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Long-Term Travel: Planning

I’m taking some time off from my Adventures in Asia narration. Instead, I want to share some tips and information about our three-month trip. Hope it’s helpful to those of you interested in long-term travel

Where we went:

  • Malaysia – 2 weeks
  • Thailand – 2 weeks
  • India – 6 weeks
  • Nepal – 1.5 weeks
  • TOTAL: almost 12 weeks

Why we went there:

India formed the core of our trip, because my travelling partner’s extended family is from there and we wanted to visit them. We picked Malaysia because I have a friend there, Thailand because everyone goes to Thailand, and Nepal because I’ve long been fascinated by the Himalayan kingdoms.

Of course, those reasons shifted and expanded as we went!

How we were able to go:

My employer allowed me to put away a portion of my salary for two years before the trip, then take six months off and have that portion paid out while I was off. My travelling partner runs his own business, so he was able to free up three months in his schedule by overloading the several months before and after.

Of course, we were both very lucky. But we also met retired couples and people combining volunteering with travel. Long-term travel isn’t just for students and “gap years” anymore!

How we afforded the trip:

Asia is much more affordable for long-term travel (another reason we went), and we were able to sleep and eat in relative comfort without breaking the bank. NOT including flights and pre-trip spending (for things like vaccinations and supplies), we spent an average of $100 USD per day for the two of us combined.

For that price, we:

  • slept in clean two-person rooms in family-run guesthouses (not as polished as Western chains, but often friendlier and definitely cheaper)
  • ate in mid-range restaurants several times a day (breakfast was sometimes included in the room price)
  • took trains between cities, and auto-rickshaws/tuktuks within cities
  • paid for historical attractions, day tours, souvenirs, etc.

What we used as resources:

I chose the Rough Guides series of travel books, after flipping through several competitors at the bookstore. (In the past I’ve used Lonely Planet and Rick Steves.)

A Rough Guide is a backpackers’ guide at heart, so it emphasizes independent and eco-friendly travel. We weren’t looking to rough it in dorms (been there, done that), but the books had a good balance of budget and mid-range accommodation and eating options.

They were also very informative, with good city overviews, detailed info on historical attractions that often surpassed what we got on the ground, and extensive appendices for those who want even more information.

We did find them a little outdated — for example, they talked about Internet cafes but not wifi, and most of the guesthouse prices were out of date — but city information and attractions don’t change much.

I bought Rough Guides in ebook form, rather than paperback, for each of the countries we visited. Naturally, an ereader is a lifesaver for this kind of travel — I could never have carried four physical guidebooks plus a novel or two.

But the ebooks did have some disadvantages:

  • Many of the maps were too small to read, and at least on my Kobo, I couldn’t zoom in. We resorted to picking up (usually free) physical maps for many cities, then discarding them as we moved on.
  • It’s a lot harder to flip back and forth. You don’t have the physical cues that remind you where a piece of information was, and if you’re flipping between chapters, you have to wait for the new section to load.

In addition to the travel guides, we found these websites invaluable:

  • TripAdvisor – We started cross-checking every guesthouse between the guidebooks and TripAdvisor. Most had enough reviews that we could make an informed decision based on what was important to us (more about this later). We also used it occasionally for restaurants.
  • IndiaMike – This forum for travel in India is packed full of info. We used it to learn all about the Indian railway system.

How we planned:

We didn’t pre-plan complete itineraries for each country — we pre-booked the flights in and out of each capital, and not much else until shortly before we arrived. So we planned as we went, sticking to just a few days ahead, as much as we could. This was great because it let us be responsive to our own needs on the go.

The constricting factor was transportation. We ended up taking some internal flights in both Thailand and India, and lots of trains in India. Both must be booked in advance — at one point we had to hire a car and driver (not prohibitively expensive in India!) because the train we wanted was all booked.

So we couldn’t spontaneously decide to stay longer in a place once we got there…but we could (and did!) adjust a week or so ahead.

That’s all for now. If you liked this post, let me know, and in future I’ll talk more about what we packed, how we travelled, and how we survived twelve weeks in close quarters without wanting to kill each other!

Have you done any major travelling? What are your best tips for the planning stages?

5 responses to “Long-Term Travel: Planning

  1. That is absolutely amazing. I never thought I could possibly travel for 3 months while I was still holding down a full-time job. You showed me that possibility can become a reality with a little planning!

  2. Elizabeth, I’m happy to be an inspiration! Good luck with your travel dreams…

  3. It’s great that you managed to do that without quitting your job and taking up another (which is what I took advantage of three years ago to get in a trip longer than three weeks). But obviously it did take rather a lot of pre-planning for you to work it. It’s a great idea if you have a flexible employer! I’m certainly interested in hearing more.

  4. Ellen, that’s always the catch — if you have money (i.e., a steady job) you don’t have time, and vice versa. It’s tricky, but doable, to work around!

  5. You lucky girl!

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Fitchburg Public Schools

"Prepared to Succeed"

The mission of the Fitchburg Public Schools is to provide coordinated curricular and extracurricular experiences that inspire students to develop the academic, intellectual, creative, technological, and social skills necessary to work and to participate in our democratic society.

Fitchburg Public Schools has a new logo that expresses our commitment to STEM – Science Technology Education and Math!

STEM+ signifies a belief that ALL subjects inform the STEM experience and are valuable components of a well rounded education that prepares students for higher education and careers.

Upcoming Events and Information

8th Grade Washington Trip 2018.pdf

FPS and Community Calendar

Fitchburg Public Schools

376 South Street

Fitchburg, Massachusetts 01420

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Admin Spotlight

Okay, I dropped the ball, since I was supposed to do this YESTERDAY! Got into my editing cave and forgot everything else! So, here is my pick for this week’s Author Spotlight!  Loved this book, a great new series! Loved the characters, and the world building was phenomenal!  Go grab your copy and ENJOY!

Sizzling Romance Admin

Title: Grayson’s Mate

Borough Boys Book 1

Author: Tamsin Baker

Genre: MM PNR

At thirty-five, Grayson Nox is the business manager for his werewolf pack. He’s good at his job. Too bad he’s not as successful at finding his destined mate. He’ll know her by a distinctive birth mark, but he’s getting tired of searching.

But the night Grayson finally sees his mark, it’s not on a woman. It’s on a gorgeous guy who wrecked his car near pack headquarters. Grayson brings the beguiling stranger home to heal … and to try and make sense of this strange twist of fate.

Medical student Reagan Forster has studied for ten years at University in Melbourne. At last he’s ready to sit his final exams and head out into the world to heal people. But when he foolishly tries to drive home after a thirty-six-hour hospital shift, Reagan passes out behind the wheel.

He wakes in an unknown world, tucked away in the mountains of Greensborough, with the hottest guy he’s ever met at his bedside. Their mating starts a fire hotter than either werewolf or man has ever known.

But they must make their relationship work against the backdrop of conflict, as Regan struggles to find his place in this new world, and the pack battles the Rogue werewolves who are a constant threat.

When the spoils are counted in the end … can Grayson and Reagan both be victors?

About the Author

Tamsin Baker loves everything erotic. Her books can be long, short and everything in between, but they’ll all be fast paced with snappy dialogue and lots of sex. No Tamsin Baker book is the same except there won’t be a lot of angst in as she wants her books to be everything that a fictional world can be- full of happy ever afters, dirty words and sweet love. ‘Love is love’ and she tries to show that in a range of sub genre’s, from m/m contemporary to paranormal ménage. She has a need to shock people and bring up embarrassing topics at the most inappropriate times.

Stalker Links

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Sixteen people protesting a SeaWorld float in the Rose Parade on January 1 were arrested, according to the Pasadena Police Department.

The SeaWorld float, which depicted a boy snorkeling above sea life including orcas, was surrounded by heavy security throughout the parade.

As the float headed toward the grandstand on Orange Grove Boulevard, several protesters with People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals ran in front of the float, wearing shirts reading “SeaWorld Hurts Orcas” and waving signs urging the boycott of the amusement park.

Pasadena police officers and Los Angeles County sheriff’s deputies quickly detained the protesters and removed them from the parade route.

A spokeswoman for the police department said 15 adults and one juvenile were arrested on suspicion of “interfering with a special event,” a misdemeanor violation of the city’s municipal code. They were cited and released.

Later Wednesday morning, several deputies confronted other PETA protesters carrying a small blimp emblazoned with the words “SeaWorld Tortures Orcas.”

One of the deputies grabbed the craft, bending the propeller and cutting his finger as the blades whirred to life. After threatening to arrest the trio, deputies allowed the protesters to leave with the blimp, which had been damaged and could not fly. The deputy was treated at the scene.

The entertainment park has faced renewed scrutiny since last year’s release of “Blackfish,” a documentary questioning its treatment of orcas, or killer whales.

