tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-187023412024-03-07T18:12:13.371+00:00Bits & Pieces of ZenSporadic musings on dance, books, coffee breaks, and fishtzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.comBlogger107125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-74253867070379364092021-04-01T14:23:00.000+01:002021-04-01T14:23:43.703+01:00Off piste<p><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’m going a little off piste with this entry - but I have been inspired by this quiet period of reflection to write something a little different for myself. In part this is inspired by Michelle Obama’s wonderful podcast which I have found deeply resonant; and by the recent rise in anti Asian hate crime in the USA following covid.</span></p><span id="docs-internal-guid-53c4056b-7fff-0fea-264f-ae62380460d1"><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve been reflecting on the importance of being yourself, wholly yourself, in professional as well as personal contexts. Up to now, I had always had an enormous edifice of a wall between my personal and my professional lives. I hadn’t been entirely certain of why. I think now that perhaps it was because I subconsciously tried to hide my otherness at work. I was in my early 30s, born and largely raised in South-east Asia, with entrepreneurial parents who had grown up poor, and there I was COO of a 250 year old art institution with royal patronage at the heart of central London. It was a crazy place to have arrived. I didn’t recognise, for the longest time, that my discomfort in receptions and fundraisers and even at social occasions with my peers around the senior management table was not because I wasn’t extroverted enough or engaging enough -- somehow I managed to blame it on myself -- but rather that there was a sort of shorthand going on amongst a group of largely wealthy white UK born and raised people which I was inevitably not part of. None of these people knew much if anything at all about the part of the world I was from. I didn’t talk about it either. I figured they weren’t interested. I did what I think I’d been trained to do: assimilate, forget my otherness, simply not talk about where I had come from. Graciously smooth over (and in fact, not even generate much internal anger) when I was mistaken time and again at events for somebody’s secretary (usually a white male). I subconsciously figured that my otherness was a weakness, something that didn’t serve me in the role; that I’d probably be better at it if I, too, were white British, middle or upper class, marinated in dinner table conversations about British art, British politics, British cultural life.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I wonder now how much more powerful it could have been if I had spoken more about my otherness. The people I think most about are the young people in the institution at the time. So many of them, too, would not have come from the types of backgrounds the rest of the management team had. Naively I was still in the mode of “keep your head down, do the work, walk don’t talk”. I think there was a part of me that thought that simply being there was good enough. I confined myself in the workplace to professional topics only. I talked about audiences, projects, money money money. On one rare occasion, during the #metoo movement, I wrote a memo to all staff about being a woman professional. I found I didn’t even know how to refer to myself, stumbling to find the words beyond “woman”. BAME? Asian? None of them seemed right. After so long seeking assimilation I didn’t even have the words to describe myself fully.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">My story isn’t one of a rise from dire circumstances. In so many ways I was hugely lucky. Parents who fought for my education (above all else -- a double-edged sword); a comfortable middle class upbringing; intellectual capacity that felt gifted; an absolutely world class education from the age of 8 onwards; mentors and role models who consistently told me that I could do anything I wanted. There are so many people whose otherness is even harder, who come from working class families, who have a lifetime of being told they could not do things, that they had to dampen their ambition. I cannot speak for those people; I have awe and admiration for what they do and what they give the world every day. My story is just mine. I have an immigrant otherness instead -- not working class but no class. I have experienced intense pain from being told that I could do anything, play on a big stage a world away from my roots, and indeed trying to do a great deal, and learning too late that that alone does not make a fulfilled life; that that is not worth building your identity around.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I watch and read now as the world, and as young people, some decades younger than myself, speak up. I watch in horror as I see that Asian Americans, people who look like me, talk like me, have the same cultural references as me, become the butt of racism and hate crimes. I see them standing up and marching. I hear them say that they too, were taught to be obedient and quiet, to pursue a traditional form of success and assimilation, but they are choosing now to speak. Because individual success is nothing if your community is in pain.</span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I’ve had to step aside from work for a while. The chasing of a traditional form of success, one in which I was no longer my whole self, one in which I was still seeking assimilation, ended up a disaster for me. It’s taught me that without a stronger connection to who I am, my values, my tribe, my childhood, it’s too easy to be dangerously adrift. It put my health into crisis, and dragged in my family as well. </span></p><br /><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">I have started healing by reconnecting to myself, my family and people, and my values. My family and friends are mostly halfway across the world -- and I know now that they will be my tribe forever, and that any steps I can take to be closer to them and to home will be good ones. I have started to articulate my values: love and family; beauty; respect. I have started to make things again for the sheer joy of it. I have made baby steps to find community in the geography I find myself in today. I have started volunteering at a local food bank -- in Tower Hamlets I am in one of the poorest neighbourhoods in the UK -- and I am no longer making excuses or rationalising to myself that I can achieve more by playing on a bigger stage. It starts with me, with my community. I am starting to see that this “amateur” work, this work done for love, this work of raising my family and connecting with my friends and helping provide dignity to those in crisis who live next door, is probably the most important work that I will do in my life.</span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"> </span></p><p dir="ltr" style="line-height: 1.38; margin-bottom: 0pt; margin-top: 0pt;"><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;">When I return to professional work, I hope to bring more of my whole self -- selfishly, because it will help me to stay stable; selflessly, because I hope that it will be useful for younger people to help them to avoid the mistakes that I made. I can start practicing that now, as I think about my next steps. That memo I wrote in the time of #metoo was a good thing, albeit all too rare. I am Chinese Malaysian. I am an immigrant. I am a woman. I am almost always “other” in the circles I find myself in professionally, but there is so much strength in that “other”. I will never speak or behave or think like a British 40+ year old privately educated white male. That is a beautiful thing. I have memories as an 8 year old of sucking garishly pink coloured syrup out of a shaved ice ball in a plastic bag in a small village in Malaysia. I have met the Queen of England in gilded rooms, which I was responsible for looking after. I have birthed a beautiful bright mixed race child, and with my husband we are raising her as best as we can. I am a professional. I am proud of who I am, and who I could be still. I hope that I can help my daughter in time, and perhaps even other young people, to think hard about who they truly want to be and to find a way to move towards their dreams, small or big, intimate or expansive, or all of those things at once -- with authenticity, grace and integrity. I hope that by doing that I can find more of my own authenticity, grace and integrity. If that is all I do, it will be more than enough.</span></p><div><span style="font-family: Arial; font-size: 11pt; font-variant-east-asian: normal; font-variant-numeric: normal; vertical-align: baseline; white-space: pre-wrap;"><br /></span></div></span>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-67158518687683819852021-04-01T14:04:00.001+01:002021-04-01T14:04:21.383+01:00If at first you don't succeedTry, try and try again (and then at least you will have 15 points, or 21 with conversions)<br />
<br />
A very strange urge has come over me suddenly to remember what it feels like to write prose, rather than powerpoint slides<div><br /></div><div>[this was as far as I got with clearly the beginnings of a draft blog entry in 2015 - publishing in 2021!]</div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-77930814927259824382012-12-29T15:32:00.001+00:002012-12-29T15:32:57.346+00:00(re)-hello, worldSo, a small close-to-New-Year resolution/experiment to start writing a blog again. Reading through it recently made me think my life was previously rather exciting, and the lack of recent entries makes me wonder if my life is now rather less exciting, but perhaps these are causal in the counter-intuitive direction and there is something about the art of public diarying (as opposed to "proper blogging" about politics or suchlike) that is good for you, your sense of place in the world and luck to be living in it.<br />
<br />
I suppose "dance, books, coffee breaks and fish" is no longer quite as apt as perhaps "another upper middle class day", however I think I had better desist from such a depressing tagline and get as much dance, coffee breaks and fish into this as I'm able. Here goes nothing!<br />
<br />
DANCE<br />
I have sadly not seen very much live dance recently -- in fact I've been to the theatre more, with recent trips to the NT to see two very different plays: Scenes from an Execution and The Magistrate. The first, thought provoking and such a tour de force of acting, but quite frankly a little bit "up itself" for my taste although perhaps that is just me being a philistine. The second, some lovely light entertainment and also it was nice to see an all singing all dancing John Lithgow on stage (good plummy English accent). Truly gorgeous sets, so intricately and vibrantly designed and with some whizz bang motors revolving things and unfolding things all over the place. It made me think that dance just doesn't do clever enough things with sets, or at least I've not seen very much dance that does -- we are usually too obsessed with having enough space to jete. So much potential there, not just for narrative dances but also incredible stagecraft ideas, I can just see dancers clambering all over bits of moving set everywhere... (expensive, I'm sure, and in need of an extremely gung ho set designer/technical team).<br />
<br />
Really must go and see more dance, I've had tickets to multiple things this year but work and various personal emergencies got in the way and I missed the Royal Ballet's Titian tribute as well as Cedar Lake and also Ballet Black. Gutted! Must make more of an effort... Perhaps to make up for it I started watching the Nutcracker on YouTube this Christmas and funnily enough my three year old nephew got well into it and is now even doing pirouettes all over the place. I am rather pleased with this, even though his uncle's response is that he needs more male influence in his life :)<br />
