doodlyroses

It's...over?

2012-03-18T03:42:00.000-07:00

So I gave my senior recital tonight! And it's over!

The whole thing happened too quickly for me to comprehend. I came back the week after spring break and in a few days it was March 17. Then before I knew it, it was 7:30 and then before I could even blink I was holding flowers in front of an audience on its feet.

It has gone by too fast, but isn't that how life is?

It almost seems like it hasn't happened, but I have the live stream recording to prove it. (Oh yeah, my recital was broadcast live online. Welcome to the twenty-first century.) Somehow this hypothetical event that always lay ahead of me has been committed to the past, with all the quirks and imperfections I never could have foreseen.

The one thing I'm terrified of right now is that I'll fall prey to the Post-Recital Depression (PRD?) I had last year after my junior recital. It sounds stupid and silly but after my recital last year, I could hardly get out of bed or find any meaning in what I was doing. It was a horrible place to be. I'm hoping that the slew of projects I have to steamroll through will keep me too busy to get let down.

"What projects?" you're probably not saying right now. Well, tomorrow (today, really, as we're almost four hours into Sunday) I start...

...

RECORDING AN ALBUM!

I know! Whoa! It's all happened so fast. Two weeks ago I was wandering around Manhattan, this past week I found myself plummeting toward one of the most significant events of my college career, and this week a recording opportunity sort of fell into my lap. And if all goes well, I'll have a CD to my name in a few weeks/months/hopefully-not-years.

I also have a bazillion research projects and whatever. And I have the performance of my concerto with the orchestra in May. And my future is so undefined and scary and exciting that I'm starting to think I'll have a reason to get out of bed every morning.

But I will say this—I hope, hope, hope that my senior recital, something so big and important to me now, will be nothing compared to what I have ahead of me. I hope that I'll have performances that blow my senior recital away. I hope that in several years I'll look back on my senior recital the way high school kids look back on their second-grade plays. I hope that there will be many recitals and concerts, some that will be tearful disappointments and some that will be exhilarating triumphs, and the important thing will be that I have those opportunities. I hope that this is only the humble beginning of something greater, and that the steps I'm taking now will put me a little bit closer to where I want to be.

Am I a great success now? No, not by a long shot. But I'm doing things I never imagined myself doing when I was in high school. I'm performing, premiering works, recording a CD, playing music I never would have been able to play before, soloing with an orchestra, and finding out that maybe, maybe a dream that I've feared would never come close to coming true may be a little possible.

There is so much to look forward to. There will be disappointments—there already have been, and there always will be. But I need to keep moving, never stopping, always pushing. Tonight only reminded me of that. This isn't the end of anything; it's only a benchmark in a continual journey. And I have to remember one of my favorite bits of advice from one of my favorite books:

"You have to keep beating your head against the wall until you come to a soft spot, and then you must beat even harder."

Tests

2012-02-13T00:26:00.000-08:00

As I went through the dreaded TSA screening at the airport this weekend, hastily throwing my shoes in a plastic bin and presenting my plastic baggie of travel-sized liquids, I found myself attempting to quell a rising mixture of dread, anxiety, and fear.

My mind suddenly flashed back to a memory of first grade, when—don't laugh!—for the first time, I got a test score that wasn't a 100%. It was a devastating experience for a six-year-old who had taken her own perfection for granted (you may now psychoanalyze me).

The thing is, stupid little life processes, like TSA screenings, optometrist exams, and check-ups, give me something akin to testing anxiety. It doesn't make sense, considering I can walk on stage in front of hundreds of people and perform just fine, or I can give speeches and present papers in front of audiences without panicking about it.

Yet the last time I had an eye exam, as the optometrist calmly asked me which was better, one or two, I had to struggle to keep down the anxiety that I might give the wrong answer, and when she determined that my eyesight had gotten worse, I felt just like I had done the unthinkable and failed a test.

Likewise, as I watched my belongings roll down the x-ray conveyer belt, I tried not to feel like I was about to take an important exam which I might fail. And right before I walked through the metal detector, I felt as if I were suspended in that moment right before you're allowed to flip over a midterm that's just been passed out, and when I walked through and no horrific alarm went off, I felt the same kind of relief that you feel when you finally do flip over that midterm and realize that you do in fact know all the answers.

I seriously love my professors

2012-02-12T00:17:00.001-08:00

One of the things I just can't get over is how much my two piano professors care about me.

My first grad school audition today didn't go as well as I had hoped—I'm usually able to suppress the nerves for performances and auditions but today I was way more nervous than I'd anticipated, to the point that when I walked into my audition it was hilariously difficult for me to just say things. It didn't go well enough for me to feel satisfied afterwards, nor did it go so badly that I could at least cry about it—rather, I just felt kind of blank and surprised.

After some debating, I called my primary piano professor; it's an honor, for me, to be given a professor's cell phone number and I didn't want to abuse my privilege, but I figured it was okay since he has me call him after competitions and such to let him know how it went. I left a voicemail, then called my mom, then sent both my professors an email saying how it had gone.

Later that day my primary professor called me back, and that one phone call somehow lifted the weight I didn't even know I'd been carrying all day off my shoulders. It wasn't a totally unusual phone call, but it left me feeling that everything would be okay.

Later I checked my email and got a reply from my other professor, and it made me feel even better. Neither of them had coddled me, or sugarcoated things, but they were just truthful, positive, and supportive, and that was just so incredibly great.

This year especially, I've realized what wonderful mentors they are to me—it makes me wish I could keep them close to me forever, run all my important life decisions by them, have them coach me on my music every day, and talk to them after every success and disappointment. It's too bad life just doesn't work like that. You can't go through life scooping up guardians to flank you wherever you go and take care and counsel you; the most you can do is appreciate them while you've got them to yourself and do your best to absorb their wisdom and knowledge.

In defense of art again

2012-02-06T23:23:00.000-08:00

Facebook recently seems to have turned from a place for me to keep up with my friends' lives into a forum for my acquaintances to share and re-share comics, pass links to news articles around, and spew their political or religious beliefs. I logged onto Facebook today and one of the things that caught my eye was the news that a politician (doesn't matter which one, they're always doing this) was pledging to cut funding for the arts.

The endlessly frustrating thing about these smug figures—regardless of political party—is the way they paint (pun not intended) the arts as a useless, disposable luxury that needs to make way for more important things. The other frustrating thing is that there are many people in this world who agree with said smug figures.

I guess when these people think of "arts education" they think of kids in school being taught to paste construction paper together or a horde of instrument-wielding children hooting tunelessly in band class; and when these people think of "funding the arts" they imagine millions of dollars being thrown at symphonies that play boring music only old people like to listen to and charge too much for tickets anyway, and people who make weird sculptures that get placed in parks for birds to poop on.

It is just too bad that these people—politicians and plebeians alike—can't seem to understand that the arts are a functional thing, essential to society and to humanity. I dare anyone who wants to cut any sort of arts funding to go a week without using, doing, or looking at anything that involves the arts of any kind.

First they'd have to get rid of their clothes. Clothes and textiles are designed by artists. Then they'd have to move out of their house or apartment because the building they live in was invariably designed by an architect. Naked and shelterless, if they were able to find a place to lay their head (parks don't count, they're designed too) they couldn't watch anything to pass the time, as movies and TV shows are produced by artists (and they wouldn't be allowed to have TVs or computers anyway, as those are designed by arts-educated people) and they couldn't read anything either, for writing is an art, as is bookbinding, newspaper-printing, and layout creation. They wouldn't be allowed to listen to music of any sort, and the politician who did this (not that any would) would find him or herself no longer a politician, with no speechwriter to write speeches or designer to make signs and billboards.

The upside is that no one would have to see this poor pathetic arts-deprived sap, as he or she could not allow photographs to be taken, since photography is an art.

I'm not saying that cutting arts funding would result in a world where we're all bored cavemen who aren't allowed to do anything. But eliminating funding for the arts sends a very powerful message: that humankind's rich, unique ability to create is useless, that the creativity that drives human innovation to improve our quality of life and our ability to create even more is not worth supporting or studying, that in the end we are all just wretched creatures scurrying pointlessly across this lonely Earth.

It tells children—the ones that dream of being artists and writers and musicians and dancers—that these dreams are stupid. It tells the dreamers who grew up to pursue being architects and designers and opera singers and concert pianists and ballet dancers and journalists and photographers that their very existence and struggle has absolutely no bearing on humanity.

It contradicts the fact that things like the Mona Lisa and Beethoven's Fifth, held as the pinnacles of human achievement (we sent Beethoven's music out into space to represent us to the aliens, for gosh sakes) are treasured and revered. If the arts are not worth funding, then what is the point of valuing art?

If you strip art away from humankind, what do you have left? Without art, we're really nothing more than the other animals on this planet, living to eat and sleep and reproduce so that our descendants can eat and sleep.

What an absolutely wretched existence.

Thank you, Mrs. Mittelstet

2012-02-05T14:26:00.000-08:00

These days, checking my email has all sorts of emotional ramifications. In the past few weeks alone, I've opened my inbox and danced for joy, wept with pain, and sobbed out of happiness.

This week I got an email that one of my favorite literature teachers of all time, Mrs. Mittelstet, had passed away from Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease.

The surprising thing was that amid all of the predictable emotions—sadness that she was gone, disbelief that someone so sprightly and animated was no longer alive, regret that I hadn't visited her more or sent her a card—I felt something more amorphous and intangible. I was glad that I had her as a teacher, thankful that I had known her, happy in a way that I couldn't call it happy, but what else could I call it?

Mrs. Mittelstet wrote twenty-something recommendation letters for me. (Did I ever properly thank her? I hope to God I did, but then again high school Sharon was a little too self-absorbed.) She was one of the few people I knew with a Southern accent I didn't hate. She made little jokes about our first name (hers was Sharron, with two Rs).

When we discussed The Great Gatsby, she called Tom Buchanan and Myrtle's apartment the "love nest" and giggled every time she said it. She would often repeat it, "the love nest," stretching out the "love" and giggle again. She introduced us to great literature, which I loved but didn't truly appreciate until years later. She encouraged us to write, and even though I cringe now thinking about my Poe-esque short story (which incorporated what little I knew of Robert and Clara Schumann, and Papillons Op. 2, which I was learning at the time), she had me read it aloud and said it was too bad I wasn't able to play Papillons for the class.

She was witty, bright, and lovable. She had a way of looking over her glasses and winking at you that made you feel like you were both in on a joke. When I visited her after high school, she would open her arms wide and hug me and be genuinely happy when I told her that I was happy in college.

Mrs. Mittelstet, I hope you are at peace, and I hope you know what an impact you had on your students. My biggest regret, I think, is not telling you so when I had the chance.

Late Night Thoughts

2012-02-03T00:20:00.000-08:00

It's not strictly late night yet—it's barely midnight, but this is something I think about when I'm lying in bed, unable to sleep because my brain doesn't know when to take a break.

I'm happy with what I'm doing in life. I'm glad that I'm actively pursuing the things I love and am passionate about.

The tangible amount of work and effort that this all entails, though, is fairly formidable. And even though I love what I'm doing, sometimes I catch myself thinking, "Why am I doing this? Do I have to do this?"

Sometimes—just sometimes—I wonder if I'd be just as happy if I chose one thing, and dedicated myself wholly to it. There are times—when I'm struggling to manage two design jobs, trying to find time to read the sixteen books I've accumulated so far for my music history research project, when I'm skimming through the sheet music I need to arrange for another project, when I'm brainstorming an effective grassroots woman's rights campaign for yet another senior project, when I'm hunched over millimeter-high type to set in the letterpress, when I realize that I haven't practiced violin all week, when I'm coding a CSS stylesheet—when I think, "Why am I doing this? I'm trying to become a concert pianist in a world brimming with talented musicians; I should drop everything and focus only on piano."

And yeah, if you put a gun to my head and asked me to do the one thing I love the most, I'd run to the piano and stay there. There is no doubt, in my mind, that, if my interests were progeny, the piano would be the favored eldest child.

So sometimes, I lie in bed and wonder—would I be happy if I only had one passion? Or am I the type of person who needs a million different outlets to find meaning in life and art? Do people like that even exist, or am I kidding myself? And by simultaneously pursuing ten million different avenues, am I crippling myself in one?

Now that I've typed this out, my thoughts appear far less eloquent and weighty and thorny than they do in my head at 2 AM. Maybe the gravity of my thoughts increases as the hours go by, or maybe they are really empty thoughts to begin with and I'm too convinced of my own importance.

Hmm.

In which I finally update my blog

2012-01-31T23:08:00.000-08:00

It's a really good thing that blogging isn't my job, cause otherwise I'd be unemployed, right? This post is brought to you by Ben, who reminded me to show a little love to my blogs.

So here is a post, whoohoo! The unfortunate thing about my blog is that I actually think of good blog posts all the time—I compose them in my head, little witty morsels of brilliance about my life, and look forward to typing them out. I never do, and then when I'm finally pushed to update, it's something half-hearted and not at all intriguing or impressive.

The other thing is that this is a public blog, and the downside to living an interesting life is that half the stuff that's at all fascinating is not fit for publishing on here. That's not because I get up to depraved or illegal activities, but simply because, believe it or not, I don't live a life totally disconnected from other people, and out of deference to the people in my life, I don't write about the stuff that involves other people in non-professional situations they don't want the world to know about, you know?

But just so this post isn't a vague smorgasbord of apologetic I-promise-I'm-not-boring, here are four things for you, dear reader who I'm sure is nonexistent at this point:

1. See my roommate's blog post (with photos!) of us at the Conservatory's Dinner Dance, which is, as you can guess, dinner and dancing. It is one of the few occasions in which I get all dressed up not for piano-playing purposes.

2. I WON THE CONCERTO COMPETITION.

Number two is kind of a big deal for me...ever since I got here I've dreamed and agonized about winning it, and playing with the orchestra at the conservatory commencement concert. I'm not a seasoned competition winner (if anything, I'm a seasoned competition loser) and I've never soloed with an orchestra. I rarely get any kind of concrete external validation that I'm actually any good at music, and getting the news that I won, after having been rejected from a few grad schools already, was super validating, in a take that, world! kind of way. I'm not the type of person who cries openly, but I started sobbing when I got the news.

3. Grad school auditions are coming up and I'm slightly panicked about that.

4. I have three research papers to work on as well as several senior projects, and I really don't know how that happened. Goodbye sleep, it was nice knowing you!

Four things someone should have told me about music

2012-01-06T20:56:00.000-08:00

Happy 2012, everyone! I know I'm a little late but I'm still wishing people happy new year—I even included a little happy-new-year note in a package I was returning for a refund the other day. And really, what's stopping anyone from saying "Happy 2012" all year long? I'm going to keep hoping that 2012 will be a good year and by Beethoven, if it's not a good year, I'll make it one.

Anyway everyone who has a blog (basically...everyone) has been writing about their resolutions for the year. Like I've said before, I've never really believed in resolutions, although remember that one resolution I made about writing thank-you cards? I totally kept it up. I bought boxes of cards and went to town writing people thank-you cards all year.

So ten points to Ravenclaw, hurrah!

In a nutshell, my "resolutions" are to work harder, practice more, and dream bigger. Not very interesting as far as resolutions go, so I thought that for my first post of 2012, I would write about something else: what I kind of wish someone (another pianist? Clara Schumann's ghost? my subconscious self?) could have told me about this whole being-a-serious-classical-musician business before High School Sharon decided on Present Sharon's fate. These may or may not be universal or good or even at all true, but I write from the perspective of a twenty-one-year-old going on her seventeenth year (yikes!) of studying piano and discovering certain things along the way.

Here goes! Four things it would have been nice (albeit crushing and disillusioning) to know about seriously pursuing music...

1. You are not going to be capable of the impossible.
I was not born some news-making genius prodigy with an eidetic memory, and thus I don't have Mozart-esque skills. That's fine. Some little part of me, though, kind of assumed that somewhere down the road, I would get really really really good, and be able to, oh, I don't know, learn and memorize a concerto a day, or something. Who knows, maybe I'll actually be able to do that one day, but it is actually really ridiculous to count on being able to do something impossible in the future. That being said, some things that used to be really hard for you will become really easy, so that's okay.

2. You will still have ups and downs.
Pretty self-explanatory. I don't think anyone ever becomes so great that they land in this permanent state of greatness. Famous world-class pianists have their downs; it's what keeps them human. (And if you ever find a pianist who never has any downs, ever, that's how you know that the robots have taken over.)

3. Your self confidence should not be dependent on how good you are.
Kind of going from #2, you're going to have your downs, and if your self-worth is only based on how great you perceive yourself as a pianist (or musician in general) then those times when you feel that you're not that great, and everyone is better than you, will absolutely kill you. Know yourself as a whole, and stay in touch with those qualities that make you a good person, not just a good musician. This is really important, because...

4. You're not going to feel like you're getting better. Sometimes you're going to feel like you're getting worse.
This was kind of the biggest surprise for me; I am pretty sure, objectively, that I am getting better as a pianist. As said in #1, some things that used to be hard for me are now easy, I'm definitely playing more difficult or demanding pieces, and when I listen to older recordings of myself I cringe, and that's got to count for something, right? But the more I study piano, the more sensitive I am to all the hundreds of elements that go into good technique/skill/musicality/musicianship and the more aware I am of how sorely lacking I am in so many ways. Sometimes I just can't believe how horrid I am, at everything, and I can't believe I ever thought I was, or could be, a good pianist, and everyone in the world just seems a thousand times better at piano than I am. Sometimes I wonder if I peaked several years ago and everything is just downhill from here. That's when I have to just keep working hard and trust that some little part of me knows what I'm doing.

2012 is going to be an interesting year for me—there are already lots of things I know are going to happen, there are bound to be things I didn't foresee, and while I hope to have some successes, I also know there are going to be some sore disappointments in store. So I'm just going to have to work hard, practice more, and dream bigger.

A pet peeve about Youtube

2011-12-20T00:39:00.000-08:00

This is a really petty and inconsequential pet peeve—there are far worse problems in this world, but I feel like I need to say it anyhow.

I really, really get annoyed when I go to a funny Youtube video and the top comment (which I can see in my browser window without meaning to) gives away the ending or a punchline or something funny that someone says or really, anything that makes me want to watch the video.

It totally ruins it for me, because then I expect whatever funny thing is supposed to happen, and it's just not funny anymore because I totally saw it coming.

I get that you thought that some part of the video was super duper funny and you wanted to share it, but what I really don't get is why a million people decide to thumbs-up it and send it to the top. It's as if you were at a party, someone told a great joke, some highly amused schmuck repeats the punchline just cause he can't get over it, and everyone pats said schmuck on the back and says "Wow, that was awesome how you just restated that one thing!"

