blog.erik.rainey.name

I've started Cello practice, under the tutelage of a local, skilled instructor. My first lesson went well last week and I have many more planned. My first homework was to practice my hand positions. I tend to hold the neck of the Cello like a violin with my fingers at a non-right angles to the finger-board. This, I'm told, is bad form for a Cello player and will result in later problems when vibrato is practiced. I've had the week to practice this new form and I think I'm fairly comfortable with it now. I've also picked up speed with my pizzicato (plucking) and in some of my practices I've reverted to the bass guitar gate of index and middle finger when I'm trying to play too fast. This will also be bad form, I'm sure, since practically everything you pick up on your own ends up that way. I think this week we'll pickup the bow and start using it, which should be cool. I can't wait to be able to play Canon in D Minor.

Last week I was in Nice, France again, on assignment from my employer, TI. Even though it was the middle of February, the weather was rather mild and pleasant. Another engineer and myself only stayed for a week but we managed to get alot of work done. Each time I go over, I adapt quicker to the jet lag. This time, even though I was tired, I was functional most the time, with strategically timed coffee-breaks. At night we dinned at the local restraunts in St. Laurent Du Var's port area, like Le Kashmir which is a tremendously good Indian cuisine restraunt. Their rose lassi is to die for. However, I found that their concept of "hot" sauce was lacking. It had kick but no real heat. The next night we went to the Thai restraunt down the road. I had an appetizer of Nem (some fried rolls), an entree' plate of deep fried pork with pineapple, which seemed to me like a distinctly American concept but it was rather good. Everything was somehow light and somewhat creamy instead of heavy and fried. On the next night we hit a pizza place which serves Nice-style pizzas which are very thin, about 8" across and have somewhat large chunky toppings. You typically have to eat them with a knife and fork due to the thinness or the crust and the chunkiness of the toppings. They love putting eggs on their pizza's there, which aren't bad actually. On the next night we went out to a fancy place downtown with all the other TIers we were working with and some we hadn't seen in a while because they had ex-pat'ed (ex-patrioted) to France for their work assignments. It took us 4 hours to get through there. Waiters in France just aren't rushed to get you the check, even if you ask for it and look to be in a rush to get back to your hotel room to get to sleep so you can get up at 5 so you can catch the red-eye to Zurich. That's what happens when you don't work for tips ;).

The car I rented while I was there this time, a Renault Laguna, was not nearly as functional as the Kangroo I had last time (in terms of cargo space, fuel efficiency and passenger space), but had some cool features. First, the key was not a key! The "key" to the car was a credit card sized fob with lock/unlock buttons on it. This fob slide into a slot on the console. You would then press the Start/Stop button and the car would start. I imagine that the fob has some sort of RFID chip in it to match the fob the car. The car also was a manual shift. It had a really smooth clutch and shifter. The only real problem I had was the parking break. There was no level arm, or foot pedal. There was a pull-style switch on the dash on the lower-left hand side of the steering wheel along with a button. In order to engage or disengage the electronic parking brake you had to pull out the handle and then with the handle extended, depress the button. Unfortunately I didn't realize this until I got to the hotel. Let's just say that the car smelled funny for the first couple days. The brake worked fine after that though.

On the flight over to Europe I had a flash of insight. I can't explain what set it off exactly but I think it has to do with the amount of Guitar Hero I've been playing. I'm pretty good at the game and I enjoy it tremendously, probably due to my music background, but recently I've felt like the experience is a bit hollow, considering that it's just a game and that as the guitar player you are not actually playing the guitar, legitimately. I've had a "someday, maybe" task of pickup up a music instrument again, ever since we started playing Karaoke Revolution, but I've always thought that it would be the Tuba, since that was my last instrument. Well on the plane the thought crossed my mind that that instrument should be the cello, and I must say, I was intrigued by the thought. I remembered back to the first days of 6th grade when as a student who was interested in music, you had to pick either Band or Orchestra. I chose Band at the time, and the Trombone, specifically. But (and here is the personal insight) I had always wondered what would have been if I chose Orchestra, because I knew that Cello would have been the instrument that I would have played. It occurred to me (in the present) that there was nothing stopping me from picking up a completely new and untried instrument. I am well-off enough to fund my own music lessons and purchase a decent modem Cello. So I've convinced myself to rent one very soon to give it a try. I'll find an instructor and see how well my Band-style music theory holds over in an Orchestral setting.