Tag Archives: people

Events

The World Bank’s First Opera Gala

Ligia and I attended the World Bank’s first Opera Gala today. The singers who participated in the program were an eclectic mix: previous and existing bank employees, students enrolled in opera programs at local universities, and professionals. The Gala Program and the Artist Bios can be accessed by clicking on each of their respective links.

The music selections were best hits (well known arias from well known operas). Since most in the audience were already familiar with the music, this gave us all a chance to see how each singer interpreted it. In other words, we were able to compare their performances with the standards we’ve come to expect. Overall, Ligia and I found the program good, with several standout performances.

By far, my favorite performance was that of Helen Toni, when she sang “Vedrai, carino” from Don Giovanni. She’s a retired Bank employee, and was a member of the WB-IMF Chorus for 20 years. She sang that aria just right. Her voice was soft and sweet, not loud, and right on the notes. Ligia and I were both smiling through her performance. It was very, very good.

Another standout performance was given by Cara and Patricia Rogers (daughter and mother, respectively) in “Sull’ aria”, from Le Nozze di Figaro. It was evident they did their homework by practicing it properly. The timing was right on, the voices matched – it was a joy to hear it! Cara then gave another great performance in “Quando men vo”, from La Boheme.

Kimiko Shimada has a great voice and showed its range in “Ebben?… Ne andro lontana” from La Wally. Her powerful voice has a pronounced tremolo.

Last but not least, Yoshinori Hosaka played exquisitely on those pieces where he accompanied the singers. Clearly he is a very good and dedicated piano player. He did not seek the public’s attention, but fulfilled his role as an accompanist perfectly by allowing the singers to shine.

In the end, we were happy to attend. Even though the auditorium where the gala took place wasn’t built for opera, and the voices couldn’t travel properly, it was still a promising start to what I hope will be a regular, annual event at the World Bank. Perhaps a new hall could be found for next year?

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Thoughts

Romania's orphanages still a bad place for children

The IHT carries an opinions piece from the NYT today on Romania’s orphanages. The gist is that conditions are still deplorable. The problem is that once Communism ended, the big, mega-orphanages were closed down, and the children were distributed to smaller orphanages, who have to battle with pauper’s budgets, which means limited staff and even more limited conditions, all with a growing orphan population.

Meanwhile, Romania’s government is busy putting together task forces and committees. Having grown up in Romania, I am not surprised at the pathetic government response. They can’t be trusted to do much right. There are certain things they’re good for: wasting time talking things to death in Parlament, rampant corruption, and extravagant salaries. Beyond that, it’s anyone’s guess as to whether stuff they put out is good or bad. Sure, certain factors play into it, like the alignment of the rings around Saturn, weather on a particular day, traffic conditions – you know, stuff that matters – but it’s still a crapshoot.

Seems to me the solution is fairly simple: increase community services for disabled children, increase funding for orphanages, and focus on placing children with foster families, not keeping them in orphanages indefinitely.

Of course, I have to smirk when I say that, and believe me, I do it painfully, because the reality is pretty grim – but how many families will really want disabled children? Don’t think I’m cruel when I say it. But in a country where salaries trail woefully behind market prices, and healthy people can barely afford to live, who can take on the added responsibility and cost of caring for a disabled child? Realize that in Romania, most apartment buildings don’t have elevators, and most people live in apartment buildings. How will one get a child in a wheelchair up the stairs? How will one foot the doctors’ bills, the special education, and all of the other things that go along with such a child? Who will want them? My answer will only sadden you. I just don’t know.

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Reviews

A review of My Life of Travel

My Life of TravelNo, that’s not my life of travel, it’s My Life of Travel, a site where travelling bloggers can document their adventures. Kiera Bailey of My Life of Travel invited me to write a review.

I love the concept of this site, which is so simple it can be expressed in only a few words, as I just did in my opening paragraph. Perhaps the folks there can take a clue from me, and rephrase their description of the site:

“My Life of Travel is a free web-based travel journal and travel research tool that lets travellers record their journeys, map travel histories, share tips with fellow tourists and keep in touch with friends and family, without the need for mass email communication and photo sharing sites.”

As you can see, this is noticeably longer that what I’ve got. What’s the word I’m looking for… ah, yes, verbose.

