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Week 30- Y4(Oct 5th to Oct 11th) |
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Sun:
Today I dragged Summer to the Jarasum jazz festival. We took a shuttle bus to Jarasum, ran into about a gazillion of my students, threw down a blanket on the grass close to the front of the stage, and drank cheap beer while listening to great music! First up was the Bjorkestra from New York, this really cool big band that re-arranges Bjork's music in really cool ways. I loved it, and surprisingly Summer did too! The next group was John Abercrombie, a great, very famous guitar player that I love. After that it was Yoon Sun Na, a Korean jazz singer who I thought kind of sucked. And yet she's the most famous jazz singer in Korea. Grr. That's why I need to get out this country . . . and the best for last, Joe Lovano (saxophone) and John Scofield (guitar). They were totally sick, and I was super into it (Summer not so much), but the stupid festival organizers had the last shuttle buses leaving before the end of the concert, so we only got to see
about half of the show. I was upset to leave, but since we were 2 hours out of Seoul and both of us have to work tomorrow, we didn't really have much of a choice. Still, awesome awesome day!!!
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Mon (Oct 6):
Being at the jazz festival yesterday reminded me of why I want to get out of Korea so much. There's so much more that I could be doing musically, but I can't do it here. The masters application is due on Dec. 1, and I'm already working on it.
Today after work, yet another meeting. Kenji, sick with food poisoning, had to find a babysitter for his son and drag himself into work, and Hye Jin had to bow out of a prior commitment. And guess what: the 4 fulltime professors that are causing all these problems didn't even show up! The idea of the meeting was for Jae to go through the 6 pages of accusations and refute each of them in front of those professors, as well as one of the dean's "underlings". We got through about 1 page, when the underguy said what's the point if those guys aren't here to hear it? When is this going to end?
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Tues:
Tonight was the big concert for our students. This year we only had the best vocal jazz ensemble sing, and it happened to be one of my ensembles, so I also had them "premiering" one of my arrangements. They did a great job! I'm really happy to have at least one really strong ensemble this year, and I love seeing how affectionate and caring they are with each other. It reminds me of when I was in school. The rest of the concert, however was SO long! Man, if my back wasn't hurting enough before, it's definitely worse now!
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Wed:
Another night of the same concert! Afterwards, Ben and Kenji and Jae and I went out for a little bit. Last year, all the guys would have been there, but I guess that "big happy family" thing has come to an end . . . anyway we had a great hang! Ben and Kenji and I spent the whole time laughing and telling jokes and funny stories about people we know in Toronto.
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Fri:
Okay, my back actually is deteriorating a lot now. I could barely get out of bed this morning. This is not good.
So things around the house have been a little weird with Bobby back. Most of it is just that there's 3 people around again, so it's bound to get messier faster. But there's also some little irksome things: just little stuff like the buying of household products that doesn't quite get shared the way it should. Also, there is some tension with Summer and Bobby still about Max-hole, as I like to refer to him. I think it will be fine, but we all need to sit down and have a chat soon. Bobby expressed an interest in maybe moving in with her friend Matty in December, so we'll see what happens . . .
Tonight, I met up with a bunch of the salsa people at Bonji for Chi He's birthday party. Really fun, but again super frustrating not to be able to dance. I've been in really bad spirits this week, just super depressed and grumpy, and I realized that it's because I've had no phyiscal outlet at all. So despite the pain, I did dance one song, very gently, with Chris, who I trust infinitely to lead me carefully. It may not have done my back any favours, but it certainly helped my peace of mind.
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