The amazing storyteller

I have just finished my second Carlos Ruiz Zafon book!  I read his The Shadow of the Wind, beautifully translated into English from Spanish a few years ago, the book made a strong impression, specifically due to the way he use the language but indeed also I loved his characters and their stories:

Actually, I did not expect to read a second book of Carlos Ruiz Zafon as I did not expect anything would be able to match The Shadow of the Wind, but now I have done so; I have just completed The Prisoner of Heaven which turned out to be a continuation of the The Shadow of the Wind and unbelievably but true, it was even more exciting and as lovely as The Shadow of the Wind - thus highly recommendable reading - I almost could not lay it down once I got into his fantastic story from his beloved Barcelona:

ACO and Beethoven 9th

Yet again I have had the pleasure of enjoying the Australian Chamber Orchestra (ACO) and its Director, Conductor and Lead Violin, Richard Tognetti:

 

As an introduction, we got a piece of Brahms (Geistliches Lied, Op.30) and a fantastic sensitive piece of Beethoven (Calm Sea and Prosperous Voyage, Op.112) with text by none other than Goethe ! 

An amazing and fantastic piece of music mellowed in the hands of Richard Tognetti and his fantastic ACO musicians with the help of the very talented Choir of Clare College from Cambridge.

But this was just an introduction,  never the less worth the whole ticket:

 - but that was before we had heard the performance of the 9th- I have never ever heard anything more beautiful - most of us are very much familiar by the bits and pieces of the 9th that are played over-and-over again - but this entire 65 minutes was the most exquisite pleasure for my ears and mind I have ever experienced - the entire concert hall was filled with the breadth and depth of the music that I have never experienced before - I could actually hear each instrument and almost each person in the big choir - simply beautiful and such a wonderful 65 minutes that I would have been able to turn around and go for another round at any time!!

More on Sydney

Australia and particularly Sydney is fascinating given the diversity of its society. After all, in less than three hundred years ago this 'city' and country was 'invaded' by convicts from the UK.

Since then this society has expanded its amazing infrastructure, culture, democracy, independence and diversity many times over into today's prospering and amazing good living society and city well known for each beaches, Opera and Sydney Harbour bridge:

 Last year Australia conducted its 16th census (which includes both Marianne and my self :-) and there are some very interesting reading:

Only 60% of Sydneysiders are born in Australia (Nationwide it is 70%)
3.5% are born in England
3.4% are born in China - thus the Chinese are the third biggest immigrants to Sydney as opposed to New Zealand if you view it Nation wide.

Only 60% of Sydneysiders speaks English at home (Nationwide it is 77%)
4.1 % speaks Arabic
3% speaks only Mandarin at home (nationwide the third group is Italian)

I have many times over made comments about the low number of churches in Sydney - and here comes the evidences which actually indicates that there are more Christians in Sydney than nationwide in Australia, but still, viewed as a western society, number of Christians are low:

28.3% are Catholics
16.1% are Anglican
17.6% has NO religion, but this is actually lower than nationwide which is 22.3%

Melbourne vs Sydney

I recently had the pleasure of visiting Melbourne together with my wife. I need to credit my colleague Priscilly who recommended some excellent Italian restaurants:

Il Bacaro: www.ilbacaro.com.au/
and
Il Solito  www.ilsolitoposto.com.au/

And we agree, both are highly recommended, especially now during winter time as the weather in Melbourne was a bit cold and damp, however with these two restaurants, an excellent Napoleon exhibition and a short tour at Melbourne Museum, winter  in Melbourne was not that bad - btw, currently there is a slogan in Sydney saying: "Love Every Second Sydney in Winter" - eluding to all the various 'art' activities going on in the city - and just a few days ago we enjoyed a concert with the Australian Chamber Orchestra led by Richard Tognetti and the Australia born (Melbourne actually)  young talented soprano Danielle de Niese:

The concert was great, except for "The Tree of Man" composed by the Australian Carl Vine as late as January 2012 - a complete disaster if you ask me. However, the orchestra played another "local" composition called "Cantilena Pacifica" by Richard Meale from Sydney - lovely piece, and now we saw the potential of the ACO Director Richard Tognetti who played the lead violin - very sensitive and beautiful.
Overall the concert was fantastic, not so much because of Danielle de Niese, she did great and has a great voice, but got too few songs, the reason I found the concert so great was because of ACO and Richard Tognetti who arranged and played the lead violin on the string quartet in D Minor, D.810 by Schubert so excellent and sensitive that I am sure it will take years before I get to have a similar music experience - well done ACO and Richard Tognetti!!

