Posted on 22 June 2005 @ 13:09 in Family, Janis Ian, The Working Life
TV Dinners
My sister arrived home yesterday evening to find two bodies in the TV room, each holding a bowl in hand, eyes on the big screen.
My niece had started it. She piled her bowl of rice with mussels and tofu and headed back to watch the movie that’d been interrupted for dinner. I was more “civilised”, eating at the table. But eventually, my rice bowl and I joined her and hers in the TV room.
So what was so interesting on TV that we just had to watch it? Nothing earth-shaking, no Astro premiere. Just a movie about a pinkish animal in the city. A movie about a pig, some chimpanzees, lots of dogs and cats, and an orang utan named Thelonius.
Babe: Pig in the City.
It was funny and touching, our movie of the moment, captivating two humans enough to eat our dinners in front of the TV instead of at the table.
Welcome to the 21st Century
Our computers at work have been ram’d up, each with an additional 512MB to the original 128MB. You read it right - 128MB. Soooo slow, sometimes I would almost fall asleep watching for something to move on the computer screen.
I have also recently switched to 1024 x 768 screen resolution. I’d tried once before but my multi-focaled eyes protested so much, I bowed down to their demands and went back to 800 x 600 without any fight.
Not this time, though. I have to stick to the 1024 x 768, else I cannot do my work. We are developing the latest version of our corporate web site, a version “best viewed at 1024 x 768 resolution”. It was either that or lots of horizontal scrolling to the right to read the whole page.
This time, it’s my eyes that have bowed to my demands. Good for them. Good for me. You can see so much more at 1024 x 768. Well, maybe not first thing in the morning, eyes still gummy from sleep.
Expanding my JI Collection
To my meagre Janis Ian collection (one cassette, and three CDs, one of it a double CD), I have added three more, plus two books, and two DVDs.
No, I didn’t get them from any local record or book shop. And no, I didn’t have anyone coming back from the States to ask them to bring the items back for me. I ordered them directly from her web site’s merchandise page, specifying shipping by International Mail. The alternative was much too expensive, costing even more than the total cost of the three CDs, two books and two DVDs!
I was so worried the package would be lost in the mail. But that’s just me, a worry-wart, cuz it arrived safely. I did have to go to the General Post Office to collect it. It’s years since I’ve been to the GPO. Even had to ask if it was still in the same place. What do I know? I don’t deal with snail mail much anymore, except for bills and whatnots.
Specifics of the package contents?
CDs - Between the Lines, Breaking Silence, and Hunger
Books - Who Really Cares, a new re-release of Janis’ 1969 book of adolescent poetry with photos and additional poems, and Stars: Stories Based on the Songs of Janis Ian
DVDs - Janis Ian Live at Club Cafe and JanisMania 2004
Oh yes, every one of them signed by her.
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Posted on 16 June 2005 @ 12:14 in Family
One of the things I love to do with my mother is, when we’re out in the car, I’d ask her to read out the number plate of the car in front of us. In the past, she’d not only done this perfectly, she’d actually surprised me by adding up the numbers and giving perfect answers each time. And then, beyond addition, sometimes she’d multiply the numbers and come up with perfect answers, too!
This reminds me of the evening we were watching a Taiwanese game show in which contestants were shown pairs of numbers and they had to multiply them and give the answer as quickly as possible. Mother played along, reading out the numbers and giving the correct answer each time. She even commented that some of the contestants were giving wrong answers!
Actually, her ability to do additions and multiplications so well is due to how she was taught to do them - by memory. And also by the sound of the numbers. Even I was taught that way - by memory - except for me, the teaching done in English got me to repeat the multiplication tables as in “2 times 2 is 4″, “9 x 6 is 54″, etc. Whereas, for her, she was taught in Cantonese and to say “2 2 4″, “9 6 54″, etc. So whenever she read out the car number plate to me, she would sometimes go on to give the answer, because it was automatic for her, ingrained in her memory from long ago that the dementia has not destroyed. And once I knew she had the ability to do this, I would “test” her, as a way of challenging her mind and keeping it from slipping further into dementia.
