La Grande séduction

I went to my favorite place last night, the library and after only spending 30 mins there (a world record for me) I arrived home with a few books, a few comics and some DVDs. So we watched 'Mysterious Skin' thinking it was about aliens - so very very wrong - so not about aliens - try child abuse!. After that horror, really wasn't in the mood for anything serious plus I don't think the movie actually made a statement or did anything new, so if I was you I wouldn't bother with it.

Anyway, we threw in 'Seducing Dr Lewis' , its this Canadian/French film set on a small island fishing community that needs a Doctor in order to get a factory to open so that everyone can work (the fishing dried up years before hand). Cue the funny and silly ways they try and win the naive guy. I have to say it and I know its a cliche but it really is one of those 'feel good movies' in a weird French sort of way. You've got to love quirky cinema it what spares us from tripe like the insanity that was 'Batman and Robin' {shudder}.

Farce

It going to be one of those days, we are meeting my father-in-law tonight for 'a chat'. Before I continue and for those who didn't read my blog the last time he was in town, my father-in-law is a different from most other people. How bad can he be? For tonight's drinks, despite already talking to my husband and organising things, we have to go through his PA:

"Can we fix for you to meet up with your Dad when he is in town this week? He suggested 5.15pm on Thursday but need to sort venue. If you can let me know if this works for you and maybe suggest venue?"

The guy obviously thinks he is a celebrity and his kids (though they are all adults) need to be scheduled in, lest they interrupt his oh so busy life. Farce I tell you Farce...

news headlines

Top five news headlines I've read today...

1. A SYDNEY brothel has started offering petrol discounts of 20c per litre to clients in a bid to boost business, claiming that high fuel prices have hurt the sex industry.

2. M&M off 2 million sweets for the safe return of Edvard Munch 'The Scream'

3. Police in South Africa say they don't have enough squad cars to get to crime scenes, so minister of safety solves the problem by telling them to ride donkeys or bicycles instead

4. A MAN calling from Dallas in the US has helped foil a burglary in northern England whilst watching a Beatles-related webcam over the Internet.

5. A CHINESE woman crashed her car into an oncoming vehicle while attempting to teach her pet dog how to drive, state media said today.

For more funny news visit http://www.fark.com

Saving Fish

I just finished Amy Tan's newest book 'Saving fish from drowning' this morning. What struck me about this book was how very easy it was to read. The story followers a group of 11 tourists who go missing in Burma. The best thing though is the narrator, her voice just stucks you into the book, guides you through the events and sidetracks in to rather amusing anaedotes. But she's able to balance to development of the characters and the political commentary on Burma itself.

Being Bengali, I'd heard and learn a lot about our Burmese neighbours from my father. But I was shocked to learn how much he hadn't told me. I guess parents tend to leave out the very unpleasent stuff and wait till your old enough to read up on it yourself. Anyway, if you've got some free time give it a go.

The Open Road

My family are notorious for taking day trips. We all pile into the car and drive in a random directions to see a castle, a cave, a beach, cliffs, animals, etc. These were such a massive part of my education as a child. My sister and I would learn about all sort of things you've never hear of in school. My dad was especially good at getting us kids to appreciate history and nature and a million other things. We'd be excited for weeks about which trip we were taking next, where would we go, what would we learn, to us school trips were a let down as there was no freedom in them.

But as we got older the problems began. My sister and I did not really get along very well and my mother tended to over react to everything. We'd usually arrive at the destinations and have conflicting opinions on what we want to do, then there was the issue of lunch. We ALWAYS bring one but my sister tends to make such a fuss that we end up buying a separate, over priced one for her. The result is that no one is speaking to each other by the time we get home. So the day tripping was abandoned for years. I missed it like crazy, in fact we all did, it was one of the few things we all loved doing together. Now all families have their internal insanities but this sort of held us together.

Recently we've been on a few trips with the five of us (my family and Eoin) and thanks to the fact my parents adore Eoin they've been marginally successful. Now I LOVE day trips I really do, despite the petty stuff but Eoin gets Car sick.

What I need to know is does anyone have a cure for car sickness?

Scruffy Duffy

Scruffy Died yesterday.

He'd been in Eoin's family for the past 12 Years. He was wonderful, the most happy-go-lucky dog you'd ever meet. Always smilling with his tougue hanging out and tail wagging. Such a pretty dog but never too bright which just made you love him more. Jumping in to the sea, eating mangos and cheese. Never to shy to give you a big slobbering kiss or hide under your chair when fireworks scared him.

We'll all miss him.

Bad Coffee, Good Movie...

We went and saw "A Scanner Darkly" yesterday which was rather bizzare and insane (so very Phillip K Dick) and the animation was fantastic but I can see that this is the sort of movie you either hate or love. Speaking of movies, if you have time go see "Lady in the Water", I loved it. It's possibly M. Night Shyamalan best movie, but I know Eoin will argue the case for "Unbreakable". Then again I have a weakness for anything fairytale related.