Having said that, I am back to Melbourne vs Sydney again as most people point to the 'fact' that Melbourne is a much more culture and art city than Sydney. In the most recent "Limelight" magazine published by ABC, this perception is being challenged and investigated as they have assessed multiple art disciplines in both cities - and Melbourne wins over Sydney on Opera and Festivals - Festivals is a big surprise to me after just experiencing festivals like Vivid Sydney 2012:

But it turns out that Sydney is the "Arts Capital" after all as Sydney wins all the other categories:

Vivid Sydney 2012

So far I have had the pleasure of enjoying the Vivid Sydney twice, this year and last year.  Last year display on the opera sails was much better than this year, but this year the event has expanded and is much better by all standards, I am really impressed by this 'investment' by Sydney in art and art opportunities that the entire population of Sydneysiders as well as tourists enjoys in abundance.
This year we have a great presentation on the MCA and the Custom House which is even better than last year - enjoy:

The Tipping Point

This book, about the “Tipping Point”, is claimed to be an International Number One Bestseller and its an ‘Intelligent, articulate, thought-provoking’ book, according to the Observer.

Well it has enough selling point to raise my interest – the book is of course about the tipping point and it tries to explain what makes a product and/or a concept or an idea to reach its tipping point – if you vision a normal distribution curve, the tipping point is in the middle where it has reached its max and is about to go down or recline.

According to the author Malcolm Gladwell, it takes Connectors, Mavens and Salesmen to create the epidemic that makes an idea and/or a product to reach its tipping point. Interestingly, Gladwell spends the whole book in describing various ‘use cases’ (scenarios) from the infamous American history of Paul Revere who was spreading the message that the English was coming and saved many colonists of New England and really set off the American independence – to less bravura stories of children TV series, how to inform about breast cancer, cigarette smoking and how to make a new shoe brand sell etc etc.

He also tells the interesting story from NY on how the train authorities tackled the train-tagging as well as how the NY Police reduced serious crime by attending the 'small' crimes (zero tolerance) – all very interesting and good stories, but why Gladwell needs to invent theories about Rules of Epidemics, the law of the few and the stickiness factor, is really completely incomprehensible to me as all these interesting stories, which Gladwell has researched very well, is nothing else than “thinking out of the box”, strong believe and enthusiasm in what we do – thus this book is nothing else than a typical American book on re-inventing and re-labeling something that others already have done and has already labelled.

Sydney funnel-web spider

Under a social business dinner recently the newly appointed CIO of Westpac, Clive Whincup, who is a literate of many subjects, told us that the neurotoxin from the Sydney funnel-web spider only was deadly to primates.

This is particularly interesting given that there are no other indigenous primates in Australia than the humans.

The neurotoxin causes wholesale release of neurotransmitters, especially acetylcholine. The puncture wound is intensely painful. Although the bite of the funnel-web spider (Atrax robustus) can be and has been fatal, there have been no reported deaths since the introduction of the antivenom in 1981.

This may be because all Sydney funnel-webs live within commuting distance of the Opera House, a relatively small area dense with well-supplied hospitals.

Although extremely toxic to primates, the venom appears to be fairly harmless to many other animals. So apparently science do not have an answer to why the funnel-web spider has developed a toxin that is harmless to many of its targeting small animals. It has been suggested that these animals may be resistant to the venom's effects due to the presence of Immunoglobulin G (lgG) and possibly cross-linked IgG and Immunoglobulin M (lgM) inactivating factors in their blood plasma that bind to the toxins responsible and neutralise them, or it may involve a non-specific reaction due to the highly basic nature of the toxins.

In other words, we don’t know why the funnel-web spider has developed a neurotoxin that is only able to kill the English convicts and immigrants at their arrival in Sydney more than 200 years ago…