Spanish words - 10 more

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 Spanish - English

cerazon - heart (both words have the letter ea, and the letter r, and are about caring)

desierto - desert

fotos - photos

guerra - war (as in guerilla warfare)

inviernos - winter (The Spanish and English contain the letter in and er. Inviernos con nieve winters with snow, both |Spanish words contain n ie)

la naturaleza - nature

nieve - snow (both words contain the letter n and v or w)

rey - king (letters r and y in rey and royal, one who reigns)

reina - queen

vida - life (as in the English words vitality, revive)

Now try to remember English-Spanish

English - Spanish

desert -

heart -

king -

life -

nature -

photos -

queen -

snow -

war -

winter -

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Is a lab-grown diamond really cubic zircona? If not, what's the difference?

I admit it. When I first attended the Jewellery and Gem show in Singapore in September 2022 and saw the words Lab Grown Diamond, I thought it was a fancy marketing ploy to make cubic zircona sound more attractive. If I had had the courage to ask the stand staff, I would have found out immediately that there is a huge difference. A lab grown diamond, like a mined diamond, has a carbon base. A cubic zircona does not. 

Cost-wise, as the Lab Grown Diamond suppliers say in their leaflets and banners, they are cheaper than mined diamonds.

The simplest thing to do is to approach sellers of all three products, and ask each person how their  product differs from the others. Ask about price, use, advantage and disadvantage. In short, who would be buying each product and why?

Are you buying a loose diamond, or several, or a finished product, as an investment, to look glamorous, to outshine others, to feel good about yourself and the product? Or seeking a bargain, to save money? Or as a spare, or a copy or cheap version for travelling, so as not to risk losing an expensive item? Or for industrial use?

Lab grown small diamonds are used in industry.

Sellers have various selling points to make and buyers have various considerations. The first is often price. 

Then colour. Then striations (streaks) and visible polishing marks. Also the sharp or rounded edges of cuts. 

Ethics

At first sight, as a buyer of pretty and expensive jewellery, whether a grand royal tiara or a small engagement ring, you might think that real diamonds are real mined diamonds and anything else is a fake.

However, on the other hand, one could talk to the buyer about affordability, durability, using diamonds instead of steel in medicine, in surgery.

Safety

Then, about saving workers from unsafe mining or from diamonds being used to fund wars, so that one product is more ethical than another. 

Learning More

We have a lot to ask about when buying, to answer succinctly when selling, and to learn before the next trade show. For more information see

Useful Websites

https://www.adadiamonds.com/synthetic-diamond-facts-and-misconceptions/is-a-lab-diamond-the-same-as-cz

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Synthetic_diamond

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubic_zirconia

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Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi, women in war, peace and life expectancy

Vietnamese Women's Museum, Hanoi. Exterior front. Photo by Angela Lansbury.

The outside is colourful and inside on the ground floor is small and welcoming with a giant gold statue and museum shops on both sides. Buy your ticket and go upstairs. This museum is on several floors. One level is about marriage and rather like the Ethnology museum. Patrilinial and Matrilinial societies, colourful costumes, cross-stitch embroidery. I liked the opening quotation about a married couple being inseparable, like chopsticks.

Women and Wartime

A grim section deals with women in the army. Also those who lost their lives as spies in the Vietnam war. 

Upstairs is one room devoted to the mothers given awards and financial help if they lost a husband, more than two sons, or a husband and son, in the war. A row of sad faces. Some aged eighty, ninety or over 100. One lost nine sons. You can see the sadness etched on their faces.

An enterprising woman artist rode around the country, on a motorbike, sketching them. She spent about an hour per sketch. 

On a brighter note, the fashion gallery shows traditional dresses. Some recent versions of the ankle-length elegant traditional designs would look great at a wedding or dinner dance or ball.

Working Women

Woman are shown in various professions and entrepreneurial enterprises. One woman who was orphaned as a child, set up a home for orphaned children. Others founded craft industries, teaching rural and poor women how to create beautiful or useful objects and earn a living. I recall a mother and daughter who were pioneer doctors. 

We did not rent the audio guide. For the time we had to spend, the trilingual captions in Vietnamese, French and English were sufficient. The human guides going around were very well spoken and informative. I stopped one to ask a quick question - what is the life expectancy in Vietnam. He told me 69 for men, 72 for women.That is about ten years less than in the UK. You can check tables of life expectancy around the world on line and in Wikipedia. 

The shop sells good jewellery, bangles and more.

As you leave, on the right there's an art gallery about domestic violence and the refuges. Very striking images, a bed, a living room with a sofa, a broken mirror.

Travel information
Restaurant
www.hungryhanoi.com

For hotels
booking.com
Comparison site:
https://www.clicktripz.com/rates/search/index
For airlines
travelok.com
vietJetair.com (Comprehensive list of budget airlines in Wikivoyage.)
For transport
https://www.grab.com/vn/en/

Language
Duolingo.com 
(Remember to click on the sound symbol to hear how words are pronounced.) 

