Departure Lounge

dreams of Zombie plagues... in my dreams.

2009-03-16T10:35:00.002+02:00

I had a dream last night in which I was traveling across canada in order to escape an onrushing zombie plague. Then, I dreamed that I woke up and gave my friends a blow by blow of said zombie-plague dream, making revisions and embellishments as I went along.
Weird. Even in my dreams I can't resist a good old exaggeration. In fact, I felt so odd about the in-dream dream revising, that when describing the zombie portion of the dream in actual, wakeful reality, I down-played the hell out of it. But trust me, the zombie evading was crazy intense.
Oh, and at the very end of the exposition portion of the dream, curtains pulled back and I realized that I was sitting in the audience of a giant theatre while my friends were sitting on the stage. When I finished telling them the souped-up tales of zombie fleeing, they all got up and did a bizarre celebratory dance/tumbling routine to convey their remarkably excessive adulation.
Any ideas what this might mean? Other than that I'm a pathologically embellishing narcissist?

Walking

2009-03-06T11:18:00.005+02:00

No one walks here. I find that very odd. Everyone rides small motorcycles around town.
The only ones that walk are foreigners and little kids, though some of the little kids have their own motorcycles too. I was strolling back from the store yesterday and I was passed by a kid who couldn't have been more than eight, cruising down the street on his little honda.
And the bikes here all have cruise-y names lke: 'dream'. and 'viva'. and 'wave'. except one. There's actually a model of moto here called a 'smash'. A suzuki smash. Not the best name for motorized transport now is it?

sunsets and rainbows (and puppy dogs and cotton candy)

2009-03-06T11:11:00.002+02:00

I'm currently staying on the top floor of a kindergarten in Battambang, Cambodia, and from my room I can hear the children laughing and playing in the classrooms below.
The door at the back of my little flat leads out to the roof, the best place to catch a nice breeze at the end of a hot, dry afternoon. A few of us were up there a couple of nights ago, waiting for the sun to set so we could break our fast with fresh mangos or dragon fruit or guavas or oranges (it's currently the Baha'i fast).
It had rained that afternoon, but the sky was clearing, the sun dipping low in the sky and ringing the clouds with gold. To the east, a double rainbow stood out against dark clouds in the distance.
I hear it's still winter in Canada.

Mongkul Borei

2009-03-03T12:56:00.002+02:00

I was in a small village in the district of Mongkul Borei in western Cambodia a few days ago, working on a little photo/video piece about how the Baha'i community here is slowly (and sometimes not so slowly) transforming community life in a number of villages across the country by providing moral and spiritual education to children and youth. I know it doesn't sound like much, but it really is having a profound effect in some of these places. In this one village, over one hundred people were already involved and the demand for the classes was far exceeding the ability of the organizers to provide them.
Anyway the second day that I was there, we were waiting for a class that was supposed to start but the students were missing and the teacher had gone to find them. I was sitting with my friend Kuoy who was there to help with the classes and to help me with the translating. He was sitting under the tree, flipping though a book and would periodically break into song. I was pacing around, watching gusts of wind kick up little dust storms on the dry rice fields, pushing them into stands of bamboo that would rattle and dance and then fall silent again.
A few boys wandered into the scene, glanced over at us, and then walked over to the school building, disappearing inside. I wandered over to see what they were up to and as I approached, could hear them laughing and joking. I stood in the door for a moment, camera in hand, and watched them push desks around and write what only could be naughty khmer phrases on the blackboard and then rubbing them out. They didn't seem to notice me at all. While they played, I slowly raised my camera, eith the intention of checking light, fixing focus. Just as I was bringing the camera to my eye, one of the boys grabbed a small cushion that was lying in the corner to hurled it across the room. The cushion, which had clearly seen better days, began to leak its feathers the moment it left the boy's hand. Upon impact with his friend, the cushion exploded, filling the air with them.
The boys froze when my shutter clicked. All of them turning to face me. We just looked at each other for a moment, feathers hanging in the air, light slanting in from the door across from me. They stared. I stared. feathers drifted.
I shot a couple more frames in the moments before the feathers all settled back on the floor. The sound of the shutter seemed to release them and they all began to laugh, kicking the feathers up again and racing outside. As the last boy left, he turned and flashed me a smile, pulling his fingers up to his eye and clicking an imaginary camera before disappearing out the door.

The kite

2009-03-02T11:41:00.000+02:00

It started with a kite.
I grew up on a farm outside of town and, other than my sister, there weren't many kids around to play with which meant lots of hours of entertaining myself.
And so it was, one suitably windy sunday afternoon, that I was flying my sister's kite out over the fields. It was fall, october probably, because I remember broken corn stalks poking up through plowed earth and the air was crisp and cool in a way it never was in the early spring.
The wind was coming in from the direction of town, pushing smoothly over the house and out over the broken corn, out over the empty fields. Lifting my kite up into the air, pulling the string smoothly off the spool.
I'm not sure why I thought this was a good idea, though I'm even more surprised that I had never tried it before, but this afternoon, alone with my kite at the edge of the field, the wind holding it strongly in the sky, effortless, motionless... boring.
So I let more string out, slowly at first, cautiously. But soon letting the spool spin freely in my hands, the kite climbing higher, shrinking away to a tiny dot.
So intently was I watching the kite that I didn't notice the string reaching the end of the spool. Even if I had have realized it was nearing the end, I doubt I would have been able to tell that it wasn't actually attached. And even if I had have realized it wasn't attached, I don't think I could have caught the string before it spun itself free and took off after the kite, lifting lazily over the field.
Luckily, when the string pulled free, it caused the kite to dip, and the string fell lower and began to drag along the ground. I took off after it running out into the field, over the rough ground and the broken stalks. As the string dragged along, it would catch on the corn stalks, tugging and pulling the kite slowly out of the sky. It crashed not far into the field, and I was able to grab the end of the string and start to pull it in. But the wind kept pushing the kite, and it rolled and tumbled over the ground. Being a 10 cent cellophane special, I knew it wasn't going to last long that way, so, in a panic, I began to gather up the string as fast as I could, winding it around and around my hand.
So with the kite safely in one hand and the string wrapped firmly around the other, I went back to fetch the spool, which I had dropped when I went chasing after the runaway kite. As I walked, I let the kite go and it immediately jumped back into the sky behind me, following along as I marched across the field and back into the yard. I knelt down to pick up the spool and began to let the kite pull the string off my arm, concentrating intently on the end of the string grasped firmly in my fist.
But it was october. and my fingers were cold. and the string had been wrapped around my hand for a while at this point and by the time I got to the end of the string, my fingers were completely numb and the string slipped from my grasp and sailed away a second time.
This time I just sat in the yard while the untethered kite lifted higher and higher, fading slowly away, obscured by distance and the tears of a boy who had just lost his sister's kite.
I walked into the house, climbed the stairs to my room and buried my face in my pillow. I cried both for the loss of the kite and for the legendary beating I was sure to get at the hands of my sister whose kite was now probably halfway to the sea.
But my father heard my crying and offered to come with me to find the kite. He was sure that it couldn't have wandered too far.
So my father and I put on our coats and our boots and set off across the field. I had never been to the far end of the field before. It was, it seemed, farther than I'd ever walked in my life. But together we walked, strolling and talking and enjoying an autumn afternoon. We walked to the very end of the field, and then across the field after that, and began to walk across the next one after that. It seemed like we had been walking for days, but I was afraid to turn back, afraid of what my sister might do.
And then halfway across that third field, a miracle appeared in the sky. It started as a little red speck in the sky. A bird perhaps, or a plane, or a cruel, cruel trick of the eyes.
But we kept walking, and the dot stayed. and grew. it bobbed and dipped and fluttered in the breeze.
It was only when we reached the fence that I realized what it was. A tiny knot at the end of the kite string had hooked itself on a tiny barb at the top of the fence and hung on. Hung on with the most precarious hanging.
We stood for a moment, watching the fence fly the kite. And then my father asked, "well? Aren't you going to grab it?"
I grabbed the end of the string, expecting it to jump out of my fingers again. My father helped me tie the end to the spool and I reeled it in slowly as we walked back to the house, back across three fields, three times farther, it seemed, than I had ever been in my life.
It was heroic really. and miraculous. and all of those other superflous words that don't actually apply to anything that happens in our daily lives. In my mind I can see us, ten feet tall and swaggering like cowboys, kicking up bits of dirt that glowed in the setting sun. And swelling music and rolling credits. I swear it happened just like that.

My father got sick a year ago, and by the time I got home from Israel to see him he was shriveled and weak, cancerous. Almost the first thing I did when I walked in the door was ask him about that day that neither of us had mentioned in 25 years.
"Dad, did you remember that day that we went to look for the kite?"
"I think about that day all the time."
"All the way across the field, and then all the way across the next one too."
"I couldn't believe that your little legs made it that far."
"And was it really stuck to the fence like I remember?"
"It was amazing."
He had to rest after that. The cancer in his lungs had taken his breath.
He lived two more weeks.

Shooting Photos.

2007-10-11T03:21:00.001+02:00

Cameras and guns seem to be inextricably linked in many people's minds. Consider common photo terminology: 'shooting' photos, people that go out 'hunting' with their cameras, 'firing off' a few frames. The use of cameras and guns is seen as analogous. (A few months ago, while I was 'shooting' in Cambodia someone remarked that they could tell I would be a good sharp-shooter, based merely on the way I always had my camera within easy reach 'ready for action'.)

But it's never a comparison that I've been particularly comfortable with. I've shot guns before (I've even shot competitively, though I was never any good.) and I would never, ever even begin to think of pointing a gun at a person. At the same time, most of my friends can attest to the annoying presence of my cameras in their faces at the most inopportune moments.

And then, while I was in Panama, I was introduced to a whole new way of looking at it. In spanish the verb often used to describe the act of photographing is 'tomar' (to drink). To drink photos. Drink, both in its sustaining, refreshing, nourishing sense and in the sense of 'drinking in the beauty' implying time taken to pause and appreciate something on a deeper level. The idea that photography allows one to experience something more fully. Drinking it all in... through your camera. And sometimes you go out with your little point and shoot, taking a sip now and then and other days it's a head thrown back, light splashing down your shirt, guzzling of photos until finally, gasping and choking, you have to stop and catch your breath.

Drinking is also our most basic of needs, prevented from eating, drinking or sleeping, you'll die of dehydration long before hunger (interestingly, lack of sleep will also kill you before hunger). Of course, this just makes the metaphor that much more appropriate, because if I couldn't take photos I'd probably die.

And one last thing that makes this analogy so appealing to me is that now, when I sit with my camera held lightly in my hand (as I often do), I no longer have to think of gripping the cold metal of a gun, but of a warm (and comforting) cup of tea. Though lately my camera has been more of a 1,000 frames-a-day Super Big Gulp.

Consider also that when it comes to sharing your photos, would you rather share something that lets your audience taste what you tasted? Or would you like to give them something that shows what you saw, or rather what you saw right before you shot (and killed) it? For me, photos are about conveying feeling, not about displaying trophies.

The gear so far

2007-10-11T03:10:00.000+02:00

Five and a half months ago, before I started this trip, I did a little gearing up. I bought a new camera, a lens and some other odds and ends to add to my already considerable camera-harem (the collection can be seen here). The trip, which has so far taken me through 13 countries in Europe, Africa, Asia, North and Central America and the middle of the Pacific has been a little rough on both me and my kit and I thought now would be a good time for a little update on how everything is going:

Cameras: I bought a 1D for the trip, planning to use my much-loved 20D as a second camera, shooting with both bodies most of the time. Alas, most days, my 20D sits unused, waiting until disaster strikes. And after years of shooting aperture priority on my canons, I've started shooting manual much of the time. A combination of harsh sun, dark skin and even-changing conditions that my aperture priority just couldn't keep up with. I find myself often setting my camera for the light conditions and then tweaking slightly for shadow or highlight detail. I'm getting much more control and much more consistent results... except when I step out from a dark hut into the bright sun and shoot a few frames of something that catches my eye before realizing that I've just over-exposed everything by 12 stops. But that's only happened a couple of times, I swear. Oh, and I noticed the other day that whenever I change cards in my camera, I instinctively shield the open CF slot from the sun. Anyone else do this? Or is it just me?

Lenses: I'm using a 17-40 f4, a 135 f2 and a 50 f1.4 (all Canon lenses). I expected to use the 17-40 the most (it's just the perfect lens for the kind of work that I'm doing) and, sure enough, I'm shooting almost 80% of my photos with it. It's been holding up fine, but I'm beginning to think the 16-35 f2.8 would have been worth the extra money. Also the 50 f1.4 (which I've been using less than I thought, but is still indispensable in low-light) was damaged in turkey (my first country!) and replaced in london a couple of weeks later. It's most likely repairable, I just don't have the time right now to get it fixed.

Cards: I'm shooting 2GB cards. I know I can get bigger ones, but it just seems like a good balance between not having to change them too often and not losing too many shots if I damage a card. I'm also backing things up to a battery powered 80 GB drive while I'm in the field, meaning that I can leave my laptop safely behind and go out shooting for a few days at a time. While the batteries on the drive will die long before I fill it up, I've discovered that, when things are busy, I can shoot 80GB of photos (about 10,000 shots) in 2 weeks.

