I’ve got so many things I want to write about, I’ve take so many pictures that I want to post and I’ve started writing the blog entries, but I can’t seem to finish anything! In my head I know exactly what I want to write about, I know exactly what elements are part of the entry but as I sit in front of my PC and look at that blinking cursor, I freeze. The words just won’t come!
I think the writing muses have gone away somewhere. I’m thinking they’ve gone to somewhere warm and sunny. I feel a bit put out that they didn’t invite me on their spring break! I really wish they would come back. I really want to start writing again.
My feet were killing me (I’d been wearing only heels for months and on this London trip I only brought flats–let me tell you, that was not intentional! My feet and leg muscles were telling me, in no uncertain terms, exactly how they felt about wearing flats after a heels-only arrangement for months! They hated the idea and me at that particular moment in time). They were absolutely murdering me. But I walked on–completely ignoring Portobello Road (which was an experience in itself – especially when the market is on!).
I walked on because I wanted to go to a Filipino food place. But as the experience was definitely forgettable, I won’t talk about it again.
My disappointment was all but forgotten when I left the Filipino food place because a few doors down was a familiar looking bookshop. People were posing in front of the shop, having their pictures taken and I couldn’t understand why. And then it dawned on me: I was in Notting Hilland they were posing near a BOOKSHOP! I ran (hobbled really quickly, more like!) the 100 meters to the bookshop and gasped (yes, out loud!) because it was THE bookshop. It was THE bookshop where the scenes for the Travel Book Company were shot for the movie Notting Hill (which rangs high up in my list of favourite movies, near enough to Sliding Doors for it to matter a lot!). I tried to be cool. I tried to be nonchalant and I managed to convince myself that I only wanted a photograph of the shop front, that that was enough. So snap away I did! Only just one photo! Ha!
So I walked away, and round the corner, I found the Notting Hill shop of the Biscuiteers. I had a look around the shop and oohed and aahed at the lovely iced biscuits. But I really wanted to ask the shop keeper if he knew where the house with the blue door was. I figured if they were local, they’d know where William Thacker’s house with the blue door was. I was told to go back to the Notting Hill Bookshop because the lady who ran the shop would definitely know. So my crown iced biscuite securely stored in my purse, I went then went back to the Notting Hill Bookshop to ask directions.
I went around to the bookshop because it was a bookshop and I LOVED bookshops. There’s something about the smell of bound paper that comforts me. Plus I didn’t really want to pounce on the lovely shop lady and just get the information and run out of the shop! It didn’t seem right. They had a copy of the Travel Book Shop Company’s sign up in the area where Rufus the thief stuffed a book down his trousers–or at least that’s where I thought it was shot. Apparently the interior layout of the shop hasn’t changed, it remains exactly same as it was in the movie! I couldn’t help myself and did a happy little dance because I was — sort of! — sharing a space with Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts!
I bought a cloth book bag and a fridge magnet (to add to my growing collection) because I felt that I owed it to the lovely lady who ran the shop. As I waited at the till for her to ring up my purchases, I asked if she knew where the house with the blue door was. I also apologised in the same breath as I know she gets asked the same question time and time again. She laughed and gave the directions. I was relieved to hear that it was only a block away because as excited as I was to be in the Travel Bookshop, my feet were still hurting!
After a few pained steps, there it was, the house with a blue door! And for a while, I stared at the house, trying to decide why it looked a little different (I realised later that the pillars and the area framing the door were painted blue before and now they were white, except for the door). But it didn’t matter so much that it looked only slightly different.
For one brief shining moment, I was a girl, standing in front of the door, living a dream!
I grew up going to church every Sunday. I will even go as far as to say that I have 2 home churches, one that I grew up in and one where I grew up spiritually in. I went to Sunday school. I sang in the children’s choir. I eventually taught Sunday school and daily vacation church school. My summers were spent in church and I was there nearly everyday! I sang in the church chancel choir and completely immersed myself in all the church activities. I spent so much time in church that I think it would be natural for me to miss church at Easter.
I think it’s fair to say that Easter is one of the busiest weeks in the Christian calendar, apart from Christmas. Funnily enough, there is a Filipino term (Pasko ng Pagkabuhay) which translated means Christmas of the Resurrection. We start counting down to this week from Ash Wednesday. But it all starts unfolding on Palm Sunday, when Christians celebrate Jesus’ triumphant entry into Jerusalem with a Palm Sunday service. The Catholics in the Philippines have their beautifully woven palm fronds blessed in church and they display this in their homes, mostly on their windows. I grew up in a Methodist church and while we didn’t have the blessing of palm fronds, children of the Sunday school class came into the church waving their palms to re-enact Jesus’ triumphant entry. This Sunday also marks the beginning of a very busy week.
