I was looking into buying a portable, high-quality digital audio recorder for taping concerts and doing interviews with people, recording ambience noise, lending it to Chris to do his Boredoms work. But I found that the reasonable contenders turned out to be unreasonably priced at USD 400 and some. So I lost interest. This was over the course of the last month or so.

Then tonight I was reminded why I wanted one in the first place. After work—Monday is the 市立幼儿园 marathon—I needed to unwind so I went downtown and caught a performance by Shanghai's greatest band, Cold Fairyland, at Shanghai's coolest concert venue, the Ark in Xintiandi. They played some songs I hadn't heard, and a lot of old favorites. The light show was fantastic. I made a single glass of USD 6 ginger ale last for the whole 3 hour concert.

Then again, I went alone. When I go to concerts alone, I end up convincing myself that I'm there for the music. But I'm getting more and more unconvinced that chasing after something so impersonal of the music is the right thing to do. Like I told Chris and Asa, I'm looking for the Answer and one thing I know is that music is not the Answer.