I have started signing up for all the Timeout preview screenings - mainly because I am stingy, love the cinema and love a free film even more, no matter what the film is like. The problem is that the preview screening thing is based on a bit of a lottery service, so most of the time you get a polite email back telling you that you haven't succeeded this time but that urges you to keep trying.
Now, for the first time I actually won one of the free tickets, to the preview of Caramel - I read up on the film and thought (shamefully) "oh god, a Lebanese film about women". All the people I tried to ask along with me thought the same thing (because I ended up going on my own). I wasn't about to miss out on the first free ticket I finally won though, so I went to the cinema with absolutely no expectations but a massive bucket of popcorn.
Oh my god was I wrong with my initial reaction. It is probably the law that if you expect something to be long and dreary you end up having the best time, and thus of course this ended up one of the most enjoyable films I have seen this year. The film follows the lives of a group of female friends who all work in the same run-down beauty parlour. One has a doomed affair with a married man, one discovers feelings for a female visitor to the shop, one is about to get married and terrified that her husband-to-be will discover that she is no longer a virgin, and one is a menopausal actress terrified of getting older.
This set-up doesn't sound very humourous, and there is a great feeling of bitter-sweetness throughout the movie, so it is even more surprising that the comedy elements are so frequent and so thoroughly funny. Beirut is shown as a normal, exotic (rather than war-torn) city where its citizens lead everyday lives, although undercurrents of the conflict between women's liberation on one side and a male-dominated society on the other side can be seen throughout the film. Another great thing is the soundtrack which suits the whole feel of the story from start to finish. It doesn't happen often that I walk out of the cinema at the end thinking "wow", but it definitely happened this time!
So I can thoroughly recommend this movie (although people who really don't want to watch films about women's issues should probably stay clear). I guess I also got a lesson in being a bit more open-minded with regards to non-mainstream movies!
Ouch, it's been ages since I last posted anything. It's not even that I haven't had anything to write about - it's probably more like that I have done more things that equate to "having a life", I went to Norfolk for a long weekend which was brilliant, and work has been insanely busy, so I have been too lazy to write blog postings. But now I'm back because the novelty of "having a life" has worn off (I'm not actually that sad, honest :-) and I have to have an outlet for my new hobby: my brand new camera.
Yes, I have taken the big step, raided my savings account and finally upgraded my camera to something a little more modern (although my old camera was only 4-5 years old, that would make it an antique in digital camera terms, and I've been looking with envy at what everyone else's cameras were able to do for quite a while). So I bought a brand new camera this week. Since the two things that most annoyed me about my old camera were the frustrating (lack of) zoom and (equally lack of) wideangle lens, I went all the way and bought one of those super-super-zoom hybrid cameras: the Panasonic Lumix DMC-FZ18.
It is absolutely brilliant actually. On my daily walk through Hampstead Heath (I walk 5 miles to work everyday now, very healthy - and relaxing) I tried to take pictures of the local wildlife before, but what you could see was usually *random landscape* with black dot in the middle where you tried to zoom in on some animal. This time you actually could see the animal in the picture. A novelty! I was 20 mins late for work and got mistaken for a birdwatcher, but hey.
Anyway, here are some of the photos. I actually feel quite lucky that I get to walk past all this on the way to work everyday, despite living in the Big Smoke!
I've just been to my first ever Weightwatchers meeting. Yes, I now have 10 weeks to go until I am supposed to spend three entire days on a horse on and next to mountains, a day in a canoe and multiple other days dragging my backpack around Northern Sweden, and the last thing I want is to be unfit and dumpy for the experience. So this calls for drastic measures. Hence the Weightwatchers meeting, and my new routine of walking 4 miles a day and walking the stairs at Highgate instead of taking the escalator. That's worth mentioning because the stairs at Highgate are so long and high that at the top end of them you can't feel your legs anymore and indeed you can barely see anybody walk up those stairs. People will patiently wait at the bottom of the escalator until it's their turn to go up, no matter how long it takes. And now there is me (usually joined by one superfit person who just sprints them up taking two steps in one and makes you look like a granny in comparison) climbing the stairs next to them.
