best foot forward

were i to take myself a bit too seriously, i might refer to this serendipitous pink as a decisive moment, but really, it was simply very good luck.

triple dip

there is a bicycle at the top of the dune: smile number one.
the bicycle is red: smile number two. because red rocks.
the tide, on the other side of the dune, is high and rising: smile number three.

a hat trick. my day is made.

at long last

it has taken me a few years - the havoc wreaked by the hack and the lack of backup
seemed insurmountable - but i have spent the last three days giving here some first aid and some much-needed tlc.
some happened-upon old back-ups turned out to contain many of the first photographs,
so i finally reinstated almost all of the early pictures (save a dozen that are probably
lost forever). the anxiety that overcame me at the mere thought of all the empty
images has lifted.
this feels like home again.
and i tackled the spam comments (that's 778 on one entry) that had me so frustrated that i couldn't even face moderating any more.
*
thank you for sticking with me.
i am grateful. and happy.

o hark, o hear

travel is discovery, and travel is rediscovery, and both touch deep.

i have photographed this cliffside house at happisburgh before, but every encounter
sees it sadly closer to its tumble into the sea.

hip, hip...

hooray, for me, today, even though i stopped celebrating my birthday a few years ago, when i stopped counting the fleeting years.

above, the vaulted sky

it's time to get this show back on the road.

or, at least, it's time to try.

the world's a forest

when we travel, we wander a lot, absorbing local sights, and sounds, and smells.
every now and then, though, something needs to be accomplished, and that something, this particular day in singapore, was the purchase of bus tickets to melaka.

we got lost, of course, and - in a side street - happened upon this.
staying on path can be so overrated.

the rising of the morn

"Faith is the bird that feels the light and sings when the dawn is still dark."

- Rabindranath Tagore (Indian Poet, Playwright and Essayist, 1861-1941)

we thought they'd never end

I took ballet lessons as a wee pony-tailed-spindly-legged lass, and, when my hour was over, I pirouetted myself downstairs to Lattimer's Drugstore and perched myself on a stool till my Mum or my Dad picked me up to take me home. I was given 35 cents to buy a soda or a sundae while I waited, and I remember spinning, alone, to the hiss of the fountain, in my leotard and my ballerinas, on scarlet leatherette, and feeling very Grown Up indeed.
I thought of this, decades later, in Penang, when I saw these fluted coupes: my mind jeté'd back to then, when "chocolate" or "butterscotch" was pretty much the most important decision I had to make.

so, so semiprecious

I've almost finished writing tripadvisor reviews of all the guest houses and hotels we stayed at during our month away. Only two remain: this one

(the beautiful Cheong Fatt Tze Mansion in Georgetown/Penang), and our final-night splurge, the fabulous Pan Pacific in Singapore...which still, in all its glory - and with a buffet breakfast the sumptuous likes of which I have never seen - cost less than a mediocre 3* hotel in Amsterdam on a weekend night.

Yes, I'm still in a nostalgic state of mind, and this is still Southeast Asia. Hey, it's still Penang, even. Bear with me.