Christmas feasting, toys and movies

This past Christmas was spent in Silicon Valley with Neve and Mason and the rest of the Cheng clan. It was a nice relaxing visit, with a LOT of eating. There was the big family feast on Christmas eve where, among lots of other foods, I was introduced to guava cake from Aki bakery in San Jose. Apparently it's famous locally, and I can certainly see why. Neve and Mason must have been VERY good this year because Santa brought them a bunch of cool toys. The GloDoodle was one they kept picking up (as did I!) to draw and erase (the erasing seemed to be part of the fun).

More feasting happened on Christmas day with an informal brunch for whichever family members wanted to stop by. In the evening, we visited the Barty's for a lovely English Christmas dinner. The meal was turkey, roast potatoes, apple pie, christmas pudding and custard from a can (delicious on pie!) and we were all quite stuffed at the end.

The following day Mei and I made a brief stop at Stanford mall, braved traffic and parking, left quickly. That was the extent of the Boxing day shopping. In the evening, Stephen made roast beef and more roast potatoes (can't really get too much of those) along with some delicious trifle from Sarah Barty.

I vowed to have leftovers for the rest of the week! I saw two movies over the holiday, both highly recommended. "Up in the air" was excellent, some great acting by the three leads (George Clooney, Vera Farmiga, Anna Kendrick). The ending was quite unexpected. "Sherlock Holmes" was very entertaining. Lots of fun banter between Holmes and Watson, they reminded me of House and Wilson, which is ironic and a little circular! Great action, a very Holmesian story (about cults and the supernatural and stuff). They definitely set this up for a sequel.

The year is about to turn and it's hard to believe 2009 has passed.

Thanksgiving!

This is my favourite holiday. Lots of good food, no gift giving pressure. This year was special since D and Julie brought the kids to Silicon Valley. They spent a total of 10 days with Mei's family and reports are that the kids mostly all got along! I was up only for the major feasting, but it was fun to see D, Julie, Austin and Mari so soon after having just visited them. This year's usual turkey blow-out at Gugu and Al's was supplemented by a surprise party for D's 40th birthday, coordinated by Julie, Baldwin and hosted by the 3's (Yvonne and Ralph). The Da's (Marjorie and Dah Yu) and their family were all their, which was nice because they will all be at Ching and Grace's for Thanksgiving. Food consisted of delicious meaty ribs, ducks (2 of them), Da Bo Mu's (Marjorie) spring rolls (which I usually miss because I don't visit during Chinese New Year, so I ate a lot of these), and of course cake. Julie requested comic strips for D as gifts and many people contributed very creative strips.

The big turkey day started with a ballet class with Gugu. We figured we would need the extra calorie burn. In the afternoon, I went over to Mei's and hung out for a bit, then headed over to Baldwin's with D and hung out some more. There were 26 people at dinner, including an Iranian couple (who have been to previous Thanksgivings) with each spouse's brother, some relatives of Al's, various other graduate and former graduate students who have been attending for years, plus the usual relatives. We had potatoes of all kinds (yams, mashed, scalloped, Stephen's roasted), some token veggies (peas, salads), and stuffing (with pork and without) to go with the juicy turkeys (2 of them). Desserts included the usual apple and pumpkin pie, but my favourite was Edie's cranberry cake and her chocolate mini muffins with secret zucchini inside.

On Friday, I headed over to Mei's again and went on some shopping errands with them. The mall parking was crazy busy and we ended up only spending about an hour inside after all that but I did get some ideas for Xmas gifts. Mei and Stephen made a delicious 'toad in the hole' dinner with more roasted potatoes. Toad in the hole is basically sausage with yorkshire pudding served with onion gravy. Delish!! In the evening, there was another surprise for D. Julie had arranged for all the Cheng cousins to play Bocce at a place in Los Gatos. D is pretty easy going so it wasn't hard to get him to go along with whatever crazy scheme Julie and Mei were dreaming up. Once we got to the courts, the cousins were all there and we had a great time. It was such a blast to hang out with the cousins without any kid responsibilities. I'm not sure when was the last time that happened.

D and Julie and kids were flying home on Saturday so I hung out with them in the morning to see them off. Then I headed to San Francisco where I'd planned lunch with my 'city' friends Annette, Deborah and Tegan. We ate at Bar Tartine and the food was delicious. I had a french toast with berries along with home smoked bacon. I loved catching up with everyone although the time was short. I had to hit the road for the long drive home. A relatively short trip, but relaxing and fun, just perfect!

La Danse

This is a new documentary by Frederick Wiseman. He filmed the Paris Opera Ballet from top to bottom in a fascinating movie that includes a lot of footage of dancers working together and with choreographers, as well as backstage activity such as sewing costumes, dying shoes, keeping bees and arranging fund raising events. The movie doesn't have any descriptive commentary or titling and there is no single person talk-to-the-camera footage either, so you really feel like a fly on the wall watching this amazing organization go through its paces. I was most fascinated by the process that the dancers go through to learn their parts. With the many modern pieces that are shown, the choreographers are there in the studio, tweaking the smallest movements, describing 'motivations', adjusting as they go. In one scene, a couple does something that interests the choreographer who asks them to do it again, however they didn't notice what they were doing so have trouble recreating something that just happened. As I watched this process, I realized that these dancers are taking their exceptional bodies and creating a vocabulary, expressing emotions, ideas, in a way that most of us normal people could never do. We are like toddlers just learning to speak compared with the beauty they can express with the smallest, precise moments.

There is a lot of humour sprinkled throughout this movie. In one sequence, we hear a running commentary as the troupe runs through a rehearsal on stage. When one dancer comes out in her tutu but with leg warmers pulled up over her thighs, someone watching asks why she's wearing thermal underwear.

This movie does more than other ballet movies that I've seen to reveal the collaborative work that dance really is. Sure there are superstars and their individual talents attract audiences, but dance is created by a lot of people, from the stars to the corps members to the people working on costumes and lighting and keeping the facility clean, to the administrators who keep everything humming.

Wiseman includes a lot of footage of Paris street scenes, the vaults and tunnels under the Opera Garnier and empty hallways, which sometimes felt like taking time away from the dancers, however the overall feeling from this movie is of the amazing, difficult, beautiful work of creating dance.

Last day in New York

My day today is mostly at our New York offices. It's always a treat to see our folks here and we have a lot of work going on so they showed me around. After work, I met with a friend back in Chelsea at Bar Stuzzichini. Nice little place for a drink and during happy hour (from 4:30p to 6:30 weekdays) they offer one little plate for each drink ordered. The selection includes delicious little meatballs, sheep cheese, rice balls. I was stuffed from lunch so this made for a nice light meal.

Old paintings and new dance

Today started with a visit to the Met where I met up with Lilian. Among other things, they have a Vermeer painting on loan from the Rijksmuseum and are making a show around it. Since there are so few Vermeers out there, I'll take whatever opportunity to see one. The audio tour does a nice job of giving some background. The painting, The Milkmaid, is surrounded by other work by Vermeer (owned by the Met) and other works by contemporaries of Vermeer. It's really interesting to see not just his evolution as a painter but also how he and his fellow painters were working through issues at the same time (and learning from each other). The use of light and depth in the paintings is always amazing to me.

After our taste of 17th century Dutch, we headed to the roof to have a look at the sculpture up there. It's a piece by Roxy Paine, who did a similar sculpture in Madison Square Park a few years ago (which I took a picture of). He creates branching metal forms that appear to grow out of the roof. This piece is low and long and we can walk in and around the branches (unlike the one in the park which was more compact but very tall). The early pack of runners were starting to come into Central Park (for the NYC Marathon) and we could hear the cheering down below. My goodness, those runners were really fast! Amazing after 26 miles.

After our roof foray, we decided to explore the American Wing via a guided tour. They recently renovated this area and the courtyard is exceptional. It's one of my favourite places in the museum. They have also installed a series of period rooms starting with the 17th century and it was quite interesting to see these. A great deal of the art is set up in glass boxes in library like rows. Picture frames, portraits (Washington by Gilbert Stuart! Madame X by Sargent!), furniture, grandfather clocks, and all presented in a much more casual way than you normally see with such treasures.

