Tag Archives: random pictures I took with my phone because i could

Der Rambling über Berlin [sic]

I spent 7 Euro for the privilege of going inside the Berliner Dom. Money so well spent.

 

So… This happened. I walked into the hotel and there’s this giant aquarium about 25 metre tall in the middle of of the lobby.

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Aqua Dom. I found this extremely amusing. Spent $15 Euro so I could get this pic.

 

A room with a view.

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What happens when a German, an Italian, a Dutch, an Asian Indian, an American and a Chinese walk into a traditional German cafe/bar/restaurant?

Have beers, lots of beers of course. Then make fun good-natured of each other’s country and other European countries that were not represented at the table.

#ProTip: For a greater does of fun, shout into the table “How about football?!” when with a European crowd and watch them ribbing each other.

When in Berlin. Muss man Bier und Schweineschnitzel haben.

When in Berlin. Muss man Bier und Schweineschnitzel haben.

We really enjoyed the food and atmosphere at Schwarzwaldstuben, a great, casual bar/restaurant specializing in Swabian food. Rothaus beers are really good. I don’t usually enjoy beer (gasp!) but I happily had 4? 5? I had Schweineschnitzel at almost every meal on this trip and none tasted as good as the gigantic one I had the luxury of polishing off on my own my first night in Berlin at Schwarzwaldstuben.

Of course, I paid the price of having Schweineschnitzel (basically fried porkchop) and beers at every meal for three days…

 

The Berliner Dom at night.

Berliner Dom & the moon

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Flying home from the Berlin airport was a very interesting experience. I marveled at it while at the gate area…

PSA: you’re to find out which gate your flight is departing from on a huge billboard while driving into TXL, ordered by departure time. Each gate has its own custom (2 windows) and there is always a long line. This is when status makes a huge difference. Once you pass custom, you’re in a tiny room with everybody. One pretzel stand. One tiny duty free shop that looks like it’s from the 70s. That’s it. No bathroom. I’m sitting here wondering what do we/they do when someone needs to go?!?!

When boarding came, a shuttle took us on a LONG tour of the airport and deposited us in the middle of the airfield, next to the runaway. My jaw dropped.

 

Thank you for the tour of the runway Air Berlin

Self. Portrait.

self portrait

 

I walk by this building plastered with “variations” of “The Son of Man” every morning on my way to work. I always wonder whether Rene Magritte would weep about his painting being used to advertise restaurants.

Although he does not strike me as someone who is obsessed with the divide between high and low/pop arts.

Margritte painted The Son of Man as a self-portrait. This I knew. However, I never knew what he said about the painting until I wanted to tell the story of how I  took this self-portrait and became curious of the story behind Margritte’s.

At least it hides the face partly. Well, so you have the apparent face, the apple, hiding the visible but hidden, the face of the person. It’s something that happens constantly. Everything we see hides another thing, we always want to see what is hidden by what we see. There is an interest in that which is hidden and which the visible does not show us. This interest can take the form of a quite intense feeling, a sort of conflict, one might say, between the visible that is hidden and the visible that is present.

 

Son of Man

 

Brilliant.

The Instagram Diary

There you go…

Oversharing on the road.

p.s. Will continue until I get home and start the long winding road of unpacking and adjusting to time zone and crying myself to sleep because I don’t want to go back to work…

 

[instapress tag=”oversharingontheroad” piccount=”24″ size=”90″ effect=”fancybox” title=”1″ paging=”1″]

Wordless Wednesday – Cliche

Pictures taken at Houhai Lake, Beijing.

You can see the pictures I’ve been taking while in Beijing here on Instagram.

I need to go to bed

If only The Internet would let me…

It’s been tough and crazy at work. I have been trying to wrap up as many things as possible in preparation for my business trip to China next week. Word of advice: Always have a valid passport. AND make sure you renew your passport one year ahead of the expiration date. I had to get my passport renewed before I could get my visa to China. There was a lot of nail biting. What did I get for a last minute trip? How about 6 am flight on Monday, back of the cattle cabin, middle seat?

Good thing I have a blog right? All calamities are blogging fodders.

 

When I came up for air on The Twitter, The Facebook, and ok, let me throw in The G+ also [placeholder for disclaimer], I realized that maybe it would have been better if I did not spend time on the Internet at all. Ignorance is bliss right? I want to bitchslap some people so bad. Let’s start with the panty-twisted bunch over at Concerned Women for America who are now anti-anti-bullying because apparently picking on gay kids at school (and everywhere else) is their children’s GOD-given rights, literally. They are fighting against anti-bulling measures in congress at state level in the name of religious freedom. Simply typing the above paragraph is making my chest hurt.

