Zeitgeist Addendum October 29, 2008

A friend of mine sent me this addendum to the documentary film Zeitgeist. Opens our eyes to the phenomenon which his happening RIGHT NOW. I am not smart enough to really understand all of this, but curious enough to look at it and try to grasp another reality that we don’t hear about on the news. In watching these videos I ask myself: If Barack Obama is voted president, where and how does he fit in all this? Is he too good to be true (and therefore in grave danger) or is he just part of the whole manipulation machine of what they call “corporatocracy”? I guess only time will tell.

Zeitgeist 2 – Addendum Part 3

Zeitgeist 2 – Addendum Part 4

Résister October 22, 2008

J’aime bien ce verbe résister.

Résister, à ce qui nous emprisonne, aux préjugés, aux jugements hatifs …résister à tout ce qui est mauvais en nous et ne demande qu’à s’exprimer … résister à l’envie d’abandonner, au besoin de se faire plaindre, au besoin de parler de soi au détriment de l’autre … résister aux modes, aux ambitions malsaines, au désarroi ambiant.

Résister, et … sourire.

Emma Dancourt … Préface du livre de Marc Levy “Les enfants de la liberté”

(merci Gerald)

Images of Asia… October 19, 2008

I have finally managed to sort through all my pictures and upload all the ones I wanted to share. I know I probably should have still deleted many but I just couldn’t. In reading my last post, I decided to add the photos to the few descriptions I listed. Here they are (click on the photos to see a larger version):

- The traffic guard on the busy Seoul street who wears a microphone so that everyone hears him as he controls the pedestrian and vehicular crowd.

- The tiny Vietnamese old woman with her cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth. I would not want to run into her in a dark alley!

- The adorable high school children in their uniforms in Vietnam who answer questions in unison and give me peace signs as I walk past their classrooms and snap at them trying to avoid the wrath of their teacher.

- The other little elementary schoolchildren who sit down to watch the impressive changing of the guards ceremony at the entrance of a palace park in Seoul. There are groups wearing yellow t-shirts, blue t-shirts with “happy smiles” written on them, red t-shirts…and they clap and roar and show me the same innocence and purity that I see in every child of the world.

- The remnants of British rule in Hong Kong. Street names such as Lockhart, Hennessey, Fenwick… double decker buses and streetcars passing right by the open food market with fish. beef, duck…

- The homeless people who sleep in cardboard boxes at the underground station in Seoul. A part of this society that my Korean friend tells me is very sad. I agree. He explains to me that many of these men have lost their jobs and that shame prevents them from returning home to their families. I see an old man who looks like an ordinary grandfather. I take a photo of him hoping he doesn’t wake up. I do not want to add to his shame, but I want to document the intense sadness I feel when hear this story.

- The orderliness all over Seoul. The excellent customer service. The wealth. The addiction to brand names. The tradition. The fashion conscious youth. The generally bland look on people’s faces. No, Koreans in general would not rank at the top of my list of warm-hearted people. I have met very warm individuals, but as a whole, when you walk down the streets I find them to be a bit robotic.

- The beautiful face of the young and strong Indonesia man I meet at Kaliandra. The pleasurable feeling of looking at a warm and kind smile.

- The amazing ability to pretty much transport anything on motorscooters in Indonesia and Vietnam.

It was all so amazing that, one week later and looking at thousands of photos over and over again, I am still trying to make sense of it all; trying to understand what travel means and how important it is; taking my notes and, as Daniel comments in my last post, hoping I will one day put it all together and share it the best way I can. Just the way I love to share everything else I observe. I will find the words one day. The right words. For now, enjoy my photos:

Asia Photos

Final impressions… October 8, 2008

I’m almost done with my “recruitment” trip to Asia.  I am back in Hong Kong for the last leg of the trip and I have slowed down my pace.  My colleague and I (luckily she is originally from Hong Kong and even though our goals and tastes are quite different, we have managed to find a healthy common ground) are staying in a small but clean hotel in the Wanchai district of Hong Kong Island.  In the past few days I have been sensing that I might get sick.  My throat has been sore and my energy level is not as high as I am used to.  Might have to do with the extreme change in temperature between Vietnam and Korea (oh the weather in Korea was SO perfect!) and then back to hot Hong Kong.  That is fine though.  It forces me to slow down and do what I am doing right now.  I found a nice cafe called “the perfect cup”, sort of reminds me of the starbucks theme, except it’s not starbucks.  As Western as it can get with very pleasant Diana Krall-type jazz music giving it this cool feel.  At 8am it is a mix of “natives” and mostly white middle aged business men. 