Photo Credit: SeaWorld needed heavy security at the Rose Parade to safeguard its float. Picutred is a file photo of demonstrators from a People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) protest against a killer whale's injury outside SeaWorld in San Diego October 3, 2012. MIke Blake / Reuters


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How Can I Prepare for My First Spa Experience

Planning a spa day can be both anxiety-provoking and exciting. In fact, it is common to wonder what will happen, if you have never been to a spa. Most spas offer a variety of services from facials and body scrubs to massages and waxes. Some spas even offer cosmetic enhancements (i.e. collagen injections and makeup applications), manicures/pedicures and hair salon services (i.e. wash, cuts, perms, coloring and styling). Some spas are more soothing then others so it is important to visit the spa before scheduling an appointment.

Although, preparing for your first spa appointment can be quite daunting, researching the spa and its services in advance can help make your “first time” a relaxing and enjoyable experience. Being able to mentally and physically prepare for your first spa experience can help calm your jitters so that your experience is both soothing and satisfying. If you are wondering what to expect during your first spa experience – you have come to the right place. This blog will help you prepare for your first spa appointment. Listed below are some helpful tips that can prepare you for your first spa experience.

Steps that can help you prepare for an enjoyable and relaxing spa day:

Quiz Your Friends

Quiz your friends about their spa experiences. In other words, ask them to explain to you what happens during a spa treatment. For example, what happens first, how long does it take, how much does it cost, what is the best thing about spas, what is the worst thing about spas, which services are recommended and which are not, what spas are the best, etc. Research and visit various spas and request references before scheduling your spa appointment.

Contact the Spa

Once you have narrowed down one or two spas – call them and discuss what services you are interested in. If you have a gender preference – let them know. Alert them that you are a “first timer” and ask if there is anything you should know before you come. If you are using a spa gift certificate, ask what services are offered with it. Most spa gift certificates allow you to use it on one of the basic spa packages: massage, manicure/pedicure, body scrub and/or facial. If possible, ask for a brochure that details what services are offered and how much each service costs. You may be able to select individual services or you may have to select a spa package.

Shower & Shave

You will need to shower and shave before going to your spa appointment. This is especially true, if you have sensitive skin. Depending on your chosen services, your spa specialist may treat your skin with a variety of facial cleansers, scrubs, masks, lotions and/or ointments, which can irritate it, if there are already products on your skin. In addition, removing excess hair (i.e. shaving or waxing) from the treatment area before your spa appointment will help your specialist better nourish your skin. Lastly, if your skin is not clean, products and bacteria can enter into small cracks in the skin causing irritation, inflammation and/or infections.

Wear Comfortable Clothing

You will also want to wear comfortable clothing during your first spa experience. Although you will probably be asked to put on a robe prior to the treatment, you still need to dress comfortably before you go. Why? Well, if you are uncomfortable before you get to the spa, it may affect your ability to thoroughly relax during the treatment, which may make your experience less than enjoyable. Although there will probably be an area to store your personal items (i.e. keys and wallet), leave your valuables (i.e. rings, bracelets, necklaces, earrings and watches) at home for safe keeping.

If you are scheduled for a pedicure and the weather is nice, wear shorts and flip flops. This will not only prevent you from accidentally messing up your pedicure, it will also give you a chance to showcase your newly painted toes. In addition, if you wear contact lenses, bring your solution and storage case with you, in case you are asked to remove them before the treatment. Make sure you pack you glasses before leaving the house. Moreover, if you have long hair, you may want to pull it back with a ponytail holder so that it does not get in the way of your facial, mask and/or scrub.

Eat Before Your Go

It may be wise to eat a light meal or snack before you go to your first spa experience. Why? Well, if you are hungry during your spa treatment, it may affect how you perceive the experience. In other words, if you are hungry, the only thing on your mind will be food, which may cause anxiety and prevent you from relaxing. In addition, refrain from drinking large amounts of fluids because it can cause you to continuously run to the bathroom during your treatments.

Arrive Early

To keep stress and anxiety at bay, you will probably want to arrive to your appointment at least 15 minutes early. When you arrive you will be asked to fill out some paperwork and directed to a changing room so that you can disrobe. Place your personal items in the designated area and let the receptionists know when you are ready. The receptionist or the specialist will take you to a private room where you will lie down or sit back and prepare for your treatment. The most important thing to do at this time is take deep breaths. Clear your mind and let all of your worries drift to the far corners of your mind. You deserve to be pampered so relax and enjoy the experience.

Consumer Guide to Plastic Surgery. (2014). Day spa services-pamper yourself. Retrieved from

Schocker, L. (2012). What to expect at your first facial. Huffington Post. Retrieved from

Schocker, L. (2012). What to expect at your first massage. Huffington Post. Retrieved from

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Blog Archives

SLAMSTYLE: Introduce your team to the best quality basketball uniforms

Basketball Jerseys melbourneSlam your opponent team with SLAMSTYLE clothing. SLAMSTYLE is a service known for its unmatchable quality and low price. We offer you a wide range of basketball uniforms including Basketball Jerseys and Basketball Singlets.

To keep ones identity as a team in sports, uniforms play a much bigger role. We understand the role and importance of uniforms in any game that is why we manufacture and deliver best quality made uniforms to our customers. SLAMSTYLE uses the latest and updated online technology for the basketball uniforms to have an extra edge and quality.

Our basketball garments are made from high quality polyester fabrics. Color, neck style design i.e V neck or round neck of jersey and singlet, written quotes, all the necessary requirements would always be taken seriously by our expert team to deliver the best results to our customers at any cost. We can provide you excellent and cheap basketball jerseys and singlets at a very reasonable rate. We supply our uniforms to schools and clubs on order and can provide full team outfits of any type and design. The kind of variety and options are available here in SLAMSTYLE nobody can ever feel disappointed at any stage.

SLAMSTYLE basketball uniforms are specially designed to uplift the player’s performance. And for this, soft and high quality fabric is used to provide maximum comfortable to the body in terms of proper air penetration, flexibility and sweat absorption. As we have a full control over the entire process of making the uniforms starting from selecting the fabric to design it and finally the packing of the uniforms, we assure our customers the best output which they deserve.

Design, quality and comfort!!! You will get here all. The way you need and the way you want, get your team stylized with SLAMSTYLE in order to beat the heat and to beat the game.


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Wednesday, 22 September 2010

London Calling

Cupcakes is beginning to open its remodeled stores and have also introduced a new skin line.  London comes with 2.0 layer eyebrows in a variety of styles and cleavage options.  To celebrate they have put up a Midnight Mania with one of the London skins in a sienna tone.  This skin would be 1000 L to buy right now but for about a week you can get this one for free.  I know that it has already locked for today but it will reopen tomorrow and I'm pretty sure it requires 350 slaps to lock.  That will fill up fast so get there early if you can.  Because we are foremost a respectable blog I did not show a full body shot here but there is one in my flickr if you care to check out more of the skin.  The details are great.  Thanks Rosemary and Mimi!  You did it again!
Skin: Cupcakes: London: Sienna - Dolled: Midnight Mania
Hair: W&Y: NEW Hair 147 "Type" A


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The Press IDs

Processed with VSCOcam with se1 preset

Today, I’ve decided to make a new category for SliceofKeiq and it is called #KeiQreates. This is basically just me, ‘KeiQ’ with all the stuff and projects that I’ve been making when I’m not online. It’ll feature everything that I’ve made over the past few years (plus the one’s ill work on in the future, of course!). Aside from that it’ll also include collaborations with other artists, commissioned work and other freelance work. I’m so psyched to share to you guys what I have been doing so far! It has really been a creative year, and I really can’t wait to venture more!

And In commemoration of this special day, I’m going to post about my latest work, The Tel-La Salle Press ID.

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The Odd Beauty of Space Raptor Butt Invasion

I’m skeptical.

I scan the library’s shelves for the telltale spine typography of the self-published and I’m skeptical. I Google their print-on-demanders and their price packages and I’m skeptical. I flip through their pages, a veritable collage of design and editorial missteps, and I’m skeptical. These Indie Author Day people and their glittery SELF-e marketing scheme give me the heebie-jeebies and I think this whole self-publishing industry must be filled with vampires who prey on uninformed wannabe writers’ disposable incomes, and I’m skeptical, guys. I’m also an introvert, and so I tend to think not speaking –and by extension, not publishing — is kind of a plus in a world full of information static. And I’m a perfectionist: if what you’re saying isn’t the cream of the mainstream crop, to be lauded and validated by the best and brightest, why bother saying it at all?

BUT — Let’s acknowledge that I’ve been an avid consumer of publishing powerhouses’ little cash cows since my eyes could focus, and I’ve worked in publishing, and I was an English major, and I’ve participated in my fair share of writing w24453778orkshops. I’m indoctrinated. And I hold that indoctrination dear because I’ve paid (and continue to pay) a lot of money for it, and it makes me feel smart.

AND — Let’s consider for a moment the revolutionary potential of the self-publishing enterprise. How much of mainstream publishers’ stuff is really all that good? Since it’s been fed through a finishing machine, it’s somehow worthwhile/true/lasting? Eh… no. It just makes for an attractive product. And with so many hands in the mix, stretching and trimming until all is palatable and correct, how can a voice shine true? How can the traditionally unpalatable and the traditionally incorrect ever win?

