Tuesday, January 22, 2013

When Is A Club Not A Club?

I am someone who definitely loves all extracurricular activities and practices, and throughout my time in primary and secondary school I've always been the one who goes up to teachers to complain about why some debating or film-making club has decided to shut down on me. But there was one incident that happened today that got me asking the question that serves as the title of this post. 

I was at my book club (which is usually very fun, my fellow blogger and friend The Human Guide also is a member, we have a book for 10-15 year olds to read every month on one of many themes, and we discuss and do fun quizzes and other activities based on it at the next month's meeting. Great for book fans like me!), and before I went I knew that two school friends weren't attending because of school trips and sports practices, but I wasn't expecting what was going to happen! Basically, I arrived in the library and saw that the table we usually use was empty, so naturally I asked the group leader if the club was happening. She replied in the affirmative, and I waited for a few minutes before realising to my horror that no one else would arrive!

I thought this might be a way to get home early (book club goes on to 5:30) so I could start work on the despised DT novelty cake project, but no. Our overly energetic group leader marched over to me, and starting bombarding me with questions about practically everything under the sun, from Sri Lanka at Christmas to iPads and from Chinese characters (my chosen language at school) to freedom of thought (I'm not sure how that one came up...). She even gave me the general knowledge quiz and the drink she'd planned to give us at that meeting! Seems as I was the only one there, shouldn't she have just let me browse books or maybe go home like I was intending?! It's really not much fun on your own with an overly energetic group leader.

Anyway, so this posed a question for me: when is a club not a club? Well, in addition to the awful waste of time that was January's book group, we had a school German club when I was about 8 or 9 that got reduced to about 2 or 3 members, and that wasn't much fun either. 4 or 5 is about the starting number, but 10 is a bit many, because not everyone can have a go at activities or have a voice. In fact, my sub-group in the gymnastics club I used to go to had about 6 members and there was perfect equality and fairness. So anyone who's starting a club soon, that is the perfect number!

-DP :)

PS Today marks a milestone in The Dramatis Persona history; it's the first non-illustrated post! I hope you like my writing without the pics as well as with!

Friday, January 18, 2013

Snow Day Alert!!!

Hello everyone, and yes, as the title of this post suggests, today London was blanketed in snow so we had only a half day of school! Yeah! 

This is also a particularly special blog post for me, because the weather was exactly the same just under a year ago when I buckled down and finally started to write this blog you are reading. I don't know if you remember but I also wrote about snow, speculating about some very large animal footprints in the white stuff. Whoa, it seems like a long time ago now :).

Anyway, I'm getting off topic. So, like last year, the mighty snow demons didn't let it snow until mid-January, but at least there was some. And today has had all the elements of a snow day, from snowball fights (:)), to slipping onto my side in black ice while being watched by a film crew (:(), and even a very bizarre snow angel-type-thing on our school playing field that looked like a cross between an apple and a floppy-eared rabbit. Perhaps a UFO...shame I didn't have my camera!

Anyway, here are my spectacular snow shots (note my alliteration)...

This is a restaurant near my house that had one of the best snow coverings I've seen today. No one's going to want the umbrellas out now, hey?!




And here's a great photo (although I say so myself) of a little alley leading down to a yoga and pilates place. I'm surprised it got this much snow because it's so closed up, but do I know anything?

- DP :)

Sunday, January 13, 2013

The Gentle Giants: Real and Artificial!

A return to my unforgettable trip to Sri Lanka now: this is quite a long time in the past now, but on Christmas Eve we visited the Elephant Orphanage, which is basically what it says in the name, a home for orphaned elephants near Sri Lanka's second city of Kandy. I didn't have time to blog on the actual day, but I thought it was too awesome not to write something about, so here it comes...



























I don't know about you, but I think this picture is SOOO CUTE! They look caring yet violent at the same time!










This is me and my dad (the people in orange shirts are the workers at the orphanage) tentatively yet excitedly feeling the rough, robust skin of a beautiful Indian elephant. If you look closely, you can see that this elephant has wonderfully unique pale pink marks on its trunk and ears, a pacifying mark on such a terrifying (to some) beast.





