Jessica Zafra's Blog, page 94

Before sunrise but after midnight

We want to be a writer-in-residence on a train line, writing stories on the railway. We could live on Snowpiercer. The way climate change is proceeding, we probably will live on Snowpiercer. The train to Vienna was an hour late; a long delay at one station added 1 hour of tedium (fidgeting, looking at watch) […]

Trieste, I loved you but you’re bringing me down.

Took a break from watching movies and drinking excellent Friuli wines and hopped the train to Trieste. Trains make me happy. I start replaying The Lady Vanishes in my head (“Zere is no Eenglish lady”). An hour later my day trip is off to a bad start. When I first came to Trieste a decade […]

The cats are all right.

Report from home: Our feline housemates are fine, despite having tried all the different varieties of emotional blackmail when we were leaving the house last Wednesday. They have a catsitter who shows up everyday. Usually cats can manage on their own with a month’s worth of kibble, but Saffy and Mat are teenagers and someone […]

Asian Cinema invades Europe at the Far East Film Festival 17

Joe Hisaishi and the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra performed some of his best-known film scores, including music from Spirited Away and Howl’s Moving Castle. For 10 days every spring, Teatro Nuovo Giovanni Da Udine is taken over by lovers of Asian film from all over Europe. Jackie Chan opened the 17th edition of Far East […]

We are now flying through the Gum Nebula.

Save your money, we’re going to space. These images of the Gum Nebula, taken by the Hubble telescope, were presented on its 25th anniversary.

The Jinx is the creepiest TV show we’ve seen this year, and it’s a documentary.

A dismembered body is discovered in Galveston, Texas, wrapped in trash bags. It is missing a head. The dead person is identified as Morris Black, resident of a run-down boarding house. Police find clues in the trash bags and blood in the house. They arrest Black’s neighbor, a middle-aged mute woman named Dorothy Ciner. Who, […]

Airport accounting: NAIA 3

In Frankfurt airport. The temperature outside is 36 degrees…Fahrenheit. Sweater weather. Yesterday we were in NAIA Terminal 3, sweltering. NAIA 3 is not bad, but they really need to turn up the airconditioning because even we natives are melting. Yes, it’s the fault of climate change, but humans have invented airconditioning and our airports get […]

We’re spending this day in airports.

Off to Venice-Udine-Vienna-Budapest. Today, airports—Manila then Singapore then Frankfurt then Venice. It’s our second least favorite thing about traveling, next to enduring the angry stares of three cats the night before a trip. In the weeks before departure we spend a lot of time deciding what book to bring. We like to read something set […]

Dispose of clothes you don’t want anymore and get a one-time 15 percent discount at H&M.

Gather all the clothes you no longer have any use for, including the ones that no longer fit but you’re in denial about, and put them in two bags. (All, meaning even those that are not from H&M. They can even be very old or damaged.) Take them to an H&M store. Bring only two […]

Melancholy, happiness, Miyazaki: the music of Joe Hisaishi

One Summer’s Day from Spirited Away The 17th edition of the Far East Film Festival in Udine, Italy opens on 23 April with a concert by the great Joe Hisaishi, who will perform his music for films by Hadao Miyazaki and Takeshi Kitano with the RTV Slovenia Symphony Orchestra. Tonari no Totoro from My Neighbor […]