Category: General

Just a quick note: the other day after the Krauze opera we had walked out after the end of the performance to see the street full with bicyclists going down the street and was happy to find that they do Critical Mass here.  It was always nice to see it in San Francisco and seeing it here makes me think we should do it sometime when we get back to California…

This past weekend, Lisa and I took a train from Warszawa Centralna to Berlin Hauptbanhof to spend the weekend in Berlin. For both of us it was our first times there, though I am sure it will certainly not be our last. What a wonderful city!

We started out trip very early in the morning, a quick breakfast of instant Tchibo coffee and strucla, then a last minute check over everything before heading down to the tram stop. A few stops down to Centrum, then a short walk over to the Warszawa Centralna train station, we arrived with a good amount of time. After a short wait before we got on the train, we got ourselves situated and then were on our way to Berlin.

The train ride was quite pleasant: a little nap, good reading, a coffee from the attendant pushing a cart who came around periodically. From Warsaw to Poznan then to the border, where border guards came on and checked everyone’s passports. We got our stamps, the train entered Germany, then on to Frankfurt/Oder and then to Berlin.

Arriving at Berlin Hauptbanhof was a world of difference from Warszawa Centralna: the station was quite new and beautifully architected, organized and clean. We got off the train, guidebook in hand, and started out on our weekend in Berlin.

The first impressions walking away from the Berlin Hauptbanhof are really quite stunning: we walked by the Reichstag with all of the amazingly beautiful modern buildings around, then down beyond the Brandenburg gate, stopped by to the Jewish Memorial, then on to Potsdamer Platz. There we took a break to grab a small bite to eat, then on to our hotel which was nearby to check in and drop off our bags.

Neither of us really knew how big Berlin was until we got there. I think realizing how large and full a city it is, we got the impression that there was a lot to see in little time. Using our guidebook we decided our evening would be to do the Kreuzberg walking tour that was listed, which we enjoyed very much.

I think whenever we come into contact with a new experience, our first reaction is to compare it with known and familiar experiences, and I found myself this past weekend often doing this. For me, traveling around Kreuzberg reminded me very much of Brooklyn in the way the buildings felt, but also of San Francisco in terms of the feeling of the people; it’s hard to explain but that was the sense I got. The area seemed filled with neat boutique shops and a very relaxed and conscience atmosphere. We walked quite a bit, stopping by shops, looking at landmarks, and taking in this neighborhood. We ended up near the Kotbusser Tor U-Bahn station and had dinner at an Indian restaurant (our first time having a fish curry: delicious!), then a ride on the U-Bahn back to the hotel.

The next morning we had a wonderful breakfast at the hotel and then got started on a very full day of exploring the city. Our first stop was at the Reichstag, the building where the parliament convenes. The building, very old, has an incredible modern glass dome-sphere installed at the top which is open to the public. After a bit of a wait in line, we went through security and got to the top, then walked to the top of the sphere on a spiral platform to get a fantastic view of the city. In itself the dome was quite fantastic, and the view was a great way to get our bearings and to get a sense of the city.

Afterward, we briefly cut through the Tiergarten to get to the Brandenburg gate, then headed down the street to Friedrichstrasse to check out the shopping there. We had an opportunity to check out the Galeries Lafayette there with it’s wonderful center sphere shape that went through all of the floors, as well as took a brief look at the buildings next to it. From there we went over to Markgrafenstrasse to see the Hedwig Cathedral and Bebelplatz (where the books were burned in WWII), then on to Unter den Linden.

Unter den Linden was filled with remarkable buildings: universities, museums, and churches amongst the many other buildings. The street itself is gorgeous: very wide with a long view down the street. While walking we stopped for a moment at the Berliner Dom, then watched as a protest march went by. It was very interesting to watch as I had never seen a protest march where the air felt so full with genuine anger: quite a sight. From there we went behind the Berliner Dom and crossed the river to end our walking tour near Hakescher Markt. Walking around here we found a Camper Foodball restaurant==which I had read about in the States and was happy to find–and enjoyed an all-organic rice ball meal.

After lunch we walked over to Alexanderplatz to explore a little bit around there, walking by the art center Tesla (unfortunately closed at the time), then took an S-Bahn back over to Friedrichstrasse to go to Dussmann to check out books and CD’s (very happy to have found a copy of “Computer Music Currents 13”!). After Dussmann, the day already full and starting to get dark, we walked down the street to go our last stop that evening: Checkpoint Charlie and the Museum of the Berlin Wall.