Flashes: I packed a portable studio made up of a pair of light stands, umbrellas and vivitar 285s triggered by light slaves because I knew I'd be shooting in a lot of dark interiors. Well, one of the triggers died a few days into the trip (luckily I had a spare) and one of the 285s blew up a couple of months ago. Still not quite sure what happened, but it smelt like burning. I've also been having a tough time with the light slaves, they're just not as reliable as I need. So I just bought a pair of pocket wizard radio slaves. So now I can tuck a flash just about anywhere and trigger it from really far away. Like the moon. I also picked up a Bogen super-clamp before I left. I wasn't really sure what I'd do with it when I bought it, but it seemed like a good idea at the time. Well, it really proved it;s worth in Zambia and Malawi when I was able to clamp a flash to just about anything to light up dark hut interiors without having to worry about my light stands showing up in the shot. The only down side was that I only had one of them, but that was rectified a couple of months ago.

Computer and Hard drives: computer has held up like a champ, but the hard drives are waaaaay too small. Sadly, I can't buy a 5TB, 2.5 inch, bus powered fire-wire drive, so I'll have to make do with what I've got and just keep burning DVDs like a madman. Oh, and I ditched Aperture after the first few countries. Once you dump 10,000 images into it, it really starts to drag. I'm using lightroom now, and even with over 50,000 images in my current library, it's still running pretty smoothly.

Audio gear: the mic and recorder are performing great, though I haven't been capturing as much audio as I hoped. I'm trying to make more of an effort, but it the shooting is definitely the priority.

And the piece of kit that I'm using the least? my ipod. go figure.

It's Wednesday. Where am I?

2007-10-11T02:45:00.000+02:00

This trip that I'm currently on, this 20 country sojourn to all corners of the world has been a great test to my last minute, slackadasical, planning-is-for-wusses travel style (which, thanks to the magical inter-web isn't the million-dollar-last-minute-booking-penalty nightmare that it used to be. In fact, in some cases, my complete lack of organizational skills has saved me a penny or two).
While things have been pretty smooth so far, I'm starting to notice the cracks. I arrived in Fiji a couple of weeks ago only to be informed that I would need an onward visa to Kiribati before they would let me on the plane, despite the assurances of the Canadian travelers website. So I was trapped in Fiji for a couple of days (many have pointed out that there are far worse places to be stranded). However, true to form, after a 4 hour bus ride to Suva I sorted out my visa in 15 minutes and secured a warm bed and hot shower at a stranger's house for my first unplanned night, caught up with an old room-mate, and then went and crashed with another friend before finally flying out for Kiribati two days late. All this despite never having been to Fiji before.
Or take my recent departure from Australia. I was in Brisbane as part of a 4 day/ 6 flight journey from Tarawa, Kiribati to Ulan Bataar, Mongolia (I'm sitting in Beijing, waiting to board the final flight to Ulan).
Anyway, my quest for the cheapest tickets meant that the whole trip was cobbled together from internet e-tickets, a travel agent in Brisbane and another agent in Kuala Lumpur, so when i arrived at the airport in Brisbane, ready to fly to KL and pick up my ticket to Ulan, I was told that, while I had a ticket out of Kuala Lumpur, travelers to Malaysia need proof of an onward ticket and unless I had physical proof of that ticket, they weren't going to let me on the plane.
I've long since learned that arguing this stuff, no matter how mistaken they may be (ok, technically they were right but in practice the onward ticket thing is a non-issue in Malaysia) is far more trouble than it's worth. So here I was, 90 minutes before my flight, with two eager baggage toting, form filling friends (who were beginning to show sleep-deprivation giddiness with one of them referring to them both as my 'minions') as my airport escorts, asking the Malaysian Airlines reps what I needed to do to get on the plane.

Malaysian Airlines Rep: Well, you just need to show us physical proof of an onward flight from Malaysia.
Me: Any flight?
MAR: Yes, any flight.
Me: Is there any internet access around here?

Brisbane international airport has no wifi (or none that I could find) but it does have a series of over-priced internet kiosks with broken mice and sticky keyboards strewn about the departures floor to steal your coins and mock your attempts to type. The catch of course is that once a ticket is booked on one of the infernal machines, how to show them? Drag the kiosk over to the ticket counter? Have them all come over and huddle around the machine? Brains were stormed, I toyed with the idea of shooting a photo of the confirmation screen and show it to them on my camera, but as luck would have it, one of the coin-stealing kiosks, tucked in a corner way at the back of the airport, has a printer plugged into it.
But time was quickly running out, so coins were inserted, keys were pounded, temperamental mouse buttons were sworn at, and I managed to book myself an Airasia ticket to Bangkok (I needed the ticket anyway, for my return from Mongolia, I just hadn't planned on booking it yet). Once I reached the confirmation screen, I pushed print, looked expectantly at the printer and... nothing.
cables were wiggled, little doors were opened and closed, more buttons were pushed and printers were even knocked about. still nothing.
It was at this point that airport escort #1 (and self-declared minion) stepped in and managed, in an effort to kick start the printer, to shut the whole kiosk down. The screen went blank, the computer rebooted and the printer remained silent.
Time was disastrously short and didn't really have much of a back-up plan. I was just beginning to accept that I may, in fact, be stuck in Brisbane for another day when the printer, no doubt pleased with its dramatic pause, sprang to life and began spewing forth printed pages of confirmed bookings of onward flights. Unfortunately, they weren't MY onward flights. Oh, and did I mention there were only 4 sheets of paper in the printer? right.
Of course, since I'm not typing this post from Brisbane, you all know that when that last piece of paper shot out of the printer, it had a reservation for an Air Asia flight from KL to Bangkok with my name on it. I grabbed my bags and ran back to the ticket counter to collect my boarding pass, minions in tow, with mere minutes to spare.

(footnote: I'm finally getting this post up after having sit on my computer for a couple of weeks. I'm currently stranded in Miami, having spent the past 24 hours here waiting for a flight to La Paz. I left Tel Aviv yesterday morning, flew to Madrid, missed my connection to Miami, was rerouted to New York where the connecting flight to Miami was delayed and by the time I arrived here I had missed my flight to La Paz by less than 30 minutes. After spending the night in an airport hotel (where I had to wash my unmentionables in the bathroom sink as my checked bag is still in airline custody) I'm back at the airport, ready to go.)

Hating Heathrow: It's not just me.

2007-10-05T12:40:00.000+02:00

Well it's nice to know that someone reads this blog.

morning diversion for the photo nerd.

2007-08-16T17:53:00.001+03:00

I normally hate these things, but my inner photo geek just couldn't help itself this time. And it's hard to be un-satisfied with the result:

Which famous photographer are you?

Henri Cartier-Bresson: Known for street photography and photojournalism

"We are passive onlookers in a world that moves perpetually. Our only moment of creation is that 1/125th of a second when the shutter clicks, the signal is given, and motion is stopped..."

Click Here to Take This Quiz
Brought to you by YouThink.com quizzes and personality tests.

Innovative new technology

2007-07-22T08:40:00.000+03:00

Now, you'd think that airlines, what with their hundred-year involvement in the sort of physics voodoo that allows apartment blocks to fly, would be pretty hard to impress when it comes to the 'innovative new technology' department. I mean, they pay it all cool when it comes to hundreds of people enjoying video-on-demand from their seat-back touch-screens which traveling a thousand miles an hour 35,000 feet up in the air. "Oh that?" they ask, pretending to stifle a yawn, "yeah, it's just a little something that we do."
But the industry does have one trick that it loves to tout as Innovative! New! Technology!: e-tickets.
Here's a tip airline industry: being able to use a computer to look at a list of names at an airport check-in counter does NOT count as 'innovative new technology'. Unless those screens are being read by sexy-voiced robots that can also beat you at checkers any day of the week while tagging your luggage.
And here are a few things that might actually count as innovative new technology: i) rfid-ified luggage tags. So they actually know where your bags are. Even if they end up in Ouagadougou, at least they know it.
ii) meals that don't smell like urinals. You know that odd combination of gross and disinfectant? How do they get it to smell like both at the same time? Actually, that is pretty innovative.
iii) a plane that can't be hijacked by cutlery. I mean, plastic knifes are fun and all, but when your hand slips because the plastic knife has softened up while cutting your hot entree, and you slice your hand open on the edge of the metal chinese-takeout tray (which, ironically, is as sharp as a samurai blade), it's hard to get the flight attendent's attention for a bandage without bleeding all over yourself.
iv) clear, sound-proof domes that drop, oxygen mask style, from the ceiling in the event of a crying baby or snoring row-mate. Please affix over your travelling companion, securing snugly by pulling firmly on the plastic tabs.
or, best of all, v) in-flight hibernation mode like in sci-fi space flight. I'd gladly doze in an upright, glass-fronted coffin stacked in rows in giant supersonic transport planes if it meant that I could forgo the plastic knives, horrid movies and crying babies.

Anyway, this little tirade was spawned when I booked a ticket last week on Malaysian Airlines and they insisted on sending me a paper ticket (and believe me, when you're in Cambodia, booking a ticket online to leave from Kuala Lumpur and you don't have a mailing address anywhere, it's a giant pain in the ass.)
paper. ticket.
What is this? 1995? Why the retro stylings? Perhaps it's related to the current malysian tourism campaign. It has been 50 years (sort of) since malaysia gained its independence so 2007 is 'visit malaysia year'. Maybe they're trying to make us feel like it's 1957 all over again.

break down

2007-07-22T08:26:00.000+03:00

So I've just spent 5 weeks in SE Asia, traveled from Kuching to Phnom Pehn to Kuala Lumpur, eaten roti and curry, laksa and nasi lamak, moved by car, bus, plane, moto and bamboo train, and finally after all that, I broke down and did something awful. Here I am, hours before stepping on a plane to Miami and I... I... I just... I mean... I... it just seemed like such a good idea at the time...
...
ok, here goes:
IwenttoburgerkingohI'msosorryitwillneverhappenagain.
And after that first (admittedly satisfying) bite, it became clear just what a mistake it was. And I have quite the McStomach Ache.

airport pick-up

2007-07-17T13:24:00.000+03:00

For all of my airport security complaining I really do love to travel. And it's not just the sights, smells and sounds, the charming smiles and unexpected pleasures. For me it's also about the actual travel. The miles passed and the act of passing them. London suburbs whipping past train windows, the lulling hum of wheels on the autobahn, the endless dunes of the Sahara crawling slowly beneath a plane. I really just like to be on the move. And it really doesn't matter if it's cars, trucks, trains, planes, boats, buses, bicycles, motorcycles, hovercrafts or helicopters, they're all great (though helicopters definitely get extra cool points).

Today I flew into Phnom Pehn from Kuala Lumpur. I chose the 2 hour flight over the 2 day bus ride (but to be fair, I did take the bus last time). I've been beginning to worry that this trip may be turning me into a bit of a wimp (what with my decadent flight from Malaysia), so I was starting to feel bad that I had someone coming to meet me at the airport instead of just grabbing a taxi out to meet them when my ride appeared... on his moped.

And with his brother on the back.

But seeing this as an opportunity to show how I'm game for anything, we pile my bags on and the three of us climb on to this little scooter and race off ('race' being a relative term). I really wish I had have stopped to take a picture of the three of us and all of my clothes and gear for a 9 month trip around the world loaded onto what's basically a bicycle with a blender motor strapped to it weaving our way through Phnom Penh traffic. And I probably would have taken a picture too, if I hadn't been too busy humming the Dead Kennedys.

overheard in the lounge

2007-06-12T22:23:00.000+03:00

I'm to board my flight from tel aviv to bangkok and I just overheard the following:
(guy on cell phone): "We just wanna come hooooooooommmmmee. We can't wait to get hooooommmmeee. We just want the quickest way hoooommmmmeeee."

I can't even imagine.

left behind

2007-05-23T12:54:00.000+03:00

For all of the traveling I do, you'd think I'd be much better at the whole packing/unpacking thing. But alas, not a trip goes by where don't manage to leave something behind. In Turkey it was my cell phone, and a few days ago I recieved this email recounting a conversation between my friend Pam, and Sydney, the four year-old daughter of my hosts while I was in London:

Sydney: Pammie? Do you know Ryan Lash?
Pam: Yes Sydney I do
Sydney: I like him
Pam: Yes, me too
Sydney: Well do you know that he has now left the country to go to another country?
Pam: Yup
Sydney: Well, Ryan forgot something here
Pam: Oh really? What did he forget?
Sydney: He forgot his sock (giggle)
Pam: Oh dear! I wonder how he is surviving with one warm foot and one cold foot?
Sydney: Yes, his toes must be very chilly
Pam: Are you taking care of his sock for when he comes back?
Sydney: Yes, I think it is somewhere, but August and I might have to use it for other things.

Pam had no idea what 'other things' could possibly mean. Anyone want to hazard a guess?

