last week tuesday, i attended the first non-classic concert this year, namely the calgary instantiation of the progressive nation tour 2009, featuring dream theater, zappa plays zappa, bigelf and scale the summit. originally, pain of salvation and another band should have played instead of bigelf and scale the summit, but unfortunately they had to pull out due to some side effects of the financial crisis. too bad, i would really have liked to see pain of salvation.
i decided to spare my energy in particular for the last two bands, and hence skipped scale the summit. the announced timing for the concert was perfect, and so i arrived directly when bigelf began to play. they were ok, but i was more waiting for the next band. and the very bad part of the evening started during their gig (maybe even before, but i wasn’t there), namely some [insert your favorite curse word here] potheads started smoking weed. it was not as bad as last year, but still very annoying. why can’t these idiots smoke somewhere where they don’t annoy anyone? at least there was no moshpit and the crowd’s density was really pleasant.
after hearing so many good things about them, i was really happy to finally see zappa plays zappa, which is not just another frank zappa cover band, but founded and lead by one of zappas sons. (not that this makes a difference to me, as i have no comparism of zappa plays zappa to other frank zappa cover bands.) i really enjoyed their performance – even though the potheads annoyed the hell out of me.
finally, dream theater entered the stage. they played several songs from their new album, but as usual also a lot older songs, everything including some improvisation and extensions, and several solo performances between the songs.
the concert was really good, even though the potheads repeatedly tried to ruin the whole thing to me. the only way to make it better would be to throw the potheads out and re-add pain of salvation (and maybe reduce to three bands, all of which can play a bit longer in that case).

the last two weeks were pretty much packed with two conferences and a summer school. on august 13–14, i.e. thursday and friday, the selected areas of cryptography conference was held in calgary. then, the week after that, the ecc summer school was held from wednesday to saturday, and from sunday afternoon to wednesday the 13th workshop on elliptic curve cryptography was held. (in fact, this was the sixth ecc workshop i attended, beginning with the one 2004 in bochum. and the second ecc mentioned in this blog; apparently i was too busy to write something about the 12th one held in utrecht last year.)
in addition to these things, several more things happened, some about whom i might write a few words in some more posts.

if you’re from europe, you probably know quark. if you’re from northern america, you probably don’t, as it’s essentially impossible to buy it here. well, there are some exceptions, for example dutch/german shops which happen to be around somewhere. mixed with milk and sugar, and with other ingredients such as strawberries, it gives a nice, refreshing snack or even whole dinner. i just love it.

on saturday, some friends and i went on a hike to lillian lake in the canadian rockies. due to time restrictions, we didn’t continue to galatea lakes. in fact i’m happy about this, as this was the first hike for me in this season and i was really done when we arrived at the lake. gladly, the way back was a lot easier. here are some impressions from the trip:

today, we had our conference dinner at an italian restaurant called l’espresso. the atmosphere was nice and the food was good, and after the dessert espresso, coffee or cappuccino was served. i asked for hot chocolate itself, and the waiter said he has to check whether that is ok, since they use high quality chocolate which is a bit more expensive. that already sounded good, so i told him in case of doubt i’d pay for that one myself. some minutes later, i got my chocolate (without having to pay for it), and i must say, it’s the best hot chocolate i ever had. i guess it was made in a similar manner to the one i once produced myself. if i ever come back to toronto, i have to get back to this place :)

i’m currently staying in toronto, attending a conference at the fields institute. today’s afternoon was free, so i did a trip to the toronto islands. here are some impressions from the trip:

finally, a photo of myself, taken at the beach of ward’s island.

it appears that i forgot to document two trips i did last year, one in calgary at the end of may, and one at the beginning of december in switzerland.

the first one is a trip on may 31, 2008 to calgary’s nose hill park, a huge natural environment park depicting (if you ignore the roads and trails) the landscape which would be there if the city wouldn’t be there. enjoy some impressions. the last photo shows some rabbits in a street near to the place where i’ve been staying, which is maybe a 20 minute walk away from the park.

on saturday, i went for a small walk before going shopping, again to the confederation park in calgary. here are a few impressions.

sometimes, i like to cook fancy. with fancy, i mean something which needs a bit more work than just pasta with pesto. like what i ate today. here are two photos, showing everything except the ice cream afterwards, and the drink:

today i was rather surprised when i got a facebook message around 14 o’clock, from a friend i haven’t seen for years, and who moved back to calgary a month before i came here, asking whether i’d like to join her for a hockey game of calgary’s flames, which apparently are known all around the world. they played against the buffalo sabres, which resulted in a very exciting game. first, the flames ruled the playground with 2:0. then, the sabres caught up, resulting in 2:2 which lasted until the end of the second period. then, in the third and last period, the flames scored another 3 goals, making them the winners. well. it’s fascinating how much commercials you can put in such the game.
a thing which was a bit strange was the motto, “salute to the military / we are commitment”. before the game started, the national anthem was played, with a group of soldiers standing on the playground together with the players. apparently, the canadian military also set up a merchandize / information place somewhere in the arena, and during some of the intermedite fun games with visitors, soldiers took part. all this surprised me pretty much, i’ve never seen something similar before.
oh, and harvey was there, too.*