top ten fridays: opera's 10 most wanted

baddies. everybody loves 'em. but of course no one wants to be on the receiving end of a bad guy's ire and punishment. however, without villains, opera would not be dramatic. or provocative. or talked about. it simply would not be op-er-ah.

so while we're sit in the comforts of the red plush seat, in the dark of the theatre, we can enjoy the villainy taking place on the stage, without any guilt.


who: iago in otello
why: power hungry iago tricks otello into thinking that his wife, desdemona and cassio have been having an affair. only after otello kills his beloved wife, does he realize how iago had deceived him.


who: don giovanni
why: he views women as sport and plays with their feelings recklessly. donna elvira whom he abandons, donna anna whom he tries to rape (and kills her father) and donna zerlina whom he tries to lure away from her fiance. all 3 vow revenge on don giovanni. he gets his comeuppance however by being dragged to hell.


who: salome
why: she desires john the baptist. john the baptist refuses her. salome goes off the deep end and has him beheaded. then goes on to perform some necrophilia.


who: lady macbeth in macbeth
why: an ambitious woman, lady macbeth is disgusted when her husband can not carry out the murder of king duncan. so instead, takes it upon herself to kill the king in his sleep. but later suffers pangs of guilt for her part in the crime.


who: scarpia in tosca
why: a sadist who lusts after opera singer tosca whom he forces to watch as he tortures her lover, cavaradossi. tosca succumbs to his advances when scarpia writes a guarantee of safe passage for her and cavaradossi. after tosca murders scarpia, she realizes that she has been tricked. there was no guarantee. cavaradossi is executed by firing squad.


who: count di luna in il trovatore
why: another man wanting a woman he can't have. di luna loves leonara in love with manrico. di luna sentences manrico's gypsy mother azucena to be burned at the stake. when he can't get leonara to truly be his, he executes manrico. then finds out that he was his brother.


who: barnaba in la gioconda
why: barnaba lusts after la gioconda. when she rejects him, he denounces her blind mother as a witch. gioconda stabs herself to death rather than give into barnaba. as last act of evil, barnaba screams at gioconda's lifeless body that he had her blind mother drowned.


who: kaspar in der freischütz
why: trying to get out of a deal with the devil for his immortal soul, kaspar tricks max into casting 7 magic bullets to be used in a shooting contest. all so he could obtain 3 more years of life in exchange for max in his place. one of those bullets hit his beloved agathe.


who: nick shadow in the rake's progress
why: a devilish character, nick shadow "influences" tom with the sleazy life of london's underbelly, gets him to marry a bearded lady and market and mass produce a machine that turn stones into bred, bringing him financial ruin. tom wins his soul back with a card game but not before nick condemns tom to insanity.


who: aegistheus in elektra
why: elektra's mother klytaemnestra enlists her paramour aegisthus to murder her husband and elektra's father, agamemnon. elektra swears revenge and gets her brother to kill klytaemnestra and aegisthus. as electra dances in triumph on her father's tomb, she drops dead.

who said opera was boring?

adventures of aqua girl: part VII

class opened today with learning what to do if we come across someone not breathing at or in the pool.

while it was not full-on first aid, we did learn the ABCs: airway, breathing, circulation, which we took turns practicing on each other poolside. some of the steps came back to me from when i went through the emergency first aid training years ago as it was required in becoming a flight attendant.

after that, it was a couple of laps warm-up and then practicing whatever stroke(s) we wanted to work on as audrey gave us each personalized instruction. mine was the front crawl and the elementary backstroke, namely to be able to synch breathing in the front crawl and upper/lower body movement in elementary backstroke.

we ended the class with an intro to breaststroke; arm movement only. putting a noodle underneath both armpits, we front glided and worked on pushing ourselves up for a breath before putting our faces in the water for the glide. this upper motion i found easy. at the next class, we'll learn what the legs will be doing in the breaststroke. put 2 and 2 together.

after class, i stayed on for another 45 minutes when public swim opened just to get more practice in. and to beat this heatwave vancouver's been scorched with. yesterday was a record-breaking 33.8C and humidity of 58%. and today another record breaker at 33.9C. we've been like this since monday with no sign of breaking in the next few days.

vancouver is just not equipped or used to such hot weather. heck, just the other night, we were still at 28C at 7 o'clock at night! i have friends saying they're trade their kingdom in for an a/c unit. or eat puppies for some air conditioning. or take ice cube baths. or jump into the ice cream vat at dairy queen. yes, heat makes people say strange things.

i have every single window opened, lights out, 3 fans going on at my place plus 3-4 cold showers a day and i'm still whining away like the wicked witch in oz. i'm melting.....

adventures of aqua girl: part VI

the motions of the whipkick we were taught yesterday was for more than learning to tread water. we paired the whipkick with upper body movement which then became the elementary backstroke.

i got the arm movement down when we were practicing with just a back float. i actually like the way it feels whipping your arms outwards and downwards to propel you backwards on your back.


arm positions easy...

but it was kinda tough to synch the arm stroke with the kick together. trying to keep so many things straight, such as remembering to flex the feet when the legs go down. (i tend to point my feet, therefore losing power) also, i'm trying to focus on making wide enough circles with my legs and then snapping them back hard and quick for propulsion.


synching it with leg positions not so easy...

the elementary backstroke is suppose to be a restful stroke. huh.

i feel so ineffectual.

operamania 101: it's getting hot in here

vo blog readers in vancouver and the lower mainland will get why i chose malcolm mclaren's madame butterfly as this week's operamania 101.