Jumping the Shark at Heathrow

2007-05-15T13:24:00.000+03:00

"Jumped the shark" is a term that's been kicking around the internets for some time now and was originally used in reference to the old "Happy Days" episode where Fonzie jumped a shark on water skies. It's now used to mark ther point where a tv series (or really anything else for that matter) has passed it's peak, lost its charm and is heading for the end, often to die under an increasing number of ridiculous plot twists and new (and pointless) characters.
When your favorite series is starting to get a little tired, the characters tiresome and the plot aimless and then suddenly an episode shows up involving alien abduction, drug mules, car wreck comas, or anything to do with spring break, then it's fairly safe to say that the shark has been jumped and your show, taken to the extremes of pointlessness, is on its way out (It should be noted here that shark jumping isn't always the end. I think Lost jumped the shark at the end of the first season, and has been jumping it every other week since then. And then of course there's the Simpsons, which seems to have built Jumping the Shark right into the charm of their show.)
Now, like any good phrase, "jumped the shark" can be applied to all manner of things that have passed their prime and lost their initial charm. Take for example my recent adventure at Heathrow airport: arriving well in advance of my scheduled departure with passport, ticket and bags in order I stepped up to the check-in counter where I was quickly and cheerfully issued a boarding pass. Emboldened by the ease of my success I strolled jauntilly over to the security checkpoint where things began to go a little pear shaped.
The security checkpoint is made up of two areas. The first is one of those rope mazes where you go in one end, walk back and forth until you begin to get a little dizzy, then stumble out the other end having walked a total of 147 steps to cover about 4 meters. Along the way, you pass 2 different security officers in florescent vests with reflective stripes (perhaps they cycle along the motorway to get to work?) asking to see boarding passes. Then, you come to a long table with a various bottles of all shapes and sizes being watched over by a man (in matching florescent vest) who is calling out to passers-by 'liquids, perfumes, toothpaste, gel' like a macy's counter-girl. Naturally I assumed it was a duty-free stop, a last minute opportunity to pick up some forgotten grooming supplies, but since everything of mine was tucked neatly away in my checked baggage, I carried on through to the end of the maze. Just when I thought when I had reached the end, when I could smell the fresh air beyond the little rope barriers, I was suddenly blinded by the piercing florescent glow of yet another security vest.
"Only one carry-on per person sir," says the dazzling yellow garment before me.
My blank stare obviously wasn't the answer he was looking for as he cleared his throat and continued, "government regulations sir, all passengers can only have one carry-on bag. You've got two there. You'll have to check one of them."
Ah yes, the wonderful all-passengers-can-only-have-one-carry-on-bag-but-only-in-the-uk-and-only-for-a-one-minute-security-check-other-than-that-we-could-give-a-rat's-ass rule. Fortunately I had a cunning plan.
"Look," I say, wishing i had have brought my sunglasses so as not to be rendered permentently blind by security garments, "both my bags together fit neatly inside the little baggage allowance bin, so are you really going to make me dump both of my bags into a bigger plastic bag for the 10 meter walk through security?"
"I'm sorry sir," my luminescent friend replied "but you'll have to consolidate both bags into one in order to get past this point... oh, and you can't just use a garbage bag."
So much for my cunning plan.
"It's too bad your bags are so big," he continued, "otherwise you could have just run over to the book shop and gotten a shopping bag."
I will let the reader pause at this point to consider that last statement. Garbage bags = forbidden, but shopping bags are a-ok.
"You're kidding right?"
"No sir, government regulations state that you cannot use a garbage bag, but there is no guidance regarding shopping bags."
Heading back out of the rope-y corridor, I walked over to a luggage store located conveniently right next to the security check-point and then, $28 later, walked out with a carry-on certified piece of crap with all of my carry-on belongings jammed inside.
I marched back into the maze, waving my boarding pass at all brightly clothed individuals who crossed my path, past the macy's perfume counter and on to one-bag-rule enforcer.
"Wow, you managed to get it all consolidated, well done!" he enthused.
In lieu of punching him in the mouth, I instead recommended that perhaps he should invest in the nearby luggage store, suggesting they may be doing some brisk business.
And with that I was through the horrid rope maze, on to the next step of the exciting security adventure.
This next part should be vaguely familiar to anyone that has flown anywhere in the past few years. The security check at Heathrow was only notable in its excessive signage, which the UK airport authority is using to outline the various steps to ensure trouble-free passage through the x-ray/metal detector stage of the trip (eg. step 1) remove your shoes, step 2) remove your jacket. etc.) So I joined a line of docile air travelers, all shuffling along, stripping off items of clothing, relinquishing phones and ipods and dignity. Somewhere between step 46 (remove your contact lenses) and step 123 (turn your head and cough) I became vaguely aware of some soft-pop-rock melodies wafting down from above. So while trudging ahead with the crowd, I began looking around for the source of the music. Just as I neared the metal detector, with it's menacing, paddle wielding watcher, having given up my bags, emptied my pockets and readied myself for the revealing walk through the archway, soft-pop-rock tunes still in my mind, I looked up and noticed a sign affixed to the wall.
"The music in this area," announced the sign "is provided by HMV."
And so dear travelers, I deem this moment, the moment that the UK airport authority decided that while we're all standing in their lines, shoeless, beltless, seperated from our belongings, lost, shivering and scared, that this would be a fine time to sell us CDs, to be the shark jumping moment of airport security.
The only logical conclusion now is that eventually we'll arrive at the airport bagless and naked, and purchase everything that we need for the trip from the duty-free shop.
Oh, and the war on terror? I say the terrorists won. At least until someone gets me my $28 back.

I have the best job in the world

2007-04-22T23:04:00.000+03:00

(Can we dispence with the obligatory dead blog apology? splendid.)
I appreciate that the title of this post may be a grand claim, but I assure you dear blog-readers, I do, in fact, have the best job in the world. Well, not a job exactly, more of a project. Or an adventure perhaps.
Here it is: I'm going to be spending the next 9 months or so traveling the globe, visiting amazing communities of Baha'is and taking photos. lots and lots of photos.
In fact, I've already started the trip and have really just been trying to figure out how to explain such a thing as being given your dream job. I didn't even really go looking for it. It just happened. I went from listless (some would say feckless) wandering image-maker... well, to a wandering image-maker with purpose. and plane tickets.
Anyway, this all kicked off a few weeks ago and now I'm in Istanbul, Turkey, stop number 1 on what promises to be a fairly epic, 19 stop tour of the globe.
The destinations will, for now, remain a well-guarded secret. But stay tuned for further updates. They will, hopefully, be forthcoming.

Baha'i Joke

2007-03-29T01:42:00.000+02:00

A Baha'i joke made up by a friend of mine who is not a Baha'i herself, but is quite knowlegable about the Baha'i Faith:

"Two Baha'is walk into a bar.

They decide it's lame.

And go to Africa."

time for a haircut

2007-02-05T05:58:00.000+02:00

You know it's time to get new friends when the mere mention of their names at the airport gets you dragged off to the little room where you have to take off your shoes, watch and belt before getting a thorough frisking and a once-over with the metal detecting wand:
overly friendly security officer: And who did you stay with while you were in Israel?
me, because I'm an idiot: My friend Payam.
OFSO: Payam what?
me, realizing what I had done and contemplating for a moment just saying "smith": Etminani
OFSO: ...
me: he's canadian, from montreal.
OFSO: please come with me.

And you know its time for a haircut when, once you get to that little room, the first part of you that the super-smily security guy checks with his little hand is your head.

Tel Aviv

2006-12-29T19:20:00.001+02:00

You know when you go to the airport in Israel and they search through your bags, running all of your possessions, individually, through the x-ray machine? twice? And then when they're done with that they take you to that little room where they ask you to walk back and forth through the metal detector, taking off items of clothing until it stops beeping?
Did you know that there's a secret button somewhere in that room? And if you press it four undercover Israeli security guards with radios and guns come storming into your little metal detector room and no one says anything for a second and you think you're about to get hauled off to airport prison because you forgot to take the pack of gum out of your pocket and that's what kept beeping even though you had already taken off your shoes and belt and were wondering what else you could take off given that that curtain over the doorway was ridiculously small and kept flapping open anyway? Well, don't worry. They won't haul you away. And when you ask the guard who was supervising your trips through the metal detector, he'll just tell you that no, you're not in trouble, but that button sure is sensitive...

Balmy Israel, oh how I miss thee.

2006-12-24T23:10:00.001+02:00

When I finally arrived in Tel Aviv, it was a balmy 12 degrees. At 7:30 in the morning. I walked out the terminal, took off my jacket and haven't put it back on since. It's been sunny and warm and I've passed the time strolling about in the sun and sipping coffee on outdoor patios.
Sadly, it had to come to end and I'm back at the airport, killing time before a flight to Prague. I'll be there for week, attending a conference as an 'internet specialist' where I'm going to be running a workshop on the blog-o-sphere. Just have a glance back to the dates of my last 10 posts and you'll see how much of a joke this is.
After the conference, I have a month of unscripted Euro-adventure. Other than a need to hit London at some point in those 30 days, I'm pretty open for anything. So, if anyone out there has a Euro-destination that is not to be missed, let me know. Also, if anyone is in possession of a Euro-couch I can crash upon, please do leave your particulars in the comment section below.

breakfast with miss Jelly Pong in balmy Israel.

Last plane out of Heathrow

2006-12-24T22:54:00.000+02:00

So when last I blogged, I was relaxing in the departure lounge at Heathrow, waiting for a flight to Tel Aviv, sipping coffee and basking in the comforting glow of the interweb.
They finally stared loading the plane about half an hour after our scheduled departure and by that time I was glad to wedge myself into a seat and try to get some sleep in preparation for my 6am arrival in Israel. So I sit down, immediately fall asleep and nap for what feels like (and actually was) about 20 minutes or so. Upon waking, I can't help but notice that we're still on the ground. No matter, I figure we'll be on our way shortly and drift off back to sleep.
What I didn't know at that point was that a heinous freezing fog had descended on the airport that night and was coating everything in ice. As airplane wings and ice don't mix so well, flights were being cancelled left and right. And now, our plane was sitting on the tarmac, waiting for clearance to go.
So, having no idea that I'm in danger of spending a night camped out in Terminal 4, I slumber some more, only to be woken by the following announcement:
"Ladies and gnetlemen, this is your captain speaking, as you may have noticed, we're still sitting on the ground. You may also have noticed that it is quite foggy outside. And those of you sitting above the wings most certainly will notice, if you look out the window, that the fog is icing up the wings."
At this point I, from my vantage point above the right wing, look out the window and noticed that, yes, the fog is icing up the wing. fancy that.
"So now, ladies and gentlemen, I have some good news and I have some bad news. The good news is that we have, finally, been given clearance to take off, the bad news is that in order for us to do so, our wings have to be de-iced, and unfortunately, the de-icing crew has got their hands full tonight. We are currently number 7 in the de-icing queue and it will be about an hour before they can get to us. So we will be going, but not just yet."
There were, as you can imagine, a few groans and sighs and general sounds of discontent about the cabin, but most people just looked at each other, shrugged, and went back to talking/napping/listening to their ipods. I closed my eyes and went back to sleep, only to be woken an hour later by the de-icing crew spraying my window with de-icer. This is also when the second announcement came:
"Ladies and gentlemen this is your captain again. I'm sure that those of you sitting over the wings have seen the de-icing crew and expect that we will be leaving shortly. Unfortunately, we can't leave just yet because when all of the flights were cancelled, all of the ground crews went home, so now we need to wait for the only remaining ground crew to come and push us back from the gate. It shouldn't be too long, so just hold on and I'll let you know when they arrive."
More groans, but also a few chuckles, as hey, we'd been sitting here for over 90 minutes, how much longer could it be? And aren't delayed flights and missed connections what holiday travel is all about?
A few minutes later the captain was back:
"Ladies and gentlemen, as I'm sure you've noticed, we are now leaving the gate. We'll be taking off shortly and we'll do our best to take advantage of our tailwind and see if we can make up some of the lost time."
This time, some scattered claps for the good news, and when we left the ground a few minutes later people actually cheered.
I guess that's the secret for airline crews, just make people think that the plane might not take off at all. Then, not only will they not mind that you're leaving two hours late, they'll actually cheer when the plane gets off the ground.

Terminal 4 - Heathrow

2006-12-20T21:19:00.000+02:00

No airport departure lounge blog would be complete without the requisite airport-security-is-a-pain-in-the-ass post. This one, however, comes with a twist:
You see, I've been lucky enough to travel a fair bit. And normally when I travel, it's with bags of cameras and computers and other bits of techno-gadgetry. So I'm used to having my bags hand-searched. And my pockets emptied. And metal detecting wands waved around my private areas. One time they just refused to let me get on the plane with my gear (I ended up getting them to buy me a ticket on someone else's plane, figure that one out.) It's all just part of the travel experience (unless your Congolese fixer has just bribed the security people (the ones with the big machine guns), then you can just walk right onto the plane. But that was just that one time).

