lock

I'm shutting down for the evening. The last few days I've been around Stockholm, Sweden and Frankfurt, Germany. I managed to duck the side visit to Helsinki on Tuesday but it still feels intense. Tonight, the Lufthansa Airbus 300 was on time but we'd forgotten to figure out how I was to get back from Heathrow.

Logistically challenged, with my car in a distant multi-story car park.

Its been a multi-story kind of week.

niederrad

So, against my logic and at your request, we fleetingly met again in a Greek restaurant in Niederrad. Marco had told me it was a rough part of town, but it looked like a good and random place for us.

Corner table, professionally facing two exits and with a small glass of white wine already poured when I arrived.

A few words, a new request and the slightest touch of our hands. I know I should have destroyed the small slip of paper after I had memorised the number, but it has no connections for anyone else.

A few minutes later, the smudged yellow light of a taxi outside and you were back into the early darkness.

My evening had become complicated.

OTA : Wordless Wednesday

gamla stan

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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

smoked

I was thinking about Seattle yesterday after dawdling by netchick's site and my mind drifted to the seafood bars along the waterfront near to Pikes Place Market. They sell oysters so fresh they are bursting with the sea's being - an experience like no other.

Then today, in Stockholm, I tasted the fresh North Sea salmon and had a similar minor brain explosion from the freshness and the energy.

Sometimes you just have to be there.

Москва

I knew you'd used me, weeks before our last goodbye, shivering at the embassy that icy morning. You'd walked from the main doors to the bars by the sentry post. I could see your breath, like mine, across the four meters separating us. The guy with the grey barrelled zoom lens didn't seem that interested whilst he took perfunctory photographs of us.

You said they'd never catch you now - but I noticed you didn't make the same comment about me. I'd been the one who you'd asked to get the stuff and had fallen deeply, willingly, into your spell as we'd plotted mere weeks before how I could provide you with the information.

And three weeks even earlier, when we'd first met in that cafe. Insufficent tables, a coffee together and then you'd forgotten your bag and I'd left a few moments later to return it. Such a simple device, but you had me hooked and then as we developed our passion you started asking for small, soft favours.

It was a rachet, both of emotions and of crime. Who'd ever know about either? But they did find out. Not about me, but about you having some of the papers in your possession. It wouldn't take long to piece it together and that's why I thought it best to disappear. You ran for cover to your embassy, but we now both know what happened.

A week after I said goodbye with my eyes, I saw the news report and the pictures of your car being pulled from the Moscva and you being described by that other name you had told me. I left Russia the same day, back to London, to another identity.

The ache lasted months but I finally put you into a little closed box in my heart.

Then today.

I saw the black cars approach, the whirr of a window from the one in the middle. A couple of softly spoken words, and the look from those eyes. Your eyes. Then a whirr again and you were gone. But now, to me you have come back, and it will all start again.

Saturday

I'm not quite sure where today has gone.

Its nearly seven pm and I'm getting ready to go out for dinner with some friends, but I can't really work out how it could be so late.

Sure, I've had some things to do today. Shopping, visiting the laundry. I don't think I've really even stopped to eat today so far. Oh yes, maybe a valencia orange yoghurt earlier, but that was mainly because I'd accidentally closed it in the car boot and needed to rescue the perforated carton. Actually it was pretty good.

So tonight I shall be with some friends. No doubt a lot of talking, but I hope they don't ask what I've been doing today, because it won't be very interesting. Maybe its because they played "Sunday Morning" on Radio Four early today and I got confused.

Heres Live if you want it.

दिवाली

Its interesting in our global village that there are huge festivals in one part of the world which others in another may not even be aware of. So, amongst current ones is दिवाली or दीपावली - Diwali.

This "Festival of Lights," symbolises the victory of good over evil, and lamps are lit as a sign of celebration and hope for mankind. It is celebrated in different ways in different parts of India, so there's about 1 billion people involved, or roughly 3 times the population of the USA.

Thursday Thirteen (V31)

I thought I'd try to save £13 this evening by posting 13 questions which I could otherwise ask to 82ask. In case you don't know 82ask is an SMS text service in the UK where you can ask ANY question and get an answer for the charge of £1. If I can get answers to my questions from bloggers, then I can save £13, based upon it being Thursday Thirteen. So here goes...