the past few days with its record breaking temperatures and humidity have left almost of all us wishing for an end to this heatwave. as vancouver is normally temperate in climate, i think like 99% of people here do not have air conditioning at home. so fellow vancouverites in the 99% boat (myself included), this one's for you.

who would've thought that the man who introduced the world to 70s punk act, the sex pistols and opened a fetish inspired boutique called sex with fashion designer vivienne westwood would later make his mark with opera? mclaren who also managed 80s groups adam and the ants and bow wow wow, released fans in 1984. the EP blended opera, hip hop and electronica with its pop adaptations on famous operatic arias from bizet's carmen and puccini's turandot and madame butterfly.



written by mclaren and produced by stephen hague, madame butterfly (un bel di vedremo) with its slow beats of the drum machines and airy synthesizers complemented mclaren's spoken word as pinkerton.

what may have sounded like disaster on paper was in fact transcendent upon listening. fans became a huge international seller and charted in the top 20 in the UK.



choosing not to tell the story literally, mclaren envisioned for the dream-like video, a procession of scantily clad women in flesh coloured leotards hanging out in a turkish steam room.

the runway model type women look distant, detached and distracted, possibly thinking of and waiting for their own pinkertons. whether reading a letter, crying, getting a massage, waiting or dragging their drape sheets around, the images of these women with their heavy makeup are hypnotic. i wouldn't even be surprised if madame butterfly inspired the 1985 robert palmer women-centric video, addicted to love.

but as i watch this video, i'm thinking, "boy, they look like they're absolutely melting in that steam room." if it's at all possible, i'm getting hotter than i already am just by watching this video. and hence the vancouver connect.

mclaren would continue his love of opera by sampling another aria; this time for the award winning 1989 british airway commercial, featuring lakme.

keep cool vancouver. stay out of the saunas and the steam rooms. see you at the pool instead.

adventures of aqua girl: part V

instructor wastes no time. i guess she thinks we're ready, so audrey had us jump in the deep end (without any floaties) first thing today. then tread for 10 seconds. i even surprised myself that i treaded longer than that and longer than the other students, michael and andre.

after that she gave us a kickboard and had us do some laps to build up out endurance. front kick/side glide to the shallow end and then kicking on our backs back to the deep end.

today's class focused on learning the whipkick for treading water. each of us grabbed a noodle to put behind our arms so that we could float in the water in a seated position so that we could look at our legs and feet whilst practicing.

it was rather hilarious as the next lane beside us were little kids being taught the same thing too.

then with a kickboard, we were on our backs giving the whipkick a go. i think i got the motions down but found it a challenge to kick with enough power to propel myself back. it must've looked funny to the parents in the stands watching us, whipkicking but not making any distance. also it took some coordinating to remember when to flex and when to point my feet whilst whipkicking.



inspirational video: i want to be like her. she makes treading water look so easy.

adventures of aqua girl: part IV

today i went off the deep end.

not loony bin style, of course.

this afternoon's swim class taught us about PFDs or personal floating devices/life jackets. so outfitted in lifejackets, we were told to jump into the deep end of the pool. then we had learned the H.E.L.P. (heat escape lessening position aka fetal position) and huddle positions to prepare us should we ever find ourselves out in the middle of the water and to group together to conserve body heat, lest hypothermia sets in quicker.

then audrey had us remove our life jackets and aided only with a noodle to keep us up in deep water, had us take turns pretending we were drowning and what the other students would have to do in order to save our a**.

after that, we attempted to tread for 10 seconds in the deep end before audrey handed us a kickboard and had us warm up by swimming on our fronts back over to the shallow side. this is where i know i have to build up stamina. i'm not much worried about swimming from deep to shallow because when i start to get tired, i would be able to stop and put my feet on the floor. swimming lengths from shallow to deep is another matter. where i would get winded, i would already be in deep water. luckily, i wasn't the only student thinking the same thing.

we concentrated on practicing shoulder rolls on our back, as well as front crawl and back crawl for the remainder of the class. my back crawl is coming along much better than my front crawl. i'm elbowing up too quickly and diving my hands in front of me with too much arm extension, therefore not being able to paddle further in the water. but at least i know what i have to concentrate on.

so refreshing. being in a pool is the best way to remain cool on yet another recordbreaking heat wave of a day. i don't even mind smelling like chlorine when i get home. it's a reminder that i'm doing something worthwhile on my vacation.

out with the old

new blinds. new coverlet.



happy camper.

touch of suede

it is indeed the dog days of summer: scorching hot weather, humidity some days, breeze if we're lucky. and all i want to do on days like these is go play in some water. and then sit in front of a fan and cool down with a blueberry/pomegranate swirl bar.

this video from one of my all-time favourite bands, suede, makes me want to take a refreshing dip in a costa rican mountain spring with its cascading waterfalls. or run through some sprinklers.


everything will flow

suede was a serious musical addiction for me. i fell in love with brett anderson and suede from their first video, metal mickey. exploding on the britpop scene in the 90s, suede has since left many of that era's contemporaries in the dust. the songwriting matured as well as the direction and sound of the band, which took a turn when they released their 3rd album, coming up and continued with head music.

why suede never charted in north america is beyond me.

so many great songs:
the drowners
the wild ones
new generation
trash
beautiful ones. (i chose this as one of the songs for my fashion show presentation in fashion design school years ago.)
electricity

to name but a few.

