I found Madrid to be more interesting than Porto – it had that mix of history and modernity. Because I understand a lot of people get bored by churches, palaces, galleries and museums, I’m listing the places I went to here:

Royal Palace & gardens
Puerta de Alcalá
Parque de Retiro
Museo Naciona del Prado
Caixa Forum (by Herzog & de Meuron)

In summary – I liked it, I had fun

Took the night bus from Madrid to San Sebastian – woke up on my birthday on the beach! Was so happy. San Sebastian is a gorgeous seaside town but also with city walls that date back to 800BC. Just cruisy, walked to the top of the hill with fort and the giant Jesus, sat on the beach..

Took the bus to the Guggenheim, Bilbao. Amazing building, really good exhibits – loved the one by Richard Serra & Jeff Koons. I’ve been a huge fan of Richard Serra for years, his works are these huge pieces of treated metal that compress and expand space as you walk through them.

Went back to London, really tired but happy
Shi.

ps: will send the rest of the collages..some other time :p

]]> http://misstraveler.com/postcards/giant-flower-puppy/feed/ 0 http://misstraveler.com/postcards/blonde-wig-in-the-london-gale/ http://misstraveler.com/postcards/blonde-wig-in-the-london-gale/#comments Tue, 18 Mar 2008 22:30:00 +0000 http://misstraveler.com/?p=43

Hey,

More stuff from the Jan-Feb filing cabinet – NME Big Gig (Klaxons, Bloc Party, Kaiser chiefs, Manic St Preachers, Cribs), Linkin Park concert, V day Vauxhall Roller disco, Carwash 70s disco on Old Street, Science Museum, Barbican, rappers from China, Sundays at Spitalfields markets..

Horrible week of wind, rain…

Sun came out today!

Hooray!

Hope you’re well
Shi

]]> http://misstraveler.com/postcards/blonde-wig-in-the-london-gale/feed/ 0 http://misstraveler.com/postcards/go-go-gingerbread-carols-concerts/ http://misstraveler.com/postcards/go-go-gingerbread-carols-concerts/#comments Mon, 10 Dec 2007 22:30:00 +0000 http://misstraveler.com/?p=39 xmas is in full swing now..

nice that in london there is so much choice to do the conventional xmas stuff and the unconventional xmas

like:

shopping: John Lewis,Debenhams (conventional) v Spitalfield markets, Brick Lane flea markets (unconventional). Acryllic jewelley is all the rage atm, even Chanel & Tate Modern have gotten into it :p I wonder if Mexican wrestling masks might make good gifts…

xmas cookies: Design Museum where I made my own rainbow gingerbread men. Meet Selvi the Indian gingerbread woman and Frieda, the cross-dressing (at the same time) gingerbread transgender

There were also girl go-go dancers Actionettes – they were swingin!

St Martin in the Fields are having Christmas concerts. On Sat was audience carols & my favourite (ever!): Vivaldi’s 4 seasons! Divine to hear & see the fantastic skill of the lead violinist, I was in heaven.

Trafalgar’s square’s Xmas Tree & Menorah (Chanukka this Tuesday)

Company Xmas dinner last week. We had it at a middle-eastern restaurant, stand-up buffet with dj & free flow drinks afterwards. Can’t say it compares to a pirate xmas party, but by the end of the night you could have been a 6ft peg-legged parrot & no one would have noticed.

Lion King was both gorgeous (costumes, make up, props) and disappointing (plot line, lead’s singing, some set design).

Comedy Store (Picadilly Circus) improv Sunday night follows the same format as “whose line is it?” and I have learnt a new word to love and cherish: “Tosser!” I’m sure it must mean something good because they only said it 50 times during the show.

And they’ve got more xmas fairs set up in front of City Hall and Leicester Square.

Turin Brakes & Kaiser Chiefs this week. Looking forward to it. Woo!

It’s still been raining all week.

