2010
Back to Watching the Rice Grow
12 October 2010
Just home from Cathy's splendidly exotic birthday bash at Café Havana. How un-Balinese can you get! Old Cuba decor and "Bali" Vista Social Club music with dancing waiters. They had us 'girls' up dancing the salsa and when we weren't dancing, the waitresses joined them and performed very seductive steps with the guys. Cathy treated us all to exotic cocktails, and then we had a jug of sangria with excellent food- smoked pork, salmon, choc caramel pie. Not a grain of rice or stick of saté in sight! Very special night - Cathy loved it! So did the rest of us- Alex couldn't join us in the end, but Yoga came, and Pam and Roger, and Deidre, (whose Sydney book club I am now part of, and she has occasional Indonesian lessons with me.
Going backwards - we'd just come from another book launch - our Malaysian friend, Shamini Flint's latest Inspector Singh Investigates - the 4th Writers Festival where we have seen her. We are her “Australian Aunties" fan club. This time Singh is involved in the Singapore School of Villiany. Her launch speech - we have heard varieties of it in Byron Bay and Sydney already, is a half hour comedy routine that has the mob cheering and then rushing to buy all her books. I've read them already, so just enjoyed the lovely food and drinks and Shamini's flow of jokes.
Spoke a few more times to the author on the novel based on the Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company (it is on sale everywhere in Australia - under young adult fiction). It was my great uncle Arthur Pollard, who caused the scandal in India. He was I think, the youngest of the 15 children - two large families by two sisters - Great Grandfather married the second sister when his first wife died (of exhaustion?) Apparently all the Pollard Opera Company archives are kept in the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne where Murray did a lot of her research. We had never thought to go there! But will be sure to on the next visit south! I spoke to Tom Keneally more too - he remembered my sister Jann who was his grandchildren's Baby Health Centre nurse years ago! He knew the Pollard story too as he is a friend of Kirsty's and gave the speech at her launch. I have been brushing with fame, haven't I?
Spoke a few more times to the author on the novel based on the Pollard’s Lilliputian Opera Company (it is on sale everywhere in Australia - under young adult fiction). It was my great uncle Arthur Pollard, who caused the scandal in India. He was I think, the youngest of the 15 children - two large families by two sisters - Great Grandfather married the second sister when his first wife died (of exhaustion?) Apparently all the Pollard Opera Company archives are kept in the Performing Arts Museum in Melbourne where Murray did a lot of her research. We had never thought to go there! But will be sure to on the next visit south! I spoke to Tom Keneally more too - he remembered my sister Jann who was his grandchildren's Baby Health Centre nurse years ago! He knew the Pollard story too as he is a friend of Kirsty's and gave the speech at her launch. I have been brushing with fame, haven't I?