Meanderings of an opera obsessed mind...

Hmm...isn't it strange that despite the fact that my intention last night was to buy the sheet music for Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 1 online that I ended up saying, 'Heck, it's bloody expensive for a book from which I only like one piece of music, ie. 'Snape to Malfoy Manor' and then randomly went off to Abebooks.com to buy two books on Wellington instead? *facepalm* My obsession with Wellington never subsides really even with my love for history, TA, opera and Poirot. 

But in my defence, these are actually books I've never read and aren't available in HK. The first is Lawrence James' The Iron Duke: A Military Biography of Wellington which I've seen cited numerous times in other books on Wellington while the other is a rather interesting book named Wellington's War: His Peninsular Dispatches where the author has actually pieced together a lot of Wellington's actual dispatches, letters, correspondence, etc with his own descriptions to make a sort of narrative account of the war through Wellington's eyes. Although I sort of have ALL of Wellington's dispatches in PDF format, I could never actually read them all without having some sense of direction first as to what I'm looking for so the second book is going to be of great help, I hope.

It's weird how some things turn up in places you really never expect them to; just watched the first part of Andrew Roberts' documentary on Churchill (yes, I know it's late but I can't sleep) and instantly recognised the Embarkation piece from William Walton's score for Olivier's Henry V and then grinned like an idiot when I heard 'Dance ti thee Daddy' (which I first heard being sung by TA) being played in the background when Roberts' started talking about Churchill's rather bizarre interest in fish rations for the Royal Navy at the beginning of WWII.

Anyways back to watching...

EDIT: Watched the other 'side' of his documentary series on Hitler and there was this clip of the battle of Agincourt from Kenneth Branagh's Henry V. Talk about media cross-references....

Great...this has been stuck in my head for the past two days now...how embarrassing...

But I must admit it's a great way of remembering the wives of Henry VIII...XDD
( Loathsome Lyrics...XD )

Non-related history question: Which one do you think I should get? The iPod Touch or the Nokia E71? I just figured that I think it's best to just get one instead of two...

Though admittedly I'm a little too old for Horrible Histories (which I confess were one of the reasons I started to get interested in history waay back in Year 6), the books and illustrations are just too hilariously true/critical at times...



I've also just realised that they've made audiobooks and even a television series of them! Both are quite amusing as well (the television 'Shouty Man - Victorian Child' sketch in particular is so wrong and yet so laughing-out-loud funny). Also the actor voicing the history teacher on the audiobooks sounds so uncannily like David Suchet even though I know he obviously isn't him...

Finally got a hold of the historical RTS game, Napoleon: Total War and it's very embarrassingly obvious to me that my fangirling over the Duke of Wellington hasn't blown over quite yet (if ever) since I simply squeed with delight upon seeing this pop up in the game whenever I right-clicked Wellington's portrait:



*sighs exasperatedly*

But overall, it's quite an interesting game so far (an improvement over Empire: Total War since that game wasn't exclusively focused on the Napoleonic Wars though both sort of cover the same period) though I confess to playing on the easiest level since I'm still very much of beginner with these things...

Found this poster the other day and I think it's simply fantastic (can you believe it was actually made in 1939 as a British propaganda poster in preparation for WWII?!)...XD



Great to put up on your bedroom wall esp. if you're having a bad day, methinks.

MY BOOK HAS FINALLY ARRIVED!!!

Exactly two months after I effing ordered it but HURRAH!!!

And it looks pretty new too...=) [Yes, I think this seriously needs a picture post because I've been ranting about this book so often...]
( Wellington's Doctors )

Been seeing a lot of macros these days and finally found out how people created them...started out with some random picture on the site and funnily enough it came up with Washington crossing the Delaware and so here are some history-related macros and some not so history-related ones. Sorry couldn't resist...XD


( Utter randomness... )

Hurrah! A free day for me today...but not exactly a day of relaxation from academia since a) the toes on my left foot have decided to swell up thus making it almost impossible to walk comfortably or put on shoes (I tried and accordingly suffered by doing so yesterday since it just made them more swollen) and b) the joint in my right wrist seems to have been sprained or something since I can feel a twinge of pain from time to time even as I type. Why, oh why, has my body decided to give me a heck of a lot of problems since the end of 2009? *sigh*

