2015

Whether the Weather…

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image Photo, left: Whimsical thought of softly padded insulation on wire-framed outdoor seating

Mark Twain sarcastically commented that the coldest winter he ever spent was a summer in San Francisco, and even San Franciscans reluctantly agree in a rare self-deprecating moment. But being caught in the last snowstorm of the century in New York, I think Mark Twain ought to retract his statement. New York definitely gets the prize for the hassles one has had to endure in the soon-to-be infamous Winter of 2015.

Concerned family members have been asking me how I am faring with the weather. To be honest, it hasn’t really sunk into my path of denial yet. Until today. Fun over. I checked the list of weather stats for my favorite world cities that I track every now and then. How can NYC top the list as the coldest spot of 20? It apparently is doing so, beating out Dunhuang in the middle of Gansu and Tashkent in Uzbekistan. OK, so I cheat and have a string of Bay Area cities, but it’s the being HERE and not there that gives me the shake up call.

So I did the common sense thing and went out in the middle of the storm.

I met my dear friend Lisa, whom I had met in Hong Kong from the 70’s, when she was looking for a job and got in touch with me through a Berkeley connection. It was great to catch up with her after a long absence of 15 years since the last time we met in NYC. It was the first winter after 9/11 and New York at that time felt like a ghost town.

This time, Lisa met me at our designated lunch spot on the Upper East Side near the Metropolitan. Originally we had talked about going to visit a museum together. We abandoned that idea after glancing at the window periodically and realizing that staying in a nice cozy spot was a winner. We ended up chatting for hours. We switched mid-stream to another location for a change of pace but we kept our conversation going full steam. The venues hardly mattered, we had so much to catch up on–kids, family, work, travel, Board volunteering, and everything in between.

Lisa’s warmth and energy haven’t changed at all. It was gratifying to know and see an old friend the same in the best of ways. We have both been very lucky to have shared the same values and enjoyed similar interests throughout life.

Yes, life is short. But don’t let the weather get you down. It will be a sunny day tomorrow.

2015

Holy MOMA!

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The Museum of Modern Art (MOMA) is and was overwhelming, so it required an advanced tactical maneuver (I was trained over twenty years ago during visits to Disneyland with kids). I had been here a few times before so I was prepared for the onslaught. I spent the better part of the day at the museum, from first arrival at 10:30 opening to a German film at 4pm, honoring this high Temple of Art.

As recommended by the museum to visitors, I duly focussed on two exhibitions only. One was the special exhibition entitled “The Forever Now: Contemporary Painting in an Atemporal World”. Pretty vague title, but it basically tackled how artists are pretty eclectic, borrow from various sources such as the Internet and art history, and make art. In the photo below, you can see a pretty amusing pile of canvasses on the floor. The artist invites viewers to touch it and interact with it in ways you aren’t allowed to when it is displayed on the wall. A visitor got pretty creative with it, using the canvasses as a blanket!

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Below is a painting I like by a black artist, Rashid Johnson. He painted a canvas entirely in black, showing his moods as he made strokes on the canvas. The black color also depicted the historical moment in Berlin when Europe decided to colonize Africa.image

The second exhibition and tour at the Design and Architecture Gallery was exhaustive and addressed “Uneven Urbanization” in four major cities: Hong Kong, New York, Istanbul and Rio. Mega cities are defined by having a population over 8 million. HK and NYC are considered one of the smaller cities in the spectrum of mega cities. The exhibit was put together by various consultants who tried to come up with small-scale solutions that people could do themselves. Building urban gardens and small cafes are examples to reduce alienation. Obviously this was a very tall order to try solving, but the exhibition was very thought-provoking. The tour guide, who teaches city planning, was very informative and packed a lot into a one-hour tour.

To recover from the heavy morning’s brain dump, I decided to lunch at the Modern, a Michelin-star rated restaurant at the MOMA. You can see the white glove service in the pictures and the menu below.

