Another shot of one of the Yácatas at Tzintzuntzan. (See the previous post for background information.) Bizarrely, my Summer is all of a sudden threatening to transform from one of withdrawal into hiding to work on my Project to a much more travelled mode than I intended. The Morelia trip … Click to continue reading this post
(Top prize for the best name on last month’s trip.) This is the name of an existing town as well as the nearby archeological site, the subject of this post. On the Sunday I referred to in a previous post, several of the School went off on a bus to do some sightseeing West of Morelia. This is one of the places to which we went. I learned a bit about the pre-Columbian mesoamerican civilization, the P’urhépecha (or Purépecha), whose capital was Tzintzuntzan (place of the hummingbirds). The structures in my photos (click for larger view) are called Yácatas, which are on a plateau overlooking the lake Pátzcuaro. […] Click to continue reading this post
Morelia is a beautiful city. One of the things that strikes you is the high concentration of architectural features that are either churches or related to churches (convents, chapels, etc) in the core of the city. The queen of these is the cathedral, which was across the street from my hotel (and gave it its name). Here it is during the day. The photograph was taken quite early in the morning to take advantage of the pleasant light (click for larger view):
It has fountains and gardens on both sides of it, and so acts as an all important […] Click to continue reading this post
(Anyone remember Mike Oldfield? I recall a lovely piece of music of his with the same title as this post and it has now been playing distantly in my head as I type…very pleasant.)
Well, I’m sitting at an outside table across from the main square with the cathedral and having a simple lunch. It is hot, and so I have a glass of cold pale beer in front of me, and everyone around me is speaking Spanish. This feels like it could be that I am back in Madrid, but in fact I am in Morelia, Mexico. (I can tell because, among other things, I’ve never been offered a shoe shine quite so many times in the space of 15 minutes…) It is quite a lovely place, as far as I’ve seen so far (I’ve not explored much yet). I’m resting after a very early morning travel schedule which saw a slight panic (er…long story) at LAX to catch my flight which left just before 1:00am. The seats were fixed to the bolt upright position the whole flight and so the two and a half hours I’d planned to snooze were not so […] Click to continue reading this post
Googling people is often interesting. One thing I’ve noticed is that in the search results it seems people are showing up a lot more on various kinds of databases, business networking groups, social networking groups (of course) and so forth. Is this a growing phenomenon? Are people joining more of theses, or are various network entries automatically generated? (I ask this as someone who walked away from facebook, for example. Perhaps I’ll talk more about why some other time…)
In this vein, I forgot to mention that a little while ago I discovered that I have a Wikipedia entry. I am not sure how I feel about this, but it is (I suppose) flattering that someone took the time to add this to the things out there on the web about me. (I don’t think it was automatically generated.) I’d previously assumed that if an ordinary person had a Wikipedia entry it must mean that they wrote it themselves. After all, who would be interested enough to write one about someone else? Seems […] Click to continue reading this post
Yeah, I know I’ve used this post title before, but I do love it. So… sorry.
One of the things that really sets my week up nicely is my Sunday visit to the Hollywood Farmer’s Market. Today was an exceptionally nice day for it, but weatherwise and just the overall atmosphere of the market. The people making their food purchases and simply socializing, the vendors, the many musicians (even the corny ones sounded really good today), and of course – the food itself.
One of the highlights for me today was a new (ish) vendor, specializing entirely in mushrooms.
The variety was fascinating, and I stood there with a friend sniffing and sampling for a while (encouraged by the vendors, I hasten to add) before purchasing a lovely persimmon enoki (the ones in the middle of the first photo):
[…] Click to continue reading this post
There’s something enduringly lovely about local independent bookstores. I love stopping by to visit them, try to give my local ones the first shot at supplying me with a book I’m looking for, but most of all I value them as community centres at the heart of the villages (real and virtual) that exist in our neighbourhoods, even in a vast city like Los Angeles. People gather and linger at them, bonding over the written word for the most part, but sometimes just for the sake of gathering and lingering. In that role they are a lot like public libraries, another favourite of mine. Much of what I said can apply to the large chain bookstores too, but somehow I find them less likely to have that community feel that independent stores have. I’m not sure why (location? focus? less of a personal touch in the organization of the material?), but this is the way it seems to me. (I’m speaking about the USA; the feel of bookstores is different to me in different countries.)
