Hello,
I'm delighted to say that my work has been chosen to be featured on the fantastic Cultural Expose blog as part of their travel photography feature InterNational!
You can see my pics & read their blog here.
My pictures from Cuba are being featured, along with some tips and thoughts from me on my travel experience. And a goofy picture of me drinking tea.
Thanks very much to the Cultural Expose team for featuring me. Hope you like my work!
Bex
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Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Cuba. Show all posts
Wednesday, 3 November 2010
Wednesday, 12 August 2009
CUBA
Hi there!
Me and Anders have been away for a few weeks, hence the lack of posts, on a trip to Cuba. It was amazing. If you get the chance I would really recommend it to anyone. It's a really beautiful country, with lovely beaches, lush green countryside and all that, but most of all it's a fascinating communist country, trapped in the fifties to a large extent, like a living museum.
Here's a few pics, just to explain a little what I mean:
A shop in the Old Town. When we got back we were a bit overloaded with all the signs, imagery, ads and visual clutter in Britain. That sort of thing is really at a minimum in Cuba. Even road signs. There are only about 10 signs on the whole motorway there, there's about a million here!
A restaurant near where we stayed in Vedado.
This picture illustrates a story which itself neatly illustrates what's so fascinating about Cuba. The building is the American Embassy. In front of it there are 138 flags. In about 2006 the US started to broadcast anti-Castro propaganda from a TV in a window of their embassy. They had messages saying things like "It's a shame that everyone who knows how to run this country is driving taxis". Castro was obviously not happy, so he erected 138 flags in front of their embassy so no-one could see the messages. It's kind of like a piece of public art in a way, the flags make an amazing sound as you stand near them. Plus on the other side there is an area used as a stage... for political rallies and public celebrations. A lot of public space in Cuba seems to be used for these dual purposes - speeches & salsa.
This is a bookshop. Anders read a phrase in a guidebook which has really stuck with us... a modernist gorilla of a building.
The museum of the Revolution.
Wish we were still there!
Bex
x
Me and Anders have been away for a few weeks, hence the lack of posts, on a trip to Cuba. It was amazing. If you get the chance I would really recommend it to anyone. It's a really beautiful country, with lovely beaches, lush green countryside and all that, but most of all it's a fascinating communist country, trapped in the fifties to a large extent, like a living museum.
Here's a few pics, just to explain a little what I mean:
A shop in the Old Town. When we got back we were a bit overloaded with all the signs, imagery, ads and visual clutter in Britain. That sort of thing is really at a minimum in Cuba. Even road signs. There are only about 10 signs on the whole motorway there, there's about a million here!
A restaurant near where we stayed in Vedado. 
This picture illustrates a story which itself neatly illustrates what's so fascinating about Cuba. The building is the American Embassy. In front of it there are 138 flags. In about 2006 the US started to broadcast anti-Castro propaganda from a TV in a window of their embassy. They had messages saying things like "It's a shame that everyone who knows how to run this country is driving taxis". Castro was obviously not happy, so he erected 138 flags in front of their embassy so no-one could see the messages. It's kind of like a piece of public art in a way, the flags make an amazing sound as you stand near them. Plus on the other side there is an area used as a stage... for political rallies and public celebrations. A lot of public space in Cuba seems to be used for these dual purposes - speeches & salsa.
This is a bookshop. Anders read a phrase in a guidebook which has really stuck with us... a modernist gorilla of a building.
The museum of the Revolution. Wish we were still there!
Bex
x
Wednesday, 3 June 2009
busy-ness
Things have been busy lately, right? The sun makes me busier too, because I don't want to do boring things while the sun shines. One brilliant thing about the sun shining though is "Summer Tea", which just involves sitting eating our food on kitchen chairs in our little garden. It's brilliant.
Fun things over the past couple of weeks have been:
- Seeing Fists play in Sheffield. It's really great to see your friends doing something they are really good at. It just makes you see them as something else besides your friend who you've known for ages and have lots of fun memories with. I think seeing them play in Sheffield did this x2, because in a little room above a nice pub there was a bunch of strangers really loving them and their music. It makes you sure that you don't just like them as a band because you know them and reminds you how good they are.
