Run 2 of 50. (At some stage I'll have to start counting back from 50, but I'm happy to work up for the time being.) Today I did a few laps around the park and my time for 5K was 22:25. 15 seconds of a PB, but I feel satisfied with that, considering that my running hasn't been consistent, and I haven't slackened as far back as I thought I might have, but still I know I have to think about achieving more rather than about not achieving less. I want to go under 20 minutes eventually though.

Hurricane Katrina - my thoughts go out to all those affected by it. Over here in Pomland the news is about the lack of aid and the looting. Call me naive, but with regards to the looting, I wonder how people can find it in themselves to do that in such times. We watched news footage of looters heroically (in their own eyes) carry out items from stores triumphantly. No doubt they were thinking "I gotta do what's right for me". Truth is perverted by rationalisation. The cynic in me says "Watch out next for the 'Help Katrina victims' spam emails which ask for your credit card details".

Still awaiting my timetable which I expect to come over the weekend. I've also been composing some more new music for the beginner and intermediate keyboard learners, but it's difficult to find stuff that is (a) popular with kids, (b) easy to play and (c) sounds nice. Many of the ones I teach want, for example, to play "Alicia Keys songs" without having the skill to do it, and when offered with a scaled-down version, struggle with it and then complain that "it doesn't sound like the real thing at all". This culture of immediate gratification and end-gaining is so prevalent among people today. In my music classes it translates into people wanting to be musical maestros without doing the necessary learning for it. Instead of learning to read music, and accepting the struggle of doing so, and the exercises, they want to be able to be a megastar within twenty minutes and aren't happy if they (naturally) can't. Instead of learning music, they are learning "I'll play the 'C' here, then it's two keys up, three down, one up, left, left, then jump to the note between the second and third black key..." and various patterns. And we're even not talking about left hand yet. Learning patterns instead of reading notes. Dumbing down.

To put it in a running context, no one ever runs a marathon without doing any training for it. You can't expect to show up for a marathon without training, and then run it by thinking "left foot here, right one next" for the entire way and then hope to finish first in your age-group.

We watch stuff like "Pop Idol" and "X-factor" and all that - those singing shows where people expect that they'll be perfect singers over the course of ten weeks. Some of them are good, but it's the ones that think that it takes a short time to achieve success that annoy me. As well as the ones that are so full of themselves. (Am I like that too? Oops.)

Enough rambling. I'm outta here.