seriously magic.

a distinctive voice and the best bone structure i've ever seen on a lead singer, brett anderson, the 90s thin white duke, only gets better with time.


i love men in ties and a nice fitted suit. anderson modelling for savile row tailor nick hart for aquascutum in wallpaper magazine.

after suede disbanded in 2003, anderson continued to prove he can make beautiful music.



suede, the tears, brett anderson. whatever the musical incarnation, i am a fan for life.

on the road: girly style

it was almost this time last year that peggy and i had a girly fun day away, so we were long overdue.

this time, we went south of the border. on one of the hottest days of the summer. without air conditioning in the car too.

but adventure calls and roadtrips beckon.



the wait at the pacific truck crossing border wasn't too bad-just over an hour, which gave us plenty of time to catch up with what's been going on with each other's lives, as we chowed down on drive-thru breakfast from micky d's. a girly fun day means a vacation day which means we can slum it in our eating junk food for that day. but as we don't normally slum it, mcdonalds = instant gratification = instant regret.

for the first stop, peggy and i headed down to the premium outlet mall just north of seattle. the sun was mercilessly scorching and unforgiving as we made our way around the outdoor mall. i made sure to hit adidas (uk adidas stores are so much better), converse, quiksilver, vans, zumiez and dickies, where i picked up the cutest "apartment" pants to lounge around in.


bamboos and panda bears. is there be a better combination for pajama bottoms? coupled with a white tank top?

surprisingly, peggy and i didn't go nuts with the outlet shopping and we headed back north after a couple of hours.

but of course, since we were on US soil, there were a couple stops that i just HAD to make.

jamba juice for one!



so just before we arrived in bellingham, we hit the jamba juice at burlington crossing. i just had to get peggy to try one since i've been talking it up forever. i got my new york regular, strawberry whirl and she got the matcha green tea. purr-fect for the humid afternoon.

as we walked back to the car, this truck drove past us and caught both our eyes. without an exchange of words, peggy and i looked at each other and simultaneously said, "we GOT to get a picture!" and we ran after the vehicle which was pulling into a gas station, like children chasing down an ice cream van on a hot summer day.

now if anyone knew peggy and i in the good ole days, aka our rave days, you'd understand why we would run after this truck and put japanese tourists with cameras to shame. this whole exterior of the truck was decorated with toys from sesame street, disney, looney tunes, merry melodies, hello kitty et al. a raver's dreamobile.






this photo courtesy of peggy

the driver told me that he glued all the figures last winter and that he did it because he wanted to spread good cheer and make people smile as he drove. road rage suppressant. we need more people like him on the road.



this fortuitous run-in was definitely the highlight of our day.

we headed to trader joe's in bellingham so that i could stockpile some favourite dry goods but to my surprise, TJ's discontinued carrying papadums in yoghurt and dill like 6 months ago! gah! that was the one thing that i wanted to buy. merde.

however, since i'm a fan of TJ's, i floated down the aisles and picked up a couple of things: tom yum flavoured cashews, sweet chili sauce and TJ's wild maine blueberry fruit sauce.

that's when weather turned freaky. afternoon was record breaking hot and humid and when we exited TJ's, lightning crackled the sky, thunder boomed and it started pouring as we drove to our last stop, bellis fair. not quite soaked to the bone but invariably wet, we spent the next couple of hours hitting bath and bodyworks (another US store that i ask aloud why we don't have in Canada), victoria's secret and target.

walking around bellis fair, i started feeling rather icky. like that burnt out feeling from heat exhaustion accompanied by a headache from all the temperature changes of walking in the sun and going in and out of air conditioned shops all day.

ever the sport, peggy who wasn't affected the same way i was, drove us back after bellis fair, skipping out on any casino action. in the car ride back to vancouver, the sunset sky was a gorgeous orange, pink and red. then the storm descended. it felt like we were stormchasers, watching the lightning/thunderstorm make its way into canada. the summer storm was the most fantastic thing i've seen in a long time. LOVE lightning. (hence my name)


i heard the lightning storm upstaged the celebration of fire fireworks down by english bay

we don't get nearly enough of them out here in the pacific northwest. not like in new york where it's a regular occurrence. oh how i miss watching mother nature's lightshow from my 29th floor apt down on the bowery.

still, the summer storm was the one thing to take my mind off the queasy-ness i was feeling. heat exhaustion causing the motion sickness do not make for a good combo. so happy when we crossed back onto canadian soil because i knew that if i hurled or needed to go to the hospital for fluids, i have medical.

however, it wasn't that dramatic although i did feel like lying face down on the wet sidewalk outside my building, happy because i get to go jump in the shower, get cleaned up, climb into bed and wait for my headache to go away and for the appetite to return. and sure enough, about 2 in the morning, i was back to myself and raiding the fridge.

good gosh, i wasn't even like this for new york summers with 75-80% humidity. i've reverted to being a temperate weather baby again.

adventures of aqua girl: part III

perhaps it's because after 2 days of swimming lessons, today i was more winded than usual in the water. or it could be that i ate an hour-ish before my lesson started. probably the former as another student felt tired today too.

it's good that we have 4 days back to back of lessons, so that we can build on all the techniques learned the day before. we started with practicing the frontkick/side glide and i felt i was much more coordinated than yesterday. muscle has memory!

but i found that swimming 4 laps of side glides in shallow part of the pool was strenuous and i actually had to take a few minutes out as a breather. my heart was pouding and i was short of breath. darn that cardio which i'm still building.

