Recently in Excursions Category

Last Friday, Azure and I were lucky enough to attend the 104th Annual Bachelor’s Ball, over at the Beverly Hilton. It’s been a long time — too long, honestly — since the two of us had a big night out, so this event helped make up for lost time.

The Bachelor’s Ball is a fancy-dress party, and a rather fancy fancy-dress party at that. It’s put on by an old L.A. society called (unsurprisingly) “The Bachelors”. There’s maybe 60 of these unmarried Bachelors, and each invites a table of roughly 10 friends, who in turn costume themselves around a group theme. As the Beverly Hills venue implies, it’s a pretty posh affair, the sort of shindig that starts with a cool champagne reception and promptly keeps the open bar wide-open ‘til 4 in the morning. I can toast to that.

Our longtime friend (and stalwart webhost provider) Andy just so happens to be one of these Bachelors, and his table’s theme this time around was gosurori, a niche Japanese fashion subculture that’s been stomping around Harajuku for over a decade now. The EGL scene is more of a girl thing, so us guys loosely followed in the vaguely-related “Elegant Gothic Aristocrat” style, with a bit of gentlemanly steampunk-ishness thrown in the mix.

Azure and I had way too much fun assembling our costumes over the last couple of weeks. Since we’re already unabashed Japanophiles, the Bachelor’s Ball provided yet another excuse to go shopping in Little Tokyo and explore new joints like the EGL-friendly Royal/T cafe in Culver City. (The maids make a mean mug of Matcha Milk Tea, there, and I’m not just saying that for alliterative purposes.)

The pictures in our photostream tell the rest of the story. ‘Twas a pretty special occasion, an excellent night out, and a much-needed break from reality.

We’re in Seattle for a week. It’s been raining off-and-on since we arrived; not exactly unexpected. What has been a nice surprise, though, is how stunning the fall colors are around here. I’d go so far as to call it New England-y, albeit with the disclaimer that I’ve never actually been to New England in autumn.

Although it’s our second trip to Seattle in the last couple months, this is notably the first time we’ve flown with two kids in tow. Preflight logistics turned out to be more daunting than the travel itself, though I did get a moment of excitement when (as Murphy would have it) our plane encountered a wee patch of turbulence halfway through Tamtam’s airplane-lavatory diaper change. Seeing the seatbelt light illuminate was like hearing a starter pistol fire — I’ve never wielded baby wipes with greater speed and dexterity, nor snapped shut a onesie with such machine-like precision and efficiency.

Anyhow, we’ve been keeping occupied with trips to the playground, zoo, puppet show, and other demographically-appropriate destinations. Most of all, we’ve just been happily hanging out with friends here. Which is why we came up in the first place.

Allow me to sweep the dust off this blog, so I can quickly post a list of cheap eats in Rome’s Centro Storico. I’ve emailed variants of this guide to traveling friends for a long time now, but somehow never managed to put it on the web.

Two caveats: First, it’s been five years since Az and I lived in Rome; two since our last visit. Second, we were mostly vegetarian back then, so our dining staples tended to be pasta, contorni, and pizza. Which is not exactly a limiting diet, in Italy.

Around Piazza Navona:

My favorite lunches in town are both near Piazza Navona: first, there’s Lo Zozzone, which makes awesome sandwiches on hot, straight-from-the-oven pizza bianca that’s sliced to order and stuffed with ingredients of your choosing. The breasola, arugula, and parmesan is particularly popular; I’d generally go the tapenade-veggie-cheese route, and sometimes order a small second of nutella-ricotta for dessert. Best to arrive both hungry and patient, the lunchtime queue can be a bit of a jostle.

Even better is Da Tonino’s, which is officially called Trattoria Antonio Bassetti. I’m not at all sure if it has a sign, yet, and while I know they upgraded the decor when I visited a few years back (interior lighting used to be a couple of raw fluorescents) it’s a humble-looking place. The food isn’t fancy by any measure — it’s the simple pastas that shine here — but the taste of it all is stupendous and superlative. The pasta melanzane (eggplant) and pasta broccoli are my two favorites; in a perfect world their pasta fagiole would be spirited away somewhere safe to serve as the specimen against which all others should aspire. Check out the carciofi and brocolli romano (perfectly saute’ed with chili flakes and olive oil) as side dishes.

