Looking back...

on 2011 and forward to 2012!!! I copied this blog idea from Bethany's blog and added a few things of my own. :)

The Best Book I read in 2011: would have to be Personality Types by Don Riso with Russ Hudson. I came across it seemingly by chance in the library, and it has proven to be one of the most useful books I've ever read. I know some of you will think it sounds rather weird and nerdy but I can tell you that trying to understand different personalities is something we are all constantly doing whether we realize it or not. This book gives some very good insight to understanding the people around us, their way of thinking, their motivations and fears, and how to relate to them effectively.

The Worst Book I read: I hardly ever read so don't have many books to choose from, but I didn't really like a book I started to read earlier on in the year, The India Rubber Men. I can't even remember much about it except that I found it a bit dry and uncaptivating.

The Best Movie I watched: Although it wasn't actually released in 2011, we watched Tangled a number of times during the year, and I always appreciate what a good movie it is. Apart from being a very well-made film, it's relaxing and easy to watch, and despite outward appearances, a good film for the whole family. (At first I was put off the whole "Disney princess movie" idea, but surprisingly it wasn't what I expected and actually has a lot that we guys can relate to as well).

The Worst Movie I watched: The Inspector General. It's really annoying, corny, and "cringe-ful". Why people make movies like this one is beyond me. What makes things worse is half the family finds it very amusing, which means we have to see it (or at least hear it in the background) occassionally.

My Favourite Holiday: Our October holiday at Culburra Beach was not only my favourite holiday of 2011, but the best holiday of my life so far. It was fantastic to just get away from all the busyness of life and completely relax (although I was also very glad to get back into the usual routine of things in Term 4).

My Favourite Moment: Getting my L's, passing my Grade 8 Flute exam, and playing a concert as Principal Flute in the CCO, and playing bassoon in a professional orchestra all come pretty close. However, probably my favourite experience of the year was performing Handel's Messiah in Cooma. Messiah is an incredible piece of music, and when you're actually "inside" the music playing it, you experience an incredible sensation that can't be adequately described. To finish off an extraordinary day by performing the Hallelujah Chorus with a very enthusiastic 50-piece choir behind you - not to mention amazing timpani (Caitlyn) - is something you have to experience to understand. The libretto is very Biblical and uplifting, too.

My Favourite New Thing: Well if it counts as a "thing", then teaching flute last year would be my favourite. I still consider it a miracle how God has worked things out for me, and I'm SOOO thankful for everything He's done for me in 2011. Two of my students did AMEB exams (2'nd and 3'rd Grade) last year, and both did very well. The enthusiasm some of my students have is so inspiring, and I can tell you, I've learnt a thing or two from them over the past year as well! I look forward to starting next term with 12 students, and founding a Flute Ensemble to give them even more opportunities.

My Favourite Song or Album: It's kind of complicated. I consider "You Know Better Than I" from Joseph King of Dreams to be the best song ever. At the same time, When You Believe (from Prince of Egypt), is probably my favourite song, while the theme from Jurassic Park is the one I most enjoy listening to. However I've never enjoyed music quite so much as when I am playing the Dvorak Cello Concerto or Symphony No 8 or Handel's Messiah. All these pieces of music are favourites of mine, but all in different ways. As I said, it's hard to explain.

What I'm thankful for in 2011: So many things! God has been so good to me. Apart from what I've already mentioned, some of the more notable things include getting a scholarship for cheaper music lessons at the ANU, learning to drive, being in COOMA!, 6-a-side soccer, our church carols night (one of the highlights of my year, actually), and probably the thing that I've come to appreciate most; all the amazing people that have done so much for me in the past year, especially those like my family who know all my faults and see me at my worst, but still put up with me.

Achievements I have in mind for 2012: 2012 will be a BIG year in my life. I hope to get my P's, buy a car, finish school, do my Flute AMusA, audition for the ANU, start a Flute Ensemble, and finish memorizing Jesus' Sermon on the Mount (Matthew 5-7).

What about you? What were your highlights of 2011, and what are you looking forward to in 2012?

Happy New Year, everyone!!!

10 things I'm grateful for 2010

As we start a new year, I decided it might be interesting and worthwhile to make a list of some of the things that I'm thankful to have received or done in 2010:

#1 I've finished the last year of not being able to drive. Yep, that's a big thing for me. I can finally start to learn to drive this year! Only 116 days to go now...

