UpBeatSquare

Mostly up beat, and a little bit square. 

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Museum Asks People To Recreate Paintings At Home, Gets 30 New Impressive Photos

It appears that boredom lies behind the most creative ideas. That's why quarantine has produced some of the most entertaining activities. One of them is the Getty Museum challenge, that so many of you have already seen in our previous article here.

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@blood-and-pepper

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Only place in the world this is happening. Homesick

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Legends

I’m currently working my way through the (excellent) Margaret Atwood Masterclass on writing. I’ve not actually read any of her work and only made it through about two episodes of Handmaid’s Tale. I’m going to correct that error. She’s a pure delight! I’m also on the fence about ordering one of her novels, but Corona... If I order from Barnes and Nobel rather than Amazon AI(still)TA?

Anyhoo, the course material included a link to this incredible resource compiled by a professor Ashliman. It’s a list of hundreds of myths and folklore from around the world and throughout history. I wasn’t really interested in that kind of thing until I started the course. But now I’m going DEEP!`

It’s hosted on the university of Pittsburg website, and so like most ed websites its a bit of a mess. But if you’re into that kinda thing; go check it out here. 

She recently held some talks back home in New Zealand. Here’s a screen grab from a Twitter video she posted of 80 year old Margaret riding a scooter around Te Papa, the national museum. 

"Misbehaving in #Wellington #NewZealand! Don't tell the grownups,"

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The weather here has finally turned. Less time spent finding new leaks in the house. More time eating salads for lunch in the sun.

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This, I take no credit for. I’ve been craving lasagne for a while and isolation lady made it tonight. It made isolation man very happy. And now isolation couple are now on the isolation couch digesting isolation lasagne whilst isolated and libated. The rustic charm of this dish, that appeals to 4/5 senses is completely out of touch with 1/5 of sense (ratios of singular multiples are beyond my English language capabilities). On the telly is a 36 hour live dj stream from Beatport called Reconnect and streamed on Twitch. It’s worth watching, connecting to live humans around the world through music is ...lovely. So, stop reading this and get to it...

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Due to some miscommunication my butcher, I ended up buying a 9lb leg of lamb. That’s a lot of lamb for two people! Evidently American lamb is a lot bigger than New Zealand lamb. There was a period of shock over just how much money I’d just spent on lamb, and then a follow up period of guilt that people are losing their jobs and can’t afford any lamb (my catholic upbringing ensures that guilt will feature in some form in most situations). Once this subsided I chopped it up into various parts that seemed to me to be roughly appropriate cuts of meat - later viewing of You Tube videos confirmed that I wasn’t entirely off the mark. And onto the bbq one of these cuts went, the rest nestled in the freezer for later consumption. Having relatively limited ingredients does mean some fusion cooking was required. I used a za’atar rub, charred squash and radicchio, and served in on fresh tortillas. Folks! this was the best bbq lamb I have ever prepared and eaten in my life. At the moment I do have a greater appreciation for food than ever before, isolation scarcity will do this I guess. So perhaps there is some covid bias going on. But, come on…how good does that look!

[dailyoverview]

For your daily dose of perspective, here’s a photograph of the space shuttle Endeavour, lifting through the clouds during its final launch in May 2011. The photograph was captured from a nearby NASA shuttle training aircraft.

Instagram: https://bit.ly/2RhQprH

Source imagery: NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

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In the space of ten minutes this city went from drab to fab #saigon

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Vietnam has this thing about fresh beer. You can go a few very local places, grab a little plastic stool and drink fresh beer straight out of a keg. It's usually very low in alcohol and drunk with a large chunk of ice in your glass, on account of how freaking hot it is outside. Craft beer has come to Vietnam since I was last here, there are now a bunch of breweries and they all make the usual line up; pilsner, pale ale etc. But it hasn't lost the freshness. Despite being in the hotel bar and drinking beer from a bottle it's still fresh. This bottle of IPA was brewed yesterday!

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Feels like I could spend a week in this building and not see it all #saigon

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It continues. Chicken rice, char kway teow, BBQ sting ray with sambal, soy chicken a char siew. My stomach is saying enough! #singapore

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After having a pretty unhealthy 9 weeks of work travel, I vowed to turn a leaf and clean up the diet..... Having a week back in Singapore/Vietnam and this is breakfast. Delicious! But #badstart

This is nasi lemak, a Malaysian breakfast dish of rice cooked in coconut milk, spicey sambal, peanuts, anchovies and some meat component, in this case deep fried chicken! Not an everyday breakfast food.

Singapore was once part of Malaysia and today about 15% of the population is Malay. And that means a lot of spicy deep fried breakfasts to be had.

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Nice to be back in London for a few days. I miss this city!

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Wanderlust in #sanfrancisco

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If you happen to find yourself in Christchurch and wanting to try our second national dish (after fish n’ chips), go to Hillyers for a meat pie. The best!

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A very short road trip through the top of the south island with that little guy.

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You cannot reason people out of positions they didn’t reason themselves into.

Jonathan Swift