Maybe this is a problem only I have; maybe everyone else in the world is capable of looking only at a video and not processing the words below. Come to think of it, I have a similar problem with books—I don't know if I read weird or something because I tend to look at a page/area/spread and kind of just take in all the words at once, so if I'm reading the left page in a book and the big shocker is on the right page, I see it and get spoiled beforehand. It's like the opposite of tunnel vision.

Yeah, maybe I'm just weird.

#firstworldproblems

2011-12-16T00:32:00.001-08:00

Today I was notified of a relatively small but significant accomplishment (vague, I know—I'm always afraid to jinx these things) and happily forwarded the news to my piano professors. They congratulated me and one of them offered me some short but really meaningful advice.

"And much more important—this is when you must start to work for real."

Dear Sharon, may you always accomplish more and more, but please do not ever sit on your laurels and stop working hard.

Today is a beautiful day

2011-12-03T17:39:00.001-08:00

I was walking to the practice rooms and the sight of the sun coming through what's left of the trees (a week of 25-mph winds has all but stripped them) and shining on the brick buildings struck me as being very lovely indeed. And who knows where I'll be this time next year? I remember the lyrics from Avenue Q's "I Wish I Could Go Back to College" where one of them sings "I wish I had taken more pictures." So I took a picture.

One thing I love about California is that the weather becomes brisk enough to require wearing warm outerwear of some sort (my gray knit cape in this instance) but is not so cold that you can't wear a crop top. :)

Time for research-paper-writing!

2011-12-01T21:31:00.001-08:00

One of the small tragedies of my life is that my best friend in the world is more than two thousand miles away from me on a regular basis. We haven't been in the same state for the better part of four years. Recently we've begun describing our outfits to each other via text; I figured I'd take it to the next level with my digital camera and Photoshop.

(My reluctance to do this sort of frivolous thing is alleviated somewhat by the fact that my face has been effectively censored out. Background from here.)

Now that my grad school apps are in, a small weight has been lifted off—I can't shake the fear, of course, that I won't make it past the prescreening round and be thoroughly rejected before the crucial next step, but at least it's out of my hands. Recording is done, essay-writing is done, frantically hitting the "upload" button again and again is done. (For all of our technological advancement, this kind of thing is still a pain. Go figure.)

I still have research projects, juries, papers, and always! more practicing. But at least there is one less thing to worry about, and it makes all the difference.

Happy Thanksgiving!

2011-11-25T19:41:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know I'm a day late, but happy thanksgiving to everyone anyway!

I've spent the last two days hunched over my computer painfully eking out essays and personal statements for my graduate school applications. I think the main difference between the application process now and the one four years ago, when I was applying to college, is this: four years ago, I didn't know what I wanted to do but was sure that, whatever it was, I could do it. Now, I know what I want to do, but am not sure I can do it.

Funny how things work out, huh?

Smells I Dig

2011-11-13T14:23:00.001-08:00

I realize that all my posts recently have been kind of personal/down-ish. So let's break it up with something completely frivolous.

Cold weather seems to emphasize just how wonderful things smell. I already go around smelling everything like a drug-sniffing dog, so I might as well just make a small list of things I've been sniffing recently.

1. Brigitte, by Tocca

This is my favorite perfume in the world. It was a Christmas present from Bryce two years ago (wow!) and I still can't get over how wonderful it smells. Neither can anyone who hugs me.

2. Nivea Creme

It just smells fresh and clean. I keep going to my dresser and opening the tin just to smell it. I'M NOT WEIRD.

3. Pond's Cold Cream

I know a lot of people hate this because it smells "grandma-y" and very strongly of roses. I personally can't get enough of rose smells.

4. Earl Grey Tea

I used to hate Earl Grey tea. And now I love it to bits. It's got an unmistakable fragrance that I can't get enough of anymore.

5. Genmai-Cha

This is green tea with roasted brown rice. The scent is unbelievably amazing when you brew it. There's no way for me to describe it—it's tea-y, and nutty, and rice-y, and just smells of Life Is Just Great to me.

6. Trader Joe's Fresh Linen Scent Antibacterial Hand Soap

I bought this yesterday—I don't know what voodoo magic Trader Joe's uses, but this soap smells just like fresh laundry to me. I know I'm weird because I like to slow down and inhale deeply every time I go past the laundry room because I think fresh laundry is one of the best smells ever. I fully expect to open up this bottle and see a crisp white bedsheet stuffed at the bottom.

On the end of a gray week

2011-11-11T22:46:00.001-08:00

It's been a strange week. I hesitate to call it "bad"—I've gone through some major ups and downs. The downs were particularly unsettling; at my lowest points I seriously questioned my choice of applying to grad school, of trying to go anywhere with piano, even with having chosen to study piano in college in the first place. I had moments where I decided that I just wasn't any good at piano, never would be, and that all the people who had ever told me I was good were just lying to me so that my feelings wouldn't be hurt.

Not necessarily good thoughts.

Anyway, I've spent the past week practically living in the practice rooms whenever I didn't have class and bullying myself into a state of fervent desperation. I barely ate, hardly slept, and spent hours at a time forcing my fingers to keep going on the piano, all the while telling myself that I wasn't good enough and that I had to work harder. And okay, there might have been some crying involved. I'm starting to think that I'm in an abusive relationship with myself. ("Elizabeth tells me you're killing yourself," is how one of my friends greeted me today.)

I have to say, though, that my friends and my boyfriend are doing their best to flood me with positive thinking, to counteract all the abuse I'm heaping upon myself. And I don't know what it was, but today, on the grayest, dampest, vaguest of all days, I think all their enthusiastic positive hammering broke through.

I found myself thinking, "Wait, I can actually do this. I'm not that bad. I can do this!"

Generic stuff, but after weeks of cloudy thinking, the smallest ray of sunshine is a total revelation.

The difficult line you have to walk in this field, I suppose, is that you have to have high standards and crazy self-discipline and a killer work ethic. But at the same time, you can't lose that joie de vivre, that pure joy and the love of music-making, while you're working at it. And without realizing it, I'd been so hard on myself that I'd momentarily lost sight of everything else.

My roommate earlier told me today about a moment she had while walking back to our apartment in the evening. I'm going to steal a bit from her blog post. (Dude, this isn't creepy at all that I'm stealing from your blog...right?)

I have been feeling like I've been floating through my days. I haven't felt myself for a little while.

[...] The air was so cold i could feel it chilling my hair as I walked. It had rained throughout today so the pavement was wet, reflecting the light from the street lamps on the ground. I was walking alone and I put the hood of my green coat over my head to block the wind.

Then Ravel's Pavane Pour Infante Defunte began to play from the bell tower...I stopped walking for a moment just to stare at my shadow as my favorite piece rang through the whole campus.

I looked up and then i saw the moon shining through the trees bathing everything in a strange blue light. I could feel something just let go inside me.

I realized I was all alone. Nobody even in the adjacent buildings to see me walking by...nobody going anywhere to pass by me on their way. I was by myself...it was all mine!

The thing is, when she told me that, I realized that I used to have those feelings of magic, of some glimmer that showed me just how charmed my life was, all the time. But I haven't had that in a while.

I have to keep working hard. In fact, I may have to work even harder in the next few weeks than I am already. But I need to keep a hold on the love and the magic of music so that I don't totally lose myself.

Quick Update

2011-11-10T00:04:00.000-08:00

I just got approved to add another minor (this one in music history, hooray!)

I also realized that I am currently too tired to function. (It took me quite a while to properly write that last sentence.)

...I wonder if I have a problem.

On not keeping it in

2011-11-06T00:40:00.000-07:00

I don't know if this is because I've somehow trained myself this way or if it's just the way I am, but by default I always keep negative emotions bottled in. In some ways it's good—I have to be able to squash the feelings of nervousness or stress or anger so it doesn't get in the way of performing. In pretty much every other way, it's kind of bad.

For the past couple of weeks, I've been having a pretty rough time of it. I'm taking more than the maximum number of classes, I've been flooded with work projects, I've got three research projects going on at once, and the closely-impending deadline of graduate school applications and pre-screening recordings—which honestly, I am not at all ready to do—has me on edge all the time. On top of it all there's some personal stuff going on—there always is.

I know there are people in this world with way more to deal with than me, but I've felt continually stretched to the limits, to the point where I've had minor freak-outs sprinkled in my daily routine. It's been hard to be happy about the little things, and it's even been hard to hope for good things to happen because every hope triggered a mean voice in my head saying "Why do you even bother to hope? It's just going to depress you if it doesn't happen." Still, I tried to keep it all squashed deep down, because I didn't have the time to deal with my own emotions. I didn't need people to know that I had problems, or that I was anything less than perfectly okay.

I'm not sure what it was, but this past week something just happened. I don't know what. But I got to the practice rooms one day, knowing that I had to get on with memorizing a thorny Bach fugue so that it'd be ready to be video-recorded and sent off before December 1, and I got into a practice room and just started crying.

I probably scared the person in the room next to me—the walls are maddeningly thin, and my crying isn't the most pleasant-sounding thing in the world. But I just sat on the piano bench and cried about possibly nothing and possibly everything. And then I practiced my Bach. And I felt a lot better.

That particular practice session actually turned out to be really productive. I looked back on all the times I've shut myself in a practice room lately, stomping the feelings down, struggling to make the music make sense in my head when my head wasn't making sense to begin with. And I kicked myself for not crying and getting everything out earlier.

And then I remembered one of the resolutions I'd made this summer: that I'd let myself be emotionally invested in the grad school application process—and everything else, really.

And part of being emotionally invested, I suppose, is just letting it all out every once in a while, instead of trying to pretend I don't care and acting like the emotions don't exist. I'm not going to start having breakdowns in public or anything, but I need to admit to myself when I need a cup of tea and a good cry. And I need to admit to myself that the stuff I'm doing really matters to me. And I need to hope for the best (but prepare for the worst, as they say).

And speaking of preparing for the worst...I've thought about how I'm going to feel if/when I don't pass a prescreening or get rejected from a school or don't win a competition. I got over myself and admitted that I'm going to be really, really upset. There's no getting around it—if I didn't care, I wouldn't be trying.

So as soon as I send those applications in, I'm going to go and get maybe a thing of ice cream, some of my favorite candy, some junk food I'd normally never eat, and I'm going to set it aside. I'm also going to put five dollars every week into a little fund for Retail Therapy in Case of Rejection. And if/when I get rejected, I am going to cry, eat my junk food, and buy something I totally don't need.

Because being cliche and crying and eating and buying things is a lot better, I realize, than internalizing all the hurt and destroying myself on the inside.

How I almost set my apartment on fire

2011-10-30T22:37:00.000-07:00

I feel ever-so-slightly iffy about posting this because as I still live in said apartment, blogging about this is essentially an admission of guilt if Housing sees this. So let's hope this blog post doesn't make me homeless.

Anyway. This happened a couple weeks ago; I was getting mysterious bug bites on my legs and I was sick of it. I'd heard that burning candles can keep bugs away (though I looked it up on the internet after the fact and found that non-citronella candles are actually ineffective. Whoops) so I bought a 99-cent pack of tealights at Target and a small glass tealight holder. Lit candles and open flames are banned in my on-campus apartment, but that's a stupid rule, right? It wasn't like I was going to start a fire or anything.

I proceeded to burn the little tealights in the evening, feeling rebellious and sophisticated. One night, as my little tealight burned, I decided to tidy up my room. As I threw away scraps of paper and such, I thought that it would be fun, for no reason, to burn little bits of them in the flame.

I know. This is where you're banging your head on the desk going "Sharon. You're such an idiot."

The thing is paper actually burns a lot slower than you'd think. I'd tear off a small corner of paper, set the tip of it in the flame, and watch as the fire caught, slowly ate through a bit of paper, and die out before it had even made it an inch up the scrap.

So it went like this, me cleaning, occasionally lighting a scrap of paper, and then throwing it away.

Soon I found the large bundle of recycled paper that my glass tealight holder had come in. I duly ripped off a piece and touched the tip of it to my little candle.

It went up in flames faster than I could blink.

I quickly tried to blow out the little fire quickly approaching my fingertips, but the thing only burned more. I could feel the heat searing my fingers, so I dropped it.

On the pile of the rest of the very flammable recycled paper.

There's no calm way to say what happened next.

IT FREAKING ALL WENT UP IN FLAMES AND I THOUGHT I WAS GOING TO BURN DOWN THE WHOLE APARTMENT COMPLEX AND EVERYONE WOULD KNOW ME FOREVERMORE AS THAT GIRL WHO STARTED THAT HUGE FIRE AND IF I DIED THEY'D ALL MAKE FUN OF ME AND SAY "SHE TOTALLY DESERVED THAT"

So I had this huge inferno of paper blazing on my desk. I did the only thing that made sense: I grabbed that fireball with my bare hands and ran to the bathroom, thinking that I'd throw the burning mess in the toilet, where it couldn't burn anything else and the water would put it out and ow my hands hurt ow ow ow.

Here's the thing. Paper on fire is still paper. And if you, in elementary school, ever folded up a paper note and tried to throw it to your friend across the aisle only to have the paper flutter impotently into the very visible middle of the aisle, then you too have learned the hard way that throwing paper is a bad idea.

So kids, throwing paper is a bad idea.

Because as soon as I saw the toilet, I pitched that awful burning fiasco in my hands towards it. And instead of landing safely in the toilet bowl like I'd hoped, the blazing inferno showed that it was still capable of having air resistance, and landed on the floor right in front of the toilet, where it kept burning.

OhgodohgodI'mgonnaburndownthewholeapartmentmylifeisover, I thought, running to the sink and filling my toothbrush cup with water.

That's when two things happened: the paper ball of hell magically burned itself out, and the fire alarm went off, causing my roommate to run out saying, "Sharon, what happened?"

I quickly stomped on a smoldering corner of paper. "Uh, I lit a candle," I offered lamely.

"I didn't know a candle could cause that much smoke!" my roommate exclaimed, fanning at the smoke alarm.

"Well...I kind of set something else on fire," I admitted, eyeing the scorch marks on the outside of the toilet, and hoping they'd come off.

For a week afterwards, our bathroom smelled like smoke, there was ash on the floor no matter how much I tried to scoop it up, and our toilet had some characteristic scorch marks which have thankfully come off by now.

I've also promised my roommate (who I later told the whole story in a fit of penitence) that I'm not going to burn candles anymore.

Yet another sporadic update

2011-10-25T00:24:00.000-07:00

Yeah, I know, I failed on the "day in the life of a Sharon" post. Since I sincerely doubt I'll ever finish it, here's what happened: I have a work meeting that goes late, I run around madly trying to finish a big graphic design project, my gallant boyfriend drives me to the plastics store so I can pick up a special-ordered, $90 piece of plastic for said graphic design project (if you ever wonder why I work three jobs and am still broke, that's why), run to the campus printing center to find they can't print the parts for my design project, buy special paper from them to print it myself, run (late) to class, do the work for two classes simultaneously while in that class, go straight to teaching piano, then have two studio recording sessions in which afterwards I'm offered professional recording sessions of all my repertoire for free sometime before I graduate. By the time this is all done and I get to eat, it's almost 10 pm.

ANYWAY.

I felt like posting because I feel really bad that I just never blog anymore. I don't even journal anymore—I don't have time. However, I thought about it and this is the breakdown of why I blog:

20% for the people in my life who actually read my blog (hi guys!)

80% because I like looking back at this sporadic chronicle of my life, and also because I'm narcissistic and like reading and writing about myself.

Or something like that. So I thought to myself, "Look, Sharon, you can at least dump some rambly word-vomitty stuff on your blog for ten minutes, right?"

So here's a general update on my life: the past couple weeks were really, really stressful. The coming weeks are possibly more stressful, but I'm trying to not die of stress and overwork; I got a little sick of being told I looked tired, of being tired all through the day, of feeling like I was constantly on the verge of either throwing a tantrum or having some kind of breakdown, and of constantly starving because I was never eating.

The never eating became a bit of a problem, as I now am significantly skinnier than I was at the start of the school year; enough that when I wear my size 0 jeans I look like I'm a spokesperson from one of those weight-loss commercials, and I have to belt my size XS skirts so they don't fall off of me.

So I'm trying to let myself breathe a little. I'm making myself eat, I'm prioritizing as much as I can, and I'm trying not to freak out all the time.

And sorry the blogging is not all that great. I still take photos of all my food, and I write blog posts in my head as I walk to class—I always intend to write them down and post them, but never do.

Is there a point to this post? Not really. I have to get back to my homework in any case.

A Day in the Life of a Sharon, Part I

2011-10-11T01:37:00.000-07:00

So ever since school started I've been "too busy to blog." I always figured that my next post would come on a day when I had not so much to do, but I had so much to do today and blogging was on my mind and I finally said to myself, "I AM GOING TO UPDATE TODAY."

Go figure.

I knew I was going to have to stay up late tonight anyway, so what the heck, I might as well, right?

So, dear friends who have been waiting on tenterhooks (ha) for my next update, here you go. A day in the life of a Sharon.

7:00 AM: I wake up and attempt to get dressed. I have a slight crisis over what to wear because I have no idea if it's going to rain and should I wear rain boots but what if it doesn't rain and I look silly for stomping around in rain boots when it's perfectly dry out and why is this an issue and yes I think in run-on sentences? Make myself a piece of toast and discover that my beloved Trader Joe's Italian truffle cheese is moldy. Oh, the agony. Oh, and I guess I'll wear sandals.

8:00 AM: I practice piano. Ruminate on the fact that I was supposed to go practice at 7:30 but the will-it-rain crisis and the tragedy of the moldy cheese somehow ate up a half hour. For a glorious hour I feel completely at peace with the world as I practice my Schumann, and with a twinge of bitterness realize that this is going to be the calmest part of my day. On my way out I realize that it's raining, and my what-shoes-to-wear crisis is resolved. I'm get to wear my red rain boots, hurray! From here on and throughout my day I get several dozen compliments on my red rain boots, some from complete strangers.

I love getting showered with compliments as much as the next person, but these are just plain red rain boots. Oh well.

9:00 AM: I go to my first class of the day, Typography, where I get mildly upset at the professor's announcement that no one got an A on the last project. Because that means that I didn't get an A, which means I have officially gotten my first non-A of the semester. Drat.

11:30 AM: Class gets out early, so I swing by the mailroom to pick up some parts I need for a project due tomorrow. Some random guy says my boots are "beautiful" and tells his friend, a young-ish boy, that "there's no need to holler because she's a beautiful woman." Uh, okay dude.

