Recent Posts
Are black belts in martial arts too easy to achieve these days? I practise taekwondo, and became a black belt after 2 and a half years of training. I did have to work hard at this – I was among the oldest in the training group, so I always felt behind the eight-ball in terms of flexibility, and had to work hard on the fitness side too. That never bothered me greatly as it was more rewarding for me to be disciplined. I worked hard and am very proud to have earned my belt, and I definitely respect the philosophy of the art. Is 2.5 years really a long enough period to have earned the right to a black belt though? I see teenagers and young adults who do not really show enough respect to their 5th Dan instructor during classes, just to give an example. Where’s the respect for the philosophy here?
I have long been a music student, and it seems to me that piano exams were way more rigourous than my taekwondo gradings could ever be. Why? Firstly because it’s one-on-one, so if there is a gap in knowledge, it cannot be missed. The en masse nature of the gradings, where several hundred children and adults are herded cattle-class into a large hall – in catering for the entire audience, the adults are patronised in a way that isn’t conducive to performing at one’s best. It just doesn’t really do the artform justice. It only serves to line the pockets of the brains behind it all, and they really do have it all figured out – books, training DVDs – a veritable marketing machine, at the end of which, every man and his dog come out with a black belt. Yes, determination, focus, discipline, confidence….. Stop right there though – doesn’t the speed with which the black belt is achieved cheapen its very value and that of the martial art itself? I suppose I’m really asking about fundamental values here – those running the show supposedly love taekwondo – they live and breathe it, and yet they can marry this with a money-making enterprise that I would have thought runs counter to its core philosophies?
As I placed the vegetable slice I made for last night’s dinner in the oven, delighting in my own legend status, I began to ponder what I’d do with the three leftover egg yolks I had as a result of making it. The slice recipe calls for two whole eggs and three egg whites, and I really didn’t want to waste the yolks, given these trying economic times, so I began tossing ideas around in my mind. I could easily make the cardiology specialist’s mayonnaise, (what with three egg yolks isn’t going to be the cardiologist’s special?!) but the family was not eating an accompanying salad, so why make the effort? Instead my sense of ‘adventure’ conquered me and I decided on egg custard. It’s only adventurous because I’d never made it before, and I only fancied it because we were having stewed apples for dessert and I thought custard would dress it up nicely. So I set out to find a decent custard recipe, and although I didn’t have the exact quantities, nor a vanilla pod handy, I did have enough milk, castor sugar, some vanilla essence and the egg yolks, so I figured I could just wing it. So I creamed the sugar and egg yolks together and felt that was fluffed up well enough, so on to heating the milk. Apparently you can make custard with half milk and half cream, or just all milk. I decided on half low-fat milk and half full-cream milk – perhaps the first step towards deflating my buoyant ego. Things were progressing well, I heated the milk up and poured that into the egg yolk mixture and began stirring. I then had to place the whole mixture back into the saucepan and under the flame where, with a little (constant) stirring, the mixture would thicken and then turn bland stewed apples into the most exquisitely warming, silky autumn dessert ever. The mixture obediently began to thicken for long enough to lull me into a false sense of security, but just as I became complacent and decided the heat should go up under the saucepan to speed things along, I had vanilla-flavoured scrambled eggs. I sieved this ridiculous concoction in the vain hope that I might end up with a smooth mixture – it ended in the bin, along with my flagging legend status.
So now I ponder what went wrong – could there have been a little white in my egg yolks? Remotely possible, but I was pretty careful when I separated them. Did the saucepan have a heavy enough base to take the heat? I have an idea the answer may be no, but I can’t be sure. Should have I used full-cream everything to make this to lower the possibility of curdling the mixture? Yes and cardiologists everywhere would be thanking me, no doubt.
In the meantime I’m looking for a decent counsellor (or a good cook / chef would do) to help me recover from my trauma. I will be trying again over the next couple of days to make custard as I refuse to allow a few stupid egg yolks and a dodgy saucepan to leave egg bits on my face! I’ll have to let you know what happens…….
