Dear Telus

Well, it's been quite a while since I've ranted, so here we go! Below is a letter I sent to Telus outlining my dissatisfaction.

Dear Telus,

I would like to voice my extreme dissatisfaction with the customer service I have been receiving from Telus. There is a huge disconnect between the in-store representatives and the telephone representatives. I understand that in BC, the stores are independently run, an inherent flaw in the manner in which you do business. I regularly get conflicting information from these two sources, and neither seem willing to cooperate with one another.

Here is my background.

One year ago, I bought the Blackberry Storm from a location in Ontario. I was told that it was comparable to the iphone, which soon became clear that it was not. In addition to massive weaknesses in Blackberry software, the touch screen has been unreliable and problematic. With my increasing dissatisfaction, I have made it clear that I wanted to change my handset to an iPhone.

I was told there were two options:

1) Buy out of my contract and upgrade at the 3 year pricing. At 20$/month, I could not afford this option.

2) Send my phone in for servicing 3 times and Telus would make me an offer for upgrading my handset.

This is the option I chose.

Since everything was under warranty, this should have not been a problem, and should - in theory- have been free.

Since I had moved to BC, I couldn't return my phone to the original location. I used the swap program, but had to pay a 50$ charge from the Telus retailer for some type of shelving fee. I was happy with the swap program, the phone was slightly more responsive, but not much better. I was encouraged to install the 5.0 software, which I did and gave the phone an honest chance. It was slightly better, but not enough to rectify my dissatisfaction

When I next went to swap my phone, I was informed that the swap program was cancelled - the reasons have been explained to me multiple times in full; I understand, but am sincerely disappointed in this decision.

As a result, sending my phone in for repairs cost me 60$ each time for a loaner phone, in addition to a credit card deposit. The first of the two times, I was even charged 35$ to cover the location's mailing costs!

To date, I have paid (50+60+60+35) $205 JUST to have my warranty honoured. This is unacceptable; Telus needs to rethink how their locations deal with their customers.

Recently, I was informed that my phone had come back from 'being serviced', without any paper or electronic trail of having been serviced. As the retailer knew that I needed it to be registered as serviced, they informed me that the were sending the phone back with a note indicating that there needed to be registered. Wondering what possibly could have happened to my phone in 3 weeks with no trace, I called Telus to inquire and express my concerns.

I was not willing to be pacified on this phone call, and as a result, I was made an offer which made me happy, until today when I realized that Telus does not honour their promises.

I was offered a discounted buy-out which would allow me to buy my choice of phone at the 3-year contract rate. While the representative couldn't tell me the pricing for the iPhone 4, I was told that I could get it when it was released on Friday, July 30th - today.

This seems like a clear agreement. An offer. A promise.

I looked into my phone options and decided on the iPhone 4. I registered my intention to buy it with a Telus location and they called me this morning with a phone set aside for me.

I left my apartment this morning happy, feeling like today was the day that Telus would make everything right - I would feel like a valued customer.

Before I continue with the twist, I currently feel like a second-rate customer, Telus Client Care made it clear that they have done wonderful things for me in the past and that I am being ungrateful for asking them to honour the promise I was made.

Long story short, when I went in to buy my phone, I was informed that my offer did not apply to the iPhone 4. There was nothing the location could do unless I wanted to pay full price. I spoke with 3 telephone representatives in each of the Client Care and Loyalty departments, each of which explained that there was nothing they could do - I simply had to wait. When I asked how long, I was told a variety of things: 1) just not on the release date (today), 2) on the second shipment (they couldn't specify a date or confirm that I could get it on Tuesday, when the location receives its second shipment), or 3) 4-6 weeks.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not simply impatient. I've waited about 9 months for a new phone, I can wait a little while longer. It's the principle - I was made a promise and not only is Telus ignoring that promise, but they belittled me in the process.

It was explained that, due to small shipments, they needed to prioritize. They told me how wonderful I should feel that they are allowing me to upgrade my handset before my contract is over, but that people in my situation (early hardware upgrade) could only get the iPhone 4 if they have less than 6 months left on their contract, whereas I have 24. I understand fairness, but people who are at the end of their contract were likely satisfied with their handset. In my case, I may have been happy with it for a month, but my dissatisfaction has been growing for about 11 months, that's over a 90% dissatisfaction rate!

I mentioned that I understand the general principle, but I am extremely dissatisfied and asked them to make an exception. At this point, the representative got on his high horse and pointed out that my discounted buy out was an exception, so I should not be entitled to another exception!

I do not think that I am being unreasonable in my expectations and I don't think that I should be disadvantaged because Telus cannot supply the demand for their product.

The Telus location I am dealing with was happy to reserve an iPhone for me, not because I put down a deposit and am just a dollar sign in their eyes; rather, they realize the importance of customer satisfaction and making up for the previous disappointments I have incurred, This independent retailer is currently the only thing that I remotely respect about Telus currently.

