This Post, No Subject

Gack! One month and so far two postings.

Uhmm, let’s see.

Watched or Watching
The Constant Gardener (Rachel Weisz is simply magical), Million Dollar Baby (Clint and Morgan have great rapport), and one more DVD to go for 1st season Stargate SG-1 (it is fun).

Read or Reading
The Winter Queen – I’d read the Erast Fandorin mysteries numbered 2 to 5 over the last year, but had never been able to find the 1st one, The Winter Queen. The stories are not connected, but The Winter Queen begins with a young 20-something Fandorin whom ages over the 5 books. And after reading it I want to go back and reread the others because so much his character and the style of the stories (mystery + action + humor) are introduced in this first outing. Recommended.

The Horse and his Boy – Before I saw the film of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe I decided to reread the book. At the book store there was the complete set of Narnia books in a very nice illustrated edition. I remember not really enjoying them the last time I read them (a little over 10 years ago), and so didn’t want to spring for them all. I thought I’d test the water with The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe and come back later if I liked it. I did like it and so thought I’d pick up the rest. On returning I found that someone had bought the 1st volume (The Magician’s Nephew), and as I’d got #2, that left the other 5 still there. As I couldn’t get them all at once I decided to pickup just The Horse and his Boy (#3), and keep reading from there. Then on the weekend when I went back to see if the others had returned I found them all gone!
Who bought the 5 remaining books?

Two solutions present themselves:
It was the buyer of #1, who despite being unable to purchase #2 decided to get what he or she could.
Or it was a mysterious “3rd man”, who has swerved in from an outside lane to cut off the book buyers of #1 and #2.

Away Team Report
Catching up with friends on Saturday night was great. Many drinks were drunk and much tasty Mexican food was eaten. There was even a Lost in Translation moment when the wedding party that was in progress across the courtyard had entertainment provided by a singer/impersonator/comedian who was wearing a Star Trek: The Next Generation uniform.

Pipe of Peace
The other day I was sitting in a café when I saw a man smoking a pipe. As I hadn’t seen a pipe-smoker in a long time (actually my first in Japan, I think) I watched with scientific interest. Actually I’m quite interested in the motivations of smokers. Is it really relaxing to smoke?

Using a stopwatch I timed his total pipe-smoking interval, plus the uninterrupted intervals of smoking within that. There was a total of 6mins 50 secs of smoking, broken into 2 parts, with the second interval providing over 4 and a half minutes of uninterrupted puffing. But how does that stack up against a cigarette?

There were ample cigarette smokers in the café, and so over the next half hour I was able to find that cigarettes last about 2min to 4min. But unlike the pipe, where the puffing was constant, much of that time was not spent smoking. Mostly the cigarette seemed to be fingered or left in the ash tray. Interspersed with this was the occasional inhale.

This initial and admittedly very slight study suggests to me that the pipe (where the puffing is almost constant and maintenance of the fire during smoking requires the added ritualistic skill of puffing and relighting) is of much better value to the smoker who wishes to enjoy the pleasure of smoking, whereas the cigarette seemed much more like a deliver device for nicotine into the body.