this is amazing...

Oxford...

For a long time I've been considering a move to the UK...mainly because of my undying love for my mother's hometown of Oxford. To some, it may seem like a bunch of stuffy old buildings, but to me, there is such a great sense of history and academia.
Perhaps, one day...

 

This week I...

Got these..

Was guilty of...

Hung out with this cool cat..

Photo by Nicole/Rob

Ran 17K (on 2 separate runs)...

Mike Cheliak Photography Company

This week I...

Ate this at Harlem Underground...

before                                                                              after

Laughed at sleeping Lola ...

Was shocked by this amazing cover shoot..

Got these shoes for 70% off!

Watched this movie at Amsterdam Brewery...

(i'm actually seeing this tonight!)

Ran 23K (2 separate runs)...

another TIFF film...

for the love of words...

The Oxford English Dictionary has come up with a new way to preserve our dying language. Take a trip to "Save the Words" where you can interactively explore some of the many words near extinction. In an effort to preserve, the OED is challenging people to adopt a word if they can make this promise:

"I, Herby promise to use this word, in conversation and correspondence, as frequently as possible to the very best of my ability"

Happy wording!

eat. pray. dud

Photo courtesy of http://photogallery.filmofilia.com/data/media/207/eat_pray_love_11.jpg

There's been a lot of hype recently about India with the book "Eat Pray Love" becoming a best-seller. To top things off, they've recently released a film rendition which stars, Julie Roberts, as the author Elizabeth Gilbert. Having read the book, begrudgingly, after many months of avoidance, I wasn't particularly surprised that I was left with a feeling of meh...  Logistically, the plot had all the ingredients of something I would love (exoticism, food, travel, love), but for some reason, I found myself getting bored midway through India and found Indonesia painfully predictable and totally hypocritical to what I expected the novel to be about.

SPOIL ALERT!
The novel starts by introducing us to the author and narrator, Gilbert herself. It's supposed to be a biographical retelling of her divorce and how she decided to take a year off life to get to know herself. She would travel to 3 countries, beginning with the letter "I" (ironically) for 4 months each. Sounds great to me! But then, out of the blue in Indonesia, this love story blooms, and the rest sort of unraveled from there. I later learned that the man she meets in Indonesia, she ends up marrying (going against another one of her decisions; to never get married again). I started going back over the entire novel in my head and I couldn't help but just feel annoyed, and betrayed by the author.  
I read the book two months after I had returned from India and felt that the descriptions were somewhat overly-dramatized and not an accurate description of Indian culture and life. Gilbert, walks the reader through her firsthand experience in an Indian ashram just outside of Mumbai. In her telling, India is a mix of beautiful colours, smells, peace and calm. Having spent nearly a month travelling all over Northern India, the India she describes is not the India that one experiences when first stepping off the plane.

India for me was an experience like no other.  A mad mess of movement, sounds, smells and smoke. In a country of over a billion people, there is an almost choreographed movement that you can only truly understand once you have witnessed it. Everything had an extremeness to it. This extremeness extended to the people we met in that the poor were extremely impoverished; and those who showed us kindness, expressed an almost overwhelming kindness. Subtlety is not a word I would use to describe India.

The word ashram in Sanskrit means a spiritual hermitage. Gilbert never really leaves the walls of the ashram during her time in India, giving her only part of the whole picture. Part of the ashram experience is to participate in the Indian rituals and practice, such as meditation, yoga, etc., however, it is also to participate in the cultural heritage of the land. India is more than just rice fields and Om, it is a country rich in heritage, history and creativity. For me, this aspect was missing from Gilbert's novel and rather, was replaced by a drawn out "spiritual search" that felt contrived and self-indulgent (maybe that's the point?).

That being said, Gilbert's experience has inspired a movement in North American with a dramatic increase of individuals seeking India as a destination for their spiritual retreat. Am I one of them? Probably. Having only traveled in the North where the majority of tourist attractions, and therefore, the richer density of people are, I think it would be nice to take a glimpse at the "softer" side of India. Hopefully it will be more "spiritual" than my experience in the spiritual capital of Varanasi!

