Two Concerts, One Whale and A Wannabe Winter

Lots of things have happened since my last blog entry! I have been to two concerts in three days, had three great evenings and did a lot of work for university. Let me start with

[h4]Monday[/h4]
After my last lecture, I went shopping downtown for some winter clothes. I had a scarf and a hat already (my beloved “Molson Canadian” hat from Canada!), but I desperately needed gloves, so I bought some Thinsulate wool gloves. As the exception that confirms the rule, clothing is actually very cheap in Norway, so no money wasted. I also got two woolen sweatshirts (which are in fact called “Norweger” in German). Not only are these a nice memory of Norway, they are also pleasant to wear, very warm and robust and the recommended clothing for hikes. The latter is because wool, unlike cotton, keeps you warm even when wet. I also bought a third sweatshirt at the second-hand. Dirt cheap, ugly, but very warm and robust: Perfect for being out in the snow.
On that evening, the Samfundet symphony orchestra was giving a concert with reknowned violinist Elise Båtnes. I hadn’t been able to find out a lot about it, other than time, place, price and that a Sibelius would be played. My flatmate Ole wanted to go because his girlfriend was playing in the orchestra, I wanted to go because I hadn’t been to a classical concert in a while. The concert was taking place in the former Freemasons’ Lodge in Midtbyen, in a rather stylish room with maybe 500 seats, of which unfortunately only about half were taken. The program started with Stravinsky, ending the first half with a dance from Borodin. The second part would be dedicated entirely to Sibelius’ violin concert, the only one he ever composed. I didn’t particularly like the Stravinski, but the Borodin had a very nice flow, as expected from a dance. The Sibelius, on the other hand, turned out to be superior. Ole and me had moved to the gallery during break to get a better view of the orchestra. We were sitting in a central position at the back of the room, right against the balustrade. View and sound were greatly improved. As the Sibelius started, I suddenly felt as if I knew the music. I eventually recalled that my godmother Brigitte has given me a CD of Sibelius a couple years ago and that the violin concert had been on it. So I [i]did[/i] in fact know it! I greatly enjoyed being reminded of that and have listened to it several times since monday. In summary, the concert was a very nice experience, but took a while to really warm up.

[h4]Tuesday[/h4]
was not very eventful, simply because my routine stuff keeps me busy from ten to six. I did see something interesting though: I spotted a flyer in the Realfagbygget announcing a joined concert by the choirs “Ad Libitum” and “Cantemus”, on wednesday in Vår Frue Kirke, no entrance fee. Interesting…
After my routine stuff, I went to the Go club again and played several fun games. I wouldn’t say that I am drastically improving, but I am leaving some of the most elementary follies behind and gaining some appreciation of what Go is meant to be like. It’s very nice, and the people are friendly, but I am always tired tuesday evening and thus I left at nine. After I got home I asked Werner if he was interested in going to the concert, but didn’t get an answer right away. Unfortunately, the “el cheapo” mouse I bought in july died, and I swore to get myself a new one come morning. Computers are bloody useless without a working mouse!

[h4]Wednesday[/h4]
started very relaxed. I had no lectures at all, due to Karina from chemistry being sick this week, but I did have my functional materials paper to work on. My partner, Nico, was also doing his best to get us finished in time for the deadline on friday. First thing, however, was to go down to Gløshaugen and buy a working mouse. I bought a no-frills Logitech, but made sure not to take the cheapest in the store this time. Computer functionality thus restored, I was able to get in several hours of productive work before the concert approached. Went down to Gløshaugen again to meet Werner, who had a deadline to meet for a homework assignment. We walked to Vår Frue and arrived just in time for the concert to begin. Appearantly, “Ad Libitum” was a Trondheim choir, whereas “Cantemus” was a hungarian choir of considerable status that was giving the concert in celebration of the hungarian national day. At least, that is what the hungarian ambassador said before the concert started. I believe him.