This retailer made the offer to hold the phone for me for as long as I wanted, making me a priority - something Telus as a company seems to have no interest in. While the lure of spite is strong (I would be responsible for that store only selling 80% of their initial shipment), I am putting my hand forward as a friendly gesture. I have asked them to sell that phone and hold one for me from the second shipment, which comes in on Tuesday, Aug 3rd. I am happily making that phone available to one of Telus's much more valuable customers.

What I am asking in return is simple:

I want them to make it easy for me to walk into the retailer on Tuesday and buy the iPhone which will be reserved for me. A simple override of their system's self-imposed limits should make this possible.

I thank you for taking the time to read my lengthy email. There is little-to-no new information here, I have said it all before to telephone representatives and heard any number of explanations. I am beyond the point of being placated by a scripted explanation of why you cannot do what I need to be satisfied - I am waiting for action.

Sincerely,

Michael Park

Combining my favourite things is one of my favourite things! Wine and knitting are a great combination whether it be drinking and knitting, or using a knitted product to care for your favourite wine before you get around to drinking it.

To the left, you can see my latest knitting project which did exactly that. I had originally thought of making a bag, but opted for a cozy on account of the stretch of anything knitted.

I knit it on straight needles and just joined the seam at the back. I left a space near the bottom (see the next picture) so the bottle can be inserted. I thought about different ways of securing it closed, but they all seemed more labour intensive than they would be effective. I'm rather pleased with the way it turned out.

I'm still not sure how I feel about the yarn. I like the colours and they would be perfect for a nice German Riesling. I also like that the slow variegation creates large sections of colour, but the imperfect shift between the different-coloured sections drives me crazy.

In conclusion, I'm not quite sure about the benefits of a wine cozy... Wine doesn't need to be kept warm and it makes your wine a mystery! Either way, it's fun!

Comedic Saturation

As some of you may know, I have a rather refined, characteristic sense of humour. I love pretending not to get jokes and mispronouncing words.

Normal jokes don't suit me; I can never remember the right order of things, and often screw up punchlines.

Amongst my friends in Vancouver, it's reached the point where everyone I know understands and expects my 'punchlines'. When this happened in Winnipeg, my favourite punchline was "I don't understand, can I get a diagram?" When people realized they were setting me up, they would pre-emptively ask if I needed a diagram. Unfortunately, things are different here in Vancouver.

My Vancouver friends make a habit of ruining the joke for any new people I meet, and it pisses me right off!

It's caused me to think a fair bit about my sense of humour; they always do it to save the new person the bother of being fooled. Long story short, it shows that they're missing the whole point of my 'jokes' - it's not like I do it out of malice! I do this to evoke a magical moment, that look of 'you can't possibly really be that naive, can you?!?'

In conclusion, it's not just that my Vancouver friends are robbing me of my glorious punchline (that, I could handle), rather, they are robbing new people of that sense of innocence!

Don't worry. I will continue to make every effort to bring joy and delight to the whole world with my laugh and witticisms.

In completely unrelated news, I am worried about some potential legal liabilities.

Somehow, I've gotten myself onto a mailing list of secret insider trading opportunities. I get these emails with information about companies and stock rankings, letting me know that I can strike it rich if I invest in them.

I am at a crossroads - I know that insider trading is illegal, but I could really use the extra income.

Any thoughts, advice?

Time to get the gears in motion...

I haven't been blogging, I haven't really been composing, I tried starting a knitting project, but that's been moved to the back burner...

I've fallen into the slump of summer.

I've been reading, ish... not as much as I thought I would when I bought those books, but little bits help - baby steps.

This has already been a very social weekend for me, and the sun hasn't even risen on Saturday, yet. On Thursday, I went to a friend of a friend's going away shin-dig at an irish pub - it was cozy and fun. Contrast that with this evening's adventure to a dance club... too many people, too many loud noises, skanks, punks, ugh... I'm old, but I've always been this crotchety - I hadn't drank nearly enough to have enjoyed the bar tonight, but it was ok... the free drinks made it worthwhile.

I would be happy to never go to another loud-music-style bar ever again. Take me to a pub, a dive, a martini bar, or any similar place and I'm happy. Conversation and table service are the name of the game.

Also, thanks to a group of my friends, I've rediscovered an old favourite game - Asshole!

My, how we used to play it in the high-school cafeteria...

I like nostalgia.

Wordle

I'm sure you've all heard of these, but if you haven't, Wordle is a thingy that generates a word cloud based on whatever text or website you give it. It presents the words that are used most commonly in the text and ranks them in sizes according to their frequency. I didn't really think the Golden Girls theme that was prominent on my main page was representative of my blog so I plugged in the text for all entries with the word 'mumbly' in them, and this is what I got:

I really like it and I think it captures the essence of my blog. My name, words like 'posted' and 'comments' appear so large because of the footers on each blog entry, but it does make for an interesting collection - I didn't know that Tuesday had such a prominence in my life!

A Palace Made of Gold

As requested, this post will be a review of The Golden Palace.

