Four weeks post-partum and I’ve been dismayed to discover that my seemingly miraculous recovery from wine-addiction was entirely fictitious, brought about solely from the pregnancy hormones swamping my body. As the hormones slowly ebb, the love affair with the grape flows and I find myself once more enslaved to that glass or two each night as I settle down in front of House; series 1 and 2 of which I recently downloaded and have been watching obsessively ever since (who would have thought Blackadder's Prince Thickie would make such a brilliant, curmudgeonly American MD?) As a result of my 3 episodes a night habit, I’ve become somewhat of an expert on diagnostic medicine and am prone to pronounce ‘it’s got to be lupus’ every time someone in my house has a sniffle.
On the positive side, my penchant for the hot chocolate and apple crumble served up in my local ‘Shakespeare’ cafe has subsided giving my girth a fighting chance of fitting into my newly acquired wardrobe this side of Christmas.
Pretentious, Moi?
Is it just me or is ‘Little Einsteins’ the most annoying, pretentious and smugly middle-class kids show on TV? It is the TV equivalent of a three year old learning to speak Mandarin and is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with modern parenting where a child can no longer just be 'normal' but must be either gifted or on a spectrum of one sort or another.
The plot, such as it is, is four precocious kids whizzing around in a rocket, landing in places like Tuscany or Paris where they chant the names of famous composers over and over again (‘Dvorak, oh! Dvorak!’) to the tunes of said composer, while words like ‘allegro’ and ‘adagio’ flash up on the screen along with a picture of that composer (eminently useful that the average three-year-old is able to pick out Grieg in a line-up).
Last week I struggled to understand the point of five cello’s prancing about to Peer Gynt on the banks of the river Po. And today I really thought it had gone too far as the characters searched for the ingredients for rocket soup -- how pretentious! but it turned out the soup was actually for the rocket-ship, rather than a soup made out of a rocket leaves...mind you, it wouldn’t have come as a great surprise- next they’ll be singing about the virtues of cashmir sweaters or the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvingnon blanc (which to be honest might actually be quite useful as a life-skill).
Of course there is nothing wrong with introducing your children to classical music; my children hear it regularly if I happen to have Lyric FM playing on the internet; but being able to name a composer, while charming, is of little use to a three year old. There does seem to be this drive among middle-class parents to have ‘gifted’ or ‘exceptional’ children who can read and play instruments before they’re three. Learning to do something early doesn’t necessarily make a child any brighter than a kid who learns those skills later on: Steven Hawkings commented in an interview recently that he couldn’t read until he was 8- and it could be argued that playing in mud or emptying the pots and pans cupboard is more educational anyway.
Personally I’d rather they learned to tie their shoe laces or wipe their own bottoms than speak fluent French.
Abu Dhabi aka Morocco
And finally.... I recently got to see Sex and the City 2 which, much to my excitement, is supposedly part set in AbuDhabi. It was, in a word, abysmal.
I don’t know what was more unrealistic, the four subservient Emiratis holding open the car doors for the four female protagonists at the airport (I doubt Emiratis hold their own toothbrushes), or when Aiden tells Carrie that ‘they consider it rude to keep people waiting here’. This comment was so at odds with the way of life here is, where nothing happens on time and in fact it's practically mandatory to be late, with inshallah (roughtly translated: in Allah we hope/God willing/not a feckin' hope pal) being the stock response to any pressing questions.
Clearly they didn’t bother to employ a cultural anthropologist on the movie to lend a certain realism to it, if they had the girls would have arrived to Abu Dhabi airport to find that the cars weren't in fact there at all as there had been a mix up with the bookings, and were in fact on their way to Dubai airport.
The authenticity was further thrown in to question when the girls decide to visit ‘Old Abu Dhabi souk’.
Now, when I first arrived in Abu Dhabi I too had images of wandering around a traditional souk, Kristen Scott-Thomas-like, buying exotic silks, spices and rugs, haggling charmingly with the wizened old market sellers, while wearing crisp white linen (and still in the realm of fantasy with Ralph Fiennes clandestinely trailing me and without my four squabbling children).
Alas, it was not to be! I was greatly dismayed as I emerged from my taxi in Al Meena Port to discover that the souk, located on a large piece of wasteland, contained mainly plastic buckets and industrial sized cooking pots, plants and household implements. There was nothing charming or exotic about it and I eventually gave up trying to be intrepid and cultural and escaped into the nearby mall for a coffee.
Yes, prior to my arrival, my idea of the Middle East had been mostly informed by the movies and I had erroneously believed that it was all belly-dancing, silken tents and sultry exotic evenings dancing the seven veils under the stars.
Thankfully SATC2 delivered on this fantasy; after all, who wants to see badly constructed hotels complete with leaking external air-conditioning systems or piles of rubbish on the side of the road. Or, for that matter, maniacal drivers mounting pavements to get around the too-slow car in front. Those images are best kept for movies like 'the hurt locker'.
