Archive for December, 2009

Italian Tenors in Singapore

Entertainment | Posted by admin
Dec 30 2009

This was always the moment that she would be taking herself apart, her personality being dismantled before my eyes.  In some settings, it would happen in the mornings over breakfast when she, waffles in her pupils, would lead me to understand that she was no longer who she was a moment ago.  In Singapore it was always at night, and always with an exquisite attention to detail  I could never be sure if it was partly in my head, or completely an act of witnessing, free of my own perceptions.  And there was that day, that peculiar day, when I knew it would be more extraordinary than others.  Like an Italian film I can no longer remember, I woke up and she was already floating outside the window, attached to a string she had thoughtfully tied to the bedpost.

I’m not always drawn to details, but I have found a way to admire bedposts in foreign countries, and it is mornings that begin like this that remind me of why I like to travel.  One can always learn, and when there is no more to learn, a veil gets lifted and there is a new and unknown world again before your eyes.  This day would not be about any deep learning, however, because it was only the Bocelli concert that was holding the day together.  For her, something maybe, for me, only ghosts.  She was following his Asian tour, when she found the time to land, and this was an important day for her, but she wouldn’t say why.

For me, I was always caught up in numbering and counting, and I counted seconds, because it was a nervous afternoon, and before long I was counting steps to the Italian restaurant where we met our first accordion player, the one who would accompany us and make music whenever we walked anywhere else in the world.  It was over linguini with clam sauce that I realized how strong she resembled Bocelli, at least in that light, and at that moment, everything changed.  I would never again be able to think of her without seeing the Italian tenor in my mind, and I also saw, by the way she was floating out of her chair, that she was visiting a Singapore that I could never know.

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Anne Frank House and Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam

History, Travel | Posted by admin
Dec 28 2009

Amsterdam is famous across the world for many of its contemporary cultural aspects that are either illegal or considered to be taboo in many other countries and regions. This alone draws millions of tourists to this capital of the Netherlands, though it is definitively not the most significant factors of the city. Amsterdam also has an incredibly interesting history and has many cultural attractions that relate and testify to it. The Amsterdam Stock Exchange, which is located in the city centre also happens to be the oldest in the world and serves as one of its icons. The Anne Frank House and the Van Gogh Museum are two the most popular visitor attractions in the city and many of the tourists who are staying in one of the luxury resorts or best Amsterdam hotel visit both of these landmarks during their visit.

The Anne Frank House is now a famous museum that is located on the Prinsengracht where Frank and her family once hid during the Nazi persecution surrounding the second world war. The actual hiding place of the Frank family is in the back of the building that now honors it. The purpose of the museum is to preserve the hiding place, known in Dutch as the Achterhuis, as well as to display various items related to the family and the period. The museum also serves to highlight and demonstrate all forms of discrimination and persecution.

The Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam contains the largest collection of paintings and drawings in the world from Vincent Van Gogh. The main exhibit in the museum also serves to chronicle the life and work phases of this great artist. Some of the highlights in this exhibit include one of the Sunflowers paintings, for which he is most known, as well as The Potato Eaters and Bedroom in Aries. The museum also houses extensive collections from the 19th Century.

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Fearless and Friendly

Business | Posted by admin
Dec 22 2009

Being able to walk through the world without fear is an important strategy for living an effective life.  It’s very likely that there are few truly useful things that fear can do for us, because it seems to be a holdover from a fight-or-flight mentality that has not been necessary since we started the first civilization.  It was perhaps a very necessary tool in the time of the saber-tooth tiger, but all too often comes in only at the most inappropriate moments, and hinders us more than it helps.  However, the instinct is still there, and of course, for anyone who’s ever lived in the world at all, that instinct is very strong.  It rises up at the first sign of conflict, no matter how slight.

There are many different practices that can help us to overcome fear, and most of these seem to suggest the same thing.  We can only get accustomed to it by learning how we respond personally, and that’s only possible in real life situation.  Sales training can be one very effective, and very useful, ways of dealing with our own responses to conflict.  Conflict here can be something as small as a minor disagreement with a co-worker, or even the first moments of the dreaded cold call.  However, by understanding certain principles, and having real experience, we can turn the thing that used to stop us into something that in fact can help us.

It’s a good thing that instincts are so strong, because they do help us to remember how we’re designed, and help us to understand how other people behave.  In taking real life situations, and practicing them in employee training, we are also giving our team a leg up in the world, so that they can be more efficient in the work place, and learn skills that transfer into the everyday world as well.  In theory, reason should be enough to overcome instinct, but perhaps we occasionally need to refresh ourselves on ways to become more reasonable.