Almost every aspect of the show I wish to talk about is related to the issue of continuity. The premise is to take as much as possible from a previous series and just plunk it down into a new location.

On the one hand, the show is big on a community-style sense of continuity. Some characters, like the girls' children, only appear in a few episodes, but the show gives a sense that their storyline continues outside of our view. Stan, is around a fair bit, but his continuity is still greater than his actual presence on the show.

On the other hand, there are the men/dates. For the most part, dating is a within-the-episode event. Because of this, the original series is plagued with in-congruencies. Characters often say things that conflict with events that have happened in the past.

On Rose's hand, Miles occupies a special place between the other hands. At some points, they're madly in love, then they're just friends, then they almost get married a few times, and are seemingly unaffected when they go back to just dating the next episode. Because Miles's presence is sporadic, the viewer is forced to assume that he occupies that first sense of continuity - that he and Rose are close and exclusive, but there are so many problems with this continuity. Anyway, I don't want to waste too much time discussing this.

Anyway, everything I've said this far applies to both series.

I love both series and thoroughly enjoyed watching them this year.

The Golden Girls was a fabulous series that was and is timeless. When ratings took a dive in the 6th and 7th seasons, everything that happened was understandable: Bea jumped ship, realizing that the show was falling out of fashion. Everyone else wanted to keep it going and thought a change of scenery would help.

Now, I'll go through the characters to outline my thoughts about both shows, and the Palace in particular.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion among Golden Girls fans and gay culture, I never really liked Dorothy. Granted, she was a vital part of the mechanics of the original series, but we all have our favourites, and she just wasn't on my list.

[Bottom line, I think Golden Girls was a perfect comedic entity. It dropped in ratings because that's just what happens eventually. They should have just ended it, but with a much better finale - Gosh that was sappy!]

In theory, I was excited to be rid of her voice and better-than-thou attitude, but it fell short. Sophia's one-liners, which were once beautiful escalations, seemed out of place. Their tag-teaming was sorely missed in terms of Blanche mocking. St. Olaf stories lost that je ne sais quoi that came with waiting for Dorothy to explode with impatience.

I have a certain fondness for Blanche, likely because she reminds me of a dear friend. In the Palace, she became one of the biggest victims of continuity. Basically, she only has 2 or 3 dates in the whole season, yet the new characters jump right into the slut-casting. I also didn't like the control-freak part of her character that was prominent at the hotel. I know it started in the GG, but it just caused more frustration than anything plot related.

Chuy - HA! Cheech... need I say more?

Roland tried to be the straight man replacement for Dorothy, but he wasn't severe enough to really be effective. I would liked to have gotten to know more about him, but there wasn't room for that.

It's obvious that GG spent the first few seasons making sure that each character was solidly backgrounded and their characters were developed. After that, it went on autopilot and no one ever really needed to venture out of the house. By adding these new characters, they were incomplete pieces in the puzzle, but the show couldn't spend the time it needed developing those characters to the point of the girls.

I LOVE SOPHIA!!!

Through her, we see the stark change in action between the series. In GG, all the action was either sitting at the table in the Kitchen (with one character standing), or sitting in the living room (the Linai was a direct substitute for occasional variety).

In the Palace, there were more scenes and they were used less regularly. Also, the type of action was greatly increased. The kitchen, which was almost exclusively the table in GG, was divided into the table (rarely used), the work area by the stove, and the area near the door. The replacement for the living room would likely be the front desk. Additionally, there was the lobby area and the dining room. I might be making too much of this, but it changed from a static show, where the dialogue was the motivator, to one that was more driven by action.

Sophia seems to be the biggest victim of the change. They basically reduced her to a trouble-making one-line spouter, ignoring the wisdom, and old-country stories that I loved so much

Finally, Rose - my favourite! Back to the loss of the static quality of the GG - sitting around and gabbing, Rose's St. Olaf stories suffered. On GG, there was always a sense that Rose could be telling the story for hours without thinking twice about it (or once, even), but on the Palace, she was almost always standing, giving the sense that she was going somewhere. The roles were reversed, people would stop when she told a story, and it just wasn't the same. I also felt that they dumbed up her character a bit much, to the point that it became almost insincere.

In the end, The Golden Palace had me laughing a lot. I'd long been attached to the characters and was happy to have a little longer with my favs.

Without the Golden Girls, the Palace wouldn't, couldn't, and shouldn't have existed. I would only recommend it for people who watched the entirety of the Golden Girls.

I'm disappointed in the lack of finality. GG had a strong, though cheesy conclusion, but the Palace didn't even make the effort for a season finale, much less a series finale. Surely, they must have realized that they wouldn't be coming back for a second season...

Oh well, thus ends the Golden Girls portion of my life. It's been about 9 or 10 months over which I watched 8 seasons of marvelous comedy. I would happily recommend any and all of it to anyone and everyone!

Back to the Books!

