“It won’t do to dream of caramel, to think of cinnamon, and long for you…” – Suzanne Vega
I had a very busy day at work today with not a spare moment to even sit down and think. Meetings, people coming to see me, preparation of submissions, going to an external seminar, sending off regulatory documentation, budget matters and then finally in the late afternoon a goodbye function for one of our long-serving staff members who is retiring. When I got home I was pooped…
Although we have been having some beautiful fine and sunny days, as soon as evening falls, the temperature drops quite considerably and a dark night soon follows. This is the best time in winter for coming into a warm house and having a hot dinner with a rich and gooey dessert!
Apple Caramel Cake Ingredients - cake
• 1 and 1/2 cup light brown sugar, firmly packed
• 2/3 cup vegetable oil
• 2 teaspoons ground cinnamon
• 1/2 teaspoon ground cloves
• 3 medium eggs
• 1/3 cup milk
• 2 cups flour
• 1 tablespoon baking powder
• 2 Granny Smith apples, peeled, cored and coarsely chopped
Ingredients - Caramel Topping
• 2/3 cup light brown sugar, packed
• 1/3 cup butter
• 1/3 cup heavy cream
• 1 teaspoon vanilla essence
Method
In a mixing bowl with electric mixer, beat together sugar, oil, cinnamon, and vanilla.
Add eggs one at a time, beating well after each addition.
Mix in the milk, flour, baking powder, and salt, stirring just until blended.
Stir in apples.
Pour apple cake batter into a greased 25 cm square pan.
Bake at 175°C until cake springs back when touched lightly in the centre (about 30 to 40 minutes).
Meanwhile, combine brown sugar, butter, and cream in a heavy saucepan over medium heat.
Bring to a boil and then reduce heat to a simmer; continue cooking and stirring for 6 minutes.
Remove from heat and stir in the vanilla.
With a fork, pierce cake all over. Pour hot caramel topping over the hot cake.
Serve warm or at room temperature with a dollop of clotted cream.
“In true love the smallest distance is too great, and the greatest distance can be bridged.” - Hans Nouwens
The internet has revolutionised our life in all sorts of ways. Communication, entertainment, education, publishing, networking, commerce, business, etc, etc, etc. However, the internet is also a major way that we socialise and meet potential partners. The virtual environment is conducive to rapid exchanges of intimate details and many people utilise the electronic medium to find their “perfect” match. Numerous “matchmaker” sites exist and they range from the casual “clip-joint” type of site where one-night stands are arranged to the genuine relationship-building sites where the object is a match that leads to marriage or other long-term arrangements.
Matchmaking of course is nothing new and in many traditional societies quite a large number of marriages are the result of the efforts of specialist matchmakers. It is perhaps not surprising that most of these marriages are very successful and last a lifetime long. An astute matchmaker seeks individuals who are well-suited, socially, physically and intellectually, and who share similar values and can communicate effectively with one another. Love is given every opportunity to flourish in such matches. The specialist skills of the matchmaker who gets to know a very large number of available singles and does a “best-match” exercise can be a very effective way of building a successful and long-lasting relationship.
The ease with which we communicate through the internet and the large variety of online forums that make meeting your “perfect” match more likely explain the popularity of this medium when one is searching for a mate. The electronic medium can provide a “safe” environment for frank discussions where people may exchange candid disclosures about all sorts of things: Politics, religion, sex, prejudices, music, books, sports, hobbies, etc. One may then find a partner with whom one shares much and can communicate with on a non-physical level.
The problem in many cases is that with the reduction of the world into a global village through the wonders of the world-wide-web, one’s perfect match may live in Outer Mongolia or the permafrost of Lapland, while one is happily ensconced in the tropical paradise of Vanuatu. The dilemma then is, where to go with this budding relationship? Long distance love affairs do not last the distance, but a new survey has shown that Australians are not daunted by geographical separation. This is of course nothing new in this vast land of ours, which is so far away from the rest of the world!
A survey of 120,000 Australian singles showed that about a quarter of respondents would have no qualms in packing up and moving to a new location in order to find love. Moving interstate or even overseas was not unreasonable for 27% of people asked, and 54% said that they would relocate if the person they were to join was the “right” one. Those who had never been married before were more likely to move than those who had married before and single men were more willing to move than single women to join their soul mate. In Australia, Northern Territorians were the ones most likely to move so as to be with their love, while on the other side of the coin, South Australians were the most loathe to do so. The survey also compared Australians to a similar survey done in the US and it found that Australians are 12% more likely to move for love than Americans!
Internet romances need caution and often people are disappointed, but I am also aware of some very successful matches made on the net. Distance can be a problem but the course of true love never ran smooth. It seems that if the chemistry is right, distance is no object for the determined couple…
LDR noun, abbrev. Long-Distance Relationship: An intimate relationship that takes place when the partners are separated by a considerable distance. In 2005, according to The Center for the Study of Long Distance Relationships, an estimated 2.9% of US marriages were considered long-distance, with 1 in 10 marriages reported to have included a period at long distance within the first 3 years. This means that in 2005 approximately 3.5 million people in the US alone were involved in long-distance marriages.
“The problem with getting older is you still remember how things used to be.” - Paul Newman
A family friend of ours was admitted into a nursing home this week. She is in her eighties and although she lived alone up till now, her increasing signs of dementia and inability to look after herself forced her family to decide that she would be better off living in a 24-hour care environment. She had done her utmost until now to conceal her memory loss and confusion. Her stratagems were ingenious to say the least, but her increasingly bizarre behaviour and her inability to cope with everyday tasks, the simplest chores and routine forced her to finally break down and admit that things were not at all normal.
It is a sad situation and it was painful to watch this woman that we knew well and liked, going through such a terrible ordeal and realise that her mind has been gradually deteriorating. We had to concede that over time, her normally alert bright eyes became increasingly dull and vacant and that her smile was a rarer and rarer occurrence. Her amusing and wry comments, engaging conversation and keen sense of humour gradually disappeared; firstly into confusion, then into outlandish incongruousness, then incoherence and now what lies ahead is complete apathy.
The loss of one’s mind is a loss of identity. Dementia robs the person of their selfhood, their perception of who they are and what makes themselves as individuals. The loss of higher mentation dehumanises and makes of the person a thing. How can one cope with this loss of self as one perceives it disappearing? How can the people who love that person cope with that living death?
My Foggy Brain
The fog creeps and covers the landscape
In a pall of gray – like a winding sheet
Around a corpse recently dead.
My mind dulls, and ashen woolly thoughts
Flit in and out of my consciousness; now like butterflies,
Now like strange visitors, intruders in one’s house.
The wintry mist obscures and blunts perception,
The cold numbs me and the wetness seeps in,
Drenching my clothes, chilling me to the marrow.
Sunlit memories of childhood are vivid, with scents, aromas,
The woody, resinous smell of newly sharpened pencils
On the first day of school… Last week, wasn’t it?
The twilight yields its realm quickly to night
And as darkness falls, I am disoriented, yet strangely alert,
Feeling like a nocturnal creature: I must go out, go there!
The days all merge into one and no matter how hard I try
I cannot remember what I had for lunch, if did have anything,
Where I was five minutes ago, or who the person I talked to was.
In darkness I wander, searching for some unknown goal,
My random peregrinations having some higher purpose
That I cannot divine; yet its all-important gravity, overwhelming.
I see my wedding day clearly, attended by my adult children,
I hear old familiar songs, sounding new and fresh;
And who is this strange child calling me “Grandma”?
Summer falls heavily this year and freezes everything it touches.
Snow falls and merges with the white hair of the old woman
Staring at me reflected in some shop window, waving to me as I wave to her.
Who is this person who apes my every move? Where am I?
I wore a pink chiffon dress yesterday at my birthday party, I turned seven…
I was so happy…Why is this old woman staring at me crying?
“Science fiction films are not about science. They are about disaster, which is one of the oldest subjects of art.” - Susan Sontag
Yesterday we had a near miss with an asteroid that came dangerously close to the earth. The name of the object is 2011 MD and fortunately it flew by harmlessly but at the terribly close distance of only 12,000 kilometres (a hair’s breadth in astronomical terms!), which is 32 times closer than the moon, and closer than geosynchronous satellites. Astronomers in the Southern Hemisphere were able to spot the asteroid with fairly modest telescopes as a fast moving bright spot. Though this celestial object came close, it is not a distance record holder. Earlier this year, a tiny asteroid flew by even closer - within 5,500 kilometres of the earth’s surface.