So, then I thought if I do the health thing I'll do it properly so I joined Weightwatchers. The surprising thing is, it was actually pretty good fun! At the very least I can now see why it works for people because you are forced to 'fess up to your unhealthy habits once a week (and apparently the scales don't lie). The most amusing thing was a huge discussion by some of the people in the group about which is the least-diet-ruining way to get drunk! I like it. So, I'll do this thing to plan, go back next week and see what happens!
Other than that four more days to go till the Sonata Arctica gig which I'm childishly excited about!
I finally got my tickets to the Sonata Arctica concert in a week. Yay! I already saw them in November (they must like the UK) and it was probably the most thoroughly enjoyable concert I've ever been to. It probably helps that the songs are so easily "singable". The friend I went with was singing along after 20 minutes even though he'd never heard any of their songs before. This time I'm bringing three friends. They should start giving me a referral bonus or something, haha...
And on even more concert related stuff... I found out that my trip to Sweden in the summer happens to co-incide with a Europe-gig at a town festival in a city called Skellefteå, which is very close to where I am planning to go. Now, Europe probably aren't the trendiest choice of band to watch, but in music terms they were "my first love" in the 80s. I had all the posters on the wall, knew all the records by heart, watched the video recordings over and over, started pestering my poor mother to let me go to their concert a whole half year before they even came on tour to Vienna (in the end I was allowed to go - with my dad. My dad now claims that he really enjoyed it, though this is in contrast to his behaviour at the actual concert which he spent mostly poking fun at the rest of the audience and waving a pretend lighter. Classic "embarrassing dad" moments.) I even bought a Swedish book out of my eternal loyalty to the band when I was 15, and to this day I can still speak the language.
The funniest thing was that many many years later, as a grown up (as grown-up as I'm ever going to be anyway), with my Europe-enthusiasm long faded, I flew back to London from a trip to Stockholm, walked off the plane (faintly noting that one of the other passengers looked vaguely familiar), and... found myself standing next to Joey Tempest (Europe's singer and the sole object of my teenage affection during the 80s) at baggage claim. My grown-up reaction? I nearly had a heart attack, walked into the arrival hall (instead of attempting to say a few words to him like most people would have done in a similar situation) and shouted "guess who was on my plane" towards my waiting then-boyfriend with such a volume that half the arrival hall turned around to look at me. Not a very dignified story, but I still enjoy telling it whenever the conversation subject comes to teen idols. How many people can say that they randomly bumped (sort of) into theirs?
So, it has got to be done. I am obviously destined to stalk the band to near the Arctic Circle, just so I can sing "Ca-ha-har-rieee" on top of my voice in the midnight sun and jump along to "The Final Countdown". And I will be going to a festival in a foreign country, on my own. This should be interesting to say the least: either I will drink some beer and meet random people, or I will have an interesting, but character building, billy no mates experience!
Have you ever read Dilbert, the comic strip? I'm not sure Dilbert has much relevance for people who do not work in a corporate software environment, but for those that do, it actually is scarily close to real life.
I work in an internet start-up, and if that isn't enough I work in an internet advertising start-up, which combines the chaos of a regular start-up and the commercial egoes of an advertising company. I generally love my job. Despite my glaring lack of experience when starting this role (I now call myself a product manager), I have been able to experiment, improve by trial and error, pick up skills that I would never have had in my job description before (such as writing website copy), so I cannot really complain (well, don't bite the hand that feeds you, as they say).
However, one of the less fun characteristics of my job is that I sometimes feel like I am working in a kindergarten where kids pull each others' hair, throw their toys out of the sandbox, throw stomping tantrums, threaten to "tell mommy"... and I have been able to experience a wonderful example of office politics weirdness first hand in the last 24 hours.