I'm not really a reader. I read articles for seminars and I read blogs and various things on the interwebs, but that's about it. I can't remember the last time I read a book from start to finish for fun. I've tried many times, but I get side-tracked and lose interest.

Today, I went to a bookstore that was having a 50% off sale. I got a nice selection of things that piqued my interest and I'm looking forward to getting around to all of them. I really need to get myself back into reading because I have loads of books coming here in about a month. When my parents visit in August, they're bringing my library of books and music. I'm excited, but realize that it might be a complete waste unless I actually start reading the books.

One of the books I bought was John Gay's The Beggar's Opera. At only 65 pages, I managed to read it in one day, though not in one sitting. I sat in a park and read for a while, I read while walking for a bit, and then I finished it off curled up on a chair in my living room.

I finished the Golden Girls series the other day, and I'm more than halfway through the Golden Palace... I don't think I should get caught up in another series this summer, so I'll replace internet t.v. with books!

Hiking and Vlogging

So, I went hiking today and it was super fun. In order to show you, I vlogged!

It was a long hike - 18k (9 up, 9 down). It was basically a steady rise the entire way up which was nice; nothing too intense, but it kept us on our toes.

This was the first really scenic thing we came across, after about 5 kilometers. It's called Barrier Lake, you'll see more of The Barrier later on.

So, there were three lakes that we saw today: Barrier Lake, Lesser Garibaldi Lake, and Garibaldi Lake (the non-lesser). In addition to the lakes, there were creeks and streams galore, for example...

Aside from a black bear we saw on the drive home, the only wildlife we saw were chipmunks (so tiny and cute) and these birds called Gray Jays. Both were extremely good scavengers. Earlier on the hike, we fed the jays out of our hands - the flew onto us and ate, until we got in trouble from the Ranger. She was actually very nice about it, so we stopped immediately.

When we got to the top and were eating lunch around Lake Garibaldi, these creatures were a nuisance.

As we left to come back down after lunch, we hiked back through the snow. It was actually quite treacherous, but that didn't stop me from doing an action vlog. My roommate suggested it, knowing there'd likely be a scream involved.

A few minutes later, we decided to go over these logs instead of taking the bridge again:

I stopped the vlog early cause I didn't want to drop my phone, but this was a LOT of fun!

I tried to get my roommate to recreate the Log Driver's Waltz, but she didn't know the video, and I didn't know nearly enough of the words. Oh, Tote-bag...

I talked about lakes and rapids and creeks earlier, but what water phenomena could be more exciting than....

Barrier Lake was one of the first scenic things on the hike, but the Barrier was quite a bit higher. Basically, it's a huge rock formation - very steep. The view was spectacular and I felt like I was on top of the world! Because a lot of the boulders we were sitting on were at awesome angles, we had a lot of fun taking pictures that looked like we were falling off the mountain. When my friend posts her pics, I'll share it on here, but for now, here's my final vlog entry!

Why is it so hard to spell my own name?!?

Of all the things that you type all the time, your name should be one that just rolls off your fingers, but it doesn't for me.

Every time I write an email and sign it at the bottom, it turns out something like this:

-MIchael

or

-Miachel

or

-Micahel

etc.

For a while, I tried using the signature thingy on gmail, but I like to change things up. I also don't like that it puts it in a different colour so you can tell it was a thoughtlessly added electronic signature.

There's really no point to my blog post today, you're welcome!

I'm loving summer!

The hike last weekend was fantastic, I had a great Kung Fu class today, I'm going hiking again on Saturday, tomorrow will be filled with Canada day delights, and I just finished a bunch of projects in a row.

The most recent project was a wedding arrangement for voice and string quartet. Originally, I was under the impression that it was for voice and piano, but it turned into a string quartet accompaniment. That's delightful for the wedding, but it took up significantly more time than a piano arrangement would have. Oh well, it turned out well enough, though saccharine as weddings often do!

Really, the only things I NEED to do before going back to school are write a make-up essay and study for the Baroque entrance exam.

Non school-related, I have a stack of piano duo music to learn over the next two months.

I also have some composition projects which are both WANT and NEED, in a sense. I should really finish my Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird cycle/collection:

...Speak of the devil....

In the latest issue of the CMC Newsletter, BC regional director, Bob Baker made mention of the VISI ArtSong Collab and my pieces in particular:

"One of many highlights of the day was the performance of Thirteen ways of looking at a blackbird by Michael Park, during which the singer changes character from that of a woman singing to a blackbird to that of the blackbird singing in response. Participants were transfixed by the transformative effect created through the words and the colour of Gayle Shay's voice, truly demonstrating the power of verse."

I don't mean to brag [yes, I do], but talk about good press!

The other WANT/NEED project I have in mind is an orchestral piece. If I start it during the summer, I'll be able to finish it by November, in time for the VSO reading session deadline.

Also, I feel like I should always be working on something. I had a sense of non-procrastination this last weekend and I want to keep that sensation going.