I remember choir rehearsals in earnest because we would be singing during a series of services. Our church usually had a service for the last supper where we would have the washing of the feet ceremony. Our minister and members of the church would recreate the moment when Jesus washed his disciples’ feet in a display of his humility and servanthood. We would have a communion service to commemorate the last time Jesus broke bread with his followers before his death and when he foretold of Judas’ betrayal.
One service that is closest to my heart is the Seven Last Words on Good Friday. We start off the service at one o’clock in the afternoon. We have seven speakers, a mixture of lay members and ministers, all speaking about the biblical basis of Jesus’ seven last statements. Interspersed with the short sermons are songs by the choir. The choir chronicles the last 24 hours of Jesus’ life with songs commemorating the kiss in the Garden of Gethsemane, Jesus’ journey carrying the cross through the Via Dolorosa, His nailing on the cross, His message to His disciple entrusting his mother into his care and His subsequent surrender of His spirit and His life into His Father’s hands. Each song that we sings makes the hairs on the back of my neck stand on end because all the songs just underline the great sacrifice that The Lord undertook to save the world. And because the songs paint a picture of how it was to be there, it just shakes me down to my foundations. What it must have felt to be there!
We usually finish at three o’clock which is popularly believed to be the time of his death. After all the speakers have finished their messages, and the choir have sung all their songs, the church is stripped as a sign of mourning. Because Christ is dead and we are bereft without His divine presence.
Black Saturday is usually celebrated in silence, in contemplation. Nothing really happens on a Saturday. But the choir does try to sneak in a few hours of practice because we do have a sunrise service and an Easter Sunday service to sing in.
Easter Sunday is celebrated in so many ways. But my favourite is a sunrise start. We have an Easter sunrise service where messages of hope, joy and salvation resound in the sermons and the songs from the choir. As a Christian, it is lovely to greet the brand new rays of the sun with the reassurance that Christ is not dead, He is alive and sitting at His Father’s right hand and waiting to come back for all of us. We have an Easter Sunday service (yes, after the sunrise service, which is usually an ecumenical service with all the Christian churches in our community) that finishes with a lovely (and very traditional) Easter egg hunt for the children.
While I will enjoy the odd chocolate bunny and the occasional chocolate egg, and enjoy the bank holiday and the respite from the rat race, the reason for the season will always resonate in my heart. I will always know that Easter is the celebration of Christ’s resurrection, Christ’s ascension to heaven. It is the fulfillment of the promises in the Bible.
Easter will always bring me hope, joy and a wonderful reminder of my salvation by Christ, but I will always feel a twinge in my heart because I will be missing my church family and the fellowship of Christians that I grew up with. It is always wonderful to celebrate the fulfillment of God’s promises with like-minded individuals.
Fairview Park United Methodist Church – photo credit: Matt de Guzman
Today wasn’t such a good day because I am currently in the throes of quite a bad migraine episode. The pain meds are fading and I’m due to drink my next round of painkillers.
I wanted to share this photo with y’all though because I thought it was such a positive little slogan that it won’t fail to make you smile. This was taken outside the Spitalfields branch of The Breakfast Club. They used to have this note on their receipts but for some reason the last receipt I got from them didn’t have this little cheerful tidbit. I guess they thought having the sign outside the shop would be enough. And, in my case, it was enough; and on the day that I saw that sign it was certainly a good day!
Good vibes sent out into the cosmos and all that! Even if you start the day with a pounding headache or even if something negative manages to wiggle itself into the start of your day, if you tell yourself that you’re going to have a good day, you are. Don’t let the negativity get you done!
If you tell yourself you’re going to have a good day, you are!
I must say that I am quite pleased whenever someone comes to visit the blog.
I know it’ll sound cheesy when I say this: but I am always challenged to write better when people come to visit. It’s all about the quality of the posts, really. It’s all about content. And every time someone likes a post, or starts following the blog, it reminds me that I have a responsibility to the people who follow the blog: to write better, to post better photos and to share something relevant.
I started the blog because I wanted to embrace the fact that I am all about the food. But I’m beginning to realise that whilst food might be the centre of my writing universe, it’s not the be-all-and-end-all of my writing world. I started with a tag line on the blog that said “There is no love more sincerer than the love of food.” I took my food posts from a previous blog and brought them over to this blog. But I soon realised that concentrating on food did not allow me to express all my thoughts. Sure, it’s good to have a niche blog, but I have opinions and I have thoughts that I most certainly love sharing–mostly, selfishly, so that I can validation; that I can say that I’m not the only one with these thoughts. It’s good to get validation and it’s even better when someone you don’t know in some other part of the world says, “Yeah, I think that too!”
