The great bruschetta-off

The food here is everything I'd hoped. If, in my bumbling-foreigner way, I'm choosing the poorer ristorante, trattoria and pizzeria, I can scarcely imagine what the good ones dish out.

Last night, I had good ol' tomato-and-basil bruschetta before a bloody divine spinach-and-ricotta ravioli in a sauce of sweet cherry tomatoes, zucchini and (I think) eggplant. The buschetta tasted rather similar to the one I make at home, which pleased and disappointed me simultaneously. Presumably this means I make a passable tomato-and-basil bruschetta. But, while I'm here, I want some kind of culinary transcendance, not confirmation.

Speaking of transcendance, I leave you with a piece of art I bought from some back-street Caravaggio near the Spanish Steps. Simply glorious. God onlyknows how somebody else didn't snap it up before I had the chance. It'll look divine on the bedroom wall back in Oz.

I call it "TomKat".

Someone ELSE is making a comeback too

Yes, you heard it here first. Mark Latham is making a political comeback. You doubt? Here's the proof:


In the European Union elections, no less. He's changed his name to the picaresque "Roberto Gualtieri", but he can't fool me.

Ba-da-bing!

And you thought I'd lost it...

BACK!

Awake.



(This, by the way, is the lovely little pad that's mine for 2 weeks in Rome.)

*sigh*

Charmingly life English DVD #5

North American Chain-22 Action Movies!
(I LOVE North American Chain-22 Action Movies!)

Charmingly life English DVD #4

Earthquake Magma Volcanic Disaster!
(Just in case you weren't sure what the theme was.)

Charmingly life English DVD #3

Man of painful heaven!

NOT secret wombat...

Arthur Cradock is either Satan personified or my own personal hero. I'm not sure which.

NZealand court sentences man after wombat rape claim

Thu Mar 27, 10:19 PM ET

WELLINGTON (AFP) - A New Zealand man has been sentenced to community service after telling police he had been raped by a wombat and the experience had caused him to start speaking "Australian".

Arthur Cradock, a 48-year-old orchard worker from Motueka on South Island, rang police on February 11 to say he was being raped by the slow moving Australian marsupial at his home, The Nelson Mail reported.

He rang back soon afterwards to say he was withdrawing his complaint against the wombat, a court was told Wednesday.

"Apart from speaking Australian now, I'm pretty all right you know," he told police in the second call.

Cradock pleaded guilty to using a phone for a fictitious purpose and was sentenced to 75 hours community work.

Prosecutors said alcohol played a large part in Cradock's life, although his defence lawyer said he was not drunk on the afternoon of the phone calls.

Charmingly life English DVD #2

Make track for the shot mutation ages!

The pirated DVD guide to English

Lucky YOU! SW, with the help of the lovely D, is bringing you a NEW SERIES. On this very blog, over the next few weeks, we present to you covers of pirated DVDs* seen around the Philippines. Use them to improve your English!

*SW in no way endorses or purchases pirated DVDs!

Charmingly life English DVD #1

Denseness Love Classic Series 12 in 1!

Take two and call me in the morning

I found this article by Barbara Rowlands in the The Independent utterly fascinating. The story reports on a study of the placebo effect, which turns out to be much more powerful than previously thought.

Last week an analysis of clinical trial data on modern antidepressants, carried out by Irving Kirsch, professor of psychology at the University of Hull, and his team, found that leading brands of antidepressants worked little better than placebos in all but the most depressed patients. Much of the reporting of the story concluded that antidepressants may be useless. But, interestingly, the study found that patients' response to placebos was "exceptionally large". So it wasn't so much that antidepressants didn't work but that placebos can work very well indeed.

The article mentions a 5-year-old study that

...found that not being told they were receiving morphine cut the effect of the pain relief on the patients in half. And only those who were told they were getting tranquillisers became calmer; those who received diazepam without being told got no relief whatsoever.