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Singapore Restaurant Living is a Delight

Food | Posted by admin
Dec 22 2009

There’s no better place for an enchanting meal, and it’s very possible to remain enchanted for as long as you’re here.  Singapore has an amazing selection of restaurants, and there is really no end to the scrumptious dishes to be sampled here.  If you’re in the mood to try something new every night for a month, then this is the place for you.  If you only like Chinese food, however, this is also the place for you.  The same could be said for so many other kinds of cuisine, whether it’s Indian, Malaysian, Japanese, Italian, and the list goes on.  Singapore’s swift rank to the top of the lists for the best places to eat has been a long time coming.

Many travelers have known for years that this is the place.  It makes perfect sense, because it’s proximity to other countries makes it peculiarly capable of bringing both the ingredients and the culinary artists with expertise to make the perfect meal.  It also happens to be close to different types of water, so that any kind of seafood is in ready, and very fresh, supply.  For every cuisine offered here, there are chefs who are adept at performing magical feats that speak to the centuries of tradition that go into the cooking, and it’s a great place to discover how things are supposed to taste.

It’s also a fabulous place for culinary innovation.  The culture at large here has a great love for anything new and modern, and they’re always looking ahead to see what the next trend might be.  This translates into some fantastic innovations in food, where the highly skilled and trained chefs need to meet the tastes of a very discerning public.  The quality is always high, and the level of fun is also extraordinary.  If you take your food seriously, or if you just happen to have a great love for the good life, you’ll find yourself right at home in Singapore restaurants.

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Bonding by the Hearth Fireplace

Food, Home & Garden | Posted by admin
Dec 17 2009

It’s wintertime and the holiday season, which means families with fire places are going to be buying lots of wood and stoking fires — but what do you do once you’ve got the kids gathered around.  Staring at flames for two or three hours, as interesting as fire may be, still seems a bit unproductive.  But, with the right activities, a nearby cozy fire can help make an evening with the family fly by.

Telling stories around the fireplace is one of the oldest activities of human beings.  In the past, they may have been about the hunt of the day, or the movement of the sun or moon.  Often, around a camp fire, the stories are spooky; ghost stories seem to work well under settings of low light and crackling, flickering flames.  However, the joy of the holiday season may not lend itself to ghost stories.  In that case, the family could tell stories about the family.  It’s an excellent time to let children know the adventures of their parents when they were kids, reliving the more interesting or exciting times of life.  Sharing these memories (the positive ones, at least) can be a real bonding experience for a family.  Why not bring out your old photo albums and scrapbooks while everyone is gathered around the fireplace? There’s nothing more entertaining than looking at old photographs and sharing forgotten memories. This activity can help to bring you closer as a family.

I remember, too, toasting marshmallows in the fire place on untwisted wire coat hangers (although I’d be hard pressed to find wire hangers in my home today).  Still, making molasses cookies (a favorite of my father’s) or heating up some hot chocolate — essentially, bonding with food, seems like a decent way to go, as long as you’re not eating this way every night (in the past, we never thought about the calories, but today, it seems, it’s essential).

Consider card games or board games, too.  These activities are excellent ways to spend time with each other at a level on which everyone can relate, the spirit of friendly competition.  Considering how much time we spend on our computers and video games, we may find actual cards and boards a welcome break.

Time gathered around a hearth fireplace is not only a way to heat your house, but it’s also a way to warm up the relationships you have with your friends and family.

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Penn Museum in Philadelphia

Travel | Posted by admin
Dec 16 2009

If you’re looking for an American city overflowing with history, you would certainly do well to investigate Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.  But if you wanted to move past the typical places Philadelphia is famous for — the Liberty Bell, Independence Hall, and so on — you should check out the Penn Museum, also known as the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archaeology and Anthropology, a place chock-full of exhibits about the past and present in Pennsylvania, as well as the Americas in general, and even examining worlds distant in time and place, such as the gold of ancient Troy.

Presently, this winter, there are a number of interesting materials on display.  Start with the exhibit, Fulfilling a Prophecy, which explores the past and present of the Lenape in Pennsylvania.  It discusses how most people are under the impression that all but a few elderly Lenape people had quit the state by the 19th Century; however, the truth is that many stayed secretly, and that some Lenape and Europeans married and had children in the 1700s, continuing their traditions in hiding, only now, some two hundred years, coming forward to tell the story.  The exhibit contains photographs and dolls, jewelry, ancient masks, and other art forms from the Lenape Nation of Pennsylvania.

Over in the Americas collection, amongst 300,000 objects, you may see a waterproof parka made from the throat lining of sea lions from 1905, or a Pomo basket made of quail feather, beads, shells and plant fiber, from the same year.  The Americas collection at the Penn Museum are amongst the largest, with collections that range from North and South America, in an attempt to document the history of human habitation in this region.

