Easter Holiday

How fast time flies. Three of the four days Easter holiday have passed. It is now the time to record the activities during these three days.

On day one we went to Cleveland, which was a seashore suburb to the east of Brisbane. Several years ago before I went to Shenzhen, I had visited this suburb a few times. It was the place where I bought my car in 2016. As the car dealer gave me a discount to have the car service in their store, I visited there for car service twice from 2016 to 2017. For the first time for car service, I went there with two friends who were studying at QUT then. After the car service, we drove to many places of interest in the surrounding area. For the second time, I went there with my parents, and we found a snug place for fishing.

This time I went there with my wife and son, and the scenic views were as beautiful as before. The sea was so calm that it looked like a huge lake. It was not a popular place for tourism, and most visitors were local people. The shore, the river, the street and houses were all very clean and tidy. I could not be able to spot even a piece of rubbish. The buildings there were all nice with very few old and broken houses. The region of Raby Bay had many canals, along which the houses were splendid and all with a boat ramp. We first arrived at Raby Bay Boulevard Park. It was a quiet, beautiful and small park by the sea. There were not that many people, with some of them casually fishing. There was a nice small playground for children with a slide, four swings and a few rides. We had a wonderful time and had our prepared lunch there. After lunch, Ivan played with the lunch box by casting it on the lawn and picking it up with much fun. We had tried to find the fishing location where I and my parents visited before, but as I had forgotten where it was, we eventually couldn’t find it. In the afternoon, we went to the park next to the old Cleveland lighthouse. There was a canteen with a great sea scenic view. We bought a box of fish and chips and ordered two cups of coffee there.

On the second day, we had a good time in South Bank Parkland. We parked our car at QUT’s gardens point campus, and walked there through Goodwill Bridge which was across the Brisbane River. South Bank parkland is a memorable place for my wife and me as it was where we hold our wedding in 2019. Our wedding was held in the then Steak House (a western-style restaurant with river views) that was located along the river and next to Goodwill Bridge. Now the restaurant has changed its boss and is named OTTO. We had planned to have our lunch there but we gave up this idea as the dishes seemed too small and expensive when we checked the menu online. We went through a passage of an arched metal channel on which lots of bougainvilleas spiring around. When we arrived at the swimming pool, Ivan had some fun with the water. Then we headed to the Ferris wheel. This was the first time for Ivan to be on a Ferris wheel, but I had not much more experience than him. I had become a bit nervous and vigilant during the process while my wife said I looked too stressed. Sitting in a carriage on top of the wheel, we could see a full view of Brisbane CBD.

On the third day, which was today, we went to Lone Pine Koala Sanctuary, which was a zoo not limited to koalas but was the largest sanctuary for koalas in the world. The zoo was located in a western suburb of Brisbane with river views. Ivan was a bit afraid of the koalas when he first saw them. However, he soon liked them after a while. He wanted to touch them but of course, he couldn’t do that as there were fences surrounding the trees where the koalas resided. After watching the koalas, we entered the kangaroo field. There were plenty of kangaroos on a large lawn. Some kangaroos were in the restricted areas with a board saying that only staff could enter inside, while some were in unrestricted open spaces where people can feed them. I was a bit afraid of the kangaroos though I knew they were tame animals and probably would not attack humans. Naturally, I would like to keep a certain distance from them. However, my son was so brave and excited that he chase the hopping kangaroos, touched them, kicked their tails, pinched their ears, and attempted to tear their furs. I was so worried that the kangaroos might be irritated and hurt him. There were so many kangaroos that the grass field was full of kangaroo poos. There were also a couple of black big birds which were too heavy to be able to fly. I forgot their names but based on my memory they were endemic animals within the Australian continent similar to koalas and kangaroos. After playing with the kangaroos, we went to the barn to see some sheep and pigs. There was a small pool on the way to the barn, where there was a crocodile. We bought yearly tickets so we could go there many times in future.

The weather was nice during these three days, The sky was clear with a few clouds. It was not hot though the sunshine was bright.

