candles, on my fireplace

vienna teng, singing and playing the piano

- most photos courtesy of Adam Tow (http://www.tow.com) -

Vienna is so talented. At 7pm today, roughly forty enthusiastic fans piled into my living room (and loft area) to experience her music, recital-style. She was very good about radiating an aura of informality throughout the show, sharing with us insights born from conversations she had just had with guests in the audience, and stories about sources of inspiration for her songs. Most of the attendees were the usual suspects who have been coming to these events: friends from E.piphany, Stanford, and high school (and their respective stranger-friends who are new to me), but there seemed to be many more "small" groups of people who knew each other this time. I was happy to see Jamie Knox, Jarom Pollack, Jessica Grossman, and Oliver Miao, all of whom I went to high school with! Jamie is in town for a summer internship, and Jaron was in town on business. Other out-of-state attendees included my online friend Michael, whom I met because he purchased Pocketsynth from me a long, long time ago. :)

Vienna attracted quite a crowd! I literally didn't have enough seating for everybody, so it was a pseudo-BYOC event. Jamie, Jeremy, Larry, and Dardy all brought their own chairs (and extra chairs), and in the end, I think we were only a few seats short! It was quite an accomplishment, I think, to cram forty mostly-seated adult-sized people into a small San Francisco house. :) I think I had around sixty to seventy show up to the December event, but I didn't have a piano then, and people sort of piled up the staircase (which I thought was really cool).

I think people mingled pretty successfully, despite having lots of random groups colliding, once again. Dardy said that he was a wallflower, "as usual," but it looked to me like he did get to meet some people. Plus, he knew a bunch of people who were there, anyway, and despite the potential for ex-girlfriend drama, things seemed to go smoothly. :) Also, I'm sure Sophie met everybody she hadn't met before. She knows virtually all of my friends by now. :)

Everybody except for Vienna and Eric cleared out by 11:30pm. What's up with that? I think the older folk went home to be domestic and stuff, and the younger folk went out to other parties. Speaking of age, Melissa (one of Vienna's friends...?) and I were comparing notes about when we finished our degrees at Stanford, which resulted in her exclaiming, "oh. you're old!" Hmm... I had something to say about that, but it has eluded me, for the moment.

Anyway, so Vienna, Eric and I finished cleaning up, and then geeked out, musician-style (I broke out my cello), for another hour or so. And now, everybody's gone, and the house looks as empty as it usually does. Even my cats are sleeping (exhausted from playing with so many people!). The only remnant of the night's event is the lingering smell of the candles that were burning during the show, and even that's starting to fade.

More about Vienna: http://www.viennateng.com. More than half of the attendees bought her CD tonight after hearing her play. That's just cool.

Oh! One thing that worked well tonight: I set my two Canon 550EX Speedlights to slave mode and stuck them high up in the room. Bounce-flash is tricky because the ceilings are so high in there. Anyway, since both Adam and I have the ST-E2 transmitter, we could both use the same flashes remotely! We're such nerds.

I'm sure Adam will post many of the same photos (and many more!), because most of the photos on this page were taken by him. Thanks, Adam! He really relieved me of my normal photo-taking obligations so I could play the role of a host more effectively. AND... this way, I don't have to be as "throrough" in my photo selection. :) Peter was taking pictures, too, so he may put some up as well, 'cept all of our heads will be centered in his photos. hahahaha! :)

vienna, pretending to fly (or something. :)	the audience
standing ovation!	immediately after the show
tphs'ers: me, oliver, jamie	jamie and jarom
elliot-monster	yay! mandy's back from florence. :)
dardy and olivia	l->r: chris, cindy, olivia, peter, karine
dardy, olivia, jane	jane, peter, olivia, w/autographed (?) cd
hiro surveys his land...	korean posse
bev and yuji. i have a pic like this from every one of these events. :)	michael and adam
sophie, jeremy, domi, dardy	sophie, adam, jeremy
me, with camera!	munira, with emil, jonas and alessandra's baby boy!!
cindy, wendy, vienna	munira and sophie
betsy and me	vienna and eric
sophie / adam

Photos from Peter's camera:

jay, jane, me, hiro, karine, peter, olivia	peter and karine. he wishes he could play the piano! :)
something weird going on...

More photos: [Adam Tow's coverage]

Last night I went to Dardy's housewarming party, which was a lot of fun! Adam posted a bunch of photos on his site. This morning, after only a few hours of sleep, I pried myself out of bed to hit Koi Palace for some wonderful dim sum. yay! If you get there at 10am you don't have to wait an hour and a half to sit down. Oh, and Adam posted a bunch of photos on his site, as did Amabelle (password required). Oh, Rita did, too. :)

online posse + bill	amabelle and rita
me, looking vaguely borg like

You know, at Dardy's party, I was one of the people who were being referred to as online journalists, even though I went to Stanford and knew people there other than Dardy. To be honest, I never thought I would be lumped into that catagory over other categories one might be lumped into, but... my site really has evolved into something that people might know me by, I guess. Crazy.

Oops! Did I let a little bit about how I feel seep into the contents of this page? :) Dardy keeps urging me to post more about how I feel about things, but... I probably won't. I'd like this page to remain a page where I can show photographs of people/events/etc., and maybe rant a bit in a passive-aggressive way. I'd like it to remain um... "intimately superficial" or... "superficially intimate", I guess. :)