Speaking of procrastination, I'm making great progress on the Golden Girls. I've been watching them sporadically all year and I'm now on the final season. I don't know how I'll react when it's over and I have to watch the one season of the spinoff they did without Bea Arthur, but I'll cross that bridge when I come to it.

Kung Fu With a View

Yesterday was another pretty frickin' awesome day. As you may know, I've been doing Kung Fu with a group of music students this year. The group meets once or twice a week. We have our classes on Kits Beach, so we're used to having the ocean and the mountains in our line of sight; on a clear day, it's really inspiring. Anyway, we've been talking about doing a hike sometime so we could do Kung Fu on top of a mountain. Long story short, because one of our friends is moving away, we finally got around to it.

The hike we did was E

agle Bluffs, on the north shore of North Vancouver. I always get confused when I try to describe mountains, but we parked where the Olympics happened on mount Cypress. It was about a 45-minute drive and we left at 9 in the morning.

Despite the early morning aspect, the drive set the tone for a day of wonder and merriment. My bassoonist friend brought a fun little book of Canadian children's songs. I remember using the same series of books in elementary school [sidenote: I'm now on a mission to find some other volumes of these books cause they're so fun!] There were some great songs and we had a repeat of a song we learned the last time I went hiking - Lester the Lobster from P.E.I.. We took turns teaching each other the choruses by rote and then passing the book around for solo verses.

After a quick bathroom break, we started the hike. The first section of the hike was mild-to-moderately horrid. Almost exclusively steep s

witchbacks, and very few flat sections. I don't even like walking up a hill in Vancouver, so an hour of up-walking wasn't exactly putting a smile on my face. Unlike last hike, I never reached a point of feeling like death; I learned my lessons from the previous experience - stay hydrated and don't let your sugars drop.

*DIABETES TANGENT*

Last hike, I cut back my Lantus (background insulin) from 36u to 26u - as a result, my sugars were dropping the entire time. This time I only took 21u and my sugars were much more well behaved. They still dropped, but I had them higher to start - 10.0 mmol. At the first viewpoint, they were at 8 something, the lowest they got was 6 something just before lunch.

I made a big mistake - I assumed my s

ugars would be dropping, so I took less insulin for lunch, and took it later than I should have. When we headed back after lunch, my sugars had shot up to 15 and I felt like death! I corrected and after an hour, they were tolerable, but I won't second guess things next time.

*END TANGENT*

We took regular little breaks to re-hydrate and check sugars/snack. Basically, we reached the destination without incident - everyone was happy and healthy and it was good fun!

So, it's summer, right? We were all wearing summer garb like shorts. It was cooler than we expected, but we kept warm by moving around all the time. The sun was playing catch all day, and when it was sunny, it was very

warm. Despite this - THERE WAS SNOW! We had several little snowball fights as we went along, and it was the responsibility of the people at the back of the pack to try to hit the front runners. By far, the most exciting moment of the hike was this:

The discovery of crazy carpets!

This was after we reached the summit and we used them on the way to the Eagle Bluffs Lookout.

[oh ya, so it's a little confusing, but the main destination is not the summit, rather it's a viewpoint. The summit is the highest point, but not that stellar. After the top, you hike down to get to the Eagle Bluffs where you can see Vancouver, and on a clear day, Vancouver Island. This is where we did Kung Fu and ate lunch]

Kung Fu with a view was great! We had a bit of an audience, as we always do at the beach, but we were mostly distracted by the view and the tiredness and the hunger! We focused just on arms, obviously our legs were getting a good workout from the hiking.

Anyway, the section between the summit and the Eagle Bluffs was my favourite - it was downhill a fair bit and snowy. My choral conducting friend and I were the only ones who took crazy carpets. Someone had obviously just left them there for other people's enjoyment. There were lots of little places to slide down on the crazy carpets, lots of screaming and fun! My butt was pretty much soaked for that whole section of the hike

Before we reached the Eagle Bluffs, we ditched the carpets so that other people could enjoy them near the snow.

I hate regretting things, but I regret not holding on to the carpets for another hour! Halfway down, we reached the biggest hill! It was next to an off-season ski hill. My snow friend and I ran down the hill and had fun doing that, but it would have been SO MUCH FUN to have had the carpets.

Oh well.

The hike was great!

Later in the evening, I went to a bonfire and we had s'mores.

It was a fantastic day!

Best Day Ever

I was up all night doing the Easter Seals Piano Marathon. Surviving today on 4.5 hours of sleep, split between two naps, I've had that achey kind of heartburny sensation all day long.

In a sense, I've felt pretty horrid all day long.

So, why didn't I just sleep the day away after the piano marathon?

Because if I did, today would have been lame.

Instead, I went to the VISI/CMC Art Song Collab this afternoon and everything about it was perfect.

As an event that I helped organize, it was a great success. It wasn't a full house, but it was well attended. There were submissions by 2 established and 2 emerging composers, so there was a nice variety as well as a sense of community. As one of the emerging composers, I was glad to be in the good company of Hal Foxton Beckett and Neil Weisensel.