I confess I haven’t yet had much enthusiasm for this Indie Author Day event. For one, I worried it would mean joining the vampire legion, leading the library’s group of writers astray. Mostly, though, my gut impulse was to silence these writers — I think, because I’ve been trained to think, that if the bigwigs aren’t interested, then there ain’t really any interest to be had. So quit. Or at least quit trying for an audience. Write in private the same way you poop in private — take a few bites of that postlapsarian shame cake!

Friends, this is the selfsame crap my brain whines at me whenever I try to do anything. I hear it so much in my own head that I apply it to other people. And these other people tend to mill about on the margins already, so what gives me the right to further marginalize them — and myself? That makes me The Man’s proxy, and that’s, like, just what The Man wants.

Anyway. This rambling is all to introduce an evidently enlightening article from Lit Hub’s M. Sophia Newman, “How a Self-Published Writer of Gay Erotica Beat Sci-Fi’s Sad Puppies at Their Own Game”. It threw into question my whole outlook on the situation, and I hope it does yours, too.

An excerpt:

Question: If you could pick a single writer to make an effective, compassionate statement about identity politics to a divided literary community, who would you pick? Would it be a schizophrenic, autistic person who’d authored an e-book called Space Raptor Butt Invasion?

Despite the unselfconscious strangeness of [Chuck Tingle’s] writing style and a lack of what fancy-pants literary types might call “talent,” his work is lighthearted, good-natured, and hilarious. He’s timely and in touch with the American cultural milieu. He clearly embodies the nondiscriminatory mindset that science fiction and fantasy types now seem to favor.

And he’s prolific. Whatever else he might be doing, Chuck Tingle clearly applies the seat of his pants to a chair each day and puts words on the page, unfettered by what other people might think.

I envy him. I admire him. And although my writing is very different from his, I’ve begun to self-consciously emulate his work ethic. To me, he’s been an unexpected jolt of energy at the last possible moment, and a good example to follow forever after—just as the elves were to the shoemaker.

I invite you to come to the library’s Indie Author Day panel this Saturday. Watch as I attempt to shed my many layers of privilege, low self-esteem, and indoctrinated skepticism! And meet a few cool writers who’ve been-there-done-that in the process. We have much to learn from them.

This entry was posted in Library Hype, STL Scribblers and tagged , . Bookmark the permalink.

2 Responses to The Odd Beauty of Space Raptor Butt Invasion

  1. It’s an interesting take on things. Though I often say that everyone has a book in them, the question arises– but who would read all of those books? Maybe, bringing up science fiction, they would all be part of some huge library in another dimension or for some higher being(s). I am sorry I missed the event today– had family stuff. Will try to make events next weekend.

    • eformby2 says:

      I’m liking the another-dimension library scenario, though I’m sure that would make our jobs a lot trickier!

      No problem, Tom. Thanks for the reply. I attempted a very primitive recording of the event, which I may or may not post here. (I haven’t had a chance to listen to it yet to see if it’s worth it.) And I’ll likely come roam around SPEx myself, even though it’s my day off… 🙂

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Tag Archives: In Public

Party 0, Sludgebelly 1-ish

They never seem to stop, the Christmas parties around here. It started on the 3rd of December with a Swedish schnapps-fuelled, drunken group-singing, buffet-laden night (the Janssen’s temptation was burnt at the edges, poor show, dahling), the physical effects of … Continue reading

Posted in Diets, Food | Tagged , , , , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Nudism is Always an Option

I caught sight of myself in the lift mirror this week. Rattlingly ancient, size-too-big, faded black trews sagged around my legs, tummy and bum. I hated the way I looked. I said to my husband: I looked hideous today, a … Continue reading

Posted in clothing, Self Esteem | Tagged , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Googly Eyeballs

I work with a bunch of blokes. We had a study done recently (nothing to do with gender) however an interesting outcome was that our directorate is 70 percent male. Of the 30 percent female only 4 percent are in … Continue reading

Posted in About Me, clothing, Self Esteem | Tagged , , , , | Leave a comment

  Good smells are underrated. They are tempting, memorable and distracting. I believe that men should have a discernible smell. Not the smell of the great unwashed at the end of a long sweaty, deodorant-free day. The kind of smell that pervades a packed … Continue reading

Posted in Off Topic | Tagged , , , , , , , | Leave a comment


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Skip to content

Baseco: ‘Nobody’ Dance in Slum

by on January 31, 2010

Any song being continuously played in slum settlement is, most probably, a hit song. I heard this song, ‘Nobody’ performed by the Korean debut band Wonder Girls, played along from dusk till dawn in Baseco – children and adults can easily rehearse the gluttonous dance everywhere. Surprisingly, the Kpop Convention winner is not only popular in Baseco or in the Philippines but globally shocked the music scene and political realm. This song has been performed in front of United States first lady, Michelle Obama, and her two children.

Suffice to say, let’s listen and see the (in)famous rhyme and gluttonous dance!

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Clearing My Throat

I so want to write here again. But it’s been AGES! And my whole life is different and is anyone even still out there? And what would this be, then…a post-infertility mom blog with junk about running and garding and poetry and such thrown in? And would I tell my real life friends (some of whom have great blogs of their own that are a big part of what’s made me want to come back here) about it, and if so would I delete previous posts with overmuch mention of my private parts?

These are questions to ponder while I squander naptime chuckling over the funny toddler moments in {i}Waiting for Birdy[/i] instead of editing the thing I need to edit for work, or unloading the dishwasher, or pulling out all the rude little millkweed plants that are encroaching on my iris and rhubarb. For now, I’ll think about these things. In the meantime, is anyone there?

One thought on “Clearing My Throat

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Nov 19, 2009

Get Sketchy GS#14

Made this one for GS#14 . I color the image with markers and finish with some glitter glue. I made this card for some special friends. They are amazing ladies and really make my life colorful. Hope they like it.

Thanks for looking.

~amy~ said...

WOW...this is absolutely gorgeous! Love your choice of colors and of course all of the glitter!!!

Dora said...

Very elegant take on the sketch!
thnx for pplaying!


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Whilst enjoying the excellent Anish Kapoor – curated Brighton Festival this month, I’ve managed to poke around some artists’ “open houses” (most have lovely bathrooms), see a whole bunch of strange street performances, some hit-and-miss installations and a shed load of live music at the truly wonderful Great Escape festival.

One of the more off-piste projects I encountered during this period was Victoria Melody’s “The Demographic of a Pigeon Fancier”.

pigeon fancier

As the flyer says the exhibition was very much about Englishness, and by taking a very specific route into the topic (namely, the fading northern institution of pigeon racing) it seemed to succeed in bringing some of the more universal associations and connotations of ‘Englishness’ to light.

The installation consisted of a number of different elements.

The first, and most striking, was a hypnotic ‘pigeon-cam’ video projected onto the wall of the gallery opposite the entrance. Everyone who entered the exhibition stood, transfixed for some moments by the simultaneously familiar and alien viewpoint the film showed.

pigeon video hotchilicat

There was something clever about this – the fantasy of flight, of freedom as represented by seeing from a truly bird’s-eye view was successfully rendered smaller, mundane and mean by both the status of the bird itself (pigeons are generally regarded as flying vermin in London and the South) and the spectacle of the landscape it held lofty dominion over; characterless suburban semis with neatly enclosed gardens and garages, all smothered by the leaden blanket of an English sky.

Once you descended fully into the gallery space, you were faced by two suspended nests of handwritten parcel tags. One of these ‘nests’ was composed of messages sent via homing pigeon from people in Cumbria addressing ‘southerners’ in general – including pearls like the one captured below:

pigeon tags

The other nest was composed of messages written by people in Brighton addressed to inhabitants of ‘”the North” in general, and visitors were invited to record their thoughts on a blank tag with the promise that it may be included on the pigeons’ return trip to Cumbria at the end of the exhibition. The tags, and the functional hardwood shelves that housed them, were also deliberately reminiscent of another, even more rapidly fading English institution, the local Post Office.

The far wall of the gallery was covered in newspaper clippings, letters and photographs gathered by the artist during her extended tour of the North where she spent her time documenting the lives of England’s forgotten fanciers.

Adding depth to this material were 3 close-cropped talking-head documentary interviews, installed so that the monitors displaying the films served as the heads and faces of a tableaux of three stereotypical pigeon-fancying mannequins – all dressed up in flat caps and body-warmers with pies or pints of bitter clasped in plastic hands. These films played alternately, often freezing mid-sentence as another of the mannequins took its turn to speak about the decline of their 10,000 year old tradition.

Something about the gallery setting, and the genuinely thoughtful way in which the artist had used the space made this really feel like a trip into a different England; a place far removed from Brighton’s metropolitan sensibilities and somewhat mired in the past- but at the same time retaining a strong sense of pride and a surety of identity that is notable by it’s absence down here.

It was fun, interesting, thought-provoking and kind of sad all at the same time, and probably my favourite thing from the festival this year.

Sadly, I missed the liberation of the homing pigeons that took place at 10:00am on bank holiday Monday – I was in bed with a hangover- and am still eagerly watching Flickr for some photographic evidence of the event.

So far I have found an image of some specially bred fancy pigeons sitting in Jubilee Square waiting to be set free…

pigeon release fred_pipes

… if you saw it and have a photo, please send me the link – thanks!

