This is why I love the Daily Show, they made current issues fun to watch.
Wyatt Cenac travels to Sweden to wake them up from their socialist nightmare.
| The Daily Show With Jon Stewart | M - Th 11p / 10c | |||
| The Stockholm Syndrome | ||||
| ||||
Today at Muriwai, I had the best waves since I started surfing. Finally it felt more like "surfing" rather than "getting beat up by the waves". I'm so glad that I decided to go despite the fact that summer is over and there are no more lifeguards at the beach. It turns out that the temperature in the afternoon was still very comfortable, and with such a good sea condition today, who needs lifeguards?
Listening to other people's stories is one of the best aspect of travelling. I wrote these down while I was working in Hyderabad back in 2007, but never had the time to finish & publish them.
What will a guy go through for Pamela Anderson?
A guy from my studio found a cool water bubble/ripple screen saver, he called his mom to show her. For some reason the screen saver stopped working, and his mom saw the background image of his desktop: the sexy Pamela Anderson.
It was just a normal fashion shot, not from the infamous home video, but his mom still got angry, slapped him and called his dad. His dad came and also slapped him.
Imagine this happening to a big tall 25 year old~
A mysterious disease in Chennai
A story from another guy in our studio. He studied animation in Chennai for a period of time and stayed in a hostel. One morning he woke up and found his foot had a strange skin disease, the skins appeared to be peeling off. He told his friends about it and they told him it's not a disease, a flesh eating species of rat in Chennai must have fed on his foot during the night. He thought his friends were bluffing, and did not believe it.
That night he stayed up, with a brick in his hand and waited. AND....? You guessed it, the rat came, and it was at least 60 cm in length (excluding the tail)!
He screamed, and threw the brick at the rat. For the remaining time in that hostel, he slept by curling up in a sitting position, and surrounded his bed with bricks as weapons.
It's hard to imagine how big the rats are in India, I did not believe it myself until I saw one lying dead beside the road. Only then did I realize the rat stories weren't exaggerations.
Not your usual national park adventure
My friends M & K once decided to visit a national park in a place called Etumagaram, about 300km from Hyderabad. They looked it up on the map, and drove there on their motorbike. When they arrived, they noticed something wasn't quite right.
First, they asked the locals where could they find a hotel or a guest house, but everybody told them there isn't one and urged them to leave.
They thought if there is a national park here, there must be accommodations so they didn't believe them.
Finally they found a guest house and asked the owner about the national park. The owner told them there is no national park, they can stay for the night but have to remain in a room without windows in the basement, and leave the first thing in the morning.
When dinner time came, they asked where can they find a restaurant. Again the owner told them there's no restaurant and they better stay inside.
Strange right? What were the locals playing at?
Once again they looked around and found a supposedly non-existing restaurant, sat down and ordered their food. Half way through the meal, all the locals suddenly stopped talking, and an uneasy silence fell upon the restaurant. There at the doorway, entered several Naxalites (Indian Maoist rebels) with automatic weapons, and their attention immediately turned to the 2 foreigners.
The rebels pointed the guns at their faces.
M smiled at them, tried to be friendly "Hi..."
"Who are you? What are you doing here? Are you Americans?"
"No no, we're tourists from Germany." They could feel cold sweats coming down their back.
The rebel leader took their cellphone, look through the contact history, and finally his suspicion dissipated. He warmed up to them, even apologized for the disturbance and said "enjoy your meal" before leaving.
They realised afterward, there are two places with the name Etumagaram, one has a national park, and the other is within the Maoists' territory. They've obviously visited the wrong one.
There's a not so well known picture behind India's modern image, poverty in rural areas drove many people to the Naxalite movement. M told me "In many rural areas, Naxalites are clearly the ones in charge, not the Indian government." M & K drove passed some police station & military check points during the trip, but on their way back they found them in ruins.
Now I have to say that M & K seem to have a knack for getting themselves into these situations (and live to tell the tale). They lived in Nepal for more than a year during the Nepalese civil war and witnessed the fighting between the government and the Nepalese Maoist rebels. Their best friend was on a plane to join them in Nepal, while the royal massacre happened, so he arrive and found Kathmandu in chaos.
So it should be no surprise that some interesting things happened when I travelled with them, right?
A dozen of my blog posts stayed in draft mode and never got published. Most of them are from 2008, which was unsurprisingly the year with the lowest number of entries.
March 2008, I exclaimed "what a ride!" in regard to everything that had happened.
"I am sitting in a small lifeboat, floating in the middle of a vast ocean called reality. Being thrown and pushed around by the raging waves and currents, what can I do other than to hold on tightly?"
