Things to ponder : 11 March 2011

I had been upset about a work-related email since yesterday but woke up this morning to the horrific news from Japan which put things into perspective and I quickly got over myself.

– David Abraham, a Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations based in Tokyo, writes about the search for solid ground ;

Civility still reigned though: pedestrians waited for traffic lights to turn green before they crossed the road and no car horns blared. (New York Times)

– The London Review of Books also has an eye witness account ;

– Japanese skyscrapers swaying dramatically;

– In Focus has photographs of the damage  (The Atlantic)

– but things would be a lot worse without Japan’s remarkable disaster readiness (Frum Forum) ;

– one of my favourite journalists, Nicholas Kristof, covered the 1995 Kobe earthquake which killed more than 6,000 people when he was Tokyo bureau chief for The New York Times and he offers some words of hope :

In an essay in the Times after the Kobe quake, I ended with a 17th century haiku from one of Japan’s greatest poets, Basho:

The vicissitudes of life.
Sad, to become finally
A bamboo shoot.

I find something noble and courageous in Japan’s resilience and perseverance, and it will be on display in the coming days. This will also be a time when the tight knit of Japan’s social fabric, its toughness and resilience, shine through. So maybe we can learn just a little bit from Japan. In short, our hearts go out to Japan, and we extend our deepest sympathy for the tragic quake. But also, our deepest admiration.

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Top 100 women

In honour of today being the 100th anniversary of International Women’s Day, The Guardian has put together a list of the world’s most inspirational women.

I am surprised that Dame Helen Mirren is not on the list – not only has she played really strong women, such as in Prime Suspect, but she also shows that you can continue to look fantastic in your 60s.

Top 100 women | World news | guardian.co.uk

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My February 2011

Art

The Clock (Christian Marclay) – so good it was worth a three-hour wait on a freezing February morning in New York

Books

Skippy Dies (Paul Murray) : funny and poignant and makes  me very glad I don’t have to relive my teenage years

True Grit (Charles Portis) : the dialogue in the movie made me want to read the book and the novel lived up to my expectations

The Imperfectionists (Tom Rachman) : the only imperfection is in the title, absolutely loved this book

Dance

Flamenco Hoy by Carlos Saura (New York City Center) : transported me back to my holiday in Cordoba and made me want to take flamenco lessons

Movies

– Biutiful (Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu) : beautiful performance by Javier Bardem although the lesson of this bleak film seems to be that we live short painful lives without any beauty.  I am more of a Vicky Cristina Barcelona-type of girl

– The King’s Speech :  the second time round you really notice how fantastic Colin Firth‘s performance was, a worthy Oscar winner

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Things to ponder : 4 March 2011

The funniest article I have read for a long time is Tour de Gall, AA Gill‘s review of Parisian restaurant L’Ami Louis in Vanity Fair.

This is his description of the dining room before he even gets going on the food :

It’s a long, dark corridor with luggage racks stretching the length of the room. It gives you the feeling of being in a second-class railway carriage in the Balkans. It’s painted a shiny, distressed dung brown. The cramped tables are set with labially pink cloths, which give it a colonic appeal and the awkward sense that you might be a suppository. In the middle of the room is a stubby stove that also looks vaguely proctological.

-more seriously it makes me ashamed that the government of Bangladesh is trying to take over Grameen Bank (Nicholas Kristof) ;

– new word watch : “precariat” – people whose lives are precarious because they have little or no job security, from precarious and proletariat (The Big Picture) ;

– new word watch II : “aerotroplis” – a city planned around its airport (The Wall Street Journal) ;

– old words used in an inspirational way: Clarence Jones, author of Behind the Dream, chooses the five best speeches of all time (The Browser) ;

Martin Luther King, Jr was the only person I have ever observed or known – and I’ve never ever seen or heard anyone do it since – who could compose a speech extemporaneously in real time and while he was speaking. Like we use computer skills, he could cut and paste in his mind from previous speeches or writings and he could insert those excerpts into his real time speech. It was an extraordinary ability. It was a transcendental experience to be there. It was like watching lightning captured in a bottle.

– visual inspiration : photographer Timothy Allen’ stunning images of people living in the world’s most extreme environments (BBC).

Have a good weekend.

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