Wallet Stolen + Concerts

Wallet
I was eating lunch with my friend Melissa and I took out my wallet, paid, and set it on the table next to me. After a while I went to pick it up and it was gone. I thought I must have pushed it off the table accidentally, and we were sitting against the railing for a stairway going down, so I feared it had fallen downstairs. Melissa and I looked everywhere around the table and down the stairs and couldn't find it. The employees also helped but nothing was found. My only guess is that someone picked it up and walked away with it.

Contents of the wallet that seem important to me:

• Bank card
  
• Debit card
  
• NYU card, required to enter all university buildings
  
• Social Security Card (with my signature from 7th grade)
  
• Health Insurance card
  
• $200
  

I have ordered a replacement bank and credit card and I'm heading right now to replace my NYU card.

Concerts
We had concerts Sunday Dec 9 and Wed. Dec 12. Both concerts were good and the Sunday concert was especially memorable. Thanks to all my friends who came and supported us!

Concert today

My choir RCCNY will give the first of two concerts today. We will perform at Saint Ignatius of Antioch, which is a really cool little Anglican church on west 87th street.

Here is the program. In this program we span the earliest written chants to late 20th century compositions.

First Half

• Velichanie Rojdestvu: A sort of plainchant, russian style. After the first time through we harmonize more progressively each time. Men's voices only. Composer unkown.
  
• Nyne otposh'ayeshi: A very traditional russian-orthodox four part chant (don't know what these are officially known as). Men's voices only. Composer unknown.
  
• Rojdestvenskiy concert: Strokin (?-1887). This means "Christmas concert" and is a beautiful four-part piece for all voices.
  
• Let My Prayer Arise: Famous Bass solo with choir accompaniment by Chesnokov (1877-1944)
  
• Milost' Mira: A Mercy of Peace, Alexandr Yegorov (1864 - 1956).
  
• Svete Tikhiy: Quiet Light. Alexandr Yegorov. These pieces are amazing and tuning them is a joy. All voices, typically 6-7 parts.
  

Second Half

• Slava vo vyshnih Bogu: Glory to God in the Highest. Bortnyansky (1751-1825). a boroque style concerto for two mixed choirs 4 parts each. This is a paired down group of 16, not all of us will sing.
  
• Cherubic Hymn: Grechaninov (1864-1956). Just amazingly beautiful and simple. Mostly four parts.
  
• Four Ukranian Carols: The name speaks for itself.
  
• Aliluya: Modern Ukranian composer Skripnik (living). Mix between sacred traditional and gospel.
  
• Sh'edrik: Known as "Carol of the Bells" in the west, but actually is about a little Ukranian bird :)
  

Fall Pictures

Sarah and I went hiking in upstate NY and took a few pictures. I put up a full album at picasa and you can see a sample below. It was a fun day and about all the exercise I've gotten this fall.



In case you are out of the loop, I'm applying for jobs this fall. It is a bit stressful, but not horribly so. It just means I'm much more busy than usual. I've already applied for three and I have a bunch due around the first of December.

My choir RCCNY has two concerts in December. These are our usual Christmas concerts which focus mostly on Russian music, or at least Slavic music. This is a good program: we are exploring the history of this music starting with the earliest written chants to contemporary composers. Check out the poster.


I think it turned out nice, and captures a wintery holiday feel.

Now the title of this blog entry is Fall Pictures, so I'll end with a picture of the trees in the playground viewed from my balcony. I just took this picture a few days ago, so we still have plenty of nice fall colors around.



Have a good Thanksgiving, and good turkey.

Erin

Nevsky at Carnegie Hall

My choir performed Prokofiev's Alexander Nevksy in Carnegie Hall on the 1st of November. It was really fun. This was the first time I had sung on the stage at Carnegie (our last time there we sang from off stage). I was amazed at how good it felt to sing there. Something about the acoustic just made everything that came of of my mouth feel right.

