Diverse Ramblings

Keep your distance

To anyone who was driving along the coastroad yesterday afternoon at about 5pm and got stuck in the convoy of vehicles trailing the learner driver, my apologies. Next week I will endevour to proceed a little closer to the speed limit.

Yes folks, it's official, I have started going to driving lessons.

Again.

But this time, Little Sis says that she won't let me quit after the first or second lesson, I have to go all the way! If I make it to the third lesson, then that will be a record for me *grin*

When I got into the car this afternoon, the instructor asked me what experience I've got (two lessons with Mangu, one with Rudolph Driving School, and a couple with Michael in Ta' Qali) and I declined his offer of a demonstration (cos, you know, I've driven before).

But then when the time came to pull out into the road, I began to panic a bit - cars were coming and I couldn't remember which pedal was which!

The instructor talked me through it though and it wasn't so bad once I was under way :-)

He is brilliant, really patient, and he explains why we do certain things. ("Fhimt għalfejn niċċekjaw il-mirror qabel ma nagħfsu l-brake?") He likes to give directions with his hands instead of talking ALL the time, but the thing is that I don't yet know what any of his motions mean! ("What are you telling me? Aaaggrrhhhh!!!")

At one point he said "OK, now we're going to drop down into second gear because third isn't allowing you to go as slowly as you want to. Do you understand why that is?". And it was kind of embarrassing that I, a mechanical engineer, can calculate the thermal cycle of the car's engine but, erm, no, no clue about the third gear thing. *sigh*. I'm going to spend some time on howstuffworks.com before next lesson. X'mistħija.

The girl with the lesson after mine wanted to be picked up from, of all places, Popeye Village, so I had a nice scenic drive up there. It was a lovely sunny afternoon and the views up there are fantastic, although I didn't really get to look around until after I relinquished the wheel to the next student.

At the end of the lesson, the instructor told me that I had "good control" with the steering wheel, and he very nicely didn't mention all the things that I'm crap at, such as not panicking when a car is closer than 20 feet away, or looking out for cars at roundabouts, or noticing road signs...

He also says that next lesson, I'm not allowed to look down at the gear stick to check where the little numbers are every time he tells me to change gear.

Off to read the Highway Code...

Call for submissions

The end of the month is soon upon us, so please send in your entries for the Karnival tal-Bloggijiet (post/s written by you, that you want to share), and L-Għażla tal-Bloggejja (ONE entry written by someone else, that you liked for whatever reason).

Both will be posted on Saturday 1st April.

Send your entries by leaving the address in the comments below, or by email to maltagirl at gmail dot com.

Important: I will only accept ONE entry from each person for L-Għażla (you can send as many as you like for the Karnival) and no anonymous entries are accepted (this is an attempt to preserve the last remaining shreds of my sanity!)

Manoel Island Canoe Races, 2006 edition

Last night I wrote a post about yesterday's canoe races, but then another site crashed my browser and *poof* no more post.

The weather yesterday was glorious - a bright, bright, sunshiny day, with very little wind, and a far cry from the weather we usually get for this event. I regretted that I wasn't competing in the 10km marathon. Regretted it even more when I realised that there were NO women competing in it, and that I would have got the gold just for finishing! *grin*

I did do the 3km fun race with Coach though, in the Canadian canoe that he built himself. It has been six years since I last paddled a Canadian, but I did all right, hooray!

We came first in our category too! Mind you, since no-one else used a Canadian, that meant we were the only people in our category... That's the secret you see - just find something where there's no other competition and you get to come first!

By the time we loaded all the kayaks onto the truck after the race, took them back to the boathouse, unloaded everything and stowed it, it was about 3:30pm before the last four of us got to have lunch. I finally crawled into bed at 6pm feeling fine except for sore knees. I woke up two hours later aching from head to toe. Agrh.

Pictures will follow later (I'm moblogging this) and in the meantime, anyone in need of entertainment need only watch me limping through dance class this evening...

Capitulation

The pesky cough has continued to settle in, unpacked its luggage and seems to be organising a houseparty for all its friends, including Horribly Sore Throat, Spending A Fortune At The Pharmacy, My Head Hurts When I Cough, and it has also invited its friend over from Reesa's, name of I Can't Sleep Because I Cough All The Time.

This evening I officially withdrew from Sunday's canoe marathon... I'm rubbish at it to begin with, let alone when I have to stop every ninety seconds to have another go at hacking up my lungs. Urgh.