Anyway, so the point of this post was to moan about bad coffee, you see before the movie I grabbed some coffee from Cafe Culture (alas it was decafe as I'm still off the caffine free thing) but it was awful. Instead of forking out for Starbucks (who do really nice decafe even if they are taking over the universe) I went somewhere else cos I had a voucher. I know I know vouchers are the bane of life, they make you go places and buy things you'd never normally consider. I've learnt my lesson.

So here is my Good Coffee Chains top 5...
1. Seattle Coffee Co.(they are all gone now, bought by Starbucks but my they were fantastic and will always be at the top of my list).
2. Starbucks (yes I know I'm just like everyone else)
3. AMT
4. Esquires
5. Cafe Nero

5 places not to have coffee...
1. Cafe Culture (in the Torccadero)
2. Costa, I've tired over and over again, it just tastes vile
3. National Gallery, its pricy and not very nice, but most museum food is like that.
4. The Collesium in London (good Opera bad Coffee and I mean it tasted sour...)
5. Any fast food place, you'd have to be ill to order coffee from Burger king.

Tom and Jerry

I read in the paper this morning that scenes from Tom and Jerry are going to be edited (in the UK by Boomerang) to disgard any smoking, so that children don't get the wrong idea. Has the world gone insane?

I know for a fact I never watched Tom and Jerry and thought to myself, here's a cat that gets beaten up daily by a rather tubby mouse and look he's smoking a cigar, that must be cool! I mean do they really seriously believe children are that pathetic. Years ago they took out a few things that were considered racist, which is completly understandable, as they were offensive. But Smoking is a matter of personal choice, I don't snoke myself and thing its a horrible habit that kills thousands of people each year but if its awful enough to be edited out of television surely it should not be tolerated at all i.e Banned. So I ask again has the world become that ridiculous, do we really believe people are such sheep. Surely kids and adults have the to right to see things as they are and decide for themselves. You can't protect children from everything, education not cersorship is the key.

I must be very lucky to have never gotten the urge to hit a cat with and iron after watching an episode. My point is not just about smoking but how far will we end up going with censorship? Will the end up banning Tom and Jerry all together for its violent content...Will the news stop telling us about all the war, death and murder in the world incase a child happens to tune in...where do you draw the line...

Tom and Jerry is timeless and I for one LOVE it just as it is.

Sunday afternoon movies

In that distant era known as childhood there was the Sunday afternoon movie, they still exsist but there is something about those classics you can't forget. My friend bought me Flight of the Navigator, I haven't seen this snice I was 8 and barely remember it but I can't wait to sit down and watch it again. It got me thinking of Escape from Witch Mountain, D.A.R.Y.L, and all those others that had bearly any budget yet we found ourselves watching and believing. But my personal favorite was The Cat from Outer Space.


This was about a Cat called Jake, who had both telephatic and telekentic powers. He crash landed on earth and needed help fixing and getting his spaceship back. Eoin refuses to believe this movie exsits and one day when its on TV again I'll force him to watch all 2 hours of its glory but until then here's the cat...

I'm very tempted to go on about some of the joy's of 80's kids adventure movies like, ET, The Goonies, Explorers, Lost Boys to mention but a few but that requires more then just a post it needs a shrine.

Roman Britain

On saturday Eoin, my father and I packed into the car and headed out to St Albans, the site of Verulamium the thrid largest Roman town in Britian. Which was at one point destoryed by Queen Boudica. Despite the sudden and bizzare fits of rain we managed to run through the fields and see the Roman theatre and unearthed mosaic. The museum was pretty interesting and really managed to potray what everyday Roman life must have been like the the 2nd and 3rd century. Something I'm sad to say you didn't really get a chance to see in Rome itself.

Now I hate modern histroy, but I love stuff like this, really being able to access a past that we can never truly understand. Little glimpses that can utterly surprise you, both my dad and I were shocked bythis beautiful clear green perfectly shaped glass vase, it was over 1700 years old and still in almost perfect condidtion. Makes you wonder how much of our civilisation will be left in 2 thousand years time.

shocked

Ok I just got called to reception and my husband sent me some beautiful flowers!

I'm so shocked and happy (ok he does buy them on occasion), But I've never been sent flowers before, like proper delivered ones and stuff...

I think I went pink when I walked back in the office.

Its my birthday and I'll cry if I want to...

I'm 24 today.

