Finland, Russia, Russia and Switzerland… "96
tea bags and 2 pedal bins"!
Day 7
There is a
heavy mist on the Sea of Japan this morning but I can see the cargo ships
passing ever so slowly as a portion of their long journey brings them close to
my new neighbourhood. I was thinking that life on one of these boats must
be a bit boring but it must work for some people so I wished them bon voyage and
got down to the serious business of waking up. I am anxious to find out
who will be the next President of The United States, among other things of
course. I was debating whether or not ot take a quick (tepid) shower before or
after breakfast and a little voice told me to do it before.
As I finished
my shower and stepped out of the bathroom, my room phone rang and a bigger voice
was there:
"Good morning
Mr. Hensley, this is Elizabeth at reception and I am informing you that the
hotel will have no water until 8 o-clock tonight"
I am glad I
listened to that little voice. Later on I helped the ladies at the front
desk to make their official sign notifying guests and potential guests of the
problem. Nothing major, just a couple of adjustments to their grammar.
Today is a
show day which makes me even more grateful for a good night´s sleep. Had
some breakfast which looked spookily like yesterday´s breakfast, caught up on my
e-mail and off we went to the venue for lunch and sound-check.
We hadn´t
played together since August 7th but it didn´t take long for us to click back
into place and, despite some of the equipment being decidedly wrong, it actually
sounded cool. This would be Harek´s first show with us but he seemed
efficient, calm and confident and somehow you can always tell when someone knows
what they are doing. Sid was doing his best to bop while confined to a
tall stool because of his "walking wounded" status!
Back at the
hotel I was introduced to the general manager, Robert Martin who insisted I call
him Bob. This of course I could not do because I would only be thinking of the
doggy vitamins! Robert is from Dallas and works for the group which owns
this chain of hotels. We had a pleasant conversation and the water situation
seemed to have been fixed so I went happily on my way, looking forward to
cleaning up in readiness for the show.
Somewhere in
there I had found out that Barack Obama had won the Presidential race in the US
and this made me really happy.
Rufus!! Hey Rufus…. Now
he´s talking about American politics and he´s over there in one of them commune
countries.
That would be communist
Hon and Russia ain´t communist any more.
What is it then Ruf?
Not sure Hon, but I know
their hockey players come here a lot, probably to get their teeth fixed…. he he
he he
The gig was a
surprise to all of us. It´s a cool club with a good stage but the audience was
all seated, like a kind of cabaret gig and I admit we were all giggling a lot
when we walked in and saw this. I read some sage advice once about the risk of
having expectations, especially high ones. Time I started following it…. But I
won´t! But they made a lot of noise and were apparently very happy.
We made a few mistakes and my monitor mix was so bad that I couldn´t really hear
anything so there was a lot of guesswork going on. Overall though it was a
cool gig and we´ll fix a few things in sound-check tomorrow.
I spent a long
time doing the signing/photo thing and then it became a bit of a mad dash to the
train station for our overnight ride to Khabarovsk. We had wine, beer,
water and loads of sandwiches and stuff so we would be okay. And somebody else
was driving!
