Had a wonderful concert last Friday, though some things went wrong my singing went ok. Audience liked it, as far as I could tell and afterwards we had a lot of talks with different people and had a great night. Like a former-Musilus; Joost, and some guy from taekwondo.

Well, where's the bad luck in that? There isn't, but there was bad luck before the concert. Matthijs asked me to help him to put a ladder away. So we moved it and then started folding it in, but there was a roll of Ducttape lying on top and it came down right on my nose. It was a big roll and still nearly full, you can imagine what it must have weighed. And that hit the bridge of my nose (where normally my glasses would rest, but I was wearing my lens).

Ran to the janitor to get some ice, but either the guy was not too smart or just not really concerned because he didn't make any haste in finding some ice. When he finally concluded that there was no ice in his cupboard Renske ran to the Theatercafe to get some ice from the fridge. So I walked around with a tea-towel full of ice pressed against my nose for half an hour.

Fortunately I never have nose-bleeds. When I walked into a doorpost last year, my nose didn't bleed (I just passed out), and when I got hit by the Ducttape I didn't bleed either. Which was good because I was wearing my only white shirt for the concert. Next to that I don't color easily. I do get bruises, but they don't show. That is why my nose and eyes didn't turn purple/blue. There's just a cut and a slight swelling of my nose and it hurts, but that's it.
Honestly, you don't know how much you actually are using your nose. During chewing, yawning, frowning, laughing etc.

Warning: bloody story coming up

The next piece of bad luck came in today while I was making my lunch. I used the cheese-cutter (kaasschaaf) to get a piece of the coating off the cheese when it 'slipped' and cut halfway through the knuckle (the joint) of my thumb, leaving a fare share of 'meat' hanging loose. Autsj. I closed it as quickly as possible by putting the nearly-cut-off piece back in place and wrapping a patch around it.

Then I set forth to finish my lunch by cleaning the cheese-cutter, cutting some cheese without further accidents and lying it on my bread. That's when things started to blur before my eyes. I tried to tell myself that fainting would be really stupid at this time because the wound was closed already and it didn't hurt that much. Still, the woozy feeling didn't go away and actually got worse. So I sat down on the kitchen floor, at least preventing a dangerous fall (hitting your head on the sink or fridge for example) and hoping that the dizziness would go away.

The dizziness got worse and I put my head between my legs, which didn't seem to help much. So I called Matthijs, asking him to come home quickly because I might faint and only mentioning that I cut myself. Then I took a towel and held it under the tap to make it wet and cold and put it in my neck. That seemed to help, instead of gray the floor became checkered black/white once more.

When Matthijs arrived I still didn't feel 100%, my hands were prickling and my fingers started to close when I relaxed. He gave me a banana (though I'd already eaten a sandwich before even handling the cheese-cutter) and finished preparing my lunch, which I ate on the kitchen floor. After some talking and eating I felt much better. Perhaps it was the shock of it all, I can't think of anything else because I really don't faint or even get nauseous when I see blood (even if it's mine) and there wasn't half as much pain as with the Ducttape incident. Ah well, good that it's over. I really hope that the wound will heal neatly. Geez, I could've hit bone...

Yesterday were the taekwondo exams of this half year. I had the green belt and wanted to go for blue, skipping green-blue. My teacher allowed it, knowing that I already have black belt in kempo and that I participate in every Wednesday lesson (those were his words..). To cut it short: I passed, but I was told that there's a thing that I have to work on. I seem to have 'barely passed' for blue, though green-blue was no problem. I should show more spirit/force in the taeguks (kata/style form), he thought my movements were weak.

That's a bit weird because most of the time I think I'm rather forceful in my movements, I really don't experience it as weak. However, it might have been the nerves and the concentration on getting the movements exactly right that made me slower yesterday. I was focusing more on technique than on strength and speed, so that might have been the reason that things weren't as powerfull as they could have been. Well, that's something to work on, I guess. Ha, the break test went perfectly fine though! And that for a first time, I never practiced it.

My teacher told me that, now that he knows that I am able to do sparring*, he wants me to do more sparring and kicking at the training-pillows to see if that will improve my strength/power. This might be a good thing, though I dislike sparring a bit. On Monday lessons the focus is on sparring, on Wednesday on taeguks and technique. This year I could not participate on Monday because of Musilon, but that's finished next year. However, next year there's an interesting set of lessons by the Theaterobers and those are on Wednesdays. So perhaps I'll switch music and sport.

* When I told my teacher that I miss an eye, he concluded that I could not spar because it was too dangerous. So last week when there were club championships (I became first in my poule, though it was a poule of only one guy and me..) I was not asked to do sparring. I sent him a mail then to ask permission to go for the blue belt at once and in that mail I explained that I am otherwise perfectly healthy and that sparring would not be a problem as long as my left eye wasn't kicked shut. I guess that the message got through because yesterday at the exam I was asked to put on protection and do some (feet only) sparring.