April, an entry titled "miracle" never got finished.
May, another unfinished entry titled "Too much to write, too little time".
"Sometimes I feel like time is running forward madly like a wild stallion. I have one of my legs stuck in the stirrup, so it dragged me through a rough terrain while I, to no avail, tried to grab on to something in an attempt to slow it down."
June, a post titled "beauty".
"Contacts with beauty always send emotional shockwaves through my body, shake me to the core of my being."
July, "Riding motorbike in Nepal"
August, "The long hiatus", in regard to my blogging efforts.
1. Steve Irwin and Richard Branson are my favourite celebrities.
2. Most of my favourite songs were sung by female singers.
3. My favourite comedian is Jon Stewart, now you know my political inclinations.
4. Things I learnt from travelling: it can take you to places that evoke surreal and wonderful feelings beyond description.
5. I weighted a mere 44kg by the end of my journey in India. If someone sneezes next to me I would be blown into the air like a feather. However my luggage was so heavy that the gravitational force it exerted would then pull me back down and go into orbit.
6. I have a love affair with the ocean, but I'd cheat on her and have affairs with rivers and lakes whenever I can. I plan to convince them to have a menage a trois when they meet one day.
7. I still believe in magic and miracles, and I'm still fulled of ideology and dreams. These things are so essential to me that taking them away would be like cutting the oxygen supply to an astronaut.
8. I still dream about my childhood pet, the cutest Sheltie in the world.
9. I have a very high tolerance for spicy food, I was trained by certified mystic chilly gurus in secret locations in Asia.
10. I once stayed overnight in a hospital during my trip in Spain, where everyone's English was as good/bad as my Spanish. P.S. No hablo mucho Espanol.
11. I once attended a 2-week German-run marble sculpture course in Italy, where I was the only non-German speaker. You should see the instructor's face when he found out that he had to teach in English.
I could almost hear him thinking: "why you weirdo...why would you come to a course run by Germans in Italy?"
But we ended up having a great time, the instructor would do his best to get me to drink all kinds of alcohol: Limoncello, Grappa, Sambuca, Campari..."Eddie, come here, drink this!"
12. I find that experiencing a beautiful scenery is a whole body affair, my eyes can get watery and I can often feel the chill travel through my spine.
13. I was crazy about Swiss knives when I was a kid, and I suppose I never fully grew up in that respect.
14. When I was 6, I was once reported missing to the police.
In reality, it wasn't me who was missing, it was my dad. He was waaaayyyy too late to pick me up after school(it seemed like hours), so I walked home instead.
I don't remember how long it took (the distance was about 5km), but apparently long enough for my parents to file a missing child report to the police.
15. Beautiful art works affect me emotionally in ways that are hard to describe, but I don't care much for modern art.
16. I think a playful & slightly mischievous spirit in a girl is extremely attractive.
17. A bungy jump used to be something terrifying and off-limits for me, but now I've done it and I'd like to try skydiving next. Getting over a fear and/or a preconceived limiting belief always give me a great sense of achievement.
18. I obsessed about doing things differently from everyone else when I was a kid. Once I had to write a fairy tale in a writing class, I wrote that once upon a time there was a little sheep, who's father passed away 3 years before he was born. The teacher commented "this could not happen" and I couldn't understand why.
19. A spider once built a web between my thumb and index finger during my sleep. Fortunately it was one of those skinny long-legged spiders which didn't look so menacing.
20. I was super competitive as a kid. For a brief period of my life, I indulged in mercilessly crushing my opponents in chess. Until some time later, I helplessly watched atrocious war crimes being committed to my mini soldiers, that's when I started thinking about karma...
21. I often visualize stories while I fall asleep.
22. I like the feeling of being intrigued, and I want to travel to almost every country in the world.
23. when I rode a motorbike for the first time in the messy Kathmandu traffic, my feelings were so intense and I was so occupied with surviving the journey that I had no time to stop, think and be afraid. However I did have time to curse at my friend on the leading bike whenever he started to zig-zag through tiny gaps between cars, trucks & buses. What else can you do other than to follow-on?
24. My favourite quote at the moment: "something is not interesting unless it's inappropriate".
25. I used to think that achievement is everything, until life taught me that finding joy in everything is...everything. Surprise surprise.
Each of my surfing sessions can be divided into three acts so far.
1
It begins with me throwing myself into the wild west coast sea.
The waves would then start to beat me up, giving me rounds and rounds of powerful poundings.
It is not difficult to see how the current can easily drag you out and have its way with you, so it's only reasonable that my mind is focused on staying alive.