After lunch, Lilian had to head home and I killed some time checking out items in the wing that had an audio guide symbol. Then it was time to catch a bus for City Center. I didn't have coins and the bus driver was kind enough to let me stay on (who says New Yorkers are rude?). Morphoses/The Wheeldon Company was performing. The review of their Thursday performance was not so good but this was a different program. I love City Center because it's so small and compact. From my seat near the front of the first balcony it felt like I was on the stage with the dancers. The company draws dancers from many different places and I was interested to see that Melissa Barak was with them. She used to dance with NYCB and is now with the LA Ballet. Wendy Whelan is also part of the company and it was a real treat to watch her in such close quarters. She is one of the 'elders' of ballet and it was a joy to see her dancing and more than holding her own with much younger partners. The first piece was to music by Georgi Ligeti which did not appeal to me and I found this makes it hard for me to enjoy the dancing. I loved the second piece and thought the 2 dancers were absolutely beautiful, fluid and instinctive. The third piece was also great, although I'm not sure what the deal was with the cones floating in the air above the dancers. The costumes by Francisco Costa, designer with Calvin Klein, were quite interesting. There was a lot of very unusual and beautiful partnering but maybe my favourite part of this ballet was the sequence for the men only.

Both the Boston program and the City Center program had a piece danced to music by Arvo Part. Somehow this Estonian composer has become the darling of contemporary choreographers. I can see why, the music is haunting, lyrical and beautiful. The Boston piece was choreographed by Helen Pickett and the NY piece by Lightfoot Leon. I believe there was another ballet I saw in the last few months danced to Part's music as well, I'll have to try and remember what that was. 'Spiegel im Spiegel' seems to be the piece that is drawing the dance makers.

Dinner tonight was at a Lebanese place called Ilili. The food is an upscale take on Lebanese and was delicious. They have a kibbeh in yogurt soup which really makes the meat moist and the duck kabob was so rich and flavourful. Dessert was essmalieh, which is shredded filo with creamy filling and an orange blossom syrup and tasted like eating crunchy flowers!

Balmy day in NYC

It was really warm for much of the day today and I had a pretty packed agenda. I started in the morning at the Gaynor Minden showroom. I wear their pointe shoes, but wanted to see if they could help me tweak the fit. It turned out to be really quick, just needed softer shanks. I'm excited to try these shoes at home. Next was a visit to High Line Park. This is a new redevelopment of an old train track into a public garden and park. It's elevated and a really interesting way of reinventing something that was otherwise probably a bit of an eyesore. The track goes through or under a couple of buildings, including the Standard Hotel which has developed a reputation as a place for voyeurs (in the park at night) and exhibitionists (in a hotel room overlooking the park with the drapes open and the lights on). There are benches and wooden lounge chairs scattered throughout the park, and at one area, the designers have built in a theatre style seating area for park goers to watch the activity on 10th street, below. The plantings along the park appear to change from one end to the next, however I'm not much of a plant person so I'm not sure what the themes are. It being late fall, it was mostly in decay stage, although some hardy plants were still showing off.

My next stop was International Center of Photography, located in mid-town, not far from where Ming and Wilson used to live. They are presenting a show called 'Dress Codes' which seemed like it would be interesting. The area appears to be mostly a business district and was very quiet today. The show was a bit disappointing however. I was hoping for some interesting takes on fashion, clothing and photography however I found the pieces in the show to be too much about ideas and not enough about emotions. The one piece I found intriguing was a series of photos of an elderly Moroccan woman who showed how she smuggled clothing across borders by wearing them in layers under her clothes. There's nothing wrong with art meant to express ideas, but very few of the pieces brought out any kind of visceral reaction in me. The museum includes both still and video images in their shows.

My final stop of the day was at the New Museum of Contemporary Art. This museum is in the Bowery and the neighbourhood is really interesting. Lots of high fashion shops and smaller boutique-y places with street vendors all around. The museum is showing pieces by Urs Fischer who was profiled in the New Yorker, where I learned about it. I found this show much more appealing. The artist pretty much took over the museum (3 floors of large gallery spaces). Each floor had a different feeling. The art had a certain obsessive quality to it, which is something I am always drawn to. Each gallery had a very different feel from the others and it was amazing to consider it all came out of the brain of one guy. The museum offers free iPod tours, which is a nice way to give viewers additional information and helps in the appreciation of the pieces.

I was pretty pooped at this point and my feet were ready for a rest. One of the big problems with living in LA is that there are so few opportunities to walk. I had a couple of hours of relaxation at Wilson and Ming's. For dinner, we headed to Bar Breton, near their place. I had a nice ham and cheese crepe (with a sunny side up egg in the middle) and we shared a mousse with rice crisps and fleur de sel. The traditional beverage with crepes is cider and I tried a delicious pear version. By the time we were done and heading home, it started to rain pretty hard. I had been thinking of heading down to the Village Halloween parade but decided that I didn't care enough to get wet in it.

Speaking of Halloween, all day I saw people in interesting outfits. Half the time, I wasn't sure if it was their usual weird outfit or a costume for the holiday. Is that guy in camouflage for Halloween or is he really in the military? Was that guy a real doctor, or is he going to a costume party? I'm pretty sure the 3 zombie nurses and a few people with blood stains were for today only. The David Bowie standing outside the restaurant was pretty convincing, but the real guy is a lot older!

Boston Ballet and back to NYC

Yesterday started with another ballet class, different teacher and this time the intermediate/advanced class. It was much more intermediate than it was advanced, but a nice challenging and small class. The teachers here all are very aware if you are a new student. When I told him I was from LA, he immediately asked about LA Ballet. Before heading back, I stopped at Taste Coffee House for lunch and had a pretty good crepe. As I was getting bundled for the walk back, who comes walking down the street but The Flash! Grown man with full head-to-toe red outfit with the wings on the head and the fake muscles. Walking with a normally dressed man. Going to get something at the coffee shop. Very interesting.

In the afternoon, I took the subway into downtown to meet Julie for dinner and the ballet. We chose a place called Teatro the night before, based on menu (Italian) and mosaic ceiling. It's located right off the Common and very close to the theatre. We had a very nice dinner (prosciutto and fig appetizer, linguine with crab meat, tiramisu) and I had a wonderful chance to catch up with Julie one-on-one, which is a rare treat! The ballet was performing a repertory of Paquita, 2 new pieces and Jorma Elo's version of Carmen. Paquita is a ballet I've always wanted to see because the variations come up a lot but it's rarely performed. It's really a combination of groups of dances, duets, trios, eights, just strung together for entertainment. The story is fairly unimportant (something about a gypsy girl discovering she's noble). The dancing is very nice. The two premiers are beautiful, very different. The first is much more balletic, very romantic and sensual, completely captivating. The second is much more modern but also engrossing, beautifully done. I enjoyed the Carmen, although they did not provide a complete synopsis and so I kept getting confused as to who was who. The men's costumes looked like pajamas to me, and did not differentiate the 2 main characters very well. The music helped (it's a modern version based on and using themes from the original). The principal ballerina, Lorna Feijoo, was amazing. Some parts of the ballet are so beautifully choreographed and the company really did a great job with it. All in all, a great way to end my Boston visit.

Today, D and I took a walk with Boo through the local woods in the morning and then headed downtown. We planned to have lunch in Chinatown before he dropped me off at the train station. We found a new dim sum place to try (Winsor) and had a great lunch (they do a nice xiao long bao, soup dumplings).

When I got to NY, I walked out onto the street and immediately was struck by the energy in this place. Wilson and Ming live a few blocks from Penn station. Walking down 7th Ave to their loft I'm struck by the variety of people and activity happening in such a small area. There really is no city like this. Ming wasn't feeling well, so I had a nice dinner with Wilson and a chance to catch up. We headed out afterwards to the Shake Shack where I got a frozen custard for dessert. I've got a jam packed weekend here. The past week in Boston was a really great, quiet and relaxing time. I'm ready to jolt myself back to explore NY this weekend.

Boston Ballet School

I'm going to be seeing a performance by the Boston Ballet on Thursday evening with Julie, however during the week, I discovered that they have open adult classes and there is a studio very near where D and Julie live! I went to an Elementary class today and thoroughly enjoyed it. The school has a separate series for true beginners so their elementary class is not as 'basic' as at some studios where all adult classes are open drop in. It was a small class and the level was great for focusing on perfecting technique. I'm going again on Thursday and will try their Intermediate/Advanced. Apparently it goes much faster so we'll see if I can keep up.

