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Brooklyn leather camera satchel

The best gifts come from people who know you best. Don’t you agree?

Take my husband, for example. He knows I’m always carrying around a DSLR with at least one spare lens. He knows I have a terrible habit of using my nice, “grown-up lady” bags as camera bags, which is great for me but not for the bags. (I once horrified a friend by taking my DSLR with the clunky wide-angle lens out of a buttery soft Bottega Veneta handbag.) He knows that I’ve been in the market for a sturdy brown leather bag for a few months now. Most importantly, he knows that I pin pictures of all my bag crushes on Pinterest.

This is how he completely bowled me over with his birthday gift: the Brooklyn leather satchel from Ona.

I absolutely love the vintage style of this bag, as well as the chestnut leather that’s just begging to get all nicely worn and beat-up. The cross-body strap makes it easy to carry… and it looks great with everything! I can totally see this becoming my go-to travel bag.

Not only is this a good-looking satchel on the outside, but it’s also a camera bag on the inside. Removable inserts (attached with Velcro) allow it to store a DSLR and up to three lenses. Generous padding cushions the whole kit.

As if this wasn’t awesome enough, tucked into the padded interior was another birthday surprise… a Canon 60mm Macro lens!

I discovered this lens at The Hive Berlin, when Yvonne of Fraulein Klein (who takes beautiful photos) used it during her photography workshop. Like my 50mm lens, it’s a fixed-focus lens with shallow depth of field. However, it’s a lot sturdier, more light-sensitive, and easier to use for macro photography.

I will post test photos when I’ve gotten to play around with it a little more. This definitely completes my photography wish list and I think I’ll be very happy with my current set of lenses—all four of them!—for a long, long while.

3 Comments
Posted on November 2, 2012
Category: Personal Style, Pregnancy, Shopping & Finds · Labels: , , , , , ,

Birthday staycation: Hotel Vondel

In the grand Paul-Plazo tradition of the birthday whisk, Marlon whisked me away to a top-secret location for my birthday weekend. Like all our previous birthday whisks, it was all a big secret until we pulled up in a taxi (he knows how to push my buttons, this husband) to the front door of the Hotel Vondel, right in the center of Amsterdam.

Like I said, Marlon knows how to push all my buttons. He knew very well that sleeping late in a cloud of white sheets, padding around in fluffy bathrobes and ordering in room service for our Top Chef Masters marathon would make me the happiest little birthday girl in Amsterdam. And he was right!

I loved our room on the top floor with its slanted roof and black shutters. It had a nice mix of coziness and luxury that was great for a weekend staycation.

The rest of the hotel was not bad either!

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Posted on October 30, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: , , ,

Birthday dinner: Brasserie Witteveen

One of the places that I like to go to in the Pijp is Brasserie Witteveen. My friends with kids like it because unlike the typical Dutch cafe, Witteveen’s wide aisles have lots of room for strollers. I just think it’s a really good-looking place to meet someone for lunch or a drink, thanks to the combination of sleek design with cozy elements like the seamless, 16-meter leather Chesterfield couch.

Brasserie Witteveen

I’ve always been curious about the private dining area at the back of the restaurant. Since Friday was my birthday, I thought it was a good excuse to finally check it out for myself.

Witteveen private dining area

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Posted on October 29, 2012
Category: Food & Drink, Life in Amsterdam · Labels: , , , ,

Birthday girl

Today, I am the birthday girl! Yay!

To fit the occasion, I found these pictures of my 7th? 8th? birthday, which I spent in Calcutta (before it became Kolkata). Here I am with my mom, my Dadu (grandfather) and Minnie Mouse, from whom I was inseparable at the time. My Indian relatives threw me a party at my grandparents’ apartment, dressed me (and my sister) up in traditional salwar kameez, and showered me with gifts. It was a blast!

I’m not spending my birthday anywhere as exotic this year, but it will still be lots of fun. It’s a full day—today I have my first prenatal yoga class, followed by lunch with my pregnancy buddy (a good friend who is due just a week after me!), a haircut, and finally dinner with friends at one of my favorite brasseries in the city. Then, as is our tradition, Marlon whisks me away to a top-secret location for a weekend staycation. The only thing I know is that it will be in Amsterdam, since he can’t travel without his passport.

The first year of my 30s has been amazing—full of unexpected blessings and happy moments—and I have so much to celebrate. I hope wherever you are on this Friday night, you have reason to celebrate too!

11 Comments
Posted on October 26, 2012
Category: Life in Amsterdam · Labels: , ,

Up, up and away

I knew Marlon and I were going to arrive in Goreme past midnight. I also knew that we would have to be picked up at the hotel before dawn. So I knew there was more than a slight chance that I would look back at my 30th birthday pictures and think that I looked like the biggest living eyebag that ever walked this earth. But I knew, more than anything, that I wanted this to be the first thing I did upon turning 30.