12:00 PM: I eat my lunch, a bowl of rice with seaweed salad, not realizing that I am not going to eat again for ten hours. Then I practice violin in my room. The walls are so thin that I can't always tell if it's my neighbors using their bathroom or my roommates using ours, which is probably a sign that I shouldn't inflict my cat-yowly-scratching on the residents of our apartment complex, but I'm too lazy to bring my violin to the practice rooms.

I'm working on Bartok's Romanian folk dances, which I'm trying to play like this:

But I'm pretty sure I sound like this:

Sigh.

1:00 PM: I have my violin lesson. I leave wishing I could play the violin better and wondering how it is that I'm allowed to take lessons with a Juilliard-trained violinist.

Let's remind ourselves that I can at least play the piano decently.

Okay. I know I was going to write about my day but it's already 2 AM and I still have to put together a presentation for tomorrow and I didn't know post-narrating my day was going to take this long. So I'll title this "Part 1" and I can't promise that I'll ever update with a "Part 2," which would be a shame as Part 2 contains a few minor freak-outs and some moments of Sharonesque brilliance.

Yes, Sharonesque is a term. I just made it up.

I really shouldn't blog at two in the morning. I'm just rambling now.

I'm not dead, I promise

2011-10-02T20:57:00.001-07:00

Hey there. Sorry I haven't blogged in an obscenely long time. Ever since school started, I've been so ridiculously busy that although I think about things to blog about all the time, and even bother to take and save photos, it's all I can do to make sure I sleep and eat, much less update my blog.

I can't promise more posts anytime soon, but at least I'm not dead.

IKEA, I love you so

2011-08-18T17:35:00.000-07:00

IKEA, here is a list of reasons why I love you.

I love you because you have red trash cans for 1.99.

Because you have sweet paper lamps that I'm going to have to decorate with red ribbon because my mom says all-white is bad luck.

Because you have big red rugs that are soft but that I will inevitably get horribly dirty.

Because you have awesome drop-leaf tables that I have absolutely no compunctions about screwing into the wall of my on-campus housing.
And because of you, I can now express my affection through heart-shaped ice cubes.

Targeted advertising scares me...

2011-08-18T17:24:00.000-07:00

A few seconds ago, I posted this as my Facebook status:

As soon as I hit "post," I got this ad in my sidebar.

Not cool, Facebook. (I have to say that a 44-key piano would be totally useless for me, as I can't think of a single piece I could play on that small of a range. Maybe Bach. But definitely not Liszt.)

I also have to wonder what kind of person the internet advertising gods think I am, as I got this the other day:

In which I may have gotten chased by a serial killer today

2011-08-16T01:29:00.000-07:00

Because I am such a social butterfly today (ha!) I went from one friend's house to another (well, with a few hours of practicing in between). We went out for pearl milk tea and, because there are no good hanging-out places open at night, headed to Walmart. Because, y'know, that's what hip young 20-somethings do.

After wandering around Walmart we found the magazine aisle and proceeded to look at unintentionally hilarious magazines. You know, magazines where the person on the cover is so Photoshopped that they look creepily unreal, teen magazines with quizzes for you and your BFF and detachable posters of Justin Bieber, and women's magazines with the latest #1 sex secrets.

We were laughing immaturely at the last item, when the other guy browsing in the magazine aisle addressed us.

"In America, what are really good guns?" he asked us.

I looked at him. He was maybe in his late 20s, slightly unkempt looking, with suspiciously scruffy facial hair, and with the most God-awful teeth you could imagine. This is kind of how the conversation went:

Us: "Uhh..."

Creepy guy: "I like M-16s. Do you know anything better?"

Us: "Uhh..."

Creepy guy: "You don't go out to the range or anything?"

Us: "Uhh...no..."

Creepy guy: "Americans like their guns. M-16s are good. They're not for normal people to handle though. Military grade. I like them."

Us: "Uhh..."

Creepy guy: "M-16s are really accurate."

At this point we were getting really scared, but we didn't know what to do. He made a few more statements about guns and his love for M-16s, then ended it all by saying that Americans like their food too.

We did the only thing we could do. We slowly turned and walked out of the aisle, then ran and hid in the hair and beauty section, looking behind us every so often to make sure he wasn't following us.

We took a crooked path across the Walmart, going through the out-of-the-way aisles, checking to make sure we weren't being followed. We reached the toy section, where Eric suddenly ducked into one aisle.

"He's right there," he whispered, pointing to the next aisle over.

"How did he get over here so fast?" I asked, actually freaked out.

We continued our crooked path to the checkout, because we actually were buying things. Eric has some weird thing with playing cards and was holding a sandwich of five or six of them. We went to "Speedy Checkout," which is anything but; the line was hardly moving and we felt totally exposed. I kept turning around to make sure the guy wasn't in sight.

When it finally was Eric's turn to pay, I turned around and saw Creepy Guy getting in our line.

"He's here," I hissed, "behind us, getting in line."

Eric grabbed his change, we speedwalked out of the Walmart, and then we RAN AS FAST AS WE COULD to the car. I hopped in the driver's seat, backed out, and got out of the parking lot as fast as I could.

"Where are we going?" I yelled.

"I don't know! Just get out of here! Make sure he's not following us!" Eric yelled back.

We spent the rest of the night looking over our shoulders and being wary of hooligans.

Looking back now, it's kind of a really funny story, but man, I am still slightly freaked out. If none of you hear from me for a few days, that'll mean that he's found me.

Edit/P.S. In talking it over Eric and I are slightly, legitimately afraid that this guy could have somehow followed us back to our respective houses, so if one or both of us suddenly goes missing or shows up dead, he was Middle-Eastern-looking, at least 5'8" or 5'9", had a mustache and maybe other facial hair? And he had dirty-looking teeth that all stuck outwards. I DON'T WANNA DIE.

On a supposed pathological addiction

2011-08-15T19:13:00.000-07:00

From reading my Twitter and Facebook posts, I think a lot of people believe that I have a pathological addiction to practicing piano. (I mean, it's gotten to the point where I wouldn't let myself go see one of my best friends in the world, who I hadn't seen in a year, until I'd finished learning my Bach fugue. I have no idea why my friends haven't dumped me yet.)

While I actually do enjoy practicing most of the time, a lot of my supposed self-discipline boils down to two things:

1. I go into agonies of deep self-loathing and unhappiness when I go too long without practicing or being productive, and

2. I strongly suspect that I am actually a horribly, incurably lazy person and that I have to make a huge effort to keep up with the rest of the world which has everything together.

Anyway, I'd write more, but I have to practice. Toodles!

Bad Book Review No. 2: On behalf of Laura Ingalls Wilder, I feel totally indignant

2011-08-14T04:42:00.000-07:00

You've probably read at least one of the books from the Little House series by Laura Ingalls Wilder. I first started reading them in kindergarten and instantly was smitten with the world that Wilder brought to life. I built houses out of Lincoln Logs and pretended that I was Pa, building a house on the prairie. My friends and I pretended that the playground was a forest and that we had to protect ourselves from bears.

My mom, who'd bought me my first copy of Little House in the Big Woods, got me a bunch of later books in the series, as well as biographies of Laura Ingalls Wilder. (Because, of course, this was back before Wikipedia and if you wanted to know about someone you had to get a book about them.) Somehow one particular four-pack of books from Costco made it into my possession; this was a chunk of a series called "The Days of Laura Ingalls Wilder."

It took me a while to realize that these books were not written by Wilder, nor were they nonfiction biographies about her. They were fictional stories about things that never happened to Wilder, written by some guy named "T.L. Tedrow."

Now that I'm older and wiser, I know what that means. These books are fanfiction.

I don't have anything against fanfiction as a concept. From a writer's perspective, writing fanfiction is a great way to sharpen your wit, hone your prose, and practice developing characters and plots in a ready-made universe. I just don't think anyone should publish their fanfiction and pass it off as literature.

It might be understandable, I guess, if Mr. Tedrow embellished on events in Laura Ingalls Wilder's life that she hadn't described in-depth in her books. But no. What Mr. Tedrow did was create an entirely inaccurate character, make up wild events (cause, you know, her real life wasn't at all interesting) and then slap Wilder's name on it.

Think I'm exaggerating? In the four books I have, Laura Ingalls Wilder goes to the World's Fair and becomes Alice Roosevelt's new BFF, helps solve a murder, gets thrown in jail for advocating women's rights with Ellen Boyle and Susan B. Anthony, and has a second daughter named Laurie (named after herself).

None of these things happened. Also, half the books are dedicated to three made-up kids called Sherry, Terry, and Larry, and the hilarious hijinks they have with their dog Dangit.

I know this makes me sound like a totally dumb kid, but I just couldn't process the idea that someone would make up stories about an existing historical character who'd already written books about her life, and publish them. Therefore, I concluded, these stories must be true. I walked into my second-grade class after I'd read one of the books and told my teacher about the time Laura Ingalls Wilder and Susan B. Anthony got put in jail together.

It wasn't until I got to the last book where Wilder has her daughter Laurie, who I couldn't find in a single biography, that I started to suspect that maybe, in the real world, people really did pull stunts like this. Bam! Disillusionment.

Seriously, Mr. Tedrow, these books are already 99% made up. Why didn't you just give Laura Ingalls Wilder's character a new name and market the books as historical fiction?

Someone just cut off my internet already

2011-08-14T01:54:00.000-07:00

When I'm not practicing, designing, compulsively making pages of lists in my Moleskine, or reading actual books, I'm most likely spending useless time reading blogs of some interest or other.

I'm slightly ashamed to say that I've explored a vast section of the blogosphere. My obsessive blog-reading phases follow a sort of cycle that goes like this:

1. Be slightly curious about one thing.

2. Google that thing.

3. Discover an endless web of blogs and websites dedicated to people who are incredibly discerning about that one thing. Follow every single link on these pages to even more blogs and websites.

4. Spend an embarrassing number of hours reading these blogs and sites.

5. After some time, decide belatedly that I should stop.

6. Start all over again.

So far I've gone through different obsessive phases: fashion, makeup, paper products, pens, art, food, typography... I am a walking treasure trove of all the information you will probably need to know about these things.

Anyway the reason why I blog about this is that an innocent internet foray into finding out how to make my apartment look nice has spiraled into an obsession with interior design blogs. I've spent the last couple of days looking at different organization systems, reading about paint, learning how to refinish wood, and finding out how to "dress up" a space.

It made me realize that I have yet to go through a professional-classical-musician phase. Sure, I keep up with Alon Goldstein's insightful musings and Jeremy Denk's witty essays, and I follow Yuja Wang and Hilary Hahn's violin case on Twitter, but none of them post with the frequency or regularity of style bloggers who post several outfits a day. My Google Reader is inundated every day with photos of Jeffrey Campbell shoes and photos of the newest eyeshadow from some high-end brand, but months will go between Alon Goldstein's updates.

Why don't classical musicians blog more? Surely there's an audience—I'm sure there are more people like me.

And then the answer hit me. Classical musicians don't blog or tweet incessantly because they're practicing. And performing, and having actual lives.

Here I am, writing pointless blog entries about nothing at all, and Twittering endlessly, and reading blogs about anything, when I could be practicing more. And I call myself a pianist.

Salmon

2011-08-12T22:05:00.000-07:00

Pictured: the lox plate from Ikea! (Only $3.99 or $4.99, I think.) I love salmon in all its incarnations and this was especially delicious, with dill and lemon.

Anyway I'm not that dedicated to blogging at the moment, but I actually don't feel all that guilty about it. I'm not being paid to blog, I don't have blogging deadlines, and I have other things to do in my life right now—a lot, in fact. I actually do wish summer would last a little longer, so I'd have time to do all the practicing I want before school starts, as well as actually finish the design projects on my plate and make some progress on a few outside ventures.

Oh well! Summer is winding down, time marches on, and I just have to accept it!

The new addition to my stationery collection

2011-08-04T23:41:00.000-07:00

I have a slight stationery addiction. A few days ago I cleaned out a nightstand to use as a dedicated storage unit for my collection of notebooks, letter pads, cards, pens, stickers, etc. because it's gotten to the point that they are in piles and boxes all over the place. I pledged not to buy any more stationery for a while.

...But then today I found myself in an Asian stationery shop and I was able to resist until I found a set of gold-embossed piano-themed letter paper. It was the only piano-themed set left in the whole store, and I had to get it.

(Sorry for the super funky coloring, this photo was super yellow and I color-corrected it really quickly.)

The thing is, after I bought it, I took a closer look and realized that the piano is backward.

See how the lid opens up on the left, and the crook (the curvy part) is also on the left? All grand pianos open up to the right, unless, I suppose, they are specially constructed otherwise. I can't believe that the stationery makers got the piano wrong; maybe they hired a dyslexic piano-illustrator.

I'm now ever-so-slightly embarrassed to use this elegant stationery for anyone who's an actual pianist. I guess I'll only use it when I want to test amateur wannabe pianists. "You didn't notice that the piano is backward? I hereby eject you from the Real Pianists' Club! Good day!"

Hindsight isn't always 20/20

2011-08-01T21:38:00.000-07:00

I often find myself missing the "good old days"—the days of innocence, dependence, and fewer worries. Usually my thought process goes something like this:

1. The future ("Will I get into a good grad school? Where will I go? What will I do after that?")

2. Money ("How will I pay for grad school? How will I support myself? Am I going to end up a hobo?")

3. Some rehashing of the future ("Will I be happy? Will I achieve success? Would security make mediocrity more bearable?")

4. Missing of the past ("Gosh, I miss when I was little and I didn't have to worry about this!")

I'm sure you do the same thing. You remember how kindergarten was a delightful haze of naps and snacks and sitting in a circle, how recess was the most glorious thing in elementary school, etc. etc. You think about how you didn't have to worry about silly things like money, or what to do with your life, because the future was so far off and hypothetical it wasn't even relevant to you.

The thing is, though, that as a young adult, I have at least one thing I didn't have when I was little: perspective. Yeah, back then I only had little problems, but because I'd never had actual problems, my little problems seemed huge to me.

For example, in preschool the worst trouble I got into was that I once got put in time-out for talking during quiet time. Now I look back and think, "Oh how cute, that was the worst thing to happen to me."

But I still remember vividly how that was the worst thing to happen to me. When I got put in time-out, I thought my life was over. I thought I'd never be happy again. I wished with all my might that I hadn't talked during quiet time, and my little self was wracked with regret. I cried, hard.

Or, in elementary school, I once lent my favorite pencil to a boy sitting across from me who needed one. Later in the class I looked over and saw him chewing on my pencil. My favorite pencil. That pretty much wrecked my day.

Now that I've worried about paying bills and performing for people and writing research papers and auditioning...if I saw someone chewing on one of my pencils that would hardly be a blip on my bad-things-to-happen-to-me radar.

It's all about perspective. Most of us are as happy now as we were back then (or we're no more unhappy than we were back then, if you want to be a bit of a pessimist about it) and we don't realize it because we like to glorify the past.

I actually don't know what I am

2011-07-31T23:13:00.000-07:00

This is a conversation I had with one of my five-year-old students. He posed the opening question to me at the end of his lesson.

Student: Are you a teenager?

Me: No, I'm actually older than a teenager!

Student: Are you a mom?

Me: Uh...no, I'm not a mom.

Student: Then what are you?

You know, that's actually a good question. There's no one word to encapsulate "bewildered young twenty-something trying to figure out life."

Oh, kids.

(This post was supposed to feature an unintentionally hilarious book I found in my possession, but out of the dozen or so times I've tried to upload my photos in the past three days, I've only been getting error messages. Seriously Blogger, get your act together.)

Bad Book Review No. 1: If you're going to write about music, know about music first

2011-07-28T02:18:00.000-07:00

Okay, so I can't sleep. And I've always wanted to write unofficial reviews of bad books. So naturally, 2:30 in the morning is the perfect time to put together a little rant about one book in particular that has always bothered me; and hey, this may become A Thing. I'm going to say, right up front, that I'm kind of a book snob. Sorry.

So for my Bad Book Review #1, I will tell you exactly what bothers me about Define "Normal", by Julie Anne Peters. (Hey, this is like a middle school book report, only...better?)

Now to be fair, this isn't a bad book. It's your typical going-through-middle-school/uncovering-facades-type young person novel, and it touches on some dark topics like depression, abandonment, etc. Then again the characters use slang like "cronk" and "bode" unironically, so I guess you win some and you lose some. However, I did actually read this several times in my youth because it's fairly enjoyable reading, except for one thing which has always really bothered me.

One of the main characters, a punk-type girl with a prickly exterior, is secretly a budding concert pianist. So as it stands, classical piano is an important element in this book. The problem is I don't think the author knows anything about classical piano.

Let's establish some facts here. Our thirteen-year-old quasi-heroine (who goes by "Jazz") tells the protagonist that she wants to go to Juilliard. Great! Juilliard is one of the most prestigious conservatories in the world (with its latest acceptance rate at 5.5%), so good for you!

But hold on for a minute. If you want to have the remotest chance of getting in to Juilliard, you have to be brain-smackingly good. So this is where it all falls apart.

One piece that Jazz plays, which astounds the main character, is Bach's Minuet in G.

Hold on, this Minuet in G?

This is the piece that every six-year-old plays once they learn how to read notes. But let's give the author the benefit of the doubt; maybe this is some obscure Minuet in G that is really difficult. The best I could think of was maybe a minuet from one of the partitas, and there is indeed a movement marked Tempo di Minuetta from his G Major Partita.

But why would someone learn a tiny part of a partita and not learn the whole thing? It's like if Justin Bieber only performed one stanza of "Baby" at each of his concerts. So I'm going to have to assume that Jazz is indeed playing a piece most often played by babies. And she wants to go to Juilliard. Well, okay. Nothing wrong with dreaming big!

Next, Jazz entrances people with her rendition of Debussy's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Fawn." The author describes how our pianist's rendering of the piece is so expressively powerful that the protagonist can clearly see a baby fawn frolicking with mama deer.

A few problems.

1. Debussy's Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is an orchestral piece. (There is a version arranged for solo piano, but it wasn't by Debussy.)

2. It's "Prelude to the Afternoon of a Faun," not "Fawn." It's all well and good that the main character can see the baby fawn so clearly, but this isn't just a matter of spelling. Prélude à l'après-midi d'un faune is not about frolicking fawns, it's about a mythological goat-creature trying to have sex with nymphs .

Well, maybe Jazz's repertoire is just very creatively constructed. The glowing jewel of her repertoire though, which she was slated to play at a competition in the book, is Chopin's Polonaise.

But wait, which one? There are at least twenty-three polonaises by Chopin. Was it the one he wrote when he was seven? Or the Polonaise-Fantasie? All we are told is that Jazz struggles with it, which isn't surprising if 1/3 of her repertoire is a piece played by the post-toddler set.

