Hello?
Just in case there are still one or two people who still stumble across this site from time to time, or maybe never quite got around to deleting that dead RSS feed, Verbalized is being resurrected — sort of. It’s going to be more of a running commentary/stream of consciousness type thing, rather than a full-blown blog. I don’t do well with the pressure to sit down and write out a well-formed, carefully thought out entry, but there certainly are a lot of random thoughts bouncing around in my head, and I might as well let them out for the internet in general.
Check back here soon(ish).
3 people have said something // posted under: Life in general
Endings and beginnings
You’ve probably noticed that I haven’t been writing here much anymore, and that when I do it’s usually pretty boring. I’ve got so many things on the go lately that I hardly even have time to think about this site, let alone sit down and write an interesting, well thought-out entry. And honestly, there aren’t many things that I can write about on here anymore without feeling like I’m divulging just a little bit too much of my life to the internet. Work is certainly off-limits, as is anything too specific when it comes to university and my classes. I don’t feel comfortable writing about friendships or relationships in any detail (or even at all), and what’s left after all that self-censoring usually isn’t worth writing.
There are a lot of things I could be saying on here, but the bottom line is that there just aren’t enough hours in the day to say it all. I’m wrapping up my last year of university before I graduate, pack my bags, and head off to conquer the world, and I’ve undertaken a few big projects that can easily suck up any spare moments that I might have. One of these projects is a business that I’m in the process of launching — an online business, in an area that I’ve been incredibly excited about lately — but I’m not going to give away any details on here because it’s still in the very early stages and I definitely don’t want to let anything slip to a potential competitor that might stumble across this site.
One of the other projects is something I can talk about, though. In fact, I’m going to do more than just talk about it; I’m going to tell you to go check it out, bookmark it, come back to it from time to time, maybe even pass it on to your friends if you find it interesting: I’ve just launched a sort of online magazine called “En Amour”, which I’m very excited about. There’s not a lot of content there yet, but I’ll be updating it on a daily basis.
Don’t expect too many more updates here on Verbalized.net, at least not for a while. I’m not killing off the site entirely, but when (if?) I do start writing here again it’s going to be in a different format and on different topics. It’s been fun, but now it’s time to move on…
2 people have said something // posted under: Life in general, Design and business
Champagne and high heels
Having lived in Victoria for my entire life, afternoon tea at the Empress Hotel was something I had always known about. The hotel itself has become a definition of this city as a whole, topping the “must-see” list of nearly every single visitor and gracing the glossy fronts of hundreds of postcards, and its afternoon tea, served in the supremely elegant Tea Lobby, is something of a Victoria institution. An institution, that is, that I had never really considered taking part in until very recently.
Last week, while sipping late-night lattés in a cozy coffee house and dishing about our latest male-related woes, one of my friends casually remarked that we should have tea at the Empress some time soon, before we all left the city and headed off to the far corners of the world in pursuit of adventures and high-flying careers. Her suggestion was met with immediate enthusiasm, because really, is there any better excuse to put on a pretty dress, some high-heeled shoes, and a strand of pearls in the middle of the day than a traditional British-style afternoon tea in the city’s nicest hotel? Probably not.
Plans were nailed down, reservations were made, and this past Thursday saw us sitting around a table in the Tea Lobby, confronted with the first of several decisions that we would have to make: Would we have the traditional tea, or would we splurge on the enticingly-named Royal Tea, which happened to include champagne? This decision turned out to be a no-brainer — if we were going to do tea, we were going to do it in style. The second decision — choosing the type of tea we would be drinking — was easily reached by selecting the most exotic-sounding, impossible-to-pronounce option on the menu, and soon we were sipping perfectly milky, slightly sweetened tea out of the finest of china teacups. The other decisions, presented on a multi-tiered silver tray loaded down with everything from sandwich slivers to chocolate truffles, were not quite so straight-forward. Which of the tiny, delicate-looking sandwiches should be eaten first? Should the oh-so-decadent smoked salmon with cream cheese sandwich be consumed before the curried chicken and mango one, or afterwards? How much clotted cream can be slathered onto a miniature scone without crossing the boundary between indulgence and indigestion? And would it really be a good idea to take the server up on her offer to bring more of anything (anything!) on those trays?
In the end, we might have felt more like rolling than walking out of the Tea Lobby, but I can safely say that we managed to do complete justice to afternoon tea at the Empress. Oh, did we ever. And now, after living in this city for twenty-one long years, I can finally say that I’ve taken part in one of Victoria’s great traditions.
4 people have said something // posted under: Life in general