What happens to my brain when it’s not challenged enough to keep it in good condition over extended periods of time.
That’s the term I’ve coined for it.
I suspect it’d happen to yours as well.
tan
A Fashion and Sewing Blog within this Blog
Between 2013-2015, sewing and fashion design was a big part of my free time. It is again and will continue for the foreseeable future. As part of this move and in anticipation of more articles on sewing and fashion, I have organized the 110 articles on said topics that are this blog into a number of categories listed below. You will also be able to find them on the My Fashion page, or under the menu at the top under My Art, or in the Categories menu at bottom left, if you want to see the articles together in some sense.
Me Racing the Bus on Foot in Halifax
A few days ago, my friend Jack from the Halifolks site (and Facebook page) that tells wonderful stories of Haligonians, got a video made of me racing the #1 bus in Halifax on foot for about 4 miles. It has turned out to be shockingly popular as I didn’t think that many would care for me and my running routines! The YouTube version below that I can embed here only has over a thousand views at this point.
However, the Facebook version currently has over 98,500 views, something like 2400 Shares, 2000 Likes and a couple of hundred comments!
It’s gotten enough positive reaction that the local media have even asked me to do stories with them!
Kelland Sundahl of CTV News, and camera man Jay, did this really fun report!
Steve Silva of GlobalTV was kind enough to accommodate my work schedule and put together this great story without a lot of time with me.
The local Chronicle-Herald newspaper interviewed me for more than just the racing and running in this article by Jacqueline Arsenault.
I also did radio interviews on the Sheldon MacLeod show, and FX101.9 country station!
Phew! What a whirlwind of a couple of days!
Thank you so much to Jack from Halifolks for the video, and egging me to do it cause I’ve done this for at least a decade and never cared enough to get anybody to document it. I do it for the training benefits, honestly! Keeps my running fun. It’s a hard physical workout, but also a tough mental workout for when that bus passes me in the second half of the route that it usually does. It’s only a matter of luck to get the right stops and lights that if I run hard, I can come back to win. Jack had the insight this was going to be popular with the people so credits to him for it, and the fantastic job with limited equipment that he had!
The bus driver, Brad, was definitely a co-star with his fantastic attitude and sense of humour! Thanks to him, for sure! He wants a rematch and I’ll be glad to oblige. Considering I win about half the races and have beaten him twice now, he’s due for a win!
Of course, I have to thank all the people who were supportive online to watch, react, comment, Share and such. You’re all too kind!
Special thanks go to my Facebook friends who not only did the above, but had to put up with stories, tags and such of me relating to this story clogging their newsfeeds worse than Donald Trump’s media hogging could ever do to them!
And last but not least, thank you to all the media people who gave me a chance to be in the media, spending time with me to create their journalistic pieces!
I’m enjoying my 15 minutes of fame, but secretly hoping I’m not going to use it all here! 🙂
My Haiku Collection about my Trip to Viet Nam
I have just started to the haiku collection I wrote mostly in March 2015, during my life changing return to Viet Nam, 35 years after fleeing as a child refugee. It is called Tales of an Expat Tourist.
This is the backgrounder to the collection on my poetry blog. It has a link to the first of 62 haiku in the collection, with notes to give more information on its subject matter, as will be done with all subsequent haiku in the collection.
If you like poetry, very personal travelogue style writings, Viet Nam and/or Vietnamese culture, I hope you will give it a read. Thank you.
The Pho Incident (A Story from my Childhood)
This past winter, I entered the CBC Literary Awards competition for Creative Nonfiction. In short, it’s a contest for style of how you tell a real story in 1500 words or less. The Long List was recently announced and I wasn’t on it, which meant I can now share it here with you! Entries published anywhere until now would have been disqualified from the competition.
This event had an impact on something in my near future at the time of writing, on which I contemplated and which has since passed. In a few days, I will post the follow-up to my contemplation at the story’s end.
I hope you’ll like it and thanks for reading. 🙂
Digital Citizen 