luckily, after that warm up, we did some shoulder roll drills for the back crawl. i've always found swimming on my back and sculling to be fairly easy for me. so taking it a step further to roll the shoulders to an semi side glide was not a stretch. and it was less strenuous on the breathing, although my legs were getting a work out with all the flutter kicks.

we ended the class with treading. it's comforting to know the instructors actually took a while before they "got" it. there's hope for me yet. i always seem to start off in circles when egg beating but end up kicking out with both legs. hrmmmph. my teacher told me that it looks like i move both legs at the same time when treading, so my new mantra is: "one circle. next circle" to get me to mindfully make sure one leg does a complete circle before the next one.

why is it that people who can tread water make it look so effortless? it only looks deceptively easy.

operamania 101: say my name

who hasn't felt like an outsider growing up? or woken up with nary an ounce of teen angst? who thinks that high school was the best that life could get?

yeah, didn't think so.

everyone's felt like 80s it girl winona ryder in tim burton's 1988 movie, beetlejuice. the teenaged goth daughter dressed in black to match the colour of her heart. your typical adolescent. feeling lost, strange, confused, unable to relate to anyone, not sure how to cope. it doesn't help much that her parents are gaudy and obnoxious jeffrey jones and catherine o'hara.

but unlike us, she gets to become friends with the resident ghost couple geena davis and alec baldwin as well as the object of affection to michael keaton's miscreant betelgeuse.

right before betelgeuse tries to get her to bring him into the land of the living by saying his name 3 times, here she is melodramatically composing her suicide note by candlelight. in the background plays the famous aria, regnava nel silenzio from donizetti's opera, lucia di lammermoor.



it is this aria in act one that lucia tells her maid that she has seen the ghost of a girl, to which the maid responds that the apparition serves as a warning and that lucia must abandon her love for edgardo because of the feud between her family and his.



course we know how that all turns out and what happens to "mad scene" lucia.

so it's no surprise then that dramma tragico (tragic opera) can feel like the domain of life as a teenager.

course now that we've lived through it once, who'd want to do it again?

adventures of aqua girl: part II

day 2 of swim class.

must say, my front thighs were a little sore from all that kicking yesterday but not too bad as i thought it would be. i was excited for today but then a momentary thought. would there be a day within the 11 lessons that i would so not be looking forward to? a day when i would just suck or worse, declare defeat?


like our dear mr bean starting at 1:15

well, that day hasn't come yet.

today, we focused on rolling over front/back, back/front, alternating front kicks to side glides with shoulder rolls. thus building up and coordinating arm stroke techniques to learning the front crawl. with breathing to the side aka "rotary breathing".

arm strokes started out as whipping your arm out of the water like a "rainbow" to bending your elbow up to the ceiling like a "sharks fin" once we reach the hip before cutting our hands back into the water in front of us, like a proper front crawl.

felt a bit uncoordinated today with everything we had to keep in mind. kinda feels like learning a new dance routine. i think the more practice, the more second nature it'll become. and less water in your mouth or up the nose while taking a breath.

then a minute at the end to practice treading for 5+ seconds.

the pool is closed to the public when we're there for our lessons, save for one lane that is for swimming lengths only. the pool is roped off to about 6 lanes with most of the lanes dedicated to children's lessons. so it's kinda funny to see that we're the only 3 adults in the water learning to swim with the tots and young kidlets.

the lane for swimming lengths is kinda cool to watch too. practically all of these swimmers are seniors and they just bob along, swimming the length of the pools in whatever style they like, oh so casually. it's like i'm watching long-toothed walruses go by or something. not that they're anything wrong with that. i want to be like them when i'm that age. still have the stamina and the cardio to swim lengths. they're doing better than i am.

for the rest of the day, i found myself moving my arms in front crawl motion whenever i was walking or standing. and then found myself practicing egg beater motion with my legs whenever i was sitting down or lying on my bed belly down. couldn't help it.

i must look hilarious had i not been in the comforts of home.

adventures of aqua girl: part I (origins)

i suppose i'm no different than the many dieters out there who would pin up on their fridge a picture of their favourite celebrity bodies as inspiration to get in shape, lose weight or whatever.

so here is my motivation picture for surfing:



as i have an abundance of stay-cation time, i thought that this would be the purr-fect opportunity to continue with adult swimming lessons. so i had my first level 2-3 lesson today.

no stranger to beginner's classes, having been to a couple in elementary PE class, as well as a few mandatory lessons through high school co-ed PE and then finally a number of years ago, enrolling in adult level 1 swim. the experiences weren't awful, save for the old crone instructor who pitched us elementary school kids by the arm into the water as a way to jump as far as we were able. that could've been a childhood trauma to say the least.

and it wasn't so unusual when i was growing up to have friends that don't swim. all my elementary school friends didn't swim. mainly because their parents didn't either. my mom and 2 brothers don't know how to swim. my mom didn't want me to drown so she didn't enroll me into swim classes. this was the chinese parents backwards thinking at that time.

and so i've always been stuck at the red cross level 1 stage. i've become good at jellyfish float, front/back float, flutter kick, intro to side kick, blowing bubbles, turning over front/back, back/front. all the basics.

but that was the extent of it. i didn't further myself with lessons or practice. i'm certainly not afraid of the water, at least not the shallow end of friend's pools that i'd play around in the past few years. as long as i can touch the floor with my tippy toes and have at least my chin above the water, i was fine.