The concert was split into two parts, with no break. First Ad Libitum would treat us to three songs, one of them by Nystedt. The nice thing about Nystedt is that he is always surprising. He is one of the most unboundedly creative composers I know. Sadly, Ad Libitum lacked the vocal power to really dominate the church. I did not get the feeling that any great mistakes where committed, but the sound simpy had no draw.

Cantemus completely stole the show by entering singing a dirge, in four streams of persons. One each walking down the sides, two in the center aisle. When they arrived at the stage, the four streams overcrossed, every person sliding into position in a display of grace, organisation and musical force. Then the real concert began. Cantemus boasts about forty members, and is at least at the same level as the Kammerchor Aachen (for those who know it). Inside a medium-sized church, their vocal power was all encompassing, their clarity enchanting. The program featured Palestrina and Kodaly, along with several others hungarian composers. As some of you may know, I have a weakness for sad choir pieces, the raw tragedic feeling and the catharsis it causes. “Lieder, die wie Wunden bluten” is the best way I have found to put the feeling into words, roughly “songs that bleed like wounds”. BTW, credit for that phrase goes to L’Ame Immortelle, a band whose music I dislike but who I respect for their way with words. In this respect, Cantemus was much more than I had hoped. During one of the latin songs, they actually spread out around around the walls of the church, treating us the ultimate in surround sound. I just closed my eyes and swam in the sound. Regrettably, even the best things end. Werner and I left the church, but not before spotting a poster advertising several organ concerts being held during fall. One particularly interesting one is the Bach evening in Nidarosdomen on Novermber the 16th. I definitely plan on going!

After the concert, we went back up to Moholt to supply our stomachs with the food they had been demanding for quite some time. I had been shopping in the afternoon and had prepared all we needed to have an interesting meal. I had decided that my morals are flexible enough to buy whale meat at least once in my life. So the menu listed whale with carrots and rice, in a sweet sauce of cream, cinnamon and peach. Werner decided to throw in a sour salad as a counterpoint, and after half an hour of work in the kitchen, we were ready to begin the feast. The wait was well worth it, since everything tasted great. Whale, curiously, tastes rather like beef, so I won’t be missing it too much. Nevertheless, it was interesting, especially during preparation. I didn’t know whale meat was so dark and bloody.

With sated appetites, we burned two DVDs for Werner, then finished the evening in a heated duel of Frozen Bubbles, the #1 addictive piece of satan spawn game under Linux. Under the well known motto of “just one more!” we played until after midnight, when we finally decided that we really should go to bed.

[h4]Thursday[/h4]
was rather normal, actually. I woke up, had breakfast, and walked down to the Realfagbygget to meet Nico and scan in some pictures we needed for our paper. Afterwards we went back to Moholt and put finishing touches on our individual parts of the paper and met for the final merge&polish. That took us two hours and now I have a PDF ready to hand in. Hurray! We will have to hold a presentation on it in two weeks, but considering that it’s a twenty minute gig with two people on a paper of twenty pages, we will barely be able to scratch the surface. Oh well. Of course, choir practice in the evening, then kveldsmat and afterwards home for a relaxing evening and some blogging.

There, I do believe that is all that happened in the last four days. Hm, seems I wasn’t as lazy as I thought I had been. One things remains to be mentioned: The “winter” *coughcough* has been a bitter disappointment. The initial snow melted over a space of two days, current temperatures are at +5, and forecasts indicate +12 tomorrow. Autumn is back in full swing, and no, it’s not the nice and sunny one with the coloured leaves.

Forget Autumn, Winter is Here

This morning, winter issued a surprising statement, declaring its victory over autumn. This statement was given in the form of snow. That’s right, Trondheim has now had the first snow for this winter. Check out my gallery to see what it looks like. At the moment it’s still not a lot, but with temperatures several degress below zero, I am confident that more shall soon follow. As it is, I need to deal with getting proper winter gear. I have a nice coat and a hat, but I still need gloves and long underwear. Possibly also one or two woollen sweatshirts, but I’ll wait a while longer for that. Gloves are currently my number one priority, and I think I’ll be taking care of that this afternoon.

