August 12, 2017 at 2:13 am (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: California, desserts, discoveries, indulgences, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is ELEMENTAL. Erica V. on The Daily Post describes her response to experiencing the American Southwest for the first time: “I was both confused and in awe of this extreme landscape.”
Last month, self was in Pasadena. Her first visit south in three years. She Airbnb’ed in the Pasadena hills. The house was at the very top of a winding driveway. Behind it was nothing but steep, scrubby hillside.
Just inside the front door was a rock, a very heavy rock. Self should have asked her host about it, but she never did:
There was a chameleon that kept trying to get into self’s unit. It was a beautiful thing. Every time self left the apartment, the chameleon would be clinging to the screen door. One day, self decided to photograph it:
Finally, a slice of green matcha tiramisu from Urth Caffé, in downtown Pasadena, a block from legendary bookstore Vroman’s. It looks for all the world like moss!
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
6 Comments
August 5, 2017 at 3:16 pm (Places, Traveling, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: art, inspiration, London, museum, restaurants, short story, work-in-progress, writing process
Setting, The Wallace Collection, London:
Fragonard’s “The Swing” Originally, the lady was to have been pushed by a bishop. But this was evidently too much. So, instead, we have an elderly gent sitting on a stone balustrade, in the shadows behind.
- She walked past the Flemish Masters in the East Drawing Room, strode past Titian’s Madonna and David Teniers the Younger’s the Deliverance of Saint Peter.
Later, self took her notes and added this sentence (while having lunch at Chez Nous, 22 Hanway Street):
- She was more of a café person than her friend Maxine, who’d set the bar pretty high, whose idea of dinner was to go to the Ottolenghi in Islington, who had impressed her parents into gifting her a trip to London (she couldn’t be bothered to learn French, so London it was) by getting an A on a paper about the Thirty Years War (“1618 to 1648,” she told her mother, Cici, who blushed with maternal pride).
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
1 Comment
August 2, 2017 at 5:29 pm (Artists and Writers, Family, Food and Drink, Links, postaday, Surprises)
Tags: art, California, discoveries, exhibits, memories, museum, nostalgia, restaurants, San Francisco
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge (posted every Wednesday) is TEXTURE.
Photos have “a tactile element, too,” Ben Huberman says. As an example, he provides his shot of “tangles of seaweed . . . across the wet sand at low tide.”
Here are three of self’s own examples of texture:
- The lace on a ladies’ hat, circa 1900 – 1925, in the exhibit on Impressionism and the Milliner’s Trade at the CA Palace of the Legion of Honor:
Maker identified only as “French, Madame Georgette”
- Look at the wonderful texture in this salad arrangement!
Le Pain Quotidien, Claremont, CA: July 2017
- Discovered in the exploration of son’s room: a frog that squirts water. Self loves that the frog’s skin is so pebbled. It has a degree of realism you don’t often find in other toys.
Plastic Frog! Found in Son’s Room in Redwood City, CA: This used to be one of his favorite toys.
Leave a Comment
July 31, 2017 at 3:22 pm (Artists and Writers, Food and Drink, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: Chinese food, coffee, London, memories, Mondays, museum, restaurants, San Francisco
Self scoured her archives to find illustrations for this week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge: SATISFACTION.
She’s feeling nostalgic.
Capuccino Break, British Imperial War Museum, May 2017
Chinatown Love, October 2016
Eating with Emily at Fabulous Chéz Nous, 22 Hanway Place, London. We waited for this meal: it was a promise we made to each other when self left London last July. Emily’s daughter directed the Wonder Woman movie.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
2 Comments
July 18, 2017 at 6:06 am (Artists and Writers, Books, Dearest Mum, Family, Food and Drink, Lists, Personal Bookshelf, Pianos, Places, postaday, Relatives, Surprises)
Tags: birthday, California, Los Angeles, memories, Mondays, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, summer, Wordpress
Everything Summer 2017:
- Discovered an old stash of photographs of Dearest Mum in her younger days.
- Explored the inside of son’s closet in 2431 Hopkins Ave., Redwood City.
- Rediscovered one of self’s most treasured books.
- Had dinner with Jennie, son’s fiancée, at Himalayan Café in Old Town Pasadena.
- Found artwork by son (when he was in grade school).
- Got a Birthday present (for self) from son and Jennie: Nude Awakening (Self is so WOKE!).
- Amused by a giant stag at the end of a driveway in the Pasadena hills.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Leave a Comment
July 13, 2017 at 9:57 pm (Artists and Writers, Books, Family, Flowers, Food and Drink, Links, Lists, Niece, Personal Bookshelf, Philippine History, postaday, Relatives)
Tags: art, California, exhibits, museums, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Sacramento, San Francisco, Wordpress
What is a collage? In the words of Michelle Weber over at The Daily Post, it is “an assortment, a collection, a hodgepodge.”
