Week 1/104: My Wrist Hurts =(

For accounting purposes it is easier for my weeks to start on Monday and end on Sunday, rather than start on Thursday (when I got the piano) and end on Wednesday, since that is how I track my time for everything else I do. Week 0 (Th 8/14-Sun 8/17) I spent 11 hours playing the piano. I may have overexerted myself because my forearms feel a little carpal-tunnely, as they were wont to do when I used to play computer games.

I’ve got the first 19 bars of Prelude memorized (I have to think about it, though, and pause for a long time at certain points–definitely can’t recall at speed), and the next 16 I haven’t looked at at all. It’s a natural stopping point since he starts in G and through a mysterious sequence of chord changes ends on a G one octave down. Presumably he should then work his way back up in the next 16 bars, but, since that part is completely unknown to me, it amuses me to suppose that I can practice by beginning on the (second) highest G on the keyboard and simply repeat these 19 bars, moving towards the low end one octave at a time, until there are no more Gs left on the keyboard. I shall call it “The Idiot’s Staircase.”

I realized that, this summer, I split my time between Disney and the paper, and as a result got nothing done for either project. Therefore, I don’t think I ought to split my time between too many projects. So, I’ve decided to just totally eliminate Minuet from my program. It’s very difficult (at this stage, for me) but honestly, sounds kind of childish, so I don’t think the difficulty to nice-sound (euphony?) ratio is worth it. (By contrast, the difficulty to euphony ratio for Prelude is quite low.) On the other hand, I have heard that one shouldn’t work very hard on one piece, but should rather work on several pieces at once and slowly improve on all of them. I don’t know.

Progress report:
Prelude: 19 out of 35 bars memorized, can play maybe 4 at speed
Minuet: returned to the store for a full refund
Alfred’s: around page 30 of 95 (there are many sketches (I wouldn’t call them full pieces) of varying familiarity. Sight reading is getting better with these easy pieces.)
Revolutionary: learnt the first chord. It’s a G7 with 2 extra notes. So, completed… 5 notes out of about… 1000?
[Edit: 84 bars. Maybe 20 notes per bar on average, so closer to 1600 notes. Where can I find an exact count?]

Week 0/104: Goals for August

Today I had my first lesson. My piano had come with a free book of sheet music, but almost everything in it is too hard for me (actually, Revolutionary Etude is in it!). I’d been dicking around with Bach’s Minuet in G since I know that’s a pretty simple piece. I’ve got the right hand worked out okay, but putting the left hand together with it is a challenge. Anyway, when I met with my instructor I was surprised to hear him say that he wouldn’t give that piece to someone until they’ve been playing for a couple months. He told me that I could do it in a month, maybe. I think I’ll do it in a week.

I showed him the book, and he told me that Bach’s Prelude is an easier piece, so I’ve started working on that, too. It doesn’t look easier than Minuet at first glance, because it’s got more notes, but having played through it some I see that it is, because the RH is just chord shapes, and the rhythm is simple so it’s easy to put both hands together. I’m hoping to get through that in a week, too, but there is significantly more to memorize than Minuet, something like 3x the amount of material.

I also purchased from him a copy of Alfred’s Basic Adult Piano Course Book #1. A lot of the stuff in the beginning is too elementary and of no interest to me, but I think it’s good because it groups lessons by concepts, and concepts are good to know as a general rule. I’ll be working on this book, too, but I don’t know if I’ll record videos of any pieces from there because a lot of it is stupid shits like Jingle Bells. Christmas has really killed Jingle Bells for me.

Finally, I really like this song, so I downloaded the sheet music for that as well, but this is almost surely too difficult for me right now. In the 4th bar, it is actually physically impossible for me to play it without the sustain pedal (I’ve got small hands that span about an octave). So I’ll need figure out how to use the pedal before I can play this piece–it’s just hard because I’m not used to doing so many different things with my body at the same time. The fact that it’s hard is offset by how much I like the song–that’s really the only thing that’s going to motivate me through this project. If I find a song I like then I’ll want to practice so I can be cool and play it, but if I don’t like something then I’ll be bored and never want to practice.