As for dinner, well, it’s gotta be Baffetto’s, right up the street. Look, there’s a reason this place is in every single guidebook: Baffeto’s is very, very good and very, very Roman pizza, with a two-dimensionally-thin crust that’s crunchily croccante, baked perilously close to the fire, and topped with a type of grated fresh mozarella that I’m convinced is the key to it all. (Order the Insalata Burina as an appetizer to sample the cheese raw; I’m personally torn between that and a starter bruschetta every time I go.) Be prepared for gruff service and a wait outside, with plenty of tourists and crowd-control all’italiana. It may seem gauche, but arriving early in the evening (like, ten minutes before they open) makes for a wayyy more civil experience. Plus, you’re more likely to get a seat downstairs where you can watch the two cooks work the pizza oven, which I always like. Contingency plan: if Baffeto’s won’t work, and you can’t make it to Trastevere, run with Da Francesco, around the corner at Piazza del Fico.

There’s also Da Alfredo & Ada, which is just down the street from Baffeto’s and Da Tonino. Another sign-less joint, I’d always referred to this place as the Three Sisters, since it’s run by three older women who fuss around each other like siblings. (They’re not.) It’s a tiny restaurant with a humble menu — in fact, don’t even kid yourself about a menu at all, the schtick here is that the ladies will serve you whatever they feel like serving you. Last time we went, I watched Ada scold a group for not eating their veggie sides; she promptly pulled them off their table and gave them to ours. Behave yourself — you’ll get some cookies after dinner if you do. (Check the great post and photos at tastingmenu for a second opinion.)

Around the Pantheon:

The best coffee in Rome (IMHO) is Caffe San Eustachio. And given that the queue at the bar sometimes goes three deep, it appears others feel the same. Il Gran Caffe is the paragon of espresso shots, though I swear there’s some cheating going on — the crema on top is so wonderfully fluffy that I suspect they’re doing something when they stir in the sugar for you. (A note on that: when the barista barks “zuccherato?”, he’s asking if you want sugar, and the answer is yes.) If you don’t believe me, check the weird metal guard they’ve put in to block the view of exactly what happens under the espresso machine. I know I’m not the only one who thinks something’s going on (a teensy hint of hot cream, or bicarbonate of soda, maybe?), but whatever it is, it’s good.

Also good at San Eustachio is Il Gran Cappuccino, a hefty-in-the-hand cappuccino that’s massive by Italian standards but seems just about right by me. (For more thoughts on dainty Roman cappucini, see my old post here.)

Caffe Tazza D’Oro is nearby, too, and while the decor is sweet and the place is something of a destination, I can’t say the espresso struck me as being notably better than anywhere else (in Rome, that is).

Gelato is the other staple that’s abundant around the Pantheon. Like the Trevi fountain, I think the Pantheon looks better at night, and always worth a minor course-correction when taking an evening stroll. Ditto for a few of the cremerias in the area — there’s La Cremeria right on the piazza, and the venerable Giolitti nearby. Della Palma wins on quantity (but not quality) and is wonderful to look at; it’s an OK place if you’ve got some kids in tow.

Here’s a few of the clips that wound up on my desktop after making our little Valencia video. B-sides, Outtakes, Deleted Scenes… dunno what to call ‘em, but I figure they’re still worth sharing:

A week after the fact, and I think we’re finally recovered from the long weekend in Valencia. It’s a great city to visit for a few days — really manageable size, nice people, and plenty of toddler-friendly attractions.

We only ran into one problem, which stung us pretty bad: the whole idea of ‘lunch at 2:30, dinner between 11 and midnight’ doesn’t mesh well with a strictly-sleep-scheduled baby who naps promptly at 2 and needs to be in bed by 8. We wound up foraging a lot of cold tapas and chocolate & churros, which ain’t half-bad, though the foodie in me quietly wept a few times. (Comment from Azure: “Quietly? I don’t know if you can use the word quietly…”)

‘Twas also a learning experience about what to expect from a kid at attractions. Valencia has a pretty awesome aquarium (L’Oceanografic) and a small zoo in the city gardens, and Az and I were both super-excited about taking Em to these, since she loves animals so much. (Without exaggeration, I’d guess that 40% or so of her current vocabulary is animal names.)

