We started our trip to Asia in Singapore. The tiny city state often makes the list of great food cities, which I wholeheartedly support, but is usually seen more as layover stop than the destination. I’ve heard it described as sterile, full of modern skyscrapers, and at worst, boring. These critiques seem to come mostly from Singapore’s…
Mooncake Mania
Sweet, dense, and highly caloric, mooncakes have been compared to American fruit cake, and the Mid Autumn Festival to which they’re tied has been compared to Thanksgiving. It’s celebrated across much of Asia, a remnant of China’s sweeping historical influence throughout the region. Before this trip, I had heard of mooncakes and even tasted a few traditional flavors during my excursions in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but I had no idea the scale of the mooncake mania we would encounter in Singapore. In this post, you’ll learn a few of the unique flavor combinations on offer in Singapore, some of their (supposed) history, and how they’re made.
How to Make a Smooth Transition Home After Traveling
Two weeks seems like the perfect amount of time to unapologetically check out and forget life at home. Having paid any bills in advance, you can push off everything else until you get back. We did exactly that in Singapore and Thailand. We spent the bulk of our time in Thailand and that meant getting used to practically 100%…
Singapore & Thailand Soon!
Last fall I won two free round trip tickets from San Francisco to Singapore on Singapore Airlines at an event put on by Travel Massive. I (really!) never win these kinds of contests, but somehow I got lucky, very lucky! After being totally overwhelmed with the sheer number a of promising destinations just a short flight from Singapore, we…
On Stage in Front of Thousands of People
Sometimes the biggest most challenging adventures in our lives are personal and internal — not nearly as easily shared as a trip around the world. I love big adventures that bring us outside of ourselves. They give us an opportunity to imagine ourselves differently — in a different context, with a different identity. And I think…
Embracing My Creative Legacy
Last summer, my Mom gave me this copy of The Artist’s Way, by Julia Cameron. She had probably mentioned this book at least a handful of times before, but I was finally open to reading it. I can be a little stubborn, especially about what I read. As I read and worked through the twelve weeks of material, I thought a lot about the legacy of sharing this book with my mom. Her life, creatively lived, along with her love of fine art, gave me the permission to love art too, to admire artists and writers, and to begin to pursue writing myself. If she hadn’t been so committed to creativity as a way of life and largely incapable of living any other way, I may never have begun writing in any earnest or my writing might have stayed locked away in my journals. Now after decades of filling page after page, I understand that inability to live any other way, and I’m finally learning to embrace it.
Yosemite’s Slow Reveal & One of My Own
After talking about visiting Yosemite for long enough, availability aligned, and we made a reservation for three weeks later. We left on Friday right after work. So by the time we had arrived, it was long past dark. The climb through the mountains and the following descent to the valley floor were obvious as we drove, but all the majestic beauty had simply faded into black. The valley walls that John Muir, champion and protector of Yosemite, had described as “mountains in size,” and “so compactly and harmoniously arranged … that the Valley, comprehensively seen, looks like an immense hall or temple lighted from above.” Those walls would have to wait, at least until the next morning. Or so I thought. Mother Nature had other plans.
Travel Caching & Learning to Pack Less
I travel a lot for business and for pleasure, and my most frequent destination (by far) is Dallas, Texas. This isn’t news to anyone who’s been reading here for a while. Dallas is home. Newer readers might not know that I even tried to maintain two homes for a little while — one in Dallas and one in San Francisco. I wasn’t ready to let go of Dallas, but I craved more time in San Francisco.
Ultimately, I came to the conclusion over the course of many months that living this split life wasn’t workable for me. Now I live in San Francisco full time, but I still get back to Dallas quite a bit, usually every 6 to 8 weeks. All this back and forth convinced me that I needed to find a way to make my travel to Dallas simpler.
Word Harvesting
Writers deal in words, descriptive and evocative, and reading regularly is one way to ensure you always have fresh supply in mind when you sit down to write. No surprises there! But this technique is valuable beyond writing. It will make you a better communicator and give you the specificity to describe moments and meaning in your daily life.
Scenes from a Trip to Paris
February is celebrated as a month filled with love and romance, but because I’m somewhat ambivalent about Valentine’s Day itself, I’ve decided to skip it here and write about Paris instead. If there’s a more romantic city in the world, I haven’t seen it yet. I’ve visited Paris a handful of times since my first trip for my 20th birthday while studying…
