Christmas Podcast- Thursday, December 10th, 2015
Christmas in America is probably the biggest holiday of the year. People begin to get in the Christmas spirit and decorate for Christmas even before Thanksgiving. The day after Thanksgiving in America is known as Black Friday, followed by Small Business Saturday, and Cyber Monday when everything is on sale and people begin their Christmas shopping. People even go out on Thursday night to begin their shopping. Many times people start fights over specific items, which is very much not the Christmas.
In the Sager household, we take Christmas decorations and take Christmas very seriously. One of my favorite Christmas traditions surrounds our Christmas tree. Every year, we go out to get our tree together. And its not a short little, go get the tree, and come home to decorate it. We have to walk the entire Christmas tree farm, while my father wears this hat that I simply cannot stand, and look at every single tree before choosing the perfect one. Once we have sung “O Christmas Tree” to the chosen tree and taken a plethora of pictures, my Dad and my brothers saw the tree down and carry it up front, before putting it on the car and driving it home. Once we get the tree home, my Dad and brothers bring the tree in the house and secure it in the stand while my mom and I get the ornaments from the basement. Then we put in Christmas tune and the fireplace while my mom tells us the story of our “first ornament of Christmas”, an ice cream cone ornament that my Dad won for my mother at a fair they went to together, when they first started dating. My dad said that he was going to win my mom a big prize and paid lots of money, only to be able to win her this tiny stuffed ornament. Then my Dad puts the lights on the tree and all three of the kids put the remaining ornaments on the tree while my mom prepares dinner. That night we spend the night together, putting up more Christmas decorations and just being together.
The Man, The Myth, The Legend; Valenti Sanjuan
After multiple failed attempts, yesterday, we were finally able to meet with Valenti Sanjuan. One of the craziest people I have ever met, if I do say so myself who lives the coolest life. Valenti started out on radio, broadcasting his show on one of Spain’s major radio networks. After the network fired Valenti, his world was rocked. And not only because he was now out of work; getting fired took a large emotional toll on Valenti as well. So he decided to take things into his own hands and create his own radio show, via podcasts and mainly on the Internet where his former listeners would still be able to tune in and hear him. He “borrowed” a few microphones from his former studio and created his own studio, using the couch from his own home. Valenti continued to make a name for himself and reach out to his listeners, even without his own studio and without his own production equipment. I think this is where Valenti’s dislike for the old media, the main media, comes from. He explained during his visit with us that he strongly dislikes the main media, i.e. television, radio and newspaper, because they more or less screwed him over big time. And his reasoning for hating the big media, especially with the follow up of the smaller medias, is totally justified. Had Facebook, Instagram, Twitter and SnapChat not have become as huge as they are, he probably would have struggled a whole lot, but he got very lucky.
Now Valenti is known all over for both his shows, as well as his videos on YouTube
, not to mention the outrageous adventures and competitions that he has competed in. Valenti hosts a live show at a theater every month called Visto lo Visto, where fans can buy tickets and see him host a variety of different guests. He also has become more or less world famous for his accomplishments. During one of his shows, a fellow competitor in IronMan suggested that Valenti compete in an IronMan race in three months time. Valenti agreed so long as he was given the training that he needed in order to compete. This was only a few years ago. An IronMan race consists of a 2.4 mile swim, 112 mile bike and 26.2 mile run. Since his first IronMan, Valenti has competed in 8 IronMans and 2 UltraMans. An UltraMan is a three-day, three part race.
“The Ultraman World Championship is a three-day, 515 km (320 mile) annual endurance race held on the Big Island of Hawaii. The race is divided into three stages over three days: The first is a 6.2-mile (10-km) ocean swim from Kailua Bay to Keauhou Bay, followed by a 90-mile (145-km) cross-country bike ride, with vertical climbs that total 6,000 feet. Stage two is a 171.4-mile (276-km) bike ride from Volcanoes National Park to Kohala Village Inn in Hawi, with total vertical climbs of 4,000 feet. Stage three is a 52.4-mile(84-km) double-marathon, which starts at Hawi and finishes on the beach at the Old Kona Airport State Recreation Area. Each stage must be completed within 12 hours or less. The swim portion of stage one must be completed in 5.5 hours or less. Participants who do not reach the finish lines within the time limits are disqualified.”
