Ordinary fool

Drupal really is the bees knees. So much so that I've thrown up an [?external:http://www.efurbishment.com Efurbishment] web site. I think this means I'm in business.

Another of my clients—[?external:http://www.breath.net.nz Breath New Zealand]—made the jump to [?external:http://www.drupal.org Drupal] last weekend. If you are looking for a content management system (CMS), it's hard to go past Drupal's pluggable, skinable architecture. Polls, forums, blogs, collaborative story writing, you name it; the feature's either already available, or easy to build and plug in. Drupal is open source. I haven't been this excited about a tool for a long time. It won't be long before AtomicMaestro gets the treatment too.

The irony. A lesson learned. At work today I realised that my strenuous efforts to impress and win the professional trust of other people can actually cause them to distrust me. My self-confidence and surety ("trust me, let me show you I'm right... no really, I demand you to let me prove it") can come across as undermining and disrespectful. Seems obvious really doesn't it? God only knows how I got the idea that I could force someone to trust me. On the bright side, my brother Warwick trusts me enough to have asked me to be the godfather of hismy niece/nephew. I'm thrilled.

Let me set the scene. An idyll. Nicola and I living fulfilling lives together in London, our lives joined practically and spiritually. We travel, work, drink, eat, sleep, blog and dream together. Perhaps one day we will reproduce. We want to marry. Readers will be familiar with this dramatic curve. Two lovers, pastoral bliss... There must be trouble ahead, and indeed there is. Let me introduce to you this story's rocks, and hard places.

First, the rock. Nicola, like me, is a Kiwi. Unlike me, she doesn't have a British passport. Her Commonwealth working visa runs out in February next year. Once we are married she will be entitled to live and work here indefinitely.

Second, the hard place. My father, brother and sister-in-law live in the UK. My mother, Nicola's parents, sister, many of our friends and extended families live in New Zealand. Ideally we will all be together on our wedding day. The reality is that we can't be. How do we compromise? So far we've thought of:

1. Marrying in Wellington. Pros. Our friends and the vast majority of our extended families can attend a traditional wedding in a church with a family connection. Nicola's parents are in favour of this option and we will be able to rely on their energy and support. Cons. My father feels too old to travel 12,000 miles and won't be able to come. My brother and sister-in-law are having a baby in December. I will need to wait until my brother and sister-in-law are ready to travel with their child. I want my brother to be a best man. It will be difficult to organise from London. We'd need to rely on our families to help organise it, or hire an events coordinator. While we grew up in Wellington, it doesn't currently feel like home.
2. Marrying in London. Pros. My father, brother and sister-in-law are already here. It would be easy for us to organise. We would not need to travel or take extended time off work. Cons. My mother and Nicola's parents will need to travel. Nicola's sister Felicity, bridesmaids, and many of our friends and extended family probably won't be able to join us.
3. Marrying in a registry office in London, and following it up with a church service in Wellington. Pros. Everyone can be at one or other of the ceremonies. Both ceremonies have significance and meaning for us. Cons. Nicola's parents are against the idea. They feel that literally speaking, you can only get married once. Their approval and understanding matters to us. The Wellington ceremony will still need to be organised remotely and parental disapproval will make this difficult. With two ceremonies there will be twice as much preparation and organisation.
4. Elope. Pros. It worked for Percy Bysshe Shelley and Mary Wollstonecraft but she ended up writing Frankenstein. Cons. It's not what we want to do.

It's paralysing to be caught between a rock and a hard place. We've realised what we must do. Divide, conquer, and use diplomacy to persuade the rock not to form an even more formidable alliance with the deep blue sea. We can't let Nicola's visa expiry date force us into an unhappy compromise, or capitulation over our wedding plans. There will be a happy ending.

The New Zealand Opera Society's blog is now online. May God bless her and all who sail in her.

I've just arrived back from two weeks in New Zealand and I have plenty of new material to puzzle through. More to come, but for now I'll start with a soft target: Wellington's newspaper. In Wellington there is just one daily, The Dominion Post. The Dominion Post averages around 40 pages per day. Extensive advertising content is interspersed with relatively inobtrusive local news, world news, sports, features, crosswords and TV listings. I skim-read it happily in the time it takes to eat a bowl of my Mum's fabulous porridge.