Now, not having the richest sense of history, I was really quite amazed once I learned the history of Checkpoint Charlie to have been standing there looking at that place; I was most taken aback by the photo of the standoff between the Russian and American tanks, and standing there imagined the incredible scene in front of and around me. The museum was amazing in telling the history of the Wall, of all the people who tried to escape and the ways in which they did it as well as the politics of the Wall in its creation, maintenance, and eventual destruction. Thinking of the Wall made me think back to my visit to the DMZ in Korea years ago, how sad it is to see a people divided…

Now late into the night, we made one final stop at a Doner Kebab shop (although very tasty, I think I prefer the ones in Warsaw; maybe it’s just a matter of what I came across first), then back to the hotel. A very long day, exhausted from all of the walking, we watched a little television (strangely enough, there was a German two-part drama on the last days of the Nazi’s, depicting Hitler in the bunker…), then headed off to sleep.

Sunday we woke up early once again and had another fantastic breakfast at the hotel before packing up and checking out. We started our final day in Berlin with the Jewish Museum. We had heard from a few friends as well as the guidebook that it was certainly something to be seen, and it really was quite amazing. The building, architected by Libeskind, was quite disorienting at first to walk through. The Holocaust Tower was an incredible experience: the humbling darkness and near silence, only a faint ray of light and whispers of traffic outside… going through the ground floor and reading all of the incredibly sad stories of the people lost in WWII was heartbreaking (very interesting to see a German presentation of this after having seen Auschwitz and Birkenau in the past…). Walking up to the exhibit floors, it was really quite fascinating to learn about the very early history of the Jews and about their culture and and how it developed over time in the context of European history. We spent quite some time taking in the information; after two and a half hours we had only gotten to the late 19th century, but with little time left and the time period being much more familiar, we took a quicker pace through the rest of the museum.

After the museum we took the U-Bahn over to the Zooligischer Garten station, went to see the Kaiser-Wilhelm-Gedachtniskirche(a bombed out church), then with little time left, a nice lunch, then an S-Bahn ride over to Berlin Hauptbanhof. It would have been great to explore more of Charlottenberg, as well as the rest of Berlin, but with so little time, I was happy in just getting to see what we did.

Being in Berlin was an excellent experience with much to think about afterward. After being in Warsaw now for a few months, I think going to another city in another country with another language was very refreshing, both in experiencing something new, but also in coming back and noticing new things about Warsaw and Polish culture. I am sure that before we leave in April we’ll go to visit Berlin again to get to all the things we didn’t have a chance to check out this past time, as well as just to enjoy a wonderful city.

I was lying in bed, awake, and remembering the past… many memories from childhood, high school, college, New York, San Francisco, Paris, Krakow… images of different places, events, friends and family, time spent quietly alone…

This feeling and weight is familiar, this sense of time. It’s now past two in the morning and there is that quiet serenity that only exists between midnight and 6 AM, when most of the world has gone to sleep. This sense of quiet and all the memories reminds me of all the other times I’ve spent looking inwards and looking outwards, late into the night.

Yesterday, I had the thought to start capturing down the memories of my life, as I previously did not keep much of a journal, and perhaps in the future the memories won’t be so vivid…

Sitting here awake, I get the feeling of being connected to seemingly dormant parts of myself. For a while I’ve felt that there were aspects of my musical life that were asleep but which I didn’t know quite how to awaken, but perhaps it is simply that I have not spent much time awake in the gentle quiet of night. I remember how much I used to love to be awake at this time, how clear everything seemed, and how slowly time moved, as if there was all the time in the world…

Reconnecting with this experience, I do not know how yet I will proceed, to revisit these night-time hours more, to return to other ideas of letting time be free–as is so important to me in music–or simply to try to keep this frame of mind within the context of the schedule I have been keeping. Regardless of how things proceed, though, I think it will become very important to me to remember this experience…

Just a note that a good friend of mine is putting on an arts event tomorrow (Saturday) in Athens, GA from 4-10pm, entitled “Aux Collaborative Arts Event”. It’ll be at a venue called Athica.

More information about the event can be found here.

I have a piece being performed at this event and will make it available Sunday after the event. If you’re in or around Athens tomorrow I’m sure it’s going to be a wonderful event and would highly recommend going. If not, hopefully you’ll enjoy the piece I am releasing Sunday. (More thoughts on the piece to accompany the release).

Thanks!
Steven
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Just wanted to make a note that I’ve updated my software Deep Breathing and have added a new software called LifeTimer.

