06.26.07
Posted in Life, London, Theatre at 6.17 pm by Caitlin
I love to sing but anyone who has ever heard me sing will tell you that it’s not my strong point. I don’t have an awful voice but I find it hard to hold a tune – which doesn’t necessarily stop me from trying!
My beloved boyfriend has decided to try to fix this state of affairs and has bought me singing lessons for my birthday. I am doing classes with City Academy, just down the road from my office, and I am really enjoying them so far! They also do acting and dancing on the same night and I have decided to stay for the acting class as well.
I did a lot of drama when I was a teenager, both at high school and through Australian Theatre 4 Young People. (One of my drama teachers for a term was Cate Blanchett! Back when she was a NIDA student, if I’m not mistaken.) I haven’t done it since university and I’m really enjoying getting back into it.
Formal training in singing is pretty new to me but I think I’ll get a lot out of it. Scientifically I’m told there is no such thing as “tone deaf”, unless of course you are actually deaf. I believe it’s a matter of training and practice. I don’t expect I’ll ever be professional standard but if I can sing a tune to my own satisfaction without making cats screech and dogs howl, I’ll be happy.
I’m off to class now – this week I’ll be staying for dancing as well.
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06.25.07
Posted in Family & Friends, Film at 10.32 am by Caitlin
One of the wonderful things about the internet age is that it is helping people reconnect and stay better connected. A dear friend of mine from high school, Emme, found me on Google recently. Ironically she was actually searching for information on Google and she came across this article. Wondering whether the author of the piece was the same Caitlin she knew at school, she did some further Googling, and came across my blog. She sent an email, I sent an email back, we both forgot about it for six months, and then finally we met up.
We are both from Sydney but we are both living in north London and have been for several years! I’m so glad we’ve found each other again as we get on really well. We’ve done dinner with the partners a few times and on the weekend we all took off to see Shrek the Third.
It’s definitely a fun movie but I must admit I didn’t enjoy it as much as either of the first two movies. It wasn’t as funny – they didn’t make the most of their great line-up of comic characters like Puss in Boots, Donkey and Gingerbread Man and it wasn’t as rich in observed detail either. I felt for a movie that is about satire and sending everything else up, it could have taken itself a little less seriously. The whole moral of the story was a little heavy. It wasn’t a bad movie and I certainly don’t feel cheated out of my £8 and two hours but it wasn’t great either.
Luckily the company was good!
PS The roofer has put boards down between our ceiling and where they are working so hopefully this means no more dirt through the light fittings!
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06.21.07
Posted in Life at 2.00 pm by Caitlin
There are roofing works underway in our building right now. We are in the top floor flat so we are bearing the brunt of the noise. Our landlord has given us a 20 per cent rent reduction while the works are being carried out, which is fairly generous, so I don’t mind the noise so much.
The worst thing is that every room is fitted with halogen lights and we are getting a constant stream of dirt through the light fittings. Everyday we come home to find black dust in piles on the floor, the table, the bench tops, the sofa, the clean laundry, the fruit bowl, the bookshelf … everything! Rent reduction aside, I hope this is over soon.
All together now, GRRRR!!!
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06.18.07
Posted in London at 7.56 am by Caitlin
There is quite a bit of green space in and around London. There are the parks, of course, but there are also wilder areas. Hampstead Heath has pockets of wilderness but for anything more substantial you need to travel further afield to places like Epping Forest and Walthamstow Forest – a relatively short distance on the Tube.
Armed with our Lonely Planet guide to walking in Britain, we decided to try to walk from Leytonstone to Epping, a 12-mile hike to the end of the Central Line. The first part was through Walthamstow Forest, then at Chingford, with the landmark of the Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge, we would enter the wilds of Epping Forest.
The Walthamstow Forest part of the walk skirts alongside some urban areas but it’s still very pretty, with gnarled, mossy forest and ponds filled with waterlilies and ducks. The area is popular with walkers, joggers, mountain bike riders and horseriders, and there seemed to be a huge number of dogs off their leash, chasing squirrels and rabbits. (We saw some fluffy remains on the ground so they must catch them from time to time as well).
