All posts filed under: Life Abroad

Post #8: BART

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Welcome to the eighth post of the Great Writing Challenge of 2012. Five days a week for six months, I will be given a topic to write about. The stipulation: it must be 250 words (or more), and positive in tone. If you would like to suggest topics for me to write about, please email me at TheRebeccaProject [at] gmail [dot] com. BART trains are cool. They look like portals from the future, prepared to take you back with them. Even the horns sound digital. Harrison Ford caught one in Blade Runner. Or maybe I just made that up. But he totally would have. Each day, I ride the futuristic cars to work and back. BART is my preferred form of public transport, and mostly an enjoyable experience. The system is known for its large, comfy seats, and has a completely different feel from the hard plastic seats on trains in New York and London. I am a creature of habit and each day, I make a beeline for my preferred seat: the reverse-riding left …

I heart SF

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San Francisco is unique, and so breathtakingly beautiful. Sometimes I forget to stop long enough to take notice. Thankfully, someone captured it for me, and edited it into an easily-watched 4m56s. [Source] I heart my city. One of my favourite part of the city has always been the fog. It seems to crawl in over the hills and down the valleys like fingers. It’s a living organism. At 33 seconds in, check out the exact view I get each morning as I step outside my front door.

Thoughts on Travel

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This article was first published in the summer edition of ‘At The End Of The Day’, my organization’s in-house magazine. *** In the late 18th Century, a Frenchman by the name of Xavier de Maistre pioneered what became known as ‘room travel’. Instead of packing up sixteen trunks, commandeering two stewards and journeying on trains and sailing vessels to new worlds, de Maistre donned his blue and pink pajamas and set about exploring his room. In ‘Journey Around My Bedroom’, he participated in grand old adventures, starting with his couch. What we glean from his writings is that while we all can’t be brave explorers like Cook and Magellan, we can all look at our own surroundings with a different eye, taking the time to notice what we have already seen. It’s less about where in the world we are heading as the mindset with which we travel. It’s an interesting way to look at travel, particularly as many of us take a vacation this time of year. There is no one-solution-fits-all when it comes …

Everything will be okay.

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Back in Sydney, I once worked closely with a lovely woman who was in her mid 50s. Even as most women her age were looking forward to retiring and slowing down, she was vivacious, charismatic and had energy for days. And, rather importantly, she was an amazing campaign manager. As things would have it, she turned out to be a friend of my parents’ (Mum’s right when she says “you never want to talk about anyone…”) and over the course of the campaign, we became quite close. Her quirky habits started to make sense as I learnt more about her. She had recently lost the love of her life and her son within months of each other. Tragic story, and one I will always remember. But yet each day she seemed so… together. I really enjoyed being around her, learning a lot about Aussie political wheeling and dealing. It was great to watch her in action. When the votes had been counted, we celebrated the following day an amazing home right on Cronulla Beach. During …

Moments of bliss

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My life has moments of bliss, but today, however, I am not feeling as blissful as I usually do, as I should. I have obligations to attend to, and I am just not ‘feeling it’. Days like this happen no matter where you are, no matter what you’re doing. So I cancelled the plans I had in the morning and have been doing the things that make me content. But now the time has come to suck it up and uphold the obligation. I imagine I’ll have a good time when there, but I’d just rather sit here on my new couch, in my clean home, with the sun awakening my skin. Lately, it’s a rare phenomenon to have silence and the company of just myself in our little box in the sky. I have enjoyed it whilst it lasted, nevertheless. And I just ate a Cherry Ripe, so all will be okay in the world. Moments of bliss; The smell of fresh bread and bagels baking in the morning on my way to work …

Adventures on Pay-Day: Vegan Soul Food

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I have been thinking a lot about traditions, lately, and how to go about forming them in a place where I don’t have much of a history. As I get older, I am really starting to understand just how important traditions are important to feeling settled, involved and to feel a sense of belonging. So I’ve set about trying to create my own, and I aim to live the nostalgia whilst we create it. Recently, I have been enjoying meeting my friend (the Canadian) for a drink and a meal after work on pay-day.  She’s great craic and seeing as she’s a new transplant to the Bay Area, it’s been great building a new friendship — someone I would be friends with no matter where in the world we met or in what situation. Our first official pay-day outing took us on a culinary adventure through Rockridge from happy hour and half-price appetizers at Khana Peena Indian in North Oakland, to the Trattoria La Siciliana, an amazing Italian restaurant in the Elmwood neighbourhood in Berkeley. …