My Lords, Ladies and Gentlemen...

Tea and tatties

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 08 May 2008 08:48:59 +0200

Knowing that I was going to want a really good cup of tea when I got back from New Orleans I asked Julie for recommendations on somewhere in Santa Monica. She suggested the Tudor House and I gave it a go. Good call.

The tea menu was everything I had hoped for and the tea came in a generous pot and wasn't the weak, insipid stuff I drank at another place the week before. The service was friendly as you could hope and as fast as you'd expect in the US. I really didn't need the fried potatoes that came with my omelette but they were very good and I thoroughly enjoyed them. I deny anyone not to enjoy fried potatoes or a really good pot of tea.

I think I know where I'll be drinking tea when I'm next in the area.

Tea Cup

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ironic |īˈränik|

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 01 May 2008 00:00:02 +0200

adjectiveusing or characterized by irony : his mouth curved into an ironic smile.• happening in the opposite way to what is expected, and typically causing wry amusement because of this : [with clause ] it was ironic that now that everybody had plenty of money for food, they couldn't obtain it because everything was rationed.

Safari AdBlock

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Not a paradox, a blog post

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Mon, 28 Apr 2008 04:18:39 +0200

Today, Massimiliano and I visited LACMA. It's a great museum, with an excellent selection of art movements and styles, although it doesn't seem to have a permanent photography exhibit. On the other hand, it seems to cater well for kids, as there were several interactive art-creation stands in and around the campus.

I enjoyed the docent talks on abstract expressionism (of which I knew nothing) and Robert Motherwell. I'm not sure if I could say that I enjoyed Motherwell's Elegy to the Spanish Republic (100) but I loved David Smith's piece, next to it. I can't find a picture on-line but this one is quite similar and is outdoors, which is where they were intended to be displayed. Want.

But I suppose that it was inevitable that having travelled over 4,000 miles from Belgium, the painting I most enjoyed from the collection was this one from Magritte, one of Belgium's most brilliant artists. It's always struck a chord with me. I expect it stems from my love of paradox and patterns. And as much as the statement is true (it's an image of a pipe), it's also funny.

Ceci n'est pas une pipe

Before visiting the museum I hadn't realised quite how close it is to the La Brea tar pits. I've wanted to visit them ever since seeing them in movies when I was a child. Standing next to them, smelling the tar and seeing it bubble away was excellent fun.

The museum and the tar pits both look like they're worth a second visit.

Tar Pit with Bubble

Ground Sloth

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Can't cook, will eat

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 27 Apr 2008 04:34:30 +0200

I don't have a kitchen to cook in at the moment, so I bought a different set of foods than I would normally choose at the Santa Monica farmers' market, this morning.

As I've said, the really good ingredients don't need much in the way of cooking, anyway. So while it would be nice to experiment with some of the vegetables I saw there and don't have at home I wasn't too worried. I started off buying 2oz of sliced, dried persimmons. They're not too sweet, chewy and don't have that mouth drying effect you sometimes get from a raw persimmon. But they definitely have the fragrance and perfume you get from the fresh fruit.

Then the chap running the fresh fruit stand gave me a Fuji apple to test. I did and I liked it. Sweet and crispy, it was a great breakfast and most likely more healthy than a muffin or a pastry. I got half a dozen to take back with me so that I have something healthy to start the next few days with.

If it hadn't been so hot I'd have stayed longer. But it's still April and I'm not yet ready for 90°F, so I made a hasty exit and did a very un-English thing and found some shade.

Dried Persimmons and Fuji Apples

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Looking forward to pea dumplings

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 15:01:52 +0200

I'm not normally a big fan of dumplings. Possibly because I look a little bit like one and possibly because I'm always a bit wary of any kind of food that comes with a 'wrapping' or sauce. Surely, if the ingredients are good, there's no need to coat them in pastry, dough, batter, bread crumbs or thick syrupy, creamy, unctuous sauce?

So I was surprised to find myself thinking how delicious the dumplings, that Filiz just showed me, look.

