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The Mona Lisa

13 Jan

I started reading the book ‘How to Think Like Da Vinci’ a Christmas gift from hubby. It sure is an interesting eye opener not because of Da Vinci himself but more of the fact it made me recall my encounter with the Mona Lisa.

I have been to Paris twice. The first trip when we wanted to visit the Louvre, we didn’t know the museum’s schedule well enough. It was closed and we were due to fly home the next day. Disappointed, we vowed that if we ever went back to Paris, we have to make the museum trip.

Went back we did, a few years later – 2013. During the second trip, hubby and my sibling were off for a business meeting, so I was left to my own devices. I decided to visit the Louvre. Thankfully, it was open.

And like every other tourist, I had to see the great painting. It was such a huge crowd, I couldn’t get any closer. And having a barrier and protective glass over it, it sure was hard to have a good look at the masterpiece.

Was it worth the hoopla? Depends on which angle you look at it. For me, it was merely a ‘been there, done that’ moment; didn’t move me. Give me a Monet anytime, I’d be totally inspired.

So back to my book, maybe reading it and trying to think like Da Vinci may move me better.

    

    
 

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Ben Thanh Market

28 Dec

Ben Thanh Market is a very vibrant place but I find the vendors there very aggressive and intimidating to a certain degree. It’s very crowded and competitive. One cannot simply make any eye contact with them. The minute they see you looking at them, they latch onto you,  that’s it!

One should not also touch any products on display if you have no intention of buying. They think you want to buy and they latch onto you, that’s it!

But buying is also a skill. You must not show interest otherwise you won’t get a good deal. We did not buy anything this morning from the market. And honestly I find haggling too much, it’s not in me.

After a while, we left and headed to Saigon Center for some cool air.

 

Fancy some fresh seafood?

  

Maybe veges instead?

  

How about frogs?

  

I think seafood would be good

  

Crabs looking crabby, all lined up

  

Peeled crabmeat

    
 

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Losing Steam

12 Aug

Of late, I have been stuck at all levels of my virtual games so much so, I feel I am losing steam playing them.

Maybe I should stop. And immerse myself in the Olympics happening now in Rio. Or go back to reading especially that book on Genghis Khan that I started but stopped because the mountains were too epic for me. The book has been collecting a mountain of dust since then.

Or I could go back to carving owls. This too has lost steam because I have gotten lazy with it. It can get quite messy when the momentum picks up and I don’t like the cleaning up when I get done. But there simply has not been an opportunity to sit down quietly and be at it. Too much going in and out and this interrupts the focus. Losing steam. Sigh…

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I Love Pez!

16 Jul

I love to collect things, from the typical to the quirky and unusual. Besides the usual knick knacks and paintings from my travels, I enjoy growing my animal figurine collection especially the owls, pigs and elephants. One of my more quirky collection however, is not an animal but the candy dispenser, Pez. I guess when one already have 16 dispensers on display, it can qualify as a collection.

I don’t know why but I simply love Pez. I was at the grocery store the other day and came across these two new ones and I had to get them. Gary now completes my Spongebob collection, while Dave is the first of the Despicable Me family.

My all time favorite though, has to be the miniature sized bunny that I bought from Hong Kong many years ago. Apparently it’s a collector’s piece due to its condition. But I didn’t know much about its history then and never bothered to find out; I bought it because it was cute and it appealed to me.

But as I am writing this, I am also suddenly curious. So thanks to the internet, yesterday I managed to find out more with some tedious googling. It’s a character for Play Station games. You can see the complete collection, #009 Dokodemo Issyo 1 mini Pez at http://pingu.minipez.net/page/5/. It’s adorable, no?  

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We Wait Again

14 Jul

My book, Genghis Khan, is pretty intense to read. I am constantly seeing vast lands of Mongolia as my imagination goes into overdrive. So I jump back to my games to reset or clear my thoughts.

