Paris Opera Ballet - would Nureyev be happy?

I have been waiting for months to see the Paris Opera Ballet in their only Australia season (Thanks Anna Bligh for coughing up the $$ when Melbourne pulled out). But I must say that after months of anticipation and waiting and building it up in my head, I walked away slightly disappointed after Friday nights performance of La Bayadere.

I will preface all of my following comments with this one. It was an amazing production of a beautifully crafted ballet by Rudolf Nureyev. My question is, would Nureyev have been happy with Friday night's performance? I think not.

Whilst technically things were beautiful (especially the large corps work in Act 3) I felt like the performance lacked passion, specifically from many of the principal dancers. If there was one thing that Nureyev did not lack it was passion. When he danced on stage you were captivated. This is coming from someone who never saw him live, only ever on film, and even then he was mesmerising.

Now I know that no one can ever emulate Nureyev, it's just not possible. However, one would think that in order to dance a ballet choreographed by him at such a poignant part of his career (just before his untimely death in 1993) the dancers should perform with as much passion as they can muster.

And let's face it, these dancers are French. If there's one emotion or trait the French are (in)famous for it's passion (or arrogance depending on your point of view - I tend to err on the side of passion).

Even Al in all of his ballet experience (hehe) was less than completely enamoured. It's quite funny to hear him critic the dancers, he even knows 'the words' ie the correct ballet terminology for some things (other things he tries to demo and it's hilarious).

Maybe this armchair critic has set her expectations too high? Or maybe not? You be the judge. It's well worth seeing this performance and likely one of the only times we'll get a decent ballet company in Brisbane for a while considering the Aust Ballet has chosen not to grace us with their presence again until 2010.

The dance of the uterine fairy

We are 28 weeks now and Baby De Rooy is in full swing....dancing that is. Our little hypo 'Bubba' usually gets going about 7pm and wriggles and rocks it's way around inside much to Al and my amusement.

Bubba still wriggles around at night, in the morning and random times during the day (especially if I sit too closely to my desk) but it's nightly 'dance-a-thon' is becoming quite a fixture.

At 28 weeks now I am just verging on the last trimester. The belly pic below shows how much I have grown but all things considered I am still quite small. I don't expect this to last for much longer!

I met up with my Student Midwife today. The midwife that leads our Childbirth class on Thursday nights asked us if we would be interested in having a student midwife. Nicole is going to accompany me to my pre-natal appointments, the birth and post-natal checkups as part of her study. She is in second year at UQ.

Each midwifery student has to undertake 10 'follow throughs' during their study which means seeing 10 women from pre-natal through birth into post-natal care. I figure, one more person in the birth suite isn't going to concern me (as long as she is happy to hear screaming, groaning and swearing as I'm sure it'll happen) and the students need this experience to round out their theoretical study.

Another weird pregnancy thing is the slow disapperance of my belly button. A few weeks ago it was there, and now slowly, but surely it is disappearing. It's the Mysterious Case of My Belly Button. See for yourself...warning photo of my bare belly coming up.......

WEIRD & FREAKY! But at least it's still kind of an 'inny' and it doesn't look like I have a nose on my belly.

My objection to adverbs

I was listening to a sermon on my iPod the other morning and as I listened to the speaker closely I began to take objection to his use of the word 'just' or 'only' directly before the word 'Mum'. For example: "Whether you are an accountant, a lawyer, a truck driver, or just a Mum." Whilst I know that the speaker didn't mean anything by this remark (and he is not the only one who does it), the inference is that accountants, lawyers and trucks drivers have actual or important jobs/professions, then there are Mums.

If you look up only in the dictionary the first explanation given for its use as an adverb is this: as a single fact or instance and nothing more or different. So in theory the use of only before Mum would mean that I am a Mum; nothing more or different.

As I move into a different phase of life, one where I may not return to work and therefore be just a Mum, I would like to think that Mums are valued for the important work that they do creating, delivering and raising children.

