Weekly Photo: Hope

Coloring illutions.

Walking around one of these days I came across this bulding. The colorful flowers on the balconies of a high apartment caught my attention as they made the whole building to come alive even as it was the only part where a little color could be found. I loved the idea that the tenants didn’t lose hope and tried to have their flowers no matter what, nor the winter time neither the distinction of being the only ones standing out. All in all, I like the whole composition, both visual and humane.

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Let’s food be our guide!

A feast of colors and aromas.

From the original recipes cooked in the ancient city of Petra (Jordan), to the modern fast food style find in places like Singapore and Los Angeles, hundreds of culinary trips are shown in the book Food Journeys of a Lifetime.

The collection of 500 places was prepare by the National Geographic team to give the readers a wonderful leisure time in which it’s really hard not to get hungry after finishing every chapter.

It’s just a matter of letting our hunger take us around the book to start traveling with our minds to famous street markets such as St. Lawrence in Toronto, Canada; the European cafés and bistros from Paris to Prague; and the museums dedicated to Food, like the one in Vevey, Switzerland, called Alimentarium.

Time just flies while going through every one of the food-traveling stories shown here, encouraging the readers to start a culinary journery of their own.

Now, it’s just a matter of packing a knife and a fork, and getting ready to try new and traditional dishes in the well known places for their food such as Italy, or soon-to-be discovered towns, and let food and our appetite lead the way!

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Weekly Photo: Simple

The wonders of taking a moment and seeing around.

Life is full of simple things that might seem really small, but they are there for us, letting us see all its essence at a glance, and if we had the chance to stop for a little while and really observe them, we can get a special moment of peace and inspiration.

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From Beethoven’s hands

Text by Nora Vasconcelos

Music from the heart.

Very well recognized around the world for his beautiful music, Ludwig Van Beethoven spent as well some of his time writing several letters, from his early years around 1783 when he was a young man talking about his love for music to Frederick Maximilian, to the last year of his life in 1827, when he wrote to Ignez Moscheles, a Czech composer, letting him know his intentions of finishing his 10th symphony as soon as his health improved.

This letters were put together in a compilation made by Ludwig Nohl, a German music scholar. These letters were published in German, in 1866. Years later, the book Beethoven Letters was translated into English by Grace Wallance.

From this collection of letters, three of them were taken to be the base on which the movie Immortal Beloved was done. The movie takes the name of one of the phrases written by the composer while asking her to remain faithful to his feelings.

Now, a new chapter in Beethoven’s life can be known, as this week was presented to the world another letter -recently discovered- written in 1823 by the composer, this time to the musician Franz Stockhausen.

Beethoven trusted this time his trouble to Stockhausen, asking him for help to promote his work as he was having some money and health problems. As contradictory as it might seems, nowadays this document it worth nearly 200,000 dollars.

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Weekly Photo: Peaceful

A place to find oneself.

I always find amazing how hidden gardens can be such peaceful spots in the middle of crowded cities, like beautiful oasis in the middle of the desert.

It’s just a matter of getting around them, finding a nice bench and breathing deeply to feel relief and comfortable. Our thoughts come into place and our feelings get the strenght to go back to our hectic world.

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A desperate search for Einstein’s last theory

Text and Photo by Nora Vasconcelos

When the world goes upside down.

David Swift is a young professor who spends his days at Columbia University sharing with his students his passion for physics. As his personal life is going through a rough path, and he’s trying to figure it out why, he’s receives an unexpected called from the
hospital where he’s mentor is agonizing and wishes to seeing him.

Is in this novel, Final Theory, by Mark Alpert, where Hans Keinman, a brilliant scientific who gain fame after being one of Albert Eintein’s students, shares a key secret related to his mentor with David Swift, after the professor has being attacked in his apartment.

Swift leaves the hospital with the sorrow for the situation of the professor, and with a group of numbers that were given to him by Keinman with no further explanation.

As soon as Swift leaves the hospital, a man hunt starts that takes the young physicist to runaway without even knowing why he has being chased. His path takes him to the surrounding of the University of Yale, where he looks for his old girlfriend, the scientific Monique Reynolds.

They work together to decipher the code that in the end might lead them to find the long lost final theory developed by Einstein.

If it happens to be real, such formula can become either a major discovery or the biggest danger for the planet. And for that reason, many people will do whatever it takes in order to find David Swift and make him deliver the coveted equation.

In the end, Swift and Raynolds come to the terms that they have to make decision that will change their lives and will assure that Eintein’s wishes related to his last theory become true.

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Weekly Photo: Launch

A voice of the Nature.

Here it’s, the wonderful sea, covering the shore with its warm water full of life. The waves come and go, sometimes strong and some other soft, sharing its voice with everybody who comes along, either the tourists who reach for the beach, or the sailors who launch their vessels to the open sea.

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