Went to see Sigur Ros at Alexandra Palace last night. ‘Twas great. I wasn’t sure their music would transfer well to such a large venue but they ramped things up a treat. Birgisson’s voice soared above the audience, combining beautifully with the cool light show to create an etheral environment. There wasn’t any moshing, people simply stood as one in mutual appreciation at the beautiful sounds flooding forth from the stage.
The light show was particularly impressive. A sudden curtain of rainwater; a blizzard of ticker-tape; sound-sensitive lights that twinkled like stars during quieter moments and blazed like suns when the volume rose.
Top stuff. Having seen Arcade Fire, Radiohead and now Sigur Ros in the past year, just the White Stripes to go and I’ll be quite contented
I’m really rather fond of buying gifts. There’s something about understanding somone so well that you can hit the right button with a well timed gift. The smile on their face upon receipt is one of the simple pleasures in life. However, the process can be frought with peril. The best gifts are undoubtably those that don’t require prompting or coercion, that come from your instinctive understanding of what the other person likes and needs. Therefore to get the gift wrong can often be taken as a sign that you simply don’t understand them.
Recent research has shed some insight into the business of gift buying and how it can impact upon a relationship. I’ve read a few articles in the past that suggest that a good gift affords little benefit as it merely reinforces what’s already there, but a bad gift can do significant damage. I came across a new study today however by Elizabeth Dunn from the University of British Columbia that suggests men and women react to a rubbish gift in very different ways.
She set up an experiment whereby two strangers of opposite sex were told to chat to one another for five minutes, after which they would select a gift for the other person, with each then voting on perceived similarities between them and their new friend.
Before the session each participant had been asked to rank the gifts in order of preference. This is where they got a little sneeky though because instead of giving the chosen gift, they split the gifts in two, with half getting their first choice gift and half getting the booby prize.
This is where it gets interesting. When the men got the gift of their dreams it led to an upturn in their favourability towards their new friend. Women on the other hand were largely indifferent, relying instead on the conversation they had over the preceeding minutes.
So in new relationships it seems that the way to a mans heart is with a gift, whereas for women it’s a communication thing.
How about established relationships?
The same experiment was done again but this time the participants were those in an established hetrosexual relationship. The twist for this experiment was that in addition to be asked for similarity ratings each person was also asked how long they expected the relationship to last. Ouch. Right to the point there.
The men were kinda true to form. Rubbish gifts produced poor scores on both similarity and prospects. Women however, complex creatures that you are, bucked the trend. They actually scored their partner higher for similarity and prospects when they received a poor gift!! I think I’ve heard a collective cheer erupting from petrol station forecourt owners across the land.
What gives though? How can such an unintuitive answer emerge? Apparently it’s all about womens in built desire to protect what they have. Some nesting instinct no doubt. Anyway, that causes them to react more strongly in the second experiment because they have a relationship to protect.
Hurrah, crap gifts ahoy
Stand easy soldier. Before you start thinking this is a prime excuse for lazyness in the gift department do bare in mind that this experiment did only measure short-term responses. In the long-term a perpetual display of oafishness is just as likely to send you to the dog house.
I’m sure you’ve all heard the expression “death by a thousand cuts”, well it seems that the opposite is true and that lots of small happy moments are better for our general well-being than rare, profound events. That at least is the finding of a group of MIT scientists led by Daniel Mochon.
Mochon’s team have tested the idea that whereas rare, massive events have no lasting effect on happiness, the cumulative effect of lots of little boosts may well have the power to influence happiness over the longer-term.
They surveyed people as they left the gym and found that the more times people had attended the gym in the last month the happier they reported being.
Professor Mochon had this to say:
“Our findings imply that, in contrast to the notion of an inescapable hedonic treadmill, it is not pointless for people to seek to improve their well-being,” the researchers said. “However, improvement may not come from major events such as winning the lottery, despite the seemingly life-changing nature of such examples. Rather it seems like the key for long lasting changes to well-being is to engage in activities that provide small and frequent boosts, which in the long run will lead to improved well-being, one small step at a time.”
So if you’re looking to make people happy it seems that the best bet is to make many small steps rather than grand gestures.
The Hell of the Ashdown sounds like something Paddy might suffer from but it is in fact one of the first Sportives of the year in and around Ashdown forest in Kent. The ride covers 110km and takes in some of the finer hills found in the Kent countryside. Apparently some of these climbs have featured in the National Road Race Championship and have ominous sounding names such as ‘The Wall’ and ‘Biggin Hill‘ (that is right, although I’m sure once I’m slogging up it ‘Bloody Biggun’ Hill’ would be more appropriate!).
