Thinking back, my newfound interest in film actually started in late 2012. While living in Bratislava, there was a film festival, and when I got my hands on the programme I went wild highlighting all the films I wanted to see. A Bollywood film! A film about the Bosnian war! A film about a boy living in a slum in South America! I wanted to see all the films, and even though I only ended up seeing one (When Day Breaks/Kad Svane Dan, which was very good up until the last five minutes when it was very bad), I felt all enthusiastic about seeing different films and that can only be a good thing.

So when a PR company got in touch with me back in March to offer me some codes to watch movies online at Blinkbox, I jumped at the chance. Unfortunately my excitement waned when I realised my internet connection was not fast enough to stream the films. This is partially my own fault, for living in a corner of the country where it is probably faster to use a carrier pigeon than send an email, but still, it certainly threw a spanner in the works. So I left one title downloading overnight and then woke up the next day excited to watch it – at which point I discovered that it just would not play on my laptop, no matter what I did. Blinkbox customer service were helpful up until the point where I was told I would be passed to someone else, and then never heard another word. So to this day I do not know why I can’t play my downloads, and Blinkbox don’t seem to plan to let me know.

Fortunately I ended up going to visit my boyfriend and was able to use his somewhat speedier connection to stream Argo, Tyrannosaur, and Beasts of the Southern Wild. The Blinkbox website was very easy to use, and you get the film for a decent amount of time in case you love it so much you want to watch it again. Overall, while I was disappointed with the fact that I couldn’t play the films at home, I was happy with the way the service works and may use it again at some point in the future. The film rentals are reasonable considering how expensive new releases can be at a DVD rental shop, and the fact that it is not a subscription service is great for people like me who are still only dipping their toes into the film world. If you have a reasonable internet connection you probably won’t have any problems with it.

Beasts of the Southern Wild was a visually stunning, almost ethereal film, but also very sad. It is a film which deals with a lot of heavy issues but simply manages to weave them into the narrative, rather than making them the obvious agenda of the film. Tyrannosaur was a brutal and merciless film that showed the truly dark side of humanity, but it had such fantastic acting that I couldn’t help but enjoy watching it. Argo was just as exciting as I hoped it would be – just before the aeroplane took off I honestly thought that I might wee myself or be sick or scream. Other films I have seen this year include Lincoln, Flight, Contagion, Zero Dark Thirty, The Disappearance of Alice Creed, and Les Miserables. I may get beaten for this opinion but I did not enjoy Les Miserables.

I will leave it on that note, so you can all tell me how awful I am for not liking Les Mis.

I was given codes to watch free films in return for a blog post. I was not paid for this post. All words are my own.

For those who have yet to hear this news, I will briefly fill you in. Angelina Jolie has revealed that she recently had a double mastectomy in order to reduce her risk of breast cancer, which was very high due to family history and faulty genes. This was likely a difficult decision to make – though not necessarily – and is, essentially, a decision which can only truly affect Jolie, her loved ones, and perhaps the doctors involved in the procedure. My personal feelings on the fact that she had the mastectomy stretch as far as ‘it’s good to see somebody taking positive steps for their future health, and unashamedly discussing it’ and very little further.

I’m not trying to discuss her actual mastectomy, though. I’m discussing how, as expected, many internet-dwellers have had an incredibly visceral reaction to the idea of Jolie having her breasts removed. Is she crazy? Why would a woman have her healthy breasts cut off?* RIP Angelina’s boobs! Should we all be chopping off any body parts which might make us ill? What will Brad Pitt do now?**