So anyway, to summarize:

Short term goals:
Minuet in G and/or Prelude (Wohltemperierte Klavier I No. 1) in 1 week
Cavatina in… 3 weeks? But I’m leaving on vacation in 2 weeks so I don’t know how that’s going to work.

Medium term goals:
Finish Alfred’s in… 6 weeks to 2 months? I want to get through the basics quickly and get to the fun stuff!

Long term goals:
Revolutionary etude in 2 years

Revolutionary Etude in 2 Years or Bust

I have taken it upon myself to learn to play the piano. At 23 years of age, my entire life has been completely amusical–I don’t know how to play any instruments. So now that I can do whatever I want, I am going to change that.

I’ve made a bet with my roommate. He doesn’t believe that I can learn to play the Revolutionary Etude in 2 years. If I lose, I’m going to have to buy him steak, and vice versa. It’s going to be a challenge, but I am confident I can do it (and I base this on absolutely nothing). He did lose the last such bet we made, so I’d say I’m the favourite going into this. I also managed to rope 3 more people into the bet. If you would like to get a piece of this action, let me know.

This blog is going to document my progress with this undertaking. I’m going to post videos of pieces on youtube as I learn them. I thought about registering a new wordpress account solely for my piano blog (possibly with a catchy handle, like revolutionaryetudein2yearsorbust.wordpress.com–branding is everything), but I prefer the wholisticness of having all my projects be under one umbrella blog. Those readers who only care about my piano updates can simply bookmark http://frymetothemoon.wordpress.com/category/Music/.

Having done some research, I spent about a grand on a Yamaha Arius 160. It’s a new model, just came out, and supposedly does everything the low end Clavinovas do but for less! Here is my set up:

Yeah, it was supposed to come with a piano bench but that hasn’t arrived yet. I’ve got the laptop up there so I can track my practice times on iGoogle.

2 years. It’s going to happen.

(like me)

The Roommate’s Dilemma

Well hello!

Lobby and Fobby

Creepy hallway

Kitchen

Living room

Slave Bedroom

Slave Bedroom

Master Bedroom

All rooms lead to balcony

All rooms lead to balcony

Another view of the living room. Also, an idiot.

Kitchen again

The reason this place is affordable

It will be totally possible to dive from here

The Roommate’s Dilemma is an instantiation of the Cake Cutting Problem. Basically, n=2 (dashing, handsome, etc.) roommates need to be assigned to n rooms, which are not identical. Since they are not identical, the rent should not be split equally. Each room presents different utility to the roommates, so the assignment and rent split should reflect this and try to maximize everyone’s utility. How to do it “fairly”?

The solution to the cake problem is to let one person cut the cake and let the other choose. Thus, the person has an incentive to cut the cake as equally as possible, lest the other take the bigger. Neglecting physicalities, such as the impossibility of splitting something exactly equal, this algorithm ought to leave both parties satisfied that the outcome is fair. If the chooser is not satisfied, it is his own fault for being a dumbass and picking the inferior cut; if the cutter is not satisfied, he has only himself to blame for not cutting it fairly.

The direct analogue of this solution is to let one person split the rent and let the other choose which room to live in. I started thinking about this, though, and I think this is actually not fair. It is not possible for the cutter to live in a room and pay less than what he thinks it is worth, but it is possible for the chooser.

For example, suppose that roommate 1’s utility is at 1200/800, and 2 is at 1500/500, for rooms A and B, respectively. If 1 is cutting, then he has no choice but to place the rent at 1200/800 (assuming he doesn’t know 2’s utility split). For were he to do otherwise–for example, at 1300/700, then 2 may choose room B, leaving 1 with room A, and having to pay higher than what he thinks room A is worth. Only at 1200/800 would he be neutral about the outcome of 2’s choice–it’s an equilibrium of sorts. Then, 2 will choose room A, and pay 300 less than what he thinks it’s worth. Thus, basically, 2 has benefited $300, while 1 has benefited $0 from this mechanism.