#2 I got to learn the bassoon!! I'm still amazed at how everything just came together for that to happen. A week before it happened I would never have dreamed it would have even been possible, but God pulled things together like He does and before I knew what hit me I was enjoying the opportunity of a lifetime.

#3 Snowy Mountains Ensemble. Taking over leadership of an ensemble at the end of 2'nd term this year was a huge learning experience for me, but one for which I am extremely grateful. Not just because I've learnt from it, but because I've finally been able to give something back to the Cooma music community which has given so much to me! With five new members joining in the last term, the ensemble has come a long way from the time when there was only one regular member outside of our family. It has been a huge encouragement to see God bless the ensemble so much.

#4 Friends! We've met a record amount of people this year, some of whom are really nice Christian people. It's always so encouraging to meet like-minded people, and I hope to get to know them a lot better in 2011.

#5 Community. The community here in Cooma is remarkable. I won't go into detail, but suffice it to say that the general attitude of giving so generously is very humbling. I'm also thankful to have received opportunities this year to begin giving back to the community a little of all I've received over the years.

#6 Jesus' sacrifice! Okay, sure this didn't exactly happen in 2010, but I can still be grateful for it! This deserves a place on ANY list of things to be thankful for.

#7 Vella - my new flute. If you're a musician you'll know exactly how I feel. After upgrading from an inferior instrument to a much better, more reliable instrument that is SO much nicer to play, I can't help but be forever thankful for those involved in helping me to get it. Thank you - you know who you are.

#8 Finishing Year 10. What a great feeling! Less than 2 years to go until it's all over for good!! Not that I don't enjoy it; don't get me wrong, I love doing schoolwork a lot more than nearly everybody I know, but I just can't wait until I can study the subjects that I actually want to study at uni - things that will actually help prepare me for a career. Right now I can hardly think of anything more exciting than being able to learn more about music and teaching, so this was a real milestone for me.

#9 We had an extension built! The whole house is so much better with it, and it has immensely benefited all of us.

#10 I got accepted into the MuST program at ANU!! That was probably the highlight of my year, as I'm sure you've all figured out by reading my previous blog posts...


2010 was a really good year for me, but on the other hand I'm really excited about what 2011 might hold. I might even do a post about my goals/resolutions for this year.
What are you thankful about from 2010? Do you have any New Years Resolutions or anything you're looking forward to about this new year?

My first attempt...

At creating a piece of music from scratch using only electronic devices. Let me know what you think!

My first page-turning experience...

was, in a word, nerve-racking. As I mentioned briefly at the end of my last post, I had been asked to act as a page-turner for the pianist at a concert today. This wasn't just any concert, it was a concert put on by [apparently] one of Australia's best cellists, an extremely accomplished pianist, and a fantastic clarinettist - meaning that there was a huge amount of pressure on my shoulders to not stuff up anything. Unfortunately I had never done any amount of page-turning before - not even at home - so I was already feeling quite nervous. The rehearsal did absolutely nothing to help my nerves, especially with quite a large audience gathering 1 hour and 15 minutes before the concert! I hadn't felt so nervous since... well actually last time I performed, because I did this enormous stuff-up in which I totally forgot what to play and had to 'fudge it' (aka improvise) for about 15 bars... anyway, I was feeling extremely nervous. Enjoying the beautiful music only helped a little, because I had to pay such rigid attention to following the music so I wouldn't get lost. While it was a good experience and I was delighted to be able to help in some way, it wasn't exactly the sort of thing I would choose to do for fun. It is unbelievably easy to make a mistake that could ruin the performance, or even the whole concert.

On the bright side, I was given the privilege of meeting and getting to know David Pereira, which I'm very pleased about. I was also very happy to be able to do a favour for the pianist, who has done lots of things for me in the past.

The moral of the story is that I now have a proper appreciation for page-turners and what they have to go through. To anyone in the world who's ever done page-turning - thank you for making a difference by offering your services, and I can now empathise with you.

And now I shall go find a CD so I can hear what Beethoven's Clarinet Trio IV actually sounds like without the sound of a heart thumping 180 beats per minute...

I'm a bassoonist!!!!

No joke, I really am! It's almost as much of a shock to me as it is to you!! If someone had told me 2 weeks ago that I would be playing the bassoon before the month was over, I would never have believed them. But then God started working again, and opened all these doors that made it amazingly clear. Basically, this is what happened:

1) My piccolo which I had been looking forward to learning to play turned out to still have problems. I still haven't had an opportunity to have it fixed.