This all got me to thinking about what this reaction says about how we view breasts. It would be hard to argue sensibly that breasts are just a body part like any other – despite the fact that they are. They are just body parts and unfortunately, for some women they are body parts which are likely to become diseased and potentially kill them. Some women are privileged and fortunate enough to be able to take full control of their future health and have the risk eliminated. Some women do not have this opportunity, but that is another discussion for another day. So why do we view a woman having her breasts removed as such a tragic, crazy thing? I can’t and won’t argue that breasts are never sexual, but they do not have to be sexual, and should not be treated as such when discussing medical issues. But when you consider that breasts are sexualised even in the context of breast cancer itself, it can hardly be surprising that Jolie’s healthy breasts are being held up as the pinnacle of her femininity and sex appeal, and the decision to have them removed is viewed as ridiculous and unnecessary. Never mind the fact that prophylactic mastectomy is not something which Jolie has created for her own purposes, and never mind that in some cases it can reduce the risk of breast cancer by up to 90%. Never mind that Jolie lost her mother to breast cancer, and wanted to reduce the chances of her own children losing her to the disease. Never mind any of that, she is just being silly and crazy and ridiculous.

It also seems to tell us something about how we view celebrities. People feeling angry and hurt over Jolie’s mastectomy may be feeling that way because we’re all led to believe that celebrities are somehow our property, our puppets, or even our friends. It says something even more sinister about how female celebrities are viewed – though it may be tongue-in-cheek, the cries of but what about the boobies?! speak volumes about how Jolie is valued by some – not for her acting career, her humanitarian work, as a mother, or even just a human being. Simply as a sex object. You might think I’m putting too fine a point on this, but I’m perfectly comfortable with characterising this kind of lament over lost breasts as a type of objectification. Women’s bodies are often seen as public property, and this may be an extension of that: Jolie has taken control of her own body in a way that transcends its appearance, which is an an affront to a culture that believes the true value of a woman’s body is how good it looks. Her decision was not about aesthetics, it was not about changing her body for a film role, it was not about looking good in case she gets photographed in a bikini, it was not about trying to get some column inches devoted to her smaller waist, more toned limbs, more tanned skin. It was about trying to ensure that her body will remain healthy throughout her life.

* This use of the phrase ‘cut off’ is particularly unsettling and conjures images of body parts being simply sliced from the body. Jolie herself does a pretty good job of describing the procedure, though there is bound to be more detailed and accurate information out there somewhere.

** Also rather unsettling, some people seem to think that Brad Pitt will be more concerned that his wife’s funbags boobs tits ta-tas melons breasts have gone than he will be about her overall health, wellbeing and life expectancy.

]]> http://whatemilydidnext.com/2013/05/14/some-thoughts-on-breasts-women-and-celebrities-angelina-jolies-mastectomy/feed/ 5 whatemilydidnext http://www.dslrf.org/breast_diagram.html http://whatemilydidnext.com/2013/04/23/book-qa-giveaway/ http://whatemilydidnext.com/2013/04/23/book-qa-giveaway/#comments Tue, 23 Apr 2013 08:00:00 +0000 Emily https://whatemilydidnext.wordpress.com/?p=3077 Continue reading →]]> If you make it through me answering thirty-five questions about books, you might get to win a book. Sound fair?

1. Favourite childhood book? I loved the Whitby Witches trilogy! I also liked Harry Potter an appropriate amount while I was still a child. But seriously, if the Whitby Witches had got as big as Harry Potter the world might be a better place.

2. What are you reading right now? World War Z, Eugene Onegin, and The Real North Korea. I’m quite surprised at just how boring World War Z is. I thought that it was going to be the most exciting book in the world. But some parts of it are beyond dull.

3. What books do you have on request at the library? For some reason I don’t use the library. Although when I was in there collecting by WBN books I did wonder why. Maybe I shall dust off the old library card and go have a look around.

4. Bad book habit? Recently, it’s been reading too many at once and not finishing any of them.

5. What do you currently have checked out at the library? Nothing! Though maybe this will change in the near future.

6. Do you have an e-reader? I have a Kindle. It has not stopped me buying and reading paper books. It has just contributed to my general obsession with buying all the books all the time.

7. Do you prefer to read one book at a time, or several at once? I prefer to read one at a time. Why I cannot seem to do this is quite another question.

