04.29.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 11.12 pm by niltiac
We went to see the new Spike Lee movie, Inside Man, at the cinema tonight (Saturday). I’m really glad I did and I thoroughly recommend it. At heart it’s a crime caper movie but it has far more intelligence and depth than the typical movie of that genre. The storyline and execution is hugely entertaining but it also has something to say. I imagine the original script probably looked a lot like Ocean’s Eleven but Spike Lee has put his own stamp on it so it deals a lot with race and class. It’s a smart movie not just because it deals with weighty issues but also because the twists and turns of the plot are quite clever so it’s never predictable and it’s gratifying when you make connections that are not obvious.
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Posted in Uncategorized at 6.36 pm by niltiac
I’m tired in a good way – I feel like I’ve been packing a lot in rather than just frittering away time. It’s been a full day – I had yoga this morning and then this afternoon Natalie and I went skating in Battersea Park. It was beautiful – the sun was shining and the park was filled with white and pink blossom trees set against emerald green lawns. We skated for two hours or so without really noticing the time pass and then treated ourselves to an ice cream before heading off.
I went out last night in Hammersmith for birthday drinks for Steven, a guy I know from home. (I’ve known him literally since he was a baby and he’s been a flatmate to both my cousin Kim and my cousin Elianor). He was celebrating his twenty-third birthday at the Old Fire Station pub, which was pretty funky. Twenty-three! Now I feel old – that feels like a long time ago! I turned twenty-three in Canada, after working for Youth Challenge International in Guyana and working at summer camp in upstate New York. I returned to Australia a few months later at the height of the dotcom boom and got a job in technology journalism (with one year’s journalism experience at a local paper under my belt but no real knowledge of technology). Twenty-three is also the age that I got together with my boyfriend.
Steven is actually heading back to Australia in July so we’ll have to catch up a couple more times before then. It feels like everyone’s leaving! Kimberley left today, which is very sad because she didn’t really want to go, it was just because her visa ran out. Cameron is leaving soon as well. This is the problem with being friends with other expats! Must make some English friends soon!
Steven was meant to be coming to see the Chilli Peppers in July. He’s now leaving six days before the concert so if anyone wants to buy his ticket and join me, please let me know.
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04.28.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 11.50 am by niltiac
Kevin, a mate of mine who used to work at Media Week, is now editor of a magazine for the online travel industry Travolution. I’m going to be doing a bit of work for them so I went along to their one-day conference yesterday. I didn’t expect to stay the whole day but I did and it was mostly very interesting. The last speaker was Simon Woodroffe, the founder of Yo! Sushi, and he was an amazing presenter. He was so good that he ran 40 minutes over time at the end of a long day of presentations and no one noticed or cared! He was funny and dramatic and inspiring and eccentric and didn’t do a Powerpoint presentation (the kiss of death for any presentation as far as I’m concerned). He reckons that we can all do anything we want, we just have to work out what we’re good at and what we’re not.
The rest of the day was interesting. I was going to talk to Brent Hoberman, chairman of Lastminute.com in the break but I missed him so he missed out on my pearls of wisdom. So for what it’s worth, I’m going to make a few suggestions that he or any of his competitors are free to use on their sites. After all, he repeatedly said that he wanted to empower the customer by giving them the information they want, which he believes is imperative in the era of Web 2.0 (an annoying buzzword to describe how the internet now has a lot of social content such as blogging, podcasting, sites like MySpace and is a lot more bottom up in terms of content).
Firstly, I would like a site where I can key in a destination and it will return results for all modes of transport – plane, train, ferry and automobile – so I can compare the cost and the travel time directly. Secondly, I would like to be able to tag a city and a price and ask the site to notify me when the price drops below a certain point. Thirdly, I would like graphs to show me when the cheapest and most expensive times to book are and to have these graphs updated in real time so I can know the truth about whether it’s better to book in advance like the airlines say or last minute like the name Lastminute.com implies. Bring it on!
Kevin wanted me to come armed with lots of questions for the panel debates. Most were fairly standard but I did ask how the travel industry was going to respond to the growing global environmental problems and also what would happen to online travel businesses if the cheap flight revolution was reversed. (I actually asked Kevin for advice on whether to ask this question because I didn’t want to step on his toes but he seemed pleased as it’s also something he’s interested in but it’s obviously better coming from the floor than the chair). The question was answered by a guy from an online travel company in the States who unfortunately took it as more of an economic question than a social responsibility one and basically said it probably wouldn’t happen because $75 a barrel for oil had failed to raise prices so $100 a barrel probably wouldn’t either and therefore we didn’t have to worry. He also said something about Boeing producing fuel-efficient planes, which would be nice.
