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Oxford, England.1°c at 7am
No, that’s not a misprint! Not even the middle of September yet and there’s 1° here.
At least it’s not raining…
Car repair shops seem to be in a pickle of sorts. One doesn’t answer the phone, and has a recorded message saying its going to be back in action at the end of July. Another one has time for a relatively quick fix job two weeks from now. A third one could get it done inside of one week, but costs almost 50% more than the busy one.
In situations like this, it’s super practical to live in a place where I can simply take a 10 minute bike ride to reach two grocery stores, two cafes, a library, a drugstore, four barber shops, and pickup points for packages.
While upgrading my OS this morning it was noted that I keep my desktop extremely ~~empty~~ clean. Which is definitely true, currently there are only three symbols/shortcuts on it. I’m the type of person who starts everything from the task bar and also doesn’t have a problem digging a bit through the file system to find any folders or files I need. I really don’t like (visible) clutter. How bout you?
Second random thought: Pearl Jam’s album Yield is [criminally underrated](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWfwkcnrBw0).
The bacon fat I used to fry some eggs with was tasteless, so off to the plastic ‘oily materials’ container they go.
Talking to Finnish people at science conferences be like:
Me: Hi, I’m Holytriplem, nice to meet you”
Finn: 😳😳😳😳😶🌫️🫥
Me: “So what do you work on?”
Finn: “Rocks.”
Me: “…What kind of rocks?”
Finn: 😐”….Big rocks.”😐
Me:”….Sooooo, like comets? Asteroids? Or…”
Finn: “Yes.”
Me: “…oooook right. So like, are you a PhD student? Postdoc?”
Finn: “PhD.”
Me: “….Oh cool, so you’re at Turkujärvi Institute of Technology?”
Finn: “Yes”
Me: “What’s it like there?”
Finn: “Good.”
Me: “…care to elaborate?”
Finn: “Very good.”
Me: “…..ooook. Well, it’s…been a pleasure”
Finn: 🫥
There is a performance or Kaija Saariaho’s HUSH in Finland next week, a trumpet concerto that ended up being the last work she completed, but it’s on Thursday night and it’s in Jyväskylä which is a 140 km drive for me. Had it been during the weekend I would have definitely bought tickets, especially since a good friend of mine lives in Jyväskylä, but I don’t think I can make it on a weekeday. 😩
It’s a shame, because I would have loved to hear it. Apparently it’s a sequel to her first concierto, a violin concierto called Graal théâtre from 1994, and that’s one of my favourite Saariaho pieces. Oh well, maybe they’ll perform it during Musica nova Helsinki next year. I think it’s the first time that festival has been held since her death, so I suspect there’ll be a lot of her music there. Maybe.
Yesterday someone was telling me about the composer Johannes Bornlöff. I hadn’t heard of him before, but when I started listening, I could recognize perhaps 80% of the pieces. They’re everywhere. I somehow never wondered who wrote them.
How often does it happen that you hear a song or melody that you don’t know, and go out of your way to figure out who the artist is? Or do you usually just listen and move on?
The rain is here, now we’re waiting for the flood.
I’m a volunteer and we’re on high alert since yesterday. I’m not too worried since flood management in Vienna is pretty good in general (big Donauinsel love!) but our station is an old-ish building (of the cheap, hastily built, immediate postwar years kind, not _old_ old) on a street over an underground river, so the cellar gets flooded pretty regularly, even with far less rain than predicted for this weekend.
So here I am, working from home, wellies beside the door, ready to go pump the cellar if necessary. Not saving lives, exactly, but saving equipment worth a lot of money and paperwork.
Let’s see.