Tag: Events/Gatherings/Occasions

My Birthday in Paris and Yoyo Ma Concert, etc.

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Last month, I celebrated my birthday in Paris with the hubs and some friends. We stayed at one of our friends’s very lovely apartment, which overlooks the Eiffel Tower. It was wonderful!!! I didn’t wanna leave the room with the view. 😀

We also saw Yoyo Ma at the Philharmonie de Paris. We booked the ticket early this year, and it was almost fully booked! We were still lucky to get seats third row from the stage, facing the front. Here is a video of some of snaps and video shorts I took during the mini-breaks in the concert.

The Philharmonie de Paris was majestic outside, but a bit disappointing inside. But I still had fun watching the concert. It was a birthday gift from my wonderful husband. We had a great time despite the noisy people in the audience violently coughing and sneezing all the time. It was so nerve-wrackingly distracting. I do not know how Yo-Yo Ma managed to keep his calm and cool throughout all the noise. And having said that, I think it will be the last time I will be watching him live. It was too distracting. But it was a real pleasure seeing him live in the flesh. Best birthday gift ever!

Lastly, a bit of update on the job hunt: before going on this trip, exactly a day before, actually, I received a very good news from one of the companies I have applied to. I started working two weeks after this trip. I was ecstatic!!! I have been on the job for two weeks now, and so far, I’m still not disappointed. It’s a great company, one of the biggest French IT Consulting companies, and my client is the biggest aviation company in Europe. Also, I’m working on their big data platform, doing Data Engineering until the end of this year. After that, I might go into another project, of which, I do not know yet. 🙂 I am quite happy. C’est fini, la tristesse.

Cheers, and have a good week ahead!

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Fiesta Filipiniana in Le Triadou, France

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My friends and I, together with the Philippine Honorary Consul to Occitanie, Jeffrey Cabuay, went on a trip to Le Triadou, in the South of France to attend a Filipiniana Festival and Art Exhibit. This is a Philippine Festival featuring a programme with Philippine folk dances, and folk songs. There was also an art exhibit, where my artist friends and I contributed some artworks.

The event was organized by the Filipino association, “Tanglaw” (Guiding Light), with members mostly living in Montpellier, France, and around the area.

It was very refreshing to see young people (Filipino students) being very active in the event. There were also some participants and guests from surrounding European countries. It was all very entertaining, relaxing and enjoyable. Even the variety of Filipino food being sold at lunch time were delicious! I had such a great time in this event.

Here are the watercolor artworks I have submitted for the exhibit:

You can get more information about them here:

https://springfugue.com/pahiyas

https://springfugue.com/gumamela

https://springfugue.com/paintings

Also mentioned in my vlog:

https://phinaymarket.com for shopping online Filipino items https://www.zazzle.com/store/springfugue for shopping my online Filipino themed artworks

Thanks for dropping by and have a good day! 🙂

Drawing Contest (Concours de dessin) by Art Tea Shop Toulouse

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I was surprised and very flattered to be contacted by Art Tea Shop Toulouse for their Drawing Contest. They asked if they could use the photo I took of my watercolor artwork for their Drawing Contest’s flyers.

J’ai été surprise et très flattée d’être contactée par Art Tea Shop Toulouse pour leur concours de dessin. Ils m’ont demandé s’ils pouvaient utiliser pour les flyers de leur concours de dessin la photo de mon aquarelle que j’ai prise.

My original artwork and photo

If you are interested to join, do visit their instagram page for details.

Si vous êtes interessés, consultez leur instagram pour plus de détails.

This artwork was totally not my best but I guess I captured the mood really well. My composition was not bad at all. And overall, everything in the photo looks quite nice! 🙂

Cette peinture n’est pas du tout ma meilleure, mais je crois que j’ai bien saisi l’ambiance. Ma composition n’était pas mauvaise du tout. Et dans l’ensemble, tout ce qui est sur la photo est très joli 🙂

By the way, they also have a nice restaurant / tea shop, where we had one of our monthly watercolor sessions two years ago.

À propos, ils ont aussi un joli restaurant/salon de thé, où on a fait l’une de nos sessions mensuelles de l’aquarelle l y a deux ans.

Art Tea Shop in Toulouse

If you live around Toulouse, do drop by the Art Tea Shop. It’s a really nice brasserie and tea shop with warm, welcoming staff. The place is very cozy and quite original, they have good food and drinks, and they sell artworks from local artists, too. We totally had a good time there. I should go back one of these days. 🙂

Si vous habitez dans la région de Toulouse, ne manquez pas de vous rendre à l’Art Tea Shop. Il s’agit d’une brasserie et d’un salon de thé très sympathiques avec un personnel chaleureux et accueillant. L’endroit est très confortable et assez original, ils ont de la bonne nourriture et des boissons, et ils vendent des œuvres d’art d’artistes locaux, aussi. On a passé un très bon moment là-bas. Je devrais y retourner un de ces jours. 🙂

Youtube 100 Subscribers, Master’s Degree, Travels, and Other Updates

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Hello, everyone! It’s been a long time since I last made an update. My family and I went traveling for half a month in the Northwestern region of France last month. We were trying to make the most out of the seemingly very few “sunny” days of summer this year. It has been sooo rainy and windy. It felt more like autumn than summer.

