Activity here is going to be really infrequent for the next several months, till when I feel I can speak freely again.

I am doing really well, but I am not in the sharing mode right now.

Goodbye Tokyo! We’ll be back again.

Meanwhile, I went from posting here once a week to… once a month.

I’ve been really, really busy. I am sure this is not new to you if you’ve been reading for a while. Some of you may know (from my previous post) that John and I brought our house, so we’ve been busy working on interior changes. The house is in great shape, but the paint color needs to change, wood floor needed to be put in, and we also need new carpet. We’ve also ordered a few pieces of funiture but it will take a while before they arrive.

I’ve also done a few cool things, including being in this highly popular PSA for Taiwanese Census campaign. Showed my paintings in Claremont Village (California) for the entire month of February, made a trip to Montreal, Canada, for a beautiful winter wedding, went skiing in Utah, and now, I am in Taiwan, for my first overseas art exhibition!!!!!

I’ve been working on this art exhibition since last summer. This is the first time I put this much effort into being in an art show. Although it’s not my solo show (that’s a long term goal), because it involved international communication and coordination with some much older artists with whom I not only have a big age gap but a cultural difference, it was a lot of work. It also was the first time I shipped framed paintings overseas (that’s another story and half in itself), and the first time I felt nervous about attending an art show opening.

The show opened yesterday, in a huge, beautiful gallery at the Cultural Center in Kaoshiung (Taiwan), and was a great success. A lot of people came to the opening reception/ribbon cutting ceremony. I do not believe Americans have ribbon cutting for an art show opening, but Taiwanese do. Since I haven’t lived in this country for twenty years already, I felt like an outsider looking in. Wow, such serious odeal for an opening. Ok I am glad the hosting organization took us (US Artists) so seriously.

I received many good comments on my four oil paintings in the show. It felt truly gratifying to show my works in my home country, and see them so well received. What touched me more was my support group — i.e. my parents, John, John’s dad, my relatives, my dear friend Erin and her boyfriend, John’s side of friends, plus many other family friends. Most of them had to travel to be there. Ah I love them all!

The show will run itself until April 7th. In the meantime, John and I will go to Tokyo for six days, plus spend a few more days in Taipei (John’s hometown) be with his dad, and visit a few friends. We’ll return to the US on April 6th, and hopefully… it won’t take me too long to write about this trip in full.

The National Christmas Tree in front of White House

I seem to always slow down on my posts when a year comes to its end. This was true last year, but it’s especially bad this year. By now there are 4 trips that I haven’t written a word about, plus loads of other going - ons that went un-documented.

Oh well, this means I am living a full life. As the weather cools down, the trees turned gold, and distant mountain tops covered with snow, I just want to slow down and “feel” evey waking moment. This is when I tend to negelect my blog.

Christmas was wonderful. It was full of family visits. Since this is the first Christmas since John and I got married, it was the usual merry jolly x 2. John and I spent good quality time with his family, his aunts + uncles + cousins + nieces+ nephews, plus my family. My dad, sister, and brother flew in to be with us, and it was very nice to have our whole family under one roof (which doesn’t happen often anymore). It was also nice to see John’s side of the extended family and feel a bit more acquainted with them. In addition to celebrating Christmas, one of John’s aunts celebrated her 40th wedding anniversary, plus there were 3 birthdays, therefore we had two cakes on top of all the festive food. Imagine the amount of eating…

But, all in all, it was nice.

The 32' high tree was magnificent. Although it was so cold, it was worth the metro ride and walk.

Here’s a photo of us in front of the National Christmas tree in Washington D.C. It was taken during our visit there two weeks ago.

A small part of John's huge family. I am still getting to know them. This was taken on Thranksgiving Day.

And, here’s a photo taken at one of John’s aunt’s house during Thanksgiving. Did I ever mention that John’s side of the family is huge? For Christmas, it was the same size of gathering, but I don’t have any group photos in my camera.

And I made a mistake of not taking photos with my family during Christmas. I guses we’ll have to make up for it for the New Years, when we count down at Las Vegas strip. However, my sister will be missing at that time.

• I am practicing the noble concept of “keep friends close, keep enemies closer”. It tortures me to be fake but I have to protect myself from liers.
• It sucks to be betrayed by someone I considered a good friend. No, I did not think she would be a vitally important friend to begin with, but I did treasured her as a good friend. Therefore, betrayal is upsetting.
• I dispise those who steps over others, manipulates, lies, kisses other’s ass, in order to get ahead. OkI know she’s insanely jealous of me but I’d very much appreciate some respect for boundaries.
• Thank God that besides friendship, all other areas in my life are peachy happy. I am thankful for that.
• I am still busy with painting deadlines and will continue to be till end of next month at least.
• Because I am busy, I looks like I’ll write about my recent trips backwards — from the most recent trip (Washington DC this past weekend) then to the previous one (Costa Rica in mid November). I figure that since the Costa Rica travelogue is already late, I should write about DC trip first to catch that fresh-after-the-trip feeling.
• I love John. He’s perfect for me.

More later…

I’ve been really busy (doesn’t this sound familiar?). I’ve been real busy doing my favorite things such as taking trips, caring for Taiwan, spending time with my family, meeting up with friends, plus painting!!! Painting!!! And more painting!!!

In the past few months I’ve finished more paintings than I normally produce, because I have some deadlines to meet. Here’s one of them. It’s oil on canvas, 30″ x 24″, and titled “Many Colors of Zion”. It depicts the valley floor of Zion National Park in its autumn splendor, as the field receives a blanket of gold.

