"Darnce"

So we went to that performance choreographed by the guy who did the choreography for Athens 2004. Athens 2004 opening and closing were not bad at all. Papaioannou is his name. Apparently he is well known. I don't know the first thing about darnce.

The performance we went to was called "2" and featured an all male cast. It explores men, manliness, masculinity etc.

I am no critic, just someone who went to the performance, to a certain extent against his will, but with a healthy dose of curiosity and with a sense of obligation, so as to ensure that I too would be able to throw my 2 cents into the ring whenever the conversation would turn to the performance.

The stage was minimalist to the extreme. It was empty. All necessary partitions and stage props were carried in and out to great effect by the dancers themselves. There would often be two or three (once or twice even more) poles of interest on the stage at the same time, which worked well enough, although the occasional full cast tableaux were less effective.

Plot-wise, I did not find myself wondering "what the fuck is going on now?" more than two or three times during the show and I must admit that the emphasis on masturbation which was depicted in various ways at various times in the show was a little disconcerting.

There was a small moment of joy when I recognized a reference to the Aristophanes story from the Symposium of Plato. Unfortunately no one else seemed to notice and I had to quietly smile and nod alone as the two dancers stuck back to back became unstuck (with suitably schlocky sound effects) and began their journey as two halves longing to be re-joined. The scene was repeated towards the end of the show.

Some scenes dragged, others were fun enough. In all, though, I would not rate it too highly. Everyone is ranting and raving, but I get the feeling that this is more because one feels compelled to rant and rave about it lest one be considered boorish and unknowing. Yes, some scenes were good and memorable, others were how I would imagine Greek darnce to be, extrapolating from what I have seen of theatre in Greece. At best, the vast majority of theatre in Greece today may described as provincial and lacking in subtlty and finesse. Certain scenes in "2" seemed to have been dumbed down or exaggerated as if the artist was creating for an audience which lacks the ability to appreciate real art, rather than creating for his own gratification.

It was worth having gone, though, if only to be able to have an opinion.

Team

So here is the team I work with - from the right, my boss, with my arm around her, and in the middle in the white trousers is "Igor", my sister.

Yes, I work on a team with 9 girls.

Like the word paleomammalogist

You have to get to the end of the article to find the word, but it is here: "Paleomammalogist"

Cool little story about the oldest known mammals to take to the skies, and a new order of mammals to boot!

Thought I would share.

It's here.

I am currently listening to an album I have recently purchased from Amazon.com. It's in one of those nice hardened CD cases with the button you have to press to open and with suitably tasteless cover art. I am currently listening to the first track which is catchy enough to get used to, but I will reserve judgement on the rest until I have heard the whole thing through a few times.

The monster is loose indeed!

Saddam verdict

Over at Struggling Author Marie has written a few words about the whaddayacallit verdict thing and, basically, I agree with her 100%.

So there.

Kritios boy disappoints tourist...

The Kritios boy stands to the right of the Blond boy in the Acropolis museum, they form the back end of the kouros exhibit in the museum and represent the very latest kouros forms before the sacking of the citadel of Athens in 480BC. I had the pleasure of seeing the two of them again yesterday, along with old favourites such as the moschophoros and the sandal-binder, together with James and Fiona and Korinna. So there we were, kettle drums going off in our mind's ear and quite excited as we were about to see the Krition boy again (of course, I underexposed the whole roll of film, but that's a story for later), when a voice was heard coming from a group of North Americans huddled around the statue: "Oh, that is such a disappointment".

We truly are living in strange times if one can be disappointed with their first sight of the Kritios boy.

"Endangered"

"Workers in Iceland hose down an endangered fin whale"

Err, yeah, like, it's sitting on a bloody platform out of the water - I'd say it's endangered...

Anyway, as one who has eaten whalemeat (and come to think of, the flesh of quite a number of endangered critters), I can honestly say that:
1) I am sure that the people of iceland know what they are doing, and
2) I can't see what all the fuss is about.

After all, whale tastes better than seal.

Possibly getting older

The odd grey hair in amongst the mane of hair on my head, I have sorta lived with that after discovering the first one in a scanned photo of myself proudly standing in front of a fiat cinquecento much less battered than the one I currently abuse. I had thought that the hair was an artifact of the scanning process, but no, it was there in the mirror as well… This was back in 1998. Then came the grey hairs in the beard, which I have been watching as they multiply (while the grey hairs on my head have not managed to do so) since I noticed my first one a couple of years ago. Now, the final bastion has fallen: white hairs in my 'tache. Not only that, but someone at work noticed it only like a day after I had noticed the little fucker. I have no idea what to think about it – like whassisname says in Spinal Tap – I would be, I would be upset, if I were not so heavily sedated. I am not sedated, but I am well too tired and ragged at the edges to sit and worry about the graying of my beard. It was fun laughing at the ginger hairs in there, and I am sure it will be fun to laugh one day at the whiteys, but not yet, dammit.