8. Have your reading habits changed since starting a blog? Well, yes, but not because of writing my blog. I started this blog while I was an English Literature student so my reading habits were very different then.

9. Least favourite book you read this year (so far?) Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas was a huge anticlimax. With or Without You by Domenica Ruta was just badly written self pity. Warm Bodies by Isaac Marion was almost bad enough to be funny, but not quite.

10. Favourite book you’ve read this year? Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi.

11. How often do you read out of your comfort zone? Lately I’ve tried to get out of my reading comfort zone by reading classics and young adult literature. Neither of these experiments went over particularly well. I will go back to the classics soon. Young adult is kind of fun, but overall quite unsatisfying. My WBN choice is actually classed as young adult, so we will have to see how I feel about it!

12. What is your reading comfort zone? Contemporary fiction by British or American authors. So, so boring.

13. Can you read on the bus? Yes. Bus reading is one of my favourites of all the readings.

14. Favourite place to read? The bus! Other forms of public transport are also good. I also like reading in bed. Every now and again I like to be self-indulgent and sit in a café with a book and a hot drink and a pastry, but this is not a regular activity. I do not like to read in the bath as I am too clumsy to avoid dropping the book.

15. What is your policy on book lending? My policy is that I want to lend everyone a book, and very few people want to take one. Let Mrs Doyle illustrate my book-lending policy.

16. Do you ever dog-ear books? Yes. I am not precious about books in any way. I am baffled by people who claim to love literature and reading and yet focus on the physical book rather than the words inside it, the importance of literature, or the act of reading. It’s just a book. On the very rare occasion that I have paid more for a fancier looking book, I might take a bit more care of it, but even then. What does it matter if the book has creased pages and coffee stains? As long as I can still read the words it serves its purpose. I do think that physical books are great, but if you think it is more important to have a pristine book than to enjoy the story and share it with others, I feel that you may be missing the point.

17. Do you ever write in the margins of your books? Not very often now, but at university I obviously did. This was why I regularly ruined my bank balance by buying all the books I needed rather than just using the library – so that I could write all over them with impunity. I also love it when I buy second hand books and find little notes in them.

18. Not even with text books? If it was a text book I owned, I would write all over it. One of my literature anthologies was made of such thin paper that I could only write very delicately with a sharp pencil, or it would tear the pages and copy through.

19. What is your favourite language to read in? English. I don’t know any other languages well enough to read literature.

20. What makes you love a book? I don’t think that there’s a formula.

21. What will inspire you to recommend a book? If I am excited about it.

22. Favourite genre? I’m never entirely certain what constitutes a genre. (I probably shouldn’t admit that.) I like contemporary fiction, I like historical fiction, I like classics (and am trying to like them more).

23. Genre you rarely read (but wish you did?) I may regret saying this, but I would like to try reading some science fiction.

24. Favourite biography? If Persepolis counts as an autobiography, then I loved that! I don’t tend to read a lot of biographies or autobiographies.

25. Have you ever read a self-help book? I just finished reading Happier by Tal Ben-Shahar. It did not make me happier. It made me slightly annoyed and eventually very bored. Other than that they’re not something I spend much of my time consuming.

26. Favourite cookbook? Honestly, I’m not sure I have ever read a cookbook from cover to cover. Why would I need to when the BBC Good Food website exists?

27. Most inspirational book you’ve read this year (fiction or non-fiction)? I can’t say that I have been particularly inspired by anything I’ve read this year.

28. Favourite reading snack? I’m not sure that I regularly eat while reading. One time while reading a very boring book for my uni syllabus I bribed myself with Monster Munch. That was certainly a worthwhile experience.

29. Name a case in which hype ruined your reading experience. This happens far too often. I might have enjoyed We Need To Talk About Kevin a lot more if I hadn’t been made to believe it was the best and most shocking book in the history of ever. I also might have liked it more if it was just a better book, but perhaps that can’t be helped.

30. How often do you agree with critics about a book? Well. I’ve never contemplated this before. I think I agree with critics quite often.

