Piotr Illych

Last night at badminton I was asked to 'play something' (on the piano) and I really didn't feel like playing anything substantial so I said, 'well, what would you like me to play'?
The reply was an incomprehensible (to me) Mandarin transliteration of some composer's name, followed by the piece name, which was 夢中的婚禮 and an automatic 'yuck reaction' kickstarted and I went, huh?

My first association was A Maiden's Prayer of course (fill in the speech/prayer bubble time! hmmm....) but then having a wedding in a dream (most likely flanked by cherubs) sounded exponentially worse than a maiden's prayer and then it hit me WHAM!

Richard Clayderman.


Well here's Karien Kooiman instead.

I append this photo because a couple of days ago I had a bout of nostalgia when I heard Tchaikovsky's Méditation on BBC radio 3, albeit accompanied by orchestra.
We had played (must use the pluperfect here, to be fair) this piece together, me on the piano, in the end-of-year concert in Italy exactly 3 years ago, in the same Church where this photo was taken a year later....
Well, all that's over now, isn't it! Duino was a honeymoon with Life; you can have nice dinners together from time to time but it's just never same.
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Latin exam was fun, to put it blandly. Had a lunch that was way too big as a pre-exam meal, the kind that makes you want to take the afternoon off and doze off, wherever (in this case McEwan Hall).

Anyway, in one of the original Latin passages we had to translate, Mark Antony marries Octavia, Julius Caesar goes on with his Campaigns and then the Velleius Paterculus goes on to describe how Labienus scared the heck out of Roman Africa after leaving Brutus' camp and teaming up with the Parthians and so on.

Of course Labienus like all bad guys, "extinctus est", here by Vendidius. Point of the story, instead of translating: "Vendidius vanquished Labienus along with the Parthian army and the Parthian prince" (or words to that effect), I had to the nerve (that were evidently 'stuck together', for those non-existent cantonese speakers out there) to write down this syntactiacally equivalent (in Latin) version:
"Vendidus, along with the Parthian army and the Parthian prince, vanquished Labienus".

Ave Syntax!

Reading Shakespeare's take on Julius Caesar, who has just died.
Fixus, as Ovid would say.

You, the reader.

Came across this random Latin riddle which, admittedly, is quite lame. It does have its relevance:

EGO SVM PRINCIPIVM MVNDI ET FINIS SÆCVLORVM ATTAMEN NON SVM DEVS

(I am the beginning of the world and the end of all ages yet I am not God [, who am I?]).

... The letter 'M'!

('world'/mundi starts with M and 'all ages'/saeculorum ends with M........... *awkward silence in cyberspace*)

Anyway, I'm having my Latin exam tomorrow in the McEwan Hall (hence the connection with the letter M, hence the archaic sense of humour, or the lack of it)

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Just this week a Cuban blogger was denied exit Visa (whatever that is!) to travel to Spain to receive some award. How on earth do blogs come to have a wide readership outside one's social circle to the extent of being accused of incitement? That, evidently, isn't one of my aims... (both to be denied exit visas and to incite... I wouldn't mind the Spain bit, though. More Spanish guitar, please.)

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This is a very disjuncted post so here's yet another disjunction: Great documentary, go see it:

Al Jazeera, Iraq War (no I'm not an active activist, which makes me not an activist); most of the action takes place in room called Centcom, a mini-media-colony where thousands of international journalists gathered during the ordeal to receive new information, make live broadcasts, hold interviews etc. Beautiful filmmaking, heartfelt testimonies by the both top-level informants and your average cafe-frequenter in Doha, and a unique chance to peer into how news of the Iraq War was represented, both by Al Jazeera and other agencies of 'the West'. A bit of demonizing goes on, evidently, but not so much in the documentary itself as in the minds of viewers.

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Getting a video camera from Rich tomorrow, shall see if I can put anything interesting onto the web.

You, the reader, still don't exist by the way (except for random googlers of 'elliot leung' or sth of that ilk).

How Calvino.

Salut Émile

昨晚原本打算早一點關電腦，拜訪周公，發個好夢，七小時後「捲土重來」，讀過聖經，喝過咖啡後繼續「咪書」．結果呢？結果．．．
多手開了一個ｂｌｏｇ，

還把什麼ｂｌｏｇｇｅｒｓ’　ｇｕｉｄｅ之類的東西看了一遍,自然也被wikipedia吸了過去．是的，認識許多ｂｌｏｇ　ｌｉｎｇｏ（按原理,可稱ｂｌｉｎｇｏ吧）．有用嚒？ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ is　ｃｏｎｓｔｒｕｃｔｅｄ，有人想出來自然有人看，愈看愈多，無中生有；ｋｎｏｗｌｅｄｇｅ is　ｐｏｗｅｒ (blowledge is blower 'blauer') , 我想是吧.

經過多番周轉,還是兩點多才鑽入被窩「赴約」, 發過什麼夢也自然忘記掉了.

剛在數千英里外新鮮出爐的online明報讀了一篇梁文道的文章，什感痛快，與大家分享, 也是我第一個post用中文寫的原因．

http://www.mingpaonews.com/20080503/msa.htm

至於我何時開始有對cyber空氣說話的喜好，還塑造出這不存在的「大家」－我想，弄個research design出來，搞個清楚吧！（被週一的methodology考試沖昏了頭腦，不好意思）

第一篇ｂｌｏｇ就在這裏劃上句號吧．很期待明天的來臨！