What's Katya Doing?

Back to School

2009-09-03T13:20:00.003-04:00

So. It's September now. How did that happen? My summer in Canada was great, though way too short. Time really does fly when you're having fun. Domaine was great. Lots of work, but great. I was hungry and tired for 4 weeks, and was super busy with practicing, rehearsing and playing. And some fun as well. But only a little, because you know how much of a no-funster I am. After partying a little bit too hard on the last night, I had to pack up my life into a suitcase and road trip to Montreal. We introduced my American roommate Heidi to the joy that is Tim Hortons, and I successfully did NOT vomit in the car. So props all around. I spent the night in Montreal, and then the next day made my stealth visit to Saskatoon. It was a big surprise for my mom - my dad bought the ticket for me secretly, and she thought I was just going back to Toronto after Domaine. My dad told her that he ordered an anniversary present for her off the internet, but he wasn't sure when it would arrive. He said he thought it would probably be there by his birthday, which happened to be the day that I flew in. I got in around dinner time, and my little sister came and picked me up at the airport and drove me home. She went in first (since she was expected to be there for my dad's birthday dinner), and I waited in the car for about 5 minutes and then just walked in the front door and said, "Honey, I'm home!". Mom was setting the table for dinner, and she just sort of stared and me and said, "What are you doing here????". It was hilarious. And my dad now has a saintly reputation with all the girls my mom works with. How romantic for him to fly his daughter home! Oh, how sweet! Oh, the humanity!
So I was 10 days at home. I did all the usual stuff like doctor and dentist, and pretty much just visited with my family and saw as many friends as I could fit in. I drove out to North Battleford one afternoon to visit my Grandma Woloshyn who was staying out with my aunt and uncle there, and I spent 4 days up at Emma Lake at my Grandma and Grandpa Theisson's cabin. Anne was there for 2 days, but she had to go back to Saskatoon and work on Monday, so I hung out with the parents for an extra day. We went fishing in P.A. Park, and dad caught 4 fish (one of which he had to throw back because the limit is 3), and I caught 0. So I amused myself by talking in silly accents with my mom while I caught copious amounts of weeds. Good times. Then after Saskatoon it was back to Toronto, and straight into Tomchelle wedding craziness. I found out when I returned that I was in charge of music for the dinner and dance, and everybody had a million requests for me. The playlist ended up being around 8 hours long, so not everybody got to hear their songs. But that's the way she goes. I also got to catch up with my Cosbey and Zapf families, and I got to meet Ingunn's baby Jonas! Such a cutie. Then I had to pack up my life once more and head back to Amsterdam! I was sure that I would have way too much stuff to cram into only 2 suitcases, but I actually managed to fit everything. I flew the red-eye overnight to London, then had a 4 hour stop-over there and caught a flight to Amsterdam. I got in at around 5 pm, and got back to my place, showered, ate dinner, and then headed out to a party. In my defence though, it was the going-away party for my friend Hayley who was moving back to England, so I had to go! But by the time I actually went to bed I think I'd been up for around 36 hours. Like, deliriously tired. But now I'm back, and getting back into the routine of things. I have a pretty busy September coming up as well - I'm playing in two people's exams, a concerto grosso concert, a small recital at Amsterdam City Hall, and I'm rehearsing for a chamber music concert I'm playing in early October. I was doing my scheduling today, and I was thinking it's a good thing I only have one class a week! Well, yeah, and my research. I'm supposed to hand my first draft of that in soon........good thing I can't sleep on planes, because I did the most work on it while I was flying from Toronto to London. A big 6 hour chunk of work. While watching crappy movies like "My Life in Ruins". Nia Vardalos should really branch out from the whole voiced-over 'Greek people are strange but lovable' movies. But that's a discussion for another day. Enjoy the photos of St-Irenee/Domaine Forget, since on the last night there someone broke my camera and so I have no pictures from anything after Domaine. Drunken eejits.

Oh, Canada.

2009-07-11T16:52:00.002-04:00

So I've not been doing a lot, just enjoying Canada! I had a bunch of errands that had to be done in Toronto, such as getting my viola appraised etc, and other than that I've mostly just been hanging out. I spent 5 days up at my Aunt Margaret's cabin in Muskoka, and my cousins Fred and Larry came up too so we had a mini-reunion. I haven't seen Fred since the last time we were both up at the cabin together! He goes slightly more often than I do, seeing as how he lives in Ottawa which is only 3-4 hours away. I live in Amsterdam. It's farther. Tonight I'm headed to St-Irénée to attend four weeks of masterclasses at Le Domaine Forget. I'm also going to be getting a big chunk out of my Masters reseach done while I'm there - I've gotten some articles copied from the U of T library, and hopefully I'll be able to come up with something!

For Your Listening Pleasure

2009-06-20T10:28:00.003-04:00

So not much is happening, just wrapping up all my loose ends and attempting to pack for my exodus to Toronto on Wednesday. But I thought I'd post a few things so that you guys can hear what I've been up to this year! First is from the finale of the National Viola Competition in February - the piece by Max Knigge for viola soloist and orchestra of violas! The Dutch radio recorded it, and it's available to stream on their website here. Then there's the recording I made of my exam. It's not great quality - I just set up my laptop and the back of the hall and pressed 'record', so the levels aren't great, but it gives you a gist of what I sound like when I play these days. I've uploaded the files here, and you can download and unzip the file to play it. It's in mp4 format, which is like mp3 but not. I'm not sure. That's just what format my computer put them into. And if you want to listen to the recital in order, it's Hindemith-Enescu-Ryan-Rontgen! And last but not least is the recording from Alex Simu's end exam, where I participated by playing in the Modern Baltic Jazz Orchestra. All the pieces except one were written and arranged by Alex, and he plays solo sax/clarinet on all of them. It's Baltic jazz because he's Romanian and you can hear Romanian folk influences in some of the songs, and the one piece that wasn't written by him was written by his friend Bobby who's from Bulgaria! Representin. So you can find that here. Same deal - download, unzip, enjoy!

What!!!!!

2009-06-15T20:19:00.002-04:00

So according to my mother I should stop playing Mafia Wars on Facebook and post on my blog already! So here we go. I haven't really been doing a lot since my exam. I played in the New Baltic Jazz Orchestra for a jazz sax final exam. We played music that was all composed and arranged by the saxophonist, save one piece that was written by his friend the drummer. So that was pretty cool. Then on Sunday I played in the Klank Kleur festival, playing in the orchestra for the final concert of the festival. On Wednesday I'm playing in a pop music final exam at the Beurs von Berlage called "Unsettled Scores". They've even made a website for it - unsettledscores.com. Scroll down and check out the movie trailer they made for it. I'm not totally sure how Johnny Depp fits into it, but I'm sure all will be explained. Then I'm just partying until my return to the motherland on the 24th. And if by partying you mean sleeping, eating, reading, and watching TV. That's my routine these days. I would be doing fun stuff outdoors, but the weather's been really craptastic. Beautiful Dutch summer. There was about 5 days of nice summer weather, but it was the week before my exam and I missed it! I learned my lesson for next year though - if it's nice out, screw practice! Enjoy it while it lasts......

The end of real life!

2009-06-04T10:12:00.002-04:00

Ahaha! I'm now back to non-scheduled programming, seeing as how my exam was last night and I passed. So now I don't have anything to work on. Technically. I have a few concerts to rehearse for, but the holidays have begun. To celebrate this, I slept until 1 pm today. I know how to party. But there isn't too much to relate about what I've been doing since I got back from London. Just practicing and trying to stay out of trouble :) My exam went quite well, aside from slight wrong note issues in my Hindemith solo sonata, I feel good about the rest of the pieces. I recorded it on my laptop, and recordings are available upon request! I will of course have to send it to my mother, because she loves to listen to me. Y'know, so she can hear how her investment is doing. My dad says I'm her hobby, but I see it more as an investment. In me. But anyways, I'm not sure what I'm going to be doing with myself for the three weeks until I go to Toronto. I'm idly thinking about going to Belgium, mostly because it's the cheapest place to get to that's not in the Netherlands. But we shall see. Over and out.

Back to Real Life

2009-05-20T11:14:00.003-04:00

So I'm back in Amsterdam, and buckling down to practicing until my exam in 2 weeks. Then I really get to do whatever I want!!!! Until Domaine. But whatever. Anyways, London was amazing. It was so what I needed. A little break, but also because I'd been before and also because I was there for 6 whole days I didn't ever feel the manic need to sight-see that I sometimes do when I'm on holidays. I basically just hung out with Carmen and Dan, and also did some sight-seeing. So fabulous. Also, I had macaroni and cheese for the first time in a while. It was magical. It's strange the things you miss......I miss ketchup chips and mac n cheese. Anyhoo, London is a ridiculously large city. I'd forgotten what big cities are like. In Amsterdam, you can pretty much get anywhere in 30 minutes (on your bike). Unless you're going from one suburb to another, but even then it's not that big of a city. Just the fact that we bike everywhere attests to that. You wouldn't be able to bike everywhere in London. Unless you have a lot of spare time on your hands. And a death wish. Also I flew into Stansted, which is the farthest airport away from the city. The London City Aiport and Heathrow are both close/in the city, and then Gatwick, Luton, and Stansted are outside the city but connected by train. But of course Ryanair flies into the farthest airport. Probably cheaper airport taxes there. So from Stansted it's a 45-50 minute train ride to Liverpool Street Station, and then from there I got on the Underground. I had to go meet Dan at his office to get the keys cause Carmen was playing out of town that day, but both his office and their house are on the other side of the city from Liverpool St Station. I think it took like 45 minutes on the Underground to get to Dan's work. Anyways, I got into Stansted at 9.30 am, and didn't actually get to Carmen and Dan's until 2 pm. Ridonculous. Anyways, I was so tired and hungry and whatever that I just raided Carmen and Dan's fridge, then went to Sainsbury's to replace what I had pillaged, and then lazed around until Dan got home from work. Then I went with Dan and their neighbours to quiz night at the pub on the corner. It was totally hilarious. And my fountain of useless knowledge came in handy - especially when it cam to identifying random celebrities. The next day I decided to go shopping! In England they have this amazing store called Primark. It's a clothes and whatever store, and it's ridiculously cheap but nice. Also, it has clothes in larger sizes, which is important for me. Half the time in the Netherlands I don't fit the biggest size in the store, and I actually bought a pair of jeans from the plus-size department at H&M......but I always find that plus-size clothes are designed with really big women in mind, so everything's kind of like a variation on the mumu. And while I may be big, I ain't all that fat. So Primark was like shopping heaven. I got a pair of jeans for 8 pounds! And dress pants for 6! OMG! So that was basically my day. Shopping takes a lot outta you.
The next day I went and wandered around Oxford Street, and then I decided to go to Fulham Palace. Carmen and Dan live in the area of Fulham, at Fulham Broadway in fact. And so when I looked up Fulham in my Lonely Planet guide (they sort the city by neighbourhood), Fulham Palace was the only entry. Apparently there's nothing else to see there. But Fulham Palace was pretty cool - it was the summer home of the bishops of London from 704 to 1973. It's a sort of hodge-podge of different architectural styles and apparently until 1924 it was enclosed by the longest moat in England. The oldest part to survive is the little red brick Tudor gateway, and the main building dates from the 17th century and was remodelled in the 19th century. But unfortunately for me, it wasn't open the day I visited but I did get to wander the grounds a bit - the palace is run by volunteers, so it's open at very weird times. Then that night I went to see the Royal Ballet at Covent Garden, performing Giselle. It's so handy to have musician friends! The next day I didn't really do much of anything, just bummed around.
Then on Friday Carmen and I went on a fun field trip to the Hampton Court Palace. Originally built by Cardinal Wolsey in 1515, he felt obliged to give it to give it to Henry VIII when he fell into disfavour after being unable to procure a divorce between Henry and Catherine of Aragon. As soon as he aquired the palace, Henry set to work expanding it, adding the Great Hall, the Chapel Royal, and the sprawling kitchens. By 1540 it was one of the grandest and most sophisticated palaces in Europe, but Henry only spent on average three weeks a year there! hen in the late 17th century, William and Mary employed Sir Christopher Wren to build an extension, what is now known as the "Georgian rooms". The result is a hilariously awesome blend of Tudor and baroque style (though my lonely planet calls it "a "beautiful blend"). They put on a daily program, and on the day we were visiting it just so happened that the program was the marriage of Henry VIII to Catherine Parr. They had a bunch of different things that you could go to, but I'll get to that later. In the Tudor part of the palace, you enter King Henry's apartments through the Anne Boleyn gateway, and into the Great Hall - which apparently has the country's best hammer-beam roof. Then onto the Great Watching Chamber where guards controlled access to the king. Then there's the smaller Page's Chamber, and the Haunted Gallery. Apprently Henry's fifth wife, Catherine Howard, managed to evade her guards and ran screaming down the corridor in search of the king. Her woeful ghost is said to do the same thing to this day........Then there's the Chapel Royal, which is still used as a place of worship today. There's also the Tudor kitchens, which have ben fitted out to look as they might have done in the Tudor days, including palace "servants" who turn the spits, stuff the peacocks, and frost the marzipan with real gold leaf. Mmmmm.....gold....... And there's also the wine cellar, which handeled the 300 barrels each of wine and ale consumed here every year in the 16th century. And this is the room where we went to part of the schedule - Henry VIII enjoying a last drink before his wedding. It was quite funny, and I even got a kiss on the cheek from the king! Then we checked out the King's and Queen's apartments from the Georgian wing. We went for lunch in the Tudor wing of the house, and I had some delicious good old fashioned beef and ale pie. It was really good. And then we went exploring the gardens. We saw the Real Tennis Courts, dating from the 1620s and is designed for the kind of tennis developed by playing in monastery courtyards - bouncing off the walls is totally kosher, and the ball stays in play as long as it hits the wall below a certain line. They still use the court too - when we were there, there was a game going on! And we visited the 800 metre long maze, planted in 1690. We managed to make our way through it pretty quickly, though I'm not sure we ever really made it to the centre. But it's hard to tell, cause it's a maze and all. Then we headed back into London, and I went to another show at Covent Garden that Carmen was playing in, but this time she was playing with a quartet and it was a program of all newly choreographed modern dance works. She only played in one of the dances, but it was a very interesting and diverse program. They even had a piece that was choreographed to a mixture of Copland's Fanfare for the Common Man, and Obama's election night speech. Then after the show, we headed to the Maple Leaf, a Canadian bar right behind Covent Garden. It was quite funny actually. They had a stuffed bear. And hockey jerseys on the wall. And we drank Sleeman's! It was a little taste of home. If we had gotten there before the kitchen closed, we could have gotten poutine as well.
The next day I was planning on going on a Monopoly pub crawl, organized by some people on Couchsurfing.com. But in the morning I just really didn't feel like it. It's a hilarious idea though - you go to all the streets and train stations on the monopoly board, find a pub, and have a drink. And move on. But it's like an all-day venture. Instead I decided to just walk around and see some things I hadn't seen yet. And I ended up walking for approximately 11 km. Crazy. I started out at Fenchurch station, and I walked to St. Paul's Cathedral, and then down the Strand to the courts of Justice, up to Holborn station and the British Museum, then down Oxford Street to Marble Arch, through Hyde Park and across to Kensington Palace, and then I finally hopped on the Underground at Kensington High Street. I got back to Carmen and Dan's at about 2 pm and I was exhausted. I was sitting on their couch looking at my watch like "how can it be only 2 pm? I'm soooo tired!". But I managed to re-group to go to a Eurovision viewing party that a friend of theirs was having. I love Eurovision. I love bad pop music, so it was so awesome. I was rooting for Greece. Don't get me wrong, that kid from Norway was cute, but Greece was the bomb. If you haven't seen or heard it, you should definitely YouTube it. Sakis Rouvas, "This our Night". Amazing. I need to learn how to dance like that.
Then on Sunday, all three of us went on a field trip to Greenwich. We wandered around the old marine college, and up to the Royal Observatory. The college was built in the site of the Old Palace of Placentia, where Henry VIII was born in 1491. It was originally built as a hospital for naval pensioners who were wounded in the victory over the French at La Hogue. Commissioned by William and Mary, it was built in two separate halves so it didn't spoil the view of the river from the Queen's House, just above it on the hill. It was turned into a naval college in 1869, and now houses the Trinity College of Music and the University of Greenwich. The two parts that are open to the public are the Painted Hall and the chapel. The Painted Hall is one of Europe's greatest banquet halls. It's covered in "allegorical Baroque" murals by artist James Thornhill, who also painted the cupola of St. Paul's Cathedral. Just off the Upper Hall is the Nelson Room, where Lord Nelson's brandy-enbalmed body was kept for a week before his state funeral at St. Paul's. He died in the Battle of Trafalgar, and to preserve his body before they got back to England, they stuck him in a barrel of brandy. Pretty classy stuff. Across from the Painted Hall is the chepel, decorated in a lighter rococo style. It was originally designed by Wren, but wasn't finished until 1752. And then in 1779 it was badly damaged by a fire and the present interior is actually the work of James Stuart and was completed in 1789. Then we ventured up the hill to the Royal Observatory. Built in 1675 on orders from Charles II, it sits on a hill in the middle of Greenwich Park, was was built to find a way to calculate longitude at sea. The entire globe is divided between east and west at the Royal Observatory, and in the Meridian Courtyard you can put one foot on either side of the meridian and straddle the two hemispheres. Which is totally did. Every day at 1 pm the red time ball drops at the top of the Royal Observatory (it's on a spire), as it has done since 1833. This was so that ships moored below on the Thames could set their watches and clocks to Greenwich Mean Time - just wait for the ball to drop and you know it's 1 pm. After the observatory we headed back into town and hit up the Greenwich Market. We passed this shop that's directly beside Greenwich Park, and markets itself as the first shop in the world (because it's the first shop on that side of the meridian). Very funny stuff. Then we headed back into town, and I had to pack. So much fun. Not.
I had to catch a bus at 4.20 am to get to Liverpool Street Station in time to catch the 5.10 Stansted Express, and then when I got to Stansted I almost missed my flight because everything took forever!!!! It was so frustrating. They make you check in on these "Express Check-In" kiosks, but then you have to stand in this very huge line to drop your baggage. I was just lucky that some very nice people let me cut in front of them, because I definitely would have missed my flight otherwise. Then, security was ridiculous. Those Brits are so paranoid, though I guess they're the Western nation that's most recently been the victim of terrorism. But this whole liquids thing really pisses me off, because they never ever charged anybody that they arrested with that whole liquid bomb plan, because there was no such thing! But they still won't let you take your perfume with you if it's bigger than 100 ml. But oh my god. I was already late for my boarding, and I go through security, and they pull my bag aside to be checked. Whatever. I know that there's nothing contraband in there. But then I stand around for like 5 minutes while they're all chatting and drinking coffee, and my plane is already boarding. Then they spend 10 minutes searching my bag, making me pull everything out, running it through the scanners, swabbing it for explosives, then scanning it again. It took so long, I was hauling ass running at full tilt through the terminal once I finally got through security. I was just happy I wasn't the last person to board the flight - a few people who obviously got stuck in the same situation boarded after me. But seriously. I couldn't have been there any earlier unless I had spent the night at the airport. Or took a cab, which would have cost me like $100. Next time I just might spend the night, cause then I can leave 3 hours to check in and go through security. So very annoying. But now I'm back in Amsterdam, and back to real life. For a couple of weeks at least, until my exam is over.

London Calling!!!

2009-05-10T19:22:00.000-04:00

It's been a busy time since Queen's Day. We've been heaving into the Enescu project - we had our first run-through at the Theatre School on May 2, and we've done 4 shows since then with our last one tomorrow night. Then on Tuesday morning I'm going to London! Oh, wat leuk! I'm ridiculously excited, because I will see some old friends, and I will see some sights, and I will be on vacation! Only 6 days, but I'll take what I can get. Then it's back to the salt mines until my passing exam is over on June 3. Then I have a couple more things I've agreed to play in, and then before I return to the motherland at the end of June I want to explore Belgium. I have big plans, I just need to come up with the money to put them into motion.
One cool thing I've done is I went to the official public ceremony for Dutch rememberance day on May 4th at Dam Square. I saw the Queen, and Crown Prince Willem-Alexander and his wife Princess Maxima lay a wreath at the war monument. I actually didn't get to see the queen in the flesh, since I couldn't see her through the crowds, but I did see Willem-Alexander and Maxima. Plus on my way to the ceremony the royal motorcade passed me. It was all very sudden - all of a sudden there were cops stopping the traffic, and then these black sedans whizzed by. But I whipped out my phone and managed to grab a picture. It was a very cool ceremony, and they had this choir singing and I swear one of the choir members was my evil twin or something. We looked like we could have been sisters or something. Exact same colouring and face shape and everything. It was hella eerie. But I guess it is true what they say about me - I do look very Dutch! Still, you should all beware of me evil Dutch twin running around out there!!!!! Be vigilant!

Koninginnedag!

2009-05-01T07:40:00.006-04:00

The whole country is recovering from Queen's day (which was yesterday). For some, they're recovering from raging hangovers. For others, they're getting bailed out of jail. And for the politicians, they're trying to figure out why the hell some guy tried to drive his car into the Queen. But more on that later. Queen's day actually starts with Queen's night, which is the night before Koninginnedag. Not the night of Koninginnedag. So for Queen's night I started the party at school, where the student society was hosting Koninginnenacht drinks. Then I met up with Niels, Ana, and Ari, and we decided to hit up the Jordaan, but first we stopped at Niels' place in the Red Light District to drop off stuff and meet up with his brother Jens and their friend Casper. Then we headed over to the Jordaan, to the Noordermarkt. It was insane. So many people. And the cool thing too is that it was mostly Dutch people, which never happens in Amsterdam. So we drank and danced Queen's night away in the Jordaan, migrating around the Prinsengracht. Queen's day didn't begin bright and early, on account of the late Queen's night. Niels and I set out from his place, and headed over to the Nieuwemarkt to get some cash and some food. Two very important things to have. The we just walked. We walked over to Spui, and then Koningsplein, and then decided to go to the Vondelpark. Easier said than done. To get to the Vondelpark we had to leave the canal belt, and it was a huge traffic jam of people. We were on Nieuwe Spiegelstraat and it took us about 25 minutes just to get the one block over the bridge and onto Stadhouserskade. It was just this huge crush of people and everyone was pushing, and to make matters worst they had lined the bridge with stalls for food and stuff, so it was just like this tiny funnel full of people. But we made it through (finally) and into the Vondelpark. The Vondelpark was actually quite nice. It was a more chill atmosphere than the rest of the city. There was a lot of people of course, but they had set up games, or were playing music, or just sitting in the park. Lots of families and kids, so that made it less of a drunken idiot atmosphere than other areas of the city. So we sat in the park for a while, to refuel, and then set out towards Jordaan. We walked all the way down Rozengracht, and then through Dam square and back to Niels' place. It was so noisy, and there were so many people everywhere, and the streets were just covered in garbage. We hung out at Niels' for a while, and then Ana joined us and we went for dinner on the Zeedijk. This really nice Thai place that our dutch class went to in the fall. Then we went back to Niels', and Jens and Casper showed up, and then Ana and I decided to head home. I was so tired, from combined lack of sleep and walking around in the sun all day. But getting home was an experience in itself. There were people everywhere, and I was just glad I hadn't drunk anything but water all day because I almost ran into so many people who just walked out in front of my bike. And the streets were like an obstacle course because of all the garbage and broken glass and everything. Whoa. But I made it home in one piece, and went to bed. I've never had a better sleep. So nice. I read a news story today with the official Koningennedag numbers from the Amsterdam police. Apparently 196 people were arrested in Amsterdam this Koninginnedag. This year, police had announced they would be cracking down on boat revellers. In total, eight people on boats were arrested, including four captains who had drunk too much. Some 36 people fell in the canals. Of them, 27 were on boats which sank. But this doesn't count the people who fell into canals and hauled themselves out, cause we totally saw a guy do that outside of Niels'. I wouldn't want to fall in those canals though, cause they were dirty. Very very dirty. Floating garbage everywhere.
So in addition to Koningennedag being a big country-wide street party, there is an official royal aspect to it. Every year on Koningennedag the royal family makes a traditional return to the Het Loos palace in Appeldorn. This is what they were doing when the "attack" happened. A guy drove his car through the barricades, through a crowd of people (killing 4 and injuring 17 of them), and narrowly missed the big open bus carrying the royal family before hitting a monument. He was a middle-aged Dutch guy from Gelderland who'd recently lost his job and his house, and he has since died from the wounds he received in the crash. I doubt we'll ever know why he did it, but they're saying that this will mark a big change in the accessibility that the public has to the royal family and politicians here. It's not unusual for MPs and ministers to bike to work, and the royal family themselves also bike around town like normal Dutchies. Not the Queen, but the princes and princesses. All in all, public figures in the Netherlands are much less sheltered and unapproachable than they are in most other Western countries, but that's also because nothing like this has ever really happened before. Of course this is all the babblings of newspaper editorials and the like, so we'll see what really results of this all. If you haven't seen the video yet, here it is with subtitles in English of what the announcer is saying - it was all caught on camera by the official TV coverage of the royal family's Appeldoorn visit.

1 concert down, 4 to go.