PS if you want to know what I sent to our friends in the north, either dm me @smimarchie or send a homing pigeon 🙂

Images sourced from Flickr users hotchilicat, melita_dennett and fred pipes

So a few weeks ago I went to see Brian Eno have a conversation with his friend Jon Hassell as part of the South Bank’s Ether festival. I was going to write it up, but I actually think it’s probably more interesting (and less work) to just post the hurriedly-typed notes I made in-situ.

The stage was dominated by a giant screen that showed the table top the two men had arranged their stimulus on in massive scale- whether live scribblings, images or pages from Eno’s notebook.

It was a broad, wide- ranging chat, but stayed within the realms of the type of things Brian Eno normally talks about- the weird sex stuff was all from Hassell, who I thought was a bit of a waste of space conversationally (maybe this is unfair – he just seemed to keep taking the dialogue into less interesting places as far as I was concerned).

Anyway, this is my record of the two hours:

“Stop moving the ohp!
Not just about making attractive things, creating new worlds
Systems + structures, music as a metaphor for collaborative society
‘Surrender’ a choice vs control
Surfing, bridge building
Human history is the surrender zone
4 areas: art, sex, drugs, religion
Not me, us, the flow
The north owns broadcasting (most powerful technology) an ideology of survival
Science makes opposites that are false
Media pipeline is narrow, demands caricature
Is there always a valid opposite opinion? Culture of agument
Elevate the nutter
Geometry makes equal makes opposite- these are abstractions_
misleading when applied to human affairs
Anus- wordism- desire to control by fencing language
Drug companies- inventing illnesses, not cures (paxil)
Creating by naming (WMD) propagenda
What exists before language? Is weird sex marginalised when it should
be lionised? How much is universal?
Porn does not equal happiness, equals alienation
Pleasure is evolution’s compass- now we’ve virtualised it
Scale effect- a qualitative as well as a quantitative effect. All
political systems work well on a small scale
Intrinsic/conferred value
There is no reality referred to in the credit crisis- it is a belief
system that propagates itself- conferred value is easily unconferred,
intrinsic value is not
Art is all about conferring value (creates something from nothing, is ephemeral)
Most art loses value
We are mixed up
Gold moves between real and abstract
Nearly everything happens in the middle ground, not at the poles
What is it that you really like?
Wanking as surrealist art
Art is valuable because its harmless
Eudemonic criteria
Navigating possible worlds
It exists because it’s non verbal
Charts are v useful!
Being blown off course- haircuts
Real information in cultural choices
Dialectic between control/surrender
Religion is like classical music- an attempt for ecstasy”
Read the rest of this entry »

I was in San Francisco last month. It’s really a little depressing that I’m not still there now. It was beautiful and hot- see?

Mmmmm… ice cream sherbet…

Anyway, I’m drafting a different post to round up all of the brilliant things I saw while I was there. This post is meant to single out one particular event for special bloggy attention; the 2008 SECA award at the San Francisco Museum of Modern Art.

SECA is an acronym that stands for “Society for the Encouragement of Contemporary Art”; a local art interest group that bi-annually selects four local artists worthy of special attention and features them in an exhibition at SFMoMA. This year, the recipients were Trevor Paglen, Desiree Holman, Tauba Auerbach and Jordan Kantor.

Charlotte and I were just really lucky that this exhibition was on, as we stumbled into the gallery with no plan and only an hour until closing time (for anyone who can feasibly get there it runs until May 10th). Apart from Trevor Paglen who has achieved relatively substantial web-fame, I didn’t have prior knowledge of any of the exhibited artists; a fact of which I’m now ashamed as this was a thought-provoking and entertaining exhibition, choc-full of great work.

The aforementioned Paglen is probably best known for his photographic project ‘The Other Night Sky‘ where he meticulously locates, ‘captures’ and identifies classified US surveillance satellites as they orbit the earth. The image below exemplifies this series of works, which look like they could’ve been liberated from the pages of an issue of National Geographic.

Without the context supplied by their titles, these images appear to be well-crafted yet essentially innocent time-lapse photographs of celestial bodies. They look like nature photographs, and they evoke the appropriate set of associations and responses as a result (the sense of awe, the sense of one’s own inconsequence, etc) until the works’ titles- which are literal, scientific, flat and factual- impinge upon the reverie.

Four Geostationary Satellites Above the Sierra Nevada

These are not marvels of nature, but man-made machines. Machines with a purpose.Machines constructed here on earth and forcibly blasted into orbit by millions upon millions of $$$ worth of political and military will.

Moreover, they’re machines that you’re not supposed to know about.

The image hanging on the gallery wall is a mute witness to countless hours of investigative effort: contacting amateur ‘spotter’ communities, matching sightings from enthusiasts all over the planet, building mathematical models of prospective orbital paths, eventually identifying a space and time window that might yield a photographic capture.

It is this effort that the art work – that Paglen’s whole practice, in fact- is really concerned with: the surveiling of the surveilors. The fact that the images recall the conventions of nature photography serves to make their tortuous back-story all the more sinister.

Paglen’s other project featured in the SECA exhibition is Symbology, which documents the rich visual language of ‘black operations’ in the US military. Given that the projects, places and departments immortalized in this work do not officially exist, these meticulously collected decorative patches (displayed single-file in one long horizontal frame) are a strangely kitsch physical remnant of an unknowable world.

They are surprisingly decipherable, demonstrating camaraderie, bravado and no shortage of black humour. They could be doodles on a schoolboy’s notebook.

They are all the realer for it – unexpectedly characterful, human and mundane where they ought to be secretive, obscure and glamorous. It is this supreme recognisability that unsettled me – their surfeit of everyday-ness seemed to crystallize a hard and frightening reality from the realm of playful, enjoyable conspiracy theories and harmless TV drama paranoia. These little objects are powerful- physically and culturally real in a way the sealed manila folder of popular imagination ever could be.

Desiree Holman was only showing one work, The Magic Window. This mixed media installation was a playful (if a little creepy) meditation on the role of Television in creating and fulfilling popular fantasy.

The centrepiece of the work was a video triptych. The centre panel was blank when we first walked in and sat down. The flanking panels each featured a roughly-assembled stage set designed to resemble the living room of a well-loved sitcom family; that of the Connors from  Roseanne on the left, and that of the Huxtables from The Cosby Show on the right.

In each set, actors wearing masks went about enacting typical interactions between these familiar characters: on the right, ‘Cliff’ and ‘Theo’ engaged in horseplay with a basketball, whilst on the left ‘Roseanne’ sat on the sofa, chatting to ‘DJ’ as ‘Darlene’ moved about the room.

What was immediately striking about these films was the deliberation with which Holman drew our attention to the artifice – to the tell-tale exposed edges of her representation. Her sketch of the ‘Roseanne’ mask below, clearly shows its ‘mask-ness’ as well as being recognisable as Roseanne Barr – as others in the gallery noted, the masks are more than a little reminiscent of Tobe Hooper’s Texas Chainsaw Massacre.

The same attention to lack-of detail was true of the sets the action took place in.

Click on the image for a video clip:

Holman seemed to want us to buy in to the fiction, but at the same time remain always aware of her purpose- her presence in the re-staging of these familiar (yet warped) scenes.

Soon enough, the two families invade each other’s worlds (oddly recalling the Run DMC/Aerosmith ‘walk this way’ video) and wordlessly interact via hand gestures and the domestic ritual offerings of cookies. Subsequently, the central panel of the triptych comes alive- showcasing a bizarre ‘third space’, a sort of space disco where the characters dance together in jerky, awkward rhythms to a pounding electronica track- whilst glowing green.

It was pretty odd.

At the same time however, it was interesting and entertaining: the blending of these two sitcoms that both dealt with different forms of social prejudice in their different decades seems obvious in hindsight. Also, highlighting the role-play that takes place in family relationships (which also provides the dramatic impetus in sitcoms) via the donning of masks seemed to me to be asking more profound questions than the pantomime performance initially suggested. In its deliberately rough-shod presentation it referenced the DIY video aesthetic of Youtube, an important platform for video art and as prevalent a force in popular culture as each of these sitcoms were in their respective heyday.

Tauba Auerbach seems to be an artist fascinated by systems, whether visual, mathematical or cultural. I thought her work was completely brilliant.

This image shows some pieces from a series dealing with Auerbach’s interest in randomness, particularly the difficulty associated with simulating randomness through algorithms. She has created a whole series of images of Television static – analogue noise that at first glance appears random, but when captured in a photograph…

…actually contains patterns. Patterns which can be extracted and made into beautiful, decorative works in artistic media like paint…

…or through printmaking techniques like this aquatint:

which are the antithesis of randomness – deliberate, precise and authored.

Another series also on display featured her various experiments with language; interrogating the alphabet as a visual system (as in The Whole Alphabet, from Centre Out, Digital V below) or playing with anagrams, letter subtraction games and the physical appearance of letters to highlight the essential ambiguity of these fundamental components of our culture.

