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Week 39 - Y2 (Nov 26th to Dec 2nd) |
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Sunday Nov 26th,
Today, Mike came up to visit. We were going to check
out some museums, but both of us were so exhausted
that we ended up just lazing around my apartment
instead. I made rice and peas, he brought up leftover
turkey from American Thanksgiving (for me,
Thanksgiving and Christmas turkey has to come with
rice and peas, and preferably jerk pork and mac and
cheese pie, but at least I got one of them!), and we
watched "The Harder They Come", which was sent to me
by Kevin M.-- thank you! This week absolutely wiped
me out, and next week is going to be even crazier . . |
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Monday Nov 27th,
I got up bright and early this morning not to go to
Iksan, like usual, but to adjudicate auditions for
incoming students! Jae, Ben and I spent all day
listening to students and making decisions. I was
shocked at how terrible some of them were! There were
a lot of really young looking boys who could barely
carry a tune, but obviously have aspirations of being
a part of the next big "boy band" or something. The
whole thing was kind of depressing at times (we'd get
like, 100 bad auditions in a row with no end in
sight), but the whole thing was made easier by Ben's
inventive lyric re-writing of the cheesy pop songs
that the kids were bringing in. His take on "Saving
All My Love for You" is pretty classic . . . |
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Tuesday Nov 28th,
More auditions, more frustration. Today was even
worse. I think we accepted maybe 2 people from the
whole day. It's crazy how many people actually
audition for Paekche-- I had no idea! This round of
auditions is only the early acceptance round. The
main auditions will be even crazier. As it is, we
only hear about a minute of playing and then send 'em
packing. There were actually a few times where we
laughed out loud at the auditions. It was kind of
fun, kind of felt like I was Paula Abdul on American
Idol.
Tonight at Chicago, there was all kinds of hassle
about payment for last week. It took them forever to
untangle their confusement. Why can't he just pay us
each night in cash like every other club does? Still
really want to quit . . .
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Wednesday Nov 29th,
Long day today. My regular teaching, as well as
graduation recital adjudication, and then straight to
Chicago from school.
I'm starting to think that Chicago is a high-class
escort service . . . (I'm only half-joking!) I see
the same girls there every night, but the men are
always different. The girls kind of flit around from
table to table and be "social butterflies", but the
men never move. Maybe the girls are supposed to be
the equivalent to geishas or something? Hmm . . .
maybe I'm just creating more drama in my head, because
I hate this gig so much!
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Friday Dec 1st,
More vaccination shots today-- my arm hurts so much! |
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Saturday Dec 2nd,
This afternoon, there was a lunch for the full-time
professors in the applied music department. We went
to VIPs, which is a steakhouse, with a salad buffet.
Very reminiscent of Sizzler or Ponderosa. I actually
had a salmon fillet, which was delicious-- mmm I miss
salmon fillets! Being a professor always has all
these little perks, like wine box sets at Chuseok,
random dinners, etc. etc. No complaints here!
Tonight I subbed out of Chicago to play a better gig.
Chang Hyun, a bass professor at PaekChe called me and
offered me a gig at Palm, a popular jazz club in the
Hongdae neighbourhood. Since all I've been doing for
the past two weeks is lame standards, I jumped at the
chance. The gig turned out to be really fun-- there
were 2 Korean guys, a guitarist and an alto
saxophonist, who had just gotten back from studying in
New York. Their accents for speaking English are
great, and they really reminded of jazz players from
home. It was great, and really comforting in its
familiarity. Afterwards, I went out with them and a
few other young players around town-- again, really
fun. It was one of the first times I've been out with
all Koreans, me being the only foreigner, but I was
perfectly comfortable, and they were all good about
translating the conversations for me. Fun!
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