2) My passion for Woodwinds was reinforced, and I couldn't stop dreaming about the bassoon. Even when I wasn't dreaming, it seemed like there were bassoon reeds following me all around the School of Music.

3) Mum started talking about how much we will need a bass instrument to replace the cello when Bradley goes off to Uni. This was the first time I started thinking that it might actually be a reality, not just one of my dreams.

4) I told Mum (and Dad) about the bassoon and what it could do, and mentioned that it has been my dream to learn to play it. Amazingly, they were both very positive about it. In fact, the idea met absolutely no opposition at all! This convinced me that God was telling me something, because I had been expecting to spend months convincing the parents to let me learn another instrument!

5) Then I had to face the reality - buying a bassoon would cost me about $5,000 to get a decent instrument. I didn't give up hope, though, and kept praying. Then God opened another door when I found out that the Canberra School of Music had a very good bassoon sitting in storage that I could 'rent' for free as a MuST student!! I became convinced that God creates these 'problems' so that we can watch him at work solving them, rather than just take everything for granted.

6) The worst problem of all then presented itself. Playing pretty much any wind instrument can have very bad effects on one's flute playing. I had to give up playing the trumpet, clarinet & oboe for that very reason. However, it turns out that bassoon is the ONLY wind instrument (besides maybe recorder, which is technically a type of flute) that is compatible with flute playing!! To me this is nothing short of a miracle.

So I decided to take the challenge and learn another instrument - and before I knew it my dreams had become reality! I brought home the bassoon (haven't come up with a name for him yet... suggestions welcome! =P) on Tuesday afternoon, and much to my relief it came with a reed (a reed is the bit of cane that vibrates to make the sound - without the reed, you can't play a bassoon). I think I would have died if I had had the bassoon for a whole week without being able to play it. I'm seeing my new bassoon teacher on Tuesday, which, needless to say, I'm very much looking forward to. He is the Principle Bassoonist of the Canberra Symphony Orchestra, a position he's held since 1965. He has also received a Canberran of the Year award, as well as an Order of Australia medal for his work in youth orchestras.

And now I've come to the point where I realize that in all my excitement I forget to tell you what a bassoon actually is. Most of you probably wouldn't know, due to its extreme rarity. Well, the Bassoon is the bass of the Woodwind family. It is made of an 8-foot long pipe which is bent double over itself to allow the player to reach all the keys. It has an extremely complicated fingering system - most of the fingers only have to cover 1 hole each, but the thumbs have to control 13-14 levers between the 2 of them. Crazy, I know. Especially when you're the one playing it. But trust me, it's definitely worth it!

Since bassoons are so expensive, hardly anyone plays them, so they are very in demand in ensembles and orchestras. After only playing for 1 day, I've already been asked to play in a beginner orchestra group and possible another ensemble later in the year. This afternoon will be my first experience playing bassoon in an ensemble, so wish me luck!

Finally, here is a picture of the bassoon I'm using. This photo doesn't show the size very well, but standing up it goes up to about the height of my neck. I might add some photos to this post later on if I can manage to take any that aren't as bad quality as this one.

1 week old kittens

As promised, here are some photos of Pepper's new litter. All 7 kittens are growing healthy and strong, and are due to open their eyes and ears tomorrow or the day after. After that, it won't be long before they start leaving the nest to explore.

To give you an idea of how much they have grown in one week, here are 2 photos of the same kitten, taken only 1 week apart!!

This one has a rex coat, and also a very nice colour called Broken Sooty Fawn. As she does with all Sooty Fawns, Caitlyn has fallen in love with it and named it Francine. We have decided we are definitely going to keep this one, and probably sell all the rest.

This one looks like it has a normal coat, and is Blue. Sorry about the awful quality of the photo. I've re-discovered (as I do every time we have a new litter) that it is simply impossible to take a good quality photo of a baby rabbit sitting still. The only way to get one anywhere near satisfactory is to hold the rabbit still with your hand, take the photo, and jerk your hand away just before the photo is taken. Take your hand away 1 second too soon and the rabbit scrambles out of the way, and take it away too late and you get your hand in the photo. That's why you can see my hand in so many of these photos. In light of that, please excuse the terrible quality and try to focus on the bunnies. ;-)

Not sure about this colour yet... although we're fairly certain it has a long coat. We're praying it will turn out to be a doe (female) because someone has promised to give us a Plush Lop in exchange for a long-haired female rabbit. In case you're not aware, Plush Lops are the breed that we long after the most (besides Silky Lops!), and this one is LILAC! So I can't wait to determine the gender of this kitten (which, unfortunately, won't be for at least 4 weeks).