This makes me understand, I think, the real appeal of this hall to performers. From the audience the sound is quite good I think, but not exceptional. But on stage it is amazing. The appeal of Carnegie is just the feel of the place. I see why people feel they have arrived when they have sung there. It isn't because it's famous and you are great if you are invited to sing there, it's because it feels great to sing there.

Erin

Lightning

We had a thunderstorm here last night, the best I've seen in NY. Sarah and I took some pictures from my balcony. We didn't use a tripod so some of them look doubled from hand movement. Here are a few good ones:





You can see the whole album here:

Lightning

Inaugural Speeches

This is not a political blog, I'm not trying to make a political statement here, but I think these two inaugural speeches are interesting. A comparison illuminates far more than just the relative political climates.

Lincoln's Second Inaugural Address
G.W. Bush's Second Inaugural Address

Erin

Brian May is an astrophysicist?

I'm linking a post I just put up on my research blog.
Erin

iPhone and new number

I bought an iPhone. It is the 8Gb model. Yeah, it's really expensive, but the way I look at it I bought myself a little miniature computer, which it is (it runs OS X). To me that is justification. And since my iPod broke and my contract with Sprint is up, it made sense to me.

I had to get a new number because you can't transfer numbers when you no longer live in the same area code as you bought your old phone (yes it makes no sense).

I'll send a mass email with my new number, but if you don't make it on the list please send me an email.

Erin

Germany trip

Germany was really nice. I keep saying that since I got back; it was just really nice.

I stayed with Dorothea and Hartmut Samtleben, friends from my days in Hyde Park, Chicago. They have two beautiful and rambunctious children, Armin and Iris, and live in a quiet neighborhood in the outskirts of Bonn.

I decided not to spend a lot of time exploring famous big cities. Instead, I tried to see some of the countryside around Bonn and neighboring cities. I even took a couple of days just to rest and read a book.

On the first weekend, the five of us took a train to Limburg, which is what Hartmut called a "preserved city", meaning there are lots of preserved old houses and other structures. From there we biked (with the little ones in bike seats on the back) along the Lahn river toward the Rhine (Rhein). This was my favorite part of the vacation. It was beautiful and the river and forest air was pure (The cities and riverways are very friendly to bikers which I really appreciated. There are bike paths everywhere).

I spent one day in Cologne (Köln), mainly to see the famous Cathedral. The cathedral is the most impressive man made structure I've ever seen. I took no pictures, but there is a nice virtual tour here. I was impressed by many things, but my attention was drawn the the floor mosaics. These are hand made mosaics of little pieces of stone arranged into pictures. They are quite robust as a floor and beautiful to see.

I also took a 50k bike ride South along the Rhein starting in Bonn. This was less nice because the Rhein is heavily populated, but still enjoyable and I saw a number of beautiful things such as an ancient Roman Church, many castles, and the remains of the Ludendorff Bridge at Remagen.

I think the people in Germany are friendly and warm but quite reserved. Overall I felt quite welcome there.

I didn't take that many pictures on this trip. I took no pictures at all of things for which one can Google to find many excellent representations. Here are some highlights of my own pictures from the trip:

2007 Germany Highlights

Highlights from Aspen

Aspen was great. It was relaxing yet productive and challenging, both scientifically and physically.

I had a little difficulty with the altitude and dry air, but it was completely worth it. I went on two hikes, one up Hunter Creek trail and another up the Ute Trail. The Hunter creek trail is an easy but nice hike North of Aspen across the river. It goes up along Hunter Creek (which was pretty big for a crick), up over a ridge, and into a nice meadow. The Ute trail goes up Aspen Mountain South of the town. It was quite challenging; very steep and beautiful. It is true what they say about the thin air. At the top is the ski area, where they were having a bluegrass festival and hula hooping.

We pulled some late nights working but also spent some nights out having fun, eating and drinking.

Below is a short photo album of highlights from the trip. My next trip will be about my vacation in Germany!