1. Main Course: Branzino steamed in spinach with trumpet mushrooms and orange zest
2. Starter: Grilled Fois Gras with quince
3. Starter: lobster and turnip

Starters were prefaced by an acorn squash soup with roasted almonds and sabayon. I chose a nice glass of French Chablis to complement my selections, after the wine steward failed to convince me to try a California Chardonnay or a NZ Riesling!

The finale at the MOMA was punctuated by a film “Left-Handed Woman” by Wim Wenders, a well-known German director (he did Wings of Desire and Paris, Texas). The most amazing part is that HE was actually at the film showing as part of a retrospective on his work and HE presented the film! This is what NYC gets that little specs like SF don’t. Thus my title for today’s posting.

Here’s a fuzzy picture of THE man on the left in front of the podium…

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If this weren’t enough, I dashed over to Bouchon at the Time-Warner Center for a quick dinner of warm olives, broccolini and salmon terrine (all appetizers), then hiked my way over to Lincoln Center for my first opera evening. Despite already seeing a half-dozen opera movies filmed from here this past season, I still felt excited to be at the MET in the skinny, particularly at a sold-out performance of Carmen.

Sadly, however, Jonas Kaufmann, my favorite performer who was scheduled to sing, was sick tonite. He was replaced by Yonghoon Lee, who did a pretty decent job as his understudy. Fortunately, I’ll have another chance to see Jonas, a German version (with a real operatic voice) of Andrea Bocelli in August.

The opera only had limited seating in the rafters (dead top of the stadium, last row). It wasn’t the best experience, but I was able to witness a signature performance at the MET. Below are a couple of shots of the dated lobby interior and the opera house. The chandeliers inside the opera hall move up to the ceiling automatically when the lights dim so they are out of the way–well appreciated for the bleacher seats where I was located.
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Photos above:
1. Lobby of the Metopera
2. Stage from very tippy top (opera glasses are useless from up here– you need a telescope)
3. Curtain Call with Elina Garanca (Carmen) and Yonghoon Lee (Don Jose)

Good Night!!

Up Next: Serafina and the Audience

Resource Tips

You can find more MOMA news on their awesome website at moma.org. When you visit MOMA, you can track your path and send emails of items you like to study further to yourself! The site also allows you to search and copy images of many items in the MOMA collection architectural models. Ordering tickets online in advance is also a timesaver.

You can book Bouchon (the inexpensive cafe related to Thomas Keller from French Laundry) and the Modern (very expensive) on opentable.com.

2015

News Flash! Fodor’s Go List 2015

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Fodor’s Go List 2015 includes the Silk Road! It covers the northern portion that Travelswithmyselfandothers.com covered last September in Turpan and Dunhuang. While we traveled east from Urumqi, Fodor’s trip starts in Xian and goes west.

Stay with us, and you’ll get the scoop on cutting edge travel. We can claim that we did it in 2014! You can find the original posts in the September 2014 archives or search for Days 51-54 in Segment III of the trip blog or for the Post index on Day 80.

Along with many other destinations (both common and exotic), you can read about the Silk Road at Fodor’s on Slide 26 at
http://www.fodors.com/news/photos/fodors-go-list-2015#!26-the-silk-road,-china.

2015

United Nations in Jeopardy

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Coming from JFK and crossing the Queensboro Bridge this morning and staring at the ice floes in the Hudson (a first for me–to see ice on any body of water!), I realized that I haven’t ever been to the UN Building. Even after nearly a dozen times to this awesome city, I wasn’t any more astute than any other NY city dweller about this venerable institution. Visitors to San Francisco often asked us if we have been to Alcatraz. The knee jerk is based on snobbery coupled with insecurity, a dangerous defensive reaction we often give.

Anyway, it caught my attention and imagination, and I had a free day to un-jetlag myself from the red-eye. It also occurred to me that a new expansion had occurred recently. So I resolved to make it my activity for the morning and find out more about a major tourist attraction that I had never thought of visiting.

