sadara.be

today i needed to change the file names to upper case and the extensions to lower case on 1500+ files on a windows xp machine. and realised i had no idea how to do it quickly. a bit of googling and a few minutes later i was using ‘Febooti fileTweak Case’, which is freeware. great little application!

download it here: http://www.febooti.com/products/filetweak/members/case/

I missed my train out of Delhi yesterday evening. The traffic was awful and the rickshaw wallah very old (looked it, anyway). Should have used the metro, but I couldn’t find it. For the record: New Delhi metro station is on the far side of the main line station’s tracks – over the footbridge. No signs, of course, until you’re nearly there. So today I have some more time in Delhi. So …

Today a trip out to Majnu Kha Tilla, a suburb of Delhi, where there’s a Tibetan enclave. A haven of peace!

The temple is fairly small, with the usual beautiful collection of thankas and rupas. I was particularly drawn to a White Tara rupa.

Get the metro to Vidhan Sabha. It’s a 10/- rps ride on a cycle rickshaw from there.

And I’ve just dicovered that my ‘waitlisted’ reservation – I was no. 18 on the list – has been converted to a confirmed reservation. I’m off to Jaisalmer. This time I’m going to Delhi Junction Station by metro. The announcements on the metro really do say: Please Mind the Gap, though there’s no gap to be seen.

It’s not often you come across a genuine spitoon these days. Indeed, I’m not sure I’d ever come across one before visiting Moscow’s Sheremetyevo airport yesterday. I’m afraid that in my ignorance I used it as a litter bin.

The snow clouds over Moscow came almost down to the ground – as the plane was landing, I saw the ground for the first time only a few seconds before we touched down.

The whole journey from Amsterdam to Delhi went absurdly well and to schedule. When I’d cleared immigration and picked up my luggage, it was still a bit early to be looking around for a hotel, so I hung out at the airport until about 5.30, then got a taxi into town. I had the name and address of a hotel which had been recommended, but it took the taxi driver a while to find it. On the way, he tried to drop me in two places which were clearly not where I’d asked to go – and one of them was a dark alley where I definitely did not want to get out and explore.

Today has been the familiar culture shock: the heat, the noise, the crowds, the riches and poverty, the shoe-shine boys, the touts, the strange crumbling remnants of the British Raj. Of course, there are many, many changes since I was last here, in 1988, but my main impression is actually that it’s just the same. Or maybe it’s just the effect on me that’s the same! One difference: where’s that smell of bidis gone?

And not a spitoon in sight, just lots of spitting.

I was at a funeral on Monday. Not someone I knew well – the father of a friend. In the last week I’ve also been in contact with an old friend in Israel I’ve not heard from for many years, so what with the news from Gaza, maybe it’s not so surprising that I’ve had death and loss on my mind.

So … here’s a mix of music which begins with Fairuz evoking Christ’s Passion closely followed by Emily van Evera singing the famous Dido’s Lament from Purcell’s opera Dido & Aeneas. Two sublime voices from very different traditions.

There’s Chôros No. 1, one of the best-known guitar pieces by Villa-Lobos, followed by another sublime voice, that of Amália Rodrigues, singing Fado da Adiça.

Rokia Traoré sings Finini next. The translation of the words of this song is:

Nobody has both everything and nothing
Everything’s favouritism and inconvenience
That’s the way it is
Some people say that what we are, we asked for it
Others think that everything has a transcendent reason
Still others receive everything with a peaceful fatalism
No matter what your principles are
Hold the cloth that absorbs tears

Ghazal play a piece called Pari Mahal, which is followed by To a Dead Friend, part of the soundtrack to Eternity and a Day, composed by Eleni Karaindrou. The mix ends with a cheeky bit of froth from Werner Egk’s opera La Tentation de Saint Antoine, sung by Janet Baker.

The first time I saw Waltz with Bashir, I fell asleep. No reflection on the film, more a reflection on my irregular lifestyle. Seeing it the second time I was again struck by the opening credits, a masterpiece of scene-setting. But to wind back a bit ….

Waltz with Bashir is an animated documentary telling the story of the director Ari Folman’s search to recover his memories of his own involvement in the 1982 massacres of Palestinians in the Shatila and Chabra refugee camps on the outskirts of Beirut.