The Joffrey Ballet: Robert Joffrey and the Making of an American Dance Company – Sasha Anawalt
The Joffrey Ballet is a comprehensive history of the quintessential American dance troupe and a textured portrait of Robert Joffrey, the creative maverick who led and inspired it.
Broadly researched, richly anecdotal, and elegantly written, The Joffrey Ballet probes the complex relationship that exists between a culture and its artists through the prism of this company’s story.
The absence of sound is silence
But is golden silence brilliant?
Away from the daily hustle and bustle
To be able to commune with nature and mull
Over the different things you want to think and do
Especially when your mind is in a funk and blue
Then the silence helps you clear your mind
Tells you what to do next and get you out of the bind
Then silence is the wisdom, the truth and the fragrance
That which soothes your soul and gives you balance
Land of the Blind (Inspector Ikmen #17) – Barbara Nadel
A body is found in the ruined Constantinople hippodrome: a woman, clutching a piece of red stone. She’s recently given birth, but there’s no sign of the baby. Inspector Cetin Ikmen discovers she was a Byzantine specialist on a crusade to protect the historic but now squalid areas of Istanbul that her enemy, property developer Ahmet Oden, seeks to destroy and rebuild. As Ikmen searches for the lost child and the truth behind her death, the people of Istanbul rise up in protest against their government in Gezi Park, and the city lurches into chaos and anger. Against this background, Ikmen will unravel a tale of ancient hostility and modern desires, where the truth is concealed within the secret history of this antique city.
This week also flew by quite fast. I was quite busy preparing for my two interviews in the week that I hardly had time for much.
Speaking of the interviews, both interviews were the shortest I’ve had to date. The first one should take pole position as the absolute shortest interview, it only took 5 minutes of a couple of questions before they started asking me if I had questions. With my questions, I managed to increase the time spent to slightly over 10 minutes. I know I will not get a callback here, as usually if you know you are not going to proceed further with a candidate, you don’t really spend time with them. But they’ve said they will let me know in a week or two if I make it to the next round. Another reason why I know I may not get a callback is they need someone urgently with a very specific skillset and experience as they need to hit their KPI by the middle of the year and I don’t have that experience. I don’t understand why they invited me to interview, though!
The other interview, in the same general vicinity of the first one also lasted just slightly over 15 minutes. This was probably the most unfriendly panel I have met – they didn’t bother to introduce themselves and I assumed the main interviewer would be the potential boss and one other person the HR. No idea who the others were. This went better than day 1, but the biggest negative about this position is that it’s based on a project which is initially expected to run for two years, which makes this position only a short-term one. Anyway, they too should let me know either way by next week. In the meantime, I need to still apply and no reply….
S’ cousin and his family are in Singapore this week for a family holiday. They are staying with S’ mum and so we invited them for dinner yesterday. Since I knew we had to go out for GG’s award ceremony after lunch, I did as much of the prep work as possible in the morning and even made a couple of dishes before hand. So all that was left for me to do after the ceremony was to make sure the house was nice and sweet smelling and some last minute cooking. R came home early from her off day to help me make rotis. It was an enjoyable evening spent talking and chit-chatting.
This was my week, hope this week is better than the last and may your week be awesome!
School has started in earnest now and both BB and GG have a full school week. On days when they have CCA, they are home only after 6 pm.
Later today, GG will receive her Edusave scholarship. According to her, she saw some document in school which shows that she came in third in the level, missing the second position by a small percentage (actually a point percentage). So this has made her even more determined to do better her Sec 1 grades this year.
GG has her Singapore Youth Festival competition sometime in April this year and her CCA is going all out to practice. They will be wearing some kind of an ombre dress this year and GG says they will also be wearing formal court shoes with heels as part of the costume. Excited for them and hopefully, they get a Gold this year too….
BB did something new this year. On Friday when he came back from school, he told me he had to go back to school to present some dance as part of the environmental club he was in for he Sec 1 Orientation day. Since S was going to be working late, I decided to let him go to school and come back alone. This is a huge thing since they’ve not gone out alone after sunset before. He left around 6:15 pm and came back around 8:30 pm. I was worried and was relieved when he finally came home. Now GG is asking that she also be allowed to do the same thing. I’ve told her when the next opportunity comes, we’ll do it….All part of letting my chicks spread their wings and take tentative steps outside the nest….
All part of letting my chicks spread their wings and take tentative steps outside the nest….
Have a great Sunday folks!!