Fenway Park

Today I hopped on the subway and took a tour of Fenway Park. I've been to Dodger Stadium (tough to get in and out, beautiful view of hills, lots of visiting team fans), the old Yankee Stadium (great transit, great street life, no visiting team fans!) and Angel Stadium (fancy food, odd rock/fountain thing in the outfield). Fenway is tiny compared to those three! And because of the Green Monstah (the 'r' is silent), it's asymmetrical. But the history is pretty neat. There is Yankee bashing from start to finish by the corny old tour guide, but he has got a lot of information memorized, about the hand operated scoreboard and the men who run it, the retired numbers, the old jerseys, and about the great players who've made their name here. Past the outfield, where the bullpen used to be is a restaurant called The Bleacher Bar where you can sit and see the park from the center fielder's perspective. They have some nice sliders there (the mini burger, not the pitch).

Boston Book Festival

Today was a rainy day. In the morning, we headed to a local bookstore to get a book for a birthday party that the kids were going to later. Lunch was a combination of chicken noodle soup, chicken nuggets and grilled cheese sandwiches. All perfect for a rainy day lunch! After lunch, we dropped the kids off with Julie, and D and I headed to downtown to check out the Boston Book Festival. Now, LA has had a book fair for years and I've never been because you have to get tickets to the speaker sessions, fight traffic and parking to get to UCLA and I just know it's going to be crowds everywhere. Boston is a much smaller city and we are able to get into the two sessions we were interested in without much trouble. There are lines for book signings, but we pretty much skipped those. The first session was on the power of place in books. The format was a small speech by the 4 authors which made it less dynamic and interesting. Anita Shreve and Anita Diamant were the two authors I have read, and they both were very interesting. Anita Shreve's book is now on my list to look up. Elizabeth Nunez was an author I had not heard about, but she read an excerpt from her book which was enticing. The second session we went to was on thrillers and espionage books. This time, the format was a discussion and the 3 authors and the moderator all clearly had interacted before and were very practiced in this type of conversation. They talked not just about writing this genre of book but also about what writing does for them, why they write, how it affects them and how it affects their lives. They compared their own styles with each other. I now have Joseph Finder, Andre Dubus and Stephen Carter to look up. The festival included a few booths out in Copley Square with displays. Unfortunately, it was extremely windy and many books fell to an unfortunate soggy fate. So sad to see. We saw Ken Burns in one booth signing books, had some free Brigham's ice cream (Rocky Road, delish!) and checked out some e-readers (Sony has one you can take notes on). The final session was the keynote address by Orhan Pamuk. He spoke about his new book called "The Museum of Innocence". Recently the New Yorker published a short story by him and I realized today that it was an excerpt from this book. He read a few sections out of the book and then sat for a discussion. Unfortunately, his interviewer took a political tone to his questions which immediately irritated Pamuk. Even more unfortunately, the interviewer had nowhere else to go so each new question was more irritating. Finally, Pamuk suggested taking questions from the audience and here we were in luck. Mostly really good questions came out of this, including asking about how the first person narration restricts the viewpoint of the story, about the translator and that process and others mainly focusing on the writing process. [Update: Some videos are now online for various speakers from the Festival.] We skipped the signing line up and headed for a short stroll on Newbury Street. This place totally reminds me of Yorkville in Toronto, down to the architecture. Dinner was at Brasserie JO. The place was packed so we pulled up a couple of chairs at the bar. I had their mulled cider with brandy. We shared the onion tart (delish, good flavour but lovely light texture). I had the steak frite with a really delicious blue cheese butter, D had a pork tenderloin that he polished off. Dessert for me was chocolate mousse and for D the profiteroles. Both were exceptional, and they serve them in a nice showy way! We came out of the restaurant completely stuffed and for me, I felt the price of the meal was very reasonable (compared to what I think a similar place would be in LA). The best thing about the day was not having to fight crowds for everything, like I'm used to in LA. Plus we lucked out on $10 parking as well! It was a great way to start my week in Boston.

Getting to Boston

I flew out of LAX on Thursday night. The United flight to JFK is Economy Plus in all of coach, so with the extra 5 inches, I napped my way across the country. It does make the flight feel shorter. We landed in NYC at around 6:30a and the Airtrain/LIRR combination got me to Penn Station for about $13 bucks and in about an hour. By 8a I was sitting at the Tim Horton's having a donut and coffee with my printed ticket in hand. When I bought my train ticket, I wasn't sure how long it would take to get into the city. Clearly I gave myself way too much time, so I hung out for a few hours waiting for the train. About 20 minutes before it was scheduled to depart, I went to hang with the crowd staring at the board. I find this scene endlessly amusing, regardless of which train station I'm at. Crowds of people all standing and staring in the same direction. As soon as the track is listed, a big portion of the crowd heads towards it. The train ride is so civilized and relaxing. My only difficulty was that I decided not to attempt the overhead lift of my suitcase into the bin, so my legs shared the space with my bags. That extra 5 inches of leg room would've been very welcome. Even so, I find it very easy to nap on the train. The glimpses I got of the countryside showed that autumn was in full force. The colours of the forests we passed were beautiful, particularly against the backdrop of the overcast sky. I arrived in Boston at around 3:30p and easily found Julie's car waiting near the taxis. A quick drive out to the 'burbs and I'm at Julie and D's new house! The kids have grown SOOOO big since I last saw them (maybe 3 years ago?) and the house is really nice. It's much bigger, with a great big beautiful yard, a nice sun room, and a whole master bedroom suite for D and Julie, so now they don't need to share the bathroom with Mari and Austin! The kids are just as much fun as I remember. D made a wonderful dinner of turkey, baked potatoes, peas and an apple tart for dessert. I tried to stay up, but by 9:30p, bed was calling.

"Where the Wild Things Are"

I went to a screening of this and I loved it. The movie is directed by Spike Jonze, who made 2 of my favourite movies ("Being John Malkovich" and "Adaptation"). I love his skewed but creative take on things and he brings a similar sensibility to the classic children's book. A bit of 'backstory' has been added to flesh out the original. The boy who plays Max is remarkable. The 'Wild Things' world is gorgeous and everything about it, the monsters, the landscape is a reflection of Max's real life but filtered through his imagination. You see echoes of Max's anxieties and emotions in the events that happen to him while he's there. And when he finally comes home, the beauty and quiet of the scene between the boy and Catherine Keener playing the mother is amazing.

Gustavo!

The LA Philharmonic got a new music director on Thursday night, Gustavo Dudamel. He's been the talk of the town for months now. There are pictures of him all over the city hanging off street lights, on billboards. He's the 28 year old Venezuelan who has taken the conducting world by storm. I don't know enough about symphonies or conducting to compare him to Esa-Pekka Salonen or the various other conductors I've seen, but I knew it would be a BIG deal, so when Amy told me tickets were available, we got a pair of cheap seats to watch the festivities. There was a big party after for the VIPs so part of Grand Ave was closed off. From what we could see as we walked into Disney Hall, it was going to be a major shindig!

The concert included a premier of a piece by John Adams called City Noir followed by Mahler's 1st Symphony. I knew the Mahler would be enjoyable (Dudamel has a bit of a reputation on it) and that we would take our chances a bit with the Adams. Turned out the Adams was a lot of fun. His program notes indicate a 40's era LA vibe which clearly came through in the music. It reminded me of the feeling you got from those great black & white noir movies. The Mahler was great, with a very celebratory ending. Dudamel conducted this from memory and covered the podium pacing and jumping around as he conducted. He will be fun to watch. The symphony seemed to be really energized-who knows if that's season-opener-energy or new-conductor energy-but there was an electricity in the air.

Frankly, Dudamel had us at his first entrance. A couple of people stood up for him just for entering the stage! After the Adams piece, the composer came on and received his acclaim. Dudamel stood aside and allowed him to take center stage. After the Mahler, Dudamel stood in amongst the musicians to take bows, every time. The applause went on for so long that he finally had to grab the Concertmaster and escort the orchestra off stage. After all, he had a party to go to!

