Sunday, June 29

It is well past midnight and I'm sitting comfortably in the empty offices of Cornerstone Magazine. Jesus People USA, the place where I've been staying at ever since I arrived in Chicago has, over the past 4-5 days, seen a drastic drop in population because of the festival. The setting for the Shining can probably give you a pretty good mental picture of what it's like hanging around this grand old 20's era hotel at the moment. Thankfully I too will be heading down to Bushnell the day after tomorrow to join the 40,000 or so other fest goers. It's crazy to think this place would be even deader by then.

Weather-wise, it's been kinda neat for the most part. Plenty of sunshine and clear blue skies but without the usual humidity that lingers around the Chicago air at this time of year. My trip so far can be summed up by a string of culinary experiences... Uptown Barbecue Fries, Great Wall Salt Fish Chicken Fried Rice, Hing Kee Bubble Tea, Ed Debevic's world famous (supposedly) Rude Service. Nothing like quality time with friends over fine meals and conversations.

Earlier today I spent the afternoon hanging around the Sylvia Center and caught a small glimpse of life for both its workers and inhabitants. Two hours with a handful of hysterical screaming, toy-hurling, mess-creating toddlers sure enough drained me dry of all emotional and physical strength... it amazes me that there are people who courageously deal face to face with this on a daily basis. The level of love and grace they repeatedly demonstrate is definitely beyond anything that I have the capacity to show for at this point in time!

To be honest I haven't really been looking forward to Cornerstone, at least compared to past years. Maybe it has to do with the fact that I already had my annual fill down in Florida last month, but now that I'm all packed and ready for the 4 hour drive on monday morning, the excitement has sort of returned... if anything it'll be good to catch up again with all the friends that I don't normally get to see apart from this event: Ester Drang, Cheyenne, the Wiitala Brothers, Billions, Norma Jean, Sarah Adams, Danielson Famile, Denison Witmer, Saxon Shore, Brandtson.

Saturday, June 21

Greetings from Chicago! So after a semi-hiatus I've decided to return with at least a stripped down weblog that seems to be all the rage these days, for if anything the simple purpose of letting my friends know where in the world I am at any given point in time. With my life being booked up with tours and other music-related engagements until the end of November, this will serve as the only point of contact for many of the people I know.

So let's see, it's been a good 4 months since I kissed my wonderful DBA role at edesigns.co.uk goodbye and, despite the financial limitations that I now face, I honestly don't reqret the move one bit. I've definitely found myself much busier than originally anticipated, which I guess is a good thing since downtime in London can only be compensated by going out, which one can't really do much of without a regular source of income at their disposal.

With regards to the development of nostalg!c, over 250 new photos have been uploaded onto the server but I haven't yet managed to create a decent format to present them within. My plan is to work on this over the next week or so, as I'm in Chicago for the sole purpose of attending Cornerstone Festival, which unfortunately doesn't take place until 10 days from now. So apart from visiting my old windy city haunts I imagine there should be a fair amount of time which I can devote to getting this site up and running on an acceptable level. But for now a daily rambling will have to serve as consolation.

The flight itself passed by pretty quickly thanks to a combination of decent films (The Pianist, Life of David Gale and Catch Me If You Can) although I only managed to catch about half of the third one as we ran out of time in the air. Flight was full as always but thankfully I got assigned an aisle seat this time which sure beats being trapped in the middle by two overweight passengers on each side. As it always seems to be the case, there were a handful of passengers who were so keen to step off the plane that they stood up and opened their overhead compartments within minutes of the aircraft touching the runway. Chaos and panic from the cabin crew ensued. I wonder how much of this nonsense my flight attendant friends have to put up with. Then of course there was the guy next to me who demonstrated a similar level of impatience by urging me to step out into the aisle even before we had come to a complete stop. Being in the second last row, it's not like we were going to be moving any time soon. Grrr.

Anyway, it's nice to be here again. It is currently 90 degrees fahrenheit...