Of course, she lost this ability with her recent minor stroke. I still remember, when taking her to the clinic, I would ask her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. Sometimes, she’d say she could not see the numbers. Sometimes, she would try to read out the numbers. On good days, she would get 2, sometimes even 3, of the 4 numbers right. I could see she would be trying really hard, but the effort often tired her very quickly.
Now that she’s back to her old self (oh boy, is she back to her old self!), I tried the numbers game with her during our last visit to the clinic last week. I did the usual, asking her to read the number plate of the car in front of us. At first, she asked which car. Then she said “cannot see” . Finally, she read out the numbers correctly, but in a different way from what she’d done before.
The numbers were one, nine, four, five. But instead of reading them as one, nine, four, five, she said nineteen, four, five.
Well, is that creative or what?
*proud daughter*
Thank You, Lord!
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Posted on 13 June 2005 @ 01:44 in Family
A car came careening round the corner as I was leaving my sister’s house one evening. As it came nearer, I saw that it was my sister’s, with her in the driver’s seat.
“If father knows of this, he will surely give her an earful,” I found myself thinking. Buth then, the one getting an earful would be me, as he’d complain to me, and ask me to tell her to drive more carefully.
More recently, I was driving home when I noticed the Mobil petrol station along the way had no cars at any of its pumps. I looked again and saw that the minimart was empty. The place looked closed.
“I wonder what father would say if he heard of this?”
It’s almost two months but I feel like he hasn’t gone for good, but will be coming back. I see and hear things that I want to share with him. Ah well, maybe I’ll tell him when I see him, but by then, earthly things won’t interest him. All he’ll wanna do is praise the Lord all day long.
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Posted on 8 June 2005 @ 07:30 in People
| Mrs Robinson
And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
We’d like to know a little bit about your for our files
We’d like to help you learn to help yourself.
Look around you all you see are sympathetic eyes,
Stroll around the grounds until you feel at home.
And here’s to you, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
Hide in the hiding place where no one ever goes.
Put it in your pantry with your cupcakes.
It’s a little secret just the Robinsons’ affair.
Most of all you’ve got to hide it from the kids.
Koo-koo-ka-choo, Mrs. Robinson,
Jesus loves you more than you will know.
God bless you, please, Mrs. Robinson.
Heaven holds a place for those who pray,
Hey, hey, hey
Sitting on a sofa on a Sunday afternoon.
Going to the candidate’s debate.
Laugh about it, shout about it
When you’ve got to choose
Every way you look at this you lose.
Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio,
Our nation turns it’s lonely eyes to you.
What’s that you say, Mrs. Robinson.
Jotting Joe has left and gone away,
Hey hey hey.
(Paul Simon) |
Banroft complained to a 2003 interviewer, “I am quite surprised that with all my work, and some of it is very, very good, that nobody talks about The Miracle Worker. We’re talking about Mrs. Robinson. I understand the world … I’m just a little dismayed that people aren’t beyond it yet.”
Note: She’d won the 1962 best actress Oscar as Annie Sullivan, the teacher of a young Helen Keller in The Miracle Worker, a role she’d earlier created for Broadway, for which she was awarded the Tony, but went on achieve greater fame as the seducer of her daughter’s boyfriend in the 1967 movie The Graduate.
Obituary in CNN Online
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Posted on 7 June 2005 @ 23:28 in Family, Memories
As I was driving towards the gate into my sister’s house this evening, I noticed a familiar blue car parked to the left of the road. It was the Langley, given a new coat of blue, and literally new lease of life.
The Langley about a month ago:
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I had a word with NG about the colour and he said he’d followed the original blue. Well, actually, that is not the Langley’s original colour. I’d mentioned in an earlier weblog entry that the original was a nice midnight blue, but after googling the Net for a colour match, I found a colour sample (see below) and realise that the Langley’s original blue is a lighter shade than midnight blue, but definitely darker than its current “groovy” blue.
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