2009-04-26T14:29:00.004-04:00

So we had our last orchestra concert today in Amsterdam, and next week the Enescu concerts begin. We've been offered a spot in a festival in Romania in September to perform our Enescu project, but the hang-up is that they don't want to give us any money towards travel or anything. So Simona's going to try and bully them, and then the next step is to apply for funding from organizations. But we have our 'official' invitation to the festival, so hopefully we can come up with the money and go to Bucharest! This past week was pretty crazy - 6 hours of orchestra every day plus rehearsals for Enescu and some valiant attempts at practicing. Big time fun. Friday was our run-out concert to Eindhoven, and the trip was kind of a disaster. They had two big tour busses for us, and we left the school at around 2:45 pm. We made it through the city traffic OK and got onto the ring road expressway. And that's when the fun started. Apparently there was a really bad accident outside of Utrecht that caused the traffic to just stop. And so we slowly inched our way down the highway around Amsterdam. One and a half hours after leaving the school, we were only in Amsterdam Zuid-Oost. We ended up missing our soundcheck altogether, and we barely even made it to Eindhoven in time for the concert! What should have taken about 90 minutes took us 5 hours!!!! It was completely insane. With the amount of time we spent on the bus we could have been in Germany! Or Belgium!
Yesterday was a free day, and I ended up going on an adventure to Kinderdijk with Aida and a friend of hers from the Conservatory in Enschede. Kinderdijk is a small village outside of Rotterdam that is a Unesco protected world heritage site, due to the 19 windmills it has dating from the 1500s. My favourite part about Kinderdijk (apart from the windmills) was that it was in the Gemeente Nieuw-Lekkerland. Which translates as like the township of New Yummyland. Loves it. Anyways, the windmills were very nice, but I must say that it took much longer to get to Kinderdijk then you could ever spend looking at those windmills. But it's one of those things you have to see in Holland, so now that's crossed off the list. Our concert today went quite well, and we had a pretty good turnout for the audience. Now all my classes and stuff are over, and I'm just rehearsing and practicing until my exam in June. Well, except for the 6 days I'm going to London.
Ah yes, I almost forgot my trip last weekend, to the Keukenhof. A big group of Couchsurfers got together and biked from Leiden through the flower field to the Keukenhof itself. It was pretty cool, though there is a limit to how many flowers you can look at in one day. But it was fun, and very pretty.

Britain's Got Talent

2009-04-17T16:47:00.003-04:00

The reality TV show Britain's Got Talent is all over the news this week, on both sides of the pond. Why? Because Britain really does got talent. Hiding around the isles are these gems, like the winner of the first season of BGT, Paul Potts. The Welsh mobile phone salesman who sung a mean opera. If you haven't seen his original audition from two years ago, you must. He is the sweetest man, and he just blew the roof off that place. He's now released his second album, and is a big celebrity. The video of his audition is here.
This season everyone's talking about Susan Boyle, a middle-aged eccentric Scottish lady, who by her own accounts has never even been kissed. But she has a dream, and she's become an instant celebrity ever since her audition hit Youtube. Millions of people have watched her audition, and she's been doing interviews this week with all the major media outlets. And she hasn't even won yet - she's just made it to the semi-finals! If you haven't seen it already, watch Susan Boyle's audition here.
However, my favourite act to audition for BGT so far is the father/son team of Stavros Flatly. They can't sing (that I know of), but boy can they dance. And if you remember that whole Riverdance/Lord of the Dance craze, then this is particularily awesome. So, dear readers, I present to you STAVROS FLATLY!

I'm really updating a lot these days! Wowza. It probably won't last though.....

Sword Lobby

2009-04-17T12:17:00.002-04:00

Apart from the mis-spelling of "Amendment" and "lobby", this amused me greatly. Apparently some people tried to attack a woman and her baby with a sword in Saskatoon. And of course it was on 20th Street W. I swear, my 'hood is ridonculous. But one of the users comments on CBC.ca really made me laugh. Here's the link to the story:

http://www.cbc.ca/canada/saskatchewan/story/2009/04/17/sword-attack.html

And here's the comment that made me laugh:

Ah jeez, here we go... First we'll get the public outcry against swords, then the Sword Ammendment loby will start throwing around the usual rhetoric about how they have the "Right to Bear Blades", then the Concerned Parents Groups coming out about how there's too many swords in schools today, and that Sword Awareness Education should be taught in all public schools... that same old rigamarole every time you hear about a sword in the news.

What's this country coming to, anyways? In times of Canada past, even members of Parliament carried swords, and everyone was fine with it! Heck, the Governor General still gets a mace, right? I've got to say, all this media attention on swords is blowing the whole thing out of proportion, and if anything, will only encourage more people, young and old, to start thinking, "What if I'm out in public and I'm not carrying a sword? I could get hurt!" The last thing we need is every person on the subway or bus to start carrying concealed swords for "personal defense".

We all need to face facts: swords are a part of urban life, made more dangerous by the tight confines of urban life. Movies like "Kill Bill", "Braveheart" and "the Princess Bride" romanticize the sword and give our youth shabby information on their propper care and use. In smaller towns like Saskatoon, swords are mostly used in more traditional roles, like hunting, and are more numerous than you'd expect.

On a final note, let me just say that this isn't about swords; it's about people. Lets all send our prayers to this woman, and remember to teach our children -- as I'm sure she'll teach her child -- that swords can be dangerous if used improperly.

Another Week, Another Project

2009-04-16T14:05:00.002-04:00

We're starting up project week - aka orchestra week from hell. Rehearsals from 10-5 every day, and then I'll have other rehearsals and practicing to do on top of that. I'm also trying to shake this cold I've had for weeks. I got it on one of the first really sunny days here, where I went to sit outside and enjoy the sunshine, and ended up getting a cold (from the cold ocean breeze) and a sunburn (from the shiny sun). It was a bang-up day. But since then the weather has gotten quite nice - yesterday it was a scorching 21 degrees! It's cooling down a bit now, supposed to get some rain tonight and tomorrow. But it's supposed to be nicer again on the weekend, which I sincerely hope it will be, because I've heard rumblings about renting a boat on Sunday. Canal boat party! Anyways, I've just been practicing and rehearsing, yada yada yada. I had a lesson with Nobuko yesterday, and she said that in the competition in February she was the one on the judges panel rooting for me - which I can only take to mean that the others were all against me. They will pay! Anyways, apparently I move too much when I play. I think this is hilarious, because 6 years ago the major complaint teachers had with me was that I didn't move at all and that I needed to emote more. Ah well. You win some, you lose some. Today I did some spring cleaning, and I went all out on my room. It's now the cleanest it's been since I moved in. I cleaned and dusted and vacuumed and washed everything. It's amazing. Also, today I was offered a place in the Jeunesses Musicales World Youth Orchestra for a project in Spain during May and June, but I had to turn it down because it conflicts with my performance exam at school. Totally bogus! I could really use a month in Spain. But I suppose passing into next year is also something I could use. Currently I'm still trying to decide when I'm going to come back to Canada in the summer, though I'm now leaning towards late June. I gotta decide though, cause I gotta book my ticket!!! Any thoughts or suggestions?

Facebook is a Monumental Waste of Time. I love it.....

2009-04-07T19:16:00.002-04:00

So for those of you who aren't on Facebook, it has all these annoying/awesome quizzes that you can take. Most of them are totally bogus, like which Star Trek the Next Generation character would you be (Lt. Cmd. Geordie LaForge), what your ideal job is (doctor/nurse), or what your political ideology is (very liberal). But this particular quiz I just took was totally genius, so I thought I would share it with all my non-Facebook friends. The quiz was "Which mode do you live in?", as in which musical mode. Music has modes, which anyone who had to suffer through musical theory knows. Certain modes are quite commonly recognizable, like Dorian which is basically a natural minor scale that goes whole step-whole step-half step (repeat). Used a lot in medieval music. Think Greensleeves. Anyways, apparently the mode I should be is Locrian Mode. And they described is as the following:

You live in crazy world, aka Locrian Mode. This is the most unstable of all the modes because its tonic triad contains a tritone. You probably have no friends because nobody can figure out your tonality. You can alter your tones to seem normal-ish, but when you reveal your true self all will go awry. Maybe that's what you want, though.

I love the part about altering my tones to seem normal-ish. Aw, so true. Anyways I was highly amused by this so I thought I'd share.

Bad Memory

2009-04-07T12:23:00.003-04:00

I forgot something really ridiculously hilarious that I did, and it was only this weekend. I think I mentioned I went to the World Minimalist Music festival at the Muziekgebouw aan t'IJ. Maybe I didn't. But the hilarious part is that I went to this piece by Erik Satie, the Vexations, which is 20 hours long. Of course I did not stay for the whole 20 hours. It's a 1.5 minute piece of music that is repeated 840 times. Which equals 20 hours. Now that's what I call minimalist music. They had it in this room called the Klankspieltuin, which is usually full of fun music-y stuff for kids to do, but they had it all set up with armchairs, pillows, and beanbags, and you could just drift in and out over the 20 hours. They also had pianists rotating in and out, even though apparently one of the pianists really wanted to play the whole thing. But just logistically - wouldn't you have to go to the bathroom at least once in 20 hours??? Anyways, I went from 11:30 pm to 4 am. At a certain point I was so deliriously tired and also sort of delirious from listening to the same thing over and over it was like I was in a trance. It was definitely an interesting experience. Attached are pictures from my canal bike trip, and the view from the top of the carnival ride I went on!

I Can Fly!!!

2009-04-05T15:59:00.002-04:00

Well, it's bad. I know. I'm a bad blogger. But life hasn't been that exciting. Really. I swear. So anyways, it's just been your plain old practice, rehearse, sleep, eat, repeat kind of deal. The weather has been getting nicer here in the past week. Spring has sprung. Friday was a really nice day - it was 16 degrees! Some people from school and I went and rented a "canal bike" (aka pedal boat) and tooled around the canals for an hour and a half. There were lots of Amsterdammers out having boat parties too. It's the thing to do here during nice weather. Well, it's the thing to do if you're rich and have a boat. We made do in our pedal boat. Then yesterday they had a big carnival set up in the Dam square, complete with Ferris wheel and other exciting rides. So I just had to go on one! The one I really wanted to go on looked like so much fun, but it cost 8 euros! I mean, it looked fun. Just not 8 euros fun. So I went on a different one that only cost 4 euros, but it was still fun. It swung you up really high on these swings, and at the top they even slowed it a bit so you could take a picture. Which I did. It was amazing how much stuff they managed to fit onto that one city block. Anyways, I've finally decided on my summer plans. I'm going to be going to Domaine Forget string session in July-August for four weeks, and then going to TO and hanging until Tomchelle's wedding on the 23rd. The sticker is - I need to make some money. Like, bad. I'm so very broke. So if anybody knows gigs or whatever in TO I can get in on, I'd be very grateful!

Life, or Something LIke It

2009-03-18T18:29:00.002-04:00

It's still been pretty quiet. Just keeping busy with practicing and rehearsing. Nothing too exciting. I did take a little day trip to Utrecht last week. I've been a few times, but always at night and I've just gone directly from the train station to my rehearsal and back again. So I actually went during the day this time, and got to see some of the sights. I even went to the Rietveld-Schroderhuis, designed by Gerrit Rietveld in the 1920s and is a Unescu protected heritage sight - it's the only building in the world that faithfully adheres to the De Stijl style inside and out. It looks especially futuristic and out of place compared to all the other traditional brick pre-war Dutch buildings in the neighbourhood. Even after almost 100 years it still looks modern. Also, on Sunday it was the end of book week in the Netherlands. During book week, if you bought a book worth more that 11.50 you got a free book called "En Tafel Vol Vlinders", and with said book you got to ride the trains to anywhere in the Netherlands for free. And I like free things. So I ended up hopping a train to Den Helder, on the northern coast of Noord Holland. Then, because it's kind of a boring little place, I hopped the ferry to Texel Island. Apparently it's really nice in the summer, but on this particular day it was pretty cold and windy. Hopefully I'll be able to go back and visit the islands during some balmier weather - take my bike, explore a bit. Sounds fun. So yeah, that's my update. Very exciting.

So Apparently It's March

2009-03-03T16:37:00.001-05:00

March just sort of crept up on me by surprise there. I somehow always forget that February doesn't have 31 days. Selective amnesia I guess. The viola festival went very well, the end concert was quite fun. So many violists all in one place! The fun thing about a large group of violists is that we're all so chill that we can just hang out and have fun. I knew there was a reason I wasn't a violinist. Luckily I didn't really have anything on my schedule for the next week, because I was a bit tired and worn out. And seeing as how I didn't get my February break I decided to take it easy. But I still had some rehearsals and classes to attend. This Sunday I'm playing the Schubert Octet for winds and strings in a concert at the Oude Kerk in Amsterdam - the oldest building in the city. It's apparently also hella cold to play in, since it's a large unheated stone church from the 15th century. So I will have to practice my layering skillz. This week as well the St. Lawrence String Quartet is in town doing concerts in the Netherlands. I met up with Chris and Scott on Monday morning for some coffee, and I'm going to hit up their concert on Friday night at the Concertgebouw. Other than that nothing too exciting is going on. Life's a little quieter now, which is fine by me. I'm still dreaming of a getaway to Tenerife......apparently we have some holidays in April. If that's the case I may go somewhere. If not Tenerife, maybe London. I've been craving some English-speaking-country-ness in my life. Plus you can get super duper cheap flights to London. Like, ridiculously cheap. But we shall see. The picture above is of me with Ruben, the 4 year old son of the family I stayed with when I was in Groningen. I always like hanging out with kids, because at heart I'm still a kid. I even still talk about what I'm going to do "when I grow up". Which if I have it my way, will be NEVER!

The Rumours of My Death Have Been Greatly Exaggerated

2009-02-19T15:37:00.001-05:00

Things were pretty crazy when I got back from Vienna, what with rehearsals and mad last-minute practicing for the competition. But then I had to most ridiculous day ever on Monday. I was at school practicing, and had a lesson, but since it was the first day of the spring vacation the school closed at 4. Crazy, I know. So at 4 I headed over to the gym to get in a little working out, since it's also supposed to help with stress relief. I finished at about 6 and hopped on my bike to go home. It was dark and rainy, but that's not very unusual for Amsterdam. I was taking my usual route home, and lo and behold I get hit by a car! It was totally ridiculous. I was on the main street and the car was coming up on one of the side streets, and I saw him coming so I was keeping an eye on him. He started to slow down as he approached the intersection so I thought "great, he's going to yield like he's supposed to" and I keep on going. Then as soon as I'm in the intersection he just speeds up and runs right into me! I was completely in shock - shock that I had actually just been hit by a car. But luckily for me, I'm used to getting in all kinds of accidents so I got out relatively unscathed. Over the years I've learned how to fall properly :) Just some bruises (hip and shoulder), scrapes (shoulder), and a super swollen toe. I'm not sure how I banged just my one toe, but I did and now I have to walk funny for 2 weeks. But the absolute best part is that I was pretty OK, my bike was OK, and my viola was OK. So I got back on my bike and proceeded on my way. And I shit you not, about 4 blocks later a frikkin scooter trying to run a light runs right into my front wheel. By this time I was just in total disbelief. And after very bitchily pointing out that he was totally in the wrong I got his details (so that he could pay to have my bike fixed) and locked my totally kaput bike up to a pole. I then hobbled over to catch the tram home.
The next day was the first round of the viola competition, and I'm not sure if getting hit by a car helped or hampered my chances. If anything, it gave me something to keep my mind off the 'big day'. I actually played quite well. I was really happy with my performance, but unfortunately didn't make it through to the 2nd round. The level was really high, but I can't really say how I compared since I didn't hear anyone but me play. I'm not sure if it's particularly kosher to say either, but I was kind of happy not to move on. It's sort of stupid, but the 2nd round was at 10 am and I was already so overtired and just sore...... I ended up spending yesterday in bed, popping pain killers and watching downloaded tv. I think was actually more sore yesterday than on Tuesday, but today I'm definitely feeling better. Although I seem to have sprung another bruise! Very strange indeed, but who can say whether it was from the car or just from me. The viola festival is still going, even though the competition is over, so i'll be busy for another couple of days with that. Saturday night is the big final concert where we're all playing a piece for solo viola (Nobuko, natuurlijk) and and orchestra of violas (the rest of us - including violists from most of the major orchestras in the Netherlands) by a composer from Haarlem. The first rehearsal is tomorrow morning, so we shall see how this crazy viola piece works out.

Wien: alles andere Tagen

2009-02-11T18:15:00.002-05:00

Well I'm back home safe in Amsterdam, and recovering from Vienna. Really the only recovery necessary is the fact that I had to get up so darned early to go to the airport this morning so I'm a wee bit tired. But back to Wien. On Sunday we went out for a bit of sightseeing. Moody really wanted to take me to the Nachmarkt, but it ended up being all shut up. Hard to say whether it was the fact if was Sunday, or if it was just closed for the season, but everything was closed. So we ended up wandering through the rain to a little cafe where the waiter was rude and the food was ok. Ah, Vienna. Then we went our separate ways - Moody went back to his place to get some practicing in and I went exploring. I was on a mission to find as many composer's houses as I could. I started with the Mozarthaus, where he lived for 2 years when he composed the Marriage of Figaro. Then I went to the Johann Strauss haus, where Johann the younger lived and the very apartment where he composed the Blue Danube. Then I wandered over to the "Schubert commemorative rooms". Because though he didn't actually live there, he died in that apartment (it was his brother's place). But by then I was cold and wet and needed to practice so I headed back to Moody's place to dry out, warm up, and practice a bit myself. That night we headed to the Wiener Staatsoper to see Salome. We got last minute standing room tickets, and it was really great. I wouldn't want to stand for a long opera, but Salome was a very manageable 1.5 hours. Moody started talking to Emannuel (the guy standing next to him), and so we invited him out for a drink after with us. We went to this old cafe that was started by a Czech couple after the war. It was a very cool old bar, fairly unchanged by the years. These types of places are quite common in Vienna, where they really like to preserve things as the way they have been for hundreds of years. Tradition! Moody and I commented several times that it's a strange concept for us North Americans, since even if you live in an old building ideally it has been gutted and completely remodelled and renovated to be totally modern. But in Vienna they like to keep things just as they were for the last 100 years or so. It's good and bad - it's nice that these traditions are so important to them, but at the same time it seems like sometimes they are just being crushed by the weight of all this tradition because it doesn't allow them to explore new options.
On Monday I had my Verbier audition, so that kind of dominated the plans for the day. It went well (I thought), but I suppose I will just have to wait and see. We did go for a walk around town and then I went and wandered around Schloss Belvedere. It's a big old Baroque palace that now holds a really nice art gallery, which features A LOT of Klimt. We had originally planned to go see the Küchl-Quartett on Monday night, but both Moody and I felt like a night in so we just hung out and then met up with our new friend Emmanuel for a drink. Hilariously enough, he had gone to the Küchl-Quartett concert. Then on Tuesday we hung around in the morning until we were really starving, and then we went to an Irish pub in the centre to celebrate Moody's deportation. He's had no end of beauraucratic hassles in Austria, and now that his residence permit is finally ready they won't give it to him because they took longer than 3 months to process it (thus making him an illegal resident in Europe). So he has to leave the Euro-zone and then come back. Crazy. He was originally thinking of going to Zagreb (Croatia) but then a friend of his who's a diplomat told him that the Eastern non-Euro countries will charge you up to 400 Euros to enter if they see that you're past your three months. So he's going to London instead because at least in London we know how the beauraucracy works because it's so similar to Canada. Anyways, we went and ate some nice British Isles pub food in preparation for his trip to the homeland. Then we went to the Küchl-Quartett concert at the Musikverein. The Concertgebouw orchestra was playing in the big hall, and their concert was totally sold out so there was a billion people there. The Küchl-Quartett concert was very interesting - they're the principal players of the Vienna Phil, and they play very much in the traditional Viennese style. It was great for the first half of the program (Haydn and Mozart), but not so much for the second half (Shostakovich). They just played the Shosti too......nice. It was both boring and annoying, because they would really shy away from the grating harmonies and try and make them sound as pretty as they could. This is definitely an instance where the Viennese traditions don't allow them to explore new horizons. Anyways after the concert Moody and I were wandering through Stephansplatz on our way to the opera bar when who should we run into but Emmanuel! He was with a colleague of his, heading out for a drink after their meetings. So they joined us to the opera bar for a last night out on the Wiener town. Then this morning I got up at an ungodly early hour to catch the train to the airport. I got to have a nap this afternoon, but it was very necessary because I had a trio rehearsal and then a rehearsal for this Icelandic music day concert I'm playing on Saturday. Now I'm just preparing for the competition next week. No rest for the wicked.

Wien: erster Tag

2009-02-07T15:29:00.002-05:00

It's been a while I know. Busy like a beaver, as they say. I had a good trip to Groningen last weekend, and played a very fun concert on Tuesday in the Oosterport with a string orchestra + jazz combo. Fun times. I caught the train back to Amsterdam on Tuesday after the concert since I had to be back in A'dam for a class at 10 am on Wednesday morning. I caught the train that runs straight from Groningen to Schiphol airport (which is just one stop from mine), and sat back with my magazine and iPod. I glanced outside and noticed it had started snowing, and thought nothing of it. Then the train stopped at Amsersfoort, and everybody mysteriously got off. Then I noticed the sign outside said that the train was going back to Groningen. So because it snowed 1 cm, it got all the trains off schedule and instead of going to Schiphol it was just turning around at Amersfoort. So annoying. So I had to jump on a stop-trein (one of those slow commuter trains that stops at every station) to Amsterdam Centraal, and then catch another train to my stop. It was very annoying. Nobuko Imai also came again this week to give some lessons, and since I'm missing two weeks worth of lessons with my own teacher due to my travelling schedule I got two lessons booked with her - 1 hour on Thursday and 1 hour on Friday. But luckily for me (and unluckily for them) the person with the lesson after me on Thursday didn't show up, so Nobuko just gave me a two hour lesson. It was pretty sweet. And she gave me the strings off her viola. Not quite literally, but close. She was convinced that I could produce a bigger sound with different strings and so she dug around in her case and found some of her used strings to try out on my viola. She assured me she only used them for a few days, and gave me 3 out of 4 new strings. And she was right - I can produce a bigger sound! Bully for me. Today I got up at the ungodly hour of 4:30 am to go to the airport to catch my flight to Vienna. My flight wasn't until 7:15, and getting there at 6:15 would have been fine, but so many years of flying Air Canada and getting hassled and treated like shit all the time has made me fearful of flying, so I decided to go almost 2 hours early just because. It puts my mind at ease, even though at Schiphol nobody bats their eyes twice and me and my viola. It was also funny because I didn't have to go through passport control (because I was travelling within the EU), but I still got to shop duty-free and got breakfast on my flight (because I guess it's still technically international). I was actually a little surprised when they said they would be coming around with breakfast, since I'm now used to flights in Canada up to 5 hours where they give you jack and make you pay $10 for a crusty old sandwich. God I love Europe. Anyways, my trip to Vienna is slightly business and slightly pleasure. On Monday I have an audition for the Verbier Festival Orchestra, but since my old pal Moody (fellow Canadian violist) is going to school in Vienna now I'm also taking a sort of mini-break to stay with him and do some sight-seeing. Today we walked around, and then took a tour of the Vienna State Opera House. It was pretty cool - and we're going to try to go see Salome tomorrow night. They sell standing room only tickets they day of for only 4 euros! And they have this big section where there's just these boards to lean against (for all the standers). It's a pretty sweet deal considering how expensive the normal seats are there, though I'd probably think twice about going to see something like Wagner if I had to stand the whole time...... Then we got some street meat from a vendor (I had a Frankfurter, he had a Currywurst), sat in a park, then went to a cafe for coffee and Sachertorte. Yum. Who knows what tomorrow will bring. We're pondering an overnighter to Zagreb (Croatia) on Monday after my audition. Mostly because Moody has to leave the EU for min 24 hours due to some slight deportation issues, but that's a story for another time. Gute Nacht und gutes Glück.

Nothing To Report

2009-01-26T08:37:00.003-05:00

I have nothing new to report, but I'm a little bored since I've been sick in bed since Thursday. Saturday I ventured out to school for a rehearsal, but it was actually quite exhausting. I used up all my energy during the rehearsal, and so during my bike ride home I was sort of in a trance-like state.... Today I was supposed to have a rehearsal but it got cancelled, and since I'm still not feeling well I've decided to take another sick day. I firmly believe that the best thing is rest, especially since this was definitely caused by my over tiredness and over working during the last 2 weeks. However usually a few days in bed and lots of vitamin C takes care of this for me. But not this time apparently. I'm feeling OK now, aside from general tiredness and the fact that I'm so stuffed up is ridiculous. Anyways, I digress. I just had a few things to share. I got this book out of the public library on Saturday called "The Trudeau Vector". It caught my eye because of the title, and it's a medical mystery/conspiracy at a Canadian arctic scientific research base. There was a really funny line in it, where the lone Inuit staffer there was explaining his culture to the protagonist: "We thought that death made storms, that killing a spider would cause rain, that Pierre Trudeau was a shit." It made me laugh :) And secondly, the picture. It's me, trying to break into a nunnery. It's from December, when I met up with someone else from Saskatchewan through Couchsurfing. She's been living in Hong Kong for the last 15 years or so, and she was travelling through during the Christmas holidays. We were both so astonished to be meeting another Saskatchewanite, since the chances of that are statistically quite slim. I took her to the Begijnhof convent in Amsterdam, and she took this picture of me trying to break into the English Reformed Church in the middle of the courtyard. Enjoy, and send me your good energies - I need to get better soon or else!!!

