Animal Motion Machine

Brainstorming for this project kept me up way past my bedtime for a couple nights. In the make-believe world of this painting, live spherical animals continuously roll through a ball run for perpetual fun.

Animals follow a specially-engineered path:
1. Vacuum tube sucks animal to the top

2. Swinging flap holds animal back until the next one bumps them through, thus regulating the pace between animals

3. Animals roll down paths on both sides, ideally at the same speed

4. Animal crosses sides through the drop turnstile, to enjoy both sides alternatingly

5. Bottom platform releases two animals when all six spots are filled, ensuring symmetrical release and throttled pacing

I chose 18 animals from a huge list, looking for variety in color, interesting traits and balanced representation of different ecosystems (safari, forest, sea). It was awesome to include more eclectic animals, like a peacock (which looks more like a robin with a headdress, as you will see).

Row 1: Panda, Hedgehog, Rhino, Giraffe

Row 2: Elephant, Lion, Koala, Alligator

Row 3: Manta Ray, Peacock, Walrus, Dino Egg

Row 4: Whale, Tiger, Bunny

Row 5: Jellyfish, Raccoon, Sheep

Some standouts:

- Best execution: Bunny

- Best idea: Dino egg

- Family's favorite animals: Koala, Lion, Elephant

- My real-life favorite animals: Hedgehog, Manta Ray

This painting took on a baby-nursery vibe, which was not intentional. I'm scared of bold colors, so everything went overly soft. Regardless, coming up with this concept was really fun and I'm happy with how it turned out.

Ideal Reading Room

Last year, I bought a shirt with painted windows.

This shirt comes out of the closet whenever I need to break the monotony of wearing navy, head-to-toe for work. Because I love this shirt, the pattern became the inspiration for my next painting.

The original vision was to show a brick face of an apartment building with six windows peeking into six different-styled apartments. As the idea evolved, six apartments narrowed to three, and the windows themselves were nixed altogether.

In an informal poll, most people liked the top-right pink room the best out of the three.

My real-life room decor best resembles the pink room. However, I'm happier with how the other two rooms are painted, as they're more visually interesting.

Reading Rooms: Boho, Scandinavian, and Cottage Styles

Boho

Scandinavian

Cottage

This painting turned out quite faithful to what I had in mind, which is very satisfying. It is one of my favorites to date!

Reviving This Blog

Hello. It is 2020. We have been quarantined for 8 weeks. It's time to revive this blog.

I've been making a lot of art. I don't share it all on Instagram, because I don't want a profile of 10 consecutive paintings. Additionally, the design process is really fun and interesting for me to talk about, and yet my sisters cannot listen to another word from me. So I need a new outlet...

New watermark Almost exactly 4 years after abandoning this travel blog, I'm fixing the broken links and giving it a second life for art stuff. Somehow, this blog platform is even more outdated than before and my old email subscription engine broke. You can subscribe again here or in the left bar -- and you'll get post notifications in a pretty, new email template.

Revisiting this old blog, I still like the design a lot. However, some of my old writing is super cringe. So be kind, and maybe don't judge old posts. And I'll be kind to myself too, because I'm 90% sure this post is going to be cringe-inducing in a couple years as well. Or way sooner!

That's all! Welcome back, us!

If you're interested in more rambles about what's transpired over the break...

Before I abandoned it in 2016, this blog was a creative outlet that helped me find some balance to an all-consuming new job. When I got busier, I stopped investing the 10-15+ hours it took to create each post. But along the way, I also lost touch with a huge piece of creativity in my life, and forgot the joy of obsessing over side projects purely for the fun of it.

This time last year, I took a long vacation from work and stumbled into acrylic painting. When I picked up a creative hobby again, it was like opening a cupboard of favorite snacks that you had forgotten about. That's simply not done!

Now, being in a different place in my life, art means something different than before. More than ever, I need it as a way to stretch my mind, think non-linearly and embrace that there's no perfect standard. I am still low-level anxious to finish each painting as quickly and as close to my vision as possible, but I'm working on finding ways to enjoy each part of the process as well. I hope you enjoy going through this creative process with me, if anyone out there has more patience to listen than my poor quarantine buddies!

Faith

Modern Nomad - Reclaiming My Zone

Virtual guest, I'm sharing a look into my hotel room: specifically the bathroom counter and my corresponding posse of toiletry supplies, which take up a fifth of my suitcase and are typically the first things I care to unpack.

Here on the right, you can see a life-sized replica of my setup at home, engineered for optimal hotel-living convenience. You may not think of it, but a primary concern with hotel rooms is finding a mirror with good lighting. That's why, once I've figured out my mirror arrangement, I tend to stay at the same hotel week to week. Of course, I also like to do this because the hotel staff start to recognize me, but even more than that, I start to recognize them.