City of Death, Varanasi...


Now i only call this the city of death as it has become famous for the religious cremations which, to this day, take place on the banks of the Ganges River... it was also the place where i felt deaths toll knocking on my door...


"The Ganga" or Mother Earth is where Hindu people believe life begins and ends... every morning hundreds of people come to the shores to bath in the (rather filthy looking) waters which just down the river, will be the cremation site for another.. these cremations take place throughout the day and people travel from all over India to have their loved ones cremated here.. bodies are wrapped in cloth and placed on a pier of wood... the kind of wood used is indicative of the wealth of the individual... there, the bodies are burned and the remains are washed back into the land where they once came...


it's hard for us to understand wanting to bathe in what is so obviously unhygienic water, but it only speaks to the strength of the religion of some...


i had heard a lot about Varanasi and the Ganges before coming to India, so you can imagine my disappointment in being relatively ill for this portion of our trip... unfortunately, my illness was not the only disappointment as with the interests of foreign tourists have grown over the years, the once sacred Varanasi has become a quite commercialized locale... the once peaceful boat rides available along the shore have become more of a novelty tourist trap where your boatman does double duty as a salesman... and wandering holy men are nearly indistinguishable from common beggars.. evening rituals have armed security and friendly conversations have turned into forced donations on skeptical charities...


so much for my spiritual awakening...
 
14 January 2010

Remembering... Scotland

a bonnie bonnie time with my lassie heather!

Glasgow University

so i guess i should mention that I'm now in Scotland with heather and chad in their Glasgow home... so far I've been lucky enough to have some really beautiful weather.... started off my Scotland experience by checking out Edinburgh, the city upon the city... literally, there are bridges in the city over top of the city.. if that makes any sense... google Edinburgh and you will know what i mean.. beyond that, it's hard to get over the history here... every thing is so old and so many things have happened that it's kind of overwhelming... walking down the street you are constantly noticing plaques where someone was burned at the stake or where a famous person lived or was born... it's incredible... we wandered around for most of the day, venturing to Arthur's Seat to try and get a better look of the entire city... the weather held up and we managed to have a lovely day!!


yesterday we attempted to walk around Glasgow and take in it's sights however, weather was not on our side and we ended up catching up on some other cultural things... such as shopping!!! i also got to see heather's school and even met a Scotty class mate!! fun!


today we bused out to St. Andrew's (St. Andrew being the patron saint of Scotland) where Prince William went to school and where the protestant church was first formed in Scotland... it was a beautiful little town with again, SO MUCH history... St. Andrew's is also the birthplace of golf which obviously thrilled heather and i... we were going to play some holes but were slightly deterred by the year long waiting list to get on the green and the 600 pound fee... maybe next year... tomorrow we're off to Fort William over night to check out Glen Coe and Ben Nevis (Scotland's highest mountain).. looking forward to it!
 
13 August 2008

Edinburgh

St. Andrews

Ben Nevis

Glen Coe

Just added to TIFF...

This week I...

did NOT spot Michelle Williams, Sarah Silverman or Seth Rogan, despite the fact that they were filming "Take This Waltz" directly across the street from my house for 2 days straight...

Images from justjared

ate an entire bag of super Nibs.. again...

Had my orientations for TIFF and Nuit Blanche!

Ran 27K (spread out on 3 different runs)...

Drooled over this bike...

Image from curbside cycle

wrote on my blog while at work...

