Journal Entries
Bit of a change ... or is that an understatement?
Posted Aug 8, 2007
Well, given that it has been 9 months since I last wrote a Journal Entry, I'm not at all surprised that things have changed somewhat ... the only problem I've got is trying to remember it all! 
I may as well start with my love life again: about a month after my last Journal Entry, Adam decided to call it a day with me ... not because he was no longer in love with me, but because he still was and yet he couldn't move from London and I couldn't move from Manchester. 
However, we're still talking to each other and (after a while) I finally managed to move on ... although I wouldn't rule out getting back together with him if the circumstances were right sometime in the future.
However, as I've already said, I've moved on - I saw a guy called Iain who's studying Music at Salford Uni for about six weeks (give or take) this Spring and while he was a nice enough guy, I didn't feel nearly as intense about him as I did for Adam and he called it off anyway due to him feeling the pressure of getting his Masters dissertation written. After another few short weeks of being single, however, I finally met another Adam ... this one's based in Stoke-on-Trent (which is quite convenient for me - more on that in a bit), he works at a solicitor's dealing with mortgages and the like (can't remember the exact term offhand 
) and he's absolutely adorable! 
In the past few weeks we've been seeing each other, we've been going to the cinema lots to watch new films (like Shrek the Third, The Simpsons Movie and Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix), going out for dinner and spending lots of time in my flat watching DVDs, drinking the odd glass of 
and cuddling up together. 
Although we originally thought his own living arrangements were a bit complicated - he lives with an ex-b/f who he was dating for some 4 years, who has been known to be possessive of Adam even now he's single and doesn't often let him bring people back - it turns out that it isn't really a problem (his ex Steve asked to meet me and we seem to get on quite well). 
Anyway, I'm cautiously optimistic ... let's hope things continue to go well.
Apart from love, work has also been going fairly well in spite of a shaky patch - near the end of last year, I discovered that my supervisor was leaving Manchester Uni to go to Manchester Met (presumably for financial benefits), so I had to find yet another one! Fortunately, there was a lecturer who belongs to a computer modelling group in my school and who I'd met when I presented some work to the group a while back - and he agreed to become my new supervisor. Apart from being more proactive than my previous one, he also had contacts with a group at Sheffield Hallum University who are doing some modelling work which is similar to what I want to do, so he arranged a meeting ... and as a result, they've allowed me to use some program code in exchange for me writing a couple of journal papers. That's not to say I haven't made any progress by myself - I managed to do something which I originally thought was very difficult but turned out to be much easier after a bit of rethinking, and produced some really interesting results which'll definitely end up in my thesis! My new supervisor also managed to help me get a six month extension on the time I have to complete my calculations, write up my thesis and submit it ... so whereas before I would be panicking right about now, I'm now not (quite as much, anyway!). 
So I now have until the end of March 2008 to finish ... certainly doable.
My music life has also been pretty productive over the past nine months. One of a few major highlights was being invited to join the Northern Baroque Orchestra, a good-quality amateur string orchestra that performs predominately Baroque music: after quite a good concert last December, I was invited back for the following one in July! (Even better, the feedback I heard about the second concert was that it was "sparkling" - a good compliment for a baroque orchestra!) It also gave me some extra musical contacts - apart from doing my second production of Gilbert and Sullivan's Ruddigore, I also played at the first concert of the Saddleworth Music Festival (whose programme included Orff's Carmina Burana - a great piece if long and repetitious). For various reasons I also got to play in the orchestras for two productions in Heywood a few weeks' apart - Anything Goes for one local group and The Arcadians for the other rival one. The last few concerts for Oldham Symphony Orchestra have also been fantastic - especially the all-Russian one in July. The uni orchestra also had two fantastic concerts: one in February with Debussy's La Mer and Beethoven's 7th symphony, and the other in May with Elgar's Cello Concerto and Sibelius' 5th symphony ... some of the best music I've ever played! 