If you’ve dropped by the blog, if you’ve liked a post, if you’ve clicked that button to follow the blog, let me just say “Thank you!” for without y’all to spur me on, I don’t think I’d put my thoughts out there!
This is my second thank you post, but I feel the need to say it over and over again. You all make my heart sing (insert Dido’s Thank You song here)! 🙂
On February 14, I was woken up by 2 text messages: one from my mum and one from my big sister from another mother. I crawled from under the toasty warm covers and read the text messages, smiled sleepily and then crawled back into bed.
Valentines Day was just another day, really, because I had loads to do work-wise. I’m quite happy that work is keeping me busy because busy is always good. I got home late because there was a staff meeting and I had to catch a later train. The idea was to have take-away from my favourite Chinese take away. But when I called the Chinese take away I was told they couldn’t do anything about delivering food to me until about 9PM. I was exhausted so I wasn’t going to cook. Settling for fried chicken wasn’t so bad. At least I didn’t have to cook and the clean up after was a breeze!
Now, y’all must be thinking, awww what a sad Valentine’s day. It wasn’t really. I had a really productive day at work and learned new things, I managed to catch a train that got me home earlier than I thought I’d get home, and even though I didn’t get my Chinese take away (I was craving chow mein noodles!), I still shared chicken and chips with the person who knows me the best. I’d say it was a good day. After all, like Christmas, every day should be Valentine’s day. We should all make an effort to make sure our lives are filled with love and romance and the appreciation of what our loved ones do for us.
However, I thought this photo was good to share: a picture taken at Covent Garden in London the Saturday before. Things like these, they make me smile. Romance is grand, aint it?
This gave me ideas about cleaning up the blog and making it look less cluttered. Changing my blog background was a great start. Reblogging this because I know it’ll help others who use the Bueno blog theme…and even if you don’t use the Bueno theme, the ideas are too good not to share!
We all want our blogs and sites to feel like “us,” and there are tons of tweaks that can turn a plain ol’ theme into a bespoke web experience for the discriminating blog connoisseur. Last month, we looked at how one online mag transformed the Oxygen theme; today we’ll check out how one blogger took the third most popular theme on WordPress.com and built something entirely her own.
“Mi Piace Kate” is Italian for “I Like Kate,” and we definitely do! Kate’s a graphic designer, cat aficionado, and handcrafting devotee who’s taken the free Bueno theme and run with it. Her blog is a stellar example of how some custom images and a $30 Custom Design upgrade can change a free theme into a million-dollar site that’s totally unique.
Take a look at the standard Bueno home page next to Kate’s:
I’ve been working on a secret project for a few weeks now. It’s been quite frustrating because I couldn’t really blog, tweet or post anything about it on Facebook. I’ve been wanting to be able to vent my frustrations but because of the nature of the project, everything had to be secret–and until now, there are elements of the project that still have to be kept secret.
I’ve found myself literally sitting on my hands to stop myself from talking about the project online. There were days when I needed instant validation and wanted to take to social media to ask for people’s opinions. I didn’t and that in itself was quite the achievement! I’m not really good at keeping secrets…I will eventually let a secret slip somehow. I’ve been quite pleased with myself really because I haven’t talked about it much. I’ve only let my family know and of course, Alan, who has been helpful with ideas and suggestions. It felt really good to be able to talk out my frustrations about this project. We all need a good sounding board to bounce ideas off of. Thank God for blessings like these!
Even without going into detail, I’m quite pleased that it’s finished (even though I can’t really talk about it!). I’m quite pleased with the way everything’s turned out. I am, to be honest, also very proud of myself. I’ve actually started a project and finished it on time, and the result is exactly how I envisioned this when I was planning everything! The discipline that I forced myself to stick to while working on this project is definitely going to be something that will help me in future. I learned a lot about feedback and constructive criticism and taking the positive from every comment received. The critiques reminded me of a Repertory Philippines workshop where we were taught that in everything, we had to learn to take the positive and not to let the negative affect us.
Working on this project has definitely bolstered my confidence! My brother has indicated that what I had done was a winner and that’s always a good thing. Family, while they will always fight your corner, can be your worst critics because they know what you are able to achieve. I’m just hoping that other people share my brother’s enthusiasm!
