The critics have been raving mad about Swan Lake, so on the 3rd of March, Julia and I went to see what all the fuss was about. Having read all the reviews, I was pretty excited - I'd never been to a proper theatre/dance production before, let alone a ballet. This would make up for missing out on Phantom of the Opera (my mum had free tickets at the time, but I was young and stupid and said no) all those years ago, and the Lion King (a certain someone's fault) just recently. I told my workmate I was going, and that's when he told me: 'The cast is all guys.' Suddenly, all the enthusiasm I had for watching Swan Lake drained away. All guys! I picture a bunch of guys dressed in tutus and feathers prancing about on stage, or guys pretending to be women. Groan.
On the day, we were almost late for the performance. We managed to squeeze in just as the doors were closing, and seated ourselves in a theatre full of people. I was expecting the performance to be something akin to watching a movie, and hence just wore sneakers, jeans and a shirt. Most of the audience however was dressed in nice clothing - suits and evening gowns and dresses. Oh well. I settled down and watched the show unfold.
Swan Lake was, for lack of a better word, awesome. The dancers were sublime, gliding across the stage like swans on a lake (hohoho). Thankfully, there were girls (it was the swans that were all guys, a role normally reserved for females), and in short strappy dresses too! (Ouch! What was that for?)
What probably impressed me most besides the dancing were the sets. They were simply gorgeous. You could see that a lot of ingenuity, effort and painstaking design had gone into them. They really took you to the scene and made you feel like it was all too real - the neon lights in the bar, the stars outside the ballroom window, the full moon in a deserted park.
My main gripe with the performance was the lack of a live score. Tchaikovsky's Swan Lake will always be a classic, and the music played through the speakers was crystal clear, but I couldn't help but think (being the fussy prick I am) how much better the music would have been with a full orchestra playing. The performance was also a bit on the short side (bit over two and a half hours? - expected most theatre things to be longer), but I guess it's pretty tiring to be on stage for so long.
Anyway we both walked out of there extremely impressed, and now I'm hooked. I'll be waiting (and saving) for the next highly talked-about show, whenever it comes...

Sometimes you'll think you know someone well, and then they turn around and surprise you.
'I'm sorry. I didn't want it to happen this way... and there doesn't feel like there's been any closure...'
'Aidan - hadn't it already ended before we ended?'

When all is said and done, let me not look back with remorse and say: 'You were the one.'

It was Serena's birthday in February, and thus we decided to celebrate by having a day of much merriment on the 25th. First on the agenda: a three-hour karaoke session at K-World.
People are always afraid to put songs in or sing too wildly at the beginning; it takes a while before the playlist really starts growing, and increasingly more gusto is put into each song. After the inital warm-up, we were putting in songs by the second, so that by the end of the three hours, we still had another fifty or more songs left to sing. It was a real concert too - there was singing, dancing, and yes, even a bit lesbian action.
After the karaoke, we were all a bit frazzled and hungry. It was at this point that Monkey said: 'I feel like a German-style veal knuckle and a hearty stein of beer.' To which we replied: 'Well you sure don't look like one.' Very funny. Luckily for Monkey though, we had booked a table at the Rhinedorf, which, coincidentally, was a German restaurant specialising in things like veal knuckles and beer. And so off we went to the restaurant to meet up with the others who had been invited.














The singing gets emotional.

At the restaurant, the men amongst us (myself included) ordered the veal knuckle, whilst the lesser men (Sam, for example) ordered the smaller pork knuckle. Some of the girls ordered sausages and meat platters while Monkey, rescinding on his earlier decision, displayed his feminine side by opting for the chicken. By now we were famished, but fortunately it didn't take long for the food to arrive. And what food it was. The veal knuckles were simply enormous! They looked like they weighed a tonne and could be used as weapons of mass destruction.
It took almost two hours of constant carving and vigorous chewing for me to come close to finishing my meal, and even then there was at least a quarter of it left to eat. The others fared no better. Fingers numb, jaw muscles strained - we were well and truly stuffed (Monkey meanwhile continued to nibble daintily at his chicken). We hoisted the white flag, and the meat was taken away.
They say a person has two stomachs: one for food and one for dessert. With the 'food' stomach filled, it was time to work on the 'dessert' one with a gelato cake that had been ordered earlier. The cake looked gorgeous, but we didn't have much time to look at it before it was cut up and ravished. Oh well. Beauty is in the stomach of the beholder. Sigh...*burp*... a merry finish to a very merry, merry day.

Post-edit: I didn't eat for a few days afterwards.














'You rekon I'll be okay to drive?'













Serena tries to snort her meat.














'Hello? Can I speak to Veal Knuckle please?'


















Ze Good German.














Ze Cake.


















Ze End (of Ze Cake).

I've got a huge backlog of stuff I want to blog about, so I'll start with the stuff from last month.
On February 23rd, Monkey, Serena and I went to Damien Rice's concert at the Enmore. In case you don't know who Damien Rice is, he's this Irish guy who can sing, write poetry and play guitar. Really well. The concert, from beginning to end, was awesome.
Anyway, guess it's hard to describe what a concert sounds like in words, so I'll end this post with a few photos for you to ponder over.




























Next post: Aidan is kidnapped by a walking frankfurt.

'Why isn't the search working? Why isn't the customer name coming up? How come this field is highlighted?'
On he goes. I grit my teeth.
I want '...you to fix this...' to smack him in the face, again '...integration testing...' and again, and scream '...results from the database...' shut the fuck up while the blood pours down. 'Okay, so let's aim to get this out of the way by Tuesday.'
I sit back at my desk, seething, and calmly continue with my work.