All in all a great night for LA, as the Dodgers won their game in the bottom of the 9th inning, so there was celebration at the north end of Downtown as well!

Las Vegas

Today we wake up to winds. Very strong, gusty and kind of cold. We decide to head back to Vegas instead of more park sightseeing. We have our last breakfast at the hotel (delicious make your own waffles, eggs, sausages, cereal, quite good for a free meal) and hit the road. After driving through some dramatic canyons, we are back to grey, dusty and desolate. It's incredibly windy today so on top of everything, there's a dusty haze in the air. When we finally hit Vegas, it's a bit jarring. After seeing the kind of natural extravagance that's in Zion and Bryce, Vegas seems rather gaudy, blousy, trying too hard. We are staying at the Imperial Palace, which is a bit of a dump but is clean and really cheap! It's also well located, being across the street from Caesars in the middle of the strip. We start our afternoon at the Palazzo, which is connected to the Venetian. Lunch is at the Grand Lux Cafe, which serves us a good hearty meal. Ma loves the soup. The Venetian is a pleasant place to stroll, with the gondoliers singing their Italian songs. We save $16 a head watching them instead of taking a ride. Our next stop is Caesars, however they replaced their talking statues with a large aquarium. We were kind of looking forward to some talking statue entertainment. After a little time at the penny slots, we head for the Bellagio. We find out that the winds may prevent the dancing fountains but we take our chance and get a spot along the railing. Luckily, the fountains go as planned, to Elton John. This just never gets old for me, I love the dancing fountains. We decide to walk over to where the main lobby is to see the Chihuly glass flowers and the conservatory. Since we are walking rather slowly, we decide to stay for another round of dancing fountains, this time from the other side. The next performance is to "All That Jazz". The programmers seem to feel the wind is dying down because this performance goes higher than the previous. The conservatory is decked out for fall, with some gigantic pumpkins (over 800 lbs). They've also added animatronics! There's giant fake Venus Flytraps, a talking tree. Kind of weird. After the Bellagio, we decide it's safe to check into the hotel and then figure out which buffet we will hit. The goal is crab legs. The buffet at the Imperial Palace has them but they are cold. We try Harrah's next door. Hit the jackpot! Not only are the crab legs warmed, but they have a little sampling of just about all the major cuisines: American barbecue, Asian sushi rolls and noodles, Italian pastas, Mexican taco salads. Plus the desserts look really good and they are dishing out very generous portions of ice cream. Ma and Ba have an all crab leg meal. I do plenty of damage to the legs but add a few other items as well. We all save room for dessert, although the chocolate fountain was probably the way to go-strawberries, rice krispies, marshmallows to dip. Before we leave, we grab a banana for breakfast tomorrow. I am catching a plane early in the morning so I leave Ma and Ba to stroll the streets and head to bed early. It's only been a few days away, but I feel like I've gone very far, which is I think the sun of a good vacation.

Bryce Canyon

Today we drive East through Zion heading towards Bryce Canyon. We will gain another 2000 ft in elevation. We learned yesterday that Bryce, Zion and the Grand Canyon form the Grand Staircase of the southwest. The lowest layer of Bryce Canyon is the highest layer of Zion and the lowest layer of Zion is the highest layer of the Grand Canyon. It's actually possible on a more extended stay to see all 3 national parks, since the north rim of the Grand Canyon is only about 4 hours from Bryce Canyon. The drive through Zion is incredible, one amazing view after another. We also drive through a very long and very narrow tunnel in order to get to the other side of the mountains that form Zion. Once on the other side, the land immediately becomes flat as a pancake. I remember this from my trip to Wilson and Ming's wedding in Salt Lake City. Where there was no mountain, the land is very flat. As we head northeast and higher up, the deciduous trees are starting to turn colour. Also, there are more coniferous forests. Eventually it's all pine and the like, very few leafy trees. Eventually we get to Red Canyon and the landscape changes dramatically. On one side, it's shades of grey dotted with green trees, flat with an occasional mountain or hill. Turn 180 degrees and the rocks have turned red-orange and rise in front of us dramatically. It's like in the Wizard of Oz, but instead of a tornado, you drive from B&W Kansas to Technicolour Oz! Bryce is about 2 hours from Zion so we get there at lunch. Outside the park gates is a little cluster of businesses catering to the tourist crowd. There is no real town here. We have lunch at Ruby's Inn which seems to be the place to go. Large tour buses stop here. Strangely, there's a strong French presence; I'm not sure what they make of this food, it's only so-so. We finally get to the park and head to the Visitor Center again. Today the weather is very overcast. Bryce Canyon is supposed to be one of the darkest places in the US at night so has an astronomy program for visitors, but we're not sure if the weather will hold. This is a park you drive through. The scenic points are all slightly off the main road. We are on the top of what seems like a plateau. The primary highlight of Bryce is the hoodoos that are formed in the eroded landscape to the east of the road. Hoodoos are formed by erosion of softer rock under a hard cap forming these eerie looking pinnacles. The erosion also forms natural bridges and arches. Bryce Amphitheatre is the largest in the park and it's phenomenal. Because of the weather conditions, the sky was very dramatic with patches of clouds and occasional sunlight bursting out from behind. As at Zion, the quality of the rock changes depending on the light. It seems being able to hike down into the amphitheatre would be the best way to see the park. We're not equipped to take on the climb down and back up, but it appears that once you are down into the bottom, it's relatively flat. We watch from the viewpoint the little clusters of people down on the trails. You can also take horses down into the amphitheatre. Both Zion and Bryce are small parks and are easily viewable in about 1/2 day if you are not hiking. Of course if you are able to hike, I imagine you are able to get an even deeper appreciation for the places. By late afternoon, we had decided that the weather would not be amenable to skywatching that night so decided to drive back to Springdale. On the road back, wild animals were starting to come out for their evening meal. Wild turkeys attempted to cross the street in front of us (one made it, the other two decided to turn back). Deer were jumping over fences and across the street to get to the rest of their group. It's a rather remarkable thing to see this happening right next to your car!! Dinner in Springdale was at Pioneer Inn, which was okay, nothing remarkable. Because of the cloudy night sky, another attempt was made to photograph the moon before turning in.

Zion

I flew into Las Vegas last night to meet up with my parents. We plan to drive to Zion and Bryce National Parks in the next couple of days. It's a 3 hour drive to Springdale, which is the small Utah town that caters to the Park tourism community. The land between the two places is rather desolate. It's all very grey, flat and dusty. We will gain about 4000 ft elevation between Vegas and Zion. (LAX is pretty close to sea level and Las Vegas is about 2000 ft elevation.) We drive through 3 states on this short drive: Nevada, a sliver of Arizona and finally Utah. As we get closer to Zion the land changes. It gets very dramatic. It also gets redder. We finally reach Springdale around lunch time. The hotel staff at the Quality Inn Montclair Suites recommends a burger place up the street. Everything that a tourist crowd needs is on this street. There is also a shuttle that stops off at various places in town and takes people to the Visitor Center at the Park. There is an East/West street through Zion that is driveable, however the street going north into the Canyon is closed to private vehicles during peak season. It's actually kind of nice to leave the car at the hotel. Our lunch was at Blondie's Diner, which is a little house converted to a restaurant. There are domesticated elk in a pen in back. We learn that the elk will become lunch when we see elk burgers on the menu. The food is quite good, even my mom thinks so, and she's rather particular. Their berry pie is warm and goes well with the vanilla ice cream. After lunch and settling our stuff in our hotel room, we grab a shuttle to check out the park. I remember from visiting national parks as a kid that the staff are really helpful, and this remains the case. We ask for guidance on seeing the park in the short time we have and the ranger suggests places we should definitely stop. We hop on the canyon shuttle and spend the afternoon getting on and off at various beautiful spots to look at the dramatic rock formations and take pictures. The weather is beautiful, and the higher elevations make the sky just look incredibly clear and blue. The lodge at Zion is not one of the great lodges such as at Yosemite or Yellowstone, however there is a nice easy trail that takes you to a few waterfalls. We head out and spot a flock of wild turkeys hanging out in the creek. This is not the last we will see of wild turkeys. Ma and Ba both drop out after awhile, but I continue to the lowest waterfall, which is a small one falling off an overhang. The pool underneath is not much to look at but the water spray adds a pleasant, cool feeling to the place. After I get back to the lodge, we continue up the canyon. Along the way, we spot a couple of rock climbers on the cliffs. One of them had set up his sleep sling on the cliff. Zion has a multitude of trails of varying degrees of difficulty which of course we didn't explore, but there is so much to see just from the shuttle. And as the afternoon wears on and the sun starts to set, the rock changes colour and texture at every change in the light. It's really rather remarkable. After we completed the canyon circuit, we headed back to the hotel to rest a little before heading back to town for dinner. There are many options and it looked like Pizza & Noodle was a popular choice so we headed there. Indeed their pizzas were delicious, really good dough. It's a very casual restaurant and we are surrounded by families with lots of young, blond kids. The crowd in the area in general seems very diverse: foreign tourists, families with young kids, older people, young hikers. The full moon is on Sunday so before going to bed I try and take some pictures of the full moon. I need better equipment! The hotel has free WiFi so a little surfing gets us back in touch with the real world.