So I went for it. My first hot-air balloon flight! And because there are times when even pictures are not enough, I made a video so you could all come along for the ride.

I was stumped for a soundtrack until my wonderful friend Jeline sent me a link to “One Day Like This” by Elbow. It’s awesome to have friends who have great taste in music. Thanks Jeliney!

Oh, and I think it’s so cool that the date of my 30th birthday is printed right on my flight certificate.

Some notes on the flight after the jump:

I have a fear of heights. Observation decks? With glass floors? Hate ‘em. So I was a bit worried about how I would respond to this flight. But hot air balloons are now my favorite way to reach the skies. The takeoff is unbelievably gentle. It helps that you always feel something solid—the basket—under your feet. I didn’t even feel the balloon leaving the ground.

Speaking of heights, I had the misfortune to be riding with the loudest, most annoying woman in the world. She just wouldn’t. Stop. Talking. Everything, and I mean everything she saw triggered a barrage of verbal diarrhea.

“Ohmygodlook, a Ford Everest. I want a Ford Everest, honey I really want one of those. Beth tells me they give great mileage. Ohmygod, a cat. So cute. There are so many cats here. It’s unbelievable. Do you know why there are so many cats here? Ohmygoodlook, the balloons! There are the balloons, honey! Do you see the balloons? They look so scary! Ohmygodwait. Is that fire? Are they on fire? ARE THEY ON FIRE?!?! I don’t want to be inside the one that looks like it’s on fire!” Lady, there is a reason they are called hot air balloons. What do you think creates the hot air?

It got so uncomfortably loud in the van (“Small space! Loud sounds!” is what we used to tell our playgroup toddlers) that even her boyfriend/husband tried to shut her up tactfully by saying, “Wow. I didn’t know you were so talkative in the morning.” She retorted: “I’m only like this when I’m scared.” It was like this all the way until we got into the air.

All 16 of us in the balloon were the most unfortunate recipients of a blow-by-blow commentary on how nervous she was at any given moment. To the pilot: “So, you do know what you’re doing right? Have you been doing this long? I just want to be sure.” Pilot’s semi-sarcastic reply, delivered with a smile: “Oh yes. About two whole weeks.

While up in the clouds: “Down! Let’s go down. Down is good. Down is a great idea.” Lady, I don’t know about you, but I didn’t pay €150 for “down.” We all paid for up.

Here’s the clincher. The pilot attempts to reassure her with a few facts about flying. Her response: “Oh no, I know all about flying. I fly Cessnas. Back home in Arizona I fly planes all the time.” WHUUUT? Then why the heck would you be nervous about—oh, never mind! I’m 30 now, I can’t afford to create any more wrinkles.

For a blissful, soaring hour and a half, this hot air balloon ride made me feel like I was in heaven. Too bad I had to share it with the traveler from hell!

12 Comments
Posted on November 9, 2011
Category: Creative Projects, Wanderlust · Labels: , , , , , ,

A (birthday) gift that keeps on giving

My wonderful husband has once again proved that he knows me so well. How? By getting me a birthday gift that I absolutely love.
Want to know what Marlon’s gift was? I’ll give you three clues. These three pictures all have something to do with it.

Any guesses? See if you’re right after the jump!

Nope, Marlon’s birthday gift was not an evil eye pendant, a paisley shawl or a juicer. What those three photos have in common is that they were taken with my awesome new toy… a Canon EF 50mm f/1.8 II lens!

The 50mm f/1.8 II lens is a fixed focus lens, also known as a prime lens. Fixed focus means exactly what it says on the tin: you can’t change the focus, i.e. zoom in or out. That’s not what this lens is about. What it is about, is a low f-stop number (1.8), which translates to a larger aperture and shallower depth of field.

To put it in four simple words: blurry background, sharp subject. Those four words make all the difference in a portrait or detail (macro) shot.

Prime lenses are also also sharper than variable focus (or zoom) lenses, making that contrast between blurry background and sharp subject even better. 
Take this photo, for example. I was caught not by the woman, but by the gooeyness of the sweets she was serving up. The sharpness of this prime lens plus its shallow depth of field are great for blurring her (and the other servers) into the background and highlighting the sticky, shiny drips of syrup.

