Some weeks ago, I received an email from a lovely lady named Anne. (Yes, I already knew then that she’d be lovely.) She wrote to invite me to spend a day in San Francisco taking photographs of the sights, followed by a 3-hour Lightroom workshop with the amazing Julieanne Kost the following day. Oh, and Adobe was sponsoring the whole thing. She then so kindly remarked that she thought I might need the break.
The disadvantage of being on Eastern Standard Time out here in the west is that your body wakes you up at 4:38AM and soon after, it wants breakfast.
The advantage of being up at 4:38AM is that you get to catch one of the most beautiful sunrises you’ve seen in a while.
Never mind that I was standing on the window ledge, in my pajamas, and folks standing on the street may have thought I was two shakes shy of a cocktail.
That’ll just the be perfect setup for the rest of my day.
Trinidad offers some of the best street food you can find. From breakfast to dinner to midnight snacks, the food you can get from the various stalls and carts outside will rival just about any restaurant’s standard fare. For me, when the late afternoon hours stretch into dusk, the sight of a stall lit with a cloth wick in a fuel-filled bottle can only mean one thing: the oyster man is open for the night. Or at least as long as his day’s catch lasts.
I’ve always loved traveling. It doesn’t matter much if it’s somewhere new, or some place that I’ve been to dozens of times. The whole process of leaving home, putting miles between me and the familiar, breathing in new air, and naturally becoming more observant because everywhere my eyes rest there is something different, something to be noticed … it exhilarates me, recharges me and makes me tingle all over, literally and figuratively.
(Apparently, it also makes me write really, really long sentences.)
Itchy eyes. Endless sneezing. Scratchy throat. Irritated ears. Troubled breathing. And now, you can add “neglected blog” to my growing list of allergy symptoms.
I’ve been trying to figure out why this year’s allergy season is hitting me so hard. Why, I can hardly remember having any difficulties last year! What’s going on this year? Has the weather really messed up the plants and trees so much that their pollen output is going haywire? Maybe the air has more impurities, making things that much worse for allergy sufferers. Could it be that my backyard is somehow suddenly hiding an invisible forest of the maples, oaks, and birches?
It wasn’t until I spent some sick time organizing my old photo files that I realized the answer. It’s not that the season this year is worse—it’s that I have no point of comparison. See, last year around this time, I was somewhere else. Somewhere far enough from all the kinds of pollen that affect me.
I write, cook, play music, and make pictures. Not necessarily in that order. I was born and raised in the Philippines, and it shows. That means I eat rice with every meal, love my cousins like my own siblings, and firmly believe that avocados are best eaten with cream and sugar.
If you want to learn more about me, here are 43 things I'd like to do. Here's a little something about my name, in case you were wondering. Here are some other places you'll find me:
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One summer night in 2010, our house burned to the ground and we lost everything we had. This is the story of what happened and how life and hope can always rise from ashes.
