English History Quizz

     A good way of learning things is making quizzes. It is not only funny but also interesting. I have been doing some quizzes about English History and the most worrying thing that I have discovered is my total ignorance on the subject, although I have learnt many other interesting facts. History is a hard work, full of events, dates, people (too many queens and kings) and, unfortunately, wars. Needless to say that,as an academic subject, History has always been many students’ horse battle. That’s why these “trivial” games often bring us to heel when we want to win the yellow edge…History!

      Players usually dread history. They try to keep a stiff upper lip in adversity and they cunningly try to answer the wicked question muttering…”I knew that, who the hell was Philip II’s daughter’s mother’s lover?” A tough question.  Did he indeed have a daughter? And if he had, wasn’t her mother the King’s official wife? What is more, had that poor woman a lover? Admittedly, this may be an overdone example of History questions that can give us away. By the way, what were Anne Boleyn’s parents names?

*Thomas and Elizabeth

*Edward and Catherine

*Gerorge and Mary

*James and Anne

     If you are keen on History, or if you feel like refreshing your knowledge about English History, visit this site:  http://www.funtrivia.com/html5/index.cfm?qid=76063

stuck in the rut

STUCK IN THE RUT

    

     As I already told in my speech during the first term, my mother suffered from Alzheimer for many years.  By the time she died, nearly four years ago, she had been 13 long years diagnosed with this disease. Quite honestly, some of her behaviours used to be more than I could bear, partly due to my anxiety but mainly because I couldn’t understand what was happening in her brain.

     That’s why the video on Neuroplasticity really appealed to me. Alzheimer’s patients’ direct relatives usually live under Damocle’s sword. We are still waiting for a pharmaceutical cure or for a magic pill to prevent this awful process of human deterioration that your loved experienced. It is clear  that you may be able to slow down this process by leading a brain-healthy lifestyle, or even reverse it. The pill? I hope for the best. Anyway, in the meanwhile I’m trying  to put knowledge to practical use. While some factors, such as genes, are out of my control, there are others however which are highly recommended by neurologists. These are, among many others, mental stimulation, stress management, learning something new and practising memorization. All in all, don’t take the C1 as a joke, you are being  constantly training your brains. One of the activities that specialists suggest is learning a foreign language. Also teaching information to others enables to get into our memory and remain there, since we have to be able to understand it and then express it well to someone else.

     I’m curious by nature, thus when my mother was diagnosed with Alzheimer I started to read everything that I could find about the disease. Sometimes I saw my mother’s behaviours reflected in many examples of other patients, yet there were always others different. I’ll capture a shocking situation to illustrate this. In a middle stage of her illness my mother used to sing my daughters nursery rhymes that they couldn’t understand. Of course they couldn’t, she was singing French songs! When she was a little girl she had attended a school run by French nuns and she used to sing these rhymes. Curious, isn’t it?

     Long term memory is a function of our brain where we remember something longer than a day or two, and often for many decades. Unlike short-term memories, they are relatively permanent. Our earliest memories often go back to the age of four or five, if they were significant in some way. This function takes part of “Procedural memory”, known as non-declarative. You know how to do something, including the specific steps required to accomplish a task. For example, you just know how to ride a bike.

     This is what Norman Doidge calls “plastic paradox” Our brain is pliable, it has ruts in which we are sometimes struck.

Octavio Paz anniversary

     Octavio Paz was born 100 years ago. He is not here anymore, but his wonderful work is. I have chosen one of his poems as a modest homage. Do read it with a nice piece of music from Listz " Le mal du pays" from Années of Pélerinage https://www.youtube.com/watch?

Between going and staying

the day wavers,

in love with its own transparency

The circular afternoon is now a bay

where the world in stillness rocks.

All is visible and all elusive,

all is near and can't be touched.

Paper, book, pencil, glass,

rest in the shade of their names.

Time throbbing in my temples repeats

the same unchanging syllable of blood

The light turns the indifferent wall

into a ghostly theatre of reflections

I find myself in the middle of an eye

watching myself in its blank stare.

The moment scatters motionless,

I stay and go: I am a pause

                                      

Babette's feast

     I have always liked films related to cooking. Although I had seen the film some years ago, I hadn't enjoyed it so much as I have now. Why? I don't know, it may be my recent inclination to admire beautiful things. I have watched the film again, which I highly recommend, and I have also read the short story written by Isak Dinesen. The film reminds me of  "Chocolat" that I really appreciated because the scenes, the music and the way in which interactive process is working .Culinary art requires sensuality of taste. The music in Babette's feast, I can guess Mozart and Chopin, the colour that changes according to situations, and specially the art of cooking, that speaks to the senses.Wonderfully written and beautifully adapted to the big

screen. In my opinion it is a very good version of the written text, which is usually very difficult.

 

Quiche Lorraine

  Last Tuesday our English class dealt with cooking. We watched a video from the BBC which made our mouths water. It was partly due to the late hour but, above all, to the delicious aspect of the Quiche Lorraine that was being prepared by the lively girl. She easily formed a firm dough in an old porcelain washbasin which, by the way, was quite beat-up. “How easy!” I thought. At that very moment I decided that I had to prepare myself a Quiche Lorraine. It was crystal clear that it wasn’t her first quiche but, anyway, it seemed so easy…

     Idleness is the root of all evil, thus having a couple of free hours I got down to work yesterday. I watched the video again and tried to observe carefully every step. The filling was very easy to prepare but the pastry was something else. Once the dough was ready, the task of rolling it out to form a thin pastry, rolling and rolling out with the rolling pin to get it larger than the diameter of the tart tin, was not a simple task. Next time I’ll buy a ready-made shortcrust pastry in a supermarket.

     The thing is that, fortunately, I got a delicious soft crusty Quiche Lorraine. Don’t you fancy cooking one?

Review. The sailor-boy's tale

     Isak Dinesen’s “The Sailor-Boy’s Tale” was first published in 1942 in Winter’s Tales, a collection of short stories. It is narrated in the style of a fairy tale, a fact that is marked both by the word “tale” used in the title, enlightening the reader as to accept the possibility of strange and unlikely events, and by the ending line “ Simon lived to tell the story”.

     Simon, a young sailor boy, rescues a falcon which was tangled in the ropes of the main mast of a ship. Two years later, Simon is working in a different ship and he goes ashore at a port town on the northern coast of Norway. There he meets Nora, a very young girl who promises to give him a kiss if he comes back the next day. Unfortunately the next day he accidentally kills Ivan, a Russian sailor who he had known some days before. Simon runs to Nora, who gives him the promised kiss. When he is being pursued by some men, Sunniva appears to help him. She is an old woman who explains Simon that she herself was the falcon he had rescued and that now she is rescuing him in return. One particular strength of the book is the supernatural element that appears in the teenager’s life, struggling in the dangerous and unpredictable world of sailors.

     However, if you are not a devoted reader of sailors’ tales, don’t be put off by the title. The story does more than simply trace the story of a young sailor: it provides a fascinating insight into the coming of age of a teenager who goes through a rite of passage to make the transition from boyhood to manhood.

     “The Sailor-Boy Tale’s” is an excellent read. It is both beautifully written and entertaining and I would highly recommend the story to anyone interested in fantastic tales.