Concert

Since January I have been singing with the choir Laudate here in Lausanne. Yesterday we had our biggest concert yet, CEP Bach's Magnificat and Mendelssohn's Vom Himmel Hoch. Both were in collaboration with another choir, and an orchestra, who also played Mendelssohn's Die Hebriden. In all we were more than a hundred people, and the church in Lutry where we were performing was packed, with people having to stand for lack of seats. Suffice to say it was awesome, especially the Solists, who, unlike us, are professionals. I can't wait to hear the recording, but that will have to wait, as I am now sitting in a plane to Amsterdam. For business, not pleasure, unfortunately.

Choir

I've been singing in the choir 'Laudate' since January, and last weekend we had our first concert. Rachmaninov op.15 (very Russian, especially the first piece, 'Slava'), and 'Les chansons des roses' by Lauridsen. It went quite well, although I think us tenors could have been a bit more daring...

I recorded the concert with my new Zoom H5n digital audio recorder, an ingenious little device that produced, in my amateurish audio-barbarian opinion, an excellent stereo recording. More on this maybe in a later post.

Anyway, I put some heavily compressed mp3s online here - 112 kbps to keep the file-size somewhat reasonable.

Golden 10 minutes

Photographers talk about the "golden hour", the first hour after dawn, and the last hour before sunset. In this light, nearly any subject will look good - and the closer to sunrise/sunset you are, the better:

Apartment blocks in Lausanne, 10 minutes before sunset. 

I took the photo with my Nexus S, and added some vignetting with the appropriately named app "Vignette".

Ugh. News.

The reporting about the Fukushima nuclear incident following the earthquake in Japan has been nothing short of atrocious. Even the BBC, normally my go-to place for serious world news, succumbed to inept comparisons with Chernobyl, gibbering headlines about 'melt-downs' and 'radioactive drinking water'.

Der Standard, a normally quite serious Austrian newspaper (with the best online-presence by far) even gobbled excitedly about a 'Super-GAU' - GAU is a german acronym for grösster anzunehmender Unfall, or worst-case scenario.

And on Wednesday this:

20minutes is a Swiss free-of-cost newspaper, so no aspirations of quality here, but still: The headline screams 'Le nuage radioactif passe sur la suisse', or 'Radioaktive cloud passing above Switzerland'. True, they do say (on page 2) that the radioactivity poses no danger to anybody in Switzerland, but still. Can you imagine a more lurid and sensational headline? Is a bit of journalistic integrity too much to ask for?

A new dawn

Or at least one of the first I saw in 2011 in Lausanne.

Aiming for bi-weekly posts this year. Don't hold your breath.

Run run run

While in New York (I know, I still need to do the after-action report. Before Friday, I swear), I bought these:

These are not my disgustingly dirty feet, these are my disgustingly dirty Vibrams, my new running shoes, after my first run with them. Here is how they look in the shop, before you run along the lake-shore for an hour or so:

source

The Vibrams are more gloves for your feet than proper shoes - all they do is protect your soles from glass and other pointy things. No cushioning, no air-soles, no support.

The idea behind that is simple: Our feet evolved over a million years for bare-foot running. It's what they do, and they do it well. Now we don't run around barefoot all day any more, so our soles are soft and can't deal with the ground and sharp stones like they should, but the rest of the mechanism works just fine. So just slap on an artificial sole, and everything should be peachy.

Does it work?
I am no stranger to hopping around barefoot, I train martial arts for a couple of hours a week. So I thought running in the Vibrams wouldn't be a problem for me, and in wasn't. At the start.
I am not a runner, but I am generally fit, and I know that running for 90 minutes or two hours is no big problem for me. Still, new shoes, and two hours of training coming up this evening, so I kept it down to about an hour. Here is the route I took, from the EPFL to the marina and back, about eight kilometres.


View Larger Map

First of all, running in the Vibrams is as much fun as barefoot running. Your feet adjust automatically so you land on the balls of your feet, your heels won't touch the ground at all. You can run on tarmac no problem, but the real fun is running over rough terrain, as you can feel the ground through the thin soles. Second of all, training for martial arts does not a runner make, and my calves are screaming at me right now because of this. Running on your toes puts much more strain on your calf-muscles, and mine were woefully unprepared, which is why I took an hour for eight measly k's. But my joints were fine, no worries at all. The feel of the Vibrams is also excellent - they are so light you don't notice them at all, apart from a vague feeling of having mud between your toes. But I happen to like mud between my toes, so no worries there. I am, as you may be able to tell, quite happy with them, and look forward to adding one or two midday runs to my weekly routine!

Arrows

sensing the uncommon and unwelcome feeling of productivity descending upon me (upcoming talks/deadlines might have something to do with this) I quickly installed a dart-board in our office.

arrows: Four

I can already consistently miss the twenty. Go me!

Creationists in Lausanne

I couldn't believe my own eyes:

Evolution is wrong - believe the guy with the laser eyes!

Adnan Oktar (aka  Harun Yahya) is coming to Lausanne! Oktar is an insane old earth creationist (and there is a tautology for you), who likes to tout the wrongness (and evilness! It leads to terrorism!) of the theory of evolution and How You Can Save Your Soul With Islam. He even has a book, called "The Atlas of Creation" where he debunks evolution by comparing fossils to... stolen photos of fishing lures. Seriously; see this post at forbidden music.