But now, in the age of shoe bombers and shampoo bombs, suddenly no one cares that you're walking around with bags of gadgety goodness (well that and the fact that now everyone is walking around with just as much cellphone-laptop-digital camera-gadgety-ness).
So now, instead of being pulled out of line for a little bit of intimate wanding, it goes like this: I'm leaving Israel and transiting through Athens. In Athens, I have to go through a security check with a bag full of cameras and a bag full of computers and hard drives and countless other devices with flashing lights and beeping beepers and what-have-you. Of course, I go straight through and no one even gives me a second glance. As I'm standing there, re-packing my laptop, the guy after me comes through with no carry-on other than a zip-lock bag with a toothbrush, toothpaste, and what looks like a small bottle of shampoo. The woman behind the x-ray machine looks up at him and says, "sir, could you step over there please? We need to check your bag." I wonder if he enjoyed the wanding?

However, here in London they've decided to change the carry-on rules to 'speed things up'. This means that you're allowed one carry on bag, no ifs, ands or buts (usual rules are that you're allowed one carry on plus a purse, laptop or camera bag, which really means you bring two bags). They tried to get me to check one of my bags in Vancouver, but in the end admitted that I could fly from Vancouver to London with two, but I could only fly OUT of London with one.
So, when I arrive in London, and see that yes, they are not messing around with this one-bag only thing, so I step around the corner and repack all of my cameras into my laptop bag. Everything that won't fit, I jam into the pockets of my jacket. Then I sling my camera over my shoulder and proceed through security. At this point, I can't even really close my bag, so swollen is it with photo paraphernalia, but that doesn't concern the one-bag-only rule enforcer, next time I think I'll just bring a garbage bag and when they take issue with my computer bag + camera bag, I can just drop them both into the garbage bag and be done with it.
And of course, when I get to the actual security checkpoint there is no line at all. And i don't mean that in the 'yeah, there was no line at all, only 4-5 people in front of me' way, but in the, 'there was no line at all' kind of way. And then once I got through security, I just repacked my bags again. Thank you oh-so-much Heathrow security for speeding things up for me.

Terminal 4 - Heathrow

Coming to you from an actual departure lounge.

2006-12-20T20:09:00.000+02:00

So when I started this blog back in the day, I was in the midst of a hard-rock, border-hop, jet-set lifestyle. My first post was composed at a friend's house in Kuala Lumpur and, at the time, I had just come off of a 9 month project that included jaunts to every continent (no nit-pickers, I did not go to antarctica. But seriously, who goes to antarctica?) and a fair bit of time in airports and departure lounges. So, naturally, the blog was called 'departure lounge' after the location from which I imagined I would be composing my witty and engaging reports of travel and adventure. Of course, less than a month later I ended up in Israel, where I spent the next three years. Three (almost) departure-lounge-less years.
But now I'm back on the road.
I left Israel a month ago, went back to Canada to catch up on my television watching, and I'm now on my way to Europe. Scratch that, I am in Europe. At Heathrow. In a real live departure lounge.

And I'll be on the road for the next few weeks, swinging through Israel, up to the Czech Republic and then I have 4 weeks to kill in Europe before I head back to Israel for a wedding and finally back to Canada where, if all goes well, I'll take a quick break, repack my bags, and set off again. I'll keep you all posted.

serene moments

2006-10-04T02:49:00.000+02:00

So this is mostly a random post about nothing (on this blog? shocking, I know), but while reliving strange and wonderful soundtracked moments from my walks to work here in Haifa, it reminded me of the Single Coolest Thing that I have ever witnessed. Ever.
It happened when I was in Uganda last year. I was standing outside of the Ugandan parliment buildings, shooting some b-roll of the street and of the police checking cars as they drove in through the main gate.
I had been there for about 20 minutes and was just getting ready to pack up when a Boda-Boda* pulled up next to me. (brief aside about Boda-Bodas: A Boda-Boda is a motorcycle taxi in Uganda. They're normally ridiculously underpowered scooters piloted by fearless (and/or reckless) young men who all seem to be engaged in an on-going quest to find the absolute quickest route through the traffic-choked city...or die trying. And they would like nothing more than to take you with them. And because it's Uganda, they all wear shorts, t-shirts and flip-flops, though more and more of them are wearing helmets as the police begin to enforce the helmet laws (or at least use it as an excuse to shake-down a few Boda pilots for a few thousand shillings).
Right, so anyway, this Boda pulls up beside me, and the driver is wearing a pristine white helmet with a gold-tinted full face visor (something like this, but the visor was gold, like this.) So when I turned to look, I could only see myself reflected in his visor. He just sat and looked at me for a moment, his face hidden, before slowly reaching up and tilting the reflective sheild back to reveal the coolest damn face I've ever seen (no really, you have no idea. And I couldn't possibly come up with the words to describe other than to say that I immediately fell in love). He continued to watch me, hardly reacting to my now shameless, open-mouthed gawking (I'm telling you, coolest. face. ever.) before saying simply: "cool, isn't it?" and raising his eyebrows slightly, awaiting my response. When he realized I was too star-struck to offer one, he gave me a little nod and a smile, dropped his visor with a flick of his hand, and took off again.
The whole thing lasted less than a minute, and I know that I've done a fairly dismal job of discribing it, but it was, without a doubt, the coolest thing ever.

morning music

2006-10-04T01:44:00.000+02:00

I was, until a few months ago, rocking an old-school discman on my walks to and from the office (the discman, in turn, was rocking a super-tough skull and crossbones sticker from here. I like to think it made me look tough.)
Sadly, my retro cd machine met his end in an unfortunate floor-related accident and I was suddenly music-less.
Not able take the silent commutes, I finally broke down and bought an ipod (yeah yeah, ipod haters, whatever), and am now back to walking the streets in my anti-social headphone cocoon, scoring full dork points with my baby blue ipod sock.
Anyway, I find it interesting how different music affect how I see the world around me, even during something as routine as a walk to the office. The other morning I left my house listening to an upbeat little ditty (I believe it was Jean Knight's "Mr Big Stuff") and just around the corner I passed an old man walking the other way, 70ish, slightly stooped, shuffling along with a cane, wearing black shoes with black socks pulled up to his pasty knees, little blue shorts, a stripe-ity shirt and, just for kicks, a sailor's hat perched rakishly upon his head. And here is where it may have been the music talking, but I swear he had a bit of a swagger as he shuffled on down the street, a coy little smile playing on his lips.
Or yesterday, almost to the office, this time listening to a cover of Leonard Cohen's Hallelujah, done by Susanna and the Magical Orchestra. Now, if you know the original version, you'll know that it's already a fairly slow and melancholy piece, but Susanna and her orchestra draw it out to it's limit, slowing the tempo as they go, creating the impression that the song will never actually end, but reach a point, mid chorus, where time stops and you get trapped in the song forever. So this song is slowly dripping from my headphones and the sun on my face is making everything feel that much more sweet and sleepy, and coming the other comes a woman pushing a stroller, and in the stroller is a child of 2 or 3, stretched and lounging. The song is now winding down and with it the motion of things around me slows until it seems as if we're pushing along underwater. The child looks up and catches my eye. We hold each other's gaze as we pass, Susanna and her magical time-stopping orchestra stretching the moment deliciously. And then, just before looking away, a small nod from the stroller as if to say, yes, it just doesn't get any more serene than this.

I am so going to blog that

2006-09-04T14:25:00.000+03:00

Periodically, as I meander my way through a day, I come across those little sparkling gems that are the reason that blogs were invented (boggle kings, internet curios, and the like). Usually, when confronted with such treasures, I loudly exclaim 'I'm so blogging that' (or some other, equally dorky phrase. 'hello interweb' is also an unfortunate favorite) and everyone around me rolls their eyes and exchange knowing looks because, of course, these rarely, if ever, actually get blogged.
Well, today (just a moment ago infact) I was in the office of a colleague (a colleague, coincidentally, who is very often the inspiration for my dorkified blogging pronoucements) as she was explaining to me the new super-uber wheat-free suger-free dairy-free fat-free salt-free food-free fun-free diet that she's on. I had just tried to offer her a cookie (I swear I forgot about the diet, I know I used to be an annoying my-food-is-better-than-tour-food vegan, but those days are behind me, I promise), anyway, I offered a cookie and she responded by explaining the preparation of the bland-tastic muffins that she had attempted to make:
"I dunno, they had walnuts and apples and when they came out of the oven they were all flat and dense..." a pause here while she noticed my scowly, unimpressed-with-her-muffin-fu-skills expression, "they're made with rice flour, they didn't rise. They were super dense! like chinese fighting muffins!"

Chinese. Fighting. Muffins.

So I, of course, am about to proclaim my intention to put said gem up on this beloved blog when I realize that blog access is right next door! in my office! where I should be working! but am instead putting up this increadibly pointless blog post! So I dash off to pen this little post that you're reading right now. about chinese fighting muffins.*

*As a side note, "chinese fighting muffins" is a quote from the 2000 release "Charlie's Angels". You have no idea how disappointed I am by this.

*update: my colleague, who holds the title of worlds biggest luddite, claims that she had no knowlegde of the use of "Chinese Fighting Muffins" in Charlie's Angels. This, of course, will be the title of my next post: pop-culture influences on the global luddite community: "When you think you're making up quotes from major motion pictues".

The King of Boggle

2006-05-09T01:51:00.000+03:00

Ok, I really just need to write this story down because every time I think about it my brain starts to ache and I need to turn of the lights and put my head down on my desk. And the story didn't even happen to me. It's not even my story. But now I'm going to tell it to you. And it can be your story, and your brains can hurt for a while:
(Before we start, if you have a copy of The Beastie Boys' 1998 release "Hello Nasty" put it on and skip up to Track 9 " Putting Shame In Your Game ")
Ok, so some years ago a friend of mine was playing the classic word gameBoggle with her brother and a friend. It should be noted that both my friend and her brother (and, I assume, the friend) are giant geeks. Geeks of epic proportion. The kind of geeks who actually play boggle.
So here my friends are, in this heated and riveting game of boggle, madly scanning back and forth up and down rows of little cubes with letters printed on them, trying desperately to link those letters together into words, searching frantically for the longest word possible while the little grains of sand tumble through the hourglass, counting down the seconds until they can shake the damn think up and do it all over again. It's a miracle that people even bother with Playstation.
Anyway, so here they are, mid-boggle. Pencils scratching, brows furrowing, grains tumbling, words forming. The time runs out and they begin to add up words and points. My geeky friend slowly notices that her brother isn't counting, isn't adding. He's written but a single word. Q-U-A-G-M-I-R-E. 11 Points. (At this point I'm sure most of you have absolutely no idea what I'm talking about or why this is a big deal. A few of you may be impressed by the Boggle prowess. And a very select few of you have just tumbled off your chairs in fits of laughter. But I'll continue.)
So here's the brother, sitting smugly with his 11 point word which caps his 107 point boggle victory.

He then declares himself to be the King of Boggle.

A crown is made, and the self-declared Boggle-King parades about the house waving regally to his subjects (who all ignore him).
Now, being the geeks that they are, neither my friend nor her brother realized what had happened. It wasn't until YEARS LATER when my friend called another acquaintance of theirs and got on to the story about his-royal-boggleness. She gets into the story, no doubt conveying the tension and excitement of the game, the riveting boggling that had taken place. She gets near the end of the tale and relays the 11 point Quagmire event. The friend, who is not just a regular geek, but a giant music geek, begins to chuckle. My friend, not knowing the import of what she's about to convey, gets to the part about the crown and just when she begins to say "And he made himself the K-," the musically geeky friend cuts in with following lyrics from "Putting Shame In Your Game", which happens to be Track 9 on the 1998 Beastie Boys' release "Hello Nasty":

Well I'm the king of Boggle
there is none higher
I get 11 points
off the word quagmire

Like Mike D had been hanging out outside their window or something. Or MCA had gone through their trash and found the "King of Boggle" crown. Or maybe Ad-rock had been a friend of the unidentified third boggle geek and the story got out. Whatever, I just want you all to know that I know the REAL "King of Boggle" of who there is none higher. And who got eleven points with the word "Quagmire". And he ain't no Beastie Boy.

spam

2006-05-04T20:11:00.000+03:00

Right. So I've been spending more and more time online and in the blog world (not this blog obviously, but, you know, in the blog neighbourhood. Anyway, during that time I've seen a veritable metric ton of spam. Email spam, comment spam, trackback spam, spammity spam spam. But I have to say, rare is the spam that makes me stop and consider, if only for a fleeting moment, actually clicking on their links or calling their numbers. And so I give you the comment spam that dropped onto that last post a couple of days ago:

"While you read this, YOU start to BECOME aware of your surroundings, CERTIAN things that you were not aware of such as the temperature of the room, and sounds may make YOU realize you WANT a real college degree.

Call this number now, (413) 208-3069

Get an unexplained feeling of joy, Make it last longer by getting your COLLEGE DEGREE. Just as sure as the sun is coming up tomorrow, these College Degree's come complete with transcripts, and are VERIFIABLE.

You know THAT Corporate America takes advantage of loopholes in the system. ITS now YOUR turn to take advantage of this specific opportunity, Take a second, Get a BETTER FEELING of joy and a better future BY CALLING this number 24 hours a day.
(413) 208-3069"

Can you imagine having a conversation with someone that spoke like this!? How awesome would that be? Or finding an entire webpage with randomly capatilized words and feelings of cheap bliss that it attempts to convey? Now if you'll excuse me, I'm going to go and listen to some SOUNDS that may MAKE me realIZE that I want A real COLLEGE DeGrEe.

you mean he didn't try toprint out the entire internet?