DeepBreathing has been redesigned and has added more options for how to play back sounds. I am planning to do some more programming on it to have it save your settings and perhaps even to save your own presets, and perhaps will incorporate new sound options as well.
LifeTimer is a new program for timing various things in life. It includes a Timer (Stopwatch), an alarm where you can create different alarm presets (i.e. Green Tea, Black Tea, Nap) and when the alarm is finished it opens up a dialog and beeps, and a Work/Break Cycle that you set how long to work and how long of a break to take and it will repeatedly do each one until you turn it off, playing a sound at the beginning of each work and break period. It’s good for setting up regular breaks to avoid RSI as well as implementing the (10 + 2) * 5 Procrastination Hack from 43folders.com.

Enjoy!

Today is the Catholic holiday of the Assumption, and being in a country where church and state are not so different, I imagined it to be more of a somber affair, but I think my expectations were different than what I saw. We later found out it’s also a holiday in Warsaw to commemorate a defense of the city during WWII, which made things fall much more into place.

The day started with us going to meet Karen and friends on Chmielna. A gorgeous day, probably the prettiest I had seen since coming here: a deep blue sky, bright rays of sunlight, the colors rich and vibrant. We thought we’d ride the bus down but just a couple stops after we got on we were stuck waiting on the bus for first a parade to go by, then a procession of assorted tanks and armored vehicles. A very strange sight to see.

We eventually made it to Chmielna and had a nice lunch at Muza, then Karen, Lisa, and I made our own way afterwards towards the Palace of Fine Arts to see about a science exhibit. We arrived there but it seemed that the ticket cost also covered going to to the top, and since I didn’t have my camera with me, we opted to come back another day for those. (They also had the 48th European Team Bridge Championships there and as much as I had hoped to see Omar Shariff it wasn’t to happen. =) )

On our way out we saw that there was a free exhibit in a tent entitled “Tajne Fotografie Luftwaffe – Maj – Czerwiec 1944” (Secret Photography of the Luftwaffe – May-June 1944). We went in and saw many photos from ’44 as well as a narrated movie showing the state of Warsaw at that time: gutted buildings with the rooves destroyed, buildings missing altogether. The photos of the Ghetto were particularly disturbing as blocks and blocks of building were completely destroyed, in their place what seemed to be like dust.

It was erie and haunting to see such photos of the city as it seemed so familiar and yet altogether different. As we saw each photo we discussed all of the differences between what we were looking at and what we knew of the city today from our own experiences, noticing what buildings were no longer there, what new roads weren’t in the pictures, and so on.

Looking at the photos reminded me very much of some of the photos of Lebanon I had seen recently online comparing city photos from before and after the Israeli bombings. I thought to myself that like Warsaw it will be rebuilt, but cities are alive like human bodies and that although they heal, they’re never quite the same. I am sure that there must be similar images of destruction on the Israeli side and equally as sad to see.

We left the exhibition and decided to make our way to a coffee shop, but on the way we stopped by Prozna street which Karen told us is the last street from Jewish Ghetto still intact(Karen explained that it was in the small ghetto whose occupants were evacuated to the large ghetto which was later completely destroyed). The first building we saw there was quite beat up in terms of brickwork but all of the windows were new and seemed to have people living there. The next building was in quite worse shape, the windows old and missing glass, the building evacuated. We saw very old bullet holes in the walls outside…

A small walk across the street and we found the only Warsaw Synogogue to survive the war. It was closed but from the outside it seemed a rather beautiful building. The front exterior looked newly painted a nice yellow color that looked like it would be continued all around. Perhaps one day we’ll have a chance to look inside, but it always seemed like a strange thing to go into houses of worship like churches or synagogues to look around, so if not, I think that’d be alright.

We left the area and moved on to the park and returned to a more holiday setting. There in the park was a sort of small marching band standing in an arc and playing music with a color guard in front throwing batons. Seeing a tuba player and a sousaphone player there rekindled some urges to play the tuba. (I’m looking forward to December at my parent’s home to get to play my tuba…)

The rest of the park was setup with a sort of fair for children, though very different than any I was familiar with in my own experiences. People set up stands for people to play fooseball, pool, and even putt golf balls on those mini putting greens which I imagine executives purchasing for their offices. It seemed strange to me but at the same time the kids looked like they were enjoying themselves a good deal and I was happy to see that.

After the fair we finally made it to Antrakt, a very lovely coffee shop not too far away from where we live. A very neat space, I imagine that when it is colder that it would be a great place to read and work at.

We stayed a while and enjoyed good conversation then left and parted our own ways. It was a long, full day.

Hi All,

Regarding the website, I’ve just done a bit of work to make WordPress split entries with multiple enclosures to generate multiple entries with single enclosures, thus making it compliant with all Podcast software and RSS2 specifications.