He has also accomplished the equivalent of 1 IronMan every day for 5 straight days. Purely insane if you ask me. With the majority of the races that Valenti competes in, he records his endeavors and publishes the videos on YouTube for his fans and followers to watch. This has added to his publicity as well as added to his fan base. People follow along with his races and see his different accomplishments and struggles along the way. From his racing he has also become sponsored by a variety of different companies. The companies that endorse his races and his videos range from shoe companies to sunglass and clothing companies. He also doe
s videos on a pretty weekly talking about a different product that he likes or has been using recently. Many of the times these videos will be paid by the products company. Essentially, Valenti has made a complete name for himself as an entertainer, an athlete, a competitor and an endorser
of different products. He travels all over the world to make his videos as well and compete in different races. Valenti and his sister, together compete in many of the races together as well as run a business together called, Gordon Seen. When asked where he is headed next, he told us that he is headed to Cuba to do a race through the jungle where he will not only encounter the challenges from his body and the race course, but he will also be encountering the wildlife that comes with the jungles of Cuba. You couldn’t pay me all the money in the world to run through the jungle and just hope that I don’t get eaten by a snake or wild-cat. No thank you. I’ll sick with hanging out along the beaches here in Barcelona.
Follow Valenti here: Youtube, Twitter, Instagram, Facebook
Word Count: 864
The Waldo Movement – The Black Mirror – Sunday, November 29th, 2015
We recently watched The Waldo Movement – The Black Mirror. This video left me kind of confused by what type of video it would be classified as but also puzzled by the concept of the video.
In short, there is a cartoon bear, named Waldo. The bear is a televised cartoon who is “run” by one man who opposes the political views of most of the politicians running for candidacy of the Parliament. Waldo, makes appearances, via television obviously, at different campaigns and events held during the campaigning
time. There is a black truck that drives around with a large TV screen on it and loud speakers, where Waldo is able to voice his opinion, ask questions and interact with the people. More or less he is trying to get the people not to vote for Mr. Monroe and in return, he has convinced the people that they should vote for him. The man behind Waldo is unknown to the people and is kept a secret for the majority of the campaign until one debate where Mr. Monroe calls out “the man behind the mirror”, calling him childish and scared to show his face, etc. Eventually, this leads to the demise of Waldo and the man behind him can’t take the heat and pressure of having to live up to the name that he had made for himself.
The ideas and concept behind Waldo is an interesting one for sure. The likelihood of something like that being able to happen in the United States is an absolute zero, for sure. There is no way that someone could hide behind a cartoon animated character is straight up reject all the idea and ideologies put forth by a candidate. There is a small possibility that something like that could happen on a smaller scale, like in a small local election, but that would require people to be way more radical toward their local elections, which doesn’t tend to be the case. At least for the most part. Having said this, it is possible for someone to
reject the way that the government works, the things that they are doing, etc, but just openly. Take Edward Snowden for example. Snowden is a former government agent and CIA employee who released classified information about both the American and United Kingdom’s government to the people. Currently, Snowden is not allowed in the United States and every time that he attempts to re-enter, is arrested on the spot. As of late, he has been camping out in Russia were Putin, has told him that he is safe. This is a radical example, similar to that of Waldo, were Snowden was unhappy with the way that things were being operated and chose to expose the two governments, in hope for a change. If you ask me, it more or less backfired on him but that’s just my opinion.