If you’re interested, the exhibition catalogue is available here, and Tauba Auerbach’s “50/50” book can be ordered here. Trevor Paglen has books to sell on Amazon.

Sadly, my rather lengthy enjoyment of Paglen, Holman and Auerbach’s work meant I had somewhat less than 5 minutes to look at Jordan Kantor’s stuff. I’ve got nothing to say except that he seemed to borrow more than a little from Gerhard Richter – but in an obviously deliberate way.

Anyway; a really great exhibition in a really great gallery. Also, if you are inclined towards podcastery, SF MoMA makes a generous amount of the audio guides to its exhibitions available for downloading, which aside from being edifying, can be used very effectively to transport oneself out of London bendy-bus hell to a calm, white-walled gallery of the imagination.

All images were sourced from the artists’ websites

I just read about this project at the electro^plankton blog, and had to re-post it immediately!

I know a couple of clever folks who tutor courses in the ITP department of NYU, and was lucky enough to hang out and chat with them a bit whilst in New York last month. The kind of work they’re doing over there I find thoroughly absorbing and just a little inspirational.

This project (Kacie Kinzer’s “tweenbots”) has been making news in its own right over the last few days, and is a brilliantly realised experiment in complex systems, navigation and anthropomorphic empathy. Basically, this little robot can only head in one direction. It bears a little flag, upon which its desired destination is communicated. This is the sum total of the powers at its disposal in its attempt to navigate part of New York city.

Basically, it relies entirely upon interventions from the perambulating public in order to achieve his goal- people have to stop, take an interest, and then to redirect, realign, retrieve and rescue him if he is to have any hope of success.

Perhaps surprisingly, succeed he does – via the interventions of 29 individuals over some 41minutes in Washington Square park.

I guess depending in the kindness of strangers can be a viable wayfaring strategy – if you’re helpless/cute/robotic enough to make it work.

For more info, visit the site.

Images sourced from

I’m not going to write a post about maps.

The topic is too big, and there’s so much great material out there already that there’s no need for me to add anything that isn’t more carefully researched and considered than this! If you are interested in (relatively) current discussions and interesting ideas in the world of maps and mapping you could do a lot worse than pick up a copy of this book, or Peter Hall’s essay on visualization in the “Design and the Elastic Mind” exhibition catalogue.

It was browsing through this beautiful book however, that I came across the work of Paula Scher– who I’d been hitherto completely ignorant of.

Paula Scher paints maps.

Paris, 2007

That is to say she makes amazing, colour-saturated paintings that are at least part map – they are too sensual, too irregular, too wilfully representational to be truly map-like.

Nonetheless they are instantly familiar to us, both from the graphical language of political maps (coloured states, boundary lines, textual hierarchy), the design language of transport maps (bold, simplified lines and dots) and the ubiquity of the satellite’s-eye view we encounter on our PC’s, mobile phones and in our cars.

NYC Transit, 2007

They straddle a space between the authoritarian, didactic tone of the cartographic map that is designed to show the world as fact, and the hand-made, ornately annotated maps drawn from memory that we make for one another (and for ourselves) that show the world as imagined, as experienced and as filtered by human concerns.

Tsunami, 2006

For all that, they are also huge and imposing things that I imagine you can get lost in for hours- shown to scale below.

lovely, lovely things.

Gallery image sourced from Flickr user litherland, all other images sourced from Paula Scher’s site

I went to the Brighton Photo Biennial in 2008 and had a great time touring the city and discovering some great artworks.

One of the things that it re-confirmed for me was how brilliant an organisation Brighton-based Photoworks is. They organise loads of talks and exhibitions throughout the South East as well as producting a truly excellent magazine (subscribe here) and publishing numerous monographs and collections of critical essays. Their logo is a guarantee of excellence as far as I’m concerned.

I wanted to share one of their publications here; Mark Power‘s arresting “26 different endings”. It’s been sitting on the coffee table in our new house for the last week and I can’t stop looking at it!

The idea behind the project is this: Mark Power tours the fringes of the historic and ubiquitous London A to Z, finding the places at the edge of the page -the places that fall just the wrong side of the invisible line- and captures them in a monumental photograph.

It is a tribute to the sites where the grid ends, a portrait of London’s invisible boundary.

What I love about these images is the sense of pathos imbued in every one. The complete assence of people lends them an eerie quality; the places framed and displayed feel abandoned, somehow tragic – as if being outside the map really has consigned them to the land of the forgotten. The fact that the title of each piece is an A to Z grid reference adds to this sense of forgotten places- they are named for how the map sees them rather than how people would have lived in them, humanised and personalised them.

Z22 West

At the same time they retain a lyrical, mysterious quality that makes you want to enter the frame and explore, peek round the corners of these strange ghost-town streets and abandoned, neglected fields.

A148 South

The scenes of suburbia also retain a sense of pride in their closed, gated Englishness.

O145 East

All the beautiful images are united by the other dominant feature of this collection, the leaden London sky.

F76 West

If your coffee table is in need of some fresh artiness, please go ahead and buy the book (in special edition) here.

Last week I managed to find 10 minutes to poke my head into the Maddox Arts gallery near Bond Street, as they were hosting the first UK exhibition of Argentinean enfants terrible Mondongo.

Seems like the things you need to know about Mondongo (who are 3 young collaborators) are as follows:

  1. their name refers to a type of Latin American stew made from tripe
  2. they employ unusual media, particularly plasticine and fur, to create their striking images
  3. they are favourites of Comme des Garcons owner Rei Kawakubo

I have to say that while I enjoyed my whistlestop tour, I didn’t leave feeling particularly bowled over.

There is definitely enjoyment to be gleaned from seeing what are huge, technicolour images break up into many hundreds of squiggly lumps and clumps of string, matted hair and plasticine as you move closer toward them.

I like the idea put forward in their manifesto that through mixing up a ‘cauldron’ (as they call it) of commonplace, lowest-common-denominator products as their medium, Mondongo are trying to somehow capture or distil the rudeness, cheapness and lurid texture of everyday life in a ‘medium = message’ kind of way.

And let’s not be churlish- they demonstrate some real virtuoso skills in just compliling these things. This cat’s face (a detail from a huge ‘painting’) is just brilliant:

from Eloi Eloi Lama Sabachthani (2008)

You can see how engaging with the medium itself is essential to the experience of viewing one of these works by looking at the different levels of detail in the massive diptych Alone Again.

From a distance, this image depicts an apparently decomposing corpse lying face down on the grass in an imaginary European landscape, complete with an oil pipe-line and thickly-rendered Van-Gogh trees.

When you move in closer, you can see that the individual ‘pixels’ making up the rich tapestry of the image have their own figurative function. The photo below shows the area in the bottom left of the image, just to the right of the oil pipe-line:

detail from Alone, Again (2008)

detail from Alone Again (2008)

The earth itself is a character in the narrative of this tableaux- a seething sea of disembodied heads with bared teeth and ghoulish expressions make up the ground on which the subject lays, appearing to be complicit in whatever tragedy occurred here.

Whilst I enjoyed all this, the exhibition never seemed to move out of second gear for me. The images were undoubtedly striking, and the skill with which the artists had composed them was truly impressive; it just felt a little lightweight.

This may be unfair (because I saw the images used in promotional material for Comme des Garcons before I actually made it to the exhibition) but the works felt to me like they were made for advertising. They felt a bit contrived to me – designed to be ‘edgy’ and transgressive without really breaking any really meaningful rules or having anything much to say. The twisted-fairytale idea (libidinous red riding hood flashing a leering wolf) felt perfect for a Diesel campaign or a Vice magazine spread. Sex, pornography and images of death are not exactly new subjects to bring into a gallery, and whilst Mondongo have definitely found a unique voice they don’t seem to have an awful lot to express with it at the moment.

Also, for some reason it bothered me that whilst the figures in Eloi Eloi… and the mass of breasts making up a young girls face in Mamman were provocative and sexualised, a huge image of floating infants was very careful to structure it’s composition so that no rude baby bits were exposed. It seemed to strike a false note, undermining the rest of the exhibition, as if the artists had second-guessed themselves or suddenly gone all prudish.

Anyway, I would heartly reccomend a look at their website because the images there really are impressive, and beautifully photographed (unlike those posted here).

Here’s an example:

I’ll take a proper camera next time 😦

I don’t make a big thing out of it (naturally) but I happen to hold a first-class degree in History of Art.

(Interestingly enough, I know of at least two other History of Art graduates also employed in the world of media strategy- an opportunity the rather inadequate careers department at UCL should probably include in their very thin folder of potential careers for directionless graduates.)

Anyway, when I came out of college – back in 1998- I was heartily sick of Art.

I’d spent three years reading and studying all sorts of theories; from formal analysis to feminist and queer theory to psychoanalysis to class struggle to semiotics to economics and back to formalism again, and had started to percieve the whole thing as a house of cards. It was the year of sensation at the Royal Academy, which was a pretty good metaphor for how I felt about the whole subject- it all seemed vacuous, overtly concerned with the market and fascinated by it’s own cleverness. I pretty much wanted nothing more to do with it.

