October means 2010 is almost done

Woooo! 1 October 2010! That means we're nearing the end of 2010! It's so weird because I can still remember the beginning of 2010! Heck, I still remember excited about being the announcer at Legend Fighting Championship 1! And now I have done 3 of those gigs already! Woah!

Well September was an awesome and fruitful month. Lots of things happened during that time, of course, I turned 28 ;) And I got to enjoy the lovely sounds of Jun Kung's concert that night and I was quite inspired really! After that night, I realized one thing lacking with my drumming was that fluency. It's kind of like a local Hong Kong person speaking english vs. an American. Sure the HK person may have perfect grammar and most of his accent may have been cleaned up, but it's the little "ya' know" and other slang terms that make the American's English sound more fluent and smooth. This is the problem I'm struggling with. When I speak drums, I know the rules of nouns and present tense, etc. but it doesn't flow the way people like Jun Kung can just flow at a drum set. I'm currently interested in taking lessons with a master (one of the reasons I didn't get a teacher was because I wanted to make sure either I'm learning with the best or I learn on my own). So far, I've contacted 1 guy who a lot of people consider to be a very harsh but awesome drum teacher but no response yet about whether he's interested in adding another student to his gang. I'll probably message him again today to see.

But if anyone knows a good (and harsh, I like teachers who are strict and require extreme discipline) drummer in Hong Kong, please let me know :)

On another note, my one-man English comedy show is going to be on in a week's time! Excited and nervous at the same time! I'm confident it'll go well but I guess maybe I'm just hoping to exceed my own expectations :P
Life has become a bit more stable for me, I've found my groove on many things and I've learnt to better accept failure to achieve a bit better. Like now as I said before, I'm going to keep Sunday as  my sacred day to just chill out. I realized the reason I worked my ass off even on Sunday was because I often felt like I hadn't made the most of the week so Sunday was my compensation day. However, last week since the birthday landed on a Saturday and I had just finished Legend 3 on Friday, I literally switched my brain off on Saturday to the point for the first time in ages, I went out with nothing but a cap :P No bag, no water, no laptop. Ok so I had my phone and stuff, but not the general things I'd lug around with me. It was an awesome experience, very relaxing because I was just "flowing" with the moment, I wasn't pre-planning everything (I'd usually literally pre-plan my food and water so when I go out I don't find myself going "shit, Im hungry, I need to find a restaurant" but more like "I'm going to be hungry in 15 minutes, it's better I stay near restaurants for now"

I watched Derren Brown's HERO at 30,000 feet and man I loved it! So inspiring! I mean a lot of the things he talked about were things I'd read about in books and stuff, but just watching it and seeing what he was going made me so refreshed about life. My favorite part was when he said we're not defined by our past but rather our current decisions and I remembered, that is so true. I mean, I'm a firm believer that we need to know our history to help define ourselves today, to realize how we got to where we are, but at the same time, we can't be stuck with the past and limit our futures due to that. Sure it's easier said than done, but it's worth remembering. I remember when I first started reading his book Tricks of the Mind, he talked about how magicians worked and the mentality behind that and I have to say, it really excited me! I guess the concept of deception is one I'm very fascinated by. The Art of War, The Art of Deception, Tricks of the Mind, etc. are all some of my favorite books, mostly because it talks about using deception (not lying) to fool someone into creating a fake reality for a moment that seems so justified the person getting fooled doesn't realize they're being fooled and thinks all is well and they were doing the right thing!

I remember some of the stories in The Art of Deception talked about how many humans are willing to disclose partial information, thinking that there is nothing you can do with a piece of incomplete information, but we forget that if you disclose partial information and your friend discloses the other partial bit of information, I now have the full piece of information and neither you nor your friend would have guessed what they did could have got them in big trouble..

Anyway, so today being a public holiday, I now have to face the reality of do I also take a holiday or stick to my guns and work it out, only holiday-ing as I promised on Sunday? Hmmm, let's see what happens in the next few hours ;)