In a piano lesson, Jazz's teacher tells her that the Bach and Debussy are "perfect," but the Chopin is not quite there. And that's it. He doesn't tell her if it's an issue with her technique, or expressiveness, or if she's muddying the harmonies with the pedal, or needs to improve the clarity of the melody, or what. He just tells her it's almost there, and leaves. If only I could get away with teaching like that! "Yeah, this one thing is perfect, and that one thing isn't. That'll be a hundred dollars."

So to Julie Anne Peters:

Look, I realize that music isn't the center of your novel, and you might not have been counting on a book about an aspiring concert pianist to be read by...an aspiring concert pianist. But it doesn't hurt to do a little bit of research. College students do it all the time.

To all pianists who hope to go to Juilliard:

Don't play Minuet in G.

A small but important accomplishment

2011-07-27T22:45:00.000-07:00

Hi my name is Sharon; I play two instruments, speak four languages, and I can now drive a stick-shift!*

Every couple weeks this summer my boyfriend's been teaching me how to drive his manual transmission car, and this past weekend I got good enough to drive on actual streets with traffic lights and actual other drivers on the road.

I do have to point out, though, that it hasn't been a smooth process. In addition to being a multitalented fellow, my boyfriend has the magic ability to stay perfectly calm while I...

1. ...stall the car, yell, and let out a string of expletives,

2. ...pop the clutch, yell, and let out a string of expletives,

3. ...change the gear and mutter a string of expletives under my breath.

In fact, this was a typical exchange:

Him: Okay, hear that? You should change to fourth gear.

Me: OhgodohgodohgodokayhereIgo [changes to fourth gear]

Him: Good!

Me: I know I'm going at 35 in a 45 zone but I don't care, if the other cars think I'm going too slow they can just go around me.

Him: That's totally fine.

Me: Ohmygosh it's a red light whatamIgoingtodo [censored censored censored]

Him: Just brake, you'll be fine.

The reason why I wanted to be able to drive stick, though, was not so I could drive my boyfriend's car at my leisure, or because I wanted to be a better driver in general, or any of the sensible reasons you might come up with.

I wanted to know how to drive stick so that if I'm ever in a situation where I'm running from bad guys and my only getaway option is a stick shift, I'll be okay.

Hey, you never know.

*I still don't know how to back up and I haven't driven on the freeway yet, but I think that if I'm on the run from bad guys, backing up won't be involved, and everyone knows only the criminals from "Cops" take their getaways to the freeway.

Time to learn from my mistakes

2011-07-26T00:27:00.000-07:00

It seems fitting that in the process of clearing years of old documents from my desk, I've been uncovering tons of papers from high school college counseling, with tips on picking and applying to colleges, how to write a great essay, and so on. As I'm about to start my last year of my undergraduate studies (seriously, where have the past three years gone?!?!?) I am in the process of researching graduate schools and post-bachelor conservatory programs. It definitely feels like senior year of high school all over again, only this time I've gone through the process already and I'm determined to not make the same mistakes as last time.

1. I will not do my applications last minute. Reading over my college essays, I've realized that while they were good, there were a hundred little things I would have changed and improved had I simply started them earlier and allowed myself time to think about them.

2. I am actually going to practice and do my best to make sure I'm as prepared as can be. I know that goes without saying but I actually had a number of bad auditions because I often said to myself "Eh, good enough," and not "Is this the best I can be?"

3. I will let myself be emotionally invested in the process. I think that, subconsciously, the reason I made mistakes #1 and #2 was because I was so afraid of failure (that is, not getting into various schools) that I detached myself from the whole process, didn't put 100% of my effort into trying, and tried to convince myself that I didn't care. When I didn't get into my top school I refused to be upset and simply shrugged it off. This time, I will admit to myself that this means a lot to me. I will let myself be afraid or excited. And if I don't get into a school I really wanted to get into, I will let myself cry.

On choosing which dreams to let go

2011-07-25T01:53:00.000-07:00

I'm in the middle of cleaning my room and I discovered a few things that reminded me of a dream I've chosen to let go.

First was a letter from a high school teacher telling me that he hoped to see my poetry in print. Then I found a letter from a middle school teacher who had been touched by one of my poems and urged to me to get my writing published. I found the poem in question, written in my best cursive on display paper, Post-It notes with poem ideas scribbled on them (dust clinging in clumps to their sticky undersides), and my collection of floppy disks—remember those?—on which I'd stored my writing.

Because although I've always wanted to be a concert pianist, I spent a lot of my life writing—stories, attempts at novels, and many, many poems. In high school I churned out idealistic, optimistic poems with fervor; they were "published" on a now-defunct online magazine run by a friend, and people I hardly knew came up to me in the halls to tell me that they liked my poetry. I'd cherished the idea of being a writer for a great deal of my life, and for some time in my teens, seriously thought about pursuing publication and becoming the next Shel Silverstein.

And then somewhere along the way the dream fell by the wayside. Piano cemented itself firmly in the forefront of my life, with art and graphic design dangling behind. I stopped writing poetry, and misplaced my rhyming dictionary.

The thing is, sometimes you have to put a few dreams away to chase the ones you really care about. In the grand scheme of things, I didn't feel as passionately about my poetry as I did about my music, and that's actually okay with me.

As for the letters, I do feel slightly guilty about not pursuing something that other people felt very strongly about. But I'm doing what I really, truly want to do, and I know they'll understand.

On Social Networks, Anonymity, and Maturity

2011-07-20T01:14:00.000-07:00

I've had Google+ for a few weeks now, and one thing I am pleased to report is that right now (and I do anticipate this changing soon enough) is when I log into Google+, I don't have to deal with any of the cringe-worthy whining or drama I've come to expect from Facebook. This is, of course, because the people who've so far moved to Google+ tend to be the tech-hip types that know how to maintain their professionalism even in social networking.

It got me thinking, though, that I am devoutly thankful that the progression of social networking somehow lined up perfectly with the progression of my maturity. Because I've realized, in hindsight, that it's getting harder and harder to be anonymous on the web, which is great in some ways but not so great if you're, you know, growing up.

Let me explain. When I "graduated" from middle school and got my own laptop with an internet connection, I immediately began exploring all the social-type things you could do online. I'm embarrassed to admit that one of the first things I stumbled upon was Habbo Hotel, where I spent a few weeks under a fake name chatting with random strangers and learning all the weird acronyms that seem to define internet language.

I gave that up soon enough and discovered Xanga. A good portion of my high school friends were on Xanga as well, and so I set up an account and began blogging to my heart's content—and by blogging, I mean articulating all my angst-ridden adolescent whinings, and commenting on my friends' angst-ridden adolescent whinings as well.

(A side note though; thanks to Xanga's "look and feel" editor I started experimenting with HTML to make myself custom layouts, and I even got asked to make layouts for my friends. I spent an exorbitant amount of time tweaking images in Fireworks and messing with code, but it was my gateway drug into the world of web and graphic design. I honestly think that if it weren't for Xanga, I wouldn't be a graphic designer today.)

Somewhere along the way some high school love interest or someone convinced me to join Myspace, and so I had your typical high school girl Myspace profile, with a star-patterned background and headlines that followed the tune of "*_+^~i l0ve $+r@wberR!e$~^+_*" all over the place.

The thing was that through all of this, I never posted my real name anywhere. The most I ever put was my first name, and even that was rare. Thanks to the structure of Xanga and Myspace and various other sites, I wasn't expected to use my name as my username, and since I was fairly paranoid about the internet, I had amped-up privacy settings on everything. I highly doubt that, during my high school years, someone who wasn't my "friend" on these sites could ever have found a photo of my face. (Oh, and don't bother looking for my old Xangas—every year I'd get a new one and close the old one down.)

A few years into my internet wanderings, Facebook became big, and so when I signed up, I made my name "Llama Poo" or something by default, as I'd never thought to use my actual name for anything. One of my friends asked me why I'd done such a thing, and as I added people I realized that everyone used their real names.

Now that Facebook has been legitimately around for quite a while in internet time, I would like to point out that when I first signed up, it seemed that everyone operated respectfully and professionally—or as professional as inherently immature high school students can be. Knowing that we were posting under our real names, and were thus identifiable, we didn't say anything that could possibly incriminate us later. Now though, that Facebook is "mainstream" and stocked with younger people and people who jumped into Facebook without the cushion of anonymity-friendly sites, I've noticed that people will say anything and everything that comes to mind, including things they'd never say in real life or to employers.

I am so very glad that I, and most other people in my generation, got to let our pointless angst, our long ramblings, and those stupid surveys that we kept filling out—in short, everything produced by our natural immaturity—out when the web was structured with anonymous profiles and easily shut down accounts, and that by the time Facebook came along, we'd shaped up. I am incredibly thankful that if you Google my name, you are not going to find evidence of my adolescent stupidity.

It makes me a little scared for the preteens on Twitter and Facebook who are hashing out drama and emotionally articulated opinion without abandon, because that stuff is not going to magically disappear once they're old enough to be ashamed of themselves.

A pointless update to the jeans saga

2011-07-15T22:47:00.000-07:00

(I apologize to all the people who started reading this blog for the exciting snippets of my European life and are now slogging through my uninteresting posts about mundane things. Exciting things actually do happen to me, for some reason I like blogging about the pointless stuff.)

Remember the weird jeans saga?

I'm currently cleaning my room, and realized, after putting all my clothes away, that I can no longer find THE jeans.

However, I did find the OTHER jeans that I'd mentioned losing along the way.

I really give up on trying to understand my life.

Behold: a crucial artifact from my childhood

2011-07-15T00:11:00.000-07:00

This, my friends, is an item from one of my very first memories. It's a pink Garfield pencil sharpener, the kind that you crank to grind away at the pencil. (Apologies for the awful picture quality.) I found it while I was cleaning out my dresser, which was stuffed with other various childhood memorabilia that I could not bear to throw away.

The reason why this old, dirty, two-decades-old (yikes!) sharpener is so important to me has nothing to do with sharpening pencils. It's because one of my very earliest memories is of my dad helping me draw Garfield from this sharpener. I remember him guiding my hand on a piece of paper and copying Garfield by sight.

Funny that one of my earliest memories is of drawing—my other earliest memory is of playing piano, isn't it funny how things turn out? It was probably the first time I'd realized that you could draw things exactly as they appeared, just by looking at them. Since then, making photo-realistic drawings by sight has always been a particular strength of mine.

I also remember being confused by the colored oval behind Garfield. I thought it was an egg.

Thoughts of an insomniac

2011-07-08T05:46:00.001-07:00

(For reasons unbeknownst to me, I couldn't fall asleep tonight. I wrote this in my journal at 2:51 AM, and it is now almost 6 AM and I need something to do, so I am blogging it.)

Three times tonight I've climbed into bed, waited, and waited for sleep to come while my brain whirred through the act of missing.

The thought of life carrying me to more places of lonely adulthood kept me preoccupied with the maddening fear of uncertainty, of failure and mediocrity, and I missed, vaguely, but painfully, the days of dependency, unimportant worry, and misconceptions about growing up.

Then I missed my friends. I wrote one letter to a best friend in Japan and wrote another letter to a best friend in Prague and pondered how it is that life flings friends across the world so far from one another.

And I lay in bed and missed Salzburg. I closed my eyes and superimposed my Salzburg bedroom over the bedroom I grew up in. I could see clearly in my mind the funny window that could be tilted in, the desk I kept tidy, the bars at the foot of my bed, the armchair I never sat in, the light on the nightstand I kept on when I slept. If I wanted to go to the bathroom I could open the door and walk down the hall to the green bathroom where the water from the tap was pure enough to drink. In my mind I could envision walking to the bus stop, riding the bus into town, walking past construction to my school built into the mountain.

I tried eating, reading, listening to music, but I couldn't sleep for the uncertainty of the future and the loneliness of missing things.

On wanting things

2011-07-02T17:18:00.000-07:00

As soon as I came home from Austria, excited and cultured and tired but also broke, I focused on building my funds back up again. I worked a random Top Chef tour gig and started teaching. In a moment of pleasant daydreaming, I thought of how much money I'd have by the end of summer, and my mind looked something like this:

Right after I got all excited about my fabulous jet-setting life with all my nice new things, I realized that this year I will be applying to grad schools; not only will I have to pay those darned application fees I will also have to worry about the airfare for all my auditions. (I guess I'll be a jet-setter in a way, at least, only instead of being breezily fabulous I will be strung out about auditioning.)

Oh well. Goodbye new pretty things, it was nice having you in my imagination. On the bright side, it will be nice playing that "watch-my-bank-account-go-up" game before I have to go broke again.

My Top 3 Books

2011-06-30T22:42:00.000-07:00

I feel like I never blog about books enough, seeing as "books" are one of the four things I profess to loving in my blog profile. I remember seeing a Top [Number] book list in someone's blog a while back, and I always meant to write about my own favorite books.

(And for the record, I am all for keeping the printed book around. The other day I had a quasi-nightmare that I had a Kindle. I know it's cool and tech-y and lightweight but there's something about throwing a well-loved paperback in your bag and reading it on the train.)

If you've read all of my Top 3 books, you might notice that I have a thing for books that somehow capture the essence of life. These three are my favorite books because I just relate so strongly to them, and they are so beautifully written and constructed.

1. The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry

There is something magical and indeterminably lovely about The Little Prince, even though I am only ever able to read the translated English version. It tugs at my heart every time I read it—just reading the Wikipedia summary of this book makes me cry. It captured my heart when I was too little to understand what made it so beautiful and I still love it to death; so much that, in fact, that I end up succumbing when it's used for cheap marketing gimmicks.

2. A Tree Grows in Brooklyn, by Betty Smith

I don't know how to explain why I love A Tree Grows in Brooklyn. At face value you might say nothing remarkable happens in it; there are no shocking plot twists and it's the literary equivalent of a picture album. But somehow Betty Smith has encapsulated the poignancy of childhood and growing up, of understanding life and heartbreak of all kinds, and her prose is so starkly beautiful—not flowery, mind you, but every word is so well-chosen it's astounding.

3. The Namesake, by Jhumpa Lahiri

The Namesake is a more recent discovery of mine but it is such a beautiful book. It has the same illustrative prose and naturally disjointed style as A Tree Grows in Brooklyn but applied to the first-generation American experience. It captures so well the pain and loveliness and haphazard maturity that comes with being trapped between cultures.

"Honorable Mention" favorite books: Lolita, by Vladimir Nabakov (such an insidious journey), The Joy Luck Club, by Amy Tan, and of course, the Harry Potter series, because I can never stop reading them and still have the scary ability to quote entire passages at a time.

Oops

2011-06-28T21:48:00.000-07:00

Yipes! I haven't blogged for nine days. Well, I told you I was going to start slacking once I got back to the US. I haven't even covered all the stuff from Austria that I wanted to...don't know if I ever will. Oh well!

Actually, this was going to be a real post. Then I got distracted with some work and now...I'm just going to post this?

In which I supposedly bought $500 of candy

2011-06-19T17:18:00.000-07:00

On the airplane I was given a customs declaration form to fill out and present to officials when I landed in San Francisco. When I got to the bottom and it asked me the total value of the items I was bringing back, I blanked. I hadn't bothered to itemize the things I'd bought to bring back to America, and I wasn't sure how much they cost altogether. I decided to put "$500" as an arbitrary but safe, all-encompassing number.

When I got to the customs official, he looked at my form.

"Austria, huh?" he said, glancing at what I'd filled out.

"Yeah."

"What were you doing there?"

"Studying abroad."

"Cool. What did you study, European history?"

"German and music. I'm a pianist."

"Cool. $500 worth of stuff, huh?"

"Yeah."

"What did you bring back?"

At this point I completely could not remember what I possibly could have spent a hypothetical $500 on. The first thing I could think of was the pile of Mozartkugeln in my suitcase.

"Candy."

Silence.

"Candy?"

"Yeah...and souvenirs and stuff."

"Okay...here you go," he said, handing my customs form back to me.

I took my form and headed to baggage claims, thinking that to the customs official, I was going to be known as That Girl Who Went to Austria and Came Back With $500 Worth of Candy.

Thinking back, the majority of that $500 is actually probably sheet music.

Back in America

2011-06-19T16:49:00.000-07:00

Well, I'm back in the US—my time in Austria now feels unreal, as if I merely had a very long, vivid dream. I still plan on doing a few blog posts with photos I haven't uploaded yet, but who knows? I can already tell I'm going to start slacking on blogging again.

In the meantime, I can use jet lag as an excuse for my laziness; yesterday I was awake for at least twenty-four hours straight; I only slept a few minutes on the plane as all twelve or so hours of it were full of bright sunshine. (The plane was going the same direction as the sun, so it was like it was permanently 5:00 PM.)

I had a stroke of luck getting my luggage through; Lufthansa had a 23-kilo limit and mine was definitely overweight. I tried to lessen the damage by putting all of my books and sheet music in my carry-on, which made that well overweight. Remember how I was hoping that they'd be lenient on me?

Well, when I got to the counter and the lady asked me to put my suitcase on the scale, I watched with terrified anticipation as the counter went up...all the way to 28 kilo. I was more than eleven pounds overweight.

"When I weighed it at home it was twenty-four kilo," I said innocently, stretching the truth a little.

"Yeah, you can't trust those home scales," the lady said sympathetically. "That's why I never weigh myself, I'd get depressed thinking I was fat, fat, fat!"

I laughed, hoping this was a sign of niceness.

She actually had me put my suitcase on the scale again, with it hanging off a little; it was still 28 kilo. I finally asked how much it would cost to pay for the extra weight, so she started typing on the computer.

Several minutes passed, and she finally said she couldn't find it. "I know that with Piece Concept it's a €150 fee," she told me. €150? I'm doomed, I thought. But then...

"Well, never trust those home scales! Now you know," the lady said cheerfully, sticking the tag on my suitcase and letting it go through.

Thank goodness for miracles!

Goodbye, Salzburg

2011-06-18T00:23:00.000-07:00

Goodbyes are so very difficult. After six wonderful weeks here in Austria I must once again brave the Munich airport (I am hoping against hope that they'll be lenient on my overweight luggage and carry-on!) to go back to the US.

I've had to say goodbye to the wonderful friends I've made here, to all the people who helped make my experience so wonderful. In a short while I have to say goodbye to Salzburg—its wide open sky, its fortress and church domes, the beautiful Salzach, its markets and bus stops. I will have to say goodbye to my host mother, who has been so good to me.

I will miss everything; the greenery, the mountains, the tiny dumpsters, the city. I will miss the lovely walk to my piano lesson. I will miss the endless stairs in my school built into the mountain. I will, of course, miss all the food.

