At lunch today we were talking of such weighty matters as marriages and relationships and gossip.
Colleague: ...yes of course opposites attract. Like my husband is much quieter and more sensible than I am.
Me: Doesn't it depend on who you're with? With sensible people you can be frivolous and silly, but some people you just have to be sensible because otherwise they'll fall down drunk in a gutter somewhere and kill themselves.
[Oh do shut up. That was not meant to be self-referential. To resume - ]
She: Yes! Deep down I'm really sensible, but I don't have to be cause my husband is more sensible. He calls me a kid, which I am. (She looks at me for a while.) I think you'll get the sensible type.
Times like that I wonder exactly what people think of me and suspect it's not flattering in the least.
Monday, January 24, 2005
Sunday, January 23, 2005
Weekend notes
Thursday: Red wine and apples.
Friday: Open-faced sandwiches at the Copenhagen Tea Room. (XZ: These sandwiches defeat the whole point of sandwiches. WN: That's cause they're open-faced sandwiches. Me (brightly): And there we see the evolution of something utilitarian to...well someone had to say it, yes?) Night was videos at Terry's place - Next Stop Wonderland, which was fantastic till ACME LINOLEUM appeared; The Pianist, which is really not necessary to a healthy and fulfilling life; and This is Spinal Tap, which I disgracefully fell asleep in the middle of. I know; getting old. Oh and Bat Thumb! And Terry's the Matrix Remounted, which just goes to show why every kid should take karate/wushu/etc. classes.
Saturday: Woke up at 3 in the afternoon, pottered around, had dinner (ish) at Addy's place and then we sat around on the porch and realised exactly where our lives weren't going. Minzhi's back next week, the snow and JFK runways willing, so we can do it all over again, and with GP scripts and cranberry juice.
Sunday: Damn is it Sunday already? Well it was good while it lasted.
Friday: Open-faced sandwiches at the Copenhagen Tea Room. (XZ: These sandwiches defeat the whole point of sandwiches. WN: That's cause they're open-faced sandwiches. Me (brightly): And there we see the evolution of something utilitarian to...well someone had to say it, yes?) Night was videos at Terry's place - Next Stop Wonderland, which was fantastic till ACME LINOLEUM appeared; The Pianist, which is really not necessary to a healthy and fulfilling life; and This is Spinal Tap, which I disgracefully fell asleep in the middle of. I know; getting old. Oh and Bat Thumb! And Terry's the Matrix Remounted, which just goes to show why every kid should take karate/wushu/etc. classes.
Saturday: Woke up at 3 in the afternoon, pottered around, had dinner (ish) at Addy's place and then we sat around on the porch and realised exactly where our lives weren't going. Minzhi's back next week, the snow and JFK runways willing, so we can do it all over again, and with GP scripts and cranberry juice.
Sunday: Damn is it Sunday already? Well it was good while it lasted.
Jagged
At a talk on making a living in the arts on Friday, one of the panellists said, we shouldn't judge local works by Western standards. Some people watch too much Spielberg and then see something like "Fifteen", which is all jagged, and say it's not good! You laugh but some people say that!
Took all my self-control not to jump up and say "Fifteen" is a bad movie! It is! It's incoherent (jagged?) and self-indulgent and far too long.
(But all the panellists were impressive in their own right, and at least they're out there arranging music/singing/writing. I'll hold my peace.)
Took all my self-control not to jump up and say "Fifteen" is a bad movie! It is! It's incoherent (jagged?) and self-indulgent and far too long.
(But all the panellists were impressive in their own right, and at least they're out there arranging music/singing/writing. I'll hold my peace.)
In the marine trade
Julian mentioned them at dinner last night and so I looked them up and here are pictures and one "commonly known as the clown or harlequin mantis shrimp in the marine trade".
Wednesday, January 19, 2005
What I learnt at work today
If in St Petersburg and pickpocketed by a bunch of gypsies, grab the gypsy kid (i.e. the youngest and weakest member) and hold him hostage and refuse to hand him over until they return your stuff. Which they will.
