East Timor:  Christmas 2018 and New Year's Day 2019

Christmas and New Year in Timor Leste (East Timor)
It was a long flight from Vancouver through Taipei to Bali to East Timor, but the trip was worth the adventure as we were greeted by our daughter, Vivienne from Geneva and her husband, Ronny, who is representing the UNFPA in this new country.  Signs of colonial days under the Portuguese rules are seen in many places in Dili.  After years of war with Indonesia, the country is finally independent although with trials and tribulations of a developing democratic country, helped by the UN and others.  Its capital, Dili with its many embassies face miles of sandy beach front.  Its infrastructures are primitive but its landscape is just gorgeous with miles of unused sandy beaches and multi-coloured forest greens adorned with tropical flowers among various shapes and sizes of tropical leaves.  Fruits like mango, banana, rose apples, coconut, avocado etc. seem to grow in the wild lush forest of the island.  Ronny managed to import a turkey for our Christmas dinner.  It looked like a big fat chicken with a long neck with no giblets in its cavities but a long flattened skin from the neck attached to it. Cooking it was an adventure but amazingly it turned out well even with minimal available supplies and seasonings we are used to, at home.  It was a wonderful Christmas gathering, joined by Ronny's two sons, one from Japan and another from Montreal.

Post COVID-19 Group Exh. June 21, 2020 at

International Art Gallery: 555 Howe Stl, Vanvouert







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Richmond Art Coalition: Featured Artist Virtual Exhibit June 10, 2020

Exhibition of New Paintings from Aug. 24 to November 2, 2018

Exhibition of New Paintings will be mounted by Vancouver Art Gallery's Sales and Rental Division at the Barrister's Lounge, BC Law Courts from August 24 to November 2, 2018.  The works will be predominantly landscapes in acrylic on stretched canvases.  As the Lounge is a private space, f

or information, please contact Vancouver Art Gallery, Rental and Sales 604-662-4746.

Hawaii in October, 2018

After 17 years of not seeing each other, a visit accompanied by Lynn Spence, to see Kriss Provenza in Honolulu brought us together to reminesce and update each other on developments. Kriss' wonderfully creative artistic works in her Provenza Gallery in the hear of Honolulu was impressive and inspiring.  She was the most gracious hostess, touring all over the island of Oahu.

2018 Jan-Feb. Vietnam and Cambodia with friends
I was fascinated by charming narrow three-storied houses crammed together on busy Hanoi streets with many signs of earlier French influence.  Talk of busy, it's a venture just to cross a street.  Most of the busiest corners don't even have signal lights.  And swarm of motor-cyclists, cars, trucks and anything movable are going about doing their daily business to getting to places.  Not fast, but steady movements so that if you want to cross the road, you just have to start walking, not running, so that anything moving will adjust around you.  Cruising around Halong Bay and seeing Ho Chi Minh City, were great experiences.  We left Vietnam by bus and entered Cambodia's Capital, Phnom Penh via Mekong River.  I found people in the Kingdom of Cambodia to be such sweet-tempered and gentle mannered people in spite of horrendous experiences they were put through during the Khmer Rouge Regime.  We were impressed by the mild demeanour of these people.  Also, we were so lucky to have been at the right time there to see the famous Bohdi trees in full bloom with almost wax-like red flowers.  But our high-lights were seeing series of ancient Angkor Temples around Siem Reap.

2017, July  internment Trip

When Canada declared war on Japan, the federal government forcibly removed over 21,000 men, women and children of Japanese ancestry from the west coast of BC, starting in 1942.  They were sent to temporary homes in internment camps, road camps, and self-supporting sites outside a 100-mile radius of the coast line. The largest camp, Tashme (today’s Sunshine Valley) was self-contained and many men from this camp were sent to build Hope-Princeton Highway.  Many were sent to the BC Interior’s “ghost towns” located in the Kootenay/Slocan Valley areas: Greenwood, Slocan City, New Denver, Kaslo, Rosebery and Sandon.  Some were sent to leased farmers’ fields:  Bay Farm, Popoff, Lemon Creek.  Roger and I were still babies when Roger’s family went to Slocan City, and mine to Lemon Creek.

