Muziek beleven

Soms krijgen nummers een diepere betekenis of eigenlijk een extra lading omdat ze ineens perfect aansluiten op je situatie. Je beleeft de muziek ineens heel intens.

Dit heb ik momenteel heel sterk met 3 nummers van heel uiteelopende artiesten. Geen van de nummers dekt de lading helemaal maar alledrie hebben ze zinsneden die nu heel erg aansluiten bij mijn gevoelens.

Kate Rusby - Who Will Sing Me Lullabies

"Lay me down gently, lay me down low. I fear I am broken and won't mend, I know."

Deze zin kwam voor het eerst hard aan nadat mijn moeder had verteld hoe ze aan het sterfbed van haar moeder nummers uit haar koormap had zitten neuriën en dat mijn oma hier rustig van werd en nog van leek te genieten.

Helaas ligt mijn moeder er nu bijna net zo bij en is muziek een van de weinige dingen waar ze nog van kan genieten.

 "Who will sing me to sleep"

Jason Isbell - Elephant

De olifant in de kamer is al lang niet meer te negeren maar nu raakt het weer op een nieuwe manier.

"I'd sing her classic country songs and she'd get high and sing along

she don't have a voice to sing with now"

Melodiek is het kerkkoor dat mijn vader dirigeert en waarin mijn moeder en zus zingen. Zondag kwam het koor zingen aan het bed van mijn moeder. Een heel mooi en ook emotioneel moment. Judi lag vanuit haar bed mee te zingen, voor zover dat nog ging. Ze verontschuldigde zich zelfs dat ze niet goed bij stem was.

Echt meezingen zat er al niet meer in maar er was nog een sprankje humor en ze heeft intens genoten van het korte optreden.

"There's one thing that's real clear to me: No one dies with dignity"

Dit is de harde realiteit. Ook al probeer je er in te berusten en heb je het misschien zelfs wel geaccepteerd, er is weinig waardigheid in de laatste fase van kanker.

Tool - Wings for Marie (part 2)

Misschien wel het minst algemeen van toepassing maar ik heb het altijd een krachtig nummer gevonden en er spreekt een beetje de verontwaardiging uit dat einde zo tergend langzaam gaat en het verlangen dat ze snel "naar huis" mag.

"Hallelujah, it's time for you to take me home."

                                                            -----------------------------

Momenteel luisteren we aan het bed van mijn moeder veel naar hele mooie muziek:

Kerkmuziek uit Canterbury waar mijn ouders een paar keer naar toe zijn geweest om te genieten van (en zelfs deel te nemen aan) de Evensong in de kathedraal.

Ommadawn van Mike Oldfield, dat blijkbaar ook op stond toen mijn moeder van mij ging bevallen.

Veel advents- en kerstmuziek, o.a. Van de Boxtelse Cantorij.

Maar ook Kate Rusby en zelfs VAS.

Het is fijn dat we dat nog met elkaar kunnen delen en beleven.

OnLondon

Ik had me nog zo voorgenomen vaker te bloggen, vooral ook over leuke dingen maar ik het is al weer lang geleden en dit wordt weer geen vrolijke blogpost.


Ik zit niet in de trein naar Londen voor een lang weekend musea, gaming en opera.
Ik zit naast een bed in de woonkamer van mijn ouders, waar mijn moeder nu bijna de hele dag in doorbrengt.

Geen Natural History Museum, Dragonmeet of Satyagraha.
Wel proberen de laatste mooie momenten te delen met mijn moeder, vader en zussen.

Ik ben dit weekend niet op reis.
Mijn moeder maakt zich klaar voor haar laatste reis.

En eigenlijk hopen we dat deze met niet al te veel vertraging van start kan gaan.

36 going on 63...

Zaterdag ben ik jarig. 36 Jaar geleden werd ik geboren op de verjaardag van mijn moeder.
Ik ben nooit zo bezig met mijn verjaardag en ik vier het ook zelden. Ook dit jaar zal er geen feest zijn.

Mijn moeder heeft onbehandelbare alvleesklierkanker en dit betekent dat 1 juni waarschijnlijk de laatste keer zal zijn dat mijn moeder en ik onze verjaardag samen zullen doorbrengen.