Hope all is well,
Shi

ps: yes, I know what tosser means so please don’t send me emails suggesting how I might integrate using it into my daily life…
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=A+-+Tosser

Forgive the fragmented nature of this email, I don’t think I’ve had time to process the varied stuff I did over the weekend.

Weather’s gotten cold, rainy, windy and dark. Feels heaps better to get into a warm concert hall & listen to some jazz during the London Jazz Festival. Southbank’s beautiful in the rain huddled under an umbrella and wrapped in a warm coat.

Went barn dancing for laughs in London in a kitschy town hall with cherubs and chandeliers and an all-english country western band. Steel capped boots would have been handier than the prescribed cowboy hats and gingham togs.

Feeling horrified by the (admittedly very good) Holocaust and the Crimes Against Humanity exhbitions at the Imperial War Museum.

Laughing at the Camouflage exhibit.

Feeling bored at the V&A museum, then impressed at the broad spectrum of exhibits and then loving the cafe with the high ceilings and beautiful lights – the most stunning cafe I’ve ever eaten in.

And all the normal Friday & Saturday night shennenigans.

And titled “1 experience never to try in London” is dropping your Ipod onto the tube tracks, having a train pass over the Ipod and lying on your chest on Waterloo platform to pick it up. No, I don’t know why if you do touch the metal bit you do not turn into a smouldering cinder. Possibly the dumbest thing I’ve done in a long time. Yes I deserve a good scolding.

Stupidity aside…

I’m going to Malaysia and Australia for 3weeks from xmas, so really looking forward to warm weather, clear waters, the sun setting at 7pm and sunshine.

Have fun viewing the pic
Shi

Hey there

This weekend passed in a blur – last weekend in Tokyo for a bit. Going away dinner for me and another colleague who is being posted in another prefecture (different area in Japan).

Went to see hanabi (fireworks) at Sumidagawa River (’tis the season for hanabi..) with D, a Dutch expat who’s been in Tokyo for a while. It was pretty good, not as crowded compared to other hanabi, and all the Japanese girls were in yukata, which was really pretty – so we had a good time admiring girls’ outfits , but my all-time favourite, I think best of all the outfits I’ve seen in Tokyo was the goth yukata. Even her obi (sash) was all goth, with lace and teardrop pearls. Very cool. I wish we went in yukata too, but it’s a really difficult thing to wear and tie properly. Drats. Fireworks were great! 1 hour of fireworks (and sitting on newspapers on the road), there were some like golden streamers, star bursts, crazy alien rockets but the most stupendous was one that sounded like a great waterfall, and then the whole sky would turn red as a fountain of thick columns of light (about 10 storeys tall) gushed out…I love fireworks. As usual, there were police with megaphones telling people where to sit and walk – it is really common in Tokyo. Which is good, because there are so many people at these events that it would be chaos if there weren’t. Everything was really orderly and clean plus no garbage on the ground after. Finished up with a tops dinner (thanks to D’s superior Japanese skills) and cocktails in Japanese restaurant before going home.

Odaiba on Sunday for the Miraikan museum – long name is National Museum of Emerging Science and Innovation. Coolest museum for little kids, you get to manipulate a 2-storey high globe with LCD screens showing changing weather patterns, temperatures, change the planet… and just swivel the whole thing, fast forward the years..and of course other stuff like Assimo (freaky how humanlike he moves), spider robots kids can manipulate with Playstation controls, VR…I think the Malaysian science museum has something on tadpoles turning into frogs. Hmm. And the Fuji televion building had some summer festival at the bottom with the weirdest giant elephants and celebrities heads, policegirl uniforms for Japanese girls to take photos in (although being Japan, the skirts stop ½ inch below the butt) And the Statue of Liberty with the Rainbow Bridge in the back. Dancing Elvises also on tour in Odaiba seaview deck.

