Music vs Writing (Part II)

So why is music related to writing?

In analyzing a music piece, the tempo of the piece, its genre, the instruments used and etc. are analyzed. Those are the characteristics or what I called the "social expectations" earlier on of a music piece. In analyzing a music piece, I used to ask myself a few questions. What makes me think that the genre of a piece of music, for example, is an orchestra? It's because an orchestra usually consists of string, brass, percussion, and woodwind instruments. What makes it different from a chamber orchestra? It's the number of members in the orchestra. A chamber orchestra usually has less than 40 members while orchestra has more than that. What makes it different from a concerto? Concerto is a solo piece for an instrument accompanied by an orchestra. In other words, a concerto is designed for a specific instrument, let's say the piano, and most of the time, the piano will be played in most parts of the performance with an orchestra as the background music.

As for "sub-genre" in music, there are ways to identify them, too. The tempo can be determined by clapping your hands or stepping your feet according to the rhythm of the music. By that way, you could determine if that is in slow or fast tempo. For the musical instruments used in the music piece, you have to be very sensitive to the sound produced by a specific instrument. This can be pretty hard for novices in music. In the music class, I was also struggling to identify the sound produced by the instruments. I always had a hard time in differentiating the sound produced by violin and cello as they just sounded the same to me. However, definitely there are some differences in the sound produced by these two instruments.

Analyzing academic writing can be done in the similar way as analyzing music pieces. In the analysis papers that I did, I always asked myself the similar set of questions. However, the item to be analyzed in that assignment is an academic writing, instead of a music piece. Let's take an abstract as an example. What is an abstract? Abstract summarizes a research paper to give an overview to the readers and let them decide if they want to continue reading the whole paper. What are the specific criteria to be identified as an abstract? An abstract is a short yet detailed summary of the purpose of a research, problems related to the research and solutions to them, definition of key terms, and results. What makes an abstract different from the scholarly peer-reviewed paper? Abstract is part of a scholarly peer-reviewed paper and it's usually put at the very first section of the paper. By doing this way, it helps me in doing my analysis paper.

Music vs Writing (Part I)

We have been doing genre analysis all these while in class. So I guess we are pretty sure what a genre is by now. Just in case you are still confused, let me define it once again. According to dictionary.com, genre is defined as "a class or category of artistic endeavor having a particular form, content, technique, or the like" or "style". To me, genre is about the social expectation of what an "item" is supposed to look like. At the beginning of this semester, I always got so confused by the word "genre" in the context of writing. So I have my own little secret of trying to remember it (not really a secret though). :)

I took a class called "Music Appreciation" in my former college before I got transferred here. Just to clarify, I'm not really a "musical" person (not sure if this is the right word) and I don't play any musical instrument. Although I always wanted to learn how to play at least one instrument, I failed all the time. :( The music notes are just so hard for me although I was taught how to recognize the notes in the music class. So why was I still taking the class? The reason is simple: to fulfill the distribution. :) But today, I'm glad that I took the class as it was really a fun class and the lecturer was just very interactive with students. I love the class also because I started to appreciate music more since then and I could apply the knowledge that I learned in that class even in a writing class.

So without digressing too much, what's genre in music and how is it related to the assignment that we did on analyzing some scholarly papers and short academic writing?

In the music class, I learned about the musical periods since 1100s (Medieval, Renaissance, Baroque, Classical, and Romantic) and some histories about the prominent figures in music during those days (eg: Mozart, Beethoven, J.S. Bach and etc). Also, I learned a variety of genres in music, such as opera, concerto, orchestra, sonata, symphony, and etc. In some parts of the exams in this class, I was actually asked to identity the genre, the texture, the tempo, the mood, the period it was produced, and the musical instrument used in the music by just listening to some classical pieces. This was really challenging. In order to prepare for the exams, I had listened to the same piece of music over and over again. Imagine, there was not just one piece, but more than 30 pieces of music that we were required to sort of "memorize" their elements (ie. genre, texture, etc). What made it worse is that they are not some modern music pieces, but they are pieces from those ancient periods! This was once my nightmare when I was still not used to them.