Yes — Emmie had a good time at both the zoo and the aquarium, no doubt. But while Azure and I had debated whether Emmie would enjoy the penguins more than the giraffes, etc. etc., we hadn’t anticipated that the show-stealing attractions would be the aquarium’s crowd-management equipment, and a particular 3-inch-high curb outside the zoo’s Primate House. I mean, Emelyn seemed to like the fish, and all, but it became obvious that she’d have been even happier in a room full of retractable belt barriers and their rope-and-post brethren. As for the curb, well, it was sized ‘juuuust right’ for Emmie to step up and down, and down and up.

This is all on tape, of course. Here’s a video — click through to Vimeo for HD:

Anyhoo: there’s a ton of stuff to love about Valencia — the noise of Las Fallas, the Syd Mead stylings of the City of Arts and Sciences, the constant availability of freshly-fried churros, and so on. My favorite, though, has got to be the Parc Gulliver in the river gardens. Pretty much the coolest ‘concept playground’ I’ve ever seen, it’s a gigantic Gulliver that makes all the children playing on it perfectly Lilluputian in proportion. The folds of Gulliver’s coats are slides and steps; the ropes tying him down are made for climbing up, etc. Genius. (Here’s Emmie and I on it, and here’s a satellite view from Google Maps.)

The Turia river gardens are great, overall — apparently the old river Turia flooded in 1957, nearly destroying the city, so that the city fathers wound up diverting the entire thing elsewhere, and created this long, narrow, meandering park in its place. The landscape changes every few blocks — different fountains, little orchards, bike rental shops, grassy knolls and cafés as you stroll along. Urban planning done well, which you rarely see.

And that’s pretty much it. I suppose it’s worth noting, just for our own memory’s sake, that we actually did run into another major problem, and one which didn’t relate to restuarant opening hours. Problem was that Emmie didn’t sleep. Something about being out of her crib, or hating the hotel’s playpen, I guess. It seriously felt like raising a newborn again — we were up almost every hour to console and coax her back to sleep in our bed. (Although when she was a newborn, she just mewed or cried, and didn’t start jumping up and down wildly in bed.) Hence the quip in the opening line about being ‘recovered’ from the trip.

Autumn is creeping up on Cambridge. It’s dark when we wake, now, and in the morning it’s cold downstairs.

I made a short video from our trip to Adare, here:

Sometimes, the journey is not the reward. Take, for instance, the 30-or-40-odd hour trek that Azure and I endured getting from Indianapolis to L.A. and London (respectively). We woke up at 5am (Chicago time) only to leave at 1am - Az and Em flew off a couple of hours before I did, but only after enduring a 3-hour wait on the Tarmac. I can only imagine.

As for me, I landed at LHR around 2pm local time, and am just now catching the 7:45 train home. Very. Long. Day.

Cutest bit was this: right after limping into work, I discovered that I was scheduled to interview a job candidate that very minute. I managed to run into the restroom to brush my teeth, at least, but I can still only imagine what the poor fellow thought of my employer after his interview. (My god, they’re all zombies! Catatonic! Crazy!)

Anyways, if the journey wasn’t so rewarding this time ‘round, the destination certainly was: our Memorial Day weekend turned out to be a great chance to meet extended family and glimpse parts of the country I’d never before visited. Indianapolis was unexpectedly verdant and green, and the local’s friendliness a contrast to the British reserve. I also managed to take in (A) a White Castle, (B) a live-bait vending machine, and (C) a sunny morning in a local laundromat that offered the best people-watching that side of the Atlantic.

Better still, we did stuff with Emelyn that we’ve never had a chance to do in the UK, like go to a big coffee shop for early-morning breakfast. (Naugahyde booths are one of the things about America that I miss most dearly; I don’t care if it’s a Denny’s or Cocos or a Bob Evan’s, a real-deal coffee-shop is one thing Euros just can’t seem to duplicate.)