So it's with a slightly aching heart I have to tell myself it's time to say "Auf wiedersehen" to Salzburg. But then I realize that "Auf wiedersehen" means "Until we see again," and I will see Salzburg again at some point in my life.

Therefore this isn't a permanent goodbye; Salzburg and I are merely parting ways for the present.

Auf wiedersehen!

I shouldn't have, but I did anyway; I have no self-control

2011-06-15T13:16:00.000-07:00

Ever since I've been in Austria I've been using my Moleskine religiously. (Yes, it's the same one I got all the way back in freshman year. After the initial excitement I stopped using it.) I've been using it to keep track of lessons and excursions and plans, to monitor my "Salzburg Bucket List," and keep all my to-do lists and notes. I also take it out occasionally to sit and sketch the Salzburg scenery.

Despite my sudden rampant usage, I'd lost the sense of worship I once had for the Moleskine. I told everyone I was "over it"; I don't buy into the cult following, because it's just a notebook. A quality notebook, yes—I do have a thing for high-quality stationery—but a notebook nonetheless.

Since I'm almost at the end of my Moleskine I decided that when I got back to America I'd find some cheap black-covered knockoff and be perfectly happy. I passed by every Moleskine display here with a sense of superiority—I'm not going to be sucked in again.

Yet today I bought a The Little Prince edition Moleskine after it haunted my dreams. I've officially bought back into the weird cult following and cheap gimmickry. AUGH.

(In my defense, The Little Prince is one of my favorite books of all time, and at least now I won't look like I'm carrying a little flat Bible around. And yes, I left my new Moleskine in the plastic because I'm still coping with the fact that I gave in on another one of these overpriced things.)

MacGyvered thank-you cards/Why I am so cool

2011-06-15T12:02:00.000-07:00

My time in Salzburg is winding down and I wanted to thank the appropriate people; however, I forgot to bring some of my nice cream-and-blue embossed thank you cards to Austria. I went to a wonderful stationery shop and while it had an astounding collection of soft leather-bound books and Moleskines (I caved in and bought a pocket-sized The Little Prince edition) and paper, I had trouble finding nice thank-you cards. I did get a gold-embossed card for my host mom, but wanted to give different cards to each person.

Being me, I decided to just make my own cards. I went to a children's store and bought a cheap pack of blank cream-colored cards with scalloped edges, and a 69-cent blank notepad. My idea was that I'd 1) draw something nice on the notepad paper and then 2) stick it to the card. Since I can draw reasonably well, and I'm pretty good at this paper-craft thing, I knew I'd be fine.

I found scissors, tape, and a cup of colored pencils in the desk in my room. That's all I needed to set forth.

For my piano teacher here, I drew a picture which may or may not be based on the photo of me I used for the background of my About.me page. (All drawings are done with my Pilot Varsity fountain pen!)

For one of my teachers I sketched out one of the views of the Attersee I'd snapped.

For one of the administrators I replicated one of the ink sketches I'd made of the Salzach and shaded it in.

When it came time to assemble my cards I realized that a drawing on top of a plain card just isn't that aesthetically pleasing. So I turned on my inner MacGyver and hunted around for material to make the cards look nicer. I ended up discovering the little collection of colored Post-It notes I keep in my planner, and the honeysuckle-colored netting that came with the rose my boyfriend had sent to my Austrian house.

I used my white gel pen to write "Thank you" in some form on cut-out pieces of Post-It note, snipped off pieces of netting, and taped it all down. The effect was way more "charming handcrafted stationery" than "Well, you get an A for effort."

(Oh, and to complement my Attersee sketch, I took a little bunch of unidentified floral arrangement from my rose and stuck it to the card.)

All in all I'm pretty stoked that I was able to make pretty sweet thank you cards out of minimal supplies. Lack of resources can't keep me from thanking people properly!

In which a Taiwanese-American girl walks into a Japanese restaurant in Austria and speaks Chinese

2011-06-15T10:51:00.000-07:00

Sunday was particularly lovely; despite sleeping past my alarm and waking up at 1 PM, I enjoyed the entirety of the day.

As soon as I got into town I set my mind to obtaining lunch. I seriously entertained the idea of getting kebap again, but then decided that for experience's sake, I should try something new every time I eat—well, while I'm here, anyway. So I headed to Getreidegasse to try Austria's take on Asian food. I passed by one Chinese buffet and found myself in the quiet courtyard of Restaurant Nagano.

I was a little thrown off that I didn't get tea automatically; I had to ask for it. When my bill came I found that it cost €2.80...oi. To the restaurant's credit though, it was delicious: loose-leaf green tea (no tea bag!) with a hint of peach.

I've heard that the sushi in Austria is awful, so for the sake of trying I ordered a two-piece plate of salmon nigiri. It was pretty good; kudos for the fish not being cold, and it tasted fresh and milky. The only thing was, as you can see from this picture, that the fish was sliced THIN. Sigh!

I felt a little self-conscious when I took out my Moleskine to take notes on the food. I probably looked like a very insecure Anton Ego. I hope no one mistook me for a food critic...

For the sake of my wallet I ordered a simple bowl of udon soup. The price was still a little painful at €8.90, considering that I make myself udon soup all the time for next to nothing. Oh well. The noodles were nice and chewy, the broth was savory, and the vegetables and seaweed tasted fresh. I suppose you can't ask for more!

While it was unnecessarily pricey, I do have to say the food was satisfying and delicious. The highlight of my meal, however, was my conversation with the waitress. While I chewed my noodles and read a book, I overheard all of the staff speaking in Mandarin Chinese.

So rather than speaking in my limited German sprinkled with English, I addressed the waitress in Chinese when she came with my bill. She immediately brightened up—considerably—and eagerly asked me about myself. "And you came here all by yourself?" she asked in awe, when I told her I had come from the US. She thanked me over and over again, even though I only tipped 50 cents, and even though I had done nothing more than order food and eat it all.

It was a lovely, warm moment; it makes my day every time I make a connection with the locals, though funnily enough I have far more extended conversations in Chinese here in Austria than in German. There's something indescribably beautiful about breaking out from the confines of a limited vocabulary in one language and finding another soul who speaks your native tongue; even if you have nothing else in common it creates an instant bond.

It may sound silly, but I feel like we are all grains of sand being flung from place to place and we rejoice when we are thrown against another particle that came from the same stone.

How I almost lost my host mom's dog

2011-06-13T09:26:00.001-07:00

After having my last piano lesson here, coming back on the bus next to one of the scariest-looking guys I've ever seen, and eating an early dinner, I thought about completing the three things on today's to-do list: blog, homework, thank-you cards; but instead decided that I needed some much-deserved procrastination time.

I ended up spending quite a long time aimlessly reading articles and blogs online, trying to forget that I had homework to do or a final to study for. I was brought back to earth by the sound of the doorbell.

I didn't know what to do; my host mom wasn't home. Her dog was, though, and he had run to the door, barking and sniffing, and looking at me like I was crazy for not running to open it right away.

For some reason my first thought when I hear the sound of the doorbell, any doorbell, is that I'll open the door and be slaughtered by a serial killer. I certainly didn't want to be murdered today, so I peeked through the peephole and saw nothing. Either the doorbell-ringer had gone, or they were hiding out of view to ambush me when I opened the door. I wasn't sure what to do...

...so I asked the dog. I actually said, "Do you think I should open the door?" out loud to him. I took his sniffing to be a "yes" and cautiously unlocked and opened the door.

The doorbell-ringer came into view.

It was a middle-aged man in lederhosen.

He immediately went into his spiel, in German. I quickly tried to put on my I-understand-what-you're-saying-and-listening-attentively face while trying to figure out what was going on. He was holding a stack of glossy pamphlets so I held my hand out for one.

"[GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN] Euro," he said.

"Oh! Nein, danke," I said hastily.

The whole time this was happening, my host mom's dog had slipped through the open door and was now cavorting outside, sans collar and leash. By the time the lederhosen man had left, I was determined not to have a dog's life on my conscience.

"Hey! Oskar! Come here!" I called in my best talking-to-animals voice. "Come here, Oskar!"

Either Oskar didn't want to come back, or he didn't understand English. Or both. I watched him run in and out of view, unresponsive to my calls, so I took necessary action.

I fled to the pantry, grabbed the box of dog treats, and ran back outside.

"Here, Oskar!" I yelled, shaking the box in his direction. For one moment he looked at me as if sizing up the situation, then seemed to make the decision that one cannot obtain treats in the wild. He began trotting back towards me.

So in the end, I got my host mom's dog back inside, with a delicious treat for all his troubles. I also now have a dog that won't stop following me around because I think he now knows I will give him treats at the drop of a hat.

Also, I should do my homework now.

Sachertorte

2011-06-11T17:29:00.000-07:00

Today after my delicious kebap wrap Jodi and I headed to the Hotel Sacher to try the world-famous Sachertorte, which you can only get at the Sacher Hotel in Vienna and Salzburg.

You may not be surprised to learn that it took us three tries to find the right door. The second door we went through may have taken us into the back of a private party...I really don't know. We sat down cautiously in the hotel's cafe, which was classy and beautiful and definitely made me feel underdressed. It made me feel like I wanted to come and stay at the Sacher Hotel in the future. Maybe when I'm a famous, traveling concert pianist? Ha.

The menus, which featured blurbs about the Sachertorte's 175-year history, were hung on a little stand. I was really excited to try the Sachertorte (it was on my Austria bucket list) especially as I'd missed my chance in Vienna.

Funny story: when the waiter came, he asked "What would you like to order?" in German. The problem was he didn't use any vocabulary we'd learned in German so far so for a few awkward seconds we just stared blankly at him. Good thing he spoke excellent English and was very patient with us!

Anyway, the Sachertorte was delicious. I'm not the biggest fan of chocolate cake as it's usually heavy and wet and overly chocolatey but this thing was none of the above. It was served with unsweetened whipped cream which went perfectly with the cake, balancing out the dryness and sweetness. The layers of marmalade in the cake also added a lovely dimension of fruity sweetness. The covering—I hesitate to call it "frosting"—was chocolatey but not overly so. I realize I'm doing a stupidly bad job of describing it so I'll just say it was good. If you ever, ever find yourself in Vienna or Salzburg, do not miss out on this!

The best cheap meal I've had so far

2011-06-11T15:51:00.000-07:00

Okay, I'm doing a really horrible job of keeping posts in order. I also haven't been doing a good job journaling, so I'm probably going to kick myself when I look back on this trip and can't remember what happened when...

Oh well! Today I had a great day of mall-browsing (I hesitate to call it "shopping" as I looked more than I bought), Ikea-visiting (for the record, the Ikea here was exactly the same as the Ikeas in the US), EATING, and...well...eating.

For dinner my saxophone friend Jodi and I went to a highly recommended kebap place in Salzburg. It was a hole-in-the-wall type place but oh, was the food delicious!

I am embarrassed to admit that I always thought "kebab" was just food stuck on a stick, but Wikipedia and the plethora of kebap places in Austria tell me otherwise. I think kebap is a big thing over here? We went to "Popeye Kebap" which was a few yards (I'm sorry, meters) down from "Sinbad Kebap." I thought that was hilarious.

I had no idea what to order, so the friendly guys who worked there, as well as a free-spirited-looking customer, helped us out. ("The beef is the best! Get the beef!")

I ordered by pointing to an empty plate and answering "Yes" to every single question I was asked. Miraculously that actually resulted in me receiving delicious food.

This is beef kebap in a tortilla-looking thing, with lettuce, cabbage, tomatoes, onions, chilis, and some kind of sauce. It was delicious. My stomach is twisting with anticipation just looking at these photos, which I know aren't the best.

I'm sorry for the disgusting mid-bite photo, but can I say that THIS WAS DELICIOUS? Oh gosh. I want to go back and stuff myself.

To top it all off, the meal, drink included, was €5. Considering that a cup of coffee here can run you from €3.50 to €8, I'd say that was one fantastic deal.

Process of Deduction

2011-06-11T15:32:00.000-07:00

I realized today, after going through shops (one amazing accessories store may have stolen my heart, even though I didn't get anything) and a riverside of market stalls, that although I adore jewelry of all sorts, I can hardly, from a utilitarian standpoint, wear any of it.

I don't wear rings because of piano; my exception is my sapphire claddagh ring, which I take off every time I play. I've forgotten it many times on the piano, though luckily have never lost it!

I don't wear bracelets, also because of piano.

I don't wear earrings because I don't have pierced ears. I have a pretty admirable collection of clip-ons, including some really nice clip-on hoops, but I almost never wear them.

The only thing left, really, is necklaces. And even then I can't wear big statement necklaces all the time because I play violin.

So even though I love pretty accessories of all sorts, I pretty much never wear jewelry other than my ring and my Tiffany key. I envy girls who sport big cuffs, oversized rings, and huge statement necklaces (I secretly love huge statement jewelry!), but unless I want to remove all my accessories before I play any instrument, I will continue living a blingless life.

I did, however, buy this necklace today. I couldn't help myself, it made me feel like Cleopatra.

(I realize now that this post has absolutely no point whatsoever. Oh well.)

On Plans

2011-06-09T15:51:00.000-07:00

As part of our study abroad program, we have a four-day travel weekend to go anywhere we want—France, Spain, Germany, Switzerland, Italy, etc. My plans for this weekend kept changing; first I was going to go to Paris, then London, then Paris again, and somewhere along the way Amsterdam and Barcelona were in the mix.

In the end I decided to spend my last weekend in Salzburg. There are still so many things I want to do in this beautiful city before I leave, and I want to enjoy it while I can. Besides, four days aren't enough for me to go the places I want to go; I can always come back (provided I have the money, which granted isn't a given with grad school on the horizon) and when I do, I want to come with my best friends.

I think I made the right decision; I felt mellow and prematurely nostalgic on my walk back from my piano lesson today and I'm glad I have my weekend to do all the things I wanted to do—like get kebab, go to the market, visit Ikea, try the world-famous Sachertorte, available only in Vienna and Salzburg, do some damage to my credit card at the music and stationery stores, etc.

Anyway. Plans change, and the best thing to do is to enjoy life no matter what! Now that my to-do list for the evening is complete, it's time for me to go to sleep.

Upper Austria Part 4

2011-06-09T15:31:00.000-07:00

The last stop on our whirlwind Upper Austria trip was Hallstadt (we went through Bad Ischl) on the way. The town is known, amongst other things, for salt. I bought all of three containers of special Austrian salt there.

The main attraction that we were shown was the "bone house" next to a church there—it had over a thousand skulls and bones. The skulls were painted with symbolic imagery (roses for love, ivy for life, snakes to represent man's sin), and the name and years of the people the skulls had belonged to. Apparently it was once customary for people to have their skulls dried out and painted and put in the bone house.

Let me just say that I do not want to end up in a bone house, and that although I took pictures, I don't really want to put images of painted skulls on my blog, so let's have some photos of the town itself instead.

The view overlooking the lake was so beautiful, like a painting.

It was truly a beautiful little town, although due to time restraints we were shooed back onto the bus very shortly. I would have liked a little more time to look around and take advantage of the many souvenir shops; as much as I try to blend in with the locals (and judging by all the times I've been asked for directions, I might have succeeded) I'm a sucker for souvenir stores. I did make it out with the aforementioned three containers of salt and a package of delicious peach gummy candies.

Upper Austria Part 3

2011-06-08T13:09:00.000-07:00

Although Mauthausen left us thoroughly shaken, we were smacked in the face by beauty and splendor very soon at Saint Florian's Priory.

The priory features a stunning library that is so reminiscent of the library from "Beauty and the Beast" that I couldn't help but wonder if this was its inspiration. None of the photos I took capture the grandeur of this library; everyone gasped audibly when they walked in, it was that breathtaking. The ceiling featured an amazing fresco of the sciences and virtues in the heavens.

This is the Bruckner organ, named for Anton Bruckner. We also saw Bruckner's tomb below the priory; it was flanked by six thousand real human skulls. We stayed for an organ concert played on this very organ. I always thought organs were kind of kooky-sounding, as I've only ever heard lower-rate organs and recordings, but the mighty sound reverberating through the cathedral was awesome in the original sense of the word.

Upper Austria Part 2

2011-06-08T12:44:00.000-07:00

On our Upper Austria trip, we were taken to the Mauthausen concentration camp. Mauthausen itself is a beautiful town, now marred by what was once one of the largest labor camps in Europe.

The site is now a memorial, with countless sculptures and plaques dedicated to the victims of the camp.

Mauthausen was easily the most disturbing, depressing, and heartbreaking place I've ever been to. After we watched a sickening documentary about the camp, we were taken to key locations: the "Stairs of Death," the "Parachute Jump," the sleeping cabins, "Wailing Wall," and the execution center, where we stood in the gas chamber and crematorium.

It is an awful thing to learn about the horrors that people inflicted upon each other. It is an even more awful thing to stand in the very places where you know that these horrors transpired, and where you know for a fact that people died, in pain and panic.

Upper Austria Part 1

2011-06-08T12:23:00.000-07:00

The Saturday before last, all fifty-something of us in the study abroad program piled into a tour bus and off we went to Upper Austria. It was such a packed day that everyone was practically dead by the time we got back to Salzburg.

One of the first places we went was Lake Attersee in the Salzkammergut. This particular lake is next to the Höllengebirge (Mountains of Hell) and Schafberg (Sheep Mountain).

All of the lakes I've seen in Austria so far are wonderfully beautiful. The Attersee was no exception. The water is also supposedly safe for drinking, provided you don't dip from the same place the ducks are living.

Gustav Mahler loved the Attersee so much that he had a little cottage built on the shore so he could compose in peace. This cottage was literally a few seconds' away from the water.

This was probably Mahler's piano. I didn't actually find out.

(That's my Salzburg roommate standing in the shade of the cottage. She didn't know I was taking a photo!)

Sudoku und Winnie Puuh

2011-06-07T13:06:00.000-07:00

Okay so now I'm getting out of order as this is NOT one of my backlogged posts...oh well. I was too excited to wait.

Today at the music store in Salzburg I found a little stack of Sudoku books. I'm a fan of Sudoku, so I picked it up...and was blown away.

Instead of numbers, it's played with solfege.

What more, the gray boxes, after you've completed each puzzle, reveal the theme of a popular song...

...or famous classical composition.

And this is a book I picked up my last day in Vienna. Two friends and I found a bookstore and were drawn to the clearance bins outside. We proceeded to go through the bin of kinderbücher, or children's books. One of my friends, who is taking German I with me, bought a counting book and two animal books. In the shop we talked to the shopkeeper, a really nice girl who let us practice our German on her, helped teach us our colors, and talked to us in English about languages, Skype, and life.