Caitlyn has adopted this one and named him Arthur. He has a normal coat, so we won't be able to keep him, but hopefully we will be able to find a friend or at least someone we know interested in taking him like we did with her last 2 adopted children (Dora & Winifred) so that we will be still able to visit him after he has left home.

Here's the same photo of my favourite kitten again. She deserves the double-photo. ;-)

She's done it again!

Pepper and Muffin are pleased to announce the arrival their 7 new healthy kittens!! They were born late on Wednesday night. The total litter size was 9, but 2 didn't make it (Pepper was really stubborn and refused to build the nest where I kept telling her to...); but we still have 7 healthy babies to rejoice about! It's a bit early to state the colours accurately yet, but it looks like there is a Broken Black (black + white markings), Blue, a couple of broken Sooty Fawns (orange with black shading + white markings), Beige (fawn with blue shading ), Broken Siamese Sable (Siamese cat colour + white markings) and possibly an Iron Grey or 2 (creamy white with dark grey shading).

AND the best news is that there are 2 rex kittens in this litter!! Getting a rex is the reason I bred this litter, and it's great to have 2 to choose from, so I can select the best. They're also more in demand as pets, and consequently easier to sell. ;-)

I've decided to include a couple of photos of the newborn kittens, even though they look really ugly at this stage. For those of you who haven't seen a newborn rabbit before, yes, it is normal for them to look like this, and no, they won't be this ugly for long! In a week they will have tripled their weight and started growing fur, and in 2 weeks they will have opened their eyes and will be walking about! I'll try and post some photos when they've grown a bit, so you can see how not-ugly they actually are!

 

This one is [what looks like] a Broken Sooty Fawn with the rex coat. (You can tell if it is a rex coat because it has very short, curly whiskers.)

 

Another rex-coated kitten, that looks to be Broken Blue.

All 7 kittens in the nest (I dare you to find them all!). We had to lift up all the fur so you could actually see them, then quickly snap the photo before the wriggled out of sight again! By the way, all these photos were taken by Caitlyn, my loyal assistant.

My rabbits

I promised to eventually show you my rabbits and tell you about the breeding project I'm doing. Since there's no better time than the present, that is what I have decided to blog about today.

As an introduction, I will tell you what I am aiming for in my breeding project. I started my current project in May '09. Well, if you count the months of research I did before actually beginning the actual breeding, I guess you could say the project's been going since about February '09. Anyway, my ultimate aim is to produce a "line" of rabbits with that have the small, cute dwarf body type, lopped ears, and a very special type of coat. The development of this coat will be by far the biggest achievement when I finally reach my goal. The idea is to develop a coat similar to the rex coat (the rex coat is extremely short, unbelievably soft, and incredibly plush all at the same time) - only longer. So rather than being short and plush, it will be long, silky, but still extremely soft to touch. There used to be several rabbit breeds with this coat, but they have all become virtually extinct. In very recent years, one man in Tasmania has begun to develop a single breed with pretty much the same coat, although it is genetically quite different. Anyway, the point is that the long-haired rex coat is extremely rare, and virtually non-existent outside of Australia. So to have this special coat type on a lop is going to be very exciting.

After less than a year of breeding, and only into the 2'nd generation, I'm am very pleased to announce that we have been fortunate enough to have breed a rabbit with this very coat!! He is one very special rabbit, and we are so proud of his parents for defying all odds and producing him. Well, of course God was the one that lined up all the correct genes that made it possible. But anyway, I'm getting ahead of myself. I'll come back to this rabbit later.

We decided to go about developing our line of "Silky Lops" (that's we we are calling them for now) by hybridising Mini Cashmere Lops with Mini Rex. We already had some excellent quality Mini Cashmere Lops that would be very useful in contributing the dwarf body type, lopped ears, AND long coat. The Mini Rex was used for adding the rex gene into the line.

