The Adventures of Sion.
in London (Mon, 20 Feb 2006 10:24:06 +0000)
Hi Adam:
Quoi de neuf? I'm at Plashet, the girls' school, but have a 'free' and can
even afford the luxury of doing a bit of emailing. I've just finished
half-term break, though it didn't feel like one, as I had quite a bit of
tutoring arranged. (My teaching agency had actually found me an American 12
year-old on holiday, who was behind in his school work and whose dad wanted
him to be made to do something. He was a nice kid, but typical of his
motherland's twelve year-olds; he talked about his X-Box a lot.) Anyway, it
was quite alright, and I got some sprinting in as well.
Here's an experience that makes a bit of a story: on Sunday, Sara and I tried
a session of Bikram Yoga with her friend Anna, an Italian Australian from
work. This is the kind of yoga that takes place in a room heated to 43
degrees. I thought that sounded pretty good, since it's never remotely hot
in England. (This might be a chance to actually loosen up a bit!) The
minuses outweigh the pluses, malheureusement. For one, the stench emitted by
forty odd people crammed into a small and very hot room is hard to ignore,
even once your olfactory powers have dimmed a bit. (Foot odor can be almost
unbearable!) More importantly, my preconceptions about yoga were more or
less confirmed: there's very little exercise science in this. Each 'pose'
requires that you use your body's own strength to stabilize the area being
stretched, so you rob Peter to pay Paul as it were. This wouldn't matter too
much if you did nothing but yoga, as the strength required is not that great,
and the stretching would create good flexibility, but if you add some
tightness from, say, sprinting, the stabilising becomes much harder and the
balance of benefit to damage is thrown off. You gain only a little
flexibility, and tighten major areas of your body. You also lose about a
litre and a half of water. Some elements of the routine are even insane:
once we were required to suddenly stretch our hamstrings while uttering a
sort of war-cry, "Zaahh!" Excuse me?
Once finished, we emerged from the small and crowded shower into a sort of
living room with sofa cushions that were wet from the still-prespiring yoga
masters' and mistresses' bottoms. An appropriately Zen rasta-man was making
fruit-juice and tea infused with beetroot and ginger... A great way to relax
after the whole ordeal!
Oh well. Latuhs, mate.
Sion
in London (Mon, 19 Sep 2005 16:35:08 +0000):
Hi Adam:
How are you? I've been in London for three days, and am now suitably
depressed. We've moved into a new flat, which in theory should be an
improvement; we're living with only one flatmate, a Belgian friend of ours
called Tine (Ti-na). She's quite nice, but is a little fanatical about the
environment. She likes to leave the toilet unflushed to save water, only
after urinating, and doesn't believe in using chemical cleaners. I've bought
some anyway, and have hidden them, as I have no intention of living with the
stench of multiplying bacteria--a problem that grows, literally, faster in
London than elsewhere, thanks to the damp.
We still live in Notting Hill, though we're now at the north end of it, which
is the 'tougher' but 'cooler' end of it. You see a lot of guys trying to
steal scooters, or just hanging around checking out places to break in, and
lots of people flock down the street at certain times to go to the Portobello
market, which is on the vanishing edge of cool, if you haven't kept up. The
annoying thing is that we're not paying less; we have the advantage of having
fewer flatmates, and live in a house instead of in a council complex. I
thought the old place was fine...Sara couldn't stand it anymore, though, so
there you go.
I spent my first two days moving, which was an entertaining way to get over
jet-lag. We rented a small car, and went to bed stores and Ikea and so on.
(The old place was furnished; this one's not.) The experience of driving in
London confirmed the commonly held notion that it's not worth owning a car in
London. The city is a labyrinth of forking roads and one-way streets. None
of them are straight, either, so you have no hope of guessing your way to a
destination. You have to follow an A-Z map, and have to take your time over
it, at least in my case. We let our meter expire once, and found out the
price of the fine: 50 pnds. Not funny. Even having a scooter looks hellish,
thanks to the multitudes of fast drivers and great number of thieves. It's a
shame, as the distances are truly much smaller over land than they seem when
you take the tube. It actually makes you appreciate the subway in Toronto,
which, in addition to being free of bombs to date, is quite fast and cheap,
relatively.
London does have a lot of cultural life, though, and I suppose you're paying
for being in the middle of it all. There are thousands of galleries,
independant cinemas, good restaurants, theatres, etc. I really don't spend
all my time on entertainment or art, though. How can you?
What about Montreal? I've always liked it, mainly because its strength is
its atmosphere. People enjoy themselves and don't seem to take work to much
to heart. That's an important quality, as the opposite prevailing more makes
life into a fog of misery, one that never lifts.
Let me know how you're doing...
Safe, Sion
in Cannes(Wed, 25 May 2005 11:01:41 +0000):
I've just got back from Cannes, where I did some good training and had fun
sitting around with stars. I did rather wonder what I was doing there, since
I wasn't a star, but there you are. I hadn't been to Cannes since I was a
child, and I wasn't that impressed...It's generally tacky and over-priced,
though it does have some of the beautiful architechture and atmosphere of any
of the towns of the littoral. While other towns have some real character and
local food, however, Cannes just has glitz. It is exactly what you'd expect,
I suppose.
Jen and Neil did get me invited to a premiere, and I did the whole red carpet
walk and so on. There are a lot of good-looking French actresses, I can
honestly add. They are French, however, which means they're quite obsessed
with whatever's, well, French. At least it seemed the producer who was
sitting next to me became progressively less enchanted the less it appeared I
knew about French cinema. Hmmm.
Another French touch to the whole trip: the hotel has emailed me to insist
that I had booked two double rooms, but never cancelled them and now owe them
a cancellation fee, to be taken off my credit card. Mais Monsieur, vous
n'avez jamais dit that you did not need the rooms!