The Brown Knowser

As we gear up for a long weekend in Canada, you might want to take some time to relax. To sit back with a cold beverage in the back yard, with your feet up, and your wireless device resting comfortably on your lap. Ready to do some reading. Here are the past week's offerings from The Brown Knowser : Remembering Tuscany —I forewent my weekly beer review after I found a red wine to which my family and I had close connections. Cheers! Celebrating Green Cake Day —Four years ago, we said goodbye to a special lady. For the third year in a row, we honour her memory with cake. Wordless Wednesday: Time Machine 5 —I found some negatives from my 1998 trip to Thailand. Sadly, the negatives were in rough shape; luckily, we live in the digital age. What's Up, Russia? —I'm so naive: here I thought I was gaining an audience from a far-away country. A friend has told me it's most likely spambots. Oh well. Photo Friday: Overcoming Shyness for a Fashion Statement —My parent...

I'm really shy. Morbidly shy. (I'll give you a moment or two to stop your snickering.) Sure, when I'm around close friends and family, it's hard to shut me up. But if I'm in a crowd where I don't know anyone, or if I'm alone with someone I either barely know or don't know at all, I become extremely introverted. I clam up. If I speak, the conversation is trite, small. I come across looking and sounding like an idiot. Not so yesterday. Yesterday, I took a deep breath and stepped outside my comfort zone. I put my shyness aside and just did it. I talked to a complete stranger and asked if I could take a photograph of her. It all started when I caught my bus from work and headed downtown. The afternoon bus wasn't very crowded, and so finding a seat was not an issue. I like to sit alone because I don't want to run the risk of having to speak to anyone. I'm shy, after all. When I stepped on the STO bus and worked my way down the ais...

I'm confused. When I first started blogging, my intention was to keep my family and friends informed about the comings and goings of the Brownfoots. The bulk of my family and friends live in Canada and the United States, but at the time I also knew people in the U.K., Nigeria, South Korea, Ireland, and Germany who were reading my early blog posts. When I began posting rough drafts of my now-completed novel, Songsaengnim: A Korea Diary , on its own blog site, I attracted more readers from these countries, but also from Australia, Poland, Denmark, the Philippines, Brazil, and Russia. While most of my audience grew at a slow but steady pace (the greatest audience for Songsaengnim is, surprisingly, the U.S.), one country started hitting my posts in great numbers. And it makes me scratch my head. Makes me wonder why. Makes me go hmmm... Russia. I always wonder why a non-English-speaking country shows interest in my blog. Perhaps, the readers are English speaking?...

Thailand, August 1998

Yesterday, I was thinking of celebrations past and future. And in the present, that meant green cake. And while yesterday marked the fourth anniversary of the passing of a very special woman—one that treated me as family—I stopped to think of her, and her husband, who also played an important part in influencing the values I carry to this day. I'm not going to explain the significance of Green Cake Day. If you're interested, you can read here . If there are those who helped turn you into the person you are, take a moment and think about them. And if you're still lucky enough, tell them.

One of my all-time favourite family vacations, not surprisingly, is our trip to Italy in 2009. We spent nearly three weeks in late September-early October, in Rome, Tuscany, and Venice, and it was our first overseas trip with the kids. It was a promise I had fulfilled to the girls after Lori and I went to Italy, without them, in 2004. The highlight of the trip was when we spent a week in Tuscany. We had rented an agritourisma (farm cottage) just to the north of Siena, just inside the Chianti region, between Poggibonsi and Castellina in Chianti; one of my favourite Italian wine regions. The agritourisma we rented was owned by a young farmer named Antonio. His villa was set on a hillside that overlooked a valley, the medieval hill town of San Gimignano visible on the ridge on the other side. Every day, we would tour the countryside, exploring some of the regional towns, only to return to our home away from home, where we would go for a cool swim in an outdoor infinity po...

I'm stealing this idea from The Bloggess . I hope she forgives me: after all, isn't imitation still the sincerest form of flattery? I know that many of my readers don't go to The Brown Knowser every day to see what I'm blathering on about. Some of you visit only once a week and catch up; others don't read it that often, but I fugred I would dedicate this post to the readers who wait until the end of the week to catch up. Starting today and continuing each Satruday, I'm presenting My Week, In Blog Posts . Here, I'll list the post titles of the past week with a summary of the post and a link to it. You can then jump to the posts that you want to read. Think of it as your weekly, one-stop shopping on The Brown Knowser . Here is this week's summary of posts: All I Want For Father's Day is My Family. And Beer. Last Sunday was my day. So I was treated to great gifts from my wife and kids, including a trip to a local brew pub for my weekly bee...