but tiptops on the pool floor doesn't make for a swimmer. and more than that, i want to try surfing. and seeing as swimming is a rather important skill to have when surfing, i thought this time i'm going to really learn to swim.

and i know my biggest hesitation in really learning how to swim is my fear that i will not be able to tread water, therefore i won't be able to stay afloat in deep water. i was somewhat resigned to the fact that i may just not be able to do it. my friend karen told me that because i'm so thin and don't have alot of body fat, that i'm probably not especially bouyant.

but i really want to put that to the test. is treading water a skill that i can learn?

so for the next 3 weeks, i have classes 3-4 times a week. as i've enrolled in a mon-thur afternoon class when most everyone is at work, there's only 3 adults in the group + instructor, which is awesome cuz you get more personal attention that way.

our teacher audrey wanted us to acclimatize to the practice of swimming for the first day so she started us out with refreshers.

course i was the keener who thought that she wanted as our first warmup for us to front kick with the kickboard the length of the pool, to the other side. i didn't hear that she only said halfway down to where the ladder was (and hence still in shallow side). by the time she saw where i was and yelled for me to come back, i was already in the 6 1/2 ft deep end. and you don't call for a newbie to stop in the deep end with only a kickboard to keep you afloat because you do not know how to tread water to turn around and come back. that was a mini-panic moment. right off the bat of our first day of lessons. audrey had to swim down and help turn me around as i was clinging somewhat to dear life onto my kickboard and lane rope as i was practically vertical in the water.

i tell ya, only me.

well, after that, all the lessons we practiced in the shallow end was peachy keen. we practiced front/back kick, side glide, blowing bubbles and breath control as well as treading water (egg-beater style) did i mention with swimming apparatus' too? yup, bring out the flippers, kickboards and noodles.

but i'm committed to learning how to swim. how else am i going to surf? or swim with the dolphins? or dive off a board? or jump off my 130 ft luxury yacht for a quick dip in the mediterranean should i feel like it? but most importantly, survive if ever i found myself in a precarious situation in the middle of a lake or worse yet, an ocean?

i believe that swimming is a fundamental skill that everyone should have. it's never too late to learn. even at my ripe old age of 30-something.

turn on the radio

feeling alil' twee today and going to feed my dream pop craving.

continued proof that there are musically interesting bands coming out of sweden.

the first time i heard the new order-influenced pulling our weight was in sofia coppola's candy coated marie antoinette. save from the film locations, music and costumes, the movie itself was just okay. however, girl knows her music and for that, she gets two thumbs up. i mean, who else would use the strokes and windsor for the derby in a film based in 18th century france? and not to forget the creme de la creme, new order's ceremony used perfectly in the movie and its trailer.

the 2 disc soundtrack is a veritable cornucopia of songs worth listening to, with its mix of 80s new wave, indie and classical works from rameau, scarlatti and vivaldi.

and when i do go see the chateaux in versailles, chantilly and millemont someday, this soundtrack will be what i'll be listening to.

tourists in the city part II

friday's playing tourists found sean and i having greasy spoon brekkie at helen's grill. not the best breakfast out there, one patrons the mom and pop diner for its mini jukebox players at each booth.

and although the jukeboxs don't have the variety of mel's diners in san francisco, it was exactly what we were craving this morning. and it's also fun to find out what each other would choose to listen to. so down comes the ching ching of quarters on the table. and we were the only 2 in the sea of single blue collared men gulping down their lunches who cared to play dj.

helen's grill is definitely one of those time-warp 'breakfast served all day' places, where once you walk in, the mood and the look would best be captured in amber or b/w.



a scorcher of a day, not sure what compelled two somewhat sun-adversed people to spent an afternoon laying out at buntzen lake except that it's picturesque with a beach and a lake and surrounded by forests and mountains. so yes, armed with bottles of water, nibblies and spraycan of spf 30 we drove to buntzen lake.


walking to the beach/lake

and although there were people there, it wasn't crazy busy like it would be had we gone on a weekend. it was comfortable with your nearest beach-going neighbours were far enough that you didn't feel that they were encroaching on your space. it also didn't feel crowded going for a swim in the lake. in a word: go on a weekday! (okay that was 3 more words, exclamation point)

seriously, a lovely afternoon.

peggy would be so proud of me. laying out for two whole hours in the sun and not getting all antsy, looking for the nearest shady tree to sit under.



got some reading in, a couple of dips in the lake and spending a summer afternoon with my favourite guy in the world.

i may become a beach bunny yet.

erm, wait. let's not get carried away now.

as sean and i have a propensity to burn (him more so than me), i must say, i have to start stockpiling that coppertone sports spf 30 sunscreen because we did not turn pink, red, freckled or burned later that night. it's miracle in a can.

we did however felt drained from laying out in the direct sun for that lengthy amount of time (for us anyways). after washing up, we were both beat. we had some take out and curled up watching christopher walken, well, do christopher walken in the prophecy II and the schlocky the blob dvd to end the night. we're such amateurs.

tourists in the city part I

being that i'm on 4 1/2 weeks holiday right now, every day is a weekend for me. and since not everyone has the gift of time like i do, i'm trying to keep myself busy in town since i'm financially unable to jet away. i have a feeling, however, that my staycation will still go by in a blink of an eye.

so while most everyone i know worked thursday and friday, sean and i took advantage of being tourists in our own city. armed with fruit smoothies to combat the summer heat, we headed over to the vancouver art gallery.

