Here’s another favourite city for you. Someone once described Oxford to me as a “toy town”, and the metaphor is apt. The city is quite small, built around the castle-like buildings of the university. It’s quaint yet majestic, historic yet home to ideas of the future. And boy, is Oxford ever pretty!
Sneaking a peek of one of Oxford’s colleges.
Richard Dawkins, his snazzy tie, and me!
On Wednesday, May 26, 2010, I was in the presence of greatness. And no, I’m not only referring to Anand, Claire, and Danica, my companions for the evening; I’m talking about being in attendance at the Science Museum Lates presentation of Genius of Britain, based on the Channel4 documentary series of the same name. Both the show and the event involved prominent scientists talking about their heroes, fathers of British science from yesteryear. And who were these scientists? Well, as you can probably guess by the title and photo above, the panel included Richard Dawkins and James Dyson, alongside Lord Robert Winston and Jim Al-Khalili. As for Stephen Hawking, he provided both the opening and closing remarks for the evening, and more importantly, he sat right in front of me!
It has been noted that my photos, both on my camera and posted to this blog, rarely feature any people. This is true, and yet strange, because I really do enjoy taking photographs of humans. Any number of my friends can describe the “chaos that is Anubha as art director/photographer” (Awad 2010), and if I was to buy a DSLR, it would be primarily to capture that beauty in motion that is a European woman on a bike. Anyway, I actually have loads of shots of my friends, some that I really like (I’m referring to the photos here; I like all my friends), and I’m quite excited to share them. Get ready to feast your eyes on some really, really, really attractive people!
View of Pont Jacques Cartier from La Ronde amusement park.
Montréal is my favourite city to visit in (what I’ve seen of) Canada, and after spending four more days there last week, it’s quite possibly one of my favourite places to visit anywhere. Though I’ve visited the largest city in French-Canada numerous times before, Montréal never feels boring or passé. I used to call it “weekend Europe” because I’ve often felt like I was somewhere new and really different, all while enjoying the comforting familiarity of being in your own country. Combine this setting with amazing friends, both old and new, glorious sunshine, and way too much delicious food, and you’ve yourself the makings of a très bon week-end. Continue reading
Leprechaun in latex at the end of this rainbow.
Hi, I’m Anubha Momin. You may remember me from such posts as “Working Undercover: The Art of Sleeping” and “Love in the Time of Web Cameras”. I’ve been back in Toronto for exactly one month, haven’t blogged in over two, and decided not to extend the latter to three. And what a busy few months it has been: I survived the volcanic disASHter while being eaten alive by mosquitoes in Morocco, found out just why Denmark is one of the happiest countries in the world, ran a veritable hostel out of my bedroom/glorified closet, and found two little pools of Ayr Bay in London. The plan is to blog more consistently, as I’ve been inspired by my friend Chris’ entry into the blogosphere, though his blogging regime of one post per day is intimidating.
Anyway, here are some photos from this year’s Pride Weekend and Parade in Toronto, which was, as always, a gay old time. Click to enlarge!
Floating Heads at Kelvingrove Art Gallery and Museum
For the Easter long weekend, I took a short trip to Glasgow, Scotland’s largest city. This gritty, witty city won me over with its architecture, food, and especially, the warmth of the Glaswegians. Continue reading
Dunguaire Castle
The day after celebrating St. Patrick’s Day (and night) in Galway, our crew hopped into our rented cars and drove through the Irish countryside to the Cliffs of Moher. On the way, we noticed Dunguaire Castle and stopped to take photos. I believe we had the luck o’ the Irish with us on this day, because 1) I wasn’t the one driving (though I did take the role of chauffeur early in the morning after we had celebrated St. Patrick with the lads and lasses of Galway), and 2) we had a few moments of sun throughout the day.
Click the photos to enlarge!
My current goal of life is to get back to blogging. I’m quite backlogged with post ideas, so to speed everything up, I am going to represent my life in the past two months with mostly photos. But don’t fret; once I’m up to speed, my verbosity will again be on display.
This post: photos from Galway, where I spent St. Patrick’s Day this year. Continue reading
Move aside, Nelson, this column is ours! Photo by Jess Kwong.
I’ve been really busy this past month, hence the blog neglect. I’m still quite pressed for time, but since my blog personally requested some attention, I felt inclined to write this post.
So, as stated above, I’ve been very, very busy, mostly with school work and research. However, for sixteen days in February, I couldn’t blame King’s College for the late nights, the tears, the screaming and hair pulling; something else was occupying my limited emotional and temporal resources. Yes, of course I am talking about the Vancouver 2010 Winter Olympic Games, the record-breaking event that brought our glowing hearts together as a nation in the name of sportsmanship, global communities, and hockey. At the culmination of the event, and after reading articles like this, I obviously felt proud to be Canadian; even more so, I felt proud to be a Canadian living in London. Continue reading
Wuthering Heights by Emily Brontë
This won’t be much of a review, not that any of my “reviews” ever really are. I will say that Wuthering Heights lives up to its infamy in that it is every bit as engaging, pathetic, and wonderful as one would expect. Bonus points for playing to my love for the English countryside, Yorkshire (Mario!), and moors. Why anyone thought it would be necessary to re-brand the novel’s cover to emulate that of the Twilight series is beyond me. Timelessness, by definition, ought to be immune to modernisation.
Anyway, again, this isn’t really a review of the novel. I am writing this post because I want to talk about the book itself, not the story. I found the text on a shelf in my hall of residence, and I couldn’t resist picking it up. Used books, in my opinion, are awesome, for many reasons, one of which is that in purchasing or reading a used book, we are reusing a product and reducing our consumption of new items. However, there may be a limit to the usability of a used book, and this novel was definitely right on the borderline. Pictures to follow. Continue reading
