now that september third is set as the gloomy date it bears in on me that i can't possibly leave this life behind: the library trips and galilee chicken tenders, and the train and weekday afternoon movies at plaza sing and cake at baker's inn and cheese munchers at cartel and evenings at the esplanade and friends and chocolate after the ballet. decided to spend the rest of the time living exactly as i would most miss so went to the sso "sax and the city" concert (featuring claude delangle) last night. the evening went badly enough for a start, what with being holed up at home unexpectedly and then running late for dinner and having to find a cab and then walking around suntec/marina/esplanade for ages, not being able to find any place to eat at and finally stumbling through a poor dinner and was still hugely embarrassed to have to rush in to the concert with a minute to the start, although the esplanade is not the friendliest of theatres and in anycase i don't know why we had to go to our assigned seats. there were plenty of empty aisle seats near the back of the hall to slip into quickly and quietly, and isn't that part of the point of being early - that you don't make a nuisance of yourself out of consideration of other members of the audience? and the usher insisted we go to our ticketed seats, which was in the very packed third row, so that we had a) further to go b) were under everyone's contemptuous eye and c) had to creep over many feet and apologise like nobody's business. on my way to the front i tried twice to slip into a back row but each time the usher hustled me away and that's completely stupid to my mind, particularly since they're the super ngiao ones who obviously aren't admitting any more people, so who's going to dispute a seat till the intermission? i remember ushers at victoria putting latecomers in the most empty seats to hand and asking them to stay there till a suitable break in the program. and isn't that far more sensible? well yes of course it is a bad thing to be late and i generally am punctually seated but the esplanade isn't the most accessible place and the traffic is always bottlenecked up to nicoll highway and friday night isn't easy for anyone to find dinner and 7.30 is fairly early for those who work late. and one ought to be flexible and think a little if the orchestra is already on stage and one has a stall seat you can see that makes it quite awkward but when it's a full-length ballet why can you not let someone into the upper rings one or two minutes late when you know very well there'll be a prologue? so all in all, while the concert itself pleased i didn't enjoy it as much as i could have because i was a) cross, thinking all of the above b) embarrassed, on account of being nearly late c) trying to choke back a fit of coughing (from running) d) sweaty and uncomfortable. bah.

but the rest of the evening turned out quite alright, afterall.