10.31.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10.24 pm by niltiac
I released this on Wednesday 12 October 2005 on the side bureau in the lobby of Copley Inn, Garrison St in Boston, Massachusetts USA. The person who caught it joined BookCrossing and left this journal entry:
Journal entry 7 by FinePrintReader(0/0) from Franklin, Kentucky USA on Monday, October 31, 2005
I was on a trip to the northeastern part of US and was delighted to find something “free” in a big city like Boston. Since I am an avid reader and knew of the author of this book, I was excited about the opportunity to find this book and learn of BookCrossing.
Book rating: 7/10
See all journal entries for this book.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7.36 pm by niltiac
I’ve been listening to the “I Should Be Writing” podcast on my iPod about a wannabe writer, her struggle to write and lots of tips she has found useful for other aspiring writers, plus interviews with published authors and so on. This is her blog, which goes with the podcast, but it’s really only show notes and links so I recommend the podcast itself if you’re interested.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 7.29 pm by niltiac
Good news! According to Zest magazine (a women’s health magazine), coffee is good for you. Although reviled by anti-toxin types, it now turns out that small doses of coffee can reduce your risk of liver disease, bladder or colon cancers, Parkinson’s disease or diabetes, burn fact, and boost concentration or memory. And by small doses, they mean up to 300mg – the amount in five cups of instant coffee or three cups of brewed coffee.
I have always felt vaguely guilty about drinking coffee, but it’s generally come down pretty low on the list of health priorities. Now I can knock it off entirely, which is fantastic! I generally have only one, maybe two, cups of coffee each day so it’s all good.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 5.47 pm by niltiac
This article in The Sunday Times on Oscar Wilde’s grandson fighting a losing battle to maintain Wilde’s grave tickled my fancy. The grave is in Pere Lachaise, a beautiful old cemetery in the suburbs of Paris, and it’s one of the most frequently visited graves there (the other one is Jim Morrison’s grave). Unfortunately over-zealous fans like to cover the tomb with lipstick kisses – and the fats in the lipstick damage the stone. Merlin Holland, Wilde’s grandson, has had to pay for three previous clean-ups and now he’s asking L’Oreal to sponsor the next one! The article is by Matthew Campbell, who is one of my favourite writers at The Sunday Times. (I’ve picked out articles of his before – here’s another that I’ve mentioned previously.
My boyfriend and I visited Pere Lachaise when we went to Paris together in March. As you can see it’s quite striking.
Oscar Wilde’s grave 
Oscar Wilde’s grave
Close-up of Oscar Wilde’s grave
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10.24.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 3.50 pm by niltiac
I used to visit the Hunger Site and its sister sites all the time but then I changed jobs and forgot about it. I’ve rediscovered it now and want to bring it to wider attention as I think it’s a really good idea. The concept is that you click on a tag on the website once a day and the advertising revenue generated will go directly to charity. There is a bar at the top for all of the affiliated sites, including the Breast Cancer Site, the Child Health Site, the Literacy Site, the Rainforest Site and the Animal Rescue Site. I don’t know how effective this in the scheme of things but it doesn’t require much effort and it’s anonymous.
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10.20.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 9.45 pm by niltiac
Anonymous Lawyer tags itself as “stories from the trenches, by a fictional hiring partner at a large law firm in a major city”. It’s one of the best public blogs I’ve seen for ages – absolutely hilarious!
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10.17.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 10.12 pm by niltiac
We arrived back in London early on Sunday morning. I was fairly tired and jetlagged but I just had a little nap in the morning and then stuck it out for the rest of the day. I took it fairly easy though. Today was my first day back at work and it was deadline day too so I plunged right back into it.
New York was great. Unfortunately it bucketed down on Thursday and Friday so there was no prospect of doing any of the outdoorsy things I’d hoped for (ferry to the Statue of Liberty and Ellis Island, walking across the Brooklyn Bridge, climbing the Empire State or some other tall building, rollerblading in Central Park…). We spent Thursday at the Metropolitan Museum of Art – the Met. We’ve both been there before but it’s such a great museum, there’s no hardship in going again! There was a special exhibition on Prague from 1347 to 1437 with amazing panel paintings, gold-work, illuminated manuscripts, sculpture, silk embroideries, and stained glass.
On Friday we braved the rain for a spot of shopping down in the West Village (yes, Natalie, we went to the Magnolia Bakery and ate a cupcake for you!) and then in Midtown. We went to dinner and drinks with Jon and Betsi, who we’d met at Mike and Jessica’s wedding in Detroit and clicked really well with. They seem really great so I’m glad we followed up and went out again.
And wouldn’t you know it? The sun came out on Saturday, the day we were leaving! Our flight wasn’t until 6.30pm but that meant leaving at 3pm. We decided to save money and get the subway and air train, which takes about an hour and a half (faster if there’s traffic; slower if the roads are clear) and costs just $US7 each. We spent the morning having brunch with Alex, a former colleague of my boyfriend who now works for the UN, at his apartment on the west side. We had an absolute feast with lots of Russian delicacies such as pickles and fish and even dessert and because the sun was out we could admire the spectacular view, all the way down to the Statue of Liberty.
It’s hard to belive but it’s now less than two months before our trip home to Australia. Yippee!
