Who can?

A Toucan in the bird sanctuary at Iguazu Falls

Men's problems

Notice in men's toilet at John Newell Mazda in Alexandria

Anna Karenina

This umpteenth adaptation of Leo Tolstoy's tale of the doomed 'Anna Karenina', a married woman whose affair with the dashing and arrogant aristocrat Count Vronsky can only end disastrously, is certainly an unusual mix of choreography and tableaux style posture. Sumptuous images and costumes fill the screen to the background of a lushly romantic soundtrack. Joe Wright's imaginative production is of the style of Baz Lurhmann without the latter's frenetic editing.

I'm not sure if this interpretation is much more than an indulgence but it is a delicious one.

★★★1/2

Birds

Bird sanctuary at Iguazu Falls, Brazil.

Bridge

tonight, four boards to play and sailing along nicely in the top half of the field. Then disaster. The last four boards; 5%, 0%, 32% and 0%. Indeed on the last board we (I) gave away 4Hxx making 13 tricks, a mere score of 2280 to E/W! Amazingly we didn't finish last. 43.00%, 10/13.

Oh well, there's always next week.

More of Iguazu Falls

Bridge

tonight, 44.40%, 8/9, same old, same old.

Iguazu Falls

A section of the Falls seen from Brazil's side of the border.

Cat On A Hot Tin Roof

Company B - Belvoir Street Theatre

It is Big Daddy's 65th birthday and although under a health cloud his family gather for a party to celebrate the milestone. Younger and favoured son Brick, drink constantly in hand, is under attack from his sexually frustrated wife, Maggie. Older son, Gooper, his wife and brood of children, are currying favour with the patriarch.

Tennessee William's classic 'Cat on a Hot Tin Roof' is being staged by Company B in a somewhat muddled interpretation. The cast use their natural accents and purport to be playing out a situation 'here and now'. Whilst this doesn't distract overall it certainly provides an odd counterpoint with the deep south and American sporting references in tact in the dialogue.

It is not until the second act that there is any reference to the heat that supposedly pervades the setting and the absence of the play's original southern accent means the languid rhythm of the piece is missing.

There is a lot of noise that irritated me and the longest off stage fireworks display this side of a millenium new year's eve.

★★

A tango in BA

Silver Linings Playbook

Bradley Cooper and Jennifer Lawrence are troubled by mental health and drawn together in 'Silver Linings Playbook' despite the best intentions and worst behaviour of their families.

This film is almost too well acted. So realistic are the early scenes of Cooper's bi-polar behaviour, it seemed to me, that I became quite nervy just watching his interactions with his family. Robert De Niro and Jacki Weaver complete a splendid ensemble cast.

★★★★

Cafe life in BA

Cafe Tortoni

Flight

Denzel Washington usually plays squeaky clean characters so it comes as a surprise when in 'Flight' he is a sleaze bag from the opening scene engaging in drink, drugs and 'fast wimmen'. He is an airline captain and a very competent one too as evidenced early on when his aeroplane malfunctions in a major way.

But contrary to what the trailers might suggest this is not so much an adventure film about an aeroplane in trouble but rather a study of a flawed man in trouble. It is quite good but it is a bit overlong and could have done with a snip of twenty minutes or so.

★★★

Bridge

tonight, the first game for three weeks and we did OK, 52.80%, 4/14.

Subtitles

The mind is strange thing; well mine is anyway.

During my recent trip to South America I would have the hotel television on in the background before bedtime and in the mornings. Mostly I sought out the BBC World Service for the latest news. That service is very fine but it can get a bit repetitive at times. Often in the evening I would seek out an English language movie as an alternative all of which carried subtitles in the local language (Spanish or Portuguese, as applicable).

Despite the fact that I cannot read or understand either language my eyes would constantly be drawn towards the subtitles notwithstanding that all I needed to do was listen to soundtrack in my own language.

Strange.

How I know I'm home

OK, let's work this out.

Lima to Santiago - 3 hours and 25 minutes.

Transit in Santiago - scheduled to be 5 hours but became 6 hours and forty minutes with a tarmac delay.

Santiago to Auckland - 12 hours and 50 minutes.

Transit in Auckland - 1 hour and 50 minutes.

Auckland to Sydney - 2 hours and 50 minutes.

Counting the three hours pre-departure time spent at Lima Airport for check in, outwards immigration and security checks, an overall elapsed travel time well over 30 hours. Thankfully at Sydney Airport, immigration, baggage collection, customs and quarantine (because we had been in South America) clearances did not take long at all. I was home just after 9.15am.

