one fish, two fish

Genevieve, my old friend from Victoria, recently had a birthday.

In celebration, yesterday we went to a spa where little fish ate the calluses off our feet! Call it decadent (or creepy), but I was curious. Apparently it has been practiced for centuries in Turkey but is still illegal in most of Canada. Wiki has more on garra rufa fish.


A little closer to her bday, we also celebrated with a bunch of gals and a lot of wine at a Soho club.

It was a wild time and definitely helped build up our fish food. Ew!

revisit'st thus the glimpses of the moon

Last week we saw the National Theatre's most excellent production of Hamlet... and an amazing full moon on the walk there.

romanian fractals

Like our shower, the local co-op grocery store never ceases to surprise us with its produce.

Check out these groovy fractals on our romanian cauliflower!


And these gnarly purple potatoes:


Yes, unfortunately we did toss out the old plants from the Columbia Flower Market -- there's not enough light or heat around here during this time of year -- but the flower pots have made excellent food containers.

bbc radio 4

On Sunday we saw David Sedaris as part of the studio audience at BBC Radio 4. He read a number of hilarious stories that will air in the spring.

This is the BBC HQ -- a striking 1930s boat of a building.

After the show we wandered down to the National Gallery. We've now watched three of Simon Schama's documentary series The Power of Art. It was a treat to go see the Rembrandts and Caravaggios that Schama analyses... in the flesh.

spring sprung?

After the coldest December in 100 years, January has been just balmy. This has resulted in a tremendous confusion for the trees and for the rest of us as well.

back in the box

Happy New Year everyone! Sorry for the absence. I've been less 'snap happy' since the holidays and spending time organising my sock drawer and the like in prep for 2011.

But don't worry, I'm getting out there again. In fact a couple nights ago we were back in the College's box at Royal Albert Hall and saw Cirque du Soleil's Totem.


Although the story wasn't so great and I think they relied much too heavily on essentialised cultural stereotypes, the artists were amazing, the set was stunning, and it was great to be back in the Hall.

Royal Albert Hall is across from Hyde Park and across from a huge memorial that Queen Victoria made for Albert.


I'll try to take some shots of it in the daylight too. It's over the top -- described in the London Architecture Guide as "all perfectly ghastly and silly" (Whitehead & Klattenhoff, 2010). The English have a way with words.