Author

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer. Please share links to your favourite posts.

Minsk, Marx, Chagall and Belorussia

When I think of Minsk and Belorussia I see Chagall's visions of idyllic flowers and calm cows and bedecked brides and villagers arm in arm, dancing through their simple happy lives in the nearby villages. And the cities, with their grand gold  domes and stately buildings, magical centres of learning and opera, and the humour. The stoic yokels and cultured writers.

That is the romantic view. But what can you see today? A street called Karla Marksa. Who would that be? But let's start with the museums.

Here's my wish list. M i n s k e r s (predictive text wants to replace with ministers) and tourists can enjoy about twenty museums including those in the list below:

Belarusian State Museum of the Great Patriotic War. (Alphabetically)
Museum of Ancient Belarusian Culture.
Museum of the History of Minsk.
Museum of Modern Fine Arts.
Museum of Nature and Ecology.
National Academic Bolshoi Theatre of Opera and Ballet. (Bolshoi means big.)
National Art Museum.
National History Museum.
State Museum of Theatre and Music.

Yakub Kolas Memorial Literature Museum.

Street Names
Regarding finding your way about and language, they seem to add the letter a onto everything which makes life easy. For example, The Museum of Nature (etc) is in Karla Marksa street. Ah. Karl Marx.
The State Literary Museum of Maxim Bogdanovich is in Maxima Bogdanovicha street. The State Literary Museum of Yanka Kuala is in Yanki Kupaly street.

Chagall
The Marc Chagall Museum is in Vitebsk. If you can't make it to Belorussia, or want to do a grand tour of Chagall sites in more than one country, there's a Chagall Museum in France. (See TripAdvisor.)

Vitebsk is also associated with the classic haunting tale of The Dybbuk, written by Ansky.

• S. Ansky (1863–1920), playwright, The Dybbuk
• Marc Chagall (1887–1985), artist

www.artmuseum.by
www.minsktourism.by
www.warmuseum.by
www.yakubkolus.by

Angela Lansbury, travel writer and photographer, author and speaker.

Picasso Museum Opens In Paris

"Good artists copy. Great artists steal." So said Picasso. (For more quotations see Brainyquote.com)

Pablo Picasso was born 25 Oct 1881 and his museum in Paris has opened 25 Oct 2014 in Paris. After five years of renovations.

Picasso is famous for his blue faces with odd angled noses and for his large painting Guernica (displayed at Reina Sofia museum in Madrid, Spain), a political statement about the horrors of war. I read somewhere that he said he painted all in blue because he had run out of other paints.

Make of that what you will. You might think that I have mis-remembered. That myths grow up to account for anything. That he was joking. And the reporter had no sense of humour. That Picasso was honest. Went from rags to riches. That a true artist can make and beautify from anything. That necessity is the mother of invention. That a poor artist today can hope to one day become as famous and successful and appreciated as Picasso.

If you want to read about the importance of Picasso and his painting Les Demoiselles D'Avignon and cubism go to the site
http://www.pablopicasso.org

But Picasso painted many more pictures, extremely colourful. With beautiful swirly curly shapes. He  presented new ways of seeing faces, people and landscapes.

The Paris museum had been closed for five years for renovation so as a tourist I had forgotten it. The museum is huge. It contains sculptures, pottery, also artworks Picasso collected from other artists who were his friends.

If you can't get to Paris right away, put it on your wish list. If you are in London, England, see the Rembrandt exhibition. If you are in Spain you can visit the Picasso museum in Barcelona. Other works by Picasso can be seen in art galleries in New York and other US cities. You can get an idea of where from the pictures in Wikipedia. Somebody has done all the research for an article in the uk's Telegraph newspaper.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/destinations/europe/france/11184945/Picasso-Where-to-see-his-works-around-Europe.html


Beautiful pictures on the BBC website.
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/entertainment-arts-29758658

What of Picasso's life? His name is Spanish and he was born in Spain, in Malaga, but spent most of his adult life in France and died over dinner and was buried in France.

Wikipedia has a fascinating account of Picasso and WWI and WWII and the Spanish Civil war and his relationship with other artists such as Dali and communism.

Picasso's Death Over Dinner in France
Picasso lived to the age of 91 and died over dinner. (8 April 1973). His wife was devastated and later shot herself. On a happier note, better to die over dinner with family and friends than a lot of other ways, in fact most other ways. And better to die, world famous, at 91 (still able to get around at home) than unknown and all the other years up to 91.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pablo_Picasso

Les Demoiselles D'Avignon

USA

From Wikipedia 

(See full details in Wikipedia.)

Angela Lansbury, author. See Lulu.com for books including:

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