Pompeii

LACMA has an extensive exhibit of treasures from Pompeii and Herculaneum. The entrance fee included an audio tour, which I find really helpful with these types of exhibits. The organizing theme of the show is the wealthy Roman's typical summer home in the Bay of Naples area. The interesting thing about seeing these treasures this way is that you can get in your car from LACMA, head west to the ocean and go see such a typical house, at the Getty Villa in Malibu. Most of the artwork shows the Romans love of Greek art of all kinds. In addition to the copies or imitations of classical Greek statues (5th century BC, what most of us think of as 'Greek' art), they even used 'archaic' techniques on some statues. Again, you can go to the Getty Villa and see actual classic and archaic Greek statuary and do a comparison. Apparently the homes that these wealthy Romans lived in in the city were kept austere and spare, as they felt this was proper. In their country homes, the social pressure was much less so they went all out on the decoration and trappings in these homes. Some of the pieces retain traces of the colour that we now know these statues once had, although I still find it hard to imagine these beautiful white sculptures with coloured robes and the like.

The Bazaar by Jose Andres

This is a newish restaurant in the SLS Hotel. The chef is a protege of Ferran Adria of El Bulli, who pretty much started the whole 'molecular gastronomy' thing. The menu is divided into more traditional takes on tapas and a modern menu. The staff was asked to design our meal and we were told that we would be presented with a story in food. Eating at a place like this is not so much just about good food, good service, good wine. The actual eating of the food (placing in mouth, tasting, chewing or drinking) is an experience. The decor is kind of crazy, the design being by Phillipe Starck. We sat in the dark room with a great view of the kitchen. We could clearly see a former 'Top Chef' contestant working away back there. This was a meal unlike anything I've had. It started out with a series of cold dishes. 'Bagel and lox' was in a cone with some kind of fish eggs on top of cream cheese. There are dishes called 'organized' and the caesar salad was one of those. The ingrediants are composed in small sushi roll sized pieces with either a quail egg or parmesan cheese on top. The caprese was small balls of liquified mozzarella with cherry tomatoes and little mini 'air breads' on top of a pesto sauce. You combine the ingrediants on a spoon. Even the more 'ordinary' dishes were amazingly good. 'Corn on the cob' consisted of grilled baby corn on top of corn puree but the taste was phenomenal. They served us a brussels sprouts dishes that actually made the vegetable taste good! I find them usually rather bitter, but here they were combined with peaches, grapes and other fruits and the sweet fruit acids combined beautifully with the sprouts. I probably ate more sprouts than I have in my entire life. Lamb came on top of mashed potato foam and the taste was pure buttery, potatoe-y goodness but with the texture of foam! The meal progressed from lighter fare to heavier. We started with champagne, had a shot of vodka to go with the caviar cones, their amazing white sangria went with the lighter fare and finished with a delicious red wine. There is a lot of description and often instruction to go with the dishes and the servers are clearly having as much fun as the diners. The end of the meal was a caipirinha made tableside with liquid nitrogen to form a beautifully smooth and potent slushy texture (photo). For dessert, we moved into another room where we sat at a little table and had chocolate 'popsicles', flan and mousse. Altogether an amazing dining experience.

Disneyland!

It's been years since I've visited the park. I think the last time was when Foster came for her 3rd birthday. I think she turned 14 this year. A lot has changed. The whole California Adventure and Downtown Disney area has taken over the old parking lot. Now there is a shuttle network that takes you from various hotels in Anaheim to the park. Harbor Blvd. has become completely inundated with hotels and restaurants catering to visitors. This visit was to accompany my sis' family. Neve is almost 4 and Mason is 1 1/2. This visit was mostly for Neve. She's particularly into the princesses. Apparently there is a whole princess marketing phenomenon that has successfully infiltrated the minds of young girls all across America. They bring their princess dress to wear in the park and the sizes and skin tones of the various young 'princesses' is rather remarkable. We did two princess-y themed activities. The first was the Princess Fantasy Faire which has taken over the old theatre next to Small World. You line up for an hour or more to spend quality time with 3 different princesses. We saw Belle, Mulan (I didn't even realize she was a princess) and Cinderella. Neve was particularly excited about her! The second princess themed event was lunch at Ariel's Grotto. You meet Ariel before you sit at your table and then during lunch 4 different princesses come to meet you. Cinderella and Belle made repeat appearances (same actresses as yesterday) plus Snow White and Aurora (Sleeping Beauty). I do have to give props to the young women who played the princesses and who must smile for long periods of time, and were particularly sensitive to noting a camera aimed in their direction. The food was okay and actually pretty reasonably priced considering the cost and quality of food elsewhere in the park.

The other unique thing we did this visit was to have lunch at Club 33. This is a private club within Disneyland and the only place in the park that serves alcohol. I didn't even know it existed. It's a rather formal place and quite pricey but you get buffet appetizers including crab claws, choice of entree, and a dessert buffet. The quality of the food is very good and they have some of the best raspberry lemonade around. The kids got apple juice in a plastic cup with a straw that changes colour when the cold liquid hits it. I'm not sure it was quite worth the cost, but it was a quiet air-conditioned oasis.

Aside from the princesses, Mason quite enjoyed the Carousel (he rode it twice) and Neve liked Small World (she requested a second go around on day two and we were actually glad to oblige given that it is dark and air conditioned inside). We spent half a day in California Adventure (very sparsely populated) and we all got a kick out of the Heimlich train there. He's the caterpiller in A Bug's Life and the mini train takes you through a giant watermelon where you get sprayed with 'watermelon juice' (photo above) and animal crackers (complete with scent) and candy corn.

Disney critters were in abundance all over the park, however lines formed quickly to get face-to-face meetings and autographs. We viewed most from afar. The park is very loud, with constant noise and music from loudspeakers. And as I mentioned food is of poor quality, high in calories and very expensive. The nice thing about going with young children is that the rides they favour tend to be less popular and have shorter lines. They do get a little overstimulated and there is so much Disney paraphernalia being pushed at them. It's amazing the number of items you can make into mouse ear shapes!

Home sweet home!

We're all home today after a night in our own comfy beds. It was another amazing week at camp. Got to spend time with friends from previous years, and meet new ones. The performance was amazing. Travel home was smooth as silk, unlike the trip to Richmond. This year, I felt like there was a lot of focus on breaking down dance into its elements. I loved that because it really helps me to learn how to work properly. I feel like it's even more important for someone with my body (i.e., not naturally flexible) to learn the right way to work and not try to 'look' right. I also loved being able to see the improvement over the years of fellow campers who've been here as long as I have. Every year I'm so grateful to Heidi for providing this venue for me to learn how to dance!

Friday is the big performance!

Today starts later than the rest of the week and with a short warm up class. Pedro taught the class and as usual he had a great class with a lot of humour (which I really needed because I was so tired, more mentally than physically). We then run through variations. It didn't start off very promisingly but I managed to get everything pulled together before our time ran out. We than ran through repertory. The timing is still tricky, and Kathy did some final tweaking. It's going to be interesting to see how that works out. It really all depends on if we get our timing right. The music itself is kind of tricky but at lunch I figured out that we need to listen for the bass notes of the timpani and not get distracted by the upper melody notes.

