Category: Entertainment

We needed cheering up

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flowers-003

Feeling sick after watching Trump accepting his win yesterday, I went out and bought flowers. I arranged them in my lovely gold Burslem vase, put them on the coffee table, poured myself a glass of Oyster Bay sauvignon blanc and watched Sense and Sensibility on DVD. Did it make me feel better? Not really in the face of what feels like an unmitigated disaster for the US and the world.  To quote Garrison Keillor I’m going to spend the next four years “raising heirloom tomatoes, meditating, reading Jane Austen, traveling around the country, tasting artisan beers” or a version of that.

La Traviata

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072

Last Thursday the five of us got into our glad rags and caught the bus to Circular Quay. We walked in the direction of the opera house and got to the end just as the sun was going down. We had a drink and a bite to eat while watching the lights from the harbour bridge appear through the twilight. Then we went into the opera house for a performance of Verdi’s La Traviata. It was a first for all of us and we enjoyed everything about it – the spectacular building with its views of the harbour, the orchestra playing the overture, the sumptuous sets, the singing and the familiar music. We got tears in our eyes when Violetta parts from Alfredo and were stunned when she dies! None of us will quickly forget the wonderful experience.

Watching a TV series in Malaysia

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the good wife

I have never acquired a taste for reality TV and have not watched a single episode of American Idol or Master Chef. However, I did follow The Good Wife while living in New Zealand and when I saw that it was to be shown here, I decided to record it using our Astro box. The package we pay for provides hundreds of channels and a recording device. I find it all a little bewildering because there is no printed TV guide and their website only lists that day’s programmes. I saw the ad for The Good Wife by chance while Jim was watching some sport. The ad claimed the show was appearing on Malaysian TVs “the day after it was screened in the US”! Much more bewildering though was the order in which they screened the episodes here: episode 1 was not The Good Wife at all but some other show, all good with episode 2, then we skipped to episode 4 with episode 3 screening the following week, and so it went on. I never got to see episode 21 at all and it was with relief that I finally watched episode 22. If that is how the series was broadcast in the US I will eat my proverbial hat!