Tag Archives: London

Paris, London, Prague

Posted in Vacations by

I was recently away on vacation, and today (a week after returning) I’ve finally processed and uploaded all of my photos. I took over a thousand photos, but I won’t post all of that online, who wants to go through a thousand photos!? So, I thought I’d post just a few to highlight the trip.

Mr. Asphodel de Canter is my Pygmy Puff companion. He travels with me everywhere – he’s almost one year old! The first thing we did when we landed in Paris was go to the hotel.

The view from our room was spectacular, one of our walls was practically an entire window, looking out onto the canal.  Continue reading →

My Fondness for Les Miserables

Posted in Broadway, Cultured by

To love another person is to see the face of God.

When I moved to the United States, I took a few months of high school to finish off my senior year and to take the SATs for university. I started in the beginning of the second quarter and choir was one of my electives.

The Music teacher was working at the school for four years, so he started with my class – then freshmen – and they all had a very close bond. I was the new comer and I definitely felt it.

He had us do a lot of Broadway music and a lot of latin songs, so in our final concert, he wanted the seniors in the choir to do One Day More from Les Miserables and he held auditions for solo parts. I remembered hesitating, after all I’d only been a senior for a few months, but, I liked the song so I tried out for a part. He was definitely hesitant about me being in it, I could tell by the way he treated me compared to the others. I had this stern faced man, waiting for me to riot, while all the others had this jovial, kind-looking man. Finally, he let me be a part of his senior choir’s solo piece, I sang a few lines of Cosette’s part as he wanted to “make sure everyone got a part.” Despite his hesitance, I fell in love with One Day More, the song stuck with me and even though the Broadway show closed while I was in college, I always held out the hope that it would play again.

Continue reading →

And the Gold Medal Goes To …

Posted in Media, The Observer, The Telly by

Some of the memorable highlights of the opening ceremony!

The theatrics in the beginning… I especially loved the Maypole and the different scenes in the grass – picnics, rugby … and the transformation. It’s a shame that NBC didn’t do a good job showing the different scenes depicted in this display of historical Britain before the introduction of the industrial revolution. I mean, real sheep on the set? What’s not to love?

The forging of the rings. Definitely a fan of this! Flying rings of fire gets the gold for sure.

The world’s greatest nanny – Mary Poppins – coming to save the day! This tip of the hat to the NHS and to famous British children’s literature, a segment that started with J.K. Rowling reading from Peter Pan was fun to watch. Especially identifying the different villains. Of course, it’s not without it’s controversy as some  – who will not be named – seemed to believe that  it was a blatant political move. Maybe it was, maybe it wasn’t, all I saw was some very lucky kids having a lot of fun at the Olympic opening and some hard working doctors and nurses honored for their work and Mary Poppins (my favourite nanny), a symbol of imagination. Also, some really awesome umbrellas that I kinda want.

The Queen and James Bond and some cute doggies. Oh that Queen, shocking the world with her sense of humour.

Mister Bean and Chariots of Fire. In true Mr. Bean style, this segment had me laughing at his hilarious facial expression and running scene.

The way the torch was lit!

What a way to light the torch! Why isn’t there more talk of the symbolism behind this? One torch lit by 200 and some tiny torches, burning brightly for the remainder of the games!

Of course, there were some huh moments, like the cover of Come Together, was it just me, or did they sound a little low energy? And, Hey Jude, I mean,  I love The Beatles and great for Paul McCartney for singing at the ceremony, but, I am sure there were many more songs that he could have sung than Hey Jude. And please don’t say it’s for the sing-along value, a lot of people in the world know many more songs and if they wanted people to sing along they just had to put the words up somewhere. I mean .. they have the entire stadium lit, it’s not impossible!

Overall it was enjoyable. Different. Unique. A great display of history. And of course, it was also fun to watch it while having a running commentary on Facebook with a few friends. My status because Olympic size, totaling 1006 comments. Not bad for seven or so people.

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Images from Reuters