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:
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.
Asia on my mind… September 25, 2008
How do I know I am in a country I have never been in? When I am sitting in a room on the 7th floor of a hotel at around 4am overlooking a boulevard and hearing in the distance something I have never heard before. Chants coming from a loudspeaker: oh yes, I am in Indonesia, and 80% of their population is Muslim and right, they pray 5 times a day and the prayer is broadcast for everyone to hear and participate in. Fascinating!
Well, this is only one way of knowing.
I arrived in Hong Kong last Monday after a 14 hour flight. I thought I’d never make it but I surprised myself and even got a few hours of sleep. My friend C. picked me up at the airport and brought me to her relatives’ house about 45 minutes outside of the heart of Hong Kong where I was graciously welcomed to stay for a night. I am a 24-hour sponge here, an infant whose eyes are wide open and can’t keep up with everything she looks at, feels, tastes, smells…
Oh yes, it is hot and very humid here. And then you enter buildings and it is annoyingly freezing thanks to the AC probably set on high. But since I was in for a nice surprise that evening (a Typhoon that quickly went from a level 3 to a level 8 ~ and no, that vocabulary never existed for me until that day), the day was a bit cooler than normal with occasional bursts of rainpoor. Cooler means 29 degrees Celsius instead of the usual 30+ with a steady breeze which does wonders when you are sweating.
We walked and walked and walked…I tried to take photos of what I was looking at. I tried not to take photos of what I was mostly seeing: brand names (real and fake), electonic stores en masse, the shopping shopping shopping that seems to be everyone’s favorite pastime. I wanted to capture something more authentic. Then, the next morning, while writing in my journal I realized that perhaps I should photograph these things because that seems to be the authentic deal! I said to myself: don’t try to make a place into something that it is not…or at least be open to the reality of a people that may just possibly be less creative and individualistic than you would like them to be.
So my first lesson was: accept the reality of big city life. DOn’t I feel the same thing when I walk the streets of downtown San Francisco or New York? People shopping shopping shopping…for sure they must have other things to do and be passionate about. And surely there are areas of these cities where you see another picture.
But I haven’t flown halfway across the world to criticize its people of having no creative individuality…no, I am here to take it all in and not judge. So I try to find moments when I can capture beauty:
- a child looking out the window of the bus driving parallel to the one I am in with the rest of my Community Colleges delegations. He smiles at me when he sees that I have the camera pointing at him.
- an old man in the Hong Kong market selling bloody fishheads that still pulsate as thought they have not yet realized that they are really dead, horribly dead. He stops his blood-splattering head-chopping for a second so I can snap a picture.
- The young Indonesian security guard who is busy getting taxis to drive on after having dropped someone off at the door of the US Embassy allows me to snap of photo of his beautiful facial structure.
It is my first time ever in Asia. I am here for work representing my college. I will be busy with Educational Fairs, visits to embassies and High Schools giving information to prospective students at our college. I am with a “delegation” of Community College Representatives and we seem to be given the semi-royal treatment. I like the fact that I have a reason to be here and that taking in all the impressions and snapping photos is my side gig…
After saying goodbye to the typhoon in Hong Kong who’s name is not Ike or Catherine but a name I will never remember, we flew to Jakarta Indonesia.
It is the middle of the night and I still hear the chants outside my tightly sealed and air-conditioned room. I should go back to bed because today will be a busy day and I don’t want to be tired at 6pm.
More to follow…
Road Trip…Sonoma Valley April 8, 2008
Recently I went on several local road trips and took my new camera with me. Yes, after about a year of searching and thinking about it, I finally bought myself a Canon EOS Rebel xti…good deal on ebay with lots of extras (lenses, batteries, warranty, etc…). So far I am very happy with it. Of course, since I never really took a proper photography class (everything I know is pretty much self-taught…which is good AND bad at the same time), I am working right now at understanding the world of manual settings. I think I have a mental block when it comes to “aperture” “f-stop” “shutter speed”…but hopefully with the help of websites, books and my friend Natasha (a photographer), I can eventually get it.
Enough about that.
