Monday 25 October 2010

Dinner is Served

Now that I am pregnant, meeting friends for drinks has become a thing of the past. Rather than looking back at those alcohol quaffing evenings through sepia-tinted (or septic as my liver would cry) nostalgia, I've found a new social enterprise du jour.

Meeting friends for cheap dinners.

Certainly some friends looked askance at me when I first suggested that we sup together.  I've always enjoyed dining and drinking but not together. If we were out for a session, it was a liquid one. For me anyway.

I've gone from this..

With nausea in check and mouth open wide, I have sampled the cuisine at a fair few joints lately. The Shard near London Bridge for a (suprisingly) fancy curry; Kitchen Italia in Convent Garden who are gunning (I think) to take Strada's crown; supposedly Gordon Ramsay's fav, Donna Margerita in Wandworth for their famous pizza and most recently, The Bedford & Strand in Charing Cross for some old-fashion pie action.

To this...



I have thoroughly enjoyed this new spate of social intercourse. With two-for-one vouchers in hand, I plan to cruise London's mid range eating establishments until I find my gems. The excitement of it all makes me giddy. Frugality makes me come over all frou-frou.

This, however, is not cool.

 Let's see how long it lasts.

Saturday 16 October 2010

Not All Chinese Are Gutless

My dad is a professional hobbyist. This aspect of his personality benefitted me hugely growing up as I got to participate in whatever had captured his fancy. Fishing, building construction, tennis, stamp collecting (I passed on that one), table tennis, dancing and so on. But for as long as I've known him, his love for the written word, politics and history has remained constant.

Dad contributes regularly to an online Chinese poetry site based in Macau. Recently he posted a poem in tribute to ths year's Nobel peace prize winner Liu Xiabo who is currently imprisoned in China for his non-violent struggle for human rights. Dad called today to tell me that he had been criticised and accused online as being an anti-revolutionary for what he wrote in his poem.

Liu Xiabo
I warned him to be careful on his trip to China at the end of the year. I said maybe his phone was bugged as we spoke. After all, he was a counter-revolutionary now!

Here is the poem below. It loses a lot in English translation, rather like comparing an ice sculpture with a lego house but you'll get the gist:

In Praise of the Liu Xiabo - Nobel Peace Prize laureate

Praise, for you have gone to prison with courage.
Not all Chinese are gutless.
You refused to go into exile
although now you are in such a fatal enterprise.
Heaven and earth tremble beneath your dignity
while the termites put on their show.
In the chill of the morning,
I behold your withering statue
as the rising current, rages on.


Personally I think he shoud re-title it - Not All Chinese are Termites

Tuesday 12 October 2010

Of Woman Born

When I was just a wee young girl, far from the clutches of puberty, my mother and I had a conversation about marriage and children. When I declared that I wanted neither, she replied:

If you must get married at all, put it off for as long as you can

and

You won't know what it's like to be a woman unless you have children*

I was just ten at the time but even then I retorted:

That's rubbish. Are you saying that women who choose not to have babies or can't have them are not women? If becoming a woman means having views like that, I'll give it a miss thanks.

As I digested the fact that my mother's dream for me was to become a single mother, I felt my anger at her statement grow.

Twenty seven years later, I still get mad when I hear this nonsense spouted at me. Unfortunately it has been said to me far too often. And always by women.


Does this make you a woman?

In the period after I got married (sorry mum), I got the baby question a lot. It drove me crazy. Some people felt it was their right to assess my womanly status in direct correlation to my breeding status. However when I asked these people if they were planning to go back to work or what else they were planning to do apart from childrearing, it was as if I was launching a nuclear attack. Defenses went up. Tangible bristles appeared. How dare I question the sacred fount of Motherhood!

Well don't dish it out if you can't take it I say.

I'm going to become a mother sometime next year. So far my pregnancy has not made me feel any more womanly. It has made me feel pretty gross in fact. I know there are big changes ahead and I know nothing I can do will ever prepare me for them.

But I do know one thing. And that is I will not suddenly become a Woman when the baby is pushed, pulled, yanked, cut, tugged out of me.

It will be another stage of becoming me.


*To be fair, she did tell people to shut up about the kid question after I was married and told me that having kids was definitely not the be all and end all of life and sometimes it was better not to have them. I was somewhat reassured and offended at the same time.

Sunday 3 October 2010

Student Daze

Many moons ago I was presented with the opportunity to return to academia and undertake postgraduate studies. I wrote about that here.

Well I did it. I signed up and am a bona fide student again. Part -time. I couldn't quite commit my whole life to poverty.

The campus I am attending is gorgeous. It's like the Lost Gardens of Heligan plucked from Cornwall and plonked into London. Swanning around the grounds makes me feel very at one with student life. It reminds me of the times I spent sitting on the lawns of Bush Court at Murdoch and the Great Court at UWA, chatting with friends and skipping classes. The library at this institution holds more dance resources than any other place I have been. As I am a library junkie that is studying dance, this is heaven.

Just like this woman in the Lost Gardens, theory waffle sends me to sleep

The only thing that bugs me right now is Theory.

What did I expect. What did I think I would be doing?

But why does so much have to be hot air? Why can't some of these published academics say in one sentence what they use a  whole page for? Why can't the language be plain instead of convoluted? Why do you have to read twenty crappy pieces of theory to find one brilliant one.

Keep it simple people.

So the wall I came up against in my past studies is still there.

But this time, I'm going to smash it down. Or get kicked out. Or fail.