Jet Set

I remember the very first time that I travelled anywhere on business. It was after my third year at university, and I was to accompany a colleague on a tender briefing in Manchester. I was on the road early in my car to Loughborough, and delighted. The Dodgess, equally, delighted that I was invited around to meetings in Manchester. For a student, I lived the high life - free lunch, and 38p per mile for driving was a real bonus.

Oh how things have changed. Strange, because my latest travel is undoubtedly far more exciting, at least on paper. I mean - Ho Chi Minh, Hai Phong, and Hanoi are certainly more interesting than Manchester. Flying around is certainly more exciting than driving down the M42. the flight to Ho Chi Minh particularly hair-raising, with the Captain aborting the landing a few seconds before touching down due to heavy rain - I was relieved - visibility was below 100m!

The trouble with business travel, is, frankly, the work. We had a meeting in Hai Phong on Wednesday. In order to make it we had to fly to Ho Chi Minh on Tuesday evening. Then wake up at the crack of dawn (well, before in fact - 4.30 am) in order be on the first flight of the day to Hai Phong. Whilst we did manage to land first time in Hai Phong, the flight was awful. We were sat next to a mother struggling with her toddler daughter. I can understand this, but then who thinks changing a nappy at the seat is a great idea? Really nasty. It hardly surprised me when she sent her tray flying down the gap between the table and theseat. But it was very funny. At that point, we gave up a moved down the plane.

This set the tone for the day. We had a horrible meeting about our poject, then a 3 hour car journey on northern Vietnam's slightly rough roads. We eventually arrived in Hanoi, and the driver had no idea where the hotel was. A leisurely tour of the river bank later, and eventually we reached the hotel far too tired to enjoy the evening, or the suites that we had been upgraded to. 


Things did improve mildly on Thursday - we had some productive meetings. But two got pushed to Friday. The result was that we were running around like loonies. We set off for the airport for the flight back only 2 hours before the flight. Normally, I'd be at the airport at this time, let alone shaking hands with a Japanese contractor. The stress levels flew up as we got stuck in Hanoi's worsening traffic. The trouble is, should we miss that flight, then we'd be in Hanoi until Saturday.

So we did get on the flight back in the end. Hanoi airport is scarily efficient, or maybe they all are if you don't have enough time. Overall, though, this week proves why I dislike travel for business. Ok, the meetings are necessary. But, the two of us spent the best part of the week in Vietnam. In that time we wrote no reports, even sending emails was tough. 

I will no doubt whinge about things more - this was my third trip to Vietnam. In the next month, I have at least one more, together with a trip to Hong Kong. I also have two trips that I actually look forwards to - the Dodgess and I are visiting Penang. And we intend to sleep!


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


In the past two weeks I have, in between my flights to Vietnam, managed to go to two concerts put on by students of the Dodgess. Both have, in different ways, been staggering.


The first one was a solo piano recital. All the usual suspects where included - some Chopin, Lizst, Brahms. Performed in the Esplanade Recital Studio, this was a very good recital, by anyone's standards. The pianist was 17. A young age for a solo recital. Particularly given that she doesn't even want to pursue music professionally - aiming to study medicine. I had thought that she was perhaps a one off - no - the same teached puts such recitals on every six months.


The second was a half hour recital in Esplanade Concourse. Not this time by one person, but by 3 from Raffles Institution. Again, the level was pretty exemplary. The age, yet lower, 12 -14. One boy could scarcely see above the top of the piano.


I went to what was without one of the best schools I could have gone to, and I daresay that I met with some of the most talented children that I could have. Yet it seems to me that even the Perse School would have been hard pushed to put on three 12-14 year olds with such distinction. That concert was not a one off either - Raffles Girls School presented the following evening, though I was en route to Ho Chi Minh as the performance progressed.

It's still quite a large world

Those who wish to prophesise that the world is somewhat small, would cite someone like me to prove their case. I have after all, been to 5 continents, been in hospital on four (!?) and even lived on 3, encompassing points that are diametrically opposite, at least in terms of east-west if not north-south.

Still, I was reminded exactly how far away Britain was when my Uncle Harry passed away of cancer earlier this month. Looking through our wedding photos taken not 5 months before reminded me that at the time he was hopeful that he was getting over some mystery illness that had affected for the previous 18 months, and was hopeful of a trip to Singapore at some point. I have probably too few memories of Harry - but those that I do have are of a true gentleman, invariably with a beer in his hand (but never the adverse affects of his preferred tipple) and a slight assymetric smile.

