My life, my dominion

Let's start chronologically.
Wednesday evening after work 5pm.
Grabbed dinner (two whopper meals) and headed down to embankment station to catch the train to leicester square.
On the way i'm wondering... do i go to victoria or try my luck at leicester? I need a train ticket for the next week can i get it at Charrring Cross or embankment? I've got an hour till the director's tour at National Gallery.
Get to Embankment. Realise i can buy tickets there, get ticket there, go on the NOrthern line and arrive at Leicester Square. No tickets for billy elliot at the box office in the tube station, run up stairs with the locations of all the discout booths running through my head... right the one outside the pizza place.
Rush there and see like 8 couples in line. I scan the announcement poster, YES! billy elliot tickets for 21 quid.
as i line up i waff down one whopper meal( 2 minutes thank you very much) but i keep hearing all these horrid noises ' two for billy elliot please'. I think, NOOOOO don't go watch it it's horrid, watch something else you GITS I WANNA WATCH IT DON"T TAKE MY TICKET! SHOO!
two more koreans girls in front of me. Tourists! Pffft. The go forward. 'Two Billy Elliot Please'
the sales girls mumbles something about 36 quid each for seats together. YES! they shake their heads. YES!!! they ask for another time but somehow they don't seem to be very good at english, they fail and walk of despondently. YES!!!!!!!
I waltz up and ask, 'One for Billy Elliot Please'. after a bit of beating round the bush i get back row dress circle tickets for 21 quid. WOOO HOO!!! AFTER 5 WEEKS!! I FINALLY GET TO WATCH BILLY ELLIOT!!!! WOOO HOOO!!!!!!! Then of cousre i realise that i paid 3.50 for booking fees but heck I GET TO WATCH BILLY ELLIOT.
Right then i skipped off to trafalgar square to catch my tour.
Waffed down another whopper meal in front of Lord Nelson then skipped to the National gallery. Late for the tour had to run to catch it. Sheesh.

Tour guide is a teacher. And she makes a coupld of mistake with regards to the symbolism of the Saints. In particular, st Peter, has TWO keys not One but when holding one he holds a church. and the keys are to heaven and earth not heaven and hell. And she fails to point out st Paul. how roman catholic he hahhaha. but anyhow strange that she misses him out, considering that in iconography he's second to perhaps christ the virgin and peter only. oh well.
There's skull painting (can't remember the name i'm just bad with names) by holbein, the tale of the golden apple by rubens and finally turners... i forget. anyhow am happy to always see art that means something go home thinking about billy elliot.

okay to be fair i haven't blogged about Les Mis. now les mis is les mis. i don't think blogging about it would do it any more good plus i think most of you would have seen it. Let's say it's just stunning and so grandiose it's blows you away, sucks you in and totally immerses the audience in the story. I jsut wish they didn't sing so much and actually had some dialogue.

bILLY ELLIOT on the other hand is different. The singing leaves something to be desired. The set although very cleverly designed is not fantastic with rather bad transitions if you ask me (too much movement as if the director just didn't want the movement to be concealed. The dialogue while funny wasn't much.

But what billy elliot has that no other musical i've seen has is reality. it's RAW. it's about the north east of britain. it's about miners and strikes and the lives affected brutality by thatcher's (long may the iron lady live) reforms. it's a harsh truth about the things happening. It's not visually stunning but the simplicity of the play and the simple storyline is so straight forward it's just real. yo uget all these fantastic other musicals with unbelieveable storylines and you go off into lala land. but with billy elliot you're just stuck there watching and getting soaked in the story. and for all it's rough edges, billy elliot blows away the competition with it's choreography. once again, it's not graceful or perfectly fluid. it's a hodge podge of musical dance numbers,ballet jive and what have you. It's an artful and cheeky combination of girls in tutus, men in jumpers and police officers. its' so amazing where yo usee three different parties, composing two different scenes but on the same stage engaging in an ensemble that fits so nicely.

of course px would have LOVED the tap dancing finally. I personally preferred billy's tirade in the movie because he moved his feet more and fell down less than in the musical but honestly that was just one HUGE rush during the whole 10 minute set of him letting rip.
I didn't get my breath taken away ( i rarely do anyway) but this was one really really exhilirating performance. And the best part is, the humour isn't slap stick, it's well placed not shoved in as an after thought. And yo ucan tell the audience is really captured by this performance.

Of course, someone's gonna say, so... you like ballet now don't you. Eh... sadly i don't. coz what was on the schow and movie wasn't strictly ballet though it had a lot of it.
I dont' think i'll ever understand ballet. It's not i don't like it or hate it like i do modern art. But it's something along with modern dance and all those other so called 'dance arts' coz i guess i'm more of an academic art fan. i like art that tells a story that has history like stories from metamophosis or well hidden warning sign about pride. something that require one to know something before yo ucan know eerything. it's like a puzzle, that intrigues and educates. ballet for me is... too .. abstract... too unintellectual (okay that's not true but well unacademic). perhaps it's coz i don't like people heh so i don't like staring at someone prancing in a leotard and i'm suppose to interpret what he's doing. I love theatre, the clever dialogue, the plot. is it i'm too simple? or i think too much? dunno
eh.. yeah so i've watch billy elliot now. guess i can give the rest a miss. coz they really don't seem that fantastic. would like to see wicked but it just opened so don't think there'll be cheap tickets.

well that's about all now i guess.
sigh, wat a lonely friday...
8 hours back and 8 horus forward. this is going to be one SHITTY year trying to reconcile with time differences. I WANNA GO BACK AND SHOOT!!!!!!! I WANNA GO HOME AND EAT MEE POK!!!!!!! I WANNA GO BACK AND SLEEP IN A PROPER SIMMONDS MATTRESS!!!!!!! I WANNA NOT WORRY ABOUT THE WEATHER!!!! I WANT TO TALK TO FRIENDS!!!! I WANT 1000 SMS!!!

yes tirade over
last day of work and i'm not actually doing any work really hee hee!
okay settled on my modules for the next two years
year 2
economics 2
econometrics 1
industrial economics 1
international relations theory

year 3
the making of economic policy
economietric 2
industrial economics 2
principles of finance

wonder if i can sneak into lessons for C programming... hmmm
oh well

after that. hopefully get a us masters for FE. just pray they have it

right long enough entry. off to buy cookies for my colleagues
CIAO!