 

As I look out my window I see: 7 Eleven and Outback Steakhouse right next to each other.  Yeah, did you know that every place I have been to (and that probably means every city in Asia) is bombarded with your classic: Starbucks, Mc Donald’s, 7 Eleven, Outback Steakhouse, Pizza Hut, Dunkin Donuts (in Seoul Korea…all over the place!), oh, and KFC…I know I should not be surprised, but I am.  I guess seeing it with my own eyes just confirms that reality.  I know it is not anything that can be stopped or avoided, so I don’t even try to think about it further.

 

My question is to myself: how can I possibly write down all the impressions I have experienced during this trip.  Remember, this was not a pleasure trip.  It was for work.  But I managed to find time to wander the streets sometimes aimlessly, sometimes with a specific goal.  When my sister in law recently told me that I still have the intense curiosity she saw in my eyes when she first met me (I was about 10 years old), I find that this trip confirms this fact.  I am like a sponge.  I look at everything around me.  I watch the people, I watch the way things are done, I observe people’s interactions and the unspoked rules, or lack of rules (such as transportation in Indonesia and Vietnam).  I sometimes think I will explode with all the senses that are stimulated while my eyes are open.

 

There is absolutely no way I can write it all down.  I don’t think I have the vocabulary and ability to describe it so that you, the reader, can truly relate or understand what I am looking at.  It would be my goal.  And so I have learned something else about myself.  I LOVE to take photos and I am thrilled to have fould out about myself that my lense has indeed become my choice of language to convey what I see.  All I need to do is SNAP and there you have it:

 

-  The traffic guard on the busy Seoul street who wears a microphone so that everyone hears him as he controls the pedestrian and vehicular crowd.

- The tiny Vietnamese old woman with her cigarette hanging from the corner of her mouth.  I would not want to run into her in a dark alley!

- The adorable high school children in their uniforms in Vietnam who answer questions in unison and give me peace signs as I walk past their classrooms and snap at them trying to avoid the wrath of their teacher.

-  The other little elementary schoolchildren who sit down to watch the impressive changing of the guards ceremony at the entrance of a palace park in Seoul.  There are groups wearing yellow t-shirts, blue t-shirts with “happy smiles” written on them, red t-shirts…and they clap and roar and show me the same innocense and purity that I see in every child of the world. 

- The remnants of British rule in Hong Kong.  Street names such as Lockhart, Hennessey, Fenwick… double decker buses and streetcars passing right by the open food market with fish. beef, duck…

- The homeless people who sleep in cardboard boxes at the underground station in Seoul.  A part of this society that my Korean friend tells me is very sad.  I agree.  He explains to me that many of these men have lost their jobs and that shame prevents them from returning home to their families.  I see an old man who looks like an ordinary grandfather.  I take a photo of him hoping he doesn’t wake up.  I do not want to add to his shame, but I want to document the intense sadness I feel when hear this story.

-  The orderliness all over Seoul.  The excellent customer service.  The wealth.  The addiction to brand names.  The tradition.  The fashion conscious youth.  The generally bland look on people’s faces.  No, Koreans in general would not rank at the top of my list of warm-hearted people.  I have met very warm individuals, but as a whole, when you walk down the streets I find them to be a bit robotic.

- The beautiful face of the young and strong Indonesia man I meet at Kaliandra.  The pleasurable feeling of looking at a warm and kind smile.

- The amazing ability to pretty much transport anything on motorscooters in Indonesia and Vietnam. 

- And then, in the background of all this, the occasional news reports I see regarding the presidential debates, the vice-presidential debate, the downfall of the financial markets…as I sit here I glance over to my neighbor’s newspaper and see titles such as: “give me back the money I made”, “it is only going to get worse”…no one seems to be immune to it.  But I must confess that I am not really connected to this reality right now.

 

…and there is so much more.  And I will share my photos with you as soon as I have uploaded and sorted through them (all 2000+ of them).  I look forward to sharing what I saw with you.  I look forward to reliving every moment.  I look forward to returning home and sitting in my favorite cafe Trieste and looking back to understand what I have learned from this trip to a corner of the world I have never been to before.

