A Sea Change

February 15, 2014 Leave a comment

Harnessing the constant movement of life is a tricky feat.

Harnessing the constant movement of life is a tricky feat.

Change regardless how simple does shake one’s equilibrium.  It’s like having a new body.  I have to re-orient myself to a better way of living, more in the affirmative rather than having to hide my talents, needs and authentic self for fear of rejection.  I know this sounds so Oprah-ish. I guess I am volunteering to fill some of the void since she is no longer part of the collective consciousness on a regular basis.

Perhaps the trick is to simply sit on a rock and be.

Perhaps the solution is to simply perch on a rock and be.

As this new phase in my life is taking shape, it has also opened up more “space,” which I’m tempted to fill.  However, I’m mindful of that at times it’s just best to leave it alone and accept it for all its simplicity and what it could teach me–to be.

It’s something I haven’t intentionally paid attention to when I had to put my focus on, say, work, and I had to create opportunities, as minuscule as they were at the time, that cumulatively led to pivotal breakthroughs until a major one presented itself.  I know this is getting way too philosophical.  But the fact I have a choice between the two or a panoply of options puts me in an unusual, dare I say, power position, that I’m slowly yet surely figuring out how to handle.

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Feeling Bookish

January 29, 2014 Leave a comment

IMG_1820When one part of life comes together, it is my natural inclination to shore up another portion that may have been left behind.  But like anything else, a resolution doesn’t happen overnight.

So when I feel stumped about anything, I typically turn to family and friends, and a good laugh would sometimes even do.  But this time around required something more of the brick and mortar kind.  So I jumped on the bus and headed to Pacific Heights for Browser Books to retrieve a book I briefly scanned while I was there one weekend but didn’t buy.  I lingered and leafed through a few more books before purchasing, and slowly my ill feelings started to ebb.  It’s comforting to know a good bookstore worth its heft, no matter how technology renders it obsolete, still has the power to anchor me when uncertainty sends me adrift.

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Paris in December

December 29, 2013 2 Comments

Yes, it is sitting on a wooden wine box.

Yes, it is sitting on a wooden wine box.

A year ago it was so difficult to allow myself to find joy around this time of year, but I look around and see it so much more clearly now.  As another song goes, love is all around.

I removed from storage a framed collage of photos of my Paris trip long ago and set it prominently on my shelf as a reminder of happy days–they are here again.  The pop songs never seem to end.

But I suppose what I’m trying to convey, at least to myself, is to keep things simple and light.  I know it’s easier said than done.  But when I push through a hardship, it’s important to focus on what is so good about being alive.

And then an interesting thing happened to me at the end of this year:  I landed a new job.  It was the Christmas gift I was waiting and hoping for.  In another moment of reflection, I remember a friend telling me to be sure I am running toward something as opposed to running away from a situation.  I’m happy to report it is the former.  Right now it does feel like Paris In December.

Filed under Brass Ring 2.0, In My Life, Paris, Philosophical, The Bay Area, Travel Tagged with , , , , , , , ,

Her Journey So Far

October 17, 2013 Leave a comment

Lea Salonga

 Tony Award-winner Lea Salonga delighted fans in a rare concert in San Francisco to kick off Filipino American Heritage Month.

It is apparently a rare occurrence to have the international Broadway and movie musical star Lea Salonga perform in the San Francisco Bay Area, since she’s a self-proclaimed New Yorker who divides her time between the Big Apple and the Philippines.  So it was a treat for the mostly Filipino American crowd that packed the Nourse Auditorium in the city a few weeks ago to welcome the singing sensation, in time for Filipino American Heritage Month.

PhilDev, a non-profit that develops programs to support initiatives cultivating economic growth in the Philippines through science and technology, brought Ms. Salonga to the City by the Bay  for a one night-only benefit gala.  It was a kind of a reintroduction since her whirlwind success in the 1990s.  She has certainly grown into her own, using the cabaret-style format to illustrate the trajectory of her career from the age of seven to a mellow 42-year-old.

“I’ve learned through characters,” Ms. Salonga explained in between songs.  “I am grateful for the work, even on a rickety stage and an iffy sound system somewhere in the Philippines.”  She said her perspective of the world has changed as a woman, a friend, mother and daughter, adding she is less judgmental.

Her song selection came from her 2011 CD “The Journey So Far,” a mix of musical numbers, American standards, pop and Filipino songs, that was spun from her 2010 limited-run singing engagement in New York City’s Cafe Carlyle.  She also dedicated a portion of her performance to the rich history of Filipino Americans here, referencing literary icon Carlos Bulosan in the song “Long Season.”  With age, her exquisite voice has found more range as she determinedly knocked out Stephen Sondheim’s vocally challenging “I Don’t Want to Get Married” from his musical “Company.”

