asia · europe · north america · travel · video

Talent is Universal.

I’m known to have bouts of wanting to wander aimlessly anywhere, and more often than not, these are the times when I run into street performers. I adore these chances, as they make me feel that I was on the right place at the right time. At one time, I may think I’m lost, but I may be actually meant to bump into something special.

Here’s a montage of some of the fascinating acts I chanced upon in 2011. Yey to brave hearts and creative minds.


Song: Love and Wonder (Club Edit) – DJ Earworm

north america · travel

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”

north america · travel

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”

north america · travel

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”