The Dominion Post is an uncomfortable contraction in both name and content of two long-established Wellington newspapers: The Dominion (1907-2002) and The Evening Post (1865-2002). Worse, its domain name, http://www.dompost.co.nz/ is a single unfortunate letter away from http://www.compost.co.nz/.

I always suspect myself of singling out home town product for disproportionate criticism, tall poppy syndrome if you like, but the amount of advertising is unfortunate. Grumpy, and itching to jump onto Google News instead, I decided to have a go at the five minute quiz. I got as far as question number 5: "Who is Australasia's biggest travel agency?". Aargh.

When I've sung enough to ensure myself a supper, I get to spend time on the projects that I do more out of interest than for the money. One of these projects is the web site of the  New Zealand Opera Society.

The printed form of the New Zealand Opera News is fairly well established, published monthly since 1977. The magazine targets New Zealand's opera enthusiasts. The standard of writing in the magazine is high. It recounts readers' impressions of trips to the opera houses abroad. It features letters from foreign-based New Zealand singers describing their successes overseas. It contains interviews with creative teams behind new productions. A diary, running about four or five months into the future, outlines opera productions and other operatic activities such as concerts of opera excerpts and singing contests. Sometimes the magazine risks slightly more controversial subjects, such as government arts funding. Subscribers pay around $30 NZ per year.

The committee and editorial team are intelligent, literate and articulate volunteers with plenty of experience in the print medium. They are enthusiastic about opera and travel widely to follow their passion. A couple of years ago the society commissioned a web site but for various reasons, mostly technical, the web site became unmaintainable. Sharon is a friend of mine who is both an editor and a member of the National Opera chorus. She offered herself to the society as "web editor" in an effort to revive the web site. She called me for technical assistance.

We met with the committee to discuss the site. Not unreasonably, the society feels that an attractive web site should attract new members. Online teasers and a "subscribe now" button ought to encourage subscriptions. The diary and events page should be the most up-to-date opera diary around given that the list of subscribers includes the majority of the New Zealand opera community. The reality is that few people visit the web site, members rarely volunteer events information, and nobody is clicking the "subscribe now" button. So what can the web can offer an organisation like the New Zealand Opera Society?

More and more I am of the opinion that organisations will benefit from seeing their web site as a conversation, not as an advertisement. It's no surprise I'm sure, but I suggested the Opera Society try blogging. Imagine a travelling opera lover, stunned by an ex-pat's performance as Gilda in a small theatre on the Black Sea coast in Varna, Bulgaria. She drops into an Internet café, logs on to www.opera.net.nz, and submits a review which is instantly available for all to read. Imagine an opera chorus baritone blogging behind-the-scenes gossip during rehearsals for an upcoming season; the audience swells with people who want to see the vain, corsetted Don Giovanni. Some editorial control may prove necessary, but you get the idea!

I may even volunteer as contributor myself. I can just see it now: struggling conductor, living in a London garret, singing for his supper... and that's where we came in.

Here, direct from the Whittington Hospital Prosound SSD-5000, is the latest image of Baby Leicester—at 20 weeks. This was a scan to detect “major abnormalities”. Abnormalities? I'm not sure about that, but my brother Warwick thinks his baby has inherited our father's unusually large nose. I suggested that baby might be a unicorn. Either way, baby is beautiful.

My social life has picked up a little now that I'm conducting a new choir here in London. Already there are a core of us who regularly head off after rehearsals to the Prince Arthur (a local recommended by the St Mary's priest, Father Rob Wickham). A couple of the guys asked me how I became a conductor. After a few jokes about the sort of qualifications you'd need to go riding around in a Routemaster clipping tickets, I told my story.

My mother played the clarinet and some piano. My father was a manager for the national orchestra (when it was the NZBC orchestra) and a fine whistler. Back in those days the orchestra thought it was a good idea to introduce visiting international stars to a good New Zealand-style home-cooked meal. My Mum still tells stories about the times Janet Baker or Vladimir Ashkenazy came around to our place for dinner. Janet Baker, as Mum tells it, would take off her shoes and run her toes through our sheepskin rug with great delight, not realising there was a petrified housewife in the kitchen cooking up TVP for the rich and famous.