Oh, and we can now tick one very minor item off the “not-a-real-American-baby-til-you-do-this” list: Emelyn finally got to try Cheerios, pawing them off the table into her mouth in her not-even-slightly-dextrous way.

It was never going to be easy, but the last couple days featured less sleep and more contingency planning than I’d ever expected. Our flight from Heathrow to O’Hare wasn’t much fun, but at least it got off the ground, which is more than can be said for the (canceled) jump from O’Hare to Indianapolis. And yet that’s still more than could be said for the ‘free shuttle’ that was supposed to drive us to a Chicago airport hotel but never showed, supposedly being “en route” for hours…

Anyhow, we’re here now, having rolled into Indianapolis in a rental Hyundai, a mere 24 hours behind schedule. Lots of family present to greet us on arrival.

Plus, I should note that traveler’s luck can go both ways: Yesterday, Em started shrieking like crazy in the backseat, obviously in need of an immediate diaper change, and what should Dad discover but, lo! - the ‘World’s Largest Fireworks Superstore’ sitting at the next offramp.

For the record — holding a happy, babbling baby in one arm, and clutching a pack of bottle rockets in the other is a mighty fine feeling.

Happy Memorial Day!

It was a stay-at-home weekend, as both Azure and Emelyn have a cough-and-cold combo that’s been pretty rough. (Emmie had some sniffles in Rome, but the doctors think she caught another virus right after, and it’s been way worse the second time around.) Both were running fevers earlier in the weekend, and Azure had to get up throughout the night to feed Emmie, who’s eating in smaller doses. Not easy.

On a happier note, staying in gave me a chance to go through the hour of tape we shot in Rome, and make a 6-minute movie out of it. I’m starting to understand why family home videos are so maligned- I dumped 13 gigabytes of footage onto Azure’s Powerbook, and we still had a hard time finding clips where the shaky camera didn’t leave the viewer seasick, or where my own bubbling, asinine commentary managed to achieve the same effect.

Anyhoo. Here’s the goods:

Alrighty, then. Pulling into King’s Cross as I type; so ends the nice part of Monday morning. I strongly suspect this’ll be another Week Of Pain at work - so see you Saturday!

And what a skip, hop, and a jump that was…

We’re back from Rome, which was as great as ever. Ditto for Emelyn, who hit the Italians with a shock-and-awe charm offensive so big it deserved State Department funding. (I’m sure Emmie would’ve toned down the maximum-wattage cuteness if she’d realized that nearly every Italian man, woman, and child seemed to think she was our darling boy. The multitudes kept stopping in their tracks to say “Ciao Bello!” to her - not quite the same as “Ciao Bella”.)

Anyhow, it was a fine time, and thanks to a few years’ worth of Starwood Points, the whole affair was a mighty luxurious free ride, to boot. We stayed on Via Veneto, in a hotel that was palatial in style and scale. Emelyn, for her part, quickly discovered she had more space to crawl around than she does at home, and promptly went nuts venturing from the bathroom to the bedroom and back again.

The clear highlight of the trip from her perspective was the hotel’s bathroom scale, which she joyously clambered on every two minutes. A bit obsessive, perhaps, but still a better fixation than her very first object of desire, namely, the cable that dangled from the plasma TV screen. She’s her dad’s daughter, for sure - Emelyn started pulling and yanking on that bit of high-priced technology about 30 seconds after we first entered the room - but Azure and I quickly jerry-rigged a Grand Barricade that kept her from the electrics.

We didn’t spend the entire time in the hotel, of course — we pushed across most of the Centro Storico in our five days there. For Azure and I, the trip was prioritized solely along culinary lines, and we hit pretty much every target on our list. I’m proud to report that Emelyn’s first pasta was from Da Tonino’s (the staff there not only recognized us, but gave me the kiss-kiss) and her first bite of pizza was equally proper, coming from Pizzeria Da Baffeto. Nuthin’ but the best for my girl.

Food and caffe aside, it was a surprisingly mellow trip. Azure and I both went to bed at 8pm or so every night, since Em’s crib blocked the door - no in and out privileges for either parent. The Easter holiday also meant that a lot of the city was closed. We spent Easter Sunday lunching and lounging in the Villa Borghese with some friends who run a hostel in Rome, and wound up splurging on room service later that night, as every restaurant outside the hotel was shut down or full up. (Pity the Starwood points didn’t cover that doozy of a bill.)