I'm pondering whether it's more objectionable or less that I use almost every one of these items in the picture on the daily, albeit in quick succession in the mornings. Things aren't always laid out this way (remotely neatly), especially since I'm rarely blessed with this many drinking glasses to be repurposed as containers. However, I do consistently pack everything that I use when I’m at home, so there’s no living simple on the road for me.

This is all too true when I start to bring duplicate items like face wash – one for the main trip and another for trips within trips. Would these then be called travel-travel products? Products for travel when you're already on travel? I am aware that all of this is considerably high maintenance. In my very feeble defense, maintaining my ideal personal care process helps me feel normal and well-functioning wherever I go.

Speaking of heavy packing, there was a period of time recently when I was travelling so much that it became necessary to bring an extra suitcase of clothing to keep at the hotel. The two suitcases together essentially became my rolling closet. Given that 70% of my usual wardrobe was with me in those suitcases, I was functionally dumping out my entire closet every single week when I unpacked at the hotel and three days later, reorganized and placed everything back in. The interesting thing was that I needed clothing for very different climates, so I simultaneously had heavy gloves and spring dresses in my suitcases. Anyone looking inside them may be led to believe that I was running away from home and that I grabbed everything I could in a mad dash, including an electric blanket. I’m surprised it all fit, to be honest.

Even without varying climate considerations, my packing mentality should explain why I always have a full carry-on regardless of whether it’s for one night or four – and goodness knows that we're checking a bag if it's longer.

Back to the Basics - Kona, HI (Part 2)

Apparently, people notice when other people travel alone. I got asked whether I was "here by myself" almost as frequently as I was asked where I come from during my short trip to Hawaii. I could be overlaying my own perceptions here, but being asked whether I'm traveling alone feels uncannily similar to being asked whether I still live at home. A yes to either question elicits a “Oh… Well, good for you! *overcompensatingly brightly*”

???

Fair enough. Hawaii is first and foremost a scenic spot, so you have an absurd amount of quiet time if you’re not traveling with someone else.

There’s a lot of freedom in being independent. I can wind down from my high-interaction work week at my own pace in my own way, which took about a solid day actually, to remember how to take it easy. But it also means I need to entertain myself and stack up the weekend with good planning. Say for lunch, I can easily spend two hours if I'm with someone else, chatting, but I don’t eat two-hour lunches on my own. Given that the concept applies to every other part of my day, my plans become that much more event-focused as I move rapidly from activity to activity. Coffee plantation tour > Hike by a historic beach > Drive to another beach for the sunset. Bam bam bam.

The sense of staying active and not fully relaxing is rather accurate and actually necessary for another reason, which is that I am the only one looking out for my safety and well-being. There won’t be anyone to brainstorm solutions if I drive myself into a ditch, wander into a bad area, or run out of battery on my phone. No one is going to watch my stuff from getting stolen or remind me to pack my water before I leave the hotel. I have to keep a portion of my brain aware at all times just to maintain the baseline preventative measures, and that's a permanent feature of traveling alone.

Hawaii was really beautiful; it was an amazing trip and concurrently a concentrated weekend on the considerations of being on my own.

I like it. It was good. I exclaim these things with some vigor, overcompensatingly brightly, you might suspect – especially when we consider my sunburned back, with a windshield wiper-shaped crescent of un-tan in the only spot on my back that I was able to reach any smidgen of sunscreen. *Slow quiet exhale out.*

Just kidding. :)

The sunset is worth it.

One Food Item Only

Question #14 on the 50 Facts About Me tag asks If you had to eat one food for the rest of your life, what would it be?

Given that I eat this particular thing once or twice a day already (unless I run out of it), I am super inspired to answer this question – it's the delicious, nutritious Greek Yogurt with Berries.

Here, let me show you:

Components:

  Huge dollop of Greek yogurt, plain or honey

  Blackberries

  Raspberries

  Blueberries

  Roasted Pecans


Triumvirate of Food Objectives Achieved:

  Protein

  Fruit

  Sweetness


If you're using plain yogurt, you can add a spoonful of raspberry preserves or lemon curd.

    or    

For interesting texture and to join the superfood bandwagon, add the miraculous chia seeds. (DL on chia seeds: Add water, wait, stir. Gelatinous and a little earthy-tasting. Loads of fiber and other things.)

A quick Google search has revealed to me that there are no set questions to the Facts About Me tag. The tag is just 50 facts that you share about yourself, so actually there is no defined question 14. But anyway, I shared that one fact and now you know.

“There is No Typical Week In My Life”

I have a proposition for myself, and it is that I will buy and enjoy one fruit tart pastry each and every week that I am on a travel project. There are no conditions and no quid pro quo. I'm not even obligated to have a fruit tart if I didn’t want one that week, although I’m not sure what unusual event would cause that circumstance to arise.