Asteroid 2011 MD is 10 metres long and was discovered last week by telescopes in New Mexico. Scientists say asteroids this size sail past Earth every six years. If 2011 MD did hit us, then it would more than likely break up in the atmosphere and give us an amazing display of fireballs and meteors. Quite a light show! It is unlikely that an object as small as this would cause grave effects. However, asteroids larger than 25-30 metres are more likely to impact the ground and have more serious consequences (depending also on where the impact occurs – an asteroid impacting in Paris will have different effects to one hitting the middle of the Pacific Ocean).
There are about 8,100 Near-Earth Objects (NEO) that have been discovered and about 827 of them are asteroids with a diameter of approximately 1 km or larger. About 1,236 of these NEOs have been classified as Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). NASA currently plans to launch a probe to visit one of these PHAs and return samples of the asteroid to Earth. That mission will launch the OSIRIS-Rex asteroid probe in 2016 to rendezvous with the space rock 1999 RQ36 in 2020. The target asteroid is 580 metres wide and has a 1-in-1,800 chance of hitting Earth in the year 2170, and a 1-in-1,000 chance of slamming into us in 2182.
2011 MD was part of a group of Earth approaching asteroids called “Apollo Class”, which regularly crosses the orbit of the Earth and thus has a slight but noticeable chance of striking Earth. Not every asteroid approaching Earth is quite as benign as 2011 MD has proven to be. About two years ago, asteroid 2009 DD45 which was 61 metres long, approached us and had it struck Earth, it would have been with the force of a nuclear blast, similar to the presumed object that fell on Siberia in 1908, causing an air burst in the multimegaton range, flattening 25 square kilometres of forest. One of the largest Apollo asteroids, named Geographos, was discovered in 1951. Geographos is several kilometres in diameter. A strike on Earth by an asteroid the size of Geographos would be an extinction level event on the scale of the object that destroyed the dinosaurs. Looking at the near future, we still have the threat of asteroid Apophis to deal with, which is looming ever closer, a possible impact occurring on April 13, 2036.
In Egyptian myth, Apophis was the ancient spirit of evil and destruction, a demon that was determined to plunge the world into eternal darkness. This seemed to astronomers a fitting name for the asteroid hurtling towards Earth from outer space. Apophis is 350 metres long and was discovered in 2004. Scientists are ever since monitoring its progress and have discovered that this asteroid is on a potential collision course with our planet.
NASA estimates that if Apophis impacts earth, it would release more than 100,000 times the energy released in the nuclear blast over Hiroshima. Thousands of square kilometres would be directly affected by the blast but the whole of the Earth would see the effects of the dust released into the atmosphere. Astronomers are imploring governments to decide on a strategy for dealing with this event, in a case of reality imitating art – the art in this case being science fiction movies!
If you have seen the 1998 film “Armageddon” you will be familiar with the possible effects of asteroids impacting the earth. The film looks at the possibility of destroying the asteroid in space before it has the chance of hitting the earth. Another 1998 film “Deep Impact” also looked at the possibility of an impact with a comet.
Scientists initially put the risk of impact of Apophis at 1 in 233, which is almost a certainty in cosmological terms. Subsequent studies upgraded the probability to 1 in 43. However, refined studies, more accurate measurements and some serious number crunching led to a downgrading. As of October 7, 2009, the odds of an April 13, 2036 impact have been reduced to about 1 in 250,000. So you can sleep soundly tonight!
“We long for an affection altogether ignorant of our faults. Heaven has accorded this to us in the uncritical canine attachment.” - George Eliot
Occasionally when scraping the bottom of the “specials” basket at the DVD shop one may find a film that one will get, albeit one that one would never have considered getting at full price. Such was the case with a movie that we saw at the weekend. The only reason we got it was because of sentimental value… We used to own Chihuahuas and they were both beautiful dogs with a wonderful temperament. Hence seeing a movie with two chihuahuas on its cover brought back memories and we got it to watch. It was Raja Gosnell’s 2008 “Beverly Hills Chihuahua”, produced by the Disney studios. As such, one could immediately tell this was produced for the children/family market and one’s expectations are immediately toned down somewhat.
It is interesting how many children’s picture books, novels, films and TV series are being made in recent years. It seems that ever more and more are being produced and there is quite a vast array of very ordinary stuff out there. However, the market niche is a lucrative one and it always amazes me to see young children or even babies in the back of four-wheel drive cars, with eyes transfixed to the TV monitor, watching on DVD some children’s show or another. No matter how short the trip the DVD is an easy solution for keeping kids occupied and quiet. Needless to say that at home the TV and DVD player are always on the go and kids tend to spend more and more time exposed to this form of entertainment. Very much unlike my childhood where TV was always live and strictly rationed – a privilege not a right.
The worst offenders nowadays are the inane animated series that take silly ideas and elevate them to the heights of absurdity. For example, karate-practicing (and suitably dressed) dinosaurs that fight on the side of good trying to overcome the forces of evil as exemplified by sabre-wielding alien bird-like predators in space suits, or some such bilge. The premise is outlandish, the plots repetitive and mind-rotting, and the whole quality of production low and nasty. These types of shows are produced on conveyor-belt types of establishments and are preparing the young viewers for the adult brainless equivalent, the daily soap opera.
One thing about Disney movies in the past was the relatively high standard of production, the use of classic stories and fairy tales as the starting point and the strong “messages” or “morals” that they had embedded within them. These features aligned themselves with most of the classic children’s literature in this respect, where the object of the story was to not only entertain, but to also play a role in shaping young minds so that they were edified and cultivated in some positive way. In recent times, more and more children’s literature and films are produced mainly for entertainment and may in fact have quite a opposite effect to educating or raising the moral, spiritual, and intellectual level of their audiences. Perhaps this is considered old fashioned now, and to actually have such a goal may be looked upon with impatience, cynicism and disapproval.
“Beverly Hills Chihuahua” is one of the latest breed of Disney films (pardon the pun!). This is not based on any classic story or fairy tale and it is a live action film not an animated feature. It does grant dogs anthropomorphic characteristics and they do talk to one another as people do, sharing in this respect elements with similar works in children’s literature: “The Wind in the Willows”, “Aesop’s Fables” and “Winnie the Pooh” for instance. One can see that the prime purpose of this film is entertainment (and entertainment of children mainly), however, it does retain that underlying morality mentality, and it is a vehicle for edification. The plot revolves around Chloe, the Beverly Hills Chihuahua of the title, who is a spoilt, pampered pooch complete with designer clothes, expensive jewellery, and a lifestyle to equal that of rich and famous humans. Her owner, Vivian, leaves on a business trip and her niece, Rachel, is left to dog-sit Chloe. Rachel is a party girl and decides to join with her two friends to go to Mexico, for a vacation. Chloe wanders off, is dognapped and finds herself in an illegal dog-fighting establishment. She is rescued by Delgado, an Alsatian who will help her get back to Beverly Hills. The man who runs the dogfights finds out that Chloe is worth a kingly ransom and he sends his Doberman, Diablo, after her. Rachel, and Vivian’s Mexican landscaper, Sam, and his chihuhua, Papi who is in love with Chloe, are on the hunt to find her and get her home safe and sound.
The plot is thin and the moral lessons are delivered with a sledge hammer, however, one should constantly remind oneself that this is a movie aimed at young children and primarily made for entertainment. Along the way, some important messages are given, more or less effectively, generally not very subtly, but at the same time in a comic manner making the moral pill easier to swallow perhaps. Rachel’s prejudice against the Mexican “gardener” is an example that is held up for ridicule. Chloe’s pampered lifestyle contrasted with the homeless street dogs is a warning against the loss of one’s true value systems when one is endowed with riches. Chloe’s return to her “national” and “racial” roots in Chihuahua, Mexico where she meets a colony of proud Chihuahua warrior dogs and learns to bark, is a lesson in the virtue of never forgetting your roots and being proud of your heritage. It all has a happy end of course and everyone gets their just desserts.
It is a fun movie for young children and the parents may enjoy watching along with their offspring, while doing a cryptic crossword perhaps. We enjoyed the Mexican settings, which were picture postcard perfect and idealised – well-suited to a fantasy world as portrayed in the film and any dog-loving person will adore the pooches, even spoilt Chloe. True to formula, the dog voices are provided by some well-known actors including the likes of Drew Barrymore (Chloe), Andy Garcia (Delgado), Plácido Domingo (Monte), George Lopez (Papi). The music score by Heitor Pereira is unobtrusive and appropriate while the direction is conventional and unobjectionable. A sequel was made based on the success of this movie (cost $20 million, $94.5 million gross February 2009 in the USA).