Aspen Highlights

Quick Aspen Update

I'm going to do a real post on my time in Aspen soon, but for now I'll just say that it has been extremely productive and fun. Here is a picture as a preview. Peder Norberg and I hiked up the Ute Trail to the top of Aspen Mountain, where this picture was taken.

Zanetto | Calvin & Hobbes

Zanetto at Carnegie Hall
The Carnegie Hall performance was a good experience. I had reservations at first because the whole thing was such a big production and it seemed like it was going to be difficult to maintain any artistic integrity in that environment. But I was pleasantly surprised. What I learned was that the presence of a few real artists can offset a lot of distractions.

Writing
I'm writing a paper and so I've been thinking a lot about presentation. I've always felt that academic papers are too formalized, but it is hard to break out of that because the journals have very rigid rules about the writing. But maybe it doesn't really matter in the end, because it is difficult to really learn anything directly from a paper anyway. You only really learn from trying to repeat the work yourself. Maybe the point should be to give the information needed to reproduce the results.

Also there is the issue of writing style. I prefer to write in as straightforward a manner as possible, but inevitably jargon creeps in and can obscure things. I think this Calvin & Hobbes cartoon illustrates the point pretty well:

Simple

I often find myself talking to scientists in other fields and when I tell them I do astrophysics, or physics, they are always impressed. They often say that physics was too hard for them.

This really surprises me, especially coming from people who work in fields like psychology or even biology. I tell them that they have it wrong, that physics is the easiest science and psychology is the hardest. But they always just laugh like I'm joking. Let me explain.

The reason I was drawn to physics is not because it is difficult but because it is so simple. Physics focuses on the simplest and most basic phenomena in the universe because those phenomena can actually be explained and predicted.

When I tell people this they sort of understand, but they always say that even though that might be true the thing that makes it hard is the math. They could have done it if it weren't for the math.

But the fact that I can actually use math in physics is just another reflection of its simplicity. People don't really use math in other fields because the systems they deal with are so complex that there is no way to explain them mathematically yet.

Some concrete examples: One of the first great successes of math in science was gravity. Newton was able to explain the motion of a planet around the sun using an incredibly simple formula for the force of gravity. This is possible partly because the system is so simple: the sun and a planet orbiting it. Compare this to the human brain, a system so complex we are just now mapping out the rough correlations between regions of the brain and observed behavior. Physics tells us how the electrical impulses in the brain work, and this is not much more complex than gravity. But the system of neurons is so complex as to make performance of calculations infeasible.

I understand the fear of math in that it seems strange and disconnected from everyday experience. But it is just a very simple language; it is far simpler than any human verbal language, and it is structured in such a way that everything makes sense and there are no exceptions and few opportunities for confusion. But like any language it is only useful when it is intuitive, and intuition only comes with experience and practice.

In many ways this parallels the misunderstanding people have about physics; it is actually much simpler to learn basic math than to learn Italian. It is partly for this reason we use it in the first place. It is a fairly simple and fool-proof way to tell other people something. And of course we can use it to predict much of the phenomena we see in the universe accurately.

But that simplicity is a drawback when trying to describe a complex system like the brain. Human language is better at that; when I say I am contemplative people have a good idea what I am saying, but how would I say that mathematically? On the other hand description isn't enough, and that is why psychology is so difficult. As a science it cannot truly make predictions, at least yet. Maybe some people go into psych because there is no math but in that case they are doing a disjustice to the field. They should hope that someday they can make predictions.

So that is a rambling attempt to explain myself. I hope it makes some sense.

Erin

Opera in June

My choir is performing in an opera at Carnegie Hall on June 4th. You may be thinking "that isn't really the place for an opera", and in fact it is a concert performance. This means we will just perform the music without any staging or costumes.

The opera is called Zanetto, by Mascagni. It hasn't been performed in New York since 1902! It is only one act, in fact it is a single scene. We open the whole thing with a few minutes of chorus sung unaccompanied and with no words. The music is great. I haven't heard the rest of the opera yet, but I anticipate the rest is also worth hearing.