This year, a lot of us had to drive to the theatre (because of the hotel change) which made it a little confusing. We got to Grace St Theatre, which is like coming back to an old home now. The performance order changed this year. The upper level repertory started the show. They are doing a mazurka from Swan Lake and it looks really complicated! Very fast and lots of character dance, but they looked great as always. We did our variation after that. I was extremely nervous about this particular dance this year. I had a few minor boo boos but nothing horrible. I hate that all of these variations end with turns and so frequently chainee turns, because they are a weak point for me. But I tried to finish strong nonetheless. The 3B's did their variation after that, which was Kitri from Don Q. This is such a fun variation. The men did a really neat dance and most of them were quite good at being in character. They had 3 jumps landing on their knees and amazingly, Dennis the oldest of them, did all three with aplomb. We did partnering after that. Dancing with Danny was quite fun. He's a very strong dancer. I wonder if his having taken ballroom helps at all with this. The last thing was our rep piece. We're going to have to see the video to see how it went. I started off being able to hear the timpani beat, but by the time we got to the front-side-back part, I had totally lost it. Kelly said it looked pretty good, but was better in the practice run, which is often the case. Heidi had a nice little speech at the end, and she was kind of teary, which immediately got me all teary but it's such a great celebratory feeling to be at the end of the performance. Tonight was the final dinner. We were a little delayed in getting there due to some airline difficulties (which I won't go into because it's just stupid and irritating). The locale turned out to be not as great as last year. The outdoor setting meant there were a lot of mosquitos and the indoor areas had smokers nearby plus loud music. We cut the evening short in order to be packed and ready for tomorrow morning.

It's magic Thursday at dance camp

Just like last year, I woke up feeling much better today than I could've anticipated from what I felt like when I went to bed last night. Today is the last day before the performance. We had tech class with Danile. She did a really fun center combo with a Spanish flavour. Pedro taught pirouette class and helped us with attitude turns. His suggestions really made a difference. The trick with all of these tips and suggestions from camp is to remember them when I go back to class. We ran through repertory again. There are some really tricky rhythms in this piece. I think we have it but we could really use another day of practice! Every year, though, it does end up coming together somehow. Our second day of partnering was in the afternoon. I'm going to be doing the performance with Danny and Mike, both campers. Danny is quite strong, but Mike is a little weak. Luckily the routine is something I can mostly do on my own, so it'll be okay. Again, there are a few tricky rhythms so we really have to pay attention to the music. Probably a good suggestion for ballet just in general!

Wednesday is a very long day at dance camp

Today is the first day of partnering. It's usually a favourite class for all of us, but it makes for a very long day. We had Scott Putman for tech class. He was amazing! He taught in a very different way, mainly focusing on helping us to learn how to work on pulling out of our pelvis and use it properly. The way we worked, it really helped me to feel my legs extending and this is the first time that an arabesque has felt good. Instead of feeling myself trying to crunch up my back to get my leg higher than the pathetic height it normally reaches, by pulling out of my pelvis, it gave me room for my leg to extend. It felt really good. We continued with variations, with Danile setting the groups for the performance. For once, I'm in the front (because a lot of the girls don't like being in the front). I love it because I've always hated being crowded by other people. I'd rather take the chance of totally screwing up and at least have empty space in front of me. We continued to work on the repertory piece and we're almost through the whole thing. It is really starting to come together, and I'm ever more amazed at Kathy's ability to picture this whole thing in her head! It's going to look really amazing. Partnering was with Pedro. He's really funny. He did a really good class with some trust exercises at the beginning and some traveling across the room with the guys. We are doing part of the Sugar Plum pas de deux from Nutcracker. The guys are mostly all different this year. There are a couple of young guys still in high school! Sheesh, do I feel old. But as usual, they're good fun guys and really great to dance with.

It's Tuesday and I'm not feeling as sore as I thought I would

I woke feeling not so bad today! I thought it would be much worse given how I felt last night. Today we had Pedro for tech class. This is the first time he's taught at this session of camp. He is a kick. He's originally from Venezuela and danced with Richmond Ballet. His class is quite hard, however it echoed the difficult things my regular teachers Joan and Onisha do, so I felt prepared! Joan has prepared me for the endless promenades, and Onisha for the echappe and beat jumps over and over. Heidi did pirouette class, and every year I learn some new thing to think about or focus on that improves my ability to turn. It's one of the most amazing things about camp. She also taught pointe and again, breaking down the way you need to work in your shoes, it helps me to work correctly which builds strength in the right way so I can do more difficult things. We had another repertory class and now I'm beginning to see how this is all going to come together. I can't believe Kathy can put this all together in her head. We were getting to the ending but the fire alarm went off and we all had to rush downstairs. Of course that meant all the pros from the Richmond Ballet who were upstairs rehearsing did as well, and my goodness there are some attractive young men in that company. We did another group photo session at the end of the day, and this time we kind of played around with some ideas. It was a lot of fun and I think we'll have some great photos from it. Chris and Kathy were great in putting our group of 6 together in various interesting ways.

It's only Monday and every muscle is sore!

I'm going to have to look back and see if I felt this sore on Monday last year. It's the first full day which means we learn our variation and our repertory piece. Tech class was with Kathy, who is so great. She did a lot of fun center runs. Variations is with Danile, which is perfect. She always does a great piece for us and this year is no exception. We're doing one of the women's variations from the Pas de Trois in Act 1 of Swan Lake. The music is beautiful and the piece includes jumps, turns, lots of little steps and A LOT of arm and leg coordination! It's going to be tough, but fun. Kathy is doing our repertory. She picked the 'Stars' from Cinderella, the last part of Act 1. The music is amazing, Prokofiev is just so dramatic. He also composed the ballet music for Romeo and Juliet. There are 19 women and 2 men for Kathy to coordinate. She has an amazing ability to put it all together and see the patterns. I know it's going to look great. Tonight is the trip to Ellman's and then dinner in Carytown. One thing I'm happy of is that the beds at the hotel are really comfortable. This year at least I'm sleeping well.

Back in Richmond!

It's the end of the first day of dance camp. Familiar faces are back again-the two school teachers from Connecticut, little Rachel, Theresa, Jenn, Todd, Tracey, Ann the physician. Lots of new faces are joining us, including a small contingent from Detroit. This time, my aunt (Gugu) is with me. I'm sticking with the 3A group. It's a good pace for me, it lets me focus on the technical things I need to work on but isn't so challenging that I can't also focus on being more present in the moment, and not so much in my head. Danile taught technique and that's just the perfect way to start. She gave a great class-I felt warmed up. Heidi taught pointe, and she was really good at focusing on correct positioning in the shoes and rolling up. Every year, the kinesthesiology lecture is one of the most informative and this year was no exception. The instructor is a former dancer and physical therapist and taught us quite a bit about how our bodies are (or are not) properly aligned. I learned that my knees are hyperflexed (which is why I can't get the backs of them on the floor like the ballet teachers always want). I also learned I have some curvature in my spine and I need to stretch my right side and strengthen my left. She also told us that despite what teachers say, it's not possible to penche with your supporting leg turned out! We were all feeling vindicated by that! The final class was modern. The teacher is the same dancer who taught us jazz last year, and as last year, he gave us a bajillion ab exercises. He ran us through a lot of releases and taught us some Horton and Graham techniques. The thing that's great about him is he really tries to get us to focus on being present, connecting with the imaginary audience. After class and cleaning ourselves up, we went for dinner and met up with Kitty Felde. She is a reporter for Pasadena station KPCC now based in DC. She used to take class with Joyce, Ronnie and Kelly and she was a fun addition to the dinner company.