Ik wordt 36 en mijn moeder 63. Deze omkeerbare leeftijden waren anders misschien aanleiding geweest voor een leuk feest maar ik heb dit jaar minder zin dan ooit om mijn verjaardag te vieren. Eigenlijk zie ik er vooral heel erg tegenop.

Het klinkt misschien gek maar ik heb tot nu toe niet heel erg emotioneel gereageerd op de levensbeëindigende kanker van mijn moeder. Wellicht is het nog steeds niet volledig tot me doorgedrongen. Wel zijn er steeds meer momenten die je onvermijdelijk met de grimmige realiteit confronteren en onze verjaardag is denk ik "the big one".

Tot die tijd zoek ik maar afleiding in werk, sport en op vrijdag me vrienden in de Efteling.

When in Budapest...

So, when you get to go to Budapest for a conference it seems a shame not to stay a few days longer to enjoy a short holiday. So that’s exactly what I did, just like last year in fact. That time I made the mistake of taking the holiday before the conference by flying out Saturday before it started. This meant I had the Sunday and Monday to myself but this has two major drawbacks: I hadn’t met anyone in Budapest yet and on Monday most museums are closed.

Having learnt my lesson, I decided to stay on two days after the conference this time and fly back Sunday evening. However, because I had a massive brain fart when booking the flight, I ended up flying back on Monday evening instead, so I'd have to spend another Monday in Budapest this year, but it turned out quite well in the end.

At memoQfest I met some of the people that were in the training last year and with whom I’d hit it off. Because this year I stayed on for the entire conference, instead of just the training held before the conference proper, I was now able to attend all the networking events in the evenings and this way I got to talk to more people – I think I mentioned interesting characters.

Fear and Soaking in Budapest

So when the conference finished, I had three days left in Budapest. On Saturday, I met up with Raisa and Simon, who work for STP Nordic and whom I’d first met last year. We spent the morning at Terror Hazá (The House of Terror), which contrary to what the name might suggest is not some sensationalist faux-museum of torture equipment, but a rather though provoking look at the reign of terror of both the Arrow Cross party (Hungarian Nazis) and the Soviets. It was all pretty bleak but nicely presented and with an evocative use of music.

After a seriously historo-cultural start of the day, Raisa and Simon treated me to a wonderful lunch, after which I treated them to towels at the Széchenyi baths – a rather paltry thanks you but they seemed to appreciate it. 

Twitter works!

After spending the afternoon soaking in the pools and saunas of Széchenyi, my companions had to catch a flight back to the UK, so I was left to my own devices. This was when I first realized how powerful social media can be. After I tweeted about my day with Raisa and Simon, I was contacted through Twitter by Susan, one of the other attendees of memoQfest, whom I’d had a chat with walking back to the hotel on day 2 of the conference. She was also still in town and we agreed to meet up for dinner. This is when I was contacted by Istvan of Kilgray, who’d also seen my tweet and was just walking home along the very street my hotel was on.

In the end we first had tea at the fanciest (and only, but it was very fancy) tea houses I’ve ever been, followed by Indian food and whiskey: a very good evening/night indeed and all thanks to social media!

And the Romans walked everywhere on sandals...

On Sunday I decided to go to Aquincum, the remains of the roman capital of this region of the empire. The museum itself is not very big but it just so happened that they had a special event called a Floralia, which meant there were both Roman and Celtic re-enactors recreating life in roman times.

 Then in the afternoon I had planned to maybe take a stroll through City Park or lay about but since the sun had disappeared by then and the wind picked up even more, I decided to go to the Museum of Fine Arts. Never do two museums in one day; this will result in very sore feet in the evening.

In the evening I met up with Susan and Istvan again and on the latter’s instigation we went to a restaurant where all tables had a built-in monitor and mouse so you could place your own order through their interactive website. You could even pay directly through the website using online banking. Sadly, this proved to a gimmick and the food was uninspired. 

Cold War and warm baths

So the next day, another Monday in Budapest rolled around. This time I did find a museum that is open on Monday, though: The Hospital in the Rock, which is a WW2-era hospital set up in the cave systems below Buda castle. During the Cold War part of it was converted to a nuclear bunker and hey've kept it more or less like it was in from 1944 to 1966. 

Last year I only used the spa facilities of the hotel the conference was held but didn’t bother going to any of the thermal baths that Budapest is famous for. This time I managed to strike two of the list and Monday afternoon I spent a Lukács baths. This meant I had a very relaxing end to my stay in Budapest.

