I think I just have to face it. Updating every day/week is not my cup of tea. So now I’ll try every month instead, so consider anything more often than that a bonus.
So last weekend I went to Oslo. I was going to a sports bar (now there’s a first) to see the Formula 1 race live from Shanghai. On a sunday morning at 8:00a nonetheless! It was a good race and the atmosphere, though inhibited by the early hours, was quite good, so I’ll probably come back at some point later… though at more humane hours.
Since I had to get up so very early that particular sunday I chose to go to Oslo on saturday and spend the night in a hotel instead of getting up even earlier and drive all the way from Kongsberg to Oslo. So I booked a ticket on the train and headed for Oslo. I haven’t had a traintrip ever since I bought my car so that was a nice addition to my trip. When I arrived in Oslo I walked up to the hotel where I had already booked a room online. The hotel was the Rainbow Hotel Astoria. Unfortunately, as I found out later, "Astoria" is indian for "We have no sound isolation". I got to bed early and finally fell asleep at around 11:30p. 20 minutes later someone flushed the toilet in the next door room and made some loud noises in the piping. Of course I woke up. 20 minutes after that I fell asleep and after another 20 minutes someone decided to play Beethovens 5th symphony on their car horn outside my window. Needless to say, I once again woke up. And this kept repeating the entire night. 20 minutes of sleep, some noise (piping, car horns, drunken people yelling) woke me up, 20 minutes of lying awake, 20 minutes of sleep, some noise, you get the idea. So at about 5:00a it had been quiet for a long time, so I though "This is it. At least I can get a couple of hours sleep before the wakeup call." And then the city dumpsters started arriving to clean up the mess from the people drunk in the streets that same night. It sounded like someone was using an industrial strength vacuum machine outside my window… for all I know that might have been exactly what they were doing.
After watching F1 and boarding the train back home and walking in my door, you can guess I was pretty worn out. So I threw everything I carried into my living room and myself into my bed. I thought I’d get an hour of good sleep before I had to get up and play in a small concert with my orchestra. 4 hours later I woke up, very confused… to realize I’d overslept bigtime. So no concert for me that weekend.
So the lesson for the weekend is: Always bring earplugs and learn indian.