The site is built in .NET, which one can tell right away by the .aspx extension of the web pages. I found it interesting – uncommon, but interesting – that they chose to explain the technology that makes the site work.

Their service seems to be a win-win situation for everyone involved. Bloggers can host their journals and photos for free with them and make money from the web traffic by using their Google AdSense accounts, and My Life of Travel gets to be an entertaining source of information for many people, and also gets to sell advertising on its own to support its services. We, the web visitors, get to browse all the locations and see the world vicariously, through the eyes of intrepid travelers.

That’s the main draw of this site – for me, the web surfer. I can stumble on some pretty cool photos from different places in the world, and hopefully find out how that area is – what it’s like to travel through there. I might even pick up some useful advice, right? You could even call this site a travel wiki.

In theory, that’s how things are supposed to work. In practice, stuff gets a little boring. I chose to browse journals, and selected a drop-down menu for a location. I said, gee, wouldn’t it be nice to see photos from Antigua? Three journals came up for that, none of them with photos, and all with very little text, mostly one-line titles. It was like that for most smaller or out of the way places. And I suppose that’s to be expected, right? Until their site builds up to a critical mass of users, the world isn’t going to be well represented. One can’t hold that against them. So I chose bigger places, like Paris, or London. Stuff came up in the searches, but for some search results, even though I was supposed to get photos from those cities, I got photos from the countryside. I think the tagging system needs to be tweaked a bit to reflect locations better.

Then I started looking at photos. Most were group photos of people, or people standing in front of stuff – you know, the usual tourist photos. When there were landscape photos, the mix was about 50/50 between the good photos and the fuzzy or blurry ones. Again, typical. I started reading text, and most was the self-serving kind: I met up with buddies, drank some beer, hey, here’s a photo of me with some Guinness… etc. Typical once more, and that’s the caveat. Most people don’t know how or don’t care about keeping journals. They also don’t know how or don’t care to know how to take photos. So most of the stuff on the site is boring, run-of-the-mill, touristy stuff, the kind that’s good for a chuckle and a smirk, but doesn’t leave you feeling you’ve learned something.

If the entire site was like that, it wouldn’t be worth it. But, thankfully, it isn’t. They’ve done something smart, which is to highlight useful/popular member profiles. It also helps that these people take better photos, and usually write more useful things. Here’s an example of a good journal entry, with good photos. This is what makes this site worthwhile. What they need to do is to focus on these people and encourage them to keep blogging and posting. This sort of quality content is valuable stuff.

Bottom line: good travel site with great promise. They need to focus on building up their user base and encouraging people to post useful entries with great photos. It wouldn’t hurt to reward the valuable members through incentives of some kind, financial or otherwise.

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Reviews

Rhapsody in Blue (1945)

Rhapsody in BlueJust saw “Rhapsody in Blue” (1945) tonight, and what a great movie! It’s a movie biography of George Gershwin. Some of the plot was fictional, but that’s okay. The talent in the movie more than made up for that. What’s amazing to me is that the people who knew him and were his friends while he was alive were in the movie: Oscar Levant, Al Jolson, George White, Hazel Scott, Paul Whiteman.

There were three great pianists in this movie, whose dexterity amazed me. Oscar Levant, of course, then Hazel Scott, who must be noted. Robert Alda left me speechless with his rendition of “Rhapsody in Blue”. His dexterity on the piano was natural. Robert Alda, of course, is the father of Alan Alda of M*A*S*H fame.

How talented the actors were back then! They could sing, dance and act. Nowadays, we’re lucky if they can act…

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Thoughts

David Blaine, the human fishbowl

Just found out about this, and I gotta wonder, what’s wrong with this fellow? He’s clearly obsessed with what he’s doing, but to a sane person, the stuff he gets into is odd at best.

Now he’s in an eight-foot acrylic sphere at New York’s Lincoln Center, and he wants to stay fully submerged in the water for up to a week. He’s planning to break out on Monday, after beating the world record on holding one’s breath underwater, all while tied up with 150 lbs. of chains and handcuffs. One might say he’s asking for trouble. He’s also reported having problems with his skin because of the continued submersion.

You can’t help rooting for the guy, though. With so much stacked against him, he’s an underdog, and everyone loves an underdog, yours truly included. CNET has more photos and details. Photo courtesy of CNET. Hope he gets out alive!

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