So, club champion, blue belt and this Friday my last Musilon concert. After that things will get quiet because of the summer holidays, meaning that I'll have two more evenings free per week. Time to work on our tent improvement; we want to pimp our Sahara 400 tent by giving it walls, making it something like this reenactment pimped tent (see background).

Alas, yesterday evening all the external (i.e. non-student) female members of Musilon were told that they will have to leave the choir. The external guys can stay, because Musilon does not have enough males as it is, sending half of them away would seriously hurt the choir.

Even though I helped set up the policy to keep the externals/students ratio at a good level (25/75%) and promised to leave the choir after this year (as an example and to show that we did not make this policy to pester others), it still saddens me that I will actually have to leave. Monday evening rehearsals are always fun and we're a happy group of people that have fun together. Yesterday we stayed till 00:00 at the terrace, singing and laughing. It will be sad to loose that.

Since Matthijs and I want to move more to the center of the country after he is finished with his study and his graduation should be somewhere in September/October there's no time to find another choir in this neighbourhood. So I'll have to find an other way to pass the time. Perhaps take individual singing lessons or something. We'll see.

The last concert that I'll sing is next week on Friday (19th) here at the campus. More information can be found here. Let's go out with a blast!

Spent a long weekend in France at the Damada festival, a balfolk festival with about 500 visitors. I had taken the opportunity to travel with a tour bus in which the Gonnagles and a lot of other folkies were traveling. We left Enschede at about 21:00 on Thursday evening and arrived after an exhausting (and way too crowded) trip at about 07:00 on Friday. We set up our tents, mine in a goal since the 'camping' was a sportsfield, and relaxed the whole Friday by making music, reading and in my case working on Jojo's present.

At Friday night the Gonnagles opened the ball and the dancing went on until the early hours of the morning. However, I went to bed around 00:30 because I was still very tired from the trip and wanted to participate in a workshop at 10:30 the next day. I slept like a log and woke up at 09:00. Took a shower (in the shared showers...), had some breakfast (brown bread and 'krentebollen' with cheese from home) and went to the festival site.

On Saturday I did the workshop Estonian dances, which was very relaxed and entertaining with nice circle dances. I even learned to count (phonetically) till 7 in Estonian. At 14:00 I participated in the workshop reverse rotation of the scottish, given by Koen, a Belgian. Unfortunately the workshops were all in French and even though Koen does speak Dutch and we had a lot of Dutch participants, he didn't give a brief explanation in Dutch. So it took quite some effort to follow the instructions and at one point I misunderstood them (he showed 2 variations and I guessed wrong on which was the right one), which resulted in Koen correcting me (he started in French until I reminded him) while I was trying to dance the male part. The whole workshop I danced the female part, but this time all males were taken already and a French woman approached me and 'made me the male'. Somehow I missed the whole reverse rotation thing, though we did learn some salsa steps.

I skipped the workshop of 16:00 because I was just too lazy and none of the workshops interested me enough. Had a nice ball evening again with the Gonnagles playing from 01:00 till 03:00 and went to bed shortly after.

Sunday I was woken up at 10:00 by a sms from Matthijs, who didn't come along after all because of the burial of his grandfather on Friday.. Did a quick breakfast and went to the festival site again to join in on the workshop irregular waltz. The waltz in 5 is quite easy, but the waltz in 8 eludes me. You can dance it in 3-3-2 or 3-2-3 and I have a lot of difficulty hearing the difference. But with a guy that can lead well it is not much of a problem.
At 14:00 I did the workshop 'variations of the jig' (jig is chapeloise in French) again by Koen. Again no resume in Dutch, but this one was easier to follow. Most of the variations I already knew, which made it all the more clear that some guys really can't lead... Skipped the 16:00 workshop again because I was lazy again. Did some reading and had a lot of fun with Eva, Tessa, Leon and Cecilia.

Sunday night I didn't dance much. I did follow the dance initiation of Indian Dances, but because of that I missed the start of the performance of Eric Theze and it was very crowded on the dance floor when I got there. The dances that I actually did, I did mostly with French or Belgian guys that I did not know. I had about 4 dances with so much fast spinning that if we had let go of each other I would have been launched to the other side of the hall. Went to bed at 03:30 after a shower because the alarm would go off at 06:00 to pack up my stuff and the tent and head for the buss that would leave at 07:30.

After a long trip (back in Enschede at 19:30) with not enough sleep I cuddled with Matthijs and cleared away my stuff and went to bed. It had been a good weekend.