Part Two of Pain: Done

Ah... Monday. And tomorrow I have to be on course for two days to officially learn the ropes of proper goal setting and appraisal for my people (it's basically SMART).

But for today, or whatever is left of today, I get to chill due to being on leave.

Yesterday saw the successful staging of the concert with King's Flute Choir at Esplanade Recital Studio. That is actually the first time that I was playing at the Esplanade complex, and while I have explored much of the publicly accessible areas on my various ``annual pilgrimages'' to the place, I was simply not prepared for the warren of mazes that comprise the back stage.

Entry is naturally controlled---a performer's pass needed to be obtained from the security office (main from the B1 parking area, or the satellite one opposite from Marina Square). Once inside, it was just corridors upon corridors of rooms, equipment, and signage pointing to places. The first floor was largely towards the main concert hall, and since I entered through the main back stage door, I had to filter my way back towards Lift CH 3, where the Recital Studio can be reached on the second floor.

It was a real doozy in the beginning, but I soon got the hang of it.

The performers' rooms were spartan and utilitarian---dressing tables with mirrors that had strong lights that could be used to assist in make up, attached combination toilet/shower room, and even self-serviced combination lock lockers for any other things that one might want locked away. I spent much of the time outside of sound check and the actual performance in one of the rooms, just chilling, or working on some of the more difficult parts on Davie, sharing the room with fellow contrabass flautist, the double bassist, the harpist, and a few other low flute folks.

That is, until we started getting exiles from the other performers' room, mostly to escape the piccolos that were doing much of the same last-minute practices that I was doing. It's understandable, and in between their own practices and my general pre-performance ``any more work I am going to put in is going to do fuck-all'' attitude, I shot the breeze with some of my fellow performers.

The concert went through as well as it could, despite my own bumbling here and there (I'd like to think I cover it well enough that I was tolerated due to being one of only a few low flute players). GY and a few folks from TGCO were there to watch, and they all had a good time, with GY particularly impressed at the quality of the musicians (as it should be---the core players are actual professionals). I caught up with the TGCO folks after the concert for drinks at Harry's, while GY had to run off, while suggesting that we catch up again some time later.

Davie did well---I think that I definitely need to level up more as the player. I've had low flutes on hand for 8 years, ever since I first got hold of Mio, but I don't think that I had really put in a serious effort to develop my low flute techniques more strongly, mostly because I never had the need to play it ``big'' (like in a flute choir) before. Much of the time, it was mostly playing melody lines an octave lower, or that one time I was covering for the cello, which explains my rudimentary control over Davie and Mio.

But the key thing to note is that for bass (and later on, contrabass) flutes in the flute choir setting, that pesky low-C is used way more often than might be expected. And this is something that I haven't really been working on, which prompted my earlier comment of needing to put in serious effort to develop my low flute techniques more strongly. The use of the low-C was so often that I had to abandon the use of the Oval-8 splints on my right pinky, just to avoid the problem of numbness that I got the first time I was drilling through Ruslan and Ludmilla and William Tell. The Oval-8 splint did its job of holding back the hyperextension of the proximal interphalangeal joint of my right pinky, but due to the sheer amount of force I was pushing through holding the low-C due to poor technique (and a bit of imperfect maintenance of Davie due to no COA done since purchase), the splint was crushing my nerve in my finger, causing the finger tip to be tingly for days after.

So, no Oval-8 splints. But the irony of course is that with more strength in the pinky (through drilling on the difficult parts in the pieces), the less the hyperextension becomes a problem because of the increased tension forces of the muscle that pulls the finger closed.

I'll probably send Davie in for COA at Windworks when they have an open slot.

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So that was yesterday. What about today?

Well, I paid good money for 120 min of getting beaten up in a controlled manner to remove the pain that has been plaguing me for the whole month (I went for a 2-hour massage).

My left shoulder was shot (my posterior deltoid was messed up), and my lumbar triangle was giving me random-ass pains (probable erector spinae strain, with possible strain in one of the deeper gluteus muscles). The masseuse beat the shit knots out of my muscles, with greater focus on the shoulders, but with good enough focus on the back muscles and lumbar triangle that after the session, I only had the ``good'' sore with no remnants of the original pain.

And anyone who claims that they can go through a massage sleeping... is probably lying or have told the masseuse to go easy on them.

For me, massages have always been an uncompromising assault on the knots in my muscles through skilled application of force and pressure. That kind of force application does not cause damage to me in any way, but it does trigger a sensory overload that is either ``sour'' or ``pain'', where the ``pain'' here isn't the kind you get from banging a body part on a hard object, but the kind of resistant pain a bundle of highly tensioned relaxed muscles pushes against the force that is meant to forcefully relax them. I am actively awake and completely aware of what is going on, controlling my breathing to go with whatever the masseuse is currently working on, to ensure that the misfiring sensation of ``sour'' and ``pain'' from my nerves do not weaken my resolve in allowing the tensed relaxed muscles to be treated.