Anyway, I left with a Winnie-the-Pooh book. In German he's known as "Winnie Puuh."

Sadly my Winnie Puuh goodnight story is somewhat above my German reading comprehension. So far I've made it through three pages.

The prettiest commute

2011-06-07T12:10:00.000-07:00

Two to three times a week I walk twenty minutes or so to my piano lesson. I actually prefer walking over taking the bus (even though I have a bus pass) because the little journey is so pleasant. One time I took pictures along the way.

This is the view as I walk along the river. Ahead is the bridge I walk over.

There are multiple bridges over the Salzach, some for pedestrians and some for vehicular traffic. I like walking over this one—it's less crowded.

This is the view from the bridge. You can see the domes of churches and a fortress on a mountain. It's beautiful.

After I cross the bridge, I continue walking along the river. In the afternoon beautiful twenty-somethings sit under the trees playing guitar or talking and sometimes on hotter days they sunbathe on the riverbank.

I always pass this giant guitar.

The graffiti here is much more artistic than what I've seen in America. I also see a lot of anti-Nazi graffiti; things like "Nazis töten!" and "**** Nazis!" or "Kill all Nazis!" and "Space Invaders against Anti-Semitism." There's also the occasional ideological anti-war or anarchist message scrawled on walls.

This is the part of Salzburg known as the "new town." By "new" they mean it's a few hundred years old. The "old town" has buildings dating back to when years only comprised three digits.

This is the view I get when I return from my piano lesson and the sun begins to set. If only all commutes could be this glorious.

On the Piano and Loneliness

2011-06-07T11:24:00.000-07:00

I once read in an interview that Martha Argerich—one of my idols—preferred playing concertos to solo piano works because she didn't like being lonely on stage.

It seems like a mere quirk, something you'd attribute to the fickle creative type, but I've since discovered that to be a pianist is to be alone. Many people have told me that they gave up seriously pursuing piano because of the solitude the job entails. Although people who play other instruments also need to have a lot of solo practice time, they often work with accompanists or ensembles.

The amount of time I spend alone in the name of piano is surprising. Of course there are the countless hours of solitary practice time. There is the time spent in my room listening to recordings of pieces, by myself (for self-criticism) or by the masters (for inspiration). There is the time alone backstage or in the green room before a solo performance.

One of my piano professors, Dr. Cooper, said that at one performance during his career, as he walked onstage, he realized that he had spent more time in his life with the piano than "with any living human person."

I had a funny realization as I watched Claudius Tanski rehearse the second Liszt piano concerto at the Großes Festspielhaus in Salzburg. (Fun fact, I played on that piano in that concert hall the day before; the acoustics were mindblowing.) Even on a stage with dozens of musicians, the pianist is alone. He (or she) sits behind the conductor's back, totally separated from everyone else.

Conclusion? It takes someone who needs that degree of solitude in their lives to become a pianist. It isn't necessarily a bad thing, but it's something to consider.

Another food post from Salzburg

2011-06-06T10:49:00.000-07:00

Well I am back from my Vienna trip, tired and with a German quiz fast on the horizon. Since I have a lot of pre-Vienna photos, I might cover those and do a post-Vienna recap later. Or maybe I'll just let things get out of chronological order. Who knows?

Wienerschnitzel, perhaps the consummate Austrian food? I didn't find out what wienerschnitzel was until I got here; it's breaded fried veal. Delicious drenched in lemon juice; then again everything is delicious drenched in lemon juice.

My host mom's cooking: chicken, potatoes, and a vegetable medley. I love how fresh and flavorful all the veggies are here!

A mystery dessert I had from my host mom. It's like a coconut macaroon on top of some kind of chocolate cream on top of some crunchy thin wafer thing and held together with chocolate. In any case, it was delicious. Does anyone know what this thing is?

Gnocci in cheese sauce!

I think this was chicken stuffed with cheese and ham. Made by my host mom and accompanied by potatoes (and curry ketchup, of course!!)

Some kind of pastry stuffed with feta, spinach, and what I think is ham. My host mom made this, it was ridiculously tasty.

I forget what kind of meat this was—pork? Chicken? Oh well. What looks like salsa is some kind of stew-y tomato sauce.

I have so many more food photos that I don't know when I'll ever finish blogging them all. I'm not even showing all of the food I'm eating; I try only to show the most memorable meals and desserts, and all of these are from weeks ago...

BRB

2011-06-01T14:14:00.000-07:00

I'm going to Vienna for a four-day trip, and I'm not bringing my laptop, so unless there is a magic blogging machine in the hostel, there will be no updates. Meanwhile my backlog of photos and posts is growing increasingly large.

(Photo is from the inside of Saint Florian's Priory.)

2011-05-30T12:21:00.000-07:00

On Saturday I had the opportunity to explore the city by myself. (This was the same day that I tried an Austrian Big Mac and found a discreet painted street symbol.)

It was a day of hilarious mishaps, related to my inability to navigate a world that isn't filled with signs in a language I can read. At McDonald's I opened the door to a private office because I thought it was the bathroom, and I walked into an unyielding board because I thought it was a door. At H&M I got stuck on the men's floor because I couldn't find the exit, and in my attempt to get out got myself stuck on the children's floor. Then I got stuck on the men's floor again. After I finally asked for help I almost opened an alarm-rigged emergency exit.

After some time I just wanted to sit down and rest and not be tripped up by my inability to function in German. I walked aimlessly down a block and saw Cafe Tomaselli, which I'd already been to. Then I noticed that near Cafe Tomaselli was a little building with a fenced seating area, called Kiosk Tomaselli. I guess it's a little add-on to the original cafe?

I wasn't actually sure what it was, so I walked in, and asked a tux-clad waiter, "Do you serve coffee here?"

Which, in hindsight, is probably the stupidest question to ever be asked in a cafe. To his credit the waiter answered me without laughing. It made me wonder if stupid tourist questions were the norm. I sat down outside and proceeded to be confused at the menu.

I wanted to try a coffee, because my boyfriend, CEO and food-blogger extraordinaire, had told me that I absolutely had to see what Austrian coffee was like. I'm not a coffee drinker, so thanks to being coffee-illiterate and German-challenged, I didn't have a chance of understanding the menu.

When the waiter came, I pitifully pointed to the very first thing on the menu without knowing what it was. I got the Tasse Melange, which according to the description is a mocha with milk and "schlag." I had no idea what schlag was. Google tells me now that schlag is whipped cream.

My coffee arrived very quickly, on a silver tray with a small glass of water and two pretty packets of sugar. I could only assume the water was for drinking...? I hope there isn't any cultural practice I'm missing out on in which you use the water to wash your spoon, or baptize the nearest infant, or something. In any case, I drank it.

I first tried the coffee without sugar, and it was good—rich, complex, and slightly bitter. Then I dumped in both sugar packets and it was delicious. Coffee purists everywhere, you may shudder.

I sat outside, sipping my coffee and reading Casanova's memoir until it was time to go home for dinner.

Austrian McDonald's

2011-05-28T09:18:00.000-07:00

Today I wandered around the "Old Town" section of Salzburg with a furiously growling stomach. On one of the main shopping streets I found myself in front of McDonald's.

I honestly don't remember the last time I ate at a McDonald's. I generally stay very far away from fast food, with the exception of In-N-Out.

However, I have been told that because of very strict food laws, Austrian McDonald's are of far superior quality to American McDonald's—although we all know that's really not saying much. The ingredients are fresher, are not over-processed, and are free of trans fats.

So I went in, stood in a line, and anxiously tried to figure out how to order in German. Of course I could have gone up, done my requisite "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" and ordered in English, but for goodness sakes, I am taking German here. I just had my German midterm. If I couldn't order at McDonald's in German, then I would be a failure of a human being.

I ordered a Big Mac because what else is more representative of McDonald's? I wasn't sure whether to say "ein Big Mac" (masculine) or "eine Big Mac" (feminine) and decided on "ein" because Big Macs just seem masculine to me. I also got waffle fries (Gitter Pommes) because someone had told me they were amazing.

I was amused by all the unintelligible (to me) German on my Big Mac box.

The Big Mac actually looked pretty appetizing.

And it tasted pretty good!

The waffle fries were honestly some of the best fries I have ever had. Seriously, if you ever find yourself at an Austrian McDonald's, get the waffle fries.

(I didn't get a drink because I couldn't figure out a way to order it with my limited vocabulary without making a fool of myself, which is probably the stupidest reason to go thirsty. Oh well.)

Spotted today on the ground

2011-05-28T09:04:00.000-07:00

In Salzburg the paths are divided into lanes for pedestrians and bicyclists, and are marked with painted symbols to tell you which one is which. Today on my way to my piano lesson I spotted one very modest walking-man-symbol.

A matter of Great Importance

2011-05-27T10:32:00.001-07:00

As you may know, I once had a ducky umbrella, and it meant a lot to me.

Today I was browsing a children's store in Salzburg, and when I was in line at the checkout I saw a container of plastic-wrapped children's umbrellas in the shapes of ladybugs and frogs. My heart leapt when I saw the ducky umbrella. There was only one. I picked it up—it looked exactly the same as the one I used to have.

Believe it or not, I didn't get it. I had already bought an umbrella here, having been caught in the rain, and I generally don't make impulse buys.

However, when I think back on it, part of me thinks that it must be fate. The universe put that one ducky umbrella in my path to tell me that I HAVE TO GET IT.

Another part of me thinks that I don't need to go around buying children's umbrellas.

So what do you think? Should I go back and get the ducky umbrella? Or should I let it go?

The bus stop

2011-05-23T10:03:00.001-07:00

Well, I've moved one step up from going around starting conversations with "Sprechen sie Englisch?" and speaking in English all the time. Thanks to my German class I can now ask a few key questions and give a few very specific answers. Now when I brush past someone I say "Entschuldigung" instead of being mute.

The unfortunate downside is that I sometimes accidentally give the impression that I know more German outside of these few key phrases.

The other day I got to the bus stop just as the bus had left, as did an older lady who sat down next to me at the stop. She turned to me and said something, probably about how it was just our luck that we'd barely just missed the bus.

Now, when people speak German to me and what they're saying falls outside of the tiny realm of my German understanding, my mind, instead of properly processing what they might be saying, automatically fills it in with "[GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN.]"

So this is how the conversation went:

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN]

Me: [nods and smiles]

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN]

Me: Um...sprechen Sie Englisch?

Lady: Nein. ("No.")

At this point, I knew I was doomed.

Me: Okay, ich spreche ein bisschen Deutsch. ("I speak a tiny bit of German.")

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN]?

Me: Umm...uh...ich weiß es nicht. ("I don't know.")

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN]?

Me: Ich weiß es nicht!

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN]? (At this point she was asking the same question again and again, clearly under the impression that if she repeated it enough, I would understand.)

Me: Ja. ("Yes." I have no idea what I was saying "Yes" to, I just wanted it to stop.)

Lady: Woher kommen Sie? ("Where do you come from?")

Me: Aus den USA! ("From the USA!")

Lady: [GERMAN GERMAN GERMAN]

Me: Um...

Eventually, after a whole round of questions that ended in me answering "Ich weiß es nicht" each time, the lady gave up and we waited for the 21 bus in awkward silence.

The story of how Sharon got trapped in a church, but not really.

2011-05-22T11:57:00.000-07:00

One of the downsides of being a pianist is that you don't have the security of carrying your instrument around with you. Of course, one of the perks if you don't have to carry your instrument around with you and deal with security.

The college has only one piano in the building, and it isn't always available, so I'm allowed to practice on the grand piano in St. Mark's Church when it's open. The only caveat is that the church closes at 5 PM.

The first time I went to St. Mark's to practice, I was very wary of of being locked in. I periodically got up from the bench to open the door, close it, open it again, and close it again, just to make sure. Had someone been watching me they probably would have thought I had some sort of severe obsessive disorder.

Five o'clock came and went, and I packed up to get home before dinner. When I got to the door, it refused to open.

I stayed calm. I went to the other side of the room to a door with a sign saying, in both English and German, "Emergency exit—DO NOT LOCK."

It was locked. I was trapped in a church.

I couldn't believe that the door had been locked while I was practicing. I imagined some sinister priest coming to the door, hearing me banging away at Liszt inside the room, and locking me in anyway.

Brief visions of camping out on the floor and waiting for the morning flashed through my head. I tried the main door again. I jiggled the handle, pushed against the door—nothing. I took out my phone, for which I'd bought an Austrian SIM card the day before, and called the director of the college. I was flooded with relief when she picked up the phone, and I think the first words out of my mouth were "I'm trapped in Saint Mark's!"

When she arrived the first words out of her mouth were "It's not locked."

As it turns out, the door just happened to be a very old door, and the handle had to be pushed down a certain way. The director had me try, in front of her, and I sheepishly discovered that I had been capable of opening it the entire time.

Hungry? Food post from Salzburg

2011-05-22T05:58:00.001-07:00

I've been snapping photos nonstop since I got here (my official count is 866 photos so far, eek!) and one of the things I'm documenting without fail is, of course, the food I'm eating.

Here are a few looks at some of my meals so far. I'm attempting to be a Real Blogger and color-correcting my food photos now!

Tortellini with ham in cheese sauce.

Salami and pickles on a roll at Cafe Tomaselli, the cafe Mozart used to frequent.

Pasta and cheese (and the sauce too, I think) from Italy, made by my host mom.

Fish and potatoes.

Fish and vegetables cooked in ginger, made by my host mom.

A dessert platter at a cafe.

A slice of cake from Cafe Tomaselli.

Turkey sausage and potatoes with curry ketchup (!!!!!!!) made by my host mom. Side note, she includes a salad with every meal. The lettuce-lover in me is so happy. Also, curry ketchup is so much better than regular ketchup. Apparently it's a German thing.

Apple strudel!

I've got a lot more food photos but cropping and color-correcting can definitely slow a girl down. This should be enough to leave you hungry for now.

Sprechen Sie Englisch?

2011-05-18T15:21:00.000-07:00

Before I started taking German here, the only useful phrase I knew was "Sprechen Sie Englisch," which means "Do you speak English?" in its formal form.

Of course, one could argue that it's a useless phrase as anyone who'd answer yes to "Sprechen Sie Englisch" would understand "Do you speak English?" anyway, so it wouldn't make a difference, but I like to make myself feel better by feeling like I tried, at least, to not be That American.

The thing I've noticed though, is that every time I someone "Sprechen Sie Englisch?" and they do, in fact, speak English, they don't just say yes. They always say "A little bit," or "Yes, only a tiny bit." That's a perfectly reasonable answer, but here's the kicker: they always speak perfectly good English. And yet if you ask them if they speak English, it's always "only a little."

I don't know if Austrians are a modest people, or if they really underestimate how well they speak English, or if that's what they're supposed to say. I can almost imagine, in Austrian schools, children being told exactly how to respond to such a question.

"Klaus, if an American comes up to you and says 'Sprecken zee Engleesh,' what do you say?"

"I say 'A little bit,' Lehrer!"

"Perfect! Have a Mozartkugel."

Though I suppose if someone came up to me and asked if I spoke Spanish, or Chinese, I would respond the same way. I suppose answering that you only speak a little bit of the language excuses you from having to say anything more than a few basic things, and getting away with it. I guess it also saves you from extended conversations you don't want to be part of.

"Sprechen sie Englisch?"

"Yes, a little."

"Where's the nearest McDonald's?"

"It's over there to your right."

"Great! Say, what's your take on foreign policy?"

"Sorry, I told you I only spoke a little English. Auf Wiedersehen!"

I want to take Mozart home with me

2011-05-16T09:26:00.000-07:00

As I said before, Mozartkugeln is a really big thing over here. To be honest I still can't tell if it's a tourist thing or if it's a genuine Salzburg thing. I suspect it's the former, since the hugest displays are in the more tourist-centric areas, but Wikipedia won't tell me anything.

In any case, there are cardboard cut-outs of Mozart-holding-a-Mozartkugel EVERYWHERE. You cannot walk anywhere without seeing life-sized candy-schilling Mozart standing on the sidewalk, enticing you to go into a shop where the display is purely boxes and boxes of Mozartkugeln.

It's so endearing to me, in an odd way—this army of Mozarts telling you to buy chocolate with his face on it—that I really just want to grab a Mozart cut-out one day and take it with me. I want a candy-advertising Mozart for my very own, maybe to stand next to my piano.

Here's a picture I snapped of one Mozart I ran into while I was busy getting supremely lost for the umpteenth time around the Mozartplatz.

Unfortunately, I have a feeling that I would get in trouble were I to pick up a Mozart one day and walk down the street with him, and I think I would have a very hard time explaining to airport security why I had to bring a lifesized cardboard Mozart back to America.

I told you Austrian dumpsters were small

2011-05-16T09:15:00.001-07:00

I took this photo while waiting at the bus stop today. That brown thing that looks like a doghouse? That's a dumpster. They are all that tiny.

Three Things about Salzburg

2011-05-14T16:20:00.000-07:00

1. The trash receptacles here are TINY. The trash compartments in my host mom's kitchen are the size of what Americans consider desktop or counter-sized trash cans. The first time I saw a dumpster here I stopped and stared because it was so cute. You know how American dumpsters are so huge that people make swimming pools out of them? Austrian dumpsters are small enough that you can actually look down on them. Street trash cans, likewise, are tiny. My first day in the city I had a wad of tissues wedged in my pocket because I couldn't find a single trash can, until someone pointed out that the trash cans were these little barely-two-gallon-sized cans tied to traffic poles. Despite the trash cans and dumpsters being small, they are never full. My conclusion is that Americans just produce way too much garbage.

2. Public transportation here rocks. Once I figured out the bus system (there are multiple bus lines, of course, and due to me mishearing German yesterday I got off about five stops too early and had to walk a ridiculous distance back to my host family's house) I realized how convenient and easy it was. And the buses are clean and feel updated and well-kept. I rarely ever take American busses, but my impression of them is that they are gross and poorly maintained.

(What also threw me at first was that the busses here don't stop at every stop if there is no one waiting to get on or off. You either get up and wait at the door before you get to your stop or you press a red button to alert the driver that you want to get off at the next stop. I was bewildered when the overhead announced my stop but the bus went barreling right past it. Now that I get it, it just seems really efficient.)

3. Mozart is EVERYWHERE. If I had a penny for every time I saw a storefront with a display of Mozartkugel, I would have enough money to upgrade to a first-class ticket back to the States. There are two big statues of Mozart in the area of the city where I go to school, and I can easily walk to Mozart's birthplace, an apartment he lived in later, the cathedral where he worked, and I can visit where his sister is buried and the cafe where he got his coffee every day. (The cafe is still in business!) The Mozarteum, of course, is in Salzburg. There is enough Mozart-themed merchandise to make you puke, from violin-shaped bottles of Mozart liqueur to Mozart perfume. Salzburg is a city that will not let you forget that it was the birthplace of the greatest musical genius of all time.

