Recapping a Month in Trichotomy

Making an impact

Wow, it's been a month since I wrote here. It's not that there aren't stuff happening, it's just that I have gotten lazy about writing them.

Four weeks ago we went out into the city for Saturday. La Professeure said she wanted to go to a concert, and the Barge Music has musicians from the St. Petersburg quartet playing, so we went. The music itself was decent - I think it's harder to impress me as I get older - they played Brahms, Schumann, and I think a Mozart piano quartet.

But before the concert, we met up with Wise Young Friend and family in Dumbo and had lunch and hung out. It was the area where I used to work, so it was nice to go back to the neighbourhood and see what has changed. Little boo-boo is now obsessed about the Titanic and her sister ships. Apparently the school had taught him about the Titanic and the Brittanic (which was a hospital ship in WWI and was sunk by a mine), but didn't tell them about the third sister ship the Olympic, which has the most boring story - basically it ran the tras-Alantic passenger route until it was replaced by Queen Elizabeth a Queen Mary. So he learned a lot about the Olympic through wikipedia. Schnookie was under the weather, which made her easier to deal with. They played, got ice-cream, went to a Dumbo hipster bookstore, and had a nice time. When we went the bookstore, LBB went up to the front and asked for books about the Olympic. It was cute.

After the concert, La Professeure and I went to the same restaurant we went to on our 4th (?) date on Governor's Island. It was nice. We had planned to meet WYF there for lunch, but our search engine had incorrect information about its opening hours (it was closed for lunch on Sundays but our search engine said it would be open). Given that it is my team's mission to enable efficient updating of information like opening hour for businesses on the search engine's map, I actually for the first time felt the direct impact of my job. It was kind of weird.

Speaking of which, I have recently finished off the 2-month-long assignment to research the storage backend for the next-generation system, which, when built, should fix problems like not updating the correct opening hours of restaurants. So last week I started to write code, and it is a relief. I gave a tech talk and a tech review to my organisation (basically all of my boss's boss's underlings), and got positive results, so that went well. Funny thing: the first talk was scheduled on a Tuesday (Jun 3rd), but for some reason I had thought it was scheduled on Wednesday. So I had planned to use Monday afternoon and the whole of Tuesday to prepare the talk. And it was only on Monday afternoon that I realized I messe up the schedule. So I only had half a day to crank out a 30 minute talk. My tech lead, who also mis-remembered the date, was impressed I could do that. He doesn't understand that, the most valuable skill I learned with my Ph.D. is the ability to crank out powerpoint slides at short notice and bullshit about mundane subjects. I worked at home that night, though.

So, up till the last two weeks, work had been a drag - days after days of reading documents, writing documents, and talking to people. It was research. It felt like grad school all over again. But more importantly, in addition to deciding our storage solution, I also have a pretty detailed design and implementation plan for our storage layer, so, now it is just a matter of executing the plan with codes. But I am glad it's over. It was appropriate that our product area had an offsite retreat the Thursday and Friday after my talk. We went to Hawley, PA, to a resort called Woodloch that is by a lake, and spent two days there. It was fun once you get to know your way around it. On the first day, I went for a bike ride and played mini-golf, before joining other people on my team for a boat touraround the lake. That night we played card games in the adjacent cabin, had talks - I traded horror stories about our previous jobs with the new guy, and heard about my other co-worker's kicking out his son. The next day I took part in a group-building excercise, where we were divided into teams and asked to build a boat out of cardboard, duct tape, a yard stick and some bedsheet. And at the end of the hour, we'd take our boat to the lake and race it. We would take the boat out to a bouy, turn around, and get back to the beach. There's an intern on my team (the teams are randomly assigned, but I know everyone on it except the intern) who had talked to a bus driver who had done the boat building before and advised him to build a simple box-shaped boat because right angles are easiest to seal with duct tape, so that's what we did. While all the other teams have nice, boat-looking entires, we had a pizza box. I was the lightest member on the team, so I was chosen to race. I was convinced that the thing would sink. So I was pleasantly surprised that it managed to float. When the race began, I paddled as fast as I could (we used two pieces of left-over cardboard as paddles), trying to finish the race before that thing sinks. Steering was easy because I could just do differential paddling, as I found out by accident at the beginning of the race when I made a turn because I held the paddle wrong in my left hand. So, I was focused on making my way back before the thing sinks. And not only I made it back, I was first place. Fear is a great motivator. While other boats were still making their way back, one of my teammate decided that he was going to take the pizza box out for a spin. I think he actually made it back before some other boats completed a lap. It was fun. But also scary. After the race I went to paddle boat with my co-worker, played some mini-golf, and unsuccessfully tried to find the archery range. I think I could have come back an hour earlier, but still it's nice.