Word Count: 485
Categories: Politics, Journalism, Government, The United States
Tags: Snowden, Waldo, The Waldo Movement
Politics 2.0 – Wednesday, November 18th 2015
Spain and the United States on a variety of platforms; one of the most notable being the way each handles politics. In Spain, political advertisements and regulate by the law, while TV time in the States is purchased at hefty prices. Spain’s use of the internet in politics is growing while the US already has an extremely large presence and platform on the web. Similarly, the specific political campaign handled the parties professionalism on the web while in the States, the job of orchestrating the webpage is sold to large, ultra professional and progressive companies.
The United States saw a complete change and progression in politics and elections overall during the 2008 Presidential Election. President-Elect and current President, Barak Obama used the Internet to his advantage and this played heavily into his successes. President Obama used the Internet to reach a broad spectrum of people and most importantly to hear from the people. This allowed them to have even more say when it came to our future President and his policies as well as giving the people a voice. Most specifically, President Obama used the Internet to reach “The Y Generation”. The 2008 election had the largest turn out of young people, of any election in our nations history. My.BarakObama.com allowed for the people to reach out to the Presidential Candidate and explain to him what they wanted to see in our future President as well as gave Obama a way to reach back and communicate with the people. His professionalism as well as attention to detail on the web was also key. It is important to note that Obama did not win the 2008 or 2012 election because of the Internet, but it did play a large role in his success.
During the 2012 election campaigns, Obama was present on Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, MySpace, a personal blog, Google+, Flickr, Spotify and Pinterest as well as his own MyBarakObama.com while opponent Mitt Romney was only visible on Facebook, YouTube, Twitter, Flickr, and Google+. As important as it was for Obama to be able to reach a broad audience during his first candidacy, it was his continued interaction on his social media platforms that made the difference. Even after he took office, Obama continued to interact with the people, especially with interacting with them on Twitter. One instance that strongly stands out to me was this past fall when a young boy named Ahmed, from Texas, brought a clock that he had made, to school to show his teacher. Rather than the praise that he anticipated, his teacher called the police and the boy was arrested and detained, because the teacher accused him of bringing a bomb to school. Quickly after this story went viral and brought to question racism and prejudice in youth, Obama tweeted, praising the young Ahmed and inviting him to bring his clock to the White House.
Ben Self, a fundamental part of Obama’s campaign success, instituted a few key dynamics into the campaign and the use of the Internet during said campaign. Self pushed hard for the following things:
- Inform, Inform, Inform, and Keep Informing
- Connect with the People
- Ask the People
- Talk with the People
- Micro-Target
- Test things before publishing and pushing them.
It’s unfair and inaccurate to say that President Obama has the internet to thank for his seat in the White House but it is fair to say that the internet played a curtail role in winning his seat, as well as keeping him in the White House. It is also fair to say that President Obama has the best relationship with his people of any president that has come before him and for that, he has the Internet to thank.
Word Count: 620
Tag: Barak Obama, President, Candidacy, Election, Politics, Mitt Romney, Campaign, Ben Self, Ahmed Mohammed, White House, Pinterest, Google+, Flickr
Categories: Internet, News, Facebook, Twitter, Journalism, 2.0
Branding Marketing – Wednesday, November 11, 2015
Brand Marketing, like all types of marketing is getting your name out there for consumers to buy your product. The difference with brand marketing compared to other forms of marketing is that branding marketing is designed to make the customers happy. It works to entice a feeling of happiness or pleasure that the consumer can that associate with the product. Brand marketing also involves the people more than traditional marketing does and includes the consumers input to market the product. Examples of this include reviews on a specific product or on a restaurant etc.