After a canned tour by a Brazilizan guide, I noticed that her trick to keep visitors engaged was to ask them trivia questions. So I decided to make it fun to see what information you know about answers in the form of questions, Jeopardy style. We often made Jeopardy games for the kids in the countries we were visiting, to keep them entertained (and focused).

Category: United Nations (value: your pride) (do-do-do ling do-ding-do)
Answers:

1. China, Russia, U.S., France and UK
2. Two of the six languages used for official translations other than English, French, Chinese, and Russian
3. Ban-Ki Moon’s predecessor
4. The continent with the highest number of peacekeeping operations today
5. Palestine and the Vatican

I learned quite a lot, if nothing else–to jog my memory over what I know about the UN, when it was formed (1945), and why it exists (6 good reasons, including peacekeeping, fighting world hunger, and human rights). The UN sends peacekeeping forces by edict, but costs are borne by each country that agree to participates.

Security Council Chambers
General Assembly Chambers
UN Permanent Mission to the UN on the corner

Photos above (tap on photos to see captions and enlargements)

1. Security Council Chambers
2. General Assembly Chambers
3. Expansion for the U.S. Mission to the UN

Of course the deviant thought was: who built this original monstrosity?!? It has obviously suffered the test of time. The answers are yours truly, (and not a Jeopardy question although tempting): Wallace Harrison, Oscar Niemeyer, and Le Corbusier, the leading architects of the time (among others who unfortunately fall off the page). Leger, a French artist, did do a decent mural inside the General Assembly, though. While somewhat naive, it represented open and free thought that still has relevance today.

After the tour, I toyed with the idea of buying tourist trinkets, including flags, pins of each country, mugs and UNICEF tee shirts, but ended up with a free 24×36″ poster in Arabic to End Violence.

The expansion across the street was apparently designed for the U.S. Mission to the UN. (Designer: Gwathmey Siegel Architects).

Answers: see the bottom of the post!

I also asked the guide how much security was required for Netanyahu today. She looked perplexed and awkward, with no ready answer. We eventually worked out that he went to Congress today, not the UN. Oh well, close. Would have messed up my visit anyway!

Jeopardy Answers:

1. Which countries are Permanent Members of the Security Council?
2. What are Arabic and Spanish?
3. Who is Kofi Annan?
4. What is Africa?
5. What are the two countries that have a seat in the General Assembly but cannot vote?

2015

100 Hours in San Francisco

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Those of you who have been checking my blog might be noticing a dry spell. I am planning a few upcoming trips this year, but I thought I would share a few recent activities with you. This weekend, we hosted some very good friends from Vancouver. Bennett and Colleen were arriving with some very serious dining plans that included Delfina, Mourad (the new Moroccan restaurant where Melissa works) and Nopa. We were to fill in the gaps between dinners, with epic walks, sights, and activities to justify the indulging among San Francisco’s best eateries.

The long weekend began on Thursday am, with a pickup at the airport. If you are coming from Canada like our BC friends, beware of the confusion between domestic and international airport locations. Customs and immigration might occur in Canada, but the airlines might still arrive in international or domestic, depending on the airline.

After hugs and greetings, we eventually set off on a specific shopping pursuit. At Bennett’s request, we ventured to Noe Valley to the Union Made store where Bennett and Gee Kin have bought elegant and hip men’s clothing. It didn’t hurt to have a 40% off January sale. Gee Kin likes to shop there (on Bennett’s recommendation) to keep up with the techie world, even if the prices are a bit steep. He found a great jacket there with super long arms that suited his proportions and was flattering for his next step out into Techie SF.

After this purely hedonistic venture, we recovered at Kasa on Eighteenth Street. Regarded as one of the best meals in town under $15, the home headquarters version on the food truck, this spartan shop eventually served a line out the door after we purviewed the menu of Indian specialties and ordered.  Three of us ordered a “Thali” lunch special of pork or lamb and three sides for $11.50.  I had the “Kati” roll with lamb. You can check out the menu at http://www.kasaindian.com/indianrestaurantsf/kasa-menu/.

