January 2, 2020 at 5:58 pm (Artists and Writers, destinations, Family, Food and Drink, fpj-photo-challenge, Holidays, Links, Lists, Niece, Places, postaday, Recommended, Relatives, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: art, Bacolod, Christmas, Cork, Cornwall, Events, Filipino food, Fowey, Ireland, London, memories, Menlo Park, Oxford, Prague, Redwood City, restaurants, The Philippines, Tyrone Guthrie Centre
Great theme!
In 2019, self traveled the world. Her life triangulated between home in Redwood City, California, to England and Ireland, to the Philippines. Side trip to Prague with her niece, Irene!
Here goes, all the images that mattered most to self in 2019, arranged from most recent — December 2019 — to the earliest, January 2019: Starting with her home in Redwood City in early December; to London’s Blackfriar station; to Manggapuri Villa in Don Salvador Benedicto, Negros Occidental, Philippines; to Prague; to Oxford University’s Exam School for Alice Oswald’s first reading as Oxford’s first woman Poet in Residence; to Kepler’s Books in Menlo Park; to the Main House of the Tyrone Guthrie Centre in Annaghmakerrig; to the fire pit in Manggapuri Villas; to the Daku Balay in Bacolod City, the Philippines; to self’s bedroom; to the Blue Room in Café Paradiso in Cork, Ireland; to Fowey in Cornwall; to Courthouse Square, Redwood City; to the cover of last winter’s issue of Prairie Schooner, which included her story Things She Can Take
Prague, May 2019
Waiting for the Alice Oswald lecture to begin, 13 November 2019
Tyrone Guthrie Centre at Annaghmakerrig, Republic of Ireland, last week of October
Manggapuri Villas: September 2019
Daku Balay, 50 Burgos Street, Bacolod City, Negros Occidental, The Philippines
Self’s headboard in Redwood City, CA: Made in the Philippines
Paradiso, Cork, May 2019: She bought the Converse sneakers in London a few weeks earlier. Now they are scuffed and smudged, everywhere.
Stay tuned.
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December 24, 2019 at 5:51 pm (Food and Drink, Holidays, Links, Niece, Places, postaday, Recommended, Relatives, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, Christmas, England, London, Prague, restaurants
Excited that it’s ALMOST CHRISTMAS!
Excited, too, to be able to participate in Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge this weeK: ONE BASIC COLOR.
Here are some pictures self took earlier this year, in May. She was in London and then joined her niece Irene in Prague, her first-time ever in that wondrous city:
- The Church of St. Martin-in-the-Field, just off Trafalgar Square, London
- The London Eye
- St. Martin restaurant in the Mala Strada district of Prague, just a few doors away from the American Embassy
Self just realized, looking at her shots and comparing to Cee Neuner’s, that self’s are extremely monochromatic. Ah, well!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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November 3, 2019 at 10:30 am (Fan Fiction, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Sundays, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: California, Everlark, Manila, Menlo Park, photography, restaurants, The Philippines
P. A. Moed quotes Kim Hunter:
. . . emotions come through much stronger in black and white. Color is distracting in a way, it pleases the eye but it doesn’t necessarily reach the heart.
Domestic Terminal, Ninoy Aquino International Airport, Manila: September 2019
Sitting at an Outdoor Table, Café Borrone, Menlo Park, California: August 2019
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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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 8, 2019 at 10:22 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Food and Drink, Links, Traveling)
Tags: fast food, Manila, Mondays, Philippines, Redwood City, restaurants
Lens-Artists Photo Challenge # 62: SILHOUETTES
Silhouettes “are a marvelous technique to add to your photographic repertoire because they can add drama, mystery, emotion, and atmosphere to your photos.”
Can they ever. Self’s favorite types of shots are silhouettes.
A Little Past Midnight, Jollibee Drive-Thru, Manila
Reading Nook, Self’s House in Redwood City, California. The lamp is one of her favorites: She bought it several years ago from Harvest, a furniture store in Menlo Park.
Menchit Ongpin, wearing jewelry of her own design, at a dinner with former college classmates, Fely J’s, Greenbelt 5, Makati. Self asked Menchit to turn her head so she could capture her in silhouette.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
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July 21, 2019 at 5:36 am (Books, destinations, Filipino Writers, Food and Drink, Memoirs, Places, Recommended, Weather, Women Writers)
Tags: Asian American Writers, English writers, Kepler's, memoir, Menlo Park, novel, restaurants, Saturday, summer
Bookstores are fine places.
Kepler’s Books, Menlo Park: That woman is very wisely dressed.
Staff Picks, Kepler’s Books
More Staff Picks! Leanne Shapton’s mother is Pinay.
The order line at Café Borrone, around 10 a.m.
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June 4, 2019 at 6:48 pm (Family, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, humor, London, Miami University Press, restaurants
Self just got back from a trip to Ireland and England.