Sunday, January 16, 2005
Definition of cool
An ad just overheard on the radio:
She: We don't just study normal subjects, we study cool things like rock music!
He: And we get personal laptops? Now that is cool!
Eh. What are kids coming to these days.
She: We don't just study normal subjects, we study cool things like rock music!
He: And we get personal laptops? Now that is cool!
Eh. What are kids coming to these days.
Tuesday, January 11, 2005
A Dylan Thomas Song Cycle
Looking for Dylan Thomas' "On No Work Of Words", I find that Peter Dickinson (is this the Changes trilogy author? I hope so. And did you know he - the Changes guy I mean - is married to the children's books writer Robin McKinley? Ok I'll stop now) has composed a Dylan Thomas Song Cycle. Does anybody have this and do you know how to get hold of it?
And since I did find the Dylan Thomas, here it is. (Well take it as a promise of some sort. Though I gotta say - three months isn't bad.)
On No Work Of Words
On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body
I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:
To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given
Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,
The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.
To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death
That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath
And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.
To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.
And since I did find the Dylan Thomas, here it is. (Well take it as a promise of some sort. Though I gotta say - three months isn't bad.)
On No Work Of Words
On no work of words now for three lean months in the bloody
Belly of the rich year and the big purse of my body
I bitterly take to task my poverty and craft:
To take to give is all, return what is hungrily given
Puffing the pounds of manna up through the dew to heaven,
The lovely gift of the gab bangs back on a blind shaft.
To lift to leave from the treasures of man is pleasing death
That will rake at last all currencies of the marked breath
And count the taken, forsaken mysteries in a bad dark.
To surrender now is to pay the expensive ogre twice.
Ancient woods of my blood, dash down to the nut of the seas
If I take to burn or return this world which is each man's work.
Sunday, January 09, 2005
[and yours is wilful ignorance]
He said, have you no sense of self-preservation?
It would appear not.
It would appear not.
Free advertising for the Smithsonian
I bitch about the job all the time, but it does make me look up things like ways to give to the Smithsonian - some of which are pretty inventive (to a financial moron like me, at any rate). Invest with the Smithsonian! I don't know what the rates of return on investment are like for other kinds of investment, but at least this way you're helping a great museum?
Citizen of New York
Check out the Board of Regents of the Smithsonian Institute. I love it that the Chief Justice and the Vice President of the United States hold ex officio positions on the Board of Regents. And Patrick Leahy - it's somehow cool that the Senator from Vermont is on the Board (yes well). And I love the titles of the Honorable Barber B. Conable, Jr. - Citizen of New York, Former Member of Congress, Former President of the World Bank, and Consultant in International Finance - whatever else he was and is, he is first and foremost a Citizen of New York.
You can tell from the frivolous blogging (as opposed to all the serious and thoughtful pieces I produce of course) that I'm pretending to do work. Anyone who can take me though the tax structure of the US and particularly tax deduction for gifts to museums, foundations and other charitable institutions (or whatever qualifies in the US for tax-deductible gifts) will have me very much in their debt.
You can tell from the frivolous blogging (as opposed to all the serious and thoughtful pieces I produce of course) that I'm pretending to do work. Anyone who can take me though the tax structure of the US and particularly tax deduction for gifts to museums, foundations and other charitable institutions (or whatever qualifies in the US for tax-deductible gifts) will have me very much in their debt.
The Book Thing
An article from aldaily.com on the Book Thing - where people can give and take books freely (and free of charge). You think something like this would work in Singapore? I have any number of old books at home, some of which I guess we could possibly part with.
Tuesday, January 04, 2005
To be 16 again
Conversation with my brother, who is undergoing orientation at RJ (does one undergo orientation, in the same way one undergoes an ordeal? is one oriented...into? towards RJ?):
Me: ...So how are the girls?
Him: They're so dumb! We were playing volleyball with trash bags - you know, one guy and one girl partner to hold a trash bag and toss the volleyball to the next pair using the bag - and we were told not to move when we had the ball, and you know it means not to run but just to toss the ball, but then this girl said, but if we can't move our arms then how to throw the ball?
Me: Not all the girls right.
Him: They're all dumb or ugly.
