Quiz Love

I love British TV and one of my favorite genres is the quiz-themed.  For me, it is relaxing, and at the same, ironically, provides a chance for me get hyped shouting answers at the telly– cathartic when you’re in a country where you have no friends, family or work colleagues to talk to just any time.  My favorites (in order) are:  University Challenge (BBC), Mastermind (BBC), The Chase (ITV) and Eggheads (BBC).

I began to follow a full season of University Challenge (meaning, start to finish) last year. When I was in the US, I would catch it on delayed run on YouTube. I have also introduced a few American friends to it, and they love it.  Which makes me wonder why Quiz shows are not as big or common on American TV, but anyway.  I digress.  University Challenge got a spike (not just in viewership but in social media buzz) largely because of Canadian Eric Monkman and his team mates Justin Yang (also Canadian), Ben Chaudri (who has made “Nominate Chaudri” a popular byline when you need help with answers) and Paul Cosgrove (he of the bemused smile and closing-bracket sitting position) from Wolfson College, Cambridge.  And also the team from Emmanuel College Cambridge led by Bobby Seagull and his baby-faced teammates.  Monkman’s tight-browed intensity and booming voice is a stark contrast to Seagull’s smiley enthusiasm, but they seem to share an endearing lack of arrogance or self consciousness.  And altho neither team won the Championship — that honor went to Oxford’s Balliol College (led by Joey Goldman) — they came out with their own cult following.  The bromance also produced radio stints and a book  (which I must admit I have yet to get a copy, but I will).

So far this year, the show is at the quarter finals level.  My favorite team is Ulster University — if only because, or maybe precisely because, they are so out-of-the-mold of the teams or winners:

1.  They are from Northern Ireland (largely under represented in UC)
2.  Their average age is 50 which makes them often more than twice the average age of their opponents (“You’re never too old!”)
3.  They are a very good, solid, cohesive and fast team
4.  They are NOT Oxbridge (to point out the obvious)
5.  Their spirited, excitable and animated expressions when they get a question right or wrong.

They have that underdog quality that makes you just want to root for them, because they represent the quiet and deadly potential, nay power, of the unexpected.  I really hope they win (they lost to St. John’s Cambridge, but still have another shot) or at least go through to the semis.  Go Ulster!

Bird Watching

When I tell friends in the US about the “British things” I like or do when in the UK, I get reactions like eyes widening (or rolling) or raised eyebrows.  Drives home the reality that my lives on either side of the pond are VERY different, and this oftentimes makes my interests on one side of the pond sound quite incredulous to people on the other.  But I always say “vive de difference” as it is always difference, diversity, even incongruence, in life that makes things inviting and fun.  The latest thing I have developed is (get ready for this) BIRDWATCHING.  In Chicago, I don’t get the chance to see the variety of birds that i can when in our little village in the UK.  I can tell you though that at any one time when I look up the sky in the Windy City, I can see at least 3 planes flying northwestward over Lake Michigan, en route to Ohare International.  Mechanized flying things that roar, not quite as graceful as birds and their songs.  And so I started noticing these feathered friends from those daily look-outs from the window by the kitchen sink here in England, and hearing their tweets and calls.  What a refreshing treat.  Not long after my father-in-law gave us a colored poster of common birds (pull out from a Sunday paper) which piqued my curiosity even more. Add on a day at Caernarfon Castle with the RSPB (Royal Society of the Protection of Birds) selling (and me buying) lapel pins of a host of bird species to raise funds, and the serendipitous £1 find I got from a charity shop (RSPB Pocket Guide to British Birds by Simon Harrap) the very next day, and there we have the perfect storm of the birth of a new hobby.

Over Christmas, Hubby bought me a pair of binoculars, specifically, a NIKON PROSTAFF 7s 10×42.  They are not the typical small little things that birdwatchers can thrust into the pockets.  More the type you hang on your neck while you move around. They feel “substantial” — which I like, because they have more the feel that you’re holding a piece of equipment rather than a toy.  The best part of it is that it is lightweight, for all the power it packs in.  

I keep on the window sill the RSPB pocket guide, and a more expansive “Birds of Britain and Europe” by Rob Hume. I like that both books either describe the bird voice/sounds or illustrate their flight pattern.  Both books also provide a cross reference to confusion species or similar species.  I also have a small notebook where I have begun to note down the birds I have seen and where.  For now, I think the most special one I have on the list is the Great-Spotted Woodpecker which honored us with its presence when it came for the bird-feed pellets we have just put out.                                                                                                                            With his bold black wings decorated with little white dots, and a bright red crown and under tail — what a beauty.  We now have 3 feeders in the backyard, and we like to think it has become Blue Tits Central in this little neighborhood.  They fly together, and oftentimes we have finches, blackbirds, chaffinches, robins, starlings, chubby wood pigeons and even the odd pheasants joining in there party.  I am so looking forward to more of these glorious feathered creatures, in number and types, coming over in the spring and summer.

“…I keep looking for one more teacher, only to find that fish learn from the water and birds learn from the sky.” ~ Mark Nepo (author, in “Facing The Lion, Being The Lion, Finding Inner Courage Where It Lives”)

Read To Me

I love this site.  If only to hear passages from classic and modern novels in THAT accent.  www.cartenoire.co.uk.  “Are you sitting comfortably?  Then we shall begin….”