With or without religion, you would have good people doing good things and evil people doing evil things. But for good people to do evil things, that takes religion.
— Steven Weinberg

 

On the other hand, The Internet has also brought good things into my life. For example, Jeri Ryan, Seven of Nine of Star Trek fan, became my friend on Google+.

Ok, technically, she did not say “Hey, let’s be friend.”  BUT she plussed and shared one of my posts, i.e. she read my post and knew of my existence! Woohoo! +100 to my geek cred and coolation (cool+ration)! I of course took a screenshot as proof right away just in case she changed her mind and withdrew her favor.

It’s my first brush with fame. Please be as impressed as I am.

 

It is rather embarrassing how excited I am about this latest development…

Here, this is the reason why I have not responded to your email/tweet/comment/like.

I have been contributing to the Internet with my own crapshot snapshots, documenting my oh so exciting life. Really, how many pictures of Chicago River and the caption “Y’all. I am on a boat!” can I take before I stop having friends?

 

I really need to go to bed now. Once you reach 40, you really cannot survive on less than 4 hours of sleep on three consecutive days. Your grammars will also start to suffer. If you miss me, check my page Life As I See It so I can tell you that I am on a boat. Again.

The things I do for my children

When last summer was over, finding pants that fit all of a sudden became my obsession. Oh not for myself (I mean, that’s another, sad sad story). For the strange teenager that took over my oldest boy. Overnight the pants from BOYS’ department no longer fit him and those from MEN’s department won’t for a while. My choice seemed to be either highwater pants or a barrel.

Of course my son was no help.

“Can’t you just ask your friends where they buy their pants? For sure you cannot be the only person built with crane legs!” He looked at me with horror.

For weeks I had to refrain myself from asking random model-grade teenage boys with legs rivaling Manga characters (ok, to be fair, so you won’t tzk tzk me, they look almost 20. I think.) where they got their jeans.

After repeated whining of “mom I need new pants!” for a few weeks, I managed to drag him along to the mall. To be honest, the only store I was familiar with was The Gap. But somehow their designers have decided that the waist on boys doubles as soon as they outgrow Size 18. I was gearing up to go home with Erkel when I walked past this store with a name that I could not (and still cannot) pronounce.

Aéropostale. (I am still calling them Apocalypse just to annoy my children)

Why didn’t anybody tell me about this store? They call their two departments “Guys” and “Girls” for goodness sake! And because this store is for teens, there is no BASIC items, no STAPLES, no CLASSICS. You know what this means right? SALES. DRASTIC DISCOUNT, every season. Before the season ends.

$18 for a pair of jeans. 50% off of sales price.

AND they carry size 28*32 for jeans.

As I was grabbing at sweatpants, jeans, hoodies, shirts with the cut for gazelles, I was at the same time telling myself:

I am a good mother. I am a good mother. I will NOT wear matching clothing with my son esp. the way the clothes are emblazoned with the logo.

I did get a Peace bracelet for $6. And this:

Love the bag. It's now my favoriate bag. Only $15.

Love the fuzzy hoodie too. But…

I will not wear the same clothes as my son. I will not buy another hoodie for myself.

But, it is fuzzy. Did I mention that it is fuzzy. It’s like if you scalpe a teddy bear and line the hoodie with the fur. You head is cushioned by the dead teddy bear’s fur.

On top of that, once we got home, he repaid my kindness by pulling on his new jeans without unzipping first.

Zooom. The jeans were on him. Zooom. They were off.

Like a potato sack. It irked me to no end.

I am an adult. I will not wear clothes from the same store as my teenage son and his friends. I do not have anything to prove. I do not need to dress in clothes from “teen stores” nor will I covet those clothes. I am not going through some mid-life crisis. I will not (threaten to) steal my son’s cool new hoodie lined with teddy bear furs… (repeat the mantra)

I told him. I hate you. Seriously.

He beamed and demonstrated the ease with which he pulled on the jeans a few more times.

I said, “I love you. And that is why I will not wear clothes from this store so we won’t seem to be wearing matching clothes.”

He did not seem to appreciate the sacrifice I made for him.