Being thousands of miles away relatives is of course nothing new. But the world does seem very very big when you'd like to try and get back at a week's notice. Not for the first time, this proved impractical, and the predicament was one of two things that brought my US GrandDad to mind this month. 


The other was a performance of Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto by Midori. The Tchaik has a particular resonance around our family - It was undoubtedly my Grandfather's favourite piece of music, and I will never forget his reaction at hearing it in (presumably) the first time in years after I played Vengerov's recording to him in his home in Washington DC. He had had a CD player for years, but owing to his short-sightedness had never worked out how to use it. It was like the dawn of a new world for him. From then on for the next two years he would listen to a piece of music every night before dinner. After he passed away, his Dog maintained the habbit!


The Dodgess also played it in her final concert in the UK. Originally she had planned to play it earlier, but an operation had prevented it. So, as a piece that meant so much, and had so many memories, I was hoping for a good, virtuosic performance.


What I got was in many ways far better... Midori's playing was incredibly tender. It really brought out the lyricism within the piece, in a way that I had never really thought possible before. The fireworks were of course present (with that finale, it's kind of hard for them not to be), but, my main memory is of the melancholy that she brought to the performance. It is without a doubt why I attend live concerts (her recording is reportedly nothing like as tender) and was one of the best performances I've ever heard of anything.

This book-ended a week of fabulous concerts. The first had been Ken Hamilton's Lizst recital. The pianist was the Dodgess' PhD supervisor, and now she is his Concert Supervisor (at least in Singapore). For the first time I really enjoyed Lizst's b minor sonata - a "pianists' piece" if ever there was one. I've always liked the Hungarian Rasphody 2 - though, like Midori, Ken put a new spin on the piece compared to the recordings that I've heard. And, like the best concerts, I will look out for more Lizst, in particular the Biblically difficult Transendental Etudes.


Ken stayed around for the week. I like to think this is entirely to take his concert organiser (and her husband) out for cocktails, though in reality it probably has more to do with a series of masterclasses in schools. The last time he performed here, his Concert Organiser was treated to Cocktails at the Marina Mandarin, where the thigh high slits in the waitresses skirts startled the Dodgess. This time, the Dodgess was startled by the view from the rooftop bar of the Fullerton Bay Hotel, which feels every cent like a set from Sex and the City.  It was a good night.


So, the past three weeks have been an up and down ride. And I haven't even discussed the lengthy saga of us trying to buy a flat here - this will no doubt come up at some point in the future, though its tone is somewhat dependent on the outcome of all the negotiations.


So Grandad, I hope that you enjoyed the Tchaik. And Harry - I hope you did too, and I will keep a look out for a concert including some Stanford that I know was your favourite.

Concerts with a domesticated Dodgess

Going to a concert with the Dodgess is a fun experience. Partly because you get her encyclopedic knowledge of music and performers, to make up for what are often hugely sub-standard, and mind numbingly boring programme notes.

But you also get her reactions to the playing. The first time I noticed this I had driven her (though some of the worst driving conditions imaginable) up to a concert in Leeds given by her academic consultant on 19th century violin playing.  Even I could tell the concert wasn't good - I was bored by it. At the end the Dodgess did clap - slowly, but her face had a very puzzled look on it. Perhaps saying 'why have I wasted a Sunday afternoon on this?' Or 'Argh - my academic life is dead if this is what my advisor plays like' Or possible even 'Is the Dodge going to shoot me for putting him through this painful aural experience?' (I hasten to say that I didn't...)

On the other hand, after a good performance (such as a recent account of Beethoven 7 directed by Joshua Bell) the joy she feels could be understood by a toddler.

All of this leads me to a similar reaction she had when sat next to me following a performance of Grieg's Piano Concerto last week. This was with the SSO and Dang Thai Son, a Vietnamese pianist. Pianists reading will know that the Grieg is not the highest mountain of the piano world. But even this proved too high. To me, the fast parts have to sparkle - not be over-peddled. And the lyrical parts need space - and should never sound like the pianist is in a hurry to catch the 11 O clock flight off the island.

Shostakovitch 5 was better - certainly lacking the depth of insight that Russian orchestras bring to the work, and with some distinctly variable intonation. There were also a couple of pieces played in lieu of an overture were, well, forgettable (but more to do with the composition than the playing).

