The Gabster

Giles and Kerynne's Wedding...

22 May 07 @ 11:17 AM  category » joys

...London, May 19th 2007, was really lovely. So many old faces I don't see enough of any more...

Niran looks happy, doesn't he?

Giles and Kerynne's Wedding - Pix

Jobs for Life

18 Jul 05 @ 09:21 AM  category » joys

Steve Jobs' commencement address at Stanford this year is inspirational.

Freecycle

17 Jul 05 @ 03:41 PM  category » joys

Freecycle. Nice idea.

Mad Hot Ballroom

17 Jul 05 @ 12:56 PM  category » dance | joys | new york

Mad Hot Ballroom is a more delightful, hilarious, moving, triumphant dancing version of Spellbound, the doc about the National Spelling Bee.  I absolutely loved Spellbound, and was gripped by its intensity and pain and disappointment, but it was populated with excessively bright, over-achieving, hypercompetitive children that were preternaturally adult and serious, so my heart went out to them mostly because of the desperate pressure they were under and the pain of disappointment.

Mad Hot Ballroom on the other hand, comes from the other end of the spectrum. Kids in the New York City public school system, 90% of them officially living below the poverty line, take ballroom dance classes after school and compete in a city-wide competition. Some of the kids are troubled, and the program gives them new pride and purpose; others are shy, and it makes them blossom; others are goofy but it teaches them style and confidence. One new boy can't speak English, but he's a natural dancer, and he's accepted as a new friend as a result. And watching the teachers with their pupils - mostly Latino and Asian - makes you remember why it is that we owe dedicated teachers so much.

It's wonderful. I laughed, I cried, I snorted. And boy, did it make me want to dance. Shayne and I are switching to Salsa on 2 (club salsa) which is a pain since it means going back to the beginning, after all these months of learning formal Salsa on 1. But we tried out a new school on Friday - Dance Manhattan - and had a great teacher, Rodney Lopez. So imagine our delight and surprise, sitting in the cinema on Saturday evening, to discover that the inspirational, charming, funny, kind and wonderful teacher that led his school team to victory in the competition, was no other than Rodney. I wanted to run straight back to school after leaving the cinema.

And now I want to learn the tango, and swing, and the rumba. Watch MHB and you'll be tapping your toes too.

Committed to the Challenge

10 Jul 05 @ 11:55 PM  category » joys | sports

At 5am this morning, as I was wandering along Riverside Drive towards the swim start, surrounded by nervously excited chattering triathletes, I saw a remarkable sight. Three women ahead of me - tall, lean and extremely athletic - were walking along jauntily laughing amongst themselves.

But all of them had prosthetic legs. The contraptions attached at the thigh and displayed a variety of bionic shapes and sizes. One woman's lower leg was a simple curved bendy piece of metal like a scoop, with a flat part for the foot; another's seemed to have springs for the lower leg leading to a solid foot block. I was transfixed, walking behind them, for, had they not been wearing shorts and thus openly displaying these miracles of modern technology, I would never have noticed anything strange about their gait or demeanour. Then I noticed the others in wheelchairs: one man with no legs, another with a single arm, all dressed in their tri suits and raring to go.

I was myself too nervous to think more about them for a while. But as I finished up the last mile of my run, the woman with the scoop leg ran past me. I practically fell over in surprise (ok, not surprise, I was tired). She was moving. It inpsired me to run faster, despite wanting to stop and walk the rest of the way. And then I calculated the truth - the disabled atheletes had started some twenty or thirty minutes after I had, which meant that she was not only moving, she was a seriously elite athlete with a time to be proud of even as an able bodied competitor.

Which got me to thinking about the origin of her disability, and of the famous stories of people overcoming tragedy - like Lance Armstrong. Were these people serious athletes already, who had a bad accident, but would not let that deter them from their passion - like the paralysed skiers you see who bomb down the slopes strapped into their contraptions, who most likely injured themselves leaping off an enormous cliff or competing in the Olympics? Or were these non-competitive people who were born with a disability, or had an accident at some point later in life, and instead of wallowing in despair, decided at some point to become a champion athlete? I'm fascinated to understand the difference in motivation, and what it takes, if indeed you are one of the latter types, to go from nothing to elite from the sheer force of your willpower.

Don't get me wrong: I think Lance Armstrong is an amazing character. But he was already a professional sportsman before he was diagnosed with cancer, already had the competitive streak, the determination, the willpower. Getting cancer was a tragedy, but for someone like him with those characteristics already, it must have been somehow more a foregone conclusion in his own mind that he wouldn't let it beat him down. And so it proved to be the making of the man, or at least the making of the legend, if he was a man of measure to start with. But cancer, once cured, is gone and he has clearly regained the fitness he had before, and then some. A leg, on the other hand, once gone, is gone for ever. And if you were not already a sportman or woman, how do you not only get over the agony and despair of the accident, but then train yourself to compete at this level? What if you didn't have a competitive bone in your body beforehand? Does that mean you wouldn't try? Can you change?