Of course, in real life, 1 can try to guess 2’s utility. If he knew what his utility was, he could place the split at 1499/501. 2 will then pick A (assuming he knows the value of an honest dollar), leaving 1 with a $299 discount.

The system we’ve agreed on is to each write down our utilities by secret ballot, then average the utilities, and assign the rooms “down”. For example, in the example above, the averages are 1350/650. Then, 1 would take B and pay 650, and 2 would take A and pay 1350. Then each has mutually benefited $150 (essentially, wealth is created from the utility differential).

Now to decide what my utilities are and see if I will actually be happy with the outcome of this experiment… Today I measured the sizes of the rooms, using my armspan, which ought to be the same as my height. The smaller room is 2×2.4 Siwei’s, and the larger is about 2×3.5. However, the balcony door to the smaller room is bigger, so it’s brighter. Hmmm…

我也要吃粽子55555555 T____T

L’autre journée, mes enfants ont pris leurs examens finaux. Pendant ceci, un etudiant m’a demandé une question au sujet d’un des problèmes. Sur ce problème, on roule un dé quelque fois, et on doit trouver les probabilités d’obtenir des nombres identiques ou distincts. L’etudiant m’a dit, “que veut dire ‘distinct’?” Je lui ai donne un look(?), comme “are you fucking kidding me?” (How do you say this in French???) Mais il était complètement sérieux. J’ai dit “‘distint’ signifie ‘tous différents’”. Il m’a répondu avec “n’est-ce pas le même que ‘identique’?” Je lui ai donne un autre look de “are you fucking kidding me?” J’ai dit “non… c’est le contraire… ‘Identique’ veut dire ‘tous le même’…”

Mes enfants sont retardés.

生活等於烦恼

这几天忙碌着。六月底要搬家，我现在才开始找房子。。。如果可以的话，我宁愿一直住在现在的房子里，即使每月多付几百块钱也可以，因为它又离学校近，又新。我跑到BRENTWOOD看了几间一千六到一千八的(比现在便宜一点)，都比较旧。而且需要乘BUS。沮丧。。。

I like Tuna, but Tuna doesn’t like me T__T

Hey, I have a question for you.

Am I awesome, or am I really awesome? Because I’m having trouble decide. XD

Unfortunately I am not as awesome a photographer as I am awesome in general. Apparently this is the best picture I can get.

I was going to do yesterday, but I started grilling late in the afternoon and did not have the appetite for a second meal. So, I kept my tuna on ice overnight, like so. At $23/pound (it has to be sushi grade) I wasn’t going to take any chances.

The ingredients: Olive oil, sesame oil, salt, pepper, sugar, soy sauce, vinegar, cilantro, garlic, Jalapeno, ginger, lime. Oh, and my beautiful Tuna, of course. <3 The recipe doesn’t actually call for vinegar, but it does call for a full lime, and I only had half left. (I forgot the avocado in this picture.)

Mix, mix!

Mix, mix!

The recipe wants you to just salt & pepper the fish and sear it like that. I figured it would be good to toss in the sauce, so I did. What the hell do I know, though. I also cut my block in half (2 5oz pieces).

It sears! I seared for probably less than a minute per side. It is easy to tell when you should stop, since you can see on the side how much of it has been cooked. It’s like a progress bar, really. The aim is to just sear the surface, while leaving the middle raw. If you don’t have sushi grade fish then you should probably cook it all the way through. After it was about done I tossed the sauce in there.

If you’re awesome like me, you can take out the flesh of an avocado from the skin in one piece.

Then slice it up and plate! This is actually really simple. Takes maybe half an hour to do. The only difficult thing about this recipe is being able to afford sushi grade fish, haha.

Welp, it was really good, but the soy sauce was a bit overpowering. Must remember 3T is too much next time.

Lamb Ribs; or, The Tears and Suffering of Innocent Baby Animals ^____^

Tears and Suffering taste good, real good. Very tender.

This was actually an impulse buy (I don’t usually eat lamb), but I am very happy with it.