The performers were fantastic - not just their musical skills, but their dedication, willingness, and excitement! Knowing that they only had the music for a few days before today's reading session, I really appreciated the time they spent learning and rehearsing my music. As today's workshop was focused on interpretation, they really engaged with the music, the poetry, and the new musical approaches that I asked for in my songs. In addition to great singing and playing, the performers were so positive and supportive of the songs presented today.

Singing my newest creation, More Than Containers, was Michael Broder - and extremely polished young baritone. Singing The River is Moving and A Man and a Woman was Gayle Shay, a mezzo-soprano with a delightfully velvety tone. At the piano for A Man and a Woman was the supportive touch of Allison d'Amato and finally, Laura Loewen, one of the most compassionate musicians and people I've encountered, played piano for More Than Containers and The River is Moving.

One of the most exciting parts of today's event was the open discussion that followed the performance of each piece. This was a great opportunity for composers and performers to discuss and ask questions of each other. In organizing this event, some concerns had been raised about the involvement of the audience in an open discussion of the pieces and interpretation in general. I'm not sure if those concerns were ever quelled, but there was no reason to worry today. The audience was stacked with interesting, intelligent minds - ready to experience and explore new music.

I should be upfront: the feedback on my pieces was unwaveringly positive, so of course I will sing the audience's praises, but it goes further than that. Today's gathering seemed stripped of pretensions and personal agendas, instead, people had genuine interest in exploring the ideas and interpretations which were presented.

All of these elements came together to make today a wonderful experience. I wasn't nervous at all; the performers and audience created a sense of warmth and support.

Bottom line - I get to add some stuff to my CV, I met some great new people, heard some great music, but most importantly, I heard my own music performed really well and other people really enjoyed it - I call that a good day!

Good Fortune!

I went shopping today at Long & McQuade in Vancouver.

When I was in undergrad, my piano teacher advised me that it was the cheapest place for me to buy music. Time and time again, even with shipping, it was!

I was informed on facebook that they were having a customer appreciation day. I needed to order some scores anyway, so I went for an adventure. Long story short, they were clearing out a bunch of scores with 75% off in addition to my student/teacher discount.

I scrounged the piano section and found a variety of stuff and even picked up a few mini scores for symphonies and whatnot. Holding this armful of music, I thought I was already breaking the bank; but my mental math skills were lacking - it was only $30.

After paying, I continued searching, discovering the full score section and found a LOT of great pieces!

Because I feel like it, here is a catalogue of the scores I got today - from smallest mini scores to largest full scores/piano scores:

Mini Scores

Beethoven Symphony No. 4 and 5-7

Milhaud Concertino de Printemps

Poulenc Sextour

Schoenberg String Quartet Op. 7

Bruckner Symphony No. 7

Richard Strauss Symphony for Winds

Milhaud 3rd String Quartet (with chorus)

Khachaturian's The Valencian Widow Suite

Berlioz Romeo and Juliette

Beethoven Piano Concerto No. 2

John Adams Chamber Symphony

Piano

Saint-Saens Scherzo Op. 87 for Two Pianos Four Hands

Scarlatti 20 Sonatas

Satie Les trois valses distinguées du previeux dégouté

Reger Aus Meinem Tagebuch Op. 82, book 2

Roussel 3 pieces for piano Op. 49

Haydn Easy Piano Pieces and Dances

Bastien Series Playtime at the Piano, Happy Thanksgiving, and Collage of Solos

Scores

Lindberg Cantigas

Dutilleux Sur le même accord

Gounod Petite symphonie

Gubaidulina The rider on the white horse for large orchestra and organ

Pärt's festina lente, pro et contra, Wenn Bach Bienen gezüchtet hätte, and the fratres version for winds and percussion

Shostakovich orchestration of Johann Strauss's polka, The Pleasure Train

Penderecki 3 Pieces in Baroque Style

Hovhanness Holy Mystery of the Martyrs

In conclusion, I'm very happy with my findings!

In the end, I ended up spending $101.31 on scores today, but the savings on the receipts was $610!!! It probably wasn't the ideal time to make an investment in my library, but some sales are just too good to pass up!

Tonight, I go to the opera, play piano all night for a fundraising pianothon, and then go to my workshop tomorrow afternoon. It'll be a while before I sleep!

So, the video from the Vancouver Complaints Choir performance is already up on YouTube!

The weather was beautiful yesterday - it was a wonderful day to be wandering around downtown Vancouver, maybe even a touch too warm. I should have worn shorts and a non-black shirt, but oh well. We garnered some good attention and got good feedback everywhere we sang.

All in all, it was a pretty damned fun experience and it came together just dandy for only 3 rehearsals.

Visit www.complaintschoir.org for more information on how you can set up your own complaints choir!

Milestones and Complaints!

Some important milestones are coming up:

1) This is post #984 ish. Only fifteen more and then it's the big One Thousand!