As 2017 is the 75th Anniversary of the Internment, we joined a tour group, many from Toronto and Los Angeles with historians expert in the field of the Japanese Internment.  It was a good trip, and we learned a great deal about injustices suffered by our parents, many of whom were born Canadians.

2016 Croatia: From Italy to Montenegro

Having arrived in Venice, Italy, my friend, Shamsi and I taxied through Slovenia to reach north-west of Croatia.  Know as Croatia’s Riviera, Opatija and Pula area offered some of the most beautiful coastline of the Adriatic Sea.  To the inland lay Plitvice Lakes, an UNESCO World Heritage Site.

We covered some of the UNESCO World Heritage Sites, such as Plitvice Lake, the old city of Dubrovnik, Diocletian’s Palace in Split, and an old city of Kotor in Montenegro.

The entire area offered rich and fascinating history from the Ottoman’s Empire’s time to the dismantling of Yugoslavia to the present day.  I learned a lot.

2013 Bohemia etc.

Bohemia

Having experienced a portion of Eastern Europe on our Baltic tour, we continued our journey into eastern and central Europe in 2013.  We saw the Bohemia area of the old Hungarian Empire of the Habsburg dynasty.  The tour started from Budapest to Prague, covering Hungary, Slovakia, Austria and Czech Republic.  

UNESCO Heriage site of Cesky Krumlov, Czech Republic was a charming place steeped in the C13 to C17 history of Bohemia.

It was intriguing to see the transformation of many cities from communism to acceptance in the European union.

Of course, Vienna offered something different from all other cities we’ve visited....saw where Mozart lived, and took in his concert.  This is also the home of Gustav Klimt.  I was delighted to have visited Belvedere Gallery to see the biggest collection of his work including The Kiss.

Italy and France

After the Bohemian tour, we visited our daughter and her husband in Geneva.  We were treated to an agritourism hotel in a countryside near Alba in Italy where we had an out of the ordinary array of savoring foods.  There, we had truffles for the first time.  The area also produces great barbera wine.  We also visited Mont Blanc in France where our daughter and her husband has a chalet.  It is a gorgeous place.

2012 June Indianapolis

Indianapolis to babysit my 3 grand children.

2012 July The Baltics

For the second year in a row, we visited Europe.

This year, we saw the Baltic region of northern Europe, covering all of the Viking countries, and more.  We started in Copenhagen, staying in central town close to the Central Station across from Tivoli Gardens.  It is a very friendly city offering many museums to see.  Oslo’s Museum for Peace Nobel, Denmark’s Aarhus Museum, Copenhagen’s National Museum and Stockholm’s Vasa Museum, all offered distinctly different flavours of their history and culture.  We also visited an interesting and quaint medieval town of Tallinn, Estonia.  

But the highlight of the trip was St. Petersburg seeing its 300ft deep subway system; viewing beautiful buildings from the city’s many river arms; and many historical buildings relating to various tzars of the past.  And then.....there is The Hermitage, the Winter Palace.  The inside is anything but hermitage.  The opulence, the wealth, and the greed of the tzars are intoxicating; all this while their people were starving.  Immediately, the Palace of Versailles came to mind and thought no wonder both countries had famous Revolutions.

Helsinki was beautiful but uninteresting.  Unlike St. Petersburg and other cities built on the delta of major waterways, Stockholm built on rocks of its archipelago gave the city contours attractiveness and interesting.

After returning to Copenhagen, we took a train to Gothenburg, Sweden where we were picked up by out daughter and her fiancee.  Although they live in Geneva, Switzerland, they decided to have their wedding in a beautiful remote resort town called Lyskil which is about 3 hours drive from Gothenburg.