2006-03-12T16:54:00.000+02:00

Well dear readers, it seems that those tricksters at cool.com.au have come clean about their trickery and admitted that no one really tried to print out the entire internet. Shocking really. But not to worry, that certainly won't stop me from using the expression as often as I possibly can.

Just that time of the morning...

2006-03-12T05:09:00.000+02:00

I've finally learned the secret to keeping this blog alive. I just need to keep staying up past 4am. Something about this time of the morning that generates these rambling posts about absolutely nothing, or in this case possibly the most imbecilic thing on the entire internet.
So there's this kid right? (Let's just call him "Cody Darnell") "Cody" is nine years old, and like most nine year-olds, Cody is not the sharpest pencil in the box, but this is no fault of Cody's, it's just that, hey, he's nine. So Cody makes a bet with his cousin Mikey over thanksgiving dinner. Not just any bet, but the stupidest bet in the entire world.
Cody, nine year-old that he is, bets his cousin that he can print out the entire internet. If Cody wins, he gets $50 dollars. So Cody goes off to print out the entire internet (every time I type that it just makes me laugh. I think this will be my new hyperbole: "This is even awesomer than printing out the entire internet" how rad does that sound?).
Okay, so under the terms of the bet, Cody has six months to print out the entire internet and if Mikey can find a site on the Internet which has not been printed he wins the bet, if he can’t he loses. (you know, the more I think about it, I think this bet is actually the raddest bet ever in the history of the internet).
Anyway, alerted by the incessant humming and whirring of the printer, Cody's parents come to hear about the bet. They call Mikey, he agrees to call it off and apologize to young Cody for being a jerk. fine. this is where the story would end except for one important thing. Cody Darnell is actually the smartest kid in the entire world. An absolute genius. I'm telling you, the world has never seen a mind like young Cody Darnell's. You see, young Cody somehow managed to convince his parents that he could actually print out the entire internet.
(They added the condition that websites which contain adult or obscene content be excluded from the bet. Dwight (young Cody's father) explained, "I know there’s some nasty filth on the Internet that a good Christian family like the Darnells don’t want to see so we got us some clever software that stops it getting into our humble home.")
Now this is where things start getting completely out of control (like they weren't already). A local radio station find out about the bet and does a story on it. Then others in town start pitching in. The local computer store, Big Frank’s World of Computers (I couldn't make this stuff up if I tried), has donated a laser printer and the Springwood Traders' Association is seeking donations from local businesses to cover the costs of paper and printer toner. Others are helping by taking it in turns to do the printing, creating lists of websites to be printed and providing storage space for the printouts.
The whole thing then takes a turn to the surreal. He's the end of the article:
"This heart warming story of determination and community spirit has been featured on national and international news services and the Darnells have become local celebrities. Dorothy, a waitress at a local diner and Dwight, an unemployed truck driver, have been surprised by the amount of interest in Cody’s story. As Dorothy explained, "We've been getting hundreds of calls from all sorts of people. Most of them want interviews and we've even had Hollywood people wanting to make a feature film. Imagine that, a film about our Cody and little ol’ Springwood."

"little ol’ Springwood."? Oh please.

And here we go with the kicker:

"The bet will be decided on May 24th, 2006 and will be celebrated a special holiday proclaimed by the mayor of Springwood, Ed Newsome, as Internet Day. Cody summed up the sentiment of the town by saying, "This is like, totally, the coolest thing ever. I'm gonna show Mikey that he’s wrong." before returning to his computer and printer."

So, Cody Darnell, ~~stupidest~~ smartest boy on the internet. Too bad he didn't want to run for president or something, because I'm sure he talk his way into that one too...
Of course the whole point of this post, besides to explain my new love for the espression "print out the entire internet" is to illustrate that old just-because-it's-on-tv-don't-mean-it's-true thing. In fact, dear readers, if anyone can offer any kind of corroboration for this story, I'll go and print out the entire internet. How about that? Of course, maybe a better idea would be to just send me to bed before I can even find these things...

Russian Military Ushanka Hats are the epitome of internet cool

2006-03-10T01:10:00.001+02:00

My dear cyber-friends, I just want to let you all know that this is precisely why I love the interweb. Indeed, if it wasn't so damned impractical, I think I would probably buy one of these RARE Golden Russian Ushankas and wear it all the time. Yes, even in the shower.
Sadly, the coolness that this hat would exude would be too much for a mere mortal as myself to handle and I would probably explode, showering passersby with bits of extra-cool spleen and pancreas and whatnot. And even if I could hold it together, if I happened to pass too close to another wearer of a Ushanka, say a Black & White Real Rabbit Ushanka, it would probably be like in ghostbusters when they crossed the streams and time and space would collapse in on itself and create a blackhole of coolness from which nothing could escape. Not even him.
Of course, beyond on the hyperbolic hat wearing, existance negating scenarios the ushanka site still scores top marks for internet awesomeness because of the link right at the bottom of the page. I'm not even going to spoil it for you, it's just that rad. I'm telling you.

Ali Farka Toure died yesterday

2006-03-09T01:10:00.000+02:00

Renowned Malian guitarist Ali Farka Toure died yesterday at the age of 66 (or perhaps 67). Toure was from a small town close to the near-mythical city of Timbuktu and once said this about his home: "For some people, Timbuktu is a place at the end of nowhere. But that's not true, I'm from Timbuktu, and I can tell you that it's right in the centre of the world."
I had the great pleasure of meeting him once (even more so because we were in Timbuktu at the time). It was a few days before new years eve 1999 and I was there shooting a story for the New York Times on "new years eve fests around the world" and he was there to play a concert for tourists who had come to ring in the year 2000 at the end of nowhere . Of course, other than a concert by renowned malian guitarist Ali Fark Toure, there really wasn't anything going on in Timbuktu on a cool evening in the middle of ramadan. Happily, Toure, being the magnanimous soul that he was, was inviting the whole town to the party. Sadly, the guys at the door weren't honouring those invites and those of us without tickets were left wandering the streets of the city at the end of nowhere. And that's how I ended up in a seedy little bar with a writer named Nori and 85 peace corp volunteers. After almost burning the place to the ground with our ring-in-the-new-year sparklers we stood around marvelling that our digital watches had survived the y2k meltdown and mourning our exclusion from the biggest show in town. I'm still bummed that I missed Toure's show that night, especially now that I'll never get another chance.

Big Gulp

2006-03-04T10:12:00.000+02:00

Ok, seriously now, what are these people thinking? They're selling bottled water for $1.80 and donating an entire nickel per bottle to water projects in 'underveloped regions'. No offence to them, but I think that's pretty much one of the stupidest thing ever. in the world. At least writer Rob Walker gets it when he says:
"You might at least wonder whether it wouldn't make more sense to donate $1.80 to one of the aid organizations Ethos backs and ask your barrista for tap water. Isn't this all a bit like an S.U.V. whose profits finance third-world alternative-energy projects?" Thank you Mr Walker for illustrating so clearly how moronic this is.
He then goes on to say: "Sure, Starbucks had profits of half a billion dollars last year and could donate $10 million tomorrow, but writing a check, he [Peter Thum, the other Ethos founder] says, is less effective in the long run than "trying to build a movement to address this problem." To that end, he and Greenblatt are speaking to business-school groups about their mission and have planned Ethos promotions in connection with World Water Day on March 22 to raise awareness of a massive global problem and how buying Ethos can help. Ethos, as Greenblatt puts it, "makes activism accessible.""
Wow. "Makes activism accessible" by selling them bottled water that they could get out of the tap for free.
I have a better idea. Start giving them the tap water that's available in Bangladesh. Then wait and see how "accessible" you need to make the opportunity to fix the problem before people feel moved to do something about it.
But I do happen to think that Rob Walker might be on to something. Set up a display at the grocery store. Sell people empty bottles for $2. Then make them go home and fill it up from the tap. over and over and over.

apologies, avdat and suicide bombers who love soccer

2006-01-20T21:44:00.000+02:00

Ok, so this blog is just barely hobbling along. And it seems that every other post is an apology for not posting more often... which is ~~a bit lame~~ really lame. So I'm not going to even bother with the apologies anymore (I think I've said that before too...)
Anyway.
I just wanted to share a couple of quick things: first of all, it seems that when you do a search for Avdat, Israel the second page that comes up is this one. (Of course, this is only true today. A week from now, neither of those links I've provided will have anything to do with each other, but such is the nature of the never static, always evolving interweb)
I also want to share this with you all. Because I'm still in Israel. And because there was another bombing in Tel Aviv yesterday. And I really want to know who these people are. And would these organizations really survive if they didn't exploit the ignorance of people like this? Is it really any different than getting five-year-olds to fight your wars?
(In a seperate yet related note, Hamas has just spent $180,000 trying to improve their image. Some of the suggestions? · Say you are not against Israelis as Jews, · Don't talk about destroying Israel, · Do talk about Palestinian suffering, · Don't celebrate killing people and · Change beard colour (if red). Seems like they really got their money's worth...)

Cinemania the movie

2005-11-03T05:38:00.000+02:00

I also managed to squeeze in this little doco tonight, five minutes at a time. And I have to say, I think it's viewed better that way. It was actually nice to be able to pause the action for a moment a marvel at the insanity of what you'd just seen.
The movie follows five "cinemaniacs" in New York as they eat, sleep, and breathe movies (they routinely watch 3, 4, 5 movies a day) They say the expected obsessive things like "It's better than sex, you know, it's better than love. It's beyond obsession, I don't know what it is, there's no word for it..." There may not be a word for it, but there sure is a disorder for it. OCD anyone?
Anyway, the kicker at the end has the five of them (or maybe it's only four, I think one is missing) watching an early cut of the film. So these five (or maybe four) complete cinephiles are sitting in the dark, watching their lives up on screen. Watching themselves eat, hang out, talk to each other and, above all, watch movies. And you get the sense when the lights come up that it all seemed perfectly natural for them. Like that's how they see themselves all the time anyway.
Really an fantastic documentary. Highly recommend it.

Late night net-page trolling

2005-11-03T05:25:00.000+02:00

Tonight's catch: Razzle Dazzle Warships and incredible WWI photos by Frank Hurley.
I really didn't mean for both of these to be from the Great War, it just kind of happened that way. But be sure to check out the colour drawings of the battleships to really get a sense of how incredible (razzle dazzle-y?) these things must have looked.
And make sure you have a browse through all of Hurley's photos, the man was a genius. (As well as one of the original photoshoppers).
Right, so that's about it for tonight then. I'll try to come up with something a little less uh.... war-y for tomorrow.

like an explorer

2005-11-02T03:41:00.000+02:00

You can always tell when I get back on night shift because I start posting to my blog more regularly...
Right, so I'm back into the noon to 4am shift and, so far, am quite enjoying it. I ususally last for a few weeks until the lack of sunlight and contact with others sends me back into a more regular rhythm. So anyway, a lot of the work I do is short bursts followed by longer waits while the computer does it's thing and, funny thing, as long as I've got access to the interweb I never seen to have any trouble filling those down times. I can set off on internet explorations, searching for the gems of cyberspace, the geek gold that dwells in the dark corners of this digital realm, a prime example of which is tonight's glorious discovery: the world beard and mustache championships. It's ok, I'll just hold on a minute while you drink in the spectacle.
So I'm browsing through these photos, thinking things like, "who are these people?" and, "where do they come from?" and, "what on earth possesses them to do these things?" Luckily for me, Beard Team USA has a blog.
So, who's coming with me to Brighton in 2007?