I really need to go there - I'll be sure to bring my camera!

Update (17.05 - 1637h):
A quick search at the Beaulieu centre de congrés doesn't show any talk by anybody on the 25th - did they cancel pour Oktar? An article in the Tribune de Genève from last Tuesday (caution! French!) talks about him running into difficulties, since the congress centre only found out about the subject of his talk (and indeed his identity) from the placards announcing the event. They are not happy, and for some reason even the cantonal police is looking into the matter...

Diverse Birds

We had a very overcast Saturday before Easter, but I nevertheless ventured out with my long lens, to catch some birds.

A Great Cormorant:

Also known as Black Shag. No, I'm not kidding.

 The humble duck:

Goes great with orange

A noble swan

Luckily for him, neither Parsifal nor Gurnemanz were around

And last but not least, two Great Crested Grebes, in love:

Only useable for large feasts - if you don't eat both of them, the other one will be sad/

Thirty

A month ago I had my thirtieth birthday. I was all prepared to gnaw on a celebratory piece of shortbread to solemnise this occasion, when suddenly a horde of my friend showed up and drank all my beer:

They had come from Vienna, which is about a thousand kilometres eastwards from Lausanne, to throw me a surprise-birthday party (and R nine months pregnant, too!), which is just slightly beyond awesome. As retribution I will splash their likeness all over the internet, because that's just the kind of friend I am.

We had a full program over the weekend: The cathedral

which we left only slightly damaged behind

The chateau Chillion (which I have now seen trice - it is pretty, though)

and some bowling; here my friend Chruss demonstrates the perfect form for middle-aged males like us.

Last but not least we had some beer (the general opinion of the local  beers was devastating I am afraid. In the end, the tasteless aggression could not stand, and we had to drink them all),







saw the fattest dog of Lausanne

and had a good time here at the shores of Lac Léman. Thanks for coming (Boris' liver: and also for leaving again)!

P.s. (for the shmall one): Twix heisst jetzt Raider!

Space Cowboy

Lausanne is the home of the space cowboy, and his name is François Burland.

That is all.

Eia

Recently got a letter from the service des automobiles - the biannual control of my car is due. I knew this meant new winter-tyres at the least, so I was prepared for the worst when I headed to a mechanic for a pre-control check-over, but then...

Eighteen hundred Francs? Ouch. That's about a fourth of what I paid for the rust-bucket two years ago!  But I guess it's either that or write it off, and the mechanic was quick to assure me that the really expensive parts should all be good for another two years or three. Right. I guess we'll see...

Chain

This Sunday we actually had some sun in Lausanne, so I was down at the waterfront taking some pictures...

Canon EOS 300D, 28 mm (45 mm equiv.), 1/500s, f/4.5, ISO 100

Cave du Bleu Lezard

Some live music  yesterday in the Cave du Bleu Lezard:

The new lens performs brilliantly!
The bands (all from the EPFL) were surprisingly good, especially the last act, "Little Joe"

Gender Segregation

They did not use to fool around with gender segregation here in Lausanne. One door for boys, one door for girls. A wonder there is no fence in the middle! Maybe there was, and it got removed to make place for the car park.

Sparrow at Starbucks

This little fellow was stealing sugar at the Starbucks in Lausanne. Caught him on Sunday when I was refreshing my memory on why I don't go to Starbucks. Café au Lait CHF 5.80? Are you folks insane? That is more than a pint of lager, even in Lausanne!

Vertical Gardening

It's all the rage in Lausanne right now. Point in Case: The new Metro-station Lausanne-Flon. Although I suspect watering might be a pain...

Smokestack

Update (06.07): added nicer photo (on the left)


Yup, that's a smokestack, right vis-à-vis from my balcony.  And that's a tree, growing right out of it.
And that's an aerial, right in front of it - but that really has nothing to do with anything except that I couldn't get a better angle from my flat.


I wonder why that house hasn't been raided by the bureau fédéral des ramoneurs (i.e chimney sweepers) yet. It could happen anytime...

Rain

Football Fans

At the beginning of the European Football Championship my feelings were ambivalent: I don't really care about football that much, but I don't outright hate it.Now I do, especially it's fans, and most especially it's fans from the southern part of Europe, who should be all rounded up and locked into deep dungeons without balls.

Why? Let me explain: For some reason fans from Italy, Spain and Turkey find it absolutely necessary to share their joy about their national team winning a match by driving around in their cars until two o'clock in the morning, whilst reassuring themselves about the continuing operation of their horn, by, well, operating it. This leads to my continuing state of irritation. And aggression. Indeed, I found myself rooting for the German team of all things, a nearly unthinkable act of treason for an Austrian, just because the Germans leave their bloody cars at home when celebrating.

I also don't understand why the Swiss police, who sent me a fine for going 4 km/h over the posted speed limit (50), wouldn't arrest and execute all those blithering, noisy idiots so I could catch some sleep. If I ever happen to be in the same country as some major football championship, I will build some kind of contraption capable of producing a focussed electromagnetic pulse and proceed to fry any and all honking cars in the vicinity, while cackling madly. I am serious about this, I have already started to practice cackling.