Fun Fact No. 52: The only flowers you can give are red roses. Strange but true. If you bring a bouquet of anything but red roses to someone for a birthday or holiday or whatnot, it has to be red roses otherwise someone will think someone died. Any other flowers are for funerals. Imagine my surprise when I brought some beautiful mums to my friend's house for her birthday!
So yesterday afternoon I was on my way to Li The Korean Pianist's house (more about that in a minute) when I came upon a protest. Or so I thought. There are often protests blocking streets about fair wages or upcoming strikes or environmental causes, but I have never seen this: hundreds of children with signs that said the equivalent of "Brush Your Teeth Everyday to Keep the Plaque Away." What?? Accompanied by dentists in their white coats, this march blocked about 7 blocks of a major road. I couldn't get to rehearsal on time because of a Plaque Protest. Ha!
I met Li through one of my flute students who met her I'm not sure how. In Korea, Li was a professional pianist. Here, she's a housewife with a rather annoying child. Her husband is a doctor of internal medicine and works at a clinic on the highway. She brought no music with her and has no piano in her house...until now. We have a beautiful Yamaha keyboard that is just gorgeous with a great sound (for a keyboard...well, it cost $1000.) and it's usually at my friend Piedad's house. Piedad is going on vacation, so we offered it to her for a few weeks and DAMN can this woman play! So we're preparing a recital for the end of June. She's playing some Brahms and Mendelssohn, my student is busting out a Handel sonata, Fernando is doing some Mozart on his violin, and I think I'll be attacking the Poulenc sonata. It should be fun and it is terrific to play with her.
Research is for once going extremely well. Despite some scheduling setbacks with the two groups, I've had some great interviews lately and here is where my unpaid marketing gig for the
Edirol Roland-09 Recorder
comes in. Perhaps the best $400 investment I made for this trip. Records directly as Wav or Mp3 format and the quality is excellent, although the mic is hyper sensitive. No problem, because I have a cute little Sony mic that works quite well. I bought a 2gb memory card and I can download my interviews or concert recordings directly to my computer right after I'm finished and then I can burn a disc and give it right back to my interviewees. It's absolutely thrilling and I am so SO glad I broke the bank to buy it. Thanks to Chris Cornelius who recommended it to me and showed me how to work it.
On not so hot news, my friend's 6 month old nephew died of pneumonia last week. I've never been to a child's funeral before, and it was quite crushing. His big sister (about 7 years old) was completely destroyed and his dad couldn't make it because he had been traveling. The death was relatively sudden and the mom wanted the funeral as soon as possible, which I completely understand. However, while I met the kid only once, I still cry sometimes for him and his mom. Imagine losing a 6 month old kid. I just can't.
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