Side note, speaking of quid pro quo and other words or phrases that one might look up, I recently watched an episode of the Good Wife and had to pause it twice to look up new words until I gave up and went on inferring definitions. Side-side note: I am so delighted by the commencement of TV season again.

As I was saying, this is paradigmatic of a personal tradition, a bakery-sourced tartlet on a weekly consumption cycle. Quite frankly forming such a habit is otherwise meaningless but for the theoretical relief that there’s one less decision you have to consciously make during the week (and one more certainty you can bank on).

To give you a snapshot of my current weekly traditions and activities, here’s the set-up. Mindy Kaling’s most recent book has a chapter one chapter outlining her day-to-day activities by the hour. A highly engaging, fly-on-the-wall read. This series illustrates what a recent week looked like for me, as I break into my new rhythm.

Main Post | Monday | Tuesday | Wednesday | Thursday

New York Raises You to the Occasion - New York City, NY

When in New York, make like a New Yorker. In the few days that I have been here, I have already started walking faster and double-pressing “Door Close” elevator buttons more vigorously. A friend and now-native New Yorker calls them comfort buttons, anything that doesn’t actually send signals to the elevator or crosswalk, but makes the person feel more relieved and action-achieved by pressing it. I have no doubt I'll be recycling this term and will probably even accept originality credit occasionally.

The city really does seem tireless. I’ve been to New York before, but the sensory overload of Times Square still seems to augment the sparkliness of everything, albeit between weaving through sweaty tourists and over nasty puddles. It was so exciting to recognize locations from TV and movies when you least expected it, like passing by the Times Square bleachers from Spider-Man and a random park from White Collar (love). There's a lot of good stimulation here, if I can deflect the fear of missing out. We had some delicious food, which I am now obliged to show you, darn. And with some last minute finagling, we also caught an Off Broadway musical, a production that didn’t disprove the point that things are bigger and better in NYC. People do say that, don't they.

Black Dresses and Lots of Salmon: Family Vacation

Something that bothers my sisters about me is when I care about being classy. Maybe I can generalize that I’ve always liked nice things, as you’d assume everyone does, though my middle sister in particular seems to be the exception that proves the rule. I remember in third grade when we had a creative writing project, with a prompt to stretch the imagination. I described at length the “Ultimate Luxury Liner” which had a bowling alley extending the length of the ship on a lower level and a similarly expansive swimming pool up top. The bowling alley would certainly need to be near the bottom so that people who constantly drop balls wouldn’t rattle too many levels below them. Never mind that bowling balls would definitely end up in the gutter on any ship.

(I wish I had a picture of the essay, but it's long gone and on second thought, my handwriting was embarrassingly atrocious.)

Of course at that age, I had no concept of the real size of ships nor any concept whatsoever of why people would build large ships for entertainment. Now, some dozen years later, I am fortunate to have a stronger grasp of these sailing hotels from personal experience. Because in fact, my mom has progressively phased out non-cruise family vacations in recent years, which is a way of saying that she has been vacationing more during our vacations.

     

Compared to other summer cruises, this one was less sweltering by far and delightfully more nature-centric. Mountains, I realize, are conspicuously refreshing and if air could be called organic, this would be it. We saw a few animals, like brown bears and bald eagles, though I usually preferred reading a book to whale spotting as I hear the latter is even less eventful than fishing. The weather in June was fit for hiking, so we hiked and ate berries off of bushes along the way - very rugged. I temporarily acquired the ritual of breathing deeply, not because of the altitude but because I wanted to store up on clean air. A cruise to Alaska is something one and done for me, because if I get the chance, there are so many other places in the world to enjoy, but this was definitely among the most relaxing trips I’ve ever taken.

Weekend Wedding

My good friend and college housemate of two years got married this weekend and it was a beautiful, lovely wedding in Charlottesville. Cville has become a second hometown for all of us housemates, the others of whom I went with to the wedding, so I think it was the perfect location for the perfect wedding. I obsessively checked the weather the entire week prior to the wedding -- apparently everyone else was doing this too. Predictions had been fluctuating between rainstorm and drizzle, but the actual day turned out to be clear skies with a cool breeze. No waterworks to be seen but for our happy tears sitting in the pews of the University Chapel.

Some highlights included circle dancing in traditional Scottish wedding style and Sarah's pretty and tastefully sparkly veil. As Alumni reunion weekend was happening at UVA, my housemates and I had a fun time reuniting for the last time before splitting off for the summer and our respective full time jobs or job searching.

It's surreal to witness friends getting married. Let wedding season begin, both for the year and for this period of my life.