Here are a couple of shots that show a collage:
- The printed dress. So fabulous. The wearer was self’s niece, Rina. We were having lunch at Boiling Crab:
Rina Villanueva, July 2017
- An assortment of reading matter: Everything from a Playbill to a book written by someone she used to know in college, Rick Manapat. The book, History of Negros, is about an island in the Philippines called Negros (The Spanish gave it the name, in the 16th century):
What Self Found in Son’s Room: July 2017
- A collection of roses on a hat at the recent exhibit “Degas, Impressionism and the Paris Millinery Trade” at the California Palace of the Legion of Honor:
Woman’s Hat, circa 1910: The artist went by the name “Madame George”
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
2 Comments
June 4, 2017 at 7:04 pm (Artists and Writers, Filipino Writers, Links, Publishers, Sundays, Women Writers, Writing)
Tags: dystopia, Events, fantasy, Literary Magazines, memories, Readings, restaurants, short story, Washington DC
Read it at Sixth Engine in Washington DC, at a group reading organized by Quarterly West in conjunction with AWP February 2017. The editors took a chance with this one, it’s all fractured syntax and stars a professor named Fire Lizard. Self is writing a sequel right now.
What a blast:
Quarterly West reading at Sixth Engine, Washington DC, February 2017
Discussion of the First Corollary: What is average is perfect. Thoughts dark as dark. Big arguing with her. But but but. Her winking at me behind his back. Me thinking: sunlight and glass.
Leave a Comment
May 14, 2017 at 3:01 pm (Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Surprises, Traveling)
Tags: art, dance, discoveries, England, London, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, Saturday, Wordpress
The Daily Post Photo Challenge this week is REFLECTING.
Can self just say she arrived sick and barely able to keep upright. But damn — the Royal Opera House!
Seeing it for the first time was — awesome.
Plus, the adjoining bar/restaurant: All that glass! All that light!
Perfect for this week’s Photo Challenge!
Before the start of the ballet, self dashed to the bar to order some hot tea. She wound up sharing a table with an American woman, a ballet aficionado who has season tickets to the New York City Ballet and watches “thirty ballets a year. At least.” Self confided that she wasn’t feeling well and might leave during one of the intermissions.
And the womans said: The pas de deaux in Act III are spectacular. Don’t leave.
The Bar at the Royal Opera House, 8 p.m. Saturday, May 13
And then, the interior of the Royal Opera House itself:
Waiting for the beginning of Kenneth Macmillan’s beautiful, stunning ballet, “Mayerling”: Saturday, May 13
More of the Royal Opera House Bar. At intermission, self went up an escalator to the “Bridge” over the bar, from which she got a jaw-dropping view of Covent Garden, at 8 p.m.:
Center Top, the “Bridge”: A side escalator takes you to it, and from there you can see all of Covent Garden. SPECTACULAR. Especially at sunset.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
3 Comments
May 10, 2017 at 8:01 pm (Places, postaday, Traveling)
Tags: California, Dublin, Ireland, memories, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, San Francisco, Wordpress
This week’s Daily Post Photo Challenge is REFLECTING.
As Nanci Thanki puts it, find “reflections and changes in perspective . . . from water and glass to metallic surfaces . . . “
Here’s how self interpreted that theme today:
- Dublin’s St. Stephen’s Green is a place where self does deep reflecting. She was there Monday evening:
St. Stephen’s Green, 8 May 2017
- The light reflecting off self’s lens: she loves this shot. Even though it’s not a “good” shot, it really reflects a sense of “the moment”:
More St. Stephen’s Green!
- Moody night shot of San Francisco. There’s a pedestrian reflected in the glass of the cab window (Self’s best night shots are taken from the back of a cab, lol). The cab was just passing In Situ, the restaurant on MOMA’s ground floor:
San Francisco: 3rd Street by Night
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Leave a Comment
March 22, 2017 at 9:06 am (destinations, Food and Drink, Links, Places, postaday, Recommended, Traveling)
Tags: California, England, Golden Gate Park, London, memories, museums, postaday, postaweek, restaurants, San Francisco, Wordpress
If you’re physically on top of a thing or place — a mountain, a skyscraper — what type of scene do you want to share in your frame?
— Cheri Lucas Rowlands, The Daily Post
For this week’s photo challenge, ATOP, self pulled from her Archive:
Fall 2016: Main Lobby of the de Young Museum in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park: View from the 2nd Floor
Summer 2016: The Tate Modern is housed in what used to be the Battersea Power Station. In keeping with its industrial spirit, everything in the Tate Modern has that utilitarian feel. Even the restaurant, on the 6th floor. It’s called The Kitchen. The Harry Potter Bridge (Formal Name: the Millenium Bridge) is to the right.
Spring 2015: The Portrait Café, British National Portrait Gallery
Note to dear blog readers: The Portrait Cafe hosts an afternoon tea, which is booked weeks in advance. The day self showed up, early March, she could not get a seat. So if you would like to see this fabulous view while having tea, book in advance.
Stay tuned, dear blog readers. Stay tuned.
Leave a Comment
« Older entries
