Culture
Going One Step Beyond
1If you’ve found something you enjoy, you could stick with it… or you could seek out a similar activity, learn a more specific skill or take up a related hobby. Broaden your horizons and deepen the experience by going one step beyond.
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Going One Step Beyond.
2Make Food And Friends – Gourmet travellers love exploring exotic cuisines on their holidays, savouring authentic flavours prepared by locals in unique surroundings. There’s nothing quite like eating a dish in the place it came from, but what if you could experience a revelatory cultural exchange at home, too? In order to facilitate integration and communication, charities in several countries are asking recent immigrants and refugees to share some of their culinary traditions in their adopted countries. By ordering Eritrean catering in Seattle, learning to prepare Syrian delicacies in Berlin, or sampling Nepalese dumplings in New York, curious foodies get to know their new fellow citizens – and the home cooking they enjoy.
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Going One Step Beyond.
3Take Your Photography Back In Time – At this stage, we all know that for every digital trend, there will be an analogue backlash. Once the mainstream embraces computers, MP3s and ebooks, a few hardcore enthusiasts champion typewriters, vinyl records and bound paper. For amateur photographers, the options are increasingly intelligent, complex digital cameras, paired with sophisticated image editing software, or back to the future with an analogue camera, roll of film and the excitement of seeing how a shot turns out in the darkroom. Before investing in a new camera, take a course where the analogue equipment is provided. Even if you decide to stick with digital, you’re guaranteed to learn something useful.
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Going One Step Beyond.
4Discover Art In The Outdoors – If you have to visit at least one museum on every city trip, hit up every exhibition opening in your home town, and will happily travel to see the blockbuster art event of the year in New York, London or Paris, then it’s time to take your obsession outdoors. Instead of focusing on the world’s great art institutions, head for the great outdoors and seek out amazing sculpture parks. Not only do they offer world-class art, often on a monumental scale, but you’ll get some fresh air and a little exercise as well.
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Going One Step Beyond.
5Go High-Tech With Your Green Thumb – Gardening is a hobby that is all advantages, zero downsides, so the more of it we can do, the better. If every inch of your garden, balcony or window sills is already occupied with fruit, veg, herbs and flowers, it’s time to green up your interiors. Although at first glance hydroponics (and aquaponics for the more advanced) seem a lot more complicated than the good old-fashioned method of “stick something in the ground and watch it grow,” once you’re set up, these innovative systems of cultivation are low-maintenance and will keep you in fresh produce year-round.
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Going One Step Beyond.
6Bring The Tube To Life – It’s become easier to feed a TV addiction nowadays – and so much harder to remember there’s a real world beyond the box. Motivate yourself to get off the couch by seeking out a place that looks and feels like your favourite show and is populated with people who are just as enthusiastic about it. We’re not talking about filming locations, but hangouts that were inspired by popular television series, like the “real” Central Perk in New York that popped up to celebrate the 20th anniversary of Friends, the “original” Cheers bar in Boston, or the Golden Girls-themed cafe Rue La Rue in New York (which debuted in February, just as the classic show finally became available for online streaming).
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Going One Step Beyond.
7Upgrade Your Asanas – Adventurous yogis are spoiled for choice. Should they ever become bored of the more or less established types of yoga taught in studios, gyms and community centres all over the world, they can move on to more vigorous challenges like Ashtanga, Bikram and Broga, leave the mat behind for aerial, aqua and pole yoga, or embrace the weirdness of beer, laughter and harmonica yoga. Our favourite spinoff is SUP Yoga. There’s nothing quite like doing a sun salutation on a stand-up paddleboard to really challenge your balance and work your core The sound of lapping waves will calm your mind – and a refreshing dip is only a slight wobble away. [Photo: flickr.com]
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Going One Step Beyond.