Sleeping in is never an option, anymore, but in Rome the mornings were still infinitely more civil than the workweek here. The most treasured part of my day was rolling out of bed, grabbing Emelyn, and heading down the block to a Bar for a morning cappuccino. (It was also a chance to learn just how fast Emelyn’s become — she swiped my very first cappuccino in Rome right off the bar, and sent the full cup clattering to the floor. But that also taught me how carrying a baby is like wearing a VIP pass in Italy; the staff were ludicrously gracious about the whole affair.)

What else? We squeezed in multiple visits to the saints — San Eustachio for coffee, San Crispino for gelato. Never went shopping, really, except for a brief look inside La Cicogna near the Spanish Steps, where we saw a Burberry dress for infants being hawked for a mere 275 Euro. (Not Emelyn’s size, I’m afraid.) Managed to visit Lo Zozzone for sandwiches made on top of pizza bianca right out of the oven, and ate deep-fried zucchini flowers at an Hostaria in the Jewish ghetto. Can’t complain.

That’s all I have to tell. Though I should add one note, for the record: Getting there and back was not half the fun. Emelyn had sniffles and a cough for most of the trip, and the plane ride there was hard. Going back was worse - first, poverina vomited in the taxi, then Azure and I aged a few years as we almost missed the plane. Once aboard, Emelyn pretty much screamed at any point when she wasn’t read the ‘Are You My Mother?’ book. She definitely won the Worst Baby On The Plane Award going home; not much else I can say except that she’s one for superlatives. (Plus, she’s got a very good excuse - since Rome, she seems to have picked up a secondary infection that has left her totally miserable, now.) Overall, the travelling bit was a far cry from our last trip stateside, where Emelyn behaved so very nicely that our kind neighbors on the plane actually sent Emmie a pair of booties from New Zealand a few weeks afterwards. But that’s a story unto itself…

Must. Stay. Focused.

That’s my mantra, this week — I’m multitasking more than ever. (7 product launches in 8 countries in 4 weeks, gah!). Making things worse (or better, just depends when you ask) is the fact that Azure, Emelyn, and I plan to punch out on Wednesday evening and head to Rome for a long Easter weekend. I can’t believe how much we’re all looking forward to this - 5 full days as a family sounds pretty unreal, right now.

Plus, it’s Rome, of all places. I’m clutching plenty of joy in my life, these days, but Rome remains an unrequited love, and leaving the place still pangs me more than I ought admit. As to how that crumbling, congested wreck of a city ever managed to shift the orbit of my life so many degrees, I have no idea. Nor do I know just how long we’ll keep circling it, from afar.

Course, it’s all different this time ‘round. Azure and I know the Centro Storico like the backs of our hands; either of us could plot you a course across the city that minimizes distance travelled while maximizing gelaterias en-route; knowledge like that dies hard.

Thing is, we’ve never done it with a stroller. (And nevermind a baby.) It’s not going to be easy. Hell, the thought of merely crossing the street in Rome just struck fear deep into my heart.

The trick, you see, to asserting pedestrian rights in Italy is to conspicuously not look towards oncoming traffic. Should you foolishly glance at a car barreling towards you, and they see you see them, man, there’s no way they’re slowing down. (They know you’re not that dumb.) No, in Italy, what you’ve got to do is to boldly and confidently step out into the middle of the road, and in a manner that indicates you are either (A) suicidal or (B) lack any peripheral vision whatsoever. In this case, drivers will slam on their brakes, afraid they might dent their cinquecento, and you’re golden. (An easy way to visualize all this is to harken back to the Indiana Jones movie where he blindly steps onto the invisible bridge - it’s exactly the same sort of ‘leap of faith’ pose you need for stepping off the curb.)

So I’m supposed to do that with a Bugaboo? Talk about raising the ante.