“An opera begins long before the curtain goes up and ends long after it has come down. It starts in my imagination, it becomes my life, and it stays part of my life long after I’ve left the opera house.” - Maria Callas
It is said that Opera is the queen of arts as it combines so many different types of artistic expression to create a unified whole that is seen in the performance on stage. When you think about it, there is music (both its composition and performance), singing, dancing, acting, stage design, costumes, lighting, special effects – to mention a few of these creative forces at work. It is an art form that is highly stylised and admits no middle ground, you either love it or you detest it. Its followers can get as passionate about it as a football fan is about his team and players. Its detractors cannot understand what all the fuss is about and what all that caterwauling on stage is meant to be.
Opera appeals to me as it is a magical mirror of life and its vicissitudes. The way that it presents our common experiences and shared emotions, feelings, and the way that we all react to certain situations can prove to be a powerful insight into our innermost being. And of course the music makes it all so much more immediate and can strip naked our emotional reserve and make us very vulnerable to the stimuli that reach us in that darkened auditorium. The setting draws us in and the highly artificial environment of the stage acts as a lens to focus emotions quite sharply and make us participate in the drama taking place. How easy it is to then find parallels with our own life and experiences…
Of course even the most ardent opera fan has some favourite operas and some that are not all that sympathetic to one’s sensibilities. I particularly dislike Puccini’s “La Bohème” but I like his “Madam Butterfly”. “Carmen” and the “Pearl Fishers” of Bizet are perennial favourites of mine, as are most Verdi operas, with (perhaps surprisingly) the exception of “Aida”. The aria “Celeste Aida” grates on my nerves so much! Mozart’s operas are wonderful as are Rossini’s. “Norma” of Bellini and “Don Pasquale” of Donizetti I like, but Wagner’s music dramas are not my cup of tea. Gluck’s reformed classical style is appealing and his masterpiece “Orfeo e Euridice” strikes a chord with me.
Most baroque operas are firm favourites, with Monteverdi’s “Orfeo” and “L’ Incoronazione di Poppea” ranking very highly. Handel’s operas are wonderful, as are those of Purcell, including the marvellous “Dido and Aeneas”. Rameau’s “Les Indes Gallantes” is a firm favourite, as are some of Cavalli’s operas, for example, “La Callisto”.
Yesterday we went to see one of our favourite operas, “Faust” by Charles Gounod. It was staged by the Melbourne Opera Company in the Athenaeum Theatre. “Faust” is one of the most popular operas in the repertoire and it is perhaps easy to divine the reason. The music is absolutely delicious and there are many well-known arias and choruses, including Marguerite’s famous “Jewel Song” and “The King of Thule”, Mephistopheles’ “Golden Calf” and “Serenade”, Faust’s “Salut demeure” and Valentin’s “Even Bravest Hearts may swell”. The “Soldiers’ Chorus” and the famous Waltz are recognisable tunes by even the non-opera buff person in the street.
“Faust” is adapted from Goethe’s magnum opus of the same name, the story of which he took from German folk tales and various historical tidbits. Both play and opera tell the story of Dr Faust’s pact with the Devil to regain his lost youth in order to experience love and pleasure – things he did not sample while engaged in his “serious” life work on philosophy. The object of his love is the innocent Marguerite, who falls in love with him deeply and purely. A prime character in the work is Mephistopheles, a personification of the Devil, who aids Faust to win the heart and affections of Marguerite. The debauched girl is destroyed by her affair with Faust, who not only abandons her once she is with child, but who also kills her brother. Faust is damned, but Marguerite achieves ultimate salvation.
It is a powerful story and although Gounod has sets it in the conventional manner of a 19th century French composer, the emotional power of the music is quite amazing and its popularity since its first performance attests to the genius of the composer. The full opera (with obligatory Act V ballet) is rarely performed nowadays, perhaps a pity as the ballet contains some gorgeous music and is a showpiece for some phantasmagorical stagecraft. Acts IV and V were conflated in the production that we saw, with what some opera purists may say is a result of tighter dramatic punch and no balletic distractions.
Melbourne Opera Company Ltd was founded in 2002 as a non-profit public arts company dedicated to producing opera and associated art forms at realistic prices. It is a company committed to the development of young artists, regional touring, and having dealings characterised by openness and transparency. The Board is elected annually by the financial membership, which is open to all. Repertoire and casting decisions are taken by an arms-length artistic subcommittee. Melbourne Opera is now second only to the national company as the most active opera company in the country (Australian Opera being the foremost, obviously). This result has been achieved relying mainly upon philanthropic support.
Melbourne Opera Company believe that open competition between opera companies is healthy, providing opportunities for future excellence and greater choice for audiences. In contrast, Berlin, a city smaller than Melbourne, has three major companies as well as a number of smaller houses. Melbourne Opera is active in broadly promoting the art of opera, and works to co-ordinate seasons and subscriptions between all Melbourne opera managements.
The production of “Faust” that we saw yesterday was quite good, although there were some weak areas, understandable perhaps as there were many substitute singers rather than the full original cast. Michael Lapina as Faust did a fairly good job in the male lead role, although on a couple of occasions his notes were shaky. Yang Liu as Valentin was perhaps the weakest of the singers, his notes not hitting true on more than a couple of occasions. Top honours go to Lee Abrahmsen as Marguerite who shone in this demanding role not only with her beautiful singing but also with her impressive stage presence and good acting. An excellent Mephistopheles was sung and acted with gusto by Eddie Muliaumaseali’i whose sonorous bass was satisfying musically and provided a firm anchoring point for many a scene.
Considering the chorus comprises mainly an amateur force, they did a good job of the demanding and powerful choral pieces that form a showcase for this opera. The famous waltz provided an opportunity for a pretty mini ballet around a maypole (a little clunky here and there), while the soldiers’ chorus was perhaps a little understated. Greg Hocking conducted very well and managed to evince a good orchestral sound from his instrumental team that were crowded together in the small orchestra pit. For a group that doesn’t play together often, this orchestra managed to produce a cohesive and professional sound for this difficult, magnificent score. A hooded organist in one of the side-stage boxes and the celestial chorus from upper circle were appreciated by the audience in a theatre that provided good acoustics in a rather intimate way.
The stage settings and lighting were a little disappointing, but one must remember that the Athenaeum is a small theatre and the opera company is a small one. However, a few touches of imagination would have made the settings so much better. Costumes were for the most part good although a few here and there were disappointing (Bacchus’ body suit was lamentable).
Overall we enjoyed ourselves and it is great to see our own Opera company tackling such an epic work in a spirited and courageous manner. True to its mission statement, this company provided a very good quality entertainment at an affordable price. Melbourne is the artistic capital of Australia and stage musicals, opera and plays are always in demand by a discriminating and refined audience. Melbourne Opera’s success in this city is testimony to its talented and committed personnel and artists.
“America is my country and Paris is my hometown.” - Gertrude Stein
A colleague left yesterday for a trip to France and it was his last day at work before his holiday. We talked about all sorts of things and I recommended a host of things to do and see in various places. Paris of course is a favourite… Many other friends and acquaintances are also leaving for trips overseas at about this time. It is a good time to escape to the summery northern hemisphere just as winter is setting in here. I felt a little envious as it looks like this winter we shall not be travelling very far at all.
Writing about France and Paris just now made me feel very nostalgic. We have been to France about a dozen times and enjoyed every single trip. We have stayed in Paris, Marseille, Lyon, Bordeaux, Arles, Toulon, Avignon, Nîmes, Strasbourg. Have driven through the Côte d’ Azur, Provence, Lorraine and Alsace, and of course the Île de France. French food and French music are just two of the wonderful things one can enjoy there (not to mention the art, history, culture, scenery, architecture…). We have many favourite French singers, most of them hailing from the wonderful years of the sixties. One of them is Enrico Macias.
Enrico Macias is a singer/composer who was born in Constantine, Algeria in 1938, to a Spanish father and a French mother. He migrated to France in 1961, during the Algerian war of independence. Shortly after arriving in Paris, he composed a song about leaving his country. The song “Adieu, Mon Pays” (Goodbye My Country) eventually became his first major hit, not only in France, but around the world . The lyrics describe the emotional difficulties experienced by those who have been forced to leave their homelands, families and friends.
