New Zealand and Malaysia

Well, it's a while since I've written anything despite a pretty eventful few weeks. The reason is that I generally feel like I should have something of at least moderate interest to say - simply writing, "I went here, I played lovely concerts with this orchestra and conductor, I had beans for breakfast" etc. seems pretty pointless. Nevertheless, it has got to the point where I feel I should say hi, so to speak.

A couple of weeks ago I came back from a month's trip to New Zealand and Malaysia. I was quite stunned by the beauty of the former; I think it's the only place I've ever visited where I thought to myself, "I could really imagine living here". Of course that idea didn't survive more than a couple of seconds once I considered where I play most of my concerts, but I felt very much at home in the midst of this marvellous scenery and rather relaxed pace of life. I hear that people in Wellington complain they have a long commute to work if the drive takes 15 minutes! I was touring the north island with the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra and Matthias Bamert, a really enjoyable collaboration for us all, I think. Then on to Kuala Lumpur to play Mozart with the Malaysian Philharmonic and Claus Peter Flor. I spent a lot of time looking at the Petronas Towers out of my hotel window. I just can't quite get it into my head that humans are capable of building something like this. If I think about it, actually, I'm amazed by most feats of engineering, despite my dad having been a civil engineer. Simply building a house seems to me an astounding technical achievement. I guess, like playing an instrument, it's just the convergence of a very large number of distinct skills, most of which I could readily understand if I took the time to explore, but for the Towers I can't quite shake a sense of amazement, as if it's akin to magic. How did we ever achieve this mastery over the world?