<br />
Even doing dance is happening a little -- CCD has made a little dance film of a piece that Merrilees made earlier in the year, which has been lots of fun. Trying to see if we can hatch plans for a proper performance next year. It would be utterly fantastic to get the company back into real performing mode, so I'm very keen, but we will have to make sure we have enough producing capacity to make it happen (I'm fairly confident we will find enough keen dancers which is wonderful).<br />
<br />
BOOKS<br />
<b>Quiet: The Power of Introverts</b><br />
Recent and rather atypical read on my trusty Kindle (which is stuffed with novels and occasional history books brought on by ignorance-induced guilt). It seemed a bit of a hard sell and unfortunately my scientifically trained brain always goes into alarm-bell-ringing sceptical mode whenever faced with social science, or even psychology when it starts to wander a little down the self-help route. However, much of the book hit very close to home. I'm not sure at what point I drifted from being somewhere in the middle of the introvert-extrovert continuum to being a strong introvert, but that is certainly where I self-identify these days. <br />
<br />
It is certainly true that work is an extremely extrovert environment. My workplace definitely is and I will perhaps never stop receiving feedback that I could "be more rah" (there are future CEO Myers-Brigg ENTJs all around me!), but I have learnt (and am still learning) an awful lot about how I can contribute, be heard and even perhaps lead in such an environment. I'm also lucky enough that we understand the E/I thing fairly well at work and I don't (no longer) feel guilty about not going to dinner every night with the team! I actually think that pretty much everybody needs to sometimes just get some "head down time" where we can stop talking and actually think -- the good thing is, I generally do get this, and feel like I can shout to make sure I get it if I don't.<br />
<br />
I am less sure about the soundness of the advice in the book to choose work that is more suited to an introverted personality. (I recognise the value of understanding yourself and your environment, but balk at the idea that you should use a personality test as some sort of predictor of happiness in a career.) I've tried the research thing, for example, and even as a strong introvert it can be very isolating. I don't think it is untrue to say that a lot of people do what they do because of the people around them -- introverts included. Whilst I get a deep sense of happiness and satisfaction whenever I see a rare day stretching ahead of me where I can just get my head down and think and work by myself, if I did that every day I think I would really quite quickly get bored! But perhaps more importantly and more generically, I think there is some danger in thinking about career through the lens of personality, in that you may rule yourself out of things. The author in fact gives a great counter example of an incredibly effective introvert salesman. Now the idea to me of hard selling things to people I don't know is anathema, but clearly there is an introverted way to do it, and if that salesman had followed the advice in the book he would never have figured that out.<br />
<br />
COFFEE BREAKS<br />
Um, I don't really have these anymore! Very sad. Earlier in December this year I did have a couple because D was away and I had a couple of weekends to myself, so I plonked myself in a cafe and read a book and had a too-sweet Christmas coffee. It was really very satisfying indeed and I must promise myself to magically find the time to do it more often.<br />
<br />
FISH<br />
None recently sighted other than my nephew's guppies, but tomorrow I leave for the Visayas in the Philippines, hurrah hurrah, I can't wait to get under the sea again. A whale shark would be wonderful, but some fusiliers will do just fine.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com17tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-67130950716735977932011-09-09T16:48:00.002+01:002011-09-09T17:00:41.606+01:00One year onSo I am slowly but surely creeping up to one year on the job, which is something of a milestone. On the whole it has been very kind to me indeed, possibly excepting this last month in which I found myself quite regularly doing 14 hour days and discovering that this is not really conducive to holding all the rest of the parts of one's life together (I only discovered exactly how many other things I was committed to when my work took over and I started enumerating the number of people I was letting down!). On the other hand, the last month has also been a milestone in terms of the independence and impact that I am starting to feel I can personally make on my teams. Nothing comes so easily it seems... We are now nearing the end which means I can have a bit of a breather and write this blog :)<div><br /></div><div>In terms of other commitments, perhaps the largest has been the circus, still work-related, deary me -- other than the fact that it has eaten my weekends, it has been lots of fun, very bruise-inducing, and a great challenge (largely to my upper body strength). Several months on, I feel we've gone from trapeze virgins to trapeze performers (no innuendo intended, no really!) which is not to be sneezed at... We are performing next weekend, and lots of people are coming to watch the somewhat dubious spectacle of management consultants trying to put on a circus.</div><div><br /></div><div>There is less other excitement on the horizon now that I've only just come back from a summer family holiday in Tuscany (I've been back two weeks but it feels like two months). In the misty future somewhere there is the prospect of Singapore - Bali - Hong Kong - Singapore - Sydney over Christmas and New Year's. I've decided the main purpose of holidays is not so much the holiday itself but so that one has something to look forward to!</div><div><br /></div><div><br /></div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-81477597433474242922011-07-11T21:10:00.004+01:002011-07-11T21:37:41.068+01:00Silent weekend/Taking it slowerThis weekend was dominated by laryngitis, which I seem to get every few years in acute form. It has been particularly bad this time round and I could only manage a whisper all Saturday and Sunday -- now I can croak, but it takes quite a lot of effort and is not very intelligible. It is weird not to be able to speak -- I carried around a pen and notebook for the weekend -- and sticks you firmly with your own thoughts much of the time, which can be either frustrating or sort of peaceful, depending on how you look at it.<div><br /></div><div>Loss of voice aside, it was actually a rather nice weekend. Friday night after work we went to a picnic concert at Kenwood House (on Hampstead Heath). Watched the Gipsy Kings play, along with a whole sea of other concert goers with picnic blankets and hampers. Lots of fun, if a little disappointingly cold -- most were heavily bundled up by the end of the night. I seem to have spent far too much of my life in sombre concert halls, and am only just discovering live music in outdoor, summer, casual settings. Pulp at the Wireless Festival last weekend in Hyde Park was good too, albeit in a different way -- more beer and chips, fewer picnic rugs, but kinder weather!</div><div><br /></div><div>Saturday was relaxed. Coffee at our little caf on the railway bridge -- excellent for bacon sandwiches. Skipped trapeze class as the laryngitis has been brought on by quite a bad cold, and hanging upside down did not seem a good cure for either. Dim sum lunch at Phoenix Palace -- never fails. Then a stroll through Marylebone and Oxford Street. Second coffee at Apostrophe in St Christopher's Place, friends enjoying the sun and chattering away, only downside was that the volume of this chatter was such that one with literally no voice found it hard to converse. Then home to roast a chicken. We decided to try out the "beer can up the butt" method, which is a bit undignified for the bird, but produced some absolutely beautiful falling apart moist roast chicken. Definitely worth it.</div><div><br /></div><div>Sunday. Decided to head to my friend's birthday picnic in Greenwich Park despite some slightly dubious weather and a continued lack of working vocal chords. Turns out to be a good decision -- excellent company, too much picnic food, weather fined up so sunny and beautiful, lack of working vocal chords (plus notebook) probably provided rest of the guests with party entertainment. Although picnic as a spectator event is a bit weird, really. Head home in very leisurely fashion, wandering through Greenwich Village and taking the Thames Clipper back to Waterloo. A really good £4.95 spent, what lovely tourist views all along the Thames, hadn't realised Tower Bridge is such a fantasy. </div><div><br /></div><div>Monday. Took the day off as I am still coughing and spluttering everywhere, and really quite dubious as to how effective a team member I can be when I cannot speak (will find out tomorrow). First day off since I started the job 9.5 months ago, which means almost first day to myself since that time. Certainly the first day to myself in which I have been forced to not do very much for health reasons. Surprisingly wonderful. Do some work from home, catch up on errands, but fit in a little time in the sun on the Heath at lunch. Very, very peaceful with dogs everywhere, some coming to snuffle my picnic box. Back to it tomorrow -- but good to take it slow every so often.</div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-6492328124954544372011-06-16T14:43:00.004+01:002011-06-16T14:51:06.425+01:00A few of my favourite things<div>Not really into brown paper packages tied up in string, but rather:</div><div><br /></div><div><b>My new Kindle</b>, which was a great birthday present from D. I carry it absolutely everywhere, it slots into my laptop bag a treat, and it has allowed me to indulge my escapism in fiction despite long(er) hours and a distinct lack of quiet evenings at home reading. I have sadly fallen prey to Amazon's ability to increase the amount I pay for books tenfold (having been a keen purveyor of discount bookstores in my previous life), but quite frankly it makes me happy so who cares? I've been wending my way through more of the Peter Carey ouevre, most recently with Parrot and Olivier in America, and the True History of the Kelly Gang. He has the most extraordinary ventriloquism I've ever read, an ability to inhabit the mind and voice of his protagonists that is uncanny. It is a good thing he is so prolific as I have many more of his books to read. D has claimed veto rights on the Kindle (i.e. he is allowed to take it away when I start reading at dinner or whilst walking down the street or other such childhood habits which my mother had to deal with), which is probably a good thing! </div><div><br /></div><div><b>Discovering ashtanga yoga</b>, which I mostly do at a very lovely studio called Triyoga in Primrose Hill (with a couple of branches much closer to my work too). Sadly my favourite teacher has had to stop for the summer as she is due to give birth in about a week (was still demonstrating headstands with three weeks to go!), but I can pop into any other ashtanga class too. I love that it is a bit of everything, exertion, technique, philosophy, endurance, personal space, with a neverending challenge (I know this from one week accidentally wandering into a very advanced class which I should probably not go back to for several years!). When I'm not at yoga I try to make space to dance (contemporary, jazz, ballet, whatever!) or now that it's light late I run around West Hampstead and St John's Wood gawking at the mansion blocks, then I turn left into Kilburn and wonder if I should really be running through this council estate at dusk... </div><div><br /></div><div><b>The variety of my work</b>: this week I got to read and write about two large global metals and mining companies, a luxury hotel chain, a pharmaceutical company, a diversified company that does just about everything, a great technology company, and the list goes on. As I'm settling into work as well it's great to be feeling comfortable enough to start getting involved in things around the office outside of my actual engagements too -- I'm involved in UK PhD recruiting but probably more excitingly I am learning the static trapeze! No really -- for our office challenge this year we are putting on a circus! Who knows what a circus put on by a whole load of consultants is going to be like, but I'm having great fun learning to clamber around in the air (blisters, aching shoulders and all). Bonus, they just promoted me (nothing to do with the trapeze skills as far as I know), so feeling particularly positive about the whole job thing at the moment. Give me a few weeks and I may be on a new engagement which has me working all hours, and my tone will surely change...