To dine at Orfali Bros in Dubai is to discover poetry for the first time after a lifetime of prose. So even though I don’t usually write about food or restaurants, I’ll make an exception this time. Orfali Bros — one of S. Pellegrino’s 50 best restaurants in the world and the recipient of a…
Category: Postcards
Dubai: The Very Model of a Modern Major Desert
This is Dubai, a cosmopolitan city carved against all odds out of the Arabian Desert — which in turn is almost a million square miles of harsh, barely livable, practically uninhabited vastness. But to look around Dubai you’d think water grows on trees (and you’d think there are trees). Here an outdoor pedestrian mall is…
Right in Front of Your Face (in Paris)
A man walks down the street staring at his phone, ignoring the world-famous Eiffel Tower rising behind him. What do we ignore in our own lives that other people would travel the world to see?
Malaysia: Facades and Whispers
Kuala Lumpur showcases Malaysia’s harmony and parity among different racial, ethnic, and linguistic groups. At least officially. Off the record and quietly, though,…
Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia’s Urban Heart with a Village Soul
As I toured Kuala Lumpur, I saw various houses of worship, a mosaic of ethnicities, a plethora of restaurants, a cross-section of Asia, an endless supply of shops, and a doozie of a traffic jam. But this photo of Kampung Baru…
Hong Kong’s Magical Luminous Ovoids
A magical collection of “luminous ovoids” transforms Hong Kong’s urban landscape at dusk, carving a peaceful, happy, otherworldly retreat into the space between the busy harbor and the even busier skyscrapers that define Hong Kong Island. Here time slows. Adults frolic. Smiles abound. And reality and make-believe mingle. The exhibition is courtesy of teamLab, the…
Hong Kong’s Enchanted Port(al)
The pier is the nexus between land and water, an invitation to trust your life to a vessel mere “inches from death,” as the Roman poet Juvenal wrote. But it’s worth it. It always has been. Islands are different kinds of places with a different kind of daily life. Hong Kong’s pier is…
Planet of the Monkeys (in Hong Kong)
I felt like a visitor, even an intruder. And the eeriness of the scene underscored the vastness of our planet and the variety of life on it, and silently asked the question: To whom does our planet belong?
A Man and a Tree and the Nature of the World
Only after I saw this weary man under a tree in Hong Kong did it occur to me to ask the fundamental and important question: Why is it that in some places, as here, people can rest peacefully in public and not fear for their safety, while in other places the public space is a dangerous one?
Impressions of Singapore
Singapore is the battle between old and new, the product of three ethnic groups shepherd into the 21st century under the canopy of a common tongue and a united vision. The result is tension between past and future, but not among citizens. It is…