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Are there any Armenian restaurants in Australia where one can get pure Armenian food?
In Melbourne:
“Pure” Armenian? There was an Armenian Cafe restaurant before I got together with my wife, but that’s long closed.
There’s Sezar | Modern Armenian Restaurant, which is Nouveau Armenian (Nouveau, as most upmarket ethnic restaurants in Melbourne are). We’ve been once, and it wasn’t strikingly “pure”. Pleasant, though rather heavy.
It’s next door to Armenia, and the cuisine is quite different, but I have much affection for the Georgian cuisine of the Umbrella Lounge Bar.
What are the best counterpoint duets?
The canonical counterpoint duets are surely Bach’s Two Part Inventions:
It doesn’t get better. God bless Gerubach on YouTube.
How do you retain and instill an ethnic identity from birth when living in a foreign country?
I’m not going to speak to the details of the question, but to the general question: how to help instill your ethnic identity abroad, in a child whose identity you have some say in. (If you don’t have a direct say in it, Andrew Crawford’s answer applies: be a good role model.)
- Acknowledge that the child will have the identity of the country they are brought up in, and that identity will ultimately prevail. You can cocoon the child a fair bit before they go to school, and to some extent even after. But if you get too defensive about your ethnic identity, that will end up backfiring in the child’s teens, and your cherished ethnic identity will be something they rebel against, reject, flee from, and ultimately resent. You don’t want that.
- Immerse the child in the culture of your ethnic identity at home. That means TV and books and talking the language at home and little songs and games, and trips back to the mother country. Try not to convey resentment or superiority over the host culture: that will backfire too.
- Immerse the child in the culture of your ethnic identity outside of the home. That means hanging out in the local ethnic community, and building a store of fond memories and associations. It means the culture will be real and lived for the child, not a mere abstraction or playacting at home.
The way to instill your ethnic identity is to build fond associations of family and rootedness and affect in the child with that identity. And even so, being Greek in Melbourne in the 1980s was not the same as being Greek in Athens in the 1980s. Being Greek in Melbourne in the 2010s, even less so. It’s a losing battle. But by being positive and warm about it, you can make the loss more gradual, and more reluctant.
Why do Greek parents not allow their grown children to take care of themselves?
So let me tell you an anecdote.
I have a relative in Greece of roughly my age, who was studying at university away from home, 20-odd years ago. (Since “home” is a town of 7000 people with only a nursing school, that’s not hard to imagine.)
Said relative at some stage took a job distributing junk mail. Not an uncommon thing, you’d think, for a uni student wanting to earn a bit of pocket money.
Said relative kept their part time job secret from their parents, and begged me not to tell.
It would have been humiliating to them, if it had got out: it would have implied that they were incapable of supporting their child.
It is, as John Carrick says, a cultural thing. There are different notions between Greek and “Western” society on how important the family is vs the individual, how important it is for an individual to be independent vs interdependent, and how important the family’s face is.
What’s your process for writing poetry?
- Clear my head
- No, really clear my head
- Have a vague idea of what the argument is that I’m going to write
- Have a concrete idea of what the form is that I’m going to write in
- Start thinking up phrases in iambic pentameter
- Keep thinking up phrases in iambic pentameter
- Wait till my heart beats in iambic pentameter
- Optional: have access to a rhyming dictionary, to use as emergency backup
- Start writing, keeping in mind the vague idea of what the argument is
- Scrub lines if they’re not going in the right direction
- The first quatrain is the hardest. Once that falls into place, the form does too.
Can you write a poem about yourself?
jIDel’eghmeH jIbomchugh, chay’ vIta’?
ghopwIj roSHa’moH qaD, ’ej jatwIj qa’.
.i mi te pemci mi .ei ta’i ma
.i go’i lesedu’u mi mo da
Kiel poemi pri mi mem? Ĉu praa
la stilo estu? Aŭ ĉu forbalaa?
De memet si canendum, fulmina
extinguant niteantque carmina.
Περὶ ἐμοῦ εἰ γέγραφ’ ἀγαθά,
ψευδῶς· ψευδῶς γ’ εἰ πλεῖστα χαλεπά.
A poem on myself? It won’t scan far.
Best leave it be. Best leave things as they are.
