12.28.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 5.44 am by niltiac
I’m at the domestic airport in Sydney, killing time before my flight to Brisbane. I’m heading north for a week to see my mum and her side of the family, most of whom live around Brisbane and the Sunshine Coast hinterland. Mum and I are going to be at the Woodford Folk Festival until New Year’s Day and then I have a few more days to go and see my grandma and aunties and maybe hit the beach at Noosa. I’m back in Sydney on 4th January and then leave for London via Shanghai on the 7th.
It’s been a lovely few days. Christmas was good and I have spent the last day and a half at my dad’s farm near Bowral. My little sister was given a butterfly net for Christmas and she has been running around the garden chasing butterflies. So cute!
My boyfriend is back in Sydney. He has family commitments and besides which, I don’t think camping with my mum is really his scene! I’ll see him on the 4th.
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12.25.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 6.49 am by niltiac
Merry Christmas everyone!
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6.39 am by niltiac
I finished Slaughterhouse Five by Kurt Vonnegut yesterday. The book is inspired by his experiences as a prisoner of war in Dresden in World War II. It’s the only World War II novel I’ve ever read that also features time travel and space aliens! Vonnegut is an innovative writer and in Slaughterhouse Five he plays with non-linear storytelling, motifs and an alien philosophy on life. Definitely worth reading.
27 down, 73 to go… This was another short one but I’m going to tackle the mammoth A Suitable Boy by Vikram Seth next. I’ve got some holiday books to finish first and some BookCrossing book-rings on the way but I’ll get to it soon.
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12.21.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 1.37 pm by niltiac
Being back in Sydney is like a dream. There is an air of unreality about it all and I just know that I’m going to wake up in a week or two back in cold, grey London. For now, I’m loving it! I’ve been filling my days with all things nice – sunshine, swimming, fresh fruit, good food, drinks with friends, playing with my three-year-old sister. It’s Christmas soon – have a good one and I’ll blog more comprehensively soon.
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12.14.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4.01 pm by niltiac
I love the idea that the new reality show from Channel 4, Space Cadets could all be a big con. Not of the participants but of the viewing public.
The premise of the show is that C4 advertised for thrillseekers who were selected after an Outward Bound-style weekend. After selection they were told they were being sent into orbit for five days and would be sent to Russia for cosmonaut training. The kicker is that they’ve actually been sent to Suffolk and it’s all a big hoax. Three of the participants are actually actors to keep things running smoothly (dispel doubts etc) but the rest are all meant to be genuine “real” people. The viewing public knows it’s a hoax and gets to sit at home and feel smug while these poor sods make fools of themselves in their quest for 15 minutes of fame.
The big conspiracy theory is that it’s not the participants who are being hoaxed but the viewers; that in fact, they’re all actors and totally in the know about what’s going on. Some of the “real” participants have been recognised from various commercials and actors’ directories.
If that’s true, it’s hilarious! A hoax about a hoax about a hoax… Just goes to show how far removed from reality, reality TV really is! (As if we didn’t already know). We don’t have a TV hence I haven’t seen the show and don’t know whether it makes good telly or not but I love the concept.
And wait it gets better because the astronomy lecturer sent to teach them about space is Chris Welch aka UrbanSpaceman from BookCrossing. He said that 80 per cent of what he told them was true and 20 per cent was made up but it was the true stuff they had most difficulty accepting! Of course he’s being paid but the other reason for doing it is the chance to excite public interest in space and astronomy.
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12.12.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 4.19 pm by niltiac
I have been asked what references I used when compiling this list.
The first port of call was my friend Betsi’s list, which is her adaptation of a number of other lists.
I altered it according to my own ideas to make it more international and include more contemporary works. I also discussed it with people on the BookCrossing forum who gave me lots of ideas.
I had a look at the BBC Big Read but this was not particularly useful for my purposes as it is a) based on popularity with the general public and b) for all time not just the twentieth century.
The Folio Society’s books of the 20th century is worth a look but it’s not all fiction. Maybe that’s one for another project?