31. How do you feel about giving bad/negative reviews? Honestly, it can be quite fun, especially if there is a lot of undeserved positive hype surrounding the book. If everyone else hates the book then it can sometimes feel quite mean and a bit like piling on, but hey. Bad books need bad reviews.

32. If you could read in a foreign language, which language would you chose? Russian.

33. Most intimidating book you’ve ever read? The Bone People by Keri Hulme seemed quite terrifying before I started it.

34. Most intimidating book you’re too nervous to begin? The Thousand Autumns of Jacob de Zoet by David Mitchell. I read three pages and got scared. It’s still sitting on the shelf staring at me a few years later.

35. Favourite poet? I can’t really answer this. I’m in the middle of one of my annual ‘teach myself to love poetry’ campaigns and it’s still not exactly clicking. There are a few poems I can think of liking off the top of my head: Train by Helen Mackay, Girl by Jamaica Kincaid, and Strange Meeting by Wilfred Owen. Also we must not forget, if they count as poetry, these words to live by from Ogden Nash: I would live all my life in nonchalance and insouciance, Were it not for making a living, which is rather a nouciance.

***

Now, good folks, as your reward for reading all that drivel (or scrolling straight past it if you’re crafty), here is your chance to win a copy of The Knife of Never Letting Go by Patrick Ness. Last year I was lucky enough to be able to give away one of my all-time favourite books, but this year I found that I hadn’t read any of the books listed. The Knife of Never Letting Go was a bit of a blind pick, although it is one I’m very excited about reading! I’m hoping to read and review it in the next few weeks – if the winners of the giveaway are interested, we could do a collaborative review? So, without any further ado, here is what the World Book Night team have to say about this title.

Todd Hewitt is the last boy in Prentisstown.

But Prentisstown isn’t like other towns. Everyone can hear everyone else’s thoughts in a constant, overwhelming, never-ending Noise. There is no privacy. There are no secrets.

Or are there?

Just one month from the birthday that will make him a man, Todd unexpectedly stumbles upon a spot of complete silence.

Which is impossible.

Prentisstown has been lying to him.

And now he’s going to have to run.

Astonishingly powerful and breathtakingly exciting, The Knife of Never Letting Go is an unflinching novel about the dangerous choices of growing up.

So would you like to win a copy? All you have to do is leave a comment on this post, telling me why this sounds like the kind of book you would enjoy. Please leave a way that I can contact you – preferably email or Twitter. I will be giving away five copies at first. If I have any left in a couple of weeks time I may run another giveaway via Twitter. At present I am only willing to post within the UK, so please only enter if you have a UK address that I can send the book to.

This competition will close at 12 midday GMT on Wednesday 1st May. Books will be posted within seven days.

Giveaway closed! Thanks to everyone who entered. I’ll be sorting out the winners soon.

Using your words

Being able to express yourself is so important. It’s surely the best way to make friends and influence people. In the same way that a language barrier can be alienating and upsetting, this is also true of situations where everyone speaks the same language but nobody can really find the right words to express what they’re thinking. As a language master English graduate, you won’t find yourself in this situation personally, and if you do find yourself in a situation where other people are struggling to understand and be understood, you can help to facilitate the conversation. This will make you a very useful person to have around during events or meetings where a wide range of people are meeting and communicating, especially as some of the most fiercely intelligent people in the world cannot express themselves to save their lives. Maybe this is where you can step in to help everyone get their message across in the best way possible.

It’s like a degree in history, politics, philosophy, sociology, anthropology… all rolled into one

Often, this is a criticism levelled at studying English literature: it’s not specialist enough. It doesn’t qualify you to do any one thing, in the way that nursing or teaching does. You just learn a bit of everything and hope that some if it is relevant to your assessments and possibly your life. I’m sure everybody who has studied English has heard about how this is a bad thing. Who says this has to be true? Surely it is a good thing – it broadens your horizons and makes you a more sympathetic and empathetic person.