</div><div><br /></div><div><b>Spending weekends with D</b>. I like our rituals, coffee somewhere on West End Lane, dim sum at Phoenix Palace, a Sunday evening movie, rambles through the Heath; but I also like that weekends are often very different: I head when I can to Bath's Georgian teahouses (loving the fact that I don't have to get on a Tube for two days), we've gone back up to Cambridge often to do dance performances/graduate from PhDs/see lovely friends, and London often provides with randomness when you're out of ideas (a very urban beach/sandpit on the Southbank, the Wireless Festival in Hyde Park in a few weeks, canal walks through unexplored neighbourhoods yielding finds such as establishments selling meat pies and jellied eel).</div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-75706174753204124412011-05-26T16:22:00.003+01:002011-05-26T18:06:42.002+01:00Living in London[insert usual apologies for neglecting blog here]<div><br /></div><div>I have now been in London some 8 months which I suppose is long enough to feel somewhat settled. As I spent a fair amount of my early twenties agonising over whether I should really be spending quite so large a portion of my life in the rarefied atmosphere of Cambridge, and yearning for the-grass-is-greener 'Real World', it is reassuring to find that life in London is, after all, rather jolly good (although the literal grass is definitely not as manicured as Cambridge's).</div><div><br /></div><div>How my time is spent, in order of decreasing average number of hours spent/week:</div><div><br /></div><div>A) WORK</div><div>A taxi driver told me once that this phrase "covered all manner of sins", but I will try to cover my sheepishness at now being a "management consultant". The glaring difference in 'cool factor' between being a marine biologist and a management consultant is by no means lost on me, but I remain convinced that it was the right choice. My new profession would have me now come up with "three killer reasons" why this is so, and despite my best attempts to be contrary it is in fact three that spring to mind:</div><div><br /></div><div>As advertised on the tin</div><div>1. This job is a fantastic way to broaden your horizons. I now know far, far more about Industries X, Y and Z than I ever thought I would, and my understanding of how this society works, and how people work, is the better for it.</div><div>2. My work now actually requires me to talk to people, probably more than my introversion would have me do naturally, which is great -- because people here (both colleagues and clients) are interesting folk by and large, hugely supportive, friendly, and come with a rather refreshing lack of academic pseudo-autism.</div><div><br /></div><div>As not advertised on the tin (or at least advertised in smaller font)</div><div>3. For all that we get criticised for going in and telling people what they already know, in at least some of the work I've done I have felt a massive sense of service. To help people see how they can make things close to their hearts really happen, to do it with a sense that they always come first, to see my work making a difference to individuals -- this is more satisfying that I ever thought it would be.</div><div><br /></div><div>B) SLEEP</div><div>I have been incredibly lucky such that 8 hours is not a problem to obtain; I also for the first time in my life have a real-sized bed rather than a college single; I have slept on said real-sized bed far more than the 'jetset' consultant lifestyle might have allowed (the furthest away I have worked is Birmingham!) -- all good things.</div><div><br /></div><div>C) COMMUTING</div><div>I live in West Hampstead and am quite a fan of the Jubilee line no matter how we like to moan about it (although last week's peak hour delay due to a "loose screw" was probably cutting it fine). It takes me half an hour to the office, so I don't much mind it really. Also love the 139 bus, particularly as on the way home from late nights in Soho it deposits me about 30 metres from the door!</div><div><br /></div><div>D) FOOD</div><div>The awesomeness of living in a big city means that there is a neverending supply of fantastic restaurants to discover, many of them neighbourhood gems rather than glitzy Michelin starred pretentiousness. Quickly becoming favourites: Tamada (Georgian, giant xiao long bao!), Saracino (best Italian meats ever), Atari-ya (great sushi, and even has a cheap and cheerful takeaway joint near Selfridges), Koya (uber bouncy tasty udon near office), Miyama (who needs Nobu for miso black cod), Toresano (taste of Spain), Japan Centre (how does the itsu next door survive), Phoenix Palace (old standby for comforting quality dim sum), the Gallery (great Sunday roasts, always good for a drink) etc. Also had the fortune of visiting lots of great cocktail places all with some kind of clever name or other which I can't really remember now -- Experimental Cocktail Club was very tasty, and had a great birthday night at B@1 recently where the staff are fantastic and they do a mean espresso martini.</div><div><br /></div><div>Rather hungry now, perhaps I'll be back in another year to write about London Pt II? :)</div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-82178401932844467642010-04-19T08:08:00.004+01:002010-04-20T02:05:08.549+01:00In a land far, far away<div>It has been six weeks since the viva, and I have been sadly lacking in communication. Partly this is because from Down Under the old world of manic thesis writing and worrying about fish seems exceedingly far away, and so too the usual procrastination devices of blog writing and the like. However, here I am to make amends!<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Thailand</span><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxotYbAkWqRaSK51T2SLWRhYx2IPXb3sZrNm1VTYTZoufmNhDyZuHdp2zuJWXqGZQsXlr4PeVFTF-HNDUAj4sBZgoAgN4fljZgJwdQ7-k64jlBbi1sh0EIcN484v_iS0_zBiRH/s1600/kotao.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462017932014798226" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhxotYbAkWqRaSK51T2SLWRhYx2IPXb3sZrNm1VTYTZoufmNhDyZuHdp2zuJWXqGZQsXlr4PeVFTF-HNDUAj4sBZgoAgN4fljZgJwdQ7-k64jlBbi1sh0EIcN484v_iS0_zBiRH/s320/kotao.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />D and I spent almost a week on Ko Tao in the Gulf of Thailand for a spot of diving and some R&R. We had no idea the red shirts were massing in Bangkok as we chilled out on the beach with endless mango shakes (so good surely because they must be 20% maple syrup?!) and accompanied by numerous scruffy but lovable beach dogs, after long days of diving. It was lovely for me to be underwater again in Gulf visibility of 20-30m; although much of the reef seemed sadly degraded and not particularly hard coral spectacular, the fish life was really pretty wonderful and I had some amazing dives at Chumphon Pinnacle and White Rock absolutely mesmerised by the shoals of fusiliers and yellowtail barracuda and "ikan bilis" being hunted by trevally. There is nothing like being surrounded by a school of gleaming flashing silver fish as the sunlight filters through their backlit streamlined forms. Other highlights included a sea krait out for a good old hunt, a scorpionfish I spotted on a ledge at 28m, going on D's last open water certification dives and a very, very cute little octopus on a snorkel off Nang Yuan Island which is actually 3 islands connected by a beach (and was famously once rented out in its entirety by the Red Hot Chilli Peppers).<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SuZdjPXwOMYFuHfRO0pzT1a-AW1ffacxIDdzeu4_KvDNf3pE-jihu6Q22SCKiBjozFEFos2yzIChlo5f90cTMCuz7eCcGZx2f80yigCOG19AEountXM4cPLS_yqzltxs5Sa9/s1600/apresdive.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462016536255466466" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEj5SuZdjPXwOMYFuHfRO0pzT1a-AW1ffacxIDdzeu4_KvDNf3pE-jihu6Q22SCKiBjozFEFos2yzIChlo5f90cTMCuz7eCcGZx2f80yigCOG19AEountXM4cPLS_yqzltxs5Sa9/s320/apresdive.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />The apres dive action was very lively, as the island is absolutely filled with backpackery types and has bars everywhere along Sairee Beach and in the village. It was pretty good fun if you wanted to partake of it -- I am not used to being able to go diving and then having access to a Long Island Iced Tea in a tiny shack along a road heaving with partiers and scooters. Beach BBQs and Thai pancakes were very yummy eating, and the daily THB300 massages were absolute bliss! Overall a pretty good place to unwind.<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Sydney</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1z3OfwedIV-C2XkPpPiHVs_SXf7rz5TxDMG3V_pcEiLVzYGlAEOR9bE_io6OjMrWnu_Xw0i19i45pOmxsH93i7d9hguudzyP9shHTqget3SrYqQ7t-ugj5lLXVxTES1RWAZ6/s1600/sydney.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462017954359965122" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjw1z3OfwedIV-C2XkPpPiHVs_SXf7rz5TxDMG3V_pcEiLVzYGlAEOR9bE_io6OjMrWnu_Xw0i19i45pOmxsH93i7d9hguudzyP9shHTqget3SrYqQ7t-ugj5lLXVxTES1RWAZ6/s320/sydney.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />In total I think I spent about three weeks in Sydney getting to know it properly. It is, overwhelmingly, a beautiful city. Everywhere you go the harbour gleams boisterously at you and the cockatoos and lorikeets caw above your head and the bridge and opera house peek round every corner looking more photogenic by the second. A surf beach is never far away filled with tanned beautiful people baking themselves or frolicking in the sea, with a promenade lined with breakfast places serving corn fritters and scrambled eggs till noon. And all this under that famed Australian sun in a huge sky -- the light down here gorgeously gilds everything (I liked very much the Aussie light in the landscape paintings of Elioth Gruner in the NSW Art Gallery).<br /><br /><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUT-xxkm4EffPba8PP9DUGZToXUe3btaONTmrsxeZ_GeclaFVEWbxy3CQaW-AUGbXmRWF9CP8vz1Rje38Df-llSTlwiHDCqRUBIacg1CMXnbiVA0YRdAY3cdV6GfN9WhlWXtP3/s1600/newtown.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462017945309647682" style="WIDTH: 240px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 320px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgUT-xxkm4EffPba8PP9DUGZToXUe3btaONTmrsxeZ_GeclaFVEWbxy3CQaW-AUGbXmRWF9CP8vz1Rje38Df-llSTlwiHDCqRUBIacg1CMXnbiVA0YRdAY3cdV6GfN9WhlWXtP3/s320/newtown.