(UN)LUCKY

HIM (on the phone on a Friday afternoon, with a cheeky tone in his voice) : Hello you, I have a surprise for you later on this afternoon!

HER (trying to suppress the hallelujah! coming up in full force from her lungs): Oh, really? Come on, what it is?

Who is he fooling? She already knows. All the ingredients are there: two happy-ish years together, mutual urge to settle down and have an army of kids. I mean, just like “those boots are made for walking” her hips are made for, well, pushing…. And it’s not like it had not been discussed recently…

HIM: What are you wearing today?

HER: You know, the grey t-shirt and a denim skirt. Darn, she should have made more of an effort on that Friday. Her mum was so right when stating that she was letting herself go…

HIM: OK, that’s cool, I’ll meet you at home after work.

HER: Not in town? Somewhere like Waterloo perhaps? She wanted to show him how intuitive she was without spoiling his surprise. But a trip to Paris had been on the agenda.

HIM: Waterloo? Why? No, just come home and we’ll take it from there.

HER: (muttering to herself) Ok, you are making it harder for me. How sweet! Ok, darling, I shall see you later then.

HIM: Bye!

HER ( to anyone at work who agreed to be her audience on a hot Friday afternoon full of the promise of a great weekend): HE has just called to tell me he had a surprise for me.

THEM ( guessing collectively): What could it be? A trip somewhere? Dinner out? You must tell all on Monday!

A few hours later.

HIM: Hello, just give me 5 minutes and we go.

HER: Go where?

HIM: You’ll see.

Oh, how she learnt a lesson that day. To never assume anything at all! And to try and keep such things under wrap. Talking about “the surprise” before it happened can often have one fatal merit: that of highlighting the ridicule of admitting it all later on…

They got into his car, with him looking mildly excited and not secretive enough , she thought; SHE was beginning to realize she was possibly on the wrong path. But nothing could have prepared her for what came next.

HE drove her 5 minutes away into the neighboring area that will always keep the price of her flat down… It sounds like the surname of a very rich footballer married to and ex Spice Girl, but rich it ain’t! He went and knocked on the door of a sad looking council estate. Nothing. And then he knocked again. A few knocks later this kind-looking half-deaf 98 year old (or close) lady comes out followed by an obese stray-looking dog, with obvious rheumatism symptoms.

SHE was in a state of shock and confusion. What on earth? (let’s stick to suggestive euphemisms…) Who is this? What is THAT??

THAT was most likely the ugliest looking dog on earth. With a lovely friendly and obliging personality, to be fair on him. His name was Lucky, which made his reality even more pathetic: heavily overweight, half blind, with heart problems and serious joint aches, that dog was not something SHE’d envisaged at the end of HER leish… Surprising it was, indeed! HE had basically picked up on HER passion for dogs and had contacted their local animal charity. To see how HE could involve HER with looking after a dog, without the dog actually moving in with them. Clever, eh? The charity matched HIM with Lucky and the rest flowed naturally. HIM, HER and Lucky ended up on a couple of visits to the park where Lucky would sit down with a wise look upon his tired face watching THEM run around playing badminton. A bit of a role reversal, don’t you think? Lucky didn’t even bother to fetch the shuttlecock ( now this word DOES exist, so no smirking, please!)

Gosh, and how the blokes at the local pubs laughed when THEY struggled to lift poor Lucky into the car!

Conclusion: No Paris, no middle-class heaven prospects, no 2.5 kids in the pipeline, so to speak. SHE had to move on. HIS was a carefree attitude that would have been carried through many a such confusion so SHE eventually gave up. But SHE does have a giggle every now and then over that story…

THE BEST OF YOUTH

If anyone would have said to me: “You will be given a 6 hour long film and watch it all in one go on a Thursday night until 4am”, I would have called him/her/it crazy…

Well, last night I did it.  It’s an Italian film called THE BEST OF YOUTH.  Winner of Un Certain Regard at the Cannes Film Festival in 2003.                              

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0346336/

I came back from a very nice dinner with friends, made a cup of tea, sat down on the sofa with Amore and did not get up until 6 hours later.  Not even to go to the loo…

So if you get a chance for a quiet afternoon/evening in, do get this beautiful film out!  It’s a three decade long fresco of Italian social and political life, as seen and lived by a family of 6 from Rome.  It’s tempting to turn all “review-ey” and voice  opinions on the directing, acting, locations, etc. 

However, I’ll stick to this: I recommend THE BEST OF YOUTH with all my heart.  You will love it and this is coming from someone who is quite hard to please when it comes to film.

Enjoy and do let me know what you thought!