Analyse this

Studying English forces you to be very analytical, all of the time. When your tutors are constantly asking you “but what did Alexander Pope mean?” you find yourself adapting to this permanent state of analysis of every word that is spoken or written by anybody in the world. Of course this can sometimes be a real pain, as you might end up stressing over a simple email such as ‘Thank you for submitting an application for this vacancy’ wondering why it’s submitting an application and not applying and trying to get inside the mind of the recruiter on the basis of nine words and an email signature. But aside from the obsessive nature of an analytical mind, it does help you to ‘read between the lines’ so to speak, which can be incredibly useful in professional situations.

I can beat you in an argument

Whether or not your English degree will enable to actually win real-life arguments depends mainly on what kind of person you are. I hate confrontation and tend to quake in my boots at the merest hint of anything more malicious than a spirited debate. The idea of argument skills don’t actually pertain to you having a screaming match with your flatmate, though. It’s all about knowing how to construct an argument and how to dissect the other person’s argument. A fairly common task in English lessons, from GCSE to BA, is picking a side of a controversial debate and building an argument. Knowing how to make an argument for anything is an incredibly valuable tool. Think about something in your personal or professional life that you are very passionate about, then think of the people or person who is against what you are for. If you have studied English for any considerable period of time, you should be able to construct the argument from their side. So – now you know how to put their argument together, you also know how to take it apart.

Not a slow reader

One thing that I (and presumably many other English grads) can do, which often surprises people who didn’t study English, is read, digest and summarise large amounts of written information in a short space of time. This is second nature to me, but it is a skill that some people lack and envy. This ability makes you pretty much indispensable in any kind of assistant role, as often the people who have the largest amounts of information to deal with are the ones who find it hardest to deal with that information. It also makes you great in a press or communications role, because you’re the best person for the job of taking press releases and creating something wonderful from them in no time at all. Finally, as I’m sure any English student with an interest in blogging can tell you, it makes you great at creating written content.

It should be obvious that this is not an exhaustive list, and nor is it intended as a smug diatribe on how great English students are. I know that I have had a lot of disparaging comments about my choice of degree, mainly from people who studied more conventionally worthy subjects, and it’s just nice to take a moment to appreciate that English is a worthwhile subject – even if, as I’m sure you’ve all heard before, ‘you already speak English’. Please chime in if you have any more reasons! Or if you disagree, we all know that English students love a good debate.

I am still watching all of the films. I went to Rich’s and basically spent an entire weekend watching films. We watched Beasts of the Southern Wild, Contagion, Tyrannosaur and Alien. As I seem to want one of everything when it comes to social media thingies, I now have an account on Letterboxd, if you care or want to join me.

Books

Perhaps the trade off for all the film watching is that I can’t seem to read a novel to save my life. I started The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy and while I’m not saying for one second that it is bad (it is certainly not), I think I’ve just read too much contemporary fiction lately that classic literature has been a shock to my system and sort of sent me back to reading like a student. As in, at one point I skipped a few pages and then started reading the Spark Notes. What the hell is that about?

However I did manage to finish The History of the World in Bite-Sized Chunks by Emma Marriott. I won’t pretend this was particularly exciting, but it did exactly what it said on the tin. Now, for my non-fiction selection, I’m reading The Real North Korea: Life and Politics in the Failed Stalinist Utopia by Andrei Lankov.

I’m trying to impose a personal embargo on buying books for a while. This will be hard because I love buying books. But I feel like I should stop buying so many when I am not reading so many. What I’m hoping is that this will spur me to read lots more, and then I can return to buying every nice book that crosses my path (or passes my Kindle).

Learning

I finished my course in Critical Thinking in Global Challenges, with a mark of 83% – not bad at all for a loser like me who averaged around 65% at real university. I flunked Introduction to Philosophy because I quite frankly didn’t have time for it, couldn’t understand a lot of it, and then missed the deadline for the final assessment. I’m now signed up for Democratic Development from Stanford University, and International Organisation Management from the University of Geneva.