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />But being in the city for a few weeks with a local boy I think gave me a better glimpse than that of the stereotypical. Whilst we spent plenty of time on the beach and in Circular Quay staring at that famous view and in the prettykins wine bars of Surry Hills, we also had time to wander about in some of the inner city suburbs which are perhaps the most interesting parts of the city. I loved Newtown with its edgy university atmosphere and buzzing mix of vintage clothes stores for the daytime and an endless stretch of cheap Thai eats at night. We also got to visit the pretty villages of Balmain and Glebe with their cafes and bookstores, Italian Leichhardt and Five Dock where a truly excellent flat white to drink over the morning paper whilst one surreptitiously watches the Italian men talking with their hands costs only $2.50, and just five minutes away from Five Dock we stayed in Chinese Ashfield, which although bereft of good flat whites had probably the best xiao long bao in Sydney.<br /><br />I loved the international nature of the city -- whilst this is of course common to any big city, I felt particularly at home with the influence of Asia and SE Asia in particular on food (hooray for laksa and sushi rolls everywhere!), and what I hope is a real tolerance that arises from being a young city subject to wave after wave of immigration. I must admit that there are things I missed from the cities of Europe that I know -- a subway system, real life in the centre of town rather than endless suburbs, grand boulevards lined with beautiful old buildings, a high street rather than shopping malls -- but then, what other city can claim beaches like Sydney's, or national parks of gum forest right in the middle of the city, or of course that endless sparkling harbour? Or, when you come to it, the kind of people who name an old fossil find the "Demon Duck of Doom" (<em>Bullockornis planei</em>) and then put this on a sign in the Australian Museum?</div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAB6vNdEaHfKWsvPPzKK9XPfSil7kHFfbSoge-07cW89iXzsa6rEpyOwduMKxz9Y35ruXiQcPRKqW88jRSNpUBiIucve60pd15c1vYhYOJCn7UoL8YVxi97B8hIoQuJhlde5-K/s1600/demonduck.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462018521142858882" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgAB6vNdEaHfKWsvPPzKK9XPfSil7kHFfbSoge-07cW89iXzsa6rEpyOwduMKxz9Y35ruXiQcPRKqW88jRSNpUBiIucve60pd15c1vYhYOJCn7UoL8YVxi97B8hIoQuJhlde5-K/s320/demonduck.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Northern New South Wales</span><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5pRytynca7o-MucNW1iRg5gPrgbJI9Fp-Qta6hyphenhyphenyBC4qGNaeV-gKMc57k1ZnyUmBB7J6jyAyc2eSFBlLRqlN9Ja6WTlEEPh6v5BMRrS8Kzn6OyuUr-5AtNZ0qStCvURbvoah/s1600/hunter.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462017925307595650" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjR5pRytynca7o-MucNW1iRg5gPrgbJI9Fp-Qta6hyphenhyphenyBC4qGNaeV-gKMc57k1ZnyUmBB7J6jyAyc2eSFBlLRqlN9Ja6WTlEEPh6v5BMRrS8Kzn6OyuUr-5AtNZ0qStCvURbvoah/s320/hunter.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Halfway through our stay in Sydney we took a road trip up the northern coast which turned out to be a real highlight. It is far too big a country, with us clocking up 2500km in just over a week, but there is plenty to see on the way. We first spent a couple of nights in the Hunter Valley. That we were greeted on arrival with wine, cheese, olives and port and then left to ourselves in our lovely B&B is probably a good indication of what tourism in the Hunter is like. We took a little tour of the wineries (unfortunately we did not find much spectacular -- it is perhaps more of a white wine place, although we enjoyed several of the 07 Shiraz) with plenty of kangaroo spotting in the fields along the way so I got my marsupial fix. It was pleasant enough, although I think we felt a bit like a carbon copy tourist couple!<br /><br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPM7k0o7_p_EUJ0qPht_nHSpcNlyw5BXLpuPegaD0_d4n1NGH-vjqwkdqLKAFkR4_M-60nKNpkJux2-YqO87Frd9wQsfC_LfGKXMdDoBuYgCKGFP6X3wKkEOAuu9tLAEQsSxe4/s1600/bigbanana.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462016544407297090" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjPM7k0o7_p_EUJ0qPht_nHSpcNlyw5BXLpuPegaD0_d4n1NGH-vjqwkdqLKAFkR4_M-60nKNpkJux2-YqO87Frd9wQsfC_LfGKXMdDoBuYgCKGFP6X3wKkEOAuu9tLAEQsSxe4/s320/bigbanana.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />Heading further north, we stopped in briefly in Sawtell, just south of Coffs. It is a bit of a family holiday zone, so there were yet more endless beautiful beaches and cafes to wander about, and can I be blamed for getting D to take me to see the Big Banana? Finally we headed up to Byron Bay, stopping for coffee at a very pleasant historic river town called Ullmara which with its placid river and sunny beer garden and cafe was a rather nice surprise. At Byron we had a day at the Blues and Roots Festival -- I was pretty excited as it was my first time at a music festival and best of all I got to see Buddy Guy play! He is a true blues showman, in one long set he had the audience entirely enthralled as he told us stories, sang beautifully and also played some fairly mean guitar. Other big names that day included Joe Bonamassa (fantastic guitarist, but not much of a singer...), the John Butler Trio (really enjoyable, though I don't yet understand roots music really) and Jeff Beck (bit of an aging rock god). And all this with only small downpour at the end of the night so minimal mud! After camping the night we spent the next morning eating an enormous breakfast in Byron and frolicking at the beach along with hundreds of other souls trying to avoid being taken by the enormous rip (NSW beaches are really not the wallowing type).<br /><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-A02y9mIiKvI8UF8ArxQyMZMEN5x9sXW6pxfMc-7NmvFLYQPIu_iJCmB4QSZ0L1a6Gyv1ivI9UbRr8wPY2UnZKYSAbgOWuSkcgYJhtp2Nf9tH1zO_BFm9zPi-f1OrHPtw1pa4/s1600/buddyguy.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462016550514959858" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 120px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg-A02y9mIiKvI8UF8ArxQyMZMEN5x9sXW6pxfMc-7NmvFLYQPIu_iJCmB4QSZ0L1a6Gyv1ivI9UbRr8wPY2UnZKYSAbgOWuSkcgYJhtp2Nf9tH1zO_BFm9zPi-f1OrHPtw1pa4/s320/buddyguy.jpg" border="0" /></a><br /><br /></div><div><div><div><div><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9N4B_pDmbVPoTk8EgyWYpttH8Czqmb9T8ibe-5yLcqwmmANhmSa_itlFkDnZwliw8Y8puPwqqI8jRgJE4_4Ye4TLiXQd4DhdTvXBct4ruKZOQ2OR3BsnGO320w8zRweTeC24/s1600/dorrigo.jpg"><img id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5462017888258105922" style="WIDTH: 320px; CURSOR: hand; HEIGHT: 240px" alt="" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEja9N4B_pDmbVPoTk8EgyWYpttH8Czqmb9T8ibe-5yLcqwmmANhmSa_itlFkDnZwliw8Y8puPwqqI8jRgJE4_4Ye4TLiXQd4DhdTvXBct4ruKZOQ2OR3BsnGO320w8zRweTeC24/s320/dorrigo.jpg" border="0" /></a><br />And then we turned back down south, driving to Dorrigo via some lovely if slightly frighteningly windy mountain roads. Dorrigo was interesting, a tiny little mountain plateau town which is an odd mixture of proper redneck country town (two pubs and an exceedingly old school RSL where they shut at 8:30pm) and a couple of rather swish cafes and B&Bs. We spent very little time in town though, as we spent our days walking in the spectacular national parks all around, and our evenings gazing out over the endless rolling views whilst the resident ponies chomped away in the field in front of the house. The walking was wonderful, particularly interesting because the area is filled with completely different microclimates and forest types -- we did one walk in subtropical rainforest, another in dry alpine gum forest, and yet another in an absolutely unexpected and wonderful Jurassic Park landscape of enormous basalt escarpments, moss-covered Antarctic beeches and cycads sprouting their fern-like fronds in any available space. Pretty wonderful and it was a good way to end the trip (discounting the mammoth drive back to Sydney).<br /><br /><span style="FONT-WEIGHT: bold">Lizard Island Part IV</span><br />I write this from an unexpected but lovely stint on Lizard -- I did tell myself I would find some way to come back on the last day of my last field season and here I am! I am helping an old acquaintance with her PhD -- absolutely brilliant to be here without having to worry about my own project. All I do is go diving, laying transect tapes, collecting corals or the like, and when I am done I chill out on the beach with a beer and a book. Today it is a bit blustery so we have had a dry day -- I spent the afternoon getting crabs out of their home corals to weigh and measure them, and collecting their eggs to measure fertility (they go back to their corals after this and are fine). They are very cute little critters! Not a bad way to spent two weeks I think, though I am also looking forward to getting back to Cambridge and the rest of the year. I think it has taken most of the last six weeks to really relax out of the PhD and finally gain some perspective, for which I am very grateful. </div></div></div></div></div></div></div>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com6tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-19784818149306675412010-03-05T17:52:00.003+00:002010-03-05T17:53:40.088+00:00Viva-edSat for 140 mins in a small room talking about my PhD. Had cup of tea and avoided biscuits in middle (neither of my examiners were eating any).<br /><br />Finished!<br /><br />:)tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-44183349952964969632010-01-31T22:28:00.002+00:002010-01-31T22:42:47.083+00:00The Red DoorI thought it was high time to push the Christmas Ham (lovely as it is) further down the page. Actually, I have been thinking this for a while now, but the small issue of trying to finish my thesis got in the way a little. I am pleased to say that I handed it in on Thursday, through the red door that is the wonderfully acronymed BoGS (Board of Graduate Studies), with as much fanfare as Cambridge musters on such occasions (i.e. little or none). I have a rather dull bit of paper to say that I've submitted it; there is after all the viva still to come.<br /><br />Having walked away from the door with D. asking that pertinent question that no doubt occurs to every other person in the same situation ("what are you going to do with your life now?"), I celebrated later in the day with as much fanfare as I could personally muster later in the evening at Restaurant 22 on Chesterton Road, something I've long wanted to get round to. It lived up to all the hype. Beautifully intimate front living room surroundings and really wonderfully tasty food. D. had some amazing salmon cutlets for a starter that I must admit to tasting a bit of, the pheasant and beef mains we shared were excellent with a great barley risotto side, and my British cheese board for dessert was also very yummy, although unfortunately by this time I was so stuffed with the three courses plus the various bits and pieces you get on the side (an amuse bouche of fennel and carrot foam, homebaked breads, sorbet after the starter, etc.) that it took quite some determination to eat every last morsel (gluttony prevailed). All washed down exceedingly pleasantly with a bottle of Clare Valley Shiraz. Feasting and drinking with impeccable unobtrusive service certainly made me feel that I'd done something worth celebrating, although English weather put something of a literal dampener on it both before and after! The next evening I managed to get a large bunch of people in a pub (well, to be precise, the outside bit of the Eagle where we froze a little but laughed and chatted and drank a lot, so all fine), so all in all I feel I have rather outdone BoGS for celebration style.