Enrico Macias as a singer, composer and guitarist, together with his low-key charismatic personality and rich romantic vocal tone, crosses international boundaries. He is one of those singers one can listen to and connect with, and it is not even necessary to understand the language of the songs in order to fully appreciate the extraordinary feeling, power and emotion of Enrico Macias. Besides French, he has recorded in several other languages, including Italian, Spanish, Hebrew and English. In addition to his 40 plus years of artistic career, he has actively been working towards contributing to world peace and the protection of human rights.
Here is a great song of his, “Paris, you have taken me into your arms”.
Paris, tu m’as pris dans tes bras
J’ allais le long des rues
Comme un enfant perdu
J’ etais seul j’ avais froid
Toi Paris, tu m’ as pris dans tes bras.
Je ne la reverrai pas
La fille qui m’ a souri
Elle s’ est seulement retournée et voila
Mais dans ses yeux j’ ai compris
Que dans la ville de pierre
Ou l’ on se sent etranger
Il y a toujours du bonheur dans l’ air
Pour ceux qui veulent s’ aimer
Et le coeur de la ville
A battu sous mes pas
De Passy a Belleville
Toi Paris, tu m’ as pris dans tes bras
Le long des Champs Elysιes
Les lumieres qui viennent la
Quand j’ ai croise les terrasses des cafes
Elles m’ ont tendu leurs fauteuils
Saint-Germain m’ a dit bonjour
Rue Saint-Benoit, rue Dufour
J’ ai fait danser pendant toute la nuit
Les filles les plus jolies
Au petit matin bleme
Devant le dernier creme
J’ ai ferme mes yeux la
Toi Paris, tu m’ as pris dans tes bras
Sur les quais de l’ Ile Saint-Louis
Des pecheurs, des amoureux
Je les enviais mais la Seine m’ a dit
Viens donc t’ asseoir avec eux
Je le sais aujourd’ hui
Nous sommes deux amis
Merci du fond de moi
Toi Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
Toi Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
Toi Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras
Toi Paris, je suis bien dans tes bras.
And my translation:
Paris, you have taken me into your arms
I was walking through the streets
Like a lost child
I was alone and I was cold
But you, Paris, took me in your arms.
The girl who smiled at me –
I’ll not see her again;
She only turned around and smiled, and there it was:
In her eyes I understood
That in this city of stone,
Where one feels foreign,
There is always joy in the air
For those who want to love.
And the heart of the city,
Was beating under my feet
From Passy to Belleville,
You Paris, you ‘ve taken me into your arms
Along the Champs Elysées
In the lights that come shine;
When I crossed the terraces of cafes
They offered their seats.
Saint-Germain said hello to me
I danced all night
On Saint-Benoit St, on Dufour St
The prettiest girls
From early morning’s pale light
To the last gleam of evening,
Till I have closed my eyes,
You Paris, you taken me into your arms.
On the quays of the Saint-Louis Isle,
There are fishermen and there are lovers.
I envied them, but the River Seine said to me:
“Come and sit down with them and be part of it all”.
I know, Paris, that today
We are friends!
I thank you from the bottom of my heart.
Paris, I feel so good in your embrace!
“Winter is the time for comfort, for good food and warmth, for the touch of a friendly hand and for a talk beside the fire: It is the time for home.” - Edith Sitwell
Although it was a mild day today, and we even had some sunshine, I did not get much of a chance to enjoy it as I was very busy at work. I spent the whole day in meetings, on the telephone, talking to staff, and answering a bumper number of emails. By the time I got home, it was already dark and it had started getting cooler. It was good to enter a warm house and be greeted by the aroma of dinner cooking.
There is nothing better during winter than a hot soup. It warms one up, revives and refreshes while being tasty and nutritious. Here is a recipe today that foots that bill very well. A classic Potato and Leek Soup, also called “Vichyssoise”. There is much debate as to whether this is a French or an American recipe, and the battle of origins across the Atlantic still rages!
Jules Gouffé (1807 – 1877) was a renowned French chef and pâtissier. He created a recipe for a hot potato and leek soup, publishing a version of it in his “Royal Cookery” of 1869. He was nicknamed: L’ apôtre de la cuisine décorative (The apostle of decorative cooking). He had a deep influence on the evolution of French gastronomy by gathering an immense knowledge which he wrote down in his Livre de Cuisine and his Livre de Pâtisserie.
His learning began under his father’s supervision who owned a pâtisserie in Paris. Gouffé became Antonin Carême’s pupil at the age of 16. He remained with this teacher for seven years. In 1840 Gouffé opened a shop in Paris, which would soon gain fame. He sold the shop in 1855 and then became inactive. In 1867 he accepted an offer from Alexandre Dumas and the Baron Brisse to become chef de bouche of the Jockey-Club de Paris. While he held this position he began writing books that would ensure him renown and posterity. Most of his works have been translated into English by his brother, Alphonse Gouffé, Head Pastry Cook to Queen Victoria.
Julia Child maintains that Vichyssoise is an American invention and Louis Diat, a chef at the Ritz-Carlton in New York City, is most often credited with its popularisation. In 1950, Diat told New Yorker magazine: “In the summer of 1917, when I had been at the Ritz seven years, I reflected upon the potato and leek soup of my childhood which my mother and grandmother used to make. I recalled how during the summer my older brother and I used to cool it off by pouring in cold milk and how delicious it was. I resolved to make something of the sort for the patrons of the Ritz.”
The same article explains that Diat’s soup was first titled crème vichyssoise glacée. Diat named it after Vichy, a town not far from his home town of Montmarault, France. This is the classic iced version. I must admit that I am no fan of cold soup so my sympathies lie with the original hot French version.
Hot Potato and Leek Soup Ingredients
2 onions
1 large leek
3 spring onions
2 tbsp butter
1.5 litres chicken stock
3 large potatoes
8 tbsp heavy cream
1/2 tsp nutmeg
1/2 tsp mace
8 tsp chives
1/2 tsp pepper
1 tsp salt
500 mL milk
Method
Peel and roughly chop the onions.
Trim off all the dark green part of the leek and spring onions and discard.
Split the remaining part of the leeks and spring onions in half from top to bottom.
Carefully wash out any mud and dirt (otherwise they are gritty) and finely shred the leek and spring onions.
Peel the potatoes and cut them into cubes.
Gently fry the onions and leek in the butter until they are soft.
Add the stock and potatoes. Simmer the soup for an hour and blend it to a puree.
Add the milk, salt, pepper, nutmeg and mace.
Simmer the soup for another twenty minutes.
Ladle the soup into eight small bowls.
Snip the chives finely.
Add a tablespoon of heavy cream and a teaspoon of chives to each bowl.
“When we pray to God we must be seeking nothing – nothing at all.” - Saint Francis of Assisi
Every morning I commute to work on the train. I catch an early train, which means that I am usually in at my desk just after 7:00 a.m. It takes a little will power during the winter months as I get up in the middle of the dark night, it seems. The train is surprisingly full, one of the benefits of being an early bird is that provided your train journey is concluded by 7:00 a.m., it is free. The other benefit of course, is that one can do so much between 7:00 a.m. and 9:00 a.m. when most other people get here. No distracting phone calls, no people knocking on your office doors, no meetings, no constant stream of emails that need to be looked at and acted upon.
An extra treat I sometimes allow myself occasionally is to stop for breakfast at one of the cafés in the lanes between Flinders St Station and work, which is further north. Today was a fine and mild morning and the warm glow of lights and the enticing aroma of freshly roasted and ground coffee from an open café was too much to resist. Many other people had the same idea as me and the patrons were not only commuters, but also many city residents who come down from their apartments for breakfast in one of these cafés, which provide an embarrassing choice of ambience, cuisine, décor and prices.
The clatter of cutlery and crockery, the whoosh of the steam and the bubbling of the milk as it is being frothed, the conversations from adjoining tables and the orders being given and acknowledged make for a particularly vital and invigorating mélange of sound that serves as a soundtrack for the rich visual stimuli. A mixture of people in all shapes and sizes, some happy some melancholy, the ugly and the beautiful, the lonely and the gregarious, the newspaper readers and the people watchers (like me!). The array of breakfast options being prepared and handed out is a delight to watch. The frugal toast or lone muffin, the omelettes, scrambled eggs, or the full cooked breakfasts such as bacon and eggs with grilled tomatoes and sausages, the sweet tooth choice of sticky waffles and syrup and there is always of course the healthy selection of cereals and fruit, muesli of various kinds.