The wedding was a perfection itself.  In spite of rain, cloud and incumbent weather during our trip, the wedding day gave us a clear blue sky all day.  About 60 people from all over the world celebrated a real fun party where everyone became friends with each other and made merry until wee hours of the morning. 

2011 September: Life Drawing BBQ

This year's belated BBQ event for the Life Drawing group was held on Sep.3, with no model.  A small group got together and had a lot of fun just socializing in my backyard.

2011 July Geneva to Sweden

July and August in Europe.

UN, Geneva

With Ronny's family

Lysekil

We visited Vivienne and Ronny, our daughter and her fiancee in Geneva, Switzerland in their lovely new home.  Our first visit was to the UN, Geneva where Ronny works.  From Geneva, four of us drove through Germany, and Denmark to Sweden, to a beautiful resort town called Lysekil on the west coast of Sweden (Ronny’s home town).  

We took a night ferry from Puttgarten, Germany to Denmark, then a long bridge to Sweden.  Much of northern Europe was quite cool and rainy.  That is, until we took another ferry, this time a short one, and got to a small picturesque resort town of Lysekil.  We were met with extremely and unusually hot weather (around 30-40C) there and throughout the region.  A short boat ride from there is another beautiful and charming resort town of Fiskebackskil.  We took a longer excursion to a tourist town of Smogen, famous for shrimp.   And of course our lunch was, as you can guess.....shrimp.  All around the area is true fjord: a long, narrow inlet with steep sides and sometimes barren cliffs, unlike the familiar BC west coast scenery we are used to.  For five days we’ve met some wonderful people and ate Sweden’s savory seafood.  

Smogen, Sweden

Gerald and Philippe

Our return trip to Geneva was uneventful with rain much of the way.  The highlight of it though, was a beautiful overnight ferry from Trelleberg, just south of Malmo in Sweden to Germany.  The TT line ferry was much like a cruise ship feeling with beautiful cabins and luxurious lounges.  Back in Geneva, we were treated to our friend’s sumptuous and magnificent dinner to end our visit to Europe.

2010 October in Indianapolis

It was our first trip to Indianapolis where our three grandchildren moved to, last December. Although the downtown core of the city is small, it sprawls far beyond what I had expected, with seemingly new buildings all around major city arteries. Apparently, it’s the 14th largest city in the US. The suburb of Carmel where we stayed is abound with beautiful mansions surrounded by large trees on their expansive lots with these trees giving out a constant rain of multi-colored leaves. Evergreens are more scarce than the westcoast. But broadleaves of all types were at their prime with grandiose range of autumn colors. We enjoyed our grandchildren in such a beautiful setting.

There are many places to see in Indianapolis, one of them being Indianapolis Museum of Art which is located in a large park and houses surprisingly large collection of European and American Art. I could have spent another day there.

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Other Trips to See the World

2010 September:  China/Tibet

China/Tibet Sept 4-20, 2010

I've learned a lot about China. I was fascinated about changing landscapes, amazed about the government control of different phases of people's lives, impressed with acrobatic shows. Many many hard-to-believe things.... Eye-openers. My most dreaded expectations...dirty public toilets....were non-existent in most cases. I was pleasantly surprised how clean the cities were.

My China/Tibet trip started from Beijing under the sizzling temperature of 32°C in the vail of smog and pungent gas fume. The Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square were not at all impressive except for its’ sizes. Miles of walking on concrete, going up and down on uneven steps in the uncomfortable climate in the polluted air made the visit unpleasant to say the least, relieved a little by clearer air at The Great Walls. Beijing and its’ nearby imperial city, Tenjin had some impressive aspects as well. The cities were CLEAN, with workers constantly picking garbage, cleaning and polishing floors etc, due to last year’s Olympics, I surmise.

Xian in the interior was just as hot. The Terra Cotta Museum was just stifling.