2
The most distinct sign, is that I'd suddenly have an awareness of my body moving through the water against the waves with a sense of relaxation. Everything seems to become natural, and this is where the fun begins. I begin to notice small improvements in my techniques, like how to move with the waves, how to jump up and balance on the board.
3
Get exhausted and go home with some bruises and a sense of satisfaction.
Surfing has something similar to a good addictive game, no matter how many waves you've caught, you always want to try to catch another one, and another, and another.....so you keep going until you're absolutely exhausted. It is very physically demanding, but the time goes by really quickly, especially when you have beautiful curling waves like the ones at Muriwai yesterday.
Read more...I watched a stream of movies recently, and I thought it'll be fun to write down my impressions of them.
Taken
A rather enjoyable fast paced thriller. Knowing how bad the situation is with human trafficking in Europe, it is very emotionally satisfying to see those bad guys got beat up mercilessly by Liam Neeson.
The fast paced plot kept me entertained all the time, but it did feel a bit contrived at certain points. I don't find it to be too big of a deal as it didn't take away enjoyments from watching the movie.
The final act of the movie though, is slightly dissatisfying because of its predictability, it would've been better if they throw in a twist or surprise somewhere.
Ratings:
First Act (Setup) 10/10
Second Act (Confrontation) 9/10
Thrid Act (Resolution) 7/10
Satisfactions from seeing Liam Neeson beat up the human traffickers: 11/10
Eastern Promises
Another story with human trafficking as a backdrop.
I did not find Viggo Mortensen's performance in Lord of the Rings to be anything special, but wow, he was absolutely brilliant in this film. He played the character so convincingly that I did not recognize him at first. Calm and magnetic, it feels a bit like watching a Russian version of Don Vito Corleone in the making, it's hard to take your eyes off him.
Oh ye, and the story was good too, it is one of the few movies that I wished could be longer.
Rating: 9/10
The Kite Runner
Loved it. The phrase "For you, a thousand times over!" appeared twice in the film, and both times it sent chills up my spine. Beautiful would be a good word to describe this movie. I enjoyed it so much that I watched it again with the director & the author's commentaries on.
Rating: 9/10
Holy Smoke
The first half of the movie was excellent. Interesting and engaging, it raised questions about spirituality, which is my favourite kind of questions, so the plot really grabbed my attention.
However, half way through the movie, the direction changed in a weird way. The motive for this turn was unconvincing, and, in my opinion, the movie just went downhill from there.
It has excellent cinematography though, I took lots of screenshots from this movie for personal references.
Ratings:
First half: 5 Stars out of 5
Second half: 2 Stars out of 5
Mongol
I thought the beginning of the movie was pretty good, then it slowed down and became somewhat sluggish. The depiction of Ghengis Khan's family life was a bit of a drag, yet the story about how he united different tribes was skipped and only described by texts on screen.
About the final battle between Ghengis Khan & his blood brother...sigh...he won it because it started to thunder and all the enemy soldiers were so scared that threw down their weapons???
What the @#$%%.....? Head shaking...
But I have to say overall this is not a bad movie, the visual direction was perfect, the sceneries were breathtaking, and the battles were exciting and spectacular. If you don't know much about Ghengis Khan and is not as fussy about historical accuracies as me, chances are that you'll enjoy the film.
Rating: 3 Stars out of 5
Requim For a Dream
A bit preachy. I know the danger of addiction, and I know some people may find values in a story like this, good for them. But I just don't enjoy seeing a movie about things going from bad to worse and then it ends. There's nothing really philosophical about it, just a big old "if you made the wrong choice, you'll mess up your life" message.
Rating: A small frowning face.
The Savages
Reminded me of The Barbarian Invasions, a typical festival-style film, the subject matter is something that I can't really relate to.
So I don't really have much to comment about this film.
No Ratings.
This came as a surprise. After Almost 2 years of delay, it seems that the movie I worked on back in 2006 in India is finally going to be released. It's good to see that a few shots (lighting) that I worked on were included in the trailer. ie. a top view of the floor exploding, and a few shots of blood splashing across the screen.
Now the tricky thing would be to obtain a copy of the movie, so that I can put some of the stuff in my showreel.
I thought about watching this movie a few times before, because it frequently showed up when I browse through imdb, but I always lost interest after reading the synopsis:
"The movie starts off with an old man in a nursing home reading a story to an old woman each day. The story he reads is about two young lovers..."
I mean...how boring does that sound?
However, it really moved me deeply when I finally watched it today. I can't remember when the last time was that a romantic movie affected me this much.
