Day2: Cités International des Arts and the 'magic' cards

This is a very busy week for IRCAM, as they are organizing Agora festival in Paris. I knew about this long ago and planned to use this week as a 'set up' week for myself and the family, which seems to be working well. After Bruno set me up with the new version of the Augmented Violin software, I came back to my studio apartment at Cités International des Arts and was able to run some of my demos for next week; I will be giving a lecture for the IRCAM community (though open for public, so please let me know if any of you want to come, I have to put your names on the list). It is on Tuesday, June 15th at 12h-13h at Salle Stravinsky, IRCAM (1, Place Igor-Stravinsky in front of the 'Miro' foundtain). BTW my husband said "C'est completement MIRO" in French means "it's crazy".

I am realizing that I now am being thrown back into the memories of my student era, where I lived carefree without commitment. I have a studio to myself,

only 390EURO/months in this wonderful location at Cités International des Arts, where typically foreign (French too) art/music students stay. However, I am not in the big concrete bar building, but in "Annexe" where it is a lot quieter. I hardly see anyone and hear anything, except occasional harp and jazz piano. The building looks as if this was an old Hôtel Particulier with a courtyard.

This is the staircase just in front of my room. I love the old wood beams with white plaster. And this is the wall and the ceiling of my room. The computer seems like an odd contrast! I think this is Europe--old and new live together. Here I am under the old wooden beams, running wireless remote control with Ethernet receiver, waiving my 3-dimentional sensor on my bow arm.

Husband is back in Picardie for the 1st day of school for the kids; they are attending a local French public school for almost a month. This is the "sink or swim" total immersion for them, which I know is hard but was done to me when I was 4 yrs old in English. I still remember coming home to my mom in Ottawa asking in Japanese, "They are all coming at me saying 'Whacha name'. What does that mean!?". Well husband tells me my 9 yr old daughter already made a friend with a girl named Silvie, and when I spoke to my 6 yr old son on Skype this evening, he started, "Bonjour, Maman!". Oh well. They are ahead of me.

The Cités gave me a photo ID today that opens the doors of more than 40 museums in Paris, for FREE. I don't see Louvre on the list, but D'orsay, D'Art Moderne, Picasso, etc. It's fantastic and this promises to be so valuable. I am also getting the IRCAM card, which also opens a lot of doors in Paris it seems. France is so centralized to Paris, as Tokyo is so in Japan, and not like USA. Now I am armed with two magic cards. And the BHV card.

My violin sounds very nice in this room of plaster and wood. I am starting to work very hard on the 'mystery' new Subharmonic interval which went away (I lost it... couldn't produce anymore since a few weeks ago). It usually comes back, then goes away, and this back and forth - gaining and losing - gets shorter and shorter. This is how I learned to play Subharmonic octave and the 3rd.