Hero (Yimou Zhang, 2002)

There are three reasons for sacrificing your life: love, friendship and an ideal. This is the premise behind "Hero" and each case gets illustrated. It's a beautiful film although in a rather cliche way. Lovely scenery. I particularly liked the way the story is told as three different flashbacks. Each flashback is a different version of what may have happened. It kept me really involved and guessing what was really going on and how it was going to end. However, as with so many Chinese films, it's a tragic ending. English subtitles. Recommended.

Climate Change Tipping Point

A tidbit worth knowing. In the BBC article Carbon Reaching Danger Levels, its claimed that when carbon dioxide reaches 500 parts per million (ppm) in the atmosphere, we get to irreversible climate change. It recently reached 379 ppm and its increasing by around 2 ppm each year. That gives us about 60 years to fix things or the sea level rises by 7 meters.

Chef Jenny

Jenny has been making progress with her career in the culinary world. Today she taught her first Malaysian Cookery workshop to five paying students. She covered Malaysian chicken curry, beef rendang, chicken satay, nasi lemak and accompaniments. It went very well and she really enjoyed teaching it.

She's also been baking every week and selling it through the local Women's Institute as a way of perfecting her recipes. She's managed to produce all kinds of cakes and goodies that people with food sensitivities can eat. It's got to the point where she's getting advanced orders for them.

I'm still trying to convince her to start blogging about food.

Motorcycle Test

Over the last couple of weeks, I had my final three motorcycle lessons and today I went for my test in Reading. I was a bit nervous but not too jittery.

I passed!

Whew! Quite a relief since if I had failed, I would have had to wait until mid November for a retest. As it was, the day was rather chilly with some rain. The examiner, Mark, drove around behind me in a car for about 45 minutes giving me directions over a one way radio. I was particularly nervous doing the U turn in the middle of a narrow sloping street. All you have to do is misjudge your balance and put your foot down to get an instant fail.

At the end of test, I received a mild bollocking for10 minor faults I committed while my instructor, Lou, scowled as Mark described each mistake. Luckily, you can get up to 16 minor faults before you fail. All it takes is one major fault for an instant fail.

There was another student with us who did his test after me but unfortunately, he forgot to turn off his indicator. Instant fail.

So now I'm licensed to kill myself. I'm well aware that you're 38 times more likely to die in a motorcycle accident than a car accident. In London, motorcyclists account for 2% of traffic but 18% of road accident fatalities. Still, I'd like to get a motorcycle next year for casual fair weather riding. One day, I'd like to do a motorcycle trip in a country with not too many cars. Maybe Arizona or New Zealand or something like that.

Reasons Not To Vote For Bush

Here's some links for those who think Bush could still possibly deserve their vote. George Soros has a personal message worth reading. The Guardian has offered a good speech for John Kerry to make. Better yet, visit the One Thousand Reasons website which is "relentlessly documenting the failures of the Bush administration." Another fine site is One Term President which has a good list of other websites to visit. One of those is 525 Reasons to Dump Bush. If you're undecided, start reading soon.

BBC: UN probes sugar industry claims

Looks like the sugar industry got caught buying out and influencing an "impartial" investigation into the link between sugar and health. Just another example of how untrustworthy the food industry is.

A Day At Harrods

I went down to the Egyptian Consulate in London on Thursday to get our visas. It was a bit of a pain in that you have to drop off your application forms and passports in the morning and then hang around to pick them up after 2:30 in the afternoon.

Where to kill time in Knightsbridge? Well, Harrods of course. I hadn't been there for almost ten years. The food hall is as wonderful as it always was. The cheese counter is second to none. I meandered around all five floors for four hours taking in some of the ridiculous opulence. Nice furniture. Great A/V department full of LCD and plasma TV's. Even a CD department with unused listening stations. Brilliant. But I'd never buy anything there as I wouldn't trust the prices to be good value. It's great for the absurd. You can have a children's electric lamborghini for £39,000 or 75 year old whiskey for £12,000. I eventually left starving as I couldn't bear to spend £12 for a sandwich!

Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time

Sure glad to read Mr Kerry did well in the first televised presidential debate. The BBC has published the key points made. The best soundbite was the phrase "Wrong War, Wrong Place, Wrong Time" and I hope it sticks to Bush like a bad hangover. Did you notice that Rumsfeld recently got caught telling the truth? He admitted there was no link between Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida.

