Grimaud’s book
By ari | March 4, 2009
On my weekly afternoon off, I strolled through a very rainy town, looking for an iPod dock with radio/CD capability, or if you will, a radio/CD player with an iPod dock. Found none. BUt I did found this book by my favorite pianist:
Original title: Leçons particulières
The blurb on the back cover lists three topics:
- How do you overcome your doubts?
- How do you elevate your soul?
- How do you describe passion, or even love?
Yeah, they sound a bit cheesy, but I just had to have it since she’s my favorite pianist, and since she made an intelligent impression from interviews that I read before. So I hope the way in which the above topics are covered, make it all worthwhile.
Since the setting of the book is a trip through Italy, that alone might be well worth reading.
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Grandmasters in the Groene Kerk
By ari | February 4, 2009
A few weeks ago, a friend called me to ask if I felt like coming to a chamber music concert, in a church in the same village where my parents live. The pianist was the former conservatory teacher of a friend of his. As the program also looked interesting, I didn’t hesitate for a moment to agree I’d come. On the program were relatively unknown pieces by Mozart, Schumann, and Brahms. The co-organizer (my friend’s friend) turned out to be someone I still (vaguely) remember playing at a student concert, years ago. The musicians names didn’t ring any bells, but their CVs were quite impressive.
Although I had listened to the pieces on my iPod prior to the concert, seeing and hearing them live was just spectacular. They played with so much passion and energy (although the piano was sometimes a bit too dominant to my taste), that it seemed like a completely different world. The recordings would be a black/white 1D world, while the live performance was a 3D (4D?) world in color. Oh well, you get the idea.
Afterwards, the co-organizer claimed she recognized me, too, but I have my doubts:
- I’ve gained weight since then
- she thought I studied civil engineering.
In any case, it was nice to have been there.
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Diario has come home
By ari | February 2, 2009
After having had this domain and web hoster for about a month without doing anything with it, yesterday I finally had the time to install WordPress 2.7, and move all my entries from wordpress.com here. And it seems to work, yay!
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Palm Pre
By ari | January 9, 2009
I had set my mind on the so-called Google Phone, aka HTC G1, ever since I’d heard of it. However, I’ve also been a happy Palm user since November 2000, first an m100, then since 2005 a Tungsten-C.
Yesterday, Palm presented their new Palm Pre, and now I’m so tempted to get one of those instead… Hope my - sometimes temperamental - Nokia will still last until the Pre hits the stores here.
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Lilla Svea reborn
By ari | December 31, 2008
Today I finally have the time to reinstall my Swedish laptop, which I bought 2.5 years ago, and had recently become so pollluted, that even the Windows start-up tune had become “crackled”…
First I failed to use the official Packard Bell Master recovery DVD, which didn’t come with the machine. No, you had to create them yourself, which I did about a year ago. However, after booting up the Win/98 PE version, it just crashed with a stack overflow. Wonderful! So I installed a student version of XP Pro Swedish, which seems to work fine.
However, I was still missing PackardBell specific drivers (like for video, audio, touchpad, etc.). Luckily I was able to download them here .
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By ari | December 28, 2008
Today we still went to a mass at the nearby St. Sauveur church, which was also a bit interesting. THe priest approached us when we came in, and welcomed us, asked where we were from etc. And at the start of mass we were asked to introduce ourselves to our neighbors. Nice! After the mass we headed for Roncq, probably the closest village to the Belgian border, and did some more shopping at Auchan. Lunch at Flunch concluded the trip, and we headed back to Holland again.
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Third Day in Lille
By ari | December 27, 2008
On Saturday, we went looking for another store of our favorite (?) hypermarket: Auchan, in the village of Fache-Thumesnil. I got a small universal carrying case for my iPod with nice colors: black with an orange lining = very cheerful!. Unfortunately my iPod doesn’t fit in it, so now I’m using it for my cellphone instead…
In the afternoon, we went back to Carrefour at the Euralille train station, to search for an inexpensive ‘cabin size’ suitcase that I had seen in an ad in the TV guide. We found it, and unlike the well-known Delsey and Samsonite brands, which only come in red and black, this “Faraway” brand (from China, where else?) had a nice BROWN color. So it will require a lot less effort to recognize it on an airport conveyor belt (for those times I can’t keep it in the cabin). Will show a picture of it later.