Well for what it’s worth: Fucksocks!

With a radio and good batteries…

As her bjorkiness so eloquently puts it: I wish I was on a mountain-top…

I wish I were here, actually:








I am going through one of these phases, where the sweat is sticking the shirt to your back and however high you set the airconditioning fan, it is never high enough. No really, this was not intended to be a metaphor and did not start life as such, but now I have read through it again, all I can think about is how well it works metaphorically too.

Bogged down by gunk in almost all aspects of my life at the moment, it is tough to get myself moving to de-gunkify the situation. The crazy inertia of it all. Stuff that should have been done that was not done lying around me wherever I go, at jbex, at home at the club. Inertia chaos.

Did I write about my ear? I don't think I did. On Tuesday about two hours after landing, I heard this high pitched beepy noise and a pop. And that was that. My hearing has been totally bollox in my left ear since then. I can’t follow a conversation in a crowded room, there is buzzy hissing noise twenty-four seven and generally I don't like the way it feels. I am seeing the doctor about it tomorrow.

Some day I'll be writing about the photos… although they were taken before the blog came into being.

jbex

I rarely write about jbex. Once in a while an indirect reference creeps in from time to time, some travel or whatever. Things are tough, bordering on the surreal, bordering on faulty towers. At the moment I feel strong enough. Hell, I am even looking forward to the challenge a little (must be the winter coming in).

There must be a bunch of bad karma being paid off here.

Crickey!

The link in the title is to a page on the BBC website gathering views on immigration following the EU's agreement to let Romania and Bulgaria accede. The accession of these countries will be a good thing, but the reaction of the BCC's readers is a little extreme if you ask me.

What has happened to the UK I knew? When I left eleven years ago I would never have imagined such a reaction to the question.

Is this violent intolerance of foreigners what Tony the Pony's lasting legacy will be? To be honest I am shocked. I am also glad that I have not had the opportunity to visit for four years.

It is sickening to see such ill informed and misguided bare faced racism being bounced about through the official mouthpiece of the Britsh government - the BBC. And did anyone else notice that the pictured bulgarians in the main article are not quite the most representative looking Bulgarians.

I respectfully ask Britain to stop whingeing like spoilt children being told to share their sweets with the other children and make a decision as to whether you want to be in the Union or not. I dare say you would all prefer to have pounds shillings and pence again.

I am totally surprised and appalled.

Palpable excitement

The 9th annual Panhellenic Speleological Convention is being held starting this afternoon down in Monemvasia. My car is buggered. It keeps going crazy and overheating for no perceivable reason. The drive down will be interesting to say the least...

More news on my return.

Hitch-hiking to India from the Balkans

Gordan is a friend I met in southern Macedonia in 2003. We climbed the castle of Kralye Marko together on top of the granite hills of Prilep. At the time I felt a little bad at dragging him up there, not sure if he really wanted to have a look at the castle, or if he was coming along because he was working with me and I was in his country.

I later learned that Gordan is probably more adventurous than I am, as he set off a week after our work together for China, with no intention of paying for transport - just hitch-hiking...

This year he is going one better and he's set off hitchhiking to India and blogging on the way. So it is with great pleasure that I present his bilingual Macedonian / English blog, with photos: Backpacking is a Freedom

Good luck Gordan!

Return from Istanbul Video

This is the way we come back home, come back home, come back home; this is the way we come back home la da da da dee dee dee do.

Dead characters - spoilers!

K - don't read this I write about stuff that happens in the Half Blood Prince...

Yeah, so I am probably the only guy in the world currently recovering from the double whammy of losing Dumbledore and Boone all in the same week.

Dumbledore left us this week because I'm buggered if I am going to pay Ms. Rowling's price for a hardback and the paperback has only just come out, and he was quickly followed by Boone, because we have only just got to that bit of the first season, and only because they have been playing one episode every night for about ten days.

So living in the back of beyond... it sort of means I get hit with the emotions later than the rest of the world, despite globalisation's best efforts to make us all eat drink and shit at the same time and in the same way.

Slight editing in Ravenna II

I have only just noticed how crap and unpolished the text for Ravenna II was. It remains crap and unpolished,. of course, but slightly less so...

Peppers to plant to pepper again

Time to look into what's happening in the garden now:

The story so far can be found out on the following pages:

Green fingers
Peppers...
We have Pollen!
Peppers swelling






At some point in April the plant pots were all taken outside onto the balcony again. The weather had cleared and nighttime temperatures were now consistently above 10 degrees Centigrade. It was just as well we had brought them in for the winter as all those put into plant pots not inside died horribly. The pictures show the situation at 21 April 2006.






By 27 April, some of the peppers had begun to redden as seen in these two pictures. We had what must be two different varieties growing on the balcony - one producing fairly regular conical fruit, the other producing more elongated and irregular, sometimes curved or cornuform. This picture depicts the conical regular fruit.




