fortunes read from traffic cameras
and other tales of wonder
from Paris, London, NYC

Before going to Paris, Mom and I saw the Merchant of Venice in "Shakespeare's" restored Globe Theatre. We liked the atmosphere so much that we saw a new play there the next night, We the People, by Eric Schlosser of "Fast Food Nation" and "Reefer Madness" fame. It's amazing to see new plays with 20+ actors covering what could have been very dry subject matter--the US constitutional convention--with such a large audience and up tempo. I regret slightly that we missed the London Youlan Qin Society's yaji outside of town because London sucked us in.

After three nights in Paris (ok, three hours), I was ready to move there. Unlike London, everyone elegantly moseyed, except the tourists. In a cafe, a Parisian recovering from cancer told us how much she loved Bush "because he's courageous" as she puffed on a cigarette. We climbed over some ancient buildings, rode the bus, learned a little French, and stayed in the Latin Quarter. Being back in London was brief and pleasant.

After one last walk through my neighborhood of Hasidic Jews in their fur and coats, a couple more flushes of the "crappy" English toilet, and goodbyes to roommates, my summer in London was over.

In New York, I saw my friend Chipp Jansen's exhibit "Counting Cars" at the Conflux Festival as part of a Psychography exhibit. Given six cars on the West Shore Expy Victory traffic cam during my thirty seconds led to the 6th RSS feed of the New York section of the NY Times, which means I got an article about bowling in Central Park. "Wiggled a dance of delight" and "silence is an anomaly" stood out, as did "a compelling distraction for tourists".

Or according to Chipp's co-conspirator, Will Pappenheimer,

Counting Cars is an interface and consulting station that connects Manhattan traffic cams to local New York RSS Internet news of the moment via the vernacular consultation practice of "counting crows." As a performance, I will assist participants to seek the moment's situational wisdom for a question they might entertain. With the aid of computer equipment, we will consult a live NYC traffic cam and initiate a programmatic process that utilizes motion detection to count cars within a certain period of time. The number generated as the "car" or "crow" count and is used to retrieve the text and imagery of a current corresponding RSS New York news story that is related to the participant.

As fine a counselor/psychic as e'er I saw.

Labels: London, NYC, Paris

the last days of guqin camp
at the Royal Academy of Music
London

Following from this post.

I could write a lot about my week at the Royal Academy of Music's summer school, but I won't. I enjoyed the people I met and being in that atmosphere of exploration and excitement about Asian music. There were many people who had never seen a qin before, and others who had practiced half a lifetime.

The campus is near Baker Street and Regents Park, which meant new friends and I could stroll out to smell the roses or buy a sandwich with shops painted with Sherlock Holmes murals.

On the second day, the organizers asked me to translate some talks by Zeng Chengwei, guqin professor at the Sichuan Conservatory of Music, and Hu Bin, erhu professor at the Royal Conservatory of Music. It was really a "pre-concert lecture" in which they described the songs they were going to play the next night. Though my music vocabulary was a bit rusty, I got through the technical aspects of the lecture just fine. It was Professor Hu's emotional language of her songs' heroines that stumped me, along with Professor Zeng's rattling off of classical Chinese phrases. I think he was asking me to translate something about sage emperors in the picture on the right.

The next night ZCW performed five songs, the first being Zuiyu Changwan (The Drunken Fisherman Sings at Dusk), which he was also teaching me. After the performance, I congratulated him and told him how marvelous it was to hear him play in that nearly acoustically perfect auditorium. He said in typical Chinese modesty that he "played poorly."

Our class on stage:


Thanks to Peng Hua, scientist and musician extraordinaire, for taking and sending the pics.

Labels: guqin, London

first day of guqin camp
at the Royal Academy of Music
London

I met a man from Portland, Jim Binkley, who wrote a new book, and was John Thompson's roommate in Taipei in the 1970s. He came to London just to take part in the Asian Music Circuit's 5th annual summer school at the Royal Academy of Music.

Zeng Chengwei is our teacher. Charlie Huang wore his famous hanfu. His newest is on its way from China. We are urgently awaiting its premiere.

Qin circles have strange, brilliantly plumed birds. I was planning on taking photos of the wildlife, but my Kodak decided to give me fits. Our yaji (野集?) was well documented by others, including friends like Julian Joseph from Youlan and NAGA.

Labels: guqin, London, music, 古琴

Account Summary: Summer Plans, Fall Plans
After my third quarter plans
from San Diego to London to Beijing plans

My 20 credit hour quarter is over......never again will I take that many classes. I had to put just about every aspect of my life on hold. Next quarter I will have fewer classes, but they will demand even more focus. I've got to take finance and macro econ, plus the third quarter of quantitative methods (stats) and upper level Chinese. (I found a cool site where you can make and share flashcards). Plus I started as the "website development intern" at IR/PS. Here's my first article with pictures. It's nice being paid to attend, photograph, and write about events I would otherwise take part in. I'll continue my presidency at the Chinese Language Film Society. And last week I started a group of Roots & Shoots, Jane Goodall's global youth network. We'll be doing lots of things, which I've decided to do instead of write about.

I drank a Red Bull to try to get an essay pumped out tonight. My mom is visiting me from Michigan starting tomorrow for a week and I won't have time to write while she's here. But somehow updating my blog is easier than writing about environmentalism and the development of civil society in China.

So, it looks like I've secured my absolute dream internship this summer and fall. I'll be interning with AccountAbility in London this summer. Then I'll be going to Beijing in the fall to work with the head of CSR for Bayer Drug Co., China. What this will entail exactly is not clear, but involves defining AccountAbility's China strategy. It also means working with the founder and the research team on some of AccountAbility's pet projects in China, and may include surveying consumers on willingness to pay for environmentally friendly products. This means I'll take a quarter off and graduate a quarter late. Oh well. My friends told me I'd have a hard time staying in one place for too long.

I never imagined my environmentalism would lead me on the path I'm walking now. A year ago I was looking for Chavez and an apartment in Caracas, totally flabbergasted at corporate environmental destruction, opposed to just about every form of consumerism. Now I'm donning the uniform, walking the corridors of responsibility, promoting smart solutions consumer patterns, and working with environmental and business leaders to create the frameworks that will transform the destructive habits of today's disparate global entities. Yeah, there were times this quarter when I thought that learning accounting, statistics, and international politics were some of the last things I should be doing with my life, but truly they were not. I am learning to speak a language that is not my own. (And I'm not talking about Chinese). What wonder may come!

Labels: AccountAbility, Beijing, CSR, fall, internship, London, plans, summer, UCSD