And when I say home, I mean home. I returned to find my home telephone out of order. My first telephone call had to be to that Telecommunications monolith whose name I will not publicise here. How I dislike dealing with them. Someone in the Philippines call centre informed me external problems have caused my telephone fault. Something to do with flooding whilst I was away. He blithely informed me that he has ordered repairs with a deadline for completion by 25 February! In the meantime calls to my home line will automatically be redirected to my mobile phone. Yessiree, I'm home.

Beating the International Dateline

There should have been no 15 February for us with our departure from Santiago scheduled for 11.20pm on the 14th and our scheduled arrival the next morning in Sydney on the 16th at 7.45am but events conspired to give us the 15th after all.

Despite everyone being on board ahead of the scheduled departure time, the plane remained at the gate with all of us on board and with no explanation for the delay for a further hour and forty minutes. Our eventual departure at 12.50am on the 15th means we cheated the dateline (in a manner of speaking).

It also meant we had a full dinner served to us on the flight at around 2am with two consecutive breakfasts (before and after a transit stop in Auckland) to follow. The joys of international travel.

Sunset over South America

Quite fitting, the view from my hotel room in Lima as the sun sets into the Pacific Ocean on the final night of my South American holiday with Australia somewhere over the horizon.

Just travel

Not much to report today.

We departed the hotel by the side of Lake Titicaca driving through Puno City then on to nearby Juliaca to the local airport; a drive of about one hour.

The sign indicates it is an international airport but with only three domestic flights listed for the entire day and modest terminal facilities that title comes as a surprise.

Juliaca Airport

Our plane for the flight to Lima. You can see dark clouds gathering.

By the time we boarded it was raining and by take off time the Captain considered the winds excessive leaving us sitting on the tarmac for another half an hour or so. The wind wasn't noticeable to us passengers.

Eventually we took off arriving in Lima for our final night after an otherwise uneventful flight. After a week at altitude, it is a relief to be back at sea level.

Tonight our group is meeting for a farewell dinner. Tomorrow (Thursday, South American time) Hn and I fly home via transit stops in Santiago and Auckland. Through the magic of the International Date Line we miss Friday altogether arriving in Sydney (if on time) around 7.45am Saturday.

Llama, Floating Islands, Lake Titicaca

Our second last full day spent mostly on Lake Titicaca, the highest navigable lake on the planet.

Departing the hotel this morning for the outing we had the delightful sight of a Llama in the hotel driveway.

S/he was eating grass from the hotel lawn

First stop was the floating islands just off shore from the city of Puno. These islands have about 2,000 inhabitants. Their islands and the buildings constructed on them are created from the reeds abundant in the area. The inhabitants are taking advantage unabashedly of the tourist market.

The welcoming committee for our group

Each island has a President and the President of the island we visited, with our local guide, demonstrated how each island is created and maintained.

The President (of 22 people!) left; our local guide right

The womenfolk then demonstrated how they barter their respective goods at the local market. Very noisy and funnier than the following image suggests.

We took a sort of leisurely joy ride on their local water taxi; each island appears to have one. Local children joined us on board, some even doing the rowing and they also sang songs in their local language as well as in English, French and German. Surprise, surprise the cutest looking child took her hat around for donations. In addition to any donation each passenger was charged 10 Peruvian Soles (approximately $A4.40) for making the trip. Other taxis on the water at the time carried Japanese, American and British visitors.

Their mothers saw us off with songs that included 'Row, Row, Row Your Boat' before our 15 minutes return sailing.

Our 'taxi' sailing away with the children on board following our trip

Following the floating islands visit we then motored by ferry for 45 minutes to another spot, a somewhat remote one for lunch. Lake Titicaca is very large, over 8,000 square kilometres according to our guide. About half the lake is in Peru and the remainder in Bolivia.

The lunch spot was beautiful and peaceful. Here are three images of the view from our lunch spot. The first looks north-west, the second looks north and the third looks north-east with Bolivia in the distance.

Following lunch we had to negotiate a steep set of stairs to catch our chartered ferry home. The man closest to camera in the last image is our Tour Director. He has done a terrific job managing our group through all manner of unexpected issues and personal difficulties. In this image he is carrying an oxygen cylinder. A number of our group have had problems in the high altitude and have had to receive oxygen. Despite being asthmatic and experiencing several shortages of breath I have managed to get by without a puff on the cylinder nor from the personal Oxishot cylinder each of us was issued.

Tomorrow, (Wednesday in South America), we fly back to Lima and the following day Hn and I will fly home to Sydney via Santiago and Auckland.