I'll go to the race site anyway though, to boss everyone around help out, deal with registrations and so on. Always a pleasure to take money off people, heheheh. If anyone's interested, the start/finish is on the Sliema strand, in the vicinity of the Captain Morgan boats. Just look for the brightly-coloured kayaks :-)

*update*: Looks like I will be doing the Fun Race (3km) with Coach, in his canadian canoe (that's like what Pocahontas would use, as opposed to a kayak, which is what Eskimos use). And the REALLY good news is that my cough is much better - I'm still coughing, but much less frequently. Hooray!!!! Off to pack my gear for tomorrow!

Look what the cat dragged in

The prodigal voice has returned, it sheepishly sidled in some time yesterday.

Unfortunately it also brought with it an unwelcome guest in the form of a persistant cough which has settled in as though it means to hang around for some time.

It's already finished off the chocolate cereal, reprogrammed the TV's remote, and commented disparagingly on the contents of the fridge, and it's really starting to get on my nerves...

Lost and Found

Missing: one voice

Description: somewhat nasal, quiet unless angry or excited

Last seen heard: singing a country song

Presumed location: swanning around somewhere, probably with Reesa's voice

Reward offered: I promise not to sing in your presence

Don't ask me questions unless you can read fingerspelling

The bloggers are dropping like flies... after a whole winter of not getting sick (*gasp*) I developed a sore throat yesterday morning that has just kept getting worse.

With impeccable timing, my ailment began on a Monday, which is also Stagecoach day, and even more precisely on the Monday when in Drama we started voice training... when Toni was giving us a list of things that we shouldn't do, to save our voices, (eat nuts, salty food or chocolate, or smoke, or shout) maybe he should have added, doing an hour of singing and half an hour of vocal exercises with a sore throat... *whine*

And as timing goes, of course it wouldn't be quite so effective if there weren't some kind of long-term impact too - this is the week before the canoe marathon, which is this Sunday. I am in two minds about it... is it nobler in the mind to suffer the coughs and tickles of an infected throat and thus avoid an event that one has completely neglected to train for except for a dozen stomach crunches on alternate days, or to take arms against whole cultures of bacteria with sprays and medicinal doses, and thus have another crack at bringing home a nice big trophy that I completely don't deserve?

Decisions, decisions.

This morning, in my rush to stock up on Halls before leaving for work, I forgot the rather more crucial compounds, i.e. the painkillers and the decongestants, currently sitting on my dressing table, *is an idiot* but I am surviving, and you can currently find me in the centre of a honey-and-lemon-flavoured cloud of fumes.

Walk the line

On Friday, Michael and I went to watch a movie.

After looking up each and every film on imdb.com (and dismissing most of them in the process), the clear winner was Walk the Line. It's a biopic about the country singer Johnny Cash. I didn't know much about him but the main draw for me was the music, for the same reason that I wanted to watch Ray last year.

Also, Reese Witherspoon is in it, and she is one of my favourite actors, so there you go, two very good reasons for us to go watch the film.

When we sat down in the cinema, the audience composition was very similar to that when we watched Memoirs of a Geisha, i.e. average age was 50 or so. I suppose most of them were there because they grew up listening to Johnny Cash.

There was a party of five sitting behind us, and one of the people was a woman who just would not shut up. Michael identified her for me as a popular Country singer, but he told me it would be too mean if I told you who she was, in light of what I'm about to say... heheheh...

Anyway this woman was obviously a rabid Johnny Cash fan.

She knew lots and lots and lots and lots of trivia about his life - his family, his relationships, his songs, his looks, everything.

Now, I don't object to her knowing all that trivia, really I don't.

What I object to is the running commentary that she kept up throughout the movie. My goodness. She just would NOT shut up.

For instance, the camera zooms close up on Johnny Cash's guitar, and pans along the fretboard, upon which we see is fixed a dollar bill.

So this woman goes "Iiiiiii!!!!! Id-dollar!!!! Rajtu d-dollar fuq il-kitarra! Rajtuha? Rajtuha? Eh? Eh? Eh?"

Or, during some poignant on-screen dialogue between Johnny Cash and his wife...

