2 Dec
1999
2 Dec
'99
12:59 p.m.
At 05:36 PM 12/2/99 +0000, Philip.Belben(a)powertech.co.uk wrote:
Like, in Jakarta, I bought a gong. 28 inches in
diameter, and
weighing, um, I was going to say nearly 100lb but I think it's a bit less.
I'll
have to weigh it. I wish I'd known how expensive
excess baggage charges
are ---
it cost me $700 US just to ship the damned thing
home...
And that gamelan gong has a connection to computers, too: Gamelan
music (playing in the background of shadow puppet plays) often
has its cycles of rhythms at powers of two, so a large gong
like that marks off time at, say, every 256 beats.
This cracked me up when I learned that in gamelan class, much like
the moment when aspects of the Japanese language reminded me of
stack-based computer languages.
- John