The Review

2009-01-24T14:26:00.000-05:00

So the morning after my last post, bright and early at 6:30 am, I caught the train to Groningen to start rehearsing with the chamber orchestra there - Camerata Ardesko. I was there for two days (one night spent on the floor of a Conservatory student house) before heading back to Amsterdam for my Schleswig-Holstein audition on Saturday morning in Den Haag. Of course I was foiled by construction on the route I had mapped out to the Conservatory in Den Haag from the train station. It's actually quite close to the station, but I swear this entire country is always under construction! Every day on my ride to school a new area of my route is under construction and I have to . So, needless to say I was a bit later getting to the Conservatory before my audition that I had planned.....it went OK, but auditions are a funny thing. You practice for hours, and you end up playing for about 5 minutes. And you ALWAYS play worse than you know you can. Gah, auditions. Such a frustrating exercise. Anyways, then on Sunday I played another concert with the Trajectum chamber orchestra from Utrecht, but this time in Amsterdam. Then on Monday morning it was off to Groningen again. It's about a 2.5 hour train ride from Amsterdam, which is of course considered extremely far away. But I have really come to enjoy the train ride - bring a book, sit back with my iPod and relax. It passes so quickly I hardly even notice......I'm so used to travelling much longer distances. One summer I took the Greyound back and forth from Saskatoon to Calgary about 3 times, and those 8 hours just seemed to fly by - so a 2.5 hour train ride to Groningen is a piece of cake! Anyway, while in Groningen the second time I couchsurfed with a family there - Jolanda, Jan and their son Ruben.
I was there from Mon-Thurs, and during my days I hung out with Jolanda and Ruben, and then rehearsed with Camerata Ardesko in the evenings. Ruben is almost 4, and playing with him was a very good opportunity to practice my Dutch since it's the only language he speaks. We had some good times, Ruben and I. He's really into playing the violin, so I even let him play my viola.....it was highly exciting for him. Thursday was the concert, but the concert was in the Grote Kerk in Naarden - which is actually quite close to Amsterdam. So they hired two vans to transport us and our instruments to Naarden from Groningen, but when we were loading them in Groningen the sliding side door on one of them literally fell off when we went to close it. So, the rental place had to be called, and they had to bring a replacement van, and then we had to re-load all our stuff into it, blah blah blah. Needless to say we were late for our soundcheck.
It was a pretty fancy shindig - a private concert bankrolled by the big bank ABN-AMRO for their richest clients. In order to get an invitation to the concert you had to have over 500 000 Euros in your private bank account with ABN-AMRO. So, lots of really rich people. The concert went quite well, and then they had a reception after and we mingled with the audience a bit. Though as these things always go, the musicians were in a corner joking amongst themselves and trying to drink as much free alcohol as could be possible imbibed before getting back into the van, and our interaction with the audience basically consisted of every so often someone coming up to tell us that they enjoyed the concert. Good times. The vans dropped the 4 of us who were heading back to Amsterdam off at Hilversum station, and we caught one of the last trains into Amsterdam. But unfortunately I missed the last train from Amsterdam Centraal to my house, and because I always bike I have no idea how the night buses work or even which one goes to my house so I ended up crashing at Noelle's - she's a cellist on exchange to my school from Sarah Lawrence in the US, and not only was she playing the concert but she also lived not too far from the station and had a spare mattress. Score! But next morning I dutifully got up and went to school to practice, because from Sat-Wed I had an audition every second day. It was horrible. Wargh! But it's over now. It's all over........except for my Verbier audition in February. Saturday was my Britten-Pears orchestra audition, again in Den Haag. Then on Monday I auditioned for PMF (the Pacific Music Festival in Sapporo, Japan), and on Wed I auditioned for the Concertgebouw. The last was my hilarious long-shot. I really didn't have enough time to prepare properly to actually stand a chance, but I just want to get in the swing of doing auditions. It's a completely different skill-set from actual performing, and since I want to get a job when I graduate I better start practicing auditions now! Anyhoo, I somehow kept myself going through all that craziness, but promptly on Wednesday evening after my last audition I got sick. I think the adrenaline kept my immune system going, and then as soon as the stress was gone it just gave out. So I ended up spending Thursday and Friday in bed, trying to sweat my fever out. Good times. Though last night I did manage to haul my arse out of bed to go see Laurence Power play the Bartok Viola Concerto with the Concertgebouw Orchestra. It was well worth the 10 euros admission - great stuff. Anyways, I'm still kinda sick, so I'm trying to rest up. Have to keep up my strength for all the very busy and important things I am doing!

Hoe? Wat? Waar?

2009-01-07T16:41:00.002-05:00

The holidays are over! It went by too soon........so sad. But also sort of nice to be back at the grind. It's quite a grind though. I'm sort of "commuting" to Groningen to rehearse with a chamber orchestra there for a concert next week, I have an audition this Saturday for the Schleswig-Holstein music festival, then on Sunday I'm playing a concert with Trajectum (the chamber orchestra in Utrecht I sub in). Then it's back to Groningen for rehearsals leading up to the private concert on Thursday next week - it's for the 100 wealthiest clients of the big bank ABN-AMRO. Then I have another audition next Saturday for the Britten-Pears orchestra. Then two days later I have an audition for the Pacific Music Festival, and two days after that is the first round audition for the Concertgebouw! Yeesh.......that's a crazy couple of weeks. Hopefully I'll keep my sanity through it. Check back with me in a couple weeks :S Hope everyone had a happy holidays en een gelukkige nieuw jaar.

Black Angels

2008-12-29T15:56:00.003-05:00

I don't have anything new to say. But I thought I'd share the video of our performance of Black Angels. The video quality itself isn't that great, but the sound quality is (the recording guy video'd it on his hand-held camera, but synched it with the quality audio recording). To read up on the piece, you can check this out. The video is hosted by Google video, here. Enjoy!

Prettige Kerstdagen!

2008-12-25T06:56:00.004-05:00

Well, not so much has happened since my last post. I'm on holidays, so I've been creating some diversions for myself. Sleeping. Gym. Researching for my Master's project. But no "normal" Christmas activities to be found. It's weird too, because it didn't feel so Christmas-y to me here, partly because it's been such balmy weather! I'm used to freezing my ass off at Christmas time - that's what makes it festive! But it's been anywhere between +5-10C here, so it feels kind of like fall weather to me. It's probably just me though, since I grew up in a sick and twisted atmosphere.....known as Saskatchewan...... I'm getting together this afternoon with some of us ex-pats from the Conservatory who are still hanging around town. We're all kind of bored and lonely, because our social life (aka the school) is closed. :) Just a group of us who are too far from home to go for Xmas - America, Canada, Australia....the non-European continents. Then tomorrow I'm going to a Couchsurfing Boxing Day dinner. But not your traditional fare - it's going to be some sort of vegan Asian food. Starting a new Christmas tradition! Funny tidbit - there's no such thing as boxing day here. There's the Eerste Kerstmas Dag (1st Christmas Day) which is Christmas Day, and the Tweede Kerstmas Dag (Second Christmas Day) which is Boxing Day. Prettige Kerstdagen allemaal!

Holiday!

2008-12-16T15:04:00.002-05:00

What an exhausting week! The orchestra concert went quite well, and was a lot of fun. And as is usually the case with tours, we had a bus party after the concert on Sunday. And the best part was that the school bought us beer, wine, and munchies to consume on the bus. They really know how to placate the music student masses! Yesterday was Melissa's end exam, and our performance of Black Angels. It was really amazing to perform, and I must confess I'm a little sad that we don't have a chance to perform it again. And after Melissa's exam we went out with her parents for dinner and then went to the Waterhole (a dive bar at the Liedseplein). Greg's band performed a set at the open mic night there, and then we hung out and partied it up. Then Raf, Jimmy, Olaf, Mel, and I all headed back to Melissa's place in Amsterdam North and had a slumber party! Today I've been catching up on things that have fallen by the way-side a bit. Already planning my schedule for January and February....... I'm looking forward to the holidays, but I have a lot of work to do! It's unfortunate that the school is going to be closed for 2 weeks, from December 22-Jan 5th. I can practice at home, but it's just not the same.... And speaking of home, I just found out today that I'm going to be moving in February to Amsterdam North. My landlady is buying an apartment there, so we're moving on up. It's actually closer to school than I am now, so that will be nice. And it's a really nice neighbourhood with a big park nearby. And I'll ride the ferry every day!

Mijn Sinterklaas-gedichte

2008-12-10T18:43:00.003-05:00

For my Dutch class part of our homework for this week was to write a Sinterklaas poem. So here it is, for your perusal (the translation follows the Dutch).

Op de avond van Sinterklaas
Eten wij broodjes en kaas.
De mannen hebben lange baarden,
Maar geen appelen voor the paarden.
Dan horen wij een geluid klop:
Kijk! Daar draait de deur knop!
Het was de zwarte man, naam Piet,
Hij heeft zijn zak niet.
In plaats daar van brangt hij ons niets
Uitgezondered nieuwe lichten voor mijn fiets.
Piet ons aan te keuken een haas
Maar wij veel liever onze kaas.

Translation (approximate):
On the evening of Sinterklaas (St. Nicholas)
We eat broodjes and cheese (broodjes are a Dutch roll that you can get with various fillings)
The men have long beards
But no apples for the horses (Sinterklaas comes on horseback)
Then we hear a loud knock
Look! There turns the door knob!
It was the black man, named Piet (Sinterklaas' "friend" Zwarte Pieter)
He has his sack niet (not)
In its place he brings nothing
Except new lights for my bike
Piet wants to cook us a hare
But we much prefer our cheese.

Isn't is wonderful?????? I wasn't really going for sense-making, to be quite honest I was just trying to find words that rhymed. Hence Sinterklaas rhymed with kaas. I think my teacher was quite impressed with that one ;) Tot ziens!

Holy pants Batman!

2008-12-07T17:08:00.002-05:00

Holy pants. I have been pretty busy lately, partly because I got recruited into this week's orchestra project at the last minute. One of the violists had to back out, and so I'm filling in her place. So I have orchestra rehearsals every day this week from 10-5, and then I have to squeeze in Black Angels rehearsals and practicing around that. And last week we had two days of rehearsals as well, which messed up my schedule a bit. But the program is pretty cool - it's all American music. Two pieces by classical American composers (John Adams and Samuel Barber), and then three jazz pieces - two with jazz orchestra and one with jazz quartet. Last night I also went to see the Tokyo String Quartet play at the Concertgebouw. I managed to score the very last ticket for the concert, so I was pretty stoked. It was really fabubus, and after the concert I went backstage and surprised Martin Beaver (the first violinist). He was faculty for the chamber music session at Domaine Forget when I was last there a few years back, and he created this running joke wherein he would sing my name while choral-conducting it (Kaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa-tya). You know, music geek fun. So he was pretty surprised to see me, but I ended up going out with him and the quartet for a late dinner and drinks. I also got to manhandle the violist's Stradivarius viola. But being me, and being that I'm rather clumsy, I didn't hold it for too long since I was afraid I'd drop it or something. Today I had a really good study session for my Dutch class. It was just three of us, and we basically went through the two chapters that were our homework and talked a lot, answering all the questions and helping each other out with vocabulary and stuff. But 3 hours of having to think really really hard about everything you're saying was exhausting! Tomorrow the hell that is orchestra week begins. I will most likely be very exhausted and will lead a very boring life until after the concerts on the weekend and Melissa's end exam next Monday. Then the holidays start (for me at least - I don't have any exams).

Say What??

2008-11-27T18:14:00.001-05:00

I've been a bad blogger. What can I say - I'm very busy and important. Tuesday last week was the tango recital in Rotterdam. It was a lot of fun, and we got mad props for our killer tango playing. Unfortunately I couldn't join in the celebrations, since I had to run and catch the train back to Amsterdam for my Dutch lesson and another voorspiel (class recital). I think that if this classical thing doesn't work out, maybe I'll get a degree in tango viola. That would be awesome. On Wednesday last week I had my very first Couchsurfing dutch lesson. I'm in this weird in-between level, where I'm not a beginner but I'm not really advanced either. Last week I tried out the beginner class but it was way too boring, so this week I was in the advanced class and it was better. It's a little above my level, but it's better than learning how to say "I have, you have, we have" again.......The lessons are really nice though - the teacher are all locals who are volunteering their time, and the students are from all over the world. And I have to say I like the text we're using for this class much better than the text we used for my CvA class. It's laid out so much better, especially vis a vis vocab. Friday night was the Kammerorkest Tryptich concert in Utrecht. The Walton was interesting (as always), but it was a really fun concert. Afterwards we went out for a drink at a bar nearby the church, and then caught the midnight train back to Amsterdam. I was so exhausted though - I went out with Hayley to Karma's on Thursday night and was working on Friday with 4 hours sleep. My own fault of course, but by the time we got to the train station in Utrecht to go home, I was so exhausted. And then I didn't get home until around 2 because after we got the train back from Utrecht I had to catch the night train to my station from Amsterdam Centraal. Ugh. And Saturday morning was our Dutch lesson, bright and early. THEN Saturday night I went out again with Hayley, first to Karma's and then to the Kring. Then after the Kring we met up with some people from school, but I bowed out early because I was so horrifically tired. On Sunday I got to sleep in a little, but I went to school in the afternoon to listen to my friend Simona's run-through of her concerto for the competition to play with the orchestra in April. And I also make 2 presentations - one for my Musical Body class, and the other for my dutch class. So I hung out at school working on my presentation until it closed, then I wandered into town to meet up with Josh (from TO) for dinner. It was snowing on Sunday night, so I got to bike in the snow! We ended up going for tasty Indonesian food, because the place I picked out was closed. There was a street full of restaurants, and it was the only one closed. Just my luck.
Monday I gave my presentation in my Musical Body class, and it went well. My presentation was on everyday actions that can affect our body adversly when playing - ie carrying around heavy things, posture, not sleeping in a good bed. I was supposed to have a lesson at 9 pm but I rescheduled it with Sven because I was still really tired and didn't think I'd make it to 9 pm. I went home early, and was in bed by about 10. It worked better for Sven too, since he has to commute to Den Haag. Getting home earlier is always good. Then on Tuesday evening was our very last CvA dutch lesson. We finished up our presentations, then drank champagne and ate chocolate. Celebration! I also had a couple of Memos this week, and since Sinterklaasavond is around the corner a bunch of the kids I've seen have been dressed up like either Sinterklaas or Zwarte Piet. Seeing small children in Cardinal hats (Sinterklaas) or 17th century Spanish hats with feathers (Zwarte Piet). I just got back from watching the Concertgebouw Orchestra play Shostakovich 5. I absolutely love this symphony, especially the 3rd movement. It was so amazing, I wish I could go again on Sunday. I'll just have to put it on repeat on my iPod now.

Lemmings

2008-11-17T17:24:00.002-05:00

Well, it was a weekend all right. Friday night I played a piece by Rudolph Escher in a concert of Dutch chamber music, and then headed over to the Couchsurfing weekly meet-up for a drink. It was pretty fun, but I had to head out early to because I had to get up early to catch the my ride to Gronigen. Luckily for me, Greg (the conductor of the orchestra) texted me at 8 am, because otherwise I wouldn't have made it. I slept right through my alarm - I don't even remember it going off!!! We were meeting at Central Station at 8:30 to leave for Gronigen, and I didn't leave my house until 8:15! But it's a good thing I'm a crazy fast biker. And also good that there was pretty much no traffic out, so that worked in my favour. I booked it to Centraal, and ended up pulling up just before 8:30. But then I had to find a place to lock my bike, which took me an extra 10 minutes. As it turns out, the orchestra had booked a whole lodge-type place outside of Gronigen. Oh yeah, and on our way to Gronigen we drove past Lemmer, which is the small town in Friesland that my Dutch side came from. We rehearsed there in the afternoon, and then went into Gronigen at around 4:30 for our dress rehearsal before the concert. The concert was in a synagogue in the medieval centre. It went well, but my plan to catch the train back to Amsterdam after the concert was foiled by the fact that the last train to Amsterdam left at 10:04 and our concert didn't end until 9:55. The one other person who was taking the train did make a run for it, but I had too much stuff with me to really be able to do that. So I ended up crashing with the orchestra at the lodge and coming back to Amsterdam on Sunday. It was nice to have a lazy weekend trip, but it meant that I didn't accomplish too much. Today I finally got my package in the mail from my mom, that she sent back in September. Moral of the story I guess, don't send mail to another continent by ground.....but I got some of my clothes left behind, and my rain gear, and socks! I love socks.

Railrunner

2008-11-13T16:55:00.002-05:00

It's been a busy week - and it's not over yet! On Monday evening I went with my friend Simona to check out a big band that her friend from Bucharest plays in - The Konrad Kosseleck Big Band. They have a standing date at the Sugar Factory once a month, and every month they are joined by some special guests. This month's guests were two tap dancers. At first I was skeptical - I mean, tap dancers? Seriously. But it was actually pretty cool. One of the tap dancers was definitely more interesting than the other to watch, more of a showman. But they ended up like being another percussion section. They even got their own improv solos just like all the other instruments. It was pretty cool. On Tuesday evening I went to Utrecht to rehearse with a community orchestra. The conductor is Canadian, and is a friend of my friend Melissa. He needed an extra violist to fill out the section, and I was hankering to do some orchestra-ing. It's actually kind of cool because they're playing the Walton Viola Concerto with a viola teacher from Amsterdam as the soloist. It's fun to be playing on the other side of the concerto, since you spend so much time practicing the stupid solo parts of concertos. The orchestra is all amateur players and they're all just playing for the love of it, which is refreshing. Somehow that joy can get sucked out of professionals, even music students. Music schools almost have a survival of the fittest atmosphere in that respect - I know many people who've finished their music degree and then decided to go to law school, or fashion design school, or business school. Or whatever. Anyways, I digress.
Wednesday I just had rehearsals and rehearsals and more rehearsals. Then this morning I had to get up ungodly early (7 am!) because I had to catch the train at 8:50 to Rotterdam for a coaching. On Tuesday I'm playing in an end exam for a friend of Melissa's, Xabier. He's in the tango department of the Rotterdam Conservatory. Yes, that's correct. They have a tango department. They actually have a whole world music and dance academy, and the tango department is within that. So we're playing a piece by a contemporary South American composer (that has tango influences), and then a Piazolla tango. The coaching was quite funny, if only for his teacher's declarations about tango. "Tango is like a conversation with your friends, and everybody's talking at once. Tango is the difference in a car between leather seats and plastic seats". But it was really interesting, and a good coaching. Unfortunately I didn't really get to enjoy Rotterdam, since immediately after our coaching I had to run for the tram so that I could catch the train back to Amsterdam to try and make my next coaching at 2. The difficulty level was that my coaching in Rotterdam went until 12:30, and I had to catch a tram to the station, and then the train to Amsterdam takes about an hour. Then I had to hi-tail it from the train station to school. Luckily school's very close to the train station, and when I arrived at Amsterdam Centraal in the morning I deliberately locked my bike up beside the station in the direction of school, so I basically ran to my bike, unlocked it, biked like a fiend for 4 minutes to the school, parked my bike in the square out front, locked it, and made a run for the coaching. I was only 15 minutes late, which was impressive considering that my train didn't get into Centraal until about 2:05. This coaching was for my viola flute and harp trio - the Debussy sonata for viola flute and harp. The coaching was with the flautist's teacher, and it was really helpful because it's a very confusing piece and it's easy to just be totally lost in the mishmash. So she really helped us figure everything out and make sense of things. By the end of that coaching I was kind of exhausted, partly from the lack of sleep, and partly from the stress of rushing around all morning. So I ended up sitting in the canteen at school for about an hour I think, just visiting with people. Then I ended up going for dinner with my friend Hayley at the new restaurant that just opened in the library next door. That frikkin library now has two gourmet restaurants in it. The big fancy one on the top floor, and this smaller one at the front of the building that just serves pasta and pizza. But they make it all fresh, including the sauces. My favourite part was how they cook the noodles - they have the noodles all packaged by serving, and they just grab a package of whatever type of noodle you want and pop it in what looks like a deep fryer. It's the same idea as the deep fryers for french fries at fast food restaurants, but instead of boiling oil you have boiling water - ie. you put the noodles in a little basket thing and lower them into the water. It was pretty nifty, I must say. And tasty. Now I'm just chilling at home, trying to take it easy. Tomorrow evening I have the concert of Dutch chamber music that we're playing the Escher in, and then on Saturday I'm probably going to Gronigen to play a concert with the community orchestra. I'm quite a prodigious traveller this week!

Don't worry - I will always be a purple ribbon

2008-11-08T17:19:00.003-05:00

Obama! What a win - I mean, he won the popular vote AND the electoral colleges. What a joke of a democratic system. But at least he won. That's what counts. And now we all want to know: what kind of puppy will Sacha and Malia get??????!!!!! But on to my life. On Wednesday I went out with Melissa (who I'm playing Black Angles with) and her friend Jimmy (aka James) who was visiting from Ireland. He's also Canadian - they went to school together at Laurier. We went to this crazy underground club to see an experimental jazz show that some friends of Mel's from school were playing in. There were three acts, and the group from the Con was the first. The music itself was pretty cool, but they also had this projector that they put overheads up on - different colours of transparencies and little sentences. It was a little weird - some of the sentences were just hilarious in their absurdity, but overall it was a little silly. But that's artsy-fartsy people for ya. The second act was a one-man-band that was hilarious. His songs were all two chords, and lyrics like "Everything is hypocrisy! Everything is hypocrisy! Everything is hypocrisy!" repeated ad nauseum. We were just killing ourselves laughing at the back of the performance space. The last act was similar to the first one, and they were pretty cool. And no overheads, so that was a plus. It's always cool to go to things like this, because it's really easy to get into a bubble and never go to any concerts but classical ones. It's always good to experience new things!
Yesterday was my lesson with Nobuko Imai. She's a badass violist, and is pretty much as close as you can get to an internationally reknowned viola soloist. I played the Hindemith 11/4 Sonata I played in our studio class last week, and it went really well. She really liked my playing, and we basically just worked on adding more expressiveness to the piece. There was even one part that she just skipped over because she said it didn't need anything else. Hilariously enough it was a variation in the last movement in which the directions are "bizarre, with hesitation to speak". But I already knew I do bizarre well. Anyhoo, Nobuko was really great and it was a good lesson. This coming week I have rehearsals in Utrecht and Rotterdam for two different concerts, and I have the Escher concert on Friday. And I desperately need to do laundry.

Into the Void

2008-11-04T09:11:00.002-05:00

So, Saturday was Museumnacht 2008! Museumnacht is one night a year, where 40 museums throughout Amsterdam open up and have all sorts of activites going on - live music, cheap beer, artwork, and a rumoured champagne fountain at the Rijksmuseum (but we never made it there, so I don't know for sure). Tickets were just 17 euros for as many museums as you could hit between 7 pm and 2 am. And considering the entrance to one museum can run you upwards of 10 euros, it's a pretty sweet deal. I went with a group of friends mainly from my Dutch class - Bernie (jazz bass player), Bernie's jazz friend Ben, Ana (pianist), Ana's boyfriend Guillaume, Simona (pianist/conductor), Takashi (chorale conductor), Niels (music theory), and Niels' brother Jens. Our first stop was the Pianola Museum in the Jordaan. They were having combiniation live + pianola performances, and I we ended up seeing a classical guitar player + pianola. Pianolas are those nifty old pianos that play a recording off a paper roll. The guitarist played some Granados, and then played a roll of Granados playing the same song recorded in like 1912 or something absurd like that. Anyways, it was the perfect place for a bunch of music geeks like us! Next stop was the Anne Frank Huis. I've been meaning and meaning to go here, but there's always a huge line and it's a private museum so my museumkaart doesn't work there. But it was surprisingly not packed, and we got to walk through the whole museum - they built it around her father's office building that held the secret annex that they lived in during the war. It was a little crazy to see how tiny the space was that they lived in for years. It was depressing, but also very interesting. Our next stop was NIMk, the Nederlands Insitute voor Mediakunst - ie. school for media art. They had all these wacky installation pieces, including a super trippy Bjork music video in 3-D. Very cool stuff. Then we went to the Huise Marseille Museum voor Fotographie - a photography museum. This venue was a little boring, but they did have a cool jazz ensemble playing in one of the rooms. Then we headed over to the Rembrandt Huis. I'd already been there in June, but it's a cool place to visit anyways. And the big attraction was the "low-cost bar" in the basement - 1 euro beer! At 1:30 we decided we had to hit one other place before the night ended, so we ended up going to the Portugese Synagogue nearby. It's the big old brick synagogue, and was lit entirely by candles. There was no electricity - so no heat and no light (other than the candles). Earlier in the night they had choirs and stuff in there, but since it was pretty much closing time we just wandered around and then left. It was pretty nifty though. So I guess the count is 6 museums in a night, which is pretty good.
After the Portugese Synagogue the group split up due to differing ideas about what to do next. Ana and Guillaume went home; Bernie, Ben, and Niels went to a pub at the Nieuwemarkt; and Simona, Jens, and I went to the Leiseplein to go clubbing. Part of museumnacht was that they had "afterparties" at certain clubs, which basically meant that by showing your ticket for museumnacht you got dicounted cover into the club. First we tried Paradiso, but they had an actual show happening and it was sold out. So we headed over to the Milkweg, and partied the night away. And I mean that literally. Amsterdam knows how to party, and when we left at 5:30 am the party was still going. Needless to say I was exhausted on Sunday and spent pretty much the whole day in bed. And no mom, I wasn't hungover. I was just really freaking tired - the kind of tired where you've been up for 23 hours, biked all over the city, and then danced for a couple hours. Today is US election day - very big news all over the world. In fact, the Milkweg is having a big election party tonight that's completely sold out, and the idea is to stay up until the results are in (which over here is expected to be about 4-5 am). It hypothetically sounds like a good idea, but I have stuff to do tomorrow! I guess I'll just find out in the morning if Obama lost. But this morning I had a Memo at a preschool run by the Universiteit van Amsterdam, and one of the little girls was wearing an Obama T-shirt. I thought it was pretty funny. In fact, on the weekend they did a poll of Dutch people and something like 80% wanted Obama to win, and only about 8% wanted McCain to win.......it's a little scary that we have to trust in the American electorate to make the right choice!!!!!

