Juggling

Being a distance student, I don't often go into the University Library here in Dunedin (and this time I've found all the books I need for my essay in the public library, as it happens) but when I do, it always amazes me how many of the students leave their laptops lying around while they go off and chat, or go to the loo, or get something to eat or drink.   I guess if Mummy or Daddy have bought the laptop then the students don't have any sense of having had to work to pay for the thing, or maybe they think that there's a special student laptop insurance that applies in their case - and of course Mummy and Daddy will be dealing with that anyway. 

I've only used my laptop in the library a couple of times, and I don't think either time had anything to do with studying.   It just happened to be a pleasant place to do some writing.   If I remember rightly, one of the occasions was when I was working on the script for the musical.   It was early in the piece, when I was trying to get an overall structure to the thing, before my collaborator came in on the scene and gave the whole venture the real kickstart it needed.

The script is sitting on the computer at the moment, feeling a bit neglected.   Work on the university paper I'm doing has tended to take up most of my brain time, though I'm getting a little frustrated at not getting on with the composing side of things for the musical, and I can see me pushing that into the mix even though I should be giving time to the paper. 

It's the problem of having two interesting things to juggle at the same time.   I've never been terribly good at the actual physical art of juggling, though I did spend quite a few weeks practicing at one point.   Just couldn't seem to get past that stage where you're worrying over what's happening next and into the point where you start to relax.   It's something I'd like to be able to do, because it's quite a healthy thing: not just the physical arm movements, but picking up the balls continually is physically demanding.   Well the balls are still sitting in my wardrobe waiting.....

Photo of Tom James, the unicycle juggler, by Les Chatfield

Sharpening up the children's musical

I knew I'd written about electronic cigarettes on one of my blogs in the last year or so, but it took me a while to find the post (here it is). I thought it was on this blog, but it turned out to be on Webitz, a blog that's been a bit neglected of late while I've been working on the script for the children's musical with another person. The script is 'finished' but still needs work; things that don't quite hold together, lines that seemed good when written but aren't anymore, and whole scenes that still don't want to get themselves together (there's only one of those really; the others are mostly okay).

I guess what's holding up the script isn't the lack of work on it, but the fact that I think I've got it right and then the collaborator comes back and says, 'But what about this?' and I ask, what's wrong with that? and she tells me...and so it goes. And now, to add into the mix, I've started a University paper (funded by my work, so I'm not going to refuse to do it) and that of course is taking up the rest of the room in my brain. Good stuff, but while I lay in bed on Tuesday struggling to get over a stinker of a cold that dribbled all over the carpet every time I got up on my feet, my brain was acting like an insane juggler: children's musical, varsity paper, children's paper, varsity musical, musical children, paper varsity....and so on.

If only the collaborator wasn't so sharp - the script would have been done and finished by now, and I could have relaxed over something that wasn't nearly as good as it could be. But because she is sharp, I have to sharpen up my act too...and so the script isn't quite where it needs to be.

I have written a little music for it (a tiny modicum - don't tell the collaborator!) because there were some tunes I had in my head that desperately wanted to be put on paper. I'll try and be good and not write any more....

The play begins

I'm writing this as a way of both getting warmed up for my next (and final) essay for the Research Methods paper I'm doing, and to also note that the play had its first night last night, and went very well. A few missed lines, a few moments when nobody spoke (but somebody should have) - including me - but overall a success. The audience delighted in it. It seems like a very wordy play (I guess that's hardly unusual) but the words have a lot of subtlety and heaps of humour. In fact, I think the cast continues to find it funny, which is always a plus. I certainly do.

There's a 'window' in the set, so that those backstage can actually stand there (without being seen by the audience) and watch at least part of the stage. It's interesting to see how the various actors have developed their characters; no one is just being there saying the lines: there's lots of detail and lots to keep the audiences eyes interested, as well as their ears.

We had an after-show 'do' last night. The South Dunedin Rotary Club had been the bulk of the audience, and were using it as some kind of fundraiser (to do with polio in third world countries). So all the actors trouped upstairs to the socializing area (which is where we did most of our rehearsing, in fact) and met up with the various bodies who make up the Rotarians.

