Tuesday, February 28, 2012

Leap Year Day! (Almost)

The weather has cleared and we can actually see across the harbour again. Still a bit cold, around 17 degrees and a slight drizzle today. However, everyone says it will start to heat up in the next couple of weeks which is just as well, because we are down to counting in days, not months, till David Jen and the kids get here. 24 days to go! Then only another 7 after that till Martin and Renee join us. The others we are still counting in months; watch this space though!
The boat trip on the junk on Saturday was great fun, even in the rain, and the restaurant we went to for lunch was fantastic. I bought their cookbook and hope to have a bash at recreating their signature dishes. It wasn't Chinese, it was Western food, beautiful dishes full of flavour. We loved it.The sad part was saying goodbye to our dear friends Sue and Chris who are returning to Australia.
I went to see Cosi Fan Tutte on Sunday. It was a little bizarre to hear an opera written by a German, sung in Italian with a big screen giving English and Cantonese subtitles! Afterwards, my friend (another Sue) and I came back here and Les cooked and served us Sunday dinner in true Masterchef style.
Monday' s talk was from a music teacher who let us hear 10 pieces of music and we had to guess the composer (from a list she provided so it was good for guess work) and tell her what we thought the music was "saying" to us. Great fun and I'm proud to say I got 5 correct! However one of them was Lennon/McCartney so that was a bit of a no brainer to be honest. The others ranged from Aaron Copland to Stravinsky. Immediately afterwards was our NIA class which I'm loving. Glad to say she is willing to continue now that the trial 4 week period is over so we can't be hopeless cases! It's funny though; she is really thin, has fabulous posture and moves so gracefully.She was a professional ballet dancer before she taught NIA. So anyway, here's me trying my best to copy all her moves and thinking I probably look just like her...then I passed a plate glass window mid-manoeuvre... and saw a bl***y great cart horse in a pink top and enormous baggy jogging pants with a big red sweaty face. Astonished, I looked behind me and as I turned, glanced back at the window and saw the carthorse was turning too. Yes, dear readers, 'twas I, me myself . Oh dear!
So putting that swiftly behind us, moving on, in the late afternoon a group of us went to see The Artist. I just caught the headlines saying it won 5 Oscars before I went. I spent last night watching the full Oscars show on TV. What on earth has Billy Crystal been doing to his face? It looked like he'd been blown up with a bicycle pump.
Tuesday I gave my Paisley Shawl presentation to the Study Group. It was well received and they were impressed with my Power Point skills, so I've been asked to put on a wee masterclass for them.Uh oh. It was achieved by trial and error, I've forgotten so much, so I'll need to have a practice before I go back to them on that! I'm glad its over. I liked the idea of the research and didn't mind standing up to present, but I found it really difficult to organise my thoughts and put them on paper in any cohesive way. I've got too used to being able to ramble on here in any old fashion. But my bibliography was spot on. I haven't forgotten how to cite references academically correctly!
Then in the afternoon,I had my Cantonese lesson and it was a disaster. It was as if he was talking in a foreign language. Oh, but wait a minute, he was! Honestly, I couldn't remember a thing, my brain was still hurting from the Shawl presentation and I was really tired. So then he slaps on an assessment in two weeks time and says he hopes I get a better mark than last time. Also I need to do a lot of revision because I've forgotten too much, he says.
Tomorrow night we are off to Happy Valley to see the horse racing. We'll be a group of 20 so we've taken a box and I think we get food and a wee drinkie too. Before that, I really must attack the dust; it's like tumbleweed in a deserted street on a Cowboy movie set in here. See,there's that Oscars influence creeping in!

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