I do have to get used to carrying more than one lens, and quickly switching lenses on the go. But that’s part of the package and I’m happy to do it. Though I love my current wide-angle lens to bits, achieving shallow depth of field was definitely one of its weaknesses. 
Now that I have this new lens, a whole new world has opened up to me. Surprisingly, it’s not shooting photos of food… but of people.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’m terribly shy about shooting photos of people. I always felt as if taking out my camera with its big-ass wide-angle lens was like switching on a glaring red neon sign and activating a loud warning siren. ALERT! ALERT! YOU ARE BEING PHOTOGRAPHED!
This new lens enables me to be more discreet. For one thing, it’s a lot smaller, so it’s much less obtrusive. The fixed 50mm focus length allows me to stand a comfortable distance away from my subject and still get a good shot… without getting in someone’s face.

As you can probably tell, I’m loving my birthday gift. And you can see from these photos, Turkey was the perfect place to take my new baby for our first ride.


Interested in learning more about fixed focus/prime lenses? Here’s a helpful article on zoom vs. prime lenses. Happy reading!

5 Comments
Posted on November 6, 2011
Category: Wanderlust · Labels: , ,

Let’s get this party started

Last week was insanely packed (in a good way) and there’s still so much I have to blog about. But that will have to wait, because *happy dance* it’s my birthweek! 
Marlon sure knows how to get a party started, at least in my book. He kicked off my birthday celebration by treating me to a little somethin’-somethin’ at Dutch Design Week in Eindhoven. 

And that is your sneak peek at Dutch Design Week. That’s about all I can manage for now, but there will be more (lots more) when I get back. Promise.

In the meantime, I’m taking off to celebrate The Big 3-0 with a long-awaited trip to Istanbul. I’m excited to be crossing another big one off my lifelong travel wishlist. Ta ta for now and see you next week!

6 Comments
Posted on October 24, 2011
Category: Uncategorized · Labels: , ,

Wish list

Before I continue with my Rome posts, let me just say… it’s October and it’s my birthday month! Yippee!

It’s a big birthday this year and I’m celebrating it in a big way with the trip to Istanbul. And since I’ve (surprisingly) actually made enough friends here to throw a house party, I’m thinking of doing just that.

While I must say I’m pretty content, there are a couple of odds and ends I’m obsessing about at the moment. It’s been a while since I put together a wish list; I think my birthday is a good excuse to do it!

  1. Adobe Photoshop (the only time I ever miss having a PC is when I think of all the cracked software I used to have)
  2. An Apple mouse
  3. The pretty Missoni scarf I saw at De Bijenkorf
  4. An English-Dutch, Dutch-English dictionary (to further my language studies)
  5. Parisian Chic by Ines de la Fressange
  6. Design Sponge at Home by Grace Bonney (one of my favorite blogs, now in print)
  7. Heck, any book from my Amazon wish list!
  8. Love, Chloe perfume
  9. A Flickr Pro account (thinking ahead for my blog)
  10. A nice book of easy patterns for knitting or sewing
So many books on my wishlist! And I told myself I wouldn’t buy any new books until I read every last one of my 38 (yes, you read that right) unread books. But if new books are gifted, that doesn’t count right? Right.

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Posted on October 2, 2011
Category: Uncategorized · Labels: ,

A world of our own

Part two of Marlon’s birthday bonanza was something I knew he’d always wanted, but would never buy for himself: a globe!
Google led me to Stanley & Livingstone, a small store selling a wide variety of globes, maps and travel guides in Den Haag. So I arranged to meet my German friend Robert, who lives there, for a quick coffee and a trip to the center of town to check out the store. “I’m meeting Robert for coffee,” I told Marlon the day before his birthday. What he didn’t know was that I was meeting Robert in Den Haag!
And what I didn’t know was that Robert had his own ideas for my little visit. “We can bike to the beach, then back to town, then to the center of town for coffee,” he suggested. “Er… maybe not,” I replied, thinking of my fledgling repertoire of biking skills, which mostly consist of huffing, puffing and wobbling. “I’m a beginner! I’ve never biked here before!” 
Aba, di patatalo ang Aleman. “This is Holland,” he replied. “You have to get on the horse—by that I mean the bike—sooner or later.” So get on the bike I did, said bike being Robert’s folding bike from Dutch mega chain store Hema… which, I might add, is not the easiest thing for beginners to practice on. 
Robert was pretty tough on me, I must say (must be the German influence). Even after witnessing my red-faced struggle to mount his bike and get it moving in a straight line, he didn’t cave in when I wheedled, “I don’t think this is going to work.” (Marlon probably would have, though!) 
Instead, he wisely decided to not ride through city traffic and took me on a quick spin through the Haagse Bos (a nearby woods/park) to the Queen’s Palace. And by quick, I mean 20-30 minutes… just about enough time for my legs to cramp, for my butt to become sore, and for me to wonder why I was pedaling frantically through the woods after an athletic, whip-cracking German tenor when all I really came here to do was buy a fracking globe! 
I did end up buying the globe that afternoon, and Robert gallantly carried it for me all the way back to the train station. (Maybe he noticed me hobbling and felt sorry for me!) At home, I hid the globe among the pile of moving boxes in the guest room, and tried to sit as normally as I could on my aching bum to keep the trip (and gift) a secret from Marlon… who was so puzzled as to why I seemed so tired that evening.

