Dizi?

I have decided I shall blog now, as I may not be able to get on the net for a while if I can't get my comp working once I get back. Stupid thing died before I left and resisted reinstalling of the operating system, even after reformatting. The problem may be serious this time, which would suck. So, I blog now.

I shall be back in Langwarrin tomorrow, just staying up at my mum's place tonight before we go the last leg. Should be good, I'm ready to go back now. Not going back to vinnies though, no way in hell.
Christmas was pretty good, had a big family gathering up in canberra, with a roast turkey lunch and decent quantities of snackfood throughout the day. I got a few cool things too, such as a new karate gi and a chinese bamboo flute, as well as some clothes and a game and such. The flute rocks, I have been playing it quite a lot and have started to get the hang of it. Took me all of christmas day to figure out how to make a noise, then the next day to make it more of a reasonable note and get the surrounding notes too. Now I can play all of the lower octave without too much hassle, which I'm fairly proud of. Still doesn't sound so brilliant, but it's getting better. I can see it will be a while before I can do the middle octave very well, and quite a bit longer before I can do the highest one. Its a way better instrument than those little bamboo recorders I have, it's actually tuned properly so I can play real music with it. It can't do EVERY note, it only has 6 finger holes, but as long as you use a good transposition you can play most things on it. I mostly intend to play music written for it though, so that won't be a problem. Its quite convinient as far as practice is concerned, because it is so small and light yet quite strong it can be carried around all over the place and played any time, anywhere, unlike my viola which I sort of have to specifically go off and practice. Hopefully that means I'll get better at it more quickly. Oh yeah, its called a dizi (thus the title) or a d-tzu sometimes. I'm not entirely sure on the pronounciations of those. My chinese isn't so hot after all.

Anyway, I've had a good holiday, had some fun, saw some stuff, aquired some nifty goods. See you all soon! Possibly a day or too after I get back, Kiah wants me all to herself for a while. We'll see anyway.

- Whoah man, just saw a big ass tsunami on the news. Took out large chunks of sri-lanka and lots of other places out that way. Nasty.

Viola en route

Yay, my viola has at last entered that national postage system and will shortly be arriving at my door. Damn this whole thing has taken a while.
I'm feeling tired at the moment and I have to go to work in 20 mins or so. Damn. So have to ditch this job business. I was right the first time.
When I get my balloon craft I'm so going on a world tour in it, or at least flying to some remote places to hang out for a while. I might have to go visit the desert again before that even. Theres something about the vast isolation of the desert that I find very appealing. I've been to remote parts of South Australia and the Northern Territory, but I'd like to visit some of the extremely remote places in Western Australia. There are places out there that few people ever visit.

Soldat

To answer a question somebody, possibly fudgey, asked me:

'"Soldat" means "soldier" in the following languages: german, dutch, norwegian, swedish, danish, french, slovenian, afrikaans, russian, catalan and romanian.'

- from the offical soldat FAQ