All of which sounds a far cry from the Ashdown forest of Pooh bear fame. Nevertheless it should be a good incentive to keep riding over the winter and arrive in as good a shape as possible. Whether I’ll have the discipline to refrain from gorging on Christmas cake however remains to be seen. Few bites here and there won’t do any harm I’m sure
I’m sure you’ve all heard the 5 fruit & veg per day mantra that is the key to healthy eating. I stumbled across a project today that sets out to do the same for our mental wellbeing. It’s founded by the RSA and is called Mindapples. This is what the site has to say:
“Mindapples is a social movement to promote individual self-management of mental wellbeing. The original “5-a-day” campaign encouraged people to take care of their physical health through simple daily activities, and we want to do the same thing for mental health. We aim to create a stigma-free public debate about mental wellbeing, simply by asking everybody the question: “What’s your five-a-day?””
My five-a-day
Riding my bike
Going to the gym
Have crunchy nuts in the morning
Walking the dog
Listening to music
You can take the survey yourself and help the project compile the 5 most popular activities for mental wellbeing.
Today I joined the nice folks from Dulwich Paragon for their Saturday club ride. They go for a 50 odd kilometre ride out into the London countryside. All very nice and genteel on what was a lovely autumn day. Little did I know however that today was also the annual club hill time trial, whereby each rider goes at 1 minute intervals up a stupidly steep hill for nearly a kilometre. It might not sound very far but rest assured it is a couple of minutes of lung bursting effort.
The course is the same one used in the Bec CC Hill Climb, one of the leading such events in the country. Don’t have any pics from the event today but some of these from the Bec Hill event may give you an idea of the anguish involved
You may be able to tell the gradient of the climb from the pictures. Rest assured it was bloody steep. Anyway, dragged my butt up the hill in 2mins 44seconds, not too bad for a first effort.
After a pretty long wait I finally managed to see the latest Coen brothers creation, Burn After Reading, today at a little cinema near Charing Cross. It’s hard not to like Coen brother films and with recent staple George Clooney safely installed in what he has called the final of his idiot trilogy.
In many ways the film covers familar ground, with a tail of blackmail going wrong in a goofy fashion. They had to resort to one or two gimmicks to pull the movie off, such as Brad Pitt’s hair, and it didn’t have me rolling around in the way O’Brother did.
It had a stellar cast and it’s kinda hard to go wrong with Malkovich and Clooney, and the film was typically dorkish to make it an entertaining enough way to spend 90 minutes, but I don’t think it hit the high spots of their other films.
Super day in Trafalgar square today as the British Olympic team were paraded in front of the nation to congratulate them on their achievements. It was lovely to see all the guys and girls in the flesh, and equally lovely to see the nation come out en masse to celebrate the successes of the summer.
I did attempt to take some photos with my phone, but sadly the event proved that my skills as a photographer are sorely lacking as the large majority turned out to be rather awful. Which is all rather a shame as I had hoped to get some snaps of the cyclists and swimmers in particular. Alas I’ll have to make do with these slightly better snaps from the BBC website and try to pretend they’re mine.
Becky Adlington with Mark Foster
Nicole Cooke, Chris Hoy, Victoria Pendleton
Anyway, it was a fun morning, and to cap it all off Boris gave a typically raucous speech to leave the crowd in raptures as only he can.
I’ve been a member of the GrandOldTeam.com Everton forum for a little while now under the sudonym Bruce Wayne (long story), and a moderator for the past few months. It’s a really great community for all things Everton, with some lovely folks from around the world. Danny and Dylan have done a super job in creating the place from scratch and turning it into one of the best Everton communities on the web.
Anyway, enough bum licking. Hopefully some of those guys will find their way over to this humble blog. In which case, hello to all. Good to have you here
I see a bit of a trend developing here, but another ambition of mine has been to learn to swing dance. I’m not really sure where my interest in swing came from but I suspect it stems from the time my brother lent me a copy of Zoot Suit Riot by the Cherry Poppin’ Daddies. Having played the trumpet (badly, really badly) in my youth I had an inkling of this sort of thing, but whereas the teachers of my youth stuck to staid old Glenn Miller numbers, the ‘Daddies seemed to light a rocket under it all, bursting forth with vitality and irreverence.
I managed to hunt down some clips of swing dancing (pre-YouTube here folks) and was instantly hooked. Sadly the Isle of Wight isn’t a hotbed for less mainstream artistic pursuits so there was nowhere really to strut my stuff. I remember however going to the Cabinet War Rooms for a dinner party as guests of the Made in Britain association. The whole event was 40’s themed and they had some swing dancers as entertainment. Whooping with joy wouldn’t really have been the done thing, but rest assured that internally I was giddy with excitement.
Anyway, I am now safely resided in London where there appears to be ample opportunity to partake in a bit of jiving, so I am hauling myself off to a beginners class this Wednesday at a Jitterbug club near Marble Arch. Cannot wait. Hopefully the event shall go down a storm and before you can say Boogie Woogie I’ll be jumping and jiving like these amazing folks from America.
adi on Nov 22, 2008 in Play 
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