I left things too late this long weekend to make getaway plans, so I’m going to be hanging out in the city while the lucky ones are out on their camping trips, island getaways, and cross-border adventures.

I’m not jealous; staying home isn’t all that bad especially when I can wake up to breakfast like this.
Besides I have a few local hiking and beach trips planned if the weather holds up.

And this breakfast practically puts itself together, just how lazy weekend mornings should be.

I love finding (new to me) Italian cookies, and I found another interesting cookie from Doria, this is the Melodie ai cereali, a shortbread biscuit made with wholegrains and a touch of yoghurt.

It’s crunchy, crumbly and soft, and little nutty and lightly sweetened, and it doesn’t have a crappy ingredients list (for a packaged food).

It’s good on its own, but on mornings when you don’t want to cook breakfast and box-cereal and milk just won’t do, this is what @adjoa does… she mixes broken up pieces of melodie cookies with yoghurt and blueberries.
It’s quick and easy, filling and not rushed, the breakfast of long leisurely mornings.

This is a simple and good breakfast, I suppose you could use any grainy cookie here if you wanted, but this melodie cookie makes it so much special.

And you know what? I’m kinda glad the neighbours are away so I can have a quiet breakfast.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

Monet’s ‘La rue Montorgueil à Paris’, is a painting depicting a jubilant celebration during the French festival of 30th June 1878.
The painting doesn’t only confirm the historic significance of this market street; it also manages to capture, to some degree, the spirit of this vibrant and colourful street.
Rue Montorgueil is a pedestrian market street, home to some famous restaurants, cafés, bars, bakeries and other excellent food markets.
Stohrer has been making fine pastries at their 51 Rue Montorgueil location for nearly 300 years.
And of course, L’Escargot, which seems to be in a bit of trouble at the moment, has been around since the late 19th century.

It truly is the food lover’s paradise; charming and lively with so much to explore from little cheese shops, fish markets, green grocers to candy shops, and patisseries.
It’s where to go to people watch; and observe regular Parisians go about their day, which naturally involves a lot of time in cafés
This is one of my absolutely favourite places in Paris, although I haven’t explored it enough to offer any helpful insights, save for pretty pictures – but David Lebovitz has a handy post on the awesomeness that is Rue Montorgueil.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

Photoquai is a biennale photography exhibition founded in 2007 by the Quai Branly Museum to showcase ‘non-western’ photographers.
The term ‘non-western’ sounds vague, but these are mostly emerging photographers from countries that aren’t usually included in larger photo exhibitions.
The 2011 exhibition, held outdoors on the banks of the Seine, right across from the museum in the 16th arrondissement, ran between September and November last year, and I was lucky enough to have caught it while on vacation.

The photos are snapshots of the world; unique and intriguing, showcasing a world perhaps different from many at the exhibit.
I imagine the photographers are fascinating too; their photos are varied and moving, they tell complex tales of people and places in Africa, Asia, Australia, Eastern Europe and South America.
The photos connect you to these places and make you inquisitive…. It leaves you wanting to learn more about the people and places in the pictures.
Vibrant and beautifully shot, the exhibition felt impressive under the open sky.

AutoPotraits – Hélèn Amouzou / Togo
Hélèn took these self-portraits for an art school assignment, at a time when she was also seeking asylum in Belgium.

Waiting Little People – Sergey Loier / Russia
This set on orphans was my favourite of the exhibition; the pictures are beautiful, haunting and poignant.
It’s almost like a fairytale with the bit in the notes that all the children in the pictures found homes
I hope they are happy

Alter Gogo Getters – Andrew Esiebo – Nigeria
The Gogo Getters are a football team made up entirely of grandmothers

Adrián F. Milanès / Cuba

Spring Summer Collection 2018 – Hassan Hajjaj / Morroco
I loved these playful photos from Hassan Hajjaj

And the picture I didn’t take… is young Mack Magagane’s ‘I’ll Be Gone Soon,’ black and white pictures shot in Johannesburg which shed light on teen suicide in South Africa

The next Photoquai exhibition happens in 2013

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

These pictures are from November when I first got the Jawbone UP, back then there was so much keenness to try this little bracelet.
I didn’t mind that I had to go all the way to Mount Vernon to get mine because the at&t store in Bellingham was sold out of the UP that morning.
The UP is basically a cool little wristband step-counter and sleep tracker that syncs with the Jawbone iPhone app and displays data in a user-friendly graph .

According to Jawbone,

UP™ by Jawbone® is the combination of a wristband and iPhone® app that tracks your activity and sleep and inspires you to move more, sleep better and eat smarter.

