August 23, 2015

Did I really miss a week? Wow...I must not be back in the groove yet.

The second week of ABS was even more fun than the first. I performed my chamber pieces, we did two productions of Marin Marais' opera Semele and finished with a second performance of the b minor mass. I will post some pictures I found humorous.

Can you imagine handing these out to people who annoy you??

I don't know about you but I've never felt the urge to eat graffiti

Do you think the car's name is "Spleen", or the driver's?

In the week after ABS finished I did a lot of expeditioning. Went to Thornton State Beach, South SF and Pacifica on separate days and collected a goodly number of caches.

Music-covered piano out on Market St....

Rotational slump at Thornton State Beach

WHY would this make a difference??

This is actually in my neighbourhood...the keys don't work.

A slide in Daly City

Thanks...

Something dead on the beach

Live lizard at Mori Point

Thanks for reading. Registration is next week, and school starts the week after that. Enjoy.

- Antisocial Violinist

August 9, 2015

And we're back!! Ready for another year of scintillating life and times? I can't believe I'm halfway done my degree already...

I got back to SF last Sunday and was immediately plunged into the American Bach Soloists Academy (early music training program and festival, for those who don't know). This program is possibly the most I have enjoyed music since starting at SFCM. I am the youngest person in the Academy by about a two-year margin - the mean age is mid-twenties, and about half of the participants aren't even in school anymore but are freelancing or have their own ensembles. I have not touched the modern violin in a week, and I don't miss it at all; I almost forgot I even had another violin.

Our days are packed with rehearsals. Besides Bach's b minor mass, which is done every year at this festival, we are performing an opera by Marin Marais, a little suite by a guy named Schmierer (for which I get to be concertmaster!) and many, many small chamber pieces. I myself am playing in two Bach arias and a Telemann concerto for violin and horn (Baroque horn played well is something to hear). I was telling a colleague that this is the ideal life: no classes, no competitions, no auditions, no recordings, just working on great music with superb artists and like-minded peers.

I am living in a new house with new roommates and a gas stove. Figuring out the gas stove took me more time than I care to admit. Figuring out my roommates will take longer. I have been out and about in the neighbourhood and will post pictures of the house and community at a later date.

In the meantime here is a picture of something I found hilarious.

Honestly who lets these things slip through the cracks

And here is a picture I took, in the Concert Hall, DURING a concert. I did not dare to use flash so it is somewhat dark:

He's probably the critic

We are performing the Bach mass today and again next Sunday. See you then.

- Antisocial Violinist

May 10, 2015

This week I had two final exams and the last of orchestra and chamber music events. I also looked at a lot of rooms and apartments in different parts of the city and this morning I found a new place. Not very exciting to read about, I know, but it sure is a load off my mind, especially since this place is much less expensive than my current apartment (and in a much quieter and safer neighbourhood). If anyone does not feel utter disdain for paper communication and wishes to know my new address, please email me. Those who cannot write, or at least print, need not apply.

Here are some photos I caught during my flat-hunting sojourns and around school.

How long has this been there, and how many people have noticed?

The small text is someone's recital info. Very clever.

Banana bread: You're doing it wrong.

..........

Check out the small text along the bottom

Thanks for reading.

- Antisocial Violinist

May 3, 2015

Spent the week searching for an apartment and spent the weekend playing orchestra concerts and rehearsing. Not much to report. See you next week.

April 27, 2015

Somebody has been attempting to guilt-trip me into writing another blog post. Let it be known that I am writing this because I had meant to anyway, not because the guilt-trip succeeded.

I spent the weekend caching with my geo-buddies. On Saturday we went to McLaren Park with a bunch of newbies. One of my buddies is fed up with the overwhelming 50+ demographic on the geocaching scene and is trying to get young, tech people into caching. We took a crowd of 20- and 30-somethings through the park and grabbed most of the unique hides including one that required solving a rope trick to open, one with a trick mechanism, one with multiple decoy caches, one in a pinecone and a tree climb.

