... a meme, because it looked interesting on maswala 's livejournal.
How this game works: Just comment on this post saying you'd like to play. Then I will choose seven interests from your profile, and you will explain what they mean and why you are interested in them. Post these instructions along with your answers in your own LiveJournal so that others can play along, too.
maswala picked the following interests for me:
1. Alice Liddell
2. Coraline
3. Fate
4. Miyazaki
5. Nick Cave
6. Tear in your hand
7. And since Old Irish isn't there (bad girl!), you can take languages in general.
1. Alice Liddell - As you probably know I love Alice in Wonderland. Alice Liddell is the girl who inspired Mr. Lewis Caroll to write Alice in Wonderland and Through the Looking Glass. Last year I received The Annotated Alice in Wonderland for Christmas, and I realized I quite enjoyed reading all those notes and thoughts about the books, so I decided to add Alice Liddell to my interests. Actually, to me, Alice Liddell stands for 'background information' - gaining general knowledge about books in general and the time they were written in or the time they are placed in. If that makes any sense.
2. Coraline - Neil Gaiman's novel Coraline is often described an alternative Alice in Wonderland. Having recently moved into a new apartment with her loving but very distracted and preoccupied parents, Coraline finds herself bored one rainy day and, upon her father's suggestion, decides to explore the flat. She finds a locked door which her mother opens and explains once led to the flat next door but was bricked up when they separated the building into apartments. During the night Coraline sees a small black shadow slip into the room where the locked door is. The next day Coraline opens the door again and it suddenly leads to a dark corridor, down the corridor she finds another apartment seemingly a twisted copy of their own apartment. She also finds her 'Other Mother' and 'Other Father' there, two duplicates of her parents except with buttons sewn over their eyes. Once there, her Other Mother traps Coraline in the other world by kidnapping her parents, wanting her to live there forever. Coraline learns that her Other Mother captured three other children before her and turned them into ghosts, stealing their souls. Desperate to escape, Coraline makes a bet with her Other Mother: If she can find the three children's souls and her parents, then they can all go home...
Probably my favourite quote from the book (it shows exactly why I love the writing of Mr. Gaiman so much):
There was also a well.On the first day Coraline's family moved in, Miss Spink and Miss Forcible made a point of telling Coraline how dangerous the well was, and they warned her to be sure she kept away from it. So Coraline set off to explore for it, so that she knew where it was, to keep away from it properly.
3. Fate - To me the term 'fate' is connected with the Old Norse mythology, when I hear 'fate' I think about the Norns. It also always reminds me of my BA thesis, which I really enjoyed writing because it combines so many of my interests and I could really put my heart into it.
My thesis finally brings me to the term 'fate' meaning 'an inevitable course of events' which can be said of my decision to start studying Scandinavian Languages and Cultures - and specifically choosing Scandinavian Languages and Cultures instead of any other subject - before starting Celtic languages...
4. Miyazaki - And then specifically Hayao Miyazaki, the director of many wonderful animated films. Disney from Japan, if you like, but it goes far, far beyond Disney, both in quality and in themes. Spirited Away is one of his most famous films, and Princess Mononoke. Recently he adapted Dianne Wynne Jones' Howl's Moving Castle. I particularly like his movie My Neighbour Totoro about two girls who have an adventure with forest spirits. My Neighbour Totoro also contains one of my favourite characters: the Catbus, it is a large creature, depicted as a grinning cat with a hollow body that serves as a bus, complete with windows and seats coated with fur, and a large bushy tail -he reminds me of the Cheshire Cat.
5. Nick Cave - I love his voice. Need I say more?
6. Tear in your hand - probably my favourite Tori Amos song. It means an awful lot to me although I couldn't explain why. The entire Little Earthquakes album is an album that I always enjoy listening to, I listened to it a lot as a teenager and somehow it became a part of me.
7. Languages - I admit, Old Irish should have been in my interests. But Languages in general is something I've always been interested in, specifically (and there it is!) Old Irish, Welsh, Norwegian, Swedish, Icelandic. I love studying languages, acquiring them and being able to communicate with them, even if it is only translating from one language to another. I love writing, reading, playing with words. It's something I miss in my current job. My next goal is to learn Old Norse and Icelandic - after I've dusted and cleaned my Norwegian ;)
Besides thinking about my interests I had a lovely time reading this about 'writing blunders'.
Since I am currently ill I finally have time to write an update, how ironic. But it's a good thing, I missed posting here. As you know I promised to write about Norway and London, I will do that after I organized the pictures.
Ah the London pictures are uploaded, so behind the cut are some pictures from London! Finally!
This is in Covent Garden, I love these kind of things!
Also in Covent Garden.
This was in one of the wonderful streets full of bookshops... how I love London!
A lovely signpost on the way to The Tower of London.
The view from somewhere near the Tower of London.
The Tower Bridge in the back.
The White Tower - I believe.
And of course - a raven!