The Viola as Prima Donna and Other Improbabilities

2008-10-31T12:33:00.002-04:00

Another lackluster week. I played a couple of Memos, played in my studio class on Tuesday night, and had a few rehearsals. Other than that, it's the normal eat, practice, sleep, repeat deal. However, I have been reading a book about the history of the Bartók viola concerto, and I was inspired to share this awesomely scathing review the concerto got when it was first premiered in the early 50s. (The title of this post is the title of the article). So here it goes:

The diverse efforts of Mozart, Berlioz, Hindemith, Walton, Arthur Benjamin, "Handel-Barbirolli" and others have succeeded in convincing us that the best viola concerto is one which isn't really a concerto, and that the fingerboard of the viola ought to be cut off, until further notice, at a point to be determined by a Committee of Chamber Musicians, but none too near the regions of the eternal resin. Only thus will the viola cease to lead into temptation. Meanwhile, painstaking musicological research has unearthed the inspirations, primary as well as pre-disposing, which make for a viola concerto. They are precisely four. The first inspiration is that the composer is fond of playing the viola. The second is that Paganini wants a viola concerto. The third is that Primrose wants a viola concerto. The fourth is that nobody, least of all the composer, wants a viola concerto, but that he hopes that once it's there someone will want it, since there are so few viola concertos. As for "exploring the virtuoso possibilities of the instrument," there aren't any, unless you want to change the viola's character, which nowadays isn't at all difficult, though Mozart has done far more in this direction than you with your whimpering and whining viola parts, simply by tuning the instrument up half a tone. If, however, you think that exploring impossibilities will give you ideas, you ought to turn to the saxophone, which offers the richest variety of them; or, since these have been dealt with by Ibert and Phyllis Tate, you might try a concerto for cow-horn. At least this wouldn't tempt you to throw in strings of semiquavers whenever you thought that virtuosity was called for - a game in which almost all modern composers of concertos for the violin family indulge. Beethoven started it, and indeed, with the deepest admiration for the content of the violin concerto, I do not find much reason to consider it a violin concerto. In our own time, the sense of the genuinely virtuosic possibilities of the violin family has largely been lost (for reasons that in my opinion lie ultimately in the development of harmony), which in part accounts for people's increasing readiness to write viola concertos. I personally would propose to every composer who writes a string concerto, including the great geniuses, to re-study the Mendelssohn which qua violin concerto has remained unequalled, and which incidentally goes to support Hindemith's discerning suggestion to Stravinsky, who is not a violinist, that his lack of executive ability, far from being a hindrance, would actually be "a very good thing" for writing a violin concerto.
Bartok's last work does not seem to lessen the improbablility of the viola concerto; even the would-be brilliant semiquavers are all there, in the last movement. At the same time the chief problem of the Concerto, which in places one hardly recognizes as Bartók (let alone the great Bartók), is more fundamental: should this music have been published at all?....If someone told me that I would find Elisabeth Lutyens' Viola Concerto immeasurably more satisfying than Bartók's I should have laughed in his face - which goes to warn us of even our most justified prejudices.

I love this review because it hardly mentions the Bartók concerto at all, and is instead an opportunity for the author to voice his great dislike of the viola. If only all viola bashing were this eloquent! Granted the Bartók concerto has a lot of flaws. But that's because he died in the middle of writing it. It's still a pretty cool piece, and just imagine how kick-ass it would have been had he finished the orchestration and finalized the viola part before he died. Course, this was a review of the Serly version, and it does sound decidedly un-Bartókian at times. Which is probably why they kept the manuscript under lock and key until the 1990s. But since the manuscript became available for study, 2 other versions have been published, not to mention countless others that may have been worked on but not published. The author of the book I'm reading created his own reconstruction! The most widely available new version is the Peter Bartók/Nelson Dellamaggiore version, but Csaba Erdelyi has published and recorded his version in Australia/NZ, but it is as of yet unavailable in the rest of the world due to differing statues of limitations on copyrights. Which is also why others haven't published their own versions (like the author, for example). Anyways, I'm reading this book, and I thought this was worth sharing. Enjoy.

Just livin my life, ayo ayo ayo

2008-10-25T09:36:00.002-04:00

So Tuesday I went to Den Haag to my teacher's house to get my instrument adjusted. Some friends of his from Germany who just happen to be really great instrument repair people were stopping by to look at his viola and whoever of his students as well, so me and one other of his students came with our instruments. They filed down my bridge a little, adjusted my soundpost, and my viola sounds so good! Whoa! It was pretty sweet. And luckily it stopped raining by the time we were done the adjustments, so I took the opportunity to wander around Den Haag a little. I went to the Binnenhof, which is an inner courtyard surrounded by all the buildings of the Dutch parliament. The central courtyard was once used for executions, and has a big 13th century Gothic dining hall called the Ridderzaal (Knight's Hall) on the one end. There must have been something going on because there was a red carpet of sorts and barricades with people crowded around them. Maybe the Queen was there. But waiting in a mob is actually kind of boring so I just had a look around and left. I wandered around for a bit, found the Canadian Embassy (since I figured it's probably a good idea to know where the embassy is if I ever need to go there), walked past the Paleis Noordeinde, the king and queen's official residence. I eventually made my way back to the Binnenhof, and visited the Mauritshuis museum. The building was actually a mansion dating from 1640, and in 1822 it was converted to a museum to host the royal collection. I saw Vermeer's "View of Delft" and "Girl with a Pearl Earring", as well as Rembrandt's "The Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaes Tulp". Pretty cool stuff. Aside from the biggies that are always on show (if they're not being lent out) they have rotating exhibitions of course, and the one showing was of Dutch cityscapes. The Netherlands has had a strong tradition of strong city-states, so as far back as the 1600 artists had started painting cityscapes. It was pretty cool, but there's only so many times you can see a painting entitled "View of ". I was a little sad I didn't get to see Andy Warhol's "Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands", but it wasn't on display. I considered going to a few other museums, namely the Galerij Prins Willem V (which was opened in 1773 and paintings are still hung in the manner popular in the 18th century - every possible space on the wall is covered in art), and Escher in het Paleis Museum (a permanent collection spanning MC Escher's entire career, housed in the former residences of Queen Emma). As well, it would have been supercool to tour the Vredespaleis, the home of the UN International Court of Justice, but you need to book ahead to take a tour since security is understandably pretty strict. But instead I decided to head back home. There's so many cool things to see! It's too overwhelming! Also I was tired from getting up early to catch the train, and sort of travel fatigued since I'd just gotten back from Maastricht the afternoon before.
The rest of the week passed by pretty quietly. I practiced, and went to the gym. I had a Memo in Amstelveen on Thursday morning, which is one of the suburbs of Amsterdam. But it was all good because I got paid an extra 12 euros for extra travel, and it's not like I had anything to do! Holidays! The only stupid thing about the holidays is that the school was on limited hours - 9-4. Which is just ridiculous. On a normal school day nobody is there at 9 am, or pretty much before 11 or 12 for that matter. And we have even less incentive to get up early on our holidays! I think if they wanted limited hours, they should have done them from 12-8 or something like that. But apparently most schools just shut down altogether, but music schools can't do that because we need to practice. The library was closed entirely for the whole week which was annoying, since it already has limited enough hours as it is (it's only open monday to friday, mon 12-5:30, tues-fri 10-5:30). Yeah, that's another weird thing I don't know if I've mentioned yet. Not only is everything in the entire country (pretty much) closed on Sundays, but everything's also closed on Monday mornings. And most things close quite early compared to in big cities in Canada - there's no such thing as grocery stores open until midnight, let alone the awesome 24 hour stores - here most close at 6, and the late ones close at 9 or 10. I can only compare it to living in Saskatoon, and every day is on Sunday hours. It's frustrating because I don't keep 9-5 normal hours, and so when I have free time everything's closed. Boo-urns. Also, another interesting thing I've discovered while working for Memo - all the preschools and primary schools are locked up tight, and you have to get buzzed in. There's no such thing as just walking in the front doors of a school. You have to call and get buzzed in. And most of them have playgrounds in an inner courtyard, so there's no way that you can really get at the playground either. I'm not sure if it makes me feel more or less safe, because it's a little worrying that they feel they have to take such precautions. I just think of the elementary schools I went to, where all the doors were unlocked and open at all times, the the playground was a big field that was completely open. It's the same way that when you see lots of police around you feel more afraid rather than more safe. Anyways, I just thought it was strange.

Uno Maas(tricht)

2008-10-20T10:24:00.002-04:00

So I'm back. Back again. My friend Hayley and I went on a weekend trip to Maastricht, in the very south of the Netherlands. It's right at the bottom of the country, and about 5 km one way in Belgium and 20 km the other way is Germany. We took the train out Saturday morning, and after brief confusion finally arrived in Maastricht around noon. Unbeknownst to us, the train from Amsterdam seperates at Sittard, and one half goes on to Maastricht while the other half goes to Heeren. And we just happened to be sitting on the Heeren side of the train. So we arrive in Heeren, and can't figure out what happened. So we had to catch a puddle-jumping "stop-trein" from Heeren to Maastricht. But it turned out quite nice though, because we saw some South Limburg countryside that we wouldn't have seen otherwise. Maastricht is the "Crown Jewel of the south", and is about as far away from windmills, clogs, and tulips as you can get. There are Spanish and Roman ruins, since it got its start as a Roman town and then was occupied by the Spanish for a long period of time. As well, the city hosted two key moments in the history of the EU - in 1991 the 12 members of the European Community met to sign the treaty for economic, monetary, and political union, and they reconvened the next year to sign the Maastricht Treaty, which officially created the EU. So part of Maastricht's new revitalized Ceramique district (which used to be filled with ceramics factories) has a big square called Plein 1992, in celebration of the EU and the Maastricht Treaty.
We met up with our host Marten at his flat, which is about 3 blocks from the train station. We dumped our stuff off there, and then headed out with Marten who took us on walking tour of Maastricht. This was my first adventure using Couchsurfing.com to find a host to stay with. And I must say it worked out great. Marten was a great host, and we had a really fun time in Maastricht. He took us all around the city on Saturday. We visited the church with the Zwarte Christ, a statue of christ that's "black" because it's made out of very dark wood. We checked out the old city walls and fortifications, the Sint Servaasbasiliek which is a church that dates from around 1000, walked by Sint Janskerk but it was closed for repairs, went to the Onze Lieve Vrowebasiliek which has parts dating before 1000 and may well have been built on the foundations of a Roman cathedral. We got some coffee at the Markt Square, visited a water powered granary, and then got some groceries and went back to Marten's where he cooked us a very tasty Thai curry for dinner. We then proceeded to drink copious amounts of wine and discuss life until about 2 am. Good times.
On Sunday 'morning' (and by morning I mean around 12:30 pm) Hayley and I set off with a mission to visit Sint Pietersberg, a Roman fort 2 km south of the city. It's a nice walk from town, and it lies just on top of a hillside overlooking Maastricht. We didn't get to go on a tour of the fort since we missed the 1 tour they run every day, but we did get to go on a supercool tour of the Northern Corridor System Tunnels, which were built by the Romans throughout the hills over a period of 2000 years. The Romans developed the tunnels by quarrying soft marlstone at a rate of just 4 blocks per day, creating an underground system that provided refuge to the citizens of Maastricht whenever they found themselves under attack. During WWII for example, the tunnels housed a well, a storeroom, a chapel, a kitchen, a bakery, and a pen for livestock. At one stage the Northern Corridor System Tunnels had over 20 000 separate passageways adding up to a length of over 200 km and stretching underneath the Belgian border - until the French blew up a big chunk during the war, thinking they were under the Sint Pietersberg fort. However, they only succeeded in entombing hundreds of French soldiers. Geniuses at work. The caves are quite chilly, and are really really dark. Also, they're full of graffiti from across the ages. The tunnels were only closed to the public in the 1980s, so up until then people could just wander in and write their name on the walls. I saw a lot of English/American names written with the date 1944 - Allied soldiers no doubt. I even found some names carved in the wall somewhat ornately with the date 1698. Cool stuff. The guide's favourite game is (with your permission) to leave with the lamps and go to the end of a long curved passageway, and then we have to walk through the tunnel in the pitch black, using our hand on the wall to guide us. It is so dark and so ominously silent down there, that apparently grown men break down and cry when left without a light. In our tour group, one of the kids piped up as soon as the light disappeared around the bend: "Ik kan niet see!" It was pretty funny. After our tunnel adventure we walked back into town, and ate some food at a nice little cafe in the Markt Square. Then we headed back to Marten's and hung out with him some more. But we ended up turning in at a more reasonable hour since we were all very tired from our late night before. This morning we got up and did some dishes for Marten before we left - he was already at work so we decided to leave him a little present. We caught the train at about 11:50 and got home to our doorsteps at about 3:00. Not too bad. Now it's back to real life, somewhat. It's still the fall break, so the school has limited hours. I may make use of my Museumkaart and go to some museums around town, and I was also thinking of taking day trips to Den Haag, Rotterdam, or Utrecht. We'll see.

Walk this way

2008-10-15T18:10:00.001-04:00

I feel like I should be walking around like a cowboy, all bow-legged. Yesterday I met up with a guy from Israel who messaged me on couchsurfing.com to go for a bike ride in the countryside north of Amsterdam. He (and another tourist from Seattle who he met on a city tour the day before) met me at school, and we headed out into the countryside. Beautiful weather, all sunny with a breeze to keep cool. Perfect biking weather. The Netherlands has a huge network of bike paths, and really great signage all over the place so that you never get lost. We biked north, and more north, and passed some very quaint towns like Volendam and Edam (yes like the cheese), until we got to Hoorn. The catch is, Hoorn is 31 km north of Amsterdam. And once we got there, we had to bike all the way back. So that was a 62 km round trip. And then counting the distance I bike to school and back, I biked around 80 km yesterday. And also because I'm crazy, I went to the gym and worked out. I lifted all my weights, and ran for a couple miles, and then did a yoga class. Surprisingly, I'm not very sore today. Pretty much only saddle sore. I also got to take some pretty pictures yesterday, so enjoy - on Saturday I have my own couchsurfing adventure in Maastricht!

Thanks-give-to-me

2008-10-13T17:26:00.002-04:00

Life continues on. I was super excited to go see the Concertgebouw play Prokofiev's Classical Symphony on Saturday, but halfway through the day on Friday I started to feel very tired. At first I just thought it must be because I had gotten up at the ungodly hour of 6:30 to go running with my friend Simona, but then I started feeling all achy and feverish, and I ended up getting very sick. I spent most of Saturday in bed, except for my brief sojourn to the grocery store in the afternoon. I needed food, and even though I wasn't feeling very well all the stores are closed on Sunday so I had to go out. I also stopped at the drug store and picked up some good old vitamin C. Needless to say, I didn't make it to the concert. I am feeling much better now, though I still have some vestiges of the sickness. I am a bit stuffy, and have a cough. But other than that I feel fine. Which is of course a relative term.

This weekend is the start of the Herfstvakantie, the fall vacation. We have a week off, for whatever. A lot of people are going home (because they're from England/Austria/Spain/Germany/somewhere else close), but my friend Hayley and I have decided to go to Maastricht for the weekend. She has to work on Monday evening, and I'm going to have a lesson even though it's the vacation, so we're just going to go for a couple of days. Maastricht pretty much as far south as you can get in the Netherlands, and it's surrounded by Belgium and France. It's one of the oldest cities as well, as it used to be a Roman town. It's also got hills, which is quite a novelty. And a whole system of tunnels hewn out of the hills from as far back as the Roman times. I just hope the tunnels will still be open. Maastricht's sort of described as the most un-Dutch Dutch city, so I think it will be pretty cool. On Tuesday as well I will probably go to Den Haag to get my instrument adjusted by these people my teacher Sven has recommended, who are there for one day only. As well, Hayley and I though it might be nice sometime a little later in the week to take a day trip to Rotterdam. So we'll see. Tomorrow I'm meeting up with a guy from Israel who I met on couchsurfing.com, and I'm going to take him on a little biking tour of the countryside around Amsterdam. It's a nice excuse for me to do it as well, since I've been meaning to since I arrived in August, but haven't managed to leave the city yet. There always seems like there are other things I should be doing. It's the classic musician guilt - you should be practicing. And if you are practicing you should at least be sitting at school not practicing. Hayley and I are probably going to couchsurf in Maastricht too, since it's the only way to travel!

Fun fact I learned today in my Musical Body class: our guest lecturer was a doctor at the clinic for musicians and dancers in the Hague, and one of his colleagues did a very cool study. He got the first 150 patients who walked through the clinic doors (musicians and dancers) to fill out a survey that would determine whether they had ADHD. Now only about 2-5% of the normal population suffers from ADHD. What percentage of these musicians and dancers did? You might think like I did that it would in fact be very low, since you are required to focus and concentrate for long periods of time. Until he explained that one of the manifestations of ADHD is hyper-focussing on one action or task, at the complete detriment of focussing on anything else. And then it struck me - what is the prototypical absent-minded musician? Someone who can tell you absolutely everything about their instrument from its creation to the present day and is generally a master at their craft, but can't organize their life worth shit or even remember your name half the time. Well, this study found that 50-60% of those walking through the clinic doors suffered from ADHD. Now keep in mind that these are injured musicians and dancers, so their hyper-focus may have led to strain themselves over the limit, but it makes a lot of sense doesn't it? And that doesn't take into account those of us who have some aspects of ADHD but don't "suffer" from it in a clinical sense. Then I'm pretty sure that would encompass at least 90% of professional musicians. You have to be slightly batty just to survive. Anyways I thought it was an amusing fun fact. Enjoy. My Thankgiving gift to you.

Wil jullie danse?

2008-10-08T08:31:00.002-04:00

Wow, it's been a while since I posted. I don't even remember as far back as Sept. 27. Let's see. I continue to rehearse for Black Angels. I continue to take Dutch lessons. I've started working/volunteering for this MEMO program, in which students go to nurseries and daycares throughout the city and do little 15 min music presentations for the kids. I had my first 'try-out'this morning, and it went well. On friday I do my first real paid MEMO - you get about 15 euros an hour for it. You can only earn a max of 150 euros a month, but it's pretty sweet because since you're technically just a paid volunteer, I don't have to pay taxes on it. Playing for kids is really fun - though it's funny the difference between the baby groups and the toddlers. The babies just sit and stare at you, because you're just totally blowing their mind. They can't do anything but stare. But the toddlers get really excited, and clap and dance and run around. It's very cute. This week I started getting up at 7 am to meet my friend Simona who lives near me to go for an hour run around the Sloterplas (lake near our place). It's good for now, but I'm still shopping for a gym for when the weather gets really gross. Also on friday night I met up with Ramon, the 'Dutch freeloader' who stayed at my rents place in Saskatoon back in 2005. I had my first real dutch brown pub experience, and even drank some crazy Frisian liquor. I continue with my Concertgebouw addiction, averaging about 2 concerts a week. This weekend is Prokoviev 1st piano concerto and the Classical Symphony. I must go. But then after that I think I have to cut back on my concert consumption. Only if I want to eat. And I like food almost as much as I like sleep.

Hootin and a hollerin

2008-09-27T13:23:00.003-04:00

So this week was a little more busy. Things are starting to pick up - probably a good thing, though I was really enjoying my ample free time. I started rehearsals for Black Angels, which I'm playing for another Masters student's final exam in December. I also played in a clarinet Masters final exam today, in a little orchestra she put together to accompany her clarinet concerto. It was a jazzy number, by Artie Shaw. Pretty fun stuff. On Wednesday evening the Amsterdamse Hogeschool voor the Kunsten had their big back to school partay. The AHK is a big umbrella school, and the Conservatory serves as the music faculty of it. They also have dance, theatre, and art departments. Film too I think. It's an arts school. But each department works pretty autonomously, in our own buildings scattered across the city. So they threw this big party and rented out the entire Milkweg, a big club off the Leidseplein. The Milkweg has lots of different rooms with different performance spaces, and they had something different happening in each. A big dance hall with a DJ and a live band who played a set around midnight, another hall where bands from the Conservatory played all night, a movie theatre upstairs where you could watch student's films, and then two little cafe areas. The party started at 8 pm and was supposed to go until 4 am. I left around 1:30 because I was tired, but the place was packed! The Conservatory alone has around 1000 students, so once you got all the faculties of the AHK together, there was a ton of people. I think the idea of having a big back to school bash for the whole AHK is a good idea, but the problem with a big party at the Milkweg was that it was really bad for meeting people you don't know. I enjoyed all the music and dancing and stuff, but it was so loud everywhere that you could barely hear when somebody told you their name, let alone have a conversation with them. So basically everybody hung out with all their friends they already knew. But it was fun, and was officially the first time I've been out to any kind of nightlife since I moved here.
I've also been working on my plan to become more culture-fied. I finally got a bank account on Thursday, so as soon as I get some money in it I'm going to get my Museum card - free admission to lots of museums across the country for a year. I'm also going to get a korting kaart for the trains, which costs 50 euros but I get 40% off every time I ride the train. And since I want to try and explore the Netherlands I think it will pretty much pay for itself over the year. It's basically the difference between paying for a 9 euro return trip or a 16 euro return trip. And I went to my first concert at the Concertgebouw last night. I got a rush ticket for 10 euros, and saw Antssi Kartunnen solo with the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra. I played Bloch's 3rd quartet with Antssi 3 summers ago at Domaine, so it was cool to see him playing. In Amsterdam. I have to say that although I didn't really like the piece he played, he rocked at playing it. It was a new cello concert by a Finnish composer, and aside from the 2nd movement which reminded me of Apocalyptica, it was actually kind of boring. It sounded like an orchestration exercise on all the cool effects you can make with an orchestra and all the cool effects you can make with a cello. Booooring. The RCO also played some Britten, which was amazing. The Messa di Requiem, which I'd actually never heard before, and then selections from Peter Grimes. I saw the Canadian Opera Company's production of Peter Grimes 3 years ago, and it was nice to hear some of the music again. Man, that Britten sure knew how to write good music. And there was a kick-ass viola solo in one of the 'sea interludes', so that was awesome as well. Fairly soon I should start rehearsing with a Piano Quintet, as well as a flute-viola-harp trio. And my teacher also put my name forward for some kind of funky 20th century ensemble, so we'll see about that. Until then I will continue to lock myself in a practice room and explore the overtones of my viola. It's my new project.
Oh yeah, and I mailed my absentee ballot for the election yesterday. Plus, CBC's Your Turn asked people to fill in the sentence "President________ and Prime Minister _________" for who you wanted to win both the US and Canadian elections, and so I emailed them and said President Obama and Prime Minister Layton, and I got my sentence read on the air! My friend Tim in Vancouver heard it on the news, and so I was joking that I could out-election him even from another continent! Good times. I have to say that I still feel very connected to the election even from all the way across the ocean because of the miracles of the internet. I can watch the Canadian news online, and see all the different parties TV commercials and everything. I even watched Bob's interview with Mike Duffy! (my cousin and NDP candidate for Battlefords-Lloydminster. Facebook helps too. It's all the rage in this election. So it's nice that I can still be engaged and involved in the electoral process even from a gazillion miles away. If you haven't already, check out Toronto NDP candidate David Sparrow's hilarious videos that spoof the Mac/PC ads. "I'm a NDP....and I'm a PC. I mean, C." Classic. davidsparrow.ca

If I were a rich man

2008-09-23T16:52:00.002-04:00

So, the exchange rate between everything is killing me here. I'm always doing the math in my head - I check the price of something and then I think, "how much is this in Canadian dollars?" And then I get very scared. A lot of things here are more expensive - like for instance most things in restaurants or shops are the same number price as they are in Canada, but in Euros. So that means they cost at least 1.5 times more. I usually just round it up to 2X more just to be on the safe side, what with fluxuating exchange rates and all. But buying food in grocery stores is relatively cheap. It's actually utterly ridiculous the disparity in prices between buying food in the grocery store and buying food in a restaurant. Now, it's always more expensive to eat out. I know this. But when you're only one person, you usually end up having to eat the exact same meal for at least 3-4 days because that's the quantity your ingredients come in. In Canada I had all my tricks for eating out on the cheap - like the Subway 2.99 sub of the day. Well they have that at the Subways here too, only it's the 2.99 Euros sub of the day. So really it's the 6 buck sub of the day. I can go to the grocery store and pick up sandwich fixins and pasta and stuff to eat for dinner, and for about 10-15 euros. Or I can go to Wok to Walk, a popular "cheap" asian fast-food place and get one meal for 6 euros. Actually, the 2.99 euro sub of the day is pretty much still one of the best deals to eat out. Which is just sad. Of course there's just a higher cost of living here, and that's all fine. The problem is that I'm funding this on the lower-cost living and wages my parents make back in Canada.........and for that matter I made all summer. I worked my ass off all summer, and I think I probably spent all the money I saved up before I even left the country. It's a sad sad state of affairs. I think the US government should give me a billion dollars. I mean, seems like they're just handing it out these days. As for all the electioning happening in N.America, I've been keeping up to date thanks to the internets. Though of course I'm always finding things out late, since while I'm sleeping all the action happens. But it's still fun to watch some news and videos on the internets. I'm eagerly awaiting my write-in ballot, because even though I may not be residing in Canada right now I'm damn well going to do my part to get Harper outta there.
Notes on the pictures: The first is of one of the bridges I have to cross on my way to and from school - occasionally I get to it and it's letting a big barge through and so I have to wait. The cool thing I found about it (that I couldn't get in the frame) was that the power lines also run over the bridge, so they have this system that's hard to describe (I'm finding this as I'm trying to describe it). Basically, where the bridge separates there's two tower thingies holding the wires - the wires are separate but the tower thingies touch and covey the voltage that way. So when the bridge goes up, one tower stays on the ground and one goes up and takes that side of the wires with it. It's a pretty nifty process.......or at least I think so. The second is a mailbag used by TNT Post (the dutch post office). Nobody carries mail. That's so passe. They either have these trolley thingies that they wheel around, or they carry it in carrier bags on a bike. I've passed a few posties biking around with wads of mail sticking out of TNT carrier bags. This system works well here though, because most people live in flats/apartment buildings, and even the houses are close together. Also, we don't seem to have a dedicated postie for our route. Every time I see someone delivering the mail it's somebody different. One day it was a middle-aged Muslim woman in her long dress and hijab, the next day it was a teenage boy. Anyways, it just seemed odd to me, since I know so many posties and am so used to the way our system works (or doesn't work as the case may be). Tomorrow night is the big welcome/welcome back party for the whole Hogeschool voor de Kunsten (School for the Arts) at the Milkweg. It's scheduled to go from 8pm-2am, but it's very unlikely I will stay that long. Unless it's a really really good partay. But it's a chance to meet people from not only the Conservatorium, but from all the other faculties of the AHK. Who knows. Maybe I'll be discovered :P

Notes on this week

2008-09-20T04:34:00.002-04:00

This week was fairly uneventful. I had my first lesson with Sven on Monday, and it went well. My goal is to become more XTREME! Which is something people have been telling me for years (i.e. my ideas are good but I just need to exaggerate them). I'm working on it. I hope to bring some Xtreme-ness from my life into my musics. Other than that, I had nothing to do all week but practice. So that's pretty much all I did. I've actually gotten more practicing done in the last few weeks than I did all summer, and really all last term at UBC too.....at least that's what it feels like. It's both really nice and really strange to have time to practice, since usually I'm trying to squeeze it in around everything else. It certainly helps that I'm not loaded down with courses! Bah to the Bachelors! I've also met a violinist from Sudbury, and I'm going to be playing in her final examination in December - George Crumb's Black Angels. It will be very challenging, but I think it's a really good piece to know, and also to learn in school when you have the luxury of rehearsing it for 2 1/2 months. Because in the real world, that would probably never happen. They'd probably just be like, 'can you play Black Angels next week?'. So yeah.
Yesterday Aida and Nathalie, two girls I went to UBC with, came into town on their way to Paris. Nathalie's in Austria right now visiting family, and Aida is living in Enshende doing her Masters. So I met up with them yesterday, and we wandered around Amsterdam. Went for super sketchy all you can eat Chinese food in Chinatown (on the Zeedijk), went to the red light district and the Amsterdam Erotic Museum, and then ended up sitting in a McDonalds for I think around an hour. Or maybe two. We were really just looking for someplace to sit after all our walking, and Amsterdam's not huge on the public benches. I have to say I don't really walk a lot what with riding my bike everywhere, so I never really noticed the dearth of public benches until yesterday. The other annoying thing is that you have to pay to go to the bathroom pretty much everywhere in the Centrum. Pretty much the only place I've been to where you don't have to pay is the Conservatory - even at the public library next door you have to pay! It's pretty ridiculous, even if it is only 20-50 cents. It's a washroom, in a public building - I can see McDonalds doing it cause they're corporate asses, but the public library???? So strange. Anyways I'm just hanging out at school until my Dutch lesson starts in 15 minutes. I got here early to finish my homework, but it didn't take me as long as I thought. Which was nice.