Previously marketing worked to get more to the consumers than to give to the consumers as well as receive. These days, marketers aim to attract the attention of the customers and have them purchase or use their resource but they are also looking for customers interaction
and customer feed back. Many times now when shopping at a store, the cashier will inform you after your purchase that if you “fill out this survey, you will receive a coupon for 10% off your next purchase”. This is a great way to get consumers to give feedback to the companies. Especially since now the feedback isn’t being read and tossed to the side. I know from personal experience that if something is wrong with a product and you write a bad review on their website or email a complaint to the company, they are often quick to reply with some helpful suggestion on use of their product or how you can get the product fixed and sometimes even replaces. This is also common with restaurants, hotels, etc. The companies like to have the constructive feedback so they know what they are doing right and what they are doing wrong, so that they can fix/adjust thing, but they also like to have happy customers and will often do as much as they can to keep their customers happy. After all happy customers = more money.
Viral marketing is another type of marketing that reaches a large, broad audience at a very quick pace. In some cases this requires a lot of work on the side of the company or marketing agency but other times, the consumer do a lot of the work for them. There are 6 main types of viral marketing:
- Send it
- A way to reach a lot of consumers or potential customers by having them send an SMS message to others about their experience
- Viral (Incentivized)
- This motivates the consumer to share the product with other people with money or a discount in return. The more people who share your link or use your code, the more of a discount you receive. For example, Uber discount codes.
- Masked Marketing
- When a company sends mysterious information or leading information to their consumers that doesn’t appear to be advertising and it entices them to look for more information
- Rumor Marketing
- Examples of rumor marketing would be hearing false news of an actresses affair just days before the release or announcement of her new film. This will get people to do research on the actress to find out more and then learning about the film as well.
- Social Database
- Here the consumer includes access to their contacts, which then gives the company access to more and more people to reach out to for their product. Making almost a social network for marketers to pick up on.
- Invitations
- Direct invitations from a consumer on a website to other to “join” them on the site. For example, wanting to connect with someone on LinkdIn or on Google+.
Word Count: 608
Tags: Discounts, Consumers, Feedback, Input, Outreach
Categories: Marketing, Brands, Branding, Journalism, Advertising
Digital Story Telling – Thursday, November 5th, 2015
Digital story telling is defined as a combination of text, video, and interactivity in a non-linear and complimentary form. Ok, so what does that mean? How is digital story telling different from any other story telling and how can I tell the difference from digital story telling and everything else?
Look at these two articles and see if you can tell the difference on your own:
Work Out Plans Based On Job Type – A Rogue State Along Two Rivers
Hard to put your finger on, right?
The key is the non-linear and complimentary form. Linear story telling means that you read an article from top to bottom, start to finish and you need to read everything in chorological order for it to make sense, like the first article. The difference with non-linear is that the article can contain multiple parts that don’t require being read in chronologically in order for the article to make sense.
With this comes the complimentary aspect. With traditional story telling, all of the information on the page directly relates and there is not a built in source for additional information. With digital story telling, all the information is not located on the same page, rather a collection of pages, all related to the same general topic but they compliment each other with different subtopics, like the second article. With traditional story telling, the videos, images and interactivity are all pertinent to the topic at hand but it is all portrayed on the same information page. With digital story telling, the main topic of the article could be Barcelona Restaurants, then smaller subpages each with information about different restaurants. One page could contain a video from the Executive Chef at the restaurant while a different page could have pictures of that restaurants food and another subpage could have recipes to make some of the dishes at home or have the menu displayed. All of the information here relates to the same topic, Barcelona Restaurants, but it is not all the same information on one same page. This kind of storytelling is great for both readers and writers. Digital story telling allow the writer to discuss a very broad topic, while still being able to go deep in depth where they may want to. For example, if someone wanted to write an article about F.C. Barcelona, they would have the ability to talk about a few of the players on the team without the entire article being consumed by Messi’s soccer history and family life. This also gives the readers the ability to pick and chose what information they want to read and what information they may not care about as much. If someone does not want to read about Messi, they can overlook that subpage and read about Camp Nou and the coming renovations to the stadium without sacrificing anything.
Below is a great TEDx talk given at a school near my home, that discusses digital story telling.
