1) I put a link to my friend Sara’s recent pics from her week-long sight seeing sprint. It goes to a site called Flickr, a part of Yahoo! that does a good job hosting pics.
2) I also put a link to the “Vio-blog” so you can hit that link and see the work I am doing on the violin that I am making.
3) Making some panoramas now so check them later.
Now, the actual blog entry:
So, you say you want to complicate your life? Well, this is how you do it.
First of all, make sure that you have a lot of interests in life. There’s nothing wrong with that of course, unless your interests are unrelated and don't mix well within the timeframe of, let’s sayyyy, one lifetime. If you were interested in “eating beans” AND “passing gas”…well, those interests would mix rather (potently) well. If you were interested in “having power” AND “stealing money”… heyyyy, you are a politician just waiting to be arraigned. Another example of an easy match of interests!!! Nothing to it. For a complicated life however, you have to dig deeper to get a good clash of goals. Pair up stupid things like “speed walking in the mall” and “nudity”, or “cultivating penicillin under your fingernails” and “being a dentist”. Or you can go all out with your life plans like I have: and combine “violin making” with “blacksmithing”.
Having two very different ideas at the same time can be very misleading to a young mind. If two ideas pop into your head within a short timeframe one might just assume that one is supposed to combine those ideas, no matter how different they might be. Like finding a quarter on the ground in front of a gumball machine. I first had the idea to make functional instruments out of steel when I was teaching myself violin and studying under a blacksmith around the age of nineteen. Do I ever pay for it now. And how.
I spent seven years making and redesigning my instruments for myself (see the Senior Show pictures and the Gallery panoramic), and because of this investment, I feel that it is necessary to drag these monstrosities wherever I go; including across the biggest ocean in the world. The two violins I own are smaller than the cello and the bass, so they aren’t as imposing to move. I brought one of them with me on the plane (in a case shaped like a machinegun mind you). Moving the bass and the cello however were like moving a dead rhino up to the top floor of your apartment building when the elevator is out. There was a lot of resistance to moving that much mass, and that rhino started to stink after a while…
I left Denver, Colorado for Japan in October of 2004. My bass and cello were supposed to follow me the next month, but they didn't. They were encased in huge wooden crates and mummified indefinitely, sitting in the dusty metal shop because my old boss in Denver didn't have the money to send it. So I waited. And waited. And e-mailed my old boss. And waited. And I called and tried to leave messages on the answering machine that was too full to take any more threats. So I waited some more. I waited until I went back to Denver in DECEMBER of 2005. I then had to track down the grumpy old man (who still owes me $1,000) even though he only has one phone, his work phone, and was never at work when I need him to be there. I was beginning to plan on how I would break the window to get my stuff out of his building, when I finally tracked him down at home. I had to put my new address on the humungous crates and then pay half of the shipping costs (even though he owed me $1,200 at the time). That was about $210 for each of us. I returned to Japan and had to call the Old Boss several times to remind him to give his half of the money to the shipper via credit card and after several weeks, the instruments were finally shipped in LATE January of 2006.
That's when it got expensive. And irritating. I got a call/email/letter/all at the same time from Customs. Not “customs” as in traditions followed for no apparent reason, “Customs” as in pay us lots of money or you will never see your possessions again. They told me that it would be a few days to clear the inspections and they would send me a list of the charges. The email of charges that they sent was a blasphemy to common sense. I was shocked at what they wanted me to pay for such a small amount of ‘service’. This is what they wanted:
CUSTOMS CLEARANCE: ￥11800 ($101)
CUSTOMS INSPECTION: ￥10000 ($86)
TERMINAL CHARGE: ￥ 5000 ($43)
HANDLING FEE: ￥10500 ($90)
DELIVERY CHARGE: ￥26250 ($225)
Off-loading & disposal packaging material fee: ￥6300 ($54)
DUTY: Free (!?!?!)
IMPORT TAX: will advise you…
So, I emailed a response back to them. I had never realized it before, but it is extremely difficult to type efficiently when you can’t keep your middle from sticking straight out. I asked them to explain every single charge, why there were several double charges and if they thought the streets of Japan were paved with gold (why else would they want to charge so much for the 40km trip to my house form the airport?!?!?) ?!? The delivery fee was the most offensive charge so I broke it down like this for them, in Japanese:
From Colorado to Osaka Airport it cost me $419.76(￥48,304).
Distance:
From Aurora, Colorado to San Francisco it was:
970 Miles (1,561KM) (843 Nautical Miles)
From San Francisco to Osaka it was:
5374 Miles (8,648 KM) (4,670 Nautical Miles)
In Total, the distance was:
6,344 Miles (10,209 KM )(5,513 Nautical Miles)
So ONE Kilometer cost ￥4.73 (4.1 cents) (one Mile cost ￥7.57 or 6.5 cents) (I gave up on the Nautical Miles at this point)
BUT, from Osaka Airport is only about 38KM from my house, and you want to charge me ￥690.8 ($5.95) per KM? (or $9.57 per mile!?!?!)
Isn’t this a little expensive? Tell ya what-DON'T deliver my things. Leave them there, I will come pick them up after I pay the other excessive fees.
So I paid the other fees, and then I did want any car-less person in need does, I begged one of my friends for a ride. One of the English teachers at school, Mr. Yamamoto, is a fellow musician. So he had pity on me and took me to the airport in his family van. The crates BARELY squeezed in the back.
His seat was shoved forward as far as it would go so he was driving hunched over the steering wheel.
When we got home, the cello crate made it up the elevator right away, and took up space in my living room. The bass crate, weighing several hundred pounds, put up a battle.
I finally shoved it into the foyer area, and because it wouldn't fit on the elevator I took it apart on the first floor to the amusement of everyone that lived in the building.
The bass crate was completely apart that night and the bass was standing ready before the clock crowed 12AM.
Because all sculptors are packrats, I kept all the wood. Shoved it all in the closet for future projects.
Might make a futon. The cello crate took up a lot of room in the middle of my kitchen floor.
It wasn't opened until a few days later.
Now both of them tower over me as I sit on the floor, just waiting for the day they feel their first earthquake so they can pounce on me.
So, if you wanna complicate your life, in short be an artist. Make heavy, huge, sharp things with strings. Take them with you to other parts of the world in hopes of starting a rock band. And try to do it all with as little money as possible while people are clawing at your wallet. If you do this, you are guaranteed happiness and success (or at the very least, failure and squalor).
Mine!
Erich von Meatleg
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