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

Perhaps the greatest treat of this week was coming home on Friday night. As I got out of the cab I thought 'oooh - that smells nice'. It was a combination of the brocoli soup and biscuit baking that the Dodgess had done in the preceeding hours. The biscuits are great, and so was the dinner, albeit that we had yet another blender incident - we are now on our 4th blender in 6 years. On top of that - the flat was spotless!! :)  
 

Exchange rates and the rest

I suppose that in the past year or so I have written a lot about the good things living over here. But there are of course frustrations that I feel. At the moment, there are a couple of residual things in the UK that are just a touch frustrating.

Firstly, my beautiful park view house is still empty, two months after the tenants moved out. This is not a disaster financially (though obviously isn't good). It's just a frustration that it sits there being so unloved when it is such a loveable home! My letting agent did find a set of tenants, however when one of them calls themselves self-employed when they are really on benefits, it really doesn't help. Hopefully the place will be let soon though.

Secondly my student loan fees have been re-assessed. Nothing new in this. But the exchange rate doesn't help me any more. The result is an 80% increase in the fees that I have to pay now. I did expect it to go up, perhaps by 20% because, well, my salary went up 15%. But to almost double? Not really fair! Still, I guess I am better paying it off whilst interest rates remain quite low.

Mind you, at least I'm not complaining about 20% VAT rates... and my pay did go up by 15%, which is 15% more than it would have gone up by in the UK... so perhaps I should just 'zip it'.

 

Vietnam

I think that if you had told me at the start of my degree that I would be working on a 400m span cable stayed bridge I'd have been reasonably happy. Might have prefered a 50 storey building, but this would be ok. If you'd told me that I'd be doing it in the middle of Vietnam, I might have looked at you with a slightly strange expression. Nonetheless, a week ago, an American, born in Britain, and working in Singapore, found himself on Singapore Airlines on a flight to Hanoi, to do just that.

In fact the bridge is about 100km from Hanoi, in a place called Hai Phong. A somewhat industrial port city that my fellow countrymen were shamefully bombing in my parents lifetime. Now, I lived about 100km from Heathrow Airport when I was in the UK - it takes not more than 2 hours. In Vietnam, that was 4 hours. Oh, and you need to add in an extra hour to get my visa on arrival (gratitude to the 4 other AECOM personnel who waited paitiently, and did not abandon me in Hanoi Airport!!)

The reason behind the slow traffic is mainly the motorcycles and slow lorries, and somewhat narrow roads. There is a complete lack of what I (and most western types) would call road discipline. In fact, the techniques I have for driving would be, frankly, useless in Vietnam.

So, with the slow Visa, and the long trip, I was not well pre-disposed to the trip. The weather didn't help either. It wasn't cold by UK standards. But I didn't see the sun in 4 days (again - this happens in the UK, but I'm a spoilt Singaporean, where this doesn't happen).

The place does have its charms. The people are very welcoming and friendly - and are quite happy to attempt to speak English to those who know not a single word of Vietnamese. It is also, quite like Java, a window into a time gone by elsewhere in Asia. Lots of small roadside stalls.

The bridge we're looking at building (quite some way into the future) sits over a port - the ships are BIG. Some 200m long in cases. There is an existing bridge, built a few years back, but currently it's 1 lane in each direction. Last year 3 ships drifted into it in a typhoon and bent it. They are now thinking they should repair it. 

The food is relatively typical Asian. At least the stuff I ate was. Simple veg, with more elaborate meats. I don't think I ate anything too unusual, certainly some pidgeon though - quite tasty actually. The exception was an attempt at a western dish in our hotel: Chicken Maryland; breaded chicken served with tomato sauce, potato dauphinoise, and bacon wrapped around banana. No - not a typo! It really was bacon around banana, and tasted about as good as it sounds. So rubbish then. (Actually, the dauphinoise with tomato sauce isn't a great hit either. One to avoid next time).

I think that I'm heading back again in a few weeks time - hopefully I'll have enough notice to get my visa in advance and not have the queue for so long!! 

Here are some photos:

 

The existing bridge

 

and where it got bent last year

 The big ships that need to fit under our bridge

 

Lots of bikes - no rules

Roadside stalls - not quite sure what they do when a train comes.

Old School Photos

For each camera that I've owned there are a couple of really memorable photos I've taken - from the top of Table Mountain with my first zoom camera, photos of Sydney Opera House with my first digi cam, New York, Paris, Boston, Vancouver and New York (again) with the camera I gave the Dodgess two years ago... some of Singapore, Vienna and Boston (again) with the camera which was the first present I gave my wife after we married.