For dinner we went to Le Palais du Dragon on the corner; I just couldn’t stand having stayed in that area for 5 times without having tried the Chinese restaurant there. We had
- fried fish fillet with lemon
- fried fish fillet on a hot plate with sweet&sour sauce.
- beef with “satay sauce”: my dad got this, but was disappointed by the curry-like taste of it.
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Boxing Day in Lille
By ari | December 26, 2008
In the morning we did some shopping at the Tanneurs “passage” mall. At C&A I got a leather belt, and at Fnac, I got a CD of Carmina Burana. Actually there were two, one with the famous Carl Off version, one with the original medieval songs (which I think is pretty rare!). After that we had lunch at the Flunch on Rue du Béthune. The “saumon sauvage de Alaska” wasn’t nearly as good as last night’s salmon.
In the afternoon, we first took a look at the Christmas market at Place Rihour; due to the cold we didn’t stay that long. While my parents did some grocery shopping, I went to the Palais des Beaux Arts, which has a temporary exhibition on Nordic painters visting in France. A few very well known names: Munch, Larsson, Zorn, and a few slightly less famous names, but still very nice paintings. What more could a Sweden fan ask for?
(Georg Nicolaj Achen: Intérieur)
Dinner was had at the Flunch near the hotel. The food was okay, but a noisy and badly behaving teenage gang (of North-African / Arab origin), made the other people at the restaurant a lot less pleasant. While there was a (very alert) bouncer, they didn’t go far that he had to intervene, but unpleasant nonetheless.
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Christmas Break in Lille
By ari | December 25, 2008
From the Hotel Ibis Gares in Lille, I wish you all a very Merry Christmas!
Although the hotel rooms are still the same as in 2004, a great improvement is that Wifi by orange is now free! Back then, you got a scratch card valid between 18:00 and 9:00; now you get a 24 hours pass valid from the moment you first use it. Each day you need a new code, but you can just get one from the reception.
At 18:30 we went to the evening Christmas mass at the big St. Maurice church, which was within walking distance. A few interesting things of that mass happened:
- During the last half hour off the mass we had to come forward to the altar.
- When it was time for the “Our Father” prayer, we had to “connect” by putting our left hand on our left neighbor’s shoulder, while holding the right hand horizontally opened.
- For communion, we did not have to line up in 2 or 3 orderly queues, but it was distributed by many people, at different points in the church.
- After the mass, most people did not return to their seats, but maybe went somewehere else. A few even left before receiving the blessing…!
After that (a bit after 
we had dinner at the hotel restaurant (Estaminet), which had awesome menus: for a mere €10, you got a main course + a dessert. I had a delicious warm smoked salmon, and for dessert a fantastic apple tart, with lots of apple on it.
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Sibelius & Tchaikovsky @ De Doelen
By ari | December 12, 2008
Went to an amazing concert. Although the performers were not very famous, the way they played was great.
The conductor, Ludovic Morlot, was a short and modest man, and he conducted without a baton, but what impressed me most, was that he also conducted the orchestra without a score… He knew all of Tchaikovsky’s Fourth Symphony by heart!
The violinist, Valery Sokolov, was a young guy from Ukraine, who similar to the conductor, played without bravura, but quite skilful yet calm. Hardly seemed tired at all at the end, although Sibelius’ concerto is quite demanding.
We sat at row Pf, which is De Doelen code for “6th row”; so quite near the front. And unlike the Concertgebouw, in De Doelen you don’t have to look up a meter when you’re close to the stage.
Before the concert we had dinner at a nearby Italian restaurant with the suitable name “Pavarotti” 
Oh, and 45 minutes before the concert started, we attended an introduction, by an old lady, who had a voice with resembling the Polygoon Journaal from the 1950s But she gave some interesting background info on the composers and the works we were going to hear.
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