Coffee is a Melbourne speciality and I am always amazed at the huge variety of types that one can choose from. Fully caffeinated to decaffeinated, light, medium and dark roasts, rich blends of beans to pure, single provenance pedigrees. Your choice of milk: Full cream, reduced fat, cow’s, goat’s or soy. Cappuccino, latte, macchiato, affogato, frappé, espresso, long black, short black, milk coffee, mocha chocolate, and the list goes on! And don’t think that the tea drinkers or herbal beverage consumers are hard done by either. Every kind of tea you can imagine, as well as the most exotic herbal infusions can be had as a matter of course with your waiter not blinking an eyelid while you give your pernickety order.
The morning papers are there to be read and if catching up with latest news is not your cup of tea first thing, there are always the crossword puzzle pages to hone one’s mind and ready it for the demands of the work day. “The Age” is the newspaper par excellence of Melbourne and its Cryptic Crossword is something that I am partial to in the morning. One is amused, somewhat challenged and greatly satisfied as the last clue falls into place and the puzzle is completed, just as one is swallowing the last mouthful of coffee.
As I continue up Elizabeth St, after having my breakfast (a two-shot latte with a blueberry muffin), it is advisable to walk briskly and work some of those calories off! Today on impulse I entered St Francis’s Church at the corner of Elizabeth and Lonsdale Sts. This is Victoria’s first Catholic church, built between 1841 and 1845. I was greatly surprised at the large number of people inside, praying. Perhaps penance after a sin of gluttony on the early morning breakfast table? Or maybe asking for divine intervention in an untoward turn of events in one’s personal or professional life? An early morning routine for many, an act of devotion and faith that needs to be formalised in such a setting…
The church has a beautiful Lady Chapel on its Western side and in the early morning darkness it is an almost magical place. The gaudy colours of the frescoes are toned down, the flickering of the devotional candles provide a beautiful soft light and the quiet of the hour is conducive to reflection and meditation. One may sit down and think, contemplate, pray, muse and ponder on all sorts of things. The most earnest prayers are not those that ask for something, nor those requests for divine intervention to resolve problems that we have caused for ourselves and only we alone can resolve. They are those prayers uttered in the course of self-examination and reflection on one’s status quo. Those that are the result of a self-judgment of our actions and their motives. Those that come after an evaluation of how seemly, how proper, how decent and honourable our existence is. Those prayers that allow our conscience to come forth and converse with us in a frank and open manner.
The rest of the walk to work in the dawn light was concluded in a positive frame of mind and in a mood that was cheerful and bright. One’s day can only go well after such an early jaunt through the City streets, with two stops of such different character…
prayer |pre(ə)r| noun
A solemn request for help or expression of thanks addressed to God or an object of worship: I'll say a prayer for him | The peace of God is ours through prayer.
• (prayers) A religious service, esp. a regular one, at which people gather in order to pray together: 500 people were detained as they attended Friday prayers.
• An earnest hope or wish: It is our prayer that the current progress on human rights will be sustained. PHRASES Not have a prayerinformal: Have no chance at all of succeeding at something: He doesn't have a prayer of toppling Tyson. ORIGIN Middle English: From Old French preiere, based on Latin precarius ‘obtained by entreaty,’ from prex, prec- ‘prayer.’
“The Internet is the first thing that humanity has built that humanity doesn't understand, the largest experiment in anarchy that we have ever had.” - Eric Schmidt
I came across an interesting website that features up to date world Internet Usage, Population Statistics and Internet Market Research Data, for over 233 individual countries and world regions. There are some amazing figures that are published there, including the number of users and the penetration rate in the population.
For example, in the USA there are 239,893,600 Internet users as of June 2010, which represents a 77.3% penetration; while in Australia, there are 17,033,380 users as of March/11, with a 78.3% penetration. Contrast this with Ethiopia where there are 445,400 Internet users as of June 2010, representing 0.3% of the population. In terms of the highest penetration, Iceland boasts 301,600 Internet users as of June 2010, but has the highest penetration worldwide at 97.6%. In terms of the highest number of users, China has 477,000,000 Internet users as of March 2011, with only 35.7% penetration. India is an interesting case with 81,000,000 Indians being internet users, yet this representing only 7% of the Indian population.
Nevertheless, the Internet is a busy place! It is interesting to contemplate that in 60 seconds, Google will receive 700,000 queries around the world, 168,000,000 emails will be sent and 98,000 tweets will be posted on Twitter. 13,000 iPhone Apps are downloaded every 60 seconds while in 60 seconds there will have been more than 370,000 voice calls on Skype. It is estimated that on 31st March 2011, there were 2,095,006,005 Internet users worldwide.
It is encouraging to think that from a tool that was initially developed and used for military intelligence in the 1960s, the world wide web in its present form is an indispensable part of the lives of billions of people worldwide.
As it is Poetry Wednesday today, here is an amusing poem found (where else, on the internet) about social networking and blogging:
Community Creatures
A colony of bloggers secure in their topic
ranging in size from massive to microscopic.
The lesser ones surround and support the great
who set the direction for the others to debate.
A flock of forums grazing on knowledge
their shepherds guiding them to fresh foliage.
Free to chew the cud and relax within their walls
trusting the guardians to banish the jackals.
A hydra, a multi-headed oracle, it must be a wiki
tackling all problems from the simple to the tricky.
The multiple heads give it so much knowledge you see.
The only problem is... they do not always agree.
A mob of social bookmarkers, much like meerkats
take turns looking out and deciding what's good to peer at.
Hoping none of the sentinels is actually a pretender
directing them all according to their own agenda.
In the distance, a herd of social networkers
dashing all over the place. There's no room for shirkers.
Without any shepherds they all, every day,
have a role to play in keeping predators at bay.
“Winter is on my head, but eternal spring is in my heart.” - Victor Hugo
As we approach Winter Solstice in the southern hemisphere (which is to be June 22, 3:16am), the darkness reaches its peak with the longest night of the year and the shortest day. On this day, the Earth’s south pole is tilted as far away from the Sun as it will get. The Sun rises north of east, sets north of west and reaches 28 1/2° above the horizon at noon. It felt like it today with darkness being absolute when I left home this morning and darkness again greeting me as I came back home.
Last night we had a severe storm in Melbourne with high speed winds (reaching 100 km/hr in some areas), much rain and coldness. There was damage to property with some houses even losing their roof in the high wind, with the emergency services rushing to help. Fortunately our house was spared but it was a wild night. Lying in bed and listening to the wind and pelting rain outside was quite sobering when one also thought of the people whose house was damaged, or even worse of those homeless people that had to brave such a terrible night out there somewhere. It is a very heavy winter we are experiencing this year and the cheery voices on breakfast radio telling us that the snowfields are having good snowfalls are not really providing much relief or reassurance to those who are suffering the worse of the wild weather.
This morning there was news of more disruptions to flights in southern Australia because of a new ash cloud from the Chilean volcanic eruption drifting over Australia. Many local and international flights were cancelled and thousands of people had their travel schedules disrupted, being stranded in strange places. Once again the weather would not have made a holiday of their delay.
Wild Weather
The wind is howling and the rain is falling down;
It looks as though the world might end tonight – outside.
But inside our cosy nest, I’m warm as toast
And in your arms I’ll brave even judgment day, content.
The air is freezing and the hail is pelting the roof now
Its sound like the shots on some desperate battlefield.
We sip our wine beside the fire that crackles merrily
And while we kiss, the infernal noise could well be music.
The night is dark and winter’s might manifest tonight,
The longest night that looks as though it never will dawn.
I look into the twin suns of your eyes, their sparkle
Enough to light my darknesses and warm my winters.
A winter’s night, the darkness long and cold;
The world outside a harsh and hostile place.
In the haven of your love, your warm embrace
Carries me to a paradise where light and hope
Will annul all wild weather that rages outside.
“His older self had taught his younger self a language which the older self knew because the younger self, after being taught, grew up to be the older self and was, therefore, capable of teaching.” - Robert A. Heinlein
At the weekend we watched the Robert Schwentke 2009 film “The Time Traveller’s Wife”. This was quite a popular novel and subsequently an equally popular movie, however, we had neither read the book nor seen the movie at the height of their popularity. The movie was on special at our DVD store so we got it and watched it to find out what all the fuss was about. A friend said that it was better to read the (500+ page) book as it was excellent and the movie had left her disappointed as much in the novel was missing, even what she thought were essential characters and plot twists. We nevertheless decided to watch the movie rather than read the book. Sure enough, classic books often make terrible movies, but so many classic movies have been made from good books…
First, this is not a science fiction movie despite its title and despite the fact that the hero is a time traveller. The film is a bitter-sweet romantic tale that one would class as a typical chick-flick (we seem to be watching an awful lot of these lately…). Second, I confess to having an antipathy towards Eric Bana, the male lead, however, I gave him the benefit of the doubt and persuaded myself to watch the film with an open mind. Third, the movie used the time travel as a metaphor for separation and its influence on a relationship. This I found gimmicky and a good storyteller would have found a more plausible reason for the separation without influencing the gist of the story, which really isn’t about time travel or science fiction.
