MANILA, Philippines – Here are some Life & Style stories you might have missed this week.
Chef to 6 French presidents hangs up his apron
Jacques Chirac liked calf’s head and Nicolas Sarkozy abstained from cheese while the current French President Francois Hollande is an unfussy eater partial to most things.
Bernard Vaussion has built up a comprehensive picture of the culinary tastes of 6 presidents during his 40 years in the Elysee Palace kitchen.
During that time he has seen sauces get lighter, cheese dropped and then reinstated and truffles and crayfish fall victim to austerity.
Ever discreet, however, the head chef who retired on October 31st says the specific preferences of the presidents he has served are best not discussed in too much detail.
“One avoids disclosing the dishes that are particularly appreciated. Otherwise they find themselves eating the same dish everywhere they go,” he said.
“This was the case for Mr Chirac with calf’s head. I made it for him two or three times because he was given it everywhere,” he said.
Vaussion, who has just turned 60, started as an assistant chef during the presidency of Georges Pompidou in 1974 following a 3-year stint as a sous-chef at the British embassy in Paris.
In all, he has worked under 6 presidents – Georges Pompidou, Valery Giscard d’Estaing, Francois Mitterrand, Jacques Chirac, Nicolas Sarkozy, and Francois Hollande.
“I remember the apprehension of cooking for world leaders and our head of state,” he said in an interview at his office at the Elysee.
“There is always a lot of pressure…. In a restaurant, if there is an error, the customer doesn’t come back. Here it is me who would be asked to leave,” he said.
The living dead bring Tokyo to life for Halloween
A zombie army marched on Tokyo Tower for Halloween on Thursday, with a one-time sumo grand champion bringing some weight to the gathering of the dead.
Around 1,200 people turned out in full make-up to roam the streets in an event organized by a television channel and a local beauty college.
At the front was Akebono, sumo’s first ever foreign yokozuna – grand champion – whose towering frame dominated the sport in the 1990s.
Behind him stood enough sickly and wounded undead to give unsuspecting shoppers lasting nightmares.
Yamano Beauty College president Jane Aiko Yamano said the event was a great idea.
“My daughter said ‘but Mommy, you have a beauty school, you’re supposed to be pretty’ and now we’re getting dressed up like zombies and scary creatures of the night so that was challenging for me but for our students, I think it was just so perfect,” she said.
Tourists invited to live ike Ghandi in his ashram
Tourists searching for peace and simplicity can for the first time check into Mahatma Gandhi’s most famous ashram in India. But don’t expect modern comforts. And chastity is required.
For 1,000 rupees ($US16) a night, tourists can sample the lifestyle of India’s famously ascetic independence leader by staying at the first ashram he established, set up in 1915 in the western state of Gujarat.
Guests at the ashram, which opened to holidaymakers earlier this month, can try their hand at spinning, visit local communities, pray and meditate, all while wearing khadi – hand-woven cloth – during their stay.
But they must adhere to Gandhi’s 11 vows that he promoted including non-violence, no possessions, use of local goods, working for daily food, self restraint, including chastity, and control of diet.
And they are also encouraged to follow Gandhi’s austere daily routine, such as waking at 5 am and undertaking domestic chores.
“The objective of this program is to allow people to experience a sustainable lifestyle, to enjoy the simplicity of Gandhi, experience the virtue of Mahatma,” said Nischalavalamb Barot, a travel agent who helped develop the program called “Live Gandhi for a While.”
“This might change perceptions of tourists towards life, society and our natural resources. This might also help tourists find peace and satisfaction within,” Barot told Agence France-Presse.
Bansky Nazi picture auctioned off to New York charity
British artist Banksy has donated a “vandalized” oil painting to a New York thrift shop to raise hundreds of thousands of dollars for HIV patients and the homeless.
It is the latest stunt in the graffiti superstar’s month-long pop up exhibition on the streets of the US city which has fascinated hipsters and enraged critics.
Bought from and donated back to the same charity shop run by Housing Works, which provides life-saving services to the homeless and HIV/AIDS patients, an online bidding war is now underway for the painting.
Bids opened at $74,000 and have already risen to at least $220,200 with some expecting them to reach $1 million on the website www.biddingforgood.com by the time the auction closes.
Art work by the England-based graffiti maestro, who has never been formally identified, can sell for hundreds of thousands of dollars in upmarket galleries.
Rebecca Edmondson, public relations director at Housing Works, described the gift as “pretty exciting” and told AFP all money raised would go to its charity programs.
“We’re constantly, constantly looking for funding… so anytime we get something so unexpected, so generous that can provide such immediate help… that’s always just a real gift to all of us and to our clients,” she said.
The gift was dropped off anonymously at the Housing Works store in chic Gramercy Park where two months earlier a customer had bought the original canvas for $50.
To the landscape of a lake, snow-capped mountains and autumnal trees, Banksy painted in a bench and a Nazi soldier sitting with his back to the viewer.
He renamed the picture “The banality of the banality of evil” and under the signature of the original artist, “K. Sager,” he added his own “Banksy” flourish.
Parenting classes take France by storm
Classes teaching how to be better moms and dads, which have long flourished in English-speaking countries, have begun taking France by storm.
French parents today want a new kind of authority that does not crush children but does not allow them to run wild either, said Beatrice Sabate, a clinical psychologist who adapted a method devised in California called “positive discipline” for France.
“There are rules, but the child helps to define them,” said Sabate.
“Children are growing up in a different world than that of their parents,” when teachers were more severe and adults always knew best.
Today “parents are looking to have relationships that are based more on cooperation,” she said.
In one class, nine mothers and three fathers meet in central Paris one evening a week, sitting in a circle with two trainers to learn “positive discipline,” which combines firmness with an emphasis on the positive.
Slogans on the wall intone: “Encouragement is to the child as water is to a plant” and “Mistakes are excellent learning opportunities.”
This session is devoted to “inappropriate behavior,” with participants role-playing some of the most common sources of conflict: homework, computer and television time, going out.
“Ok, it’s your turn. You’re a child again,” says trainer Alix de Salaberry, to a participant playing the role of a teenage girl who wants to sleep over with a friend.
The “mother” says no and the “daughter” stamps her foot, shouting, “I hate you!”
“What do you feel?” De Salaberry asks the “mother” who replies, “She scares me. I’m not going to manage.”
The role play starts again, but this time the “mother” has to give an “appropriate response”.
So she offers: “I’m really glad you have such good friends. Like you, when my mother said no, I was very disappointed. But it’s not possible tonight, your grandmother is coming for dinner. Let’s find another date.”
At the end of the session, the students are given homework: “Role-play with your child. You be the child and your child can be the adult.”
“Positive discipline” workshops, originally developed by American family counsellor and educator Jane Nelsen, are growing not just in the capital but elsewhere in France.
Demand has been so great that Sabate no longer teaches classes herself, but devotes her time to training parenting teachers, including students from Belgium, Switzerland and Morocco who train in France then return home to teach “positive discipline” in their own countries. – with reports from Agence France-Presse/Rappler.com
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