I’ve also changed to use Feedburner for both the general RSS feed and Podcast feeds. The URL’s for those are:

http://feeds.feedburner.com/stevenYiMusic
http://feeds.feedburner.com/stevenYiMusicPodcast

Enjoy!
steven

Every time I read Chuang-Tzu it is as refreshing as the very first time…

Recently I’ve been reading Chuang-Tzu again and have found within it a great deal. It seems as relevant today in my life as it has ever been. With yesterday’s attempted airplane bombings, many things within the book seem to resonate with the times regarding a world out of balance. Within my own life, I have found that contemplating Chuang-Tzu has helped me get back to focusing on things which are very important to me, especially in regards to my music.

Today it is gray outside and now it is raining with thunder in the distance. It is a quiet and thoughtful day, a day to work away in silence…

This weekend we went to Kazimierz Dolny, a city to the South-East of Warsaw near the Ukrainian border. We travelled via bus with Lisa’s friend Karen, Karen’s cousin, and her cousin’s husband for a very nice weekend out in this small town.

Lisa and Karen had been before but the rest of us didn’t really know what to expect. We got to the city around lunch time and had a nice meal, then decided to explore the downtown and sites to be seen nearby before heading over to the castle (more on this later). We saw a lovely old church from the 1600’s, hiked up to see the hill of three crosses and a fantastic view of the city and all along the river, then over to a ruined castle and a tower. A long day of walking and hiking around, we ended with a long walk to the ferry, went across the river, and then another long walk and small hike up to another ruined castle.

We had made reservations prior to coming and had split the group for accomodations: Carroll and David stayed at the Zamek (castle) and Lisa, myself, and Karen stayed at the Dwor (manor hourse) right nearby. Being tired from the day full walks and hikes, we were glad to finally put our things down in our rooms and to enjoy a nice evening meal and long conversation afterwards with deliciously cold beer. While we were drinking the staff left and we ended up being the only ones left in the ruined castle! Karen, Lisa, and I eventually took our leave of the castle and made our way through the pitch black night to the Dwor, then quickly were off to sleep.

The next day we awoke, showered, collected our things and went over to the Zamek for a delicious Polish breakfast (bread, butter, tomato and cucumber slices, and a giant pot of coffee!). Afterwards we checked out and took a look at the museum part outside of the Zamek showing old-time machines that the people used for farming and making clothes as well as old boats they once used. With that we hiked down a different (and shorter!) path back to the ferry and made our way down the long walk back to the center of Kazimierz Dolny.

At this point David and Carroll decided to take a boat ride down the river, while Karen, Lisa, and I went off to hike through a gorge. The walk was gorgeous as the branches of trees arc over the path we walked and the foliage a beautiful green, a ray of sun light occasionaly breaking through the canopy. We walked to the top of the gorge where it flattened out to a hilltop, then made our way back down to the city. Altogether again, we had a lovely meal at U Fryzera (which translates to a barber shop, which was a part of their theme I guess). We got to the bus just fine and on our way back to Warsaw managed to get lost (well there was an accident and the bus driver was told by another to go on a detour that got us lost and had the driver asking people passing by how to get to Warsaw) but ended up having not lost much time.

A very nice trip, wonderful company, and completely refereshing. It was nice to take a break from the computer for a couple days and to go exploring. Now back again, I am happy to return to my work with a fresh energy and a calm mind.

During the summers in Warsaw, free piano concerts of Chopin’s music are staged at Lazienki Park and yesterday we had a chance to attend one of the concerts. The area of the park where this is done is rather nice, benches interspersed with bushes surrounding a little pond, a great big statue of Chopin looking down and to the side where beneath they setup a piano. The piano is microphoned with speakers set up about every 50 feet so that everyone can hear (though it of course doesn’t quite sound like the piano that way…).

The setting was nice, the weather fairly warm, and it was nice to be in a crowd of people who could be outside and at a concert and be fairly attentive. The pieces were all Chopin and was a nice selection, though the performance left a bit to be desired. The performer’s sense of time and rhythm and focus seemed to be too caught up in the technique (for lack of a better term), and the phrasing felt to be on a temporal level too short of how I felt the material felt should have been shaped, feeling a bit labored and melodramatic with the drastic changes of tempo.

Regardless, it was very nice to be there in the park in this setting. After the concert, we walked around the park exploring it for our first time, walking where we may and enjoying the lovely design and nature. The trees are grand, the paths nicely done, and many wonderful squirells and even a very large peacock was to be found. A small walk by the lake there, some ice cream, and another walk would end our first excursion there.

The weather has been a bit warm, and while cooler in the park, I imagine how incredible it must be when the weather is much cooler, and wonder how it will be in the winter when all the leaves are gone and when the ground is covered in snow…