In short, the plot has as follows: Henry DeTamble (Eric Bana) has a genetic abnormality that causes him to travel through time unpredictably and without any conscious control of it. Adding to this embarrassment is the indignity of his clothes not travelling with him so he materialises in the past and future without a stitch on (this was comic relief, I guess?). Clare Abshire (Rachel McAdams) is the love of his life and eventually becomes his wife, hence the title. Henry’s escapades through time are often dangerous, terrifying and sometimes life-threatening as he ends up in unknown places and times. Although Henry is a mild-mannered librarian with an alcohol problem he manages keep himself in shape and has some interesting survival skills such as pick-pocketing, street fighting and picking locks, all of which stand him in good stead in travels. After variable periods, he always goes back to his “present time” but for some reason (he sometimes) cannot influence his future and past even though he knows about it and has opportunity to do so. At other times he can influence it and does so (this is a nagging inconsistency). When he is 28, he meets 20-yr old Clare Abshire, whom he doesn’t know. She knows him however, as he visited her on many occasions ever since she was a child of 6 years. His love blossoms (hers is a given) and leads to their marriage even though it is interrupted by all sorts of trials and tribulations related to Henry’s time travels. One of his trips, however, will have profound and tragic consequences…
Superficially, this looks like a good movie but the schmaltz factor is high. It definitely pulls all stops out to tug the heart strings. However, I felt that it was all too strained, despite the good performances of both leads and the supporting actors – (OK, Eric Bana was sometimes a trifle wooden, but I have confessed my prejudice, so take this comment with a grain of salt and judge for yourself if you see the film). There was much repetition in the film and plot really didn’t go anywhere much (it was always in the same place but in the past, present and future). The strength of the storytelling was meant to reside in the emotional vicissitudes of the characters and the tale of their persistent and strengthening love even in the face of enforced absences and the unpredictability of Henry’s absences.
I think this is the sort of film that you will dislike or like, there is not much middle ground. I overall disliked, especially on reflection. The unfortunate thing is that I do not wish to read the novel now, despite being told that it is so much better than the film. This is the trap that many an author has fallen into: Allow your book to be made into a movie and watch your book die…
Pietro Ligari (Ardenno, February 18, 1686 - Sondrio, April 6, 1752) was an Italian painter of the classical era. He was born into a middle-class family, the Del Pelo, and took on the name of Ligari from a small hamlet near the town of Sondrio where the family lived. Pietro Ligari can be described as the greatest artist of the eighteenth century of the Valtellina region (the small Alpine valley on the border between Lombardy and Switzerland). At twelve years of age he went to study in Rome, where he was a pupil of Lazzaro Baldi, a follower of Pietro da Cortona, and while training there he absorbed the influences of Baroque painting.
After a trip during which he moved to various locations in Central Italy and Venice, Ligari settled first in Milan in 1710, and then finally in 1727 in Valtellina, where most of his works are to be found. There are many of these, with a significant collection of drawings and several paintings of his children Cesare and Victoria, who also became painters. Most of his oeuvre can be seen in the Valtellina Museum of History and Art.
Among the most representative of his art include “The Baptism of the Indian Princess” painted in 1717 for the Oratorio di Sondrio Palazzo Sertoli, a cycle of paintings and frescoes for the Palazzo Salis in Chur. While there he also oversaw the design of the Italian garden. He completed two altar pieces and the decoration of the apse and the apse of the Morbegno College.
Ligari was also an agronomist and architect (College of Sondrio, Lanzada Ossuary and the church, now destroyed, the bridge in Morbegno Ganda), but also dabbled in making clocks.
This is a painting of the artist’s father (Oil on canvas, 98 x 70 cm), currently in the Pinacoteca di Brera, Milan. The artist’s consummate skill in handling colour and form is shown in this dark and pensive portrait, which is not dated. The middle-aged man depicted here looks to the right with a brooding, concentrated gaze although his thoughts seem to be much further away than the object of his attention. There is respect, love and affection in this portrait by Ligari and one is conscious of the special relationship between father and son that must have existed here.
A very apt choice for Art Sunday today, as in the USA it is Fathers’ Day. Happy Fathers’ Day to all my readers in USA!
“I often think that the night is more alive and more richly colored than the day.” - Vincent Van Gogh
It was a busy morning today with lots to do around the house and many errands to run outside, as well as the regulation shopping trip and visit to the library to return some books. It was hither and thither for several hours, but finally all was accomplished and then back home for a respite. Fortunately we don’t sleep in even at the weekends and the days are long and one gets a lot done.
In the evening we went out to dinner at one of our favourite Chinese restaurants. The “Red Emperor” in Southbank. We were there with friends and decided to have one the banquet choices, which proved to be an excellent one. We had “Banquet D”, which at $75 per person turned out to be very reasonable.
We started off with a selection of steamed Dim Sum, which included meat and seafood fillings. All three pieces were delicious and cooked to perfection. A touch of soy sauce on them improved the flavour. As one of our party was allergic to seafood, the prawn dim sum was cheerfully replaced. We then continued with Spicy Quail and BBQ honey pork on the side. Although the quail was tasty, I found it a tad dry, which of course is easy enough to do with such a small bird. Nevertheless the taste more than made up for the slightly dry texture. The pork was delicious. The dinner continued with Peking Duck. This was excellent, and one of the best I have had in Melbourne. The duck was cooked to perfection and was juicy, tender and extremely tasty in its sauce. The pancakes were light and well cooked and the condiments crisp and fresh. There were two portions per person, which we all enjoyed.
The banquet progressed with a serving of Ginger Prawns with seasonal vegetables. Well cooked, flavoursome and served in a delightful sauce. Once again, an alternative spicy dish with chicken morsels was substituted quite graciously for the prawns for the allergic one in our party. The next dish was Lamb Fillets with ‘Fire-up’ Sauce accompanied by Singapore Noodles. Both lamb and noodles were very tasty and cooked exceedingly well. The dessert was a choice of any one of the following: Banana Fritters, Pineapple Fritters, Fried Ice Cream or Mango Pudding. I chose the last, which was reminiscent of a Bavarian Cream with a delicate flavour and a silky smooth texture; very light and just the thing to finish off the meal. Chinese tea or coffee followed, accompanied by delicately thin homemade almond cookies.
We had a delightful 2001 Penfolds ‘Bin 128’ Shiraz with our meal, which certainly complemented the strong and spicy flavours of our meal, even the Ginger Prawns! A very good night out was had by all with all of our party recommending the restaurant very highly.
In keeping with the meal we enjoyed, an oriental fantasy piece popular some decades ago and very familiar to the service personnel in Japan and the Far East, who were posted there in the immediate post WWII period. The lyrics are in Japanese, but the theme is China Nights. I believe the original song was from the soundtrack of a 1940 movie:
China Nights
What a night in China
What a night in China
Harbour lights,
Deep purple night,
Ah, ship,
The dreamship I can't forget
The sound of the Kokyu.
Ah, China night,
A dream night.
What a night in China,
What a night in China,
Over the willow window,
A ramp was shaking, Chinese lady
Was there like a bird, Singing love songs,
Sad sounding love songs
Ah, China night,
A dream night.
What a night in China,
What a night in China,
I was waiting under the parapet
There was this girl in a rain
The rouge on her cheeks
Like flowers were in bloom,
Forever, I will remember
Even after we separated,
Ah, China night,
A dream night
Embedding of the video has been disabled, but well worth visiting this link on YouTube to hear the famous Japanese diva Misora Hibari singing this song.
“Smell is a potent wizard that transports you across thousand of miles and all the years you have lived.” - Helen Keller
Definitely a winter’s night tonight, wet, cold and dark! It’s the sort of night that begs you to come home quickly, turn the heater on and prepare something hot and filling that will smell delicious and taste scrumptious. The type of cooking that warms the air of the house with its aroma and ensconces itself in memory for later nostalgic reminiscences. Such a reminiscence is the cake below that always conjures up for me past winter afternoons at our house where the spicy, fruity aroma of baking permeated the house and promised delicious eating. I haven’t had this cake for some time now and the cold weather this year has made me hanker after it!