Last night, after a quiet evening meal after a long day of working on the Project, I went for a nice long walk, heading to Skylight books in Los Feliz. (That’s the neighbourhood at the base of the hills of Griffith Park, in case you don’t know.) My friend and colleague Aimee Bender was launching her new (long awaited) novel “The Particular Sadness of Lemon Cake”, and I thought I’d go along to support the launch, hear about the book, and absorb a bit of the buzz. And buzz there was, since in addition to […] Click to continue reading this post
AOL is 25 years old today! Twenty Five! To help you understand that, those of you who where alive then click here for the list of number one songs in the charts at the time… Yes, Wham!, Tears for Fears, Huey Lewis and the News, Phil Collins, Jan Hammer, etc… Do you remember America Online? Dialing up to connect? (Perhaps some of you still dial up, to read this blog?) Ah yes, memories. I was never an AOL subscriber. I was, after all, not in America until the 90s, and only started connecting from home in that decade. By then several companies offered dialup service. Then I was of course, just like everyone else, familiar with the reassuring dialup noises to the point where by ear you could tell if the connection was going to work or not (huh, I just realized that sound is sort of from the same swatch of sounds as the TARDIS noise), and recall the sitting and waiting for files of just a few hundred kilobytes to download, and so on and so forth. (Amazingly, and wonderfully, we are now at the point where people are streaming movies and tv shows directly to their homes on their web connections.) The speed difference became a way of measuring the difference between work and home, in a way. At work, you had tons of storage space and perpetual connectivity, and once got home that went away. So waiting for data to squeeze through the telephone line using dialup was extra frustrating.
Truth be told, there’s a piece of me that does not mind that difference, at times. Being connected all the time at home – fast and conveniently – can bring down the […] Click to continue reading this post
It has been a wonderful Spring for me so far, I must say. On many fronts. For example, work is trundling along steadily, with small but regular landmarks in my project being set and met, and the garden is planted with lots of new vegetable plants that carry promise for tasty treats in the months to come. In the mornings the garden has a cacophony of sounds from all sorts of birds, all determinedly busy with whatever it is they think needs to get done that morning. It is good to start that day hearing all that activity. 
(Fully half of that sound comes from a remarkably energetic Northern Mockingbird that manages to run through several distinct birdsong choruses at high volume while flying from tree to tree in the neighbourhood. It is almost as though it is trying to create the illusion that there are several mockingbirds in residence…) In the photo you can see a pair of mourning doves (the same pair I think I spoke about earlier), surveying the activity in the air and on the ground below.
There’s a feeling of promise, hope, and growth all around at this time of year. It’s everywhere. A nice surprise waited for me early last week. I was filling the kettle at the sink for my first cup of tea of the day one morning and noticed something green […] Click to continue reading this post
It is Mother’s Day in the USA. The UK version was earlier, in March, but since my mother is there, she usually gets two greetings from me, one for each version of the holiday.
Mother’s Day for me means flowers, at least in part. I often (although not this year) make and send her a card featuring a flower from my garden. Roses are usually the ones that make it to the card (my mum loves them) but as I stood in the garden this morning and looked around, the Oleander caught my eye. The bushes are covered in pink flowers (click the image on the right for a larger view), with many more to come, and I was suddenly put in mind of the years I lived in the Caribbean. Oleander plants were very common, and I recall many of them (in a selection of colours, I think) in the grounds of St. Augustine’s where my family went to […] Click to continue reading this post
The little railway on the left is apparently the shortest rail journey in the world. So the sign proudly claims, anyway. I imagine they mean shortest for one carrying passengers, and that considerations of scale have been made (so that model railway that loops around your dining room table does not count). Whether it is the shortest or not, Angel’s Flight is very charming and quite a lovely, brief ride (shot of interior below). I recommend visiting it if you get a chance. It’s in downtown Los Angeles. A reward at the end is Grand Central Market, so you can’t lose.
