On Joy and Stress

Well; it’s been one of those eventful weeks. The title of this blog post is written deceptively in the style of a self-help book. It’s nothing of the sort. It is instead all about the last week.

I had three exam papers this week – two astronomy, one maths – that was unpleasant. At least one of them suffered from the co-location. There’s not a lot to say about them beyond that though, so I’ll leave it there.

Sunday was good – it was Low Sunday, without the choir, making me feel doubly self-conscious singing out of tune as ever. The weather was great, and it felt more like Easter Sunday than Easter Sunday did somehow.
Most of the rest of the week was taken up by preparing for the aforementioned exams, but I did find time to resurrect my blog, to the point now where I’m bound to be annoying anyone on Facebook who gets alerted to the stuff when it’s synced over to there. There was plenty to blog about, including the business with Osama bin Laden, which I wrote after reading numerous other peoples’ reactions, and feeling slightly uneasy about their outright condemnation of either side’s behaviour.
I also got a little bit excited about the election. It’s the first one I’ve ever been able to vote in where there were real political parties fielding candidates, rather than the excuse for a system we have back in Northern Ireland. I was quite keen for a Yes vote, and was disappointed, if unsurprised by the result.

The only real news then, I suppose, comes from Saturday night. It was the closing concert of the RSNO season, and I was pleasantly surprised.
It was the first time I’d been in a proper concert hall for over a year – the last time was when my school was performing Eternal Light by Howard Goodall, and I was on the scarey side of the dais – able to see the entire audience of the Waterfront Hall. I should clarify, I was singing. Badly.  The two pieces played by the RSNO were John Adams’s moving, thought, and chilling On the Transmigration of Souls. This was counterbalanced by Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony. For £5 it was quite an evening. The chorus were outstanding.

Otherwise, it’s been a fairly normal week. I did however find out my blog is being looked at by people… I must go and tidy it up…

This entry was posted on Sunday, May 8th, 2011 at 5:00 pm and is filed under General Rambling. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.