Then, of course, there’s the whole eating-and-drinking thing. Let’s be frank, shall we — Azure and I are not planning on visiting many museums and churches over Easter - this trip is all about precision-targeted raids at Pizzeria Da Baffeto’s, Pizzeria ai Marmi, Café San Eustachio, Gelateria di San Crispino, Da Tonino’s et cetera. They say the Italians love i bambini, but I don’t recall seeing a lot of high chairs and sippy cups in any of these spots. I can happily say that Emelyn remains pretty well-behaved in public, but still, we’re going to have to make a lot of judgement calls on whether or not our presence at a restaurant is, erm, appropriate.

Roma, ci vediamo subito. In the meantime, I should get back to work…

It’s been an inauspicious start to the week - I just tried catching the 6:45am train to London, which included a mad-dash cycle ride through the dark, only to be thwarted at the very last minute. So I literally watched the train pull out of the station as I ran up to the track, which is one of those things that makes your heart sink. Rough week ahead, I can tell.

Last week was a bumpy one, too. Emelyn went into growth-spurt mode on Tuesday, when I was in Germany. She was feeding every 1.5 - 2 hours, and stubbornly fussing all the rest. Azure was operating solo, those nights, so obviously it wasn’t the best timing.

I’d thought I been through a lot on Thursday evening - I flew back via Air Berlin, a not-so-brand-name carrier, and their disreputable-looking transport (a weird Fokker jet from the early 80’s) delayed my arrival just long enough so that I missed another train - this one being the last direct train home from the airport. Oh, I made it home, in the end, but not without seeing much of Essex by night (empty, dark, featureless), first.

Like I was saying, if Thursday was bad for me, it was worse for Azure - I noisily barged through the door, only to be greeted a wild-eyed “Don’t wake the baby!”. Which told me just about everything I needed to know, and was some sound advice, to boot.

In fact, “Don’t wake the baby” is becoming something of a mantra in our lives. Certainly it’s on the way to becoming our standard phone greeting to any person who dares call us outside the hours of 11-11:30am.

Still, all this stress and worry somehow seems to disappear on the weekends. Suddenly it’s easy enough to put Emelyn to sleep in her pram or the Bjorn; you just have to keep her moving as you go about and do fun things. Saturday we spent just pushing our way through Cambridge, and hanging out on the grass behind the Wren library, watching the punts go past. And Emelyn, of course, was on perfect behaviour the entire time.

We topped that on Sunday by doing even more - Emelyn went for her first train ride, over to Audley End. (It was pretty sweet, actually, the porter insisted we hang out in the first-class cabin, so that Emelyn could have her lunch.) There’s a large manor at Audley End, and some really fantastic gardens to walk around; it’s dozens of acres. The only downside is that the actual Audley End house is a good mile-and-a-half from the station, and through intermittently paved paths - suffice to say Emelyn’s pram boldly rocked the ‘muddy SUV’ look, most of the day. Nice.

Punting is tougher than it looks. It’s certainly harder than the guides ferrying tourists up and down The Backs make it seem.

Arrive in Cambridge on a warm, sunny weekend (happens every few years, I hear) and you’ll see punting’s gnarlier side: the ‘self-hire’ crowd. Once these all-too-literal boatloads of amateurs take to the water, the whole British notion of a ‘jolly riverboat jaunt’ is replaced by a tourist blood-sport that’s more akin to log-rolling or demolition derby. It’s best to watch from the shores of The Backs, I think - you might wince occasionally, but between the crashing, splashing, and multi-lingual shouting, you’ll at least remain dry.

My own punting skills are no better, likely worse. But last weekend, I managed to elude the rent-a-boat crowd, at least, by punting away from Cambridge, towards Grantchester. (Actually, I rode down, then punted the way back.) It’s a 90-minute push either way - plenty long enough to leave me cold, soaked, and pretty well tired. I lost the pole twice (the river bottom is like clay, in parts), and then got rained upon, to boot. Happy I went, of course, but I’m done punting ‘til summer returns.

I completed another journey this week, and one which took me far longer - sixteen years, if I count correctly: I finished Stephen King’s The Dark Tower series, the very week the last installment was published.

Can’t complain about the time - after all, it’s taken King 30 years to write those books, and he’s said this final volume heralds the end of his massive writing career. I can believe that - almost every book he’s written ties, somehow, into the nexus of The Dark Tower, and now that it’s done… where can he go?