Flash photography is my nemesis. I'm rarely happy with the photos I take when I use a flash. Either the flash is too powerful and everything is washed out. Especially, when I'm shooting people, at night or indoors. And when the flash isn't powerful enough, everything seemed greyed. Dull, bland. Even shooting outdoors with a flash, in daylight, gives me varied results. If I'm shooting in shade, I usually get the same results that I get when I shoot indoors: bright subjects; dark backgrounds. The only time I feel confident with a flash is when I shoot outside, in bright light. When my flash is used as a fill flash, lightening the minor shadows that are cast on my subjects. I'm also fairly successful when I shoot subjects standing in front of a sunset. That's when I want the background darkened a little but my subjects illuminated. Decades ago, I started playing with my flash, removing it from the top of my camera. I had a secondary flash that I ...

Six weeks ago, I started a fitness regime to help me lose weight. On my last visit to my doctor, he remarked that my cholesterol level shot through the roof, but he also noticed that I had gained some weight. He made no bones about it: he called me fat . When I visited him, I weighed 175 pounds. That was 10 pounds more than I weighed the last time he saw me, when he told me that I could stand to lose 10 to 15 pounds. I now found myself with 20 to 25 pounds to lose. And so I got serious and started thinking about what I was going to do to lose the weight. The first thing I focused on was my diet. I cut out snacking between meals. No more chips. I also decided that I wouldn't eat after 8 pm. And I would reduce the size of my meal portions. I downloaded an app on my iPhone to keep track my caloric intake and keep track of my weight-loss progress. I use MyFitnessPal , which gives me a daily caloric allowance—I have a daily allotment of 1230 calories. The app has a vast d...

More in my Picasa Web album .

For those of you who are in my e-mail address book for my personal account, you probably already know by now that my account was hacked this weekend. It was a simple e-mail message, with no subject line, no body, no signature. Just a hyperlink. Anybody who knows anything about me knows that I don't do this. As a writer, I am compelled to write something that would set up the link. Ninety-nine percent of the time, I have a subject line. The only time I leave one off is if I get caught up in writing the message and forget. But that's rare. Luckily, many of you figured that the e-mail was not from me. Thanks to those of you who brought the matter to my attention. This is the first time in almost 20 years of having an e-mail account that I've been hacked. I felt violated. I was pissed. I created my Roland Axam account, hoping that I could avoid spammers and junk mail. I didn't give much thought to hackers, and I guess that's the thing about being hacked:...

I had an amazing Father's Day. It was a perfect, summer-like day and I made the most of it. The girls let me sleep in while they made breakfast and served it on our sun-drenched patio: homemade eggs Benedict with fresh grape tomatoes, oatmeal and pecan muffins that my eldest daughter baked, and a strong cappuccino made by my youngest. Tasty. You'd think for a guy like me, trying to lose weight, that this would be a killer breakfast. And it would have been, if I was to have sat on my butt all day. But my family gave me something else for Father's Day: something that I don't often get on weekends. Time. I was given about two-and-a-half hours to spend as I pleased, and they knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to get on my bike and ride. So while they went off to do what they wanted, I hit the road. I cycled for two hours and thirteen minutes and covered nearly 50 kilometres on a large circle that covered the heart of the city. My route led me out ...

Last night, I attended another fabulous evening at Blog Out Loud. It always amazes me of the wonderful calibre of writers we have in the Ottawa blogging community, but I'm also thrilled by how well those bloggers are able to present their posts in front of a live audience. Having been a Toastmaster for nine years, I'm familiar with speaking in front of a crowd, of putting myself out there. I still look fondly on the time where I performed Monty Python and the Holy Grail, taking all roles, and singing and acting my way through a condensed version—in 15 minutes. I loved it. While last night, I was out of practice of performing in front of a crowd, I did manage to get my blog read without choking. For those of you who were unable to attend, here's what you missed * : My thanks go to Derek Felson for coming out to support me, and for shooting the video footage. My favourite reading of the night? Tough choice. So many to choose from: from a story of havi...

This week, the Ottawa police are performing a blitz to ensure that cyclists are obeying the rules of the road and are exercising safe biking habits, and I applaud them. Cyclists need to keep themselves and others who share the roads and pathways safe. The police are also checking to make sure the bikes are equipped for safe travel. They are ensuring the bikes have adequate brakes (no argument there), lights (sure, if it's dark), and... bells. I own two bicycles: a big, hybrid cruiser and a lean street bike. I ride the hybrid when I have things to carry (it has a carry rack over the rear wheel), when I'm leisurely cycling with the family, or when I'm going somewhere that may not have a secure place for me to store it (if I have to lock up the bike, rather than take it inside with me, I leave my street bike at home). When I ride my bike, I respect the rules of the road (for the most part). I stop at stop signs and for red lights; I keep to the right-hand ...