I really love playing tennis – most of the time. Over the past few days I have had the joy of playing a doubles match with my brother, a beginner, and some of his friends. It sounds like a pleasant experience, right? Wrong – well, not for me anyway. The experience has led me to ask the question, what is good tennis etiquette? Conversely, what is poor etiquette and what constitutes poor sportsmanship? (Or, do I just have no sense of humour?)
As a competition player of many years, I have experienced the full spectrum of temperaments, tennis ability, sportsmanship, wins and losses, along with all the psychological drama tennis has to offer. (and some of my greatest battles have been with myself.) I believe I know my way around a tennis court and tennis behaviour, if one can credit oneself with such things. What I saw yesterday resembled a kindergarten playground. Picture a reasonable player and a novice (learning the basics and trying to put that into practice) on one side, playing against a couple of (gasp) squash players who are at best, two steps ahead of the novice, basically chopping the (flat) balls they were using at every turn, avoiding hitting to the reasonable player, then playing bodyline shots at the novice in order to win. After much back-slapping and high-fiving, they then laughed and celebrated their mean spirits under the banner of “humour”, all the while offering mock encouragement to the novice. I don’t have anything against squash players, except that they delude themselves into thinking they can play tennis, but that doesn’t matter. BUT, what of the treatment of the novice – the only way to improve on a tennis court is to play with players who are better than you are, and to use something other than your (limp) wrists in your shots to do it – ever heard of that, squash boys? Here’s a newsflash for you – playing bodyline tennis doesn’t take much brain power or skill, just a healthy lack of sportsmanship and faith in your own ability to play a decent shot. Patronising beginners by having a laugh at their expense is not only infantile, it’s simply poor etiquette, no matter what you’re doing.
The positive thing to do here is, not laugh at the fact that a rather uncoordinated adult has decided to have some tennis coaching, rather than playing hacky, wristy rubbish, but to encourage - why not try hitting the ball to a place where the person can actually practise some shots, and consolidate what the coach is trying to teach him? Perhaps you might even get a bit of a workout from it if more than one shot comes back, since that’s the general purpose of playing sports anyway, and, if you hit enough balls yourself, you might even, heaven forbid, turn into a TENNIS player!
Tennis at club level at least, is about hitting with anyone and everyone – if a beginner approaches an A grade player for a hit, then it’s good form to hit – it may not be the most fun for the A grader, but it’s certainly going to help the tennis of the beginner, and that’s the important thing. (even if it means retrieving a hundred balls from over the fence, or feeling as if you’re walking around the court rather than dazzling everyone with great play.)
In the end though, the joke was probably most on me in this match – the player of the highest standard and most experience played only as well as her opponents – even my brother had a laugh at his own expense, although I just thought that was his ridiculously good nature. Maybe I need to return to earth and just remember tennis is for fun, not sheep stations!
My grandfather was a Greek migrant who married my grandmother, an Australian girl from the country, back in the 1920s. Over the course of their lives together my grandfather taught my grandmother to cook a number of Greek dishes, one of which was spanakopita. (George Colombaris would be impressed with my grandmother’s ability to cook Greek food with as much, if not more than the proficiency of the Greeks themselves.) When I was growing up, about once a fortnight, my grandparents would bring my family (and the families of my aunt and uncle) a spanakopita each. It would arrive in a thin cardboard box protected lovingly by a brown paper bag. As mundane as that sounds, it isn’t – my grandmother rolled the filo pastry for each of those pies with a curtain rod, painstakingly painting each layer with melted butter and olive oil. She would have spent the entire day baking, and she must have made at least 6 layers of pastry per pie. My family and I would rejoice each time we had the pleasure of eating it. There would always be a fight over the final pieces and who in the family ate the most.
Fast-forward twenty years and I have been craving my Nana’s spanakopita. I have ordered it in many Greek restaurants over time, but all I have experienced is disappointment at the bought pastry used, the dull flavours in the pie mixture and the loveless manner of its making
[ Click here to read more ]
I recently had the privilege of attending a Dawn Upshaw concert with the ACO – I’ve waited a long time to hear her as she was due to tour here some 4 – 5 years ago but her voice failed her in Brisbane. So serious was her condition she was forced to take time off to rest for several months – very disappointing for all concerned.