Below is the original Cashmere we used. Her name is Rosemary, and we bought her from a breeder who acquired her from a friend who in turn purchased her from a pet store. She almost certainly isn't purebred, and she isn't particularly special herself, yet she has amazed us by producing kittens (baby rabbits) of amazing quality!! She is an extraordinary mother, and she has passed on her good maternal instincts to every female she has produced. She is a kind of "matriarch" to our rabbit stud - every single rabbit we have ever bred so far has her as their ancestor.

This is "Charmed" Peter. (All rabbits that have been bred at a registered stud carry the stud prefix as their first name. Peter's breeders had "Charmed" as their stud prefix, so every rabbit they ever bred carried "Charmed" as their first name.) He is a purebred Mini Rex, and very handsome one at that. He won Best Rex at an Online Rabbit Show, which was the first and only show we ever exhibited him at. Quite an achievement for an old fellow - he was already about 3 years old when we purchased him.

Below are the 2 rabbits we retained from Rosemary and Peter's litter. These rabbits are the 1'st generation of our breeding project - also known as F1's (F = generation... don't ask me why, that's just the way things are with Biology). The black one is Pepper (female), and the fawn coloured one is called Muffin (male). Pepper is not looking very good in the photo because she was very pregnant at the time the shot was taken. Pepper turned out to be an AMAZING mother, producing 10 kittens for her first litter. 4 or 5 would have been normal, but 10 is incredible. 1 of them had some birth defect and died on the first day, but Pepper did an excellent job of raising the remaining 9.

Muffin, not to be outdone by any of his accomplished family members, was a miracle in himself. His colour, the official name of which is "Lilac Tort Butterfly", is one of the rarest, hardest-to-breed colours in existence. And the fact that we had no idea that both his parents happened to be carrying the same, rare colour genes made it THAT much more exciting. On top of that, I'm pretty sure that he is the cuddliest, sweetest, most docile, affectionate rabbit ever to have walked the planet. You have to hold him for yourself to understand.

That brings us to the 2'nd generation. Of the 9 kittens raised, only 1 had the rex coat we were looking for. But what a coat! As well as being rexed just like we wanted, this rabbit happened to inherit a long-haired gene from each parent, giving it the extremely rare long-haired rex coat!!! Another bonus is that this rabbit has longer guard hairs than usual. Although this has the undesirable effect of making the coat feel slightly harsher, and less soft to touch, it also keeps the coat matt-free. This is just great for us, because the breeds that used to have this coat used to have a tendency to become permanently matted, which was a real problem. This is what eventually led to their extinction. So we're very glad to be able to start with a matt-free coat, because it means we'll have a lot less to worry about later on. By the way, this rabbit's name is Opus. "Opossum" is a name for the long-haired rex coat, so Opus seemed like a fitting shortening of the word. As well as that, Opus is an Italian word which translates roughly to "an artistic creation."

Opus's brother, Basil, deserves a mention, too. As a bit of background, we weren't expecting to be producing any rabbits with lopped ears until at least the 3'rd or 4'th generation. That would be 1½ - 2 years of breeding... quite a while to have to wait. But then one day when the F2's were about 7 weeks old, I noticed that one of the kittens (Basil), and one ear lopped. I was amazed, and thought I must be seeing things. Maybe he was just hot, and had droopy ears. I pushed the thought aside, dismissing it as too unlikely to be true. But the next day I noticed that BOTH ears were down, and had the most pleasant shock of my year!! We had a lop in the 2'nd generation!! That pretty much meant that we had been saved a whole year's worth of breeding. We had an F2 with the long-haired rex coat. We had an F2 with lopped ears. That means that it is perfectly possible to remate the same parents to each other, and produce another litter which might have a true Silky Lop, with the correct coat AND lopped ears!! Progress is a lot faster than was initially expected. Praise the Lord!!

We will be expecting another F2 litter sometime soon, a repeat breeding of the last litter, but for now that is all there is to report. "That's ALL?!", I hear you say. Okay, I'm sorry I raved on like that so much today. I have trouble controlling myself when it comes to talking about my rabbits. Thank you for bearing with me, and if you have read my blog post all the way down to here, you deserve a medal. *Gives you a forbearance medal*

If you're lucky, it'll be a while before I decide to blog about the rest of my rabbits... *wink*. Any suggestions as to what else you would like me to blog about would be most welcome.

God bless.

Matthew.