PRUNE AND WALNUT CAKE Ingredients - Cake 2 cups sugar
1 cup vegetable oil
1 tbsp unsalted butter
3 large eggs, beaten
1.5 cup milk
1 cup plain flour
1.5 cups self-raising flour
1 tsp baking powder
1/2 tsp ground cinnamon
1/2 tsp ground cloves
1/2 tsp ground nutmeg
1/2 tsp ground allspice
1/2 tsp ground mace
1 cup prunes, pitted and finely chopped, soaked in Benedictine liqueur
1 cup chopped walnuts
½ cup sultanas
2 tsp vanilla essence
Sauce
1.5 cup sugar
3/4 cup milk
1/2 tsp baking soda
2 tsp vanilla essence
3/4 cup butter
Method
For the cake, blend sugar, butter and oil; add eggs and beat well.
Sift dry ingredients together; add alternately with buttermilk to the sugar mixture, beating well after each addition.
Add walnuts, prunes, and vanilla.
Stir to distribute well through batter.
Pour batter into a greased and floured 22x33x5 cm baking tray
Bake at 175˚C for 35-40 minutes, or until cake tests done with a skewer.
While cake is baking, prepare the sauce.
For the sauce, combine all ingredients in saucepan. Bring to boil and boil one minute. Pour immediately over cake while still hot from the oven. Let cool completely in pan.
This cake is quite delicious and one can even be convinced that this cake is healthy! The prunes, sultanas and walnuts have much fibre that works as a laxative to assist the intestinal movement and break down bulky foods.
“There’s no art to find the mind’s construction in the face.” - William Shakespeare
I am in Sydney for work all day today, spending the day in meetings, and therefore, thankfully out of the dull, gray and wet weather. Fortunately the flights in eastern Australia are all back to normal after the past few days’ disruption with the ash cloud from the Chilean volcanic eruption. However, the flights from Perth are still experiencing restrictions as the ash cloud from Chile’s Puyehue volcano has reached there, but there is also concern about the ash from the Nambo volcano eruption in Eritrea over the Indian Ocean. We certainly live in interesting times…
I shall continue on the theme of the moon rabbit from yesterday’s posting by proposing “pareidolia” as the word for the day.
Pareidolia |parēˈdäl.ēə| noun
A type of illusion or misperception involving a vague or obscure stimulus (most often an image or a sound) being perceived as something clear and distinct. “I experienced a strange case of pareidolia this morning where the face of President Obama appeared on my burnt toast.” ORIGIN: From the Greek para- – “beside, with, or alongside” (meaning, in this context, something faulty or wrong) and eidōlon – “image”.
Pareidolia is a peculiarity of our brain wiring whereby it attempts to look for the familiar in the unfamiliar. The burnt toast really doesn’t look like President Obama, we know that. Our brains tell us that it’s an impossibility, however, this doesn’t stop us from seeing something resembling human features in the configuration of light and dark areas of toasted bread. Likewise, listening the constant drone of rushing water while in the shower can give rise to an experience of an auditory pareidolia (or to be more precise, a paracusis). We may think we hear the phone ringing or snatches of conversation. The white noise of the falling water stimulates the brain to manufacture all sorts of auditory misperceptions.
Scientist Carl Sagan proposed that pareidolia confers on humans an evolutionary advantage, especially where visual stimuli are concerned. He proposed that the human brain has evolved so that it is “hard-wired” to recognise the human face and easily distinguish a myriad variations of the basic features. This allows fast discrimination of friend from foe, but will also allow us to create order out of a chaotic pattern of light and shade, manufacturing a resemblance to a face of patterns on inanimate objects. Pareidolia is perhaps the most innocent form of this tendency of humans to create order out of chaos. It is only one example of a group of related experiences, all called apophenia.
Klaus Conrad in 1958 coined the term apophenia and defined it as the “unmotivated seeing of connections” accompanied by a “specific experience of an abnormal meaningfulness”, but it has come to represent the human tendency to seek patterns in random nature in general, as with gambling, paranormal phenomena, religion, and even attempts at scientific observation. These attempts at creating meaning from random, chaotic events or data may lead to some serious effects, as gamblers can attest to after observing some perceived pattern in the random sequences of numbers that are generated at the roulette table and losing their fortune as a consequence. Similarly, serious trouble may await the scientist who may see complex patterns in the random data generated in the laboratory. Many a spurious conclusion has been drawn from such tenuous and convoluted interpretation of truly chaotic numbers.
Brain imaging has led to some interesting results when the phenomenon of pareidolia was investigated. When people see real faces, it takes a few milliseconds for the ventral fusiform cortex to register it recognises something meaningful and assign to it the label “face”. When people look at objects that resemble faces, the same part of the brain that recognises faces becomes active, although it takes a few milliseconds more for the person to identify the object as a “face”. Subsequent analysis may then disassemble the features into their component inanimate parts.
When I was a child I used to spend the summers at my grandfather’s house. As I lay in bed I used to look at the ceiling. The cracks in the plaster and slight discolourations were an infinite source of amusement to me as I could manufacture all sorts of scenes, faces, figures and landscapes. This innocent pareidolia often lulled me to sleep during siesta time, or on occasions when sleep eluded me, allowed me to construct whole stories based on the figures on the ceiling. It did not take much stimulation for my fertile imagination to be spurred into activity and allay boredom.
How many of us have not gazed up at clouds and seen fancied shapes, water stains on floors that resemble dragons, the moon and recognised rabbits, handprints or witches carrying bundles of sticks? Come to think of it, it doesn’t take much to trick our brain into pareidolic perception, does it? ;-)
“Don’t tell me the moon is shining; show me the glint of light on broken glass.” - Anton Chekhov
Depending on where you are in the world, on Wednesday night or early on Thursday morning the full moon will plunge into the longest and deepest total lunar eclipse in more than a decade.
Moon gazers across the Eastern Hemisphere will be able to watch the moon turn shades of orange and red as the moon moves into the darkest part of Earth’s shadow for almost two hours. This is because the path that the moon is taking through Earth’s shadow is almost directly through the shadow’s centre, making for the longest possible path and so the longest duration.
Because of the tilt of the moon’s orbit around Earth, the moon usually passes slightly above or below Earth’s cone-shaped shadow, so no lunar eclipse is usually seen. Sometimes, however, the geometry is just right for the moon to cross the Earth’s orbital plane, which always happens during a full moon. As all three bodies (sun, earth, moon) line up, the moon passes through Earth’s shadow and we see a lunar eclipse. Partial eclipses happen when the moon grazes Earth’s shadow, while total eclipses occur when the whole moon passes through the shadow.
On June 15th 2011, the Earth’s shadow will start to darken the moon around 18:22 universal time (UT). The total lunar eclipse will begin at 19:22 UT and will last for more than a hundred minutes. The deepest part of the eclipse will occur at 20:12 UT, as the moon plunges into the umbra, the dark center of our planet’s shadow. The last hint of Earth’s shadow will slip off the moon around 22:02 UT.
Except for northern Scotland and Scandinavia, most of Europe as well as eastern South America and western Africa will see totality underway around moonrise—just as the sun begins to set on June 15th. The best location for viewing the entire eclipse is eastern Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and the western tip of Australia. From Indonesia to New Zealand, viewers will get to see the moon’s face slowly eaten away by the initial stages of the lunar eclipse just before the moon sets on June 16th. The eclipse will not be visible from North America, and moon gazers there will have to wait until December 10th, when western parts of the continent will be treated to the next lunar eclipse.
Looking at the rising moon this evening, inspired me to write this poem:
Winter Moon Gazing
“There is a rabbit in the moon, not a man…”
She said, looking up high,
“…Or so the Chinese say.”
I looked up and saw a rabbit,
Quite clearly, just as she said,
And I believed her truly,
For she is Chinese.
“My grandmother said the moon
Shows the murderous handprint of Cain…”
And I pointed it out;
“…And she was Greek and full of myth,
Whether biblical or pagan.”
She looked up and her laugh rang out
Like silver bells tinkling.
“You Greeks are full of stories,
And you make gods of men,
And women of trees,
You sometimes mark the moon with Selene’s face,
And at another, with Cain’s marks.
That is what I like about you
Your chameleon ways…”
“But my mother, who is English,
Insists that there is a witch on the moon,
Carrying sticks…” I said.
We looked up and tilted our heads
And looked into each other’s eyes,
In the moonlight,
And we kissed, bewitched.