Impressions of Indonesia…part 2 October 1, 2008

As I sit in the executive lounge of the luxurious hotel we are staying at I overlook the red and black rooftops of this city called Surabaya, Indonesia. It is a spread out city and as soon as we got out of the airplane, I noticed the difference between Surabaya and Jakarta. The people greet us the way they do in Buddhist countries…the drive to the hotel takes us past lush rice paddies, open space, more greenery, stalls upon stalls of what I perceive to be nurseries (do people really buy so many plants?), motorcycles and scooters (so many of them).

The world of transportation…I think this is what has impressed me most: 1, 2, 3 even 4 people ride together on one motorcycle. Usually Dad does the driving, the older child (perhaps seven or eight) sits in front of Dad holding on to the handles, mom sits behind dad clutching on to either an infant or a baby snuggled between its parents. I have seen some mothers bottle feed their babie, others holding the child so that it is standing straight resting its hands on its father’s shoulders. That particular child was not more than 2 years old. I have seen teenagers text messaging while riding their scooter. In the days that I have been in Indonesia and observed this phenomenon (and taken loads of photos) I have not once seen anything that resembled an accident or even a close call. There seems to be no laws on the road and my only guess is that this smooth zigzagging across lanes, in between cars and buses stems from years of intuitive and instinctive knowledge.  They definitely know what they ar doing!

We had our fair the day we arrived so everyone was a bit tired and spent from having to get up at 3 or 4am that morning to take the flight from Jakarta to Surabaya. We all went to bed quite early that evening.

The next day we got up early and drove to a resort-like village 2 hours outside of Surabaya called Kaliandra. On our way there we passed what I learned to be a strange phenomenon which happened several years ago. When an oil company tried to drill in this area they did not find oil but instead hit something in the earth that triggered a literal floodgate of mud. Yes, mud! The mud does not stop flowing out of the earth. It has completely engulfed the immediate village and is now a lake which rises a few meters every day. They have had to build a protective wall around the lake and have to add on to it every day to avoid overflowing and possible destruction of the next village. The area has quickly become a local tourist attraction. We did not stop to see the mud lake (too much traffic) but I took pictures of tourists walking up the stairs to the edge of the lake to themselves take pictures. As I just wrote, the village next to it has itself become an attraction and takes well advantage, understandably, of this very strange phenomenon. Along with that there are also many abandoned buildings. When I say building I mean concrete garage-like structures that, if I look at all the other ones around these, are people’s houses. These particular ones have been abandoned. As we drove by (thank God for traffic which allowed me to take a better, longer look as well as take photos) I could see just the homes…small and dark. But at least these people live in concrete and not aluminum/wooden shacks I have also seen.

Children are everywhere. They are absolutely beautiful, their faces pure, their large eyes show a curiosity that I desperately try to capture through my lens.  I have actually been so surprised at how much people react positively to having their pictures taken.  They really seem to like it.

Of course poverty is everywhere. I did not have enough time to see much, but I feel like the poverty in these countries is different than in the United States. In the US I see tremendous sadness and loneliness, anger and resentment in the faces of poor people. We have such a large population of homeless people, especially in big cities. What I have seen in Indonesia is extreme poverty but I haven’t seen the sadness, the resentment, the loneliness. Not to say that it does not exist. I know it exists. But I also know that family is sacred and even if these people are poor, they have each other and they take care of each other. In the US so many of these people are completely alone, abandoned by their families (if they even ever had any in the first place) as well as the system. Families are broken and each person fends for himself. Also, we have so many homeless people with psychiatric problems wandering the streets of big cities, ignored by most who walk by them as though they were just another bench on the sidewalk. Let’s not forget that the United States is a superpower and one of the richest countries in the world…this atrocity should not exist and the government should take care of this problem.

What I have seen here so far is graciousness, kindness, smiles, beauty in Indonesia  and my guess is the more time one spends in more remote areas the more one falls in love. In a way I think I fell in love (mind you, it is not difficult for me to fall in love) with this country and hope to return to it in the future.

…next day….

I am sitting on the plane to Hong Kong where we will transfer and fly on to Ho Chi Minh City. I look forward to getting more impressions, falling in love and taking tons more pictures…

In my next post I will write about Kaliandra.