As a self-proclaimed lover of ‘shiny new things,’ I took to the UP quickly and loved how unobtrusive and easy it was to use.
I’ve never been focused on tracking my fitness activity before; sure, I turn on my running app when I go running, but I’ve never tried to figure out overall how much I move in a day.
The band has three activity settings, regular, active and sleep. Active is for when you’re exercising.
I keep mine in regular mode most of the time except for when I’m sleeping. I thought I walked a lot, but wearing the UP put it in perspective.
I could do better, in fact I’ve made a few changes since I started wearing the band; I take the stairs, I try to take little walks during the day, I generally try to move more, and that’s what the UP aims to do.
I love the little buzzes (reminders) that remind me if I haven’t moved in two hours.
The sleep tracker is fairly helpful, it tracks sleep cycle, and shows light and deep sleep.
It has a built-in alarm clock that gently rouses you from sleep…
I find using the meal tracker a little cumbersome, same for finding friends who have the UP so I don’t use these features.

The UP isn’t without issues, I’m on my second device – the first had battery issues, couldn’t sustain a charge past a day, and then one day it died.
The replacement works perfectly so far, but I’m not sure how long that would last.
In fact the UP has been bogged down with so much hardware issues that Jawbone has a ‘No questions asked guarantee’ refund
Still, I love my UP, it’s helped me make some little lifestyle changes, I try to walk more, I’m horrified at how poorly I sleep and trying to work on it.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

Today I’m going to tell you about these adorable cookies I found at the Italian store, and my favourite way to snack on them.
My friend D. told me about these cookies years ago, along with charming stories of the summers he spent in Italy with his grandmother
I think I fell in love with his childhood a little, which made the cookies seem a bit more magical when I first saw them.

Bucaneve or snowdrop is a flower shaped popular Italian cookie with frosting on top.
At teatime when he was a kid, D’s grandmother would toss of few of bucaneve cookies in a bowl of sweetened milk and leave a few out for dunking or tossing in later.
It’s simple cookie; dry, sweet and crumbly with a delicate vanilla flavor; and doesn’t fall apart when dipped in milk.

This is exactly how I eat them too… milk and Bucaneve cookes, like cereal in sweetened almond milk; it tastes indulgent, like I’m having dessert.
With the holidays upon us, I see a lot of snacking in my future, and how fitting it will be… snacking on snowdrops.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I first heard of La Vallée Village whilst shopping at Bicester Village; both are part of the Chic Outlet Shopping, a ‘collection’ of nine luxury outlet centres in Europe.
I wrote about Bicester two years ago, and last month I had a chance to go to La Vallée Village, east of Paris about 35 minutes via shuttle.
The centre is much like Bicester, quaint outdoor settings, featuring a large variety of designer brands at steep discounts. The centre also has an art gallery.
Next to the outlet is the huge Centre Commercial Val d’Europe which has Sea Life, and Disneyland Paris is just five minutes away.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

After my friend E. had her baby, she came up with an idea for a ‘milk bar’ – where lactating mothers would go and hang out and feed their babies in comfort.
And then she worried that people could mistake it for a ‘Korova Milk Bar’ type of establishment and then there’ll be all sorts of confusion – doesn’t that sound more like the beginnings of a Judd Apatow comedy?

Of course there are regular milk bars that just serve dairy based desserts, and in recent times milk bars have become hip, and perhaps the hippest of them all is Momofuku Milk Bar.
Visiting Momofuku’s milk bar was one of the things I was looking forward to on my trip to New York.
The concept of this innovative dessert bar fascinates me; they serve classic desserts like cookies, pies, ice cream and milkshakes but made with wacky ingredients like cereal, pretzels, kimchi, potato chips, etc.
The desserts have daring names like Crack Pie, Compost Cookie and Cereal Milk – how can you not want to try them?

I tried the Crack Pie which is gooey, sweet and chewy and very buttery, it’s awesomely good, so good you probably shouldn’t eat the whole thing. I have this thing where I get a little light headed and jittery when I’ve had too much sugar, and that’s always my cue to stop.

The Corn Cookie is so good, it’s addictive, you keep on wanting more and more – again there’s no skimping on sugar and butter here.

@adjoa tried the Cereal Milk which she proclaimed the ‘best thing ever!’ so I had to take a sip – it’s like really creamy Horlicks and leftover milk after you’ve had three bowls of Frosted Flakes.

And the Compost Cookie…? I couldn’t even begin to describe it – it’s sugary and salty and crunchy and buttery.
Someone described it as being like eating candy and potato chips all at once, and they’re right!
We got a few cookies for our plane ride home and to share with friends and family at home – except it never made it to those friends and family.

The prudent thing to do after indulging like we did at Momofuku Milk Bar would be to run a marathon; that is if you haven’t fallen into a sugar coma already.
We did the next best thing though, walking all over Manhattan, from Battery Park to Central Park.
Then we did a bad thing; we had pizza at the Plaza!
We were on vacation and it was all worth it.