I went for a vintage-looking globe called the Renaissance globe, and chose a Dutch version because it was just so much prettier than the English one. I figured if we ever leave the Netherlands, it would be a nice reminder of our time here. I also chose a globe that lights up, because as my sister so wisely pointed out: “At least you can use it as a lamp, because are you really going to sit around in your spare time looking at a globe?” She has a point!

This globe has a soft warm glow that I like… and that Marlon does too!

The countries are up-to-date, but the globe is full of little details that hark back to the golden age of seafaring and exploration, such as sea monsters, nautical icons, and even the routes of famous explorers such as Drake and Magellan.

The secrecy, the sore legs and even the aching bum was all worth it when Marlon came home from his dinner at De Kas to see the globe lit up in the darkness of our living room. He loves his gift and I love it too!

5 Comments
Posted on March 30, 2011
Category: House & Spouse, Shopping & Finds · Labels: ,

Dinner at De Kas

Every year, whenever I ask Marlon what he wants for his birthday, he simply looks at me with a smile and says, “I have everything I want.” (Cue melting heart.) This year, I decided to pour my entire month’s (meager) freelance earnings into celebrating his Big 3-0 with a three-part gift. 
Part one was the birthday dinner. I took charge of choosing and booking a restaurant. After running through a shortlist of choices from my trusty Time Out Amsterdam, I chose Restaurant De Kas, which sits in the Frankendael Park in the Oost (East). 
De Kas is located in an old greenhouse that dates back to the 1920s, and used to belong to the Amsterdam Municipal Nursery. Slated for demolition, it was rescued in 2001 by Michelin-starred Dutch chef Gert Jan Hageman and converted into a restaurant. 
It also still houses a small nursery, where herbs, vegetables and flowers are grown for the restaurant. The owner now heads the nursery, and together with a team of chefs, cooks up a weekly set menu of three starters, a main course and a dessert that is based on the produce harvested that week. I was hooked by the concept and the location, and thought it would be great to try seasonal food, something completely new to us. Luckily, I was right and Marlon loved it!
Whenever Marlon and I go to a restaurant here, the first thing the server asks is if we’d like something to drink. This always throws us off, and we normally end up going blink blink at each other… before ordering water! And that always throws the server off, because it seems the appropriate response is to order an aperitif… something absent from our food culture, and thus something we know nothing about. 

I was determined to be prepared for this restaurant visit, and thanks to a very informative thread in Fodors’ forums, now I know! The Fodors foodies suggest a number of liquors such as champagne (the most common aperitif), grappa (which I’ve tried and hate), port and sherry, but the suggestion I liked most was to ask if they have a house aperitif and try it.

At De Kas, the house aperitif is champagne with an herb from the garden, which that night was the lemon geranium flower. Ordering an aperitif is the kind of thing that makes me feel like a grown-up!

I enjoyed the seasonal meal, which came with white wine for the starter and a red for the mains. Everything was so fresh, so light and so… so spring! I always hear the judges on Top Chef judges food with words like “bright” and “clean”, and for the first time I understood what that meant. 
The not-so-bright part of our evening was when Marlon found a piece of steel wire at the bottom of his dessert. Yup… steel wire. I’m not talking about steel wool na pangkuskos, I’m talking alambre here. Though it was only about 2-3 millimeters, Marlon called the attention of the server.
The response of the staff was admirable. Three different members of the staff came over to apologize. The last was the manager, who waived the bill on dessert and immediately investigated the kitchen. She brought over a large mesh strainer and explained to us that it had most likely come from that. As we were leaving, we passed by the kitchen and saw her chewing out a pair of chefs. I thought the staff handled it well and it wouldn’t stop me from coming back. I’m just glad nothing bad happened and that Marlon managed to enjoy every last bite of his dessert!

Before we stepped out, we stopped by the herb garden for photos. Our server gave us a little tour and pointed out the most interesting plant in the garden: oyster leaf from Iceland, so called because… they taste like oysters. Seeing our skeptical expressions, she plucked two fat, fleshy leaves and gave them to us to chew on. And you know what? They really did taste like oysters!

Nights like these are what make me extra thankful to have freelance work. If not for my rakets, I wouldn’t be able to treat him and make him feel happy and special, like he always does for me. And I’m even more thankful to have a husband who enjoys such simple pleasures and shows so much appreciation for every little thing. It may be his birthday, but I think I got the best gift of all. 

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Posted on March 25, 2011
Category: Food & Drink, Life in Amsterdam · Labels: , , ,