All was not bad. Seeing the gate in Xian where the Silk Road started was very interesting. As we flew to Lhasa, Tibet where we were welcomed with beautiful landscape of short vegetations hugging rugged rocks and semi-arid desert surrounding recently flooded Lhasa River. Again it was an unseasonably hot temperature from 29 -39°C during our 4 days there. Before Tibet, our guides during our visits to Beijing, Tenjin, and Xian continually emphasized money as an important goal in their lives. That is, until we reached Tibet. Tibetans’ main, if not the only, emphasis is Buddhism. They are distinctly different from Chinese. They are very gentle and obliging people with unique culture and language. Dalai Lama’s Potala Palace was impressive, but needing much maintenance. Official version of the population in Tibet is supposed to be 15% Chinese and 85% Tibetan. Obviously not so. Just by looking around, Chinese occupy much more than 50% of the population. Oppression and tight grip of the Chinese government over the Tibetan people and their culture is deeply felt by many Tibetans, majority of whom cannot get their Chinese passports. Today, Tibetan language is not totally erased, but plays a small and minor role in store and other signs.

From Lhasa, we flew to Chongqing where the Yantze River Cruise started. Chongqing is a city of 32 million people. Humidity, 34°C, pollution and the smell of the upper Yantze almost made me stay in the observation deck of the ship. But no. I’m there to experience and see China, so I went to the upper deck to see the dirty ochre Yantze gradually turn to moss green as we passed the Three Gorges. There are may evidences of farmlands and industries being submerged by the dam. Boatmen who used to manually guide ships before the dams were built, took us on one of the Yantze tributaries to see unusual rock formations and lush greeneries. Going through five lochs was interesting in that 5 ships formed a group in 2 rows to go down together. The Three Gorges Dam under construction is humongous.

Following 4 days and 3 nights on the River Cruise, we flew from Yichang to Shanghai, a totally different city from any other cities in China we saw, where rows and rows of rectangular box-like buildings are common. Shanghai has a variety of different shaped modern buildings combined with foreign influences made it a very unique look. Evidences of French, English and Italian concessions are still intact and made the city hold its unique place in the history of China.

I was taken aback by the image of Mao Tse Tung on every currency denomination. His large images is still facing The Tiananmen Square. A reverence for him is due in fact to a lack of knowledge on the part of Chinese populace about Mao’s elimination of a large number of educated, well-to-do, and political opponents. For that matter, they don’t seem to know much about The Tiananmen Massacre, either.

It was good to see China and Tibet. But it’s time to reflect on how lucky we are for what we have.

2009 November:  Egypt

My Egypt Tour Oct-Nov, 2009

I saw the magnificent temples and tombs of the old.  It was humbling to witness locals carry on alongside the ancient monuments as they always have, as a part of their daily lives.  On arrival in Cairo, I was greeted with unseasonal temperature at this time of the year, 33°C.  The old Egyptian Museum was awesome, but boiling and stewing at around 45°C, with no air conditioning, nor the temperature controls for their precious antiquities.  I was agast to see Tutumkamen's gold gilded crown chair displayed openly as though to invite disasters from careless onlookers.  Further down in Luxor, the entire place including the Luxor and Karnac temples, is an open air museum.  In spite of over 50°C sizzler I went into 3 tombs in the vast Valley of the Kings and marvelled at well-preserved thousands-year old art works and hieroglyphs.  Aswan, the most southern city along the Nile is a beautiful place with many small islands, again surrounded by antiquities in the open-air.  On the west of the Nile is Western Desert, the east end of the mighty Sahara.  It's the second time I've encountered the Sahara, the last being from the Atlas Mountains side in Morocco two years ago.  Close to the Sudanese border on the Nile are the famous temples of Abu Simbel.  I was thrilled to witness the colosal statues of Ramses ll, saved from the rising waters of Lake Nasser by UNESCO financed operation. (at a cost of $40million US.)  My final days were back in Cairo to see the Pyramids of Giza and the Sphinx.  

2008 October/November: New York, Switzerland and France

2007 October/November:  Greece

2006 October: London

2005 October/November: Spain & Morocco 

2004 Sept/October: Peru