Fast forward five years and she returned to Australia to continue her collaboration with the ACO healthy. She sang Three Songs for Soprano and Orchestra, written especially for her by Osvaldo Golijov, some Hungarian Folksongs by Bartok and arranged by our master violinist, Richard Tognetti, and finally, Richard Strauss’ Morgen! The Golijov was the highlight of the evening for me. Upshaw sang movingly, with commanding dynamic range and superior technique, and by her body language the audience knew she was singing from the heart. Quite simply, she had the audience eating out of the palm of her hand. The only tiny flaw in the Bartok was that the orchestra momentarily drowned out Upshaw at one stage. It would be difficult for the playing leader of an orchestra to be so aware of such things whilst listening to himself playing! Morgen! by Richard Strauss was the perfect way to end the evening. Whilst Upshaw isn’t quite the velvety lyric soprano, she again held the attention of the audience, singing beautifully – the deafening silence of intimacy was music in itself
[ Click here to read more ]
I recently had the (mis)fortune of reading through the year 12 exam paper in French, and all I can say is shame, shame SHAME on those who wrote this. Firstly the standard of the French in the reading passages was so basic it wasn’t necessary to fully understand the text to answer the questions. I believe competent junior to middle school level students could have answered these questions quite adequately. One of the texts is about someone trying to convince someone else to go on an outing - since when is arranging an outing ANYTHING other than what is learned from a decent year 9 textbook? In another text, there is a bland description of the walls of a tea room which is certainly not inspiring, and the students then had to pick out the three elements in the description of the room to earn their marks. Students learn about describing rooms at around year 8 level – again, the subject matter seems more than a little underwhelming. It was evident that this text was not well thought through at all – the descriptions were of umbrellas hanging off the wall, paintings of hunting scenes, and dogs. Funnily enough, dogs regularly appear in paintings of hunting scenes, and then there are other pictures of dogs? (This is an interesting take on what the French perceive to be quintessentially English, but that’s another story!) A contrast between these three elements may have made finding the answers a little less confusing for the students.
Structurally, it’s Interesting that the students were given no indication of the number of marks allocated per question – surely this is fundamental to the students managing time and effort in the pressure situation of an exam
[ Click here to read more ]
Why do advertising agencies persist in degrading master pieces of music? Obviously copyright considerations disappear from the equation because many of these composers have been dead for so long, and there’s no one around to object or protect their music. Beethoven’s 9th Symphony used to advertise Victoria Bitter though? It makes me want to weep – such a lack of respect, and worse, such ignorance! I wonder if these VB people know anything about the Schiller text of the final movement of that symphony. It’s all about the universal brotherhood of Man, and funnily enough, its noble intent just might be relevant in the 21st century. It’s pretty sad that there are people out there whose only associations with that music will be through that ad. Better to have that type of exposure than none at all? If people are that clueless, they don’t deserve to hear any Beethoven at all.
My other “favourite” is the use of Elgar’s Enigma Variations to advertise the 150th birthday of the AFL. Firstly, what is wrong with finding an Australian piece of music? To me it’s the supreme irony that the advertisement for the birthday of our “great Australian game” (with its gaelic roots) is accompanied by music from the writer of “Land of Hope and Glory”. Where are all those republicans and why aren’t they screaming about this? Actually, isn’t Bill Hunter, the narrator, one of them? I’m not sure what’s worse here – the selling out of the narrator, or the music of the “old Blighty” being used for such a huge Australian occasion
[ Click here to read more ]
One of my first posts was about what I think music has to offer people, but on Friday night and I attended a reunion of people from primary school, and someone at the function made a few very interesting comments about singing in the school choir and it got me thinking again….