Anyway, over the last few years I’ve experienced a bit of a rennaisance (l0lz) regarding Art,  largely down to the sterling work of Regine and her incomparable site, and Brighton artists Blast Theory.

I’m enthused again, and I’m enthused because the way that artists think of and utilise the media that I work with every day are so much more vibrant, so much more necessary and so obviously more concerned with how people live than the ubiquitous blandishments of the advertising community (and the meta-industry of consultants/journalists/authors on which it thrives). Seeing artists work with with digital media has helped me to see it afresh, and see possibilities I wasn’t seeing before. Which is what art should do, I suppose.

Whether it’s creating a ‘dislocative tourism agency‘ to connect physically and culturally disparate cities, or designing an alarm clock that mercilessly exploits social-connectedness to create powerful new incentives to get out of bed, it is thrilling to see digital media being employed with such an innate understanding of how it fits into people’s lives and such fertile, curious and fearless imagination.

As far as I can tell, the future of media is not being nurtured within media companies of any stripe- be it Nokia or The New York Times. In my opinion it is most definitely being imagined at the RCA, in Portslade and in myriad warehouses, co-operatives and studios the world over.

Anyway, seeing all this wonderful stuff that seemed to ‘get’ media in a manifestly different way to how I’d been seeing it actually got me excited about artists again – about how and what they think. It got me excited about going to see exhibitions again.

In fact, I got so excited about all this stuff that I actually presented a slide about Wim Delvoye’s Cloaca project to the company’s UK sponsorship department for FIVE WHOLE MINUTES.

This was perhaps ill-advised.

Nonetheless, I have regained a passion for seeing Art again, primarily because it helps me to think in a less-trammelled way about how things are or might be or might have been. So in a long and rambling manner, I thought I’d post about some of the stuff I’ve seen recently (towards the end of last year) that got me all hot and bothered: the Domestic Appliance exhibition at Flowers East in Shoreditch and the Heart of Glass exhibition that was part of Concrete and Glass, also (surprise surprise) in Shoreditch.

First up, Domestic Appliance.

I actually got to see this as part of our frankly kick-ass strategy team ‘awayday‘. What I loved about this – apart from all the great exhibits- was the fact that none of my colleagues realized that the stuff they were looking at spanned decades of artistic production. The excitement and playfulness of the exhibition had rendered studying the little plaques on the walls irrelevant. The objects themselves were enough; the  curator’s vision defeated the audience’s impulse to try and ‘own’ the exhibits by naming and categorising them into some sort of taxonomy. Domestic Appliance wasn’t an edifying lecture on the canon of kinetic art, but rather a brief glimpse of the weird and wonderful other lives of the objects inhabiting our homes – a Toy Story for grown ups who like their fairytales a little askew.

Jean Tinguely’s Mouton, the scariest and  most deranged thing on show (like a little piece of  Silent Hill somehow existing in Hackney) was from 1962:

Theo Kaccoufka’s quietly obscene Fountain dated from 1994:

And bringing us bang up to date were Tim Lewis’ bewithching, gracefully moving (and heavily photographed) Pony

…and Ian Burns’ The Way We Know It – Surrounded Islands (Version 1) – Keep it clean and organized which created a sense of drama by using live audio/visual feeds to magnify the changing light that was being reflected onto a tiny diorama of found objects.

A special mention also has to go to Max Dean, Raffaello D’Andrea and Matt Donovan’s Robotic Chair which held audiences rapt as it repeatedly assembled and disassembled itself. The BANG it made when losing it’s limbs made me jump at least three times.

A fantastic way to spend a few hours and a powerful hit of mental wasabi for me.

Right, now onto Heart of Glass.

I actually got a ticket for the Concrete and Glass mini-festival by entering a competition via email on the opening day (w00t, go me)- which meant I couldn’t find anyone to go with me, of course.

As a result I skulked around, smoked cigarettes to look less lonely (pathetic) and went home waaaay before TV on the Radio got started.

Nonetheless, one of the things I did manage to do was visit the brilliant Heart of Glass exhibition in the creepy basement of Shoreditch Town Hall. I’m not sure whether it was this awesome setting, or the head-rush from the fags, but I had a really fantastic time exploring the nooks and crannies of this impromptu gallery.

The exhibition was also a competition – one lucky artist of those exhibiting would be awarded the prize of a solo show at next years event. For what it’s worth, my highlights included Alistair Mcclymont’s The Limitations of Logic and the Absence of Absolute Certainty, a swirling shifting tornado of water vapour that would repeatedly coalesce into a powerful, visible form and then become loose and unstructured again. It was like a ghostly apparition, moving in a natural and yet weirdly unnatural way that seemed brilliantly otherworldly in the dilapidated dark setting.

There’s a video of it doing what I was trying to describe here.

I also loved Kate Terry’s Thread Installation #19, another work that visitors felt compelled to move through and around, the lines of thread changing from visible to invisible depending on your relation to the light source. It’s geometric beauty seemed to come from the digital realm – something created by an algorithm rather than by an artist fastening resolutely analogue thread to tacks hammered into the walls. The smoothness and regularity was thrown into sharp relief by the crumbling walls and dirty, sandy floor of the room that housed it.

Paul Archard’s Horseplay was unsettling, in a slightly-scary-fun sort of way.

The horsebox dominated the low room in which it was diplayed. People (me included) attempting to peer in were unnerved by the powerful, reverberating sounds of a stallion’s breathing- and left with the sense that the box could hardly contain it’s inhabitant. Every three-minutes or so there would be an explosion of whinnying and snorting that made the box shudder and shake, giving everyone a start. It created a genuinely physical response from those milling about the room, and is a great example of a ‘site-specific installation’ properly doing what it says on the tin.

Lastly, my personal favourite was Kate MccGwire’s Vex.

Caged within a victorian curiosity cabinet, it was a kind of stuffed nightmare- a mutant mess of serpent and bird, sinuously turning in on itself.

Up close the individual feathers (gathered over a period of months from London pigeons) made attractive (pretty, even) patterns and yet backing away from the thing, I felt disturbed by it, but never able to take my eyes off it.

Compelling stuff, and worthy of winning I think.

I feel a bit sad posting about these exhibitions given that they’re both over. However, if you happen to stumble across a mention of any of theses artists or works featured in an exhibition near you I reckon you could do a lot worse than checking them out.

Images credits: flickr users David Emery and turn towards the light

I work in media as a strategist. I like art, robots, comics, interaction design, karaoke, wildlife photography, indian food, campari, gaming, American TV (teen drama included), reading non-fiction, reading fiction and listening to music. I also have a tenori-on because I'm so rad.

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Fantastic Ideas For 10 Dollar Dinners

Ten Dollar Dinners Review

August 31, 2012   16 Comments

Got $25 for a dinner for four? First, you buy a book for $15 and then you pay $10 for the ingredients.

No, I’m not making this up. It seems that when I was sleeping the Food Network anointed a new STAR.

Her name is Melissa d”Arabian and she has a new book out called “Ten Dollar Dinners”. And get this, she means $10 for a family of four.

Take that McDonald’s! The last time I went to McD’s, I spent $10 just on the two Happy Meals for my kids. Ouch.

How does she do it? Well, considering that she has 4 girls under the age of six, I think she might be from another planet. (don’t tell anyone :)

Other than being from outer space, she uses chicken, ground beef, grains, and lots of vegetables in inventive ways to make dinner both tasty and cheap. For example, she does a savory baked rice (9 cents per serving) that would be a healthy filler for when your bank account is running low.

I got excited about the book's vegetables sections because I am always trying to convince people to eat more vegetables. If it is in your budget and the recipe looks easy, why not try it?

All of the recipes in the book have a code next to them for how much they will cost you. You mix and match a main with a side to get to the $10.

Melissa was kind enough to share her braised escarole recipe with me which is a side dish in the less expensive range of the vegetables.

Escarole is a variety of endive whose leaves are broader, paler and less bitter than other members of the endive family. You can find it next to the lettuce. If you can’t find it, substitute raw kale or spinach for the escarole.

I’m always trying to find ways to eat more greens and this one looks delicious.

How do you stretch your dollar? Please share.

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Braised Escarole with Olives and Parmesan Cheese

reprinted with permission from “Ten Dollar Dinners” by Melissa d’Arabian

(serves 4)
preparation time:
10 minutes
cooking time:
20 minutes

1/2 cup pitted kalamata olives
2 tablespoons olive oil
3 garlic cloves, finely minced or pressed through a garlic press
1⁄8 teaspoon crushed red pepper flakes
1 head escarole, sliced crosswise into 1/2-inch strips
1/2 cup chicken broth or water
Zest and juice of 1 lemon, plus 1 lemon sliced into wedges for serving
3 tablespoons grated Parmesan cheese

1. Place the olives on a cutting board, smash with the side of a knife, and then roughly chop. Set aside. Heat the olive oil in a large, deep skillet over medium heat. Add the garlic and red pepper flakes and cook, stirring often, until the garlic is fragrant, about 1 minute. Add the olives and escarole and cook, stirring often, until the escarole starts to wilt, 2 to 3 minutes.