“Often it takes some calamity to make us live in the present. Then suddenly we wake up and see all the mistakes we have made.” - Bill Watterson
Another earthquake in New Zealand with roads, bridges and all schools closed in Christchurch again today. Yesterday’s 6.3 and 5.7 quakes were followed by aftershocks, including a 4.7 quake overnight. Fortunately there have been no deaths, but hospitals have been treating people hit by falling debris. It is quite upsetting to think that 20,000 residents were without power and many were without water, driven out of their homes and fearing for their lives. All this in winter, with no heat and with the threat of more shocks to come. One can only imagine the terrible feelings they must be experiencing, especially those with young families.
News reports talked of more than 50 buildings collapsing yesterday in the earthquake-damaged area of the city where demolition and clearing work has been carried out since the previous quake in February that killed 182 people. Only workers who were carrying out the operations were injured as this area of the city is off-limits to the public. Eyewitnesses describing the scene said they were dodging debris as they struggled to get out of damaged buildings that were collapsing around them during the quake.
Up to 50,000 have already abandoned the Christchurch, seeking a new life in other New Zealand cities and in Australia. And now we have heard that more Christchurch families are to leave the city. I have visited Christchurch three times and have wonderful memories of a beautiful city with friendly and hospitable people. To think that is has been reduced to this with its population forced to leave it, is very sad.
I am to travel to Sydney on Thursday, but at this stage it is uncertain whether or not my flight will go ahead. Over the past few days air traffic has been disrupted in southern Australia and it looks as though it will continue to be disrupted for a few more days yet. The ash cloud from the Puyehue volcano is Chile is drifting across the Pacific to the Tasman Sea and it looks like even Perth may be affected in the next 48-72 hours. About 12,000 Qantas passengers are still grounded by the cancellations of flights with New Zealand and Tasmanian flights still not open.
All of this drives the point of the smallness and connectedness of our world. A volcanic eruption in Chile affects us here in Australia thousands of miles away. A nuclear accident in Japan poisons the seas and the air for hundreds of kilometres around. Our technology and “progress” is poisoning our atmosphere and polluting our land and seas all over the earth. The melting of the ice in the poles will affect millions of people worldwide. When will all of this sink in? Are we that stupid as a species? As if the natural disasters weren’t enough, we actively contribute to the destruction and despoliation ourselves.
“Miracles are a retelling in small letters of the very same story which is written across the whole world in letters too large for some of us to see.” - C. S. Lewis
Over the last week we have seen three movies that could all be classed as “chick flicks” or light romantic comedies (well at least two out of three, one of them was a bit darker). All of these movies had in fact the same basic plot, but each dressed it a little differently. I read somewhere once that all novels, all movies and all short stories have a basic plot that is one of the twenty commonly used ones. Therein lies their success. Here are the 20 basic plots (I googled it!):
Tobias, Ronald B. "20 Master Plots". Cincinnati: Writer’s Digest Books, 1993. (ISBN 0-89879-595-8).
This book proposes twenty basic plots:
• Quest
• Adventure
• Pursuit
• Rescue
• Escape
• Revenge
• The Riddle
• Rivalry
• Underdog
• Temptation
• Metamorphosis
• Transformation
• Maturation
• Love
• Forbidden Love
• Sacrifice
• Discovery
• Wretched Excess
• Ascension
• Descension
One can elaborate these further, of course and there are enough variations and window dressing to keep us interested, as well as combination of the above themes through subplots. However, by looking down such a list one realises just how limited the choice of plot is when we strip the story down to its bare essentials. Hence, the importance of the talent, craft and experience of a great writer or a good director in making something original and engaging out of a well-worn storyline.
The three films we saw are in brief as follows:
The 2010 Gary Winick movie “Letters to Juliet” is the classic “girl-in-an-unfulfilling-relationship-meets-a-new-man-she-initially-detests-but-comes-to-love” plot. There is a subplot of “love-lost-and-love-regained”, which allows two veteran actors (Vanessa Redgrave and Franco Nero) to shine. The film is very attractively packaged with the gorgeous Tuscan location adding great window dressing to the film. The young leads (Amanda Seyfried and Christopher Egan) do well enough and the film is a pleasant diversion. Light and fluffy and not too taxing on the neurones.
Anand Tucker’s 2010 “Leap Year” is of the same “girl-in-an-unfulfilling-relationship-meets-a-new-man-she-initially-detests-but-comes-to-love” plot, without the benefit of a subplot. The whole film hinges on the old Irish tradition of women being allowed to propose to the man they want to marry on Leap Day, February 29th. Add some gorgeous Irish scenery and pleasant enough two young leads (Amy Adams and Matthew Goode) and this is another pleasant film that will raise a few smiles, however unlikely the scenario is.
The third film, even though of the same “girl-in-an-unfulfilling-relationship-meets-a new-man-she-initially-detests-but-comes-to-love” plot has a little more depth as there are a few subplots that compete with the main storyline. It is Julie Anne Robinson’s 2010 “The Last Song”. We expected a little more from this film than what we received, having being written by Nicholas Sparks. He wrote the screenplay for this movie as a vehicle for Miley Cyrus (and it shows), and then adapted the novel from it. The novel was released shortly before the movie. Nevertheless, the film was a little laboured and the sentiments somewhat worn and mawkish.
Miley Cyrus as the teenage rebel is not terribly convincing, or perhaps I should rephrase that – terribly unconvincing, while her beau, Liam Hemsworth, is just too much to be convincing; I mean: A young, popular, sporty, handsome, rich, sensitive, understanding, intelligent, environmentally aware, public spirited, well-educated, literary (and speaks Russian), who is a good faithful friend, come on! Apparently, this film may have been the beginning of the real-life romance between the two leads, but I am not up to date with the lifestyles of the rich and famous, nor do I particularly care.
Greg Kinnear, playing the father, was a little annoying in this movie as he used about three expressions for the whole length of the film in quick succession of one another. I found his deteriorating health rather unbelievable given his good physical shape. Overall, this was stock Hollywood melodrama and a vehicle for what the studio hoped to be a rising new film star. What they ended up with was a cheap tear-jerker that lacked originality and conviction.
Out of the three films “The Last Song” was the most disappointing. Given the lightness of the previous two movies, one would not have expected much enjoyment from them. However, they were more genuine despite their unlikely plots and studious romanticised view of reality. The sugar coating held a soft centre of syrup and one could savour the cloying sweetness till the end. “The Last Song” was a saccharine coated bitter pill of cod liver oil. If one did not swallow it whole, buying into the film lock stock and barrel, one was left with a very bad taste. Presumably the film would have the same beneficial effect on our emotional health as cod liver oil has on our physical health…
“Every form is a base for colour, every colour is the attribute of a form.” - Victor Vasarely
For Art Sunday today, the art of Victor Vasarely, or in his native Hungarian: Viktor Vásárhelyi (born, April 9th, 1908, Pécs, Hungary – died March 15th, 1997, Paris, France). He was a painter of geometric abstractions who became one of the leading figures of the “Op Art” movement. Vasarely was trained as an artist in Budapest in the Bauhaus tradition. In 1930 he left Hungary and settled in Paris, where he initially supported himself as a commercial artist but continued to do his own work.
During the 1930s he was influenced by Constructivism, but by the 1940s his characteristic style of painting animated surfaces of geometric forms and interacting colours had emerged. His style reached maturity in the mid-1950s and 1960s, when he began using brighter, more vibrant colours to further enhance the suggestion of movement through optical illusion. Vasarely became a naturalised French citizen in 1959. Much of his work is housed in the Vasarely Museum, at the Château de Gourdes, in Vaucluse Département, southern France. In 1970 he established the Vasarely Foundation, which in 1976 took up quarters near Aix-en-Provence in a building that he designed.
For those of you with a Macintosh computer, download a free MacApp called “Kortil”. It is a virtual exhibition of Vasarely’s works in the Kortil Gallery in Rijeka, Croatia. Courtesy of the Regional Museum Janus Pannonius in Pécs, which has a collection of Vasarely’s works, the Rijeka Gallery hosted an exhibition in association with the City of Rijeka Department of Culture. Through modern technology, we too may enjoy this exhibition on our computer screen through a virtual gallery space.
I have been blogging daily on this platform for several years now. It is surprising that I have persisted as the world is changing and "microblogging" is now the norm. I blog to amuse myself, make comment on current affairs, externalise some of my creativity, keep notes on things that interest me, learn something new and to surprise myself with things that I discover about this wonderful, and sometimes crazy, world we live in.
I sometimes get the impression that I am on a soapbox delivering a monologue, so your comments are welcome.