Erin

Tonight's concert

I was happy to see many friendly faces in the audience tonight. It was a small but good audience, one of the best audiences I have experienced. The composers in our program are mostly not famous, so the small size isn't a surpise.

Most of the music felt right and we were connecting. As Nikolai says we created some real currents tonight and we felt that feedback we need from the audience.

If anybody still wants to hear us there is another performance this Saturday. Contact me and I can get you discounted tickets. See the link here:

http://rccny.org/ConcertSchedule.html

Aspen & Deutschland

I'm finally going on some relaxing trips soon. I'm attending a workshop in Aspen Colorado from June 10th till June 24th. This is a workshop, so there will be work and I will be busy, but compared to NYC it is relaxing. In fact working like crazy in Aspen is still more relaxing than the most relaxing thing I've found in NYC.

Then I'm going to Bonn, Germany from the 27th till the 5th. This trip is purely for fun, an actual vacation. I have friends in Bonn from my days at UChicago; Dorothea and Hartmut Samptleben and Jackie Chen. Dorothea has a job at UBonn and Jackie is a postdoc with Peter Schneider. Dorothea and Hartmut visited me in NY a few months ago and invited me to come for a visit to Bonn. This will be my first trip to the continent.

Erin

Two Motets and Three Songs

The group I'm singing with, the Russian Chamber Chorus of NY is performing two concerts next week on Wed. the 9th and Sat. the 12th. It is an amazing program, with pieces by Latvian, Hungarian, French, Russian, Italian and American composers. It has been a challenge to work on these varied sources. I also am singing tenor in this program for the first time and it is hard to imagine a more difficult first program at tenor.

Our director was interviewed about the program by the VAN site and you can read the inteview here. For my part I will say I love this program and I'm really looking forward to the performances.

Computer scam

A while back my computer, the one I built from scratch, stopped working. It just won't power up. Everything was still under warranty, so I just started sending things back. First I tried the power supply, but still wouldn't power up, then the mother board, still nothing. Tried bypassing the power switch, swapping memory, etc. Still nothing. Not even an attempt to boot. I wanted to get a new CPU anyway, so I ordered one but it made no difference (no surprise there).

So I decided to take it to this guy a couple of blocks away on Thompson and 3rd. He was clearly a part-timer, since his card said "chess instructor" and his place of work is a chess store on Thompson. So I didn't expect speed, but I figured he was probably competent. I took it in and explained the situation. I first wanted an estimate, a "diagnosis" of the problem and then after that I would decide if I wanted it fixed. He seemed unhappy with that, he's one of those guys who always seems angry all the time and likes to yell. He said he would do that for 30 bucks. That's a bit steep, but this is NY and I'm tired of messing with this machine.

So he calls me the next day and says a bunch of crap. He says that the hard drives are wrong, and that the jumpers were set wrong, and that I might have to replace the case, and that all this could run like 200 dollars. None of this makes any sense to me. First of all, everything had worked the way I had it set up before and I hadn't changed anything, so this crap about the drives was just that. Secondly, what does the case have to do with anything? I expressed this opinion but neither of us could really understand one another due to the language barrier. He yelled some more and said he would be working on it. I decided to go down there after work.

So I showed up and said that I hadn't really understood anything he said on the phone; I was trying to give him an out to retract the B.S. he tried to feed me over the phone. But he went on. The first thing he said was that my jumpers on the hard drives were wrong, one had to be a master one had to be a slave, etc. But with these new drives you can use "cable select" mode where you just put the jumper on the first slot and it figures it out by where the drive is on the cable. And all this had worked before with no changes and I could see with my eyes that things were right. Either he doesn't know what he's talking about or he's scamming me.