 

* SHOES are the exceptions. Of course.

Going Home. Again.

Waiting to get on a plane that will take me to Tokyo Narita, and then onto Taipei. I am making my annual solo trip back home so I can pack 359 days of homesickness, guilt and filial piety into a 3-day visit. (I will spend 3 days traveling due to time zone change and the sheer expansiveness of the Pacific Ocean).

As my parents get older, the necessity of going home as often as I could becomes unbearable. The anxiety and sadness I feel every time I see them though becomes unbearable as well. I long to see the joy in my dad’s face as much as I dread seeing his tears. March on, little soldier. That’s what I have been telling myself since I gave the TSA agent my passport and boarding passes.

I will try not to talk about feeling like a Godzilla as soon as I land in Tokyo. But I will feel that way while stuffing my face with food that I have been missing all year.

And I will try and send in pictures to be posted here (and below if the Flickr plug-in works). Just in case you wonder what I have been up to. *Megalomaniac laugh* *Megalomaniac laugh*

Love and peace.

Please specify a Flickr ID for this gallery

Shoot

A couple of weeks ago, I was in downtown Chicago with my family. We do that from time to time: using the hotel points we racked up from business trips for a weekend in downtown Chicago. A Staycation. (Sorry for using the stupid buzz word) After a most satisfying lunch at Berghoff where I was surprised by one two of the best Tom Collins I’ve ever had.

Berghoff is billed as a historic restaurant in Chicago. A classic. A landmark. A local gem. You know what that means. That (usually) means it is a tourist trap and therefore I was not expecting much. Following the theme of Lowered Expectations, I was absolutely blown away when I took a sip of the Tim Collins. I have been looking for a good, old, solid Tom Collins for a while now, and I have been to quite a few places where the bar tenders actually asked me, “What is a Tom Collin?”  Not making this up. Little did I know that I would have found The Perfect Tom Collins that one afternoon when we sort of gave up and walked into Berghoff because it was still open for lunch at 3 pm and was not crowded.

After lunch, The Husband announced that he needed a nap. (Don’t say anything. I know. Ugh)  I looked at the boys, “Well, mommy is going shopping. Whom do you want to go with?” “Dad!”

*Cue evil genius laughter on my part*

That’s how I got two hours of Alone Time wandering around the Chicago loop area by myself.

The streets were mostly empty.  I took my time, walking slowly, deliberately, yet aimlessly.  Occasionally I would stop, whip out my phone to take a picture of something that struck my fancy. Lamp post. Intricate carvings on a building. Wrought iron works. Brass decor on top of an elevator door. Of course, my idea of me being a great street photographer trumps my actual photographic skills and that is why none of those photos are featured here. Believe me when I say that the images are whimsical and beautiful and fascinating when I have them framed like this with my mind:

Click. Click. Click.

Of course, while I was taking my leisurely stroll, I had no idea that the pictures were coughcoughcough so I was walking around with the aura and euphoria of a street photographer exploring the beauties around me.

At one point when I stopped to take pictures of a wall scone outside one of those gorgeous Chicago buildings, a guy doubled back to ask me whether I would like a picture with the wall scone. I laughed and explained that I was simply taking random pictures of random objects. “Because I am crazy like this.”

Oh, yeah. I do say things like that to random strangers. I am indeed crazy like this.

“If you like Chicago architectural details, you really should go into this building over there,” he pointed at a building not far from the crosswalk where we both stopped at the light. “It has an amazing lobby with all the original details intact.”

Alas. (See above).

But all was not lost because when I came out from the building, I spotted a bride and a groom being led by a real photographer towards a deserted intersection. I ran. I was shameless. By god I was going to get that shot of the photographer taking a picture of this couple standing in the middle of a Chicago intersection.

I had just watched the trailer to the documentary Bill Cunningham New York and I might have been mistakenly inspired…

How ironic would that photo be. How awesome!

But when I got to within the optimal (photo) shooting range, I could not raise my phone. I was shy. It felt awkward even though there were others taking pictures of them.

I couldn’t help but smile because it was a lovely sight and walked across the street away from the trio, trying to look as if I meant to cross the street all along. As soon as I turned my back toward then, the little voice piped up,

“God damn it! You need to get over this! Chicken!” I thought to myself. “They won’t mind. People gawk and take pictures of brides all the time.”

“FINE!” I turned around to snap a picture and then quickly walked away, as if I had done something wrong.