For most of my life I've had the sort of birthdays most people need therapy for. My own mother has forgotten my birthday on more then one occasion (though she have NEVER forgotten my sisters). The worst was probably spending more then 48hours on a train from Calcutta to Delhi if I went into the details I'd get weepy again. I know loads of people have it far worse, I'll try not to dwell, but since I've been with Eoin he's always tried his best to make sure I was happy. One year he got Ice Hockey tickets! Now I've been a hockey fan since I was 10 and saw "Youngblood" (awful movie I know but I was a kid) and we got NBC so I could watch the Red Wings play every Saturday on the NHL weekly highlights show. But until that year I'd never seen the game live, I don't think I've ever had a better birthday.

This year Eoin, who kindly puts up with my miserable moods, has been very sweet as usual and bought me a whole variety of presents :-) The best and most thoughtful being a box easel. I've been painting (rather badly) for years, usually on cheap canvasses, cut up wooden boards and other pits of left over space (Like wardrobe doors). I used to spend most of my time in my parents garage working on one thing or another, but since I moved out I haven't really had the space, now all of that is solved.

hug anyone?

Space the Final Frontier

For my 21st Brithday my dad bought me a car, I don't have a drivers license and failed my test 6 times. So as much as I love the car (named the Green Hornet) I've never been able to drive it, my sister drives it instead, she failed her test 8 times so there is hope for me yet, if I can ever be bothered to take the test again. Anyway my dad also bought me a book called "The Universe in 365 Days". In a way the book was a better present then the car. As a kid I used to dream about being an astronaut, actually getting to go out into space, to really touch the sky. But I think I wanted more Star Trek then NASA. Well I can't go to the stars yet but at least we can see them.

I love this book and anyone who liked yesterday's link will love it to. It's basically 365 of the best images taken by the Hubble telescope. Now I know you can look at these online but the book also has very interesting and easy to read explainations for what the images are (for non-physics geeks). I think its incredible that we can see a star forming millions of light years away. We can see other planets, distant galaxies and all the space inbetween. How incredible is that...

I think its really sad that people don't get excited about space anymore, I'd still love to go and watch a shuttle lanche or anything like that. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that kids are still interested and one day we really will be able to fly off to Mars or Andromeda for the week.

My personal favorites are the Eagle Nebula and Lagoon Nebula (seen here).


For All us Sci-fi geeks look here...Starship

Headline

Government seizes the worlds largest collection of torture devices...


If seen approach with caution!

My fair lady

Its wednesday. Odin's day... I'm hating today already. I've been ill the past few days, which mean I've been reading loads and overdosesing on episodes of Angel. The only problem is that a few days away from work can make you rather introspective, for me I'm not sure if that is a good thing or a bad thing. So when you come back to work, everything feels different. Apart from drowning under the mountain of work I should have done in the past few days, the people seem different. Probably my imagination, its what happened to my brain after I've read Alice Hoffman, Amy Tan and Toni Morrison back to back with a fair about of Marvel Comics to keep things real. Prehaps some "chick lit" is in order.

So yesterday in my self pitying, feeling like rubbish state I watched My Fair Lady. Instatly I got a warm feeling inside and began to feel like maybe the world isn't so awful after all...I love this film, I don't think I could ever watch a stage version because to me it could never be more perfect. I'm convinced its the cure to all woes, so I'm just going to keeping singing the soundtrack in my head, grab a hot chocolate and count away the hours.

All I want is a room somewhere
Far away from the cold night air
With one enormous chair
Oh wouldn't it be Loverly

Here's my cool link for today its all about outer space....

Life without music...

Wow you have to see this guys art, its increadible...

I lost my i-river yesterday, ok well I only thought I'd lost (I'd left it in my draw at work) but this didn't stop me panicking until I found it this morning. Anyway it got me thinking, if I had lost the thing permeantly I would have been crushed, as it has almost all my music on it. These day we can walk around with a lifetimes worth of entertainment in your pocket. Even if it had video on it, its the music I'd miss. As I wouldn't be able to replace my player for a while, the idea that I would have to walk around for however long and not be able to just listen to what ever song I felt like really bugged me. It felt like I'd been condemed to a world of silence. Taking those awful long bus journeys with nothing to distract me, sitting here at my desk working on some boring Tax paper, the world a vacumn of emptiness. Music can make you happy when you miserable, it can reach you when people can't, can express your most secret emotions, lets you vent your angry and can inspire. Can you imagine what life would be like without music?

I've oftern wondered how deaf and blind people preceive the world. Is it different if your born with the condidtion then if you develop it...I guess the question there is, is it worse to know what it like then lose it or not know at all. It makes me think of Beethoven, how awful it must have been while his ear were failing to miss all that he created and cherished.

