Cut off

I haven't figured out what caused the outage, but I was cut off from internet the entire evening. Maybe the intensive rain flooded a local hub?
As the internet connection uses the television cable, I wasn't able to watch television either.

At first I was a little annoyed, but this soon faded when I realized I could read instead of watching television or spending some time on the internet.
I was able to finish a book I started reading on the train traveling to Barcelona and read some articles I had lying around.
It turned out to be a very enjoyable evening, listening to music and hearing the sound of extensive showers in the background while reading a good book.

BTW : The book I finished was 'Het derde huwelijk' (The third marriage) by Tom Lanoye.

And the winner is ...

Anna Vinnitskaya won the first prize of the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano 2007. As I mentioned earlier this week, Anna Vinnitskaya was a strong favorite to win this year's edition of the contest.
Second prize was for Plamena Mongova. Third was Francesco Piemontesi, and Ilya Rashkovskiy, who impressed yesterday, was fourth.
The only Belgian finalist, Liebrecht Vanbeckevoort, got the sixth prize. He also won the Klara-Sternefeld prize, which is awarded by the public and the viewers and listeners on radio and television.

For a complete overview of the laureates and finalists, you can check the Klara website.

It was the first time since 1968 that the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano was won by a woman.
It was also several years ago that a Belgian contestant was able to reach the finals.

Prokofiev 2

The final of the Queen Elisabeth contest for piano 2007 has started on monday and is now halfway.

Six finalist have played, with six more to come. The standard throughout the week was very high, but the second finalist that played this evening was absolutely amazing.

Anna Vinnitskaya started her performance tonight with a Beethoven sonate (Sonate n.13 in Es op. 27/1 “Quasi una fantasia”) which she played as it was meant to be.
Then she played Prokofiev's second piano concerto. And it was beautiful.
This concerto is immensely difficult to play, so the commentators on television said, but she played it like she does this all the time. Maybe she does, which might explain why she played it so well. ;-)
Both the public and panel on television were very enthousiastic about her performance.
With another six finalists that have to play in the next three days, one can only hope that all of them play equally well. But if they don't, Anna Vinnitskaya has a very good chance to become this year's winner.

Last.fm

I registered at last.fm last week.
Last.fm is a website that keeps track of the music you listen to, using plugins for the most used music players around. When you listen to your music, with your favorite music player, information about the songs you have heard, is sent to the last.fm website.
This information is used to make a profile of your listening habbits: what is your favorite artist, what kind of music do you like most, ...
This profile is then used to match you with other people who have a similar taste. You are provided with other music those people like and which you migth like too, as you have a mutual musical taste.

At least that's what the website is telling me. I have used the plugin for a few days now, but it will take a few weeks - according to their website - to build a profile.

BTW: I got the plugin working on iTunes (it keeps track of both the music I listen to on iTunes and my iPod) and on XMMS (Linux).

Jeugdsentiment

(The title is in dutch, and can be translated as 'childhood memories'.)

A few weeks ago I heard a song when listening to Studio Brussel, a Belgian radio station. The song was picked up by the DJ on a myspace.com website of a group called Fixkes.

It seems this band originates from a small town near the place where I grew up. Having left the region for some years now, I was quite pleased to hear their song because it brought back some nice memories of my childhood.

The band members must be of my age, as a lot of elements in the lyrics of the songs reminded me of things that happened when I was younger. The singer sang in his local dialect, which is not very different from mine.

It was quite nostalgic, hearing that song. And I liked it.
(I'm not sure about the title of the song, but you can listen to it on the website of the group)