However, not all pieces that I learned are dull. The following piece is one of my favorites:

Just in case you are interested to know the elements of this piece of music. (Was trying very hard to remember what I learned in the class)

Genre: Sonata

Texture: Polyphonic (multiple voices at one time)

Tempo: Fast

Period: Baroque period

Instrument: Organ

Mood: Eerie

Another piece of my favorite:

So now you might have known a little bit of genre in music. I will discuss more about the relationship between music and writing in the next post.

Till then.

Confession of an Actuary

My love for you is like a perpetuity;

it goes on forever.

Are you short on derivatives?

I’d like to give you a call later.

What is P(you ∩ me)?

Since the first time I saw you,

my interest in you have compounded continuously.

You know, the corr(me, A good time) = 1.

Would you like to simulate stock prices

and take a random walk with me?

For my job, I analyze lots of numbers.

What’s yours?

If I were a scatterplot,

you’d be my best-fit line.

(quoted from the Actuarial Club of University of Wisconsin-Madison)

Income Inequality

Few days ago, I came across the blog post about the income inequality in the U.S. on Freakonomics. This issue has always been the concern of the society. One of my economics classes last semester touched on this issue, too. This seems to be a big deal to some groups of people, while it's does not really matter to the other groups.

Before moving further to the views of different groups of people on this issue, let's us look at some statistics on this. Since 1970s, income inequality has been increasing and the gap between the rich and the poor is getting bigger and bigger. "The rich get richer and the poor get poorer." This truly reflects the current situation of income inequality that is long existed in the history of the U.S. According to an article from the National Public Radio's website titled "Haves and Have-Nots: Income Inequality in America", the author points out that 8% of the nation's total income went to the richest 1% Americans, like Bill Gates, in year 1980. In year 2004, the statistics went up to 16%, which was double the percentage within 2 decades. He also argues that while the poor or the middle class are getting better in their standard of living over the 2 decades, the rich are just getting much much better.

This might seem to be a bad sign for the nation. Nonetheless, according to James PethoKoukis in his article published on U.S. News website, income inequality is a good sign for a nation. He argues that one of the major causes for wage inequality (which is part of the scenario of income inequality) is education. As the rise of new and advanced technology causes many jobs to be obsolete, people who are less educated and have little knowledge on technology will slowly be "kicked" out of the job world. For people in the computer-based or technology field, their role is getting significant to the market and hence, the unemployment rate of people in that field is decreasing over the years. Also, the demand for educated people is increasing. This indirectly shows that increasing income inequality is just a sign of better education for the nation.

On the other hand, Tyler Cowen claims in his article that many economists are still debating on whether there is any growth in inequality for people below the top-earning 1%. According to Cowen, "poorer people are more likely to shop at discount outlets like Wal-Mart" and this leaves us a question mark on whether the real income gaps between the poor and the middle class people has widen by any percentage at all. Robert J. Gordon from Northwestern University also shows that since 1993, there is no increase of inequality among people below the top 1% and this implies that the widening of the nation's income inequality is purely due to the changes in the income of top 1%.

So does income inequality matter to you? Something to ponder on.

Spoonfeeding?

Other than culture, the major thing that I realized even before I got transferred here is the difference between the education system in Malaysia and that in the U.S.

In Malaysia, “spoonfeeding” is a common scenario, or at least this exists since my elementary schools. To some of you who might not know what exactly “spoonfeeding” education system in Malaysia is, let me define it with my own personal experience. In the context of education, “spoonfeeding” means that the students will be provided most, if not all, of the materials to study for the examinations. Sometimes, the teachers will spot on some of the potential exam questions so that the students could just focus on those questions. The students are even asked to memorize the materials and literally “vomit out” what they have memorized on the examinations.

