Wingaersheek
We’ve been having fantastic beach weather this summer on the North Shore, and it’s been the kind with piercing blue skies. My favorite time of day to hit the beach is late in the afternoon, when most people are starting to pack up and head home. The sun is more golden, the water is warmer, [...]
The Living is Easy
Perhaps a bit too easy. These are days that roll into one another and back out again, just like the tide. A weekend begins as a blank slate, with no fixed plans, yet by Sunday evening ends with pink noses, salty hair, sandy ankles, bellies full, beach time and picnic time, an endless parade of [...]
Friday Night Delights
For me, summer doesn’t begin until that first fried clam plate.
And if I happen to be landlocked in a city
Bookworm
Madelyne is my little bookworm. It is a quality I admire in an individual, especially a seven-year-old.
She was prodded repeatedly to “put down the book and join the conversation,”
Spoiled
Sometimes you really don’t know what you have had until it’s 6800 miles and 13 time zones away.
Thanks to jet lag, I’ve been wide awake at 5:30 or 6 am every morning since I’ve been home. The weather so far has been outstanding, so I’ve been itching to get out and down to the water [...]
What I Talk About When I Talk About Eating
No discussion of Singapore would be complete without talking about the food. As diverse as the people themselves, the food in Singapore is a vast array of Indian, Malaysian, Indonesian, and Chinese cuisine, with a sprinkling of colonial England. Coconuts, curries, spicy rice dishes, duck, satay, fish ball noodles and fresh fruits are just a [...]
Forcing Blossoms
Since Seoul has refused to cooperate this year, and winter has refused to release its icy deathgrip, I’m going to take a lesson from my mother and do some forcing.
Every year around this time,
Singapore
I’ve been in Singapore for nearly a month now, but you’d hardly know it if you’ve been visiting these pages.
I wish my absence was due to lazying about in hammocks under palm fronds, munching on papaya slices and sipping Singapore Slings from tall glasses. But I’m afraid there’s been far too much work and far [...]
Fifty Things
I love lists. I always have. So while enjoying a perfectly simple holiday-birthday weekend, I was quietly concocting a way of sharing some of my favorite bits of the last year. A Little Miss Year in Pictures, if you will. And then the Queen of List-Making, the irreplaceable Andrea, made this list. And it made [...]
Love Letter #1
Let’s be clear: I have never left my heart in San Francisco. It’s not for lack of trying. But in my handful of visits over the last decade, the city in the bay has never wormed its way in. It’s left me foggy and shivering, perpetually freezing and somehow lost, as my otherwise impeccable sense of direction is challenged at every turn and I am unable to get my bearings. I can’t follow the direction of the sun because I cannot see the sun for all the hills and fog and hippies.
I should have warned you
But I really didn’t know.
When I sat on that plane to LAX, muscling my way through Night at the Museum II: The Legend of Curley’s Gold, I knew this trip home had a lot waiting for me. I just had no idea what that meant.
City of Angels
Well, if one is going to go on vacation, one may as well Go On Vacation with capital letters. I know it seems with all my gallivanting around northeastern Asia this year that I’ve done plenty of vacationing. But the truth is that in the last year I took one day off and had a [...]
Dear California
It’s been awhile, and I have to say, you are making me a little bit swoony.
Love,
Stephanie
The Disney World of Giant Buddhas
Just west of Hong Kong and Kowloon is Lantau Island, where you will find Hong Kong International Airport and a big, giant Buddha on top of a mountain. For $99 HK (that’s about $12.75 US), you can take a thirty minute cable car ride over turquoise waters and pristine rolling hills, through the delicate lace [...]
I could see farther than anyone
While lunching on warm afternoon air and asparagus stuffed chicken breast with saffron polenta, I was instructed by my local guide to make sure I took a trip down to the southern coast of Hong Kong Island. The previous day he’d instructed me to take my camera to Kowloon in the evening and watch the [...]
Did you have Dim Sum?
In February, I was tasked with the very difficult assignment of going to Hong Kong to acquire my work visa. Difficult because Hong Kong was enjoying temperatures well above 20ºC while Seoul was enjoying temperatures well below 0º.
If you ever have the opportunity to visit Hong Kong, I implore you to eat as much [...]
Perfect
In case you didn’t know, the perfect day includes:
A latte your father made with homefries your mother made.
Salty hair and sandy toes.
Small ones collecting crabs and shells in the tidepools.
A Cheez-It or two.
The sound of the waves and distant laughter when you are falling asleep in the sand with an old book.
Top Dog.
That certain quiet [...]
Boston
I learned a lot of things at home this summer, but the most important things were these:
I am excellent at Wii Golf. Just like a good little Birdie. Or perhaps an Eagle.
Former state prisons make excellent boutique hotels and fancy bars.
There is not a suitcase big enough to get everything I need from the Paper [...]
The Law of Reversed Effort
When you try to stay on the surface of the water, you sink. But when you try to sink, you float.
Alan Watts
Into the Future and Out of the Past
Things are moving…
Into the future and out of the past,
into the future and out of the past.
Ryan Adams
Jacksonville City Nights
