Travels of an itinerant girl

Of travels, food, a general longing for things and places – and lots of stories in between

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Category: WritingRetreat

January 17, 2018January 17, 2018seasidegirl

The Himalayan Writing Retreat

Recent Posts

  • A Museum of Broken Dreams in Zagreb
  • The Himalayan Writing Retreat
  • Itmenaan Se
  • An (alternative) Singapore Sling
  • Market Day in Zagreb

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This has already been a year of three weddings (and no funerals, thank God), reunions with old friends and new.... and just a beautiful reminder that you dont always need the world on your side to guide you towards technicolor dreams... Just three or four is a good enough number! And binary colored black and white dreams have just as much a chance of seeing the light of day.. To Friendship and Dreams. And staying busy. (The rest will take care of itself) #friendship #chasingdreams #loveandlight #weddingseason #threeweddings #notchasinganyone #notchasinglove
Sunday morning calm before my multiple hot dates with carpenters, electricians, plumbers, the gardener and every other possible handyman! 😄 #sundayvibes #sundaymornings #calminabusyworld #calm #aquietplace #homedecor #home #acupoftea #monetinateacup #theartoftea
"As time goes on, you understand. What lasts, lasts. What doesnt, doesnt. Time solves most things. And what Time cant solve, you have to solve yourself" From Murakami's 'Dance Dance Dance'. My first Murakami ever... Memory is the strangest thing isn't it. A wrought iron day bed at a tucked-away hidden French cafe called Mermaid (in French) with sunshine fingers on its sheets and pillows, will call to mind, not quite your ex lover, or the one that got away. But Murakami. Maybe like his books, every damn thing and person in this big wide crazy world is connected to every other damn thing and person, after all. Like this delicious day bed is, to Murakami. #goa #murakami #afternoonlight #daybed #alfresco #summergarden #poeticsoul #pursuitofbeauty #memoryismagic #throwback
Sometimes you have to return to where you have been, to see the same old with new eyes.... Sometimes that journey can take 6 years in the making, when you actually think of Jing'an Temple not just as the busiest interchange on Line 2 (after People's Square) but as the old Chinese temple it truly is. And you stand outside in the 2 degree Celsius cold for half an hour, buy a 50 Rmb ticket to make your slow snaking way into the temple precinct. Then you stand in the incense line, punctuated by bar code readers which swipe your WeChat mobile wallet and direct you to the next available dispensing machine for the incense pick-up. No WeChat wallet? Too bad... no cookie (oops, incense) for you, amigo! Cash is for the have-been. So prehistoric. It is this sense of the ancient and the ultra modern in China that always gets me. Take a hundred year old temple housing a 5-ton Guanyin Boddhisatva made from thousand-year-old camphor wood,, and marry it with new age barcode readers for incense dispensing and there you have it... a perfect blend of life, today. Always the old and the new colliding. The past and the future colliding. And yet, in China, this makes perfect sense! Just like old Chinese moon gates leading off the temple precinct into the monks quarters, where said monks are busy operating industrial strength washing machines and hanging their gold-yellow robes to dry. And somehow, much like China, it is in this midway collision that much of Life happens. The famed middle as it were. We look longingly at the past, we look anxiously and hopefully at the future, and somewhere in this collision of past-present-future, we manage to live and breathe a little... China for me, is a metaphor for life. An existential collision of sorts that is neither here nor there... yet making perfect sense. Somewhere in between. Suspended but secure. #jingantemple #oldandnew #inbetweeners #fromtheoutsidein #lifecolliding #lifeinchina #thingstothinkabout #existentialism #shanghailife #shanghaiforever #introspectivetravel #whiletravelling #postcardsfromtheworld
She walks in shadows She stops to turn in the light Some say she is a cold beauty But I find her gentle as a summer's night... .... Tongxin, the intriguing Sichuan beauty of the classical Chinese face, who always reminds me of a Tang dynasty princess, and whom I am fortunate enough to call my friend and my muse... standing in front of the Dunhuang cave painting replicas at Lost Heaven, looking like she stepped through a hole in Time. #lostheaven #lostheavensilkroad #shanghailife #instaart #dunhuangpaintings #shanghaiforever #whiletravelling #girlinterrupted #nofilter #portraiture #peopleandfaces #portraits #beautifulpeople @sabrina.xin
Shanghai is... and always will be home to me. Two years since leaving my favoritest city in the world and it is still home .. Signs that it is still home... 1) My first pit stop is well, predictably, Sichuan Citizen, straight after landing and dropping off bags at the hotel! 2) The second pit stop is Subconscious Day Spa on Fumin lu! If you havent ever experienced a Shanghai massage, when will you? 😍 3) And the third.... oh for a girl who loves her food... the local corner grocers! And that lovely urban legend .. the Avocado Lady! 4) The oily jianbing (scallion pancakes) right down the street at Wulumuqi lu 5)... Add to that the morning metro hustle, and I am truly home at last! :) #shanghailife #shanghaiishome #whiletravelling #girlalone #pearoftheorient

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