24 February 2007
Quote:
Fiona on ART:
I always find it a little tiring how he
always says people
shouldn't want to make money from their music.
George is single with no repsonsibilities, but there
are people in the
music business who have spouses and children, so why
is it wrong for them
to want to make money from performing and selling
music. Just because you
think about financial considerations doesn't mean
you don't care about
your music or enjoy what you do. I think some people
just enjoy more pop
less experimental sounds. So they aren't just doing
their music for money
or to be commercial, but because they like more
poppy accesible things.
And George does make a lot of money as a dj, so I
find it just a little
condescending when he says people should give away
their music for free.
Does he dj for free?
My good friend Petra stayed over last weekend. Finally somebody has come to visit me in Sheffield!!
She arrived Saturday afternoon and had to leave early in the morning on Tuesday because I had "forced" her to re-book her flight from Ryanair to Easyjet. She had eyed up a Stansted flight first but I found out that there would be lots of repairs and diversions on the Stansted route which would have meant a 7 hour trip, so I suggested flying into Luton instead which is more en route to Sheffield.
After a boozy welcome on Saturday we did the tourist things: Kelham Island museum on Sunday (she WAS impressed by the Bessemer converter!) and lunch at the Devonshire Cat (WITH Yorkshire pudding, of course!)
Saturday night we went to the cinema to see Babel, the current I��rritu movie. What a lovely film! I had seen Amores Perros in the full-length version at the time in Mexico. It was good, but far too long and muddled up. This film was much better. Beautiful, go see it! It kind of reaffirmed my natural inclination towards all things fatalistic, too. All my actions do have an impact on somebody's life and mean something... somehow.
On Monday we went to York - after I had talked Petra out of the idea of going walking in the Peak District... It proved a good idea after all. We visited the minster and walked the city walls, and had fish & chips. And it didn't even rain.
Petra - who
has grown up without any religious education in the
former GDR - is always
good to remind me of my Christian roots. Apparently
I tend to "succumb to
my Catholicism" when confronted with important
religious sites. We went to
Jerusalem together. Before the trip Petra (who
studied Religious Science)
was the one who wanted to go everywhere. Once
there it was me who
got the "Jerusalem Syndrome" and insisted
to got everywhere - "Oh
my God, I was told about that stone in church!!!
Let's go to that
cave/rock/hill/etc... where whatever happened!"
Jerusalem IS amazing in
that respect. It is so holy for every people. And
the souvenirs are
amazingly tacky!
Anyway, I just HAD to light 3 candles in York
Minster, for obvious
reasons. Nothing to do with my Catholic past!
LOL
On Tuesday I
brought Petra to the station but her train was
delayed so she would have
missed her connection, so she had to take another
one and arrived very
late for her check-in... but luckily she did make it
in time.
I went swimming, and then spent the rest of the day
painting and drinking
too much. As usual.
2 days off work are just not worth it because you spend the rest of the week catching up, that way working an extra 15 hours in the remaining 3 days! That's NOT the point of a holiday!
On Thursday
night I went to see the WONDERFUL Indigo
Girls in concert. I almost
didn't make it because there was a major crisis at
work and the call at 7
PM suddenly turned into the MOST IMPORTANT call
ever. But luckily the show
was delayed because the music would have disturbed
Ricky Gervais who was
in the other hall, so they had to start later.
They are so amazing! If anybody contemplates a
career in the music
business, they should go see them and check if
anything they could come up
with would be anywhere as good or near as good as
the Indigo Girls - if
NOT: The why bother?!
They played about 5 albums full of stuff, and they
even seemed to like
Sheffield!
The audience was funny, too: ALL the lesbians of the
city plus 5 older
men. The people behind me were talking about the
Richard Thompson concert
they had gone to see. Just when did I turn
into my dad?! LOL
Friday night
I had to stay in the office till 10 PM to assist
another MOST IMPORTANT
call with Microsoft. Gosh, what tossers! Their
problem with us turned out
to be something completely different than we thought
and all down to
their crap tools! Manually updating links -
WTF?? All they want now is
money, so they will probably give us another chance.
The annoying thing is
that we would probably be able to solve all their
problems with our tools,
but they won't let us - great! But I'm seriously
going to kick some
translators' ass... if I wasn't so tired of it
all...
I'm going to see Microsoft in a couple of days,
including THAT group. They
don't know me yet, but I'm sure they will remember
me after I'm gone...
If anybody
asked me what my favourite place in Sheffield is
(which nobody does) I'd
have to say the Kelham
Island museum. They have a huge steam engine!!!
And the Bessemer
converter!
I love these engineering things, they are so sexy.
All those pistons
smoothly going in and out... LOL
I still don't know how all that steel-making stuff
work though...
Bessemer converter
George has
been in New Zealand and should be in
Australia now. The time
difference is doing my head in! How can it be
morning there is it's
evening here?! How can it be summer there when it's
snowing in Sweden?!
I was dying for news, but luckily there are some
now. Even TV interviews!
:)
I finally bought an application that lets me save
any video that I can
view on my PC - let's see how long it takes until
YouTube threatens to
take me to court again!