Top tips: social media can work and when in Budapest, spend at least as much time in thermal baths as you do in museums.

Conferencing and the greatest country in the world

Last week I attended memoQfest, a user conference for the CAT tool memoQ. The event was held in Budapest; in fact I'm writing this blog post from my hotel room in that very city.

The conference was my first (translation) industry event, so I had no real idea what to expect.

The venue was spectacular: the Gundel restaurant (oh the sumptuous lunches...).
Everything also seemed very well-organized, though some sessions could have been a bit better moderated.

The conference was attended by freelancers, translation agencies and corporations that out-source most of their translation. This means that the audience is very diverse but can also have quite divergent interests regarding the future development of the software. As it was, in some sessions these interests conflicted and some of the audience probably felt their concerns were insufficiently addressed.

What made the event a success for me, though, was the chance to meet memoQ users from many different countries and types of companies. While we may all be using the same tool and sometimes face similar problems, we also bring some unique problems an solutions to the conference.
What I take away from the conference, is the need to really make the most of the server solution by automating more of our processes. This will take time and effort to investigate but it will be both useful and needful.

Overall, it was an inspiring event and I feel reinvigorated for my work, though it remains to be seen how long that lasts when I return to the office...

memoQfest attracts a very laid-back crowd and I met some very nice people and interesting characters:

"I am Kaspars Kļaviņš from Latvia, the greatest country in the world"

Next, I'll post about my time off in Budapest.

Saga

Today our queen abdicated and our new king took office. We decided to spend part of this national day off playing Saga.

Saga is a Dark Ages skirmish wargame pitting various factions of the viking era (ca. 800 - 1066) against each other. Today saw the Anglo-Danes facing the legendary or perhaps even mythical Jomsvikings.

It had been awhile since I last played Saga but have since expanded my Anglo-Danes to a 6 point warband. Unfortunately, I didn't get to use these new troops. My opponent hadn't played before and was using his Confrontation Drune models as Jomsvikings. This meant we opted to play a 4 point Clash of Warlords.

When I first studied the Jomsviking battleboard I thought they were somewhat overpowered and I expected to struggle against them, especially since they could quite easily neutralize the main strengths of the Anglo-Danish, which is inflicting Fatigue and grinding the enemy up in melees.
Hanging back and waiting for them to come, just gives them a chance to inflict casualties on your warband or raise their Wrath, which poweres their most powerful abilities.

Since the Anglo-Danes have no cavalry and I don't own any missile troops for them, it would be difficult to avoid a straight slug fest between two pretty similar forces.
This turned out to be largely true, I realised hanging back and slowly inflicting Fatigue on the opposing units wasn't going to work, so I resolved to just close the distance quickly. This meant the warbands met pretty much in the middle of the table with the Jomsvikings able to make the first charge.

In the end I managed to gain a slight advantage after the first melees, which allowed me to outmanoeuvre the Jomsviking and isolate their warlord. Once, isolated he fell prey to a joint charge by my warlord and 4 Hearthguard.

While I won in the end, I think this was largely due to the inexperience of my opponent, who possibly could have used his battle board to greater effect.
However, I no longer think the Jomsvikings are overpowered. Most of their abilities can be cancelled by giving them Wrath, which makes it hard to formulate strategy. They also have no access to cavalry, or archers, nor to cheap levies.

All in all an interesting game and I think I'll need to get me same levies armed with missile weapons...

Het woord is Whipple

Goed nieuws!
Mijn moeder heeft geen uitzaaiingen in de lever en kan geopereerd worden.

We hebben het zojuist gevierd met Bossche Bollen. Dat was wel een beetje vreemd want ze moet nu een zeer zware operatie en die is niet zonder risico's maar het is zoveel beter dan het alternatief.


De ingreep noemen ze in Whipple en daarbij worden delen van de alvleesklier en alle omliggende organen verwijderd. Hoeveel kunnen ze pas zien tijdens de operatie en pas nadat de tumor is verwijderd kunnen ze zien om welke soort kanker het gaat en wat dan de nabehandeling en prognose is.

De operatie is over drie weken.

Er is vernieuwde reden tot hoop maar toch ook nog spanning.