The concert lasted roughly two hours, minus a half-hour or so intermission, and the sold-out audience was unquestionably sated by night’s end, with some of course wanting more.  Fans stood in a line that snaked out the venue’s doors into the courtyard, waiting for an autograph.

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Grace of My Heart

August 25, 2013 Leave a comment

Hanna?

Could this pup be my beloved Hanna?

I chronicled being rehired by a past employer a year ago and since then, some interesting episodes have occurred that really do not need any in the way of explanation just acceptance.  As a friend said,  spiritual awakenings can only mean good things.

In Catholic school, I was taught grace as “God’s life in us,” but I was never consciously aware how it was playing a role in my life until now.  There is an invisible hand that is somehow encouraging and moving me through each day.  For instance, I wondered whether the dog outside Hillstone’s restaurant was the same canine playing on the lawn seven years ago.  It had the same color fur but looked leaner.   It was too much to ask for it to be the golden retriever that often lifted my workdays.   However, it is a comfort, knowing there is indeed grace to give proper perspective and a ray of hope in an often cold and heartless world.

The Road Less Traveled I returned to a book I had previously read called “The Road Less Traveled” by M. Scott Peck,  M.D., and it speaks to me even more profoundly today, as I absorbed whole passages while waiting for an oil change one weekend.   I followed it up with Phil Stutz and Barry Michel’s “The Tools,” which teaches how to get unstuck and be more of a creator rather than a reactor in life.  Their ideas actually support Dr. Peck’s more than 30 years ago, although they center more on practical methods over on-the-couch self-analysis.

Life is difficult, this much is true.  The whole point is to get through it with the proper tools and coping skills and grow from challenges and failures.  Oftentimes, we want a magic pill to make everything better when in fact there really is none.  We just have to get on with it and carry on because the joy on the other side is commensurate to or may even exceed how much we had to struggle.

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A Tourist in My Own Town

July 14, 2013 1 Comment

Rin Tin Tiger

With featured act the Kingsboroughs, Rin Tin Tiger performs at Blondie’s Bar for the City Sounds, sponsored by NBC and Jack Daniels Honey.

In a fog-ridden city like San Francisco, it is often a relief when it clears, and you come out on the other side.  For almost the last 12 months,  I’ve felt I was traveling through a fog, and I’m just emerging from it.

Surely, the city by the bay has lots of stuff going on to cure the blues, and hanging out  with family and friends is perhaps the best medicine–they do well to keep me balanced.  Music is one of my favorite things, and taking in live music with my brother and his friends this month for the City Sounds in the Mission was what the doctor ordered.

With Wendy, my longest-known friend in the Bay Area, I went to Sunset Magazine’s Weekend Celebration and later Chipotle Cultivate Festival in Golden Gate Park, which was also humming with live music.   Both were delightful foodie events, with cooking demos by chefs (some celebrity) and cooks.

"The Salty Pimp" (chocolate-dipped soft-serve vanilla ice cream dulce de leche and sea salt) from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.

Profane with a Touch of Whimsy: “The Salty Pimp” (chocolate-dipped soft-serve vanilla ice cream, dulce de leche and sea salt) from the Big Gay Ice Cream Truck.

At the Cultivate fest, I enjoyed Chipotle’s tacos and even its foray into Southeast Asian cooking called ShopHouse.   I also had a bacon-wrapped hotdog from one vendor and “The Salty Pimp” from the Big Gay Ice Cream truck.  Every bite of the vanilla soft-serve ice cream was so incredible, as though the milk just came from the dairy farm.

Wendy has her ear to the ground more than I do, it seems.  I wasn’t in such a wonderful space at the time, and I had trouble being in the moment.  My head was simply somewhere else.  But when I brought myself around to be more present, I felt more anchored and grateful that Wendy gave me the opportunity to escape for a few weekends.  After all that’s what friends (and family) are for.

IMG_1392

The Truck Stops Here: Straight from NYC, unicorns and rainbows under a gray sky and an intriguing ice cream menu.

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A Lifestyle to Which I’ve Grown Accustomed

May 5, 2013 Leave a comment

I once had a blog called “Citizen of the World” that I lost since my former (read: lousy) web host decided to no longer support WordPress.  With the exception of the Passion Cafe, which has since closed, and any deaths in my family, things really haven’t changed even after a month and two years.  

April 4, 2011

Comfort Food & Company

Filed under: Food,Lifestyle — Rachelle Ayuyang @ 7:48 pm

Golden Gate Park from the top floor of the DeYoung Museum on New Year's Day 2011.

Golden Gate Park from the top floor of the DeYoung Museum on New Year’s Day 2011.