The “Procreation Paradox”, by Topolino

Why do people have children? Versus adopting, I mean. There is so much hunger in the world, so many children already without anybody to take care of them and still we procreate.  And we want two, or three or even four of our own offspring as I heard someone recently.  Why? Our chances of survival as species would be much greater if we took better care of the humans already inhabiting the Earth. Why create more? One may label it selfishness. It’s easier to put a label. The explanation might be found buried somewhere deep inside the complicated maze of human psychic, but let’s just simplify and say that procreation is a very natural desire. We want to be biological parents so that we can leave something behind, so we can continue our existence on Earth, we want to see ourselves in our kids. People turn to adoption when adoption is their only chance of becoming parents. It takes altruism and guts to adopt. Yes, guts, more guts than childbearing and labour entails. Because, I believe, of all the reasons, the most prevalent is a practical one – we don’t want any surprises. We don’t want to take any risks with adopted children whether it’s about health issues or psychological or temperamental. We think it will be easier and more comfortable to deal with someone who was made out of our own ‘material’.

 (MINE! MINE! MINE!)

Surprise-surprise!  I am a mother and every day I marvel at my son’s uniqueness. I created a new human being, however it is not a replica of my own, it’s a whole new person with his own personality and his own thoughts, desires and actions. A new person who has nothing to do with me! And the differences will increase and the gap will get even wider as he grows up and matures. Hence the paradox.  I am a biological parent and still I often ask myself “where did he get this?”, “how did he come up with that?”. There is a twinge of pride – of course – I made this being and there is pride despite the fact that this new person has nothing to do with who I am. But I MADE him!I guess we are having children because it’s a way of uncovering our own potential, it’s our chance to create something important, and our chance to better ourselves. BUT this is a double-edge sword. By expecting to become better people through our children, we put a lot of pressure on them. However this is subject for another article J      

Guessing game

It’s been a while that I’ve been toying with the idea of writing an article called “Being Foreign”.  Many of my friends enjoy that status, so, thankfully, I’m in a comfortable place.

Photos # 4 & 5

                    

                     

          

 Photo # 3

                        

 Photo # 2

                        

So, rather than going down a familiar path and delivering yet another description of what living abroad entails, I am going to shift towards presenting my country.

Photo # 1

                        

I look at it as a timely attempt to bend a rather one-sided attitude.  This is by no means a mission (impossible) to change the general views.  It is simply my way to - let’s face it - buy off my “guilt” for having left and show you the beauty of this (in many ways) wonderful place. 

I’ll let the pictures do the talking.

And you do the guessing.

Guessing, guessing, not guessed!

In conclusion to my previous post “GUESSING GAME”, the whole point of it was to try and counterbalance the following:

* the tons of bad press

* the prejudice out there

* those with the illusion of possessing enough knowledge as to feel entitled to generalize

Like I said before, this is not intended to represent my country in bucolic colours. It just offers a little glimpse to an alternative image. 

And just like After Eight have not paid me to promote their milk chocolate range (yum!, don’t forget the blue box), the Romanian government has not paid me to promote the country either…

Speaking of which, I would like to thank the Romanian Embassy in London for letting me use their lovely pictures, unbeknownst to them.  Multumesc foarte mult!

Idea de miercoles por la tarde o Discovery no es lo mismo que History Channel

Es un miercoles por la tarde y la ultima hora
del trabajo se esta moviendo con la velocidad de un caracol deprimido. El telefono no dice ni pum y la concentracion se me ha ido desde hace un rato.  Me estan pasando por la mente cosas de todo el tipo:

Habre pagado la electricidad? 

Como lo deje con amore, que nos ibamos a ver hoy o no?

Que pelicula quiero ver primero en cine esta semana, porque la lista que me hice es laaarga. 

OK. De repente me viene un idea entretenido. Dada una experiencia mia
del pasado muy cercano, porque no hacer lo siguiente: contar las cosas mas graciosas que nos pasaron a lo largo de los anyos.  No importa si fue en un encuentro romantico, en el tren, en una entrevista de trabajo, con los vecinos, con tu familia, etc. 

Yo empiezo por deciros que lo mio fue de declarar pasion profunda para el canal de television rival del donde me habia ido yo para una entrevista de trabajo.  La tia me pregunto que sabia sobre los canales de su empresa y yo – mas chula – le conteste que me apasionaba especialmente el canal de historia.  La tia –
agra y fea – me dice: “ Me alegro de que estes tan familiar con la competencia” La conteste que si quieria me podria ir a casa ya..  Me dio 5 minutos mas… Hubo mucho mas momentos “abrete tierra!”, pero os dejo la escena a vosotros.  Espero con mucho interes las historias de vuestros momentos de baja inteligencia y/o mala suerte. PS Os pido perdon por la falta de los accentos.

Catherine Tate – Translator

New funny video. I may have already sent it to you as an email link, but given that the Ricky Gervais one is no longer avaialble (why, youtube?) here’s another one for the weekend.

The Far Side

Hello all, I thought that following Topolino’s animal story, I should recommend a really funny animal-related topic. If you ever have a chance and have not done so already, check out Gary Larson’s THE FAR SIDE.  I’ve been a fan for years

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