I still remember since my 3^rd grade (it’s called Standard 3 in Malaysia), I started to learn composition writing, which was part of the syllabus. That time, all of the students are required to buy a composition book with sample essays in different genres: narrative, argumentative, letter, news report and etc, for every new school year. On the first day of class, I was asked to memorize the first essay in the book and rewrite it like exactly what it is on the book during a small quiz a few days later. This is terrible, I know. What made it worse is that this kind of scenario happened in all my three language classes: Malay, Chinese and English. Well, looking from the bright side, the students could learn the way of writing a good essay from other good authors. Nonetheless, they will be so lack of creativity by practicing this way of learning because the students seldom think of how to write in our own way and always stick to the way like the composition book. This might be one of the causes of writer’s block that happened on me.

education = future?

Moreover, in my opinion, it’s the education system that causes most of the students in my country to be kind of grade-minded. In other words, they care more about their grades than the process of learning. However, it’s always the case that the process of learning is what benefits the students the most. From the process, the students could learn the effective way of studying; from the process, the students could learn from the mistakes that they made; from the process, they could improve themselves by learning some more effective ways of studying. On the other hand, grades indicate only the level of their understanding on some concepts. It does not necessarily show how academically good or bad they are. I think this is what the education system in the U.S. always emphasizes on.

Revolution on the education system in Malaysia is what I’m hoping for now. As the saying by Will Durant goes, “Education is the transmission of civilization.”

p/s: The above statements are just my two cents with no intention to offend to anyone out there. =)

Food as part of the Culture

Other than its dramatic politics (as you may have known) or its diverse cultures, Malaysia is also well-known for FOOD! Yes, food!

Warning: It's advised to have some napkins in hands just in case your saliva drips on your keyboard.

1. Asam Laksa

It's a sour and spicy dish with noodles in fish broth. It's my all time favorite dish since small. I still remember when I was like 5 years old, I started to love this dish. I just didn't care how spicy it was. There was this stall which sold good asam laksa in the market at my hometown. Whenever my mom brought me to the market, I would definitely nag her to have our breakfast there. Speaking of this dish, it made me flash back all the memories with my mom back at home. I'm homesick now! :/

2. Nasi Lemak

This is one of the traditional dishes in Malay culture. However, it's famous among all races in Malaysia. Nasi lemak literally means fatty rice. In fact, the rice is cooked with coconut milk (it’s called santan in Malay) or screwpines leaves to make up its fragrance. Normally, this dish is eaten with some side dishes like fried peanuts, cucumber, hard-boiled eggs, dried anchovies and the most important accompaniment for the dish, the sambal (a kind of special spicy sauce which can be made by garlic, dried chilies and ginger). This is starting to trigger all my taste buds.

3. Char kuey teow (also known by char kway teow)

It literally means fried noodles. You might be wondering what's so special about fried noodles. But this is definitely something different from what you have here in the U.S. This dish can be easily found at any hawker stalls in Malaysia. There are many variations in this dish. Most people like to have it with prawns, eggs and cockles. Bean sprouts are usually put into the noodles while frying. Of course, there is this sauce that makes it so delicious, which is known as belacan or shrimp paste, a spicy sauce made from fermented ground shrimps. However, the belacan is optional and the dish is still tasty without the sauce!

These are all the food I am craving right now! Wait, are these enough for you to have your saliva dripped on your keyboard? No? There are more to come!

Onde-onde – coconut poppers

Roti canai – flatbread made from dough with flour, water and egg.

Satay – grilled meat with some spicy peanut sauce.

Claypot chicken rice – chicken rice cooked in claypot with the indescribable taste that you have to taste it yourself!

Popiah – steamed spring rolls

Ais Kacang – shaved ice with some dressings like red beans, coconut milk, grass jelly, corn or even ice cream! Best food in the summer!

Since independence in year 1957, the three main races – the Malay, the Chinese and the Indian, and some minorities have been living together on one land for 54 years, neither too short nor too long for a country to build up its own culture. If I were asked to use three words to describe Malaysia, I would say “Weather, culture and food!”

p/s: It's a bad idea to blog about food to make myself hungry.