Remembering.... India (Part I)

Smoke

if i could describe mine and Jeff's arrival in India this morning after nearly 20 hours of travelling and jumping forward 11 hours in time... i would say "wow"....
India so far is everything i expected and completely different than i imagined... to start off with, what's with the smoke?!?!?
like any well prepared traveller, i thought it would be a good idea to check the local weather a few days leading up to my departure... on more than one occasion i found the odd description of "smoke" for Delhi.. figuring this was just some Indian terminology for fog or mist i dismissed it when our plane began it's decent into the Indian capital under a blanket of white... it wasn't until we actually gasped our first breath of the white stuff that i realized.. wow, they really meant smoke.... hmmm.. i wonder if this will haunt my lungs in years to come..

other than that... India has been crazy drivers, TONS of people, crowded streets full of every kind of shopping delight, honking cars, scooters, bikes, screaming children, urinating in the streets, colours... and SMOKE...

tomorrow we're off to Jaipur, the pink city, to see if we can start seeing some of the culture beyond the big ugly city... (14 January 2010)

Bikes: The new fashion accessory - thestar.com

Bikes: The new fashion accessory - thestar.com

Small condo spaces sometimes house ‘gentle giants’ - Yourhome.ca

Small condo spaces sometimes house ‘gentle giants’ - Yourhome.ca

If I was a flower growing wild and free
All I'd want is you to be my sweet honey bee.
And if I was a tree growing tall and green
All I'd want is you to shade me and be my leaves

If you were a river in the mountains tall,
The rumble of your water would be my call.
If you were the winter, I know I'd be the snow
Just as long as you were with me, when the cold winds blow.

If you were a wink, I'd be a nod
If you were a seed, well I'd be a pod.
If you were the floor, I'd wanna be the rug
And if you were a kiss, I know I'd be a hug

If you were the wood, I'd be the fire.
If you were the love, I'd be the desire.
If you were a castle, I'd be your moat,
And if you were an ocean, I'd learn to float.

All I want is you, will you be my bride
Take me by the hand and stand by my side
All I want is you, will you stay with me?
Hold me in your arms and sway me like the sea.

- Barry Louis Polisar "All I Want Is You"

Shoe-rific!

Today I came across something that I seriously had not considered before... I know, this sounds like I'm going to say something really profound. Unfortunately, this is about shoes, and thus, not life altering. Forgive my superficiality but this just made me go "eeee!" this morning.

So those of you that have known me for a while will nod when I say, I like a little embellishment. Be it a bow, jewel, pop of colour or some other creative method, I like a little "POW" in my step.

This morning during my obessive cruising of wedding sites (I'm really not sure what has brought this on) I discovered the most simple, yet genius way to add a little pop to my shoes without breaking the bank!

A pair of Christian Louboutins, you ask? Well, yes, but answer me this.... Have you ever seen this pair before??? I didn't think so!

I too was trying to unsolve the mystery of these never-before-seen Loubous and how a DIY bride could afford such a luxery.

Well, my queries were answered in an excerpt from the photo shoot where the bride explained that her basic nude Louboutins were accented by some jeweled shoe clips she bought on ebay!!

Shoe clips??? What are these magical things??? After a few quick searches on ebay, and later etsy, I discovered that shoe clips are much like clip on earings, for your feet! Why hadn't I thought of this before??

Never one to pass up on an excellent opportunity I have now ordered a couple samples of these "shoe clips" to try and and see how they work. Based on this experiment I may have just found my next DIY project!!

Photo courtesy of rockmywedding.co.uk

This year I will once again be running the Toronto Scotiabank Waterfront Marathon (1/2) on behalf of my friend Sarah Grand (1984-2009).

Sarah was only with us for a short time, but it was a beautiful time full of happiness and great achievements! I will be thinking of you again this year as I cross the finish line. Sar! You are forever my inspiration...

"How could anyone ever tell you?
You were anything less than beautiful…
How could anyone ever tell you?
You were less than whole…

How could anyone fail to notice?
That your loving is a miracle…
How deeply you're connected to my soul…"

- Shaina Noll "How Could Anyone"

Photo credit: Larry Grand

Falling for fall...

Most of these pieces are totally wrong for my body type and yet, I can't help but love the gorgeous, gauzy, greys and golds... Marc Jacobs Fall 2010

Images courtesy of Style.com