What was interesting is that the two groups barely mixed. Here we have on one hand a bunch of people who can cope with performing on stage in front of a crowd of strangers, and yet when they come face to face with the same people, they mostly become introverts. I thought it was just me, but several of the cast were like that - or else they honed in on somebody they already knew and spent most of their time with them. And on the other hand, we have a bunch of people who are socially adept, and yet who kept their distance from the actors. Surely actors are 'okay' people these days? Or is it that they just didn't know what to say? Intriguing.

On another issue entirely...

There are always new jobs turning up (or maybe old jobs with new titles). I'd never heard of the job that requires medical coding, but apparently it's a job just like any other. The are medical coding training courses available. According to one site: Medical Coding and Billing Specialist are employed by hospitals, clinics, physicians' offices, health maintenance organizations (HMOs), mental health care facilities, insurance companies, consulting firms, health data organizations and information system vendors. As an Insurance Coding & Billing Specialist, you play an integral role in your employer's office. You help make it possible for your employer to collect monetary reimbursements from patient insurance providers. Medical insurance billing/coding and its related occupations are among the fastest growing opportunities in the healthcare industry.
Maybe the reason we don't hear so much about it here in NZ is because we don't, in general, have medical insurance. Or rather, there are medical insurers, but they're not the way the medical system is run, basically. Anyway, if you want to become a medical coding trainee, you can do it online - a kind of distance course, like my Research Methods.

Contrast

I finally made an effort and finished John Cairney's Flashback Forward, which I wrote a little about in an earlier post. Sadly the book doesn't improve. After getting to the point where the big incident happens and the main character is somehow split in two, things ramble on in an interminable fashion for another 200 plus pages (!) Cairney can write well, but he's relied on the big incident at around 100 pages to make his book. It doesn't. There's no plot, no characters that go anywhere or grow in any way. No interaction of people apart from some fairly bland relationships, and even those don't move forward. Very disappointing.
So it's been a relief to get my teeth into (an appropriate phrase to use in the circumstances), Stephenie Meyer's Twilight, which I'd had on reserve at the library for a month or more, and which finally turned up on Friday. It's obviously very popular, and you can see why. Perceptive writing about people who have some reality about them. Clever quiet humour; a neat idea that holds our attention from the beginning (I had some idea of what was coming, but it didn't spoil the reading in any way); and writing that's just as stylish as Cairney's. A lot of American writers are very stylish, but not all of them write well. Meyer certainly does. I'm already 172 pages into the book, and only started it around 1pm. (It's now 4, and I haven't been reading continually through that time.)
It's intriguing to find that this book was Meyer's first; it's accomplished, sure of itself, perhaps a little long (but you don't care), and creates a very real world with characters that come alive quickly. A bunch of high school students could easily get confusing and interchangeable: these ones don't. Furthermore the romantic angle is never slushy or over the top. Bella, the main character, is mostly level-headed and mature (for her years).
I'm looking forward to carrying on reading it before I have to go back to Varsity study and learning lines for the play and so on!

When We Are Married

Haven't mentioned the Varsity course I'm doing on here much, I don't think. When I last wrote about it, I was still doing a week's block course called, Congregations in New Zealand. Well, that got side-swiped by the fact that I was in hospital that week (!), so I reverted to my earlier choice of an online paper called Research Methods, which actually suited me better anyway.
I've been getting along fairly well with the course, and enjoying it, but I also got asked a couple of weeks ago to do a part in a play. It was a very small part, two scenes in which I would have been on the stage for no more than about three minutes in total. Achievable, I thought.
The play is When We Are Married, by J B Priestley. It dates back to the thirties, I think, but is actually set in the late 19th century. It has a cast of fourteen, so it's a big piece actor-wise. Several of the parts are relatively small (though none of them quite so small as what I was to be doing: the local chapel minister.)
Anyway, I went to the first read-through, and did my two bits, and thought this will fit in nicely with my Varsity work. And then yesterday got a call to say that the man playing the photographer in the play had had to pull out due to unexpected work commitments, and would I take over that role?
It's still not a large part, thank goodness (though it's a lot more fun) - he's on for a couple of minutes in the first act, and then doesn't appear again until two thirds of the way through the third act. The two scenes there are a bit more involved, but still not what you'd call huge. But the rehearsal schedule turns out to be very full on. Three nights a week, and we open on the 23rd May. Crikey.
Fortunately, not being in the second act at all, I have a couple of weeks off in the middle of the schedule, but after that it's going to be a fight to get the Varsity work done.
Well, live on the edge, they say. Not quite sure if that applies here, but it feels a bit like it.