Other exhibits include His Golden Touch: The Gordion Drawings of Piet de Jong from the Gordion site in central Turkey; the Goodlands: Young Photographers Inspiring Hope in North Philadelphia; and Painted Metaphors: Pottery and Politics of the Ancient Maya.  It need not take a lot of money to see these exhibits; just make a reservation at a Philadelphia cheap hotel and come investigate the less traditional side of the city.

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All about a stove

Home & Garden | Posted by admin
Dec 15 2009

Stove for Sale the ad reads. As one reads on they get the details of how it looks and maybe how old it is and of course the price. But what is a stove really. How does it all work? Well the answer is really quite simple. There are some basic components that do certain things. Then there are the different styles that consumers can choose from so it will fit in with the rest of the home decor style. Nothing worse than spending all that time and money on new decor only to have some old green thing stilling right out in the middle of the room.

When you buy a new stove here are some things you will be getting with it. There is the hopper, which stores the wood pellets ready for burning. The auger system is what slowly moves the pellets into the flame. This is a really cool part of the design of pellet stoves because it is what keeps the owner from having to get up from his cozy chair and put on another log. It is the automation system. Then you have the burn pot or firebox. This is were the pellets get burned and the ash is stored. There are two fans usually, the combustion and convection blower fans. The combustion blower is how air is circulated into the burn pot, which the fire needs to do its job. The convection blower blows the heat out into the room for the homeowner to enjoy.

These stove and their method really do create a much better way of heating than the good old wood fed fireplaces. The fans blow the heat out into the room and it really fills it up. The fireplace doesn’t have that device to thrust the air out into the room much of the heat is lost. So give thanks to some of the inventors of the early stoves like Benjamin Franklin and James Sharp.

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The Gem of the Inner Harbor: The Baltimore Aquarium

Construction | Posted by admin
Dec 14 2009

Baltimore has a long history of the working class.  From the beginnings of the city and those working at the port or on the ships, to those working on building the ships during both of the World Wars, to the Baltimore plumbers, electricians and police officers of today, the people in the city work hard, and so it goes that they play hard.  Not in the sense of the nightlife kind of playing, but in the sense that there are so many options when it comes to spending time away from work.

One of the most beautiful gems of the Inner Harbor is the Baltimore Aquarium. The architecture alone is one of the stunning features of the Aquarium, along with the more than six hundred and fifty species of animals.  Just about 2 million people visit each year to see the wide array of animals, 16,500, in an incredible array of exhibits and environments.  All of the staff remain dedicated to the care of the animals and to the ongoing education of the public on environmental issues.  There are two buildings that make up the aquarium and they are connected by and enclosed walkway.

One of the most popular shows is the Dolphin Show which has been an ongoing event each day, since it premiered in 1990.  In 2005 the Crystal Pavilion was an incredible addition.  This is the entrance way into the aquarium, a three story building made entirely of glass.  The Animal Planet Australia is housed in the Crystal Pavilion.  This is a great place for the entire family.  It takes about two and a half hours to make it through all the exhibits, the shows will add a bit of time to that.  And if everyone is still ready for some adventures, Harborplace, located as well at the Inner Harbor, has many more opportunities, from the shops and the restaurants to the performers on the streets.  This is where it’s at, for visitors to the city and for the families of Baltimore.

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When I Knew it was Time to Buy Tires

Automotive | Posted by admin
Dec 10 2009

I knew that I had needed new tires for my truck for some time.  They always seemed a bit…flat, flatter than they should be.  I had two front tires with nails embedded in them, but the fact that I don’t really drive very much, kind of helped me to put it off.  But, once I really checked my tires, I realized that it was in fact, time to buy tires.  I looked at my truck’s tires each time I got into it, but I did not follow the recommendations to thoroughly inspect my tires once a month.

My under-inflated tires not only served to make them wear much faster, but affected my gas mileage too.  Although my truck was still very easy to handle, I did notice some alterations in the steering that most undoubtedly were the result of the tires not being properly inflated.  My truck never became unsafe, but for many people, this can cause some very serious consequences.   When I did have the new tires mounted, I also had the alignment checked, as I had found out on line, that just one day of driving in a vehicle that is out of alignment, can wear out the tires completely, just one day!

Some people will try to remove embedded items, which may or may not be a good idea.  I did pull on one of the nails, but heard the hiss of air.  I pushed it back in and drove very carefully to the nearest tire retail store.  When I looked at the sidewalls, I noticed that there were very worn areas, and that my tires were no longer snugly fitted to the rims.  I was nervous about getting new tires, because I had never made that purchase alone before, and was a bit nervous about my own knowledge.  But through some investigation online, I found that it is not that scary of an endeavor.  Now I do have new tires, and my mind is at ease, and my truck handles much, much better.