1) How much does the earth weigh?
2) Does a sheep's wool shrink in the rain?
3) How many calories does kissing burn off?
4) What's the French for 'thats a nice jacket, can I buy you a drink, are you doing anything later?'
5) What is the takeoff velocity of a 747?
6) How do homing pigeons know the way home?
7) What is the largest shoe size?
8 ) How long does it take to get from the south side of Chelsea Bridge to Covent Garden, by bus?
9) Where can I buy HP sauce in Tokyo?
10) What is the oldest pub on record?
11) Who are four internationally famous Belgians?
12) How do I plant tomatoes so that I have a regular crop instead of all of them together?
13) Where's the nearest Victoria's Secret to Leeds Town Centre?

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Tag: Thursday Thirteen, free link friday, 82ask

OTA: Wordless Wednesday

supper

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Tag: Wordless Wednesday

charge it

After four little UPS delivery labels, my replacement battery for my Powerbook finally arrived today. So now I have a shiny new battery and the old one is boxed ready for collection. I was beginning to think I had been caught in an infinite loop.

nikab?

A couple of weeks ago I walked past this modernist hoarding, which shows a red veil/nikab/burka in a sort of South Park color scheme. Now, in the UK, there is a considerable debate about whether Muslim women should wear the veil in all circumstances.

I have spent some time in Saudi Arabia, and the hijab (black cloak which covers everything) and nikab(veil) was obligatory for women there, in a country where many companies would not employ women or if they did, they were segregated completely from men.

Western women would don black hijab as they entered the country and usually this included a full head veil.

Women are not allowed to sit visibly alone in public in Riyadh (the capital of Saudi Arabia) and there are special areas segregated away for women and children, with screens around them. The same is true in lines for service in restaurants and, as an example, MacDonalds has a man's line and a separate family line where women can stand. I don't pick on MacDonald's it is the same with all similar establishments.

As another trite example, the early Starbucks in Riyadh changed their logo and removed the woman's face to avoid offence or impropriety.

In the shopping malls, which are modern, air-conditioned and western-looking with Sachs of Fifth Avenue, Niemann Marcus and so forth, there is a separate floor for women, and men are not allowed to shop there. Some evenings the whole mall becomes 'family' and then groups of males alone are not allowed in.

Now Saudi is a deeply religious country and men take prayers five times a day with ceremony and using their prayer mats. Work stops whilst this takes place. The same shopping malls will close at each prayer time and religious police (muttawa) in special brown robes and carrying a stick will patrol to ensure that prayer time is being observed.

So in the UK, this use of predominately black veil has become a major topic of debate since Jack Straw made a few comments a few days ago.

The bigger debate is that in a religiously intense area of the world, there is still a convention that women must completely cover up in public, can't drive and in many cases can't take jobs. Its fair to say that that some of these areas have hauled themselves from the equivalent of the middle ages in the last eighty years, but it does create an inevitable imbalance when moving the conventions of such a country to another area.

video editing

I realised that I've done rather a lot of video posts recently. When I started experimenting with video on rashbre central, I expected it to be quite difficult to get anything to load, but now I've simplified my setup to camera, firewire, computer, final cut pro and an external firewire drive for the content its all become relatively straightforward.

To be really honest, I've hidden a spare firewire half terabyte behind a sofa so that I can just plug it into a Mac laptop when I want to do some editing.

So I suppose this is something of a technical post describing my informal way of working. So typically:

- Capture the video by plugging a camera into the laptop using firewire and capture directly into Final Cut Pro or iMovie
- Edit as required, adding cuts, transitions, and adaptations to the sound
- Render the sequence
- Export as a .mov or use Quicktime to compress for the Internet.
- In extreme circumstances use Compressor to create a special format
- Use iDVD to integrate into a DVD with menus
- Or simply upload the compressed .mov for internet viewing

And to extract snippets from an existing DVD:

- use Mac the Ripper to convert the DVD back into constituent files
- use Cinematize to convert the DVD files (.VOBs etc) into .mov, .avi or whatever for editing
- import the extracted sections into Final Cut Pro or iMovie for editing

And iMovie and iDVD are included on all modern Macs and can do most of what most people want.

So thats a simple learner driver's guide to video.

And just because I like it, here's a little video clip which went through some of the above processes. Its of Michele Shocked playing acoustic guitar and singing about learning to drive in East Texas.

Tag: rashbre, Final Cut Pro, video, vlog, video editing, iMovie