Work has been slowing the the past week though because of the World Cup. I think my company has accepted that there will be a huge productivity loss. They set up bigscreen TVs in the cafeteria - really it looks like one of those sports bars now, with football showing at every screen - showing world cup games on all day long. When there is a game someone is interested in, they could just head upstairs to watch. It's very nice.

It is a wonder we got stuff done.

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Failure is not an option

The amateur musician group held its audition for this year's Carnegie Hall on the 31st of May. I had auditioned already during a regular concert, but I was curious what other people are doing, so I went. Turned out the Dramatic soprano and the Taiwanese pianist had the same idea.

There were a lot fewer musicians auditioning this time, supposedly. I wasn't there for the audition last year (too busy getting married) but I heard there were 40 groups auditioning for what turned out to be about 18 spots. And in previous years, the ratio of auditioning groups and performance spots were about at 2:1. However, this time we have two concerts, each could have 9 spots, but only 24 groups auditioning. That was a worriying sign. There were some very poor auditioners too, so picking out the people should be easy.

Remember the organiser said I could choose between playing the "slow movement" from Rachmaninov's Pagannini rhapsody and the Rondo from Chopin's 1st concerto, and chose the slow Rach? He called a few day later and said, nevermind, the other pianist really doesn't feel comfortable learning the Chopin. So I am stuck playing the technically more challenging Chopin afterall. La Professeure said, after she heard both pieces, that she suspected that this was going to happen. And frankly, so did I. There are very few pianists in the amateur musician group who can handle the Chopin and even fewer who are good collaborators. Oh well, so I am going to end up closing the 2015 concert afterall.

After the audition, a group of us went to get dinner at an up-scale burger joint. The food was very good... I had veggie burger (where the patty is replaced by a mushroom crown), and it was better than many "real" burgers I've had. And afterwards, we went to a place called "Insomniac Cookies", they always somehow have freshly baked cookies ready. I was looking forward to re-visiting even a whole week before going to the audition.

The whole time we were getting ready to go from one place to the next, however, the organiser pulled me over and talked at length about his vision for the Carnegie Hall concert next year. He didn't put it into these words, but basically, he also sees that the popularity of the group is on the wane, as evidenced by the lack of auditioners, and generally lower enthusiasm from the participants. He likes the Carnegie Hall concerts but thinks that the Weil Hall doesn't give as much prestige to the group and thus as much visibility, and he sees the forming of the orchestra as a way to gain prominence and enthusiasm to the group? And moving to Zankel hall is a means/stunt to gain attention from the music circle. So, in his words, for the survival of the group, in the Zankel Hall concert, "failure is not an option". He also said that the 2015 concert should take priority over the 2014 concerts.

I wonder what is his vision for the group anyway... The way he is managing it, it seems like he is trying to make this group into something of a professional organisation, rather than a club where amateur musicians can get together and swap performances. We've seen drama caused by the Carnegie Hall concerts before - actual amateurs and regular participants feel chafted when semi-professional ringers come in and take their place at the Carnegie Hall concerts - so, it got me wondering what the point is. It seems like his vision is not just to afford amateur musicians performance opportunities, but also professional-level amateur musicians performance opportunities. That explains a lot of decisions he's made about the direction of the group - going to Zankel, cutting down on the number of performers at the regular concerts, hand-picking the orchestra that he's going to form to ensure the quality and collegiality of the orchestra, or refusal to do any sort of outreach program. The program for this year's Carnegie Hall concert came out today, and he's only giving 15 groups the chance to perform. We were surprised, actually, some pretty good groups were not chosen. We think he's a bit of a snob.