daredevil bike posts

2005-11-01T03:28:00.000+02:00

So those bikey bike posts that I wrote a couple of weeks ago were supposed to just be a setup to a new Uganda post. I had a couple more little odds and ends from Uganda that I wanted to get up here before I forgot all about them, and now, three months later, the details are starting to get a little fuzzy. But hey, most of my stories are full of wild exaggerations and made up details anyway so what does it matter?
Here goes. My own bikey adventures were going to be the setup to a Uganda bike post that went something like this:
(this in itself is going to be a long setup for a short story, but since you all only read this because you're trying to avoid your work I'm sure you won't mind)
I've written before about bikes in Uganda, but since I can't find what I wrote I'll have to give it another go, (though if anyone out there has that email, I'd love to see it again. And I could post it for everyone's enjoyment).
When it comes to two wheeled transport, I really have to say that north americans are punks. In Uganda, as in most other places I've seen in Africa, bicycles are actually transport, and not just for granola eaters or tree huggers or can-no-longer-affrod-to-put-gas-in-my-hummer types. But for everyone and everything. I'm constantly amazed by what can be moved on a bicycle. Here's a brief list of things I've seen being toted around Kampala on two unpowered wheels: a goat, two goats, a goat and a dozen chickens (you tie their feet together and hang them from the basket on the front. they look oddly like a bouquet of flowers), 4 cases of full coke bottles, sacks of maize flour, a few bunches of bananas, a lawn mower, 3 children (this is in addition to the adult who was actually pedaling the bicycle), a bed (this guy was still riding the bike), a coffin (this guy was just pushing), and on and on. I'm still waiting to see a guy carrying a car on a bicycle, cause I know it's been done...
And everyone has the exact same bike, the ever-loved, single speed, solid steel, indestructible Hero bike. Made in India by the millions (at one point at the rate of 19,000 per day), these things are everywhere. Weighs fifty pounds before you put a rider, two goats and a dozen chickens on it. Once you got it loaded up and you get it moving, it's got the inertia of a runaway train. And once you're going, all you've got to stop it are two little rubber pads pushing on your slick steel rims as you hurtle down the road, goat bleating, chickens squawking and the kids on the back screaming "faster! faster!"
Or rather, that's what you get with a new bike. Once the bike has seen a few miles and the little rubber pads on your brakes are worn away, they replace them with little wooden ones. And then it rains. And then you're astride this runaway livestock train with the rain pouring down, hurtling through the deluge, blinded by the drops and you squeeze the brakes and press those little sodden blocks of wood against the equally wet metal rims and the bike actually starts to go faster. You'd do better to just tie a length of rope around one of the chickens and then heave the chicken overboard in the hopes of hooking a tree or something.
Right, so that's the hero bike. So just hold on to that for a moment.
When we were in Uganda, we took a short road trip out to Mbale, a town in Eastern Uganda, towards the Kenyan boarder. As you leave Kampala heading east, you pass through lush, rolling hills that are home to tea and sugar plantations. From a distance, tea plantations look like finely clipped lawns, impossibly green, wrapped around mountains, laid over valleys. When you see people walking along the rows of tea, they look tiny, the closely cropped lawn you were admiring a moment ago reaching almost to their waists.
The Sugar plantations are less exciting, as there really isn't much to see. The sugar cane is so tall that you can't see past it as it lines the road, looking more of less like swampy grass. And while the tea is picked by hand and carried in baskets by the miniature workers, the sugar is hacked down, loaded into huge trailers and then pulled by tractors along the highway to the large sugar refineries. The trailers are open, built like giant baskets, so when they're filled the sugar cane sticks out everywhere, making the trailers look like giant bushes rolling down the road. And it's these tractors and trailers that make up the other part of this little story.
Along one little stretch, the road to Mbale passes through a small island of national forest that straddles a valley, bordered on both sides by sugar cane. The tractors on the far side of the forest are loaded up, driven into the forest, race at obscene speeds down to the bottom of the valley and then crawl slowly back up the other side and on to the refinery. And a lot of the workers that cut sugar cane ride their bikes to work.
So here we are, in a car racing back towards Kampala, just starting to head down into the forest. The car is driven by our friend Billy Francis who tends to drive his car on the faster side (he's been complaining that we're making him keep it under 140km/h). I wasn't actually watching the speedometer as we came up on the sugar cane tractor, but I would have guessed we were going about 100 or 110. The road here is 4 lanes and we were ever so slowly passing this tractor being pushed to the bottom by his fully loaded trailer (they really race to the bottom). Right behind the trailer, less then a bike length for the bouncing stalks of sugar cane was a guy on a hero bike. Drafting behind the trailer at what must have been close to 90km/h, his hat held between his teeth, his face tight, squinting to keep the flying bits of leaves and canes from blinding him, racing, racing down this hill. I'm sure he could have set those little wooden pads on fire.

Israel Must Be 'Wiped Off the Map'

2005-10-27T05:27:00.000+02:00

I'm really sorry about the New York Times link (all that registration nonsense) but, as I am currently living in Israel, I couldn't help but be slightly offended by this. Here are the juicy pieces of the article, cut and pasted for your enjoyment:

"TEHRAN, Oct. 26 - Iran's new hard-line president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a group of students at an anti-Israel event today that Israel must be "wiped off the map" and that attacks by Palestinians will destroy it, the Iranian student news agency, ISNA, reported.

Iran's new president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, told a group of students at an anti-Israel event today that Israel must be "wiped off the map"
He was speaking to an audience of about 4,000 student at a program called The World without Zionism, in preparation for an annual anti-Israel demonstration held on the last Friday of the holy month of Ramadan.

His tone was reminiscent of that of the early days of Iran's Islamic revolution in 1979. Iran and Israel have been bitter enemies since then, and anti-Israel slogans are common at rallies.
...
He said in his remarks today that the issue of a Palestinian state would be resolved only when Palestinians took control of all their lands.

"The establishment of Zionist regime was a move by the world oppressor against the Islamic world," Mr. Ahmadinejad said, the news agency reported. "The skirmishes in the occupied land are part of the war of destiny. The outcome of hundreds of years of war will be defined in Palestinian land."
...
Mr. Ahmadinejad also called Israel's withdrawal from the Gaza Strip a trick, and said Gaza is part of Palestinian territories and the withdrawal was aimed at convincing the Islamic states to acknowledge Israel.

"Anybody who recognizes Israel will burn in the fire of the Islamic nation's fury," Mr. Ahmadinejad said. Any Islamic leader "who recognizes the Zionist regime means he is acknowledging the surrender and defeat of the Islamic world."

nice. very very nice. What a jerk.

And I'm sure I don't need to remind us all that Israel, aside from being a symbol of the "surrender and defeat of the Islamic world", is also home to the Baha'i World Centre. Which Iran isn't really a fan of either.

Macgyver eats Granola bars

2005-10-19T13:53:00.000+02:00

(this post has been sitting for a while. so this was about 3 weeks ago)
After my last ride down the mountain I couldn't wait for the next one. I'd sit in my office and dream about loose, rocky soil; thorny bushes scratching at my arms; the dust hanging in the air when I stopped to rest...
So all week I waited and planned and dreamed.
And finally on friday afternoon I jumped back on my bike and raced back up the mountain to sniff out some new trails.
This time I found a twisty little piece of trail that ran up and over a small hill next to the rocky road that I rode last week. Up and over the crest of the hill, through some tight and twisty turns and back down over sheer rock faces and gnarled roots to the jackhammer staircase from last week.
Now as everyone knows, there are really only two ways to ride really rough trails, either really slow or really fast. If you try to ride it in between you'll just get bounced around too much and end up off in the bushes (which here are all really thorny and nasty, unless you have the good fortune to take a tumble into a sage bush, then you come out smelling all sage-y... not that I would know). So if you get going fast enough you can just skip along the tops of the rocks, instead of running into each one. And besides, the faster you go, the more momentum you have and it's much harder to get knocked off course by baby-head-sized rocks, right? (Though to be fair, by the time you get going fast enough to skip over the tops of the rocks if you do get knocked off course you'll be in the bushes before you have time to do anything about it).
So here I was, racing down the mountain, skipping over the tops of the little babies' heads and dropping off of stone ledges, grinning like a fool. I stopped about half-way down to catch my breath, get some feeling back in my arms and enjoy the view of the Mediterranean sparking down below me. I sat for a moment enjoying the sun and the fresh air, already planning my ride for the next day.

Now, have you all seen those cartoons where the cat goes through the big slicing and dicing machine and then comes out the other end in one piece? And just when you think that he miraculously escaped the whirling and spinning blades he collapses into a little pile of cat-cubes?

That was exactly what happened to my tire. There I was, sitting and enjoying the view when suddenly pssssssssssst.... my rear tire goes completely flat. Like it was just sitting holding it's breath, waiting for me to decided to push off down the hill again. stupid tire.

Luckily I have a bit of the boy scout always-be-prepared thing so I was carrying spare tubes and a pump and tools and water and a rag and chain lube and an apple and a granola bar and... so I found a nice flat rock to sit down on and pulled my rear wheel off and went to work. I checked the tire for signs of thorns or glass or sharp pointy stones. Finding none, I pulled the tube out to try and find the source of the leak only to find that my tube had split along one of it's seams. Weird.
So I put it aside, pulled out one my spare tubes and pumped it up a bit. pssssst. My spare had a hole in it too. Also split along the seam. huh.
No worries. I pulled the second spare tube out (see? always prepared), put a bit of air in it and... silence. sweet silence. I tucked the tube into the tire, put the whole thing back together and finished pumping up the tire.
psssssssst.
not funny.
I pulled the tube out and saw that it too and had along its seam. So here I was, half way up a rocky and rutted trail, three punctured tubes and no more spares. right. Macgyver time. I pulled out my granola bar, ate half of it and then ripped a piece of the wrapper off and tucked it into the tire over the whole in the tube. Holding the tire to keep pressure on the hole I pumped the tire back up. and.... silence once again.
I know, I'm just as shocked as you. I felt like getting up a doing a little dance. Instead I jumped up, packed the useless tubes back in my bag and put the back wheel back in the bike. I flipped my bike over again and was about to jump on when I noticed that... my... front... tire... was... also... flat. (I know you're all thinking this is the lamest made-up story ever, but really it was flat. totally, completely flat)
Giving up on the whole Macgyver style, I just grabbed my pump and furiously pumped it back up again in the hopes that it was just a slow leak and it would hold until I made it down the mountain. Well, the front held for a while and the back slowly leaked away, so I stopped again near the bottom and filled them both a bit, carrying on I noticed the front getting flatter and flatter and although I stopped a couple of more times to pump it up, it just wouldn't hold. So I ended up walking down to the beach and catching a ride back with a friend of mine. So now all rides are off until I can get some new tubes. sigh...

and an interesting footnote: Although my front tire is still pathetically flat, my Macgyvered rear tire is now holding air just fine. Maybe I should forget the tubes and just get some more granola bars...

New Zealand

2005-10-04T20:00:00.000+03:00

About nine years ago (nine years!) I spent a few months in ~~New Zealand~~ Kiwiland. Where the people are kiwis and the fruits are kiwis and the birds are kiwis and the kiwi kiwi kiwi. You get the ~~idea~~ kiwi. So... ummm...
...
There's really not much of a point to all of this other than to give me an excuse to link to this. It's a kiwi machine. That allows you to travel through time.

ps. if you don't find it funny, please don't bother letting me know. I won't believe you.

2005-10-02T15:05:00.000+03:00

(I'm going to skip the whole apology for the stale blog thing and just mention that this is a post for Shiori's mom)

So I was back home a year ago in the mountainous and forested wilds of the land of Canadia, breathing the fresh air and frolicking in alpine meadows and trying to think how I could bring a bit of this freedom and outdoor bliss back to Haifa with me.
Of course, the obvious answer was to spend an obscene amount of money on a bicycle and then leave it in my flat while I spent long hours surfing the web in my underground office. ahem.

Part of the problem was that my two wheel preferences run towards the off-road end of the spectrum, as riding on pavement is a really good way to bore yourself into a coma and/or get hit by a bus. And Haifa, being a city, doesn't offer much in the way of dirt. Not that's accessable from my house anyway.

Well, the other day I finally wheeled my bike out of my room, down the stairs and into the street. I sat there for a moment trying to figure out what to do. I had gotten my hands on a map that promised trails down the mountain side not too far away. I hadn't had much luck with the trails in Haifa so far, so I was facing a long ride up bus filled roads for an uncertain payoff.

But I turned my bike uphill and started pedaling. Up the winding roads of Haifa with the cars and the buses and whatnot. I finally got up to the spot that was supposed to be the trailhead, but found nothing but houses. I rode around a bit looking for a gap in a fence or a sign or something but really wasn't getting anywhere and was just about to give up when I noticed a patch of dirt far below, off a street farther down the mountain.

Suddenly energized, I raced down to investigate. And there, on the side of mount Carmel, I found a hint, a little wisp of a trail, turned my wheels toward it and dove in.

Now, as a little aside, I offer this brief history of Mt Carmel that I heard from a gardener who lives here:
Back in day this was a green, lush mountainside covered in trees and grass and little bushes and other planty things. Then the romans came along and started to chop down the trees to build houses. chop chop chop. And as the trees fell, their grip on the soil loosened and it started to get washed down the mountain. That carried on for a while, and the romans did their thing (roamin'?) and the mountian was still pretty lush and green, just not as much as it was. Then they built a railway that passed along the foot of the mountain and the engines, in that quiant 19th century way, were wood fired. And there went the rest of the trees. So now, the mountain is a big pile of rocks with a handful of trees hanging on for dear life. So you can only imagine what the riding is like here.

When I dropped off the paved road, it was into a shallow gully of rocks about the size and shape of babies heads (known throughout the mountain biking world as "baby heads"). I kept thinking that I would come over a rise to find a smooth and rolling dirt road, but it just didn't happen. The only brief respite I had was when broad patches of solid rock cut across the ditch I was riding in. But even then these solid swathes served mostly as ramps to lift me above the rocky mess for a moment before letting me drop back into the rough. And it just went on and on and on. Like riding a jackhammer down a flight of stairs. And I couldn't wait to do it again.

the post for Mrs. Ishikawa

2005-10-02T00:07:00.000+03:00

Dear Mrs Ishikawa,
This is a blog post for you. I know that when I chatted with your dashing husband the other day I promised him a post, but the post has now taken on a life of it's own and now it just keeps growing and growing. I'm trying to finish it off, but it just won't die. So in the mean time you get this lame little post to assure you that I haven't forgotten about you and when I finish off my big post about riding bikes and falling down you can read that one too.
Also, as a service to all of my other readers (who I'm sure have given up on me and slowly wandered off to read a blog that actually gets updated) let me direct you over to the Ishikawa blog so that you can say hello to the oh-so-cute-that-I'm-going-to-die Shiori Ishikawa. She's the little one. With all the hair. And the black eye and no eyebrows. Nice shiner shiori. It's nice when parents don't hold their kids back from doing big-kid things, but I think the boxing should maybe wait a little while. At least until we can find you some little boxing gloves to match your kimono. Then maybe you can fight this kid for the title. I think you could take him.

