Harry Potter and the 0.5 Blood prince

Okay, if you are an avid JK Rowling fan, skip this entry now.

I make a practive of reading the HP book about 1 week before I go to see the film. So a week ago I settled down and read the book.

I felt her writing style had deteriorated and the book itself seemed to go nowhere. The only interesting part was the big battle scene at the end encompassing Dumbledore's death.

I thought there is no way you can make a film of this, so awaited seeing the film with interest.

Firstly, the film is very good. As with the last film, the writers have stripped away the (incredibly large) amount of unnecessary detail in the book and managed to actually produce a coherent story from it. I was surprised that the battle scene was removed, but on reflection, I can see that it would have been out of charcter with the rest of the film. No Dudley and his parents, no silly ghosts or talking pictures and all those tedious vists to the Pensieve reduced to the only 3 important ones. Good story writing. The only bit left, which needs removing, but I can't see how to do it, is all reference to the half blood prince. At least we were spared all the various theories as to who he might be, touted in the book. But actually, it doesn't seem to me to matter. Still then you would need a new title!

Actually, someone should write a book of the film, that would be so much better than JKR's sloppy version!

Holidays - always fun

Having had 3 chilly weeks in the UK in April and May, (my first visit back for over 2 years and it was cold!), we decided to use some of our air miles and have a 10 day break in Phuket and Singapore.

Phuket was for relaxation and Singapore was for some serious shopping!

I hadn't realised how diffciult it is to use air miles to book a "free" flight. Firstly, the flight maybe free but you have to pay taxes and fuel surcharges,so the flights ended up costing about $100 each (US$). Then you have to scour the flight database to find which flight will take your type of free ticket. This meant that we had to fly to Singapore one day, stay overnight then fly onto Phuket the next day, thus further increasing the cost. By now it is only a tiny bit cheaper than using the low cost carriers!

However, all would have been well but when we arrived at our hotel in Phuket, we were told that our reservations had been cancelled the previous day. Not only that they had already rebooked our rooms.

After a lot of protests from us, we found out that the firm we had used, Asiativ aka asia Online aka Asia Trails Thailand, claimed it had gone into liquidation. They sent me an e-mail timed one minute before my check in time to tell me this , hence our voucher was worthless. So we had to spend 2 nights at anew hotel acrosss the road from the one we had booked and then moved to that one. And of course paid again.

I am currently giving information to Barclaycard about this, and from the website it looks as if the firm is still trading, though they are not answering any e-mails!!

After that, it got better. We went to Phang Nga (James Bond island - from man with the Golden Gun), and did generally relax.

Then Singapore, we saw some friends, ex-Informatics people in my case, and Filipinas in grace's and did a lot of shopping.

I mostly bought stuff for the camera, actually for the flash system and today I actually spent 45 minutes playing with it all and taking some pictures to see how the various toys work!!

Now I must get on with getting my photos onto the web.

Next project!!

And I shall try very hard to blog more frequently!!
Bye for now.

Another Birthday, another year

Well folks, here I am again. I have no proper excuse for the long gap in blogging except that, being retired, I seem to have less time than I did when I was working!!

Last Sunday was my 61st birthday. Catherine and Alex and Louisa, who were here last year for my 60th, sent me a flag (England = St. George) and here it is flying above my Byzantine Empire flag.





It was just a quiet celebration, a few friends from the village, including the Parish Priest, and a few of Grace's family. A nice Bar-B-Q with Australian sparkling wine.

A pleasant day, and it stayed (mostly) dry!!

Learning Tagalog

I am still struggling with trying to learn Tagalog. So I thought I would share some of my thoughts with the world!

I have been using a book which i thought was quite good and am (strongly?) motivated by the fact that we go to a Tagalog Mass every Sunday.

In order to help me understand, I have the Ordinary of the Mass in Tagalog, with English translations of some parts, and the reading and prayers for the Sunday in both languages in a loose leaf folder.

All this has done is confirm my deep suspicion that it is impossible to translate from one language to another.

For example, the Tagalog word for "Lord" is "Panginoon" pronounced "pang - in - no- on" (Tagalog has no dipthongs, double vowels are sounded as two vowels) except in all the Psalms where "Lord" is rendered "Poon" - what happened to the "angin"?

Understanding spoken Tagalog is made more difficult by the fact that Filipinos speak it very fast, so it sounds like a machine gun. But I now have a theory as to why they do this.

My theory is two fold:

1) Tagalog has a lot of multi syllabled wiords, by which I mean words with 4 or more syllables, so they have to rush through those words; and
2)Tagalog takes a lot more words than English to say anything.

Again an example:
The doxology from the Eucharistic parayer in English goes:
"Through him, with him and in him, in the unity of the Holy Spirit, all glory and honour is yours, almighty Father, for ever and ever." 26 words, 37 syllables


The Tagalog reads thus:
"Sa pamamagitan ni Kristo, kasama niya, at sa kanya ang lahat ng parangal at papuri ay sa iyo, Diyos Amang makapangyarihan, kasama ng Espiritu Santo magpasawalang hanggan."
27 words, 59 syllables

One more example, I won't bother with the count this time:-
"May all of us who share in the body and blood of Christ be brought together in unity by the Holy Spirit"
"Isinasamo naming kaming magsasalu-salo sa Katawan at Dugo ni Kristo ay mabuklod sa pagkakaisa sa pamamagitan ng Espiritu Santo"

Then there are the words that don't actually mean anything, ng, na for example. If you leave them out it is bad Tagalog and the Filipinos will have difficulty understanding you, but they don't actually have any meaning.

You may gather from all this that my language skills have not progressed very far!!!!

Dog Show

In February, or possibly very late Jan, I can't remember now, they had a dog show at the local mall.

So we went along and entered Sisa.

He didn't mange to win anything but here are some pictures showing Grace in Kennel maid mode!


Coming in:

From Dog Show

Trying to steer him:

From Dog Show

Getting his attention:

From Dog Show

Surely its time to go:

From Dog Show

What again?:

From Dog Show

Judge, what judge?:

From Dog Show

Round again:

From Dog Show

This is getting dull:

From Dog Show

Going now?:

From Dog Show

The Opposition (who won) - looks more like a Red Setter to me!!:

From Dog Show

Beauty Pageant

In January I was staying for a copuple of days at a hotel in Cavite, just south of Manila. Imagine my surprise to wake up to find a dozen or so pretty girls draping themselves around the swimming pool. It was a local College, organising their annual beauty pageant.

Why didn't we ever have anything like this at Portsmouth?

Anyway, a few pictures for you all to enjoy.

From Pageant

From Pageant

From Pageant

From Pageant

From Pageant

Apologies

I haven't been posting anything for ages, not because nothing has happened but because things have been somewhat fraught and busy here. So I am going to make up for it now with several posts!!