The Queen Elizabeth Hunting Lodge is named for the first Elizabeth but it actually dates from the reign of Henry VIII. Legend has it that Henry waited at the lodge until he heard the cannon signalling that Anne Boleyn, his second wife, had been beheaded, and then went hunting! It’s open to the public but we were a bit muddy from the hike, so we didn’t go in.
We didn’t get going until midday and by the time we got to Chingford the brilliant sunshine was evaporating and the clouds looking a little ominous. Chingford has a regular mainline train service to Liverpool Street so we actually decided to bow out at this point. We’ll do the rest of the walk next weekend if the weather is good.
After working up an appetite in the Great Outdoors, we joined friends for dinner at Taqueria, a Chilean-Mexican restaurant in Notting Hill. We ordered a bunch of tacos for the centre of the table and shared and then followed it by fantastic desserts – a choice of churros with ice cream, plantains with ice cream (like a banana split), and vanilla pudding with hibiscus sauce. Yum!
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06.16.07
Posted in Film at 6.17 pm by Caitlin
Apart from the Japanese movies (Karas, Paprika and Seven Samurai), I have also seen the following movies:
Bridge to Terabithia
I saw this back in May with Natalie, Jess and Tash. (We kinda figured, it’s not really the sort of movie the boys in our life would enjoy). It’s based on a book that nearly all of us studied in the first year or two of high school – a book about growing up, loss and grief, and the power of imagination. The movie was surprisingly good. The CGI effects (for the magical kingdom of the children’s imagination) were competent but didn’t really add a great deal to the movie. What really made it shine was the strength of the acting, particularly the child stars. There were a few too many Disney moments for my liking but it was a Hollywood children’s film so that’s to be expected.
Spiderman 3 WARNING – PLOT SPOILER
I saw this with my boyfriend and we both thought it was dreadful. The only difference is that I thought it was worse than the second one and he thought the second one was worse. Spiderman 1 was a competent comic book movie but this was just dull, dull, dull. The morals were laid on with a trowel and the plotting creaked. I groaned when Harry Osborn / Hobgoblin died at the end because I instantly remembered him saying earlier in the movie, “[My friends are] the best. I’d die for them.” Yep, you’re gonna.
I’m racking my brains to think of whether I’ve seen anything else lately. I did see Music and Lyrics and The Holiday on the plane to Senegal and I tried to watch The Painted Veil on the way back, but it hardly seems worth writing about movies on planes! On the list to see at the moment are the Australian movies, Jindabyne and Ten Canoes, and Shrek the Third.
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Posted in London, Theatre at 5.56 pm by Caitlin
Last weekend Beth came up to London for a pot luck play – the idea being we would see what was on offer at the Half Price Ticket Booth at Leicester Square. Unfortunately I didn’t realise that most theatres are shut on Sundays in London so our options were fairly limited. We ended up going to see Blue Man Group.
It’s a performance with three blue men who use music, mime, puppetry and audience participation to put together a clever and entertaining show. A key part is pouring paint on to drums and then drumming so the paint squirts up in quite a beautiful spray. The people in the front row have to wear plastic ponchos to protect them from the spatter of paint and the entire audience ends up covered in billowing white crepe paper at the end. It’s extremely silly and there is no point whatsoever in trying to analyse it but it’s good fun and would be particularly good for kids. I was mildly amused but I think I would have found it amazing when I was eight.
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Posted in London at 5.04 pm by Caitlin
My tour guiding at the British Museum has finally started. I have been preparing since the start of the year, with formal training and also my own explorations. I have practised the tour on friends and then finally, last Sunday I did it for the public for the first time.
I had seven people in total, including my boyfriend and Kuju who came for support. The tour looks at Japan’s interactions with the outside world, including the influence of the East (in particular Buddhism from China and Korea) and the West (Christianity, technology, trade). It’s a nice tour and it’s a lovely gallery, with particularly lovely paintings and prints that are changed every couple of months.
The tours are every day at 11am. My next dates are Wednesday 27 June, Sunday 8 July, Wednesday 25 July and Sunday 5 August. Please feel free to come along.