I'm currently in quite a state: we just returned from a few days of London AND there's the final Harry Potter book. Yesterday was absolutely mad. Friday night we took the boat home (hoping against hope they would have some copies of The Book on sale at midnight or that they would at least show a Harry Potter movie in the cinema, but nothing of the kind). We arrived in Hoek van Holland at 7:30, Sean's father picked us up and actually drove to Utrecht to let us buy our reserved copies. As soon as we got home we started reading and couldn't manage to put it down. I finished it last night and I love it. It is a wonderful book and a great conclusion to the series, I do think it's the best book of them all.
London: we've been walking around London like idiots trying to do as many things as possible, failing miserably in doing/seeing everything we wanted but managed to see/do the most important things. I love that city! We went to the British Museum and the Tower of London, and we walked through a big part of the city just shopping and looking around. There are still many, many places we want to see, so there will be lots to do when we return.
The Lord of the Rings musical was AMAZING and should really become a huge success, it deserves to be. The decor was impressive and the way they managed to put the whole story into a three hour musical is absolutely amazing. Wow. We both absolutely loved it. They took some liberties, of course, but I think they did a great job. We had seats in the front row, we weren't to happy about that in the beginning, but those seats turned out to be quite well. We could see almost everything, except when people would lie/fall down on stage or when things happened further back on stage. On the upside: we could see all the facial expressions and because they used a rotating stage and the stage would change in height we managed to see almost everything. I should say that the upper circle or balcony seats would have been better, and seats more in the back would have better view (ironically enough those would all have been cheaper - whereas we paid 60 pound per ticket, the most expensive tickets...) I am definitely not complaining, but I would advise everyone to check the seating plan. We didn't know how (and if) we could pick the seats so we just took those available.
I agree with everything 'Dumbledore' (it is his voice, isn't it?) says on the site: a spectacle, amazing, wonderful. It really is! Even Sean liked it, and he really isn't the musical type.
Was anyone else seriously creeped out by the Weeping Angels in the Doctor Who episode "Blink"? It aired 3 weeks ago or something (we are a few weeks behind, yes, due to general business and tiredness).
We watched it late last night, and don't get me wrong, it was a BRILLIANT episode, but those angels seriously creeped me out. Damn. I loved the storyline and the atmosphere, though. The girl who played Sally Sparrow was great, she would make a nice new Rose/Martha.
Now I just know that Sean wants an action figure of one of those angels which he will then - secretly - move around the room to creep me out...
I'll never look at angel statues again without thinking of this episode...
Now we'll go watch Poirot, I bought the complete series until now a few weeks ago :)
We managed to book a trip to London! I am so excited. We'll take the boat on tuesday the 17th in the evening, and we'll go back on friday the 20th, also in the evening. We initially wanted to stay until saturday (mainly to buy the new Harry Potter book, and possibly see the Hogwarts Express) but unfortunately the boat was booked full on saturday. Still, this is wonderful!
Now the fun part starts: deciding what we're going to do and see... Suggestions anyone?
Time really flies when you are having fun. We got back from our 2,5 week round trip through Norway yesterday evening. I must admit that I am very happy we still had today and will have tomorrow to prepare for going back to work. We had such a wonderful time that it will be hard to adjust to the 9-5 working pattern again. But it's good to be back home :)
I will post more detailed stories later, right now I will only give away some clues to what you'll be reading about as soon as possible:
- abandoned holiday resorts
- snowed in roads
- waterfalls
- reindeer
- general peace and quiet
- our adventures on the 17th of may (the national day in Norway - a BIG deal)
- ****hotels in Denmark and our feelings about them.
Well, I hope this will stay online for a little while longer, and I hope you'll still be able to get a glimpse of this:
http://www.aintitcool.com/node/32031
The first ever (unfinished, but still) footage from The Golden Compass.
This already looks amazing, and I can't wait to see this movie.
...to let you all know that I am still alive! I will update more often from now on, I promise. I have been extremely busy with my new job and, well, it took a while to get used to working 40 hours a week. But actually liking your job helps.
Random news: I tried a new recipe today, it tasted really nice, if I may say so myself. I made filo-pastry filled with a spicy meat mixture. Very yummie. You only need:
Filo-pastry packages filled with spicy meat
- some sheets of filo-pastry (depends on how many packages you want to make)
- ground beef
- 1 or 2 normal sized onions, roughly chopped
- 1 roughly chopped leek
- 1 or 2 teaspoons of sambal oelek (depends on how hot you want the meat to be, and how spicy the sambal is)
- 1 small can of tomato puree
- salt, pepper, curry powder, paprika powder to taste
gently fry the beef, the onions and the leek, season it well using the spices mentioned above. when it is cooked add the tomato puree and the sambal, mix very well.
Then take a sheet of filo pastry and put it on a flour-covered working space, brush the sheet with some olive oil and fold it once. Put a large spoonful of filling in the middle and then fold the sides to the middle so that the edges just overlap. Brush the edges of the pastry with beaten egg. and fold the other two sides to the middle in the same way, make sure that the package is as flat as possible. Finally heat some oil in a frying pan and gently fry the packages (one or two at a time) until golden brown and crisp.
Serve with sweet chilli sauce or sweet soy sauce and some salad. Enjoy!