Sweet Dreams Are Made Of These

I am a bit of an etsy junkie.  I superheart etsy.  It’s part of my secret life, though not so secret now.  I don’t think my clients would ever believe I indulge in that kind of a diversion — but I do, and friends from way back would not be surprised about it.  It’s just that in this day and age of high docket and case traffic in “The Practice” with heavy reliance/usage of technology (read:  you work on your computer almost the whole day), most all Practitioners need those precious few moments in between to rest the eyes.  Some look to the hills (yeah, there are a few of us that are non-worldly I would imagine).  Some take on the golf course or walk down to the pub.  Many sneak out to indulge in retail therapy.  Some plod on with work and become the cattiest creatures.  And some of us do the easy thing — we click on the “etsy” tab and enjoy quiet sessions feasting our eyes on pretty handmade things, feeling more and more covetous by the second, and throwing our choices into our virtual “shopping carts”.  And then, rational beings that we are, we calm ourselves down, edit our wants (carts), convince ourselves we’re not supposed to spend hard-earned money on gorgeous little silly things, and get back to work,  silently convinced that we are in the wrong profession.

One of my favorite etsy sellers is “Lapomme“,  — She of the hand that is as nimble with the needle as it is skilled with the pen.  The artist-writer too is an expat.  She lives in the South of France.

I adore her lavender-packed pillowettes, as I like to call them (and of which I have a few, including in the form of uber-loveable worry dolls); —

squish 'em and you get a whiff of lavendar -- wooooh!

and greedily eye her bigger ones (which I must admit shuffles in and out of my shopping cart as I wrestle with my conscience).  But best of all, I love her little sleep angels.  Here are the ones I have.  Or “had” sounds more like it —   most of them are now in the hands and homes of my friends who are now Lapomme’s fans as well.  A sleep angel definitely is one of those things that is a delight to give and to get.  How did the artist manage to make each of them so loveable, well-dressed (in flowers and leaves) and sleepy looking, with just a few stitches here and there? I wonder —

I'm keeping the "black sheep", second from right. She is actually made of heavy denim.

And to prove their really angels, look here, they have wings!

ok, now they have their backs turned to you, hohoho!

And because they have lavender inside, their aim is to get you sleeping but the downside is they just can’t keep themselves from dozing off —

Zzzzzzzz

Meanwhile, I’ve made mental note to get the book (“Provenciana”) when they hits the shelves.

Frou Frou for Free Free

Among the first things that struck me about British magazine stands (they call them “news agents” here) are the proliferation of gossipy tabloids (note to self:  is not “gossipy tabloids” a tautologic term?), and — tadah —  the many interesting freebies that come with their lifestyle, fashion and art publications.  Magazines in the US don’t give freebies the way they do here — cookbooks, DVDs, scarves, body butter from Body Shop(!), soaps, notebooks, gift wrapping prints… you name it.  

I decided to go for a walk down the street to the Co-Op at the end of the day yesterday for air and to top up on our groceries.  At the end of the run I thought to treat myself to a magazine — any no-brainer light read that had nothing to do with the practice of Law.  Maury skype’d his suggestion:  get a really trashy tabloid for a dose of cultural exchange.  Hahaha, nice.  I stood in front of the overflowing rack taking the longest time to pick something I would enjoy reading and not just pick out for the fancy freebie.  I ended up with “Easy Living”, a Conde Nast publication which I believe has no US counterpart, although the racks of Barnes&Noble certainly would have them in their foreign mags.  Nicole Kidman on the cover, and a Cath Kidston “washbag” as a freebie, plus a Cath Kidston mag/catalogue.  That looked like a fair enough deal for GBP3.20 ($4.50).

Cath Kidston does a lot of floral oilcloth stuff.  Her work is equal parts sweetness and quirk.  The frou-frouness of florals is something I must admit I have yet to get used to, much less appreciate.  But this side of the pond, it is a style/design de rigeur and well entrenched in many places, whether in the bigger cities or the smaller towns.  And, when in Rome….

I made a good choice with Easy Living.  It is a cross between Domino, H&G and a little bit of TheNest, translated to CondeNast-ese.  It entertained me enough as I laid in bed battling the sneezies that night.  Light read, although, as of now, very foreign to me still.  :) 

See anything you like?

 

 

I love the butter dish. So English country cool.

The Last Lecture is on Its Way Across the Sea

My copy of Prof. Randy Pausch’s The Last Lecture is going to find its way to a friend across the pond, in Manila.  —

The book is underneath my doodling.

I’ve never understood pity and self-pity as an emotion. We have a finite amount of time. Whether short or long, it doesn’t matter. Life is to be lived.”
— Randy Pausch (The Last Lecture)

It’s In The Accent

It never ceases to amaze me how Technology has changed the world.  Being a child of the ’80s (ooops, did I reveal too much), I witnessed it all.  From typewriter to word processor to Windows and the Internet.  Tech has made art and the artful accessible.  Today, mixed media rules.

“Charlie and Lola” is probably my favorite little brother-and-sister mixed-media treat.  They are cartoon character sketches overlapped with computer-generated effects, and cut outs from photos, superimpositions here and there.  All the what-have-yous.  Definitely not your ordinary cartoon.

Audially, these little kids just have adorable British accents.  And really, tell me, who would not fall in love that?  ; )  I know I have — head over heels.  :)

Their site  :  www.charlieandlola.com

Here are some pics.

 

 

All children are artists.  The problem is how to remain an artist once he grows up.  ~Pablo Picasso~