The last week of May, she met up with Amy Toland of Miami University Press and took her to her favorite London restaurant, Chez Nous, 22 Hanway Street. Self has been coming here since 2014, Julie is an amazing cook!
Julie, chef of Chez Nous on Hanway Street in London; Amy Toland, Managing Editor of Miami University Press
This cheeky picture of Harry and Meghan was hanging on the wall of a wee cheesecake shop on Drury Street:
Son was in London for work. Self spent time with her daughter-in-law, Jennie. Here’s Jennie in a London cab:
Love the prompt from Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge!
Stay tuned.
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May 19, 2019 at 12:31 pm (Books, Conversations, Family, Food and Drink, Personal Bookshelf, Places, plans, Recommended, Sundays, Surprises, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: Catherine Morland, favorites, happiness, Henry Tilney, humor, Jane Austen, London, novel, reading lists, restaurants
Self was supposed to go on an Old Parish Maps walk of Clerkenwall but she bailed because she wanted to take things slow today, after that loooong train journey from Cornwall yesterday.
She had an early breakfast, then set off walking. Soon, she found herself in front of the British Library, but instead of going in, she went next door, to St. Pancras/Renaissance Hotel, and inquired at reception if they could ring her son’s room.
He did not pick up, probably because he’s just arrived in London. She told the receptionist to let son know that his mother had stopped by. Then, she twirled and waltzed out without waiting for a response from the receptionist.
She wandered on Leigh Street and found North Sea Fish was closed. She walked down Marchmont Street and stopped at a café for very yummy hot banana bread with yogurt. Topped that off with red bean gelato. Picked up a couple of flyers from LSE (London School of Economics, Dear Departed Sister’s alma mater), returned to Russell Square (one side of which was sprouting police cars, she wonders why) and resumed reading Northanger Abbey.
UGH, the horrible stress inflicted on poor Catherine Morland (so far, self’s favorite Jane Austen heroine — yes, a better heroine than Emma or Anne Elliot) by manipulative Thorpe sibs Isabella and John! In the latest situation, they have conveniently dismissed Miss Eleanor Tilney (sister of that elusive love interest Henry Tilney) without checking first with Catherine whether she intended to keep her appointment with Eleanor. Catherine, on learning of the Thorpes’s horrible presumptuousness, goes running full tilt after Eleanor (and why should she not? Henry Tilney is quite a fetching man! Self too would go running if someone told her that Timothy Olyphant or Nikolaj Coster-Waldau were just around the corner!).
p. 111:
Thorpe would have darted after her, but Morland withheld him. “Let her go, let her go, if she will go.”
“She is as obstinate as — “
Thorpe never finished the simile, for it could hardly have been a proper one.
lol
Morland refers to Catherine’s older brother, James. And a wonderful older brother he is, too. He’s in love with Isabella Thorpe, who’s a ninny. If not for that, he would be self’s third-favorite Jane Austen suitor, after Mr. Knightley and Henry Tilney. He most certainly is self’s favorite Jane Austen brother.
Stay tuned.
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April 23, 2019 at 12:26 pm (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, Traveling)
Tags: Cee Neuner, favorites, London, restaurants
It’s been a few weeks, at least, since self was able to join Cee’s Fun Foto Challenge.
Today, self is in London. She walked around her Bloomsbury neighborhood and took pictures, all with an eye to the current Fun Foto Challenge, SIGNS. Here are a few:
Right outside the British Museum, which self visited yesterday.
Directly across the street from the British Museum: This bubble tea place is always full.
An Alley Off Bury Place
Stay tuned.
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April 17, 2019 at 12:42 am (Books, Food and Drink, Places, Recommended, Traveling, Women Writers)
Tags: 9/11, history, Iraq, London, memories, news, novel, reading lists, restaurants
Asymmetry, p. 196:
One afternoon we were sitting in Bloomsbury Square, keeping half an eye on our charges, when Lachlan pointed toward the iron railings on the far side of the park and said that the original ones had been dismantled and melted down for ammunition during the Second World War. These new ones were shorter, and unlocked all day; square’s been open to the public ever since. I could not pass Bloomsbury Square after that without wondering where the old iron had ended up. On which fronts. In whose bodies. It was around this time that the avowal to do away with Saddam’s weapons of mass destruction was accelerating toward its first anti-climax. Blair had declared it time to repay America for its help sixty years earlier and pledged Britain’s commitment to sniffing out all remaining stockpiles of genocidal intent. Forty-eight hours later, Clinton announced that Iraq intended to cooperate; a month after that, UNSCOM reported that in fact Iraq was not cooperating, and lo, the British-American bombing began. I watched the Desert Fox airstrikes with Alastair, sitting in our usual spot in The Lamb, whose ceiling had been strung with Christmas bunting and the bar transformed into a lukewarm buffet of mince pies and a faux cauldron of brandy-spiked mulled wine.
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