I’ve been quiet here on the blog for a few days. It has been an oddly busy time where on the one hand I’ve been trying to work on my project, and on the other I’ve been […] Click to continue reading this post
I went off into an extra dimension yesterday. Well, in a manner of speaking. No, this was not anything to do with my string theory work!
I was being filmed in 3D.
There’s a bit of a 3D revolution going on. There have been a lot of 3D movies out lately. Some are better than others, and a great deal more are to come very soon, as you probably know. Many major filmmakers that you probably regard as “serious” filmmakers have 3D films in the works. There’ll be 3D TV channels appearing soon in the UK and probably elsewhere, and they’ve been selling the TVs already, both there and in the USA (and I imagine, in other places).
There are lots of questions you’ve no doubt asked yourself: Is the technology here to stay? Is it just a gimmick? Is it just a ploy to combat piracy? Is it a new aspect of the visual form that creative filmmakers can genuinely use to enhance the story-telling? Has that happened yet? And so on and so forth…
I’ve been asking myself those questions too. I did not expect, however, to be part of the revolution (if that is what it is) and be filmed in 3D, so soon, for a TV show. My […] Click to continue reading this post
Lovely colours in Griffith Park yesterday. I did a pleasant fast hike up to the top of […] Click to continue reading this post
So it has been a quiet week or few in my immediately local world. This is by choice. Recall that I’m on sabbatical, and working on a project. I’m trying to work on it exclusively, but I keep getting interrupted by several other things, especially since I returned from Walkabout.
But I do what I can, saying no to some things, doing some duties where I am needed, and tending somewhat to my private life and friendships of course. But mostly I’ve been hiding and working on the project. Overall, I can report that I’m very pleased with progress in the last month (since I returned to LA) on several aspects of the work. I’m sorry that I have not – and still will not – tell you anything about the project. I’ve already given my reasons, and nothing has changed. Perhaps later.
Most of my work has been in Away mode, which means at offices other than the one assigned to me at work. I am certainly staying away from the department as much as I can, (no disrespect intended, but people find things for you to do if you’re perceived as being around – I am not around!), and the same goes for the campus, making only fleeting visits to the latter, mostly in stealth mode (my obligatory sabbatical beard, among other things, has helped here). Sometimes I appear for a […] Click to continue reading this post
I find myself back in Los Angeles for a bit, putting Walkabout mode on pause. Perhaps to do my laundry, perhaps to chair the committee of the upcoming Ph.D. defense of my student, Tameem, perhaps to be able to sit outside in the early morning sun in a T-shirt and blog over breakfast.
The garden is full of weeds and flowers, and all is well with the world, albeit a bit blurry due to my jetlag.
Anyway, a few random things to note:
Another Spring is here, in full force. I once again snort in exasperated laughter at the bizarre claim so very many people make about Los Angeles (Southern California more generally) not having seasons, as I marvel at all the many signs of it screaming for attention. As a random example, I’m observing some mourning doves eyeing me up from nearby as they try to decide whether I’m a threat to their potential nesting sites that they are checking out. Seems that at least one pair is rather impressed with my cluster of strelitzia nicolai and want to move in. I want to tell them that I’m not the problem, but the fact that they’d be in plain sight of the crows/rooks/ravens/winged-Nazgul that pass by here a lot will be. I’ve seen them strike nests in those trees from previous years and scoop up a tasty warm meal.
Eight hours of jetlag means only one thing: […] Click to continue reading this post
