a weblog of whereabouts & interests, since 2010
I lucked out and caught the last day when these LEGO ‘Americana Roadshow’ models were on display at Bellevue Square mall, last Sunday.
I don’t think I aspire to build giant LEGO models like these .. but maybe that is just because I don’t have hundreds of thousands of bricks to work with!
My ‘Townhouse Triple’ used up the last of my windows and white brick stock.
This illustrates the LEGO builder’s dilemma: which creations should one keep on permanent display, and which should one break down (to free the bricks for something else)?
Update 7/22: Here’s an updated model with an improved rooftop.
Birds of a feather flock together*. – English proverb in use since the mid-16th century.
*People who are similar to each other, or share similar interests, tend to spend time in each other’s company.
Birds of a feather flock together. – English proverb in use since the mid-16th century.
What would my actual house look like in Lego* bricks? I wondered. Well, only one way to find out, I thought: build it – and so I did. I’m pleased with the result. I had to scavenge bricks and roof tiles from my 2004 Lego Designer House kit, destroying it in the process – but that’s OK. The roof was a lot of fun to build.
*Lego is short for leg godt, Danish words that translate to ‘play well’.
Happy Easter, everyone! Geseënde Paasfees!
We went to see Disney’s animated movie Coco (2017)* in a local arts theater here. The movie revolves around a Mexican boy Miguel, and the annual Day of the Dead/ Día de Muertos celebration. Before the movie started, Mazatlán resident Laura Medina explained the Day of the Dead to us. ‘Life and death is a duality, and cannot be completely separated’. Day of the Dead is about gatherings of family and friends, to pray for, and remember, friends and family who have died – and help support their spiritual journey.
*To quote IMDb: a touching, massively heartwarming story of the strongest familial variety.
Saarinen (1910-1961) was a Finnish American architect and industrial designer, noted for his neo-futuristic style. I also learned that Saarinen was the architect of the Gateway Arch in St Louis.
Congratulations to the US Women’s Hockey team, and the US Men’s Curling team with their gold medals, and to Norway for their record 39 medaIs, 14 gold!
I watched most of the closing ceremony tonight. I see Inmyeonjo/ 인면조 (the ‘human-faced bird’) from the closing ceremony caused a stir among Korean netizens.
Today was my last day in Cologne. The museums and shops were finally open again after being closed Sunday & Monday. I only made it to two museums, though: the Museum Ludwig and the Chocolate Museum.
P.S. It’s a white Christmas in Seattle, with an inch or two of snow falling overnight in the city. White Christmases are rare in Seattle, but in 2008 four inches of snow blanketed the city on Christmas Day.
Here is what the latest edition of Heineken’s ‘Cities of the World’ campaign beer bottles look like. (They have been around since 2014). Heineken sells its beer in 192 countries, says its website.
I checked into the First National Bank building in Cape Town on Thursday, in a quest (unsuccessful so far) for a few new 2017 South African 5-rand coins.
The building was designed by famed architect Sir Herbert Baker, and inside the banking hall’s dome there are four beautiful plaques.
There is a lot of history in the plaques, and I did some on-line research to find the full explanation for them.
More artwork .. this rhino in The Watershed building in the V&A Waterfront is part of a public art exhibition campaign to save the rhinos. There are fewer than 5,500 black rhinos and 22,000 white rhinos left on the planet and poachers are still killing them at an alarming rate.
The Zeitz Museum of Contemporary Art Africa (MOCAA) opened in September 2017. The art collection is housed in an old grain silo complex at the V&A Waterfront in Cape Town.
We had another pitch-black national news day here, with a church shooting in Texas that left 26 dead and 20 wounded.
So it was really nice to see a segment on the Sunday night documentary program ’60 Minutes’, of a music prodigy, a 12-year old British girl Alma Deutscher.
Science doesn’t yet understand the human brain and its ability to create something new, nearly enough, to explain her extraordinary abilities.
Robert Gjerdingen is a professor of music at Northwestern University in Chicago, and a consultant to Alma’s education. He says very difficult assignments given to her, when she was six, and seven, came back, and it was like listening to a mid-18th century composer (Mozart, Mendelssohn). She is a virtuoso on the piano and the violin.
In December, the Opera San Jose Orchestra will stage Cinderella in Alma’s American debut.
Halloween (Tuesday Oct 31) is almost here. The decorations are up, on homes and apartment buildings. I love these – visible from far away. ‘Man! is that what I think it is?’ I thought, and walked up to inspect them.
Here’s my latest puzzle project : the wonderful impressionist painting, Pierre-Auguste Renoir’s Luncheon of the Boating Party. It’s fun to use the artist’s colors and textures to build out parts of the picture, and then to find out how they link up in the big picture.
[From Wikipedia: As he often did in his paintings, Renoir included several of his friends in Luncheon of the Boating Party. The painting, combining figures, still-life, and landscape in one work, depicts a group of Renoir’s friends relaxing on a balcony at the Maison Fournaise restaurant along the Seine river in Chatou, France. The painter and art patron, Gustave Caillebotte, is seated in the lower right. Renoir’s future wife, Aline Charigot, is in the foreground playing with a small dog, an affenpinscher. On the table is fruit and wine].
That’s French for ‘the pen is mightier than the sword’ .. a phrase first mentioned in 1839 in a play called Cardinal Richelieu by playwright Edward Bulwer-Lytton. The phrase became commonplace soon after that, and today its translations are used in many languages (my information obtained from bbc.com).
The brothers Grimm’s fairy tales were first published in 1812, so this year marks their 200th anniversary.
I have had my eye on a South African publisher’s ‘Die Mooiste Sprokies van Grimm (2010)’ (The Fairest Fairy Tales of Grimm’) with illustrations by artist Piet Grobler for a while now, and today I finally purchased it.