So how good was it, at the end? Tough to say - his yarn was obviously good enough for me to read one after the other, and year after year; I’d also agree with the author’s own conclusion that the tale was ‘not entirely successful’. The big concern, of course, was the ending, including the author’s sudden, interjectory warning not to read it. (I’ve read a lot of books, and never have I seen an author pop into the narrative and lecture me against turning the page.)

King was right, of course. I should’ve closed the book. The journey is the reward, etc. - and any ending would have to be more bitter than sweet. This ending, though - man, after thousands of pages, a decade and a half… it just left me crushed. King says endings are heartless, and so this was. Almost.

No spoilers, here. All I can say is that choice facing the reader and Roland were one and the same - dare you enter the Tower, to finally see and know what lies inside? Or would you sit on the doorstep, deep in that field of roses, knowing there that the quest is good and true, and already complete?

I steeled myself for my upcoming capitalist indoctrination (B-school starts next week) by watching ‘Battleship Potemkin’ on Sunday. The movie, in true socialist form, was free for the masses - it played in a drizzly Trafalgar Square, and featured a thumpin’ new soundtrack composed and performed live by the Pet Shop Boys.

Surprisingly, it wasn’t so much a big spectacle, as a good show. I’d expected a double-dose of high camp; that the synthetic techno bombast of Mssrs. Tenant and Lowe would serve only to make Potemkin seem anachronistic and crude by comparison, probably send the whole thing up as a terribly naïve work — technologically, artistically, politically, historically, whatever.

Instead, it was engaging. The music was surprisingly complementary, at times almost natural, and if anything, made the film seem more contemporary, not less. Given, I actually like the music of the Pet Shop Boys (hence my trek from Cambridge to London), so my opinion is undoubtedly suspect to some, but I’d call it a success, and an artistic one at that.

No, it wasn’t perfect: some passages veered too far to the club sound (IMO, the words “Da!” and “Nyet” do not a natural bass line make), some slower strains went on just a bit (like Phillip Glass pumped full of Red Bull). But pacing, I suppose, is something the revisionist soundtrack composer can’t completely control, and one of the more obvious aspects where early cinema shows its age.

Standing in the rain surrounded by umbrellas wasn’t the best screening venue, but it was memorable. The best seats in the house, alas, were on a red double-decker bus snarled in Trafalgar’s traffic - we watched passengers wind their way to the top deck, sitting high and dry, until a traffic cop finally cleared ‘em out.

All it takes is a little Murphy’s law: the day after local papers led with “WETTEST SUMMER IN 50 YEARS”, this place starts feeling like California. In a sunshine-y sense, that is.

We took a most civilized stroll out of town yesterday, and walked alongside the river Cam towards Grantchester. The footpath dips and rises through hyper-pastoral meadows, and it offers exactly the sort of scenery you’d hope for: grazing livestock, starry-eyed punters, and rolling farmland in the distance. It’s quiet, verdant, and all feels (relatively) isolated, especially for a route that starts just twenty minutes’ walk from the city center.

An hour later, we stumbled across Grantchester, and its tea-room of some repute: The Orchard. As the name implies, the outdoor grounds are sprinkled with apple and pear trees; Az and I entered from an adjacent meadow by first squeezing past some cows and then climbing a cattle-fence. I’d hoped to congratulate myself on my little discovery, but turns out this is a place Cambridge students have flocked to for 100 years; The Orchard even offers a glossy brochure listing its famous tea-takers, beginning with Virginia Woolf and ending with John Cleese.

Closer to my own heart, they claim Alan Turing ‘first conceived’ the idea of Artificial Intelligence whilst strolling from Cambridge to The Orchard. I don’t entirely buy it: I’m no genius, but do I spend an inordinate amount of time daydreaming about computers, sci-fi, and othersuch nerdworthy nonsense, and I can say that bits, bytes, and computer cognizance were the last thing on my mind during that pleasant walk. To me, it’s like arguing that Thoreau penned Walden whilst riding the London Underground. Doesn’t jibe, somehow — but, then again, I’m no genius.