<br /><br />I'm now back in Malaysia where I dally for a day or two eating yummy hawker food and trying to get over jetlag before we head up to Hong Kong to see family and eventually celebrate Chinese New Year. Fun ahead, although I also seem to have accumulated an exceedingly long post-submission to-do list. Ah well, at least it won't involve wrestling with Word!tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-9179404286554117042010-01-03T14:51:00.004+00:002010-01-03T14:53:47.498+00:00The Christmas Ham<a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF2rA4ie1kq3WCrcrVwVKaY2b5VSSPaRqbSwz6dttqb0qGDDeNPPqGKZ4DWw1TrhIbLPXV7gzWXltrz5wh4cpt-WsLzFdTU4QsysWd3l1Fr3XwZcmq3IUe5kx9oxkyk5o6O_ZT/s1600-h/IMG_7894.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 240px; height: 320px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgF2rA4ie1kq3WCrcrVwVKaY2b5VSSPaRqbSwz6dttqb0qGDDeNPPqGKZ4DWw1TrhIbLPXV7gzWXltrz5wh4cpt-WsLzFdTU4QsysWd3l1Fr3XwZcmq3IUe5kx9oxkyk5o6O_ZT/s320/IMG_7894.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5422526444454707730" border="0" /></a><br />2.2 kg of porky goodness, boiled for two hours in cider and water, then stripped of skin, scored and glazed with a thickened mix of cider, honey and mustard.<br /><br />Yum!tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-14466630350787786302009-12-16T15:41:00.003+00:002009-12-16T16:05:52.707+00:00Adding to the wallI have just pinned up the first page of my soon-to-be-published journal paper on our group noticeboard of publications in the corridor outside the office. This group paper wall has grown massively in the last 6 months as our group has burgeoned in size, and I am more than pleased to be able to add to it! (We are not quite up to the level of the meerkat group across the corridor whose noticeboard threatens to fall off the wall for weight of paper, but there must always be something to aspire to...)<br /><br />Huzzah, science is kind at times (after 7 months of ego-bruising-rejection).<br /><br />Meanwhile, post-show is also kind in the sense that it gives me time to actually do some science. Thesis writing progresses when the going is good; when the going isn't so good thesis writing stands still whilst I rewrite entire sections of chapters that I thought I'd already written at some point 3 months ago (it happens; generally the rewrite much improves things, but net progress is unfortunately 0%). Nevertheless, work of some description is happening, although slightly dented at the moment by a nasty sniffly coughy cold (it is proper winter now... possible snow, big black woollen coat and all). January will be a bit of a panic month as I try to get everything done before my legal right to study in this country expires, but meanwhile I'm just trying to get on with it before a welcome Christmas break in London, Bristol and Bath. This is the first time in 3 years I'll have a cold Christmas. Ice skating, Christmas lights and turkey! (When you can't spend Christmas day wallowing in the sea with a beer, you must make do.)tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-49107016258309764852009-12-05T12:46:00.006+00:002009-12-18T15:40:57.400+00:00In the Senate HouseIn between our two performances at the Senate House. Last few days have been a blur of Very Late Night Production Meetings in the ADC bar, endless muso-related woes, quite a lot of gaffer tape, scheduling too many people trying to do too many things in not enough hours, and the occasional realisation that I am also meant to be a dancer. Yesterday, my little company put on an absolutely unique dance/music/art performance in the University Senate House to a sold out house -- we somehow appear to have pulled it off. Who knew. This morning my body feels somewhat broken, but I am looking forward (I think ;)) to doing it again tonight! Am thankful for the brief lull this morning; it is a beautiful early winter day and I read a book over coffee, then wandered the backs watching geese and swans and bare trees against the clear blue sky; a gentle ease back into the real world.<br /><br />It will be a little while before our usual array of photographs and videos come out but I will point at them on this blog when they do.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-16349957954062832672009-10-29T13:05:00.002+00:002009-10-29T13:34:21.201+00:00True to the taglineDANCE<br />Watching: In the midst of a slightly overenthusiastic series of Saturday trips to Sadler's Wells to make the most of their brilliant autumn season. Highlights so far include an absolutely magical new solo by Russell Maliphant with an animated light projection by Michael Hulls that spilled light organically across the floor, leading and following the dancer as he swirled, Nijinsky-like, in a beanie and sweats. Understatement gets me every time. Also saw Morphoses' new season -- despite enjoying Christopher Wheeldon's latest, in a way slightly disappointed as it did not seem to have the utter compelling genius of Fool's Paradise or Commedia. Oddly, highlight of the evening was neither of the Wheeldon ballets, but instead Lightfoot and Leon's Softly As I Leave You, wonderfully danced by Drew Jacoby and Rubinald Pronk. In true NDT style, gorgeous and technical yet with an immense emotional depth and complexity. There is no other company that does this with quite the same finesse. A few more midnight train journeys back to Cambridge to come yet -- am particularly looking forward to Rambert this year. Their "Comedy of Change" is meant to be about Darwinism and bird behaviour, scientifically advised by one of the zoology/psychology professors here in Cambridge who lectured me way back when. My science and dance worlds have absolutely collided recently and although it is a bit of a shock to the system (being used to living a somewhat double life), I am absolutely thrilled by it all.<br /><br />Making: The company is now in full swing rehearsing for our December's Senate House performance, having casually swung and leapt our way across the ADC stage sometime last week with what a reviewer called "aplomb" (ha!). We've just started rehearsals for a couple of our professionally choreographed pieces and I am really enjoying the process and keen to see what will emerge over the next few weeks. It is really nice to see the art emerging from all that planning! I started rehearsals for my own short piece a little ahead of everyone else, so I've actually just finished it and am not unpleased, in a radical departure from epic aggressive jazzed up fish hierarchies it appears to be a pretty brief amalgation of all those Maliphant and Wheeldon influences, and not complex at all, but I hope it will suit the Senate House and that the audience will enjoy it. Sometimes you don't have to try to say too much (I tell myself). Production work is something of an ever-stressful nightmare, but between the three of us core admin slaves and our ever growing production team, we take it in turns to mildly panic, and that means that the whole thing drives forward continually. <br /><a href="http://www.cambridgecontemporarydance.co.uk/lightmatter/">http://www.cambridgecontemporarydance.co.uk/lightmatter/</a> for more! <br /><br />BOOKS<br />No time to read. Am slowly working my way through Dubliners. Really enjoying most of it, it is such a pleasure after grappling with and being defeated by Ulysses.<br /><br />COFFEE BREAKS<br />No time for this either. In my first coffee break in weeks yesterday I sat in my favourite cafe Benet's with a mug of goodness, but I was reading about the integration of cooperative breeding work and cooperation theory, so although pleasant it was not exactly chill out time.<br /><br />FISH<br />Chugging along. I am slightly worried that the dance company is trouncing my ability to actually finish writing this thesis, but I am making inch-by-inch (word-by-word) progress, and thesis.doc actually exists now which is more than could be said the last time I blogged. The aim is still January, argh, should I put this in the public domain in case I don't make it? I think I should, as the embarrassment of overunning much longer than that will perhaps be motivation to just write the damn thing. I am just about to submit about 20,000 words to a college to see if they want to give me some money in order to enable me to pursue more fish watching in coming years, so it is nice to see that I actually have 20,000 words, although of what dubious quality, I wonder?! Words are very much my work life at the moment, and I miss the actual fish very much, but to this end I have put a large picture of a chevroned barracuda on my computer desktop, which is cheering in a rather melancholic sort of way.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-4052995158187631652009-10-04T17:57:00.003+01:002009-10-04T18:10:48.246+01:00Harold et alMeet Harold the Venusian slug, Kylie the slightly radioactive cat, E7_2+ the bicolor angelfish, and Jerome the Neptunian bigfoot:<br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8430CeXIhtEwD3m8iUgqA0cMfUfnRhRZYtQt1dlJNPP9iF-VwSGbFy-yRokIu0uF4k8ujDHv0FiGfbv28Tg0t6xQ_77F-eow_XxS3RKL1-PpAqpbtP_sF8mwZ2D-lk19GorD/s1600-h/IMG_7755.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgn8430CeXIhtEwD3m8iUgqA0cMfUfnRhRZYtQt1dlJNPP9iF-VwSGbFy-yRokIu0uF4k8ujDHv0FiGfbv28Tg0t6xQ_77F-eow_XxS3RKL1-PpAqpbtP_sF8mwZ2D-lk19GorD/s320/IMG_7755.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388790858872220434" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Because of course I have nothing better to do with my borrowed overunning 4th year PhD time than to make FIMO animals. So much evening fun. I must admit to dropping Harold shortly after he came out of the oven to the loss of his left eye, but I've superglued him back together and he is as good as new:<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknshgfDbPblms2ZaVfJesG92mylCL-Snb-LhYrzr-LmBPxqacZtzWpU9uXyMGRce1h0xRAvql4N_uBkZIkYoDc-QoCseKzPS31-R62VWDuywZP4kXahpdoq0kVyp4iu5XhmTj/s1600-h/IMG_7754.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgknshgfDbPblms2ZaVfJesG92mylCL-Snb-LhYrzr-LmBPxqacZtzWpU9uXyMGRce1h0xRAvql4N_uBkZIkYoDc-QoCseKzPS31-R62VWDuywZP4kXahpdoq0kVyp4iu5XhmTj/s320/IMG_7754.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5388790864152546354" border="0" /></a><br /><br />Other unusual pursuits of last week involved an evening's sloe picking on the path between Coton and Hardwick (really beautiful and the sunset was something to be seen), followed by another evening of painstakingly pricking each sloe berry with a needle and dropping them into a gin bottle with sugar. Come this Christmas I should have some sloe gin to celebrate the festive season/drown my thesis sorrows.<br /><br />Rehearsal madness shortly oncoming, so I am trying to make the most of this pre-term lull. Yesterday we cycled out to Anglesey Abbey and wandered amongst the glorious parkland full of Austen-esque statuary and rose gardens and sweeping vistas of chestnut tree avenues and beautiful autumnal colours. Then we came back to Cambridge and went straight to chavland (the Grafton) where I had a Crunchie milkshake (well deserved after the cycle back from the Abbey straight into the wind), watched a kiddie film, and then had dinner at Shanghai Ren Jia along with a whole restaurant full of people celebrating Mid Autumn Festival, winding up finally at The Free Press for a pint. The spice of life.