I don't doubt that Mums are appreciated, but maybe we should think about the language that we use to describe them and make sure it is to build them up and make them equal, not make them sound like a lesser part of society.

You might say I'm playing with semantics but words are powerful things. I should know, I use lots of them everyday!

Be the miracle

Okay so I'm going to be philosophical in this blog post, so for those who are just looking for baby news, this is not it.

In reading Phillip Yancey's book 'Prayer' I have been challenged to think about God's response to prayer. I thought I would share some of my thoughts with you.

It's quite obvious that God doesn't give us everything we ask for. I could ask God for a Ferrari and I'm pretty sure there won't be one in my driveway when I get home. So how does He decide which one's he's going to answer?

Well I'm not God so I can't tell you, but I have been thinking about how God answers prayer, not why, and it offers a great insight into the character and nature of God himself.

How often has God answered your prayers through the actions of another person? A word of encouragement, provision or assistance generally come from someone we know - Christian or otherwise. In our modern day we rarely hear stories, if ever, of manna from heaven. Although God is quite capable of acting in this way He tends to do so via other means.

So if God chooses to answer prayer by using people as His vehicles, are we doing everything we can to be an answer to prayer?

When I am prompted by the Holy Spirit to give someone an encouraging word, do I pass that on, or keep it to myself? By keeping it to myself am I hindering God's answer to prayer from being actioned?

Some would argue no - if I don't do it, God will find someone else who will. Although a valid point, this can often be the argument of someone who is looking for excuses not to go out of their comfort zone. But no matter which way you look at it, I/we have the ability to be the answer to someones prayer.

And in being the answer to someones prayer we will often find our own prayers and supplications to God have been answered. For example, I might have been prayer for God to help me to be more bold. By listening to the prompting of His Holy Spirit and giving a colleague a word of encouragement (rather than shying away) I am being more bold. I may have been praying for more fulfillment in my life. By being the provisional answer to prayer in someones life, I experience greater fulfillment in my own.

I am reminded of Bruce's cheesy sign off line at the end of Bruce Almighty "Be the miracle". And it's true. We have countless opportunities everyday to 'be the miracle' to our family, friends, colleagues and even complete strangers.

I encourage you to think about how you can be the miracle and be God's vehicle for answered prayer in someones life.

Baptism of 'Pidgin Fire'

Most of you know I have been making very regular trips to PNG lately. Our mine in PNG is located on Lihir Island which is in the New Ireland Province. Last trip was (most likely) my last trip before baby time so in it seemed like a perfect time to finally sit the Site Induction. In the five previous trips I hadn't gotten around to it.

The majority of the days induction was spoken in Tok Pisin - aka Pidgin, the national language of PNG. Those of you familiar with Pidgin will know it's does use a large number of words from the English language, however despite the similarities, it is still another language and was a bit of a struggle to understand.

I now know that Buai is beatlenut and that Mari is woman as they spent quite a bit of time on the topics of drugs & alcohol and sexual harassment. If I listened carefully to the intonation and watched the body language of the presenters I got the general gist.

Lucky I did because at the end of each presentation we had to undertake a basic assessment. Also lucky for me that the PowerPoint slides were in English so even if I couldn't understand what was being said, I could read it.

It poured rain for most of the time we were there and I had to avoid 'Curry Night' at the club this time because I didn't think the Vindaloo was going to agree with me on the 14-hour trip home the next day. We almost didn't make it home as it was raining so hard the night before our departure that the plane didn't leave Port Moresby. Thankfully it flew in first thing in the morning, which unfortunately meant a 3am start for the incoming passengers, but worked out well for us!

As glad as I am not to have to travel that far again before baby time, I am going to miss my visits to Lihir. Working on mine sites has such a different atmosphere to working in a corporate environment. 'Mining Holly' really is going to miss the steel caps and hard hat!

Tenkyu-Tru my Lihir Island colleagues