Uganda in dribs and drabs

2005-07-21T04:10:00.000+03:00

I've been back from Uganda for a week now and am currently up to my eyes in interviews. So I'm just going to throw out a bunch of snippets of things. Really, at this point it's this or nothing, so quit your complaining.

We went shooting in the market one afternoon to capture "everyday life in Uganda" which is much harder than it sounds, mostly because it isn't everyday that I bunch of white people show up at the Kalerwe market in Kampala and ask to film the produce. But we gave it a good effort. My job for most of the morning was to run interference, keeping May supplied with fresh tapes and batteries and out of trouble. And to shoot a bunch of pictures, natch.
Something that we were always dealing with (and which I've encountered in most places that I've shot) is people asking for money in exchange for being filmed and/or photographed. I never like to pay in these situations, and although it costs me some great photos, it means I get to have awesome conversations like this one:
Him (in a hostile tone): I want money. Give me money.
Me (laughing): Hey, I want money too!
Him: No, you give me money for food. I'm hungry.
Me: Oh me too! I'm hungry too!
Him: Why are you hungry?
Me: I didn't have any breakfast this morning. Why are you hungry?
Him: I didn't have breakfast either. Why didn't you eat breakfast?
Me: I didn't have time. I had to come to the market and film you!
he's laughing now.
Me: So why didn't you have breakfast?
Him: (laughing) I never eat breakfast!
By now everyone around us has started to giggle.
Everybody now: Maybe that's why you're so hungry!

On my way back from Uganda my flight itinerary looked like this:
1) Entebbe, Uganda to Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. 2 Hours. No stops.
2) Addis Ababa, Ethiopia to Tel Aviv, Israel. 4 hours and 55 minutes. No stops.
So you can understand my alarm when I was awoken 3 hours into my Entebbe to Addis flight by the following announcement, "ladies and gentlemen, we have begun our decent into Djibouti, please fasten your seat-belts and return your tray-tables to their blah blah blah..." Really, after they said "Djibouti" I just wasn't listening. Then of course, there's a 5 minute announcement in Amharic just to confuse me more. In my jet-lagged stupor I begin to imagine that pick out words like "Addis" and "eaten by locusts" and "connecting flights" and "hhahahhahahaha", you know, the typical air-hostess fare.
Anyway, as it turns out there was some bad weather in Addis, so they sent us to Djibouti to sit on the tarmac and re-watch some of the horrible movie that I had the good fortune to sleep through the first time. But I still made my connection.
As a side note, when I mentioned the bad weather story to the guy across the isle from me, he rolled his eyes and gave a little snorty laugh: "pffft I bet you anything it's the runway lights. those runway lights in Addis are always going out..." I wasn't sure if he knew what he was talking about or if he was just talking crazy.

I've been in Haifa for a little under two years now, and so I really haven't been traveling as much as I used to. This was painfully illustrated when I was dropped at the airport in Uganda for my return trip. Now, four of us had traveled down to Uganda for this project, but we were all returning at different times and so I ended up at the airport by myself with a pile of video equipment, photo equipment and computer gear. My bags are about twice as heavy as they're supposed to be, I have $108 in my wallet, no cell phone (or rather a cell phone without a sim card in it), and no one meeting me on the other end. But at this point I still thought I was doing ok. Right.
Well, the nice lady at the Ethiopian Airlines counter relieved me of $100 (after getting her to come down from $350), my flight got re-routed to Djibouti (mercifully I still made my connection in Addis, I can only imagine trying to survive a night in Djibouti with $8). When I arrived in Tel Aviv I managed to scrounge a few shekels from the bottom of my bag for the train to Haifa (though I still got off at the wrong station) and as a final stroke of luck a kind Israeli took pity on me and let me use his phone to call a friend to come and fetch me.

We went to the National Agriculture Research Organization (NARO) to shoot both some nice science-y stuff and a bunch of high-tech plants. You know, like those flowers that change colour when you plant them over landmines? Anyway, while we didn't find any landmine detecting flowers, we did find the office of NARO's director after he hauled us in there for the heinous crime of: trying to find his office.
See, we had been next door at the seed research facility and the nice researchers there had told us and the nifty and suitably high-tech biotechnology lab next door. So we went to find the director so he could give us permission. After taking a wrong turn (which was pretty easy considering there are no signs anywhere) this director comes running out and starts asking us all kinds of crazy questions and then tells us to leave and then tells us he won't let us leave and marches us all over to his office to have our ID's photocopied and whatnot.
At one point he askes me where I'm from.
"Canada," I reply.
"Well I've been to Canada, and I can tell you that in Canada you can't just walk into any government facility and start shooting whatever you like!" Said Mr. Irrational.
"Yes sir, you're absolutely right, because in Canada we have things like gates and signs to indicate where you can and cannot go. Perhaps you should look into investing in some of that technology for your top secret facility."*
* I didn't actually say this, but oh how I wanted to...

dear you-know-who-you-are

2005-06-24T15:57:00.000+03:00

dear sends-of-the-parrot-movie,
my mailbox is now full of parrot movie.
and it can't be full of anything else.
And I can't get rid of the parrot movie for 3 more weeks.
And I think that emails may start bouncing out of my mailbox.
And please don't send me anymore parrot movies.
many thanks to you.

Uganda in 7

2005-06-24T15:29:00.000+03:00

another rushed, sticky keyboard update:
We're all still alive and shooting. We've been doing a bunch of interviews outside in the gardens surrounding the Baha'i House of Worship in Kampala, aside from being a stunning locale, it's also the quietest place in town (quiet, of course, being a relative term. I'm only dealing with trucks, planes, drumming, singing, and most of all a variety of birds that sound like chickens, donkeys, monkeys, cows and (of course) birds. And they have no manners at all. stupid interupting birds.
In other news, it seems that Patches O'toole, beloved soap-eating rat has died. Even worse, he seems to have died under our kitchen cabinets. Patches may be gone, but we're sure his odor will raise to haunt us again. Patches, we hardly knew ye.
(Service will be held tonight next to the stove; pineapple, groundnuts and a bar soap stolen form the hilton hotel in Addis Ababa will be served for refreshment. Out of respect for the dead, please leave your cats at home.)

more from the heart of the continent when something exciting actally happens.

Uganda in 9 minutes

2005-06-21T18:04:00.000+03:00

Alright, so I've got 9 minutes on my interenet cafe time and a sticky keyboard, so this will be a quick, error-ridden post of my adventures thus far.
I went to Ethiopia for a day. It was awesome. We stayed at the hilton (thanks to Ethiopean airways) and met a crazy Italian lawyer who had been to 153 countries. He is my new hero.
The video crew (there are four of us) are safe and sound and staying in a little house near the Baha'i temple in Kampala (it's on Bahai Rd. you can't miss it).
The other night we noticed there were little teeth marks in the soap. and little muddy paw prints on our cel phones. so we put out some of that glue-y stuff that you're supposed to use to glue mice to the floor (why you would want to glue mice to your floor I have no idea) And then we set a mouse trap using soap for bait.
So in the middle of the night, our noctoural chum got up, stole the soap out of the trap (without setting it off) and then escaped from the mouse glue... or at least he mostly escaped. We call him "patches". In honour of our new friend I decided to go out and get a trim too. So I had my head shaved in a friend's salon. The women told him to do a good job so they could use my hair for their braiding...
Oh and then I went out today and sunburnt the top of my head. which was fun.
Oh and we're doing some video stuff too...you know, when we have time...and it's not raining.

oops, ran over time.. had to get another minute to send this sad blog. hope you all enjoy it, you owe me 500 shillings.

Off to Uganda

2005-06-14T22:20:00.000+03:00

I'm going to Uganda. For a month. So posting may be light. Um, you know, like it has been lately.
So really nothing new... um...yeah. Carry on then.
(really though, I'm going to try my darndest to get some posts up while I'm in Uganda. but no promises. as per usual.)

The Anatomy of Sarcasm

2005-05-23T20:35:00.000+03:00

Ok, I know I told you no more updates for a while, but this was just way too good to pass up.
I know linking to an American Pychological Association press release isn't really a post exactly, but it is somewhat relavent to my life. You see, I'm a big fan of sarcasm though my mother always told me it was the lowest form of humour. I'm also a big fan of users of sarcasm (though perhaps they're the lowest form of people...) and here in Haifa, where we have such a diversity of cultures, it's been interesting to see who gets sarcasm and who doesn't.
...I'm trying to think of a witty and sarcastic way to end this post but I'm just coming up blank. Ummm...yeah. Why don't you all just pretend that I ended this post with some biting sarcasm about brain anatomy or something and we'll just leave it at that.

Listen to "The Little Prince" in 100 languages...

2005-05-18T12:04:00.000+03:00

... while you wait for me to update my blog. Seriously, it might take just that long for me to get another post up so all of you rabid fans out there (I'm looking at you Mrs Ishikawa) might want to listen to a few of these everyday and pretend that it's me reading them to you.

Reasons to Fear Canada.

2005-05-03T22:35:00.000+03:00

To continue my little charade wherein I repeatedly profess my indifference to the country of my birth yet can't seem to refrain from linking to all manner of Canadian miscellany, I bring you this.
It's all in the name of cultural exchange, I swear.

Learn english the Canadian way!

2005-04-27T17:09:00.000+03:00

I'm not sure if it's the sleep deprivation, but I have no idea what to make of this. ...though it does seem to be a handy resource for people who seek to truly understand the Canadian mind.

Japanese passover in Israel

2005-04-25T11:38:00.000+03:00

Dear all, I know I've shared this blog with you before (and it's over yonder in my links) but you really, really need to check out Shingo's passover blues (parts 1-3). Please, do yourselves a favor.

Oh, and you may notice that I am completely absent from the family photo. I think they photoshopped me right out!

Virtual Insanity

2005-04-23T12:42:00.000+03:00

Ok, last ego-link I promise. But this one was just too funny

the flickr trail

2005-04-23T12:37:00.000+03:00

Oh, and now you can see me here, here, and here.
It's kind of cool really.
Oh, and if anyone can find this picture out there on the web-o-sphere, I'd love to know. It's my most viewed picture ever and viewed about twice as often as any other, so I have a feeling it's been linked to out there somewhere....

Sierra Leone Photos

2005-04-23T11:51:00.000+03:00

I remember reading a while back about having "good internet hygene", meaning that you should periodically check and see what kind of things pop up when your name get plugged into a search engine. My name is rare enough that quite a few hits of it are actually me, but it still doesn't take very long to go through them all. But this morning I realized something else: it's not just important to check your name, but also any other web names that you might use. In my case, my flickr screen name is one that I hadn't checked before, but gets more hits than any other site I have stuff posted to (over 12000 hits in less than 5 months). So I did a quick search for "departure lounge" + photo and what should pop up but this.
Of course "departure lounge" + photo resulted in about 105,000 matches, so I think next time I'll pick a screen name that won't result in endless pages of airport lounges....

weather man

2005-04-18T21:38:00.000+03:00

They say that in Canada all anyone ever talks about is the weather and politics. Well, I don't know a thing about Israeli politics and generally adopt the "it's hard to offend anyone when you don't say anything at all" approach, but I sure can complain about the weather here.
Hot damn.
It's spring here in Haifa, and while in other parts of the northern hemisphere, spring brings things like flowers and warm, sunny days and little bunnies and other soft, cute things that make you want to take off your shoes and run around barefoot on the grass, here in Israel, spring just brings hot, dusty desert winds, hazy skies, and other harsh and gritty things that make you want to take off your shoes, tie the laces around your neck, and kill yourself.
Here's an excerpt of an email that was sent to me by the nice weather people at the Baha'i Centre in Haifa:

"Hot, dry desert winds have been given special names across the Middle East. For example, in the summer monsoon, the northwesterly Shamal blows over Iraq and into the Persian Gulf. The Egyptian Khamsin wind literally means "lasting 50 days."

The Sirocco, an Arab word for "Easterly," is a hot, dry, dusty desert wind blowing across the region and often into Europe. It is also known as the Sharkiye in Jordan, Sharav in Israel, and Simoom in Arabia. The dusty Seistan north wind in eastern Iran can reach hurricane force."

So then I did a little googling and found this out:

"Studies in the 1950's and 1960's indicated that human health, performance and mood were affected by certain weather conditions. In particular warm dry winds such as the Sirrocco (Italy), Sharkije (Egypt), Santa Ana (California), Hamsin or Sharav (Middle East) or the Foehn ((Central Europe), are associated with a sudden increase in morbidity (health problems). During these winds about 30% of the population were reported to suffer from migraine, depression, moodiness, lethargy or respiratory symptoms. Behaviour changes were reported to result in an increase in accidents and psychological illness. A further 30% suffered less, and about 40% suffered no effects."

awesome. though I have to admit, my source did seem to favor the crack-pot side of the inter-web...

