When I re-started Matchingfreak back in 2008 for the second time, I was excited that I would have an excuse to take self-portraits again. There had been a serious decline in picture-taking since college, and this project was to salvage the little amateur photographer in me.
Well, I do take more pictures in a day now, but no more "discretionary" shots than I had been taking before. Is it that my surroundings are less inspiring, or that I am less inspired? Perhaps both, and I realize this.
I got a haircut last Saturday. They made my curls look so perfect that I knew it was a good self-portrait photoshoot opportunity, for old times' sake.
A few weeks ago, I was blessed with a free $100 Google AdWords gift card sent to me by my website hosting company. I figured I'd try it out, since it's free (I'm sure this was their intention). I want to milk every last penny out of this opportunity to promote Matchingfreak, so I started an ad campaign for it. When I noticed that my one image ad has an almost five times higher clickthrough rate than to the text ads, I decided to crank out a couple more, almost one of each size available. And here they are!
I quite like the orange one. Which one is your favorite?
I'm finally starting up a systematic process to discover and acquire new music. This was a long process in the making, and began about a year ago when I started weeding through my entire iTunes library and deleting and categorizing the music I already have. Now I am ready to start building on it.
I have several tools to help me remember what pieces I like best:
1. Notebook. I always carry it with me, and quickly jot down the name of the piece.
2. tobedownloaded.txt - A text file where I maintain a list of songs I like for downloading later. This is usually when I'm listening to online radios at home and the information is readily available.
3. Shazam (iPhone app). This one is awesome when I'm in a public place, like a coffeeshop or restaurant, because I can take out my phone and send a little snippet of the music to retrieve the title and artist (if it's in the database). The best part is that the app can identify the song despite background noise, like people talking loudly in a restaurant.
4. Nabbit (iPhone app). This app is great for when I'm listening to the radio and want to make note of a song I'm listening to. I use this mainly when I'm listening to KJazz while I drive to and from work. My jazz collection is quite small, so I wish to expand it.
I then consolidate all my findings in tobedownloaded.txt and buy them off of iTunes.
Jazz is my main focus of the musical discovery efforts, but I will share my jazz findings in a later post. Today, I will talk of new pieces I've bought to add to my "chill" playlist - yes, you guessed it: a playlist of downbeat electronic music.
Keston and Westdal - Vaccine: I admit it, I'm a sucker for string instruments in "songs." This one has a light feel to it and makes me think of lemon sorbet.
Zero 7 - Destiny: I still can't remember if I Shazam'd this track because I wanted it, or because I was testing out Shazam. Generic downbeat electronica chord progressions and sound. However, I kind of like the melodic line. After I bought the song, I was repulsed by a section of parallel fifths towards the end. Many of my favorite composers would have turned in their graves. Too bad I can't get a refund, so I might as well keep it. It does fit in nicely with the playlist.
Jon Hassell - Last Night the Moon Came: I Shazam'd this song during a modern dance performance I went to last night. The artist's name sounded familiar. I then remembered that I saw Jon Hassell in concert in February 2009 in an electronic music concert. This fact was confirmed by taking a peek in my concert program collection; I've been saving programs from all the concerts I've gone to in the past decade in my file cabinet. HAH! See? I knew it'd be useful someday.
On another vein, I also recently downloaded Roy Harris's Piano Quintet. I heard this on KUSC (our local classical music radio) on the way home from work on a rainy afternoon. I liked it so much that I sat in my car for fifteen minutes, waiting for it to finish so I could turn off the car and go home. This piece has just the kind of sonority that I like in modern chamber music.
There you go. Expert musical criticism from a person with a music major degree. Seriously, though, this is just a start. I'll have more substantial musical purchases to blog about in future posts.
Back when I spent the summer of 2006 in Japan, one of my favorite food discoveries was "shumai," little bite-sized steamed dumplings with some sort of meat filling. Unfortunately, most of the shumai out there was pork-based. The couple managing the dorm I stayed in knew about my (only) dietary restriction, pork, so on the days that shumai was on the menu, they would make shrimp shumai specially for me. It would make my day.
When I returned to the States that year, I browsed through Japanese stores until I finally found boxed frozen shrimp shumai. I was stoked! I would steam them and eat them a couple at a time.... until I looked at the ingredients one day and realized that it contained pork fat! I had to give the remaining shumai away to a friend. The happiness was short-lived.
This afternoon, when I was perusing the happy hour menu in one of the Japanese restaurants I frequent, the item "shrimp dumplings" caught my eye. I figured it would be something like gyoza, so I decided to order some, after asking the waiter repeatedly if there was any pork in it -- she didn't understand why. Then, they arrived. They were shumai!
The Journal Series continues at glacial speed with a third article: The Brown Journal.
Acquired: In 2000 (?) as a 15th birthday present from Jason and Eva. I suspect that the journal was used prior to re-gifting, as the first several pages were ripped out. First entry: June 3, 2006 Language: English Usual location: My desk Pens used: Black gel pen Privacy: High
I envisioned a journal that's more than day-to-day ramblings; somewhere I write in once every couple of months, when I've mulled over and distilled the thoughts in my head many times before putting them down on paper. No-nonsense journaling. Frank confessions on how I feel about my life at that moment, thoughts that had bothered me for a long time about myself, other people, or my career. Writing them down at last, after months of introspection, is gratifying.
The journal was intended to be high in privacy, but potentially okay for very close friends to see if they saw it lying around. Therefore, I was unsuccessful in finding too many excerpts or any two-page spread that I felt comfortable with putting online, so here is one page I wrote before my first day of work.
Some excerpts:
December 5, 2006:
People probably think that I'm a very open person because of the way I seemingly say things that others think are too private. Well, I noticed that I'm a very private person; it's just the things I keep private that are different. I can't play the piano in front of people. Why bother carrying a sketchbook with me if I never draw in public? Most of my music is never written down because I never noodle around on the piano, because somebody will hear it. Most people don't have a clue about what my characters are all about. ... In fact, one reason my artistic development is completely stifled is because I fear the embarrassment. But you know all this already. Maybe what I need is the ability to isolate myself from people completely for hours on end, and listen to the inner Little Melike again.
April 18, 2007:
"Men lose their high aspirations as they lose their intellectual tastes, because they have not time or opportunity for indulging them, and they addict themselves to inferior pleasures, not because they deliberately prefer them, but because they are either the only ones to which they have access or the only ones which they are any longer capable of enjoying." - John Mill
January 3, 2010:
The one big success that came out of 2009 is Matchingfreak. Besides that, the general attitude I had was "whatever happens happens," and focused on not stressing out so much over hobbies. This year, I am changing gears. I've decided to overwhelm myself with activities, because that is when I am most productive. I will take a stab at my goals, even when overcome by apathy, because deep inside, I know that they are important and worthwhile. I know that when I look back, I will think, "Look at what I've done. I'm awesome."