So I recently went on a few road trips and took so many pictures that I need to release myself of that abundance SOMEWHERE! I was going to start a brand new blog called SF Strolls (actually, I started it, but I think I will delete it) where I planned to document all the walks I take in San Francisco with photos and descriptions. But why a separate blog? My interests are all over the place, so why not allow my blog to reflect that? With the help of categorizing things, I think I can keep everything right here.
Again. Enough of that! (man, I can go on and on and on sometimes!)
So last week my husband and I took a drive up to Sonoma Valley. Not to taste wine. We like wine, but not big fans of the wine tasting “world”. It’s nice to drive by these wineries…but I prefer other things. On the way to nowhere in particular, we came across a few “sites” I felt were worth stopping for.
First, an old rusty pickup truck. I LOVE LOVE LOVE old rusty things. This was off of highway 37 going East
I love taking pictures of my own shadow. I particularly like this one because it doesn’t look like me. It looks like a cartoon character.
The rust, the copper, the cobwebs…signs of time passing and abandoned objects…
We drove on…
Came across very very large chairs (I think that was on highway 12, right after the Sonoma Valley Airport):
Finally (well, not really, more in another post), we came across this small airport. Sonoma Valley Airport. There were lots of small old planes. We were enthralled and happy that we were allowed to just walk around and take all sorts of pictures…
There are just a few of the pictures I took. If you want to see more, go to this link:
http://www.kodakgallery.com/I.jsp?c=51l273m.7479vwjm&x=0&y=rxn0a0&localeid=en_US
coming up soon:
Jack London Park in Glen Ellen (museum, grave and ruins of the house he and his wife built but that unfortunately burned down 6 months before they were supposed to move in)
A day in Sacramento (the Capitol and Old Sacramento)
A day up the Hudson River November 26, 2007
don’t worry, this is NOT the last video. There are more.
This one is of my day spent up in the area where I went to College (although we didn’t visit New Paltz)…Hudson, Chatham, Catskill…
Takin’ the train to Poughkeepsie… November 23, 2007
I am slowly putting together the videos that I took during my New York City trip. Here’s the first one…of my trainride up to Poughkeepsie. A beautiful 2 hour ride at the height of the Fall foliage.
I really wish youtube would come up with a better way to compress videos. This video is 5 minutes long and after saving it on my computer using imovie (84 mb), it looks really good and clear. After it is uploaded and compressed onto youtube though, it really loses so much of its crispness. But who am I to complain when this is a free service…!
Birthday Dance in New York November 22, 2007
For the first time in my life, I am spending the last hours of my birthday with people I don’t know. I don’t feel alone ~ or lonely. It is an unusual birthday because I am at neither of my homes. Not in San Francisco with my husband, nor in Germany with my parents and brothers. I have chosen instead to spend it in New York ~ with strangers. That’s a slight exaggeration, although it could have just as well been that way. Had I not gone up to visit John and Hillary in Catskill the night before; had I not had dinner with Jessica that evening.
Now I decide that on a future birthday I want to really spend it completely alone from midnight to midnight ~ without seeing one human being ~ camping or perched on top of a mountain, meditating all day. Ok. Another very slight exaggeration as I am unable to meditate for more than ten minutes without opening one corner of my eye every thirty seconds to see if the time is already up. But you get the picture. This would simply be something I’ve never done before and I like the challenge of facing another unknown. Just like this last birthday. It was so simple too.
After a delicious dinner with Jessica at a minuscule Belgian restaurant, she takes me to Café Noir on Grand Street in Soho. We find that perfect spot. The corner table at the entrance where I, my back against the window, have the best possible view of “the show”. Before ordering alcohol (Sangria seems to be the signature drink) I have a café latte to give me the boost I need to stay up late. Jessica and I sit together for a short while. She has to leave because she has a blind date… “a blind date with a blind man” she tells my video camera. Typical Jessica humor that gives me a chuckle every single time. Before she leaves, we arrange to text each other about a half hour after she has met that unknown man ~ the choice of messages are simple: yes or no.
Translation: YES = it’s going well ~ talk to you tomorrow. NO = wait for me! I’ll be back soon!
