Compromises in Trichotomy

A couple of weeks ago I complained off-handedly about the commute I’m having, and that made La Professeure sad because she said she loves her life right now, and wants me to love mine. I guess picking a place to live is always a multi-objective optimization problem and you can never have everything you want. It is hard to convince her that, no matter where we live, I’ll always have something to complain about. Comes with being a New Yorker I think.

The amateur musician’s group held its audition two weekends ago. There were a lots of good people this year, though, the pool is about the same size as last years. Except this time there is only one concert, so the quality will be higher. They haven’t announced the result yet, but I already know I won’t be playing solo there, even though the organizer told me I am literally everybody’s first choice. That’s because I’m going to play as a soloist with the Human Orchestra in the encore of the concert, so if I get to play as a soloist soloist, it’ll be too much NDS time. I’m okay with it too - I like the fact that some other soloist will get the chance to perform, and that I can now focus on only 10 minutes’ worth of music rather than 15 minutes. Even though, I really would like to play the Liszt’s transcription of Der Erlkonig is so much fun to play. Maybe next year.

Rehearsals for rach2 with the Human Orchestra is crawling along. We managed to rope in a bass who sang in our Carnegie Hall concert two years ago. Almost all professional-level singers we know have limited choir experience, and I never knew how bad it sounds to have a bunch of soloists singing out together in a choir. It’s hard to hit the spot where the singers is amateur, can find his/her way in a score, but also a choral singer. Our Tenor recused himself after a rocky rehearsal, and we managed to find an Argentinian tenor - who sings primarily show tunes - to replace him. It’s actually an improvement. The organizer says he’s still looking to expand the group. He’d better. We made a recording of our rehearsal last week and I couldn’t listen to it without laughing at how bad it was.

The Treasurer roped me into accompanying at an anniversary of a cemetery in Kew Gardens next weekend. Apparently there are a number of ‘famous’ musician buried there, though I’d heard of none of them. The only one I know is the Van Cliburn’s teacher, and she asked me to learn Van Cliburn’s program for when he won’t the Tchaikovsky’s competition (which I think includes Tchaikovsky concerto and Rach 3). I said no, and she assigned me songs from Frank Howson (I’d never heard of him before this) with Jean Valjean from last year’s Les Miz. Except Jean Valjean went AWOL (no pun intended) and now she got Javert and a lady who likes to sing spiritual at the amateur concert to step in. I’ve never played for them before and it looks likely we’ll only have one rehearsal each next week before the concert, but I really don’t care if it does not sound good. It was awkward when Valjean re-surfaced and the Treasurer had to politely tell him she’d already made other plans, but at least I don’t have to deal with it.

Work has been piling up recently, because we are short staffed and other teams are making their dependencies known as there is only one month before the quarter ends. It really doesn’t help that our self-proclaimed Loud Mouth co-worker keeps asking rudimentary questions about our code that he could have found out himself. And complain about the absence of features that only he wants. Normally I can spent babying him and teach him how to look up the information or explain how unhelpful he feature request is, but when my todo list piles up it is hard not to let my annoyance slip out.

I thought that since I’m out of school and out of the education business, end-of-school year rush is not a thing anymore, but I was wrong.