Merry Christmas to all

I guess you'll think this is early, but I assure you it is December 24th as we speak. There's a party at my school (Hannah thinks it will be a dancing party & everything) so I am stoked. I mean, I never said I could dance & any ineffectual motions I make to that effect will be ruled by the raw hip-hop ability of my classmates. But whatever.

Today, I actually got to school on time (I'm never late for CLASS, but for the thing BEFORE class sometimes the stupid bus gets stuck in traffic). Hooray. Then I went to "Sanmin Zhuyi" class & it was o.k. I could kind of follow it, I was trying to read the textbook & after I looked up a few words (such as 'rights,' 'power' & 'authority' I could catch part of it)... I like that class. The teacher writes in a way that is almost legible & doesn't use too much simplified Chinese. And that's all that's happened considering it's 9:45 in the morning in computer class & nothing's happening.

Yesterday was the long-awaited concert. We left the school at like 1 in the afternoon, & I learned the word for sweater-vest, which has NOTHING to do with sweater. After practising at 師大 (NTNU) for a while, we went to the concert hall, which was Zhongshan Hall. It just happens to be right next to Ximen.

Anyway, after having actually good lunch boxes for dinner, some of the guys were like "Let's go to Ximen." And while I am not yet that jaded I was like "come on, I just went there yesterday." But then I thought, "hmm... the reason we are here is because NTNU's music program is 85% girls, in fact there is half a choir and an orchestra full of them. Girls make random stuff more fun." So I decided we were going to try to pick up the university girls to go with us. I tried to get this bass guy to be my wingman but he was all wussy and teenage-boy-like. The unconfident kind thereof.

So I was all like (in Chinese of course) "Hey we're going to Ximen do you want to come with us?" And this girl looked like she was considering it, and tried to get her friends to go with her. But she kept saying "wait a minute" and talking to some more. Anyway none of her friends wanted to go so she jammed out. It almost worked though. I bet if I had the right backup (i.e. exchange students, such as Greg) or more attempts I could have pulled it off. So we went to the arcade, and I rocked at the drum game. Well I sucked, but then on the third game I kicked ass and got a really high score. Then afterwards I realised (due to the overweight drumstick with this weird thing on it) I had messed up my finger, or kind of hurt/blistered the skin right on the stick-holding part. Oh well.

Concert wasn't bad, in the first act we watched, there was this random 'fat lady' soprano, but she wasn't all that fat. Still sang operatic style with ridiculous amounts of vibrato. Sometimes I don't think I want to study voice because of that stupid, uncontrollable vibrato that almost makes you more off pitch than on. But then Ms. Liu sings anything (usu. in a Broadway-musical-soprano-lead style) and I think to myself, "that's hardcore. Gotta be a r0x0r tenor so I can sing with the good sopranos." Because we all know that it's always tenor + soprano as leads in a musical or in that type of song. Not that I can do musical theatre or anything. Because I suck suck suck at anything involving acting.

Also a guest violinist backed up by the orchestra, was pretty good. At the beginning of the 2nd half, before we did our song, they did a strings/harp/two flutes arrangement of Greensleeves. I love that song, and the harp made it really cool. Our performance went a lot better than I'd expected. But we had to stand there afterwards while they did two encores ('Hungarian Dance' and then one with the soprano lady) & do nothing.

I figured this conductor lady out. She is Taiwanese-born but like most talented people from Taiwan did her post-graduate work in the states. I think she has a Master's or Ph.D in double-bass and is a world-class conductor. Really, the orchestra is not that good, college students, but boy did she get a lot out of them. And it was really really tight, their encore piece was amazing (even when this one time one section tried to disobey her tempo) ... though I am still not sure how she expected my classmates to understand random English.

That's that for now, later today is Chinese class again + the evening party I mentioned earlier. Post a comment, y'all. [25 minutes] K out