The Musings of the Kat

Posted by Kat Crichton Sat, 01 May 2010 14:29:00 GMT

This time, from the north east corner of Ploscha Rynok, looking down towards the Dominican Church.

I had a brief chat with another artist, who's been painting around the square for many years. The chat was brief in no small part because of the limits of not speaking the same language. He showed me a press clipping of him painting in the square.

It's fun painting in such a busy place. Makes you feel like part of the action. Lots of people came up and had a look at the painting and several stopped to talk.

Posted by Kat Crichton Sat, 01 May 2010 13:58:00 GMT

Today is the day they celebrate “Batyarstvo” (an idle and debauched style of life) in L’viv.

A selection of smartly dressed rascals getting up to mischief and occasionally being reprimanded by the police.

Ploscha Rynok is heaving with people today, there’s live music, dancing and some deeply debaucherous foodstuffs.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 28 Apr 2010 07:55:00 GMT

I’ve been living and working in L’viv (a spectacular Medieval city near the west border of Ukraine) for a couple of weeks now.

I’m trying to learn a bit of the language, but it’s fairly hard getting your message across. Very few people who went to school during the Soviet era learnt English, because the chances of travelling anywhere where it was spoken were very slim.

Only people who have been in education in the last 20 years are likely to have picked up any English, so at the moment, the cut-off age is early-thirties.

Last weekend, I managed to find an art supplies shop thanks to some helpful ladies in a local art gallery. So I set to work sketching and painting one of the views from my balcony onto Ploscha Rynok (Market Square).

Hopefully the weather will be as good this weekend, so I can get out and paint somewhere else.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 15 Nov 2006 20:28:00 GMT

Today I tried to book a ticket to go and see The Decemberists in Seattle using the Ticketmaster Web site. Everything went fine until I tried to pay for the e-ticket using my credit card issued in the UK. Lo and behold I am obliged to choose my State from a selection of US States and enter my Zip code.

This seems pretty silly since the ticket would not even be physically delivered. Given that making credit transactions in the US is ridiculously easy - my signature hasn't been checked once in the last month - it's amazing that the Web is so unaccommodating.

Bad Web design is one of my pet peeves. All Web sites should be location agnostic given the global nature of the internet. Ticketmaster have a UK presence, but the events on the US site don't show on the UK site. Seems the only way I can see the show is turn up on the night and hope.

Posted by Kat Crichton Fri, 03 Nov 2006 19:32:00 GMT

I'm always up for trying local food when I travel and Seattle is no exception to that rule. So yesterday I had my first ever burrito, at Taco Del Mar - a Mexian fast food franchise in America and Canada.

I wasn't at all sure what I was asking for, so I tried to follow Mike's lead picking a wholegrain burrito with guacamole, sour cream, beans, rice, chicken, cheese and hot sauce. My order came to a couple of dollars more than Mikes, so some of that stuff must have been optional.

When we got back to the office I had a quick lesson on the art of eating a burrito. Unwrap one end of the foil wrapping, eat the end and unwrap as you go. I later realised that these same instructions were printed on the bag.

So what did it taste like? Relatively satisfying but kinda mushy. I think I'd prefer it with a little more crunch or bite. Not bad though, interesting mix of flavours. I think perhaps the fun is in choosing a different mix of fillings each time.

Taco Del Mar's speciality seems to be seafood (as the name would indicate, so next time I might get a fishy burrito (if that doesn't sound like too much of an inuendo).

Posted by Kat Crichton Thu, 02 Nov 2006 22:30:00 GMT

Well, the nice weather lasted a few days and was followed by some bitter cold (I'm told these are typical of an El Niño year) but now the rain has set in. Still I'm hardly unused to rain, living as I do in sunny England.

On Sunday, I visited the Bodies exhibition at 800 Pike. Fascinating! If you have not heard yet, this exhbition is made up of preserved human remains, disected and annotated.

It's not nearly as gruesome as I imagined it would be, but it is a little creepy to think that these people all had lives. In some ways it's like reading an anatomy book in 3D.

Posted by Kat Crichton Wed, 25 Oct 2006 10:13:00 GMT

My company has sent me to our Seattle office to work on a project that requires support by someone in the same time-zone as our customer in South Africa.

This is the first time I've been to the US. I've never really had the urge to visit before - there are many other places in the world that are more interesting to me due to their cultural differences from the UK. However, I've recently become more interested as I video conference with my colleagues in Seattle every day.

I'm staying in Bellevue, the office is in Kirkland and about the same distance away to the NE is Redmond, home of Microsoft.

So far I've only really seen shopping malls and fast food restaurants, but hopefully I'll explore downtown a bit at the weekend.

Posted by Kat Crichton Mon, 25 Sep 2006 05:15:00 GMT

I thought I'd done a pretty good job of booking the hotel in Paris entirely in French (trois chambres simple pour un nuit). However, on arrival at 2200h - my colleagues and I were told at the reception of the Hotel Printemps that there was no reservation. Thankfully they had three shabby little rooms on the top floor available.

It didn't exactly set us up for a good meeting the next day and the train journey was sweltering. Fortunately, the village we went to was beautifully picturesque and within a few minutes of arriving, we felt relaxed and calm.

The second night was spent in the Quality Hotel in the business district. Usually the rule is that if something has to mention an attribute such as quality in its name, it will probably be trying to make up for a lack of that attribute. However, the Quality Hotel was indeed of high quality. My evening meal of duck with a garlic jus was particularly good.

The meetings went well and my return flight came far too quickly with not a moment of time available for sightseeing or shopping. Must revisit Paris soon for leisure rather than work.