I’m also still making a relatively genuine effort to improve my language skills. I’m mainly focusing on German, and I’m actually beginning to enjoy it.

Work

I have created an Excel document that logs my various professional (or somewhat less-than-professional) responsibilities. One page has jobs I’d like to apply for/have applied for, another has freelance writing opportunities and commitments, another has the online courses I’m taking, and the last one has volunteer opportunities and commitments. This document is very exciting and may revolutionise my life. (It’s up to you how much sarcasm you want to read into that sentence.)

Friends

Yes, I have friends! Who even knew that one. I’ve seen some of them, and planned to see some other ones. I don’t discuss my friends very much on here because I’m not so sure that they want to be discussed. But I have a few, and they’re all very lovely people. Two of them are moving abroad soon, for extended periods of time, which is awesome for them but means I won’t see them for ages which is sad.

Snow

It’s snowed for pretty much every moment of 2013 so far. Nobody has shut up about it. I have very little of value to contribute to these endless discussions of the weather, so here’s all I’ve got.

1. We’re in Tory Narnia, folks. I am of course not taking credit for this joke/idea but I am repeating it often. If you voted Conservative, it’s your fault.

2. The word for snow in Slovak is sneží. This is not pronounced ‘sneezy’, perhaps unsurprisingly, but it is a very lovely word. The ž is pronounced something like j – maybe. I’m not very good at either linguistics or Slovak language. The best thing about this word is that it doesn’t just mean snow but also means ‘it is snowing’. (People who speak Slovak better than I do, feel free to correct every wrong thing I have written here.) How much easier would life be for people in the UK if there was one word that meant ‘oh look, it’s snowing again’?

If you can’t find the money, find the time. It’s common to equate any kind of volunteering with gap-year type activities, where you go to Africa and dig wells. That kind of volunteering has its value and place, but it’s not the only way you can help, and it can get quite pricey. So if you don’t have the money to do anything like that, maybe you have the time to do something just as useful but on a smaller scale, in your own local area. For people who are unable to travel any distance at all for a volunteer activity, there are many things you can do from home. If you’re really strapped for time as well as cash, there are also many micro-volunteering opportunities, which can easily be completed any time you half an hour spare – or less.

Just because it’s unpaid, doesn’t mean it’s a charitable act. I turned down a volunteering opportunity after I realised that a big part of it involved working as a receptionist. For absolutely no money. It’s quite hard to know where to draw the line when it comes to volunteer activities, especially when you feel like you don’t have a lot of power to barter with. For this reason, it’s incredibly easy to get taken advantage of. Now I’m not suggesting that unpaid reception work is exploitative, but it is not something that I wanted to do without being paid. It was not something I could do in my spare time – there were going to be shifts and rotas. I won’t name any names but the organisation in question, though not-for-profit, certainly makes enough money to pay reception staff. And, in my view, it should pay reception staff. So, the lesson learned is that not everything unpaid is a charitable act. Sometimes you have to set your own boundaries so that your volunteering experience is helpful to everyone involved, including you.

You’ll probably get some tea and coffee and biscuits out of it as well, which is always a good thing. (Top tip: you also get free hot drinks and biscuits if you donate blood. You can thank me later.)

I found volunteer opportunities through Do-it and Vinspired, as well as looking out for things locally and asking people if they needed a hand with these things, and so on. I recently discovered United Nations Online Volunteering as well.

1. Know that it’s okay. You’re allowed to be clueless right now. When people ask the dreaded question ‘So what do you want to do next?’, it’s alright for you to say, ‘I’m not actually sure’. For your own sanity you might want to come up with a stock response, as many people simply cannot grasp the idea that you are just looking for a good job, rather than one particular role within one specific industry. (I would suggest lining your stock response with big but meaningless words that will stop most people from prying further.)

