I do not recall ever being too invested in model assembly kits. Surely in my childhood I received a fair share of constructor set gifts, and seem to vaguely remember assembling a model navy cruiser when I was in elementary school. But nothing that I can point to in the…
On one of the rare nowadays intraday weekend excursions, we went for the first time to New Jersey’s Grounds for Sculpture, in Hamilton Township, about 45 minutes drive away from our house. It is a sizable park that contains open-air exhibition of several hundred post-modern works of art (plus a…
Remember how at the end of this meme I promised to catch up “in the next year or so” on some of the yet-unread books on that list? Well, I am happy to announce that six months in, I managed to check off one single entry. Of course, me being…
After a family viewing of one of Becky’s favorite childhood flicks, worldly person that she is, she made a whimsical reference to her high-school friends about being fond of a Russian dub of a Japanese take on a French fairly tale. When the name of the story came up, Puss…
When we lived in London, we made several trips to its Science Museum (for instance, as recorded in this old entry). But in all years of living in New Jersey, we have never visited our own Liberty Science Center. Today, Kimmy and Natasha rectified the glaring oversight (yours truly stayed…
A number of people whose blogs I read did this meme, where they took the recently compiled NPR list of Top 100 Science Fiction and Fantasy books and marked those they’ve read (or at least attempted to read at some point in their lives). At first, I just scanned through…
I wonder how many Parisians visit Louvre more than once in their adult lives, if ever. Or Londoners National Gallery. Or Madrileños Prado. Outside of a small group of art students and fanatical art lovers, I doubt that the majority of local population ever finds time in their busy daily…
I know that you are all craving for more of these meme thingies from me, and I figured, Why not do two in a row? Especially, since this is a completely different type of meme, dealing with my literary tastes. I picked it up a few days back at Jason’s,…
I have just finished reading Merde Happens, which is the third installment in Stephen Clarke’s series about a young Englishman’s experiences with foreign cultures. Unlike the first two installments, A Year in the Merde and Merde Actually (I skipped over the latter by pure coincidence of it not being sold…
By the simplest gauge, I have already had a handful of posts devoted to the tried subject of British weather, so I can hardly expound on it any more without truly approximating a broken gramophone record. Yet, that particular topic remains – as it would be in any civilized discourse…
Oh man! I feel pretty let down by how the trilogy ended! I don’t exactly agree with Becky, since her view is more specific towards the last scene, but I am rather dismayed with how the overall story and all of its plotlines ended. And the sadly ironic thing is,…
I certainly went through The Subtle Knife much faster than through Northern Lights, which is partly of function of having more spare time on my hands in the absence of the rest of the family, but also a function of the second book being better than the first. The things…
I finally finished reading the first book of His Dark Materials trilogy – yes, I know, two months for a single book is pathetic! – and it left me with ambivalent feelings. The feelings are probably influenced by the fact that I saw the movie before I read the book,…
We went to see the Lion King at the Lyceum Theatre in London last night. Confirming what I have been hearing for years, it’s a tremendous show, with imaginative colorful costumes and contraptions depicting various animals, and simple but expressive sets. The acting, I felt, was a bit on the…
I finished reading Stephen Clarke’s A Year in the Merde the other day, and I must say that it was a fun read. The book that seemingly aims to ridicule the deserving bits of French way of life, succeeds in that, and more. It actually does a good job of…
I consider myself a well-versed fan of the fantasy literary genre (which I know sounds shallow compared to all of you Coelho-worshipping crowd). I’ve read Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter, The Wheel of Time and Discworld series, the best currently continuing epic The Song of Ice and Fire…
In our many years in New Jersey, we cannot recall ever having a breakfast outside. Barbecues, parties – yes, but never a breakfast. There were several excuses for that, such as absence of a deck and complicated logistics of carrying stuff down wooden steps to the patio, but the fact…
I forgot to check with the groundhog this year. Did it see its shadow or not? To be honest, it would not make any difference. The winter never really came to England. Late fall lingered… and gradually morphed into early spring… I will be first to admit that for a…