Word Count: 466
Tags: Messi, F.C. Barcelona, Camp Nou, Restaurants, Food, Digital Story Telling, Linear
Category: Story Telling, Barcelona, Journalism, Internet, Images, Video
Meet Marta Alonso Reig – Monday, November 2nd
Meet Marta, who in my eyes, is pretty much living the dream. Not just because she is drop-dead gorgeous, has the best fashion sense, a fantastic personality and goes on some of the coolest trips, but she is literally doing, and has been doing, exactly what I dream to do when I graduate. Marta is the founder of Circle Line, a digital storytelling agency, the founder of @IgersBCN, the first worldwide Instagrammers group, and author of WeInstagramBook. Marta has also been the founder of a few smaller companies and worked with Edelman as well as helped launch the Catalunya Experience (now its own television channel).
After studying Communication and Journalism, Marta set out with her mentor and friend in 2010 and started Muuby; one of the first digital marketing and social media companies in Spain. With Muuby, Marta worked with companies including Doctors Without Boarders and Spanair. Spanair was Spain’s second airline company. Muuby invested a lot of money into Spanair, with an expected even larger return. Unfortunately for both parties, Spanair did not thrive the way it anticipated and ended up folding, thus leading to the fold of both Spanair and Muuby.
In comes IgersBCN. I love the concept of this platform and the way that it started. Marta explained that more or less, one night over dinner and drinks, she and her friends thought of the idea of creating a community through Instagram for people in Barcelona to share their images. Essentially a community within Instagram. IgersBCN was born. Since the start of the first Instagram community here, it has since taken off all over the place to Instagram communities all over the world. I was interested and looked up some of the other communities. I now follow @IgersBCN, @IgersPhilly, @IgersBoston, @IgersUSA, @IgersBucksCounty. I was shocked to see how many different communities are out there and even more just involving the hashtag (there isn’t a IgersJerseyShore page but there is an IgersJerseyShore hashtag). I really love the concept of these online communities. The posts on the pages vary in contents. Some of the pictures are of landscapes, others of animals, people, food and then of course the meet up posts. The meet up posts inform its followers of where the Igers of that region are planning to do a meet and greet per say. Some of them are hikes, others are restaurants/bars; its all a way to meet people in your community who share at least one similar interest: Instagram.
After Marta’s project, which she is still actively involved in, she began a project with the region of Catalunya called Catalunya Experience. Essentially, they brought in all the best and most popular Instagrammers from all over the world and set them free in Catalunya to document this beautiful place. They shared pictures of food, the people, the places that they went and so on. Virtually, they hired these people to do marketing for Catalunya through their own personal Instagram pages. This was so successful that they turned the whole things into a television channel that can now be seen on Channel 3 here in Catalunya.
Links to Marta’s Fabulous Social Media Pages: Instagram Twitter LinkdIn
Tags: Marta, Circle Line, Edelman, Catalunya Experience, Muuby, Spanair, IgersBCN, WeInstagramBook
Categories: Photography, Journalism, Travel
Citizen vs Civic Journalism – Sunday, October 25th
This week, we spent some time discussing the difference between citizen and civic journalism. From the n
The concept of being a journalist has completely changed from its original meaning. The Webster Dictionary defines the term journalist as, ” a person engaged in journalism; especially : a writer or editor for a news medium”. The site continues on to reference someone who keeps a journal, essentially written form of journalism. These days, its almost an anomaly to find someone who actually takes real notes on a notepad and hand writes their articles. The digital age has taken over, taking journalism right along with it. These days, journalism is done completely on the computer and even more specifically, the internet. This is both a good and bad thing. The positive side of this is that anyone can be a journal
ist and share information, rapidly and with an extremely wide audience. On the flip side, the down side is that, anyone can be a journalist and share information, rapidly and with an extremely wide audience. This discredits the source a lot and means that we all need to be doing lots of fact checking and double checking our sources for credibility, something we aren´t often eager to do. An example of this in recent news is the recent happenings with former NBA star Lamar Odom. Yesterday, it was all over the internet saying that he was in the hospital for a variety of reason, the main source of the issue being unclear at the start. As more information came forward about the former stars situation, many sources were reporting that it wasn´t looking good for him. Later, site even reported him dead. Immediately after this source reported him dead, it was all over Twitter, Facebook and other forms of media. It took until members of his immediate family came forward to say that he was only in a coma, for the source to be discredited. Now imagine that. Your grandson is in a coma, found at a brothel in Nevada, in critical condition and people are premeditating his death. You have enough going on as is, and now you are responsible to informing the overly nosy public that he is still alive, barely.