All that was before I was born. There are no stories of a passing Glenn Gould predicting great things for me having heard me playing Für Elise between courses of fondue. Like most kids I played a little of this and that, badly, for a few weeks before casting the unfortunate instrument aside. I think I tried violin and piano. Then, for some unknown reason at around the age of 17, I picked up the electric bass guitar. In collusion with my brother and a few misfit friends, I played in some pretty awful bands and wrote and recorded some fairly diabolical songs. I realised I didn't want to be awful forever, so I decided I should learn how to compose. There was no School of Rock so I had to go to university. They didn't teach me much about writing pop hits, but I found out a lot about classical music. I loved it anyway. I took up composing seriously—serious music you understand—and I wrote a lot of string quartets. Part of me was sad though because I liked performing but I couldn't really play any classical instruments. What was I to do? I realised that back in my band days I had been the one bossing everyone around, getting my way with music, for better or worse. The answer was obvious. I took up conducting.

My first conductorial dabblings were during my university studies. I took a conducting course where we got to wave our arms at our fellow students. As it turned out, Nicola was among them, and this is how we first met. My first real choir was the Upper Hutt Choral Society. They were desperate for a musical director. Later I started conducting the Wellington Capital Boys' Choir. Screaming boys. I had a lucky break and became conductor of the Festival Singers of Wellington. The singers were good and we sang lots of masses and hymns. Through that I had the opportunity to work with orchestras, performing Handel, Beethoven and so on. I liked that. Then, with Mandy Wong, I started a professional singing group called Cantiamo con Gioia, made up of off-season opera chorus singers. We performed at Civic functions, in Te Papa, and in the Wellington Botanic Gardens during the Summer City programme. Still not content, I started conducting the Schola Sacra choir in Wanganui, travelling up on the bus once a week. Schola Sacra were quite good too, and together we recorded items for Praise Be, and a CD called Pohutukawa Carols. Also in Wanganui, I helped set up an orchestra, the aptly named Wanganui Sinfonietta. Wanganui was “well worth the journey” in many ways, not least of which being the wonderful late night conversations I had with so many choir members. Every Tuesday night I was billeted with a different choir member. Over many bottles of wine I made some firm friends.

I was busy. In some ways I was pleased to give it all up at the end of 2002 when Nicola and I left New Zealand for the UK. However, I found an application form for a conducting course in Bulgaria. I applied, and Nicola and I went. That trip was something else. Musically speaking though, that was it for a whole year. I'd had enough... or so I thought. Now, here I am in London working with a new group of singers, making some sweet choir music once more. All the singers are students of Louisa Langston, Nicola's singing teacher. It's a real privilige to work with 100% training singers. This week the choir will perform for Louisa for the first time and I think she will be very proud. I think the choir will be proud of themselves too. If they're not, I could always pick up one of these and take up the other kind of conducting.

* My mother played in an orchestra in Hawera with Ross Pople. Ross was a prodigy and went on to become a well respected conductor and recording artist here in London. I saw him conducting here recently and went and said hello backstage. Who said nobody famous comes from a small town?

Oh Mark, any opportunity to draw my attention to your blogging—and I get sucked in everytime!

Yep. I'm a shameless user and determined pusher. Not only do I flaunt my addiction in front of friends and family, promoting my blog at any opportunity, but I brazenly encourage others to take up the habit too. It's not to make me feel better about my dependency. Really.

Anyhow, a new blogonaut has entered the blogosphere. This newest blogonaut is my very own Mum. She is a counsellor and psychotherapist. Marian wants a means to articulate her observations and discoveries to her clients and potential clients. I think she may also get conversation. I like the way she writes and I'm looking forward to hearing more. If you're interested, check out http://www.pupurangi.co.nz/. If Marian is ever looking to broaden her client base perhaps she might consider diversifying into therapy for the hopelessly blog addicted.