On 8 May 2006 I had the first harvest! I took one of each type of now fully ripe pepper for use in a spicy stir fry sort of thing that K was putting together. The knife is an IKEA purple knife (if you know how big this is, you get a sense of scale.










On 11 May 2006, we have a plethora of cornuform fruit ready or almost ready for the taking.










Just in time for the Eurovision Song Contest, I harvested these three peppers and took them with me to my sister's eurovision party. Jolly japes all round. Only George managed more than a couple of exploratory bites - so hot were the peppers!









Three peppers in three different stages of ripeness, shown on 22 May 2006.











Some time before 28 May 2006 I had taken to the plants with clippers to remove the unnecessary bits of plant that had been holding the peppers up while they were growing but had no role to play any more. Despite the heavy pruning, more buds were appearing regularly.




This image is from 6 June 2006 and represents peppers of both sorts, collected and given to Komni. The plants were then pruned back a hell of a long way, and we now have a second batch of peppers on the way. I will leave this second batch to use for seeds.

So - peppers from peppers to plant to flower to peppers again…

More writing about balcony-gardening when there is time.

Shine on

Well, it was going to happen sooner or later.

New Acropolis Museum - first day of exhibition

So we went to the opening with K, George and an increasingly pregnant Poppy of the exhibition of finds from the area where the New Acropolis Museum is being built.


The new Museum, being built next to the Weiler building under the Acropolis.


George, Poppy and K

Far too many people in too small a space and politicians and the teams of cameramen following them gave the whole trip to the museum a different feel altogether. The exhibition houses some of the findings from the site of the new museum being built just a few tens of yards away, displayed in cases made out the building materials being used on the new museum. The site cuts through a good slice of old Athens from classical through to late roman and early byzantine. The site will be visible through the floor of the acropolis museum making it a huge almost open-air museum. Poppy had worked for some months before leaving for the UK on the site and had been informed of the opening by an archaeologist friend who was involved in the excavations of ten years.

On arrival and after all the faff of waiting for the Minicult to arrive, we went in and sat through speeches by inaudible archaeololigsts and the booming Minicult himself who mostly talked bollocks using rhetoric worthy of midday soap operas rather than someone with the syllable "cult" in his title.


After the obligatory chamber music and mad crush for the drinks table, and after some of the most impolite and unbecoming scrambles for the unimaginitive but tasty enough canapés K and I managed to enter the exhibition. George and Poppy had left for elsewhere.

Poppy's friend was showing someone famous around. Well, famous enough to be shown around by one of the excavators, but not famous enough to be someone I recognise. The plus side to all this fame and what have you is that K and I and half a dozen others managed to piggy back on Tatiana's tour of the finds and at the same time benefit from both her enthusiasm for and knowledge of the site.


The exhibition is separated into thematic sections.


The first section is worship. In this section we have some good marbles statues of deities which are very rare indeed outsdie the east - there are not many excavated sites in Greece which are contemporary with some of the sections of this site, so although we got the oriental gods here and there, what was found in this esentially rescue dig was unique in Greece. The first "cool" find is a statue of "Isis Panthea" an Isis figure from the second or third century AD.

Isis Panthea

Why Panthea? - well, she’s got the sun disk of Sol Invictus, the corn sheaths of Demeter, the aegis of Athena, the grape clusters of Dionysos around her ears, a snake running around her body, reminiscent of Asclepios, and she is standing on a funky crocodile. All the gods and goddesses together… Next up comes a Zeus Heliopolites – Zeus from Heliopolis (today’s Baalbek), with a whole bunch of other deities on his tunic.



Zeus Heliopolites, appearing after coming all the way from Baalbek, Ladies and Gentlemen

We also saw a nice representation of the Artemis Astarte with the many breasts.

Artemis of the many breasts...


There was a good bust of Plato from a Herm, and a whole bunch of home implements and pottery, commercial stuff and tradesmans' craftsmens' stuff in the economic activity section.

Plato

One thing I liked a lot was how they give the concept of stromatography a real good showing with this conceptual well with many pots discarded in it over time after it had silted up.

Nice representation of the stromatography in one of the silted up wells






I also liked this thumb shaped mortar for the pestle – very nice and apparently not uncommon, sitting amongst the spice containers and cooking vessels in the cooking section of the exhibition.

Can't find something witty to say - but I'm working on it...

In all the exhibition is really quite worth it, very nicely put together museuologically and interesting for the wealth of second and third century AD items on show all in the same place.


Like I said before, the experience of seeing it under the wing of one of the excavators made the whole thing that much more fun.

All venice posts together

In January of 2005 K and I visited Venice and Ravenna.

The story is told in the following posts:

Venice - Jan 2005 Part I
Venice Jan 2005 - Part II
Venice - Jan 2005 Part III
Venice - Jan 2005 Part IV
Venice - Jan 2005 Part V
Ravenna - Jan 2005, Part I
Ravenna - Jan 2005, Part II

Enjoy the story all together.