Down the Rabbit Hole

December 28, 2018. Val and I have known each other for a very long time. In the beginning, our paths never crossed except for brief greetings along a random corridor at IRRI until Sam Mohanty directed him in November 2012 to discuss grain quality with me and see how I could lend my expertise to a project Val was working on. See, Sam was his boss at the time and was my mentor in IRRI's mentoring program. Back then, Sam told me that what I got myself into was not just a mentor-mentee relationship; he was expecting it to turn into a working relationship between me and his staff. Well, he's not entirely correct...  A little over six years since Val sent me that email invite to meet with him, we got married! It's a civil ceremony in Cotonou late on a Friday afternoon. It was a simple event, followed by a reception in a riverside restaurant.

Anna had this great idea of going out on a walk along a trail in Clayton, a city adjacent to Concord. Daddy and I joined her but with a time limit because I had to catch the 4:30pm train to San Francisco (I had an evening class that day). Along the way, we noticed interesting markers that told this city's history.  From what we've learned, Clayton was named after a multi-hyphenate from England. It's a mining town in the beginning and became a cattle range later on.  Clayton is definitely less hectic than Concord. There are a lot of parks and green spaces. While we were walking, we saw quite a number of flowers in bloom. The trail we were following led us through the roads facing backyards. There were beautiful rose bushes along the way and there were a lot of pets peeking through their houses' fences, making this walk not very boring. There's a bit of highway we needed to cross so we waited for the pedestrian go-signal before proceeding...

Summer was in full swing when I took my usual afternoon walk with Krishna and Ate Mary, not knowing that this was my last afternoon roaming IRRI's world-famous experimental station (I moved to California a few weeks later). I intended to take photos because the sky was largely clear. Maria Makiling was fully visible for a change. Walking at sunset to photograph birds with a point-and-shoot was not ideal, I know, but I also wanted to exercise for a bit. I was happy that we took the time to get out of our desks to walk because the sunset behind FF Hill and Chandler Halls was glorious. It's something I'd miss when I moved to the other side of the Pacific because the course I was taking did not allow for a lot of free time (I'm currently studying data analytics at UC Berkeley). Some of the roadside fields were being prepared for planting during this last walk of mine. There were no bird tapes, scarecrows, or "bird boys" at this point in the planting ...

The San Francisco Chinatown is touted as the largest Chinese community outside Asia and the oldest one in North America. Based on my experience, frequenting the oldest  Chinatown in the world ( Binondo ) when I was still based in the Philippines, there should be a lot of great restaurants in the Chinatown in SF. But I didn't get a chance to try one out (if I'm not counting the delicious boba tea I bought in a shop near the Dragon Gate ) until one Saturday afternoon when my classmates and I walked from Main Street to Kearny Street in search of affordable noodle soup.  Grace, one of my classmates, directed us to  Joy Hing   BBQ Noodle House  along Kearny St. I chose the pho ga with ginger scallion dip (yes... it looks like the Chinese restaurant is serving up some Vietnamese fare). I have to say that it was the best pho ga I have tasted outside of Hanoi !  Grace and Janel had similar soups but with different noodles while Andrew (our instructor at t...

Antiques always have stories to tell, whether these were involved in changing the course of history or were things that belonged to notable people from several centuries ago. The Red Violin is such an example, and its story is woven into the historical fabric linking Cremona (Italy), Vienna (Austria), Oxford (England), Shanghai (China), and Montréal (Canada). My main takeaway from the movie though was how history added value to this musical instrument but the violin's real value came from its quality. It all began with a famous violin-maker, Bussotti, who varnished his last violin with the blood of his pregnant wife (who recently died) in the late 1600s. Bussotti's violins were always well-made. This violin eventually fell onto the hands of a highly gifted orphan in Austria (late 1700s), whose musical talents attracted a music teacher. Unfortunately, the child died during an audition. The violin was buried with him but was dug up by gypsies. In the late 1800s, the gypsies ...

I've always thought that Winnie-the-Pooh is a Disney character. However, the movie Goodbye, Christopher Robin  showed that this anthropomorphic teddy bear is actually a character developed by A. A. Milne, an English author. And the movie version of the real-life story is bittersweet. The adventures of Winnie-the-Pooh and of his friends (Tigger, Eeyore, Owl, and Piglet) are the result of the real-life Christopher's bond with Milne (who was suffering from PTSD) in the English countryside after World War I.  It conveyed peace, nostalgia, and a good feeling for the simpler life for the Milne father and son tandem. However, the fame that the stories generated basically robbed the real-life Christopher of his privacy as a child. He despised the stories and didn't want to have anything to do with it. But World War II changed that. Listening to the stories of his fellow soldiers, he realised that the real treasures in Winnie-the-Pooh were their happy childhood memories......