It also helped that the movie was filmed in Morocco. Anyway, by the time Samantha spots the hunky Danish architect and utters the beautifully scripted line ‘Lawrence of my Labia’ I was done with the movie and went to bed.
On the positive side, my penchant for the hot chocolate and apple crumble served up in my local ‘Shakespeare’ cafe has subsided giving my girth a fighting chance of fitting into my newly acquired wardrobe this side of Christmas.
Pretentious, Moi?
Is it just me or is ‘Little Einsteins’ the most annoying, pretentious and smugly middle-class kids show on TV? It is the TV equivalent of a three year old learning to speak Mandarin and is a metaphor for everything that is wrong with modern parenting where a child can no longer just be 'normal' but must be either gifted or on a spectrum of one sort or another.
The plot, such as it is, is four precocious kids whizzing around in a rocket, landing in places like Tuscany or Paris where they chant the names of famous composers over and over again (‘Dvorak, oh! Dvorak!’) to the tunes of said composer, while words like ‘allegro’ and ‘adagio’ flash up on the screen along with a picture of that composer (eminently useful that the average three-year-old is able to pick out Grieg in a line-up).
Last week I struggled to understand the point of five cello’s prancing about to Peer Gynt on the banks of the river Po. And today I really thought it had gone too far as the characters searched for the ingredients for rocket soup -- how pretentious! but it turned out the soup was actually for the rocket-ship, rather than a soup made out of a rocket leaves...mind you, it wouldn’t have come as a great surprise- next they’ll be singing about the virtues of cashmir sweaters or the difference between Chardonnay and Sauvingnon blanc (which to be honest might actually be quite useful as a life-skill).
Of course there is nothing wrong with introducing your children to classical music; my children hear it regularly if I happen to have Lyric FM playing on the internet; but being able to name a composer, while charming, is of little use to a three year old. There does seem to be this drive among middle-class parents to have ‘gifted’ or ‘exceptional’ children who can read and play instruments before they’re three. Learning to do something early doesn’t necessarily make a child any brighter than a kid who learns those skills later on: Steven Hawkings commented in an interview recently that he couldn’t read until he was 8- and it could be argued that playing in mud or emptying the pots and pans cupboard is more educational anyway.
Personally I’d rather they learned to tie their shoe laces or wipe their own bottoms than speak fluent French.
Abu Dhabi aka Morocco
And finally.... I recently got to see Sex and the City 2 which, much to my excitement, is supposedly part set in AbuDhabi. It was, in a word, abysmal.
I don’t know what was more unrealistic, the four subservient Emiratis holding open the car doors for the four female protagonists at the airport (I doubt Emiratis hold their own toothbrushes), or when Aiden tells Carrie that ‘they consider it rude to keep people waiting here’. This comment was so at odds with the way of life here is, where nothing happens on time and in fact it's practically mandatory to be late, with inshallah (roughtly translated: in Allah we hope/God willing/not a feckin' hope pal) being the stock response to any pressing questions.
Clearly they didn’t bother to employ a cultural anthropologist on the movie to lend a certain realism to it, if they had the girls would have arrived to Abu Dhabi airport to find that the cars weren't in fact there at all as there had been a mix up with the bookings, and were in fact on their way to Dubai airport.
The authenticity was further thrown in to question when the girls decide to visit ‘Old Abu Dhabi souk’.
Now, when I first arrived in Abu Dhabi I too had images of wandering around a traditional souk, Kristen Scott-Thomas-like, buying exotic silks, spices and rugs, haggling charmingly with the wizened old market sellers, while wearing crisp white linen (and still in the realm of fantasy with Ralph Fiennes clandestinely trailing me and without my four squabbling children).
Alas, it was not to be! I was greatly dismayed as I emerged from my taxi in Al Meena Port to discover that the souk, located on a large piece of wasteland, contained mainly plastic buckets and industrial sized cooking pots, plants and household implements. There was nothing charming or exotic about it and I eventually gave up trying to be intrepid and cultural and escaped into the nearby mall for a coffee.
Yes, prior to my arrival, my idea of the Middle East had been mostly informed by the movies and I had erroneously believed that it was all belly-dancing, silken tents and sultry exotic evenings dancing the seven veils under the stars.
Thankfully SATC2 delivered on this fantasy; after all, who wants to see badly constructed hotels complete with leaking external air-conditioning systems or piles of rubbish on the side of the road. Or, for that matter, maniacal drivers mounting pavements to get around the too-slow car in front. Those images are best kept for movies like 'the hurt locker'.
It also helped that the movie was filmed in Morocco. Anyway, by the time Samantha spots the hunky Danish architect and utters the beautifully scripted line ‘Lawrence of my Labia’ I was done with the movie and went to bed.