An elephant devours rare melons among piles of leaves!
I love both these elephant calf pictures. The top ones look so sweet as they nuzzle (or fight!) each other, yet the expressions of the bottom ones are completely different, entirely trustworthy of everything around them.





       







Elephants are not the national animal of Sri Lanka (lions are), but elsewhere on my travels in this beautiful island nation I saw enough depictions of these gentle giants to suggest that they could and should be...



This majestic trunked creature is a statue of a real elephant called Raja, who was a Sri Lankan national treasure due to his participation in Buddhist ceremonies and processions (we visited many Buddhist temples during the trip, which I loved looking round, and this statue was preserved in a museum next to one of them). Most famously, he carried the famous tooth relic (supposedly a fragment of Buddha's tooth) in many processions. Below him are some golden elephant heads from the same temple.










Here are two very elegant elephant depictions, on walls and gates in Kandy, which I think should be dubbed "the elephant sculpture capital of the world".




- DP :)

PS 83% of you voted for "Yes" in my "Would you eat a blue fruit?" poll, so you're obviously an adventurous bunch! Vaguely connected to elephants, my next poll is "Would you close zoos?", a freer poll that should allow you to be more opinionated.




Saturday, January 12, 2013

Saatchi's Latest International Art Showcase

Hi guys, I had a day off from school yesterday :) because of an exam day, so I thought I'd write about an exhibition I went to see on Monday, the last day of our Christmas holidays, and finish it today. A break from posts about Sri Lanka for a while, although I may do some sort of themed photo article about it soon. I don't know if you remember, but back in September (coincidentally also on the last day of the holidays!) I posted about an exhibition of Korean art at the Saatchi gallery on King's Road, which I thought was amazing. Well, Saatchi have made two more offerings of international art, this time from Russia and Hong Kong, and they haven't disappointed...

This is from a room of photos of Russian prisoners' tattoos. I imagine this one could be quite funny when he moves his knee and the eye opens and closes...



This Hong Kong artwork is called The Lady, but it sure looks like a squid to me!
This piece Bedtime Story is peaceful at first, but disturbing when you see what it's made out of!



Notice anything wrong with these pockets?




I particularly like this rainbow arrangement of Chinese ingredients, and it's probably one of my favourites in the whole show. I wish everyone (including myself) had the time and care to organise their shelves like this.




A funny touchscreen artwork called the Difficult Life Station. This "Relieve Button" could be pressed by visitors, and the smarter amongst you will realise the truth behind it. However, there was no harm done if you did press it, and I saw some people pressing it a lot more than once! The 45 is the number of people who had pressed the button at that time. 


There were also other activities on the Difficult Life Station. My favourite was a writing application where you could WRITE WITH YOUR FINGERTIPS, NOT TYPE a secret down on a cartoon speech bubble, to be saved and viewed by the nosy public a few days later (I won't tell you what I wrote). I also liked the Eye Trainer, where a supposedly-relaxing cartoon trainer moved their eyes around at ridiculously fast pace, and sometimes even separately. We were encouraged to copy. Hilariously hard.



Amazingly, these drawers were created entirely with ink!



More hilarity here: all these hotels are in Hong Kong, but all are named after other places around the world. Below is the second addition, a map showing where each "foreign" hotel is in the city.






There were a couple of these outstandingly cute beige robots. Every few minutes they stopped cutely/creepily staring at you, and started to make extraordinarily cynical comments about the state of the world and people's lifestyle. There was also another huge one lying on the floor, that appeared to be subtly breathing...


An ironic traditional Chinese scroll depicting global warming and the death of polar bears. It took me a while to figure out this one.

Another ecologically minded one: this time about pollution of rivers.
Imaginatively named Russian artwork alert!: "Portrait Of A Pot"

I loved this exhibition! You can see from my pictures here that there was a huge variety of both humorous and serious pieces. If you've been or are going to see it, I hope you enjoy it, but if you can't for whatever reason, then I hope my pictures are enough!

-DP :)

PS Here is an honest artist for once:



Sunday, January 6, 2013

The Mysterious Blue Sphere That Apparently Can Be Eaten?!