8Stretch It Out – If balancing poses aren’t your favourite part of yoga, perhaps you’d like to improve on your flexibility instead. Stretching is currently having a moment, with entire fitness studios and workouts focused on limbering up. Thankfully this is not the bouncy, forced and potentially harmful overkill popular in the 1980s, but a slow, progressive and measured approach to relieving tension and improving flexibility. There are YouTube tutorials focused entirely on using yoga techniques to do splits, passive stretching studios where clients are stretched by instructors in one-on-one sessions, and special contraptions that help achieve stretching positions
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Going One Step Beyond.
9Travel With Your Taste Buds – Whenever food X is declared the new food Y, the self-appointed trend police like to act as though the world was suddenly robbed of one dish, to be swiftly replaced by another. That is, of course, nonsense. What really happens is that something new and delicious is brought to our attention while (only) the best iterations of the old delicious thing stick around. This is what happened when Pho was declared the new Ramen – and it’s exactly what will happen now that Laksa is the new Pho. If you love hearty, spicy Asian noodle dishes served in steaming hot broth, there’s a world of bowls out there just waiting to be discovered.
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Culture
Going One Step Beyond.
10Dance To A New Beat – If you enjoy dancing, but have no actual dancing skills, now is the perfect time to take some lessons. Thanks to the popularity of televised dancing competitions, gyms are increasingly offering dance exercise classes and old-fashioned dance schools are getting rid of the cobwebs to appeal to a younger clientele. No matter which style of dance you gravitate towards, you get a great full-body workout and the poise, deportment and body control you learn will translate to a better posture and more deliberate body language in everyday life. Needless to say, you’ll also slay on the dance floor.
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Going One Step Beyond.
11Dip Into A Foodie Trend – If the recent taco craze, brewing for years in California before finally taking the rest of the world by storm, has helped you discover proper Mexican food for the first time, then you’ve just cracked open the door to a larder filled with fresh, deep and diverse flavours. Tacos are a colourful, bite-sized gateway drug to moles, tamales, tortas ahogadas and chilaquiles, none of which bear any relation to the cheesy carbs with bland salsa that used to pass as Mexican cuisine outside the Americas. Try them all – and while you’re at it, sample some mezcals, micheladas, horchatas, and aguas frescas, too.
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Going One Step Beyond.
12Discover Skim – So you love surfing, but the waves are no good, the water is too cold, the sharks are circling or you can’t even be bothered coming up with an excuse and it just isn’t happening today… Perhaps you could try skimboarding instead. Like a cross between skateboarding and catching waves, skimboarding may not scratch your every surfing itch, but it’s a pretty great supplemental sport. It requires a lot of the same skills, like balance, core strength and the ability to read the movements of the ocean – and it’s great, safe beach fun.
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Culture
Going One Step Beyond.
13Sample The New Seafood – Seafood lovers are probably well aware of the many ethical concerns, ranging from overfishing to pollution and disruption of marine ecosystems. Educating yourself on sustainable seafood is a good start, but why not branch out and get a different taste of the ocean by sampling sea veg. Even if you love fish, you’re probably only familiar with nori – the seaweed wrapped around sushi rolls – and wakame, served in miso soups or as sesame seaweed salad in Japanese restaurants. Branch out with dulse “bacon”, sea spaghetti, which can – as the name indicates – replace pasta, or simply use seaweed seasoning for vegetarian fishy flavour.
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Culture
Going One Step Beyond.
14Update Your Silver Screen Experience – No matter how much you love movies, it’s becoming increasingly harder to justify the cost of a cinema ticket when there’s an endless supply of streamed content online. However, even though the golden days of cinema are over – or perhaps precisely because they are – movie experiences are becoming more adventurous, exciting and enticing. From the now-standard open-air and rooftop cinemas to movies at the museum, hot tub cinema and immersive film adventures like Secret Cinema, or Sing-A-Long-A, these Hollywood-worthy events provide entertainment that isn’t available online. [Photo: Secret Cinema presents The Shawshank Redemption, Photo: Laura Little]
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Going One Step Beyond.
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