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Singapore Great Views and Theatre Near Marina

Travel | Posted by admin
Dec 08 2009

Dennis spent a week in Singapore last month due to an unexpected business meeting he was asked to take part in. He worked in the technological field and his company was in the major process of adding a top client. They sent Dennis as one of their top designers and asked him to prepare a presentation in a relatively short time. Dennis was a strong company oriented person with strong work ethics and a major interest in furthering his career. However, he thought of the last minute meeting, especially as it was going to occur on his daughter’s second birthday was nothing but an inconvenience and point of frustration.

That is, he thought that until he actually landed in Singapore. It seems that from the moment his plane touched down, Dennis was fascinated with the city and by the time he checked into his room at the business hotel he was in love with it. And yes, it happened just that fast and it was not the result of jet lag, which never produced this response in him. The plane had landed in the late evening and he thought the night skyline of the city, well the view of it he had while landing, was absolutely incredible and romantic. One of his first thoughts was that he wanted to bring his wife Judy there the following year.

He spent three days in extremely intense meetings and on the third day he had his big presentation. Dennis wasn’t the slightest bit nervous and just had the feeling that the entire even would go well. The next day, his fourth day there he had the entire day off and he headed straight over to the Singapore Marina, which he had heard was incredible. And it was. The views of the bay were beautiful and he had lunch in a quite little seafood café. He walked along the Esplanade and noticed some of the establishments there. At this point he was he wanted to make a return trip with Judy and he made a mental note for them to attend a production at the Theatre By the Bay, which was an Esplanade venue. He also found a great stuffed dolphin he decided to take back to his daughter.

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Hot Phoenix Summers Attract Tourists While Residents Head North

Travel | Posted by admin
Dec 01 2009

Living in the desert can be interesting and the residents of Phoenix are more than aware of that fact. Phoenix achieves some of the highest temperatures in the country and endures a large amount of days of temperatures that reach above one hundred degrees. And while these statistics sound somewhat ominous at first, it is interesting to know that in the last have of the twentieth century Phoenix continued to be one of the nation’s fastest growing urban areas many people are attracted to this weather. In addition, it has one of the highest rates of return residents, which means that a large percentage of the population that moves from Phoenix will eventually return.  Phoenix is also a popular destination for tourists. Guests staying in one of the best Phoenix hotels in the summer will be able to testify to the extreme heat, though they will also be able to testify to the beautiful sunsets and if they’re lucky they’ll experience the pleasures of a summer monsoon.

Something that residents and visitors to Phoenix both appreciate is the layout and structure of the Valley cities and communities. The streets and avenues are laid out in a grid and navigating through Phoenix and the surrounding cities is extremely simple. This is particularly beneficial because the geographic area of the Valley is one of the largest urban regions in the nation and most people drive thirty miles or more per day and sometimes one way. Because Phoenix is so hot for many of the months out of the year, the residents frequently feel a need to get out of town and out of the desert. This is possible by driving to the northern part of the state. Smaller cities like Sedona and Prescott are popular destinations. They also get hot in the summer but not to the extreme that Phoenix does and they are a pleasant relief from the intense Phoenix sun. Flagstaff, Arizona is further north and not part of the desert. It is also a popular weekend destination for hot city residents.

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Cellist Zoe Keating in San Francisco

Music, Travel | Posted by admin
Dec 01 2009

San Francisco is full of amazing cultural elements and city landmarks. It is absolutely beautiful and one of the major cities in the United States. In addition, there are many great artists, actors and musicians that are based there and also a number of iconic performance establishments and museums. Cellist Zoe Keating is just one of many performers that is based in this great American city. Tourists who stay in a San Francisco hotel may have the opportunity to see her perform live while they are visiting.

Keating was born in Ontario Canada to an American father and an English Mother. She began playing the cello at the age of eight and while she almost immediately loved the instrument and knew she would spend a lifetime playing it, she was not particularly interested in pursuing a career in the classical music field, such as playing for a symphony orchestra. She does appreciate and even play classical music, but has always seemed to have her own agenda and performance orientation. She studied cello at Sarah Lawrence College before moving to San Francisco. She is well known for playing onstage while recording herself and playing it back in loops. This gives the audio quality of sounding like up to 16 cellos are playing at once when it is all Keating.

She is also a composer and has written the score for films. Keating collaborates with other artists and has performed with Rasputina, the all female cello based rock band. On more than one occasion Keating has toured with musician Imogen Heap. In fact, Heap is one of her standard contemporary tour partners. In addition she has worked with Amanda Palmer and performed on the album Who Killed Amanda Palmer. Keating has been featured on television programs and frequently performs in the San Francisco area.

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