Reviewing in Sin

For those of you who watched Mr Bean, the ultimate disaster movie (the first one, not the crap close to child abduction second one - a literal disaster), you may well recall that at some point seeing one of the world's great paintaings - Whistler's Mother (or at least a copy thereof) defaced, with a horendous cartoon face inserted instead. An image all the more jarring combining the best of art, with the pure awfulness of Mr Bean's attempted fix.

It was, alas, this very image that came to mind whilst listening to Brahms' second piano concerto, with Viktoria Postinikova as soloist, and her aging husband (Gennady Rozhdestvensky) as conductor. You see the trouble with classical music is that it can be completely ruined when in the wrong hands, and leave mental scarring due to the nature of the abuse.

Splitting a note in the opening horn solo could have been an omen, but even that was nothing to prepare what was to come. Extended to a monstrous hour long effort (sometimes a 33% bonus of time really is not beneficial) this performance was slow. The music that can skip along became clumsy. Actually, it was all rather clumsy come to that - split notes all over, with the pedalling seemingly chosen primarily to disguise pianistic innacuracy rather than for musical purpose. Oh my.

The second half of Brahms' Second Symphony was also ponderous, if not as offensively slow as the concerto, and there were some nice patches with the strings making a good rich tone. Overall though. Oh my oh my.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I don't really love Jakarta. In fact, many Indonesians don't really love Jakarta - I sit next to one in Singapore, and she refuses to go anywhere near her capital city - but then she is from Bali. Although I've never actually been, I think most places would probably come in a second preference against Bali.

The troubles are multiple. I find the traffic a tad frustrating - Jakarta in particular is constantly jammed up - in fact they don't report traffic jams on the traffic news, but rather areas where there is little. Whilst I accept that I've not really looked around Jakarta (it's hard when it takes a long time to get, oh I don't know, 2 miles) what I've seen is not all that endearing - a lot of modern buildings with very limited character. the old ones, similarly uninspiring. The poverty is still pretty open.

The last two trips have been dire. The first one I worked all day in Jakarta, then stayed in the grottiest hotel I've ever not had to pay for (probably joint with a Premier inn a stone's throw from the Forth Bridge in Scotland). Then woke up at 5am to make Bandung, meetings there all day, then a 3 hour delay to my flight home. Bad would be better.

The second one I decided to get to Bandung the night before, but still worked in Jarkarta for the whole day after a 6am flight. Then the car taking me to Bandung left with someone else. The traffic meant it was 2 hours before a replacement reached me. we then got lost in Bandung. I hit the sack at midnight after a 19 hour day, with a meeting at 730 the next morning. I'm sure that eventually I will get around to seeing some of the nicer parts, and I do like the Hyatt in Bandung, which itself seems less claustrophobic and nuts than Jakarta.

We'll find out more soon - am back there from Sunday.

Back, after a break

I remember when I was at university, towards the end of term, as the workloads increased, I would feel worn out. Beleaguered by late nights working on design projects/dissertations that had to be finished before the holidays. Come the end of term I concuss for a few days, either in Birmingham, or quite often in Cambridge where I could be pampered by parents.

Oh were that I could just drive two hours, get pampered, and be de-concussed within a few days like I used to. It feels like I’ve been at the end of term for the past 3 months. It all started with a project bidding for a new rail link between Singapore a JB. A mad, under-resourced effort. We’ll have to see what comes of it. Since then we’ve won some work in Indonesia. I’ve been going to and from a little like a yoyo (or just starting to do so), and have also been in Vietnam. I doubt that there have been many American passports that have only seen immigration in Singapore, Ho Chi Minh, Hanoi, Jakarta and Bandung in their lives (I should add, I got a new passport in December).

In addition we’ve had an external quality audit which I managed – successfully J, and now are attending of an external Environmental System audit. Going from nothing to audit in 6 weeks is a challenge I wouldn’t really wish to repeat.

My family came for a second visit to Singapore (well, all except for an elder brother). That was very nice. We went running around Singapore a little bit. It was good. I hope they come back. I had actually not seen them in over a year. I’ll see them again in July when I go for a younger brother’s wedding. (I’ll also see the elder one then – only 18 months since last sight – you think that we’ll remember what each other looks like?). Today is mother’s day – so I did the filial thing and rang (ok – absolute minimum, but then over here Mother’s Day is on a completely different day, so I think that I’m a little bit excused).

The rest of this year includes a Beethoven Piano Concerto set – I’ve played a couple of them already, but it will be nice to complete the cycle. This follows from one of the most nerve-wracking, but spectacular concerts I’ve played on New Year’s Eve. Amazingly, it worked. I’ll let you know more in another post, which I promise will be sooner.

Chiang Mai

So, another year has come and gone, and whilst it is tempting to write a post about what I have done, and what I’m going to do next year, frankly, I’ve not really had a chance to think about it so far.

So instead I’ll talk about another mini-break. This time we went to Thailand; Chiang Mai to be precise. If you listen to the locals, they’ll tell you that Chiang Mai is Thailand’s second city, so a sort of Thai version of Birmingham then. Possibly, on paper, but in reality, it is a very different sort of place, so far unaffected by the hussle and bussle that usually afflicts large cities.

Chiang Mai was a place to do new stuff. The Dodgess and I went for a spa afternoon. A whole afternoon of being looked after by a gang of masseurs. We had foot massage, body massage, body scrucb, steam, a milk bath, a facial. All sorts frankly. It was all very nice and is a really nice way to spend an afternoon.

Not the spa, but our hotel, which was quite idyllic.

The other speciality of Chiang Mai is night markets. They go around from location to location, and sell all sorts from food to musical instruments, via Asian trinkets and clothes. The Dodgess, built on our collection of textile art by buying lots of weaving and silk; sadly some of them will end up on her classroom walls rather than ours, but they are nice! There is also an awesome set of markets, with all sort of fruit and veg, and other nick nacks. 

The indoor market – our favourite probably

One of the night markets

Chiang Mai would, I daresay, be very interesting to Buddhists, with a plethora of temples, all coated in gold, and very impressive, if that sort of thing impresses, but for us – not so much. Equally, somewhat disappointing was a dinner with Asian dance – the costumes were amazing, but we were a bit far from the action, and the food was a bit...

Inside one of the temples

A couple of the fancy costumes

And a mad dancer with swords – rather him than me!

Happy New Year to anyone who may still read this!