Thung Kba

A few days ago I went with my friend Ruhi to their rice field ('hali') where they were finishing planting their first crop of rice, now that the rains have arrived. I was interested to learn how to plant rice, and to learn more about the process, as it's one of the many things I've never done before. Rice is a pretty big part of life around here, as it's the main food crop, and knowing the process of rice farming gives me a better understanding of Pnar language and culture.

When we arrived, work had already started. One of the guys showed me how to run the plowing machine that turns the soil to allow the water in and make the paddy field the right kind of mud for planting the rice seedlings ('kba'). After plowing, they showed me how to plant rice ('thung kba'), which refers literally to the process of punching your hand into the mud with a few seedlings so that it sticks. I was pretty slow compared to everyone else, but they humored me and seemed to be glad/surprised that I stayed and worked until all the paddy fields were planted.

It was a lot of fun, and it's been awhile since I've done that kind of work. It's back-breaking, particularly for someone my height, and reminded me of some of my days in construction. There's something about hard, physical labor that I really enjoy, maybe because you can see actual measurable results. And it was lots of fun because everyone was talking and joking and laughing. It made me wish I understood and spoke more Pnar so I could join in.

After planting was done, we hung out by the little house the farmers use during planting time and as they are preparing to plant. It was good to relax and share a meal after a day of hard work and sunburn (at least on my part). Here's a picture with the whole group.

I've got some video, but the video site I use is down at the moment, so I'll upload it when I can and link to it on here.

EDIT: Here's the video below. http://youtu.be/ur4xtnWtwWw

Vlog Day 18 - Wood Splitter

In which I split wood at the Keller's house. I dressed as a lumberjack for it as well. Unfortunately I pulled a back muscle halfway through, but the reason you don't notice is that I stretched it out and took some ibuprofen. It was a gorgeous day in Waxhaw today. You can watch this video and laugh as I explain ExAcTly HOW to split wood.

Video Blog Installment 3 (pre-tour)

Here's a couple videos I shot Thursday. The first one I shot Thursday morning on my way to work, traveling south through Lancaster, Willow Street, and finally arriving at Peach Bottom and Math-U-See headquarters, the "Math Barn". Math U See is a great place to work, and the curriculum really does benefit people, focusing on getting kids to master concepts before moving on. It should really be taught this way in most schools, but because teachers are all on schedules it seems to work best in homeschool situations.



The second video I shot Thursday night, but my brain was so addled I didn't realize what day it was. Thus the incorrect statement that this is my second Vlog - it is actually my third, if we count Wednesday's snippets. The song is by Matthew Monticchio, who I've worked with on the past two Christmas albums and various other projects that are not yet complete. He is the music director at Wheatland Presbyterian Church (where I'm a member) and is really gifted. Writing deep worship music is one of his many talents, and it's great to be able to spend time to learn from him. I really love this community.

Video Blog Installment 2 (pre-tour)

Here's the second installment of my vlog - in which I drive, visit my parents, and hang out at the American Music Theater on the spur of the moment. Mostly a test of the capabilities of my new Flip Mino HD, but perhaps to keep you entertained as well... =)

The Reese Project @ the Hannah Garman Benefit

Saturday night I played at the Hannah Garman Benefit in Mounty Joy - it was a great time, and hopefully raised a decent amount of money. My friend Phil came along for the ride - we had a great conversation on the way there (and back, incidentally) about spiritual maturity and music. We had some time before my set, so took a tour of Bube's Brewery where the event was held. Pretty cool stuff - some great ghost stories and history of the place.
A few people performed and then I got up and played a few songs. Phil said that by the second song people were locked in to what I was doing, which was pretty cool. It's interesting how you know whether your music is connecting by how much people pay attention - another topic I could probably post on at another date. Got to meet @shanellelee, @kriscantshutup, and @jbairy - @kmueller62 was there too.
After me, The Reese Project got up - a jazz quartet that really blew me away. My friend Aaron Walker plays drums for them (and also for me on occasion) so I knew about them, but had never heard them live. It was slammin'. Tom Reese on flute, his wife Laurie on cello, Bobby Brewer on guitar and Aaron on drums. All really skilled players who make room for each other - you can check out their website for more info. The energy was palpable and they were all synced in to what was going on musically. It was pretty sweet. The songs on the site don't do justice to their playing though - the only way to really hear what they do is to go see them live. You won't regret it.