Visual Paradox

This website is so very very cool Visual Paradox

I love stuff like this, thanks to my sister Escher is one of my most beloved artists. He practically started the who amazing graphic paradox art things. You can read about him here

While I'm on the subject I really love those black and white photo's from 1920 -60 of idlic life. They are usually on the front of blank cards or randomly in magazines but some of them are so very baeutiful. There used to be this huge print of one in the window of the Kodak shop in Holland Park (not sure if its still there) of this women on a beach leaning over to pick something up, that I always looked forward to seeing. It was just so serene. One of my favourites is this photo of Embankment at night, its all dark and broody and there is one lone figure just standing looking out at the Thames. Not to mention Construction Workers Lunching on a Crossbeam, 1932.

The Wonderful Wizard of Wiki

I am so tired it hurts...

Today I devote this post the the wonder that is Wikipedia !

Why I here you ask, well its only the best thing snice sliced bread. On wiki all the world knowledge in practically at your finger tips. I don't mean just fact about heart disease but music biographies, film news, biology, history, art, theatre you name it wiki has it and if it doesn't you can write an article yourself as well as editing the ones they already have.

I'm positivly addicted to looking up almost anything on wiki, I spent a whole lunch break looking up norse gods, another one reading about different types of big cats and birds of prey and so on.

For those of you who haven't tried or heard of it, I can only say, you are missing out on the greatest resource the internet has to offer.

Reliving the past

Recently Eoin and I have been re-watching loads of old TV shows and this months flashbacks are "Lois and Clark" and good old "Angel".

It is funny how your memoary can play real tricks with you, for example - what on earth was attractive about Dean Cain, sorry but I just don't see it anymore. At least it is still fun, though its odd watching the first season again as the have the wrong Jimmy. I had forgotten about the chief's love of Elvis and just how cheaply produced some of the super hero bits are, its almost comical! I have to point out that I still love the show, cos it concentrates more on Clark being a journalist, trying to be normal then Superman.

On to Angel, I was just reading up on this on IMDB and found out that Doyle (Glenn Quin) died of a drug overdose in 2001, which make me pretty sad while rewatching the first season. Yes I get way to involved in the characters. Eoin and I were talking about this yesterday, I think I empathise with everything, movies, tv, songs and books. I can't help it, to me the whole point is to put yourself the the place of whichever charcter and live what they are experiencing, I find it more enjoyable that way. To me a bad movie etc is one where I can't engage with the protagnist. Eoin on the other hand has a more analytical prospective, he sort of steps back and looks at the thing as a whole then thinks it over, I don't get it but it seems to work for us both in its own way. Sorry just rambling a little. So I never liked Buffy (I can hear all the shocked people from here) don't get me wrong I LOVED the movie, it was so off the wall and funny. The series, well I just couldn't stand blondey, she couldn't act and just didn't convince me even in the slightest. This didn't stop me watchin 6 season of the show (must get round to 7 at some point). Angel was something else, it had two characters I didn't like that much but from the very first episode I saw I was hooked. I got to really like all the characters they bought in, for some reason it just worked, unfortunatly it did go down the x-file road to ruin, the uber story arc after story arc but it was still good.

As I'm talking about it, I have to mention the Faith prison break episode was super cool!

Free at Last

Free at last, Free at last, thank god almighty I'm free at last.

My sister is now offically married, I could not be happier. The four days of the wedding were a bloodbath, filled with tears, relife, joy and screaming. But its all over now and I'm just trying to think of a way to sleep under my desk without anyone noticing. I would tell you about all the petty things that make wedding absolutly horrible but I actually enjoyed mine.
Anyway I'd rather not depress you, more fuel for the autobiography...

So I was flicking through channels yesterday and came across some american show called 'high school reunion', from what I figure they take 30 somethings that went to high school together, throw them on an island and prove that nothing has change, cue the crying and cat fights. What seems to be a the theme is that high school can really mess up your life, well duh you were a teenager of course life sucked. But its tempoary, hopefully you grow up and get your act sorted out. The fact that these idiots went back for more punishment proves that they deserve everything they get.

Family on the other hand is a totally different matter, the thing with family is that they can be the best thing ever and the worst thing. If your like me, you loath most of your relatives but can't help feel guilty about it. In fact its the guilt tripping that make everything so damn annoying, even when they aren't doing it, you still feel it. The worst part is you can't trade them in for a new set, your suck with them forever, so you go through a cycle, and after a while you reason with yourself that its not that bad and back you come for more abuse.

Hello people I'm miss Doormat, just beacuse we share some DNA please feel free to trample all over my life and feelings, Thank you

The calm before the storm

July the hotest month in year and year has gone by and we enter August the best month ever, apart from the fact the world it covered in a grim grey mantle. Everything says a storm is coming, from the damp in the air and the ominous winds to the oddly sedate piegons wandering the streets and park. This is what it feels like ...

Or I could just be saying that cos all of my sisters wedding madness begins tomorrow and today is my last day in the office. Apparently rain is good luck on a wedding but my sister my go crazy if the weather doesn't pick up by the end of the week.

Take my advice, elope its a lot less hassel!

If you feel like being creative...I like this site