Friday Pop Tarts

More a hybrid of pop and opera, but since I missed out on the melodifestevalen madness this year, this emerged as the winner and appeals to the drama queen in me.

2009 Sweden - Malena Ernman (Final Winner)
by Galiza

You can read more of the melodifestevalen madness here on Stornisse's page.

The lights are on but the wrong one's home

The phone rings and I answer it.

Cue: a slew of French directed at me asking if I want to participate in free facials (get your mind out of the gutter), free phone lines, cheaper car insurance etc. I wait until they finish.

Me (in heavy English accent): Parlez vous anglais?
Telemarketer: Non, desolé. Est ce que Monsieur OH est la?
Me (in perfect French accent) : Non. Il pas ici maintenant. Voulez laisser un message?
TM: Oh, erm, erm. Hangs up.

Works every time.

Then we came to the end

Somehow reality has a way of showing you an opportunity, and kicking you in the teeth at the same time.

I have a great new job to go to, and was apprehensive about handing in my notice here. However, so many things have happened in the last week at my current job it seems that I may not even have the satisfaction of resigning.

At least if I'm made to leave before my notice period I can guarantee being paid for it, and I'd get to spend time with my sister who's here on holiday.

Snobbery

Clicking through the pages of the Times online paper, and checking out various events going on back in the UK, I see a link on 'seasonal produce'. Given I'm a bit of a foodie, I click on this and am immediately greeted with the caption: Purple sprouting broccoli, uncovered.

I read further, and gradually I'm turning my nose up at the article, and by the time I'm at the end its a full blown sneer. Showing disdain, or meprisé, has always been something I did best, says OH.

It's not so much the article on the seasonal broccoli, nor is it the suggested recipes. It's more the way the article is written in an almost condescending tone. How to prepare, what to look out for etc etc. Then I catch myself: I have become a food snob.

I'm not sure when this happened, the transition of gourmand to le gourmet meprisé, but increasingly I'm finding myself with reactions that I am ashamed of. Dinner can be completely ruined by a less than satisfactory sauce reduction, badly executed good ideas can make me lose my appetite, and just this weekend gone, a fantastic meal, punctuated by a lamentable créme brulèe (more a sweet ouefs brouilles).

It's a (self) phenomenon which I'm pondering the ramifications.

Check back for updates.

Friday Pop Tarts

For some reason I seem to have completely bypassed Katy Perry, until my friend in Paris said she did graphics for her. And this is really catchy. One to go on the Marmoset running soundtrack for 2009.

Katy Perry - Hot N Cold [HQ]
par wonderful-life1989

More news next week. I'm about to have another change.

Priorities

Yesterday, OH suggested that we go and watch a movie made by the Nobel Prize winning economist Joseph Stieglitz. The gist was all about deindustrialisation and how another globalisation would once again emerge and this time to benefit everyone. Given that my daily work routine consists of facing a scree with non-stop financial news and economics updates and similar discussions, I declined and went out and got drunk with a friend instead.

10 Books

I've been putting this off for a while, especially since I promised hijac that I'd do it a few Fridays previously. So, here goes my list of 10 books that have some bearing on the person I am:

1. The Little Prince, Antoine de St. Exupery : The first book I remember receiving from my father, and remained a keepsake to remember him by for the next 13 years when I didn't see him as both him and my mother were on fraught terms. Now, its a reminder of how the most important things in life are sometimes invisible to the eye.

2. Larousse Gastronomique : Because I love food, and this has almost everything you need to know about food, preparation techniques, and recipies. Truly food porn at its best.

3. The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, Haruki Murakami : Tales that involve the metaphysical and ethereal have always appealed to me, perhaps because so much is rooted in the real world, but yet has a plausible escape hatch to enter the realm of the unknown. Hauntingly told, it also explains a lot about the heritage I bear and the mentality of the Japanese people.

4. The Life and Times of Michael K, J.M. Coetzee : For making me realise how lucky I truly am to be born into the life that I have.

5. Memoirs of a Geisha, Arthur Golden : Not so much for the depiction of life as a geisha, more for the bitchy repartée between the rivals.

6. Every Woman Deserves An Adventure, Yvonne Roberts : Probably the first bit of chick lit I ever read, and to date reminds me that it can be well written, and funny. Also because I desperately wanted my mother to be liberally sexual like the heroine instead of fighting for the divorce that never happened.

7. Giovanni's Room, James Baldwin : If you've read my previous posts, you'll understand why. Although I'm the gay man who suffered the anguish instead.

8. Farewell My Concubine, Lillian Lee : Another part of my heritage, and the love/suffering dynamic played out beautifully.

9. Calvin and Hobbes, Bill Watterson : For reminding me that at times we shouldn't be so cynical and to remember what life was before we hit puberty, and to enjoy the simple pleasures.

10. The Man Who Mistook His Wife For A Hat, Oliver Sachs : This is the only book I vaguely even understand out of the years I spent doing my degree in.

So, that was my list of 10 books. I'm sure some will change over time, but nos 1-3 will be hard to shift.

Profundity.

So, my deeply religious, born again parents come online and we chat for a bit. Then my father goes off, and my mother tells me that he's a changed man and instead of paying him lip service I should tell him things from the heart, and that he'd listen.

How do I tell her after 28 years its too late, and I have nothing to say to him that would be worthwhile?