The 5 Browns

6/13/05 - I read about these youngster pianists in Time for Kids and bought their dual disc CD/DVD. Lots of people tried to badmouth them in that they are just trying market themselves using the 5 piano and family gimmicks, but I think they are really talented. The interview included on the DVD was really interesting where they describe growing up learning the piano. They all started on their 3rd birthday where they would finally be able to take their hand-me-down piano books to school. And their mother, an trained opera singer, would tirelessly sit with each of them for 1 1/2 hours everyday, for a total of 7 1/2 hours a day (she must have had a cook, a nanny and a maid)!! Of course, they had 5 grand pianos in their (grand) house as well. There was another terrible interview where the interviewer asked after they said they had 5 pianos, were you guys fighting to use the piano? Duh, there is no way 5 kids can share a piano. I think 2 kids is the max. As soon as one starts to practice I can see the other one try to kick the first one off.

Of course I thought, oh no, Adam is already 4 1/2 and he hasn't started his piano lessons! I've been trying to teach him Twinkle, Twinkle Little Star, but he really has no interest in it. The most I've gotten out of him is to play middle C, and he is still guessing most of the time. Since I started at 7, I don't think it's a lost cause yet, although he needs to show some interest. Dova, on the other hand, loves the piano. She'll definitely be starting at 3. At least she won't be fighting with her brother over the one piano.

11/23/05 - I had to come back to this post to report that Mommycast did some great interviews with the 5 Browns and also their parents. The one beef I had with their ever supportive mom was that she kept interrupting her poor husband constantly during the interview. If you have to have that kind of personality to raise 5 prodigies, I'll say, No Thank You!!!

The 11-Year Quest to Create Disappearing Colored Bubbles - Popular Science

The real interesting science stuff begins on page 9. The rest is just about a very persistent but not very scientific guy's dream.

John K. Tseng

My father passed on November 7, 2005. It was sad, especially since he had suffered quite a bit from his battle with brain cancer. I had been driving down myself on the weekends (4 hours each way) to visit him in the hospital. I arranged for his cremation according to his wishes and organized an informal memorial and lunch for him. Since Dova has been quite fussy lately, I had her stay at home with her Daddy while I took Adam to the service. Everyone was quite glad to see Adam as John's future generation.

It is too bad that John decided to leave his future generation completely out of his will and instead gave everything to his girlfriend of 8 years and her daughter. My mom told me to put this information into the thank you email so that everyone would know how mean he really was, but I did not. It is additionally ironic that his death certificate says "Never married". When I filled out the form for the death certificate, there were only choices for "Married" and "Single". Since he was divorced, I checked "Single". Now he is forever filed as "Never married" as though his family of 30 years never existed. I guess that is what he had wanted in the end.

8/20 Addendum: When I filed all the paperwork, I saw that the field for the Marital Status was a write-in. I didn't realize that the choices available were Never Married, Married, Widowed, Separated and Divorced. So I guess it was user error. And also, he didn't completely disown his grandkids because he did give some money for their college education last year. Still nothing compared to the 2 properties he owned in NYC.