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07/04/2002 Alright... Have you heard of Kathaumixw? Chances are that you haven't.. At least if you don't live around here. It's a week-long music festival that happens in July every second year in Powell River. It attracts bands from around the world - besides Canada and the US there are bands from Australia, Denmark, Turkey, The Philippines, China and more that I can't remember right now. It started yesterday, and finishes.. Saturday I think. Joseph has actually been in past concerts, and I'm hoping that by the next time I'll be in one of the PR Academy of Music choirs, probably the Academy Singers. Anyhoo, we've gone to 3 concerts so far, each one with different choirs. They are all amazing.. I've done a lot of singing in my life and when people are singing the types of things that I learned to sing I can tell when they make mistakes - I tend to be listening for these details, not to critisize but because I'm imagining myself in their place. But these groups are singing very differently, which makes it pretty much impossible for me to detect any small mistakes, leaving me to just enjoy the music. I don't have time to say too much today, but maybe I'll have time tomorrow. The concert that we just got back from was incredible... There was a choir from Denmark (Academic Choir of Aarhus) which we missed part of cause we were a few minutes late, which was beautiful.. Then there was a tenor soloist - Colin Balzer, from Canada. I wasn't really expecting to enjoy him all that much cause I am usually more interested in choirs then soloists, but I ended up enjoying it quite a bit - I got to see what could make a soloist interesting. When you're 1 member of a choir you don't really want to call attention to yourself by fidgiting - you're supposed to stand reasonably still and sing with one voice. However, when you're a soloist, it's more interesting if you're kinda engaging the audience by leaning forward, looking out at the audience, that sort of thing - instead of standing still. Or at least that's what it seems like to me! And that's what he was doing. It was neat to watch. Oh, and he had a really good voice too. <grin> The last part of the concert was a group from the USA - Cantus. They were incredible. I wish that we could see more of them... But this is the last concert that they're taking part in that we'll be seeing. And yesterday, the afternoon concert was fun.. (we took Terry cause it was her birthday.) One of the choirs there, the Orfeon Chamber Choir from Turkey, was a lot of fun to see - they sang a version of Waltzing Matilda which was hilarious and really neat... specially cause they pronounced it "Valtzing Matilda". Off to bed. 07/25/2002 Aah.. My hair feels dirty. It's cause I've been swimming a lot recently, and saltwater sure gives my hair a nice oily and matted feeling! Woo woo. It's worth it though. It's been so hot here, (though not as hot as it was in Kelowna when I was there - they said it was 40° C there!) that we've been going swimming in the ocean every day so far this week. It's been nice.. We found this great spot that takes 10 minutes of easy biking to get to. We didn't know it when we first went there, but it seems to be the place that a lot of the of the locals go to swim. It really is nice. Speaking of Celsius vs Fahrenheit, (we were speaking of that, didn't you notice?) which one do you use more? I personally us Celsius for everything except cooking and body temperature. I think that Celsius makes more sense, based , as it is, on the freezing and boiling of water. Perhaps we should all use Kelvin, as it starts with absolute zero (the point at which all molecular motion stops). To get the temperature in Kelvin, add 273.16 to the temperature in Celsius. (Therefore, the temperature in Kelowna on that fateful day in June, was 313.16 Kelvin.) To convert from Celsius to Fahrenheit you multiply the temperature by 9, divide it by 5, and add 32. Therefore, the temperature in Kelowna was 104° F. To change it back, you do the opposite - start with 104, subtract 32, multiply by 5, divide by 9. I'm thinking of giving up on both Celsius and Fahrenheit and just using Kelvin. I'd probably be too geeky then... Oh well. It was a good idea (or maybe not!) while it lasted. Now wasn't all that exciting? I bet you're really glad that you read all this today. 07/25/2002 Hehe... I just had super yummy homemade raspberry ice cream. It was good. And yummy.. or did I mention that already? I like fruit. I've been going a bit insane in my fruit buying lately.
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