KeK-weekend

This weekend VPS KeK had to perform twice. Of course, I came along to make pictures, and to capture audio and video material. Don't ask me if they sang okay, because I was quite busy operating the three different devices (photo camera, video camera and sound recorder). But, as far as I can judge their performance, it was great. The audience was really enthusiastic and so were the guys themselves.

This summer all the audio and video material will be used to make a cool movie of the group, which will hopefully lead to some nice bookings. All I am now waiting for, is my own hoody with "vps KeK crew" on it ;-)

McDulls lawn

Our garden is beautiful (thanks to the previous owners of our house), but slowly we're changing small things to make it more a garden of our own. We had to cut back a lot of bushes and trees in the past few months and planted some new bushes, because some died last winter. On one side of the garden we have a lot of roses. First, I loved them, but not anymore. There's always the problem with when and how to prune the rose bushes and fighting the plant lice. It's been said (and probably true) that roses put a lot of energy into flower production. So it's important that they get proper food care, which of course, I never give them. Our roses are blooming now, but I'm sure they could be ten times prettier if cared for better. Oh, and I haven't mentioned the enormous thorns that make it almost impossible to weed between the bushes and that during winter it's an ugly sight just to see the leafless, prickly bushes.
No, I'm not so fond of roses anymore.
But what has this got to do with McDulls lawn? Well, last week I've removed a part of the rose bushes to make a two square meter big grass-land. Our guinea-pig loves grass and now he has a nice place to browse! :) And I think there might be a good chance that we'll get rid of the other rose bushes as well....

Only one question remains.... will the grass grow under this tree? We'll see....
McDull loves his lawn, he started eating grass as soon as he saw it!

Going to Norway

Planning a holiday is supposed to be a nice activity, right? For us, it often comes with some stress. That's because we are always a bit late with planning our holiday. In the past we would always go camping and we never made reservations or whatsoever. But the past few years we like to go a bit further away and reservations are inevitable.
This year, we thought about going to Norway. In April I went to the travel agency to get some brochures, just to get an idea of all the possibilities. Time enough to find a nice place to stay, you'd say. But for some reason we just didn't find time to sit down together and decide where exactly we should go. Norway is a big country and to see all is not impossible, but we just don't want to be driving all the time.

In the end, I planned a tour from Oslo to Bergen, which we could travel in two weeks easily, with three different places to stay.
But, we found out that two of the three apartments (the ones close to the coast) were not available anymore. And unfortunately Norway does not have as many hotels/apartments as for instance the islands of Greece, so we couldn't just pick another place to stay. Moreover, we chose the apartments because of their unique and beautiful location, so we didn't want to stay somewhere else.

We were a bit dispirited then, frustrated about this bad luck and wondering why we didn't plan this all back in January. Days passed and we were thinking about what to do. Probably the coast of Norway is a favorite place for a lot of people, the fjords must be pretty breathtaking. After we had survived the busiest weekend of the year (a weekend full of music, a.o. Vocal Festival Amusing Hengelo AND the festival Den Bosch Goes A Cappella), our heads were empty and clear and within half an hour we decided we would drop the idea of traveling along the coast (but we'll go there another time for sure - and then we'll book the trip in January!) and we would just travel across the inland of Norway, from Oslo to Trondheim.

At the travel agency the places we wanted to stay were checked and we had to wait for several days, because they had to contact Norway to see if there was still an apartment available.
Today we got the phone call with the answer and it made me really happy, because the trip as we planned it can take place! WHeeee!!! So we are going to fly to Oslo, hire a car, stay some time in the first apartment, stay several days in a second apartment, drive to Trondheim and fly back home from there.

I'm already looking forward to the beautiful scenery, the quietness and just the two of us. And only now the fun part of planning a holiday can start!

Drienerlalala

Back in March I made some recordings for the vocal group Drienerlalala during the Dutch Festival for Vocal Ensembles in Almelo. Today I discovered the movies are online on YouTube, so if you like a cappella you should have a look. They don't sing every note in tune, but their subtle humor and the fun they have during the performance make them a group I always love to watch when I get the chance.

Pay attention to the persons in the back that are most left and most right at the end of the song. That's what I mean by "subtle humor"!


With the following song the group won the Harry Bannink Tribute Trophy.




Cock-a-doodle-doo!

Website VPS KeK online

One of the things that is keeping Martin busy these days is singing. Not only with his quintet Amusing, which has actually started to be more amusing in the past few months (which is a compliment really), but also with his still pretty new vocal group VPS KeK. Thanks to RJ the group now has its own website and I can recommend you to check it regularly, because they intend to upload new things all along: www.vpskek.nl!
(still Dutch only, but going to be translated into English later)