Then he says that the case might be bad. I ask what the case has to do with it, and he says that's what people always say but he knows these things. I asked "do you mean the switches are bad" meaning the power switch or something. But he just makes noises and won't commit to saying anything. I ask what he really thinks the problem is. This time he gets angry: "I don't work that way. I don't give information, because information is power". I say I don't care how he's going to fix it I just want to know what the diagnosis is before I commit to anything. But he says he doesn't work that way "You give me the computer and when you come back it is fixed". He tells me it could be as much as 200 dollars.

I'm starting to realize that this isn't a scam like I had feared, he just doesn't know what the problem is yet. I said: "look, if you don't know what the problem is yet that's cool, I can wait" But then he starts yelling because I've implied he might not know what he's doing. So I said "well just tell me what's the diagnosis" but then he goes off again about that's not how he works, and information is money or power or something.

I try to pull some information out of him but he won't budge. So I say, "I think I'm going to have to call this off." "Why?" "Because I don't trust you." Now he gets really defensive because the other chess guys are listening in and he doesn't like that. Finally, he just says it's probably the case or that my new power supply is too much for the system. "What?!?" He says: "look, there is too much watts in this power supply". I'm just stunned by this. He says "look, what do you think a fuse is for, eh?" "To limit the amount of current." "There, you see." "What?!? You don't know what your talking about! That's it I'm taking it home." He still wants his $30 for his "diagnosis". I say, "look if you want money for your diagnosis then tell me what's wrong with my computer." He won't say anything though, he just continues yelling because he wants some money. Eventually I just gave him $15 and left.

Green

Spring is really delayed here in new york. Yesterday was the first day that really felt like spring. So I decided to take steps to make my apartment feel more green. Over the last month or so I've collected some plants.



The ones in white pots are courtesy of Roman and Christina. The little tree is a Boxwood



This boxwood is a Bonsai (tree in a pot) which I think is really cool. Ever since Karate Kid I wanted one of those.
Erin

Yellowstone pictures

I had planned to upload a bunch of pics from my camera phone but I can't get them off the phone right now. So instead I have put up some pictures from my trip to Yellowstone with Mon and Jin. Click on the picture for the whole album over at Picassa.

Some Yellowstone Pics

Support

At the opera last friday I ran into a friend from my choir. His roommate, also a singer, was there too. We were discussing the opera and I said I preferred to say only positive things which surprised the roommate.

The way I see it, if you don't like a situation you can either try to remove that which you don't like or support that which you do like. I like the latter better. If you support what you like and others agree then this is continued. The rest can either get left behind or support this idea. Those who do get left behind can either attempt to tear down that which they don't like or join back in. And so on. There is some balance between keeping a good thing going and losing freedom and a sense of self, and I don't know where that is.

In music only the supportive approach can work.

At its best, a heierarchical society is like music. It is based upon support, and it is this support that gives peoples relationships meaning. At its worst it is an unstable equilibrium of men standing on the faces of their brothers.

Erin

Interpretation

For those who are wondering, the title "Sunlight on My Face" is from the U2 song "Where the Streets Have No Name". Here is the first half of the lyrics:

I want to run I want to hide
I want to tear down the walls
That hold me inside
I want to reach out and touch the flame
Where the streets have no name

I want to feel sunlight on my face
I see the dust cloud disappear
Without a trace
I want to take shelter from the poison rain
Where the streets have no name

Where the streets have no name
Where the streets have no name
We're still building then burning down love
Burning down love
And when I go there I go there with you
It's all I can do

I was thinking today that the effectiveness of the line "I want to feel sunlight on my face" depends on how it is said, or sung. Reciting it in my normal speaking voice I find it ineffective, but as sung by Bono I find it powerful. It is a matter of interpretation.

