September 19, 2019 at 4:47 pm (destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Relatives, Traveling)
Tags: Bacolod, happiness, memories, restaurants, The Philippines
Thanks to a Photo a Week Challenge prompt: SOMETHING NEW.
And self did do something new: She went home.
Not only did she go home, she went one better and returned to her Dear Departed Dad’s home island of Negros Occidental.
She stayed with cousins.
7th Floor, Belles Artes Condominiums, Galo cor. GV & Sons Street
She saw, for the first time in six years, the house where her Dear Departed Dad grew up, the Daku Balay:
Daku Balay, 50 Burgos Street, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, The Philippines
In Bacolod, she had the most delicious pizza! Here, smoked bangus pizza and basil pizza:
Café Oscar, Galo Street (Ground Floor, Belles Artes Building), Bacolod City
Great trip.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 19, 2019 at 4:40 am (Artists and Writers, Dearest Mum, Family, Filipino Writers, Great First Lines, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Relatives, short story collections, Traveling, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: humor, Manila, The Philippines
(Read all the way to the end; this post has many digressions)
Re-reading a fantastic short story, “Hothouse,” by Gilda Cordero-Fernando, a mimeographed copy of which self just pulled from a closet overflowing with old files.
Thank you, Jennie and Marie Kondo for inspiring self to organize! She had to drop everything and leave for Manila for two weeks, supposedly Dearest Mum Read the rest of this entry »
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September 18, 2019 at 7:10 pm (destinations, Family, Holidays, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Ateneo, Don Salvador Benedicto, nostalgia, The Philippines
Week 178 of the Tuesday Photo Challenge is FUZZY.
So glad there is a Photo Challenge that lets self post pictures she would never otherwise have posted!
Her Dear Departed Dad comes from the province of Negros Occidental in the Philippines. She recently had the chance to return. These pictures are from that trip.
Reading in the Gamboa House in Silay, Negros Occidental, The Philippines
Lissa Ylanan Moran, Best Friend Since College Days at the Ateneo, flew to Bacolod and Self took her to a resort in the town of Don Salvador Benedicto.
View of Canlaon Volcano from Manggapuri Villas, Don Salvador Benedicto
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 7, 2019 at 11:32 pm (Conversations, Dearest Mum, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Relatives, Sundays)
Tags: Manila, memories, The Philippines
This week’s Photo-A-Week Challenge asks us to “share photos showing a tradition you have.”
Self is visiting Dearest Mum in Manila. Been a whirl of activities, since there are many people to see.
She had a small get-together with her college classmates, and lunch with one of Dearest Mum’s oldest friends, Tita Ateta Gana.
College Reunion: Fely J’s, Greenbelt 5, Makati
Tita Ateta Gana and her daughter Tessa treated self and Dearest Mum to lunch at Romulo’s
Finally, self’s headboard back home in Redwood City: made by a metallurgical engineer, to self’s own design: an atis tree!
Self’s headboard in Redwood City, CA: Made in the Philippines
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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September 5, 2019 at 2:46 am (Books, destinations, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, Women Writers)
Tags: California, novel, reading lists
Hidden Valley Loop Trail, Joshua Tree National Park:
- In the distance were giant boulders and, everywhere on the plain beneath them, Joshua trees. I had always loved the oaks and pines and redwoods of the Bay Area, with their long and leafy limbs, but I had missed the desert trees: stout, prickly, wild-armed, and yet utterly fragile.
— The Other Americans, by Laila Lalami, p. 137
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September 4, 2019 at 1:19 am (Books, Personal Bookshelf, Places, Recommended, The Guardian, Women Writers)
Tags: novel, reading lists
Began reading The Other Americans two weeks ago. With all the distractions of the past month, self is only at p. 132! But she is enjoying this novel hugely. She especially likes the main narrator, an Oakland-based female jazz composer. (Oakland is definitely the place!)
The point of view in this section is Efraîn, an accidental witness to the death of one of the main characters, “the old man” referred to in the passage below.
After the old man robbed me of the pleasure of watching my daughter’s performance in the school play, he invaded my dreams. Nearly every night, I returned to that little stretch of the 62, my hands covered with grease, and watched his body roll off the hood of the car and land on the pavement. I thought of him now as Guerrero. Merciless in his campaign against me. Early in the morning, when I shaved by the yellow light above the bathroom mirror, he bumped against me and made me cut myself. In the van, while Enrique read the map, Guerrero was in the back, sabotaging our equipment by poking a hole in the carpet-cleaning hose or raiding our food supplies. I couldn’t find my Inca Kola when I opened my lunchbox, even though I had put it there myself. “You can have some of mine,” Enrique said, handing me his can.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 28, 2019 at 7:49 pm (Links, Lists, Places)
Tags: California, Events, festivals, Palo Alto, Redwood City, summer, weekends
Self loves whenever viveka of my guilty pleasures posts for a new photo challenge.
Yesterday she posted on Tuesday Photo Challenge’s prompt: CITY. She has pictures of Chicago, Seattle, Hong Kong, Stockholm, and several others.
Self took the picture below last Saturday, during the Palo Alto Art & Wine Festival.
Here’s a picture of Courthouse Square in self’s very own Redwood City:
Friday, Just before an evening concert, July 2019
Self gave a reading at Philippine Expressions in Long Beach in March 2018. The naval yards are huge. This is the marina at sunset. I have never seen so many boats gathered in one place, virtually stretching to the horizon. My feeling was awe:
Long Beach, California, March 2018
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August 16, 2019 at 2:26 am (destinations, Links, Places, Plays, Traveling)
Tags: Cal Shakes, Cee Neuner, Cornwall, England, Fowey, Mendocino, summer
Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge is TREES.
This is self’s second photo challenge post today. She spent a long time poring over her photo archive and came up, finally, with these three:
Early Morning Fog, Mendocino, April 2018
Cal Shakes Grove, Orinda, CA, September 2018
Monterey Pines in Fowey, Cornwall, England, May 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 15, 2019 at 8:53 pm (Family, Links, Places)
Tags: inspiration, memories, photography, Redwood City, summer
Look at the beautiful set of lock photographs in viveka’s my guilty pleasures, one of the blogs self loves! There’s a little history behind each lock.
She was posting for the tuesday photo challenge.
And here are self’s pictures of the locks in her wee cottage/house, 1250 square feet, good enough for a couple, built in the best, the absolute best neighborhood in Redwood City, CA, in 1939.
The original owner was Jack de Benedetti, who died at 90-something, in this house.
A developer bought it for a song, worked on it, then sold it to us in 1991.
He added a half-bath, but kept all the original bones of the house, and that included lots and lots of windows.
The locks on the windows are much in need of refurbishing, but heck the windows won’t even open. The wood has warped. In a way, that’s good, because the house is very safe (no burglars will be creeping in through the windows)
Without further ado: window locks on an old old house
Lock # 1
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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August 15, 2019 at 12:55 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Memoirs, Places, Recommended)
Tags: English writers, environment, essays, London, natural history, nonfiction, reading lists, Redwood City, summer
from p. 118 of Landfill: Gull Watching and Trash Picking in the Anthropocene, “Needs”:
I’d read my Henry Mayhew on London’s waste workers and had been out at night on the Thames with the body-salvagers of Dickens’s Our Mutual Friend. I stayed away from Milton. My telescope wouldn’t have been welcomed by anyone and I don’t think I could have used it. The hunt for the body resumed in the late autumn of 2017 in a part of the landfill adjacent to the area already examined. After seven fruitless weeks the search was called off.
Redwood City, July 2019
Love Dee’s book. So much.
Stay tuned.
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