Luckily, the latest chapter of Candy Crush on the iPad, Luscious Lagoon, was pretty easy. Made short work of it within a week and now I have to wait for Mellow Marshmallow to appear for the iPad. I must confess, I played it in Facebook on the laptop and now sitting at Level 1043.

However, my other two games are not so friendly. Stuck at Level 415 of Candy Crush Soda and Level 770 of Farm Heroes for sometime now. Sigh.

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It Gets Tougher

7 Jul

It was a good thing I bought two new books to read. Level 1001 of Candy Crush is by far the toughest. Reading’s a good reprieve but I could not let the challenge go.
In the end, I used my precious gold bars, nine pieces mind you, to get that extra five moves and thank goodness, succeeded in passing the level. I have moved on to Tasty Treasury, the latest chapter on the iPad.

As for Candy Crush Soda, I’ve decided to take a break from it because I simply cannot go pass Level 415.

So back to reading.

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I Should Read

6 Jul

Over the weekend, hubby complained that I have been on my iPad too much. Too much games, that is. Well, when one has four games to manage – to save farm animals, match candies, be a zookeeper and rescue gingerbread men, that’s a whole lot of responsibility to juggle! I am on my iPad in between work at the office and at home, before bedtime. And when I wake up, have my coffee in the morning, after dinner… okay, maybe I AM a little obsessed with it.

So I decided to break the pattern and go back to reading. But the third Jennifer Probst paperback that I am waiting for has not reached our shores and I don’t feel like reading Nora (Roberts). I seriously want to read again, so I picked up not one but two unusual titles from the bookstore. Not my typical fare but I think it will be interesting.

I shall be reading these for the next few days.

  

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Treasures Found

9 Jan

With M2 and her cousin in my office, I was kept busy. During their first two weeks, I shared with them some basic graphic design knowledge just so they understand what we really do. Hubby, for his part, taught them office administrative duties. Then the next two weeks, both girls worked on emptying my store room that has accumulated twenty years’ of printed work! Along the way, they found some treasures: photos from the pre-digital era!

Oh. My. God. Such classics – our wedding photo, M1 when she was a toddler, bad hair days captured in time, the twins when they were young, my Dad. The two girls certainly had a good laugh over these antiques while I was pleasantly surprised they found them.

It made me realize we should make a stronger effort to take better care of printed photographs. Not only that, we should have some favorite pictures framed and put on display to remind us of the treasured moments. Otherwise it will be forgotten.

As we are now in the digital age, a lot of moments are captured but never printed. They are then stored in a mobile device, hard drive, computer or iCloud and hardly looked at again. It is always put off for when we ‘have time’ to do so.

Think about it, how often do you find yourself scrolling or searching your device looking for that one particular treasured moment? Sometimes you cannot even find it from the thousands of photos stored! How would someone else know what treasures you store in the photo album of your device? Nobody knows except you. This whole scenario makes me rethink my life in all the photos captured digitally.

It was a good decision then to have them clean out the store room for we may have totally lost these forgotten classic photos.

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Back to Reading, Part 2

30 Dec

With the frustration of being stuck at Level 751 for Candy Crush, maybe I should go back to reading to regain some sense of calm and rid myself of all these frustration and despair. To make matters worse, both levels of Farm Heroes and Candy Crush Saga that I am currently at are no piece of cake either! Hrmph… is all I can say.

So it is a good thing I have gotten the latest Nora Roberts’ title, Whiskey Beach – I shall immerse myself in this book to clear my mind as I don’t fancy ushering in the New Year with all these negative feelings.

Back to reading it shall be for me!

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But Mummy, These are the Good Ones

24 Oct

One evening, I was commenting to the girls that I don’t seem to have a recent good picture of the two of them in my iPhone5S. My pictures are mostly on food, golf and places. Whenever I talk proudly of them to friends, the only pictures that I could show off (of them) were the US Great Adventure Road Trip ones, and they are like 2 years old! Eeesh.

So M2 cleverly airdropped some pictures of them to my phone, convincing me that these are the good ones. This is what I received.
MM7

MM8

MM9

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