Do the wave

2008-09-14T17:22:00.003-04:00

So today was the music wave. The whole idea behind it was that there'd be a travelling caravan of musicians playing the piece written for the occasion (aptly entitled Music Wave), and they would play this wave of music through the city from the old location of the Conservatory to the new location on the Oosterdok. And of course the route wound its way to some of the most popular public squares in the city, so we could put on a show as well as gather people to join our procession. Once the wave arrived at the new location, there was an outdoor stage set up on the square in front of the new building, as well as performances happening on all three stages inside. This was really meant to be the big opening for the public, since Friday (with the Queen) and Saturday (for the architect) were both invite-only affairs. The music wave started at 12, so at 10:50 I met up with Simona, a pianist who lives only a block away from me. We walked together to the old conservatory building, which took about an hour. I wheeled my bike along, since I ostensibly wanted to be able to ride it home once we got to the Oosterdok. The first major square the procession hit up was the Museumplein, the big open park between the Rijksmuseum and the Van Gogh and Stadelijk Museums. I decided that I wanted to join in - it's hard to follow a procession of people playing the same melody over and over, and not want to join in! So Simona offered to wheel my bike for me and I got out my viola and started playing. Good thing it was sunny weather though, since I think this whole outdoor procession/concert idea would have sucked big time if it had been rainy. But I walked behind the moving stage, playing on my viola until we reached our next stop - the Liedsplein. At the Liedsplein another flatbed truck rolled up, with a piano in the back and seats for extra musicians to sit on. And since Simona wanted to play the piano on the truck, I ended up leaving my bike locked up on the Liedsplein and hopping on the back of the truck. I had to walk back there after and get my bike - I could have taken the tram, but that would have cost like 2 whole euros! And the whole reason I bought my bike was so I wouldn't have to waste lots of money on trams/trains/metro. But I digress...
Now comfortably situated on the back of the second truck, we made our way from the Liedsplein to Dam Square. We stopped beside the war monument, and attracted a fairly large crowd. Then it was onwards, through the winding streets of the Red Light District to the Nieuwmarkt. At the Nieuwmarkt we were joined by an African drumming group, who were totally awesome. The picture above is of the crowd that gathered to watch the mini-performance at the Nieuwmarkt. Then we continued along the canal, up to the Oosterdok. It took about 2 hours for us to get from the old conservatory to the new, but it was pretty fun. You know me - I love any excuse to march through a city, disrupting traffic and causing a commotion! But afterwards (and especially after I had walked to the Liedsplein to get my bike, and then biked the rest of the way home) I was extremely exhausted. Apparently sitting on the back of a flatbed truck, playing the same ditty over and over is exhausting work. I literally had to have a nap when I got home, as I was completely exhausted. I had planned on trying to hit up some more buildings for the Open Monument weekend, but my exhaustion nixed those plans. I guess I'll have to wait until next year - and since I know its coming, I can plan ahead, maybe draw up a schedule, with a colour-coded map! I'll be the coolest kid on the block!

No Dutch, no problem!

2008-09-13T11:42:00.003-04:00

So I hauled my carcass out of bed this morning at the ungodly hour of 9 am to get to school for my Saturday morning Dutch class. It was gross, and cold, and rainy, so I had a bit of a damp bike ride to school. I got there a little early, so I got a croissant from the canteen and chatted with some people from my class. At the appointed hour we head up to the room in which we've had our lessons for the past 2 weeks, but it's got another class going on in it! So we're standing around, and the teacher of the class in our room comes out and puts a sign on the door saying that the Nederlands class is on the 8th floor. So we all troop over to the elevators, and as we're waiting for the elevator our Dutch teacher Anneke calls Bernie's cell phone, and says that she's not even at school yet! She comes from out of town, and someone jumped in front of her train and so she was stopped and wouldn't be able to get in for about an hour. So we decided it was probably better if we just cancelled the lesson. But since we'd all gotten out of bed and trooped to school, a few of us decided to partake of some of the free coffee being offered to people there for the opening weekend festivities. Yesterday the Queen came and went to a concert and checked out the school, and today it was the architect or something. None of us were all that clear on who exactly these strange people at our school were, but they were giving out free coffee so we weren't about to complain. I then went off to practice for a couple hours, since I had brought my viola all the way to school and all. What was kind of annoying was that after the concert that was put on for these strange people was over, they started roaming the hallways - so we had lots of people walking by and peering in while we were practicing. Only a tad annoying. But they were having a lunch when I got downstairs so I scored a free sandwich before heading out.
By the time I was done practicing, it had stopped raining, so I decided to take advantage of the no rain and go for a leisurely bike ride in an area of the city I hadn't make it too yet - Jordaan. Jordaan was originally built as the packed quarters in which to house all the workers and artisans and canal builders. It has one of the highest population densities still in Amsterdam, since the houses were built quite small and packed together (see picture above). It of course has become more gentrified over the past decade or so, what with those darned yuppies moving in. But it's a nice little district of narrow streets, canals, and tiny houses. After Jordaan I just kept biking around, and eventually found my way over to the Stopera building. And, I found the Amstel river! The city was built around the Amstel river, with the IJ river on the northern border and providing the connection to the sea. But since the city has grown, and various canals and stuff were filled in for sanitation/traffic purposes, the Amstel no longer meets up with the IJ. But I found it today - though if I hadn't have known what I was looking for I might have just thought it was a really big canal. That's really the only difference. The Stopera is a combination Stadhuis and opera house - ie its the city hall plus an opera hall, all in one building. It caused quite a controversy when built, and it is actually quite an ugly building.
I then wandered around the market on the Waterlooplein, which is right behind the Stopera. There were some interesting things, and also some "interesting" things, but I did buy two pretty pashminas for 8 euros. And I think I might go back and get a cheap bike lock.....or two....... I then biked through Nieuwmarkt, and hit up the Oude Kerk. Little did I know that today was open monument day, when all these historical buildings were open to the public (including some like the Oude Kerk that always are, as well as others that usually aren't). The Oude Kerk is used these days mainly as a space for art exhibits, and so they had one of those in there. But because of the monument day celebrations, they had a free wine bar! So I grabbed a glass of wine and wandered around the church. The art exhibit was sort of meh. I feel very similarily about modern art as I do about modern music. Some of it is really cool, but most of it is quite craptacular. Just because you can dress a mannequin up like a hooker and put it in a sarcophocus, doesn't mean you should. But one cool thing was that I found the gravestone on the floor that belongs to Rembrandt's wife Saskia von Uylenburgh. I just says, in really big letters, "SASKIA", with the date of her death. I think that's great. Very pithy. I think I want my gravestone just to say "KATYA" in hugmungous letters. After the Oude Kerk I headed back home, but along the way I passed a house that was open for Monumentendag so I decided to stop and go in. Turns out is a super fancy house on Herengracht, in a part of town known as 'the Golden Bend'. Its basically the most prestigious stretch of real estate in Amsterdam - and it showed. The rooms were all fancy with chandeliers, and gold trim, and priceless paintings. The mansions date from the 1660s, and thanks to lobbying by the richies the gables are twice as wide as the standard, and the rear gardens deeper than normally allowed. This particular house was the only one along the row open today because it's up for sale. They're all still private residences (or offices, as some have been converted to house things like the Prins Bernhard Cultuurfonds). But they apparently open one up every year on open monument day, but only then. I think the monument day open houses are supposed to go all weekend, so I might check out some other stuff tomorrow as well. We'll see. Tomorrow is the big "Music Wave" from the old building of the Conservatory to the new building. The idea is that a bunch of people meet at the old building, and some composer (student I assume) composed this "Music Wave" piece, and so we play it there, then we march through the city, stopping at various places along the way like the Liedsplein and the Dam to play the "Music Wave", and then we end up at the new building where they've put up a stage in the square in front. And then there's be some sort of concert or opening thing of some sort. Who knows. Hopefully it won't rain, but the sun shining right now bodes well for tomorrow.

In my inbox

2008-09-11T08:24:00.002-04:00

I just got this email today about the Queen's visit tomorrow. I though it was pretty amusing, so I thought I'd share it:

To all students, teachers and staff,

Tomorrow the Queen will visit the conservatory and on Sunday there will be an Open Day in the building. Therefore we ask you to take account of the following:

* during the bomb check at noon tomorrow, all coats and bags that lie around the canteen, the Bernard Haitinkzaal, the Blue Note and the Sweelinckzaal will be removed

* no bikes may be put on the square in front of the building on Friday 12 and Sunday 14 September. On Friday the square will be closed off with fences, on September 14 a stage will be built on the square.

* due to the Queen's arrival and departure on Friday, the fences on the square will be closed from approx. 2.50-3.00 p.m. and 4.45-4.55 p.m. Please wait outside or in the canteen until the fences will be opened again, it will take only ten minutes.

* on Friday the large elevator cannot be used. During her visit, the Queen will use one of the small elevators, during those times this elevator cannot be used by others.

* From 3.00-4.00 p.m. there will be a concert for our guests in the Bernard Haitinkzaal and the Blue Note; following there will be music in the Blue Note and the Sweelinckzaal. Due to the concert in the Bernard Haitinkzaal, the corridor with the computers cannot be used between 2.30 and 4.30 p.m.

* On Friday the canteen will close at 12.30 p.m.. At 4.00 p.m. there will be a party for our guests on the ground floor and the mezzo foyer; the canteen will be closed then as well.

We apologize for any inconvenciences caused and we hope you will enjoy this special day.

I swear!

2008-09-09T10:21:00.002-04:00

It's been a while since I updated this....I swear I though about updating it. But then I didn't. Not too much has been happening. And I mean, really. I had my first class yesterday, but other than that and my 2 Dutch classes a week, I've had absolutely nothing to do. I go to school every day, and practice, but that's really just to fill up my units of time. I've been slowly meeting people. It's a process when you don't actually have any classes. Last week at the Masters student orientation I met some people, including classical saxophonist from Cologne whose girlfriend is from Nova Scotia, and a half Croation-half Japanese flautist who went to school with my homeboy Jonathan at Peabody. Oh, and I also met two girls from Montreal, a singer from Poland, and a trumpeter from the UK. We went to a brewery in a windmill after the Masters meeting, and had some sweet ass windmill beer. The Brouwerie ant'IJ, I believe it was called. Hilariously enough, I met a girl from Saskatchewan while standing in front of the elevator at school today. She a violinist from Regina - we both though it was pretty crazy that we were both from SK, since when your in another country usually the people you meet from Canada are from every except where you're from.
On Saturday I met up with Aida, who I went to school with at UBC. She's doing her Masters in Eindhoeven, near the German border, and her and her roomies came into Amsterdam for the day. I met up with them after my Saturday morning dutch class, and we wandered the streets for a while. It was nice to just wander around, though I was wearing bad shoes for walking. My bad. On Sunday, one of the girls from my dutch class had a bunch of us over for dinner. It was a nice little gathering, and quite convenient for me since she lives about 5 minutes away from me. Today I just got back from the Dienst Persoonsgegevens, where I registered! Boo-yah! In the mail next week I will get my info, like my BSN and SoFi nummer, which I can use to finally open a bank account. Cause doing my banking from Canada is killing me with service charges... I also re-applied for my CPP, and I found out that I can get it direct deposited into my Dutch bank account. So I printed the form for that - just need to go get the bank account......
Oh yeah, and this whole election thing. What a joke. Stupid Stephen. But I mailed off my application for a special ballot this morning, so that I can elect an NDP MP on October 14. I'm only a little cheesed that I spent the entire summer sitting on my ass in Saskatchewan, and then three weeks after I moved to another continent he calls an election. It's really just a big conspiracy against me. I know it is. I know that Harper's afraid of the Woloshyn election machine! But that's his own problem, and he has to deal with it.

Ik begrip het niet

2008-09-03T17:10:00.002-04:00

There's a reason I've always skipped new student orientations. It really has to do with the inherent forced merriment vis a vis going to school. But I decided it would probably be a good idea to go to the new students orientation at the Conservatory, seeing as though I know how Canadian schools work inside and out, these crazy Dutch are a confuzzling bunch. Plus, we got two free meals out of it - score! You can always rope people in by offering free food. The orientation was pretty informative, and I have a Masters students information session tomorrow, and a chamber music info session on Friday. By the weekend, I will be highly informed. Needless to say, the orientation was a madhouse (see picture above). I tagged along for the tour of the building and info meetings, but ditched as soon as they scheduled 'game time'. I do not need to play games with people. How does that learn me anything????? Me learn nothing with the stoopid games. But I digress......
The weather turned after the beautiful weekend, and it's been pretty rainy and overcast. It reminds me a lot of Vancouver. I have been valiantly biking to school, and am determined to be an all-season, all-weather cyclist. Mainly because I'm also too cheap to fork out for the train if I don't have too. Cheapness is a great motivator. Also my schedule is pretty 'light' at school, but I prefer to practice there in the nice soundproof rooms as opposed to at my flat where you can hear everything your neighbours are doing. It's a little stressful if you're practicing for an audience. Most of my "classes" aren't scheduled yet - aka my lessons, orchestral rep, ensembles, etc. My only scheduled class this term in one of my electives - The Musical Body. I will be learning all about my body. And music. Music and my body. Something along those lines.
Notes on the pictures: The first is of orientation day. It was just a madhouse. The second is the view of Amsterdam from the Conservatory (7th floor). The Conservatory is built on the Oosterdok, just across the water from the centre of Amsterdam. And since it's a big glass box (all the outer walls are just big panes of glass), you get a pretty sweet view from the higher floors. On the lower floors, you can also look into the public library beside us. The third picture is one I took this evening at the park near my flat. I went for a run yesterday and discovered this park. So this evening I went on a walk with my roommate Aaron and showed him the park. It was sunset, and very pretty. I think it looks exactly like something you might see painted by a Dutch Golden Age artist.....

Sun!!!

2008-08-31T14:15:00.002-04:00

Things are going well. I just finished my intensive week of Dutch lessons, and 'real' school starts tomorrow morning. But not really, since the first day of school is just a big partay. New student orientation all day, followed by a concert and partay in the evening. Because in music school, that's just the way we roll. I still haven't gotten my timetable, so hopefully we'll get those tomorrow.....
This weekend was the Uitmarkt in Amsterdam, which is a big outdoor festival that celebrates all the different cultural things in and around Amsterdam. It spans all along the Eastern docklands of Amsterdam, and consists of a series of booths and performance areas. Every single arts organization you could think of seemed to have a booth - and they went on forever. And a lot of them were giving out free stuff, so that was awesome. They were grouped according to which 'art' it was too, music, theatre, dance, museums, libraries....... A lot of the theatre/music booths were selling tickets too, so you could pick up a season schedule and buy your tickets right there. Pretty nifty. So I was wandering all around the Uitmarkt, picking up free swag from all the booths, and I wandered over to the museum quarter and saw a big stage set up for what appeared to be an orchestra. So I found a schedule to see who was supposed to be playing - and it was none other than the Royal Concertgebouw Orchestra! For any of you who don't understand how cool this was, the Concertgebouw is one of the best orchestras in the wooooorld. They're based in Amsterdam, but this year they're touring Japan, Italy, and England as well. Since I had about an hour and half to kill before the Concertgebouw was supposed to go on stage, I decided to bike to the Vondelpark and try and read my NL Cosmo magazine I had picked up.
The weather was amazing yesterday (and it's still really nice today), so the park was packed full of people. I found a little piece of grass off one of the side trails, and sat down under a tree with my magazine. After painfully reading some Cosmo (including an interview with Scarlett Johanssen in which she claims she's not sexy, and is just a normal girl), I headed back down to the Uitmarkt. It was a madhouse down there. I have never seen so many bicycles in my life. Near where the Concertgebouw was playing they had an entire field set aside for bikes, but that was full and there were bikes locked along the side of the road for miles. If I had to guess, I'd say a million. But it really only made sense to bike to the Uitmarkt - its sort of off on its own, not close to anything, and the weather was really nice. I also discovered that my school was part of the Uitmarkt, since its on the docklands too (the Oosterdok) and so they were using the three performances spaces in the CvA for Uitmarkt stuff. But back to the Concertgebouw.
They were supposed to go on at 4, but (surprise surprise) the 'host' came on stage at 4 to say that they were going to wait until 4:30, so that the sun wouldn't as much in the musician's eyes. Anyone who's played an outdoor concert knows that although it's great when it's not bad weather, it inevitably means there's major sightline problems due to the blinding sun. As it was, they went on at 4:30 with half the orchestra wearing their sunglasses. It was a good time though. They played Mussorgsky's Pictures at an Exhibition, and then topped it off with a Dvorak Dance. The performance was also broadcast on TV, and so they had a big viewscreen behind the stage showing what they were broadcasting. It was highly amusing to a) watch the pages of the conductors score flapping in the breeze, b) watch the people in the audience try not to look surprised when the camera cut to them, and c) watch orchestra members try to act normal while they have a camera in their face. After the Uitmarkt I biked home and discovered that I had a wee bit of a sunburn. Tomorrow school starts, and the adventure continues.........

Mijn naam is Katya

2008-08-26T16:05:00.004-04:00

So I'm beginning to feel more Dutch. Except for the part where I still can't understand any Dutch. But other than that I am acclimatizing very well. I started my Dutch course yesterday morning. I've discovered that the main difference between Dutch and German is the lack of hard Gs. No such thing as "Gah". It's "hhhhh". That sound like you're clearing your throat. So therefor a word such as geboren sounds like "hhhh-eboren". It's kind of fun, actually. Just as long as I remember to pronounce it right. Though right now my Dutch mainly consists of 'Mijn naam is Katya, spiel ik altviool.
I broke down and bought a phone - I was holding out hope for an iPhone, but for that you need a Dutch bank account, and to get that you need a BSN. They call it a "Burger Service Number", but that's not its actual name. Its the number the government gives you when you register. But I haven't registered yet.......I went down there yesterday and I had to make an appointment for their first available date. Sept. 9. But back to the phone. Because an iPhone requires a contract, I couldn't get it without a bank account. And although I'm not really expecting any calls, I didn't really want to go 2 weeks without a phone. It seems wrong. So I went to the T-Mobile store on Nieuwendijk and got a pre-paid phone. The advantage is that you just pay up front, and get the phone. Pretty good for me as well, since I'm not anticipating large amounts of phone calling taking place. But I'm still totally clueless about how phone numbers work in Europe. Seriously, I know there's a country code (033) and a city code (020) but I'm not sure my phone has one. It's very confusing. There's just a sticker on the box that says my phone number is "0681639711". Also, all the instructions on activating my phone are in Dutch. I managed pretty well, but I still don't know how to refill it. Sadly, my Dutch lessons have not yet covered phone set-up. I'm sure that's going to be covered very soon.
I had a fun time after class today hanging out at the AHK's Bureau Inschrivijn (Enrollment Office). I had to get a few forms signed for the Canadian government, one so that I don't have to start paying back my huge student loan, and another so I keep getting my sweet pension every month. But of course they were very busy, what with everybody trying to figure out how to register and pay their fees one week before school starts. Fools. But it's also very weird that the BI is only open from 1-4 every day. You'd think they'd at least have extended hours for the back to school rush. But apparently not. I then stood in line to get my visa sorted out, but because I only got to the BI at 3 (due to the fact my Dutch class went to 2:30) it soon became 4 and the BI closed. So I have to go back on Thursday, because the visa person doesn't work on Wednesdays.
As for the pictures, the first is of the view from my bedroom window. Pretty sweet, no? And the second is the underground parking at the Conservatory. This is the way every new building (in an accommodating climate of course - VANCOUVER) should work. They've made absolutely no provisions for vehicle parking, but there's an underground bike parking lot (that's monitored by security) as well as ample above ground bike parking in front of the school and the public library beside it. It also helps that it's a short walk from Amsterdam Centraal train station. And since you can pretty much catch a train/bus/tram/metro from anywhere and take it to Centraal. Efficient and inexpensive public transit definitely helps with the whole no vehicle thing. Anyhoo that's about all for now. I'm sure I'll have more news later.

Oh yeah. I bought some European Smarties today. They tasted kind of weird. It was extremely disappointing.

Amsterdamse

2008-08-24T09:47:00.002-04:00

I have arrived. Well technically I arrived yesterday. But the first day never counts, since you're half delirious from jet lag and just trying to remember your name is a chore. By the time I arrived in Amsterdam yesterday I had been up for almost 24 hours. I had a few fitful hours of sleep on the plane, but plane sleeping is never that restful and usually just makes you feel worse than you were before. My new landlord/roommate Julijana met me at the airport - meeting someone you've never met before and have no idea what they look like is hard. I ended up calling her cell phone from a payphone, since there was just this constant crowd of people at the arrival area. But we managed to meet up, and went to her apartment in Slotervaart. She owns the apartment, and then rents out rooms to foreign students and the like. She is originally from Eastern Europe - Serbia I think - but has been living in the Netherlands for over 10 years. She works for the railway as a security/ticket officer on the trains, and so the apartment is very conveniently 1 block away from a train station. It's 1 stop away from Schiphol airport, and 2 stops away from Centraal Station. So pretty convenient. But I still plan on getting a bike and just biking to school all year. Aside from the up front cost, I'm convinced it will be cheaper than taking the train all year. It's only E3.30 for a return trip to Centraal Station, but that begins to add up very quickly when you start to do the math. I'll probably just become one of those people who lives at school....

My room is quite nice, with a double bed, closet, dresserish drawer units, and a view of the canal. Oh yeah. The apartment building is built on stilts over the canal, and my room just happens to be over it. Not directly, but just to the one side. But still, nice view of the canal and the nearby traffic circle from my window. I've also decided that I'm going to try and work my way through my Lonely Planet Amsterdam City Guide. When you live somewhere, you often don't ever go to the "touristy" places. I may skip overtly touristy places like Madame Toussaud's, but I think it will be nice to go to a new place once a week, like a field trip every Sunday. We'll see how long I keep it up, but the first two places on my list that I didn't go to in June are the Stedelijk Museum CS and Nemo, which are both right by my school. The Stedelijk CS is actually in the building right beside my school. So what's my excuse! It IS 9 euros, but it has the modern classes by people like Monet, Van Gogh, Picasso, and Rodin! I guess at 9 euros for all those dudes it's really a steal. Nemo is the museum of Science and Technology, that also has beach on the roof. And it's just on the other side of a little walking bridge that's about 50 feet from my school. Hopefully I'll become all culture-fied, and classy. There's always hope.