And then I had a nap or two in between, with some diet-defying choice of food to reward myself for no good reason.

In the meanwhile though, I am totally not addicted to shapez 2. Definitely not. Here's a screenshot of the ``Operator Level'', a sort of long-term measurement of the staged cumulative production of various milestone shapes.

See? Totally not addicted. I absolutely did not set up my factories, and then kept the game running in the background to amass the numbers needed. I also did not rework some of the larger space-platform machines I designed to improve the production efficiency to ensure that I could fully stack up the space belts to deliver the full 180×12/min rate of shapes.

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With all that, part two of pain is also done.

Part three is coming up soon, and hopefully I also have good news for that when the time comes.

Meanwhile, that's all I have for now. Till the next update.

May-Jan

It is now May.

I wanted to write something before, but could never convince myself that there was something substantial enough to warrant the effort needed to write a post like this one.

Long time readers might have realised that I hadn't written the customary rant that occurs whenever the annual ``celebration'' of my birth rolls around. It isn't so much as me deliberately forgetting to write anything, but that I was actually waiting for something to happen before I wrote anything. The said thing happened a couple of weeks ago, but I couldn't bring myself to write anything until now.

So, as per normal, I used the birthday celebration as an excuse to buy myself some cool stuff. One of them is a brand-new Kindle Voyage reader with the origami cover, nicknamed ``Eirian-IV''. She's a compact replacement of Eirian-II, whom was actually replaced with Eirian-III, my Nexus 10 tablet. The thing is, I've always liked to do my heaviest text-reading over e-ink, but as noted before, Eirian-II was fast fading away. I had used Eirian-III for a while, but the brightness that comes from staring at an LCD display was starting to annoy me. What convinced me to get the Kindle Voyage was the stupendous resolution. At 300ppi, it rivals that of the Nexus 10 (also around 300ppi), is more than 4× better than the Kindle DX (~150ppi---we're looking at area here), and has an amazing battery life. That high resolution made the 6-inch form factor tolerable, and so I got one. Eirian-IV is thus procured and is now part of my daily carry.

I got Eirian-IV a couple of months or so before my actual birthday, but didn't really write anything about her till now.

The main thing why it took me so long to write this was my Grenaditte bass flute, or Mio. An order for Mio was placed a while back, but due to a variety of reasons (some staff changes, Chinese New Year, probable company restructuring etc) it took GUO nearly 3 months before they delivered it to the shop. And when Mio finally arrived, I was right in the middle of my annual trip to the US to meet up and hang out with friends, as well as to go walk around to find geocaches.

It is of no secret that I am starting to explore the lower extremes of sound generation. I have been quite decent with messing around with the really high-pitched stuff (see also my picc, the new Garklein recorder that I got during my US trip, which superceded the sopranino recorder that I had since my days at UIUC), failing only with the highest of the high notes, i.e. everything from A7 and higher. But there is only that much one can go with the high pitched notes---they tend to get a little too annoying on the ears (anything at around 1kHz does that, and when it gets to 4kHz it gets stupid worse---try listening to the screams of a toddler for an idea on how annoying it gets). It may be super impressive and fun, but as I mentioned, it gets annoying. Now the lower extreme, that's not as well explored as that of the middle and high range. Partly because of the skill and resources required. Small instruments need some level of skill to construct, and a relatively iron will to actually play it. but larger instruments require quite a bit of actual material to build, and a fair bit of physiological conditioning to even make a sound out of it, let alone play it well. They also tend to sound way more pleasing to the ear, and in the grand scale (hur hur) of things, more octaves of them for playing with than the high stuff (around 5 octaves of low notes versus the commonly used 3 for the high ones).

So yes, a bass flute. The cheapest metal bass flute costs nearly USD10k, and weigh practically a ton (more like 2kg or so). Mio is made of Grenaditte, the same material as my picc, and weighs less, nearer 1.5kg. She also costs around half the price of the cheapest metal bass flute, while still sounding pretty solid for the price point. In short, a real steal. Of course she can't beat the well-crafted professional silver bass flute, but she is definitely a cost effective way to explore the beginning of the lower reaches of the flute family. In comparison, the standard ``bass'' dizi is only at the range of an alto flute, not counting the scary weird 巨笛 (or ``giant dizi'') that spans nearly 3m in length.
Waiting for Mio was the reason why I didn't write this post any earlier.

The more astute among you will know why my Grenaditte bass flute is called Mio. I shall end on this note for now. Till the next update.