So, I want Obama to win because he is a Democrat. If Obama was white and McCain black I would still want Obama to win, but feel a passing regret that this would mean there not *yet* being a black American president.

That said, on my train to work this morning I overheard some black schoolgirls discussing the election. Quite apart from my delight that the local youth were engaged in world politics (although these were the girls in posh-school uniforms), it was very clear from what they were saying just how very much an Obama win would mean to them, precisely because of the race issue. It sounded like they couldn't quite believe what might happen - one of them used the words "like a dream come true". If all this election did was inspire 4 Hertfordshire schoolgirls then that would be a worthy thing.

Of course the consequences are far further reaching and mostly relate to political colour not skin colour (black presidents, asian presidents, latino presidents, women even will all come in time). I'm finding it hard to get my head around just how significant it could be. It does all feel a little like 1997 though - when it seemed unreal that Labour could win and when it seemed that things could only get better? And yet we've just witnessed the near-death of British socialism and That War and so many other associated unpleasantries.

Perhaps its not the election that matters so much but the stuff that follows it - perhaps the most important twists and turns are yet to come. Fingers crossed for the ride ahead.

So, just spent 2.5 weeks in Canada with my sister visiting our Uncle and Aunt. They live in Niagra Falls (southern Ontario) but as well as seeing the local area there we visited Toronto, Lake Rideau, Ottowa, Montreal and Kingston. I don't have photos of everything - but here's some of the better bits of what I did get (click on image for album link).

So the thing to do in airports, as my sister pointed out to me, is to take an empty drinking bottle through the security gates and fill it up at the water fountain on the other side (Gatwick has plenty and the v. small Toronto-Hamilton had one). I am in the habit of taking a bottle of tap water nearly everywhere I go and get mightily distressed when its taken away from me - particularly when faced with a 10hrs flight. I might even try this ploy next time I go to a concert and fill it up under the (questionably hygenic?) venue toilet taps.

This weekend I went to Riga, capital of Latvia with my choir. It was a bloody fantastic weekend. Riga's a really lovely place (click on the photo below for more pictures and info) and the weather was just tops all weekend. We did a couple of concerts which were ok (standardwise I felt our London one last week was a bit better) including a joint one with a a v. good Riga choir so that was a really good experience.

Highlights of the weekend included a) lustily singing Zulu freedom song from memory in restaurant after quite a lot of wine and (our best performance ever of it), b) dancing in bar/club thing later on to 1990s pop (Ace of base and Red Hot Chillis!) with everyone really feeling the joy of the moment and c)doing/watching silly musical sketches which were v funny indeed. I'm quite impressed I'm still awake cos I didn't go to bed at all last night - was having a nice time talking to people and didn't quite seem worth it before leaving for midday flight home. So I feel like I've been given a severe beating - but in a really good way :-). Awesome stuff.

Oriana's latest recording was played on Radio 3 on Friday - 4 short "Songs for Sailors" by Dyson (George not James). Its about 2hrs 27mins in (and this will work up till Thur 15th May). I offer up my deep and sincere apologies for what preceeds it (you'll see what I mean).

The recording is from our CD release (but don't buy it from Amazon, buy it from the choir!). I don't think I ever wrote a post about how amazing the recording session was. And it was amazingly good fun. The Odysseus is a really expressive piece - and it was really lovely to sing for an entire weekend :-). It was good to get a second go at things we sort of didn't get quite right first time whereas in a concert the moment passes and is gone. It's actually a bit annoying in a way that R3 are playing the Songs for Sailors not the Odysseus cos we did those in just one take right at the end of a long weekend of singing. Still, can't complain really :-).

...makes me feel all like significant and shit. I used to say its the most important thing we ever do - I don't think that's quite right, I think being kind to those around us tops it but its fairly significant all the same.

Although perhaps most important thing about democracy is that people (like me) feel that they are doing something important, that they have a say in how their lives are governed. We don't have elections to find the best person for the job - that would be done by CVs, aptitude tests and interviews and experts would choose. No, we have elections to prevent the populus revolting by making them feel they have had a say. And I suppose to stop revolting people from running things - although Hitler's election mid-last century and the election of BNP candidates to London councils more recently undermine that preposition.

