Breastfeeding Challenge

Posted on by boj Posted in Baby, General

This is a bit of old news by now, but I wanted to blog about it. Also, I promised Marina to give her more details so I’m killing two birds with one stone.

Several weekends ago Trev and I joined our Mom & Baby friends at the Ottawa Breastfeeding Challenge. This is a yearly event that is intended to make breastfeeding in public more socially acceptable and educate public on the benefits. Every year moms and babies arrive at malls across North America and start breastfeeding exactly at 11AM. Once you have a latch you raise your hand and nurses count the babies currently feeding. It is a bit of competition between cities and Ottawa came in fourth after Montreal, Quebec City and some place in Quebec I’ve never heard of.

There was an article in Ottawa Sun, and apparently I was in the picture, but they didn’t put the picture on the web and after a few days they removed the article as well so I can’t link it.

Overall it was fun. There were just under 200 babies feeding at the same time. Here’s a link to the final results. Quebec and Ontario did great, but where did the rest of the continent go?

Theatre – Penelopiad

Posted on by boj Posted in General

We were ready for a nice Friday night with babysitters settled in and tickets to the opening night of the English Theatre Season at the National Arts Centre. There was some hoopla about the play since it was a Canadian premiere of a Margaret Atwood play. The play is collaboration between NAC and the Royal Shakespeare Company. It had premiered in London with mixed reviews.

The theatre was comfortably full with Atwood in attendance. We tried to see if there were any other Ottawa literary artists there as well, but then we realised that we don’t know what any of them look like even if they were. We only recognised Jian Ghomeshi.

I don’t have a good history with NAC English Theatre since the best plays I’ve seen there were somewhere between “strong” and “solid”. Nothing to talk about at dinner parties years later. Penelopiad is the best play I’ve seen there so far and I would describe it as “gripping”. Whatever the problems seem to have been in London it looks like they’ve fixed them. The acting was fantastic and the scenery and props brilliant.

The story is what one comes to expect from Atwood. A lot of feminism, some pessimism and just enough of humour to make it stick when you throw it at the ceiling. There was a lot of praise for the actress who played Penelope, and it was certainly deserved, but it was the chorus that did it for me. I loved the shape shifting, the dance and song, the pedantic detail that went into each character even if the character only existed for several minutes. One of the very interesting aspects was the women portraying men. They were excellent in portraying straightforward characters, but the portrayal of Odysseus was brilliant. I don’t really understand how they did it, but then again I am not a playwright so I don’t need to know that.

So yes, I do recommend the play if you get a chance to see it. It is nothing new, but it is solid. Am I going to still be talking about this play three years from now? I don’t know, ask me in three years. You’ve got to love Atwood, though. Who else have we got to go on CBC on a Sunday morning and say things like “Everyone thinks that being Byronic is romantic unless you’re Byron”?

NAC’s page

A realization

Posted on by boj Posted in Baby

A year of Trevor’s daycare is going to cost more than my entire engineering degree. Good thing I have an engineering degree.

Book – My Name is Red

Posted on by boj Posted in Books

Thanks to the miracle of breastfeeding I have been able to complete yet another book. Orhan Pamuk’s “My Name is Red” is the first book I’ve finished that has won a Nobel Prize. It is the second Noble prize winning book that I’ve attempted. I tried reading “Na Drini ?uprija” (The Bridge on the Drina) a while ago but never got past the third chapter. I was much younger then and I might try reading it again, but I will leave it be for now.

I am glad to have read “My Name is Red” in Croatian for several reasons
1) My sister gave me a copy
2) It is translation from Turkish anyway
3) A number of Turkish words (particularly words from the time of the Ottoman Empire) exist in Bosnian and are used in this translation. It gave the translation an authentic feel that I think English version would not have had the benefit of
4) It had a neat little dictionary of Turkish words at the back so the authenticity did not obscure the text
5) It is a good excuse to keep my Croatian from getting rusty
6) It was cool to compare translations with my friend who had an English copy

Overall the novel really drew me in. There are a number of layers to the story and I’ve only concentrated on the surface. There is a lot of history as well as art history, mythology, theology and other symbolism that I just had to acknowledge to be there without being able to really get into it.

Fortunately for me, Pamuk went into great detail to explain the art history concepts so by the end of the novel I felt that I knew much more on the subject. It made quite a difference in understanding the driving points in the plot. Even though large sections of the book are there to illuminate the reader’s knowledge of art, the plot moves at a fast pace. Every time I would get exhausted form reading the background information, the story would suddenly shift to one of the more exciting sub threads thus delighting the reader.

I was discussing this novel with Chris and he suggested I read Eco’s “The Name of the Rose” since it has a similar plot.

Anniversaries

Posted on by boj Posted in General

Through lucky combination of good coordination and lovely family willing to babysit, Chris and I got not one but two anniversary dinners. Yay. We went to Urban Pear (my pick) one weekend and to Les Fougeres (Chris’ pick) the next. I’m really glad we did this as we don’t get to spend as much quiality time together. I forgot how much fun hanging out with Chris can be.

We’re still re-organising the downstairs, we moved some furniture around. It is going to take years to get the house to look cozy.

nm qit’ pa…

Posted on by boj Posted in Engineering Princess

Google has broken my heart. I fell in love with the Google Calendar and now it doesn’t work properly any more. It stopped working earlier this summer and I thought it was just a phase, but I just sent out an invite and it looks like it is still not working. What happened to the “must not be evil” motto?

I am going get a tub of ice cream now…