What am I talking about. With me, there's no hope. But I'll have fun anyways :)

w00t

2007-03-19T15:07:00.000-04:00

So, not too much exciting has been going on. Becca won the nomination last weekend, so I guess that could be construed as exciting. On Friday I had a hell of a day - Aida, Vanessa, Jennie and I were playing at this West Coast LEAF breakfast downtown at 7 am, so I had to get up at 5:30 and be on the bus at 6:10! Bah! They had this really cool speaker though, who was the legal counsel for Roe v. Wade. She was amazing. We then had to race back to UBC, because we had a Chamber Strings dress rehearsal at 11, and concert at 12. By then, I hadn't really eaten anything, and was severely sleep deprived, so I went to have a quick nap before my piano lesson. And proceeded to sleep for 3 hours. Luckily I woke up in time for our orchestra dress rehearsal at 6:30 - the concert was Saturday night. I'm just impressed we made it through the whole Beethoven 9 without totally falling apart! Sunday I mostly lazed around, went for a run, started my English paper.

Housing and Conference Services are doing unit inspections this week in our rez, and so I volunteered to clean the living room, and the shower, sink, and toilet of my bathroom. Lisa was supposed to clean the kitchen, and Joyce was supposed to clean the floor of the bathroom. Well, I was the only one who cleaned. And they came this morning to inspect. All I can say is that whoever inspected this time was WAY nicer than whoever came last time! Our place is by no means filthy - it's "lived in". It's reasonably tidy, and is messy mostly because we actually cook, and use things in the kitchen and living room. Anyways, by some fluke we actually passed - you can 'fail' the first inspection, and they'll mark down what you need to clean better and come back in a week. If it's still not clean, they clean it and make you pay for it. Last term we 'failed' the first inspection, and used some fancy bargaining skills to get out of paying them! And it was way cleaner!

I just got an email that I got into Banff for Masterclasses and Orchestra, so it would seem my summer plans are beginning to firm up. Tomorrow morning I register for summer session, and so I should probably get on applying for a student loan for that... I'm going to Peter and Mariko's wedding in TO in June, and hopefully staying on for a week or so to hang out and play another Cirrus concert. If Tichelle gets their act together! Ha. Now all I need is to find a job.......

Blah

2007-03-10T03:45:00.000-05:00

OK, seriously. I know I don't update this as much as some would like, but I'm totally busy and important! I have spent the entire time since February break working. Like, going to class. Doing homework. (not much) practicing. My friend Becca is running for the federal NDP nomination in Vancouver Quadra, and I've been working on her campaign a bit - the nomination meeting is on Sunday afternoon, so I guess that's exciting. That's about it. I swear. My life is exciting. Last night I went to bed at 10:30 pm. I'm wild and crazy.

Grinding

2007-02-28T13:14:00.000-05:00

Back at the grind. School, school, school. Sunday was very exciting, as I spent basically the whole day studying. I had my theory midterm and a quiz in English on Monday morning, and because of my amazing procrastination skills I had to do all the studying on Sunday. For theory, I had to analyze a movement of a Mozart Sonata and then write an essay on it in the midterm. I hate analyzing. It takes me forever. Actually, I just sort of hate theory. Bah to theory.

I finally have all my passport stuff figured out, and after my class I'm going to mail it off to The Man. It's way easier to mail it because the lines at the passport office in Vancouver are so long, people are hiring homeless people to stand in line for them. Seriously. I read an article about in the paper. And since I'm not in any real hurry to get my passport, it just as easy to mail it in. I'm not actually planning on going anywhere, it's just sort of a good thing to have. Just in cases.

I have a research paper due in Poli Sci next week, and so I really have to start doing some readings for that. My skills of procrastination are second to none, and for some reason I have a really hard time working on something until the night before it's due. And while this works for normal assignments, for ones that require research it's not so great. So on that note, I believe I will read some journal articles while my English teacher is standing up at the front babbling about Fifth Business.

Read? Pshaw.

2007-02-24T14:14:00.000-05:00

So Reading Week is drawing to a close. It was very exciting. I swear. Monday was my recital - it went well, and relatively uneventful except for dropping my bow in the middle of the 2nd movement of my Shosti. Good times. My mom came out, as did my Uncle Jerry and cousin Bruce. It was nice to see everyone, since I've been living out here since September but actually haven't seen any of my BC-residing relatives.

I meant to do stuff during Reading Week, but ended up not doing as much as I meant to. I was hampered by the fact that while out for my run on Tuesday morning, my keys fell out of my pocket. Luckily by the time I made it back to my rez they had already been picked up and turned in, but unluckily they sent them back through campus mail which takes FOREVER! So I only got them back yesterday. My UPass was on my keychain/lanyard thingie, so it meant I was campus-bound all week. I paid bus fare downtown to go see Music and Lyrics with Jenna on Tuesday, but other than that I stayed close to home. I did a bit of reading for my research paper, and worked a bit on analyzing a Mozart Sonata for my theory midterm on Monday. Exciting.

This weekend is the YND executive retreat, where we're making our evil master plan for the year. This being, I should probably start paying attention to the meeting now - being co-chair and all:)

The Home Stretch

2007-02-16T13:22:00.000-05:00

So I'm almost done with this week. It's the home stretch. It doesn't necessarily mean I'll be less busy, but I won't have classes to go to next week. Hooray for Reading Week! The opera finished on Sunday, but we started in this week on rehearsals for our next concert - the 10th Anniversary of the Chan Centre. It's an all Beethoven program, which should be interesting......

Tuesday was not my day. I woke up in the morning, went for a run, ate breakfast, and then went back to bed because I felt so crappy. I meant to practice during that time, but I figured it was probably more useful to me to be feeling OK. Then in the afternoon I dropped my viola during my lesson. Good times. Luckily, even when I have bad luck, I'm still lucky because things always turn out OK. Some people have the worst luck, and when bad things happen it's the worst possible outcome. But my viola's fine. My chin-rest bore the brunt of the fall, and I had to replace it. It was sort of sad, since that chin-rest had been with me for over 10 years, switched from viola to viola. Rest in peace, dear friend.

Another thing I did this week was spend hours riding the bus, and I have come to the conclusion that I hate Translink with the flaming passion of a thousand burning suns. Seriously. It takes forever to get anywhere because of the sketchy system of buses. I spent 3 hours riding the bus on Wednesday just to go pick up my bow from getting a re-hair. It wasted my whole afternoon! Bah!

Yesterday I got a call from the Cecilia Quartet who were in town on their Jeunesses Musicales tour. So I met up with them last night for some grub on Robson, and made plans to meet up with them again this afternoon after I go to see Maher Arar talk about the Arar Inquiry. I'm not quite sure what to expect from this lecture, but it was free and I thought it would be interesting no matter what he was planning on talking about. Tomorrow my mom arrives for my recital, and on Monday the agony will be over and I can stop practicing, and work on all my school work I have been neglecting a bit. Anybody want to write a paper for me?

Can't Talk.....Studying

2007-02-14T01:52:00.000-05:00

Here is a letter I sent to the Ubyssey, UBC's student newspaper, that I thought people (cough, mom, cough) would be interested to read:

http://www.ubyssey.bc.ca/2007/02/13/green-leader-and-reality-checks/

I have two midterms on Thursday, and almost broke my viola. Also, am going to see Maher Arar give a talk on Friday. More to come laters.

Surfing

2007-02-10T17:38:00.000-05:00

So I'm sitting in BC NDP Provincial Council right now, surfing the internets, and came across these two news stories. The first is amusing, the second is disturbing.

Apparently teenagers still don't understand the concept that once you post something on the internet, anyone can see it. Students at King Philip Regional High School in Wrentham Mass. created a Facebook group dedicated to a pro-gay rights teacher at their school. And then proceeded to use it as a forum to bash Republican Senator Scott Brown. Excerpts include, "I hate scott brown" and "scott brown ascends from the underworld". Apparently these were the tame ones. So what does Senator Brown do? He goes to the high school to speak at an assembly and proceeds to read off the more offensive and profane comments, and specifying which students posted them. Seriously. Doesn't he have work to do? And does anybody else find it creepy that there's a rogue Republican Senator trolling Facebook? Didn't they learn their lesson about harassing youth? Anyways, I found it somewhat amusing, because when I created a group to say bad things about people on Facebook, I clicked the box to make it private so that nobody but people I approve could read it. Kids these days are very foolish.

The other story is somewhat more disturbing - an article in the Toronto Star today about poverty in Canada. It has to do with health care, but an area that is often disregarded - dentistry. It's the story of Jason Jones, one of Ontario's many working poor who is not covered for any dental services under OHIP. If he were on social assistance he would get partial coverage, but because he works full-time but doesn't make more than 8 bucks and hour (the minimum wage) and does not have health benefits from work, he has no dental coverage whatsoever. There's not much I can say about this. I know how expensive these types of 'frivolous' services are - I desperately need new glasses but have been putting off going to the optometrist because I can't afford it. And I'm just lucky that I've been blessed with a mixture of good teeth, and my dad's dental coverage. But even with coverage, it's damn expensive to see the dentist for a simple check-up and cleaning, let alone some sort of more complicated procedure. Our country is moving in a dangerous direction in terms of health care and interpretations of the Canada Health Act, and it's quite frankly very disturbing.

Here are the urls to the two stories:
http://www.boston.com/news/local/massachusetts/articles/2007/02/09/senator_repeats_bad_language_written_about_him/
http://www.thestar.com/News/article/180323

WTF!

2007-02-07T13:16:00.000-05:00

I read Bourque newswatch to get tomorrow's Canadian news today, and today they linked to an article from the Toronto Star, dated January 30, that made me so mad. This crazy-ass columnist was confused as to why people are caring so much about climate change 'instead' of health care. First of all, people care about both. The point though, is that we won't need health care if our ecosystem collapses. Also, by improving the quality of the air we breathe etc, we would become less of a strain on our healthcare system. Here are some gems from the article that particularly pissed me off:

"Another reason to wonder about our sudden environmental awareness is that, although little attention has been paid to this, global warming will actually benefit Canadians, on balance.

A warmer climate will lengthen our growing season and so expand our agricultural output. It will melt our Arctic ice, creating opportunities for speedier sea travel to Europe and Asia, and make it possible to increase exploitation of our northern resources. It will also reduce our death rate, which always increases during our winters.

Our unearned luck is not yet complete. One of the most feared of the consequences of global warming – a rise in sea levels – will have little effect on us. As a rich country, we are far better situated to cope with climate change's negative effects than is a poor one, like Bangladesh."

Holy shit. Sure, we may not suffer as much as Bangladesh or the Netherlands (whose majority of land is under sea level). But the ice caps melting and sea level rising has bigger and much scarier consequences than just opening the Northwest passage and flooding some countries that we apparently shouldn't care about. The Day After Tomorrow may have been a cheezy movie, but it was based on climate change science. They can't really predict what WILL happen, but that was one example of what COULD happen. And then, Canada would really be screwed.

There is this sort of attitude in Canada that we would be better off if the world heated up a bit, because it's so cold here anyways - so what would a few degrees matter! Uh, well, let's say drought. Massive drought in the prairies. Great Depression-like dustbowl. The Lower Mainland of BC would probably be underwater - including the Greater Vancouver area, which is the third largest city in Canada. And after the drought and flooding, maybe the climate would cool because of a shift in ocean currents. Could happen. And then we'd really be screwed. If we thought it was cold now, we should wait and see what happens if we keep destroying or planet. Next Ice Age, here we come!

Ca-razy

2007-02-02T23:48:00.000-05:00

Ok I know, I should update more often. I swear I was busy this week though - yesterday I basically no time to eat between 10 and 7:30. It was rough, man. Anyhoo, YND convention was fun. We had interesting workshops and stuff, and I was acclaimed as the new Co-Chair. The only 'hi-jinks' I suppose would be from Saturday night. We went to a house party, and Alex, Jenna, and I decided to walk there because we're cheap but apparently not lazy. Then when we got there Alex took off to the liquor store and bought Jenna and I this awesome 2-litre plastic pop bottle of orange wine cooler. And we drank it out of the bottle, ghetto style. A small dance party sub-set of the house party got started in the living room, although periodically Jenna and I would go hang out in the bathroom. Not for any reason in particular. Just because it seemed like the thing to do. However, people were very interested in what the hell we were doing in there, so the official story is that we were doing lines of coke off the toilet seat;)

At about 1 am we left the party, but only made it about two blocks before stopping at a 24-hour diner. It was a good idea, since I had skipped supper and was starving. Alex ordered a milkshake, and then got a little crazy trying to get the guy sitting across from us to look at her - mostly by making suggestive motions with the whipped cream on her milkshake. It was hilarious and disturbing at the same time! At the end of convention, I got saddled with a box 'o propaganda, but luckily I got a ride home from the ferry because I have no idea how I would have carried that sucker a) onto the bus, and b) from the bus loop to my place. I did use my new-found power to make other people carry it onto the ferry, but none of them were heading my way.

This week I've been pretty busy, just with school stuff. The opera starts on Thursday, so we've been having these crazy intensive 3 1/2 hour rehearsals. And on a non-schoolwork related note, they've also been filming on campus again. Last night they were filming outside the Chan when I got out of opera, and so I asked someone what they were filming. It's this movie called "Passengers", starring Anne Hathaway. It's about a guy who's in a plane crash, and Anne Hathaway's character is the grief counselor who's helping him come to terms with it, etc. They apparently have the plane crash site set up on the Spanish Banks, and I've been running past all their trucks along Marine Drive all week. It'll be amusing to go see it when it comes out, because they've been filming at quite a few locations on campus this week - they even have their craft services tent set up in the parking lot beside the School of Music!

I'm a Negligent Mother

2007-01-22T14:22:00.000-05:00

I know, I don't update very often. I'm a negligent blogger. But I swear I've been very busy, doing not a hell of a lot. The most recent news is from last weekend, right after I posted. My friend Alex from UMP and YND called me up, and we arranged to go to see Dreamgirls on Saturday afternoon. Then we found out our other YND friend Jeff was in town from Victoria for some NDP party, and so we ended up going out for dinner with him and Becca after the movie, and then heading over to this NDP party. It was a birthday party for someone, who I think is the head of the BC NDP. I'm not really sure. But anyways in the course of the night I agreed to run for co-chair of the YND at the convention this weekend. I still claim it's because they promised to make a Facebook group about me, but that's another story. Then, Sam invited me to go see Body Worlds with him, Becca, and Jeff on Sunday morning. It was the last day, and the only tickets he could get were for 8:30 am, which meant that we had to leave UBC on the first bus out that morning - at 6:45 am. It hurt, but it was worth it because Body Worlds was pretty cool. After that we went out for lunch and met up with Erin, another YNDer. And then I somehow became instrumental in nominating Becca to run for NDP candidacy in our federal riding. It was mostly because they wanted her forms in by the end of the day, and I was already with her so all I had to do was go over to her house and sign the forms on my way back to UBC. So that was my exciting weekend, but of course by the time Monday rolled around I was already exhausted. Although I did end up going to sleep at about 8 pm on Sunday.

Anyways, my week was busy but boring. Full of classes, homework, and practicing. Sooooo much fun. And my weekend was pretty low-key, which was nice because I spend the entire day yesterday catching up on all my readings that I've neglected. My only other piece of news I guess is that I ordered a Bam Hi-Tek viola case from Remenyi in Toronto. Why Remenyi? Because they actually had one in stock, and ordering directly from Bam takes about 6 months. So I'm eagerly awaiting it's arrival, because my cheap-o Korean case is just about on its last legs. Soooo...that's it. From the looks of it, I'm in for another pretty boring week, and Friday afternoon I head off to Victoria for YND convention. So, that will probably be slightly more eventful and then I can relate the hijinks to you-all.

My Foot's Asleep - It Burns

2007-01-12T16:23:00.000-05:00

I realize it's been a while, but I swear I've been busy! I had a pretty low-key birthday – my aunt Margaret and her sister Jennifer took me out for lunch at Mykonos, and then I went out for dinner at E.E. Burrito's with the parentals and Julianne. On the 4th I flew to Victoria for Universities' Model Parliament. I was the Minister of Heritage, and though I didn't have much to do with the actual bills introduced, I did make a ministerial statement where I announced that Canada's new government for the people was going to increase funding and support of the CBC. So, go CBC. It was a good weekend, chalk-full of policy, debate, and karaoke. Good times.

Anyways, I got back to Vancouver on Sunday night, just in time for school on Monday morning. As it turned out, Michelle was back in BC, this time for her grandma's funeral. So after my classes on Monday I met up with her and her mom for some quality hang-out time. Then they dropped me off on Granville so I could go downtown to Long and McQuade to enquire about a viola case. On my way back home I stopped for groceries, which was good because I had no food whatsoever. Before I left in December I cleaned out the fridge so that we wouldn't come home to a nice fridge full of rotten food. So the fridge was nice and empty.

Anyways, it's just been your normal first week of classes. Figuring out where all my classes are, and trying to find my textbooks for cheaper than bookstore prices. I managed it for English, but that's an easy class to find cheap books. Because it's usually quite easy to find a used paperback of whatever you're reading. Poli sci however, I had to pay full bookstore price because you always have to have the most recent, and therefor most expensive version of the book. It makes sense though, because the political landscape is always changing. And stuff. I did make an executive decision not to buy the sight-singing book for the theory class they're making me take – mostly because I don't feel like paying 80 bucks for a sight-singing book I'll only use for one term. It's sight-singing! I'll just sight-sing out of someone else's book. Although, they are doing solfege here, which I am really really bad at. I can sight-sing fine and in tune if it's just la la la, or even note names, but we have to sight-sing in either solfege, or scale degrees! Which is totally bogus! Solfege is just note names in French, so why can't we just sing note names in English. Argh! But I'll survive somehow, I'm sure.

Anyways, I'm just hanging out till I have to go to my piano lesson (fun). Oh yeah, and I've started running. Except for the two mornings I have a 9 am theory lecture, I've been getting up at 7 to go for a run. And aside from general soreness, I feel pretty good! I'm not quite as out of shape as I though I was, though I can in no way be construed as a good runner. I still hate it, but it's the cheapest, most efficient form of exercise. Which is good, because I have to try and save some money. And we all know how much I love saving. Also, I hope all of my family in Saskatchewan is having a nice time. And is not trapped in their cars or in Wal-Mart. I was watching Newsworld this morning as I was stretching after my run, and the temperature (with windchill) today in Regina was going to be -48. Suckers!!!!! It's ONLY -12 in Vancouver!

It's Bird, A Plane, A Bird And A Plane!

2007-01-02T00:42:00.000-05:00

Your results:
You are Superman

Superman		75%
Spider-Man		70%
Supergirl		27%
Batman		15%
Robin		7%
Wonder Woman		7%
Green Lantern		0%
The Flash		0%
Catwoman		0%
Hulk		0%
Iron Man		0%

You are mild-mannered, good,
strong and you love to help others.

Click here to take the Superhero Personality Quiz

Your results:
You are Mr. Freeze

Mr. Freeze		25%
Venom		25%
The Joker		16%
Lex Luthor		15%
Dr. Doom		15%
Magneto		11%
Apocalypse		10%
Two-Face		9%
Mystique		5%
Dark Phoenix		3%
Kingpin		2%
Green Goblin		1%
Juggernaut		1%
Riddler		0%
Poison Ivy		0%
Catwoman		0%

You are cold and you think everyone else should be also, literally.

Click here to take the "Which Super Villain am I?" quiz...

Ah, Family...

2006-12-31T01:15:00.000-05:00

Well, it's been an exciting family Christmas in Saskatoon. The festivities began on the 23rd with a big party for my cousin Donovan's first wedding anniversary. He got married last Christmas in Mexico, and since basically nobody from our family went they decided to have a big party for us this year in Saskatoon. I had a good time goofing off on the dance floor with my siblings and cousins - especially my cousin Ian who got totally plastered. Unfortunately we were hampered by the worst DJ ever - he didn't even have Thriller!!!! What kind of DJ has no Thriller! But we made the best of the circumstances and danced like complete idiots. Awesome! Afterwards I went out with my sisters and Vashti's boyfriend Chris to the Roxy on Broadway. Vashti force-fed me vodka, which I came to regret the next morning. We didn't stay too long though, because we were all (excepting Anne who was our designated driver) plastered and it was only the first day of Christmas celebrations! The fun part was when I got home and was locked out. I'm just lucky Cayley hadn't completely passed out yet from going out with his friends, and heard me pounding on the door.

Christmas Eve was held at my uncle Mike's farm, as always. Though this year we tried something new with the gift exchange - instead of drawing names and buying for a specific person, we all just brought a sort of generic present and then drew numbers and picked from the pile in order. Cayley and I ended up with matching sets of plates - but they're really nice! My mom foolishly picked the present that I brought, which was basically a smaller version of what I had got her for Xmas. Guess she wasn't as good at snooping under the tree as in previous years. The high point however was my uncle Scott, who got totally shitfaced and made the most hilarious toast to my grandma. She had her surgery for the latest bout of cancer moved up and went under the knife 4 days before Xmas, but she was still partying it up like the rest of us - she attributed it to the painkillers she was on. But anyways, Scott made a ridiculous speech, and then went and passed out somewhere in Mike's house. It was hilarious!

Christmas day was a production, because first we had to wait for Vashti, Anne, and Chris to come over to open presents. Those poor kids had to hit 3 different houses on Xmas day to open presents with their 3 different parents. Suck much! Anyways, I got mostly shirts....but since there was nothing I desperately wanted it was all good. I like shirts, though decidedly not as much as I like pants. I also opened my B-day present from Cayley early, because he's flying to Florida on my birthday. And he kept the chicken gift tradition alive by giving me this hideous chicken hat. Well, it's pretty funny, but I just don't know where I would ever wear it! Then we had to clean like crazy because for some reason the 'rents decided to hold a dinner at our house on Xmas day. So that basically meant that we cleaned while mom freaked out. But the dinner was nice, and fairly non eventful.

Boxing day I went to Preston Crossing with Graeme and Julianne who were hitting up Future Shop for sale printers, and I hit Old Navy to spend the giftcard I got from Julianne for Xmas. Then we went to my aunt Margaret's for dinner, with my fam (minus Vashti and Anne) and my cousin Bob and his wife and two kids. I had a good time playing Yu-gi-oh with Nathan, and got in trouble for being loud and rough-housing. I like little boys better than girls - they're so quantifiable! Besides, I was a tomboy with two older brothers, which basically meant that I played with my John Deere tractor set and not lame-o Barbies. So I find girly little girls somewhat boring.

The five-day holiday extravaganza ended with dinner at my grandparents on the 27th, with the same old Thiesson crowd. By this time though Vashti, Anne, and Chris had all left for New Years @ Tofino, but they were basically the only people absent. The hilarious story from this dinner is that my grandparents planned to have a roast as the main dish, and they plunked it in the stove in the party room of their building and came back an hour later to find out that the stove didn't really work. So we ended up eating the roast last - mmm....dessert roast.... Dinner became this sort of free-for-all and people were eating dessert while some people were still on salad! It was a very Thiesson gathering though. And then I played some sort of card game with my cousins which involved a lot of slapping of people's hands. I forget what they called it....

On the 28th I was so partied out, I didn't leave the house all day. It was awesome. Yesterday I ran errands with my mom downtown, one of which involved me going with her to Lululemon to pick out yoga pants for her. We were joking that she's become sort of like Hugh Grant's character in Two Weeks Notice - she can't make a decision with out me, at least when it comes to clothes. She now just doesn't buy any clothes at all unless I'm with her. But I think this is for the best, as she tends to pick out things at are (how can I say this diplomatically....) ugly. Well, not ugly. But wrong. Things that are wrong.

Today I went to the first live HD broadcast of the Metropolitan Opera. It's this new thing the Met is doing, and we went to our local Galaxy cinemas and watched the Magic Flute live from New York. It was pretty cool - the Magic Flute totally rocks, and it was a really cool production directed by Julie Tamor who did the Lion King on Broadway. The Magic Flute was always my favourite opera as a kid, especially the duet between Papageno and Papagena at the end! It totally rocks! My cousin Alex and aunt Judy also came, and there was actually a really good turnout for Saskatoon! And my mom heard on the news that the Silvercity in Toronto was completely sold out for the opera. I think this is a fantastic new initiative, because what are the chances you'd get to see the Met for 20 bucks, and especially if you live in, say, Saskatoon. It's a shame the CBC has no money to do something like this with the COC - especially for Canadian and/or Canadianish works like the Handmaid's Tale opera. But the CBC doesn't have enough money to HD their own shows, let along broadcast live HD operas. It's a shame though. The Handmaid's Tale was fantastic, but unless you lived in Toronto there was no way you got to see it. They played it on the radio, but trust me it wasn't the same. Anyways, I'm supposed to be going to Econoline Crush at the Roxy on Broadway tomorrow night with Graeme and Julianne, but they're stuck in Regina cause Graeme got really sick, so we'll see. I won't got on my own, because the Roxy is slightly sketchy, and who wants to go see something like that on your own! Lame!

Velvety

2006-12-17T10:05:00.000-05:00

So it's been a while I guess. Nothing extremely exciting really happened - Ingunn came to Vancouver and we took the ferry to Victoria and I hung out with her and her mom, and her niece and nephew for a day. Then I wrote my two finals, and I think they went pretty well. But at any rate I'll find that out soon enough.... Yesterday I flew to Toronto to play in Tom's orchestra - huzzah. I had this really weird ticket booked because I had already booked my ticket home, and it was non-refundable , so I was book to Toronto via Edmonton-Saskatoon. But I guess the Edmonton flight was really overbooked, so they just traded my ticket for a direct one! Score! It's so nice to be back in the T-dot, and Casa Zapf-Belanger. It really was my second home when I lived here. And also to be back with my dysfunctional Toronto family. Everybody in Vancouver thinks I'm weird, but among my brethren here - I'm positively normal!!! So to anybody who's in the Toronto area and feels like a concert, come see the Cirrus Ensemble tomorrow night at Walmer Road Baptist Church, 188 Lowther Avenue. I promise good times - especially at the big Caitlin party afterwards. She throws the best parties.