We wonder why the interest in the group has fallen in recent years, even thoug we are doing more Carnegie Hall concerts, have more word-of-mouth, and have partnership with the Orchestra of St. Luke's (though I think it's like a supply line for their chamber music classes), I wonder if it really is because the novelty factor of the group faded. Or maybe there are more competition (for pianists there are other amateur groups, and for other players there are the many amateur orchestras in the area), or maybe a combination of all things. I can understand the point that he doesn't want to start yet-another-amateur-sounding-orchestra (like this: http://www.npr.org/2014/06/22/324480108/almost-intermediate-adults-learn-lessons-in-late-starters-orchestra) but at some point you have to admit the higher-barrier-of-entrance is going to drive down interest and membership. The art song group that I was involved with earlier also switched its focus to cater to higher-level members. They arrange masterclasses, competitions, workshops, all catered towards professionals (Shepherdess, who went to a masterclass, said the coach, who teaches at Julliard, was downright mean and was angry about how tough he was - I guess she's not used to taking master classes). But, he also maintains an outreach program, which amateur singers would usually attend, so they don't feel left out, and get the performance opportunity without harsh criticism. And more importantly, he leaves Treasurer in charge of the community outreach arm of the organisation, that way he could focus on running the rest of the group. It's worked well for him; I've attended both types (my sister-in-law was in a master class once, and I played in some outreach concerts when they are short of pianists), and they feel very different types of performances. As long as everyone gets what they want, everyone is happy. So, I wonder why the amateur musician group can't do something like that. Hopefully this professional-quality amateur orchestra gets off the ground.

We went to a "tea party" hosted by the Treasurer two weekends ago, and I got to talk to one of the cellists who played at Panaman Mezzo Soprano's Bachianas Brasileiras and found out her experience with the group as a musician at a noticeably amateur level (I consider myself at amateur level too, it's just that sometimes people mistake me for being a professional, for whatever reason). It turns out that the chamber musician coaching program went through a bad phase where there was some sort of mishandling in OSL's administration, such as some people wanting to play in a higher-level ensemble than one they were placed in, and some were not happy with the experience. I would have imagined, however, that that would always be the case in any sort of adult chamber music programs... We swapped stories about the amateur chamber musician circuit (with programs at Mannes, 92nd Street Y, etc.), and I think that sort of drama is pretty common. She said it's like the dating scene, which was exactly what I had written in this diary when I was in that situation. Those programs are always a mix of retirees picking up their instruments from childhood, and thus rusty, high school students so advanced they want to take college-level classes from a conservatory, and were playing at conservatory level, professionals like me, who are at various skill levels, from conservatory level (where I think I am) to professional levels (those are usually conservatory graduates who went onto another field but want to keep on playing music), so it's always a challenge to find placement people in groups that makes everyone happy. I just accepted it as the way things are, but not everyone is so easy-going - some of these would-be musicians are real prima donna types. So that's where the complaints originate. I'm not sure how well that reflects on the amateur group.

So, I am hoping this orchestra stunt pays off - not only in raising the group's profile as a professional-level amateur group, but also in keeping members happy and engaged.

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Popular

The Tea party itself was fun. Treasurer had people bring in all sorts of tea, brews them, and have everybody share it, with tapas, dessert, dim-sum, and assorted munchies. We were full after just half an hour.

We have the usual music playing that are always a feature in our gatherings. People would come up and play whatever they were working on, and it is always fun. I'm not so sure, however, what the other non-musical friends think. Not all people like classical music, I'd think, so having them sit through one musician after another may be rude? Especially some of us are actually just sight-reading... or me, Treasurer actually asked me to sing "La ci darem la mano" with her, while accompanying ourselves. It sounded awful - you really can't play and sing at the same time - and I had phelm, but that is part of what makes it fun - making ugly sounds. So that's nice - I can't help but think other guests in attendance would be appreciative of it though. I also found out I am getting worse at accompanying now. Without regular practice I think it is a skill that can slip. So goes with sightreading too.

I stayed for a long while, maybe 5 hours, and often times I wonder if La Professeure gets bored while we "talk shop" about music. When she talks shop with her colleagues I would find it interesting because I had been in academia but I can't imagine us talking about Faure Vs Chausson would be interesting to her. Like last weekend, we went to Port Jefferson to spend time with La Professeure's animal behaviour co-worker. They have a dog and would take it to a secluded beach by the port regularly. It was a long drive for us to get out there but it was a nice visit. Once we found the beach - which is just a little 5 minutes walk away from the touristy area - the place was quiet. A lot of people bring their dogs and kayaks there to go into the water. We had a picnic and went to the farmer's market afterwards. It was a nice visit.

We are popular. Every weekend there would be at least one social activity (today we just came back from her neuroscientist co-worker's daughter's dance recital, and we had already turned down another invitation to party at the Treasurer's), but I am looking forward to 1 1/2 weeks from now, when we'll be on our honeymoon. It should be all time to ourselves.

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Last updated June 22, 2014