Category Archives: travel

Having a Field Day in Boston

Fenway Park’s a fun place to visit even if you know zilch about baseball (I sashayed in wearing a Miami Heat jersey — wrong sport, for crying out loud!). One thing I discovered was that Boston was home to probably the most loyal fan base of the sport. Locals speak of their home team (and ballpark!) with much pride. Probably the only thing that can match their worship of the Red Sox is their fervent hate of the Yankees. Continue reading Having a Field Day in Boston

College Flings and Second Chances

Cambridge, my personal land of could-have-been’s. If you want a sure way to torture me to no end, riddle me with endless what-ifs — what if I pursued the academe? What if I gunned for a scholarship to MIT? What if instead of selling out to the lure of a corporate career, I was actually meant to happily slave away with like-hearted geeks working on the next big thing for my thesis? Argh, it’s driving me crazy just to write this post.

True story: My heart bled for a bit when I saw this.

A true masochist, I whisked myself off to Boston. Rina, a friend who recently moved to this college town to pursue her MBA, kindly let me crash her place, as I subject myself to anguish with tours of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard University. Continue reading College Flings and Second Chances

Crossing Paths with Occupy Wall Street

My sister kidded that maybe I should consider being a journalist instead, since I keep running into the Occupy movements as I move around. We chanced upon Occupy Toronto on a drive downtown, and we literally walked into an Occupy protest march while in Montreal.

The one campsite that I did deliberately flock to was the mother of the movement — the Occupy Wall Street base in Zuccoti Park. I had to see it for myself. Perhaps more than anything, there was this intense desire to witness why these men and women, who had the sheer luck to be born in an affluent nation, have grown so discontent that they had to take to the streets. Shameful it might be to admit, but having grown up in a third world country that has more or less given up in expecting any sort of productivity from its own government, I guess I sort of felt smug. I was genuinely puzzled, and I had this need to understand how protestors on this side of the world felt and what they had to say. Continue reading Crossing Paths with Occupy Wall Street

How to Spend an Artsy Fartsy Day in NY

Good morning, sunshine!

Grab a bagel, gulp down that cup of joe, then head off to the Met to start off your day. The Metropolitan Museum of Art opens at 9:30 am, and offers a Highlights tour almost every hour starting at 10:45-ish, to help you find your way through this mammoth of an art refuge.

Passionate curating, don't you think?

Unless you plan on spending the whole day to comb the gazillion of tributes to divine craftsmanship, I suggest that you do your research in advance and just choose the galleries that you really want to see. The Met caters to all kinds of fanatics — from devotees of the classic and the ancient, to aficionados of the edgy and modern, from the earthy to the whimsical — there’s something for everyone. It still blows my mind to think about how they managed to get all those glorious works of art under one roof — it’s as if the Celestial Star of Everything-Almighty-in-the-World-of-Art wandered into the museum and suddenly burst, just leaving globs of awesome all over the place. Continue reading How to Spend an Artsy Fartsy Day in NY

The Rock, the Empire and the Big Apple


From Dusk

I’ve lost track of how many times I’ve cried during the Empire State Building scene in Sleepless in Seattle (who hasn’t?). I never actually thought that one day, I’ll be riding the same elevator ride to the top of the same building, hopefully to catch sight of the love of my life. Continue reading The Rock, the Empire and the Big Apple

Niagara-on-the-Lake = Smiles-on-our-Hearts

[ Forgive the cheesy title — old towns make me mushy. Can’t be helped. ]

Gorging on trick-or-treat leftover loot, my sisters and I set off for a drive to Niagara-on-the-Lake (NOTL). This quaint spot of Ontario oozes of old-town charm, its laid-back pace a stark difference to the raging waters of its better-known neighbor. Continue reading Niagara-on-the-Lake = Smiles-on-our-Hearts

A Day Trip to Montreal

Jackets? Check! Chips? Check! Extra jackets? Check!!

Belle ville de Montréal

Three reasons kept me stoked about this road trip:

1.) After a week of meandering around Toronto, today was my first time to break out of the state of Ontario.
2.) It was my nephew and niece’s first backpacking trip on a Greyhound (yey for adventure!).
3.) After crossing the Pacific, I was finally going to meet up with my high-school friend, Mace!
Continue reading A Day Trip to Montreal