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-15319602375815288032009-09-20T21:56:00.005+01:002009-09-20T22:40:43.970+01:00Cupcakes, culture & clotted creamWhoops, it's been an age since I last wrote. Perhaps an indication of the boring woes of being a PhD student in that interminable "finishing" stage. Nonetheless the past couple of months have certainly not been unenjoyable. On the whole it was a better summer than I think we have had for a few years, the sun shining beatifically upon this normally grey little isle for weeks on end (although it also rained with a vengeance in July, just to balance things out a bit -- had two exceedingly sodden bike rides back from the wilds of southern Cambridge). So despite being rather full speed ahead with work most of August, it was pleasant interspersing this with the occasional hour or so sitting on the Trinity backs reading and watching the punts go by.<br /><br />I had a couple of crazily fantastic weekends in August. First off I flew to New York for less than 48 hours to help my second sister to choose a wedding dress! Great fun although it did mean that I spent most of Saturday and Monday afternoons feeling a bit like a grumpy bump on a log despite copious caffeination to get me through wedding dress fitting and work respectively. It was so much fun being served cupcakes whilst critiqueing white satin confections of another sort. She must have tried on 50 dresses, but I think it was worth it. As they say you only do it once. Managed to fit in some New York favourites too, lunching at Chelsea Market, having dinner in the East Village, and having a big bowl of savoury ramen for Sunday brunch at Ippudo on St Mark's. Whilst at lunch we were having a slightly confused conversation about the wine of the night before, when our water waiter interrupted to give us a gentle masterclass on the grape under discussion. Only in New York. Still haven't found a city to beat it.<br /><br />The next weekend, after some truly insane days at work and on email with the dance company trying to leave things in order before a big stint away, I headed up to Edinburgh for the last weekend of the Festival. Certainly lived up to expectations, but perhaps that's because we crammed 10 shows into two days. There is such an amazing buzz about the place. Highlights were the Scottish Falsetto Sock Puppet Theatre (one Scotsman, a cardboard stand, two socks, lots of costumes and a falsetto voice is all you need for an hour of side splitting hilarity), Baba Brinkman's Rap Guide to Evolution, and Jason Byrne. He reminds me a bit of an Irish Catholic Jack Black, a ball of manic hilarious energy with a show variously about being brought up in Ireland, raising kids himself, misadventures with various skeletal joints, and cutting up men in cardboard boxes... Absolutely fantastic.<br /><br /><a onblur="try {parent.deselectBloggerImageGracefully();} catch(e) {}" href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfC2YtS6-pIcDLPaSxydJEpKsb6uEGKxt4R7P0Clo3Ai6eT2fRw3mYxrtACqceAaj03xVGGLYTgBWqbXsuL0JflKAEPiWK3H_YUtYNA66pLO_NjEBVNw27QVlkjsQaWQplH64/s1600-h/IMG_7750.JPG"><img style="cursor: pointer; width: 320px; height: 240px;" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEizfC2YtS6-pIcDLPaSxydJEpKsb6uEGKxt4R7P0Clo3Ai6eT2fRw3mYxrtACqceAaj03xVGGLYTgBWqbXsuL0JflKAEPiWK3H_YUtYNA66pLO_NjEBVNw27QVlkjsQaWQplH64/s320/IMG_7750.JPG" alt="" id="BLOGGER_PHOTO_ID_5383662023258228386" border="0" /></a><br />From Edinburgh I flew straight to Cornwall to spend three weeks in its darkest western depths choreographing Gilbert and Sullivan's The Mikado for performance at the Minack Theatre on the cliffs of Porthcurno. This is the society's 48th year doing this stint at the Minack, so it is a very venerable tradition and one that I'd heard lots about from my theatrical friends so I thought it was time to give it a go! The theatre is a truly remarkable thing, built right into the cliffs near Land's End, with the sea as a backdrop for the stage. In fact the entire experience is also pretty remarkable as the entire cast, production team, and orchestra all sleep on airbeds on the floor in a village hall in lovely Paul (just up the road from better known fishing village Mousehole, near Penzance) for the three weeks: two weeks of rehearsal from scratch and one week of performance. (Although I cheated and moved out to a cottage in Mousehole for the last week, so I only really had the share the floor and the single shower with 50 other people for a couple of weeks...) Despite being pretty hard work for the first week or so when we were rehearsing flat out in the hall, the church, the carpark etc. (and choreographing in between), it was a great experience to spend time with such a lovely bunch of people and also get my teeth into some good old cheesy G&S choreography, although my allergy to cheese was helped by the fact that I got to make pretty geisha dances as well as pirate ships (what else for "Yeo ho, heave ho," etc?).<br /><br />Cornwall itself was absolutely beautiful, at least in the second half of the trip when the weather cleared (I arrived to find Paul quite literally in a cloud). By show week I was freed from the rehearsal room to enjoy myself and think managed to get in a good varied holiday in between endlessly watching the show. One lovely thing was the chance to experience a little of the local culture as we sang in the Paul church service one Sunday we were there (as a token of our gratitude for being allowed to noisily invade their village for three weeks!), and also experienced a grand old singalong in the pub with the members of the Mousehole Male Voice Choir. I did a little Cornish sightseeing, visiting the almost tropical gardens of St Michael's Mount at Marazion, pottering about Penzance and Mousehole, walking from Sennen Cove to Land's End where I sent the obligatory postcard. And of course there were all the endless beautiful beaches and the sea, the glorious sea. Between a matinee and an evening we all trooped down to the beach (also built into the cliff, so there is actually a cliff path straight from dressing rooms to beach -- where else?!) and leaped into the freezing sea and got well buffeted by the waves and then froze for a bit trying to soak up the last rays of sun. Ah, very English. I even managed to fit in a couple of dives at Lamorna Cove in probably the best UK diving conditions ever (15 degrees and 8 m vis!). It was pleasant to be underwater again, and the kelp beds were quite pretty, and I found a lovely little cuttlefish, plus lots of bass and wrasse and shrimp and limpets and anemones, but to be honest I did it mainly so that I could say that I had actually dived in the UK and I'm not sure if I can be persuaded to do it again ;) And of course, I consumed a glut of pasties and clotted cream. That's Cornwall done I think! A really lovely part of the country.<br /><br />Back in Cambridge and wading back into the dual jobs of PhD and dance company. Thankfully I arrived with the weekend to get myself up to date with the latter, but it's back on the former tomorrow morning at work, and then it will be the usual juggling act I love to complain about but that I know makes me happy really. I've also moved back out to Burrell's Field (being a 4th year PhD student - gasp - means all my privileges have been roughly removed, perhaps as a sort of incentive to actually finish); I have yet to see if all my belongings will fit into my dinky little bedsit after several years of gradual expansion into a couple of enormous Trinity 'mansionettes'!tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-23217572884081964352009-07-15T10:45:00.002+01:002009-07-15T10:53:30.371+01:00Last night I dreamtthat I was diving somewhere in SE Asia, under a jetty in some godforsaken isolated outpost frequented only by hardcore divers.<br /><br />Underwater, amongst the wooden pylons, there were schools of fusiliers and frogfish hidden amongst the fronds of soft coral. In quick succession, I saw:<br />- a movement out of the corner of my eye; it is a whole school of fusiliers streaking upwards to the surface. Followed by the most enormous barracuda ever, some kind of 1.5 m monster, sleek and predatory and full of big shiny teeth and silver and gorgeous. I'm not sure if barracuda in real life do herd fish to the surface, but this one did so very impressively.<br />- another monster of a giant moray lurking under the jetty, which upon noticing me actually came out of his hole and hovered, snake-charmer like, upright in the open, tail curled upon the ground. Now, I'm pretty sure morays don't actually ever do this, but in dreams all things pander to you..<br />- heading out to the blue beyond the dropoff, there was some kind of crazy baitball of who knows what, and sharks of all kinds circling in and out of them, primordial and savage and so ridiculously, gracefully beautiful. It was very Blue Planet.<br /><br />I think from this dream one can tell two things:<br />1. Perhaps I am ultimately a fan of the Big and Impressive when diving rather than macro. Galapagos, here I come.<br />2. I really, really miss the sea.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com3tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-64633952017501319492009-07-12T18:54:00.003+01:002009-07-12T19:54:41.849+01:00Marylebone High StreetA perfect middle aged Sunday. Upon waking it is miraculously sunny and beautiful and a wonderful change from an endlessly drizzly Saturday. Wander up Marylebone High Street to Le Fromagerie for my usual Sunday morning breakfast of coffee and two happy organic half boiled eggs with soldiers for an exorbitant amount of money. Miraculously am there <span style="font-style: italic;">before </span>it opens at 10am, this has never happened to me on a Sunday morning before. So a quick stroll through the farmer's market whilst waiting, admiring the quiches and huge bunches of lavender. After walking D up to Baker St tube past the mystifyingly huge hordes of tourists waiting to see the waxworks I very directionlessly wander back down the high street, past more happy Sunday brunchers. <br /><br />Daunt Books beckons with its lure of travel to exotic far flung destinations (you know, like the ones I hail from), but I stick to the fiction section and end up with a rather handsome slim volume of T.S. Eliot poetry. I always bemoan my lack of poetry reading so I am at last attempting to make some amends. I am only a few poems in so far but thoroughly enjoying them...<br /><br />Farther down the street I nip back into the farmer's market for two oysters, freshly shucked, one with tabasco and lemon, one plain and tasting perfectly of the sea. Gorgeous. I share words of delight with the man next to me at the table, busy eating his half dozen. Yet farther down I veer off the the west and end up in Selfridges. It is something of a magnet, particularly its chocolate section by the food hall. I fail to resist both chocolate and a couple of cheap tops on sale, and eventually munch on a salt beef sandwich from the Brass Rail for lunch.<br /><br />Head up to Angel for Matthew Bourne's Dorian Gray. Really enjoy it; there is much to be said for his brand of hugely accessible dance theatre that draws enormous lay audiences. Dorian Gray appeals much more to me than his usual formula (family friendly comedy-shtick modern reworkings of big fairytale ballets) because it is Bourne for adults -- sexy, dark, dealing with all the usual themes of the novel very cleverly updated to the modern world obsessed with celebrity and fashion and that fragile outer surface. Some electrifying moments, particularly in the pas de deux between Dorian and Basil (turned into a fashion photographer). I particularly enjoyed the references to MacMillan's Romeo and Juliet -- the Sibyl in Bourne's version (typically for Bourne turned into Romeo rather than Juliet), dying of a drug overdose, struggles masochistically way across the stage and up and over the central bed in direct echo of Juliet's final death in MacMillan's ballet. Dance theatre like this I can certainly applaud and enjoy (I often struggle with the more avant-garde dance theatre which seems to abound in dance colleges). If you're going to make a piece of theatre about physical beauty, using a caste of limber sexy physically articulate dancers is certainly not a bad way to go about it. A very stimulating afternoon -- but I did miss slightly the moments of heart in mouth beauty that (I continue to believe) is the reason why we all go to the theatre. For that I am guessing Morphoses (Chris Wheeldon's company) will provide amply come their autumn season at Sadler's.