By the way, the entry I made in moon language just expresses my resolution to practice moon language (and French) more often, so that they don’t deteriorate. I will try to keep English language posts at a majority, though, as that is a language common to almost all my readers, even ones that understand moon language or French. Actually, I think wordpress.com may be blocked in China.

It looks more charred than it actually is. In fact, the thicker pieces were still rare.

Ingredients: Rosemary, garlic, olive oil, balsamic vinegar, salt & pepper, and 4 pieces of Tears and Suffering. I went and bought the most expensive bottle of balsamic vinegar I could find, but it was still only $12. It’s hard to be gourmet when you do all your shopping at Ralph’s… This now brings my vinegar collection to 6 bottles (I also have some rice vinegar which I’ve been experimenting with to get a peanut salad dressing)…

Chop garlic and rosemary finely.

Combine.

Add olive oil and balsamic vinegar. I used 2T and 4T. This balsamic vinegar is a lot thicker than the other bottle I have, probably on account of all that fig paste they put in there. Oh yeah, in case you can’t read the bottle, it says “Autumn Fig”.

Seal lamb chops with marinade in a plastic bag.

It is very important that you arrange the lamb chops in a 69 position.

翌日…

Oh my what a fine day it is to be grilling on my BALCONY!

Since I’ll be moving out soon, I want to make as much use of my balcony as possible. I own a grill and I’ve probably used it no more than 5 times. This must change!

Form a pyramid with the charcoal.

Oooooooooo.

While the fire burnt, I washed the grill, which had lain dirtily in a corner since the Yosemite trip last fall. Washing a grill is one of the worst things in existence, right up there with hernias and local truncation error analysis. Because, you know, it’s not a surface. You can’t just scrub it as you would a dirty plate. You have to get into each bar. It’s awful.

After the fire goes out, push the stack over to let the charcoal sit uniformly over the surface. The charcoals are not all grey but that is okay. They will continue to burn.

This is pretty fun, I have to say. I could do this every weekend. I could even have friends over. But they have to bring the beer.

Close up. I have placed the meatier part of the ribs in the centre where it is hotter. Don’t mind the other pieces of meat sitting on the grill. I am just testing out my kalbi recipe. There will be another entire post about that.

I also grilled some vegetables after this was over. I like this picture a lot for some reason. It’s like… art… or something.

Conclusion: lamb is very tender. We should all increase our consumption of baby animals.

Failure

L’autre jour, j’ai fait pleurer une fille en classe pour la première fois. Je demande habituellement des volontaires pour résoudre des problèmes devant la classe, mais personne n’a voulu la faire (? this sounds weird), donc j’ai choisi une victime par un processus aléatoire. (J’ai proposé une gamme des nombres desquels les étudiants ont choisi, qui ont déterminé le siège où la victime s’est assise–mais ils ne le savient pas.) La victime ne savait pas comment resoudre la probleme, et, succombant à son inquiétude, a commencé à pleurer… Merde…

联系 练习

最近发现语言能力退步得很严重。我一般只有给家里打电话时说中文，现在发现有时候竟然会对爸爸妈妈说英语，因为。。。用中文无法表达。。。OTZ

我决定采取“朋友”的 suggestion，认真练习中文。啊，我也有法语。所以，从现在起，我每次更新博客时会轮流用这三种语言。还有，碰见 fob 时应该尽量用 fobnese 和他们谈XD

虽然中文是我的母语，现在英文已经是我的主语了。做梦时的人物都是用英语对我说话的。还有，做数学时必需用英文。这不仅是因为我不认识单词(不过我知道 Lie Groups = 李群，呵呵一直觉得这个比较好玩)–我的中文很简单，不能表达太复杂的思想，所以逻辑推理当然是不可能的。我臆想这是因为当我的脑袋在发达推理的能力时，我已经出国了。

啊，你可能会觉得有点不对，因为我自称不太能用中文表达，而这篇文章里的思路还是比较清晰的。不要被我骗了！我能写出这样的东西，是因为我现在坐在电脑前，可以反复思考怎么说。呵呵还有，因为这是电脑上打出来的，错别字率下降许多。如果我用笔写。。。后果不堪设想。