It was this time of year again. I went skiing with two friends this year. We went to Les Menuires this time.

It was our first time there. It is a nice place with lots of appartments near the slopes. Unfortunately the shops and restaurants were in the main part of town and we had to walk a distance or take a shuttle bus to get there for food.

This year I was quite loyal by tracking my location using my mobile phone:

• Day 1 part 1 | part 2
• Forgot to turn on gps on day 2…
• Day3 on a very snowy day without not much site.
• Day 4
• Day 5
• Day 6

It was a good vacation with decent quality slopes this time, and nice weather.. for the most of the time. My friends had some lessons on the slope this year. They were quite content with that. I will probably have some lessons again next year!

This weekend I went to meet some StreamingSoundracks.com friends for another meet and greet in Ghent. Reason for this is that Ghent hosts every year the World Soundtracks awards. The weekend consisted of having fun with good laughs, good dinners and a lot of good Belgian beers.

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As could be read on my twitter and facebook. I did an interview for the Dutch film music magazine Score. My friends on StreamingSoundtacks.com asked me to provide an English translation for this interview. I did an exact translation as possible. If you can read Dutch please go to http://www.score-magazine.nl, register and download the magazine (No. 163) yourself instead of reading this English translation. They deserve our support.

The other article about me was about the Krakow festival. Translation of that is not really needed. It is about the same I have written down here on my blog.

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I still owe you my readers the last day of my Krakow trip. It started with the usual coffee and lunch on the market square. At 2 PM a minibus picked as up for a trip to Auschwitz-Birkenau. That was quite an experience.. I am not in the mood to tell about it on the Internet. It is something to see for yourself. It is just too horrible what took place there over 65 years ago. (more…)

Krakow Festival final day

This day was the final of the festival. It started relaxing with coffee on the main square. We had a good meeting with the administrators while the rest was shopping. After a late lunch we went to the festival for the last concert: ‘Days of Honor’ a Polish TV-series composed by Bartosz Chajdecki and conducted by Diego Navarro. We drank a beer a with them on Thursday. We were pleasantly surprised by the music! The only down part where interviews with the Polish actors we could not understand. We enjoyed the concert that much we all bought the CD and had it signed at the after party.

The day ended with a late dinner and beer at the square. Again a good day for us streamingsoundtracks.com members!

We started this day with a good cup of coffee in the mall. Afterwards we went shopping for some (of course) film music CDs. The rest of the group went to a discussion board about music used in Disney movies. HW and I went to the Krakow castle which was very nice except of the rain pooring from the sky and flooding the terrain. Good thing they sold umbrellas.

This day concert was again very unique for me. The large hall was this time a cinema. We watched the first Pirates movie with a live orchestra doing the music. It was again a great experience. Sadly Klaus Badelt could not be there. First time I saw about 4000 people watching the end credits instead of leaving. Afterwards we went for a drink to finish off this day.

The 3rd day of this trip is the second day of the festival. We started the day with a cup of coffee in a mall. Afterwards we went to the public meet and greet of Joe Hisaishi. Too bad it was only in Polish and Japanese. One of the questions was about one of his projects in France. To which he responded “are there French people in the room?” Poor Alchemist :-)

Next was some drinks and a quick Indian bite to eat before the next concert. The next concert was music from Final Fantasy. It was awesome to hear all the tracks that I know. When ‘Tina’ was over as the encore people started leaving. Why? ‘One winged angel’ was still to come! Wow, I always wanted to hear it live! We ended the day with again.. drinks. The 4th day will have the Pirates of the Caribbean concert. That will be quite fun too.

Day one
On day one three of us drove to Poland. The journey went fine, no problems. Even the roads in Poland were good! Thanks to the Eurocup which is going to be held in 2012. At the hotel, fellow SST member Ad waited for us and we went to a restaurant for some later dinner, beer and some laughs.

Day two
After waking up we went to get some coffee down town. The weather was very warm so we stayed outside all day. At 2:30 we went to a press conference where some of the composers and conductors where introduced. We went on picture with the famous composer Richard Kaufman. Afterwards we were drinking nearby and Ad yells “Diego do you want some beer?!” And Diego Navarro responded with “Sure!”. So we ended up drinking with Diego, his friend and the Polish composer Bartosz Chajdecki. They even went to dinner with us. Afterwards we needed to go straight to the concert of Joe Hishaishi, who sadly could not make it to the press conference. Wow what a performance! It was really a privilege to see him conduct and play. An experience I will never forget.

I am quite excited what the other days will bring.

If you are visiting this blog because you know me, than you probably also know that I have a “thing” for soundtracks. This Wednesday I will be leaving to the Krakow film music festival in Poland. Two amazing composers will be visiting. Namely Joe Hisaishi and Klaus Badelt. I am pretty excited about this! My hotel is supposed to have internet. So I should be able to keep you all posted.

As the picture suggest i bought myself an iPad. Since iPad 2 is coming out the first version was a lot cheaper. Cheap enough for me to not wait for an awesome Android tablet. I was planning to buy an e-reader anyways before this came along.

So after using it for 24 hours time for some impressions. It is nice to use for twitter, Facebook and reading my mail. Also as an e-reader it has a lot of potential. I am using it now to read a book about android development (the irony :-) ). And I already read my first Suske en Wiske on it.

Browsing is something to get used. Awesome to do it while lying on the couch. But apparently I use quite some sites with flash.

First impressions are looking very promising. I cannot wait what Android will provide us in the coming years :-)