Syncing Cell Phones: the beauty of Technology

I just got a new cell-phone today, and experienced one of the great joys of working technology. My old cell phone was a Motorola Razr V3T. A great little piece of hardware - it came with an MP3 player, expandable memory, cool vibes, and both a bluetooth and a usb connection. I've had it for about two years (I got a case for it and tried not to drop it), and just in the last couple months the screen started going bad. Apparently there is a flex cable that gets worn out over time in these flip phones. I could send and receive calls fine, but half the time I couldn't see who I was calling or read any texts. Finally the screen died altogether last week. So I figured it's time to sign up for another 2-year contract and get a new phone with it.
But Here's the beauty: with my Mac, I was able to use Bluetooth to sync my contacts with my address book - a little mac program called iSync. Just beautiful. It took me a while to figure out how to access the contacts via USB, since I couldn't see the screen on my old one to know what I was doing and get into my tools to turn on Bluetooth on my phone for my computer to see it. I had to delete the old bluetooth Razr connection and re-discover the phone while it was connected via USB. I also had to remove the memory card, otherwise it would show the memory card as a USB drive.
So I got a new phone that also has Bluetooth and USB - the trusty Razr. Unfortunately they don't make the ones with expandable memory and MP3 player anymore, but that doesn't worry me. I hear all sorts of stories from my friends about losing or breaking their cell phone and all their contacts are gone. With iSync everything is now backed up - minimal loss of contacts, if any! I just put my old case on the new phone, linked up the Bluetooth, and now my computer is putting all my contact phone numbers on the new Razr with the visible screen.
I love technology... when it works!

Life Comes at You Fast...

It's a cliche, especially now that it has been used in a TV commercial, but it does serve a purpose, as all cliches can. My brother reminded me the other day that I needed to update the news page on my website, and I figure I'd better do the same with my blog.
Suffice it to say that life has been pretty busy, with work and finishing up mastering a couple projects and trying to finish mixing the Christmas album. We spent a good chunk of time yesterday on one song, and got it pretty much mixed. We have three more sessions like that and then we can listen back to all 14 tracks and make final adjustments. It is amazing what hard, focused mixing can do to transform a song from 'okay' to 'great'. And I think we've been able to do that for a lot of these tracks.
The busy spell is beginning to slow down, and I feel like it goes in waves. Next week will probably be packed, or if not next week then the following week. I'm starting to book some more solo shows, and pretty soon I'll be working on finishing up the cover design for my album. It's exciting to have projects to work on, but when busy-ness goes in waves it's often hard to know what to do with my time when it's free.
In my free time there's a lot I could probably do (practice, write songs, record new tunes, etc..), and I do a fair amount of music-related things, but sometimes I'm just burnt out on music and I'd rather do other things. Today, for example, I had a big lunch and watched Seinfeld episodes. Last night I watched the vice-presidential debates. But that's another story.

Recording and Math

I just started a new job, working for Math U See, which makes and ships math textbooks to people around the world - mainly homeschoolers. They have textbooks from basic math all the way up through Calculus. As I remember trying to teach myself Calc out of a public school textbook, it seems like they're on to something - especially the way they are able to teach these concepts using visual blocks. They've found the teaching methods to be so effective that some public school special-ed classes are adopting it as their curriculum. Pretty cool!
We've also been recording these past couple weeks, which has been really good. somewhat stressful, of course, but we've gotten a lot done on the project. I'm working with Matthew Monticchio, David Green, Katie Becker and a bunch more musicians and it's turning out pretty nicely. Hopefully this will be ready for release by Christmas.
I actually have to go record pretty soon (we've got some string players coming in for a session), so I'll cut this short even though I haven't mentioned Purple Door. I'll try to blog about that in the coming days.

Sabbath Rest

Today being sunday, and having gotten a good night's sleep last night, I hung out at home and read and played music, listened to John Piper and did a slight bit of recording. I borrowed a friend's bass last week, and just now got around to recording it on a couple of songs - Play Switch (I wasn't happy with the tone of the earlier bass) and Ove's song I Will Hope Continually. I'm not sure I'll keep the bass on that second one.
You can see me in this picture playing the bass. I relocated my desk to the living room of the apartment, in preparation for Matt's coming this week, and I think the new location is pretty nice, actually. Gives it more of an office feel when I sit down at the computer.
The bass belongs to Jan Olav Andersson, and is pretty nice. It's an old Ibanez (they like the Japanese-made instruments around here) from the 70s - an Eagle bass. Has a nice growly attack and a smooth sound and feel. I recorded direct through the Mbox and am really liking the takes I got.
I also did some laundry, the dishes, and a few other things like nailing nails into a board so I have somewhere to put all my Uncle's keys other than in a pile. I also played around a bit with GarageBand. It's a pretty cool program, but as always I have issues with it. ONly because I dual-partitioned my hard drive, though. So I had to figure out the Mac OS X file structure and copy the files onto the second hard drive so Garageband could find the loops. I don't know why they don't just have an option in preferences that lets you select WHere to look for loops, rather than forcing you to copy the files on a dual-boot system. I think that was an issue they didn't think of though.
It just started raining, so after I post this I'll probably call it a night and crash early. Tomorrow's a busy day. I'd like to watch a DVD, but that means I'd have to change the DVD region on my player, and I'm not interested yet. I need to see if I can find a player online that lets you bypass the region. Though with Mac it might be a hardware lock...