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-19423075452653106292009-07-06T21:28:00.008+01:002009-07-06T22:33:41.549+01:00MillineryFirst evening to myself in what feels like forever. I'd forgotten the simple pleasures of not doing anything much, on my own time. Left work about 7pm, although with the 16 hour summer days it felt like much earlier. For the first time in maybe months I revisited my old favourite activity, sitting about in Borders reading dance magazines and the Economist over a hot drink. Then a rather pleasant evening making meatballs for a steamboat tomorrow (hurray for dinner parties Malaysian style) and cooking enough sausage casserole to feed a small African village (or just me for the rest of the week).<br /><br />A bit too much intense verbiage at work recently. Writing, writing, writing -- on Sunday afternoon I was sitting there falling asleep over my laptop, thinking "must.. keep.. typing". Over 24 hours later I still haven't the foggiest whether any of those words, one in front of the other, actually make any sense. But still, I'm making progress (I hope). I suddenly feel very much back in the thick of it, after the strangeness of June which despite one's best efforts always gets lost to May week mayhem and other such diverting pleasures. But it will be nice, in a bit, to have a break from writing -- I foresee having to do a bit of statistics for the next chunk of work. Who knew that one day I would look forward to statistics! I'm trying to go full steam ahead for the next couple of months as I'll be away for much of September, choreographing G+S in Cornwall. Something to work towards!<br /><br />Notables over the past 1.5 months... spent my birthday weekend in Seville, drunk on Andalusian sunshine and oranges and tapas and breathtaking flamenco and endless cheap cerveza and good coffee everywhere and chanced-upon salsa parties in the street and gorgeous Mudejar palaces. It made us feel rather self-congratulatory. Trinity May Ball, my fourth, felt a little like it was suffering from the credit crunch and various organisational hiccups, but had an absolutely fantastic time nonetheless. Highlights perhaps the silent disco (very hilarious being in one when you don't have your headphones on, watching people bop about to nothing), an enormous helter skelter, duck confit, and that old standby the 4am ceilidh. Night whizzed by and it was 6am survivors before we knew it. Theatre experiences -- my usual raft of dance shows, the standout probably Sylvie Guillem and Russell Maliphant in Push. The piece that stood out for me was Russell's solo. A master class in choreographic minimalism. They could take you anywhere, those two. Also, a very very pleasant sunny afternoon at Glyndebourne with family and friends. Falstaff, black tie, picnicking, Pimms and bubbly, arguing over whether white blobs in next field were sheep or cows! I sat next to a very nice gentleman whom I discovered had read Classics in Cambridge back in his day, and whose grandfather sang Henry Ford in the very first English performance of Falstaff in 1896. All one could want Glyndebourne to be: surreal, English, very wonderful. Also trying to make the best of this wonderful summer, the first real one we've had for three years. Cycling down to Grantchester for evening drinks and dinner (peanut butter parfait perfection) at the Rupert Brooke; punting on a silent river at 10pm under the Bridge of Sighs experiencing a city view uniquely unchanged for centuries; listening to the punt guides tell tall stories to tourists from the banks of the Cam; long moments watching the waxing moon from Trinity bridge in the long magical summer dusk. Good for whatever soul I may have.<br /><br />Busy also producing my own little bits of 'art' -- Cambridge Contemporary Dance restaged much of our Dante performance in late June. Slightly stressful working in a non-theatre venue but pulled it off in the end, we're not sure where all these Dante dance aficionados turned up from but they certainly came. Also now getting very excited about our next big project, a big evening of new work in December which will be performed in a venue no less august and unique and scary and wonderful as the university Senate House, that 280 year old neo classical edifice of imposing beauty which I walk past every day, now with an added <span style="font-style: italic;">frisson </span>of excitement. Can we do site specific contemporary dance in it to celebrate the University's 800th Anniversary, we asked the Vice-Chancellor's office. They said yes! Who knew.<br /><br />No wonder I don't seem to have achieved an awful lot of work over the past few weeks. Must embrace the verbiage (third year PhD student hat), the producing and planning (dance company co director hat), the creativity (various choreographing commitments hat), the dinners and teas and punting trips (the being-a-friend hat), the girliness and more planning (bridesmaid hat!) and the general happiness (the being-me hat).<br /><br />:)tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-21175990422987522022009-05-11T00:44:00.005+01:002009-05-11T00:57:36.999+01:00Enter cheese, pursued by statistics.Can you tell it is late and I am tired from this blog title? Quite possibly.<br /><br />Out of bed at eleven. Sunny. As is traditional for my late Sunday mornings, to market -- although I reneged on my usual ostrich burger and instead had a perfect cappucino from the guy with the little cart in market. Don't know how he did it, it was magic. Thus fortified, got picnic supplies from M+S and then lolled about very, very happily on Jesus Green eating said supplies. Sadly, attempted en route visit to the Cambridge Cheese Shop in All Saints Passage failed because it was closed! Not as dire as otherwise could have been as my cheese cravings are being assauged by the magical introduction of cheese courses to BA dinners, hence last Friday being faced (after smoked salmon, guinea fowl, and chocolate brownie ice cream) with an entire huge wheel of Camembert. Bliss! Anyway, cheese diversions aside, it was a very nice -- if cheese-less -- picnic lunch. We watched mallards and dogs and small boys pushing their big brothers around in strollers, and enjoyed the sun, and thought longingly about the sea.<br /><br />After this I came home and slogged away for hours at some statistics (successfully, so I am pleased, as slogging away at the same dataset all Friday with nothing to show for it was really very depressing), and then cooked a huge vat of herbal chicken soup (you know, filled with mysterious bits of root and seeds that come out of a plastic packet from Chinatown), and then slogged for another few hours at dance company administration. <br /><br />Rather odd to start the day extremely chilled and then have it degenerate into very tiring computer work, as my natural inclination is to do it the other way around, but all in all I suppose must congratulate myself at somehow having been productive and completely blissed out on nothing at all in the same 24 hours.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-64809485620180713322009-04-29T23:18:00.003+01:002009-04-29T23:53:14.054+01:00Fish! Dance! Who could ask for anything more?My apologies for the yonks it has been.<br /><br />I spent the first half of April in Indonesia, mainly diving off a gorgeous boat in Raja Ampat and then living it up (well actually still diving) in Bali. There were pretty fish, ranging from the small and cute (pygmy seahorses), to the large and majestic (manta rays) and with a very close encounter with a large and bemused great barracuda at the USAT Liberty; and also non-fish excitement in the form of a whole congregation of stingless beautiful moon jellies that we snorkelled with and an unbothered little turtle hanging out in the current. This is all it takes to keep me happy as a pig in muck. Oh, and iced coffee. And far too much good Indonesian food. And indescribable natural beauty, karst islands descending into a preternaturally dead calm sea. And the grand old fun of standing up on a surfboard (on a very very very baby wave). And wonderful company. (And an onboard masseuse.) And general cut-off-from-the-world peace.<br /><br />Back in Cambridge life continues; I've been drafting more papers. My supervisor seems to think I am somehow going to be able to turn these things into a thesis. (I only hope he is right, as my thesis word count remains at zero.) Work is alright, really -- I'm getting used to the whole writing malarkey. It is painful at times but I am perhaps getting the hang of it, now I just need to keep on doggedly doing it for the next 6 to 8 months or so and try not to go insane meanwhile.<br /><br />The dance company continues as usual. Last weekend we premiered three new pieces derived from Dante's Commedia. They were really interesting for the company to do as for the first time we had external choreographers. One of the pieces was set in Purgatory and I can now claim to once have danced "Sloth" (for which I lay on the floor not doing an awful lot) and to very, very almost really have been a tree on stage (there is a perennial in-joke in contemporary dance about how it is, or isn't, mainly about 'being a tree') -- I didn't get to be a tree, but I did get to be grass in the Garden of Eden. By comparison the other piece I danced in, a Paradiso piece, was conventional, although danced entirely in silence with only the dancers' breath for synchronisation -- a real test of how well the company's dancers now dance with each other. I think it's showing, all those 9am Sunday rehearsals together week after week. The final piece, which I wasn't in, was choreographed by Vanessa Fenton of the Royal Ballet. Somehow the company seems to be moving up in the world, which is fantastic.<br /><br />We move on next to a development period for a performance we will put on in November for the University's 800th Anniversary. It's nice in the meantime to be able to not rehearse quite so much and take class instead. I'm making myself go back to ballet -- that technique is irreplaceable. By now I know that all I really have in ballet is <span style="font-style: italic;">ballon </span>and not much else, but I'm resigned to that now and can just get on with working with what I have! I'm also really looking forward to getting into a good contemporary class again -- I think I will restart my Saturdays in London to this purpose.<br /><br />The weather has been kind recently, to the point of actually allowing for walks along the river and lazing on the grass in weekend afternoons. (More woe to the undergraduates who have a month of exam fever ahead of them before they can join us.) When the sun goes down I continue the long process of educating myself the philistine scientist by going to poetry readings and the opera (and in a similarly experimental vein somehow signing myself up to choreograph Gilbert and Sullivan in an open air theatre set on the cliffs of Cornwall). The precious work/dance/life balance is magically holding steady!tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-71596211993695981522009-03-27T18:22:00.002+00:002009-03-27T18:28:23.180+00:00PhewThe paper edits continue. It's been a long week but I am in high spirits because we've finally gotten to the point where we've sent it off for some external feedback, and this weekend I leave for a <b>boat</b> upon which we will mooch around <b>Irian Jaya</b> and occasionally hop off to go <b>diving</b> (no clove oil or nets or stopwatches involved!) and also I am getting to said boat via <b>Hong Kong</b> and <b>Bali</b> where I am fairly keen to have a go at standing up on a <b>surfboard</b>. Woohoo.