A week of music

My idea of a good time after work usually involves one of three things. If it's a Tuesday, I hike up to Vitacura to spend an hour and a half "teaching" my private student which usually just involves us talking about anything and everything and drinking tea and eating strawberries. It's lovely. If it's a Thursday sometimes I get together with my girlfriends and we drink some sort of alcoholic beverages and talk about life. If it's any other day of the week, I run some errands, come home, take a nap with Charlie, wake up, make dinner, clean a bit then watch some TV shows from the US, read three pages of La ciudad y los perros and then go to bed. Once in a while Jack will come over, or we will go out for pizza and wait an hour to be served by a girl named Elke at Pizza Hut.

What I don't normally do after work is go to concerts. But this week was an exception.

Photo by HS, my camera is still broken

On Wednesday, I headed up to Espacio Riesco in Huechuraba to SUE (Santiago Urbano Electronico) which is a two day music festival featuring two bands each night. On Wednesday it was Mika and Scissor Sisters. I went mainly for Mika, as did the majority of people there. It was a great show and even though the venue wasn't 100% full, the crowd was really hopping. Mika speaks some Spanish so he was very endearing to the crowd, and at a couple of points the Chilenas started chanting "Mika mi'jito rico!" (I have to admit, he IS quite attractive).

Photo also by HS

One of the guys I went with used to study at Universidad Adolfo Ibáñez, which is arguably one of the most cuico universities in Santiago (also a really good university, especially for business). He saw four different people he knew from studying there and I would say that that pretty much summed up the type of crowd. Needless to say, I think my friends and I were the only ones to arrive by micro and not by Mercedes Benz.

Scissor Sisters was not as good. The problem was that their performance style depends A LOT on English, and the crowd just wasn't getting their jokes AT ALL. Also, the main singer had a cold and lost his falsetto, which was a bummer. Half the crowd had left before they came on (at around 12:30...WAY past my bedtime) so that also diminished the energy.

On Thursday, Jack emailed me that he had tickets to see Itzhak Perlman and the Prague City Orchestra in Parque Bicentenario. Was I interested? WAS I INTERESTED? Hello! Yes. So after work I rushed home and changed into formal wear and thank God thought to get my pea coat out of storage.

We had seats in the way back, but we had a really good (but small) view of the stage. The concert theme was music from movies, and as they played, scenes from the movie were projected on a screen. They played music from Gone With the Wind, The Godfather, Scent of a Woman, Out of Africa, Schindler's List and more. Apparently, Jack and I left at the intermission because we didn't realize it wasn't over. It was REALLY cold and there was a massive exodus during the intermission, so we thought it was over and left too. There was no type of announcement to the fact either, so how were we supposed to know? But anyway, it was for the best because even with my pea coat I was frozen and my butt was numb from the hard seat.

All in all, it was an entertaining week, but I know for a fact that I can't do this every week. I've spent all day today in bed with a sore throat, and I know its from lack of sleep this week. However, it was good to break out of my routine for a couple of days in the name of good music.