Chris Doig OBE CNZM - Operatic singer, sports administrator, arts administrator

Only this year Christopher Doig was made Companion to the New Zealand Oder of Merit for services to the arts & sport.  I didn't really know a lot about him, except as an international opera singer who won the 1972 Mobil Song Quest (as it was then), graduated with top honours from the Vienna Music Academy, & performed for years at, among other international venues, the Vienna State Opera. 
So I was somewhat surprised when he was made CEO at New Zealand Cricket in 1995; he was also involved with the NZRU, NZ Rowing & Sparc.  

I already knew he was involved in Arts administration.
" He was director of the International Festival of the Arts from 1992 to 1995, a chairman of Creative New Zealand in 2006, and on the New Zealand Symphony Orchestra Foundation board.
As Southern Opera Trust chairman, he was responsible for bringing international opera star Placido Domingo to Christchurch last week " (3News - more).


Today we lost a great New Zealander (NZ Herald).  He died at Nurse Maude Hospice in Christchurch after a two-year battle with bowel cancer.
RIP.

**********************************************************

I can't feel even vaguely sympathetic to another of this year's CNZMs - Roger Kerr.  His diatribe in the Otago Daily Times recently about the "insupportable burden of student loans" reeked of the kind of hypocrisy that gets baby boomers like me a bad name - he got his MA(Hons 1st class) back in the days when tertiary education was largely free-to-user, & I'll bet he wasn't complaining then!  The taxpayer got a return via the higher taxes paid by most graduates, in a society where the well-off more nearly paid their fair share.  Not like today.  

Yes, I understand Kerr is also fighting cancer, & yes, I hate the disease for taking my friends & relatives,  but I can't feel for him in the least.

Steely Dan!!

A little while back my friend Stephanie sent me a link to a You-Tube clip which had some nostalgic significance for her - what a luvly track!!

Having gotten turned on to Steely Dan in a big way, i thought i'd show you some more
(big ups to xRainxWhenxIxDiex):
'Haitian Divorce', 'East St. Louis Toodle-Oo' & a real rocker 'Bodhisattva'

There's other great stuff too, like 'Deacon Blues',
& 'Kid Charlemagne',
but that's enuf to be going on with :)

ps: here's a Wiki ref to 'Deacon Blues'
.

I meant to get some Work Done {sigh}..

..but i got side-tracked!

'Frustrated' would be a better word:

*Online banking is usually fairly straightforward for me - i've been doing it for years, but accessing my Recharge Card is proving to be bloody annoyingly difficult!  I can't work out if the bloody thing is accessible only via Internet Explorer (which i hate & try never to use), if it has some complicated registration/log-on procedure involving galactic-sized ID numbers, & whether my bank has done anything about it since i last complained..

* All i wanted to do was to get Windows Media Player to turn some  .wma  files into MP3 files so i could listen to them on my little MP3 player - nope!!  WMP'll 'rip' them from a CD but can't/won't (dunno which!) transmogrify them into MP3 files {sigh}..

*By the time i got thru all that, a sizable chunk of my time had been wasted, not to mention an entire SecureMail to my bank because its website timed-out & my email disappeared into a cyber-hole somewhere.. My second attempt was shorter, & probably rather testy..


*I'm now feeling tired & crabby & not up to doing any work at all!


Maybe tomorrow {sigh}.. :-(

Day for Night - MouVery, & Devo - summer's coming..

I'm a chronic night-owl.
I can understand people who get up very early in the morning, but if i did that i'd definitely be going back to bed later on (as later that morning probably).
I jokingly tell people i keep 'Spanish hours':
eat late;
stay up till idiot-o'clock in the morning;
get a few zzz;
get up early-ish (i flag this bit) for brekkie;
have a nice siesta around midday until 2-3 pm :-)

I'd have the driver's seat of my car right back, an unzipped sleeping-bag over me, my head on a cushion, & i'd be fine-thank-you!
People would knock on my car windows just to wake me up!

So, here i am, online @ 4am & not feeling particularly tired - but then, i spent much of yesterday in bed, keeping warm in a house that is cold & uninsulated, so cluttered that the insulators would find it a real challenge, & wondering (yet again) why we in NZ put up with ridiculous power price hikes.


But i'm not in the mood for a whinge, not right now..


I found a music review of 'Devo', whose music i heard a few weeks ago in a tiny bar in Dunedin's main street - called MouVery.  More about Devo here, & discography.
 
MouVery advertised itself as 'probably the smallest bar in the universe' - they could be right!

Eons ago there was a small supermarket next door, & a friend of mine discovered this very narrow niche beside it that had been covered in - you couldn't see anything there from the outside.  He ran a cobbler's shop (footwear repairs to you) over in Frederick Street, just a hop-skip-&-jump away from from this place on George Street (opposite the 'Robbie Burns', our regular watering-hole), & he wanted to open a heel-bar there doing 5-minute repairs to women's damaged high-heels, but the idea fell through.

The next occupant was a little jewellery shop where i got my second lot of ear-piercings.


And now there's MouVery - run by Olivier - & i really really like the place!  
Links include their Face-book page - the little Giraffe was cemented into the brickwork, but some bastard's nicked him..I'd've had it on a steel pin stuck into the bricks with Loctite or something..
I'd spend a whole lot more time there if i wasn't so broke, even though all i drink is coffee & hot-chocolate (my elbow-bending days eventually saw me getting dried out & later going to AA meetings).  Haven't been there for a while - i hope the bubble machine is still blowing bubbles out onto George Street, or maybe that's a summer thing.

And now that we're into September, summer's coming!
We can sit outside, or in the little alley-way seats..
..& enjoy watching some of the world go by :-)

I luv the funny little WotWots.. & Radio New Zealand Concert

"The WotWots" run daily on TVNZ's morning children's session on TV2, & they're cute & so funny!  Two little aliens, DottyWot & her brother SpottyWot have landed (been stranded in?) their steampunk spaceship in what looks like Auckland zoo. Their steampunk hoverchairs run on fruit juice  & every new day we get get to check in & ask them about their explorations & any new animals they find via their Sneak-a-Peek periscope..

Yesterday's 'Composer of the Week' on Radio New Zealand Concert talked about Estonian musician Arvo Part. I'm so pleased to hear more of him than 'Fratres' & 'Spiegel im Spiegel', because they're only part of his musical style.  TG 4 RNZ Concert - i wake up @ some ridiculous hour & there's a good chance that their all-night program (thank you, 6-CD auto-changer, 4 making it economically possible) will have something i really like -Pascal Roge's fabulous performance of Ravel's Piano Concerto for Left Hand or Mahler's Ruckert songs (i'm a sucker for mezzos & contraltos - i first heard the great Kathleen Ferrier @ a little party 20 years ago; just blew me away!), Dvorak's Slavonic Dances or 'New World' Symphony (yay Mariss Jansons), Bartok's Music for Strings Percussion & Celesta, Borodin, Prokofiev, Debussy, Haydn, de Falla, Granados, Mozart. Beethoven, Bach, Sibelius, you-name-it..
Hehehe - one of my IT lecturers once joked that he had only to mention Shostakovich in the staff-room to kill a conversation stone-dead..


I'll listen to anything good: jazz, classical, rock, country, techno (& its 'classical' cousin minimalism - cf. Kraftwerk & John Adams or Steve Reich), even heavy metal (but only in places with a good - loud - sound system)..