I have noticed that when people try to interpret someone's art without performing it themselves they are generally way off the truth. The only way to interpret music is to perform it. Then you make your interpretation another truth. I've come to find the whole process of criticism and external interpretation, without performance, abhorent. Usually I would be thinking of classical music, but this song is actually a good example, partly because everyone is familiar with it. I read the wikipedia article and feel the authors' interpretation misses the point and feeling of the song. As I said the song is itself the only true source, but I find that Bono's comments make more sense. From a 1987 interview with Propaganda magazine:

Where the Streets Have No Name' is more like the U2 of old than any of the other songs on the LP, because it’s a sketch — I was just trying to sketch a location, maybe a spiritual location, maybe a romantic location. I was trying to sketch a feeling. I often feel very claustrophobic in a city, a feeling of wanting to break out of that city and a feeling of wanting to go somewhere where the values of the city and the values of our society don’t hold you down. An interesting story that someone told me once is that in Belfast, by what street someone lives on you can tell not only their religion but tell how much money they're making — literally by which side of the road they live on, because the further up the hill the more expensive the houses become. You can almost tell what the people are earning by the name of the street they live on and what side of that street they live on. That said something to me, and so I started writing about a place where the streets have no name...

Erin

Aspen and snowboarding

I just got back from a week in Aspen. Believe it or not, there is a physics center there and a few conferences are held each winter. As I said in the last post, the days are long from 8am to 7:30 pm with a break in the middle of the day for skiing or boarding. I decided to try snowboarding. It was a lot of fun and I am now good enough to take on moderately interesting runs.

On the first day I took a lesson and was doing well. Just before heading in for lunch I was tired but wanted to do "one more run". Of course those are famous last words, and I fell and hit my head on an icy part. Normally this sort of fall would be a little painful and somewhat disconcerting, but nothing to write home about, but the weather had been very warm and melting and packing of the snow had left the bottom of the mountain fairly hard. I hit the back of my head and suffered a mild concussion. Pretty harrowing actually, since I was out for ~10 seconds and when I came to I couldn't see for another few seconds. My instructor knew it was a bad day so he had made me put on a helmet even for the bunny slope. He said if I hadn't been wearing it they would have taken me out of there in a helicopter.

Anyway, I was dizzy for about a half hour but after lunch I was ready to go back out and I had a decent afternoon. I also went back a couple of days later after some new powder had fallen and had a great day. I'm defiinitely hooked.

It is a beautiful place, Aspen. The resort where we stayed (at an affordable reduced group rate) was very nice. Here is a view from my room.

Singing & Aspen

I have already seen some progress with my voice teacher. It is coming slow, but I can already tell that there is something to discover just outside of my current reach. These things tend to come in discrete jumps and there is no telling when it will happen, but I'm optimistic.

I'm going to Aspen for a meeting next week. This is one of those meetings that is a ton of work and a ton of play. The days are long, 8am to 7:30pm, but we take a break from 11-4:30 and a lot of people go skiing; and we get a group rate on lift tickets so they are half price. I'm going to try snowboarding. I've skiied a couple of times and it was fun, but I think I'll like snowboarding more.

Voice Teacher

I had my first lesson with a new voice teacher this week. I had been meaning to get a new teacher, but was finally pushed into it by my move from singing baritone to tenor in the choir. I've been singing tenor now for three weeks, and man it was scary at first. I felt much more exposed because I produce much more sound singing tenor. Of course this is the whole point; I get much more resonance in that range, hence the change of section. I need to work on controlling the sound so that I can sing at an F and higher softly but without going completely into falsetto every time. Well, I need to work on that and just about everything else. So much to learn, it's exciting.

Erin

First real snow

Tonight we are getting our first real snow of the season here in NY. I tried to take a picture but there isn't enough light. If there is some on the ground tomorrow I'll post some pics.
Erin

My dwellings

This blog is to be a departure from the last one "New York Apartment Hunter". So for the transition I'm posting pictures from all the places I've lived in new york, and this will hopefully be the last time I discuss housing.

This first picture is from my apartment on Roosevelt Island in the East River. It had by far the best view.


This one is from Washington Square Village, Apt 13F. This apartment faced north and actually had a view of the empire state building. This picture is facing northeast looking down 3rd street.


These last two are from the same building, but Apt 9C which faces south into the garden. When the construction is finished it will be much more quiet than 13F.





There is my first post on this blog!
Erin