So I took much less effort into casting my vote than I usually do. All I read was that booklet (after picking it up from where I'd hurled it on accidentally opening it to the BNP candidate; incidentally he comes across as a veritible saint next to the Christian Choice guy), I kept meaning to read more but kept putting it off till I was on the train home this evening working out who to put my cross next to. That I'd rather Ken rather than Boris is a no-brainer so my second choice mayoral vote went there. But there's still the symbolic (one might say long-term strategic) first choice vote - I was erring between Lib Dem (the party I tend to vote for most often), Left List and Green. In the end I plumped for Green - but mostly for their social policies with the Green ones as a side-benefit. I was a bit fustrated by the Left List as it seemed a bit off the plot - lots of stuff that the mayor can't do so much about - the NHS, education, Iraq. There appears to be a need for a more thoughtful socialist politics at the moment.

Every president strives to leave a legacy. Their time to serve is short but thereafter we honour their words and deeds. With the George Bush presidency in its twilight, the Presidential Memorial Commission of San Francisco is seeking ways to recognise his contribution to foreign relations, fiscal policy and the environment. Its ballot initiative asks: "Should the city and the county of San Francisco rename the Oceanside Wastewater Treatment Facility the George W Bush Sewage Plant?" It's heartfelt and simple. Future generations would think of him as we do.

I hope the Guardian will forgive me for reproducing this in full, its just too beautiful not to share.

I got put off walking up big hills just over 10 years ago, when I did my Queen's Scout expedition. 50 miles over 5 days in the lake district, carrying just over 1/3 my body weight. With no hill walking experience and no real basic fitness level. Twisted my ankle on day 1 and struggled on from there. Was glad not to have given up or anything but went through a period of getting various random joint pains and vowed 'never again'.

But lately I've been enjoying walking around Oxfordshire, Hertfordshire and London so much that I started to wonder if I'm missing something with the Big Hills. Also, a consultant has since diagnosed the random joint pains as due to hypermobility (double jointedness) - i.e. not so much walking related. Maybe time to give it another go - but on a more moderate level. So was really excited when Eddie invited a bunch of us up to the Peak District for walking over Easter weekend.

Visibly less 'kitted out' than the rest, almost certainly less fit and definitely less male - I was a bit nervous of being able to keep up. I raced up the first slope, panting desparately near the top I turned round to see everyone else looking just as knackered as me so that was a relief. As we headed up the rest of the slope the sun quickly melted away and the hail showers raced in. But as pieces of ice whipped my face I was still really enjoying the whole experience (Paul's mega-thick ski-gloves helped a bit). All in all, a really pleasant experience, went back to Eddie and Vicky's place a happy chappy.

By the start of day 2, I was feeling totally knackered. I'd just about persuaded my body to wake up sufficiently to stride along but my brain was refusing to think quickly enough to negotiate boulders and water and icy slippery bits as we climbed up a river path. Then we encountered icicles - which were pretty magic. But then, we saw these ice features - simply stunning, never seen anything like that before. At this point I decided it had been worth getting up and climbing a big hill and started loving it again.

It snowed several times that day - less painful than the previous day's hail. On crossing the top we had adventures crossing some quite boggy areas. It unnerved Mike quite a bit as he had got sunk to his thighs last year apparantly! But I found it quite fun once I'd decided I didn't really mind being sunk as far as my ankles. We found a stream to follow - with bog cliffs either side of us. Got freezing water in my trainers when I foolishly just walked into the water. That quickly warmed up to foot-temperature and I managed to avoid the wettest bits from then on.

We then spent the next 2 hours racing down the hill to make it back before dusk (which we did). By this stage nearly everyone was suffering from some degree of leg pain and Paul particularly was walking very strangely and making loud complaining noises. My knee was sore so was quite glad we took day 3 and 4 at a more sedate pace - touristy stuff in York and a bimble round the local park. I absolutely loved the walking tho - I need to do more of this stuff :-). Just not too much all at once.

So had my first rehearsal as an Alto on wed. And I totally felt like a fish out of water. I think I'd forgotten how different Alto sounds and feels. And overestimated how much Second Sop has taught me about singing harmony. I missed singing notes higher than a (2nd octave) E, I missed having the tune (yes, I'm that shallow!), I missed sitting next to my Second Sop friends (although of course I do have First Alto friends who are lovely). I'd forgotten how boring some Alto lines can be.

Of course its all just a question getting used to it. I need to recalibrate my ears to listen properly to the whole chord. I need to recalibrate my eyes to look at the right line on the stave. I need to recalibrate my sightreading instincts from "tune" to "harmony" (I get the impression that there's a different set of "frequently occuring intervals" that hopefully will become more instinctive with practice).

I need to get used to singing notes below middle C. They all felt like quite hard work and there were a lot of them. Whenever I saw an A I kept defaulting to C (there is Only One note with a line through it below the stave; I don't think I've ever sung below a Bflat as sop). I'm certainly not used to making notes down there sound tuneful and meaningful.