(Also everywhere, but not to the same extent, is "The Sound of Music." There is merchandise everywhere, there are "Sound of Music tours," and there is a public "the making of" exhibition. I've been told Austrians aren't that fond of the movie, but Salzburg is milking it for all it's worth. For the record, I've already visited several places where specific scenes were shot, in addition to the abbey where the real Maria von Trapp was a nun.)

On the Metric System

2011-05-11T16:04:00.000-07:00

Being in Europe makes me feel like the US uses a completely inferior measurement system. Ever since I got on the plane things have been in kilometers and meters. My carry-on was “under eight kilograms,” however much that is. I asked one information desk lady where to exchange my currency and the directions she gave me included “fifteen meters.” I confess I’m bad enough at judging things like “fifty feet” or “twenty yards” or “ten pounds” but when you completely switch the measurement system out on me I’m just totally lost.

Something tells me that this is America’s fault. We’re on a totally wacky system of inches and feet and miles where everything converts arbitrarily but the metric system is so elegant. Centimeters, meters, kilometers, everything is just a multiple of ten. Too bad I just can’t get it.

Another thing which makes me feel like Europe is out to get me is the way that time is notated on the 24-hour scale, or military time as we Americans like to call it. Now before you think I’m totally dumb, I do know how it works and in fact I use 24-hour time on Facebook so I’m at least somewhat familiar with it.

The thing is, though, I don’t think in terms of twenty-four hours. I can figure out that “18:48” is “6:48 PM” just fine but when everyone’s throwing around numbers bigger than twelve and instantly knowing what part of the day that is, it just confuses me. “7:30 PM” to me means the sun is going down, or that people are eating dinner around that time. “19:30” means nothing to me.

It also, in my mind, raises the possibility that I’ll somehow miscalculate the time and get things totally messed up. It’s like the European system is just lying in wait for me, just counting down the differently-notated hours until I’m bound to mess up and show up to something at completely the wrong time.

Now blogging from Salzburg

2011-05-11T16:03:00.000-07:00

I was going to blog before I left the States, WHOOPS! Anyway I had some downtime with my computer at the Munich airport, and now that I have an internet connection at my host family's house in Salzburg I'll start dumping my offline blog vomit here.

I’m sitting in the Munich airport as I write this. I don’t actually have internet access (you have to pay per hour of wifi) so I’m writing in Microsoft Word with the intention of putting this on my blog later.

The reason why I’m sitting in the Munich airport is because for some reason I have to wait three hours for my van to Salzburg, where I will be studying and staying with my host family. When I booked the van through email this week, I was told that the driver would be waiting at the airport for me; when I actually got to the transfer service counter, I was told that I’d have to wait three hours. I attempted to get to the bottom of it all but the representative of the specific service I was using couldn’t understand English and another rep for another service had to translate for him. It was a messy situation.

So yes, being in a country where you don’t know the language is certainly an experience, and I’m not even out of the airport. I’ve passed the time by reading my student handbook, journaling, napping, and changing the time zone on my iPod Touch repeatedly. Yes, I forgot to bring a book. (It’s a moment of forgetfulness I’m kicking myself for; what I would give to have my copy of A Tree Grows in Brooklyn right now.) As of now I have more than an hour to go before the alleged magic time in which I will be graced with transport to my host family.

8:03 PM edit: A man from the Salzburg transport service just came and took my luggage; in broken English he told me that we’d leave at 9:00. I really hope that this works out and that I don’t end up in some horrible situation where my luggage ends up somewhere else.

I’d like to note that so far I’ve found myself having to be That American who doesn’t know the language and copes by just speaking in English to anyone with a nametag or behind a counter. It’s a poor situation to be in, but hopefully the German course I’m taking at the college will teach me enough to at least let me show that I’m trying.

What I'm up to: a list

2011-04-26T20:50:00.000-07:00

I don't know about you, but I have a huge thing for making lists. So here's a list of what's been happening in my life.

1. A month ago, I gave my junior recital.
2. Two weeks after, I won honorable mention in a concerto competition.
3. Two weeks from now, I will be leaving for Austria for a study abroad summer session. When I come back I should be capable of speaking in slightly mangled German! (By the way, any tips on packing, studying abroad, etc. would be very much appreciated!)
4. I am currently working on a real wine label design; I'm one of four design students working on designs and this week the winery owner will be picking one. (Eek!)
5. I've gotten my new piano repertoire for next year and it is legitimately daunting. I started working on the Liszt that I picked and the sheer difficulty of it made me question my sanity.

(I may have mentioned the Liszt so that I could tag this post "lists" and "Liszt." I'm a dork.)

Hello again

2011-04-24T15:37:00.000-07:00

Sorry for the extended lack of posts. I was practicing before a concert the other day when Ben texted me telling me to update my blog.

In my defense I have been pretty busy; I kind of stopped blogging the two weeks or so before my recital, and decided that when my recital was over I would post some long, eloquent, all-encompassing write-up about the whole experience. However, because I made it seem like some big important thing I absolutely had to do in my head, I put it off, and it got to the point where I would want to blog about something and stop myself because I hadn't made a recital post yet.

So here I am, getting over myself and posting. This is not the great recital post I had planned in my head; the time is long gone for that, as my recital was almost a whole month ago.

So instead, I give you the video recordings from my recital, in the order of the program. Filming and editing was done by Bryce, my lovely boyfriend.

P.S. In case you find yourself sitting around all day waiting for me to update my blog, you can always follow me on Twitter, in case you aren't already.

I sold out a little bit

2011-03-10T20:39:00.000-08:00

There are now ads on my blog. I know, I hate it too. However, I get anything from twenty to a hundred views on a post at any given time—I know that isn't a lot, but it's quite good considering I don't publicize my blog at all. So I'm trying this out and who knows, maybe I'll get enough to get myself a pearl milk tea once in a while.

I made cool invitations: the process

2011-03-10T01:22:00.000-08:00

By all means, skip this if you don't really want to read me describing each step of my invitation-making. However, I love when bloggers post about the process. In my Graphic Design I class we had to write "process books" describing every single aspect of our design projects, from start to finish. Some might find that tedious but I found it kind of therapeutic, plus I liked hearing other people's problems and solutions.

So last semester, I wanted to let people know the date of my recital so they'd know not to schedule trips, parties, voyages into space, etc. on that day. However, I felt it wasn't appropriate to send invitations eight months in advance. The solution? Save-the-dates.

I printed and cut hundreds of these babies and gave them to friends, favorite professors, students, and old teachers. I kept a stack of them in my planner at all times so that I was always ready to hand one out. In a pinch, I'd also use the back of them to write notes or messages for other people. They'd get the card, read it, then flip it over (people always flip things over, just to check. It's a weird instinct) and see that. It's a great quasi-sneaky advertising trick.

I kept the design simple because A) I didn't have that much time and B) I was (and still am) digging minimalism in design. There's just something about the key information being front and center. I chose Fontin as my main font because it's got the classiness of a serif font but has that fresh, modern (and dare I say it, young?) feel. I wanted to convey that yes, this is a classical music event, but it's far from stuffy or stodgy.

Planning ahead, I also kept it simple so that I could easily adapt the design for my invitations.

The invitations themselves took some time to design. I knew for months that I wanted something that opened up. I've gotten well-designed promotional stuff before and there's something about something that has to physically blossom to be read that gives it way more impact than a fold-once card.

For a while I toyed with the idea of an accordion-folded invitation with a perforated panel that you would tear off to RSVP. However, that seemed needlessly complex, considering that I wasn't delivering a novel. I realized I was only presenting three elements: the what-when-where, the directions, and the RSVP. Included in my design process was the fact that I wanted the directions and the RSVP to be able to be detached from the rest of the invitation; the RSVP would have to be mailed, and I wanted people to be able to take the directions with them into the car without having to bring them entire invitation with them.

After way too many sketches with different proportions, and after cutting and folding paper to experiment with, I came upon my final design: a twice-folded vertical menu with a clear distinction between its closed and open forms, that became long when unfolded, and kept the directions and RSVP cards in slits at the bottom.

Funnily enough, after I had decided on all the dimensions (5"x7" folded up) I realized too late that I would need to find an envelope size with the same ratio. Desperately I Googled envelope sizes and found that there exists an A7 envelope that is 5.25"x7.25", perfectly proportioned for my invitations with space to breathe all around. That was lucky. I quickly ordered a pack of white A7 envelopes from Amazon.

Formatting everything properly took much longer than expected. I spent hours closely following the rulers in Adobe Illustrator to make sure that everything A) lined up, B) could be printed without need for full-bleed printing, and C) had the correct trim marks. I paid close attention to details such as the fact that I wanted the border of the main invitation card to line up with the border of the directions and RSVP.

Although I have access to multiple printers that print tabloid-sized (11"x17") paper for the outer shell, I realized it would be faster, more convenient, and more accurate to have my campus' printing center print them. After some dithering, I decided I'd have to cough up the money, so I headed to the print center with my USB drive. Luckily the guys there were nice; they printed free test prints for me, spent 15 minutes calibrating the commercial printer so that the gray of the invitation would be smooth, even, and saturated, and cut the paper along all my trim marks for free. They sealed the outer invitations in plastic and sent me on my merry way. (After I paid, of course.)

I didn't print the inner cards until I was at home for spring break, with a pack of white cardstock and a loyal inkjet printer. In my first test prints of multi-card sheets, I lamented that the trim marks wouldn't print because of the printer-imposed border. Then my mom told me that the printer does do borderless printing. I tried it out and hallelujah! the printer dutifully printed all the way to the edge, trim marks included.

PICTURE TIME! After the printing, the process involved a lot of physical craftwork.

Want to do this yourself? You will need a paper-cutter (I used two, actually), a large cutting mat, a small cutting board, a metal cork-backed ruler, a bone folder, an X-acto knife, and double-stick tape. Sharpies optional.

See the trim marks? This is why borderless printing was so crucial.

On the chopping block! I enlisted my sister on a second paper cutter to make cutting more efficient.

A close-up of the tools I'm using next.

And yes, my double-stick tape dispenser is in the shape of a horse.

First step? Measuring where the fold will be and creating a crease in it with my bone folder. I wanted a sharp, clean fold; have you ever folded a piece of card or construction paper and seen all those branched-off little wrinkly folds around the main fold? I needed my folds to be exact and clean.

This is what you get after creasing with the bone folder: a crisp, beautiful crease. Afterwards I fold it and flatten the fold with the blunt end of the bone folder, to make the fold extra sharp.

Next step: cutting the slits in the bottom of the shell to hold the smaller cards. I made myself a guide out of a scrap of card stock so all my cuts would be perfectly centered and proportioned.

See? Nice clean cuts, although on this one the cut on the right got a little off.

Then I tape the main invitation card in...

And slip in the smaller cards!

Done!

Rinse, lather, and repeat for an hour. It takes an hour to make about 40 invitations.

And then I put them in their envelopes, address them, seal them with water (no saliva germ-spreading here) and they're ready to be sent!

Whew! If you like this kind of thing, hopefully this gives you some insight into my process. I know some people find it unnecessary to know this kind of stuff but I'm kind of a geek about these things.

Sometimes I am forced to remember that I am a starving college student

2011-03-08T16:31:00.000-08:00

In fact, not only am I a starving college student, I'm also a starving musician and a starving artist, so theoretically I am forced to starve triply.

Today I visited my former piano teacher and she promptly gave me a great deal of insight and a new perspective on the Mendelssohn Variations Serieuses I'm playing. It was a fantastic visit.

As I drove back home I decided that I'd stop by Fantasia to get myself a pearl milk tea. The last time I had one was over winter break, so I decided it was due time for me to treat myself before spring break was over.

I parked in the parking lot and checked my wallet in the car to make sure I had enough cash. I opened my wallet and found that I had one measly dollar. I checked the coin compartment; I only had a few nickels and pennies.

Still hopeful, I headed inside, but was faced with a "CASH ONLY" sign and a cashier who informed me that they didn't accept credit cards. It was all for the better, anyway, as a recent deluge of application fees, international postage fees, competition fees, and accompanist fees have ravaged my checking account and credit card bill.

It's times like these, when I can't even treat myself to a cup of pearl milk tea, that I am forced to remember that I am indeed a starving college student. I drove home sadly, pondering the responsibilities of adulthood.

I made cool invitations

2011-03-07T02:39:00.000-08:00

I have a recital coming up. It's my first true solo piano recital (hopefully first of many!) and I wanted to invite many people outside of my university—old teachers, my students, other friends, etc. Some of my peers who have given recitals and bothered to send physical invitations got postcards printed.

But here's the thing. I like to do things formally, and I like to go all out. I also know that people are more likely to take you seriously and consider going to your events if you send them a fancy, well-designed invitation rather than an impersonal postcard. Plus, I liked having the chance to take on a project that involved smart designing, printing, and construction, in order to continue my own brand image.

To prevent this post from getting too long, I'll write about the whole process later later. For now, here's what a finished invitation looks like. (I really need to get a better camera, now not only does it shoot blurry photos, it also makes them all really grainy.)

P.S. Blogger, you seriously need to get your stuff together. It takes way too long to upload photos, both in the new "improved" editor and the old. You also like to automatically rotate photos that were the right orientation before, with no option for me to rotate it back. This is why everyone likes Tumblr now.

Boring envelope picture. When I intend to send one to somebody I hand-address it in felt-tip pen. Pretend I wrote your name and address on there.

When you open it up, you see the back of the invitation, with my copyright and website! (I was always taught to insert cards this way.)

Here is what the front looks like. If you got a save-the-date card from me, you'll notice this follows the same look. The outside of the invitation is a glossy deep gray.

Well hey! The top panel (the part edged with the keyboard pattern) opens up!

And so does the bottom! (The whole thing is sixteen inches high.) You may notice that the inside is printed with a blank staff pattern. The information cards are matte white cardstock, to contrast with the glossiness of the dark gray outer shell.

The bottom holds two cards, one for the RSVP, and one with directions.

So in all, this invitation contains all the information you'll need.

I've made it easy to RSVP; you have the option of filling out the card and mailing it back to me, giving it back in person, or emailing me the same information. Anyone who doesn't bother to tell me if they're coming or not is just lazy.

The directions tell you what Google Maps or your GPS can't; which school entrance to go through, how to get to the right parking lots, and how to get to the building.

And of course, the main part of the invitation tells you the date, time, and location. It also asks that you arrive early and lets you know there's a reception afterwards.

I dare you to make a cooler invitation for your next recital/party/shindig. No pre-designed templates allowed.

The best breakfast ever

2011-03-05T23:02:00.000-08:00

Normally breakfast for me is a piece of sourdough toast that I chew on my way to class, but on weekends Bryce and I like to make actual breakfasts. Last week we figured out that it was really easy to make crepes. Then, as fate would have it, I walked into the campus grocery store one morning to find a display full of baskets of strawberries, blackberries, and blueberries. I immediately bought two of each with my trusty dining dollars.

Then, as we discussed what our Saturday morning breakfast would be, we thought crepes with the fruit would be a great idea, except we then realized that we'd used up all of Chris's canned whipped cream when we'd made crepes the week before. Then this conversation happened:

Me: You know what's way better than the canned stuff? Real freshly whipped cream.

Bryce: I know! It's so good!

[pause]

Bryce: We should totally make real whipped cream ourselves!

Me: Yeah! Homemade crepes with fruit and freshly whipped cream would be such an amazing breakfast! While we're at it we might as well squeeze our own orange juice or something.

[we chuckle]

Bryce: You know what, it would actually be really cool if we did make our own orange juice.

So for breakfast this morning, we had homemade crepes with freshly whipped cream, strawberries, blueberries, and blackberries, and freshly squeezed orange juice. I have to credit Bryce for doing all of the batter-mixing, cream-whipping, and orange-squeezing.

It was an absolute revelation of taste. It was the best breakfast ever. You really don't know what amazing is until you've had homemade crepes this good. We may be starving college students, but we starve extremely well.

A heartfelt declaration

2011-02-14T12:26:00.000-08:00

(Disclaimer for my boyfriend: before you get a heart attack reading, this isn't about you.)

I thought we were in love.

I didn't know that you existed until I laid eyes upon you in class, and then it was infatuation. I'd never done anything with anyone like you; I was completely, utterly innocent. I thought you were the answer to all my problems.

We hit it off right away. Despite your complexity, you seemed easy to understand. I could sense the beginning of a beautiful relationship. We began creating something wonderful.

But soon you turned on me. We went farther than I ever intended for us to. Naively, I thought you would do whatever I wanted. But I found myself trying to make a point, and you would just behave as if you had no idea what I wanted. I tried to speak your language; I know that you're a rather mathematically-minded fellow, so I used numerical values and dealt as objectively as I could with you. I know you're not a fan of relativism. I found myself disgusted with what we were doing, but you were insistent. You'd defy my wishes and remain stubborn, even as I pleaded with you to let me reshape you. Your solutions to everything are convoluted and unintelligible. You're totally irrational, and you know what I discovered? You're a tool. You're a huge, stupid, illogical tool.

I want our relationship to end; it's a bad situation all around, but I'm stuck with you. I'm still holding out hope that I can reform you, because you have so much potential. Unfortunately, it's too late.

I want you to know, this Valentine's Day, that I hate you, Mesh Tool. Every time I open Adobe Illustrator CS5 to use you my heart fills with dread. I much prefer Pen Tool; while he's simple-minded and can't do nearly as much as you, at least he's not a jerk and he actually does what I want.

Unfortunately for the both of us my project is due Wednesday and I still have so much I'm going to have to do with you. I'm not looking forward to it and I can't wait to be rid of you.

Sincerely,
Sharon

Monster Apple

2011-02-08T00:32:00.000-08:00

This past weekend I went home to celebrate Chinese New Year with my family. I found myself greeted by the largest, most monstrous apple I've ever seen. Apparently my sister had gotten it for me; I was too intimidated to eat it and brought it back to school with me, where it kicked a bunch of bananas out to perch itself in my fruit bowl.

Tonight I finally got up the courage to eat Monster Apple. I'd worked up a large appetite from some vigorous late-night practicing and decided that it was time.

"But how large is this apple?" you ask. "Surely you're just exaggerating."

Well, friends, this is how big Monster Apple is.

It's bigger than a regular-sized mug.

It's about the same size as a loaf of bread.

It's almost as big as a pineapple.