Last night, just before "end of play" as the lingo goes, I had a meeting with one of the owners of my company about some outsourcing work that I was compiling a specification for. The company owner informed me, "don't worry, your job is not in jeopardy, but..." and that my line manager had criticized my specifications as not being technical enough. Hmm. The line manager sits two desks away from me and has only ever given me positive feedback. Naturally I was pretty taken aback that somebody would complain about my work to the management instead of relaying a few pieces of feedback the two metres to the left to where I am sitting. So after mulling about it overnight (read: seething and feeling sorry for myself) I decided to go about it what I saw as the grown up way and confront my line manager.
Hence, today I called my line manager into a meeting.
Me (still annoyed): "I hear that you have been criticising my specifications to the management, and it would help if you could give feedback to me personally. Maybe you can give me some tips on what you would like me to change."
Line manager: "What???"
The rest of the conversation consisted of my line manager swearing to God that he had never gone behind my back, insisting that the company owner either didn't know what he was talking about or made everything up.
I went back to my desk (now slightly confused as to what was going on) and continued to work, while my line manager was clearly extremely annoyed (to say the least), which suggested to me that he was speaking the truth. Maybe intimidation tactics are the new secret to effective management as proposed in the "Handbook of successful company ownership" these days.
Office politics are truly bizarre. Something tells me that the whole story is not over yet either. My line manager will have a go at the company owner, who doubtlessly will then have a go at me for my part in the quarrel. And round we go. More hair is pulled, more toys are thrown out of prams, and the total sum of constructive solutions will be zero. I guess the only constructive solution is to avoid office politics at all costs by keeping your head down, taking everything you hear with a pinch of salt, giggling at the accuracy of the Dilbert comics and watching the playground fights from a distance.
I'm a lot poorer now, because the travel company I booked my wilderness adventure this summer with confirmed that the tour was definitely going ahead - so I sent them the rest of the money. Which was a lot. Oh well, living on beans on toast isn't so bad either!
I'm really excited though! This trip falls into the category of "something I have always wanted to do but never plucked up the determination to actually go for it". Basically, I will fly to Stockholm and then have to find a way to venture the 900km north to the Arctic Circle. Apparently this isn't as easy as it sounds, as the faster trains (or trains at all, for that matter) stop about halfway from Stockholm to Sorsele, and then it's a choice of taking local buses that run once or twice a day, or a (great sounding) trip on a little wilderness railway route that takes regular stops to chase assorted wildlife off the tracks.
On arrival in the nature reserve in Lapland there will be a three day horse riding tour through the mountains (an all time dream of mine), a wildlife safari, canoeing and other activities. And the midnight sun! And then the same or a similar route down to Stockholm again, and back to England, at which point I will probably look and feel like a truck has run me over. All very exciting though.
So this also means that I now have exactly 12 weeks in which to get off my butt and get fit!! I doubt I will need arctic explorer levels of fitness, but getting fit is something I have been planning (and failing at) for... erm... years (I have lost count how often I have "started a gym routine on Monday"), and this trip will maybe give me an actual goalpost to work towards. Now, if my flatmate didn't keep bringing in those lovely bottles of red wine...
If you were independently wealthy, where in the world would you live?
OK that depends on just how wealthy I am. If we are talking about Bill Gates dimensions (one can dream) I wouldn't live in just one part of the world. I would have houses in
- The Rocky Mountains in Canada because it is truly the most amazing place I have ever been to.
- An idyllic rural area by a lake in Sweden (because I have always loved Sweden).
- One of the cobbled streets in Central Vienna (because that's where I'm from).
- Muswell Hill in London (because that's where I live now and like it, and I assume money won't be a problem).And would it be too immodest to ask for a beach house in California as well? Hmmm...
If I'm just "normal" wealthy then I guess I would have to go for the nice house by a lake in Sweden within reasonable reach of Stockholm....
On Wednesday I went to my first rock concert in a while, which was great. I am a big fan of metal, especially Scandinavian metal (I just like the melodic style that is played there), so one of my resolutions is to make use of living in London by going to gigs whenever a band I like happens to come to town.
Last week Nightwish (a Finnish symphonic metal band) played three dates at the Astoria and I went to one of them. It was really good fun - great music, great atmosphere, a few not very "metal"-ish white wine spritzers... and deafness for the rest of the night afterwards, as we stood right next to the speakers!
