It's still, quite dramatically at times, the rainy season. But rain is good for photos...





Damansara was pretty rainy on Tuesday evening. But we took refuge in the Hyde bit of Jekyll and Hyde, and had a nice, bacon-laden sandwich and a glass of wine (well, I did; Nigel made the acquaintance of Connors stout). We checked out DPAC's little exhibitions.







And then we watched Forever Love, which was part of the One Way To See Taiwan film festival at DPAC.

As the blurb put it:

"Forever Love pays tribute to Taiwan's local film industry in the 1960s when Taiwanese dialect films were cheap, stars were gods, and spies, giant monsters, and flying swordsmen crossed paths every day during lunch... Told in sweetly-campy flashbacks and semi-animated inserts, this nostalgic comedy set during the heyday of Taiwanese language cinema is a love letter to Taiwan's history as much as it is a romance for the ages."

And yes, it is a romance. Against the background of swash-buckling actors, swooning fans, dodgy business dealings, and the looming presence of Chiang Kai-Shek, there's a love story. It plays out between the scriptwriter, who is up there with Ernie Wise in his prolific turnout, and the movie fan who, despite her stage-fright, charms her way into a series of roles.

When the scriptwriter is tricked into signing dud cheques, and does time in prison, his movie-fan girlfriend waits for him. She doesn't forget, and she works hard to support the cinema they loved. They marry, and have at least one daughter and one grand-daughter.

But then she falls prey to Alzheimer's. The former scriptwriter starts to sign his communications to her with the name of the vain actor she once idolized. This man was his arch-rival, but if that is the only way to get her attention, he will do it. Eventually a movie screening, in the cinema she helped to sustain, reminds her briefly of who she was -- and who he is.

But as we all know, she will forget again tomorrow...

Another musical offering from the MPO came our way this week too. James Ehnes is a gobsmackingly good violinist, right up there with the other violin stars we've been privileged to hear at this venue. But the piano, played by Andrew Armstrong, is an interlocutor rather a mere companion.

The menu was Beethoven, Ravel, Brahms, and Corigliano, but they generously gave us four scrumptious encores as well.

Pleasantly unusual cakes have also cheered up the week: a "kelapa Melaka tart" from Illy in KLCC, and a Darjeeling chiffon cake from Three Little Birds, which has literally just opened up in the Bukit Bintang Isetan.