I thought that was a fairly weak response. I certainly wasn’t trying to stir trouble but I think the travel industry needs to think about these problems as there’s no sign of them going away. I’m not anti-travel – I love to travel myself and believe it can be incredibly enriching and rewarding and provide valuable income for local people in tourist destinations – but I can’t pretend there aren’t problems as well and I am making some effort to cut down on air travel, which is hard because trains aren’t cheap.
Part of the problem is that, in the UK at least, air travel receives a hidden subsidy in that there’s no tax on aviation fuel whereas there is on road fuel. This means that flying is relatively cheaper than it actually should be in comparison to buses, trains, ferries and even cars. I don’t particularly want prices to go up dramatically – I have family in Australia and I want to be able to afford to go and see them every year or so. But when you can fly to Spain for £20 but it costs over £100 to get the train to Scotland there’s probably something a bit out of whack!
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Posted in Uncategorized at 11.15 am by niltiac
I finally did something I have been meaning to do for ages and signed up to an organic box scheme. My first delivery arrived today – £10 for a decent size box of fruit and vegies, plus an extra £8 for milk, yoghurt, store cupboard ingredients and a couple of extra treats like asparagus. It’s all certified organic and mostly local – things like bananas are obviously imported but nothing is air-freighted. So I’m feeling pretty pleased right now.
Most people think organic is more expensive than conventional food but it’s not necessarily true. Supermarkets put a big mark-up on it because they can but I think with this box scheme, I’ll spend more on some things and less on other things but about the same or less overall. Organic meat is more expensive but it’s usually so much better – I don’t eat a lot of meat anyway and when I do I want it to be good quality. Today’s delivery is probably most, if not all, our shopping done for the week. If I went to the supermarket, I might save a few pennies on a carton of milk but I would undoubtedly end up spending more overall on things I don’t really need like 99p bags of pre-washed salad leaves, which are washed in chlorine and use illegal immigrants in dreadful working conditions (according to media reports).
I have gone with Abel & Cole, which is one of the biggest organic box suppliers and also just down the road from me in south London. Their website is pretty good and you can order all sorts of things from them including meat and fish (obviously wild fish is not certified organic since it’s not farmed but that and the spring water are the only exceptions). You can choose to get a box of fruit and/or vegies in season and you can customise it by specifying likes or dislikes or you can completely pack your own.
The only downside is the delivery time. Friday is the only day of the week when they’re in my area and they can’t specify a time. It’s only really practical now that I’m working from myself and can nominate my own hours or place of work. They did actually come before 11am and the driver said he would usually be able to come by that time but that is not guaranteed. That makes it not terribly practical for most people unless they’ve got somewhere secure or obscure where the box can be deposited. In my case, it’s just the front step so I’ve really got to be home or know that my neighbour will be home.
Compare that to Ocado, the online shopping service from Waitrose. Ocado lets you choose any day of the week and specify your delivery time to a one hour slot anywhere between 6am and 11pm. You can choose a delivery time when the van is already in your area, which doesn’t save money but you can feel virtuous for saving fuel. They deliver to your kitchen (rather than your front door) and colour code their bags for fridge, freezer and store cupboard. They often give you little presents like free bottles of wine to try to keep you happy and loyal. Obviously Abel & Cole is smaller and can’t compete on all those frills but I’m impressed with them so far. Ocado is a really good service but it’s also expensive – both the food and the £5 delivery fee – so we never used it very often. Also it uses a phenomenal amount of plastic bags and other packaging materials (Abel & Cole delivers in recyclable bags and boxes that you can return to your driver for reuse).
I hope this goes well as I really want to try to eat more organic food. It’s an open secret within health circles that pesticides and other chemicals are to blame for much of the rise in cancers in the last fifty years. Unfortunately it hasn’t been completely proven but I have little doubt that the chemical industry will become the Big Tobacco of the future. There are countless indicators that this is the case – from cancer hotspots in villages near conventional farms to the fact that pesticides are know to spread further and wider than predicted (I read a report recently that said 90 per cent of rivers in the US are contaminated with pesticides even in very remote wilderness areas). I want to minimise my own intake and I want to encourage a way of farming that is healthier for the farm workers, neighbours in rural communities and wildlife as well.
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04.27.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10.18 pm by niltiac
The polar bears better watch out – I’m on my way! The final cheque was posted off to World Expeditions today and all my medical and other forms are already in. Just three months to go!
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04.26.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 2.45 pm by niltiac
I don’t particularly like gyms and would much prefer to do my exercise out of doors and for free. In an ideal world I would be rollerblading in the park, cycling to work, swimming in a lovely Olympic-length saltwater pool and maybe attending yoga classes once or twice a week.
The reality is quite different and now that I’m lugging a laptop to and from work each day my options feel quite limited. Until I have somewhere secure to leave the laptop, I can’t really go swimming or rollerblading after work. I haven’t tried cycling since I started working in Clerkenwell but I really can’t see myself doing it every day. And I do go to yoga once a week but that’s about the only structured exercise activity I do (though I do walk a lot – I’m not a complete slob!).
It’s imperative that I get fit for my Arctic cruise especially since I have signed up for the sea kayaking option. And I think I’ll find the rollerblading much easier once I’m a bit fitter too (though technique is another big factor). So I’m going to take a three-month membership out at the gym five minutes from my office and try going in my lunchbreak and see how that goes. Unfortunately this probably means I can’t afford separate yoga classes but I will check out the yoga at the gym and see if it’s any good.
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04.25.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10.17 am by niltiac
One of my favourite websites and a great source for writers is Miss Snark, a blog kept by an anonymous New York literary agent. She takes questions from readers and occasionally runs competitions but doesn’t take pitches since she is anonymous. She is very funny and very useful if you want an insight into the professional writing world.
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04.24.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12.44 pm by niltiac
Tash and I went to the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead last night to see The Proposition (or as one friend kept calling it, The Preposition).
Wow! It’s quite a full-on movie. It’s a bloody good story so I wanted to keep watching and see what made different characters tick and find out what happened in the end. But it’s very violent and not in a stylised, unrealistic way like say Sin City but in a very gritty and disturbing way. The savagery is relentless. The dicky politician guy with the funny voice summed up the entire movie when he said: “It’s the law of reciprocity; you kill one of theirs and they’ll kill one of ours”. Violence begets more violence until someone puts a stop to it.
It was a very Australian movie, with the harsh landscape and tension between the white settlers and the Aboriginal tribes whose ancestral land it was and the struggle of trying to impose European “civilisation” in such a place. So, I was a bit bemused to see in the credits that it was partly funded by the UK. Why? Why can’t we fund our own movies? Where’s the connection to Britain? (Apart from the fact that it was set before federation and the characters largely viewed themselves as either British or Irish). I found that a little weird.
Nick Cave’s music was good and worked particularly well as the backdrop to the film. I don’t think I’d buy the soundtrack though.
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04.23.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 12.04 pm by niltiac
It’s sad but true: Kimberley is moving back to Vancouver and she leaves London in less than a week! On Friday night we saw her off in style, starting with shots of absinthe at her flat and moving on to the Swan, a dodgy pub in Stockwell with cheap booze and a dance floor. She lives across the road from me so we’ll catch up once more this week for a drink in our local and then it’s sayonara!
I’ve had a pleasant weekend. Didn’t stay too late at the Swan so managed to get up and have a Saturday, which was nice as it was lovely and sunny and warm. Unfortunately today it’s raining so the Sunday Stroll street skate was cancelled. D’oh! Tonight I am off to see The Proposition with Tash at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead. It’s miles away but what the hell – nice to see a movie out of the West End.
Next weekend, depending on weather, I’m going to be learning to kayak off the coast of the Isle of Wight! It should be fun!
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04.22.06
Posted in Uncategorized at 10.51 pm by niltiac
The Heart of the Matter is set in a British colony in west Africa during one of the world wars, I think the Second World War. Scobie, a police officer, is above reproach until he is passed over for promotion and forced to borrow money from a Syrian trader to send his wife on holiday. In her absence he falls in love with a young widow and inexorably his conscience and love of God lead him to disaster.
This is an extraordinary book. I’d previously read The Quiet American, also by Greene, and that was pretty good but I think this is far superior. It’s not as political as The Quiet American but the human story is far more compelling and convincing. Scobie is a middle-aged man and a Catholic living in a very different time and place and yet, despite being so utterly different to me, I really felt like I was inside his head and his heart. The novel explores the notion of what love is and where love and pity intersect and which is the stronger emotion. Scobie’s downfall comes because he is not able to put his own eternal salvation above the happiness of the women he loves.
I’m quite keen to read more of Greene’s books. They seem to be set in all different places from Vietnam to Cuba. The Power and the Glory is meant to be another of his best and I we have a copy of The Comedians somewhere.
30 down, 70 to go…
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