"Imma mhux hekk kienet l-ewwel mara ta' Johnny Cash, ta! Ma kinitx sabiħa daqs di, żgur! Il-ewwel mara ta' Johnny Cash kienet vera kerha, ta, imma vera kerha. Ta' dik it-tip illi, tħares lejha u litteralment tinġibed lura. Tinġibed, ta!"

When she first began doing this at the beginning of the movie, I turned around and gave her my filthiest look, but it didn't work because ninety seconds later she started back up again.

I had just had a half-pint of Guinness at O'Caseys by way of celebrating St. Patrick's day, so I was feeling a bit more mellow than usual, so I decided to ignore her. Eventually I almost got used to her, in the same way that you get used to really uncomfortable shoes.

Besides Ms. Motormouth sitting behind me (and her cronies, who occasionally jumped in too), there was another inconsiderate patron sitting at the veeeeeery end of our row, as far as possible from the door. He was wearing a suit, and obviously has an overly-high sense of self-importance, because he was one of those people who, when they are warned to switch off their mobiles at the beginning of a performance, decide that it doesn't apply to them.

His phone did ring at one point, but hey, pacenzja, it wouldn't be the first time that someone's phone has gone off in the cinema. But what he did next was completely unbelievable - he ANSWERED his phone!!! And he had a whole conversation on it in the middle of the film!!!

I'm still trying to decide whether this middle-aged audience was better or worse than having a whole row of teenage louts passing leery comments during any vaguely romantic scenes and chucking popcorn at each other.

Well, one good thing did come of it all...

I wrote a song!

No, wait, before you hide behind the sofa, my sisters have said that it is at least a hundred times better than O x'kesħa, OK?

Given the subject matter of the film, I wrote it as a country song, and, erm, *tried* for an American accent. I pitched it way down low like Johnny Cash liked to sing, and borrowed some vowel sounds off Reese Witherspoon... and I know that the "T"s shouldn't be sounded, but I thought that if I didn't enunciate, y'all might not understand my brilliant lyrics ;-)

The song is as yet without a title, I'm taking suggestions! The song is now titled "Johnny Cash Blues", with thanks to Toni.

Johnny Cash Blues (3.5 Mb, .mp3)

Agamemnon

On Saturday, Mike and I went to see a play called Agamemnon, along with most of the other students in our Stagecoach class. This was the first play that I have ever seen advertised with a promo video that was shown at the cinema!

Agamemnon was staged by Theatre Anon, and our drama teacher, Toni Attard, was in it, and so was Edward Mercieca, the senior principal of Stagecoach. It is always amazing to me when I see people I know perform, because it's like seeing a completely different person inhabit the same body.

The story was based on Greek mythology, and I followed Reesa's advice and read the programme carefully before the play started. In one paragraph, I came across such names as Atreus, Aerope, Agamemnon, Menelaus, Thystes, all related to each other, and I thought to myself, I really need a family tree to help me figure this out. After spending five minutes working out the geneaology, I turned the page to find... a handy dandy family tree! Heh.

As regards the play, the actual content wasn't really my cup of tea, I'm more of a comedy/musicals girl myself, but I was completely blown away by HOW the play was staged.

It was like a masterclass demonstration of everything that Toni has been teaching us about over the last couple of months... lots of 'contact theatre' with lifts and balances, interacting with and depicting imaginary objects - human flesh and vomit, in this case - using different walks, postures and voices for different characters, the energy never stopped.

The most visually impressive feature was the cloth hanging from the ceiling. Some of the aerial tissu acrobatics that the actors performed on it was aesthetically pleasing, and some was just downright heartstopping! A couple of times I was sure that Paul Portelli, who also directed the play, was going to break his neck.

Now I understand better why Toni is always telling us to explore, to explore the reaches of our voices and our bodies (like how to lift and carry each other), because clearly that was the source of many of the visually dramatic moments in the play.

Toni was spectacular as he played his various parts - that was probably the most effective lesson that he will have given us this semester. Watching Edward was also an experience - I don't know how to explain it, but he just fitted into his character so well that it was easy to forget that it was him.

Overall, an impressive performance where each person gave a significant contribution, and it was a great mix of dialogue, physical movement, and original music written for the show and played live.

The last two performances of Agamemnon are tonight and tomorrow night, tickets from St. James Cavalier.

Got Irish?

Not only am I an engineer, but my step-great-grandfather was Irish, which gives me two reasons to celebrate Saint Patrick's Day...

Mine's a Guinness!