It's sweet, sad, and very real. It left behind emotional ripples in me that wouldn't go away for a long while.
I went to learn surfing for the first time today, and...it wasn't easy. The worst thing about learning a new skill is that you'll be like a complete idiot and there's nothing you can do about it.
That may be the reason why many people hesitate about learning new things, and I know I used to avoid trying certain things just because I really don't like the feeling of being inadequate.
Well, one thing I learnt from travelling, is that if you want to explore new horizons, you just have to accept that being/behaving like an idiot is part of the process, so just go ahead and get on with it. In conclusion, I will continue to fumble and tumble in the waves for an indefinite (but hopefully not too long) period of time.
A thing about the waves at Muriwai today is that it was probably not the best condition for a beginner to learn surfing.
I found this advice on the internet "For your first days surfing the waves should be small, being easy enough for you to walk out to where the waves are breaking, and not have to fight your way off the beach being constantly battered by waves"
The description, "have to fight your way off the beach being constantly battered by waves", was exactly what happened today. I suppose that just made everything more....fun......in retrospect.
People are different, so different that you can be talking about the same thing, but your ideas/views/perspectives/realities are so far apart so that not only the other couldn't understand what you're talking about, they could have interpreted your words in ways beyond your expectation. And it's funny because this could be what the other person think of you at the same time.
I suppose once upon a time, when people lived in relatively segregated groups, where culture defined commonly agreed upon ideas and principals for them, it was easier to define what's right and what's wrong.
In today's world, where ideas & philosophies have virtually no boundaries, where different traditions & cultures clash constantly with each other, there's no longer absolute right or wrong.
Without a common basis of understanding, there may as well be no communication.
This was written as a comment to a recurring theme in my life, but seems like it can also cast itself as an afterthought to the movie of the same title. No wonder I liked the movie.
A heading from a news website.
It happened last Friday night, the blackout came abruptly and without warning I suddenly find that I could not connect to any website.
Well, a year or two ago this probably would have made me angry or feeling frustrated, but after my time in India, where internet & power outage was part of your daily experience, I simply have lots of appreciation for the quality of life and the stable services I'm getting in a developed country.
The dramatic contrast between India and NZ really put things into perspective. Living in a country, where a company would apologize for the occurrence of an overnight service outage, is, awesome.
Story 1
Life is hard. You have to study hard, work hard, compete with everyone to earn your place in the world.
How successful you are determines your value to the society, to the world, so you better struggle and strive to be somebody.
Story 2
When you want something, all the universe conspires in helping you to achieve it. You just have to relax, follow your heart, flow with the current and it will take you to where you want to be. Who you are is valuable and worthy beyond question, so, believe in yourself, relax and have fun on this journey called life.
I've followed story 1 for almost two decades in my life, the problem with it is that not only does it not work for me, but it almost broke my spirit, drove me to despair and the edge of self destruction.
So screw it, I'm going with story 2.
Letting go of the mental & emotional baggage of story 1 takes time and effort, but it's the best decision I've every made.
There are many people who live by the principals of story 2, for example: Richard Branson, Oprah Winfrey, Steve Irwin...etc, and I found them to be a great source of inspiration.
Soviet Union Olympic study: During the 1980s, what was then the Soviet Union's Olympic team tested various training procedures. Athletes from various sports were split into four groups.
The first group trained entirely with physical practice - 100 percent of the time. The second group used physical training 75 percent of the time, and mental imagery 25 percent of the time. The third group split its training 50-50. The fourth group spent 25 percent of the time training physically, and 75 percent of the time mentally.
The mental training required them to spend time every day practicing their sport in their mind using mental imagery. At the end of the study, the group who had made the biggest gains or improvement was the fourth group - the one that had spent only 25 percent of the time training physically and 75 percent of the time using mental imagery. Interestingly, the group that trained 100 percent of the time physically actually improved the least.
-- from "Speed Secrets 6" by Ross Bentley.
Divine inspiration comes in many forms, their expressions, however diverse, are universally joyful.
It's wonderful to witness so many joyful spirits around, an especially noticeable phenomenon in my social circles, is that many people are becoming happy first time parents.
Congratulations to those who finds joy in their lives, in any manner or forms.
One of my photo showing the full moon illuminating the Himalaya mountains is now published in Worldnomads Book of Travels 2008. I'm now waiting to receive my copy :)
Click the above image will take you to the webpage about the book, the photo I submitted can be seen in my previous post titled "panoramas" .
The cat curled up like a furry cushion, sleeping soundly on my laps.
Usually he prefers to sleep on K's laps, but for the past two days he's been coming to me instead.