The year unfolded with a European flair. My friend Wendy and I went to the DeYoung Museum on the first day of 2011 for the last half of the Orsay Museum traveling exhibit of Impressionist art. And then we had lunch at Marnee Thai in the Inner Sunset.

In February, I met someone out of the blue, and it is a topic of discussion at lunch with my friend Rose at Rocco’s Cafe.  After saying good-bye to a close family relative in the hospital in March, supper at the cacophonous restaurant, So, was quite frankly the right antidote for the insular sadness of the ICU.  Her death was one of things Rose and I spoke about on our recent lunch this month on the rooftop of the Passion Cafe, a perfect choice for the welcome warm weather in San Francisco.  My curry chicken salad paired nicely with the organic Pinot Gris.   Later we stopped by Split Pea Seduction for its chocolate chip coconut oatmeal cookies.  I know life is often beyond my control.  But if I am open, there is a moment of clarity when I see a well of endless possibilities.  Life never stops.  Like the universe, it just keeps expanding.

Filed under In My Life, Philosophical, The Bay Area Tagged with , , , , , , ,

Natural Woman

March 4, 2013 Leave a comment

DSC01799I was hoping to squeeze one more entry before February ended, but so many things happened, it’s hard to keep track, and lo and behold March is now upon us.

I’ve talked about retreating to my happy place when life gets topsy-turvy, but another one of my refuges is the ocean–lately Ocean Beach to be exact.

Having grown up rather land-locked, I now live close to water.  But I’ve often taken it for granted all these years living in San Francisco.  Unfairly, sometimes I’ve associated visits to the beach as how troubled I might be at that given moment to necessitate walking the length of its coastline, when in fact, recently, I’ve gone with family and friends there for birthdays and simple getaways from the city.

Leaves and my sneakerAs imbued as I am in urban life, it would behoove me to decompress from obligations and responsibilities in our natural surroundings, which often are more comforting and even more beautiful.  This brings me to a terrific documentary I recently saw about Sister Wendy Beckett (http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b01pqhfp), the globetrotting nun whose insights to art thrust her into the international limelight in the 1990s.  She now leads a hermetic life in Quindenham, England, which brings her close to nature and therefore closer to God and a sense of peace–something I must obviously learn to do.

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Call Me Old Fashion

February 14, 2013 1 Comment

Last weekend, I randomly popped in a cassette tape (remember those?) that turned out to be a collection of love songs, one being a 1996 hit single by R&B singer Kenny Lattimore entitled  “For You.”

I recalled I wrote a profile about its songwriter, Kenny Lerum, when I was a magazine writer, and after realizing I didn’t have a personal copy, I decided to chase it down, going almost immediately to the San Francisco Public Library to retrieve one.  Although it was one of my smaller articles, truth be told, it’s more or less for sentimental reasons that I desired to have it now, in time for Valentine’s Day no less.

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A Beeline for My Happy Place

January 15, 2013 1 Comment

Way to Work

A Little Solace in the FiDi.

Mama said there would be days like these, so what’s a girl to do?  Apparently, she goes to buy make-up.  In a million years, I would never have thought to communicate in psycho-babble with regularity, but, well, I went to my “happy place.”  That would be the CVS store on California and Sansome, across from the Union Bank building where I previously worked last year.  It was rather convenient, being placed at that particular job because a few of my friends, even my sister-in-law, worked in the same building.  There were some fun times since retrieving booze and beverages from the store for company functions was a task that invited a little envy when bumping into friends, visitors and other occupants alike.

This time I was looking for mineral foundation, and I went to the cosmetics section to try and figure out a new product that would match my skin tone.  I fumbled for a time, tipping and inverting round containers to get a sense of how it might look on my face.  Then, “Ann” came to my rescue.  The CVS sales clerk saw I was having trouble and gave me the kind of customer service I would expect from any retailer worth its weight in gold.  She even removed the packaging and applied some of the make-up on my face to make sure it was the closest match.  Apparently, CVS has a “beauty guarantee” that if the product doesn’t work out, it could be returned regardless of the condition.  I left more than satisfied with my purchase, and I personally gave Ann a ringing endorsement for her helpfulness.

As the week would compel me, I made the same route, turning on California toward Sansome, eyeing the top of the Union Bank building on my left, back to the store.  The following day, I returned with my $4.50 rewards dollars on my CVS card for a pressed powder foundation and Ann’s sage advice.  I asked her what made her so good at her job, and she said passion for products manufactured with a genuine regard for improving lives, not just for expediency and cost-effectiveness.  It’s also her positive attitude that I gravitate toward, and as I manage the challenges of each day, I make no apologies for retreating to my happy place.

Filed under In My Life, Philosophical, The Bay Area

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