We drove our guests home via the upper Market area and made a quick stop at Twin Peaks for a view of the city. Being a perfect day of 65 degrees, we had no problem with the usual windy bluff it normally is at the top. To top it off, it was reasonably clear and we could see Mt. Diablo in the East Bay, 50 miles away.

After a nap back at the ranch, we headed back to the same neighborhood in Noe Valley for dinner at Delfina.  We enjoyed the banter with the waiter over the descriptions of wine and food we eventually ordered, and the meal was predictably delicious.
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Day 2 started off with a morning walk down through the Inner Sunset to the DeYoung Museum to see the Keith Haring exhibit. While not particularly my thing, Haring had a following in New York and used spontaneous, street art to make his political statements. He covered many contemporary issues, including the Aids Crisis, racism, and world hunger.

We brought a picnic lunch to enjoy in Golden Gate Park in the unseasonably warm January weather. In the backs of our minds were the worries about the lack of rain that gives us beautiful guilt-ridden days of summer in the middle of winter. We skipped the wine but toasted our friendship on tofu and cloud’s ears, an ethnic dish, beet salad, sauteed kale, and fresh bread from Tartine (earned the night before).

After breezing past the adjacent Academy of Sciences, we headed over to Green Apple Books in the Richmond District. Another venerable local institution, this bookstore has expanded its footprint to the Inner Sunset where it shares space with LeVideo. It helped to bail out another well-loved service that has seen better days from a bygone era of VCRs and DVDs. I bought another used copy of “The Orientalist”, one of my favorite books, and a signed copy of a dessert book by the pastry chef at Chez Panisse for Melissa.

Our dinner that evening was a stunning introduction to Mourad. This new restaurant by Mourad Lahlou at 140 New Montgomery in the renovated AT&T building, is where Melissa works as pastry chef. We were lavished with new menu items produced by Mourad’s new Chef de Cuisine, Chris Kajioka, and our own Melissa. After being warmly greeted by Mourad, we were treated to a back-of-the-house tour of the kitchen. It was exciting to see this new venture long in the planning stages come to fruition, and we are so proud of Melissa’s dedication and success to her craft.

Day Three on Saturday was occupied by a walk from home to the North Side of the city to Chestnut Street. Gee Kin led our guests through Golden Gate Park. By pure accident, they found the sculptured heart painted by their friend Hung Liu perched along the Broderick steps leading to the Marina. You’ll hear more about this artist momentarily.

We regrouped just before dinner to drive over to the East Bay via the San Francisco Oakland Bay Bridge. We could still see the remnants of the former Bay Bridge alongside the spanking new version, to explain the reason for another bridge. Being seismically compromised, SF Bay Area residents recognized the importance of sustaining this vital transportation link between two major cities in California. While it was originally estimated at $1 Billion, it ended up costing $6.4 Billion and several years longer than anticipated.  Oh well, a bit off.

Our dinner with Hung Liu, a Chinese artist living in Oakland, was very illuminating. She and her husband Jeff shared with us their experience doing and selling art in the US. She is an accomplished artist and was teaching at Mills College until recently. You can see a sample of her work here, that represents a young Chinese bride with a bird in a cage superimposed on the image. We visited her studio in East Oakland after a classic meal at the Bay Wolf Restaurant on Piedmont Avenue.

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Day Four started with an early morning tour of Alcatraz Island, with a featured exhibition of Ai Wei-wei’s work. While the location may have been perplexing to many, it was a fitting venue for highlighting the issue of political dissidents and the importance of activism. Ai Wei-Wei used his expertise and talents as an artist to convey this message to many who would not otherwise attend an art museum nor a prison. He cleverly and adeptly combined the two experiences into one to convey an important message. Below is a picture of the kitchen at Alcatraz.

