Processing

The weather was wonderful, so I made the trip across the bay to Wat Buddhanusorn and the Thai Songkhran festival. Got there at 9:30 and it was already packed - snagged the second to last parking spot in the back lot. Not long ago, being that early would have meant a prime place in the front lot. My boss was early enough to snag one of those.

Everything was on Thai time, which means "whenever", and they scrambled the order of performances quite a bit. The place got more crowded than I have ever seen it, food lines were forever, and not easy to tell which line was for what. And no places to sit. at. all. Very difficult to secure a place to take photos, unless you wanted to sit on the cement. Or, like boss, are 6' +. I got some good shots, but found that all this time my camera had somehow set itself to lighten every frame by 1 f-stop. This happens often, I'm not sure how. It's supposed to take two hands to make that change.

So I'm running all 300 or so pix through Photoshop batch command to decrease brightness by 50%. It will make a handful too dark, but it's easier to fix a few by hand than a couple of hundred.

I stayed for the dove release, which I had rushed to after scoring a roti (the dessert kind with sweetened condensed milk and sugar). Photos of the doves were taken with a large patch of my shirt sticky, and some also on the viewfinder protector, and the camera strap. And my left hand. After the doves I found some water and got the camera and my hand clean, but the shirt had dried on.
 
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At 2 pm I tried once more for food, but it was still a long long wait and I was tired and my knees hurt, so after checking out the kids' water fight (which was not as massive as it usually is), I bailed. The real water fight didn't start, judging from boss' Flickr set, till 4:30.

Found the nearest Starbucks, which got me the use of a restroom, out of the sun,  and some calories.

On the drive home my eyes were not enjoying staying open, and I remembered that when I woke up at 7 after going to sleep at 1, I had promised myself a nap after the temple doings. Home at 4:30, asleep by 5, for 2.5 hours.

Decided I owed myself dinner out, headed for The Armenian Gourmet. It is not open. It may be permanently not open. Next tried nearby Barn Thai, but they don't do weekends, apparently. Then to Pat Thai, which was open, I had half a duck and seafood, but it was closing time so I got that boxed up and a mango and sticky rice to go. Took those home, reheated the duck & seafood, and finished dinner.

Plans for tomorrow:
Work
Burlesque meetup in silly valley (I forget where)

Music and Relgion

This post was inspired by a tangent on smallship1's pages, which did not need to be further cluttered up with my nostalgia.

As a musician raised as a practicing Jew and avid choir member, I was steeped in the concept of most religious music being in a minor key. I sang in Hebrew, and while I never gained fluency in the language, the cantor was thorough about making sure we knew what each word of each song/prayer meant. I mention this because I know some folks who know the sounds but not the meaning, whether it be Hebrew or Latin.

I went to a public school, and was not in chorus, mostly because I played trumpet in the band, which was at the same time as chorus, as if they were separate religions. Unfortunately, this made me think for a long time that my singing was just something I did at Temple, and my real music was with the band.

But I digress. Since I went to a public school in suburban NY, every concert was just before school break, which meant Easter tunes at spring break and Christmas tunes at winter break. End of the school year was all secular. We also played Jewish tunes, mostly thanks to my mother, who helped organize the PTA, which had a large percentage of Jewish members, and lobbied the school board - or maybe just the local administrator - to represent all religions in the concerts which were represented at school. At the time this meant Js and Cs. There were no Muslims or Hindus or Pastafarians - there well may be now.

Long story longer, playing Easter and Christmas tunes in the band was always uncomfortable for me. We chose the popular ones, the ones everyone knows the words to. And though I was only playing the music, the lyrics would be in my head. I had mixed feelings about the Jewish songs, because although it was fun to actually know a tune some of the other band members didn't, a school concert was not the place to be playing them.

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I said all of that to tell you this story:
Many moons ago I worked for HP, my job was to support recipients of grants. I worked for six very high-powered research scientists, and one of them was from Mainland China. He was the audio expert, very proud of his new car with Infinity speakers and a high-end cassette player. He popped a tape into the machine just as we pulled out of the parking lot and wanted me to listen to this beautiful music. He was in love with the music, and it was a thrill for him to hear it played with such good fidelity.

It was beautiful. The audio was first rate. The orchestra excellent. When it was over, he raved about what great music it was, and I was at a loss how to reply. The tune was Ave Maria. It was quite a WTF, because he was not Christian, and he had no idea this was religious music. I could not get the words out of my head, even though this was an instrumental.

There is some irony here, because the reason I knew the words is my mother loved Nelson Eddy's voice, and it was on both an LP and a 78 of his which she played from time to time.