The Clan Phillips, Taipei Branch, had a rather busy busy day yesterday. Well, actually, Kaye had the very busy day while Lorraine and I were busy ferrying her all about the city from appointment to appointment.

April Fourth is Kaye's birthday and yesterday she turned fifteen years of age. However, rather than celebrating all day on a Saturday, she had classes nearly all day but we did do something special in the evening.

As many of you know, Kaye is a bit of a maniac when it comes to music (yes, my daughter is a Music Maniac see http://www.kayephillips.com for some of her original music) and she's been busy this year, like all wouldbe junior high school graduates in Taiwan, preparing for the high school entrance examination. Kaye has her heart set on getting into a music specialty program so that means study, study, and more study . . . not only for regular classes but also more music than you can shake a stick at.

Since her music theory bushiban has a practice music specialty exam today, yesterday, her birthday, was spent going to all of her regular music classes with an ear toward preparations both for the practice exam but really toward the real thing which happens in two weeks.

So, we got up early and headed off to her Cello class and then we shuttled over to Music History and Theory tutorial and then to her Piano class . . . but, that's actually a typical Saturday . . . we had more . . . something special . . . it is her birthday, after all . . . we went to the Taipei Arena for the Sarah Brightman (http://www.sarah-brightman.com) concert! The Symphony Tour has come to Taiwan and we were there for it! Kaye enjoys Brightman's work and so this was a big deal birthday experience. All day she was fatigued and had a headache but when it came time for the concert, she was on the edge of her seat enjoying the experience the entire time.

BIRTHDAY DINNER AT OUTBACK

Lorraine and Kaye share a mother-birthdaydaughter moment in Outback, the Australian restaurant at Asiaworld as we chow down some good food before the concert. The food was very good, if a bit slow coming for our needs (we now know to show up a whole lot earlier rather than right before we need to rush off to a show). I definitely want to go there again.

KAYE IN A SEA OF PEOPLE

This concert by Sarah Brightman was Kaye's very first major concert experience. We've been to concerts before but mostly those are classical musicians in much smaller venues. This was Kaye's first chance to see a world class performer in a large arena so it was a very new experience. Great to see, but the intimacy is gone as you are just another dot in a sea of humanity. However, that carries with it an amazing positive energy (such as the audible gasp of delight that flowed through the crowd as the opening notes of Phantom thundered from the stage). I told Kaye that I truly believe that some day her music will be played to crowds of this size (there were well over four times as many people in this single space than live in my home town back in the States). Of course, I also told her – this time half-jokingly – that when that happens, she can buy dear-old-dad a simple house like Mariah Carey's new one-hundred-twenty-five-million-dollar palace.

A VIEW OF THE STAGE

Yes, we were in the nosebleed section . . . although tickets even that high up in the stratosphere were not cheap. However, Kaye had good binoculars for when she wanted to really get in close to the action and Lorraine had some crappy binoculars for her experience (nope, I didn't get any but then I often can't work the blasted things anyway so it was good). Even this high up, the show was visually amazing and aurally just plain ol' wow, wow, wow. Some folks were there to hear the popular pieces while others were there for the virtuoso sets. Kaye drank in the entire experience (and her critical ear was very satisfied). Brightman is one of those performers who sounds amazing live and not just on audio CD where the editors and producers rework anything and everything to make even the most mundane of voices sound golden. She's a true voice musician. We have a couple of her CDs that get frequent plan in the car CD player during our regular commutes (although at the moment we're getting a lot of Angel Voices and Libera on those commutes as Kaye has discovered a passion for boy choirs – not typical adolescent fare like manufactured boy bands like other teenagers are duped into worshiping via the plastic altar, but choirs – once more, more about the substance and skill than the flash).

THE ACTION

Obviously, we did not bother taking more than a couple test photos during the actual concert and certainly no video . . . we have the DVD and audio CD for getting in close. However, this gives you an idea of the stage setup which turned out to be an amazing setup indeed. The mirror bits were wonderful and the visual experience was awesome. I told Lorraine it seemed as if the show's designers have been dating magicians as some classic magician's optical illusions serve as center pieces to some of the show visual effects, put to very good use.

YUMMY . . . BIRTHDAY CAKE

We got in late and it was a very very long day . . . but . . . the birthday girl still got some cake, although, in fairness, it was after midnight and technically no longer her birthday but such technicalities are silly when in the face of actual birthday cake ready to be devoured. No, she's not fifty-one, the candles say fifteen, I was just on the wrong side of the blasted thing taking the photo.

And . . . of course . . . here is a special bonus . . . while outside Outback, we came across something that immediately made us think of one of our very very favorite episodes of Dr. Who, Blink (one of the pieces adapted by the same author from a short story). Some of you will get this, others won't but Kaye and I simultaneously came up with the same idea . . . so . . .

DON'T BLINK . . .

"Don't blink, don't even blink, blink and you're dead! They are fast, faster than you could believe. Don't turn your back, don't look away, and don't blink! Good Luck."

―The Doctor

There you have it . . . April Four, Two-Thousand-and-Nine. Kaye's fifteenth birthday. Of course, the weekend's not yet finished and she's still a very busy girl. She stumbled out of bed early this morning to head back to the music specialty cram school for an all-day simulation test for the music specialty high school entrance examination. Tired, but satisfied. Two more weeks and she has the real music exam at which time she will drop her special music classes and concentrate on regular studies intensively for the regular course part of the regular high school entrance examination.

For those of you back home . . . nope, kids don't just go to the closest high school here in Taiwan. They take a general test and then get admitted into the high schools appropriate to their scores. Most kids want to go to the best schools and competition is fierce. We've never pushed Kaye the way most of her classmates have been pushed (only two students in her class don't go to cram school for academic courses every single day). We have arranged extra music courses for her this year because of the pressure but have held off on most of the other bits of the hamster-wheel, although she does have a math tutor now as well.

I wish kids could just be kids and that learning could be about joyful discovery all the time and at the pace and level and interest of the child, but practical pressures of idjit government planning and misguided idjiocy get in the way of developing well-balanced happy individuals.

However, that's neither here nor there or, rather, it's everywhere. Happy Birthday, Kaye. We love you.

All the best,
Brian