I also dragged along a friend of mine who really liked it. Now, because my music taste isn't exactly mainstream, most people look at my ipod collection and laugh (and that's the more polite ones). So I always feel chuffed when one of my friends listens to "my" music or comes to a gig with me and then ends up enjoying it!
I'm back from my second trip to Vienna this month. A very Austrian month indeed! This time it was a scheduled trip though - my yearly trip home for Easter - and I had been planning it for months (which still didn't help the extortionate travel prices but hey). I didn't stay in Vienna this time, I stayed in my parents' home in a small village in Lower Austria, near Mistelbach. The area is called the Weinviertel (wine quarter) and is thus characterised by vineyards, wine cellars and the fact that every village has a wine press as a "special landmark". Apart from my parents' village which has an old fire engine, possibly rebelling against the rest by putting up a different landmark!
Other than that the area is very wide and mostly consisting of fields and rolling hills, as can be seen here:
Easter was a very freezing affair. Somehow winter came back and on the day I left to go back to England it snowed! I spent most of my time sorting through my old stuff, and found gems such as my teenage song lyrics and diaries (neither of which should ever see the light of day). My parents sorted through even older things, such as letters written by my grandparents in the second world war and its aftermath. It was a bit of an eye opener in terms of the hardships people had to live through at that time, the hunger they suffered and how much they lost during the war - and the barely contained hope that life will become more prosperous again.
I also found bureaucratic correspondence (insurance policies etc) from before the second world war, all signed with "Heil Hitler" instead of "Kind regards". Looking at it you cannot help but be amazed at the insanity of that time. Did people realise the ridiculousness of greeting each other with "Hail *insert dictator's name*"? Were they too scared to do otherwise or did they simply go with the flow because times were tough and they didn't want to question authority? Very bizarre...
On my way back to England I took an afternoon out to visit Gent in Belgium. I didn't expect much because I had never been there before, but it was amazingly beautiful. I also have to give an extra mention to the wonderfulness that is cherry beer (and it doesn't cost £5 there like it does here).
Here are some pictures of the town:
Above are some buildings in the old medieval centre, and below a huge town square called Vrijdagmarkt (which confusingly becomes a bustling market on Sundays instead of Fridays like the name suggests). The square was really impressive, and it helped that the cloud formations were beautiful combined with the huge statue in the middle of the square (I was too busy taking pictures to remember to look up who the person on the statue is)
The rest of the time I walked through the streets and along the waterways with hundreds of bridges. I don't think the pictures pay tribute to how beautiful these waterways and the old buildings and bridges next to it are. Especially because the light was pretty low (although the clouds sometimes opened to let some sunshine through) - in a way the dark clouds and blue sky patches added to the atmosphere though.
It seems to be pretty cheap to go to Gent from London, as train connections from Brussels are included in the Eurostar ticket - I'll definitely be back in the summer to drink cherry beer by the waterside - or go to Bruges which must be stunning too. Until then I have at least three litres of random cherry and fruit beer bottles that I bought in a supermarket as a souvenir (and then carried home - ouch).
Last weekend I went to Vienna and Lower Austria (with half a day pause in Paris) so I thought I would do a little photo diary.
Above are a few pictures of Sacre Coeur and around. Since I only had about 6 hours in Paris, and two of those were taken up eating an enormous amount of cheese with my Parisian friend (a dish called Raclette which consists of cheese, more cheese and some potatoes and meat), I stayed in the Sacre Coeur and Montmartre areas. Really pretty!
Back in Vienna, me and my parents went to the zoo for an afternoon. It was extremely cold. I think the polar bears were the only ones really appreciating the weather! There is a panda baby at Vienna zoo, which is called Fu Long and famous for being the first panda born in captivity in... I don't know how many, but a lot of years. It is extremely cute, and you do have to queue up for a long time to get a glimpse! There were also twin polar bear babies who were adorable and jealously looked after by their mother.
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