Even Congleton Youth Orchestra has been doing very well - since I'd turned 26 in January, I was therefore too old to be a proper member, but the orchestra decided to keep me on by making me Assistant String Tutor. Apart from that, we had our first European tour to Germany (the Rheinland, in fact) in early April and in spite of the MD having been diagnosed with some form of cancer and needing treatment (which hopefully will mean he'll be back to full health by September), our summer concert was also very well received.
There has also been some stuff going on with Esperanto, but since I've a feeling this entry's a bit long, I'll leave it for the next one (which I might post immediately after this one!).
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Latest reply: Aug 8, 2007
Three months later ...
Posted Oct 15, 2006
And I'm still with Adam! In spite of his move down to London, we've been in regular contact via text message, a couple of phone calls to each other every week and seeing each other every two or three weeks (the last time was four weeks ago but only due to work and stuff like that - we are planning to meet up again in a week's time). However, there's more to tell ... after the night when Adam came to see Oklahoma, we met up a week later in Manchester and had a really lovely night and day together - in the course of that time, my feelings for him intensified and I became more and more convinced that I was falling in love with him. In our text messages over the following two weeks until I went down to London, I really wanted to say that to him but resisted the temptation - my previous experience with Alex (my second b/f) deterred me from saying it too early in case I got emotionally hurt (again).
Anyway, two weeks and a weekend holiday on the Isle of Man later, I went down by train to London on a Saturday morning to see Adam again ... after we had lunch, we booked into a hotel - Adam had just moved rooms at the flat near the hospital where he works, so his room wasn't in a very good state - and (after saying hello in a less verbal way ) ordered tickets to see Avenue Q that evening. We then had a wander around the South Bank, the National Gallery, Covent Garden and then found a restaurant near the West End for dinner before we went to see Avenue Q - which was absolutely brilliant, by the way. However, my night got even better when we got back to our hotel room ... after a little making out, we got talking and Adam told me that he'd been falling in love with me! 
So I told him that I'd been doing the same with him ... and then, finally we declared our 
for each other! 
Needless to say, that night was an especially special night ... followed by another lovely day with him going around the Science Museum (to satisfy the 
in both of us!), coffee in Kensington and then an emotional goodbye at Euston.
We've met up once again after that, although it was for two days and two nights as Adam had managed to get Monday off work - another wonderful time. However, we've both been very busy since then and haven't managed to see each other for four weeks because of our workloads and music-related stuff - many of my rehearsals are on Saturdays and Sundays, although I'm hoping that I can ditch most of those as of December. We are finally going to see each other again next weekend, although I don't know exactly what we're going to do yet ... apart from the fairly obvious stuff, of course.
Anyway, apart from my love life, things are going OK with music stuff - last week saw me playing viola for an amateur opera company's production of Puccini's La Bohème in Rochdale, which went very well apart from the soloists pulling the speeds around far too much( !) and I apparently got complements from people in the audience for my playing (it was my first time with this company, BTW). Apart from that, uni is also going reasonably well in spite of me not even starting my end-of-year report , although it shouldn't take me too long to put together and hand in - in the meantime I've had to redo some calculations and they're producing some good, some confusing results. My supervisor's not too fussed about me getting it in on time, so it should be OK.
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Latest reply: Oct 15, 2006
Success!
Posted Aug 4, 2006
Well, well, well ... who knew that the last couple of weeks would be so good?
I was stressing out a bit about how well I would be able to conduct Oklahoma last week, but it turned out that I could do it pretty well and the show was a great success. Apart from hearing the band playing through all the music during the performances, I got some positive criticism from a couple who have done lots of musicals before (and are also friends of mine) - they were impressed with how clearly I was conducting. Both of them and also my mum were proud of me for what I'd managed to do ... and the band also seemed to enjoy themselves as well!
