Happy new year!
Happy new year (and decade) to everyone.
Thankfully 2009 is over but not before dropping it's last bomb before exiting. One of my favorite uncles passed away on Christmas eve. He was very ill and his kidneys failed and they couldn't revive him. I'm sad but happy for him because he really was suffering and wanted to go. I have wonderful memories of him so I still have things about him to treasure.
I've been on a health kick recently to really try to get my hip injury under control. I walk and do restorative yoga every day. The chiropractor has done everything she can for me and now I'm heading off to a physiotherapist who is also an acupuncturist so hopefully she'll get me the rest of the way there. I've healed enough to be able to do most yoga poses except my two favorites - janu sirsana and uppavisthakonasana. In in the former, I can only get my torso onto my thigh on the uninjured side and in the latter I can sit with my legs wide but can only get my belly half-way down to the floor.
I'm not back to work until next week so I've been focused on catching up on all my reading. I tried to read Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss but threw it aside after 100 pages when it occurred to me that I did not have to read a book that I didn't enjoy. Her writing is flat, I hate her use of adjectives and there's just no emotional resonance for me. And when you don't care about the characters, what's the point.
The high points of my reading have been Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters, Laleh Khadivi's The Age or Orphans and Colm Toibin's The South. Mistry is a master at capturing tiny moments in human interaction that seem unimportant but have incredible emotional impact. Toibin has a capacity to create layers where plot and character intersect and a beautiful rhythm that sweeps you along with it, almost like a tide. Khadivi is a sculptor or words, using her pen like a tool to create images and pictures.
I've also been spending lots of time catching up with friends. Last Sunday a whole group of us drove up to Avoca Beach to lunch at a Mexican restaurant there. Mexican food in Australia is usually very bad (you're better off with Asian food here) but this was run by a Mexican woman who'd married an Australian (who happens to be friends with my brother-in-law) and the food was amazing. It was wonderful to have a real margarita - I almost wept with joy - and they made a beautiful white sangria with lychees.
This weekend I'm planning on going to First Night - it's the first night of the Festival of Sydney where they shut down parts of the city to traffic and put on free performances of many of the acts here for the Festival. And on Sunday I'm going to the Days Like This music festival - there's a couple of djs I want to hear live and Cat Empire and Method Man and Redman are headlining.
Thankfully 2009 is over but not before dropping it's last bomb before exiting. One of my favorite uncles passed away on Christmas eve. He was very ill and his kidneys failed and they couldn't revive him. I'm sad but happy for him because he really was suffering and wanted to go. I have wonderful memories of him so I still have things about him to treasure.
I've been on a health kick recently to really try to get my hip injury under control. I walk and do restorative yoga every day. The chiropractor has done everything she can for me and now I'm heading off to a physiotherapist who is also an acupuncturist so hopefully she'll get me the rest of the way there. I've healed enough to be able to do most yoga poses except my two favorites - janu sirsana and uppavisthakonasana. In in the former, I can only get my torso onto my thigh on the uninjured side and in the latter I can sit with my legs wide but can only get my belly half-way down to the floor.
I'm not back to work until next week so I've been focused on catching up on all my reading. I tried to read Kiran Desai's The Inheritance of Loss but threw it aside after 100 pages when it occurred to me that I did not have to read a book that I didn't enjoy. Her writing is flat, I hate her use of adjectives and there's just no emotional resonance for me. And when you don't care about the characters, what's the point.
The high points of my reading have been Rohinton Mistry's Family Matters, Laleh Khadivi's The Age or Orphans and Colm Toibin's The South. Mistry is a master at capturing tiny moments in human interaction that seem unimportant but have incredible emotional impact. Toibin has a capacity to create layers where plot and character intersect and a beautiful rhythm that sweeps you along with it, almost like a tide. Khadivi is a sculptor or words, using her pen like a tool to create images and pictures.
I've also been spending lots of time catching up with friends. Last Sunday a whole group of us drove up to Avoca Beach to lunch at a Mexican restaurant there. Mexican food in Australia is usually very bad (you're better off with Asian food here) but this was run by a Mexican woman who'd married an Australian (who happens to be friends with my brother-in-law) and the food was amazing. It was wonderful to have a real margarita - I almost wept with joy - and they made a beautiful white sangria with lychees.
This weekend I'm planning on going to First Night - it's the first night of the Festival of Sydney where they shut down parts of the city to traffic and put on free performances of many of the acts here for the Festival. And on Sunday I'm going to the Days Like This music festival - there's a couple of djs I want to hear live and Cat Empire and Method Man and Redman are headlining.