There is also an upcoming special exhibition on Crafting Beauty in Modern Japan starting 19 July, which should be good.
******
The British Museum generally has some good special exhibitions. My boyfriend and I recently saw the exhibition A New World, showing drawings and artifacts from England’s first explorations of America. It was a fascinating insight into the flora, fauna and native peoples living in America at the time, but also of the Elizabethans and what they found important to record. The records weren’t just made for interest’s sake, it was also to correctly identify animals and plants that could be used for food.
Last year we also saw the exhibition of Michelangelo’s drawings at the museum, which I found to be an interesting insight into the working methods of one of the greatest artists in the world. It was particularly interesting to see it, nine months after travelling to Rome and Florence and seeing his work in real life.
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Posted in Family & Friends, Food, London at 4.39 pm by Caitlin
Continuing with the Japanese theme, my birthday celebration was a Japanese-themed picnic in London’s Holland Park. We intended to hold it in the Kyoto Garden, a lovely Japanese Garden with a pond, complete with a waterfall, bridge, and large orange and white koi.
Natalie, Jess and Steven made fantastic sushi. (Jess has photos of the sushi making session at Natalie’s house on the FushMush website). We also had Japanese sweets and huge red strawberries and white wine and beer to wash it down with. Yum! Continuing the Japanese theme, Tash* gave me some cool sushi-print sticking plasters from Paperchase, a London institution and where closet stationery lovers go when they die.
Unfortunately we had been there for just 45 minutes when the police came and asked us to move – not the park rangers, but the actual police! There were signs up around most of the Japanese garden saying to keep off the grass, but honestly not on the section we were in. It wasn’t even well-kept lawn! They were very apologetic but quite firm, telling us, “the point is it’s a Japanese garden, it’s for quite contemplation, it’s not a picnic are”. We protested that we had sushi with us but that didn’t work. There were about 40 people scattered all over the lawn and everyone had to move on.
We beat a retreat up to the very un-Japanese North Lawn instead and continued our picnic. It was lovely weather, sunny and warm (high twenties) and loads of people were sunbathing. I had a great afternoon with good company, good food, and a warm glow that my friends had gone to such an effort to make my birthday special. Thanks guys!
We went back to the Kyoto Gardens for a few photos on the way out and of course the place once again had people sitting on the grass. I think they are fighting a losing battle there.
* Melbourne Tash went home, but we have now made friends with Kiwi Tash who has been in London about eight months.
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06.13.07
Posted in Film at 11.23 pm by Caitlin
Next in the quest to
learn more about Japanese culture and history came the 1954 Akira Kurosawa classic Seven Samurai.
The Institute of Contemporary Arts was holding a screening on the second May bank holiday weekend, right after my return from Senegal. I had planned to go to Dublin originally, then after the Senegal trip I downgraded the plans to a daytrip to Epping Forest. Then we were blessed with traditionally English bank holiday weather – cold, rainy and vile – so the plans were downgraded again and I decided I could just about manage a Tube journey to Pall Mall.
The movie, in black and white, is about a poor village, under threat of attack from bandits, who hire samurai (or more accurately, ronin, or masterless samurai) to protect them and their barley crop. Every character is very different so it’s an interesting interplay of personalities and conflicts. It’s a long movie – three and a half hours, including a short intermission – but was never dull.
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Posted in Film at 11.16 pm by Caitlin
Continuing with the Japanese theme, I traded theatre for more cinema.
In April I saw a movie in the Japanimation series at the Barbican Centre, Karas: The Prophecy. In May I went back to the next in the series. After a dull talk we were treated to a preview of a Paprika, a stunning anime movie made by Kon, who made Perfect Blue. It had only just opened in the US and won’t be out officially in the UK for a few months yet.
It was deeply engrossing, visually spectacular and very weird. It was about a dream machine – and it reminded me a little of the Ursula Le Guin novel Lathe of Heaven. A lot of the anime was drawn by hand, but it was interwoven with CGI elements as well. The music was really cool – a bit Eurotrashy but with a Japanese feel.
The big downside was that some bright spark decided to make the English subtitles a yellowy-white and they were impossible to read every time there was a light background – probably about 20% of the time.
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