A friendly webmaster of a Fantasy e-magazine I've had dealings with asked me if I wanted to attend the Divergent II - Insurgent - premiere tonight at the Sony Center in Berlin. The two main parts' actors and the director would appear on the "red carpet".

The latter turned out to be a number of dark-grey crumbly-plastic mats fenced off on almost all sides. Jealously guarded by men & 2 women in darkish anoraks. It was pretty cold.

A good thousand young girls were pressed against the fences on either side - some bore placards like "we are not genetically damaged".

After many premiere ticket holders passed by - some walking works of art, others ordinary/grinning/gloating - a limousine rolled up. The stars came out. Very late. By now my bones were touching "frozen" (this time no metaphorical adjective).

Lots of screeching by the fans. Endless babbling by a Pro-7 moderator, camera-man & cable holders in tow. Shailene - and "Theeooo!" - on the big screen in the middle distance, scrabbling signatures as-fast-as-they-can on anything papery held toward them.

Then holding each other's waist on the "stage" - a low platform with a movie poster behind them, showing them in black, glass shards flying, big guns in their hands. The lady star has dropped her warming jacket & glows yellow-white in a totally inappropriate double-slit long-sleeved gown. Inappropriate not due to its sexiness, but due to the much-too-cold late winter chill.

He is gracious, smiles. She even more so, just gliding through this brainlessly bright & loud rigidly-orchestrated ritual. That has nothing to do with the cinema-watching experience of that thing, the film, which is being "celebrated" here.

I'm not allowed to photograph, but slip in a wobbly snap or two. Of course both of them come no nearer than 5 metres before they veer off, one after the other. A quick signing splurge opposite for the young adult female fans who have been waiting & yearning for longer than icy me. Then whoosh - into the yawning cinema entrance. And gone.

Those fans were the best reason to try this weird wake out tonight. Dedicated. Determined. Divergent.

Pan focus across a cold ocean, a snow-blown continent away: Our foreign minister, whose surname means something like "stone dairy farmer", happened to mention that the recent letter to Iran's government, signed by almost half the US senate, was foolish & probably destructive. Behind this opinion of his stand his boss, Mrs. Merkel - and probably about 90% or more of the German populace.

Yet one of the signees, a certain senior war veteran, who once ran for president next to a ditzy Northern brunette, took the opportunity to rail at that German guy. Implying Germans are weak - and cowardly, not standing up to Putin in Crimea & Ukraine in general. Not sending in troops & cash & armour to show those pesky Ruskies who's boss.

Well, I don't like Putin, at all. I don't usually root for our foreign minister much, either, because he's done some ruthlessly heartless things in the past concerning one or other German Guantanamo detainee.

But this time, I beg to differ, Mr. McCain! And stand solidly behind my representative to the world. US-American methods of "resolution" have hardly ever helped anyone in particular in the last 2 decades or so - in fact, they've aggravated things & people, caused countless deaths by mechanical proxy & other means, i.a. blown back hotly, mortally, into the US, at least once. It's time the currently rabid bark-up-every-tree Republicans, that you seem to be a part of, shut up & got sent back to the kennel. Stop embarrassing what little is left of US prestige in the world. Let diplomacy, with a lot of hard work & negotiation put in i.a. by that very minister & his boss, take hold.

Give non-US-"regulated" peace a chance.

The current issue of TIME touts the benefits of fat vs. a lead "fact" of the last 3-4 decades, that fat, or at least its "unsaturated" variant, is the root of all dietary evil.

As the article indicates, the truth may be a lot more complex. Reducing fat - and praising non-sugar carbo-hydrates - may have led to the rampant obesity we see in the richer nations of the world. Because all "carbs", including sugar and all forms of bread, tend to get converted into triglycerides when over-consumed - the long-term body fat many of us have too much of.

Nutrition advice is a mine field, in my personal experience. If you don't submit devotedly to one expert who becomes your god of goodness, you tend to find a plethora of mixed messages out there: Reduce fat and exercise (Susan Powter); keep fat as part of your diet and be aware that exercise will not make you weigh less (TIME). And so on.

Here's what I - a non-expert fiftysomething - go by at the moment: Keep fat intake at roughly 30% of daily consumed calories (on a given supermarket product, divide fat grams times nine by kcal, to get the percentage - this is Powter's formula); to reduce calory intake in general, look for foods around or below 200 kcal per 100g or 100ml. Avoid salty foods - make them the exception (once or twice a week, no more). Do not avoid fruits & unprocessed veggies. Keep "carbs" below 5g per 100g or 100ml; for drinks reduce this from 5g to 1g!

The last sentence is the most difficult one for me at the moment. I am in the process of giving up almost all my favourite drinks - that "healthy" carrot-orange-water-mix at 3g per 100g, for instance! Instead I'm trying to get back my taste for plain water; I find if it's cold - in summer - it's at least a little pleasant.

For the future, I need to drink more water & tea - way more than 1 litre a day. And I need to spend a lot less time in the evening alone. Spending time with people makes me eat less! So I'm going to push up my regular social evenings every week from now on. Not eating any "carbs" at all in the evening is a good thing, my young (fit) twen cousin told me some years ago.

So here I go. (Again.)

Today I got to experience first hand one of the tough people of that idiom - at a first live TED hour held in Berlin by NPR Berlin, one of my favourite radio stations. (Yes, they're broadcasting in Berlin, and can be listened to on my normal radio in my bathroom.)

It's Soraya Sarhaddi Nelson and she was one of the main reasons I went. She was basically the voice of NPR during the Arab Spring, in its Cairo instalment. I remember being amazed at the scenes she described and was obviously part of, and her matter-of-fact reporting, while at the same time not hiding she was not unmoved.

She told us today that she was meant to go on a sort of quiet assignment in Egypt after a tumultuous stint in Afghanistan, where she spent a long time reporting, managing a bureau in Kabul and surviving being shot at. She also showed us the tiny battered recorder she uses, always, about five times smaller than her mike.

Soraya isn't the best free speaker, perhaps. But that made the message of toughness and dedication all the more clear: She's someone who goes where other people don't dare go, and tells us what it's like there, and what people are saying & doing, and what's really going on. Her reporting was always from very good to gripping.

Tough people don't need to look good on TV or when standing at an open mike in a gathering of suits. Their focus is elsewhere.

Thankgod they're around when the thousandfold rest of us need them!