On a side note: There’s a classical concert tonight, a violin concert by Sibelius. It would stop me from going to Judo training, but I still think I want to go.

Yesterday was great, by the way. The Aks choir sang in the church service in Strindheim Kirke again, so I got up at 8:20, had breakfast and walked to the church for the warmup at 10. The service started at 11, and with the exception of a very enduring sermon (most of which I didn’t concentrate enough to follow) was quite alright. Then some coffee and cookies with the rest of the aksians and home to change out of my choir dress. Mica and Hilde had spoken an open invitation to a video afternoon, so who am I to disappoint? We ended up being six people, and had a great time watching “Equilibrium”, which could be described as a cross between Matrix 1, Fahrenheit 453 and Brave New World. I quite liked it 🙂
After the movie, we ended up talking about childrens’ TV series, I explained a little bit about the Augsburger Puppenkiste, we watched one episode of Thomas the Tank Engine (very much to the disillusionment of Hilde, who had the series in better memory) and had a generally fun time wallowing in nostalgia. Nothing better than a lazy sunday afternoon. I eventually went home again, ate dinner and read some before going to bed.

Autumn Came Over Us

After the cushy weather of the past weeks, with all the enjoyments of sun, brisk wind and a mild 288 K, late autumn has now come over us. It began last thursday, with rain and storm, then through two days of wet weather shifted into the current situation. The sky is clear during the day, and closes up in the evening, with very low clouds (they cover the small broadcasting tower, meaning that they are at most 70 m off the ground). At night, the low clouds reflect a lot of light and give the city a rather oppressive feeling. Worse, however, is the temperature. As you can see [url=http://met.no/meteogram/trondheim.html new=true]here[/url], we are in the low positives, which during the night sometimes dips below freezing. This is not so bad in itself, but the low clouds create a lot of fog, which at this temperature really sucks the warmth from your skin. My evening walks have become shorter and much less enjoyable. The change between day and night weather begins shortly after sundown, meaning roughly six o’clock.

Some nice developments brighten my days, nevertheless. I have discovered a Go club which meets every tuesday evening. I find Go very appealing in its mix of simplicity and complexity, and I used to play it a little bit in high school. In the past week I had a few games with my flatmate Tommy, who pointed out the Go club to me. The first meeting was very clandestine, with only five people there, including me. I did play two nice games though, teaching me a lot of things. That is one nice thing about being a total newbie: Your ability increases drastically in the first couple weeks, until you have the very basics down. Then it slows a little bit.
As a side note: Our Judo group now finally has real Judo suits, meaning that we can now practise throws properly.

On the university side of things, I have managed to hand in my project on strain gauges and I am going to hold my talk on zeolites tomorrow. The organic LED project will need some more work, as we ought to be finished week after next. Well, we shall see.

Projects, Fall and Flu Shot

Lots of things to do at university at the moment! While the german passion for weekly compulsory exercises seems to be a rarity here, everybody just loves projects. I have three running at the same time!

Project #1: Functional Materials]

This one is me and my partner, coincidentally also a german. We have to write a short paper and hold a twenty-minute presentation on our chosen topic, which is OLEDs. We have gathered some material (not yet enough, though) and are going to meet up tomorrow to plan further progress and start on the paper. The presentations start the 18th of Octobre.

Project #2: Sensors and Transdusers

This is actually a series of lab experiments. The special thing here is that we have to select and plan the experiments ourselves, based on the description of a sensor. I have done the most work for this and am almost done with the proposal for the first experiment (using a strain gauge). Due date for that is next monday, but several other experiments will be due later on.

Project #3: Advanced anorganic chemistry

This is probably rather small; we can pick out a not-too-involved topic and hold a presentation on it (15-25 minutes, with a small handout if we want). I had trouble picking a good topic in the beginning, thinking about noble gas crystals; but then I met Benjamin de Vis in the library and he suggested zeolites. Pure genius! An interesting topic with many common applications and a vast amount of resources available. I am going to work hard on this and blow them away!