The kitchen at Alcatraz

Believe it or not, this day was capped by SuperBowl Sunday! No, we were not above succumbing to social influence. After lunch at Nopa on Divisadero and a quick tour of the neighborhood market, we hunkered down for the afternoon and pigged out on beer, guacamole and chips, finger food, and split pea soup. What more could you ask for on a lazy Sunday afternoon?

Our final day of the endless weekend was topped by a final walk from home to Hayes Valley via Upper Market. We shot past UCSF at Parnassus to Seventeenth Street, and then down the hill. Bennett and Colleen did some serious shopping on Hayes Street. I managed to get them to the Glen Park Station to head to the airport at the end of the day just in time for my final German conversation class on time!
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A few notes:

Urban walking is one of my passions! You can find out more about 5 day sagas from San Francisco to Napa or San Jose and more at http://www.crazyladywalks.com

You can see some of Melissa’s amazing desserts on Instagram at _melissachou.

For followers: Look for new postings in Early March for a week in New York City visiting museums and the New York Metropolitan Opera (Carmen, Don Giovanni and Manon). Another trip to Germany for the Dresdenmusikfestspiele in May is upcoming, and another world trip is in the works for late Summer. Stay tuned!

2015

Mexico City Art and Architecture

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You can view my latest video of art and architecture in Mexico City at: http://youtu.be/grAY6YWWVYI

The Palacio des Belles Artes renewed my inspiration for Architecture. Seeing the original drawings in large-scale formats at the top of the building, “in situ” with the surroundings for which it was designed, led me to believe that every building should have a place to show its design! While not necessarily practical for all, the value and purpose of doing so for this building were certainly evident.

The exterior perspective, model, and elevations are transferred to full scale grandeur, as are the interior atrium and domed area of the museum and the main auditorium. As mentioned previously, I saw an excellent production of Rigoletto one night and sat in the prime orchestra seats for only $60 US! I’m going back!

Frida Kahlo’s life history was tragic and fascinating. She was born to a German-Hungarian father, who was a photographer. Her mother was Mexican-Spanish. Her work and attire always reflected her alignment to Mexican culture and is regarded as Mexico’s most famous woman artist.

She had polio at the age of 6 and a serious accident at 18, when the bus she was riding was hit by a streetcar. She required over 20 surgeries in her lifetime that resulted in her use of numerous prosthetic devices. She was in constant pain but managed to produce incredible works of art. Her focus on headgear was an attempt to divert attention from her body. One foot was shorter than another, so her shoes were modified to fit each foot, and she wore corsets and long dresses to obscure her distortions. The clothing in the exhibition were only recently discovered in a storage room of the house 50 years after her death.

She was born in 1907 and died in 1954. Despite this short life span, she was married to Diego Rivera twice. After being separated for a short period the first time, they remarried. They traveled outside Mexico to San Francisco, New York and Europe. Many of their works are inspired from these travels.

I hope you will enjoy the delicate sensitivity from this talented artist’s work, and appreciate the strong influence of Diego Rivera on her life. Her mantra was “Viva la Vida!”

Here’s hoping you all were able to “Viva la Vida” in 2014 and will do more of the same in 2015!!

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Panoramas from Day 68… Plus a Few More….

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If I had had audio capability to enhance my blog, I would have inserted the Beatles song “In My Life” as the leader to this post. Its melancholy tone would have been apropos to my sentiment at the moment.

With this last official post to my blog, I wanted to share my thoughts on how fun, challenging, and rewarding it has been during my travels for 68 days around the world with myself and others. It has raced past and seldom felt lonely, particularly with the focus on sharing at least one event each day.

Having the blog felt the same as when you flick the TV on at home after a long day at the office. It’s comforting to hear the background noise as if others are in the room with you. Only at rare moments did I feel that I was communicating with outer space (anybody there? Any body??)

