Day 67- October 27, 2009

Last Music lecture today! *wipes away tear* We listened to Shakira and some Paul Simon songs in which he plays about 15 seconds of “authentic” South African music before singing over the top of them. Alice showed me some book and Steve and I discussed Jews. Good times.

I decided to go to the State Library in order to work on my essay (made a start on it! woot!), and happened to walk past a good deal of construction. I had forgotten that they were renovating Myer. I wonder what it will look like when it’s done– one wall is finished and it’s all weird and glassy. So then I spent quite a long time sitting there in the Redmond Barry Reading Room thinking about Bob Dylan and getting very hungry (no connection between the two).

As I was sitting there and looking around the room (anywhere, in fact, but at my work), I noticed this guy waving to me. I assumed I’d met him before and had forgotten him, so I gave that awkward “hey…” nod and went back to staring at my taskbar. Later on, he actually got up, walked up to me and asked me if I was English. “Um… I speak English?” “Oh… I thought you were English because your face is… cherubic”. CHERUBIC? I was slightly freaked out and laughing on the inside at the same time. Luckily, he left me alone then but he did wish me a good day when I got up and left a few hours later. Strange…

I had a bit of time before dinner, so I took a few shots of a rather ominous sunset, an intriguingly lit-up garbage truck and wonderfully tacky Chinatown on my way to Tattersalls Lane and the Shanghai Dumpling House. It was Liz’s (pictured) birthday, and more importantly, Tuesday $12 All-You-Can-Eat. I think I had More-Than-You-Should-Eat. Still full of thousands of dumplings… So basically, we ate shitloads of food and listened to the bizarre mix of music that gets played there (a combination of Beatles, swing and sugary slow-dancey pop) as well as a Happy Birthday track that kept getting played. We weren’t sure if all the Happy Birthdays were for Liz, but we sang along raucously regardless.

Day 65- October 25, 2009

Long rehearsal today. Seven hours of Andrew Lloyd Webber. Which, annoyingly, includes several songs not in 4/4. Being a classically trained pianist, used to solo performance and specialising in music of the Romantic era, I very rarely keep time. So when I’m not only expected to not make up the beat, but to count in seven (“It’s easy! BA-ba-BA-ba-BA-ba-ba!”), I fail. Oh well, I’ve got quite a few months to practise.

After the rehearsal, I caught the train into the city to see Maxim perform with his Melbourne Youth Music (MYM) group, the Percy Grainger Youth Orchestra. They performed along with the MYM choirs (Vox Minor, Major and Synergy), which sang, among other things, It Don’t Mean A Thing (If It Ain’t Got That Swing). Good fun.

Maxim’s group was pretty good, performing Dvorak, Sibelius and others, and featuring a solo trumpeter for one of their pieces. I’ve got photos of all of these, but I really can’t be bothered going through and linking them, so you’ll just have to have a look at my Flickr page.

We finished the day off by having dinner at the Denn (where else?) and by walking back to the car singing various songs (“I dreamt I met a Galilean…”). Good times.

Day 63- October 23, 2009

Alas! I did not take a single photo today. Not that there was anything that fascinating to photograph. Hence today’s photo is not only not taken by me (obviously) but also comes courtesy of my mother’s blog. My artistic contribution was to make it black and white and such. Yeah. It’s me practising my part for Jesus Christ Superstar (see yesterday’s post). I’m really enjoying the music so far and can’t wait to see it all come together.

Aside from that, today was most unexciting. Apart from lunch. The sandwich I made today was brilliant– definitely in my Top 5. A succulent combination of tasty cheese, hot pancetta, fresh rocket and tzatziki on soft ciabatta (more than just a little bit classy). I really should start another blog and dedicate it to excellent sandwiches. I wonder if there’s any other devotees out there? I’m still looking for something to top #1 on my list: the time that Sarah burned the bread and we scraped off (well, got Dad to scrape off) the burnt bits. It infused the bread (as well as the majority of the house) with a wonderful smoky flavour. Good times.

In my music tute, we watched Thriller in its entirety (embedded below for your enjoyment and edification) and bemoaned the unmitigated shitness of commercial music. I have resolved to make learning the dance moves to Thriller my SWOTVAC project, the last two being a great deal of baking and recording music. I’m still working on that music essay. Hopefully I’ll get somewhere with it by the end of the weekend…

Day 60- October 20, 2009

More free movie tickets. God I love Cinema Nova. And especially its Facebook page. If you join it, you get invites to free screenings (if you’re in the first 100 or so to RSVP). Obviously it’s not in my interests to encourage competition by getting people to join the group, so I won’t link it.

Finally got a call back from Yamaha informing that I had gone through to the next round of interviews for applying as a piano teacher. I had given up on that after they didn’t call on the day they said they would (O me of Little Faith!), so it was a pleasant surprise. It does mean I’ll have to start seriously practising the pieces for my audition (reviving some Kachaturian and Rachmaninoff).