2. Remember that not knowing might be best for you. Keep an open mind. Those who hurtle straight from their graduation ceremony to the doors of the nearest publishing house, CV and cap in hand, may be doing themselves a disservice. Many skills gained through university study and work experience are very adaptable and transferable, so so by keeping your options wide open you are giving yourself the chance to become involved in something that you may never have thought of, but could end up being the perfect fit for you.

3. Try thinking about what you are able to do, if you can’t think of what you want to do. Have a look at your experience, whether it’s experience through working or volunteering or things you do for fun. Nobody else can figure it out for you but there might be some clues in there, and you may already be gravitating towards the career that’s right for you without even realising it. I simply do not believe that every person out there who is actually in their ‘dream career’ knew what they wanted to do from the start. I bet a lot of them had setbacks, changed their minds, and accidentally stumbled into the field they’re most content working in.

If I ever do come up with a recipe on my own, it’s usually an accident. This recipe came about because I really wanted to eat avocado. No, it does not contain any. My avocado was a truly tragic brown-but-rock-solid mess. I’ve never seen anything quite like it. At the risk of sounding very #firstworldproblems, it was the worst avocado ever. So I settled for a tin of tuna. This may not be a logical step, I ended up making something delicious, so I guess it was a step worth taking.

As I mentioned, I don’t go in for much by way of measuring, and this is definitely one of those ‘mix things together until it tastes good’ sort of recipes. I combined half a tin of tuna with the following chopped vegetables: cherry tomatoes, cucumber, celery, green pepper, spinach. I added in a tablespoon of Greek yoghurt and a tablespoon of mayonnaise, along with a variety of spices. I went for curry-ish spices, like turmeric, cumin, garam masala, and a sprinkle of chilli powder. A simple curry powder would probably work really well too. The final step is making some couscous – about two or three tablespoons. Once the couscous is mixed in, I added a bit of lemon juice, covered the mixture and left it in the fridge for a few hours to let the flavours settle or whatever they’re supposed to do when you leave things.

It was really delicious, and pretty nutritious too. There was enough to eat two days in a row, which was a bonus, as it made good leftovers. I served it with crusty bread the first day, and pitta bread the second day.

That might be the worst photograph in the world but I’ve eaten it all now, so it’s all I’ve got. You should go make your own and take a better photo, if you can or if you want to. Most importantly you should just make this salad.

		Amsterdam VIEW SLIDE SHOW DOWNLOAD ALL

I have lots of photos from Amsterdam, because I like to pretend that I am some sort of photography whizz with my three-year-old cheapie camera. Recently I’ve moved away from trying to take photos of All The Touristy Things – in the end, it’s just boring and frustrating crowding round something only to end up with a photo of other people taking photos – and just catching fun little things wherever I see them. I have attempted some sort of new fangled photo album thing here rather than putting them all into the post – please let me know if it has worked (and/or if you like the photos).

I have no exciting stories to tell. We did a lot of wandering around – Amsterdam is truly a lovely place just to walk around doing nothing much – and a lot of eating and drinking. We spent most of the time just moving from café to bar to restaurant to coffee shop to café to bar and so on and so forth. We saw a few museums but not many as a) the ones I wanted to see the most were having some kind of renovations and b) museums are really freaking expensive when you’re trying to work on some sort of budget.

We had a wonderful time on our very first holiday together. Of course now I just want to go away again, but isn’t that always the case?

February has been a lot more fun than January. Starting the year with a cold and miserable month has proved to be a good thing, as any vaguely enjoyable thing that happens in my life from that point onwards will be grabbed with both hands and clutched onto for dear life.

Film

I think 2013 is going to be the year of film for me. I have been to the cinema not once, not twice, but three times. That’s a wow, in case you’re not sure how to react. I have never been very excited about films. I often wondered if it was an attention span thing – I love reading books, and the great thing about books is that you can read them in as many sittings as you want depending on how interesting you find them, and I also really like watching television programmes, which are rarely more than around 50 minutes long, all told. So the act of having to sit through a whole film, in a cinema no less, was kind of excruciating. I’ve enjoyed the whole experience every time I’ve been to the cinema this year, although there still comes a time, just past the midway point of the film, where I feel the need to shift in my seat about twelve times per minute, and I want to go to the toilet, and get some fresh air, and get a drink, and check my email, and my leg has gone to sleep and I have an itchy knee, and so on. That may never leave me, and maybe it is just part of the film-going experience.

