Dialogues des Carmelites: Final Scene

The chilling finale to Francis Poulenc's Dialogues des Carmelites-- the mass execution of the nuns while singing the final prayer for deliverance, the Salve Regina--decimating the chorus one by one, to the last surviving voice. The horrible sound of the falling guillotine--zing!-- that keeps on slicing through the serene music sends chills down the spine, I swear.

This is the same minimalist but first-rate Strasbourg production I saw on DVD.

And here's the Metropolitan Opera's version starring the formidable Jessye Norman.

Cooking Disasters

Marc, you are right. Capers are awful. I cooked some pasta in tomato sauce with parmesan cheese, mixed in tuna dipped in olive oil, and then added the capers soaked in vinegar. Bad idea. I ended up spitting out the capers.

Which reminds me of another cooking disaster just a few weeks back. I experimented mixing Miki noodles with pork, string beans and...and...squash! While the noodles were overcooked, the squash cubes turned out to be rock hard--I thought I was biting into a block of stone.

Simon Bolivar is Smiling

I couldn't believe my ears! A youth orchestra from, of all places, Hugo Chavez's Venezuela, sounding so polished! The conductor looks like a reggae star than a classical musician. I didn't know that Venezuela has a very successful music program for young people.

In this trailer and in the next video, the twenty-something Gustavo Dudamel and the Simon Bolivar Youth Orchestra of Venezuela interpret an extremely demanding piece, the Mahler Symphony no. 5.

Last year at the BBC Proms, they created quite a stir and wowed critics from both sides of the Atlantic. Dudamel is moving up the ladder and will take over the baton of the Los Angeles Philharmonic.

Dudamel - 5e de Mahler (Trailer)

Mahler-Symphonie n°5 (Clip)

Power Bully

My MERALCO bill states that my electric consumption for April fell 3.6%, but I will be paying 5% more compared to last month. MERALCO says it has to make adjustments in its generation and transmission charges.

Yeah right. Somebody has to put MERALCO on a leash. The ERC seems to be at the beck and call of the distribution company, approving most of its rate hike petitions. It took the Commission on Audit and the Supreme Court to stop the company from over-charging its customers.

It has again filed for another rate hike for the debt it owes the NAPOCOR. Unfortunately, this debt was borne out of the company's stupidity: it engaged in a contract with NAPOCOR wherein it committed to buy a minimum volume of generated power. Meaning, should it fail to buy the minimum volume, it is still obligated to pay NAPOCOR the balance of the unused portion. And MERALCO wants its consumers to shoulder that. Amazing.

The explanation is simple: MERALCO's sister companies engaged in power generation, such as the Independent Power Producers (IPP) Sta. Rita and San Lorenzo plants (owned by First Gen, another Lopez-owned company) have to earn something, right? And so, MERALCO only buys 50% of its requirements from the cheaper NAPOCOR generated power, and the rest from other major IPPs, especially from its sister companies. In fact, power prices from these affiliated IPPs are much, much higher (around PhP4.00++kw/h) than NAPOCOR's (only around PhP2.00++).

So if only MERALCO buys all of its power requirements from NAPOCOR, my electric bill is supposed to be much lower. Retail electricity rates in the Visayas and Mindanao areas, which also source most of their power requirements from NAPOCOR, are way below than in Metro Manila and Luzon areas where MERALCO holds a complete monopoly in distribution.

Not surprisingly, the Philippines has the second most expensive power rates in Asia, next only to Japan.

I am for a full deregulation of the power sector. That is the only way to disband the price-setting behavior of the distribution monopoly, MERALCO. We need a power industry that is based on price-based competition, incentive-based regulation and open access to transmission and distribution facilities. We also need an ERC that will not succumb to pressures from MERALCO.

Sikatuna

Marc's here from Singapore for a brief business meeting, before going to Sydney at the end of the month and settling there for good. He's now a top flight business executive and a millionaire, I think. Anyway, I met up with him last night. He's now on the "heavy side" so I engaged him in a very productive walkathon tour of the Ortigas and Malate areas, bar hopping until the waiters politely drove us out, staying up until early morning.

Literally huffing and puffing, (I wasn't-- I ran a full hour at the Marikina Oval last night) I'm sure all that walking made him lose a couple of pounds.

Rare

I think it was Tarrega who once said that "the guitar in the hands of an Englishman is a blasphemy." Such was the dominance of the Spaniards in guitar music--Albeniz, de Falla, Tarrega, Rodrigo--just to name a few, that no other nationality, well except for their cultural cousins in Latin America to a lesser degree, could lay claim to the genre.

But the prime exponent of guitar music nowadays is an Englishman: John Williams.

And rarer still, is a 14-year Chinese girl plucking away at a classical guitar. Here's Xuefei Yang with Joaquin Malats's Serenata Española, guitar transcription by Tarrega.

Xuefei Yang - Malats - Serenata Espanola

Sluggish

The Fed cut its rate again by 25 basis points to 2%, its seventh consecutive rate cut. But whether or not this will significantly impact on inflation remains to be seen, considering that the crises in energy, food and raw materials come from the supply side of the equation. So you still have a situation where despite weak consumer spending and falling interest rates, inflation continues to rise.

The Fed can only hope that this move will translate to better consumer spending--say improvements in housing prices and auto sales-- but with no resolution to the credit crunch in sight yet, and as consumer spending well in the doldrums due to rising gas and food prices, it will take a while before consumption will be at normal levels. Consequently, 1Q08 growth in the US was at a sluggish 0.6%.