Tonight we are playing a concert for bosses of the Communist Party. The concert will be in the BaiYun convention centre. Luckily there’s a metro stop close by so I don’t need to go out of the way to get to the orchestra bus or take a little bit expensive cab.

Security measures are tight and the whole convention centre is blocked off. I must say that the guards are very strict but kind of nice about it. What a welcome change You must have the work permission card on you, otherwise you cannot get in. Of course I went against the orchestra plea of taking the bus in order to arrive together. We’ve performed at the convention centre before so I knew where to go. I ran into 2 free spirited colleagues that were not afraid to be split off the heard on the way

In the centre I went on a quest to find a drink without my work permission card. Hihi, just trying how far I could get. It was no problem and I found a vending machine with deliciously cold iced tea. I got some looks but it is fun to play ignorant foreigner at times….

It’s 34C today and UV intensity must be around 8 (very high). I got lucky this morning on the way to the metro: as I walked out of the compound, two people arrived on an electrical bike. Perfect timing so I could get on it to go to the metro station. These little bikes are all over and are perfect for quick short distance travel. I payed the guy 3 RMB and that seemed to be OK. I left home at 8.51 and was on the metro by 9.00. See if I get lucky again tonight, otherwise I’ll just walk.

Last week Johannes Wildner was here to conduct an all Mozart program. Later in the week his wife Esther also joined. They wanted to meet Lexie and we had a very pleasant evening at IN cafe.

From tomorrow onwards we have week off work. Yeah!! I hope that I can rest a bit to get rid of a very nasty cough. It’s driving me nuts! I woke up at 2.30 last night and couldn’t sleep again because I was coughing so much. Lexie requested milk at 4.00 so you can imagine I’m not really bursting with energy today.

Just as all my friends seem to be leaving GZ, some are coming back for a visit, hurrah! Lia  and Taco are in town and we met up Sunday night. Taco had to go to an opening dinner of a conference but we did get to see each other. They met Lexie as well. This weekend Sue and Dave will be in town. Sue has met Lexie before but Dave not yet.

Since I will not see my colleagues anymore after I quit I decided to open a Weibo account. That is the Chinese version of Twitter (which is of course blocked here). It is a lot of fun and a nice way to stay in touch. It is also very good for my Chinese but I must admit that I’m sometimes to tired to make sense of it. I copy the characters I don’t know into Pleco software, see what they mean and try to remember them for next time.

OK, it is about time to go get ready for departure. See you again soon, x Joke

Communist concert in the Opera House

Last Tuesday and Wednesday we played in the Opera House. We played a bizarre mix of communist songs and opera arias. On Wednesday we had a rehearsal before the concert but unfortunately I didn’t make it on time. I wanted to cycle but there was a big storm approaching. Somehow only one elevator worked so it took a long time to leave the building. As you can guess there were no cabs and the bus came only to be stuck in traffic. Mafan!!! I was 7 minutes late and had to sign my name on some list. So childish!!! I’m more and more happy every day that I decided not to sign a new contract. We are working like crazy this month and they dock pay as soon as you do one tiny little thing wrong. Sorry, I can’t deal with such behaviour!

Daddy and Lexie on her 6 months anniversary, april 25th

Lexie had her half year anniversary on Wednesday. MIL celebrated with  a special salmon treat. Lexie is not a big fan yet Just as on her 5 months anniversary, I was playing in the Opera House. Good story to tell her later.

After her first hair cut by me. She was starting to look like the Nutty Professor

Lexie’s first hair cut was a bit scary but it worked out OK.

We’ve been getting some crazy storms these weeks. Here’s the one from today:

13.15

Rehearsal was fine today. We are working with Long Yu and the famous pianist Kun Woo Paik. No time was wasted and the result sounded good. Extra bonus was that we were done by 11.15! Prokofiev piano concerto 3 is the piece of the week.

15.50

On stage view

From the back of the hall

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzg1MTg3NDA0.html (please copy/paste, the cool link stuff is not working…..)

With Hins Cheung (张敬轩) The star of the show.

With Kazcka (flute) and band manager Johnny

http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XMzg1MTUyMDAw.html (same here)

We are playing his second piano concerto this week. I had not played this piece yet so it was nice to get to play it. It is obvious why the first concerto is much more famous though ……

Before rehearsal today I heard thunder and saw some ‘mean’ clouds. I waited for a bit but no action, so I decided to cycle to work anyway. I made it there completely dry. This storm was not to be hurried and it took a long time to break loose. Wow, the first serious tropical shower of the season!!

Since I had my plastic flip flops in my locker and a short sleeved shirt, I figured I’d cycle back as well. I had to wait for departure because the rain was too intense. When it died down a bit and jumped on my good ‘ol bike. For good measure I cycled straight through some puddles and the water was warm. Much better than yucky cold Dutch puddles

When I arrived in my street I saw that it had changed into a mini river. I cycled through but was a bit worried that a pothole might have opened up. I followed to people in front of me and made it back home safely.

The biggest event of the day is that Lexie turned herself over! We put her down for a nap and when we went back to check she was on her tummy. Sooooo cute. She had trouble turning back but I’m sure she’ll figure that out soon enough.

It was a super busy week at work with pieces by R. Strauss; “Salome’s Dance”, “Oboe concerto” and “Also sprach Zarathustra”. The conductor was Massimo Zanetti. I played 1st clarinet in the dance and the concerto and Eb in Zarathustra. Lots of notes and a lot of depth. The concert went well but I was super tired afterwards.

We talked about my contract for next season and I did not accept the offer. The reason for this is that they offered the exact same contract as I’ve had for 5 years…… No improvement in position, terms or wages.  Even worse: because of the exchange rate I’d make less money!!! This is ridiculous and I’m quite annoyed. Since the GSO is not going to change any time soon, I decided that I’ve had enough.

This happened on Thursday so you can see that playing the concert was quite difficult for me. But since I am in fact a professional musician I did it anyway. Sleeping proved to be difficult after the concert and Lexie wanted to drink at 3.00 AM. I finally fell asleep around 3.40. I was going through things in my head and started to make new plans for when this current contract has ended. It turns out that my current job seems to be a dead end and I’m too young to be complacent about it.

I did have a bit of fun this week as well: on Friday we went out for dinner with maestro Zanetti in the Grand Hyatt. He saw Jose Carreras, who had a concert in the Opera house on the same night as our concert. I cycled to work every day and it only rained a bit once. In that respect I was quite lucky because there were some showers every day.

On Wednesday Lexie came to work during the break with daddy and grandma. Once again everybody was very impressed by her cuteness

Haiwen and me joined a group of friends at the Ritz-Carlton to have Easter brunch. It was nice to see them and the food was great. We did not need to have dinner tonight.

So now the big GSO count down has started…. 2 months to go!! I’m a bit in two minds about it: on one hand I’m having fun playing 1st clarinet and on the other hand I’m really fed up with the internal Chinese politics. Well yeah, 2 months will pass by very quickly.

‘Lexie obviously has the genes of a ‘levensgenieter’ hihi. Mmm, is there an English word for that? Maybe just ‘somebody that enjoys life in big and small ways’. See how happy she is to be at 1920, outside under the parasols, having lunch with mommy and auntie Mette. OK, ‘having’ lunch is an overstatement: she watched us having it… No worries though because she had a full belly anyway!

The temperatures are up again which is really nice but also means the comeback of the killer mosquitos. Time to mosquito proof the house!! I wanted to have this done years ago but now Lexie helped me in my quest to get it done. Mr. guy came over on Tuesday morning and started installing the screens and doors. He left at noon for lunch and said he would be back at 14.00. Nope….. that turned out to be 15.00, a bit annoying but what can you do? He finished up around 16.30. By then I had lost my gym vibe and decided to have a pedicure instead since flip flop season is here

My Chinese word of the week is 人字鞋 (ren zi xie) which is a very accurate way to describe a flip flop: 人 is the shape of the straps over the feet! Isn’t that sweet? 人 means ‘person’ and 字 means ‘chinese character’ that only leaves us with 鞋 and that means ‘shoe’. FIL in law told me this because he was here while I was on a taobao search for flip flops. I took one and asked him ‘how do you say this in Chinese?’. Hihi, good day! 

Mosquito door installation in progress.

Work is very easy, yet shocking this week. We are playing Beethoven’s violin concerto but the soloist is playing the piano!!!!!! Weird, very weird!! Half a rehearsal yesterday and half a rehearsal today. Not bad. We play this piece at least once every season so everybody knows it well. As I’m writing this I’m listening to Strauss’s oboe concerto. That’s on next week and it has a good deal of clarinet in it.

The pineapple that is being cleaned was mine

It is now 9.45 on Friday morning. FIL came by to pick up Lexie at 9.00. By then she was washed and fed. I gave her a cute baby ‘mohawk’ because here first hair is really starting to fall out. She will not go bald because she’s already growing new hair. She was very happy this morning. She’s now eating her toys and really playing with them. She loves to eat her hands as well. She did a roll in bed this morning but she probably scared herself because she was not happy with the outcome. Nothing a few cuddles couldn’t fix

OK, now I have to go to work!

This week we are down to a measly 3 concerts, hihi. The first one took place on Monday night in the Guangzhou Opera House. We played for some department of the communist party in Guangdong. The only mafan bit about the day was that the dress rehearsal was at 14.00 while the concert was at 19.30. Not enough time to go all the way home and back but waaaay too much time to stay and hang around. I filled the time quite nicely: first a late lunch/early dinner, a massage and then coffee with a friend. Since I was away for so long I need to express some milk as well. I did this just before the concert in the dressing room. Due to my ninja skills nobody noticed this. It’s all about camouflage and positioning.

The concert went fine, nothing special or out of the ordinary. On Wednesday the rehearsals for the normal season concert of tonight started. In typical GSO style I got a text message at 8.37 with the schedule for the day, hahaha. I had asked beforehand so I knew I was on in the afternoon. We are playing the violin concerto by Nielsen. At first I thought it was going to be horrible, but it turns out that it is quite OK. It will not become my favourite piece but it’s much better than the clarinet concerto.

I went to the gym on Tuesday afternoon. I managed to go to the gym on Friday morning again but I had to hurry to get everything done in time. I had one hour at the gym exactly. I wanted to do more but I had to go home to shower, hang up the laundry and to perform my duty as a cow. Then it was onto grandma’s to see Lexie and have some lunch. Actually I wanted to go again on Thursday but luckily  I remembered that there was a student coming at 17.00…..

On Wednesday night I went to the Hilton to see the new singer at the bar there. Free wine and snacks…. It was good fun and I was happy to go home to see Lexie and Haiwen. I’m a bit out of touch with socializing; there are so many new people in town! Nice to have a little family now so we can stick together.

Rehearsals went on…. and on Friday night we had our inauguration of a country themed wine tasting event. The first ‘meeting’ was at Nicole’s house and the country was Italy. Since I did not make it to the gym on Thursday I went by bike so that was 2 rides to Ersha in one day, same as today because the weather is gorgeous. I picked up a lasagna at IN cafe (OK, this must not come as a surprise if you know me ) and took a bottle of nice Sicilian wine. We had some Prosecco, some wines and Italian food (bruschetta, salads….). Very nice and a cool group to hang out with. The bike ride home was very serene as I cycled in the almost deserted park along the river.

Tomorrow will be concerto numero 3 of the week and at the Opera House again. Much bigger event of the day: Lexie will be 5 months old!!!!!!!!

It’s Sunday afternoon and I finally have time to write again. We visited Zuzi this morning and picked up a lot of clothes for Lexie. Zuzi and Mark are moving to the UK in 26 days, they just heard last week. Nice for them but not so nice for me as I hate to see friends leave.

The weather has been horrible with nothing else than smog and fog. The sun kinda came out yesterday:

Imagine how bad it’s been that this sight could make me happy!! Today the sun really came out and it is very warm all of a sudden. Yahoo says it’s 28C now. It was 14C a few days ago…

Last night I played first clarinet in the overture ‘Cosi fan tutte’ by Mozart and the piano concerto in a minor by Schumann. Some little solo’s here and there and luckily they went well After the break I played second clarinet in Petrouschka by Stravinsky. That piece has really grown on me this week and it was fun to play. After the concert both the first clarinet and I got to stand up It is nice to play first clarinet more now. Only problem is that I have virtually no time to practice and because of the crazy weather the reeds are all over the place. Well yeah, I try my best. I’m proud to say that I chucked out all of my pre-preggo reeds because they were too old. Just wish the new ones would stop getting soaked after 5 seconds!

Lexie is doing great. She’s sleeping and eating well and smiles a lot. Some cries here and there of course, but nothing major or extended.

I was exhausted last Friday and almost fell asleep at work. I was sick earlier in the week because of a dodgy tuna sandwich That caused me to miss work on Tuesday but that was not a big problem. On Friday night I went to bed at 21.00, woke up at 00.30 due to milk issues and then continued to sleep until 7.00 when Lexie woke up. After that I felt 150% better Just in time for the busy concert day Last night Lexie woke up at 5.00 or so but went to sleep on a bit after a feed. Not bad!

Blogging has been a little bit frustrating to say the least. I did have a few opportunities to write, but then the website would be down, or the pictures wouldn’t upload. Soooo annoying, especially since I have so little time now. This is what I got when I tried last week:

Well, yeah… I’m here now!

I’m not even sure where to begin. So much has happened!!!

Last week I went to Beijing to visit my friends Dave and Sue. As you can imagine I needed a break from Asian family life
I left on Thursday morning and came back on Sunday evening. Lexie was in my thoughts the whole time but at no point did I feel the urge to run to the airport and jump on the next plane home.

The reason for the visit was Sue’s birthday party on Saturday night. It was a great party and it was really nice to have some drinks and not worry about being a parent for a bit. I was happy to meet the members of the Beijing crew . On Friday we took it easy; some light shopping, followed by sushi and a lovely massage at the Dragonfly massage centre. Dinner together with Dave in SanLiTun at night.
The only mafan bit of the visit was that I needed to express milk several times a day. All for the greater cause……

Another quite big event is that I have started working again. I was not supposed to go back for at least another week but it turned out differently. So with less then 5 days to prepare and start practicing I played my first concert as a mommy yesterday. Luckily no difficult pieces….. Just Daphnis and Chloe on Eb clarinet. Not the whole thing, but the section that kicks off with the Eb solo. No pressure at all and so good to be back!!
We have 11 concerts this week. I play Eb in 6 of them and 1st clarinet in the other 5. Best get right back into it!

Just now I had lunch at MIL’s and Nicky was also there with a friend. They are going to America for 2 weeks today. Lexie is still there now because I have 2 concerts coming up later. I have about an hour and a half before I have to leave.