The milk bar (East Village) had just moved to its new location when we went, it’s next door in a small unpretentious shopfront with high tables for standing about.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I love these chocolate bars just for their retro automobile artwork – how cool are they?
It’s pretty good chocolate too, Belgian chocolate made with real cocoa butter.
It’s made by Starbrook Airlines (it’s an imaginary airline), with art illustrations by Jaak De Koninck.
Some of his oil and watercolour paintings can be see at the Brussels Airport.
According to the company’s website their chocolates are produced in a semi-artisan way.
And they’re adherents of the ‘Belgian Chocolate Code’ this could also be an imaginary code, but like I said, it’s good chocolate.

Don’t they seem like the perfect bar for a road trip?
With its nostalgic renderings of cars, planes and airline travel.
I got a few this afternoon for my mini road trip this weekend

Urban Fare on Alberni (next to the Shangri-La) carries these, the Dan-D Pak store on Broadway has them too.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I had an Apple laptop at the turn of the (21st) century, a cute blueberry clamshell iBook – I spent a lot of time on it corresponding with a Tuareg man, I was certain he was my destiny.
I also started my first blog (a weird word back then), and discovered an amazing community of diarists.
I loved that little iBook even when it got buggy and crashed sometimes, and my biggest frustrations were software incompatibility issues and browser/website glitches.
In time I got a Dell laptop and somehow, and I’m not sure exactly when this happened – I became an Apple Hater!

Yes, I was an Apple hater.
It wasn’t the deep seething hate that consumes you; this was mild contempt with a dash of general indifference.
Like most ‘haters’ I thought Apple products were overpriced hypes with closed architecture.
It may have begun with the launch of the iPod, and the mass fixation that followed; everyone wanted one and proclaimed it an innovation.
My iriver MP3 player had all the features of the iPod plus a built-in FM tuner, yet no one raved about it.
Then the iPhone happened… I’ve ranted about the iPhone before so I won’t get into that.
I got the HTC Prophet (Windows mobile 5.0) a year before the iPhone debuted.
I loved my prophet! Probably because of all the time I spent on it – I joined XDA Developers and tweaked the heck out of that phone; it was as if I’d built my perfect phone.
The iPhone did not tempt me, as far as I was concerned my phone was superior to the iPhone.

Over the next several years I felt smug for not falling for the Apple hype, my laptops were Windows, (there was the Linux running Eee PC I used briefly), and my phone and mp3 players weren’t Apple.
With two pivotal incidents last year, I went from Apple-hater to owning several Apple products.
The first, was the announcement of the iPad, it was the first of Apple product that I felt was worth a little hype (not a whole lot though!), then I took one look at it and I had to have it – I envisioned many scenarios where it’ll come in handy.

The second incident came from dissatisfaction with my phone; I got the Google G1 phone (HTC Dream) in the summer of 2009.
It was exciting, new OS, open-source and all.
My issue with that phone was that there were no updates available for my hardware beyond version 1.5 (Cupcake), which basically rendered my phone obsolete three months after I’d gotten it.
Of course, I could have found cooked ROM and customized the phone to my specifications, but that wasn’t why I got the phone; I wanted a phone that I’d loved as is.
It no longer makes sense to me to pay money for a phone and spend ridiculous amounts of time tinkering with it (doing potentially illegal stuff), I’m not a developer, I just want a phone that works.

I could no longer deny the appeal of the iPhone, maybe I’m just getting old but I liked that it’s easy to use and works relatively well.
So I got the iPhone 4 in May of last year.

This Christmas I got a new MacBook Air to replace my aging Windows laptop, it’s going to be my primary computer – and this officially makes me a Mac user, I’m no longer a PC (except for work).

In the end there wasn’t a long drawn out decision to switch, and so far I love the simplicity and ease of use of my MacBook Air.
Maybe we’re still in the honeymoon phase…
I still don’t like iTunes, and I miss Live Writer – I haven’t found a worthy Mac version yet.

So I’m not quite the MacHead, it took me a decade to come around and i’m quite enjoying this switch.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.

I’ve never read (or bought) a self-help or relationship book in my life.
It’s not that they aren’t helpful, they probably are; I’m just too cynical to be helped.

I’ve been meaning to write about ‘What Do We Do Now?’ for months, but I guess life got in the way.
I bought two copies of this book mainly because of the authors; Keith and the Girl.
I gave the extra copy to my sister.
Keith and Chemda are hosts of the comedy podcast, Keith and the Girl; I’ve been listening to the show for close to four years now.

KATG is a very funny show, you should go download a couple and listen to them right now.
I was going to do a witty insightful review of the book, but I unfortunately have a cough and I don’t feel so hot right now.

So go read the reviews on Amazon instead and trust me when I say the book is good, it’s funny, practical common-sense, modern day relationship problems and advice.

©2012 the whinery 2.0. All Rights Reserved.