Peas? I love peas. Cheese? I love cheese. Lemon. Salt. Olive oil. It looks so simple and good. I am now a little bit disappointed that I'm leaving in the morning and won't be able to cook them for a fortnight. But it's something to look forward to when I get back home.

I looked for a photo of some peas to go with this post and could only find this picture of a strange plant I found when I went to Mt Vernon in Virginia. I'm not sure if these are actually peas or whether they are something poisonous. In any case, they look interesting.

Pea_pods

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Vox Hunt: A Cut Above the Rest

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Thu, 24 Apr 2008 11:56:30 +0200

Show us a photo of you with a funny haircut.

This isn't actually my hair. It's a hat I tried on in a shop in Alaska. After checking in a mirror I decided against buying it.

Hair

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Locked out (again)

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Tue, 22 Apr 2008 19:51:34 +0200

Last July I managed to lock myself out of my apartment when I lived in Amsterdam and... opened the door with what I thought was the same technique as the locksmith who'd helped me the year before. he was more skilled than me and had a special sheet of plastic for opening locked doors. I sort of destroyed the door frame and it had to be rebuilt. That really did teach me not to lose my keys.

So I was a little bit irritated this morning when I was unable to lock the door to my apartment in Brussels. The key wouldn't turn in the lock, despite trying for a good 10 to 15 minutes. I was a little irritated at this as I had to have the lock changed a few months ago when one of the building's staff lost the key to my apartment. It took ages for the lock to be changed as they had to order a new one from Italy and the lock-making factory closes down for all of December. Apparently.

I met the maintenance man outside my apartment this evening and he used the trick with the plastic to get in. He disassembled the lock and decided that it was broken and would be returned to the manufacturer under the guarantee. I am now waiting for him to return with a replacement and to fit it this evening. Obviously, I can't leave the place until he does.

I really don't seem to have much luck with locks :-(

Bits and Pieces

Lockless Door

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Still lots to go

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:32:48 +0200

So now that I've visited Colorado and China for the first time I've updated the maps of the countries and US states I have visited. Frankly, I think there's still not enough red on these maps. So much more to see. I'm hoping to add New Zealand and Ethiopia soon. And I'd like to see more of Scandinavia, Iceland, Greenland and Chile if possible.

Worldmap

Statemap

I made the maps with Douwe Osinga's visited countries and visited states tools.

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A glory shrouded in smog?

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Fri, 18 Apr 2008 14:14:47 +0200

I'd never been to mainland China before and so I wasn't quite sure what to expect from Beijing.

I knew it had the ancient Forbidden City (which I didn't see) and was close to a bit of the Great Wall (which I also didn't see). I also knew that the PRC's capital city had grown tremendously over the last few years and was heavily populated and full of new buildings.

It is indeed full of huge, glass clad towers. And it has an atmosphere almost as polluted as the Moscow I visited in September 2001. When I went back to Moscow a couple of years later the air was much cleaner and I hope that China follows Russia's lead and takes steps to clean up its emissions act.

I did make one little tourist trip in Beijing. Guangliang suggested a trip to the new Olympic stadium. It's not quite finished yet, although it looks like the remaining work is fairly minor and the vast majority of the construction has been completed. Frankly, I think the outside of the stadium looks great and the outside of the swimming pool looks superb, too.

But as you can see in the picture below, it's not really possible to see the blue of the sky. There's a thick layer of smog over the whole city and you can taste it in every breath. But that doesn't seem to put most people off a visit, as the many visitors we saw confirmed. In fact, it was so popular, I couldn't get a shot that didn't have other tourists posing for their own photos.

Beijing Olympic Stadium (Pose)

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Vox Hunt: How Bizarre

nobody@vox.com(Tubbydammer) — Sun, 13 Apr 2008 04:22:27 +0200

Show us something bizarre.

These pigeons were found on the street in Montevideo on a Sunday afternoon. Why? No idea.

Beheaded_pigeons_461

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