The end of a good, but brief era.

Wishing my dear readers, and everyone else (a bit late but who cares?):

* MERRY CHRISTMAS & A BLESSED NEW YEAR!! *

I pray that the new year will bring you all more blessings, great health, and the propensity to change ourselves for the better.

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Yes, it's official now:

Top Room @ Top Hat Restaurant is closing down! Read about it here.

The place where I have been making a lot of rounds over the past 1 year over, with my own groups and with others, is closing its doors from Jan 1. The restaurant business in Top Hat is still running of course, but the jazz is gone.

So to commemorate its closure, there'll be a jam session, hopefully a massive one, this SUNDAY 30 December 2007, from 6pm. I will be there for sure, and I heavy-heartedly say that I was there when it opened, and now when it is closing as well.

In many ways Top Room was a place close to my heart, as I did a lot of my playing over the past year ever since it opened. And it was such a great place to have good jazz music, and there was a lot going for it - great ambience, and great sound, and great intimacy. But unfortunately, those qualities aren't necessarily enough to sustain a place like that.

I also want to point out that the new year starts heavy for me because of that. One would hope something good like that could go on, especially with the prospect of my (hopefully soon) departure for further studies. I would have loved to follow its progress over the next few months, and also gig if I get back here for my holidays. Alas, it is not to be. But I also hope that the remaining jazz joints keep up the good work, and maybe more potentially good ones would open up (at least I've got spots to play while I'm on summer holidays!!) as well.

Goodbye, Top Room!

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My visa interview is this Monday morning. Wish me luck! Once I get it, I'm good to go.

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I'm so saddened when I saw it on the Net.. the assassination of Benazir Bhutto. The world is a severely injured, and fractured place now, and it's gotten worse over the years (talk about understatement).

Usually I'm quite oblivious and ignorant about things around, as I never had fondness for governmental and national politics. But it is really getting hard to ignore it. And to quote sax great Phil Woods, "Musicians must be worldly people", so music has ingrained a bit of that in me. I feel a bit sad over some of the things that has been happening to our world, and mostly because most of the more horrendous ones result from only one entity: Man.

The question is: What can us lay people do about it?

A conceptual option I can think of is, be positive. Not just in thinking but in spirit as well. I cannot stress how important that is. Hopefully try to apply that in our daily lives as well. You'd be surprised how much difference it can make. I think I have lost a bit of that over the past several years, and I am trying to find it back. I need it.

You can read and find out more about it in scriptures, whether the Bible, the Dharma, the Quran, I-Ching, Tao Te Ching, and others. And I think this is the time we should do it, to save the world and save ourselves.