Ποίημα λέει για τα μας; Αλλού αυτά.
Ιδού η Κβόρα· ιδού το πήδημα.
[Klingon] If I were to sing in order to describe myself, how shall I accomplish it?
The challenge paralyses my hand, and it replaces my tongue.
[Lojban] I will be the author of a poem about me, the obligation is; in what method?
I will do so about the concept that, for x, I shall be in what relation to x?
[Esperanto] How shall I poem about my own self? Should the style
be primordial? Or should it be sweeping things away?
[Latin] If it is time for songs to be sung about me myself, let songs
extinguish and ignite thunderbolts.
[Ancient Greek] If I have written about myself good things,
it’s false; and all the more false if most things are harsh.
[English] A poem on myself? It won’t scan far.
Best leave it be. Best leave things as they are.
[Modern Greek] A poem about us, he says? Pull the other one.
Here’s Quora; here’s the leap.*
*The Boasting Traveler – Fables of Aesop:
A Traveler, on returning, boasted of the many and heroic deeds he had performed. Among those he boasted that when in Rhodes he had leaped further than anyone else found possible and that he could call upon many in Rhodes who could stand as a witness. “There is no need of witnesses,” said a bystander, “simply pretend this is Rhodes and leap for us.”
[In Archaising Modern Greek: “Here’s Rhodes, and here’s the leap.”]
Would you listen to a 5-hour symphony?
I sat through the 1992 revival of Einstein on the Beach, which goes for five hours, and which is much more static (as hardcore minimalist music) than a symphony would be. I had no problem sitting through the entire thing—even though the opera creators imagined you could walk in and out as you pleased. And I was proud to give them a standing ovation at the end of it.
(The audience was much more restless in the 1992 revival than the 1984 revival, apparently. There was booing in the bed scene. The people booing did not stick around for the standing ovation.)
The six hour TV version of The Mahabharata (1989 film)? Not a problem.
I’ve enjoyed Mahler’s Third, which is an hour and three quarters; I’ve been puzzled by where the hell Brian’s Gothic was going, and its length at an hour and three quarters was not the reason why.
As long as the symphony is any good, I’m up for it. Just gimme a La-Z-Boy and a coffee, and I’m good to go.
In your opinion, do most people who think they are too smart to get arrested end up getting away with their crimes?
I will instead volunteer Lt. Columbo’s opinion. From the pilot episode.
You’re probably right. He sounds just too clever for us. What I mean is, you know, cops, we’re not the brightest guys in the world. Of course, we got one thing going for us: we’re professionals. I mean, you take our friend here, the murderer. He’s very smart, but he’s an amateur. I mean, he’s got just one time to learn. Just one. And with us, well, with us, it’s – it’s a business. You see, we do this a hundred times a year. I’ll tell ya, Doc. That’s a lot of practice. Prescription: Murder (TV Movie 1968)
(They hadn’t quite worked out the lack of grooming in the pilot episode.)
What does your happiness routine involve? What kinds of things do you routinely do to keep your sanity, or to treat yourself to something nice?
I don’t do enough of this, especially right now. But I’m more of an introvert than I like to think, and I’m happiest when I’m walking down a street, late at night on my lonesome; or (as tonight) when I stay back in the office, in the quiet, and with the lights off. It’s calm. I miss calm. Calm heals.
When I was asked to actually come up with a Happy Place in therapy (yes, they actually do do that), I came up with Mezedakia. The only decent Greek food place in Greektown, Melbourne. Serving Greek home cooking, with smiling waitstaff who know to bring me a rakomelo (honey and raki), good rebetika playing on the sound system, and overlooking from afar the poseurs and buzz of Eaton Mall. (Well, it was the only decent place; Mykonos Taverna is a second now, with both good atmosphere and good food, and live if delightfully out of tune music.)
I Am Porthos
Nick Nicholas’ answer to What happened when your friends found out about you being a famous Quoran?
Well, the prize for this goes to a friend of my wife’s, who took to saying “Oh My God, you’re, like, the Beyoncé of Quora”.
I mean, obviously.
Steve Theodore, https://www.quora.com/What-happe…
My response:
… Wow. Who knew that if you merged Beyoncé and Nick Nicholas, you got Porthos as portrayed by Oliver Platt:
