Road to Bergen

Hello everyone!

I haven't been posting in a while. There's no special reason to be honest, just have been caught up with work and other practical things in my everyday-life that needs to be taken care of continuously.

Bergen

Bergen by twilight

This week I'm in beautiful Bergen in Norway. I've been bartending all weekend in Fredrikstad, clocking in 33 hours in that space of time. Got off at 11:30 p.m. last night, and then had to get up at 4:30 a.m. this morning because we were leaving for Bergen at six, which is a 8-9 hour drive. I did get an hour or two of sleep in the car though, so I was fit for fight when we arrived. Just left of my bag and went straight out. The day went pretty good. Made myself a couple of sales on a slightly tough list, so I'm happy with today's results.

I resigned from my restaurant job last week actually. I figured that working full time while having a 50% position on the side, and balancing traveling and a relationship could only work out for so long. So I'm going to be done there in March. It's nice working in that business too, and I'm going to miss it and the people there a lot; but it's tiring as well.

I tried to take some pictures of the beautiful landscapes and fjords on the road, but most of them didn't turn out very well.

This is the best picture I managed to take with my phone, through the car window while we were driving. Not the best, but worth showing.

I'm not a good photographer, but it's hard to make landscape such as this look bad

Also felt like take a selfie on the road for some reason.

More like Instagram material, I know. But if somebody ever were curious of what I look like, now you know

Chess

I used to play chess quite actively for a time, but I haven't really touched a piece in a year or so; which I think is unfortunate. I was actually starting to become fairly decent. Had a rating of 1474, for what it's worth. But then my co-worker at the restaurant challanged me to a game during a quiet period in the bar. A challange I barely won. I made a lot of blunders.

After that I started fooling around with openings and positions. This here is an E4 opening I started to play around with when my co-worker got tired of playing:

It's black to move here, and I got a little bit stuck on the best move after Bishop B4-D6/E7. If anybody have ideas about white's move after this I'd be happy to see them

Car wasn't a pleasuredome. The song on the other hand...

So I figured that since I wrote about a song I've been listening to in my last post, maybe I should make it a thing I do if that's intersting to read about.

Anyway, a song I've been listening to a two digit number of times the last week is Welcome to the pleasuredome by Frankie goes to Hollywood. It's a song my dad have been playing for me from time to time since I was a child, and the song I was listening to while I took that selfie. For those not familiar with it, Frankie goes to Hollywood can be somewhat excentric - but it's so cool!

What triggers me with this song is the drums and bass. The bass is pretty straight forward, but just so... funky! It's a solid work, and it plays well with the drums, and vice versa. I love the recording in itself, because it's so clear and crispy. I also think the drum track in itself magnificent.

Not that it's very hard or technically challenging, or rare for that sake; but the placement of the back beat, that the snare moves a little bit around two and four, and that the fills not just keeps hitting the one is what I like about it - because it doesn't have to do so to be groovy. (Apologies to non-musicians for kind of technical terms - but hope it made sense). It's a good example of how you can be very creative with small subtleties as musician, and not just trying to score flash points with the audience. (Credit Gavin Harrison for that last phrasing).

It's great song if you like a little wierd 80's pop-funk-rock. I encourage you to give it a listen!

So this have been my life since last time. Hope you found it interesting!

Next time,
@Pharothetillia