Travel hell day

Yesterday, Joyce, Suzanne, Kelly, Peggy and I were flying into Richmond for dance camp. Unfortunately it turned out not to be the best day to travel. Of course there was that incident in La Guardia with the nutjob with the fake bomb. On our coast, we just had 'mechanical difficulties'. We couldn't get out of LA until 11:30 (when we were originally scheduled to leave at 8a). That meant we were going to miss our connection at Dulles. The one positive thing about the delay was that by the time we took off, so many people had been rebooked that the plane was mostly empty. We got into Dulles at around 8p. We waited in line for customer service for a long time before finally getting to an agent. Her solution to our problem was to fly us the same night back to Chicago and then put us up for the night before shipping us to Richmond. Richmond happens to be about 2 or 3 hours south of DC! That's not even a solution worth mentioning. We decided to rent a car and drive. It was all going rather well, until we got into Richmond and the GPS failed us. We circled Richmond a couple of times before finally getting to the airport to drop off the car. Of course the rental counter was closed so we had to figure out how to return the key. Thank god Ronnie was there with the other rental car (the one we had planned to get) to get us to the hotel. Unfortunately we missed the exit on the freeway so had to make a very long u-turn. We finally got into the hotel at about 1:30a. What a day! It turns out we were only one of many misdirected travel plans. Several people didn't make it to camp today until quite late in the afternoon. Reasons given for other people's delayed flights included more mechanical difficulties, missing flight attendants and missing pilots. Suzanne had a theory that because of the bomb scare in NY, the airlines putting off flying people out until that situation got cleared up. Doesn't sound like a bad theory.
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I'm finally going to be on TV....

Granted, it's public access and only available in Santa Monica. That means I won't even be able to see it. It took over 20 years living in LA to get my moment in the spotlight!

I was meeting Gigi at a bar called Copa d'Oro. It's one of the new 'mixology' bars where the bartender crafts his own recipes out of premium liquors and fresh herbs, fruits and juices. The TV camera was there to film Vincenzo the bar master making 3 different drinks. I happened to choose a seat near the front to wait for Gigi. That just so happened to be where the drinks were to be mixed and filmed. After Vincenzo made a drink, he would offer it to one of us sitting nearby for a taste. I drank a concoction that he called a 'manly' drink, made with bourbon, bitters and Galliano. With an orange rind for garnish, it was a beautiful drink. The other concoctions were a cachaca, passion fruit and jalapeno blend, and a vodka, lemon juice and bell pepper one. Happy hour is from 6 to 8 every night.

Roberto Bolle

I went to see ABT perform Romeo & Juliet last night. Several of my ballet friends were there because Roberto Bolle performed the male lead. This is huge because Bolle is now a principal with ABT but has otherwise not been seen in the US. In Italy, he is a huge star, above and beyond what most ballet dancers ever become. He is the epitome of the perfect male dancer-handsome, tall, broad shoulders and long legs, beautiful feet. He's a pretty good dancer too, aside from all those physical attributes!

In this performance, he was paired with Irina Dvorvenko and they made a wonderful Romeo and Juliet. Although I just adore the music (by Prokofiev) this has never been one of my favourite ballets. The McMillan version has 2 of the most beautiful dances in ballet-the balcony scene and the bedroom scene-but surrounding this is usually a lot of silly swashbuckling and walking around the stage. Something seems to have changed with ABT because the entire ballet seemed to be much more focused on character, story, personality than ever. I actually thoroughly enjoyed this production all the way through. I saw a level of character development in Tybalt and Mercutio (the two characters whose deaths trigger the tragedy) that just added so much to the narration. This was one of those evenings that just made me happy to have been witness to such beauty and artistry.

Up!

This is an amazing movie. It may be the best of the year, and would probably be in my all time favourite list. I saw it in 3D, but it's a fairly subtle 3D. Rather than have stuff thrown at you, it just gives you a sense of dimension and place. Pixar movies are always well crafted stories, but this one has such a pure sense of emotion running through it that makes this a classic. There are moments of menace and fear in the story, as well as great humour. And the dogs!

Spending the day at Denver airport

I was supposed to catch a connecting flight that left Denver at 10:15a. They had the plane pushed back from the gate but apparently the right engine wouldn't start. We hung out on the plane for about an hour for them to try and do a fix, but once it was clear that it wasn't going to happen, we were let off. The flight was rescheduled for 3p. There was very slim chance of booking on an earlier flight, because they had terrible weather the day before (apparently there were people who were forced to stay in Denver overnight) plus an earlier LA flight was cancelled. So I hung out at the airport. Luckily, there was a massage shop near the gate. I got myself a 20 minute chair massage. It was quite nice! After lugging my stuff on planes all morning, I really needed it. The silver lining to the flight (once it resumed) was that the flight crew was really pleasant (they probably had a long day as well), and I was bumped into an exit row! I was in the row directly behind and the two young people sitting in that row had very poor english skills. That's like getting a business class seat! The airline, United, gave us all a token for our troubles. We can pick from a credit, miles or percent off. I'm still deciding what's going to work best for me.

Oh, I should add that the other silver lining to my day at the airport is that we landed safe and sound, we didn't end up somewhere in the Atlantic. My heart goes out to the family of those poor people on the Air France flight.

Yorkville, museum, ballet

Today turned out to be a really beautiful warm day, with blue skies and puffy clouds, such a nice contrast to the last 2 days. Ma, Shih Ay Yi and I went downtown for the afternoon. We started in Yorkville to wander around the pricey shops and boutiques. Lots more sales signs and empty storefronts than I saw at Bayview Mall. Maybe selling $500 spring coats is not such a great idea. After a snack break, we headed to ROM to check out their chinese collection. The museum has a new entry, designed by Daniel Libeskind (it pretty much looks like most of his buildings do, see photo). We weren't all that impressed with the new entry. It seemed kind of dark and barren on first entering. ROM has a very nice chinese collection, nicely displayed. There were some beautiful landscape paintings (spanning several hundred years) showing all kinds of techniques.

In the evening, we stopped for hot dogs and sausages from a street vendor before heading to see the National Ballet of Canada do Giselle. A very nice production, beautifully danced by the leads and the Myrtha (she was a little scary!) and I was impressed with the realistic 'acting/mime' of the background peasants in the first act. They were not doing the typical stage mugging I see so much in story ballets, it made the mad scene that much more affecting. The theatre is quite a beautiful place, a more vertical type seating arrangement. We were in a section behind the main orchestra, slightly elevated but almost 1/2 the price. Very good sight lines and still close enough to see facial expressions without binoculars. This was a great deal. I look forward to seeing more productions in the future, and Ma and Shih Ay Yi were both eager to do so as well.

Good food, good friends

Well the weather took a turn on Wednesday, it started to pour. We had mostly meals out planned for the day, so that was okay. Lunch was with some friends of my parents at a place that is called 'Chili Secret' in english, but something entirely different in chinese. (In chinese it's name means Half Acre Garden.) The food was okay, and the restaurant was quite noisy (all hard surfaces) but it was a relaxing time. After lunch we all took a nap. Almost too long a nap, making us late for dinner.

Dinner was with the Huangs and Yangs at Asian Legend (again, the chinese name is completely different, it's 'Wei Xiang Cun' or Fragrant Flavours Village). It was great to see the Huangs and Yangs. They never seem to get older. I'm not sure what their secret is. This restaurant was really good. They had 'xiao long bao' with green coloured wrappers, 'dong po' pork with a melt in your mouth fat layer, and a really richly flavoured chicken broth soup. After the main meal, we all wanted a little dessert so we ordered 'tang yuan' (like small soft hot mochi with sesame in the middle). Apparently the manager was familiar with our group and presented us with complimentary desserts: a really delicious version of green onion pancake but with red bean instead of onion, and a sweet soup. We actually ended up with 2 big bowls of the sweet soup because we were hanging around chatting for so long.

Today was raining again and foggy. It's also 'duan wu jie' or Dragon Boat Festival so we had zhong zi for lunch (they're like bigger, fatter tamales made with sticky rice instead of corn meal and wrapped in leaves of some kind). In the afternoon, Ba drove us down to see a big film production facility in an industrial district, and then to The Distillery (photo above) where there are shops, galleries and restaurants. Because it's such an old place, and with the weather being overcast, there were some great opportunities to take interesting photos.

In the evening, I met with some friends from Iroquois Junior Public School. That's Canadian for grade school! We all reconnected on Facebook! Most of the other girls had clearer memories of events from back then than I do, and some brought pictures. It was a blast to catch up and remember the drama that life seemed back then.

Toronto

I'm in Toronto paying a visit to my parents. I arrived yesterday and I went through Terminal 1 at Pearson. Quite a nice change of pace from the old Terminal. This one doesn't require a long walk to Customs, and the pathways are wide, and bright. This is my first trip using my new US passport.

