Another full Wednesday, but a good one, and a better one to have finished. To begin, I awoke somehow at 7:45 and got ready, leaving the flat at about 8:00, luckily making it to school a bit early so I could print out my paper for Advertising. I did this, and when I walked into the room, I was the first person there, save for the professor. I gave him my paper, as did many other people, but he then proceeded to tell us, that they were not necessarily due today, and that if we somehow were unable to finish it, he would be glad to accept them later and that he was not draconian about getting them then, just that it was a suggested time so that all the work would not bottleneck into the end of the term. I thought this was wise, but was slightly peeved, because I had already handed mine in, but I thought it was rather badly written and the substance was lacking, oh well, I guess it is better to have that in, than to try and write everything later. Anyway, the class was interesting but far more dry than the rest of the classes had been so far. It was about the approaches to advertising, including such factors as specific demographic and group focussed advertising with things on socioeconomic classifications and psychological profiling in the medium. Like I said, interesting but dry, and at the end he showed us some rather amusing pictures that made fun of the ‘nostalgia’ approach of advertising. One of which included a picture of Del Monte ketchup where it showed a woman’s surprised face and she said in a bubble “You mean women can open it?!” This just cracked me up, and as the professor laid the pictures on the overhead he said “This one’s a gem”- quite amusing.
Following that course, I want and finally retrieved my per diem from the American Express office, and then headed down to Embankment where I met my Architecture course and we looked at things all along the Thames from that point. It was really quite neat. Apparently about 200 years ago the Thames used to be twice as large as it is today, impressive eh? Well if you saw it you would agree. We walked along and saw many things like bishops’ palaces and things like that, we also saw the Savoy hotel and theatre, which was quite nice again, and by the way, the only street to drive on the right side of the road in the UK is the street that leads to the Savoy. We ended the little tour by going to the building where most government offices for the UK were in London, including the Admiralty and the Navy Offices and such like that. It was actually quite sublime, as that was the style used to make it, or at least that is what the architect who made it intended for people to feel with it. Apparently these offices were not open to public visitation until five years ago so I felt privileged to go inside. We walked through and it was quite impressive, especially at the end because there was one of the old admiral’s barges that they used to enter the building when the Thames was a lot wider and actually came up to it. After the class tour concluded itself, I immediately returned to school to finish my paper for my London classical music scene class, because I had only finished about 2/3 from before. The last section was actually really easy to write, and I think it looks good, but I had to make everything up, which was okay because it was all opinion anyway, but I just felt bad fabricating it, but I could not for the life of me remember the pieces of music I had to describe save for two relatively small components.
In the class itself, I was lucky enough to again be there first, and again saving for the professor who was there before me. The class went smoothly enough, and the concert of the night looked exciting, which it actually was... now my reading audience, do forgive me, but here is something that came from the class which will actually alter very slightly the way I write journal entries. I should amend this, I do mean Wednesday journal entries when I say this, but as part of my next assignment for the course I now need to keep a small journal entry for each concert that I attend as part of the course and this of course means every Wednesday night until the end of the course so I figure from now on, I’ll just write it keeping it slightly separate so I can easily extract it and compile it for the paper at the end of the term. After the class I tried to get home to drop off my bag and everything, but I was not so fortunate to do this, because apparently someone was ‘beneath the train’ on one of the central lines severely delaying it. What I believe this means is someone tried to (and probably succeeded) commit suicide by jumping in front of the train as it approached the station. Anyway, so to avoid this, I went up to King’s Cross hoping to catch a Hammersmith train back, but naturally it was really delayed with tons of people waiting for it too. I finally just caught a Metropolitan line (first time I took it) to Baker Street, (which I learned by the way was the first ever subway station in the world!). Once there I realised it would just be wiser to go to the venue where the concert was taking place, and so I headed down to Westminster station (my favourite). Once there, I left the station and as always was so impressed and so proud to live in London because I was greeted by the Big Ben at night, which is always impressive to me, every time I see it. I walked past Parliament and (quick side note I am in the chunnel as I am writing this) finally came to my destination, St. John’s in Smith Square but I was too early and had to wait for a long time. When I did get in, each seat had a complimentary box of chocolates in it and these boxes were fairly large in size as well. And now for the assignment part, but read on you may find it interesting anyway.
2 November 2005: London Chamber Orchestra playing at St. Johns in Smith Square
The concert began by playing Mendelssohn’s Hebrides, which is always a lovely piece to listen to, and one full of passion. The Hebrides was a mystical tune to listen to, and one that was very entertaining at this particular venue as well, I may well add. It was of course well played, or at least in my opinion, but I have not yet been to a classical concert of professional musicians (especially in London) where they have yet played anything badly. Anyway, the best part of this, besides the general aesthetic quality of the masterly Mendelssohn (who has long been one of my favourite composers), was the conductor’s style, getting rather into his piece and dancing with it as he directed it, but he did this with all pieces as well. The second piece was Beethoven’s 1st Piano Concerto, if I remember correctly. This piece I must confess was a tad tiresome by the end time it concluded, it was well written and passionate, as most of Beethoven’s works tend to be, but a little long for me. We then took a twenty minute intermission and when we resumed we listened to the very lovely and graceful Edward Elgar who I this night decided for good was my favourite composer, as I love all of his works. The particular piece we heard was his first Enigma Variation I believe, which was wonderful, but then I am biassed as I have said, Elgar is my favourite composer. I thought that it was delightful how he could soothe the soul with his great serenades, simply relax you, yet not bore you, and his works are always touching. The final thing we heard was Beethoven’s first symphony, which was excellent because it was fast paced, in fact the ‘minuet’ was so quickly played I wondered how the musicians, let alone any poor dancer foolish enough to try to attempt this tune could have kept up. At the end they played an encore which was also good, but I do not recall its name at this time, save to say that it involved a cuckoo, and it was a rather charming little melody, with much calmness to it.
After the concert I quickly got home with much enthusiasm and then I started to cook myself some ramen and tried to set up my computer (as the living room was of course occupied by Seamus and Kirstin) and when I tried to turn it on, it did turn on for a few seconds and to my great horror and annoyance promptly shut itself off, I figured out how to get it to at least charge, and it would again turn on if I took the power sources away and put them back, but it was simply not going to grant me too much time on it, so I was sad to say that I could not type this last night, nor could I access the internet and tell everyone bye before I go to Paris, and get some much needed emails written, oh well, that is what a train ride from England to France is for, no? Well, off to France!