I’m so sorry for all the vague references. I will, eventually, be able to talk about all this and post pictures. But I hope you’ll humour me and wait patiently with me (I will draw patience from y’all because I will probably fail this particular marshmallow test!) while I wait until I can talk about this!
I am currently humming I Enjoy Being A Girl from Flower Drum Song in my head. You know, the one that starts with “I’m a girl and by me that’s only great, I am proud that my sillhouette is curvy, that I walk with a sweet and girlish gait, with my hips kind of swivelly and swervy…”?
I’m humming this because I’m wallowing in girlish delight until I am absolutely pruney. I am being the girly-girl that I am and being positively giddy about a pair of shoes! Imelda Marcos I am not, but a good pair of shoes that love my feet is definitely worth blogging about! I bought the most gorgeous pair of wedged boots online last weekend at 60% off the retail price (there is something to be said about buying shoes late in the season!). They arrived yesterday. Mind you, I had misgivings because I’ve bought beautiful boots before but boy did they punish my feet (and no matter how many times I told myself that they just needed breaking in, if I used the boots, at the end of the day, my feet would be screaming at me to get the bloody things off! I have yet to bring myself to bring the beautiful things to either the charity shop or put it in the balikbayan box so my mum or sister can find someone else to love the boots. I’ve used them a total of, count ’em, 4 times!)! But these beautiful things were different. I put them on and they seemed to hug my feet. They seemed to wrap themselves around my feet!
I bravely booted up this morning, gingerly walking down the stairs that led up the flat to walk to the train station. My steps were slow, but steady and very stable. I had never felt so balanced in wedge heels before. So my steps became less tentative and quicker. After all, I was walking to the station to get on a train that was 12 minutes away from leaving. I made it to the train station in 7 minutes with my feet sighing in happiness! Throughout the day, walking to and from places, up and down stairs, running from one office to another (yes, I had a VERY busy day!), my feet felt like they were protected. I think I bought the shoes that had the right heel height and the right snugness. My feet haven’t felt this comfy in heels in a very long time!
I have struggled with finding shoes that fit my feet right since moving to the UK. The only shoes I’ve ever really worn comfortably are flat shoes and well, flat shoes aren’t always the best things to wear as they aren’t always the most appropriate (and while I adore ballerina flats, we all know sometimes a bit of heel is important–especially in formal situations). But tonight, all is well in my shoe world. Because I’ve found wedges that hug my feet. The next goal is to find heels that I can stomp in.
These are days when I wish there was an SM Shoemart nearby!
To say that I was excited about seeing Les Mis was an understatement. I could hardly sit still in the train on the way to the cinema. I’d been so looking forward to seeing the movie since they started shooting scenes in Greenwich in April 2012.
Les Mis is one of three of my all-time favourite musicals (the other two being Miss Saigon and Phantom of the Opera) and the prospect of seeing a movie version of the musical was certainly exciting. I told myself to not expect too much, because after all, the cast weren’t West End or Broadway performers. But I also knew that Cameron Mackintosh had a say in the production and after seeing the interviews, I understood that the cast and crew understood how beloved this musical was that they wouldn’t do anything to taint it. I’m sure everyone involved in the movie wanted to do their utmost best because like me and countless others, they loved the musical too.
So after waiting for so long (waiting to get better from illness and waiting for the snow to stop falling and start melting), armed with Kleenex, I made my way to see the movie I’d waited to long to see. And it didn’t disappoint. I cried buckets, enough to make my eyes sting the whole time after. The familiar themes of young love, unrequited love, transformation, forgiveness and redemption did not fail to touch my heart (and my tear ducts!).
While live theatre performance is in a different league entirely, this version of Les Mis was something to be seen. You could see in the actors’ performances how much they loved this musical. Hugh Jackman reminded me a little of Colm Wilkinson, but don’t get me wrong, his Valjean was his Valjean. Amanda Seyfriend was a hauntingly beautiful Cosette, and she didn’t warble too badly too! Anyone who can cry and sing at the same time as well as Anne Hathaway did deserves an award! I was quiet pleased that they chose Samantha Barks for Eponine because she did brilliantly. I wasn’t too impressed by Russell Crowe’s singing but his acting made up for it because he was Javert! But I think the performance that stole the show was Eddie Redmayne’s! Who’d have thought he’d make this amazingly romantic Marius?
I don’t really want to say too much just in case you haven’t seen it. But if you can go and watch it, do! Oh and remember to bring kleenex…or maybe a beach towel!
Yellywelly 