<br /><br />Meanwhile this afternoon after a bit of frustrated searching I was inordinately and geekily pleased to find that<br /><span style="font-family: courier new;">HPDinterval(mcmcsamp(fm1,n=10000))</span><br />does what I want it to do. Enough said about my working life I think. No wonder I'm always blogging about dance.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-25711344003110008702009-03-23T17:18:00.003+00:002009-03-23T17:20:33.221+00:00Rather enjoyed contemporary danceLooking at this, I feel I should probably start talking about science a bit more...<br /><br /><a href="http://www.wordle.net/gallery/wrdl/680976/Contemporary_Dance" title="Wordle: Contemporary Dance"><img src="http://www.wordle.net/thumb/wrdl/680976/Contemporary_Dance" alt="Wordle: Contemporary Dance" style="border: 1px solid rgb(221, 221, 221); padding: 4px;" /></a>tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-19913673008938962032009-03-23T15:15:00.007+00:002009-03-23T16:49:04.429+00:00Yet more da---Had a very lovely weekend enjoying the continued run of atypical sunshine. Alas, in England whenever it is nice one lives in a sort of constant fear that this will be <i>it</i> for the year and that this is all the summer we will get!<br /><br />As is usual for me in London I did rather a lot of dance related things. Friday evening went to see the London Contemporary Dance School postgraduate choreography presentation evening at The Place (it was free and I was at a loose end). I was perhaps more surprised than I should have been to find it really incredibly dense and of the epileptic-fit-and-bandages style of choreography. Many of the pieces were more performance art than dance. In one which I actually quite enjoyed five performers stood in a line and laughed hysterically at the audience for several minutes, then made lots of strange faces for the next ten minutes, then laughed a bit more. I am not entirely sure why we train dancers for years only in order to completely throw all technique out the window. Much as I feel that art is not solely for entertainment, that it does have some role to move our cultural understanding forward, to challenge the audience into rethinking humanity, society, life, <i>it still has to do so in an accessible way</i>. What is the point if it is so dense and arcane that 95% of the public will feel it is so unfathomable that they cannot even try to get to whatever message the choreographer has in mind? And even then, I don't believe we always need a message. Graham Swift said it so wonderfully in Ever After when he argued that much as we like nowadays to snobbishly rave about art that makes some kind of incisive social commentary, and much as it is unfashionable to simply love it for its beauty, beauty is often what great art is about to many people. It is why we come back to it again and again from our harried daytime lives. Transcendence is the word I always think of... at its best, it is transcendent. Why is so much modern art so preoccupied with running full pelt in the other direction?<br /><br />Anyway, rant done: the next evening I went to the Royal Opera House for a somewhat needed more conventional dose of dance. The mixed bill of Isadora and Dances at at Gathering was a good chance to see rather a lot of principal dancers all at once (and at six pounds for a standing ticket a steal). Isadora, a recreated staging of an old MacMillan work, was disappointing. Tamara Rojo did her heroic best to save it with some lovely dancing and acting, but why on earth did the RB decide to bring this back into the repertoire when in comparison to the MacMillan masterpieces that are for many the highlight of the company's work it pales in comparison? It is just a sort of collage of some nice bits of dancing and some entertaining but fluffy bits of film. It never gets beyond entertaining, it never even gets close to transcendence. Whereas Dances at a Gathering certainly does. A Jerome Robbins gem, it is lyrical and beautiful and subtle and it doesn't need to make any sort of statement beyond that (and is probably the better for it). Yuhui Choe, dancing Alina's role, was striking not only for her resemblance (in the head, the carriage of the arms) to Alina but for some incredibly controlled and articulate dancing. Very definitely a rising star -- the more I see of her (and she is on stage a lot these days) the more I like her. I also rather enjoyed Sergei Polunin's incredible jumps, that boy simply defies gravity.<br /><br />When not watching dance I made it to a couple of classes at Danceworks. It was nice to be in a contemporary class again after simply too long away, I'd almost forgotten how calming and enjoyable I find the beautiful shapes and awareness of all the possible movement in the back that is Cunningham technique. <br /><br />In a bid to improve my cultural awareness beyond my narrow world of contemporary dance I went to the Picasso exhibition on at the National Gallery (and got some street theatre in Trafalgar Square on the way). It was really very enjoyable -- I never used to like Picasso at all but recent encounters with him in the Fitzwilliam and elsewhere gave me an inkling that may have changed. His work is incredibly immediate. You can't just sort of stand back from it and appreciate it objectively -- it is vibrant and loud and often humorous and amazingly sensual and left me very aware that there was a human artist behind every painting. I found myself smiling at the humour of some paintings, enthralled by the lyricism of others. After coming out of the exhibition, being in the National Gallery, I simply had to head across to the 1700-1900 galleries to gaze reverentially upon Whistlejacket, that life size phenomenal racehorse painting by George Stubbs. Along the way I waved at the Constables and Turners and Gainsboroughs that I also love. It is such a wonderful place! <br /><br />And in between I enjoyed the culinary delights of the big city. Takeaway sushi (I have a rather limited choice of this given the general fish ban but still enjoyed it) eaten in Embankment gardens where I bemusedly watched a large group of American teenagers accosting a bobby for photographs (he was very tolerant). Noodles, teh tarik and cendol at C&R post-ballet (hurray for Chinatowns and Asian food and late nights). Eggs laid by very happy organic hens and a huge frothy cappucino at Le Fromagerie, the perfect lazy Sunday breakfast place. And a trek to Canary Wharf hugely well rewarded as my friend cooked an exceedingly tasty lamb roast for Sunday lunch! <br /><br />Oh yes and somewhere between dance, art and food I managed to get my hair cut. I have a bob! It hasn't been this short for over a decade; I'm rather pleased to have a new look.tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-18702341.post-49220676062277766652009-03-18T12:12:00.006+00:002009-03-18T18:09:41.960+00:00Collops (of life)Recent notables:<br /><br />1. College Commemoration Feast last Friday. Having missed it for the past two years due to being in Australia (one can't have it all, it seems), it was so lovely to be able to go again, possibly for the last time! I had a very genial and stress-free time of it as for the first time I was sitting with the 'commoners' rather than the glitz and glamour of high table. We were served collops of beef ("larger than a slice but smaller than a dollop", the fellow I was with drolly explained) and 1977 port amongst other delicacies. It all went down very well indeed and the choir sang a glorious Amazing Grace arrangement by Eriks Esenvalds in addition to their usual. After three hours of feasting the students proceeded to the College Bar for the Dean's Party (where we were provided with "entertainment appropriate to our status" -- the fellows and guests proceeded to the senior common room for the same; I rather think theirs probably involved a bit more cheese and port), where I ended up chatting very amiably about climate change, modern art, and Pink Floyd. Ah, university life.<br /><br />2. Going to a performance by the small but very slick and innnovative company Ballet Black at the Cambridge Arts Theatre. To my slightly starstruck surprise we were sitting next to the choreographer of one of the pieces, Martin Lawrance. (I recognised him from doing a workshop with the company he's worked with for decades, the Richard Alston Dance Company). I managed to squeak a hello and a "enjoyed your work" and was momentarily extremely confused as he seemed to think he knew me -- turned out he thought I was somebody else! Still, a confused conversation with a rising choreographic star in the UK contemporary dance scene is still something :)<br /><br />3. The weather. I pick and choose my extent of Britishness, but this weather really does need to be mentioned. It is gorgeous! Sunny and blue for days and the narcissi are basking in it all on the backs. I should take myself to Jesus Lock to see if the daffodils have come out yet.<br /><br />4. Sylvie Guillem, Russell Maliphant and Robert LePage's Eonnagata at Sadler's Wells was something rather undefinable and full of the most gorgeous images. It was not really dance but rather stagecraft. But what stagecraft! Sylvie silhouetted in shadow play inside the drapes of a silken gown; Russell in a mesmerising and gracious fan dance; some absolutely stupendous lighting design by Michael Hulls bringing to life everything from a martial arts arena to a symbolic joining of man and woman; and best of all, a long sequence towards the end involving a mirrored table and the most mind-bogglingly beautiful confusion between one performer, another, and each other's reflections. It is a work in progress, and not as consistent as it should have been, but I don't really mind, because the moments that worked were quite simply breathtaking.<br /><br />5. A couple of friends from my second field season on Lizard visiting for the weekend. We had a very relaxed and Cambridgey time of it, lunching in the Copper Kettle and getting coffee at Indigo's, wandering down to Grantchester along the backs and the river for tea and scones at the Orchard, going for curry and a cheesy 'bop' in the Clare Cellars, nosing around market on a blindingly bright sunny Sunday, visiting King's Chapel and yet again staring up in awe at that sublime fan vault, reading the newspaper over yet more coffee in Bene'ts, making pancakes and caramel sauce in a nod to our Lizard Island day-off traditions, and heading to the theatre... oh, but it's a good town, it is. <br /><br />6. Zoology Seminar Day on Friday afternoon filled with really interesting talks from group leaders from all over zoology. It really is a crazily diverse department, there were talks on climate change and red deer, cuckoo chicks, Drosophila gut movements, Y RNA, Ichthyostega, Francis Crick (by Peter Lawrence), the energetic cost of rods (the photoreceptor kind), etc. Fascinating. It was really good because group leaders being who they are, they were almost all excellent speakers and knew exactly how to pitch a talk to a scientific but unspecialised audience. The Y RNA talk was possibly the first ever molecular talk I have ever understood and enjoyed in my life.<br /><br />7. And still working on that paper...tzozenhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/08027572839946648527noreply@blogger.com0