When I'm used to all this, I'll start to enjoy making the juicy harmonies.

I'm an Alto! Officially. I will be singing in the Alto section at choir as from this coming wednesday after my singing teacher had a quiet word in the conductor's ear that she felt I was "developing into more of a rich mezzo and becoming less like a light soprano". Apparantly David had noticed a my voice sounding different as well - so the fact that he noticed me at all in the choir suggests I am in the wrong place (although he does seem to be quite sharp on listening to individual voices - but maybe he just gives that impression to keep us on our toes).

I'm really excited about the change. In my view Alto (lower) and Soprano (higher) are both good in different ways. Soprano tend to get more tunes and that is often more interesting than a random chord sequence. On the other hand, Altos get to make the harmony so you really hear the full chord - whereas singing Soprano you often don't really listen to it properly at all. Singing Alto I find more technically challenging in terms of learning and pitching the notes of a new piece. To be perfectly honest, the high notes I used to find really exhilerating as a soprano I've lately found just stressful. Mostly though I am excited about how it will give me opportunity to really technically develop my voice.

Started having the odd singing lesson just before Christmas this year (Oriana encourage it and have resident teachers). Its the first time I've had lessons with any vauge regularity and properly practiced the excersises and things are really starting to connect together. For example, I've long known that you need to keep your diaphragm firm - for lots of reasons like sustaining your breath and supporting the note. And I've known that lifting your soft palatte is helpful (back bit of the roof of the mouth) but never quite understood why. I now understand why a bit better but the most exciting thing has been finding that remembering to keep my diaphragm firm helps me lift my soft pallate. I'm no anatomy expert but it feels like they're really directly linked. I'm still a bit scared of the noises I'm making - I'm not at the fully controlling everything stage yet but hopefully this will come. All lots of fun :-).

Am starting to grow fond of the buses. Spent the past year or so with a "2355 train from Tottenham Hale" curfew on myself. Discovering the N279 has released me from this bond somewhat. More usefully is the realisation that there's an in-between stage. As long as I am on the last tube to Seven Sisters I can catch a bus home from there - and its a similar timescale to the train if you include the probability of having to wait the half-hourly train (buses running "all the time"). Makes it feel like I'm (still) a proper Londoner that - not having to slurp up before last orders to make it home. (Oliver has long lectured me about the virtues of buses to Ponders End but I had my prejudice-to-road-transport hat on)

The best thing about the bus though is you get to see the world you live in. Not that its very exciting. I wanted to inject examples of interesting landmarks at this point in the text but all I can come up with are food stores, tower blocks and Edmonton police station. But it all part of the local picture, the area feels more like a home now I'm not just aparating between the islands of "home", "work" and "central london".

The most exciting bit is when you get to go Somewhere New. Like Crouch End. Determined not to go into central London, I took two trains across (making the short walk between Seven Sisters and South Tottenham) to get there and on the way back (trains turn back into pumpkins at obscenely early hours), kebab in hand (which incidentally struck me as the healthiest thing I'd eaten all week - bit of grilled halloumi, massive pile of salad dressed in non-oily chilli sauce on pitta), took 2 nightbuses back to basecamp. Its like making your way across a life-sized Mornington Cresent board.

This new knowledge of my local area might even make me feel less like a "South London immigrant to North London".

The Wikipedia entry for "Dammit Janet" is very detailed. A very thorough analysis of contemporary screen art. The thing is it is entirely about the Family Guy episode and doesn't mention the song at all. The most surprising thing about all this is that this surprises me.

Keeping myself uptodate with News of National Importance, I see that UK Courts have just sentenced a man for having sex with a bicycle.

How? Why? Eh? What the fuck? Since when were bicycles sentient beings with rights?

Apparantly he was charged with "sexually aggravated breach of the peace by conducting himself in a disorderly manner and simulating sex", but he was in a locked hostel room. How is that breach of the peace? By that logic anybody who has sex or masterbates or even wanders around in the nod in a hotel room is "breaching the peace".

And for this he has been added to the 'please send vigilantes round to my house' sex offenders register.

With my new-found scrabble addiction, I was quite pleased to find out about the Free Rice website, where you can learn new words at the same time as "earning" rice for the World Food Organisation (the rice is bought by ad-income). My vocab level is around the 40 mark but I'm finding that a lot of my right answers are based on guessing the meaning from its consituent bits, or are words that I have a vague sense of what they mean but am not confident of a precise definition or by eliminating options (I decided a word ending in "ly" was unlikely to be a noun and hence didn't mean porcupine). So am being shown lots of new words and being given firmer definitions for ones I semi-knew. Not sure that its sticking in my head though.

