Tag: travel

All in good time

“He wandered away in wonderment, pondering awondering…”

“Oh, that’s tacky. Writing like that will get you no where—shows how desperate you are to establish yourself as a writer. Don’t do that. Just be cool.

Huh?

Unable to decipher the critic’s reasoning, Julia observed the writer’s crestfallen face from a distance. She was perplexed. The sentence sounded fine to her, even ambitious with the coining of a new term. Writers always took the poetic license—it was their nature.

“Write the way people speak. Be natural.” Came the critic’s afterthought.

Ah! The times they’re a changing, realised the time traveller.

Story of my journey

My first and only time in the US, everything caught my eye. And everything that caught my eye made me catch my breath. The largeness of it all left me gaping and wondering, looking up at towering structures and gulping down amazement. It was like living in a movie—with a dramatic, exaggerative story.

San Francisco

Unlike earthy

The Lan Su Chinese Garden in Portland is far more than a thing of beauty. It’s a space where serenity is overloaded and out-of-the-worldliness is the norm. This structure made me stop, wonder, and click as I mused on its weird shape and look. It appeared as if it were carved with meticulous precision while also seeming so natural—as if it had been effortless for the universe to create. I’m not sure if it’s natural or hand made, but it sure looked like something from elsewhere other than earth.

Lan Su Chinese Garden Portland.jpg

Fine and solo

I hate it when people barge in on me while I’m trying to get some me-time. That’s why I’m always wary of approaching others who seem fine at being alone. It so happened while I was waltzing off on my own in Alki beach, I saw a gentleman standing by the shore observing the coming and going of the waves. He stood there for a while in silent rumination about things I’d never discern. In a vast emptiness that surrounded us, for he and I were the only ones on the beach, he seemed oblivious to my existence.

Although I felt an itching urge to engage this man in an animated conversation, I refrained. I stood afar and watched him as he picked up a few shells, scrutinised them, and dropped some of them back. I never saw him turn around.

one in the crowd

Perhaps he had a grandchild who loved seashells, I thought as I walked away.

Cookie

Even though I’m not much of a sweet tooth I can never pass up the opportunity to devour cookies. At the near-end of my first visit to the US, I realised I’d been there a whole moth without ever trying out Starbucks. So it was with much facepalming that I entered the Starbucks outlet at the Dubai airport. I was in transit from Seattle, and not at all hungry.

But who needs to be hungry to eat cookies?

Starbucks cookie and coffee