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10.13.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 2.16 pm by niltiac
It’s our first morning in New York and it’s cold and rainy – although not as cold as Detroit or even Boston. We have popped into the Kinko’s on the end of our street to catch up on emails before we head out for coffee and sustenance. I’m not sure what we are going to do today. I really want to go to Ellis Island and walk across the Brooklyn Bridge, neither of which I have done before, but it’s so miserable out that I think we’ll probably do the sensible thing and go to the Met. The Met is fabulous and even though I’ve been there twice before, I’m sure there is plenty more to see.
We were delayed by a few hours flying into Boston because the airport there was experiencing unexplained phantom radar blips coupled with a thick fog. But we made it in the end and it was a great relief to get off the plane and be met at the other end by our friend Ben. We had dinner with Ben and his wife Jodi and their wee son David both nights in Boston, first at a restaurant where I had a great clam bake and then at their home. David is two and three quarters and bright as a button and very cute. We stayed at an inn in the Back Bay area, which was convenient to the downtown area and during the day we explored Boston. We walked the Freedom Trail, which links a bunch of revolutionary sites such as the meeting house where they decided to throw tea in the harbour and the USS Constitution, the oldest commissioned ship in the US Navy still afloat.
We caught the train from Boston to New York and travelled through some beautiful countryside – Mystic, Connecticut looked particularly lovely. Unfortunately the travel gods were once again against us and we were delayed by several hours because of a fallen tree on the electrical wiring south of Mystic.
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10.10.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 1.19 am by niltiac
Detroit was never on my list of dream travel destinations but I am really glad that life brought me here. We leave tomorrow morning but actually I would like to stay a few more days as there is still a lot more to see.
Detroit was thriving in the early twentieth century as a centre of American industry, particularly car manufacturing, but virtually everyone moved out after the race riots in the 1960s. The city is now struggling to keep its population above the one million mark, below which the city will lose stacks of government funding. The city is spending lavish amounts of money trying to spruce up downtown, yet there are abandoned buildings everywhere, some boarded up, some burnt out, some just plain empty. There is even an amazing old train station built in grand early twentieth century style that just sits in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by barbed wire and unused.
But despite the evident urban decay, Detroit is a real diamond in the rough and there is plenty to see. For starters, it is the home of Motown and we went to the Motown Museum, at the original site of Hitsville USA where Stevie Wonder and the Supremes and Marvin Gaye and the Jackson 5 and the rest recorded their hit songs. It was very cool. They have preserved a lot of the original stuff – we saw costumes (“uniforms” in Motown parlance) worn by The Supremes and others, photographs from the era such as one of Stevie Wonder and Paul McCartney, the original lobby with the old telephones and a 35c cigarette machine. Best of all, we got to go in Studio A where it all took place and see the big piano and the drum kit and the original microphones. They got all the girls together to sing and dance to Stop in the Name of Love and then the boys for a rendition of My Girl, which sounds cheesy but was actually pretty fun and we can now say that we sang in the famous Studio A.
This afternoon we went to the Detroit Institute of Arts, which is reasonably small but has a very good collection of stuff, including everyone from Van Gogh to Warhol and quite a bit of historical or archaelogical exhibits. We saw a special exhibit on screen printing, which was a real eye opener as I had no idea about how versatile the medium is. Some of the prints looked like paintings, which I found quite amazing and inspiring. But the main reason for going was to see the Diego Rivera mural of Detroit industry in the centre of the building. It was pretty amazing – all the workers and machinery but then the godlike figures above and the baby in the womb and the Mexican women down the other end. I am not that familiar with Rivera’s stuff as he was so keen on murals, which are clearly not portable, but he is extremely talented and I’ll seek out more of it.
There was a nice symmetry to all of this because I recently went to see the Frida Kahlo exhibition at Tate Modern in London. Some of the paintings were about her miscarriage, which happened here in Detroit, and one of them features Detroit hospital. Kahlo and Rivera stayed a few blocks away from the DIA and Rivera was a regular at the Scarab Club across the road from the gallery. In fact, his signature is on one of the roofbeams on the second floor. And the Scarab Club was where our friends Mike and Jessica held their wedding on Saturday evening – the reason we came to Detroit in the first place.
Mike and Jessica live in New York but Jess is from Detroit originally, which is why the wedding was here. The service was in the garden, which was quite cold as the weather had snapped about two days previously, and my boyfriend was the best man. The reception was on both floors of the Scarab Club, which has lots of art on the walls. Everything was decked out in a harvest theme for the wedding, with lots of pumpkins of all shapes, sizes and colours. It was a great wedding – quite informal, lots of happy people, loads of food, a progressive Detroit DJ – it was all good!
The happy couple have now left for their honeymoon but we did see a bit of them before, during and after the wedding, which was great. On Friday night Mike and Jess and their respective families and a lot of the guests went out for a meal in Greektown, right down town, which involved lots of flaming cheese and garlic dips. On Saturday morning the four of us went out for brunch (omelette with swiss chard [silverbeet to Aussies] and fennel) opposite the Eastern Market. We had to wait in line, which meant we got to enjoy the jazz from the street buskers before our meal. Then they gave us a bit of a driving tour of Detroit including Mexicantown and the Motown Museum.
My boyfriend and I wanted to go to the Museum of African American History, but it was closed today and won’t be reopening until Wednesday so we will unfortunately miss that. It is meant to be excellent and it has among its exhibits a full size slave ship with models of the slaves in chains. Detroit Zoo would also have been good – apparently there is a polar exhibit with a tube in which polar bears can swim overhead. And finally, there is the Henry Ford Museum just out of town. As well as Motown, Detroit is also famous for techno so if I were staying longer, I would definitely also check out some clubs. So much to do, so little time!
I will post pics as soon as possible.
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