B) In August, I'll be celebrating the fifth anniversary of this here blog.

Please feel free to leave me some comments on how I should mark either of these momentous occasions.

Over the last month or so, I've become involved with the 2010 Vancouver Complaints Choir. The Complaints Choir project is pretty spiffy and has quite a following. Basically, complaints are gathered from a region, a local songwriter turns those complaints into music and then a choir is organized to perform the song. Do click for more information - it's a fascinating project!

The 2010 Vancouver Complaints Choir will be performing the 10-minute song by Veda Hille tomorrow at various locations in downtown Vancouver at 1, 2, 3, and 4pm. CBC One came by to do some interviews and a recording at one of our rehearsals and it will be aired at 8am Pacific time, tomorrow morning (10 am in Winnipeg, 11 am in Ontario). I was one of the people that she interviewed a little more in depth, so you might hear glimpses of me on the airwaves. I did say, "mumbly", and I was unorganized with my thoughts, but if you're reading on here, you should be used to that. I haven't decided if I even want to be subjected to listening to myself in 6 hours, but I'll set an alarm just in case.

For now, I'm off to try and fill up as much of those 6 hours with sleep as possible.

Movie Reviews

I love bad movies.

Give me poor production values, inconsistencies, flawed storyline. bad acting, etc., and I'm a happy camper. In the other direction, my standards for a good movie are rather high, but luckily, I react the same to most movies that tickle my fancy.

In the past, I've had some friends that would indulge my love for B-movies, and I even had one thickly-browed friend who loved teeny-bopper rom-coms, so that filled a big section of the bad movie category, but there are few people out there who are willing to watch whatever I want.

Lately, my bassoonist friend has indulge me in watching a bunch of bad movies from the new releases wall. Here are some reviews (If you want real details and names, look them up on imdb or something - these are truly michael-style reviews and you better bet there's gonna be spoiling):

Tenure

This was about and English prof who has twice been denied tenure at various universities; surprise surprise, he's up for tenure again... Long story short, he doesn't get it the third time around. I'm glad they didn't go the Hollywood route of realizing his unseen brilliance at the end and getting offered a position at Harvard, etc.; instead, he realized that his passion was for teaching of any kind and that he didn't need to be in a university to do it. In short, they glamorized a huge wage-decrease and basically demotion!

There was a love story involved, but it only really appeared and resolved in the last few scenes, so I wasn't nauseated. The secondary storyline involved the main character's best friend who was searching for Bigfoot - you can't go wrong there! Both of these guys seemed vaguely familiar. I think the main guy was Dewey from Scream, and his best friend often plays a sidekick character.

In short, this movie was better than it should have been!

Visioneers

Starring Zackafanakagakas or something. This was a about a bizarre world where people lead seemingly vacant existences and where dreams are a symptom of the growing epidemic of spontaneous explosions.

This rental was worth it only for the opening 15 minute segment at the main character's workplace. He walks in, gives the finger to a poster - as his coworkers come in, they all flip each other off and say, 'Jeffers morning'. Jeffers is the huge company they work for, which is the self-proclaimed most profitable company in the world. Every minute, a voice announces the time, and how many productive minutes until the weekend. There are also buzzings and beepings and ringings from different sources. I can't do it justice in words, but the opening sequence is like clockwork in it's intriguing and elaborate counterpoint of events.

In the end, the movie falls short, lacking in real character development or a compelling story. I get it that that's the point of the movie, but the point of the movie also seems to be what holds it back.

Confessions of a Porn Addict

This movie stars Spenny from Kenny versus Spenny, for those of you who are familiar with terrible Jackass-style Canadian comedy. This movie is a mockumentary; it doesn't matter what the topic is, the genre is guaranteed to be fantastic. [There's one about a parking-meter attendant that I highly suggest!]

It's about a porn addict whose wife left him as a result. He joins a support group and changes his life, only to realize that his wife has gone into the porn industry - hijinks ensue.

Despite the gratuitous use of pornography, I don't actually recall seeing genitals. Nevertheless, I wouldn't say it was done tastefully. At the end, when he confronts his wife in the middle of a Bukkake filming, the reunion kiss is both heart-warming and stomach-turning!

All in all, the movie is fairly entertaining.

Taxidermia

Weird.

I can barely describe it.

Basically, three short movies in one that were connected by generational lineage, but I still didn't quite get the connection of the first and second sections' main characters. It was foreign - I'm gonna go with Hungarian. Contrasting the last one, this movie has gratuitous genitals, as one should expect from any artsy foreign film.

The first section featured a military assistant or something... he has a fire/candle fetish and he caresses, licks, and nipples the flame. There is an impressive scene where he is jerking off his flame-throwing penis. There's a graphic sex scene but it keeps changing between his partner - the variables are his boss's obese wife, another random lady, and a pig carcass that had been slaughtered earlier that day. The next morning, when his boss finds him asleep with his pants down on top of the carcass, he shoots him in the head and then it pans to a scene where the boss's wife gives birth to a baby boy.

