Looking at June 2006!
Rick’s Cafe Casablanca
27 June 2006
I really love the movie Casablanca, which is the same age as I am, or pretty close…
And now it appears, so I saw on ABC’s Foreign Correspondent tonight, that an American named Kathy Kriger has brought it to life in the city the movie celebrated. It looks great, and the Rick’s Cafe website is just a delight. She has a blog too: Salon Privé.
Welcome to my Salon Privé and please take a seat at the table. This is a dinner conversation and all the usual subjects are welcome: politics, food, music, film, design, religion, travel, drink, business, gossip, shopping…ok, even sports. So make sure your glass is topped up, and let’s start the meal…
Do yourself a favour: go there online like me or, if you are very lucky, in actuality. Looks like a great idea beautifully done.
Scored this comment:
July 18, 2006 at 8:52 am
A pleasure to offer the first comment, one of appreciation for your kind words. We had a great time taping the segment with ABC and I can’t wait to see the finished product. Look forward to seeing you in Casablanca!
Kathy/aka “Madame Rick”
Crash-tackling the stereotype
28 June 2006
Some of you remember my fifteen minutes of fame in 2002. There had been mutterings around The Mine about “Asians” and “coaching” (cheating?) and not playing Rugby…
How amused I was then last night to get an email from one of my (“Asian”) coachees to say he couldn’t attend this week as he would be playing Rugby League in The Shire.
He’s an athlete too.
As time goes by… Meeting Madam and a Buddhist.
27 June 2006
It has been a week for running into people, one way or another. Delenio will know who I mean when I mention that I saw G, a former colleague, especially in many a GPS debate, a couple of days ago. He looks different, healthy and very friendly. He’s pretty much done with teaching and is very much into Buddhism these days. He hadn’t heard about my becoming involved with South Sydney Uniting Church, but could relate to the need for a spiritual home. He certainly seems to have found his, and that is great.
By the way, I do not put great store on the exclusive truth claims of any religion, including my own; as soon as religions seriously go down that track you can be sure they are wrong. But that’s a matter for another day.
Tonight I saw Madam in Elizabeth Street, and this will mean most to The Rabbit, after whom she asked. She was pleased to hear about the English teaching. She is still doing some catering, she tells me, has some Japanese students staying with her, and is enjoying the freedom of not running a cafe. She seems to be over her Bulgarian period. (Mind you, I liked him.)
Her cafe was a bit like Rick’s. If smaller. Much smaller. And there was no piano. But it was as much a haven for all kinds of refugees as Rick’s ever was. I am sure The Rabbit remembers it with as much affection as I do.
Ah, Cafe Max. I haven’t really taken to its replacement.
Queen’s Birthday Weekend
11 June 2006
This is the Sunday of Queen’s Birthday here in New South Wales, and tomorrow is a public holiday. Not that it really is the Queen’s Birthday, which I wrote about on the appropriate day: April 22.
Confusing, isn’t it?
Tonight ABC-TV celebrates with The Queen at 80. I’ll be watching it, even if The Scotsman was less than enthusiastic:
IN SPITE of the granny hair and the Norman Hartnell clothes, I’m only a “don’t know” on the Queen. Whereas on over-zealous school prefect Andrew Marr I’m an out and out anti. Listening to him on The Queen at 80 was like being chewed to death by a set of stir-crazy false teeth. So it was a bit of bad luck for her majesty to be tarnished by association with our Andrew. I give her six months…
Marr had a go at feigning tabloid excitement at “never-before-seen” footage. This turned out to be toddler Charles running about the garden and the queen looking happy and excited with her ladies in waiting on her coronation day. If Marr was feeling that we the viewers might be thinking “is that it?” it didn’t show. The false teeth just took a few more nibbles from what was left of our faces…
I will enjoy the nostalgia nonetheless.
John Baker’s questions
29 June 2006
If you are at all interested in writing, and enjoy good writing from a real writer, visit John Baker.
You may recall he asked five questions:
1. Why do you blog?
Because it is better than muttering to myself in the bathroom. Because I am addicted to teaching. Because I need to rant in Howard’s Australia. Because I have far too much time on my hands. Because writing is the best kind of thinking. Because “How do I know what I think until I see what I say?” (That was E M Forster, I think.) Because “I blog, therefore I am.” See also Reasons to journal. (New link 2016)
2. Which author and/or book has most influenced you?
See My canon. And it really probably is the Bible and Shakespeare. Sad, isn’t it?
3. Which three blogs do you most visit?
Lately:
1. Thin Potations. It’s a habit, really. He’s been a bit slack lately though. [Since gone private.]
2. Ahmad Shuja: MyScribbles: Write-ups of an Afghan because he is refreshingly honest, amazing for a person of his age, and an Afghan, and can tell me about the Afghan cricket team.
3. Aluminium because she is an English teacher and used to be a Diary-X friend, oh for ages now it seems. (And she reads me too.)Actually I visit all those blogs on my blogroll. Often. Including John Baker’s, obviously.
4. Why do you read fiction?
Some just for delight in plot, character and language. Some because they are more true than non-fiction. Some because they can take me into world-views and milieus I could never otherwise experience.
5. What makes you laugh?
Fawlty Towers, no matter how often I see it. The items in my Diversions links to the right. The fact that the majority of Australians still think John Howard is a really really good Prime Minister…
No, that last one makes me want to cry.
Neil's Commonplace Book 