i had been excited for weeks to catch the vermeer, rembrandt and golden age of dutch art masterpieces from the rijksmuseum exhibit but found it was a bit of a letdown.

i've been to the rijksmuseum in amsterdam, so perhaps i was spoiled. (not to mention having been to the met and moma in new york, moma and de young - legion of honor in san francisco, getty museum and lacma in los angeles, the british museum, national gallery, national portrait gallery, tate modern in london and the louvre in paris).

although i happily support museums, i suppose because the admission of $20.50 was so high (compared to free for london museums and donate whatever you'd like at new york's met), i expected more bang for my buck. which unfortch for me, may have contributed to the feeling of not feeling satisfied with the exhibit.

the highlights were of course the singular vermeer and rembrandt.


l: johannes vermeer, the love letter c. 1669-80, oil on canvas
r: rembrandt harmensz van rijn, portrait of his son titus, dressed as a monk, 1660, oil on canvas

sean's favourite which we sat on the tufted bench looking at was a hunter's bag near a tree stump with a magpie, aka known as the contemplative magpie, by melchior d'hondecoeter 1660-1695.



i took notice instantly of jacob jansz coeman's pieter cnoll, senior merchant of batavia, his wife and their daughters, 1665, oil on canvas, which was right by the d'hondecoeter. mostly because the females painted looked asian. and they were, cnoll's wife and daughters was half japanese.



truly, the exhibits and collections at the rijksmuseum are amazing. so if one was wanting to appreciate dutch art, i say go straight to amsterdam. this collection with maybe too much lesser known works may not quite help to whet the appetite.

more interesting at the vag was the ought apartment installation that rises up through the rotunda. this multi-tiered tower created by local designer reece terris portrays authentic apartment scenes from 1950s to today, right down to its furniture and decor of that decade. that gave me many a flashbacks.



unfortunately, the vag does not allow any pictures taken of any kind (even without flash) what's up with that? especially since world renown museums permit it.

and perhaps what we found the most interesting at the vag was not the dutch exhibit, but rather the andreas gursky works 80-88 found on the upper floors. some of gursky's panoramic photography is just mind-blowing. you can fit all that in one frame?!


untitled xvi, 2008 the first photograph that greeted us when we stepped off the escalator.


hamm bergwerk 2008 shows suspended metal cages that hold miner's work gear.


kathedrale 2007


f1 boxenstopp 2007


kamiokande 2007 this looks so unreal, so cgi'd. but it's not. sean explained to me that this is an underground neutrino particle accelerator. ask me again and i wouldn't be able to tell you what it does, but i know that it looks astounding. on the bottom right quadrant of the photo are 2 men in boats and you could just see the sheer scale of the observatory. definitely the best thing we saw at the vag and worth the price of admission.

after our afternoon of culture and a light sushi dinner, we decided on a movie. instead of contributing to jk rowling's (many times over) retirement fund, sean found us a brilliant classic movie that was playing at the ifc, the 1967 movie bonnie and clyde.

with its deep and cush seats and just a handful of people, it was a much much better alternative than sitting with the hundreds of crazed wizard fans. (i think i've only seen the first two hp movies cuz the lord of the rings was so much better)

although sean and i had both watched the iconic movie before, it was fun watching it together. even though my favourite fashion decades are the 20s, 50s and 60s, i gotta say faye dunaway was one hot broad. she makes that 30s style look good. i want her kicky berets.



and it's good to catch a classic movie on the big screen every now and then. especially one that was so groundbreaking and chronicled as well as glamourized and romanticized america's most infamous criminals to mythic proportions.

and even as most people don't even entertain the thought of going on a cross country, bank robbing killing spree, still there's something about bonnie parker and clyde barrow that has endured and makes us imagine what it would be like to be in their us vs. them shoes: part robin hood, part sticking it to the man, part romeo and juliet doomed lovers as they were.



i suppose the appeal for me would be that bonnie and clyde were in love and remained devoted and loyal to each other even as they rushed headlong to their inevitable deaths.

that and life on the highway.

operamania 101: unquenchable thirst

watch. how many of our faithful VO readers out there after reading this blog entry will inexplicably be overcome with a thirst for a cold 'un on a hot summer day? all of a sudden, i feel like an enabler as this foster's carlton draught ad might certainly make one keep their eyes peeled for the nearest patio.

the 2005 australian ad opens with 2 armies of choir robe-wearing men about to charge at each other "braveheart" style. they run across a paddock to the strains of carl orff's carmina burana: o fortuna but replacing the original lyrics with lines such as "it's a big ad....expensive ad...this ad better sell some bloody beer."

wow. so much testosterone.

and just when you think bodily harm will be inflicted and limbs flying everywhere, surprise! an aerial shot reveals the yellow robed men running down a clear path made by the red robed army, thus clearly looking like beer being guzzled down the gullet.



what you hear is the melbourne chorale singing o fortuna and the melbourne symphony orchestra provided the musical accompaniment.

the viral ad was so successful, it won the prestigious gold lion at cannes in 2006.

in 1936, german composer carl orff wrote o fortuna which was based on the carmina burana manuscripts, a collection of 13th century songs and poetry written by students and clergymen, advising about the fickleness of fortune, mortality and vices such as drinking, gluttony and carnal recklessness.



however, if listening to o fortuna sends shivers down the spine, it's probably because you recall hearing it as a soundtrack to horror movies, most notably 1976's the omen. although it sounds dark and evil, the song itself contains no diabolical message.