In any event, we are at the end of my adventure. It has been nothing less than a thrill. I’ve met some terrific people–Vladimir, Karen, and Meilina from my German class; the driver and guides in Uzbekistan; Morten in Emei Shan; and old friends Peter, Cordelia, and George from Hong Kong.

I tried my best to keep the pace on this travel magazine moving, not too heavy or intellectual, and fill the posts with timely information as I became more experienced in formatting more visuals.

My apologies again for any technical difficulties born in part by Google’s agreement with China and other conditions beyond my control. And pardon the caps being cumbersome and captions not aligning with pictures. I will have a word with the graphics department about its performance.

Since I am traveling back to San Francisco today, I’m recapping my trip through the panorama shots (not in any particular order) in case you missed them in the headers.

Photos, top to bottom:
1. Registan Square, Samarkand, Uzbekistan
A UNESCO world heritage site, Registan Square represents 3 complexes known as Madrassahs: Ulugbek, Sher-Dor, and Tilla-Kari. The first one was built in the 15th century, followed by the latter two in the 17th. Madrassahs were the Islamic center of higher education for boys, who studied there for a period of 10 to 20 years. While the main purpose was to learn the Koran, other disciplines were taught at the request of each student.

2. Kalyan Mosque, Bokhara, Uzbekistan
The Kalyan Mosque is one of the outstanding monuments of Bukhara, dating back to the fifteenth century. The original Karakhanid Djuma Mosque was destroyed by fire and dismantled, apparently at the time of the Mongolian invasion. It was rebuilt, but only to be replaced by a new mosque in the fifteenth century.

Under Temur, the construction of monumental buildings was concentrated in Samarkand and Shahrisabz. However, under Ulughbek, the powerful clergy of Bukhara initiated the construction of a new Djuma Mosque on the site of the old one.

The layout of the Djuma Mosque (named the Kalyan Mosque) is traditional: a rectangular courtyard with a tall and large maksura room on the west side. Each of the courtyard axes has a large ayvan and the perimeter of the courtyard is built up with pillar-domed galleries (there are 208 pillars and 288 domes). The maksura is square and has deeply recessed niches on the transverse axis and a mihhrab on the main axis. Slabbing is typical for the early fifteenth century,-an octahedron of arched pendentives supports a vaulted inner dome and is capped by a spherical blue outer dome upon a drum. This structure still dominates the skyline of Bukhara.

Construction of the mosque was completed in 1514.

3. The Ark, Bokhara, Uzbekistan

4. Dresden Altstadt
5. Konigstein, Germany
6. Chengdu from Fraser Suites Hotel
7. Gaocheng, Turpan, China
8. Urumqi, China
9. Hong Kong MTR
10. Guangzhou Civic Center
11. Chengdu Railway Station
12. Top of Emei Shan, Chengdu

Call or email me if we have been out of touch during this time. I have lots of time and would love to hear from you.

Auf Wiedersehen, Zai Jian, and can’t wait to see Gee Kin, Melissa, and Julianne! Time to get back to the Real World!

With love,

Vickie Victoria

December 23,2014 Update: For latecomers to this blog, I am reposting the panorama photos from my last posting on Day 68. In addition to those above, I am adding a few bonus panoramas that come from travels immediately prior to or after my world trip July-September.

The original 10 posted above are between July 21 and September 26, 2014.

I am adding the following additional trips, all taken this year:

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1. Cappodochia, Turkey (May 2014)

2. Dresden, Germany (May, 2014–see #4 above panorama taken from this trip)

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3. Chicago, Illinois (June, 2014) during the American Institute of Architects Convention

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4. Sacramento, CA (November, 2014)–see my movie on Youtube at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0vVEX9eR0Gs

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5. Mexico City, Mexico (December, 2014)

For the latecomers, go to the index posted on Day 80 of my trip for the locations of my travels.

I’m looking forward to traveling in 2015 with you! There will be a few surprises in store, so stay tuned…Happy Holidays, Froehliche Weihnachten, Feliz Navidad, and 再见!

Real Time Creative and Independent World Travel