It also discusses the surgical (as opposed to pharmaceutical) placebo effect:

In 1959, an American cardiologist called Leonard Cobb conducted a trial on 17 patients who were due to undergo a common procedure used for angina, in which tiny incisions were made in the chest and knots tied in two arteries to try to increase the blood flow to the heart. When Cobb compared it to placebo surgery – he made incisions but did not tie the arteries – the sham operations proved just as successful.

The point made in the end, via a quote from "Dr Richard Kradin, a psychologist and physician at Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, and associate professor at Harvard Medical School," is that

"As medical science became more scientific, there was a way in which it tended to eschew any contribution by the placebo effect – and that's a mistake. Doctors need to be aware that how they interact with their patients has a great deal to do with the outcomes they are going to get."

To me, this goes a long way to explaining why things like homeopathic "remedies" (which are mentioned in the article and, yes, the quote marks are supposed to indicate my skepticism) can garner such a following. The placebo effect is just as good, if not better, than real medicine in some cases. It also depends on what you believe. The story quotes Michael Hyland, professor of health psychology at the University of Plymouth: "If you are non-spiritual, you'd be much better off taking Prozac, which is not only largely placebo but is contextualised as a medical drug."

See Ben Goldacre's Bad Science blog for lots of stuff on homeopathy. I just went to that site to get the URL and was gratified to see he's mentioned the study, too, in a nicely titled post: All bow before the might of the placebo effect, it is the coolest strangest thing in medicine.

specifics

Saw a sign on a jeepney the other day that said

Conserve Native Philippine Vertebrate Fauna!

I liked this and I wholeheartedly agree with the implications. Invertebrate fauna? Pfff! Flora? Bah! Vertebrate fauna? NOW you're talkin'.

And why say ... oh, I don't know ... "Conserve Native Animals"? Though that would mean all the arthropods and stuff. That would make a pretty cool slogan, actually: "Conserve Native Philippine Arthropods!" Then I'd take it seriously.

happy humbug

I'm an atheist, but I have no problem wishing people "Merry Christmas". I enjoy Christmas. This is largely because I get on well with my family and the gathering, eating, drinking and merriment are fun. I'm happy to enjoy the cultural aspects without ascribing religion to the occasion. Maybe this is hypocritical -- I have no idea.

I have to say, though, that the American "Happy Holidays" grates on me. Some political correctness has its merits and should not be tarred with the condesencion that the term "politically correct" has come to imply. Some political correctness seems patrician and worse than the "crime" it's trying to counter.

This was reinforced as I boarded the plane to fly back to the Philippines from Bangladesh last December. The airline staff -- who were almost certainly Muslim -- wished me a Merry Christmas. I know Christ was a prophet of Islam, but as far as I know, "Merry Christmas" isn't a typical Muslim greeting (though I may be wrong). If members of a devoutly Islamic country are OK with "Merry Christmas", surely the majority of Americans can handle it?

coffee and mountains

SW is BACK. So relaaaaaaaaax.

First, marketing. I understand the need to market a product. But I'm not the only person to feel that companies sometimes go a teensy-weensy bit over the top. Below is the text from the side of a bag of Figaro Classico coffee beans. Figaro is a Philippine coffee chain -- a la Starbucks etc, but in my opinion preferable if chains are the only available option (often the case in the Philippines). The main reason I think it's preferable is 1) it doesn't seem as evil as Starbucks (I realise that I haven't qualified that, but see here for PROOF that Starbucks is indeed evil); 2) While I'm living here, all things being equal, I 'd rather support a Philippine business over a US/multinational; and 3) I like the coffee better.

Anyway, here's the text:

An aromatic brew with a wisp of calm authority, this blend of the finest Philippine-grown coffee, hand-picked from the lush tropical mountains, was created by the country's top coffee connoisseurs. Conceived to exude quintessential civility, Figaro Classico was specially designed to provide coffee lovers with a brew so full-bodied that it wraps one's senses in a cloak of power, yet so smooth that one can happily enjoy cup after cup after cup.

Brave yet genteel,
Commanding yet so smooth...
welcome to the pleasure of
Figaro Classico

I don't know, but I tend to think if it was really all that, it would sell for more than $5 for 200 grams. And be illegal. And underscore a multi-trillion-dollar global drug industry. Shit, I REALLY like coffee. I need my coffee in the morning. I think coffee's important. But I'm yet to find a coffee that both exudes quintessential civility AND wraps my senses in a cloak of power.