I am working on a series of paintings on Zion National Park. This one is #3. This painting, plus another recent landscape I did, will be in a group show this weekend in El Monte.

The joy is indescribable. I made a monumental leap in my painting tonight! I am so excited right now that I don’t think I can fall asleep tonight!

Lately I’ve been doing lots of reading, thinking, reflecting, and listening to other artists. I have a critique group and that really helped too. After weeks of meditating on some thoughts, there’s finally a break through today. I know now that from this day forward my paintings will be so much more alive, and engaging, than before. I am working on the 3rd painting in my Zion series right now, and boy, this third one is worlds above the first and second. The improvement is such a great leap that now I don’t like most of my recent works anymore.

To be honest, the past couple of months have been frustrating creativity-wise. Perhaps it was the busy life I lead, or the expectation I give myself, or the upsetting changes at work, I felt quite constraint. The creative energy that once infuse me seemed to have gone dried. I was quite frustrated with myself that I dealt with it not by taking a break, but by painting more, which probably added to the stress.

But today that layer of grey fog is officially gone, in replacement is the long-awaited rays of sunlight! This newly rekindled energy came just in time for my serious deadlines too, as I’ll be in two shows in December, then one in March 2010 (overseas), then another one in June 2010, then another one to get ready for in March 2011.

Yay!

We just returned from a 6-day trip to Costa Rica with several other folks.

We spent most of our time in Futuna, the central part of Costa Rica where the famous Arenal Volcano is. One thing that’s different about this trip was that for 4 out of those 6 days, internet was readily available, therefore I’ve written some entries already. Once the images are ready, you’ll see posting here from our very good start of the trip to the not noteworthy end of it. Not noteworthy how? Answer: travel companions matters…

Anyhow, for the most part it was very beautiful, enjoyable, and adventurous. John and I were really happy to visit Central America for the first time. Stay tunned for those entries.

Surrounded by this kind of gorgeous water, and enjoyed snorkeling 2-3 times a day, it didn’t take us too long to decide that we want to get certified in scuba diving. There’s a Dive Center on our resort island that offered full-service diving package with lessons given by multi-lingual instructors. It was all very convenient.

To get a scuba diving license we needed to take three lessons. Each lesson started with a video session, then the practice dive follows. It was a great decision to get certified in Maldives, because if we were to do the same at, let’s say, Sports Chalet, then we would practice in a pool. However, out in the Maldivian waters, all practice dives were out in the ocean. We dived the house roof on Coco Palm’s Dhuni Kolhu island, and it was superb!

I apologize that I don’t have great underwater pictures to show. We did have some taken, with those rolling underwater disposable cameras, but all pictures turned out so bleached out that they don’t do justice of the amazing underwater world at all, therefore I’ll only show the one that turned out the best.

See the little blue fishes? They were my favorites.

Now onto some pictures of us diving.

This was taken during our very first dive. Notice how hard we tried to… hm…. dive… and not float…

I know that years down the road, when I become an expert diver, I’ll look at this picture and have a good laugh.

Signaling “ok” to our instructor.

When this picture was taken, there were actually tons of  little pink and purple fishes, plus little blue fishes, and other beautiful fishes all around us. The reef was full of colors as well. Right behind us was a huge red reef with a starfish underneath it. Unfortunately, none got recorded with disposable film.

Our instructor took this one for us right after we emerged from water. Funny how we looked so out of breath!

Here’s a picture with our German diving instructor, Ingo. If my back looked crooked, it was because the diving equipments were so heavy!

We passed the exam, and got our certificate, the day before we leave Maldives. From now I can dive 12 meters (forty feet) with an instructor. Yay! Although this is only the beginning step in diving, I was very excited about the accomplishment. Learning to dive has been on my to-learn list for years now, and it felt so good to finally do it, with John, on our honeymoon trip!

The next level up would be to acquire open water diving certificate which will allow us to dive in open water on our own (with a diving buddy, of course). We’ll get that done on our next beach vacation, whenever that is.

Here’s the graduates pointing at our names on the board.

With that, we concluded our wonderful 8 day honeymoon trip in Maldives. We created so many beautiful memories together during this trip that we want to re-visit Maldives again. Perhaps for one of our anniversaries in the future.

]]> http://wakinghour.net/blessed/?feed=rss2&p=245 http://wakinghour.net/blessed/?p=236 http://wakinghour.net/blessed/?p=236#comments Fri, 06 Nov 2009 10:05:34 +0000 Annalise http://wakinghour.net/blessed/?p=236

 While taking a tour of a local village, our guide asked as a trivia question. He said whoever gets it right at the end of the tour will win a prize.

The question was: “How many different colors of coconut are there in Maldives?”

So, throughout the walking tour, I kept on looking up to observe the shades of colors of coconuts. I saw 9 different colors, but I suspect it was really around 12 to 16. At the end my answer was tweleve — tweleve different colors of coconut.

Ah I was so wrong! The guide said there was only four. Four only? Yes, four only he said. There’s the green, the yellow, the red, and the brown… what a boring answer I thought.

I saw different shades of green, yellow, red and brown. For example, the yellower green, the redder green, the browner green, the redder and browner green, the green with a slight tint of grey and blue….etc. How can there only be 4 different colors?

I guess as an art person, it’s innate in me to make more out of colors.