With the coming of the internet and its constant use, there are a few tools that journalists use to separate themselves from the rest. One of the main tools being a TAG. A tag is a way to highlight specific topics of your article. For example, in my blog post about my trip to Italy, I tagged Italy, Amalfi, Pizza, Pasta, Wine, etc. These are all things that are mentioned in your post but are not common topics of your articles or posts. Tags are also ways for google to fund you and for other people to find your posts. Tags make your work more searchable. Google has so much content to filter through when someone is searching so tags help google to now what content you are contributing when the title is not enough.
http://www.theatlantic.com/video/index/375688/how-is-social-media-changing-journalism/
Tags: Lamar Odom, NBA, Italy, Tags, Journalist, Blog
Categories: Journalism, Technology, Internet, Facebook, Twitter
Word Count: 505
Social Networking – Wednesday October 7th, 2015
So what’s the difference between social networks and social media? On the most basic level, social networking is a way to communicate with others rather than to just share. Social Networks are more interactive than social media site. For example, Instagram is a one way interaction between the one that posts the image and the one that views it. There are some small interactions with “likes” and “comments” but it is not the same as Facebook which is based on updated statuses, interacting with friends, commenting and sharing pictures, ect.
For a while, Facebook and MySpace were the two main platforms of social networking. That is until Facebook killed off MySpace. In the past few years, Google+ has come to the main stage as Facebook’s biggest competition. Google+ is based off of the search engine Google. The only thing that users need is to have a GMail account to be able to have a Google+ account. From my opinion, two big things separate Google+ from Facebook. The first being circles. These are more or less groups that Google+ allows its user to place its co-users. For starters there are groups like “Friends”, “Family”, and “Work”. This allows the user to make posts that are only seen by one of its circles. This is different than Facebook, where you post one thing, and everyone that you are “Friends” with sees. Another fun difference between Google+ and Facebook is Hangouts. Hangouts allows the common users to be able to video message with each other. In Hangouts, compared to pretty much all other video chatting forums, you can chat with more than one user at a time. This is a game changer and gives Skype a big competition.
Another new competitor for Facebook is Diaspora. Diaspora was created by two college students to be Facebook but just much safer. Since we do not pay for Facebook, in order for Facebook, the company, to make money, they sell all of our information to other companies. Essentially, our location, birthday, friends, the things we like, the places that we travel, where we live, the other websites that we visit, ect. are all for sale to other companies. So why is this a big deal? Essentially we are giving the world tons of private information; information that maybe our closet friends don’t even know about us. So in comes Diaspora to save us all from the big bad guys who steal our information to have a more secure social networking site.
Overall, social networks and social networking is a great way to directly connect with people. A way to form relationships outside from face to face interactions and keep up to date with each other. Social media is a way to show others what you’re doing but not interact with you’re viewers. Essentially, if you want others to see what you’re doing but you don’t really care what they’re up to, Social Media is for you. If you want to be able to interact with people and share with one another, Social Networks are your thing.