All this work takes up a lot of time, but I’m actually quite happy with that. I always feel a little bit guilty when I do little work, which may be a leftover from my first two semestres, where I was really much too lazy–and paid for it. Also, the weather has taken a turn for the better and the past week we have been treated to blue skies and sun. The trees burn in an sea of red and yellows, and the brisk air refreshes mind and body. Pictures are in my gallery. The sun is already starting to be very low, though. Today at 13:00, I check the shadow of an upright post, did a little trigonometry and arrived at an angle of 21 degrees over the horizon. That is very little for early octobre. It’s still light till 19:00 every day, though.

On a side notice, I went to the legesenter today to get my influenza vaccination. I don’t usually do this, but I have the suspicion that come winter, NTNU will turn into flutopia. Several hundred international students, many from warm climates and totally unaccustomed to nordic winters–some of those will definitely catch flu. Then some nice cantines and lecture rooms to spread it out, and the vaccination suddenly seems like a very good idea. Cost to yours truly was twenty euro, and if it keeps me from lying sick in bed just a single day, it will have been worth that.

Concert Double Whammy

Today the Aks choir had two concerts; that is, we where acustically supporting two church services. First things first, though: I finally found out what “aks” means. It is the norwegian term for a wheat blade. Classical christian imagery there.

Our repertoire for these performances was mixed. On the one hand, we had the polyphone pieces we had been working on the past month, such as Laudate, Ave Verum, Hymne and Prayer for the City. On the other hand, we had the typical monophone church anthems. These are wont to be quite simple, so we only had to try each of them once during rehearsal. The anthems were not really exciting – a far cry from “Unfriede herrscht auf der Erde” or “Singt dem Herrn all ihr Völker und Rassen”, but far from the worst I have seen.

Thus armed, we met at Strindheim Kirke this morning at 9:30 (way too early by the way, I only got five hours sleep). The first service would begin at 11, and we wanted to get some practice in beforehand. And practice we did. Slowly, people began to arrive and at 11, the service started as planned. We interspersed it with a merry mix of easy anthems and more difficult pieces. Of course, this drew the service out a little bit. Combined with a long and passionate sermon from the priest, it took one-and-a-half hours. Remarkable was that communion included not just the bread, but also a small sip of wine for everyone. I have never seen this before, but it seems to be common fare here. Afterwards, we had some of the offered coffee and cakes, chatted a bit, and then left to have lunch. I went home and relaxed a little bit, then spent an hour thinking about my upcoming lab experiment in Sensors and Transducers. You see, we learn about a sensor in the lecture, and then we are supposed to come up with our own experiment involving this sensor and later execute it in the lab. Initial proposals are due tomorrow, but I think I have something interesting.

By then, it was almost time to leave again. The second service would start at 18, but we were to meet at 17. Not at Strinheim Kirke, but at Nidarosdomen! Yes, finally! There’s nothing like gothic churches to sing in. I took the walk from Moholt and arrived well on time (after picking up a tasty hamburger on the way) for warmup. Since there were already people in the main church, we were led into a small side chamber for our warmup. Roughly 15x10x10 meters, solid stone floor and walls. The echo was incredible! Any sound could be heard for four seconds. Doing our warmup exercises in this setting had a completely new quality. It’s great fun to play around with acoustics like that.
When we returned to the main church, things had cleared out a little and we could practice some of the pieces one last time. Then the service began, and proceeded rather like the first one. Except that we were not the only musical accompaniment: There was a three-person group doing traditional norwegian music with accordeon, cello and voice and we had a capable organist on a real church organ, not like the dinky little thing (barely 4x3x6) in Strindheim Kirke. Wonderful! Again, I wasn’t really able to follow the readings or the sermon, so the service itself was rather boring, but the music made it a worthwhile experience.

After the service ended (with a furious postludium courtesy of the organist), Morten offered me a ride, since he lives quite close to Moholt studentby. I gladly accepted the offer, got home, had dinner, brushed my teeth and sat down to write this. The rest of the evening will be spend relaxing, and then I will go to bed early, I think.