"Somehow cats always know that you are leaving. Before we left NZ, the cat we had came and stayed around us all the time." K said.
There are still 3 days left before I leave, but I'm already feeling nostalgic.
I really like my stay in Dharamkot, where we can see the mountains and valleys every day; walk pass forests, monkeys, mongooses, cows, donkeys, and of course dogs and cats; watch crows, huge vultures and other unknown birds flying in the sky.
Of course the place is not a paradise, it's fulled of inconveniences and daily bugs, like the frequent power cuts, internet problems, network cable problems, the cold weather & the absence of indoor heating, and the locals who always try to get as much money out of us as possible (they are the minority but unfortunately they are the ones that you have to deal with the most).
On the day before I leave, I still have to deal with the guys who sold and promised to buy back our computers, as he suddenly had a change of heart and wouldn't own up to the flowery promises he had made.
I also have to settle the payments with our landlord, who had already given us a few surprises regarding to the bills.
Every time something bad like the above happened, I wish I was in the comfort of my home in NZ, but...I will still miss the good things here once I'm gone.
"There's a French saying, every time you leave a place, a part of you dies." Five years ago, in a mountain village of Northern Italy, my Dutch flatmate told me this, before I left after finishing a two-week marble sculpture course.
Yes it is sad to leave a place where you've created a lot of memories, but that's just a natural part of travelling. You feel sad, but it's a beautiful feeling.
"I guess I'll miss you too." I say to the cat as I stroke his chin. He continues to sleep like a baby.
The cold weather on the mountain have taken its first victim, after some itchy red patches appeared on my hands for several days, now 2.5 of my fingers are swollen like sausages.
Of course, it was my own fault for not realising the hazard of cold temperatures and taking preventive measures, but there was a good reason (whether wise or not): I tried to test my limits and see how much my body can adjust to the cold weather with minimum amount of external help.
So as a result:
- I washed clothes by hand with cold water
- I only wore a pair of gloves that's not wind proof and is probably slightly too tight (bad for blood circulation)
- I walked in snow/hail storms where the cold breeze attacked my umbrella-holding hands mercilessly (this one is unavoidable though)
- I ignored the early symptoms - the itchy red patches
Anyway my hands are now wrapped in a new pair of warm gloves, and with 12 days to go until I leave here, they shall survive.
I find that when I disagree with people's beliefs, quite often they get upset.
On the other hand, it upsets me when they assume that since I disagree with them, I must believe in the opposite beliefs.
Needless to say, with all the upsetting going around, the heated exchanges of disagreements often occur naturally and unavoidably.
It's an interesting and delicate situation when you are standing in the middle, and don't want to take side in the constant fightings between dualistic beliefs and ideas.
"Does god exist?"
"Does Jesus as a historical figure actually existed?"
"Is there a purpose to life, or are we all just nature's accidents?"
"Did we really evolve from monkeys? (evolution vs. creationism)"
"Did we (humankind) really landed on the moon?"
"Was Benezir Bhutto really killed by Al-Qaeda?"
("It's Musharraf, he's the one behind this!" Someone uttered this in a matter-of-fact-tone, immediately after the news of the assassination came out.)
Having spend a lot of time on questioning and thinking about everything I could, I concluded that: "If you know the truth, then you know it. Only when this knowing is absent do beliefs become necessary."
Of course we cannot know everything, so it is inevitable that we have to believe in a lot of things that we don't really know.
The point I want to make is that, since beliefs are merely pointers to the truth, there's no point to get too caught up with them mentally or emotionally, right? My beliefs often change with time anyway, like everything else, they are ever-changing and constantly evolving.
My attitude towards questions like "Do you believe....etc?" (eg. "Do you believe that we actually landed on the moon?") have always been something like: "Since I don't have access to the first-hand evidences, and I'm often not expert enough to interpret them, I prefer to stay neutral. I'll just observe, see what both side have to say, and leave it at that."
However this answer doesn't always pleases people.
"You are being political."
"You are just avoiding the responsibility to choose."
"You just won't open your eyes and see the truth, by saying that you will stay neutral, you are denying the evidences in front of you right here!"
"You can't stand in the middle of the street, the car is coming, choose which side you want to be on now, or the car will run you over!"
I frowned whenever I see people jump blindly into believing something, without carefully examining the validity of the story being told to them. Most of the time, people just want the evidences to support or reinforce their existing beliefs, they see what they want to see, and ignore whatever they don't like.
Those who are making an effort to search for the truth, who prefer to observe without rush to conclusions, have to stand the heat coming from people on both sides of the dualistic belief, or leave and go their own way.
How did a lone wolf become alone?
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