I sliced it up into about a million normal-sized pieces because my face just hurt thinking about attempting to bite into this goliath. I'm currently halfway through it and I already feel stuffed. You know the part in Matilda when the Trunchbull forces that boy to eat an entire chocolate cake? I feel like I'm living the post-Cookie-Monster era version of that scene. Urp.

Edit: I finally finished; it took me almost a half hour to get through Monster Apple. I feel like I've just finished some kind of marathon.

On the consequences of being completely nocturnal

2011-02-04T01:05:00.000-08:00

I sometimes think that there's something wrong with me. I simply cannot function during the day.

Let me explain. I'm pretty sure I'm a completely nocturnal person. At night I have all the energy I need to lead a productive life; when it's dark out I'm just not tired at all, and I have the focus to practice for hours or work on a paper or do anything that's at all productive. During the day I'm either so sleepy it's all I can do to stay awake, or I'm fully awake but incapable of focusing as much as I know I can. And it's not dependent on how much I sleep; there have been times I've gotten more than eight hours of sleep every night for weeks and still felt like I was dying/a soulless empty shell of a person through the day.

(Of course I exaggerate, it's not nearly as bad as I'm making it sound. But still.)

I've pretty much given up on trying to solve my problem by going to bed earlier; all it does is cut down on my late night practicing time, which is crucial to my progress. When I go to the practice rooms during the day, I just feel sleepy. I've actually fallen asleep on the piano a few times this week during the day. But when I'm in a practice room at night, I'm just fine. My brain also gets completely confused when I go to bed at night; it takes a while for me to fall asleep because I can practically hear my brain going "What are you doing? Don't you know it's the wrong part of the day to sleep?"

In any case, my abnormal functionality doesn't like that I have 9 AM classes every day. Today I woke up eight minutes before class (Advanced Instrumental Conducting) started, and I stumbled out the door, still bleary-eyed. As soon my morning commitments were done with, I sped back to my room, set a few alarms, and threw myself back into bed for a much-needed nap.

Thus I had possibly the trippiest dream experience ever (which is saying quite a lot, considering I once had an Inception-style trip with five dreams nestled inside of each other). At some point I dreamed that I fell off of my bed and was sitting up on the floor. In my dream, my eyes were still closed, and I dimly thought, "I just fell off my bed. I should open my eyes."

I struggled so hard to open my eyes that in my dream, I opened them and saw this...

...which is my little tea station opposite of my bed.

However, I also made such a huge effort to open my eyes that I opened them in real life and saw this...

...which is a poster I designed that hangs right above my bed.

So to sum it up, I was dream-seeing one side of my bed, and real-life-seeing the other side of my bed, at the same time. Because my brain obviously didn't know quite what to do with two simultaneous sets of visual input, I ended up seeing the whole world skewed sideways with my postered wall as my ceiling, and the two sides of my room kind of sliced into each other, and it was just the most confusing thing ever.

I realize I might not have accurately conveyed the sheer trippiness of it all very well, so you just kind of have to take my word for it that it was really weird. I also realized that I might have to start figuring out how to function like a normal person. (Perhaps blogging at 1 AM is not the answer...)

On blogging

2011-02-03T23:51:00.000-08:00

I always think that no one reads my blog, and that the random pageview spikes in my blog stats are from one bored and curious person, and then I'll find that people actually sort of bother to read what I write. Sometimes someone will ask me when I'll update next, and occasionally people will mention to me in conversation that they look at my blog sometimes.

Such occurrences (such as today, when two friends, whom I didn't think knew this existed, admitted to reading my blog, and if you're looking at this now, hello! and thanks for reading!) send me into "what-the-heck-people-read-this" modes where I feel guilty for updating sporadically. I also get a little self-conscious about what I write; I kind of operate on the assumption that no one reads this but, for all I know, all my friends, my parents, and professors could be reading.

In any case, I need to blog more; I actually get ideas for blog posts quite often and find myself narrating a post in my head, though the few times I actually decided to put my thoughts to screen, they come out a lot less witty and insightful than they are in my head.

Sigh! Sometimes I think I'm just not cut out for blogging.

Targeted ads are strange

2011-01-27T19:21:00.000-08:00

This showed in the ad section of an email that referred to recording and shipping. The fourth link is the one that baffles me.

On Fourth Grade and Overwhelming Assignments

2011-01-25T01:45:00.000-08:00

When I started fourth grade, I was prepared to work hard. In the last months of third grade my teacher had repeatedly emphasized that fourth grade was hard, and that we couldn't afford to slack off. So on my first day, armed with a two-inch binder stuffed with paper and pens, I was ready for anything fourth grade could throw at me.

When it came time to note our first math assignment with our new textbooks, I dutifully copied the assignment from the board. I think the teacher wrote something like "p. 17-41, odd numbers" due the next day, and I wrote it down in my binder. I went home determined to do my math assignment perfectly.

When I got home, I began my math homework; my parents asked me what the assignment was, and I told them I had to do all the odd-numbered problems from page 17 to 41 of my math book. When I opened my textbook, I found that pages 17 to 41 spanned several chapters, each containing hundreds and hundreds of problems. I bravely began tackling all the odd-numbered problems. I worked until dinner; after eating, I continued.

I began getting worried because each problem took several minutes, and it had taken me hours to do only a few pages. I began worrying that fourth grade really was going to be too much for me, and I was scared. My parents both helped me through my homework; sometime after page 20 the textbook got into concepts more advanced than whatever I'd done in third grade. I couldn't understand how I was supposed to know how to do problems we'd never covered in class, on the very first day.

My parents asked me if I was sure I'd copied down the assignment correctly; I showed them the "p. 17-41, odd numbers" I'd written, verbatim, from the board. My parents helped me chip away at the endless math problems late into the night at the kitchen table, trying to explain the concepts to me, and wondering out loud why a fourth-grader would be given so much difficult homework. I began fearing that I wouldn't be able to finish my assignment, and I started crying.

Eventually my parents made me stop working; I think my mom told me to go to bed and wrote a note to my teacher.

At school the next day, I was anxious about the math homework, sure that everyone else in my class had been able to do it and that I wouldn't be able to handle fourth grade. When I talked to my teacher, she gently explained to me that the homework had been to do problems 17-41 from the first chapter, which was a review of what we'd done in third grade. The homework had been to do all of twelve problems, not several hundred.

So I did fine in fourth grade. A funny thing resulted from the whole situation; since then, no homework assignment has ever seemed impossibly overwhelming to me since. Nothing, even the burliest essay or set of physics questions, has compared to the trauma of crying at the kitchen table trying to finish hundreds of math problems I hadn't been taught how to do.

I share this story because last week in my Print Media Graphics class, we started a heavy-duty project in Adobe Illustrator and I was told to bring it in by the next class. I took this to mean that I had to have it finished by the next class, and I stayed up terribly late tooling away at my computer. I actually stopped after having done the bare minimum (usually a no-no for me). The entire time, I recalled that horrible first night of fourth grade. I couldn't help but question whether once again, eleven years later, I'd misunderstood the assignment. Still, it wasn't at all traumatic for me; I just mentally kicked myself for having procrastinated too much.

When I stumbled into the graphic design computer lab, bleary-eyed, the next morning, I found that all we had to do was bring in the projects we'd started so we could keep working on them in class.

In the end, it worked out in my favor; I got to move on to polishing my project (looking like an overachiever the whole time) while others had barely started. However, I really, really need to get better at understanding my assignments correctly. Staying up late doing work I don't need to, when I need all the sleep I can get, is really kind of stupid.

If I keep this up I'm going to become a food blogger

2011-01-15T19:56:00.000-08:00

Sorry for all the food posts, everyone. It's just that every time I cook something that isn't disgusting, it's a personal triumph that needs documentation.

Yesterday's dinner:

Jasmine rice, a vegetable whose English name I don't know, chicken, and preserved duck egg. I know that lots of people find preserved duck eggs really gross but they're one of my favorite things in the world.

Today's dinner, which I'm eating RIGHT NOW. (Sorry Ravi!)
Noodle soup with bok choy, carrots, chicken, and an egg. (This is actually the same thing as in this post, just with an egg now.) I love making this; it's so easy, so delicious, and is a legitimately balanced meal. Problem is I'm running out of the bok choy I brought from home...either I have to find a local Chinese supermarket or start substituting with broccoli or something.

Mmm so good!!!

I think I have a new favorite hobby

2011-01-13T18:27:00.000-08:00

That is, to make myself dinner, take photographs of it, and then blog while I'm eating.

Today's dinner was noodle soup with bok choy, chicken, and carrots (since they're good for your eyes). It is delicious, and again you can see my cool envelope-placemat.

I was looking at the English directions for the noodles I used, and I love them:

1. Please put Noodles into boiling water(1Lit)

I love how polite this is. American directions would just say "Put noodles in boiling water," never "please"! While Asians may withhold water and bathroom privileges from their children for having trouble with piano, we're at least very courteous about cooking our noodles.

2. After four or five minutes, (at first cook it for two minutes by strong fire and then cook it by moderate fire) Please stir it with chopsticks.

Again with the "please." I also love that I have to cook it with fire.

3. The lustrous, bright, soft and nutrient noodles should be poured by cold water after it is recovered from water.

Wow! We are getting descriptive. My noodles are lustrous, bright, soft, and nutrient. I think I've hit the noodle jackpot. I checked my package of spaghetti noodles and they don't say anything about luster or brightness. Clearly these noodles are better.

4. The making method is unique and needs short time for cooking it can be cooked into delicious noodles according to your flavor, no matter it is cooked, sauted or cool mixed.

I want to have cool mix noodles according to my flavor!

Anyway, going to keep eating my dinner. Toodles, guys!

I am getting pretty good at cooking, if I do say so myself

2011-01-12T18:34:00.000-08:00

Huzzah! I am getting better at being able to feed myself. Tonight I made Japanese buckwheat soba noodles with sesame sauce and green onions, with a side of fresh Chinese veggies! (I don't know what they're called in English.)

And if you were wondering, yes I use an old cardboard envelope mailer as my placemat. It's free, it protects my desktop from heat warping, and it's sturdy enough to be used as a tray in a pinch. Once it gets too stained, I can just throw it away. This is college student resourcefulness at its best, people.

Goodness it's delicious. I starve in style, kids!

Another resolution

2011-01-12T17:19:00.000-08:00

I've decided that from now on I will write thank-you cards or notes to people when they've done me a favor or gone out of their way for me. It's one of those little traditions I was taught to adhere to that unfortunately I've let go--and I've realized that when I receive a thank-you card, it really brightens my day and makes me feel appreciated!

In which a three-year jeans saga ends and I still don't understand how

2011-01-08T20:26:00.001-08:00

Once upon a freshman year of college, I scooped up a pair of jeans on clearance. They were nice jeans; size 0 slim, 36" inseam, and I think I got them for something under $15. (And may I point out that you never find slim size 0 jeans with 36" inseams. Normally they're 32", occasionally 34", never 36".)

After wearing them a few times, I lost them. I don't know how, I just did. I searched every corner of my dorm room for those jeans, and couldn't find them. I searched my house every time I came home for break, just in case I'd brought them home and left them.

When I moved out of my dorm room at the end of freshman year, I kept an eye out for the jeans. No dice. When I unpacked all my boxes upon arriving home, I kept looking. They had somehow vanished into thin air. I halfheartedly searched all summer. Nope.

When I had to move back to school the beginning of sophomore year, I kept an eye out while I packed. No jeans. At the very end of sophomore year, when I moved out, I looked for them. No jeans. When I got home and unpacked, I looked. No jeans. At one point, I got another pair of long size 0 jeans, but somehow lost those too.

At that point I gave up, deciding that someone must have stolen them out of the laundry while I was at school. Either that, or there is a ravenous jeans-eating monster roaming around that has a taste for size 0s with long inseams.

During one of my school breaks junior year, I was home when my sister gave my mom a pile of jeans to shorten. I poked through them and found what I thought were the jeans! I snatched them up from a terrible fate of inseam-shortening and brought them back to school with me.

When I wore them one day at school, I came upon the terrible realization that no, these were not the jeans. For one thing, they were too short. For another, the knees were far too tight, and there was a subtle decorative print on the front pockets.

So I gave the false jeans back to my sister the next time I came home and gave up on recovering those jeans.

But just now, as I began packing to head back to campus, I started sorting the pile of clothes in my suitcase and found...

...

THE JEANS.

I give up on trying to understand my life.

On Chinese Mothers

2011-01-08T13:05:00.000-08:00

My mom mentioned this article, Why Chinese Mothers are Superior, by Amy Chua, and how much she hated it; the article paints all Asian mothers as demanding, screaming crazy people who have absolutely no threshold for failure, and then insists that this method is better than "Western" parenting.

I read said article and it honestly bothers me too. Some points are true:

First, I've noticed that Western parents are extremely anxious about their children's self-esteem. They worry about how their children will feel if they fail at something, and they constantly try to reassure their children about how good they are notwithstanding a mediocre performance on a test or at a recital. In other words, Western parents are concerned about their children's psyches. Chinese parents aren't. They assume strength, not fragility, and as a result they behave very differently.

Of course that doesn't apply to all Asian parents, but yeah, it's kind of true.

But then there are passages like this:

If a Chinese child gets a B—which would never happen—there would first be a screaming, hair-tearing explosion. The devastated Chinese mother would then get dozens, maybe hundreds of practice tests and work through them with her child for as long as it takes to get the grade up to an A.

And this:

Back at the piano, Lulu made me pay. She punched, thrashed and kicked. She grabbed the music score and tore it to shreds. I taped the score back together and encased it in a plastic shield so that it could never be destroyed again. Then I hauled Lulu's dollhouse to the car and told her I'd donate it to the Salvation Army piece by piece if she didn't have "The Little White Donkey" perfect by the next day. When Lulu said, "I thought you were going to the Salvation Army, why are you still here?" I threatened her with no lunch, no dinner, no Christmas or Hanukkah presents, no birthday parties for two, three, four years. When she still kept playing it wrong, I told her she was purposely working herself into a frenzy because she was secretly afraid she couldn't do it. I told her to stop being lazy, cowardly, self-indulgent and pathetic.

Can I please say that these are not representative of Asian parenting? There's even a point in the article where author makes a point of comparing her two children and shooting down her husband's observation that their two daughters are different people. Amy Chua takes pride in being "mean" (her words!) to her daughters.

This article offends me because to the naked eye, I might look like a child of the Amy Chua parenting style: I play piano and violin, get (mostly) all As, etc., etc. But it's not because my parents scream at me to be at the top; it's because under their care I've developed my own independent drive to do the best I can. As for music, the reason why I've pursued it so far is because I love it; nothing else I've discovered in my life holds a candle to the power and expressiveness of music.

(And that's another thing: this crazy-Asian parenting churns out plenty of kids who can play lots of notes accurately and very quickly, but does nothing to instill the power of expressing oneself through the music. But I digress.)

So, Amy Chua, keep your screaming parenting tactics to yourself, and don't you dare go telling the world that all Asian parents are like you, and that it's the best way to bring up kids.

When I tell people I rock at bargain shopping, I really mean it.

2011-01-07T19:43:00.001-08:00

DubPlate!

2011-01-06T23:33:00.000-08:00

As mentioned before, I did the icon for Ben Englert's Mac app, DubPlate! It's now up in the App Store. Check it out, cause it's a cool application.

(I'm thinking of maybe using this to offer the option of recording my students' lessons and handing them the CD right afterwards as a reference...all for an extra fee, of course.)

Oh, and new layout!

Goodbye layout!

2011-01-06T22:08:00.000-08:00

I think it's time for a new blog layout. It's been around for a year and I'm a little tired of it now. (No offense, 2010 Sharon...)

From my Print Media Graphics syllabus...

2011-01-06T19:04:00.000-08:00

Group Work Policy: Everyone must take part in a group project. All members of a group will receive the same score; that is, the project is assessed & everyone receives this score. However, that number is only 90% of your grade for this project. The final 10% is individual, & refers to your teamwork. Every person in the group will provide the instructor with a suggested grade for every other member of the group, & the instructor will assign a grade that is informed by those suggestions. Once formed, groups cannot be altered or switched, except for reasons of extended hospitalization.

Uh oh... Group projects, like french fries, are the devil.

Resolutions

2011-01-05T22:31:00.000-08:00

Happy new year, everyone! I do hope that 2011 is a good year for all of us.

Just to be clear I don't really believe in making resolutions; personally I think self-improvement can start any time of the year and this idea that you're supposed to start off the year with a whole pile of ambitions that will unfailingly peter out is a bad one.

However, this winter break I started forming some good habits and as it happened I figured they coincided closely enough with new year's for me to call them resolutions. So here are my top three resolutions:

1. Stop wasting time.

As productive as people think I am, I shudder to think how many hours I've wasted this past year aimlessly browsing the internet or playing games, sitting around doing nothing productive, etc... about halfway through break I "banned" myself from pointless websites and activities, and so far I've been successful.

2. Journal every day.

You guys know my attitude about journaling. For a multitude of reasons I felt hard-pressed to make a serious effort to keep a journal, and this break I've developed a habit of sitting down right before bed and writing down everything that happened that day and whatever thoughts I needed to mull over. It's now one of my favorite little rituals and I really hope I'll be able to keep it up once I get back to school.

3. Take better care of myself.

That is, drink more water, eat more fruits and veggies, and attempt to get more sleep, though I have a feeling the last one is a lost cause.

In other news, I've redesigned sharonsu.com! Check it out!

Stuff

2010-12-16T01:29:00.000-08:00

(I don't really know what else to title this post.)

Yeah, I keep falling off the blogging wagon. One of these days I'll post stuff from my camera and hopefully make substantial posts about my life, but for now, here's a little list of stuff off the top of my head.

1. I'm home for break (and I don't have any definite plans, so definitely call/text me!) and done with finals!
P.S. Dear people on Facebook, I understand that you are very excited about passing your classes, but it's really unprofessional and annoying to see my newsfeed filled with "Yay! Got a B in this and a C+ in that an an A- in that..." or "Whoohoo! My GPA is 3.6!" Keep it to yourselves and tell your closest friends, thanks.
2. I recently designed an icon for a application my friend Ben wrote; you can see the icon and a description of the app here.
3. Recently my best friend Alix introduced me to Youtube fainting videos, and I spent a few minutes before bed watching people faint on TV. This was the result:

Me: remember when you showed me all those fainting videos

Alix: hahah, yes

Me: i ended up dreaming

that i was making my orchestral debut as a concert pianist

and as soon as i got to the first hard part in prokofiev's third concerto

i fainted

and became a youtube sensation

Okay, that's all for now. Maybe I'll start putting more effort into my posts...maybe.