So now I want to know about the life histories of those amazing men and women who completely kicked my ass in the Tri. My hat's off to you all. I have no excuse, no reason to complain that my muscles ache, and that I don't want to get up at 6am to swim train. In fact, I'm so inspired, that I am going to go volunteer at the Achilles Track Club, which enables people with disabilities to do athletics in Central Park every week.

Baby Blondes

04 Jul 05 @ 01:27 PM  category » joys

There's a tiny fluffy pigeon chick outside my window. It's about the size of my thumb. The other one hasn't hatched yet...

But it's yellow. Are most babies born blonde? I didn't realise that was true. Why, I wonder? Gotta look that up.

(Update, from Ade: apparently swans start out black and then become white. That's even weirder).

Restoring Faith in Human Nature

14 Jun 05 @ 10:40 AM  category » joys | new york

Last night I lost my wallet somewhere on Hudson St. I got to my friend's house for dinner, having walked maybe 3 blocks from the shop where I had bought some wine five minutes earlier, only to discover it was gone. So we walked back to the shop, but they didn't have it. Tarek was encouraging me to cancel my cards, but for some reason I just wasn't panicked about it. Frankly, I was so horrified at the thought that, having taken 2 years to get my act together in the first place, I had just two weeks ago stood in line at the DMV to get my NY driver's license. The thought of going through that again somehow put me into a state of denial.

Just as well I didn't rush around cancelling cards, for twenty minutes later I got a phone call from one Officer Morales from the 6th precinct. Someone had handed in my wallet to the station on 10th St, just a block away from where I was. He'd looked up my address and called everyone on record in my building until he reached my super, who gave him my mobile number.

Lucky me: my stars were shining that night. Big thanks to the nice person who chose to hand it in instead of making my life miserable.

Shopping for the non-millionaire

15 Jan 03 @ 03:34 PM  category » joys

Since it is my birthday today I decided to treat myself to a spot of shopping.  I'm after a pair of knee high boots, but having size 10 feet makes it almost impossible to get anything decent in real leather - just as with the bra issue, designers apparently assume that if your feet are big, you must be fat and have fat calves.  Every pair I've tried on just swims on me round the leg...

So, I ditched the boot idea and instead did a spot of bargain hunting. On principle I am averse to buying high end label wear since the quality never justifies the price tag.  If I had that kind of money I'd have a tailor custom make everything for me, to my design and with a perfect fit.  I'm obviously just not a New York fashionista.  However, I do have a great knack at ferreting out a bargain, which is pretty useful when you are not earning oodles of dosh.  In a shoe shop today I tried on two pairs of shoes by the same designer, only to discover that the pair I liked better was twice the price of the other pair.  Half joking, I said to the store clerk that it was my birthday and couldn't he give me the expensive pair for the price of the cheaper pair?  He clearly thought I was trying it on and said yeah yeah, show me some picture ID and I'll consider it.  I promptly whipped out my driver's license and cheerfully handed it over.  He looked at it, laughed and said "You got me!".  And I got the shoes.  I do love a recession - people are so much more flexible...

I also found a fabulously soft and funky rabbit-fur scarf which is quite the most deliciously luxurious thing to wrap up in to stave off the New York wind.  Just as well I am not longer in SF - I'd probably get pelted (pun intended) with rotten tomatoes by all the local PETA supporters.  Oops, I've just given the SF-bashers another piece of ammo!

Merry Whirl

23 Dec 02 @ 08:06 AM  category » joys | travel

Oof, the end of my India trip went by in a whirl.  Was sick as a dog for the last few days and very worried about travelling, but managed to get through it.  Popped over to NYC last week and got back to London on Friday to a whirl of late nights and partying before heading up to Scotland today.  I need the rest.  I've taken 11 flights in the last two weeks...

Talking of which, Virgin is the biz.  Used to fly United because I was stuck in with the miles and all, but now they've gone I've switched to Virgin.  And boy do I love them.  Leaving New York on Thursday night, I blithely went to Newark, since I flew into Newark on Tuesday on Virgin, did not have a paper ticket and assumed, without hard evidence, that I'd be flying out of Newark too.  But no...my flight left from JFK.  Duh.  A mad dash to try and make the original flight was all in vain - that's the last time I try getting from Newark to JFK at 6pm on a Thursday night.  Got to JFK, they'd closed my 7.30pm flight and the 9.10pm was full so they were going to put me on the 11.30pm.  Problem was, I was supposed to meet Nat and Elliot at Heathrow the next morning as they were on the 9.30pm BA flight.  I begged and pleaded with the Virgin chappie but he said the flight was full and all he could do was put me on standby.  Fingers crossed, I waited.  Then...they called my name, told me I'd made it onto the 9.10pm and gave me my boarding card.  I'd have been happy with a seat in the toilets, so it took a moment for it to dawn on me that seat 1H is most definitely not a toilet.  They upgraded me to Upper Class - the only seat left on the plane!  And I'm not even a regular Virgin customer - only my second Virgin flight in 10 years.  A massage, some pajamas, a decent meal, a nice bed...ahhhh, I will have to miss my flight more often.  Three cheers for Virgin - the most stylish airline in every way.