Flowers for a grey day (PPAC #45)

It’s that time again where I feature public art from some part of the world outside of Los Angeles. I first came across Jeff Koons’ bouquet statue a few years ago in the Broad Museum in downtown LA. While vacationing in February 2020, I saw the bouquet of tulips again but this time in Paris. The statue in Paris includes a large hand, whlie in

A Bright mural to brighten my week (PPAC #30)

I was going through my old photos and came across this mural from my 2017 Iceland trip. I guess I was drawn to a more colorful photo to brighten my week. I’ve been working from home this week due to the rise of omicron and reducing our exposure by going to the office less. Since my kid’s daycare is at my work, I have not been taking her to daycare this week so she’s with me all day. Even before having a kid, I have never been a fan of working from home.

Sun Voyager (PPAC #10)

Since I posted photos from Reykjavik for this week’s Lens-Artist photo challenge, I thought to continue the theme this week with public art. But also it happens to be the 10th PPAC! I decided every 5th and 10th PPAC for my blog would be public art outside of Los Angeles County just to break it up.

Anyways, if you leave the Harpa Concert Hall in Reyjavik, you would find this sculpture of what looks like a boat — it’s not a Viking boat! It is however a dream boat representing “a promise of undiscovered territory, a dream of hope, progress and freedom.” Viking boats are much larger — though this boat could have been a scale representation.

Sailing to uncharted territories

PPAC10

The delayed gratification of posting travel photos when you come home from your trip

Phew…Quite the post title.

Instead of live posting every moment of our trip, I decided to wait until I come home to do it. I had many reasons to why I waited and I’ve been doing this practice for the last few trips with the exception of a few.

We don’t have a roommate or someone watching the house

This is my primary reason to why I don’t post live on social media. It tells people the house is empty and attracts people to break in to rob or vandalize your home. There would be times where we would share live, but we either had a roommate living with us or a family member staying in watching the house. Safety is more important than social status.

It takes a lot of time

I finally got around to posting on my social media. Speaking of which, follow me on Instagram and my Facebook page! Side note: I am still figuring out how to use my Facebook page for my blog. It’s been going through quite a bit of iterations.

Anyways, I forgot it takes quite a bit of time to share. It has nothing to do with choosing the perfect filter since I don’t filter or modify any of my photos. Yesterday, when I was sharing photos of my 36 hours in Milan, it took me some time to choose which photos, type a caption, attempt in micro-blogging, and share it on all my social media platforms. To me, it is that nagging thing each day when I come back to the hotel. At least when I am home, I can enjoy my travels more because I can use it to reflect. It’s kind of like a project where I share pieces of it throughout the week.

The cellular network and WiFi may not always be plentiful

When I am abroad, I rely on WiFi rather than cellular network because the speed at max 2G rather than 4G back home. If I were to share on social media in real-time, uploading would suck a lot of battery throughout the day. When we went to Peru (and I promise there will be more content for Peru), I did not quite post these photos in real time. I posted at the end of each day at our accommodations.

In our last trip, two of the hotels we stayed in had good WiFI, but two out of the three AirBNBs had less than reliable WiFi. Since I already made a decision to not post until I come back, I was not too concerned about being connected all the time. If connectivity is that important to me, I would have hung out at McDonald’s for the WiFi. But who want to do that? Unless you’re eating at McDonald’s.

I don’t overshare. Instead, I curate and do storytelling.

Delaying my posts allows me to tell the story of my trip rather than bombard people with picture after picture. A lot of the times, these pictures shared in real time are terrible.

Instead of making my photos the star of the trip, I wanted my stories and observations to take front and center. I am not talking about a history lesson or spew out random facts about a landmark even those are okay, but anybody can go on Wikipedia to copy and paste facts for their captions.

I wanted to share my most frequent phrases in a foreign language, observations on how the rest of the world sees United States culture, a conversation I had with a local, and opinions. I wanted to share a more enriched travel story rather than show the superficial. There is nothing telling behind captions like “Slice of life” or “Views on views” or “Woke up in paradise” or “Should do this (what’s that?) more often.”

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Left: My most frequently used Italian phrases in Italy.
Right: When learning and speaking Italian, I struggled saying words that had an “sf” and “gl.”
Source: My Instagram stories

The United Tastes of Hamerica is an authentic American restaurant in Milan. I guess their take on American foods are burgers, bigger burgers, ribs, tacos, burritos, and Ben and Jerry’s ice cream. For the most part, they’re not wrong.
Source: My Instagram stories

I enjoyed Milan but people may complain that the buildings are too modern compared to the rest of Italy.

Do you share your photos on social media during your trip? Share below!

Mocha kayaks at Lake Skadar, Montenegro

Mocha is so lucky to have traveled more than we have. She got to go to Montenegro last year with Vikki (Journey Through the Trees).

Death by Kayak paddle

To begin the day we all met down by the river in our village of Virpazar all ready and rearing to go. I can’t remember the last time I had a go at kayaking, if ever, so this was a pretty new experience for me. Our tour organiser, Ben, was keen to to ensure we were all paddling correctly and gave us some advice and tips before we hopped into our tandem kayaks. We were kitted out with buoyancy aids which looked like child sized crop tops and tied up our electrical belongings in a water tight bag. Me and the mountain snob (aka Kat, Aka my twin sister) would be sharing a boat. He suggested that anyone who had experience kayaking should sit at the back so we decided that the mountain snob, with her kayaking expertise, would sit behind me and I would go up front. This meant that Kat had one job…to synchronise with my paddling. For twins you would think that synchronising came naturally to us but this couldn’t have been further from the truth… (read the rest on “Journey Through the Trees“!)

Interestd in hosting Mocha in your hometown or on your vacation? Let me know!

 

Iceland teasers

Iceland, you exceeded my expectations. You are a unique country. You have volcanoes. You have snow. You have incredible waterfalls. You pride in your nature and your geothermal energy. It was an incredible trip.

Below are a FEW photos from the trip to get LITTLE preview whilst I settle with my day-to-day, prep for grad school next month — in fact prep for the holidays, and organize my thoughts… or you can stop on by my Instagram.