One Year Later

Last Thursday marked my one-year anniversary in Scotland. I knew the date to be accurate, but I could scarcely believe how fast the time has gone by. I’m already beginning to see certain events from this time last year kick-off, such as the rugby Six Nations Cup and the TripTych music festival which is bringing a strong sense of deja-vu.

The past year has certainly produced results that I would never have expected on that day I stepped off the plane into Glasgow International Airport. It has been a fantastic experience thus far and now that I am fully comfortable and feel like one of the locals (though with a foreign accent) I greatly look forward to the next year as well.

Last Sunday I attended one of the more fun concerts that I have ever been to when I saw La Bottine Souriante live as part of the finale to Celtic Connections. This Quebecois band was alive with rhythm, and it wasn’t long before I (along with the rest of the crowd) was clapping and toe-tapping away. What I found quite impressive was that there was no drummer per se. Several members of the band (either while playing guitar, banjo, or mandolin) sat on a chair and stomped out the beat with their feet. Combine that with a female dancer in skin-tight outfits slinking around the stage, a full brass section and four-part harmonies in French – well, a good night is to be had by all!

Saw two more excellent movies recently which is certainly getting me excited about cinema again.

I had just finished reading Touching The Void, the true story of two British climbers in the Peruvian Andes where, during the decent, everything goes very wrong. The book was an excellent read and I therefore was looking forward to the movie version which had recently opened in Glasgow. The film, done as a docu-drama (a dramatic recreation but with interviews of the real players and narrated by the author) was stunning with its dizzying camera angles and the way it really captured the mood of the situation. Despite knowing what happens, I was riveted to the screen and you could hear the collective gasps of the crowd during key scenes.

Much different but equally powerful was the film Belleville Rendez-vous, an animated French film about a Tour de France cyclist who is abducted by gangsters and the subsequent rescue attempt by his grandmother and loyal dog. It sounds absurd, but it was both funny and sad, and incredibly realistic despite the exaggerated drawings. Fantastic songs too – the theme song just won’t leave my head.

Last night Fiona and I had an incredibly fun time making dinner as we attempted to make home-made sushi using the kit that I received from back home for Christmas. Glasgow has an excellent Oriental grocery store where we got all the essential ingredients (seaweed, pickled ginger, sushi rice). After picking up our fish from the local grocery store, we got to it. And despite initial trepidation, it turned out to be quite straightforward. They looked almost like something you’d see at a restaurant, and they were delicious - combinations of avocado, cucumber, salmon, prawn and crab. Throw in some miso soup and green tea and it ends up as the most authentic sushi meal that I’ve had since arriving in the UK.