This is New...

OK, the title for this post is somewhat cheating. It's a Kurt Weill song, but with Ira's lyrics. But anyway.

I started work exactly a month ago on Wednesday. I'm working in a great law firm in Wellington, and in tax again. *sigh* I love tax. It's a reasonably small team, but the people are really lovely.

The good things about working:

- the money! It's so exciting to get a credit card and then use it, and then to only have to pay it off in 55 days' time. Net present value and all that. Very good. And to get a regular pay after working at the university intermittently feels good, although I'm only two pays into the job...

- the tax! Not paying it (another subject to not get me started on), but the whole set of laws and everything. I've been blessed to have been able to know what I want to do, and to have been given such a great opportunity to work with some of the leaders in the field. And I can't wait till the 2007 Income Tax Act gets printed and I get my copy, fresh from the printers (I'm currently using a copy I swiped from the Finance team). Ah, the smell of a new ITA. Gives me the tingles... And under this heading I have to

- an office! I have a little glass box that is all mine. Well, other than the fact that I have a stack of about 15 boxes in one corner of my 9' by 9', and I only have about a metre of shelf space because the other 3 shelves have been used as storage. Apparently it was a lot worse before I turned up, my buddy was very proud when she showed me the extent of the tidying. But I still walk in some days and a magic box has appeared on my desk, or a file is lying open... Maybe I will start a sculpture, and block other people from looking in while I check TradeMe. But it still beats open plan offices. No privacy when you spend half an hour organising and buying tickets on the phone...

The bad things about working:

The time... It takes time to get to work, it takes time to work, it takes time to get back home. I'm out from 7.30 to 6.30 on an ordinary day, much longer if it's slightly busier. A couple of times a week I have breakfast trainings to attend, so that means leaving the house around 7am. And I'm not a morning person...

Being in a professional industry, time is of the essence and a lot of things are done within a very strict and tight timeframe. Case in point: Last Wednesday I was given a job with another, the materials we were to work with weren't ready until Thursday, by which time I had been given a couple of other urgent jobs, so I didn't start the original job until Thursday evening. I was at work from 8am until 9.30pm on Thursday, and the same on Friday, to avoid coming in on the weekend (the other grad did come in to do a few hours), and we worked from 8.30am Monday till... 4am Tuesday. I got home around 4.15, and was in bed by 4.30am. I was awake by 8.45am, to tell my secretary that I wouldn't be in until 11am. Let's just say that various family members had a lot to say about this...

My own time has suddenly become more precious to me. I have picked up the nasty habit of constantly looking at my watch. Catching up with friends is no longer a matter of drifting down to the Law School cafe, but of careful planning and booking. Shopping must be done during lunch times, because by the time I leave work everything is closed or closing (in which case they give me evil glares). I get annoyed when people are late without reason. I waited 20 minutes for someone to turn up, and my lunch hour is only an hour (funny that). Needless to say, in the absence of a respectable reason like "I got an urgent phone call from my senior", lunches with such persons will not be so quickly reoccuring. "I mis-estimated the time it would take for me to come from my house which I have lived in for the past month at least" just doesn't cut it, especially when the person in question has a history of tardiness.

All this money, but no time to spend it...

That's really all the bad so far. I really do love what I do, and I realise that not everyone gets to do what they like, be good at it and to be paid for it. My buddy commented to me that the firm doesn't require much, just your soul. Cynical and caustic he may be (and he is), but he is spot on in this regard.

Music-wise, I haven't had much opportunity to practise since I finished my Dip exam, but I am currently trying to memorise "The Man I Love" and "I Got Rhythm", as well as "Unexpected Song" from ALW's Song and Dance. I've deviated a bit listening-wise to Andrew Lloyd Webber as Cats is coming to Wellington in May, and I have just bought my tickets this past week, and am trying to re-familiarise myself with his music. Though I must say that a lot of it sounds much the same. I still love his music though. Another topic for another day. And La Boheme is here in early May too!!! But I haven't found anyone who wants to go. And Wicked! opens in Melbourne in July!!! Ditto regarding finding company to go with, the family has volunteered if I pay for them.

Buy of the month: ALW's Variations for Cello for $10.95. It's played by his younger brother Julian (famous in his own right as one of the top cellists around). It's based on a famous theme by Paganini, made famous by Rachmaninov's piano variations. This CD is out of print, and the copy at the public library is scratched beyond all reason (it can't get past the first 3 minutes without skipping, I don't know why they don't just throw it away). It's not the bestest piece of music around, but it has its place in musical theatre history.

*Sigh* Have a Blessed Easter!!!

What Causes That?

I better explain myself and what I'm doing (not that I'm entirely clear myself).

I live in New Zealand, and have done so for more than half of my life. I have also spent some time in South East Asia. I study not music, but law and accounting, and I'm just finishing off my final papers right now (yippee!).

That's actually not entirely true, I am studying for a DipABRSM in piano performance, but have never done music at university. My exam is in about a month's time, and it's quite scary to think that 11 months of hard work will culminate in an hour-long 'exam'. I finished Grade 8 years ago, and had always wanted to do a diploma, if for no other reason than to prove to myself that I could actually play well if I tried harder (I'm a last minute crammer when it comes to study, and that doesn't tend to work too well with piano exams and concerts). It also means that I am more able to find work as a piano teacher if I get sick of my desk job. And also, it adds to my superiority complex (and believe me, it's big). The thing is, lots of people get to Grade 8 in piano or whatever, and then they stop and never go near a piano again, which is a great pity. And I don't want to be like that. My performance for that is in about a month's time, and I'm playing in a couple of competitions in the time leading up to that. So it's all go from here...

And I love Gershwin!!! He is a genius... Aside from Gershwin, I also love musicals, JS Bach, Mozart, Beethoven, Darius Milhaud, and Glenn Gould (another great "GG"). But that's stuff to talk about another day.

How did I get hooked into Gershwin? It's a long story... I was watching The Les Mis 10th anniversary concert, and I was listening to Ruthie Henshall as Fantine sing "I Dreamed A Dream", and I thought she had a very nice voice so I went on a big search for music by her. She had recorded a Gershwin CD called "Love Is Here To Stay"(which is sadly out of print, I would dearly love to get it), and a couple of others (which I have). BUT I found she was in the cast recording of the London production for "Crazy For You", a musical loosely based on Gershwin's "Girl Crazy" with a whole lot of other Gershwin music tossed in (like the Concerto in F, third movement, and The Man I Love as a bridge between scene changes). And that was the beginning of the craze...

Fast forward a year or so, when it came to choosing the programme for my diploma, I saw that Gershwin's piano transcriptions of "The Man I Love" and "I Got Rhythm" were on the list, and I had to play it... To be honest, I had only heard "The Man I Love" only a couple of times and thought it was orright, and I figured it was worth it to be able to play "I Got Rhythm", but now I really like "The Man I Love", even more than "I Got Rhythm". But they are both up there in my Gershwin top 10.

Aside from that, I'm also playing JS Bach's Prelude and Fugue in F minor BWV 857, Mozart's piano sonata in C major K309, and Chopin's Nocturne in E major Op 62, No 2. It's such nice music *sigh*. Which reminds me, I better go practise before my lesson.