A Miracle!

Its a miracle! They found a young 14-year old girl survivor in the Yemeni plane crash near Comoros. The only one of 153 passengers to survive.

After the recent crash of Air France, I asked my H how does one reconcile the saying that "When your time is up, it is up!" with plane crashes that takes away the lives of hundreds of people at the same time. Is it at all possible that the time is up for every single one of them? It is difficult to imagine that kind of coincidence - the invisible hand that places every single person whose time is up on the same plane. It is more sensible to think that perhaps some of the passengers were simply in the wrong place at the wrong time. And yet, you often hear of stories of people who were supposed to be on the plane and something happened, thus preventing them to board the plane. Now, perhaps I have found the answer - survivor of a young 14-year old - perhaps it is true after all - it was not her time. How else does one explain such a miracle!

What is a IMAX theater?

We have heard of IMAX theaters but had no idea how it is different from the regular theaters. We figured, one day when a good movie shows in a IMAX theater, we shall check it out. And the opportunity came last weekend when we found out that Transformer - The Revenge of the Fallen will be shown in the IMAX theater at AMC 14 in Century Center.

We enjoy action movies but not with robots. However after watching re-runs of the first Transformer movie, we were sold on it. Not only was the dialog funny, the idea of a regular car transforming into this amazing robot made of scrap metal is interesting, particularly Bubble Bee (yellow Camaro) with emotions and sensitivity of a human is a 21st century version of the Love Bug : ).

When my nephew, Nicky was between 4-5 years old, he was fascinated with Transformers toys - he would make us buy him the different transformers, put them together in a matter of seconds and insisted that we play with him - of course he plays the good guys with the most powerful weapons and we play the bad guys, Decepticons! I had absolutely no idea what he was talking about - that was 6 years ago. After seeing Transformer the movie, I now have a better idea and would probably have enjoyed battling him but he has since moved on to new toys - electronic games : ( : (.

I was totally looking forward to seeing the latest release of Transformer - The Revenge of the Fallen last Sunday at the IMAX theater. To get to our seats, we walked through dark narrow hallways that turn here and there and finally, there it was! Really, it is no big deal - IMAX is merely a bigger screen but the screen is curved and the theater itself is smaller in terms of seating capacity -20 to 25 rows so the images on the screen appear way "big" - with the sound effects and the intensity of robots pouncing on each other, it can be quite overwhelming in the first few minutes but once you are into the movie - it could be a pretty good movie experience. I think IMAX is especially suited for 3-D movies - it makes the action more even more real and heart-pounding.

I thoroughly enjoyed the movie - the special effects were incredible and if you pay attention to the details of the robots, you'll be quite amazed. My H's heart throb is of course Megan Fox - she is cute and interesting. I like Josh Duhamel - his role is not big but he plays lead in the TV series "Las Vegas" - a real cutie! Shia LeBeouf is a funny kid - you can't help but like him.

We saw the movie after our regular Sunday breakfast at the Breadbar in Century City's Westfeld mall - where the AMC theater is also located. Our favorite waiter, Jaime was off that day. He knows exactly what we like for breakfast so there was need to look at the menu really. That morning, we were served by a lively young Romanian gal. She came from the Transylvannia region of Romania. I am used to seeing many east Europeans in the service industry in London but there aren't many of them out here in California.

Fruitful garden - yes!


Earlier today, I made one of those rare trips to the garden to take pictures of the fruit trees which are beginning to be laden. The pictures were taken especially for Lizzie but I thought I'll use them for this post as well.

Last week, I spoke to my great-niece Lizzie - she is 7.5 years old - we happened to talk about emails and she mentioned that she hasn't received any email in a while. So I promised her that I would send her one email a week and she could check her emails on Sunday mornings - that is the only morning that she doesn't not have to rush off to school or extra lessons. I promised I'll send her pictures of apples on my apple tree.

When Lizzie visited us at about age 4, she was totally enchanted by the apple tree and the strawberries. At the time, the strawberries were ready so she could pick them and ate them right away but the apples were not quite ready. So my H came back into the house, took a nice ripe red apple, held it near the branches and pretended it came from the tree, little Lizzie was totally thrilled with the nice red apple from our apple tree : ) :)

Here are pictures of the various fruit trees in the garden - green peach, mulberries, budding figs, flowers of pomegranate fruit and green plums.

Summer is definitely here!

We are back to blue skies and rather hot days! I was at Champagne Cafe at the Promenade Mall for lunch last week and the inside section was empty - good for me because I need air-conditioning in this heat. Most of the patrons prefer to sit outside. As I was starting my car to come home, I couldn't resist the beautiful sight of people sitting outside enjoying their lunch. I took these pictures from inside my car!

Salad Nicoise at Champagne Cafe - my favorite salad