Love, Pain, and the Whole Crazy Thing

2006-12-06T02:48:00.000-05:00

Well, since yesterday I had three somewhat exciting and/or interesting pieces of news. Some of you may (or may not) know that this year I am participating in BC's Universities Model Parliament as a member for the NDP. Never in UMP's history has the NDP risen to anything other than official opposition, but this year after a highly complex system of people who registered vs on-campus polling, the NDP has come out victorious!!! We get to be the government, baby! Prepare to have all your tax dollars SPENT!

Secondly, I went to physio today and found out the reason my back hurts is because my hips are out of alignment. My right hip is 1 1/2 inches below my left, and is turned down slightly, causing the bottom of my spine to bend and compress my sciatic nerve. So the physiotherapist did all these exercises to re-align my hips, and got them to within a 1/2 inch of each other. I felt so fantastic after physio, and in so much less pain, but unfortunately it didn't last and I am now sore again. But he gave me some exercises to do until I go back on Friday. C'mon hips, get in gear!

And lastly, I'm going to Toronto!!! It's so exciting!!! Tom and Michelle are organizing this orchestra concert with Tom conducting, and apparently every single violist in town is busy on that day (the 18th). They have Michelle's brother and another girl signed up, but they needed a section leader. And since I was flying home on the 16th anyways, I'm now just going to Toronto on the 16th to hang out at Michelle's for a couple of days and play this concert! Yay! I'm so excited, to see 2/3s of the girls (but I get to see the other 1/3 this weekend), and my whole extended Toronto family! I must admit I've been slightly homesick for Toronto - not that I haven't been having a good time here, but it's always hard to move somewhere that you don't know anybody and to start over completely. I've done it before, but it's always hard. Anyways, I must now go lie in bed and watch Scrubs on my laptop.

It's Official

2006-12-04T17:39:00.000-05:00

Yup, it's official. I am now an old lady. My back's still bothering me, so I decided to get it checked up on. And according to the doctor, I have 'acute lumbar strain and sciatica' and she referred me to physio. This sucks man. This is the second time in 2 years that I've been in physio - first for my knees and now for my back. When will the madness end!!!!! I'm now going to lie on the couch and moan.

Out of the Dark, Into the Pain

2006-11-27T18:22:00.000-05:00

So, big storm here. Lots of snow. Three days of snow and counting. In fact, it's snowing right now. I always used to laugh at Vancouver because it shuts down every year when it snows. But this stuff is wet, and heavy, and has taken down trees which in turn take down power lines and trolley bus lines. So that is why my power went out at 2am last night. But on the bright side, I finally get to profit from what I used to make fun of, because all classes were cancelled today. And I went out for the morning and came back to find my power back on. So hooray for that. Oh, and they FINALLY lifted the boil water advisory. Not that I was actually boiling my water, but it's always good to not have an advisory in place....

But the bad news is I pulled something in my back this morning. While stepping onto a low-rise wheelchair accessible bus. I don't know how, but I managed to do it, and am now in pain. That and I can't stand upright. I can only stand if I'm bent over, so I'm thinking of investing in a cane. Anyways, I went and saw a doctor, and he prescribed me ibuprofen and robaxacet, and said if in five days it wasn't better to get it checked up on. So we'll see. But in the meantime I plan to drug myself up, and lie on the couch moaning and watching TV. There's Star Trek and CSI on practically ALL DAY! And hey, if it's still bad tomorrow, maybe I can get out of orchestra! Score!

I'm Still Alive

2006-11-17T01:50:00.000-05:00

So, apparently the news has been talking a lot about the big storm we had here yesterday. In fact, when I got home from orchestra today I had two worried messages on my phone from my mom. So this is just a little public service announcement to let anybody who cares know that I am in fact still alive. I have power. I was not evacuated. I (sadly) still had school. And I will try not to drink the dirty water....it's just SO TEMPTING!

Ugly Leno

2006-11-16T01:52:00.000-05:00

So I was lying in bed, unable to fall asleep, and started thinking about an annoying segment Entertainment Tonight has been running for the last week. So I decided to get out of bed and rant about it. It's called 'Ugly Vanessa', and they dress up MTV hottie Vanessa Minillo in a fat suit, braces, and glasses, and send her out on the streets of New York doing various things and seeing how people react to her. As opposed to when they give her a blond wig, green contacts, and a Gucci wardrobe. There are a few things that piss me off about this. First of all, in making her fat they gave her this enormous prosthetic chin. She looks like an ugly, latin, female Jay Leno. Seriously, just because you're fat, it doesn't mean you have a huge chin! Secondly, they picked a girl who's gotten everywhere she is in her life because of her looks. She was Miss Teen USA, then an MTV VJ and ET correspondent, and all because she's cutesy and hot. So naturally she hates the way she looks, and while she's out as the 'fat' Vanessa she basically transmits how ugly she thinks she is to everyone around her by the way she acts. But at the same time, she tries to be all cutesy, because it works for her when she's skinny and hot. Honey, being cutesy gets you nowhere in life. Unless your skinny and hot.

My other big beef is the things they have her do to test how she's treated differently. First she had to approach people on the street to give them a survey. As the timid, big-chinned girl, New Yorkers just passed her by. As I would have. People laughed at her when she rode the subway, which is admittedly pretty mean, but she looked really ridiculous. She's not used to being that size, so she moved awkwardly like somebody who's used to being much different. And she just sort of stood around awkwardly, in people's way, waiting for them to have a negative reaction to her. If you're standing in the middle of the steps to the subway staring at everyone who passes you, I'm probably going to laugh at you too. Another test was going clubbing. They sent her one night as a hottie, and then next night as a fugly. Well, big surprise the bouncers at NYC's hottest club didn't let in the fugly girl with unwashed hair and horrific clothing. Seriously, they could have at least put some effort into her attire and made her look a lot more presentable. Today they had her go lingerie shopping on Madison Avenue. Dressed in ill-fitting, cheap clothes. And then she wondered why no salespeople would give her the time of day. Those people are trained to smell money, and fugly Vanessa just had the stench of insecurity and cheap clothes coming off her.

My roommate Lisa and I proceeded to have a big discussion about this. More than half of what people perceive you to be is in your attitude. People who are self confident (NOT cocky assholes) and secure in themselves are perceived as 'hotter' than perhaps they actually are. Lisa and I both thought about it, and with both of us the guys we've liked have not been 'hot' in the conventional sense, but we were attracted to their personality and attitude. So there you go Vanessa. If you walk around with the attitude you're awkward and ugly, you will be seen as awkward and ugly. And Entertainment Tonight, next time give that girl some clothes that actually fit! The character on Ugly Betty is a comic stereotype. Not a real phenomenon. Idiots.

It's Really Quite Easy. I Swear.

2006-11-09T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well, another exciting installment of My Life. It's been mostly routine, with classes, rehearsals, and lessons. Last weekend was the string fest. Nothing really exciting happened.

Yesterday we had a UBC NDP social, which basically involved about five of us meeting up to eat pizza and watch The End of Suburbia. The DVD had two versions of the film - one rated G and one rated M for Mature. We of course picked the one rated M, and proceeded to discover that the decline in oil is like a clusterfuck in a shit storm. I kid you not, that's what one guy said. I guess that's why it was rated M. After the movie we got sucked into playing MarioKart in the Arts Undergrad Society office, with us all screaming obscenities (like 'clusterfuck!') whenever we screwed up. After that I was really quite tired and so went home and went to bed early. But some asshat decided to set off the fire alarm in my building at 1:30 in the morning, and we had to evacuate the building and wait for the firemen to come and turn it off. So needless to say my night was not as restful as I had hoped it would be.

Today we had our last rehearsal before the orchestra concert tomorrow, and holy shit am I getting really annoyed at this orchestra! It's like a trifecta of badness. The conductor can't conduct (it's really quite easy to count to three, but apparently out of his abilities), the players don't seem to understand dynamics (p means loud, right?!), and NOBODY CAN KEEP TEMPO! Now, it doesn't help that we have a weak conductor, but doesn't everybody realize that if you rush like a mofo, it just makes everything harder to play?! I really just feel sorry for the pianist who's playing Prokofiev 2nd Piano Concerto with us, because the second movement is just him playing straight (and fast) eighth notes, and we keep rushing him. Actually, we just rush him throughout the whole piece. And as a soloist it is the worst feeling - that the orchestra is not following you, but you are having to follow the orchestra. If I had to put money on it, I'd say that tomorrow during the concert we fall apart in the 3rd movement of the Rachmaninov Dances.

Is it bad that I miss the Con?

Tired for no reason

2006-11-01T21:53:00.000-05:00

Well, seeing as how I'm bored and trying to waste time, I thought I'd do a little posting. Last weekend was a doozy, let me tell you. I blame Aida. Anyways, on Friday night I dressed up like post-pregnancy Britney Spears (minus the baby, because really when does she ever tote the kid around?), and went out with Vanessa and Aida. We first went over to Totem to meet up with some friends of theirs who are RAs there, and then proceeded to hang around and drink while waiting for people. I don't really know why. All I know is that it resulted in a lot of absurd drunken photos of Vanessa, Aida, me, and their friend Nathalie. After we managed to find everyone we headed over to the SUB to go to the Pit Pub, but in the mad crush of people trying to get in Vanessa and I got separated from everyone else. And then Vanessa got really claustrophobic, so we decided to leave the line and go to McDonald's in the Village instead. So we did, and then I escorted Vanessa back to Gage so she didn't get attacked by anyone, and went home.

The next morning I got up, and met some UBC NDPers at the SUB to head downtown to a peace march. So we marched around downtown, and then I had to duck out of the rally at 2:30 to head back to campus to meet Vanessa and Aida for a gig. We played a wedding reception, but the funniest part was that I was the only one who noticed it was a same-sex marriage. The other three were totally clueless, and only when both the 'best men' started giving speeches did they believe me. AHAHAHA. Anyways, I played violin, which was hilarious, but it was all good. Afterwards, Aida and I quickly changed into our Halloween costumes in Vanessa's car, and then Vanessa dropped Aida, Nathalie, and I off at the Blarney Stone. It's this pub downtown, sort of near the Lower East Side (ooh, scary) that everybody seems to love. I don't know, I wasn't so convinced. Of course, that may have had something to do with having to stand in line for and hour and a half before getting in. I never stood in line that long even in TO! So anyways, drunken debauchery ensued, and I somehow managed to catch the bus back to UBC. I vaguely remember meeting some random guy on the street, and him showing me how to get to Waterfront Station to catch the B-Line (because I had absolutely no idea where I was...).

Sunday morning was not a happy time though. It always seems like such a good idea at the time to mix liquors, but Sunday sucked. Majorly. But I managed to get through it pretty much alive, and am now back at the daily grind. There's this 'String Festival' weekend thingie on this weekend at UBC, so that means that I have two string orchestra concerts - one on Friday at noon, and one Saturday evening. Should be hilarious! I'll probably bring my computer to do some work on my Argument essay for English, seeing as my panel is on Wednesday. Anybody got any gems of wisdom on torture?

Personality? Nah.

2006-10-27T18:05:00.000-04:00

So, the other day my roommate and I were sitting around watching TV, and they kept running these ads for eHarmony and how you can get a free personality profile. Well, we were intrigued to find out what we are like, so we decided to get our computers and do it. I'm bored now, so I thought I'd post my profile. I think it's pretty good, but the problem I had with the questions was they asked things like, pick three of these terms that your friends would use to describe you. Well, I don't really know how my friends would describe me, so I had to answer what I thought my friends thought about me. Which is weird. Anyways here it is. I just noticed that it says I'm lucky alot.

In Agreeableness you are best described as:

USUALLY TAKING CARE OF YOURSELF

Words that describe you:

* Perceptive
* Realistic
* Demanding
* Down-to-Earth
* Hardnosed
* Judgmental
* Pragmatic
* Skeptical

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

You are clearly a compassionate person; you believe that you should do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and you know that friends help their friends. But with you compassion is just one side of the coin; the other being a side that also expects others to hold up their end of the bargain. So you help others but it is with the expectation that others don't take advantage of you or try to put one over on you. In short, you expect others to treat you as you treat them.

And for those people who do ask for help when they should have taken responsibility for themselves? This is the time when your more hard-edged side comes out. You are skeptical of people when they expect others to bail them out of trouble; if they got themselves into the bind, they should work their way out of the trouble. If it's an emergency, or if it's a friend who has been there for you when you have had hard times, you are there in a quick minute. But you are a discerning person and to you there is a big difference between an emergency and a self-inflicted wound. You just look at the facts: how the situation developed, how serious the situation, and how they can or cannot get through things on their own. The history you have with the person and with similar situations will inform you whether this is or is not a time for you to get involved.

You also have some limits when it comes to being with people. Sure some people need to be with others all the time and seem to get recharged by helping out most anyone else. But that's not you. You know that you do best if you spend a fair amount of time on your own. Not that you are a loner, just that time spent by yourself is not wasted at all with you. You've come to understand that if you don't take good care of yourself, eventually you'll be not good to anyone, including yourself or others.

So your compassion is tempered by realism. Your sympathy for people in trouble is balanced by a critical evaluation of how they got themselves to the place they are. And you've learned to take good care of yourself, so you have something to give to your friends or others truly in need.

On the Openness Dimension you are:
CONTENT

Words that describe you:

* Sensible
* Realistic
* Conventional
* Sincere
* Simple
* Firm
* Earnest

A General Description of How You Approach New Information and Experiences

You find that you are usually more comfortable with ideas and beliefs that you have held for a long time. These values, which for you are tried-and-true, provide you with practical solutions to life's problems, and with straightforward ways of engaging in intellectual discussions and debates. You've tested these positions over time, you know them well, they work for you, and you trust them. You like the way these solutions provide consistency and value to your life.

You've always been teachable as well. Whether in textbooks or classrooms, or through a wide variety of personal and interpersonal experiences, you've explored and tested the values and ideas you hold dear. Along the way you've grown to recognize ideas and beliefs that fit with your life. When this happens, you open yourself to learning what it is that this can teach you. Most of the time evaluating new information strengthens what you know and trust; the "next new thing" usually proves too shallow or too impractical to dislodge you from what has served you so well.

On Emotional Stability you are:
SOMETIMES STEADY, SOMETIMES RESPONSIVE

Words that describe you:

* Adaptable
* Engaged
* Able to Cope
* Passionate
* Perceptive
* Flexible
* Receptive
* Aware
* Avid

A General Description of Your Reactivity

In some ways, you've got the best of emotional worlds. When emotions rise up from inside you or are brought forth from a conversation by a friend, you know how to engage them. You deal with sadness, fear, joy, anger - whatever comes up - in ways that are perceptive and flexible. You can adapt to whatever level of emotion is appropriate to the moment. At other times, you are able to cope with your emotions in a more reserved manner. Because you are aware of what does and does not make emotional sense in a particular situation, you will decide when it is an appropriate time to express your emotions and when it would be best to keep them to yourself.

All of this gives you a rich emotional life. You are free to express your passions about certain subjects with appropriate people. But you are also emotionally adaptable; if the conversation needs to be more cerebral, you'll keep it "in your head" and talk calmly through whatever issue is on the table. This emotional awareness serves you well. You seldom get in over your head, either by opening up to the wrong person or by triggering in someone else's emotions they may not be able to deal with.

Your approach toward your obligations is:
FOCUSED AND FLEXIBLE

Words that describe you:

* Casual
* Informal
* Compliant
* Reliable
* Organized
* Solid
* Dependable
* Uncommitted
* Genuine

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

When you take on a task at work or at home, you are reliable; you get the job done. In an organized way, you define the goal, lay out a plan, figure how long the task will take, and get to work "solid and dependable you".

But and this is important you're not a slave to the plan. You're committed to it, but not chained to it; the connection is more casual and informal. You know that sometimes "the best laid plans" fall off the tracks; when this happens, you clean up the train wreck and start over, undeterred.

Though not happening often, when plans change, you're okay with it. In fact, sometimes you change the plan. It's too nice of a Saturday to finish organizing the garage. Let's go for a bike ride instead. True, the next rainy Saturday will likely find you back in the garage, but for now the work can wait.

What an interesting combination of qualities in you're organized, but casual; solid, but compliant; and dependable, but informal. At home and at work, people know they can rely on you. You take great satisfaction in knowing that people think of you as disciplined and responsible, but you also know that you have something of a free spirit in you, and when this spirit moves you, off you go, following the impulse of the moment. You are rightly proud of your work ethic, but you also enjoy your willingness to lay the tools down, crank up the music and play like a child.

When it comes to Extraversion you are:
SOMETIMES OUTGOING, SOMETIMES RESERVED

Words that describe you:

* Moderate
* Amiable
* Laid-back
* Temperate
* Relaxed
* Poised
* Civil
* Uncommitted
* Pleasant

A General Description of How You Interact with Others

Lucky you! You enjoy your own company as much as you enjoy the company of others. You are a great conversationalist and thrive in the wonderful kinds of connections you know how to have with your family and friends. You also equally enjoy your own company, whether sitting in a favorite chair with your book and soft music playing or meandering in the woods by yourself. You like coming home to your family or your roommate; but if no one is home, you find quiet, solitary time to be just as pleasurable. What a great combination to enjoy being outgoing and to be just as comfortable being reserved. Lucky you!!

Because you are so amiable and relaxed, you are comfortable with almost any group of family or friends. Whether they are pumped up and lively or calm and subdued, you remain at ease. If someone needs to take over the conversation, you are comfortable taking the lead; you can also lay back and let someone else be in charge. If the conversation gets rowdy, your moderate demeanor will often draw it down to a more temperate level. If someone in the group loses their cool, you will most likely maintain your poise, and if they get nasty you know how to keep a civil tongue.

You may find yourself out of balance on occasion. If you're alone too much, you may need to get in touch with someone. If you spend too much time with your family and friends, you may need to sneak off for a day by yourself, to putter and read and clear your head of the noise of too much conversation. When you're at your best, you live with a rhythm of time with others, time alone, time with others, time alone It's a satisfying, comfortable balance. Lucky you!

Fantastic!

2006-10-26T23:23:00.000-04:00

So Fright Night got put off, due to cold and rain. But instead Vanessa and I went out to dinner at White Spot, and then did some hilarious and random grocery shopping at Safeway. Last night I noticed them setting up all these trailers for a movie or tv shoot. This morning my roommate had a midterm at 8:30, and she saw them setting everything up to shoot, so when she got home she looked up on the internet what they were filming. Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer, baby! Yeah! Unfortunately though, it was too cold and rainy to stalk Chris Evans or Ioan Gruffudd or Jessica Alba. So that's my story for today.

Logos, Pathos, or Ethos

2006-10-25T13:32:00.000-04:00

So, I'm currently sitting in English, and since I'm bored I decided to write a post. Don't worry mom - the teacher's just explaining how to make an emotional appeal about baby seals. Anyhoo, my week is starting to look up. Tonight I'm hitting Fright Night down at the Pacific National Exhibition with my stand partner Vanessa and her friends. I don't really know what it involves, but I think there's scary rides and Halloween-type stuff. And on Saturday not only am I going to an anti-war march, but I'm playing a gig with Vanessa. But get this - on the violin. Ahaha! Vanessa's friend Aida is letting me use her spare violin, and I'm going to play 2nd violin. It should be hilarious. That's about it.

Bored now

2006-10-23T15:04:00.000-04:00

So, I got some flack from my mother over the weekend for not writing anything recently. It's only because NOTHING'S GOING ON! Seriously, my life is boring. The high point of my week was when I left campus for three hours on Saturday to go down West Broadway to buy rollerblades. And that is the only time I've left campus in the past week. Also, I went to the theatre in the Student Union Building on Saturday night to see Pirates of the Caribbean 2. As you can see, Saturday was an exiting, fun-filled day. Last week I wrote my research essay for English, and this weekend I was working on my Poli Sci paper that's due tomorrow. That's really about it. I know, I'm bored just writing about it.

I Forgot

2006-10-14T00:36:00.000-04:00

My total reasons for posting was because I discovered that TVSquad.com had hired Wil Wheaton to review old TNG episodes for them. And although he's only done two, they're really frakking hilarious! This is my favourite quote, from the review for The Last Outpost:

Troi suggests they talk with the Ferengi, and Picard is all, "Uh, we just did, stupid! They ignored us." And then Troi is all, "Hey, you're stupid! You should go try again and suck up to them a little bit." Then Picard is all "Hey, Geordi, what do you think?" And Geordi is all, "I'm just gonna shrug because I got all 'woo-eee' about that plan that didn't work." So then Picard is all, "Well, does anyone have any other ideas? Because right now going to suck up to them is about the best you guys have given me." They're all, like, dude, and they leave. So Riker comes up and is all, "Hey, what do you want to do, man?" And Picard goes, "I totally want to surrender, because I'm, like, scared. Will you hold me?" And Riker is all, "Ewww gross!" And then Picard is all, "No, seriously, dude. If the shit gets too heavy, I want you to blow it up." And Riker is all, "Damn, Gina. That is crazy!" And then Picard is all, "True dat, biotch."

Uni-suckity

2006-10-14T00:12:00.000-04:00

Well well well.....so in every one of my classes, before they hand back our assignments, they have been giving little pep talks about how university is harder than high school, and we should expect our marks to dip accordingly. And my TA in Poli Sci said that most people in our class should visit the writing centre for help with our essays. Well, I say stick it suckahs! I got my in-class summary back in English. A. I got my midterm back in Poli Sci. 83. And my essay. 95. I sort of feel bad for other people I know who are not doing so well. Anyways, those have been the bright points in my week, seeing as how on Wednesday I caught the sickness that's going around. Today was the worst, as everything was making me sneeze, my nose is totally plugged, and even though I've gotten 9 hours of sleep the last two nights, I'm totally exhausted. But at least it's not whatever they all caught at Mount Allison University. Though, on the bright side, at least they cancelled school for everybody because of it. I have to research and write a paper this weekend, so that's fun. I'm really craving a burger right now, but I'm too tired and lazy to walk the 5 blocks to get it.

Sniff Sniff

2006-10-11T20:54:00.000-04:00

So, I finally caught the cold that's going around town. My roommate was sick last week, and a bunch of people in the orchestra are sick too. It started with a sore throat yesterday, and today I woke up with a serious sore throat, and stuffed up sinuses. And I was tired for no reason, probably because I'm sick. But I don't have anything until 2pm tomorrow, so I can sleep in, eat, and practice all in time for class! I got my in-class test from English back today, and I got an A. I don't really know what I was expecting, but I also think that alot of people in my class suck because the teacher said the average mark was around 68, so if I got an A (85-89), that means a whole lotta people sucked big time. I have noticed in all my classes though that quality of writing is a big issue, especially since about half or more of these kids speak English as a second language. Anyways, I get both my paper and midterm back tomorrow in Poli Sci - and mom, I don't care. As long as I pass, I'm happy. Quit pressuring me to get good marks. It doesn't help my stress levels. And besides, I'm not really sure that you have to bug me, because c'mon, when have I ever failed anything? So now I'm going to take my pillow and blankie, and collapse in front of the TV for a while. sniff.

Oh Yeah, Turkey Baster!

2006-10-09T02:33:00.000-04:00

So Happy Thanksgiving everyone. I continued my tradition of Zapf family Thanksgivings with dinner at Michelle's aunt's house. And then after dinner, we had a hilarious game of mafia, because their 84 year old neighbour tried to play, but she was so confused by the whole game it ended up forfeit....good times. Our concert on Friday went pretty OK - we managed to make it through West Side Story without totally falling apart, so that was nice. I then went to the bar and drank a pitcher by myself, on an empty stomach. Good times. So it's back to the grind on Tuesday, with my first quartet rehearsal of the year. So tomorrow I should probably look at my music...

OK

2006-10-05T18:19:00.000-04:00

So, I've been a little negligent in terms of my blog this last week, but I swear not a lot really happened.. Jack came on Friday, and there was a really great showing of students. I sat around all weekend, and it was quite relaxing. Then on Monday, I hurt my shoulder somehow and was pissed off about that. One of those annoying things where all of a sudden you're like, 'wow. my shoulder really hurts.' But you don't know how you hurt it! Today I had my poli sci midterm, which I was a little worried about but I feel OK about now. I'm pretty sure I passed - and isn't that what matters? Soo...I have no big plans for Thanksgiving. I'll probably just sit around, and maybe if I'm feeling lonely hit up the Rez's Thanksgiving dinner on the weekend. Tomorrow is the UBC Symphony Orchestra concert - it will be interesting to see if we can make it through our pieces without stopping..... Oh dear god.

It's here, I'm on it

2006-09-26T16:50:00.000-04:00

It's here. My precious is finally here. In fact, I'm using it right now. In the hallway outside my Poli Sci lecture room. Sweet. So that's my only news, other than we had a strategy session today with the UBC NDP for the Jack Layton event of Friday, but if I told you what we talked about, I'd have to kill you. Mwahahaha.

It's like a drug

2006-09-25T21:03:00.000-04:00

I swear, Apple products are like a drug. My laptop's not even here, and I'm already in withdrawl! I need it! Ah! But anyhoo, not too much has happened since I last posted. I volunteered at this NDP meet and greet thing on Saturday night, where I got to meet a bunch of MLAs and tell them what I'm concerned about. It was pretty cool. And the president of the UBC NDP tried to convince me to join the BCYND exec. So that's cool. Oh, and the girls and I finally did our Skypeing. We did a conference call with the four of us - it was 9 pm in Reykjavik, 7 in Cleveland, 6 in TO, and 3 here in Vancouver. We talked for about an hour, and decided we should do this every week. It was especially funny because Catherine's wireless connection she was using sort of crapped in and out, and so for whole portions of the conversation she was about 10 seconds behind the rest of us. So we'd already be onto the next topic of conversation, and then she's say something like, "6 is good!" It was pretty hilarious. So, that's about all for now.