Playing the Guitar

Today we went to the Wellington Point, which was the endpoint of a peninsular to the east of Brisbane. The spectacle there was splendid, and the weather was clear and pleasant. When we arrived at a lawn by the shore, admiring the beautiful scenery formed by the sunshine, the calm sea, the blue sky, the white clouds, the green trees, the beach and the flying birds such as seagulls and ibises, I brought my classical guitar out of the bag, sat on the grass under a tree and played the song Romance De Amour. The guitar I played was a new one, which was purchased a week ago online after my old guitar had broken. It has a solid bruce top and nato back and sides, and thus sounded a little better than my old one that was built with a laminated wood top.

Time has flown fast. I have been playing the classical guitar intermittently for 9 years. I am still at the beginner level, as I didn’t have that much determination for learning the classical guitar until very recently. It was during the time that I was devoting too much to research when I purchased my first classical guitar. I did not attempt to learn it seriously and merely used it as a way to spend some boring time or practice the fingers and wrists to avoid getting a disease called “computer mouse hands”. At the time when I started to be able to play some simple melodies, I went back to China to work there for a couple of years. I bought a steel-string acoustic guitar there but practice not that much.

In the year 2019, I returned to Australia to start a new life – setting up a family and starting a new career. I started to learn classical guitar again. I was always a self-taught learner, as studying with a teacher was impractical to me. I remembered that during my wife’s pregnancy, I normally played the guitar for some time almost every day at night. Then I could play some simple melodies such as Moscow Night, Greensleeves, and Minuete in G major more smoothly than I was able to perform before I went to China. This routine activity stopped some time before Ivan was born.

I then hadn’t touched the guitar for a very long time until around May 2021. To celebrate our second marriage anniversary in August, I tried to learn a piece of music played by the guitar so that I could play for my wife on that special day. The song I chose was a simplified version of Romance De Amour. It is simplified as it has been transposed to A minor and E minor so that it could be played in the open position. In addition, it only has the main melody and some low pitched accompaniments. It is said to be at the easiest level. However, it was still not so easy for me. First, I did not know I needed to alternate my right-hand fingers at the start. For a long time practising, I was using the wrong way to pluck the strings, which the ring, middle and index fingers responsible for the E, B and G treble strings respectively, and the thumb for the three base strings. I noticed this was the wrong way after I watched some online tutorials. I then bought a textbook which was Noad’s Solo Guitar Playing for reference. The other problem was I feel it was hard to pluck more than one string at the same time. The finger movements were too rigid and I felt it hard to move my thumb. But after some practice, I started to master this piece of music and played it on a special day as a milestone I set for myself.

When I was about to learn it deeper, my enthusiasm was cooled down again. It was because the textbook said for playing classical guitar, one had to grow some nails, which I did not want to follow. I searched a lot of information online, and eventually found Rob Mackilop’s website https://rmclassicalguitar.com/ for the techniques to use flesh purely for plucking the strings. It was said historically there were many famous guitarists such as Sor used flesh purely to play the classical guitar. I was encouraged as I knew Sor was probably the most famous figure for guitar in history so far. However, as I studied this technique deeper, I found it was more suitable for gut strings rather than the modern nylon strings. Gut strings were expensive, easy to break and the tune was sensitive to environments. They were definitely not what I could afford though I admit the sounds they produced were so attractive. I stopped the playing guitar, and instead, I played the flute and Xiao.

However, my wife and mother both believed the sounds of flute or Xiao I produced were too noisy, too high pitched, and not as pleasant as the guitar sounds that I produced before. This puzzled me and drove me to guitar again. Later, I got some materials online that some top virtuoso players such as Lorenzo Micheli and Virginia Luque used very short nails to play classical guitar. Virginia in fact claimed her technique to be a no nail method though she said she grew very short nails to support the fingertips. This information shed a light on me because I did not really care about whether to use nails or not, and I merely don’t want to have long nails to make many aspects of life not convenient. Very short nails are very acceptable to me. Though they hadn’t published any books or papers on this matter. There were comments given by them on their Youtube uploaded videos, which explained how they did.After some practice, I found I got a sense of using short nails for the playing. Then I started to learn new songs. I found that I could handle the two voices in the music much better than before…