The night before last Michele, Richard, and I ate at a fantastic Bengali restaurant downtown. If everyone could eat such delicious garlic naan, we would live in a peaceful society. Next we cycled to a theatre (sic) to see Mon Meilleur Ami (My Best Friend). Ignore the B-grade rating on IMDB; this was a fantastic film -- and strange. The protagonist is an art collector who has no friends. On a whim he bids on a Greek urn featuring the famous friendship between Achilles and Patrocles. When his contacts say he has no friends, and he retorts that he does, his business partner bets him the urn. Hilarity (and weirdness) ensues. Usually I wonder mid-film whether or not I'm enjoying myself, and at no time did I do this during this one; I was completely enraptured. Interestingly, at the Academy Theatre, in the upstairs area where we were, the seating is limited to about 15. It was like a private viewing room for people with money and bonbons. The other two people there besides us brought their wine glasses into the room with them. How civilized!
Yesterday Michele and I cycled to the very new International Buddhist Centre on Riccarton Road. Although they close for lunch at 4 and we were there at 4:30, the workers (devotees?) were kind to offer us some of what was left: steamed dumplings, fried curried pockets (very much like samosas), and fried tofu. We also had lotus tea with almond cookies. The lotus flower, which I had to taste, reminded me very much of artichokes. I had to go back there for lunch today and lotus tea. I love that Centre more than anything and want to go back every day. After lunch we went to Sumner Beach and hiked Taylor's Mistake. But, we just got back from dinner at Heather's (she made a delicious banana cake which, when warmed, goes perfectly with rocky road ice cream), and I'm sleepy, so I'll show you the pictures tomorrow.
As a side note, New Zealanders are very strange. While biking around today, I saw college students drinking beer at what must have been 11:15 a.m., to celebrate the end of the term. They were partying before noon, that is, dressed in cow-patterned cowboy hats and cleavage-revealing tops and big plastic sunglasses. Also, Christchurch recently elected a mayor, and the guy who came in 4th (at nearly 5000 votes) is a 25-year-old guy and street sweeper who spent $98 on his campaign. That's 10% of the votes of what the winning guy received, who, if he had lost, would've sold everything and moved to Italy. (We could all use this sort of Plan B.)
"It's a dangerous business, Frodo, going out your door. You step onto the road, and if you don't keep your feet, there's no knowing where you might be swept off to.” -- Bilbo
3 comments:
IMDB almost always gives worse ratings to foreign language films, the ratings come from mostly Americans and being such in intollerant lot it's hard for us to understand why they couldn't dub the movie or just get the people to speak English. If you dig a bit you can see that it was nominated for Best European Film (Miglior Film dell'Unione Europea) Perhaps a better indication of it's quality than that rating.
I just ordered Mon Meilleur Ami from Netflix. In southern cali there's a buddist center out in the middle of nowhere. It was super amazing and they were always warm and welcome. I think that's something we're missing in Oregon. Maybe there's a center like that somewhere that we are unaware of? It sounds amazing. Again, jealous!
Cheryl
I love this post. If only we all received such leftovers from Buddhists the world would be a happier place! I am so envying your vacation and my vow after Argentina to not travel anymore is slowly wearing off.
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