A classical concert

Another meeting of our Westside music group last night -- at Rosemary's place at Pullenvale.

Rosemary is Austrian and her house looks very German to my eyes. Part of her decor is some mediaeval armour set in an illuminated niche. I happened to sit right in front of the niche so was inspired shortly after I arrived to get up and put the Pikelhaube (spiked helmet) on. I have plenty of the old Germanic genes in me so thought I had a certain entitlement to wear it. The helmet was meant for tall blue-eyed people with fair skin and I am certainly one of those. Anyway, Anne later commented that I looked the part in it. I put it on only for a few minutes, however. I am sure Rosemary would not have wanted me to go around wearing her decor.

Rosemary was looking good. She is about my age but Germans and the Dutch seem to wear better than Anglo-Celts. They often look much younger than they are to our eyes.

The concert was good, finishing with a rousing rendition of Chopin's Military Polonaise -- played with obvious enjoyment by a Chinese lady. I think she got every last decibel possible out of the Steinway.

We always have some Asians at our concerts. The Han Chinese fit very easily into Western civilization and appreciation of (and skill at) classical music is certainly part of that. The 21st century will undoubtedly be the century of China but the Chinese adopt Western practices so readily that it should nonetheless be a century of very substantial cultural continuity. I hear that there are even more than a 100 million Chinese Christians these days.

Tirsha, the secretary of the Brisbane Skeptics Association was there. I knew her from having given a couple of talks to the Skeptics so we were both rather surprised to encounter one-another in a different context. During the supper after the concert I had a bit of a chat with her about things skeptical.