and since the omen, o fortuna has been heard in excalibur, glory, the hunt for red october, the doors, natural born killers, the bachelor, jackass: the movie, cheaper by the dozen and epic movie.

and i may be totally dating myself here, but i also remember a remix of o fortuna by apotheosis. this 1991 electronica version certainly made its rounds around the alternative/industrial club nights.

orff's carmina burana has achieved ubiquitous worldwide recognition. the touring production has played to millions of people; 100,000 in rio's copacabana beach alone. just this past january, carmina burana was performed in london's o2 arena (capacity 18,000) involving 250 performers, dancers, fireworks, bungee jumping and stilt walkers.

listening to this epic masterpiece certainly taps into that primeval feeling inside us all, what with its complex and dramatic music building up slowly, all tense and taut-like, until it finally erupts into an explosive and triumphant crescendo.

so i kinda get why it was used for a beer commercial. because sometimes you feel just THAT thirsty.

i am cyborg

i practically doubled over with laughter at this. over at christopher's blog, he has a link to the cyborg name decoder and i thought i'd try it out and typed in my name. this is what it came up with for me:

Get Your Cyborg Name

T3's kristanna loken has nothing on me.

curiouser and curiouser

my sunday afternoon found me at the alice in wonderland festival at trout lake face-painting kidlets in the kid's tent. i didn't know what to expect really and was shocked to see that parents and their kidlets REALLY want their faces painted at festivals and will form a kick-ass line to wait it out as patiently as possible. wowzers.

between 3 of us (for the first shift), sharing the palate, brushes and paints and watching the line grow impossibly long and parents looking over our shoulders to make sure what we've drawn is what the kids envision it to be, we so began.

and not surprisingly, this of course would only happen to me. while the other 2 facepainters were getting requests of flowers and hearts painted on each cheek and what not, the first few kidlets i got asked for: full face spiderman (!), full face butterfly and full face cheshire cat. seriously?!?!

well, anything after that was gravy.

kitty cat? check.

bunny? no probs.

doggie? sure.

a heart on one cheek and a spade on the other? have a seat!


aren't these lil' girls adorable with their kitty faces? painted by yours truly.

kidlets are adorable! i facepainted some of them as young as 2 years old. and with kids that young, you can really feel their fragility. my already smallish hands felt like they belonged to the jolly green giant's as i carefully tilted their chins or steadied my hand gently for a brushstroke. i didn't even sit on the chair facing them, but rather spent my time crouching to get down face level and chatting them up for the next 2 hours.

what a great experience. imagine, facepainting now on my resume! professional world, look out.


we're all mad here

after my shift was done, i spent the rest of the day wandering amongst the tons of people who came out to enjoy the festival. most everybody got into the spirit of the festival; dressing up inspired by or as anime version of alice and cast.

i myself chose to dress in red complete with 2 "fob watches" i wore on my belted skirt. i didn't look like an alice character but got a few requests for pictures because people liked my red heart-shaped clock. (which actually is the tin man's clock from wizard of oz, but i thought it'd pass as white rabbit's "i'm late, i'm late, for a very important date" inspired watch and apparently it did!)


press play for slideshow or click here for flickr pics

there was a wandering carnival of musicians led by the red queen and king, storytime with caterpillar on its mushroom throne, a recreation of the croquet game with flamingo mallets and hedgehog balls and wandering characters acting out their parts and interacting with the crowd. kinda like an disney theme park but all wonderland out.



to say that i was like a kid in a candystore is an understatement.

today was so fun with so much eye candy that i felt exhausted and gorged by the time i got home. the best (mad hatter's) tea party i've ever been to.



if I had a world of my own, everything would be nonsense. nothing would be what it is, because everything would be what it isn't. and contrary wise, what is, it wouldn't be. and what it wouldn't be, it would. you see? - lewis carroll

down the rabbit hole

here's a video that went viral last summer. this music video called alice was composed by 19 year old australian nick bertke aka pogo. this trippy and slightly hypnotic track is made up entirely of sampled sounds and purr-fectly synchronized with the disney 1951 alice in wonderland cartoon.

and why am i choosing this as the sunday morning laze you may wonder? because i get to volunteer at the kids tent and also the tea service at the alice in wonderland festival today.

i'm off to wonderland.

operamania 101: an astronomical combination

mention the word dido and this might come to mind:


british singer-songwriter of such pop hits as thank you and white flag.

hmmm. not quite opera for our opman101.

when i think of dido, i think of 2 genres of music that the word belongs to: opera and electronica. and what's better than appreciating 2 genres separately then appreciating them mashed up together?

if you're at all familiar with the house music scene, you may very well be familiar with dido by aria (armin van buuren's universal religion mix), which you can find on tiesto's summerbreeze cd.



considered a huge trance anthem, this is an epic song for good reason:

1. it samples the aria from english composer henry purcell's opera, dido and aeneas. the opera is based on the fourth book of virgil's aeneid. in it tells the love story of how a trojan refugee named aeneas gets shipwrecked in carthage and falls in love with its queen, dido. as love stories in opera are want to do, aeneas must leave his love behind as he goes back to rome. dido finds she can not live without aeneas and therefore awaits death instead. the name of dido's lament is when i am laid in earth.