Me: ...So how are the girls?
Him: They're so dumb! We were playing volleyball with trash bags - you know, one guy and one girl partner to hold a trash bag and toss the volleyball to the next pair using the bag - and we were told not to move when we had the ball, and you know it means not to run but just to toss the ball, but then this girl said, but if we can't move our arms then how to throw the ball?
Me: Not all the girls right.
Him: They're all dumb or ugly.
Sunday, January 02, 2005
Against interpretation
Susan Sontag tells Rolling Stone in 1979 that “rock’n’roll was the reason I got divorced”.
There are of course better obituaries around and much more one could say about Sontag, which will somehow include the bit where she says that she always thought a definition of a writer was one who was interested in everything. But perhaps - a very short personal tribute? I wanted to say - that I read "On Photography" one late night in Oxford and was amazed at what Sontag and the essay could do. And that was the start of an intermittent crush on her - a half-hearted love, since it only involved a handful of her essays and hardly any of the novels. And I like the - moral? - seriousness which with she approached books and writing - as well as the clear delight she took in reading and writing.
(It seems - if not wrong, exactly, then inappropriate - to talk about one woman's death when hundreds of thousands died in the tsunami disaster. But there's less than nothing I can say about the tsunami victims that wouldn't be at best trite. I'm damn well not going to say, with the Straits Times, that 2004 was a year of D&D - death and disaster. The hell is wrong with the ST columnists?)
There are of course better obituaries around and much more one could say about Sontag, which will somehow include the bit where she says that she always thought a definition of a writer was one who was interested in everything. But perhaps - a very short personal tribute? I wanted to say - that I read "On Photography" one late night in Oxford and was amazed at what Sontag and the essay could do. And that was the start of an intermittent crush on her - a half-hearted love, since it only involved a handful of her essays and hardly any of the novels. And I like the - moral? - seriousness which with she approached books and writing - as well as the clear delight she took in reading and writing.
(It seems - if not wrong, exactly, then inappropriate - to talk about one woman's death when hundreds of thousands died in the tsunami disaster. But there's less than nothing I can say about the tsunami victims that wouldn't be at best trite. I'm damn well not going to say, with the Straits Times, that 2004 was a year of D&D - death and disaster. The hell is wrong with the ST columnists?)
What have you read this year?
The NYT presents the Hookie Awards in two parts for some of the most important essays of 2004 (excepting, of course, the NYT). Needless to say, they are all unfamiliar to me.
Saturday, January 01, 2005
Instead of Keats, and just for the title
AGAIN, JOHN KEATS, OR THE POT OF BASIL
Just when I was getting completely through
dried out, balled up, anxious and empty
like a gulch in a John Huston movie
I went to see Strange Interlude and began
to go away for a weekend on the beach
into that theatre again and again
now I have a pot of basil a friend gave
me and am reading Keats again and realize
that everything is impossible in a different way
well so what, but there's a difference
between a window and a wall again
- Frank O'Hara
Just when I was getting completely through
dried out, balled up, anxious and empty
like a gulch in a John Huston movie
I went to see Strange Interlude and began
to go away for a weekend on the beach
into that theatre again and again
now I have a pot of basil a friend gave
me and am reading Keats again and realize
that everything is impossible in a different way
well so what, but there's a difference
between a window and a wall again
- Frank O'Hara
New Year wishes
From Adrienne Rich, "Sources":
But there was also the other Jew. The one you most feared, the one from the shtetl, from Brooklyn, from the wrong part of history, the wrong accent, the wrong class. The one I left you for. The one both like and unlike you, who explained you to me for years, who could not explain himself. The one who said, as if he had memorized the formula, There's nothing left now but the food and the humor. The one who, like you, ended isolate, who had tried to move in the floating world of the assimilated who know and deny they will always be aliens. Who drove to Vermont in a rented car at dawn and shot himself. For so many years I had thought you and he were in opposition. I needed your unlikeness then; now it's your likeness that stares me in the face. There is something more than food, humor, a turn of phrase, a gesture of the hands: there is something more.Happy New Year, my dears, and may the year bring you the something more.