With my first camera these photos are from the banks of Lake Squam, with early morning mist sinking below the tops of the mountains in the distance, all reflected in a glassy lake. It was  given to me by my father circa 1993, and featured little other than a 35mm lens. Whilst going through the piles of accumalated goodies in my room before moving here I cam accross this old camera and decided that I should bring it along. And so, just before Christmas I bought a proper, old school film, and stuck it into the camera with no idea whether it would work.

Of course, it being a nineties camera I didn't have to do much other than put the film in - there is nowhere for a battery at all! And after a short reacquaintence with it, I managed to work out how to work it.

At this point I should probably point out that the wedding present I gave the Dodgess is a rather swish new camera - it takes photos by itself if you smile at it enough, you can change the lenses, add filters to it, set it up to take photos with 30 second exposures (to get really funky traffic effects), and for the most part all you have to do is press a single button. What's more, for a digital camera, the colours are hugely intense. We have expanded the basic model so that, with a couple of additions we can get ultra-wide angle shots, or zoom in to factor of perhaps 25 on the widest angle.


With such an array of options, the single zoom of 35mm posed a new challenge (well, obviously not new, but certainly forgotten) of getting the framing nice without any optical assistance. Which was fun.


The other non-novelty was having a limited number of photos. I mean, technically, the new Sony does indeed have a limit - it's about 1000 photos before meeting a computer and whilst the Dodgess and I have achieved that, it isn 't too harsh a task master. With the film I had 36 exposures - it certainly makes you think more, especially when you have to pay for them be they good or bad photos.


One of the treats was not seeing the result straight away - and having to wait for the film to be exposed, and then thumbing through the pictures to see whether they had worked.


Mixed bag - in low light the photos are poor. However, in the sunlight, they really shine - there is certainly now wash out of the colours around Marina Bay sands where I finished off the film. In fact, I'd say the photos have as much depth as the professional ones we had taken for our wedding. I'll try and get some up once I can scan them in.


So - quite an enjoyable foray back to a non-digital world, which I shall no doubt repeat. It is staggering to think that a camera that hasn't seen outside its case can work without any prompting 13 years after it was superseeded.

Mad Month

So the first month of 2011 is almost over. It's been a little crazy - both the Dodgess and I have had some very late nights.


The Dodgess has been playing with SLO - doing Carmen. This has meant that for the past three weeks she has had rehearsal or performance every night on top of all her normal work - itself quite a busy week. The result is that we had grabbed dinner together at 6ish every night, and, in order to try and get my work done, I've then gone back to work on several nights at 730ish, and worked on for an hour or two.

It's not the first time that I've only seen my home in the dark - but it has been one of the most draining. Partly because as well as a crazy month here, I've been helping out with my Mother in Law, who has been having her house refurbed - 2 nights at IKEA, and numerous hours lending muscle. Still - it has been a while since I've been able to help with muscle once again.


The Dodgess did treat me to a night at Carmen. I don't tend to go for opera that much, I find the stories a little exagerated, and for every moment of world beating music, there is an hour of so-so music. Carmen is generally superior, and I really enjoyed it this time, in spite of some slightly weird staging - the last scene felt as if Carmen could simply walk away from Don Jose - in fact I wondered why she didn't!!


Next week is the Lunar New Year. It's kind of like the Asian version of Christmas - I get to work half a week at work. Good - a chance to catch up with sleep. It really is like Christmas - most Singaporeans have a whole list of Reunion Dinners. The Dodgess and I will also have a few - probably not as many as most, but they'll still be nice.


Looking forwards to the year of the Rabbit I think there is a lot to look forwards to. We have a new project at work - some Tunneling work I believe. So I will have a new challenge in a new field of engineering. I hope that I can do some alignment design for rail, and the tunneling will be fun to learn I hope. We also have the tender for our viaducts - We're just closing out the design, and I went to have a look at a model of it last week and it looked very neat.


The Dodgess and I hope to have a look around Asia a little more - a few days in Bali, perhaps some in Malysia, a proper holiday trip to Hong Kong. We're saving a long trip for 2012 when we'll head back to Europe - probably in the Summer for my younger brother's wedding.


Lets hope that the Rabbit bounces high - Gong Xi Fa Cai