I have very few pictures from Saturday, and none from Sunday because I forgot to charge my camera. Here are the Saturday ones though.

I spent all of Sunday on Treasure Island and Yerba Buena island for the Earth Day trash pick-up event. My buddies and I walked all over the entire island and picked up all of the caches except the kayak caches and two tree climbs that were just too scary. There were several tree climbs we did succeed at though! We even got the night cache since we were still there by the time it got dark.

Treasure Island is man-made, built on the shoals of natural Yerba Buena, and so it's entirely flat. The military used to use it for nuclear cleanup training and other sci-fi stuff and the entire island is still radioactive (although they've fenced off the dangerous areas). We walked along the edge of the island for a time which I enjoyed because I could see the ocean waves. The best spot for that was out at the end of a rock jetty. There was a cache there (of course) and so we hopped out over all the rocks to get it. Afterwards I just wanted to sit there for a time and watch the ocean and the wind gliders.

On the beach I saw an alive crab that was moving sideways across the sand with its industrious little crab legs. Then we spooked it and it scuttled very fast and then went back to walking. Yamjerky made a cave for it with his boot heels, which it seemed to like. Then someone else poked at it with a trash picker-upper and it snapped at the rubber with its claws and tried to climb up Yamjerky's pantleg.

We were searching for a cache in a tree and someone had duct-taped a piece of paper to the tree with the words "Baby birds - do not disturb" and an arrow pointing to a hollow in the tree. There was no noise coming from the hollow, so we said it must be abandoned. After we found the cache I took a peek inside and in the dim light I saw a yellow beak, gaping wide. Soon it shut, but I could still see the yellow line of the beak, with another one next to it. They were very quiet although the mother bird sure was making a racket.

- Antisocial Violinist

April 21, 2015

Went on a hike to Marin last Saturday with the St Dom's YA group and found only one cache out of four.

What makes wood do this?

Tree swallowed an I-beam

The old dam and the still pond

- Antisocial Violinist

April 12, 2015

Oh, here is a picture from the SFO airport that I forgot to include last week.

I can't believe this got past whoever organizes these things.

The only funny thing that happened on Monday was that in the middle of Baroque ensemble, a panel in the ceiling opened and some black cords came jerking and bouncing down like snakes (apparently something to do with the sound system). We freaked a little and then started laughing, but our teacher didn't get it and looked annoyed at us for laughing.

The only interesting thing that happened on Tuesday was that Maddy kept dropping bits of paper from the second floor down into the atrium and hoping they would land on people. We watched the little white bits go spinning down and laughed hysterically. I don't think anyone noticed (us or the papers).

The only interesting thing that happened on Wednesday was that M and I saw a mouse on our night run. A small dark shape scuttled across the sidewalk and zoomed partway up a green wall on the other side, only to fall back, twitch itself and squeeze under the fence.

Two interesting things happened on Thursday, and they were both in German class:
1. We listened to a strange song about "Hawaii Toast" and
2. We had to do little skits and one group did a graphic one where the girl kept throwing up.

I spent yesterday morning at Mountain Lake, pulling watercress out of the North Arm. It's an invasive species and I had volunteered with a group to do the weeding. They gave us rubber boots and gloves and we waded through sloshing, sinking, squeezing, sucking mud and pulled out two large patches of watercress and lots of smaller ones. Afterwards I got a bunch of caches. Wonderful was the muddy cool water and the messy green sprawling stalks.

Bird at Mountain Lake

Today was my friend's recital, in which she and I played Schnittke's "Moz-Art for two violins". It's a humourous piece with whistling, bitonality, offset themes and two spots where I am required to detune my violin. We had conscripted M to do the whistling and some random acting onstage. As J (the girl whose recital it was) put it, "I looked confused, the people were laughing, it was good"

- Antisocial Violinist