If you have great talents, industry will improve them: if you have but moderate abilities, industry will supply their deficiency.
(Sir Joshua Reynolds)
I was invited to dinner and a small concert by the prominent T’ang Quartet at the Singapore Embassy last week. When I first got the invitation, I felt quite elevated. The standard wordings at the invitation card was enough to make you feel important, and the fact that I would be meeting some important people made the occasion seemed even more prestigious, if not pretentious.
So I packed my lovely shirt and went to Jakarta
I broke in cold sweat. Was that what the reception was all about? I thought we were celebrating.
When the D-day arrived, I found myself losing appetite, feeling lousy and dreading every minute of the day. While dressing up for the party in the evening, my brain was busy finding reasons not to go, from a sudden attack of diarrhea to a headache, but they all sounded so lame that I, after a very long sigh, decided to go.
Long ago I discovered that God had planted in every cell of my body an alarm that sends a loud ring in my head everytime I was about to face appaling situation or people. This time it rang so loud. In normal situation I would’ve not gone, but I had no choice. And I got what I deserve for not listening to my instinct.
I felt miserable all night at the reception. Everything was wrong. The food was terrible (it was actually allright, but if you’re not a fan of Indian food, you’ll be feeling quite depressed when you can’t find anything to eat), I know only maybe 10 among the 70-ish people invited, and the 60 of them talked about things I didn’t understand or couldn’t care less about, the house was freezing because of the aircon and the fact that my body was kept warm only by cups tea and coffee which also initiated the production of gastritic acid in my belly, but the most dreadful thing is that I had to come to a face I didn’t know to introduce myself and find out if he or she is an important somebody whom we may ask favour later in life.
Meanwhile, my partner, Dot, was doing superbly well and seemed to make the right contacts. I think God might have planted some sort of important-people-scanner in her body. We were talking to this Canadian woman who was also a choir trainer, and I thought the talk went well when suddently Dot excused herself and flew to another group of people. At the end of the discussion, I learned that the lady was a reverend’s wife. I should’ve known that she won’t be much help to us by the time Dot left me with her!
But such thing is unthinkable for me. Between eating worms and doing bungee jumping, this is another thing in life I cannot do.
Much later in the evening, when everybody’s gone and those that’s left in the party were planning to do another party (much to my amazement), I talked to the boys in the quartet who were very sympathetic with my situation. (By that time I had developed real headaches and was ready to go naked for a pack of french fries). They were optimistic that I’ll learn how to do it, and I know as much that I will have to learn. I love this work so much and like all things that we love, we will develop the capacity of doing things we wouldn’t have imagined doing before, like give birth, breastfeed, and with me, it’s asking people for some name cards so I might contact them later so they can give us money to help develop classical music in the country. And if Sir Reynold’s speaking from experience, I hope this industry will supply whatever deficiency I have to get the job done.
(Imported old blog, originally written on March 27, 2009)