Singing in a choir gives people the opportunity to participate in a community activity and foster a sense of belonging, for one thing. It also gives Joe Average the chance to shine in unexpected ways. There was a particular boy in our class who came from a disadvantaged background. He would fall asleep in classes because he had to get up each morning at 5.30am to complete a paper round, and often come to school without having eaten anything. He also happened to sing like an angel, and one can only imagine his sense of self-esteem when ALL of his peers heaped praise on his musical ability, and that’s exactly what happened
[ Click here to read more ]
Is anyone else excited by the influx to Melbourne of several internationally acclaimed pianists for recitals over the next week? I almost fell off my chair at the prospect of having the choice of hearing the likes of Emmanuel Ax, Pascal Rogé and Roy Howat, all within one week, playing at the National Academy of Music. So I have bought tickets to Pascal Rogé who is playing an all-French programme, (Satie, Debussy and Ravel) and Emmanuel Ax, who will be playing largely Romantic piano repertoire – such intimate musical experiences are rare, and not to be taken for granted, especially in Australia. (which is a topic in its own right.) Not only does the audience get to live the music in close proximity to the artist, but it’s the artist who selects the programmes. This is an absolute treat as the audience hears the soloist’s every breath and practically every thought, at least musically anyway. Here is an opportunity to question the motives for making such selections – what is a Frenchman doing playing an all-French programme? Is it purely French arrogance? I would say definitely not because the music stands on its own for beauty and imagination, among other things. What also makes it special for me is the way it illuminates the piano as a jewel of an instrument. Played on a concert grand piano, the sound colours and effects within this repertoire will be nothing less than stunning. This music, although largely Romantic and almost post-Romantic, (like Debussy I refuse to call his and Ravel’s music Impressionist) has a refinement and cerebral quality that other Romantic music overcompensates for with excessive “passion” and “drama” – here the music is about the instrument, not the soloist or the composer, and for me, that’s how it should be. It will be very interesting to hear M. Rogé's interpretation of the music of his own country, and by extension, his culture. Stay tuned for a review next week.
So another Easter has come and gone, and I must describe a not-so-memorable day in the kitchen on Sunday. I decided that I would make a contribution to the Easter Sunday lunch menu. I am a great fan of Stephanie Alexander, and decided to pay my respects by cooking her lemon tart recipe (from The Cook’s Companion.) This tart is straightforward enough, but I somehow managed to make it about as complicated as possible! Our main course consisted of roasted fillet steak, along with the usual roasted vegetables and some steamed greens. So whilst all of this roasting was going on in the oven, I decided I would make my shortcrust pastry – the assembly of this pastry is very very easy, then it needs to be pressed into a flan dish and blind baked. I managed to scrounge up some chickpeas and cannellini beans as my weights for this blind bake exercise, and once the pastry, foil and legumes were in place, I was confident enough to balance the flan dish (with a push-out bottom) on one hand. Big, BIG mistake. I pushed up through the flan dish, (accidentally of course!) and pastry, and what seemed to be a million beans covered the kitchen floor in the blink of an eye. Usually I have a short fuse, but rather than turn into Gordon Ramsay I managed to keep my cool – that is, until my older sibling peered over the kitchen bench and felt the whole thing was a joke. My response was to order him to clean up the mess (using some pretty colourful language) whilst I retrieved my pastry from the floor. With no great damage done, I decided the pastry was retrievable (don’t worry I’m not a commercial chef) and I made the executive decision to roll the pastry again and get this ridiculous blind-baking show on the road. (No one has since died from my cooking.)
After that was complete, I decided it was time to make the lemon filling, and that was also very easy, so I sat down with the family to eat the lovely tender meat, caramelised roasted pumpkin and the other vegetables. About half way through the meal, I got up to turn the oven on, adjusted it to the correct temperature and sat back down after placing the tart in the oven. It’s just a shame I forgot to turn the fan on, especially since the oven is fan-forced. I only learned this had happened after the 45 minute cooking time had elapsed. So although not as bad as dropping the pastry, I felt pretty silly mucking this up. Really it just meant I had to cook the tart for approximately 20 minutes longer, but I don’t like making mistakes like this one too much. I suddenly felt like a contestant on one of the cooking reality shows who’d made a timing mistake – all I had to wait for was the scolding from the master chef
[ Click here to read more ]
|
|
|
Add Comments
Read More
Comments (1)
Comment by Australia 1
on Prince Charming - The King of All Racquets?
Five Passions - Cooking, Tennis, Taekwondo, Music and French