Went to Omotesando on a mission to find Herzog and de Meuron’s Prada building before leaving Tokyo – and found it. It is now one of my 3 favourite Tokyo buildings. Love the treatment of the façade, the intersital spaces where stores rooms can be hidden yet appear if needed, the slanted planes with images projected at an angle so that person on the street can see catwalk show projected from the 5th floor, uber-cool creamy white honeycomb structure and custom made glass panes. Love the effortless cool. Then cooled down the hot Tokyo night with green tea frappucino on the 2nd floor while people-watching the Shibuya crossing.

Tired now. 3 days left, working till I leave. Will let you know if there is a second chapter of this Tokyo tirade.

Later,

Shi.

Hullo..

Yet another slow weekend. It was raining crazily on Saturday night but before that, I went to an excellent acoustic live music session by Eric, a friend’s friend, who came on with fresh original scores and then wrapped up with an encore rendition of Halleujah. Surprisingly he’s still unsigned but he is so good it should only be a matter of time. Unfortunately before Eric came on a couple of Japanese bands were on, and after the accordian player’s set I really wanted to leave straightaway. Luckily Eric came on right after and my night got heaps better. Tokyo bars are really interesting, they’re mostly in the basements, or narrow 3m slots in the street, but I think that after a few stiff drinks, no one really notices how close the walls are anyway….

The weather was really good the past few days but after Saturday night’s storm the weather is horribly hot again. Went to the Edo-Tokyo Museum and it turned out to be much better than I expected (I had very low expections, the Malaysian museum has permanently scarred my perceptions of what museums are). The Edo-Tokyo Museum was interesting because it gave an insight on current items and practises in modern day Japan that are linked to practises dating back to the 1600s…I wish that they had given more explanation to WHY Japanese people are so ready to accept and assimilate Western culture because the rest of Asia (or at least South-East Asia) have mixed reactions towards Western culture – but I guess it’s not something someone can explain in a museum anyway. Museum design was pretty good, it looked interesting and impressive from the outside but inside it took backstage to the displays without being boring.

Visited the supposed Sumo Stadium next door because I read that they had a permanent exhibition, but all they had were sales on second-hand(I think they were) designer handbags and jewellery. I’ve never seen so many out-of-season Chanel/Vuitton/Gucci/Hermes/Tiffany etc stuff before. I might have bought something but the hordes of grandmas and grandpas kinda tipped me off that the stuff they were hawking weren’t super-cool… But they kept the most important thing open at the Sumo Museum, that is the GIFTSHOP where you could buy sumo shaped cakes, sumo mugs, sumo dolls and Hello Kitty Sumo mugs. Kitty-chan gets everywhere in Japan, the other day I bought a Kitty-chan snack! It had Kitty-chan on the front, and pink sparkly cereal puffs that tasted like Super-Sugary-Fruit-Loops.

My next foray into Japanese desserts shall be to try a parfait (dessert). You see Japanese girls all looking dreamily at the plastic parfait displays all the time. They are essentially 7 cubes of fruit, a dollop of whipped cream and a teaspoon of icecream, all arranged in kawaii manner and presented with the kawaii price tag of 800yen (US$7.50) . In comparison, a bowl of noodles costs 350yen, a Starbucks tall coffee costs 350yen and Haagen-Daaz costs 262yen. 1/20 a melon and a teaspoon of whipped cream must be awfully expensive in Tokyo.

After the visit to the (giftstore) of the (so-called) Sumo Museum, I looked at the Kanto Earthquake Memorial (it took less time than expected) but I had also seen Philippe Starck’s Asahi Hall (aka the Giant Golden Turd) from the train and proceeded walking..and walking…in the general direction. I found the hall after walking in the direction of the Japanese men swilling Asahi beers. Afterwards I realised that I had walked all the way to the Asakusa temple once I saw all the tourists and cheap souvenir stores.

No email last weekend because I somehow managed to get lost in all the red-light district in all 3 places I went to (Ueno, Roppongi and Shinjuku) I think I’ll try to get myself on a dive boat to a deserted tropical island with white sands somewhere off Malaysia when I get back Aug4.

Ahhhh…

Shi.