- Playing SingStar R&B with my friend Abi. We already owned SingStar Classics and were pretty high up the score table for Depeche Mode, but SingStar R&B is a different ball park altogether. I have a new respect for R&B singers... their songs are HARD! It has also introduced me to Teardrops by Womack & Womack, and I'm very pleased about that.
- Making a draught excluder snake. He's lovely. He's called snakey and so far hasn't been used to exclude any draughts.
- Seeing our veggies growing really big in the garden. We are going to be overrun with beetroot soon.
- The guilty pleasure of the BGT final last Saturday. Oh dear, what have we come to? Loved Britain's Got Talent all week through the semi-finals, felt slightly tarnished and ashamed as soon as the final had finished.
- The Tether Art Crawl. Truthfully I didn't actually crawl. But me and Abs met up at the Ropewalk with Anders who had been leading a group round the various venues, teaching them about the history of Nottingham and sharing some of his favourite stories. Go Anders! Everyone involved was really nice and I wished I had booke in time to do the full crawl. We went on from the Ropewalk back to Tether where the Tom Tomas Club performed a "greatest hits" set after a painfully protracted set-up which involved boo-ing random people (including Dan Toporowski) as they came into the room. The TTC were as terrible/amazing as always. The room at Tether was mental, it was like a cardboard igloo. I don't know why, but it was warm and oddly comforting.
- Planning our website at work. I work for my family firm, which is mostly a little bit dull. At the moment though I'm beginning work on setting up an ecommerce website for us. This is a lot more fun. The internet is fascinating. Last month something like 70% of everyone who went online visited Facebook. It's huge.
- Looking up stuff about CUBA! Me and Anders are going in July. Can't WAIT. If you know of any "must do" things please let me know!
Hope you've been having fun in the sun too.
Bex xx
x
Fun things over the past couple of weeks have been:
- Seeing Fists play in Sheffield. It's really great to see your friends doing something they are really good at. It just makes you see them as something else besides your friend who you've known for ages and have lots of fun memories with. I think seeing them play in Sheffield did this x2, because in a little room above a nice pub there was a bunch of strangers really loving them and their music. It makes you sure that you don't just like them as a band because you know them and reminds you how good they are.
- Playing SingStar R&B with my friend Abi. We already owned SingStar Classics and were pretty high up the score table for Depeche Mode, but SingStar R&B is a different ball park altogether. I have a new respect for R&B singers... their songs are HARD! It has also introduced me to Teardrops by Womack & Womack, and I'm very pleased about that.
- Making a draught excluder snake. He's lovely. He's called snakey and so far hasn't been used to exclude any draughts.
- Seeing our veggies growing really big in the garden. We are going to be overrun with beetroot soon.
- The guilty pleasure of the BGT final last Saturday. Oh dear, what have we come to? Loved Britain's Got Talent all week through the semi-finals, felt slightly tarnished and ashamed as soon as the final had finished.
- The Tether Art Crawl. Truthfully I didn't actually crawl. But me and Abs met up at the Ropewalk with Anders who had been leading a group round the various venues, teaching them about the history of Nottingham and sharing some of his favourite stories. Go Anders! Everyone involved was really nice and I wished I had booke in time to do the full crawl. We went on from the Ropewalk back to Tether where the Tom Tomas Club performed a "greatest hits" set after a painfully protracted set-up which involved boo-ing random people (including Dan Toporowski) as they came into the room. The TTC were as terrible/amazing as always. The room at Tether was mental, it was like a cardboard igloo. I don't know why, but it was warm and oddly comforting.
- Planning our website at work. I work for my family firm, which is mostly a little bit dull. At the moment though I'm beginning work on setting up an ecommerce website for us. This is a lot more fun. The internet is fascinating. Last month something like 70% of everyone who went online visited Facebook. It's huge.
- Looking up stuff about CUBA! Me and Anders are going in July. Can't WAIT. If you know of any "must do" things please let me know!
Hope you've been having fun in the sun too.
Bex xx
x
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