Anyways, I was surprised this morning to find this email from Youtube:

Just when I was about to give up on this channel… hope to find more time for videos soon!

It’s been a long time since I last updated my Youtube art channel. I was surprised to find that I have actually been getting more subscribers. It was such a pleasant surprise. I do hope to be able to post more videos soon. I will try my very best. Although, I am going to be really very, very busy starting next month.

I have actually applied to a Master’s Degree in Artificial Intelligence. I managed to get accepted in the two schools here in France where I have sent my application. I chose the one whose campus is in Paris and Nice. But I’ll be taking live online classes since I live in Toulouse. As you know, my day job is actually IT-related, not the arts. I have decided that I am just going to keep doing art as a hobby, not as a main source of my bread and butter. Maybe someday. Maybe I just might be able to find a happy mix of art and IT, like maybe something along the lines of NFT’s… maybe. But for now, I’d like to focus on Artificial Intelligence coz I believe, there is a lot of opportunities there. The possibilities are infinite. 😉

As for my travels, my family and I went on a Food Trip Road Trip holiday going from Toulouse to the Northwest of France. It was quite tiring, but nevertheless, wonderful trip to celebrate our 10th Wedding Anniversary this year. We saw a lot of nice places and dined in Michelin-starred restaurants. I think I will write more about this in my travel blog.

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Plein Air Watercolor Painting in Gruissan, France

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Every year, my artist friends and I would take a short road trip to a nearby village in the South of France for a plein air water color session and to chill.

I was very happy with our choice of location this year — the Plage des Chalets, which is the setting of the movie, “Betty Blue”, or “37.2° le matin” as it is known in France. I’ve heard it is also a location of one of Leonardo di Caprio’s movies, but I couldn’t seem to find which one it is. Let me know in the comments if you know which one.

Anyway, here is a short video of our trip to Plage des Chalets and the pink salt mine (yes, “pink”, that’s right!) of Le salin de l’île Saint-Martin. We had a lovely time there. Hope you enjoy watching! And if you did, please give the “like” and “subscribe” button a hit.

Have a lovely summer weekend! 🙂

Happy New Year, etc.

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First of all, Happy New Year!!!

I can’t believe 2020 just happened. It just does not feel like we have really left last year though. It feels as if 2020 was not really done yet. It just wants to be a longer year than it already was. But I really don’t want to spend the first blog of the year ranting and complaining about 2020. I’m back here with some life updates, etc.

First off, I got myself a new iPad. It’s the 4th generation iPad Air. It’s really fancy-schmanzy and all coz I bought with it the Apple Pencil and the keyboard which also acts as a protective cover. So far, I’m really loving it. I bought it for the sole purpose of using Procreate coz I find that Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop nowadays are such an expensive scam. Since I’m already at ease with Apple products, why not just use Procreate, the much cheaper version?

Self-portrait created in Procreate and watercolor

Anyhoo, I’m thinking of creating some digital artworks with it, which I would like to mix with the old and familiar, watercolor. If you could see my new profile pic, I actually did the portrait sketch in Procreate but I did the soft-focus background with watercolor. I just love how the foreground seamlessly merged with the background. After unsuccessfully attempting to achieve this simple effect using Gimp, it is such a welcome respite to find how easy it is to do this with Procreate.

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La Fête des mères

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Finally had some time to paint my daughter’s photo which was taken during a school performance when she was five years old.

Mother’s Day in France was surprisingly celebrated on the first weekend of June this year. I have always thought that Mother’s Day here always falls on the last weekend of May. It is a little late to talk about Mother’s Day but it’s better late than never.

La Fête des mères en France a été étrangement célébrée la première semaine de juin cette année. J’ai toujours pensé que la Fete des meres ici tombe toujours sur le dernièr weekend de mois de mai. Il est un peu tard pour parler de la fête des mères, mais il vaut mieux tard que jamais.

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Champagne Brunch Buffet at La Brasserie

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For my birthday, hubby treated me to a surprise date for Champagne Lunch Buffet at La Brasserie of The Fullerton Bay Hotel.

Seafood and Champagne at La Brasserie, The Fullerton Bay Hotel

And for this occasion, I’m making a short review of the brasserie…

First of all, the place wows you in all directions upon entering. Immediately, you find yourself surrounded by sumptuous dessert on the buffet setting. The clear glass walls with the view of Marina Bay and the high ceiling make the room so bright and airy. It’s definitely my kind of room — beautiful view and very high ceiling. I was already sold!

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Miss Saigon on Broadway

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I really want to blog about this while everything is still fresh in my memory. So, here I am at midnight, on the last few days of my summer holiday here in France, jet-lagged and all, but I find enough energy to write about this experience. I have just been to see the musical for the first time ever last Monday, 10th July. I have always been a big fan of Miss Saigon for obvious reasons — because Lea Salonga was in it, and also being in my pre-teen years the first time it came out, I had a predisposition to crave sappy, romantic love songs.

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