2. Stir in the broth and lemon zest and juice, and cover. Reduce the heat to low and cook until the escarole is tender, about 10 minutes. Remove the lid, raise the heat to high, and simmer the escarole until the liquid in the pan is reduced by one quarter, 1 to 2 minutes. Serve warm sprinkled with Parmesan and with a lemon wedge on the side.

For one serving = 122 calories, 10.3 g fat, 5.6 g carbohydrates, 0 g sugar, 3.8 g protein, 4.5 g fiber, 327 mg sodium, 3 Points+

Points values are calculated by Snack Girl and are provided for information only. See all Snack Girl Recipes

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Ten Dollar Dinners: 140 Recipes & Tips to Elevate Simple, Fresh Meals Any Night of the Week

$24.99   $16.75   Barnes & Noble

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Is this a side dish? Or is this the main meal? If I put this on the table for my family for dinner, and offered nothing else, they would throw their forks at me.

on August 31, 2012

I think this would make a nice salad at lunch or a side dish with dinner! Nice recipe!

on August 31, 2012

I agree - was this listed as a "dinner" in her book? This is certainly not something that would be fulfilling as a main entree - possibly a side along with a main dish. My family would not be happy either if this was all I served!

on August 31, 2012

sounds good for a side, not enough protein for a main dish.

on August 31, 2012

My son and husband would not eat escarole no matter what I did to it. Kelly, the escarole and cheese provide enough protein. It's actually a healthy main dish, but most Americans who are non-vegetarians would not accept it as one.

on August 31, 2012

@Zennifer - Protein needs are generally based on each individuals body weight and needs. A body builder would require much more protein to efficiently fuel the body as opposed to a sedentary individual. With that being said, One serving of this dish equaling 3.8 grams of protein, I'm not too convinced that this would be considered a fair amount of protein for anyone.

on August 31, 2012

I would like to see the nutritional value on the recipes before purchasing the book online...

on August 31, 2012

Great recipe BUT I agree not filling for most people. I make a similar recipe with an addition of cannelloni or garbanzo beans, a splash of white wine, sometimes I include 1 c cooked small pasta [like ditalini or tiny shells] then I'd serve garlic toast for dunking. THAT IS very filling, nutritious, lots of protein, and delicious! It's equally yummy with kale. We have this alot in the cooler weather, I'm craving kale right now! :)

on August 31, 2012

This is a side dish. I am going to change the above post to fix my mistake. Sorry, guys!

on August 31, 2012

Good idea but for a family of 5 here and 1 child is milk allergic this would not work. However for a side dish.

on August 31, 2012

I love Melissa d’Arabian. She uses real food and makes things seem so simple. I highly recommend her book and show.

on August 31, 2012

I love Melissa! I watch her show all the time and have made a lot of her dishes. Always so simple and budget-friendly!

on August 31, 2012

Actually you did call it a side dish in your intro to the recipe! Others didn't read it correctly!

on August 31, 2012

The Food Network website has a section on Melissa with many recipes.

on September 1, 2012

This was very good. I did add white beans to it and that made it very filling. I will next time try the splash of wine and maybe a smidge of pasta to make it a main dish when don't feel like cooking. Very simple to make. Of course, mine didn't look like the picture!!

on September 17, 2012

It clearly says in the article that this is a side dish not an entree.

on October 8, 2012

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Department of Social Work Home

Department of Social Work News

Study Shows Innovative Program Helps Limit Domestic Violence

Strong-FathersThe statistics are horrifying. Nearly three in 10 women have been stalked or assaulted by their partner, and states reported investigating abuse cases involving 5.9 million children in 2010. It hurts children to be exposed to domestic violence, and child maltreatment and partner abuse too often happen in the same families. But social workers and social work researchers are constantly searching for ways to address the problem, and new research shows that at least one recent program is making a difference.

The Strong Fathers Program uses the concept of being a good father to engage men who have committed domestic violence in an interactive effort involving education and best practices to prevent them from committing acts of violence against their children and partners. A lot of fathers who have battered their partners, and/or their kids, also witnessed domestic violence in their own homes as children. And men who might shy away from being told what to do are often drawn to the idea of being strong fathers who take care of their children.

A pilot version of the program was launched in 2009, and two new papers show that the program is making a difference.

“Our first paper shows that many of the men want to learn how to be better fathers, and that the Strong Fathers Program is helping them understand the impact of domestic violence on their children. But it doesn’t stop there,” says Joan Pennell, lead author of the two papers and a professor of social work at NC State. Pennell is also director of NC State’s Center for Family and Community Engagement, which is responsible for evaluating the program and its results.

“Our research found that the program also teaches men the skills they need to be good fathers, such as how to communicate and how to manage their stress, and those skills also make them better partners,” Pennell says. The first paper, “Family violence, fathers, and restoring personhood,” was published in the August issue of Restorative Justice: an International Journal.

The second paper highlights findings showing that fathers enrolled in the program are far less likely to pose a threat to their children or commit domestic violence against their partners, based on follow-up assessments by social workers. That paper, “Family Violence: Fathers Assessing and Managing Their Risk to Children and Women,” is forthcoming from the journal Children and Youth Services Review.

“We hope that our experience will be helpful to other communities seeking to stop domestic violence and child maltreatment,” Pennell says.

The evaluation design used to assess the effectiveness of the program draws on data from participant surveys, feedback from program facilitators and social services data on reports of child abuse and neglect.

The curriculum for the Strong Fathers Program was developed by the Center for Child and Family Health, and the program is administered by Family Services, Inc. The program was initially launched in the Winston-Salem, N.C., area, but was extended to Durham County, N.C., in 2012. The North Carolina Division of Social Services supports the work through Family Violence Prevention and Services Act funding.

By Matt Shipman. This post originally appeared in NC State’s research blog, The Abstract.

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Into The Abyss Biker Tank

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Into The Abyss

by Clark Street Press

Our Biker Tank, made exclusively for Society6, is an edgier take on the traditional Muscle Tank. It's crafted using extremely soft 100% combed jersey cotton with deep arm openings and raw cut edges. The Biker Tank is a boyfriend fit, intended to hang loose - women may wish to select one size smaller for a more fitted wear.

Here we go. Let's see what happens.

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Space Swirl no1 Long Sleeve T-shirt

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Space Swirl no1

by Dr-Pen

Tri-Blend Long Sleeve T-Shirts are made with 50% Polyester, 25% Cotton and 25% Rayon. Enjoy everything you love about the fit, feel and durability of a vintage T-shirt.

Created in Mandelbulb 3d.

March 8th, 2017 update. Added a fleur de lis (a French stylized flower) design for the shirts, hoodies and the clear smartphone cases.

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Metal Print

Wandering Wildflowers Black and White

by Jacqueline Maldonado

Our metal prints are thin, lightweight and durable 1/16" aluminum sheet canvas. The high gloss finish enhances color and produces sharp image details. Each sheet has a 3/4" wooden frame attached to the back to offset from the wall. Prints have a wire or sawtooth hanger, depending on size selected.

Black and white version of my Wandering Wildflowers print. Watercolor, digitally edited and made into a seamless pattern.

watercolor, black and white, painting...

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by Tang Yau Hoong

Our Biker Tank, made exclusively for Society6, is an edgier take on the traditional Muscle Tank. It's crafted using extremely soft 100% combed jersey cotton with deep arm openings and raw cut edges. The Biker Tank is a boyfriend fit, intended to hang loose - women may wish to select one size smaller for a more fitted wear.

water, life, nature, birds...

animals landscape nature love


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These premium quality all over print shirts feature original art from seam to seam. The cotton-soft 100% polyester wicks moisture and maintains a rich color throughout. All over print tees are unisex fit, so women should make size selections accordingly and order a minimum of one size smaller. Please Note: Every shirt is uniquely produced using a sublimation process that can create anomalies in some areas, typically under the arm, that leaves small portions of fabric white.

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Design-y Dorm Room DIYs: 17 Perfect Projects

(Image credit: Sugar + Cloth)

So you’re thinking about decorating your dorm room, and you’ve tons of big plans but, unfortunately, not tons of money. Take a look at these 17 DIYs — colorful, fun and stylish projects that will make your dorm room the envy of your floor, without blowing your budget.

from waaaay over here —> Design-y Dorm Room DIYs: 17 Perfect Projects

Author: Sofia Consola

Hello I'm Sofey and I absolutely love decorating and design. Many of my friends have been telling me for years to start a blog. So I did :) I love to review products so I started a review blog about sofas and console tables where I review them both. If you get a chance hope on over to my website and take a look. You might just find an awesome piece of furniture for your place.


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Twin Houses by William O’Brian Jr

Award-winning American architect William O’Brien Jr. has recently completed these two single-storey holiday houses located in upstate New York.

Situated on one plot of land, the minimalist, black stucco-clad dwellings have been realised as ‘a regular six-sided polygon and a regular four-sided polygon’ respectively yet are composed from the same five forms — ‘each are made up of the same four trapezoids and one triangle.’