The time comes and I text her. Her reply is neither: OK! I laugh. Question. Think hard. My final conclusion is that she will not be back. I don’t wait. But I also don’t leave.
By now I’ve got my glass of Sangria, water, my journal, pen, camera and glasses decorating my tiny two-seater of a wooden table. Next to me is another tow-seater. And next to that one is a large table occupied by six so-called gorgeously made up sexy and “I’m in the mood to party” women. They laugh, they talk, they get up to smoke, they move…conscious of every move, attracting the attention of the men standing behind them at the bar. The game is well and on. I can’t catch up with counting the looks flying back and forth between the sexes. I occasionally interrupt my stares with sentences in my journal. My game is on too. My journal is my tool. I am aware that without that tool, I would only look awkward and sad. Instead, my journal justifies my lonesome presence. Nobody questions. As a matter of fact, I feel the looks and I know what people are thinking.
My new neighbor, the cute French man, asks me if I am writing about the people in the pub. I want to say “no, writing about YOU!”, but I nod and point his attention to the man at the bar with the down jacket “qui se rince les yeux” (this is a French expression which literally translates to “rinsing his eyes”, usually used when a person is staring at a man or woman they find very attractive). After a brief exchange of words about the fact that I speak French, I go on to explain to him why this scene is worth writing about. The French man laughs and shows his amusement at the straightforwardness and truth of my seemingly unimportant observation.
I tell him that this is just a small example of what I like to write about. I allow him to think that the way in which I describe these scenes is mind-blowing. I allow myself to enjoy the brief moment of being seen as a good writer.
The next neighbor, an adorable Greek boy, tells me that I am the “next Harry Potter lady!” I laugh. I love it. I tell him I wish he were right.
The evening rolls along smoothly and I am in my element. Virginia, the Greek girl with the group of Greek Gods, invites me into their circle by talking to me with a smile. She is extremely friendly. The kind of person, even though she is probably half my age, I would go hiking or to the movies with. As a matter of fact, they are all friendly. No pretension, no big egos, no insecurities, no fears. Just a bunch of good friends savoring the moment with each other and welcoming any willing participant into their midst. We sing “happy birthday” at least three times – to me and to Konstantinos, who’s turning 27 on that day.
I am at home. The world is a good place. My angels protect me once again and give me gifts.
I have another Sangria. I get even friendlier than I already am when alcohol flows through the open streams of my vessels. Some people become more aggressive. Where the source of that behavior comes from is not clear to me. All I know is that by the time I am completely drunk (which is rare), I will hug every moving being and profess my worldly love to them. Embarrassing, for sure. Thankfully though, I know that I am probably not the only one in a state of bliss. Except of course, the aggressive one, who would rather punch me at that moment.
Konstantinos #2 (the one who calls me “the next Harry Potter lady”) decides to teach me a Greek dance. Virginia catches it on video. This video, my friends, will remain locked in the deep vault of my “never to surface” collection. Yet, even with the embarrassing scenes, I am later brought back to the reality of that evening. Indeed, I have spent the last hours of my birthday with strangers who seem like lifelong friends.
And so I conclude: it is a choice we make. The silly animals that we are roam the world choosing friends and enemies. If we were attacked by alien invaders like in the movies we’d certainly push aside all differences and choices and hold hands, protecting each other, helping, saving each other from the greater “enemy”. Just like we do in a disaster. I am always amazed and perturbed at the surprise that reporters express at the humanitarian assistance we give each other in times of disaster. Of COURSE we help each other! It is our natural instinct. We don’t know it until we are faced with it. If only we remembered and understood this so simple truth at all times, we would not see each other as different. We’d all be learning the steps of Greek and Arabic and French and Chinese and American dances…
It is so simple. Try it. Challenge yourself to push aside your inflated egos, your exaggerated national pride, your religious insecurities and your bigotry against your unknowns. See the true simplicity of this childlike moment we are all a part of and learn to open your heart to what seems so different to you. And if you already share this naive view with me, then continue, as I do, to focus your attention on those who don’t understand or see yet how simple it can be. Use your power to influence them in a positive way. Find your tools. Tell your stories. No rules. No judgement. Just life.