The icing on the cake came on the last performance on Saturday night, although I will need to clarify something from my last journal entry. Out of the three guys who had shown an interest from last time, I finally got to meet the newly-qualified doctor living in London (but originally from the Wirral) called Adam. We met for lunch just over a fortnight ago in the middle of Manchester and while we didn't have that much time together, we seemed to hit it off really well ... so much so that we kissed goodbye at the end. (We also had our photo taken on Canal Street while we were making our way to Adam's car: http://pic1.picturetrail.com/VOL1175/4377408/9247943/169809050.jpg) We decided to meet up again just under a week later to see the latest Pirates of the Carribean film at the Odeon, and we ended up spending most of the time in there cuddling up to each other and kissing. We also popped around URBIS's exhibition about Manchester (and snuck a kiss in a darken area of it ) before Adam had to collect his mum from some meeting, but I gave him a ticket to see Oklahoma down in Stoke. So on Saturday night, he arrived in Stoke a little bit late for the very beginning of the overture, but he saw the entire show and was very impressed. After packing up the stuff in the orchestra pit, I decided to give the after-show party a miss and drove Adam up to my flat in Manchester, where we shared a bottle of wine and did quite a lot of both on my sofa and in bed together. We also decided to take things slowly as far as bedroom activity goes, because Adam wanted to hold onto me for as long as he could. Anyway, the following day, I drove Adam to Chester so he could meet a schoolfriend before going home to pack and move down to London to start at one of the hospitals there as a junior doctor. Since then, we've been thinking about each other constantly, texting and phoning each other every day saying how much we're missing each other and looking forward to seeing each other again in 8 days time. The signs so far are excellent ... so here's hoping this lasts.
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Latest reply: Aug 4, 2006
On the Front Page!
Posted Jul 19, 2006
Well ... not only has my Shostakovich Guide Entry been approved for the Edited Guide, it's also the main entry on today's Front Page! (Not bad for a first effort, eh?) And not too badly timed for his centenary ... probably two months early, but the whole year of 2006 is being used for the celebration anyway so I can't complain.
Anyway, if you're really interested in my love life, I'm single yet again - only unlike usual, I've become single out of choice. As much as I liked Craig (and still do), I just felt he was overbearing as far as his passions go compared to mine and I was feeling more and more uncomfortable with it, particularly as it felt like he was being inconsiderate about my views and feelings. So I called things to an end ... and now? Well, there are a few guys who are interested in me - one who was in London but is now in the Wirral (how interested he is, I don't know for sure but I'll be finding out), one in Leicester (who's *very* interested in me and I in him) and one down in London (who's become infatuated with me!). Anyway, I'll keep you posted.
In the meantime, Oklahoma is going well ... there is a slight feeling of panic as we approach show week (which starts a week tomorrow!) but things are coming together and the last bits of dialogue and choreography are now finalised. I've also got a 14-piece band together for the show as well - 3 violins, a viola, a double bass, a piano, a percussionist, a flute, an oboe, two clarinets, two trumpets and a trombone - and my first rehearsal with them is on this Sunday with our band call. Let's just hope I can conduct properly by then ...
Anyway, see you around.
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Latest reply: Jul 19, 2006
Shostakovich in Peer Review
Posted May 25, 2006
Hello again!
Well, I've done it - I've finally 'finished' my Entry on Shostakovich and submitted it for Peer Review. It'll probably need some substantial editing - as it is massively long! 
- but mainly cuts and splitting it into two articles, I would've thought. It's quite difficult to state how Shostakovich's music is interpreted - there are those people who claim there are dissident messages in his works, while others claim his music is purely music. Treading a fine line ... but I think I might be OK with it. Anyway, I'll see what people think.
And yet another b/f has come along: a nice guy from near Wigan called Craig, who's very much into metal rock music - a bit of a change from my musical tastes, but I'm getting into it (and him as well). We've been seeing each other for two months now - we met after finding each other on OKCupid.com - and while we're taking things steady at the moment, he's definitely likes me very much (and I him as well), so things look quite promising.
Anyway, apart from that, I'm being inundated with music work at the moment - I've been playing piano in a 70s-based show, viola for a Viennese evening, various symphony orchestra concerts and I'm now a musical director for a production of Oklahoma (the first time I've ever been an MD) at the end of July. I still have to fit my research work in as well! However, things are going well for me at the moment.
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Latest reply: May 25, 2006
Mikeo the gregarious
Researcher U201990
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