I’ve been to see Flight, Lincoln and Hitchcock. In the past I have usually opted to go see chick flicks and rom coms, thinking that the more light-hearted a film is the easier it will be to sit through. Yet, given that I have yet to cultivate a money tree and cinema tickets cost £8+ at the Showcase and £6 at my local cinema, I have vowed to only see good films. The definition of good is a work in process, and doesn’t necessarily mean, as the films I have seen so far may suggest, ‘starring a successful male actor in the lead role’. It just means ‘not crap, worth the money’.

Books

After much mental anguish, I toiled my way through With or Without You by Domenica Ruta. I do not enjoy speaking badly of anybody’s my-tragic-childhood memoir, as it seems disrespectful and strange, but I just had to review it, so click here if you want to read me slagging it off. I finished Les Enfants Terribles, which I’ve been on with for many months. It was… okay. I didn’t passionately love it, but it was okay. I wonder if the fact that I kept reading ten pages, losing the book, reading another ten pages, getting into another book, and so on, that stopped me from loving it. I might give it another chance one day in the future. I also read City of Women by David R. Gilham. Set in Berlin during WW2 and dealing with the lives of the women left in the city, it ticked a lot of boxes for me before I started it. Now, I am no prude but there really are some terrible sex scenes in novels. Am I putting too fine a point on it if I suggest that there is a very obvious difference between male-written sex and female-written sex? Well, if you ask me there is, and there was some truly bad male-written sex in this novel. (Thankfully not Beauty Story by Luke Jennings bad, in which a female character describes her own nipples by comparing them to Marmite jar lids.) I also read Persepolis by Marjane Satrapi, which was wonderful. I never expected to enjoy a graphic novel so much! Then, on the very last day of the month, I started Bright Young Things by Scarlett Thomas. The premise is great, but so far I just feel bogged down in unrealistic, pointless dialogue.

I like to have some non-fiction books on the go at all times, and this month they have been The History of the World in Small Chunks by Emma Marriott and The Horologicon by Mark Forsyth.

Learning

I am still truly, madly, deeply in love with Coursera. As well as Critical Thinking in Global Challenges, I’m also signed up to an Introduction to Philosophy course. I studied Philosophy and Ethics at A-Level, and I really enjoyed it. This course is covering some of the same stuff I learned back then (thankfully not all of it – due to the way the A-Level course was structured it was absolutely necessary to do what were essentially some Bible study modules) and some stuff I’ve never heard of. My philosophical thinking skills are slightly rusty and I find myself stuck at complete dead ends often when I’m doing the exercises, but hey, at least I’m giving it a go!

Amsterdam

Rich had some time off work and I am still not leading the wildly important and productive professional life I dream of, so I cajoled him into coming away with me for a few days. We had actually never been on holiday together before (while I was living in Bratislava he flew out to Budapest and I met him there, but I maintain that was not really a holiday, though I will allow that it was more than just a date) so he was essentially powerless to refuse. My first idea was to go to Tallinn in Estonia, because eastern Europe and because cheap and because former Soviet country, but after checking all available flights and hotels at short notice Rich eventually managed to bring me back west to Amsterdam. I’m not complaining, really, even though we all know that beer for one euro is better than beer for five euros. Having resolved that he would buy all my beers, we set off for what had leapt from a super-short break to four nights away. Amsterdam is fantastic and I had a lovely time. Lots of beer, cake, wandering around, looking at nice things, many of the things I enjoy. I will possibly post some pictures soon because I took lots and Amsterdam is very pretty indeed.

Tell me how February went for you!