Be sure to drop by the BushIn30Seconds website to watch some absolutely great spoof ads for Bush. It's sponsored by MoveOn.org. Some of the more fun things I've found include a calendar from BabesAgainstBush and protest panties from Axis of Eve. Or you can join with BillionairesForBush.

It still surprises me how much support Bush has with RealClearPolitics showing them about equal in the the polls. I recently listened to a BBC radio programme discussing the rife gerrymandering going on in the US so even if Bush does sink in the polls, there's still a good chance he'll win. So much for the US as a shining example of democracy. Not!

This all points to the boring but crucial issue of how elections are run and the need to support groups like The Center for Voting and Democracy. Closer to home, I noticed this page about the electoral reform in Canada.

Skin Two Cabaret

Skin Two is a fetish style magazine reknown for organising the annuall Rubber Ball in London, a celebration of fetish style. Ok, so you're probably immediately wondering "What on earth is Ian into now?" I think the diversity in what humans do is fascinating and makes life interesting. Certainly, I don't think there's anything out there that surprises me anymore. So Jenny and I went to the Skin Two Cabaret since it didn't have a dress code and definitely sounded unusual.

The cabaret was a bit disappointing. I was expecting more of a fashion show but it was mostly lewd comedy which was fun nonetheless. The audience was the fashion show and some were pretty stunning. The last act was a Messy Girl who's, ummm, climax was spraying the audience with her enema. Nope, hadn't seen that before!

Pesticides in Your Food

The Pesticide Action Network is offering a fabulously scarey poster entitled Pesticides in Your Food that nicely summarises the current state of affairs in the UK. You can download the PDF for free or buy a print to hang in your kitchen. Honestly, I would buy a print if I could think of a public place I'd be allowed to display it. The download page has a comprehensive list of links to documents backing up their claims. Definitely worth browsing. The truth is that you can often detect pesticides in food samples but they don't usually exceed the Maximum Residue Levels (MRL) set by the government. The key issue is do you trust the MRL's?

Well, personally, I don't trust these MRL's. The food industry lobby is strong and the government panders to business interests. There are plenty of examples where pesticides are later found to be much more harmful than orginally recognised. I'm sure some of the pesticides residues are alright but you are consuming a cumulative cocktail of about 500 of them. Delicious! We're buying much more organic foods these days.

Corporate Watch: Nuclear Contamination in Reading

Here's a rather alarming article by Corporate Watch about Raymond Fox's ongoing failure to get any justice over plutonium contamination found in his backyard at 338 Wokingham Rd in Earley near Reading. A soil sample was found to contain five times higher radioactive contamination than pollution at a nuclear weapons factory in Aldermaston! The scarey thing is the "Wall Of Silence" that he has been subjected to as no one want to do anything about it.

If I lived in the neighbourhood, I'd be pretty upset and demanding a thorough investigation. What about the groundwater?

Generally the UK seems quite good at being evenhanded but I do get the impression that there are many area's where corporations and institutions can steamroller over individuals that  have little recourse. Unfortunately, Mr Fox seems to have found one of those areas.

Buddhist Economics

Nice short essay on the value of work and the need for meaningful work. It's hosted on a site called World Transformation which looks pretty interesting.

Conkers

Yesterday, I taught the kids how to play conkers. There's a horse chestnut tree at R*'s school so the kids there collect them but they don't know how to play conkers so I figured I would teach her this most English of games. As a kid, I had my five seconds of fame playing in a conker competition with the shattering of my conker being broadcast on local TV news. My opponent went on to win the competition with a very seasoned seven year old indestructable conker.

On Sunday, we trooped down to Windsor Great Park and collected a bag of them. It's a little early in the season but wasn't hard to find some. At home, I attached the strings and we were ready to play.

I was soon reminded it can be rather painful to play conkers. It's easy to whack yourself. R* even went and put on her skateboarding pads. After I lost to R*, I set the kids up with a hanging conker to practise on but unfortunately, Kieran whacked himself in the nose and head! So, ok, maybe there's a good reason conkers isn't played much!

Still, I might keep some conkers in a dark corner of a cupboard. They could prove useful in several years.

Back From Bavaria

Got back safe and sound from our road trip to Germany yesterday. Had a great time and I'll try and get a travelogue written up and posted this week. Driving the Autobahn was a real highlight for me. Here's a picture of my speedometer showing us hitting 145 mph as we got near to Munich.

I have a new found respect for German cars; they all seem to be built for driving at speeds like these!