Today’s music lecture was quite amusing, being on pop music and MTV. The lecturer gave a cynical commentary on commercialism and the lack of social context throughout the entire video of Madonna’s Borderline (watch, below). Basically, MTV’s business model is amazing. The psych lecture was also fairly interesting, but I always end up self-diagnosing whenever we learn about disorders, so right now I think I’m an anorexic depressed obsessive-compulsive schizophrenic with multiple-personality disorder and perhaps a hint of agoraphobia.

Came home for a bit and attempted to research for my music essay. It was pretty hard finding sources so I gave up and practised the piano for a while (haven’t used that excuse for a while!). Went out in the evening for the movie, which was the new Michael Moore flick, Capitalism: A Love Story. I was pretty impressed with the way he manages to get his point across. Having only seen parts of Fahrenheit 9/11 (and not being able to cope with the general conspiracy-theorishness) and not having much to compare to, I felt this was a bit less radical. Or at the least, it took aim at big American banks, who seem like total villains anyway. At the least, it raised some interesting points (especially “dead peasant insurance”, which is actually more of a tax dodge) and had an awesome soundtrack (you never go wrong with Holst).

Today’s photo is of Chui in a hat, since I already have too many photos of James eating happily to post this one as the Photo for the Day. Debbie and Chui had been shopping for hats, apparently. I’m not going to ask questions. As James and I both got double passes, we went to the movie with Debbie and Ben. So the five of us had dinner at this place called the Rice Bar (whose slogan was “not only rice”… fair enough?). I also tried to cash some scratchies that James’ grandmother gave me for my 18th last year, but the guy at the convenience store just looked at me strangely and said “scratchies?”. How inconvenient. I’ll have to find a real newsagent tomorrow…

Day 59- October 19, 2009

My week always starts with ridiculousness in the form of Self and Other. I don’t think it’s a good thing. Well, not good right now, but I’m sure we’ll all look back on it and laugh. Unlike Logic. James and I are still bitter about that. Bad move…

So we finished with Ghassan and his penis envy and have now moved on to John Cash (the professor, not the singer) who also takes Freud way too seriously for my personal comfort and spent an hour telling us how everybody feels insecurity and how the world is devoid of security, committment, trust and all those other things that prevent you from taking your own life in a lecture theatre.

Spent most of the day grilling cheese, researching folk music and organising for the delivery of my new laptop. Which I need. Badly. My photos are still coming up in the Flickr uploader. Not uploading, just coming up. It’s all frozen. Argh!

Went out in the evening with Andrew to the Brunswick Hotel to see Marc play. I’ve missed about a half dozen of his gigs and I was in need of a photo for today (AND it was free!), so I went along. He was playing for what was called the Good Folk Club, a type of open stage thing for “emerging” (just because everybody else uses that word) musicians. This also explained why he was playing acoustic guitar and harmonica, and attempted a Dylan impersonation at one point (I think it was too much of a strain on the voice).

Apart from the obligatory Dylan cover, the rest of the set was original, and included an ode to his father (in lieu of a Father’s Day gift with cash value) and a song about his experience with clinical trials (which would sound incredibly deep if you didn’t know it was about selling your body to Science). We also heard this girl who performed some indie-pop kinda stuff and a bit of hip hop. It was pretty cool. I’ve put all the photos from tonight into my new “Music Photography” set on Flickr (so Check It Out!).

Day 58- October 18, 2009

Readers may remember I took a course several weeks ago on How To Turn Your Camera On And Then Ask Several Pointless Questions. Being somewhat unsatisfied with the scope of that course and being able (through the purchase of a camera several years ago from the same shop) to redeem another course, I took the tram from East Brunswick to go take the next course up.

Not knowing where to go for lunch, I disembarked at Spring Street and wandered the streets looking for food (which makes me sound like a vagrant, but really I was just hungry). I meandered through some strange backstreets, Chinatown (ooh lanterns!) and Bourke St (in which I found a quite talented street performer, surrounded by a large audience) to Block Place, where I supped on foccacia.

After my course, during which I resolved to download Adobe Lightroom as soon as I got my new laptop, I met up with Alex, who had come back from a European holiday. He took me (in his mother’s car, having apparently abandoned his car on a street somewhere due to a flat battery) to this bizarre shop in Gertrude Street that seems to specialise in selling random crap (such as these clamps, or whatever they are).

Alex drove around looking for a parking spot for ages, giving me plenty of time to snap shots of things one might find in Brunswick Street. We went to Bar Open to check out a band that was playing there. Today’s photo is obviously from there, featuring the bassist in a purple suit and green shirt (heaps of photos on my Flickr page from there).

We had pizza for dinner (during which he bemoaned the lack of capsicum on his pizza) and went back to my place for some accordion playing and telling of bizarre stories. It appears that my computer is aware it is being replaced and is trying to go out with a bang by inflicting as much misery upon me as it can in the time that it has left. It will be nice when I’ll be able to copy and upload my photos and write my blog in less than two hours. Sleep time.