Categories: Facebook, Instagram
Tags: Diasphora, MySpace, Social Media, Social Networks, Google+
Word Count: 515
Social Media – Sunday, October 4th, 2015
Social media has officially taken over the world and more-or-less taken over our lives. Nowadays, nobody really knows anyone that does not have some sort of social media, if not multiple forms of social media. Currently there are over 1.23 billion people on Facebook alone and the does not include the accounts for restaurants, bands, stores, etc. Social media is used for a variety of thing. The main reason, and the reason that social media began, was to connect with friends and friends of friends. Since then, social media has exploded and become a platform to advertise your brands or stores, to share pictures, to meet new people, to organize events, and in the case of our last Presidential Election, to gather people together on a common platform for a common reason or organization. Now there are more ways of connecting with people than there ever were before and it is all at our fingertips and at the click of a few buttons. Personally, this weekend, my roommates and I traveled to Prague. There we met many different people from all over the world. Immediately after meeting each other, the first thing that we all did was pull out our phones to find one anther on Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, etc. In a matter of moments, I had Instagram followers from Brazil, Canada, New Zealand, Australia, and South Korea. Now, we can all stay connected and see what we are all doing, even with being worlds away from each other.
In recent years, social media has taken a turn from being a way to connect with friends and family, to a way to get news, stay up to date with politics, and a platform to stay up to date with news from across the world. For instance, again this weekend, our friends from Australia knew about the shooting that took place in Oregon before any of the Americans in the room knew. The way they found out: Twitter. With everyone constantly updating social media and having internet access at all times with our cell phones, when something happens, the world knows about it in minutes. Facebook now features a widget on their home screen with trending topics related to new, politics, science and technology as well we sports. In the coming years, Facebook wants to be everyones main source for news and up-to-date information about what is going on in the world. With their projected, 2.44 billion users by 2018, the possibilities are endless.
Categories: Social Media, Travel
Tags: News, Information, Trending, Facebook, Twitter, Instagram
Words: 430
Blogging – Wednesday, September 23rd, 2015
I recently stumbled on a fellow bloggers site that I admire completely. Katie’s blog, The Traveling Light, takes my goals of traveling and essentially eating my way through Europe to a whole new level. In her blog, she highlights the different cities where she has traveled both in the United States and in Europe, highlighting the major cities and her favorite places. I was most specifically drawn to the way that her blog is set up. Unlike most other blogs that I have read, the vast majority of her post is pictures rather than words. I feel like this gives the viewer a way to see the experience of being in a certain location as opposed to just reading about it. I may borrow this technique from her in more of my posts from here on out.
With my potential trip to Amsterdam happening in the next couple of weeks, I was initially drawn to her page on her travels to Amsterdam, Netherlands. I have rece
ntly become a huge fan of brunch so my first stop was her post on brunch. In her short description of brunch, she touches on my two favorite things about brunch. The first being that it is low pressure and the second being that you can eat whatever you want and at whatever quantity you want, because as she says, “this is the first meal of the day and it counts for two meals”. At the bottom of the post she repeats the name of the restaurant as well as the address and where it is on the map. Her pictures, not to mention, had me mouth watering and writing down all the details for my future trip.
Being from the East Coast of the U.S., my next stop on her blog was her page on New York. Living in the two major cities that bookend New York, and having been there a bunch myself, I am always interested in other people’s opinions, on the city and what they specifically highlight. Again, my food-loving soul was immediately drawn to the post with the picture of french fries. To be completely honest, I’m not sure that I even read what the title of the post, I was just too taken under by the fries. Turns out the post is called, Brooklyn Crab. Again in this post, the main focus is the pictures rather than the words. She does touch on the atmosphere and give a detailed description of the times, the lighting, the building/and its surroundings, as well as the food. She even mentions where the food (seafood in this c
ase) is from.
I have to say that in general, I love her style. Not just in the way that she writes, but also in her style of photography, the clothes that she wears, and not to be forgotten, the fact that she is traveling all over the place, documenting her life in such a cool and admirable way. I hope that in the future, I can channel a little more of her attitude and “way of life” into my blogs.
Categories: Food, Travel, Europe, Blogs, United States
Tags: Amsterdam, New York, Brunch, Fries, Seafood, Photography
Words: 536
Ven Conmigo 