Some annoying person has kind of stolen one of my fave userpics (my past default one which has a bearded TA gazing intensely at the camera) and used it in their blog without crediting me. Though I'm glad that they appreciate him as much as I do, it kind of pissed me off since I did make them myself and sort of for my own use. I'm probably feeling irrationally over-protective (they aren't my pictures, after all) but still...GRRRR...hence the change of default user pic to the one I'm using now which I made a year ago when my opera obsession had only just started. When I made it, there didn't seem anything special about it but now that I look back, the La Scala Don Giovanni icons are actually quite pretty =) I guess that since I'm talking about this point now, I might as well announce: PLEASE DO NOT TAKE MY ICONS!!! And if you really want them, at least INFORM or CREDIT me before you decide to use them! That also goes for my mood theme.

I really want to go to see Cosi fan tutte at Covent Garden in September but again, HKU is messing up my plans since the term starts at the beginning of September. I have no idea at the moment how to work that out. TA's also doing Cosi in Munich in July, a time when I'll definitely be free and on vacation but seriously, will I be able to manage in Germany when my German is almost non-existent? Plus I have no idea what this production looks like, I know the ROH production much better. But I'll think about that...I might try going to Germany instead if I can't make it to London in September. O_O

HKU has also decided to mess up an opportunity to meet my fellow Allen affectionados in April in London since the deadlines and lectures simply clash with the performance dates...and this is the second time it has foiled a meeting with them. *grumbles* If I was going to Durham instead of HKU, the term wouldn't start until October...thus making going to see Cosi much more easier. *sigh* Out of all the goals I've set for myself, I'm definitely saying to myself that I MUST see TA as Don Alfonso since he is known foremost as a Mozartian and that sadly, I'll never be able to see him in his other celebrated Mozart roles, i.e. Don Giovanni, Count Almaviva, Papageno and Guglielmo for obvious reasons. Probably if I were given a choice to have him play a character that he used to play in the past now, I'd choose the Count. Of course it's a hard choice between the Don and the Count but I must say the latter is more of a favourite for me. To see that live would be fantastic.

The history course I was writing about yesterday did not disappoint. It's definitely the most interesting of courses of this semester and I'm looking forward to the forthcoming lectures...I might actually choose the topic for a dissertation and investigate the sanitary and medical conditions of 19th/early 20th Century Hong Kong and relate them to the Volunteer Corps stationed here or something. Or even see how the British/Canadian POWs managed to keep disease at bay during their internment during WWII. I'm also beginning to think that I might choose the professor as my supervisor as well since he's probably the expert here for such things.

On the other hand, the compulsory science and technology course which came right after the history lecture was simply the most boring lecture in the history of lecture-giving ever. It was all about ENERGY and to have all those various examples of energy (kinetic, electric, potential, renewable etc, etc) just explained to us one after another for TWO hours straight was almost unbearable. Some actually left after the first hour and I was sorely tempted to do the same but being the polite person I am, stayed on...hoping perhaps that the second half was better. It wasn't (even GCSE science was far more interesting) and I'm really wondering how on earth will I be able to sit through the remaining lectures until the end of term. -___-

I've actually made it to Sunday after going to Taiwai two days in a row without collapsing or anything. Interesting.

But that doesn't exclude the fact that I did feel like I was going to have a cold earlier this morning before going to bed...hmm...

So...I've finally got a letter from the Arts Faculty about being presented with the first year history prize in a ceremony on 18th November and the letter (as usual with all HKU pretentiousness) has even asked me to invite my secondary school principal as well as a teacher. God, they're so full up of themselves...but then again, I AM hoping to see Ang Lee at HKU in a talk given on the 1st October. To tell the truth, the only reason I'm going to that event is that he directed 'Sense and Sensibility' and has worked with Emma Thompson, Kate Winslet and Hugh Grant. XDDD

But what to wear? Gah, and if I wear heels, my feet are seriously going to suffer. It's nice being offered a prize but the preparation and dressing up for the ceremony is always unnecessarily stressful.