competitors), were playing very long and difficult pieces. To my amazement though, Ashley played with a calm demeanor until the very end of the song, when her fingers suddenly became stiff and caused her to stumbled on a note. Ashley balled her eyes out for that mistake. [First day at the competition]

On the morning of second day, Ashley practiced very hard for her pop piece. To her dismay, she was still making mistakes. As her moral supporters, we could only help by making light of everything (okay, not exactly, but we did our best). At 12:30pm, she was the first of twelve competitors to go up. To some players, being the first to go was more detrimental than being the middle or even the last. To Ashley, however, it was clearly not the case. She exuded confidence and control, and played the song to near perfection! Before her performance was over, my eyes welled up both from admiration and pure joy that her effort had paid off! This time, she returned to her seat with a big smile on her face. She knew she did her job.

Ashley took second place for her beautiful performance! First place went to our favorite competitor, Elisah, who played a beautiful jazzy version of Over the Rainbow. These two girls are one-of-the-kind because it is rare for first-year advance players to win trophies, and they both did it. Here is a snap of them two together - what a beautiful moment! [Ashley (left) and Elisah (right)]

I don't think "proud" would be the choicest word for me to describe how I feel about Ashley. What she did was awe-inspiring. We asked her afterward what was on her mind while she was playing. She answered, "Nothing, I just focused." The amount of faith coming from that little body was incredible; it helped her through the most difficult moment that she had to face yet. As long as she keeps her faith, this girl will always be strong!

I'm finally blogging

My good friend, Michelle, encouraged me to start my own blog yesterday afternoon during our cubical discussion about writing. I have never considered "blogging" as a form of "writing," since I always thought of it as a process of creating strings of "0s" and "1s," which are nonsensical in themselves, into something personal and meaningful. But as soon as you click on "Save" or "Send" or whatever the icon it is to deploy your intellectual creations (mine is "Publish Post"), those strings will simply get lost in the infinite oblivion of the Web, sort of like how it was in Madagascar: Escape 2 Africa, where there were hundreds of zebras crowding at one water hole, and one (meaning one human) could never tell one zebra apart from another. I never thought anybody would be interested in anyone else's blogs unless they were looking for specific information, such as (my husband's usual searches) "Steinway or Vogel - A Buyer Review" or "Where to Visit in New England With Your Kids?" or one of my today's favorites - "Muppets In Resident Evil 5 - So Very Wrong, Yet So Very Right."

Back in college I took a web design course, hoping I could somehow show-case excerpts of my life (continuously updated) in the pretty colors of my choice. That was seven years ago. I'm not sure if "blogging" existed seven years ago, but it is essentially what I was learning to do, except it was called something else which I can't recall now.

At any rate, I've just spent pretty much all day at work figuring out how to blog. How did the word "blog" come about anyway? I searched online for a definition, and the word was defined as a "weblog." I guess the origin is "we-blog?" Anyway, after a couple of hours, I finally found a semi-desirable template to get me started. Ironically, I often teach Ashley to not to spend too much time on designing the looks of her research paper. "Leave that 'til the end" I always told her. Why can't we parents also live by what we teach our kids?! Alas, the day will come soon when Ashley will say "YOU DO IT TOO SO WHY CAN'T I?" in my face.

But that would be a discussion for another day.