We headed to dinner directly from the airport at Congee Queen (the Steeles Ave location). We had a huge bowl of congee ('xi fan') with all kinds of seafood, deep fried pork chop, baby 'bai chai' with mushrooms and a 'you tiao'. (Excuse my ping yin.) Delish! We ended up eating the left overs for lunch today. In the evening, I checked out the loot my parents brought back from their month long visit to Beijing and tried to read a children's story. I needed a lot of help with that.

Today was mostly quiet. In the morning, we planned a lot of the week's activities, including most of the meals. After lunch we headed out to Costco (an obligatory visit) and Bayview Mall. I noticed that the prices here are quite high and there didn't seem to be the extent of sales that I see in LA area malls. Dinner was at home, then we watched a DVD of the Olympic opening ceremony that my parents brought back from China. There were quite a few segments that we did not see on NBC. It's still rather amazing the second time.

Carrot cake ice cream

Yes you read that correctly. This recipe is courtesy of the LA Times and David Lebovitz. And it's REALLY good! Lebovitz lives in Paris and I'm assuming he's the same guy who wrote "The Perfect Scoop" ice cream recipe book (as well as a few other food books). My carrots took longer to cook down than the 20 to 30 minutes specified in the recipe. Also, I substituted chopped up dried cranberries because I couldn't find currants and I had the cranberries. Aside from taking time to prep the mix-ins, this is a really easy recipe, and if you like cream cheese, it really is good.

Doodles

My friend Annette has started an interesting website to collect people's doodles. She's already got a few amazing ones. Check out the site, and if you're a doodler, send yours in to her! And remember, doodling's good for you. Apparently it helps your brain stay alert and improves memory when you're bored.

Palate Food + Wine

This little restaurant/wine bar is smack dab in the middle of a row of car dealerships. You drive down the street and wonder, there's a restaurant, here? And then there it is. The chef, Octavio Becerra (that's his arm, to the right), has the coolest tattoo-it's a knife, full size! We were a group of six, and one of the party knew the chef. The wait service was excellent. Our server was clearly a foodie. It's a nice thing to find in LA. We started with a plate of cured meats and little pickled things. I skipped the pickled things (yuck) but the cured meats were nice. The restaurant makes their own butter and cures some of the meat in-house. For main courses, our server suggested we could order up a bunch of stuff and share, so that's what we did. The menu features seasonal produce and so changes pretty frequently, to match the available veggies. We had a spring pea soup which was amazingly good. A ravioli dish was very tasty. Main courses were a duck, pork belly, beef cheeks and scallops. Everything was exceptionally well done. The pork belly wasn't quite as good as some I've had but the duck was perfectly done. To finish, we had a cheese plate with a nice variety. My favourite was a triple creme brie like cheese. Wines were suggested to go with all of this, starting with a nice Prosecco, proceeding to a wonderfully smooth white Burgundy and finishing with a mellow red Burgundy. This was a terrific way to share good food and drink, and leave feeling completely satisfied yet not overly stuffed or drunk.

Annenberg Space for Photography

I went to visit this newly opened photography museum today with Yuki. It was, appropriately, a spectacularly gorgeous LA day. I trust all the local photogs were out taking shots of the city and surrounding mountains while the air is clear and the sky is deep blue. This is a small museum housed in the Century Park complex. The current exhibit features 11 LA based photographers, including a few from the LA Times. I particularly enjoyed the Times photographers' work because of the story telling qualities they provide. The other photographers included architectural, celebrity and art specialists. The space includes a kitchen which is interesting. I wonder what the plan is for that? The admission is free, which is nice. Photos can be displayed as usual (framed and hung on walls) or through a video display. There are also 2 touch screen tables (like big iPhones) which you can play with to view the photos, although I didn't think that was particularly useful. The curators of future shows should put some thought into controlling the reflections on the photos and screens.

Vox Dance Theatre

Kathleen is a friend I met through work. She is a rep for a furniture company. Last summer, I was telling her about dance camp and found out she used to be a dancer! Apparently, my chats with her about how much I love dance inspired her to start doing it again, and I got the chance to see her perform today. The company she dances with performed at Brand Library in Glendale. I wasn't sure how dance would work in a library but they have a small art gallery the performance took place surrounded by the latest art exhibit. The piece that impacted me the most was called 'Fimmine'. It is performed to music by Philip Glass and the dancers (all women) are costumed in wedding dresses. Glass' music always makes me feel a certain sense of dread, unease, anxiety. I find it hard to listen to, however I love to watch dance done to his music, the right choreography somehow provides a place of safety for some difficult emotions. Throughout the piece I kept feeling like something terrible had happened that I wasn't aware of, or was about to happen. In the last part of the piece, the women all take off their dresses and are wearing only their underclothes (bras, petticoats, etc) and each has a red sash around their waste, which we caught glimpses of earlier. This part of the movement worked so wonderfully with the music to bring the whole piece to a dramatic conclusion. I'm so happy I played a small part in getting Kathleen back to dance. She was so expressive and daring, it's an inspiration!

Sunshine Cleaning

This is a great little movie! The plot is about 2 sisters who get into business cleaning up crime scenes. I'm a 'procedural' junkie (CSI, L&O, etc) so I find the whole idea of this line of work gross yet fascinating. There are a few gruesome images in the movie but no dead bodies (they've all been removed by the time the sisters do their work). The heart of the movie is less the crime scenes than it is the family to which the sisters belong, which includes their father and the son of one of the women, as well as their mother who is no longer with them. This is a family that's down and out but trying in their own ways to make a life and the way that they manage that makes this a rewarding movie.

Living frugal in LA

My friend Gigi was interviewed on NPR by Mandalit del Barco about living frugally after the magazine that she was working at folded. I'm one of the 'friends who invite her to the symphony'!

Flashback to 1996

I went to see the musical Rent with my friend Amy. It was at the Pantages, which is a beautiful old theatre in Hollywood. The crowd was particularly partisan and clearly knew each scene and song that was coming up next (they could've probably done a 'Rocky Horror' type participatory thing with this crowd). What struck me was how things have changed since the show came out. In New York now, it would probably be impossible to have a group of artists living in an abandoned warehouse in Manhattan (where are all the poor artists in New York living now?) and AIDS is a disease that while is still not curable, many people are able to live with it for years. It's definitely not the death sentence that is depicted in the musical. Still, the idea of a bohemian artist community fighting to stay true to their art and dying young has been around for hundreds of years (I suspect it did not start with the opera La Boheme on which this was based) and the emotional impact is still strong.

dineLA

The last two weeks were dineLA week in Los Angeles. I believe this program started in NYC and San Francisco. They've timed it brilliantly to coincide with my birthday! :) Lots of restaurants in the area featured special prix fixe menus at various price points. I went to four places with various friends, all in the West Hollywood area. All of these places were ones I had not yet visited but that were highly recommended. I loved them all. This is a great way to support local restaurants and chefs and explore some of the interesting dining that is in LA. The special deals are being extended at some of the restaurants through the end of February. With the economy in the toilet it seems people are taking advantage of the special deals and the restaurants are appreciating the extra business. The places I went are:
Taste on Melrose (Melrose & La Cienega)
Asia de Cuba (in the Mondrian Hotel)
Comme Ca (Melrose & La Cienega)
BLT Steak (Sunset Plaza)

Seattle and PNB

My friend Kelly and I went to Seattle last weekend to see Pacific Northwest Ballet perform "Jewels". I've never been to Seattle so it was also an opportunity to see the city a little. On Saturday morning, I took an open ballet class taught by a member of the corps. The class was very challenging and a lot of fun! In the afternoon, Kelly and I went to explore Pike Place Market and get some lunch before heading to the theatre to catch a wonderful performance. This is definitely a company worth visiting. On Sunday we went up to the top of the Space Needle for a view of the area. It was overcast but we could see Mount Rainier in the distance. The Seattle Art Museum is a little gem with some wonderful pieces and the Public Library is a gorgeous and relaxing place to spend an afternoon. I definitely want to come back and see more ballet and explore more of the area. This is a city that is small enough to get around without a car and if you're lucky enough to have dry weather, the surrounding mountains and bay are beautiful.