2. it also samples the actual uplink conversation between the crew of the apollo 7 (wally schirra, donn eisele and walt cunningham) and ground control's cecil b. de stafford in 1968 when the crew set up a tv camera inside the spacecraft and the very first television broadcast from space was made.

what you hear at the beginning of the track are as follows:

hey don how about saying something since you're paying
actually i'm amazed, it looks real good
the definition is pretty good down here, i can see the center hatch
we'll have cecil b de stafford down here directing
keep those cards and letters coming in folks, it's loud and clear
yeah... some of the reproductions here are real good, i can look out through wally's rendezvous window

with such a stunning intro, an intense and powerful aria, scintillating synthesizers and a beat you can't help but move to, this track is a perfect example of what gorgeous music can be made between opera and trance. if you don't believe me, ask all those kids who've danced into the wee hours of the morning to this. myself included.

chanteuse as femme fatale

special thanks to durian dave for sending me this wonderful clip of actress grace chang singing habanera. in mandarin, no less. the 1960 movie musical is called wild wild rose and was adapted from bizet's opera, carmen and josef von sternberg's the blue angel.

chang is quite the saucy little minx here, singing, growling and strutting around seductively. the poor guys at the nightclub never stood a chance.



i just love this cover of habanera. so very cha-cha and bossa nova with its latin and jazzy overtones.

you can also find this clip posted to the vancouver opera blog.

le boyfriend

he who makes me smile.

more polaroids here.

good morning starshine

every now and then, i get hit by waves of nostalgia and then i'll go on a complete bender listening to just golden oldies. today feels like that sort of day.

i was very lucky growing up that my parents were heavily into music and i got exposed on a daily basis to everything from the 50s-70s: pop, motown, soul, folk, disco and even the e-z listening "dentist chair/elevator music" sounds of the 70s. as a kid, i use to listen to my lil transistor radio under my pillow and fall asleep to the tunes playing on c-isle am 650 (also affectionately known as senile 650)

my love for the golden oldies even caused me to order the 60s gold collection from the time-life music collections. hey, it's an awesome collection.



when i can't be outside due to cleaning, organizing or in today's case, finishing up my final project for my creative copy class, it's good to know that i could bring some of that summer sunshine-y feeling inside with me. blasting some music from the bygone era always makes any task on hand more enjoyable.

and even gives me an excuse to break into some mini-dancing. so bring on the motown, british invasion and some california sounds.

far from home

suckers for anything space and astronomy-related, sean and i went to watch the vancouver premier of moon at tinseltown last night.

not what you think and certainly a film that keeps you on your toes, moon starring sam rockwell and directed by duncan jones is worth watching. bonus: the trailer only describes like 1/5th of the movie. it does not give the whole movie away.

an intelligent movie with great acting chops by rockwell, the moon has never looked more mysterious or isolated; so close, yet so far from earth.



the haunting score certainly stayed with me hours after we left the theatre. it was only later that sean said the music was composed by clint mansell. but of course it was! for who else but mansell could hold me so enraptured with a movie soundtrack? love mansell.

knowing that was like the cherry on top.

for the girl with the headphones in her ears

cassette players have gone by way of the 8-tracks but the artform of mixtapes (now in form of mix cds) still prevail. and thank goodness for that! for what could be a more thoughtful, charming, sweet and romantic gesture than to receive a mix cd with meaningful tunes handpicked just for you? not to mention the cover art or in my case a print of a photo of a day spent together, emblazoned right onto the cd.

thank you for knowing that the way to my heart is through my ears. viva la musica.

x

superhero geezers

as kidlets, we devoured comic books and watched cartoons and tv shows of our favourite marvel characters/dc comic's justice league of america superheroes. i for one tuned in faithfully to watch linda carter as wonderwoman. and who could forget bill bixby and lou ferrigno in the incredible hulk? the sound of music's nicholas hammond as spiderman? and the adam west batman shows too? campy as they were.

children looked to superheroes as being invincible, immortal and just plain kick-ass. but what if superheroes were just regular humans? susceptible to wrinkles, weight gain and grey hair? what if, perish the thought, superheroes aged?



that's what italian cartoonist donald soffritti imagined when he drew superheroes and villians are geriatrics. absolutely brilliant. click here for more of his superheroes decadence and tell me which one is your favourite.

his perspective

photos courtesy of sean

just a girl, her boy, her polaroid and nature.

a great day out.

a canadian birthday

for canada's birthday, instead of heading to granville island, kits beach, english bay or canada place with the tens of thousands of people also in full on celebration mode yesterday, sean and i opted to spend the day somewhere less crazed.

we headed for a hike around deer lake park in burnaby. not too bustling, i suspect it was even less busy than on a given weekend, what with everyone downtown. and just purr-fect for us to take pictures.



my first time walking the trails around the lake, i was wowed by the various vegetation and wild animal inhabitants of the park. we came upon a flurry of butterflies pollinating flowers and flying all around us, we saw a young coyote come scurrying down from the bush behind us and came upon a hundred geese socializing on the lake. the geese weren't even phased by us wading shallowly in the water with them.



spending the better part of the afternoon at deer lake, it felt like we were a million miles away from the city, where all around us was a sense of serenity and discovery. for me, it was a moment to feel like a kid again. with nary an eyeball on the time (no watches for us) we explored our surroundings and appreciated the simple pleasures.



and lucky for me, i was with my favourite person in the world to have this little adventure with.

maybe that explains why when i downloaded the pictures, instead of keeping them punchy coloured, i saw in today's batch a more vintagey 70s feel (like the sun-kissed amber/yellowish glow i used to get from using 110 cartridge film with my $10 camera) to reflect the mood i was in. when the world was much simpler and you did not want or need for more.