There are also the following lists:
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12.10.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 1.16 pm by niltiac
The Chemical Brothers played last night at the Brixton Academy (just down the road from us) and the boy and I were there. It was an awesome gig! They played for two hours – from 11pm to 1am – with all their favourites, from Hey Boy, Hey Girl to Push the Button. The music was great, the visuals projected on the back wall were spectacular and the crowd was pumping. The tickets were over £33 each (£28.50 plus an extortionate booking fee of £4.75 per ticket) but it was well worth it! They’re really good live and I’ll definitely go to see them again when I get the chance.
The only downside with the gig was the venue. It would have been all right downstairs on the main dancefloor but we were up in the circle (they were sold out downstairs when I booked tickets). The Chems are a a dance act and it’s reasonable to suppose that one might go to them to dance but the security staff kept trying to make everyone sit down. No one did of course, or at least not for very long, but it did make me feel a bit stalked. It was for safety reasons and I can see that there clearly is an issue – when I stood or sat still, I could feel the entire balcony shaking beneath my feet. Still, I think they need to accept that people will stand up and dance and plan accordingly – either don’t sell tickets to the balcony or invest in the necessary structural works to make it safe. They certainly didn’t warn us about this when we bought the tickets!
From the ultra-modern to the ancient: on Thursday evening, my boyfriend and I went to see the Persians exhibition at the British Musuem. They have borrowed a lot of rare pieces from Iran and also had a lot of stuff already themselves. They did a stand-up job with the exhibit – it was well curated (just the right size and thematically presented) and the lighting was superb (it brought out every detail). There was some fascinating stuff there, including statues and columns, tablets with writing, jewellery, fancy dinnerware and so on. It’s amazing to think that at its height the Persian empire stretched from the Pakistani-Indian border in the east to Greece in the west and included most of Egypt to the south.
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12.07.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 9.38 pm by niltiac
I have just finished reading Waiting for the Barbarians by J.M.Coetzee, the South African writer who won the Nobel Prize for Literature in 2003. The book was published in 1980 and is set in an outpost settlement of an Empire in no particular time and place but it has resonance for all times and seems particularly poignant in the light of recent history.
The story is about an aging Magistrate who desires nothing more than to live out his days in obscurity but is thrust into the thick of imperial politics when the Empire decides to crack down on the neighbouring Barbarians. His attempts to protect the Barbarians from the barbarity of the Empire lead to him being imprisoned and tortured as an enemy of the state and a brush with madness. The book is ultimately about the struggle, both internal and external, of decency against political expediency and what happens when a regime puts survival over justice.
It’s brilliantly done – very complex and subtle and not at all didactic. It’s a very short book – at 156 pages in my paperback edition it’s really more a novella. Although it’s got great intellectual heft, it’s not a difficult read.
It’s interesting too that Coetzee, who lived through the Apartheid era in South Africa, is now choosing to live out his life in the obscure outpost settlement of Adelaide in South Australia.
This is the second book I have read by Coetzee; the first was Disgrace, which was good but not a patch on this.
This was a BookCrossing copy. Please see here for all journal entries.
26 down, 74 to go…
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12.05.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 6.08 pm by niltiac
Bad news! According to this story from The Australian’s health section – moderate intakes of alcohol may not be good for you after all. Bugger! Oh well, have a merry Christmas anyway!
Speaking of alcohol consumption, I recently joined Tash on part two of her London Monopoly Pub Crawl. Though I only went to about five pubs and I was drinking half pints so I guess I don’t get to go in the Hall of Fame. You can read Tash’s account of it here.
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12.04.05
Posted in Uncategorized at 9.14 pm by niltiac
Last night, the boy and I went to Clapham Picturehouse to see a late-night movie. We ended up seeing that 1980s Tom Cruise classic, Top Gun.
I could feel my arteries hardening as I watched it from all that cheese! It was immensely enjoyable though – it works really well as a period piece. Check out Val Kilmer’s hair!
It was fun to see a midnight session of a movie – it was the first weekend the Picturehouse has done it (they were also showing Bruce Lee’s Enter the Dragon and some arthouse Russian zombie movie), so I hope they continue. Most of London shuts down at 11pm so it felt like a bit of a treat to be out that late – and we could take our beer in because the new licensing laws came into effect a week ago.
After all the fuss some quarters of the media made about how licensing liberalisation was going to be Booze-ageddon, it should be front-page news that in fact there has been very little change so far. But of course it’s not.
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