Rainbow

Today I finished fixing the windows in Salthellervegen 7C and did some other chores to fix it up (painting, cleaning, etc..) as well as doing some laundry. I had left one of the windows open while some paint on the frame dried, and had gone back up to the Slottet to do some mixing, thinking I'd come back in the evening to shut the window. After a few hours it started raining, and I ran down to close the window. Reminds me how little exercise I've done and how out of shape I am. As I walked back up the rain had mostly stopped, and over the Slottet was a huge rainbow. It was probably the most complete rainbow I'd seen, as its ends touched the mountain on either side. Quite a cool sight to see.

Waiting for Deliveries

The new washing machine (for clothes) is supposed to come today between 12 and 5pm. It is now 5:11pm and still no sign of the washing machine or the guy who's supposed to deliver it. Maybe we're at the end of the line and he had trouble with one of the other deliveries. That's a long time to wait for something that doesn't come. I could've gotten a lot of other things done today, but I assumed that since this is Norway the guy would be on time. Wrong assumption to make, apparently. Maybe Warren should've left his phone with me so the guy could call, or maybe it's actually coming next tuesday.
Ah well. At least I got a lot of mixing done, and I wasn't sitting around doing nothing. Tomorrow I'm going in to get some supplies so I can finish making one of the lower apartments ready for a tenant who's coming to look at it on May 23rd. Should be able to finish the projects in a couple days, and if I can get the supplies tomorrow that should be plenty of time. I'll probably also go shopping tomorrow for a few minor items. I got the 'deal flyers' today in my mailbox, and the prices are pretty insane when compared with the US. Fortunately I was able to open a bank account so my uncle can deposit funds if necessary while he's gone.

The Slottet 2

I continued working on cleaning out the apartment today. Somehow cleaning and sorting just takes so much energy for me. On one hand it's kind of nice - my hands know what they're doing, so I have time to process and think. On the other hand I largely think about how dirty the place is and how it is possible that people could allow it to get so messy. And then I have to make decisions about where things go and what to do... It can get overwhelming. But like anything else, I find if I just begin and keep doing something, eventually the task gets done, and in this sort of task, the rooms get clean and start looking nicer.
Maybe it's the influence of my Mom, but I just don't like things to be dirty or unfinished. If I leave something and know I'm going to get to it later, that's one thing, but when things around me are messy, it's hard for me to focus on other things. Not that I can't cope in those kind of environments - it's just not my preference. And then there's the other side, where things slowly deteriorate around me because I'm really busy and don't take the time to fix them. So a month or two later I suddenly look around and realize the terrible condition things are in... I hope that doesn't happen too much, though.
This evening I'm going to Odda to visit Warren's friend Knut. He is a language teacher here, and specializes in Nunorsk - Norwegian dialect. He may be willing to teach me some true Norwegian, which, if I can master, would mean people would think I'm from around here. I'll catch the bus later this afternoon to get up to his place.

The Slottet

Today I went to work on the 'Slottet'. This is an apartment building that my uncle owns - when it was built it was probably one of the largest buildings around. It's still pretty big - about 14 apartments intended for single people or small families. Each one has a bathroom, kitchen, living room and a bedroom. And the views are pretty good - looking north and somewhat west along the fjord. These pictures are from the hill above the Slottet (which means 'castle' or 'palace' in Norwegian), which is what everyone around here calls it. The view is better from up here, but pretty similar to what you'd get out of one of the windows.
To get down to the Slottet you go down these stairs made of rocks from the mountain. They're pretty steep, so you might want to hold on to the steel rail as you go. You can see the building at the bottom.
I spent the afternoon working on apartment 6. The previous renter moved out in October, and since then no-one has been into it. He left a lot of his things around the apartment, which I guess he didn't want. Some of it was good, and some of it was just trash. So since then, Warren hasn't been able to rent it out. It's interesting what you can learn about someone by cleaning out their things. I found a few DVDs and video games, an old computer that had been pulled apart, about 15 jackets, 20 shirts, and 10 or so trousers, as well as a new suit and a bunch of trash. A good trade for losing the toaster, I guess. Apparently this guy moved out because he bought a house - I don't think it bodes very well for his house...
But I did manage to clean it out a bit. I have to go back and wash the floors tomorrow, and wash the dishes. And then I'll probably move in, and have some time and space to start mixing the album. After I do the laundry, that is.