Tag: english

Progressive live 2009, yesterday

September 9, 2009
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In Kichijoji’s Silver Elephant there’s a series of concerts every year, titled Progressive live. In may i went to a concert there, which headlined the same band as yesteday’s: TEE (The Earth Explorer), a japanese flute-fronted progressive rock band. Yesterday the other two bands were the japanese Baraka and their friends from France, Eclat.

TEE was as good as expected, they played a new song as well, and they had the only vocals on the whole evening, in Col de l’Iseran (though not much of lyrics, but vocals anyway). Baraka was a surprise for me, i expected something louder and wilder than TEE, but instead got a really quiet, more jazzish, more Pink Floydish music. Eclat were really as pro as Yoneda Katsumi, the guitarist of TEE said they would be. They had a lot of fun on stage, they played great and longer than i’d have guessed from the japanese standards.

Naturally the whole evening was just as over-amplified as expected in this country, but after stuffing half a tissue in my ears i could avoid permanent hearing impairment (?). This evening definitely worth the money and the time – great concerts.

Sabbath

September 8, 2009
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Not Black, though music. On saturday i managed to wake up in time, so i got there in time to my first concert in the autum term (秋学期), a jazz festival in the Tokyo Forum, to be precise, its Groove part. The reason for me going was without question the concert of the Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra, a fantastic japanese ska-jazz group. There were three more performances as well, two more or less traditional jazzish ones and one i couldn’t categorize—but more about that later.

The Tokyo Ska was fantastic, and fantastic, and fantastic (apparently lost for words, i am), just to mention a bad point as well: short. Not a whole hour, i’m afraid. But the quality and the atmosphere worth it. All. They played a lot of songs i knew and a couple i didn’t, and i got to like them, their style and their music even more.

About the others: Abraham Laboriel, who played together with Akira Jimbo was precisely how i’d imagine a traditional black jazz musician. Fantastic style. They were visibly playing for fun, and that’s great. The second ones, John Scofield and the accompanying band… the music was great, but the feel was missing. Then the last, George Clinton and the Parliament / Funkadelic. That was crazy. I didn’t really like it, though i enjoyed it (paradox)… Very tribal, very chaotic, very difficult to enjoy, very strange. Somehow the kind of performance i can imagine from rastafarian jamaicans to do after smoking a 2g ganja per person. Not really my type.

Then i came home, though i listened for a few minutes to a jazz band playing in front of the Forum on some Japan-Netherlands something, they were really peaceful after the all too long (almost two hours, gosh) Clinton performance.

At home the usual: we grabbed a few beers with Rado and sat down talking with the others, eating fruits as well and stuff like that. Got to bed around three…

Homework

September 3, 2009
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Now that’s what i’m definitely not going to write about now. I think that i don’t have any, except for those i’ll have to do by next week, so now slacking. To be precise, doing webdesign (i’ll show it upon request) and browsing last.fm. Today i bought some concert tickets. To be exact, four. Thus the schedule becomes: this saturday, a Tokyo Ska Paradise Orchestra (et al) concert on the Tokyo JAZZ 2009 Groove section (from 13:00 to 19:00). The next one is the Stratovarius gig in Kawasaki Club Citta—my first concert in Japan where i’m not going alone: Tung from Vietnam is coming as well (his’ the fourth ticket). The last one i’m sure to attend will be a HIGH and MIGHTY COLOR gig in Shibuya’s Lightroom. Knowing the band, this one will be a lot of fun as well. Can’t wait!

Celtic punk

August 27, 2009
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I’ve been looking for celtic punk bands for a while now. The first one i stumbled across accidentally, Dropkick Murphys made me fall in love with the genre. But it’s not easy to find ones i’m really looking for. That is, ones more punk than folk, so with amplified guitars and stuff. Many of the “celtic punk” bands, for example Greenland Whalefishers, The Mahones and The Tossers are nice, but i miss the power (not the speed) from it. On the other hand, Street Dogs lacks the folk elements to make it special, the accent of the singer (who was the vocalist of Dropkick Murphys) is not enough. Blood or Whiskey is a difficult question, because it’s very, very close, but still miss a bit of power on the guitars (good point, they have four full songs on last.fm!). Even though as of now it could seem that i couldn’t find what i was looking for, i could. Three at least, and there’s still way to go among those “similar artists”. The three i really liked were: The Real McKenzies, The Bloody Irish Boys and Flogging Molly. (Flogging Molly is really close to Blood and Whiskey in sound, but it seems to be on the right side of the hedge…)

Tired

August 26, 2009
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Impossible, that i have no post titled “Tired” here, but the dropdown of Firefox didn’t offer it. Whatever. In the morning i set my alarm clock to half past seven, just to start getting used to school from next week. Well, i was surprised when i opened my eyes around ten, without a ring from the clock or anything. Scary, i say. Had breakfast, then fetched the vacuum cleaner for obvious reasons (not those mentioned by a hungarian punk band). Then i was forced to realise that i’m running out of toilet paper (at the best time as usual, lucky i have a spare roll in my backpack all the time (“always” would have been quite misunderstandable in this context)), so i went to the kombini to buy that and milk, which i also used all yesterday. There (in the kombini, not the milk) i met a senpai from pingpong who told me there was a training today not on the schedule. So i went there, although i had no lunch then. Expected two or three hours, ended up four, and after almost a whole month’s break, i must say it was dead tiring, especially in this heat. (Tomorrow if everything goes well we’re going to the shop, in my case to buy a racket.) Then i came home, starving, but i didn’t eat more than a sandwich because Tung (from Vietnam) invited me (among others (it’s scary how good the japanese of those who spent the summer here got)) for a vietnamese dinner they were making. Delicious and filling, i must say (still, i had a banana and a mug of cocoa just to help me sleep). Huyen brought us cookies as souvenir, and i also got a lovely chopstick holder kitten. Thanks! Nya!

