Sunny Saturday Luncheon

Last Saturday had to be the most beautiful day so far this Spring with temperature soaring up to 26 degrees Centigrade. A perfect day to host a garden luncheon for my one hundred plus guests. A truly wonderful occasion.

Randhir's Poem

FIGURES IN THE DARK

We are your shadow-puppets of the dark
We wear the cloak of the night
Projected by paper lantern lights,
cast on screen for your play tonight.

If by chance a moment free,
from a trap within this frame we are in,
escaping from this tiny screen,
our images shall thus scatter,
to avoid this puppet film .

For now, we move at the puppeteer’s will,
shackled to his strings,
cut-out figures in a puppeteer dream,
seamless figures, for it seems,
to perform in this twilight scene.

Stuck between day and night,
caught in between the dim and the bright
Some form of life the puppet master brings,
when he moves us with his strings.

As we be blind to what is wrong or right
All be caught and strung upright
As the puppet master indulges in his game,
he leaves us dangling on his frame.

How then can we ever free ourselves,
trapped between his heaven and his hell.
But this show, as all shows must at some time end,
then we lie still, lifeless on his stage.....A poem written by my ancient classmate and friend Randhir in Melbourne. Well done Randy, do keep on composing.

Michelle Van Besian

It was wonderful to meet up with my friend Michelle Van Besian in Warsaw recently after 17 years. Michelle is French but had lived most of her life in Poland after marrying Polish nuclear physicist Jerzy Jastrzebski (pronounced Yeshtempski!). I am a great admirer of Michelle's paintings and got to know her personally after persuading a gallery assistant where her works were being sold to give me her contact number. Michelle and I got on very well from our very first meeting and I introduced her works to many friends and colleagues. I acquired more than a dozen of her paintings which travelled with me from country to country and they give me much pleasure.

Michelle was her same bubbly self and had since eight years ago moved to a new modern apartment which she had impeccable furnished and decorated in her own distinct style. But ALAS, much to my regret Michelle had stopped painting. There was no room for a studio in the new apartment, she had some problem with her heart which made painting uncomfortable and the smell of paint unbearable. And finally according to her the market for paintings in today's Poland was not as good as during the Communist era when she supported herself by the sales of her painting. Today apart from the small market, she also had to pay the gallery a 50% commission on each sale.

So today she's a lady of leisure, attending to her beautiful apartment and her big hobby garden in the country which gave her much joy besides the flowers and vegetables, and taking long walking and camping holidays with Jerzy, who should also be retired but whose service was still much needed by the Polish government.

I was sorry I did not acquire a new painting by Michelle, but she did give me a landscape pencil sketch. Thanks Michelle, God bless and keep you.

Warsaw Revisited

“If one does not know to which port one is sailing, no wind is favourable”

A sign in the antique elevator of the Bristol Meridian Hotel in Warsaw where I stayed recently. I just spent a wonderful long weekend in Warsaw. I had not been there for 17 years since I left it in summer 1992 after a 53-month very memorable and sometimes difficult stay in that city. Perhaps that was why it took me 17 years to revisit it.

Much to my delight, Warsaw received me with wide, open arms. It was one of the best short holidays I have had in a long time. I caught up with my dear friends Karol, Ziutek, Mariusz, Michelle and Jurek, and Elizabeth (who had the most perfect complexion of any woman I knew who is more than 50 years old!!). I dared not call my other friends for fear I would be overwhelmed due to my limited time there.

The not-so-great weather (it rained everyday) aside, I thoroughly savoured Warsaw again – I roamed the Stare Miasto (the reconstructed old city), the now fashionable Nowy-Swiat, and of course the Sunday antique market in Wola and left with two beautiful old paintings (which will look like museum/gallery pieces when I am through restoring and framing them) and a beautiful pre-war bronze sculpture of two horses.

I again had the pleasure to go to the wonderful Warsaw Opera and enjoyed a spectacular performance of the ballet “La Bayadere” which reaffirmed my personal view that the Warsaw Opera offered some of the most beautiful and spectacular performances which the rest of the opera-loving would sadly miss out on.

There was festive mood in the city as exhibitions and manifestations took place in conjunction with the 20th anniversary of Poland’s shift towards democracy.On Sunday morning, from my beautiful hotel room, ( in a heritage hotel built more than one hundred years ago, the venue of many important historical events and which accommodated many luminaries, but largely left abandoned during the later communist era and now beautifully restored and refurbished under the Meridian management) I saw a parade commemorating the event and it was touching that the heavy downpour did not deter a single person in the parade from walking on. I joined a luncheon hosted by my colleague on the occasion of the upcoming official birthday of His Majesty the Yang Di Pertuan Agong and it was pleasant to see some 60 Malaysian students there; they are the first group of Malaysians to study medicine in Poland.

I had a chance to drive by my former residence on Ulica Smiala in Zoliborz and was pleasantly surprised how beautiful the house now look, slightly renovated and shaded by generous canopies of birch trees. I wonder if the owner Mrs Hetman lives there now. Driving away I passed a couple pushing a child on wheel and the man reminded me of Konrad, Mrs Hetman's son... ( see my posting Mrs Hetman's House)
So much had been said about the tremendous charges that had taken place in Warsaw since I left 17 years ago but I was pleased to register that the city still retained its old-world charm. Sure, prices had gone up tremendously but there were much more things available now and there was so much life and activities. My friends lamented that the current economic situation was badly affecting the Polish economy and their livelihood. But the people of Poland had always been survivors and I am convinced that they would continue to strive to make the courtly one of the most successful former Eastern European country - a label which had already been given to them a while back.

I regretted time did not allow me to make trips to my favourite places outside Warsaw – Kazimirz, Puttusk and Zela-zowa-wola (Chopin’s village) but perhaps this was the perfect excuse for me to return to Warsaw again in the near future.