The architect explains, “This design proposal for two vacation homes for two brothers and their families on one plot of land in upstate New York represents an examination of a curious part to whole relationship. The mathematical principle of “dissection” states that any two regular polygons with equal areas can be divided into sets of similar shapes; “minimal dissection” is the pursuit of the fewest number of subdivisions in each polygon. This scheme appropriates this principle as a solution to (1) general similarities in the programmatic requirements, and (2) distinctions in the desired relationships to the site, voiced by the two brothers for each of their homes.

The adjacencies between the five shapes are different within each of the regular polygons, as are their orientations relative to the outer perimeters of the polygons. Translated into spatial divisions in an architectural plan, these fixed arrangements prompt sectional-flexibility. Conceptually, in section the floor planes and the roof planes are configured in order to accommodate strategic micro-topographic continuities and discontinuities across the collective surfaces.”

“Proximity of houses relative to one another is calibrated through the development of the agricultural usage of the interstitial land. Water collection from the two roofs is directed to a subterranean piping system between the houses. The agricultural development of the land between the two houses separates them visually (to varying degrees depending on season) while linking them inextricably, both infrastructurally and communally. Water dispersal stems from two pairs of “water channels” embedded in two walls in each house. The planometric dovetailing of four different crops, which oscillate in harvest seasons, accommodates different proximities of crops to each of the houses. Leaf vegetables, berries, wheat and corn are braided together in order to provide each house immediate access to each food type.”

Read more: William O’Brien Jr.

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Old Exam Questions #1

In a new series of posts, I’m going to be selecting nice questions from archive exam papers, posting them, then posting possible solutions in the follow-up posts… which will contain a new question.

So here’s the first one, taken form an O-Level maths paper in 1963:

1963 O Level

Can you solve it?

2 thoughts on “Old Exam Questions #1

  1. It’s all about medians and ratios of lengths of line segments on the same or on parallel lines. This means that a transformational approach using shear and stretch, which do not affect such ratios, can turn the parallelogram into a square. I love these “sort the sheep from the goats” problems.

  2. Pingback: Old Exam Questions #2 | Solve My Maths

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Early registration for Sonot Kkaazoot ends at 5 p.m. on Friday, 27 February 2015

Just a reminder that early registration for the Sonot Kkaazoot ends at 5 p.m. on Friday, 27 February 2015. Register now and save some money.

Volunteers are needed for inside and outdoor jobs on race day and before. Just leave a comment on the “Volunteers” page and we’ll get back to you.

Thanks from the Sonot Kkaazoot organizers.

Also, don’t forget the last Buetow Dental Distance Race (7.5 km to 30 km freestyle) is this Sunday, 1 March 2015 starting at 11:00 a.m. at Birch Hill Recreation Area.

The key to a cold-weather adventure: having a proper map

After the unusually warm early winter in Interior Alaska, the recent cold spell caught some of us unprepared and others just not acclimatized to the sub-zero conditions with a breeze that mixed upwards the cold air from the valleys. However, with the Sonot Kkaazoot rapidly approaching, it was time for a long overdistance ski on the south-facing classical loops off the Sonot Connector. Bill Husby (aka Poles), one of the Birch Hill groomers had personally tracked the Little Bird Trail allowing us to do a figure 8 involving the Black Hawk and Chinook Trails in a different sequence than any of us had skied previously. Thus, with skiers of varying speeds, it was important that all of us have a proper map that was provided by Poles himself as shown below:

Having a proper mapFrank, our group’s writer laureate, read back the directions to all of us, while Dermot, the group’s historian, documented the map and directions as a video on his iphone. So off we went in search of sun and a little adventure away from the well-traveled trails on a breezy, chilly day.

Poles was leading the elite SCUM while Dermot, Dan, and I were clearly in the red lantern position even before Dan peeled off with under-performing electrical hand warmers. Once we entered the Black Hawk Trail, the “A” SCUM disappeared in the woods, and we were alone without so much as a squirrel on the trail. Where the Little Bird Trail intersected with the Black Hawk, we had two choices: right or left, so we headed right as it appeared to be heading downhill, which was the general way we were headed. It was also the longer of the two options so we figured if we had guessed wrong, the “A” SCUM would be returning in the opposite direction so we could then follow them. After some time of skiing and entertaining each other with ill-timed crashes into the soft snow on either side of the narrow trail, we worked our way back to the Sonot Connecter where we encountered a skier with a backpack, dog, and hard hat who was out for a different sort of adventure than we were. We skied down to the lower end of the Chinook Loop where we found Don who had just bailed from the “A” group who had left a tree marker on the Sonot Connector indicating the way they had headed (even further down the hill). Seeking warmth, we skied the rest of the Chinook and Black Hawk Trails that we hadn’t skied and then wandered back to the Birch Hill hut later than we had intended.

Lesson learned: a good map is essential to any adventure. One needs to make sure that the map is on a device that can be accessed even when the ambient temperature is colder than -20 deg F.

Speaking of devices, you’ll need a phone or computer plus a credit card to sign up for the Sonot Kkaazoot this year as all entries will be done online. See the register tab above. The deadline for early registration is 27 February 2015 at 5 p.m. A.S.T.

Good News: Rescheduled Distance Races #2 and #3

With early registration for the Sonot Kkaazoot ending on 27 February, it is time to test your endurance at longer distances. The Distance Race #2 has been rescheduled for Sunday, 15 February and will be 10 and 20 km classical technique. Here is the course:

2-15-15_Distance Race 2

The 15 and 30 km Distance Race #3 in freestyle technique will be held Sunday, 1 March 2015 and will be a two or four lap course so you can get an idea of whether you are capable of holding steady pace over these distances. Here is the planned course:

3-1-15 Distance Race 3

Let the fun begin. Both races start at 11:00 a.m. and more details can be found on the Nordic Ski Club of Fairbanks website.


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Condescending Jackwagon

I have very few words for this “man.”

I’m 29, with two degrees, I pay my bills, keep three fur babies alive, own my home and car (okay, technically the bank owns them), am divorced…

Maybe this was an attempt to be cute but all it did was piss me off because it was just so damn condescending.

And the Award Goes to…

This dude! For the most underrated statement ever! (Roll with my hyperbole here…)

“I’m interested in working out…”

Well, no shit! I could have guessed you enjoyed the occasional visit to the gym but I appreciate the clarification since if it wasn’t clear from your profile statement, the photo of you He-Manning it up at the gym might do the trick.

I’m sure he’s very nice… Just your average guy searching for love… on Tinder. But that photo is intimidating as shit for anyone, let alone an average-bodied gal like me.

This may be rude…

…but I’m going to post it anyway. If you have to qualify your initial message to me with “Thi[s] may be rude” (which you can’t even type correctly), you probably shouldn’t say it. What’s that my mother always said? If you can’t say anything nice, don’t say anything at all.

I really wanted to respond but I just didn’t want to waste my brain cells or give him the satisfaction of a response.

If you could respond, what would you say?

Credit Score

Why? Just, why? Why would you show me a screenshot of your credit score? Just tell me you have your shit together in your profile blurb. This just makes you look like a tool. (Plus, mine is better 😉 See, you look like a tool).

I’m Not That Modern

I apparently missed the memo about open marriages. I mean, I’m a modern lady but I’m not that modern.

One Question Begs Several of My Own

This particular inquiry begs many questions:

  1. Who actually responds?
  2. How often does this work?
  3. Is it suppose to be cute? Funny? An ice-breaker?
  4. What is the purpose of the seemingly pornographic cartoon profile picture?
  5. Why does one choose a username with “lucifer”?
  6. How the hell did we match with even 32%? It makes me seriously doubt the logarithms.

Indirect Solicitation

Is the picture in this profile (which is the only picture, I might add) a solicitation?  I’m not sure the going rate but it’s not enough.

Also, my OCD is annoyed by the mismatched directionality of the various bills. 💵

Is his name really spelled that way or is it a typo?

The sad thing is this will, if it hasn’t already, get right swipes.

Tinder profile picture with $250

This one cracks me up for a couple reasons:

1. When I looked at the photo, totally thought there were dicks on his boxer briefs.

2. I was amused to learn from his disclaimer that I was not the first to wonder “WTF? Why are there dicks on your boxer briefs?”

3. Clearly, he only seeks hookups and if I were that type of gal, I would eat those abs up.

4. It is only fitting that given what this Tinderer seeks, he is 69 miles away…

Damn, Dudes are Sneaky

So I almost swiped right. And guys know we (yes, I am lumping all us women together #sorrynotsorry) are suckers for a cute baby animal but especially a puppy.

It’s tricky and sneaky. But damn, I bet it’s effective too. It’s his first photo. He knows I don’t have to look further or read the profile because clearly, he’s swipe-right worthy (or for my Seinfeld fans, sponge-worthy) simply because of that puppy 🐶 I mean, let’s be real — the pup is effing adorable.

But you know what, you could be Prince Harry holding that puppy and I will refuse to swipe right! I refuse to be manipulated like that! You could be Channing Tatum, Chris Pratt, Ryan Reynolds… and I will stand strong and say “No!”

(Luckily, I’m a commoner and none of these men are single so we never have to actually test my will-power…)

Fair Question

To be honest, this is a fair question (I think). But it shouldn’t be the first question you ask and there is likely a more tactful way to word it once the time comes you might want to ask.

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