Dead man tells no tales

August 25, 2009
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And i’m dead right now, at least dead tired, furthermore today passed without any major event, not counting my cleaning of the room (which indeed took some effort and determination) and cooking myself lunch, which was some meat with a pile of veggies and (naturally) a splash of wine (as for now that’s the only fluid i can use for making the stuff a bit more saucy, as i have no yoghurt nor the intention to use water, or orange or grapefruit juice) and a pile of rice. Ended up nice, loads of onion and spices. Wanted some flavour…

Then maths, without any real success, i realised that i wasn’t as stupid as i thought, it was just my usual nice little miscalculations, and this teacher seems to try to prepare us for university, since he gave no points for a solution with a mistake only in the very last line. With those i couldn’t solve then (a trigonometric problem, one of coordinate geometry and a quadratic inequality (this word was the first i had to reverse-lookup: i knew the japanese but not the english)) i still couldn’t cope, so i’ll have to ask someone, possibly a science student, to help. No fun.

And although the only after that was going to the hyakuen shop to get some drinks (the aforementioned orange and grapefruit juice), i’m totally and utterly drained now. (So was i back then, i almost fell with the bike a couple of times…) And my net sucks as always (on high heels), so i’ll be happy if i can post this at all…

Already

August 25, 2009
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Scary that i’m here for the fourth day now and i still haven’t taken the trouble to throw out all the junk. I’ll have to soon enough anyway, as it’s difficult to get about in my room with the floor covered in bags and stuff…

I have accomplished nothing. Though i only have one chapter of grammar homework to get done, there’s still the more fun parts to go: maths and actually learning the kanji. I’m done with the written parts, but that’s nothing compared to the learning itself. I plan to start that today as well—unusually, i could get myself out of bed before ten, though i don’t know how i managed.

I dreamed, and it was a mixture of the seventh Harry Potter, which i’m reading now all my free minutes, just opening it randomly and reading on and on and on… So it’s a mixture of that last Harry Potter and my life. Scary how well my own experiences and the people i know fit in some of those situations. JKR really managed to knock me off the broom with that Harry/Ginny stuff, those half sentences splattered all over the book.

about:blank

August 19, 2009
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The weekend was about fixing my laptop and the home desktop computer. We’re talking about Windows, so one could guess how much pure fun that was. I finished the laptop in one evening, though there were some complications. First, i couldn’t yet get the scrollbar on the touchpad to work, but i guess if i find the right driver, that’ll be fixed. The other is more problematic, as the video card is an “old” ATi X700, and the drivers simply don’t install for it anymore. Thus i couldn’t get even the 3d-using Chronflow foobar2000 plugin to work… Sucks on high heels. And i had to play a lot with the desktop one. That’s a bit older, about six or seven years of age now, so it’s damn slow anyway. The normal installations (drivers, browser, mail client, office) was without problems. That arose with the security. On my laptop i have the Comodo Internet Security (CIS) thing with built-in everything, which is just fine for how i use my machine. On the desktop i had the eTrust antivirus and the Comodo firewall before the reinstall, but the eTrust became simply useless, as no updates were provided anymore (even though i bought the software). Thus i tried to install the CIS there as well, but the installer didn’t start, literally. The process started, and started to consume huge amounts of memory (starting from 60 megs, climbing as high as 180, sometimes dropping back to 10-15, but then going up again) without anything appearing (no dialog, no error, nothing). So i rather got the Avira antivirus and Online-Armor firewall for the desktop. Both are free, and although i had to play quite a while with the firewall to let the ICS (connection sharing) work normally, it’s now fine. And i hope it’ll stay like that…

Just strange

August 14, 2009
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I watched the last episodes from How i met your mother, and a couple of Yozakura Quartet (must conclude, though the latter i have not finished yet, that i love these), and now i feel strange, and i have no idea why. Probably because i’m tired, at least it feels so, but at the same time i’m not tired, my brain just feels as if it has to lift some heavy curtain to maintain my conscience, and this effort makes me… Repeat. It’s crazy that while i’m at home i must not engage anything that would just hurt to stop a week from now when i’ll be leaving, and especially anyone, which would be even worse, but it’s so difficult, because it’s easy to be crazy at home, as i know all the way, and it’d just take the “i don’t care” attitude, but then again next day i’d be holding my head and write whiny and extremely crappy posts here about what a damn fool i am. But i rather go and play StarCraft with my little brother cousin (this always sounds like “cuisine” to me, thus i hate to use it) nephew.

Ended Eight

August 8, 2009
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Finally Kyon figured out how to get out of the loop of Endless Eight. Suzumiya again, as expected. This episode was a huge relief. I mean, if you watched almost the same thing seven times already, this one would be a great ending for that. I could feel the adrenalin rushing through my veins as the turning point got nearer and nearer (the point when Haruhi’s about to leave the restaurant). And then, a hilarious solution. Once again the obvious message: share as much with your friends as you can. Too bad it’s very difficult to find people who are ready to share almost everything. It seems to be difficult to realise that together even chores could get fun, while alone it’d count as a method of torture. I think that just two animation works, this Suzumiya series and the Yes man i mentioned in an earlier post express my view on life more than anything else i encountered so far.