HAPPY 2012!

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I don’t think we really had any Christmas traditions growing up.
There were those Christmases at my grandma’s when I was little; joyous and precious moments that has forever shaped what Christmas means to me. I do consider those tradition.

Last weekend when we were putting up the Christmas decorations, I realized that it’s become somewhat of a tradition – somewhere along the way I’d picked up some traditions of my own.
The tree usually goes up on the first weekend in December; we brought the boxes of decorations up from storage over the weekend.

The fun is in getting everyone to corporate, deciding what goes where, and the memories that comes with a few special ornaments.
And I, I’m always on hand with snacks; I made Italian wedding cookies, the unofficial cookie of Christmas – I’m not sure why they’re called wedding cookies.
I’m in charge of music too, I love Christmas songs, especially the hymns I used to sing when I was a child.
I had Enya’s ‘And Winter Came’ album playing and every time ‘O Come O Come Emmanuel’ came on, we sang along reminiscently.
It’s one of my very favourite Christmas songs
And as the wonderful smell of cookies filled our tiny space, with soothing music playing in the background as we hung ornaments on the old tree I knew that this was a tradition I hoped to keep.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

 
These fireworks pictures are from the summer, the second day of the Celebration of Light.
It was Spain’s turn and the theme was ‘odyssey’
I took these from a 10th floor south facing balcony – I was too lazy to walk to the beach.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I love Christmas! This is my favourite time of the year.
I used to send out Christmas cards every year, and then two years ago I stopped.
I miss sending out cards, my dad used to order cards from UNICEF and we’d stay up all night addressing them.
This year I’ve decided to bring the tradition back; I’m sending out a card to anyone who wants one.
I’ve seen a few people do this on their blogs, and thought it was a brilliant idea.
Just fill out the form below with your mailing address (I promise to guard it with my life!) and just sit back, wait a few days, check your mailbox… and viola… a Christmas card with a special note!
It’s okay if you don’t celebrate Christmas; just tell me what holiday you celebrate.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

Once a year, around Easter, I usually take a red-eye flight from SeaTac to JFK to spend a few days in New York.
From the airport I take A Train towards Manhattan, and get off the first stop in Lower Manhattan, I meander through the massive construction zone, busy traffic and pedestrians; the city is surprisingly active for that time of the morning.
I find my hotel through the chaos; it’s a welcome sanctuary. I love it here; it may not be the swankiest hotel in all of Manhattan, but they know me here, I’ve written about this hotel before.
Uncle George works here, I met him the first time I stayed here and he instantly became my uncle by virtue of the fact that he too is originally from Ghana.
He’s been with the hotel for almost a decade now, and he has stories to tell… boy, does he have stories to tell…
He was working the morning the towers were hit, and was out of a job for several months after the hotel shut down for repairs.
His stories of the morning of the attacks are gut wrenching.

My room in the ‘sky’ has views of the Hudson, Jersey City and Hoboken, the views are splendid, but it’s the view looking down that gets to you – Ground Zero
It’s a colossal construction site, it looks deceptively like any other site, you can’t tell what transpired here by just looking at it.
Yet, it’s mesmerizing I point my lens down towards the construction and I can’t stop snapping away.
It’s surreal; this is the closest I’ve come to a place where that many people have perished.

The One World Trade Center tower is almost complete, it stands tallest in Lower Manhattan, and has already melded into the skyline.
For the next few days I do the same things I do when I visit New York; the High Line, Central Park, Chelsea, and restaurants, shows, galleries and places on my to-do list, and every night I return to my hotel room exhausted.
Restless, I steady my camera on a ledge and try to capture as many images of the construction site as I can, in between I think of that morning a decade ago.
Everyone’s got their September 11 story; everyone remembers where they were.
Uncle George doesn’t like remembering too much, he’s looking forward, he says.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I woke up this morning a little jaded, and so very disenchanted with this city.
I love Vancouver, I always have; there’s just something special and dreamy about the city that sucks you in, despite its issues there’s no other place I’d rather live.
I always believed the people are part of what made this city awesome; but I’m not so sure after last night.
I went for a little walk this morning before work; a massive cleanup was underway, glass was being shovelled off the streets, windows were being boarded up, and the streets are returning to normal;

Used to be a display window at the Bay on the Seymour Street Side

Cleanup inside The Bay & the entrance at Future Shop

Charred ground – Seymour Street

Bus Stop with glass broken on Georgia Street (hope it’s replaced before a rainfall)

Coach display window…

Shattered glass at Michael Kors

Chanel – Merchandise cleared out

Shards of glass & a mannequin hand

MAC store – cleared out

London Drugs – Cleanup crew

Future Shop / Winners

Broken window

Cleaning up glass at Chapters

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I think it was a saddened reporter on tv who said, Vancouver lost more than a hockey game tonight.
I sat in front of the tv tonight in my fairly quiet West End neighbourhood downtown and watched shocked as rioters tried to set the city ablaze, loot stores and destroy everything in their path.
The scenes looked familiar, of course I’ve seen these scenes before, but this time it was happening just blocks away.

And this all happened because we lost a hockey game? Stay classy – Vancouver!

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

So last Thursday, the fashionable people of Vancouver gathered at St. Andrew’s Church on Burrard Street for Obakki’s Fall/Winter ’11 fashion show.
Obakki, a Vancouver based luxury brand makes elegant and effortlessly chic clothes, and the F/W ’11 collection didn’t disappoint.
Here are a few pictures from the show;

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

 
Tonight’s edition of ABC’s 20/20 was banned in Canada because of a publication ban on a segment.
So we got a blacked out screen with a message on our ABC channels for the entire hour instead.

Interesting…

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