Concert, cycling and Serenity

The concert, you'll be pleased to know, went very well. The cold I'd had, on and off, for a week managed to hold off and not stuff my vocal chords up. I was a bit tense at the start but everything relaxed after a while so things were good. In rehearsal, I decided that doing Le temps des lilas from memory was probably not a good idea so I did it from music. Weirdly, that seemed to make it worse as the counting problems seemed to increase. Nonetheless, my accompanist and I covered it up so no-one noticed - I think...

Some friends and family joined me for dinner at Juniper (great restaurant) which was very pleasant. Turned out that my friend Alex Hood was there as well. Wellington is a very small town.

Unfortunately, come Friday my voice all but disappeared - and it's still not back as I write. I suppose the 80km bike ride I did on Saturday didn't help. However, I really needed to do it as it was the last chance to get a long bike ride in, and a ride at target distance, before Taupo. Next weekend I've got the first triathlon of the season. It was a very hard ride because Wellington decided to turn on a very strong northerly. Riding north up the east side of the Miramar Peninsula going at about 15km/h was very painful. Getting home was great! Of course, then I had to do a quick turnaround, pick up my sisters and get to Courtenay Place in time to meet friends, eat dinner and see Serenity.

Eating a pile of food at Khmer Satay House in the food court was just what I needed. In fact, it's quite nice being able to eat a pile of food after a hard effort.

Serenity is great! Go see it. No really, do, you'll like it. Just trust me.
It's best described as a sci-fi western but that sound bite doesn't do it justice. It's about a small group of people who happen to crew a ship which transports goods around the universe. Those goods might or might not be legal so they tend to get chased a lot. In this case they have a highly trained operative chasing one of their crew.
The movie is interesting because it's mostly character led. Instead of the grand heroic gestures of movies like Star Wars the characters often face fairly difficult moral dilemmas and have to ask themselves some deep questions.
For those that may not care for such philosophical questions the movie does have attractive actors (well.. very.. the engineer can come visit me anytime...) and lots of action. Seeing a slim girl taking on a whole heap of really evil bastards is rather heartening. Being a former prima ballerina is certainly an advantage for stunt work.

So, with my voice still dead, I've spend most of this lovely Sunday inside. Such is life...