Much as I love writing reviews, photo articles and factual accounts for Dramatis Persona, my favourite blog post genre is fantasy. And this time it's about one of the last photos I took in Sri Lanka (we arrived back in England at 7am GMT yesterday morning), taken at the estate of the architect's Jeffrey Bawa (the picture is at the bottom of this post). This rather sci-fi-reminiscent blue fruit can supposedly be eaten (I wonder what it tastes like...), according to our guide, but I, as usual, have a much more exciting theory...






Galaxies away from Earth, there is a planet named Villiana. It's a much older planet than ours, and has been the same way for eons and eons. And for eons and eons it has stayed an olive breeding world. But these are no ordinary olives. These are VILLIANA olives. They start off like any other olive, either black or khaki green. But the Villianese have a wicked secret. To Earthlings involved in the olive trading business, Villiana is a useful, intergalactic trading partner, but they have a long-term grudge against us Earthlings, and a plan to kill us off. Each olive sent from Villiana has a tracker inside it, so it will know as soon as it makes it out of the olive factory and into freedom. Three days after this happens, it will turn a bright and unnatural blue, to warn its new owner and potential eater that eating it while blue will end the world forever within an hour. No one has been unsuspecting enough yet to eat such a repulsive looking thing, and most have thrown theirs away or even complained to the company (who have simply replied saying "sorry, but this issue was not reported by the factory workers but we shall look into it", because they frankly don't have the time for such absurdities). Jeffrey Bawa was obviously the recipient of a Villiana olive. If you too receive one, DON'T EAT IT IF YOU WANT THE WORLD TO STILL EXIST!!!!

-DP :)

PS I have some blog maintenance points to quickly discuss:

1. Poll results

On my Christmas decoration poll, the uber-cute Christmas display cabinet got 50% of the votes so is sure to be used again next year!

In support of this new post, my latest poll is "Would you eat a blue fruit?", a simpler yes/no poll.

2. Errors

There were some errors in the last two posts that I'd like to mention and apologise for:

A: Repetition of the phrase commenting on the pictures in the New Year post (I corrected this).

B: The Boxing Day tsunami was in 2004 not 2005 (I corrected this as well).

C: The lizard image was a bit too large for the post space in the New Year post (I'm not sure how to correct this, but I'll try...)

D: The iPad doesn't support labelling, so I haven't labelled the last three posts, but will as soon as I have access to a proper computer.

E: Because you can't move pictures around on the Blogger app, some of my images are quite awkwardly at the bottom of the page. I will correct this as soon as I'm on an actual computer.




Tuesday, January 1, 2013

2013 has arrived!!!

So, the world didn't end 11 days ago, and it provided immense humiliation and slight disappointment for some of us, but at least we have the luxury of entering yet another year. I'm still in Sri Lanka for New Year, and watched the first sunrise of 2013 from a rock in the colonial town of Galle at 6:19 am (!). Since I last posted on the 26th December we've hiked through tea plantations in Ella (people called Ella, you have a Sri Lankan namesake town), relaxed in the beach resort of Mirissa (also where the Boxing Day tsunami in 2004 was) and been on an unsuccessful whale watching trip. I've even advertised this blog by writing it down an Indian Ocean beach :). But that was in 2012. WE are in 2013. And here at Dramatis Persona we love celebration. So if you have a highlight of the year, a New Year's resolution or even a highlight of the first ten months and 28 posts of this blog, don't hesitate to comment! But for resolutions, mine fall into four categories and are as follows:

1. The General Resolution, that can apply to everything

This year it's to stop throwing things away, being less wasteful and caring about the environment more. This also includes using, not selling, all Christmas and birthday presents.

2. The School Resolution

As in several past years, this resolution is to be more open to everyone I know in school.

3. The Blog Resolution

My first ever in this particular category, I aim first to manage 30 posts before my 1st blog-iversary on the 11th February, and around 80 in total by the end of the year.

4. The Secret Resolution

WELL IT'S SECRET ISN'T IT!!

-DP

PS I am in the first stages of planning a blog-iversary in February, on the theme of "what Dramatis Persona means to me", with contributions from our fans. If you have an answer to this question, please comment or, if you know me, get in touch some other way! And to cheer you up, here's this year's Chinese zodiac animal found in the hotel room (it's a lizard not a snake, but it's nearly there...), and below it a funny picture glorifying useless resolutions from the website Paperless Post.