Oh yeah

2006-09-20T01:12:00.000-04:00

I forgot when I posted earlier, because I was so excited about my iPod, but I went to a UBC NDP meeting today and found out that Jack is coming to UBC. Next friday. And we're apparently supposed to organize it all. Yay. I've also volunteered at a BC NDP fundraiser thingie on Saturday, where I will apparently get to meet BC NDP MLAs and MPs. And free wine and dessert.

Shiny!

2006-09-19T21:07:00.000-04:00

I got my new iPod today! It came from Memphis! Yay! I'm excited! It's so shiny and new!

Memphis?!!!

2006-09-18T00:44:00.000-04:00

So, another exciting week in Vancouver. This week it finally got cold and rainy, just like everyone promised it would. I also ordered my MacBook and iPod. See, they had this sweet deal on for students where not only did you get a discount price on a MacBook, but you got a free iPod. Great, right? But the cut-off was Sept. 16, and by the beginning of last week every Apple seller in Vancouver was out of MacBooks. Hah. I had the money just sitting in my account, but my credit card limit wasn't high enough to order it off the internet myself. So I had to call my dad, who was on holidays and fishing up at Emma Lake, to ask if I could charge it on one of his cards and then pay him back. So I ordered on the 14th, and all was good. On the email from Apple they said they ship all their stuff from their warehouse in California, but they're wrong. Or maybe by CA they meant China. See, they shipped my iPod two days ago, from Shanghai. I can look up where it is using my handy little FedEx tracking number they gave me. So it went from Shanghai to Anchorage, and from Anchorage to Memphis. It's now in Memphis, and will hopefully move north sometime. I know I didn't pay the extra ten buck or whatever for fast shipping, but Shanghai-Anchorage-Memphis?! Doesn't that seem like a teensy bit of a roundabout route to get to Vancouver? Oh well, I guess I will leave it up to the infinite wisdom of FedEx. They should ship my computer any day now also, which I can't wait to get. My desktop's all fine and good, but I've been craving my laptop. I could go and write my paper in the study room they have in my rez. That would be cool. Or I could just write it in front of the TV if I felt so inclined. I need mobility!!!!!

Other than that, things are going well on the whole school-side of life. Chamber music is slowly getting organized, as is string orchestra and full orchestra. And I had my first actual lecture in Poli Sci on Thursday! It was very exciting. That's all for now, but you should check out my facebook page I spent and hour and a half making this evening, for lack of any actual homework to do (as opposed to all my roomies). http://ubc.facebook.com/profile.php?id=21011672

Loverly

2006-09-12T19:12:00.000-04:00

Well, I got my computer moniter today. It was pretty quick too - I got my student loan money yesterday, paid off my credit card, and ordered my moniter off NCIX.com. And they delivered it this morning to my rez. Sweet ass. So this means that I'll be able to update more now. I'm into the second week of classes, but only the first full week of classes because of Labour Day. Still nothing too crazy, but then again I'm only taking two academic classes, and the rest are performance credits. So not as crazy as my roommates who have lots of reading and homework already. Suckers.

Waiting....

2006-09-09T17:32:00.000-04:00

So I haven't been posting because I'm waiting. On the oodles of money I've been promised. I'm sure they'll come soon. But until then I can only use the free computers in the library or Student Union Building. First week was fine, fairly painless, and I'm starting to get to know my way around campus. I had my first lesson today, and we did scales for an hour and a half. I think I fried my brain.

Pukey

2006-08-30T10:48:00.000-04:00

So I got up at 5 this morning and headed over to the airport for my flight to Calgary. I think I've been to Alberta more times this summer than in my entire life. It's weird. Anyways, I stupidly took my antibiotics on an empty stomach when I got up this morning, and while I was standing in line at the airport I started feeling kinda pukey. So I forced myself to eat a muffin, because if you don't take those suckers with food bad things happen. So that was exciting, and mom was all worried because here she was sending me to Calgary again sick. Because y'know last time I spent 8 hours on the bus in anaphalactic shock. It was fun; you should all definitely put in on your to-do list. But I digress. Here I am at Vashti's in Calgary, and as soon as she runs some errands we're off to Vancouver. We're getting me settled in tomorrow and Friday, and then Saturday morning the girls (Vashti, Anne, and I) are heading down to Seattle for Bumbershoot, a big music festival. Anne's flying into Vancouver on Friday night, and I think it'll be a nice little trip. The last time I spent time with both my sisters at once was about 8 years ago. So this is long overdue. Plus it really is the best plan when moving to a new city and starting a new school to take off to a different city the weekend before classes start. Isn't that what everyone does?

Snakes........ON A PLANE!

2006-08-19T13:55:00.000-04:00

So, I've been to a movie a day this week - Monday was The Devil Wears Prada, Tuesday was A Prairie Home Companion, Wednesday was Talladaga Nights: The Ballad of Ricky Bobby, Thursday was The Lake House, and yesterday was SNAKES ON A PLANE! The only disapointment of the week was The Lake House, and honestly I expected it to be bad, but not as bad as it was. I honestly thought they would have some sort of logical explanation for everything, but they just sort of pretended that the whole crazy time difference never happened. And that there are no repercussions for bringing back someone from the dead and changing the past. Idiots. The best movie was a toss-up between Talladaga Nights and SoaP. I would recommend that if you're thinking of going to see Snakes, go opening weekend. The crowd last night was so much fun, everybody cheering and laughing their asses off. It was much funnier than anybody expected it to be, even with it gory violence and R rating. Well, R in the US and 18A here.

Iceland Pt. 3 (Finale)

2006-08-14T22:53:00.000-04:00

On August 6th we went to Skógasafn, the Skógar Folk Museum. The entire collection was put together by 80-something year old Þórður Tómasson, who began collecting when he was just 14. It's considered one of the best museums in the country, and we met Þórður, who played hymns for us on the old church organ in the church there, and demonstrated how to use a spindle to make wool thread. Then we went to Skógafoss, Skógar's resident waterfall. Legend has it that a settler hid a chest of treasure behind the falls, but no-one has ever been able to find it. We took in one more waterfall (I don't remember the name) before heading home, but this one was cool because there was a path to walk behind the falls.

On August 9th we just rehearsed for our Reykholt concert, and then spent the evening at the Blue Lagoon. It's considered Iceland's most famous tourist attractiong, and is hidden in the middle of a lava field between Keflavík and Grindavík. It owes it's existance to the nearby Svartsengi geothermal power plant, which is powered by superheated sea water drawn from deep bore holes in the lava. After the steam passes through the turbines, huge condensors convert it back into water, which is pumped directly into the lava field. The minerals in the field naturally filter the water and return it to the sea. But the power plant pumps more water into the lava field than can be filtered underground, and where it pools above ground is the Blue Lagoon. The milky blue water is rich in blue-green algae (cyanobacteria), mineral salts, and fine slica mud that conditions and exfoliate your skin. Just swimming in it is good for your skin, and they also have silica stations where there are buckets of silica mud scraped from the bottom of the lagoon that you put on your face (or anywhere else you want). It sits in the middle of a black lava field, with sheets of steam rising off the blue water – very surreal. They've developed it alot recently, adding a restaurant, gift shop, and spa, but Ingunn says that when she came as a kid all they had was a wooden shack and a hose to wash themselves with.

August 10th was our concert in Reykholt, reknowned as the home of Snorri Sturluson, one of the great saga writers. They have a very interesting display on Snorri and the sagas in the basement of Reykholtskirka. It's also home to Snorralaug (Snorri's pool), a circular, stone-lined pool about 4 metres in diameter, fed by a hot spring. It looks like a little stone jacuzzi and is thought to have been built by Snorri Sturluson. Behing the pool is a passage believed to lead to the cellar where Snorri was murdered in 1241 by Gíssur Þorvaldsson. Our concert in Reykholt went well, and there were even a few random Canadians in the audience – a couple from Vancouver, and an Icelandic-Canadian guy from around Gimli. Today was also the day we found out about the new terrorist bust, and the new restrictions of carry-on. Panic!

Our flight was scheduled for 4:30 pm on the 11th, and Ingunn's mom spent the entire morning on the phone haggling with the airline, and our saviour Gunnar Snorri came through at the 11th hour. He pulled a bunch of strings and got permission for us – which ended up slightly unneeded, but better safe than sorry. After all the worry, and everybody (including the airline) telling us that we weren't allowed carry-on, turns out everyone had carry-on and they were only restricitng liquids and gels. Even in Minneapolis they didn't say boo to me except to remind me not to bring any liquid on. Well, live and learn. And don't believe anything the media or the airline tells you.

Back in Ka-na-ta

2006-08-12T14:00:00.000-04:00

Well, I'm back on home turf. It was a surprisingly uneventful flight, other than the zoo checking in at the airport in Keflavik. They were also patting down everyone and looking through people's bags, which took some time going through security, but they weren't actually restricting carry-on (contrary to what we'd been told). I guess it was just UK to US flights, but who was to know! And my transfer in Minneapolis went fine, the airport was actually kind of quiet. Our Icelandair flight got in at about 7, and my Calgary flight left at 9, so I guess the airport wasn't that busy because it was a little lateish.... Anyways, I'm just hanging out in Calgary today, and I head back to Saskatoon tomorrow. I'll work on the bus on a last post about what we did in Iceland - my favourite was the Blue Lagoon. But more about that later.

My firstborn shall be named Gunnar Snorri

2006-08-11T08:16:00.000-04:00

And.....a last minute save by Ingunn's cousin Gunnar Snorri. After we got the runaround, Ingunn's mom called him because he's the head of Iceland's foreign service. And he got the Icelandic government, and the US Embassy, and Icelandair on the phone and got us and only us express permission to board the flight to Minneapolis with our instruments. I think we're going to put together a huge care package for Gunnar Snorri, because he is my new hero.

Well Fuck

2006-08-11T07:34:00.000-04:00

So thanks to a foiled terrorist plot the day before I'm supposed to fly from Europe to the US, I'm screwed. They're not letting on ANY carry-on luggage - and that means my viola to. So I may be stuck in Iceland for a while, because there is absolutely no way I am sending my expensive instrument in the belly of a plane to be tossed around by ground personnel. As of now, everybody is telling us that there is no way we can get our instruments on, unless we get permission from the US Government. But the US Embassy here says it's up to Icelandair, and that they can't do anything. Fuck.

Iceland Pt. 2

2006-08-07T15:30:00.000-04:00

The saga continues....

We left Reykjavik on Friday morning and drove on a big bus across the south to Jökulsárlón, a glacial river lagoon. It’s an offshoot of the giant Vatnajökull glacier that covers a lot of the southeast. It’s a lagoon, attached to the ocean by a small river mouth so that lagoon doesn’t freeze. The lagoon has been growing steadily over the years, due to an increase in glacial melting – about 100 metres breaking off each year. The lagoon has also been used in several films, including two James Bond movies (A View to Kill and Die Another Day) and Lara Croft: Tomb Raider. For Tomb Raider they painted the amphibious vehicles they take tourists out in to resemble Russian ships, and for Die Another Day they blocked off the lagoon’s entrace to the sea, freezing it over. And then they totalled 5 Aston Martins on the frozen lagoon. After Jökulsárlón we drove back west to our farm/hotel Geirland, just outside of Kirkjubæjarklaustur. This is the farm that Ingunn’s dad Hallgrimur used to work on every summer, so we’re in his home turf.

Kirkjubæjarklaustur is very near the volcano Laki, whose massive eruptions in 1783 lasted for 10 months. Fountains of molten lava shot up around 1000 metres above ground level, and Laki spewed more than 30 billion tonnes of lava and 90 million tonnes of sulphuric acid. The black cloud that followed covered Iceland, killing crops and blocking out the sun, and 20% of Iceland’s population died. As well, the Laki cloud covered Europe causing crop failure, livestock poisoning, and starvation that led to, among other things, the French Revolution. A favourite story around Kirkjubæjarklaustur is that of a church pastor, who gathered his congregation in the church as the lava started to flow towards them, and proceeded to give a very fiery and passionate sermon. The lava miraculously split and went around the church, leaving it intact. The church is still there, surrounded by a lava field, but the only issue we could find with this story is that people can’t survive even just standing next to molten lava. It’s so hot, that even if you’re beside it you’d probably spontaneously combust. We were supposed to hike up into the Laki basin, as it is now dormant, but it was pouring and foggy and so they decided that if we wouldn’t be able to see anything then there was really no point. Icelander’s have lots of stories about religion and natural events, another one being a large eruption in the year 1000, the year that they accepted Christianity. Many saw this as a sign from the pagan gods that Christianity was bogus, but Iceland peacefully converted anyways so that they would be able to trade effectively with the rest of Scandinavia and Europe.

On Saturday we got up and were originally supposed to hike up Laki, but instead went on a hike to the waterfall behind Geirland. All the farms around the south have there own waterfalls, both for a source of fresh water, and before there was a national electrical grid many farms got their power from their own private substation at the base of their waterfall. In fact, one of Hallgrimur’s jobs when he worked here was to hike up to the waterfall and clear all the debris out of the grid under the falls. After that we changed into dryer clothes, as it had been pouring the whole time and we were all soaked. Then we set off to Fjaðrárglijúfur, a peculiar canyon carved by the river Fjarðrá, lined with steep rock walls. Then it was off to Fagrifoss (“beautiful falls”) on the Geirlandsa river just off the Laki road. Today was a day of falls, and after Fagrifoss half of us went swimming at the pool in Kirkjubæjarklaustur while the others went to the famous church that escaped the lava flow.

On our drive on Friday we crossed the Sandur, and stopped in at the Núpsstaður farm. The sandur is a broad desert expanse that lies across the southeastern coast, and is composed of deposits of silt, sand, and gravel carried down by glacial flooding when one of the two volcanoes underneath the Vatnajökull icecap erupts. The sandur is divided into two sections, the most visible being Skeiðarársandur, which stretches for 40 km between icecap and coast. Iceland has a Ring Road, and the very last part of it to be completed was the portion across Skeiðarársandur in 1974. They constructed large gravel dykes to strategically channel floodwaters away from the only road in the area, but it didn’t help much in the glacial flood of 1996. On September 29 a 5.0 earthquake rocked the Vatnajökull icecap, causing the eruption of a 4 km long subsurface fissure known as Gjálp. The next day the eruption burst through the surface, sending a column of steam 10 km into the sky. Meanwhile, the subglacial lake in the Grímsvötn caldera was filling with water from ice melted by the eruption, and on November 5 the ice lifted and the Grímsvötn reservoir drained in a massive flood, releasing up to 3000 billion cubic litres of water within a few hours. The floodwaters, dragging icebergs the size of 3 story buildings along with it, destroyed all the bridges across the sandur. The sandur is understandably unoccupied by anyone, and on the eastern edge we stopped at a small memorial to the 1996 flood, where they had on display some of the twisted metal girders that were a bridge.

The Núpsstaður farm is on the western edge of the sandur, and is set into a cliff side. The small turf roofed church on the farm, dedicated to St. Nicholas, is mentioned in church records as early as 1200. It was restored in 1657 and again in the 1970s by the National Museum, and is one of the last turf churches in Iceland that remains in general use. This farm was also home in the early 1900s to a postman and farmer who was said to be the only person able to cross the sandur in all conditions. Before they built the Ring Road, people would often detour to walk over the glacier, as the sandur is full of quicksand and other traps that claimed many lives. The postman’s 97 year old son still lives at Núpsstaður, and when we stopped by he was just o his way to the little turf church to scrub the floors!!!

On Sunday morning we packed up our stuff and loaded up the bus. We went to two more waterfalls (there sure are a lot of them), and visited the history museum at Skógasafn. We drove by Katla, an active volcano that is expected to erupt any time. There is a funny legend about Katla involving a nun and some magic pants, but I’ll save that for another time. Our bus driver had reported that we were in the area, and if Katla had started rumbling we would have been given a 30 minute warning to get the hell outta there! Now we’re back at Ingunn’s apartment in Reykjavik, and we had a very quiet day today seeing as we were all tired and sore from all the excitement over the weekend. And now I must return to Buffy.

Iceland, Pt. 1

2006-08-03T12:46:00.000-04:00

Recap of Iceland so far....

We flew into Keflavik on Saturday the 29th, arriving at 6:30 am. We took a flight that left Minneapolis in the early evening on Friday, and since we were travelling east it "took" all night. Ingunn's dad Hallgrimur met us at the airport with her uncle Stefan to pick us up and take us into Reykjavik. The international airport is 40 km outside Reykjavik in Keflavik, where the US Army base is. They built the army base as a strategic North Atlantic position during WW II, and the US is only pulling out of Iceland now, as they are having to divert their resources towards the Middle East (ie Iraq). They built a base in Iceland because before the jet plane days, they had to stop and refuel in Iceland to make it to Europe. Also, during the Second World War, North America saw Iceland as the last European blockade before Hitler would expand to America - so it was an important asset to protect. So when Icelandair, the national and only airline with landing rights in Iceland, decided to build and international airport, they built it in Keflavik so they could just piggy-back on the runways the army base had already built. The Keflavik airport only does international flights, and Icelandair also has a domestic airport in Reykjavik on the Nes peninsula near the University, that services all of Iceland.

When we flew in Hallgrimur and Stefan took us over to Stefan's house, where his wife had a huge, delicious breakfast waiting for us. And this is when I had my first tast of Skyr, elixer of the gods. It's this yoghurt-like staple of Iceland made from skim milk. Traditionally they left the milk to ferment in a pig's bladder, and there was an enzyme in the bladder that turned the milk into Skyr. They have now of course identified the enzyme, and there are two companies that produce Skyr commercially. And like yoghurt they also make it in many different flavours. But the best way to eat it in my opinion is plain Skyr, with blueberries and a little Ryómi (cream). After breakfast at Stefan's, they took us to our temporary digs that we stayed at until Ingunn's apartment was ready. Michelle and I ended up in an apartment-style University of Iceland residence on Eggertsgata, while Catherine and Ingunn stayed in the guest room of Hallgrimur and Gudrun's friends Hans and Sölvig on Reynemelur. We tried rehearsing but we were too exhausted, so we crashed very early.

On Sunday we got up bright and early for church, because in order to get the church we were playing our concert in for free, we had to play at a service. So we headed over to Neskirka (Nes church) for service. Then we had some major rehearsing to do, as our concert was on Monday night. So we rehearsed our booties off, and played our concert. It went well, and a reviewer from the paper came. We are still eagerly anticipating the review, as it hasn't been published yet. As well, Icelandic Public Radio recorded our concert, I'm not quite sure why. Then on Tuesday there was more rehearsing to be done, and we said goodbye to Eggertsgata and Reynemelur, and moved into Ingunn's apartment on Bógahlid. It's a very nice, big apartment in a three story walk-up. She's close to downtown, and the University, so it's a very nice location.

On Wednesday we got up for our 9 am recording session at Neskirka, recording the Kansas Quartet by Thordur Swinburne for Icelandic Public Radio. It took about 2 hours to record a 20 minute piece, but I think it will turn out OK. Then we went swimming and after that to a big dinner at Hans and Sölvig's. Ingunn's brothers had both flown in that day or the day before - Gunnar with his wife Adrienne, and Benedikt with his wife Lee, daughter Elizabeth, and Lee's parents. Benedikt had gone fishing that afternoon with Stefan, and so we ate the huge catch he brought in - about 8 large cod. If was a fun night, but long and exhausting. Made even more exhausting by the fact that we got up at 6:45 this morning to go swimming.

The pools in Iceland are so cool! They're warm, and either very lightly or not chlorinated at all. They get the water from natural underground springs and every public pool also has 3 hot tubs (hot, hotter, and ow! burning!), and a sauna. In order to not heavily chlorinate, they have very strict rules about showering, with signs in the showers showing you where you have to wash before going in the pool. So we've been going swimming alot, because it's so nice, and even when it's chilly out, the pool is still around 20 degrees.

After swimming we walked back to downtown and met up with people (mostly Ingunn's family) for a noon hour organ recital at Hallgrimskirka. It's this huge church in downtown Reykjavik that was partly designed by Ingunn's grandfather. It's a good orientation landmark because it's about five stories taller than any of the other buildings around it. You can see Hallgrimskirka from anywhere in town, so if you're looking for downtown, you just follow the church! It also has a famous, super good organ, so there's always an organ recital going on. After the recital, the entire family (plus us) headed to the 66 North outlet store to pick up discount fleeces. And now we're just relaxing at Ingunn's apartment, in our new comfy fleeces, before we leave for our trip to the south tomorrow.

So that's all from Iceland for now. It's kinda cold and rainy, and hopefully our entire weekend in the South won't be this bad. It's kind of hard to hike in torrential rain!

I'm Goin' To Iceland

2006-07-28T11:37:00.000-04:00

Well, the day has arrived. My car comes in an hour to take me to the airport, and I'm meeting up with the girls in Minneapolis to catch our flight to Keflavik. Woot! I'm so tired and hungry, it's really just unbelievable.

MONEY!!!!

2006-07-26T11:56:00.000-04:00

Well, the tour is going well. We currently have $2100 in the quartet bank account, with another $500 confirmed, and more coming in from our Regina concert tonight. And I got some exciting money news for me - UBC gave me full scholarship plus more! I'm very excited, because I wasn't exactly sure how I was going to afford it..... When I was accepted by the Faculty of Music, they gave me a $1000 scholarship. And when I was origionally accepted by the school they gave me a $500 scholarship. I applied for more, not thinking I'd really get anything, and yesterday my letter came in the mail saying I had been awarded the $5000 Chancellor's Scholarship, and the $2000 President's Scholarship. And my tuition is only about $5100, so they're just going to cut me a cheque for the rest. Yay! I'm thinking of investing in a laptop, because to keep my scholarships I have to keep a pretty high average, and so I think it might be beneficial for my work to have one. But I'll deal with that when it comes. Maybe I should pay off some of my debt too...... Tomorrow we head back to Calgary, and on Friday it's off to Iceland!

HOT!

2006-07-23T01:20:00.000-04:00

Wow, it's hot in Calgary today. It's 11:15 pm and I'm sweating like a pig. Disgusting. Anyways, our tour has basically officially started. We kicked off with a concert at Ingunn's parent's house in Calgary on thursday night, where people were extremely generous and we came away with $815 CND, plus $20 US (we have a stop-over in Minneapolis). We played a concert this afternoon in Sundre AB at the Mountainview Festival's new unfinished concert hall - when it's finished it's going to be pretty sweet. Tomorrow we play at the opening ceremonies of a museum in Markerville, then are on the road for Toon-town. We'll probably get in pretty late, seeing as how I don't think we'll be leaving Markerville before about 4 pm, and it's an approx. 8 hour drive. Yee-haw. And sadly, we have to listen to Ingunn's CD selection, which is odd. I guess she's just older than me though, because alot of her CDs are sort of before my time a little - like by a couple of years, but it's mostly stuff I could care less about, like REM. All their songs sound the same, but in a more depressing way than the way all Britney songs sound the same. But I'm sure we'll survive somehow. Our pieces are going okay, but our intonation is still a little off, due to a number of factors. The biggest being that with the extreme heat, and even high humidity (for the prairies), and the change in humidity for Catherine and Michelle who came directly from humid places (Toronto and California), our instruments don't really stay in tune for the time it takes us to play a whole piece. It's actually super annoying to have to re-tune every couple of minutes. Gah! And it doesn't help that all our locations are churches, not climate-controlled concert halls (which the instruments would react to better). Throughout our concerts the hot locations invariably get hotter, forcing our instruments more and more out of tune. But I'm sure we'll live somehow. Iceland will be nice and cool - I think somewhere around 15 degrees?

Cowtown

2006-07-17T10:55:00.000-04:00

I know it's been a while, I'm sorry. My whole stay in Saskatoon was entirely uneventful, except for that I got sick a lot. I got heat stroke one day, and it was not pretty. And then towards the end of my stay I got this really bad fever, and I just thought that I had whatever bug was going around. So I hopped on a bus to Calgary last Friday, and spent 8 1/2 hours popping Tylenol to keep my fever down. The day after I got to Ingunn's, my face and neck swelled up and I got a full body rash. It was very painful, and I also had a dangerously high fever. Turns out I was having an allergic reaction to these antibiotics my doctor had put me on. It was unpleasant, but at least when the doctor asks if I'm allergic to any medicine, I have an answer other than, "I don't think so..." So we've been holed up and rehearsing, but we have to venture out to Canmore today because Catherine's soundpost is fucked up, and Ingunn has an open seam. So we are taking their instruments into Wilder and Davis to get fixed - it's hard to rehearse when nobody can play their instruments. So we have to go do that now.

Daddeeeeeeee

2006-06-18T12:27:00.000-04:00

Well, it's been a while since I updated. Mostly because since I've been in Saskatoon I've been sitting around watching movies. The weather has been crap-tastic, overcast and rainy, for almost two weeks. I'm supposed to be doing yard work for my Aunt Margaret, but not much chance of that in this weather. I worked for three days this week at Lorne Calvert's MLA office filling in for the woman who normally works there. I got to deal with lots of annoying people who didn't understand that the provincial and federal governments are different things. Argh. And also people who want you to do things for them, and have you to magically have all the answers for them right then on the phone. So then after they abuse you, and you look into it and find out the answers, they don't say thank you because they're jerks. But it was an interesting learning experience - and I did get to meet most of the Saskatoon MLAs. They all know Cayley because of his position in Regina, and then they started waxing poetic about what a nice young man he is. Right. I could enlighten them on a few things. Anyways, I basically am going to be sitting around for the next week or two till I go to Calgary to rehearse with the quartet, so I most likely won't be updating.

Happy Father's Day!