On Aliens

I’m pretty sure my new upstairs neighbour is a professional guitar player.

I base this conclusion on two facts.

One, there’s been several rehearsals going on – and only a single one of them not nice to listen to, amazingly enough. It was something with improvisational grunt-singing, I believe, which is a tad guttural for my tastes. Still, if anyone were to listen to me practicing, I seriously doubt I’d get that good an average.

And two: there have been several instances where said guitarist started practicing his scales with metronome around 10 PM, keeping this up for half an hour to forty-five minutes. I know very few non-professionals who would do that on a regular basis.

I am rather extremely pleased with this. I was a little worried about potential noise complaints now that I’m practicing at my new home. However, knowing this and having received only cheerful smiles from any of the neighbours I’ve met, I now honestly believe I can study as much as I please without bothering anyone.

In other news, I think we were attacked by aliens last night.

There was some rather repetitive music being played at an unpleasant volume, which resulted in us waking up at four in the morning. After a few minutes we decided we were quite sure from which direction it came, whereupon the doorbell of said direction was rung (several times, because it took a while before they heard us).

Then, suddenly, the music stopped – right before the doorbell owners opened their front door. They told us that they’d heard some vague noises too, but it definitely wasn’t them.

The plot thickens.

After having gone back to bed, the music started up again, but at a decidedly lower volume, and stopped entirely not two minutes later.

As I see it, there’s no earthly reason why anyone would turn off their music right after someone just rang their neighbour’s doorbell. Hence my conclusion that it must’ve been aliens.

It’s a very exciting neighbourhood I’ve moved to!

My new home is a lovely 1930’s apartment in Rotterdam, complete with stain-glass windows. It’s got slidey doors and a gas heater and it’s completely wonderful. Tragically, it’s not quite big enough for my grand piano, which means I’m back to practicing on my Roland clavinova - I’ve been having some flashbacks to my conservatoire time these last weeks.

What I’m practicing for is my upcoming concert – save the date:

Sunday the 7th of February at 16:00 I will play in the Regentenkamer in The Hague.

The programme will be a mixture of studies and romantic music. The entry fee will be € 12,50.

There is also a bar.

Basically, everybody needs to be there.