In the second section, the baby boy is now grown up - a Hungarian national speed-eating champion (well, second place). Apparently this is a profession and they train hardcore. The gratuitous obese vomiting was almost too much to handle. Long story short, he and the female speed-eating champion have a baby who ends up being the focus of section three.

Contrary to his gene pool, the son grows up to be an emaciated taxidermist who has to take care of his now incredibly obese father - imagine the Monty Python fat guy right before he explodes. After a fight, the father tries to leave his chair, he dies and his guts spill out all over the floor. The son comes back, cleans out his father's carcass and taxidermifies. He then hooks himself up to a machine that taxiderms himself and also slices off his head and right arm - resulting in the image for the movie cover.

The movie is grotesque to the extreme. While I wouldn't say there was what I would think of as traditional beauty in it, it had a rich tapestry and powerful imagery. Strangely compelling. Also, slightly disturbing.

Apparently, June has not been a good month for blogging.

It's also not been a good month for Kung Fu: I couldn't make it one of the weeks, another it was cancelled, and then all of a sudden, I haven't been in a month.

Comparatively, it's been a great month for composing. I wrote an artsong for the upcoming VISI ArtSong CoLab. While I had done a lot of the planning and prep-work over the last month or so, I did 95% of the work this past Sunday. Let this stand as a testament for me to remember, that I can compose quickly and I should do it more often. I simply need to reaffirm my desire to get lots of music written this summer!

I got a cheque in the mail the other day. It was pre-payment for a jazz standard I'm arranging for some couple's wedding. It's not great money, but the mere fact that they sent the cheque means that I need to get it done sooner than later.

Payment is always a good motivator!

Another project I'm working on is an improvised (ish) dialogue between a speaker and a pianist. My friend and I will be presenting it at a conference later this month. There are also tentative plans that it might be remounted in Toronto, outside of a conference atmosphere... SO I will need to find an intuitive form of notation suitable for another performer to use.

It seems I have squandered away the month of May without doing any of the work I needed finished. I have no real complaints, I've had a great time, but now I need to get down to business - lots of things to get finished/started in the next few weeks.

Diabetes-wise, things are pretty good. I tried to use the CGM the other week - after about 5 hours of "lost sensor" and "bad sensor" messages, I gave up. I'm pretty sure they're past the expiry date, so I'm not surprised, but the expiry dates on these things come up far too quickly! No one can afford to use these things too regularly, but you almost have to unless you want them to go bad , which they apparently actually do.

I only have one sensor left, after which I can't see myself having the funds to buy more, nor the motivation. The technology, somehow, is still infantile and unreliable. Yes, it can shed some light on trends and the intricacies of rising and falling sugars, but it takes an incredible amount of work and luck to get it working properly.

A week later...

Oopsie, I made it an entire week without posting!

Blogging goes in ebbs and flows - but even though it's been lower on my list of priorities lately, I have no intentions of stopping.

I'm loving the summer: Kung Fu, Frisbee, walking, soccer, and going for sushi have been some of the things keeping me distracted from composing lately...

My diabetes control was getting a bit out of hand for a while - when I took a step back, I realized it was because I've been taking insulin closer and closer to the first bites of meals. Now that I'm consciously aiming for 10-20 minutes before I start eating, the numbers are behaving much more nicely. It's a mixture of letting the insulin work and also double checking carb counting during that time! It's impressive/bad - how fast bad habits become routine.

Speaking of breaking the routine, I finally did something that I've avoided for a long time... I learned how to crochet. Earlier this year, my roommate tried learning to knit, but gave up in favour of crochet - which she picked up quickly and really enjoys. I am a die-hard knitter, so I mocked her and flauted the inferiority of her chosen handicraft. Nevertheless, I gave it a try.

I was a terrible student, impatiently ignoring most of her instructions, but eventually I listened to enough to get through making a granny square. After mild-to-moderate frustrations with the technique of crochet, I caught on and (within the first project) mastered the basics of double crochet.

I'm still not convinced that it's a worthwhile venture, but I'll stick with it for a while longer.

As I become more active during this beautiful weather, I am momentarily missing the insulin pump I was using this time last year.

And now the moment has passed.

Time never seems to align properly; last year, I was not very active at all, but now I am doing some kind of physical activity pretty much every day or second day. It would be great to be able to adjust my basal insulin, but that's just not going to happen!

I am going hiking on Tuesday, and since that takes up a substantial chunk of the day, I will be cutting my Lantus almost in half. Last hike, I dropped it from 36 units down to 25, this time I'm going to 20.

Today, I had to sit out of the last half hour of my Kung Fu class. After an hour, of chugging orange juice between exercises, I ran out of juice and my sugars were 4.2. It wasn't safe to continue, knowing my downward trend at the time...

I ate lunch not to long before, so I could have done with much less insulin for that meal, but then my sugars would have been higher going into the class, and I would have felt shitty.

It's a hard balance to find, but I'll keep trying!