so remember when jason left livejournal for greener pastures? how's that working out for him? well, not so well because jason doesn't really post habitually anymore but he bets that if he did then he would have a readership of like 5 million because blogspot is a happening place.
however, being behind the times does have one benefit, as it seems, which is that china decided that livejournal is apparently irrelevant enough to be let through its great firewall. for those of you behind the times, the great firewall means no facebook or youtube, some weird chinese version of google, and next to nothing allowed from the blogosphere except dear old LJ (and tumblr because i guess half the shit on there is pictures of ryan gosling and LOLcatz and whatnot, and actually trying to filter all the content would just be brain-numbing). i'm half-tempted to post something on here about freeing tibet or the falun gong just to see if anyone will notice. in the end, this means that any postings from the next two weeks as i spend my christmas break in fun places in the far east will be here. perhaps i'll try to import them over to the 'spot later.
anyway, i've only been here for a few hours, and all i can say is shanghai is fucking cold in the winter. i mean, probably at the same level or even warmer than seattle, and definitely warmer than madison, but the thing about shanghai is most buildings don't have central heating, so it's like a constant battle with the elements. the same AC unit sweating it out against the oppressive heat in the summer is now futilely trying to beat back the cold in my bedroom, and i'm pretty sure the floor will still be freezing when i wake up tomorrow.
oh well, it'll be just like the good old days. i haven't actually visited china in anything but summer since i was the ripe old age of four. i'm waiting for the rest of my family to get in tomorrow, and then on christmas we'll be journeying west to yunnan province, which is just north of tibet. i'm pretty stoked for that, since i feel like i'll finally have gotten some semblance of breadth when it comes to places visited in china.
in other news, my first quarter at the other UW is over. i did reasonably well considering how much it felt like i'd bombed those finals. also, it sounds so much less significant when i say "quarter" than "semester," even though it was really only 4 weeks shorter and just as freaking tough. but quarter is probably more accurate, seeing as the prof for our statistical inference course (the main reason why the quarter was hard) has already given us homework and reading for next quarter. in fact, the last week of class we started lecturing on next quarter's material and the guy seemed to have forgotten it wasn't january yet and made references to "last quarter."
last but not least, i'm taking it easy on the past-blasting today, so rest easy
i'm just going to upload this MIDI composition i've been working on fixing up. the title is fitting, i suppose, as it's called "somewhere in the past"...it's circa 8th grade, probably my most fertile period of cranking out vaguely smooth jazz and video game music-inspired tunes, but i discovered you could import MIDI into GarageBand the other day and have been using some freeware software synths to give the tunes a little bit more substance and realism.
it was part of a trio of songs, the other two of which are entitled "future dreams" and "present tense." ugh yeah, i'm cringing right now too, but i've decided to embrace the dorkliness instead of trying to change all the titles like i did last time i put a remix of these songs out.
anyway, it's a slow ballad with some cool chord voicings i remember happening upon when fooling around on the piano one day, and features (less fake sounding now) solo viola and bassoon. enjoy!
Somewhere In The Past by R# Major
EDIT: nevermind, biostatistics ryan gosling is also blocked over here. maybe they just hate science.
No comments:
Post a Comment