Enough of that -- it's PHOTO TIME!!!*

SW and D, along with MG and KP, spent the Christmas/New Year break in the Philippine Cordillera -- a mountainous region in the north of Luzon, which is the big northern island that's also home to Manila and Los Baños, where D and I work. Here are a few shots; I'll post about the trip soon.

*Big thanks to MG for sorting a camera for me after I generously donated my previous one, plus my mobile phone, to a Manila taxi driver on the night of my birthday last November.

improving your bottom line

Nothing beats small businesses with smutty names. Nothing. Whether it’s intentional or not, I’m significantly more likely to patronize your operation if its title is dripping in innuendo.

Here are a couple of excellent examples from Manila:

1.

2.


I love that the guy seems to have caught me in my attempt to surreptitiously document his excellent work. Or maybe he reckons I'm a potential customer and is giving me a sly come-hither look.

the earth's sighs

I know the bad-English-in-Asia thing has been done to death, but I find it FUNNY, damn it.

I took the following two examples from my China trip in August. Apologies for the crap photo quality.

Here's the room service menu from the Fengtai International Hotel in Fengtai City, Anhui Province, China (you'll probably need to click on the photo to make it large enough to read):



And here's a sign in the bathroom of my room at the same hotel:



And, no, I would NOT make the same mistakes if I wrote in Chinese, thank you very much.

rice, people. rice.

The agricultural journalists' congress (the reason I was in Japan) was fun. Very few seminars, workshops etc – mostly visits to agricultural sites, organizations, farms etc. After 2 days in Tokyo, we headed northeast to Sendai City. From there we went on a 2 day agricultural tour the surrounding Southern Tohoku region.

I met some great people, but was also surprised at the narrow attitude of some of the participants. Most people were from Western Europe* and North America; for many, it was their first time to Japan (or, for that matter, Asia). I didn’t expect people to understand every nuance of Japanese culture (god knows I don’t, and I lived there for a year), but I thought at the very least they’d expect things to be a bit different to home. But on several occasions, I overheard conversations that implied that people were getting pissed off because things weren’t working as they expected (schedule changes, for example). We’re in a VERY different country, relying on translators, and there were a few hiccups. Who would’ve thought? And others whinged about the food, sneaking off to Starbucks and McDonalds when they had the chance.

Again – I don’t expect everyone to love all Japanese foods, and wanting some home comfort food is fair enough. But the attitude I sensed among some (and this was a small minority; most people had a ball) was not “Japanese food is very different, I’d like some more familiar food.” It was “Japanese food is shit, rice at every meal sucks, I want some REAL food.” Disappointing, people, disappointing. Thanks to MC, an ag journo from back home in Oz, with whom I discussed such things over late-ish night izakaya beers.

It was interesting too, seeing people start to understand the place of rice in the Japanese national psyche. Without viewing rice through a social/cultural/historical lens, it’s almost impossible to understand Japanese rice policies – e.g., paying farmers to keep 30% of their land out of rice cultivation but not really encouraging them to grow other crops on that 30%; 7-800% tariffs on imported rice (which is only imported because of obligation due to a trade agreement). But rice really is so ingrained (pun intended! HA! In-GRAINed! Geddit!?!) in the traditions and culture of Japan – and most other Asian countries – that if you simply view it in economic terms as an agricultural commodity, you can’t understand it. By the end of the week, people were starting to get it though. That’s not to say that they agreed with the policies, or that things can’t change. But in Japan, the “culture” component of agriculture should really be underlined, bolded and italicised - especially compared to, for example, Oz, which only has a couple of hundred (as opposed to thousands) of years of agriculture.

And, as always -- because I care -- here are some photos...

*There were a few Eastern Europeans too, and my hat goes off to the fattish, balding, moustachioed Ukrainian bloke who wore a skin-tight, shiny muscle shirt over his considerable torso. Fair play, fella: