As some of you have gathered, I have been in a low ebb in the past couple of months or so. I have had difficulty concentrating on work, sleeping at night, and has barely touched my guitar since my big concert in October. Mel suggested that it might be SAD (Seasonal Adjustment Depression), where the lack of sunlight in the winter (the Sun set at like 3.30pm today) made me depressed. But I've been in London for the past two winters, and I don't remember being so down.

Last night, as I laid in bed tossing and turning at 3am, grappling with my demons, I was completely filled with resentment and anger at all the times I've been wronged, even if they happened years ago, and I was lying there plotting revenge on how to get back on those people who have made me unhappy. I gave in to my anger, when I suddenly realised: this cannot last without me destroying myself mentally.

I sat up in bed, and knew I had to do something. My parents have been trying to drill into me to take up meditation for my own good, and I have always rebelled against them. They don't seem to realise that I'm the perfect candidate for reverse psychology: tell me to do something and I won't do it, even if it's something that I would have done on my own. When I was 14 or 15, I was a believing Buddhist, but my parents suddenly turned towards Mahayana Buddhism, and which had elements I completely dislike, and that turned me away from it. Ironically, the final straw that turned me stop considering myself as Buddhist came from a pamphlet my father made me read when I was about 18. It was by some Thai Buddhist monk, and it contained stuff that I considered so repulsive and ridiculous that I considered myself an atheist from that time onwards.

I realised that I need to continue my own search, and not let my disdain for my parents' particular sect of Buddhism poison my perceptions of the entire religion. When I made that realisation, I calmed down almost immediately, and I decided to pick up a little booklet of Buddhist aphorisms that my mother had given when I left for the UK. After reading a few minutes, I was calm enough to turn off the light and sleep.

It's good that I'll be flying back in 2 days' time. A change of environment can only do me a world of good, and I can't wait to meet up with my friends.

Check out this video of my friend Todd Kreuzberg from Annapolis, whom I visited during my STScI internship in Baltimore. He totally rocks (albeit rather unorthodox playing style), and I've gotta get back to working on my guitar....

I had dinner with a VIP on Sunday evening. A few days before, Jane had called me, saying that Tourism Malaysia was hosting a dinner for the visiting Minister of Tourism, and they wanted a couple of young Malaysians to be present. My first response was, 'Ummm... do I have to play?'. I haven't touched my guitar for ages, and I most certainly wouldn't have been very eager to play in public anytime soon. Fortunately, we were just to be there to provide company for the minister, so as it was basically a free dinner, I agreed.

One thing to note is that I had NO idea who the minister was even after the dinner... I've since googled his name (Datuk Leo Michael Toyad, 'Datuk' is a title for you non-Malaysians), but I was totally clueless during the dinner and had to cop out by referring to him as 'Datuk'. The dinner was at Satay House, a Malaysian restaurant near Edgware Road, so it was something that would have set my mouth watering if I wasn't going to go home during the Christmas break. Jane and I arrived at the restaurant bang on time, at 8.30pm (and this despite the fact that I was a bit late meeting up with Jane near Edgware Rd). Of course, since there was a VIP going for the dinner, AND the fact that they were all Malaysians, meant that they were precisely 30 minutes late.

There were were the top two people from the Tourism Malaysia London branch there (Zalib and Zailin respectively, I think), and the minister of course, along with a few other people whos names I didn't quite catch (the only non-Malaysian at the table was their driver, who had this extremely Cockney accent). The minister was quite friendly to us, and it turned out that he used to play the classical guitar himself...and he even did Grade 8 and Performance Diploma for it. Small world indeed.

Of course, I absolutely stuffed myself silly with the food, as a prelude to stuffing myself silly when I go back home I guess. As for the dinner table conversation, I must say that I was rather occasionally bored by some of the things that were said, and I confined most of my contributions to nodding and smiling politely, except when talking to the minister about classical guitar of course.

In any case, I would never complain about free food, and I did enjoy the evening.