I once had a book on fractal mathematics that was written by a maths professor who was also an amateur etymologist. So the maths was padded out with all this interesting stuff about the meaning and origin of lots of the words he was using. It nearly made me read the book just for fun. Nearly. But I couldn't help thinking that's how all science textbooks should be. Human.

One of you is going to come up with a noun ending in "ly" now aren't you?

So for 28 years, 4 months and 3 weeks of my life this has been a vauge abstract concept to me. Something I know exists but have never been forced to think about.

Then this week a friend who works for the BBC mentions the cuts that are being made there and that seems semi-close to home. The very next day my company announce they will be making redundancies and although the latest on the rumour-mill is that we will be ok where we are, I think to myself - that's very close to home. Then I get a phone call to hear that someone close to me is being made redundant and I now think - blimey this _is_ home. It seems to be a bit of an epidemic as the next two friends I speak to say their companies are also making redundancies this quarter.

I guess the threat of job loss is just a part of working life and that the real reason I've not really had to think about it before is cos I've (mostly) been not in employment. Bit of a shock. Oh well.

Some Holiday Snaps

We're doing Tallis's Spem in Alium in choir at our next concert. This is really exciting. There is no piece (that I know of) quite like Spem. It is in 40 parts. 8 choirs of SATBB. This is the first thing that makes it amazingly exciting (and really hard in equal measure).

The second thing that makes it exciting is that it stays pretty much in the same key but uses rhythm to paint pictures. Lots and lots of different syncopated parts against non-syncopated parts (x40 remember ;-)). This also makes it well-hard. Its really tricky to just count out the beat sometimes cos there's so much going across it. The third thing that makes it really exciting to sing is it's astoundinly beautiful.

So I'm really looking forward. I rehearsed for it with Bath Chamber Choir but never got to sing it in concert with them - so is really thrilling to get a chance to do it. I now have the biggest score I've ever owned (A3 full score). Been bashing out my notes (Sop 4a) on the Casio. Have needed to count some bits out in quavers then progress up to crotchets before progressing onto minims; David will conduct in semibreves. Am quite excited now to have got as far as singing along with the mp3. A week or so ago I couldn't even follow the score with it. Only a few places where I lose a beat or halfbeat (or half bar :-s) - and a few notes that scare me, which is daft cos the pitching's pretty unexotic. Shall see what rehearsal brings. All good fun :-).

It took 2 hours to cycle home from work along the towpath. I think if I was fitter it might be more like 1.5hrs. Strangely enough, after cycling for over an hour (having not cycled regularly for, um, 7 years) I was quite a lot slower than when I began. 1.5hrs is still quite long though.

Curry really does taste so much better eaten by hand. Get a good feel of the firmness of a mushroom anticipating the bit where the juice burst into your mouth, play around with the rice before forming a ball to eat, and licking sauce from the fingers as you go. All those things your parents told you not to ;-).

Chicane's new album was worth every second of the four year wait [floats gently on a little cloud of delicious sound].

I know this is breaching my self imposed work embargo but I just wanted to say just how very very exciting it was to see actual plastic mouldings of our product. It was very strange - the shape of the components was so very familiar and yet the size of it and it being actually 3D and made of plastic was not. I have been poring over CAD models for months but not seen the plastic moudlings. You can't just use your middle mouse button to rotate a plastic moulding and you definitely can't use the left button to zoom in on it. And it has different textures depending on the surface finish requirements. And it is a different colour to the technicolor CAD model (where components are given all kinds of random colours to make them stand out against each other visually). Really cool. Really exiting :-).

Just bought the Chemical Brothers new album :-). I bought it in mp3 format - I only ever play CDs on my computer so what's the use of having the disk? When I say bought, I mean bought. I wanted to do it legally (afterall I have a salary now ;-)). So I bought it from Virgin Digital. Buying an mp3 rather than a CD made it about 1/3 cheaper and I don't have to wait for royal mail to not deliver it. All good.

Am a little disappointed however, to discover that I am "not permitted" to transfer the files onto my portable mp3 player. I seem to be able to copy them onto my usb memory key okay but the mp3 player is a no go. Shall try burning a cd tomorrow (yes, all the irony) and see if that works. Cos of course the real irony is that if I'd bought a CD I would be able to rip it to mp3 and do what I liked with it. Its all rather annoying and stupid and frankly makes me feel like to make a point of aquiring my music illegaly in future. Or at least sharing these mp3s as freely as I can with my memory stick :-p.