I just can't wait until July when it's 40 degrees and feels just like this outside (though this is actually mali, not Israel):

rss geek needed

2005-04-17T03:40:00.000+03:00

Oh, and the rss on my other blog is broken. Anyone know how to fix it?

Abidjan, June 2000

2005-04-17T03:16:00.000+03:00

So I'm getting into my next project now and mostly that just means research. We've been reading about development and about our destination country (am I allowed to tell you all about this? whatever.) I'm sure I can at least tell you that I'm heading to Africa and it should be in the next 8 weeks or so.
Of course, all this Africa homework is making me think a lot about the time that I've spent there already. Especially about my time in Abidjan.
I just found out today that they've signed a tentative peace agreement there. I hope this one lasts longer than the last one... It's just sad to read things like this about a place that was once your home.

So I'll leave you with this picture. Taken when I thought things were at their worst.
This was back in 2000 and the protesters are calling for the then-president General Guei to resign from the military before running as a candidate in the elections. Never mind that just months before this, he swore he had no interest at all in running the counrty any longer than he had to (he had seized power six months before in a military coup to oust Henri Konan Bedie). So anyway, after this picture, Guei stayed in the military, ran for president and when it looked like things weren't going to go his way, he hijacked the election, declaring himself the winner. So then HE was chased out of town and things just few apart and now the country is trying to end it's three-year civil war.

Looking back, this picture was taken in the good-old days.

multi-tasking

2005-04-17T02:58:00.000+03:00

You can all see just how much trouble I have running one blog, so I'm sure you're questioning the wisdom of this, but I've just launched a second. So, for all of you that just can't get enough of my fantastic narratives and plentiful witticisms, I direct you here.

Oh, and just so you don't get the wrong idea, my new blog doesn't really have anything to do with me or my tedious life. It's just going to be a collection of links and things related to the Baha'i Faith. So if that's not so interesting to you, then you can just keep your browsers pointed here. On the other hand, maybe you find my bloggity blogging a little too tedious, in which case perhaps this whole Baha'i thing is right up your alley...

This new blog is also the reason that blogging here has been a bit light here lately, but now that things over there are running a bit smoother, I'll hopefully have more time to ensure that baby Ishikawa has something for his mom to read him every morning.

more late night blogging

2005-04-07T02:19:00.000+03:00

night shift is great.
Cause I spend way too much time just trying to think of something to blog about, and no time getting my actual work done.
Sadly, I've spent the past hour listening to the news of Auckland, New Zealand on bfm, so unless you want to know about Auckland, New Zealand, I haven't got anything for you.

But, ummm, how about a photo?
right. this one was taken in Akka a few days ago. There were a bunch of kids sitting around in this little alley. I had my camera around my neck and one of them gave me a funny little look, so I bent down and snapped a shot of him. That, of course, set off the rest and, one by one as they worked up the courage, walk up to me and point at his chest, indicating where I should be pointing my camera.
I got a few good shots but had to leave just as things were getting fun, the rest of my group was more interested in lunch than in photo. Well, that and one of the kids kicked a soccar ball that bounced off the front of my camera, which in turn bounced off the front of my head...
(that would be the ball there on the left)

Now I feel 95...bFM

2005-04-06T14:31:00.000+03:00

So, remember how I've been reliving my youthful NZ radio listening days through the audio goodness that is 95bFM?
Well, now it seems to be the heavy-super-power-metal show on my beloved 95bFM and I just wish they'd turn that crap down.

bFM

2005-04-05T02:21:00.000+03:00

Eight years ago I was living in New Zealand in a little pool house behind a large house in the posh Auckland suburb of Parnell. The big house that my little house was nestled behind was being renovated and as a result was missing most of it's walls and large portions of it's roof and I have to say the pool house wasn't all that much better.
I had a little table and two chairs, a mattress on the floor, a toaster, a hot-plate and a sink. I also had a little bathroom and just enough hot water for half a shower every morning.
Late at night I would climb up into the ruins of the big house and try to find the phone that the workmen had installed so I could sit in the dark and talk to my mom.
But there was one other item in that little pool house that made up for all the half showers and the lack-of-a-fridge. That balanced out the mosquitos breeding outside my front door and almost let me forget the time I had to dodge the bricks that were raining from the sky one morning when the workmen were taking down the chimney. That warmed my heart even when pedaling weakly home after crashing my bike during a short-cut through the Auckland domain and crushing all my groceries...
my radio.
Well, it wasn't so much the radio that was all that sublime, but the sounds that came out of it. It was all because of that little pool house with it's CD player deficit that I had discovered 95bfm.
I would listen to it all the time while I was home. It was turned it on when I got home and turned off again when I left, otherwise it was on all the time. I listened while I ate, while I read, while I slept. While I cleaned my bike and while I wrote letters home. bfm provided the soundtrack for the entire three months that I lived in that house.
After that, I moved in with a family that had a tv, and cable, and a CD player even. So I went back to listening to my pretentious indie-rock CD's and rarely turned on the radio.
Which brings us to a few nights ago and a conversation with the ever-blog-present mrs Isikawa. She mentioned that her work day had been infinitely improved by her discovery of internet radio. She now spends her days listening to punchy Australian radiosity that she claims makes the sky bluer and the sun sunnier. whatever. It's no bfm, that's all I'd like to say.
I know, because for the past 6 blissful hours, I've been listening to the radio genius that is 95bFM. Including weather, surf and traffic reports and such-not. I feel like I'm 19 again.

Departure Lounge: a little house keeping

2005-03-31T23:10:00.000+02:00

Well.
I sure never thought I'd see the day when my blog comments were highjacked by my frequent readers, but that's just what seems to have happened.
So I'm going to try to straighten this whole mess out.
(For those of you out of the loop, you can catch up here.)
It all started when the dear Mr. and Mrs. Ishikawa left Israel for a little R&R in australia. Ever one to take advantage of my friends, I offered to house sit for them (and their large DVD collection). But I knew that competition was going to be pretty tough for the coveted slot, so I submitted what I thought was a pretty killer resume:

(I've deleted my contact info to thwart my many stalkers)

Career Goal:
To be the best damned house sitter this world has ever seen.

Employment

Frequent visitor to the Ishikawa residence, October 2003 – present
While not employment per se, I feel I have performed well as a frequent guest in the Ishikawa home, perfectly balancing graceful acceptance of their hospitality with the occasional washed dish or fetched desert. Also, as a regular visitor to their home, I have the advantage of knowing the location of all hot beverages and board games, always a key for entertaining guests. You may rest assured that your busy, yet understated, social schedule will not have to stop just because you’ve left the country.

House sitter for M and M (last name omitted). November 2004
For this grueling assignment, while I wasn’t wielding M’s giant cleaver in the kitchen during the hosting of many a dinner party, I was forced to relax in front of the giant video projector, viewing all manner of foreign cinematic treats. Also, I tidied up.

Lived in Many Houses for Brief Periods of Time 1999 – present
During the past few years, I have routinely made myself at home quite quickly in a variety of domiciles for brief periods, while at the same time, never failing to appreciate the uniqueness and occasional luxury my temporary surroundings offered. I expect that this skill of mine, especially in the area of luxury appreciation, shall be put to good use during my proposed sojourn in your flat.

Education and skills

While I have no “formal” education in this arena, I have gathered many skills through my varied life experience that you will find make me perfect for this position. A small sample:

- Many years of working in photographic darkrooms mean that I am well adept at moving about in dark areas. Should the power go out during your absence, you can be sure I will keep my head about me.

- As a professional photographer (especially one with journalistic training) you can count on me to provide more than adequate documentation of any floods, fires, burglaries or politically motivated sit-ins that may occur during your holiday.

- My vast experience of sampling exotic dishes from all corners of the globe will allow me to keep your refrigerator clean and clear of any and all foods that may pass their prime before your return.

- One time, during a hike through the wild jungles of South West Cameroon, ravaged by flesh eating insects and delirious with fever, as my mind swam in and out of consciousness while I tried lamely to keep up with the pygmy guide who was carrying all of my beloved cameras on his head through raging streams and over the enormous roots of towering trees, in one brief moment of clarity I thought to myself: “Oh what I wouldn’t give to be stretched out on a comfortable sofa, sipping a nice warm cup of tea and enjoying a fine film on a rainy afternoon!” Now, weather permitting, I could achieve that long-cherished dream in your flat.

The Man for the Job

In conclusion, Mr. and Mrs. Ishikawa, I feel that I have demonstrated myself to be willing and more than able to provide the careful yet confident, thorough yet not overbearing, nurturing yet firm flat-sitting that your flat deserves. When you ask yourselves, as I know you are, “unto which handsome and dashing young individual can we possibly entrust the proper care and supervision of our flat?” I know you will see that the only right answer is right in front of you.

References available upon request

Now, as you may expect, I was hired immediately for ten days of glorious, DVD rich, house sitting. The only catch was that I had to take care of the fish, and Mr Ishikawa has a beautiful and dearly loved collection of little fishes.
So every evening I would count out the little pinches of flakes and pellets of food for the dearly loved (though not by me) little fishes, and every morning I would run to the tank and do a head count, praying that they all survived the night. And they did. So far so good.
Which brings us to my last day of house sitting. My dear photo friend from Canada was in town for a visit (that's "shutterbabe" in the comments there) so I was out for most of the afternoon. I planned to go back to the flat in the evening, tidy up, feed the fish and get ready for the Ishikawas' return the next morning. Of course, when I open the door that evening what did I find? Suitcases on the floor and Ishikawa holiday paraphernalia strewn about the room, that's what. They tricked me. They snuck back into the country early, only to find unwashed dishes in the sink and stacks of DVDs all over the place.
And to top it all off, one of their fish had committed suicide earlier in the day (is it my fault they kept the poor thing locked away in a tank all time, swimming around and around in water that other fish were pooping in? Is it too hard to take them out for a walk every once in a while? I'm just sayin'...)
So now they think I'm a messy fish killer. And they're taking it out on my blog. I can't wait until baby Ishikawa is born, then a few years from now when s/he does daddy a favor by washing the inside of the tank with windex while all the fish are still in it, they'll long for the days of my house sitting. ha.

a little house keeping

2005-03-22T03:25:00.000+02:00

just a quick note to let you know that I've added a couple of links over there on the right-hand side:

1) my flickr page - so you can feed my addiction

2) The Three Legged Duck - for some bloggity perfection. If you didn't heed my earlier advice and check this one out, please do it now. It's ok, I'll wait.

3) The Ishikawa Blog - fun family blog. One of the authors is none other than the now-eating-for-two mrs. Ishikawa who I'm sure you all remember as the only person in history to leave me a nasty blog comment.

In other news

2005-03-21T05:00:00.000+02:00

In other news that is all-about-me (and really, do you expect any other kind of new here?) My little flickr addiction is alive and well... and poised to welcome it's 10000th visitor. It should happen right about nnnnnnnnnnow... Or nnnnnnnnnnnow.... or soon anyway.

who is this?

2005-03-21T03:40:00.000+02:00

I hate to turn this into the recurring theme of this blog, but I seem to attract people who aren't really looking for me at all. First there was the guy who was looking for the other Ryan Lash (so much for making this an anonymous blog...) and now this little story:
(this is for Shingo who, while it was happening, said to no one in particular "I'm sure we'll be reading this on his blog tomorrow.")
We had all gone to beach for the next-to-last-day-of-fasting (Baha'is fast every year from March 2nd to 20th. During the fast we don't eat or drink from sunrise to sunset, so the beach was a good place to be as we could watch the sun drop into the mediterranean and then enjoy a nice plate of kebab. Of course, the whole enjoying-a-plate-of-kebab thing didn't actually happen, but it was a nice idea. anyway, I digress).
So there we were at the beach and the sun had just plunged itself into the ocean and the air was crisp and the friends were happy (and hungry) and this whole idyllic scene was jarred by the ringing of my phone. (what follows is a brief rundown as my famished mind recalls it):

me: -hello?

her: -hey ryan! Is this Ryan?

-ummmm...yeah.

- hey, do you know who this is?

- ummmmm... no.

- what are you doing right now?

- we're looking for a place to eat dinner. (I'm quite the stunning conversationalist aren't I?)

- really? where? Are you coming by [name of a cafe]?

- ummmm... no. We're at the beach.

- really? who are you there with?

- [ this is where I tell her who I'm there with. Obviously shingo was there, as was Mrs. Ishikawa and the unborn Ishikawa (as they are hard to seperate. They're pretty much a package these days).]

- oh, ok. So do you know who this is yet?

- ummm.... no. [now, hidden behind all of this ummmmm'ing I'm frantically trying to figure out who this is. Here in Haifa, all the Baha'is have these work phones and they're all on an internal network. So if a 4 digit number shows up on the display, you know it's a call from another Baha'i, or at least someone using a Baha'is phone. So I'm trying recall who may have been coming to Haifa for a visit as Haifa is a freakishly transiant place and people are always coming and going and besides, I couldn't think of anyone who lived here who would call me up and ask me if I recognized their voice...so it must be someone from out of town borrowing a cell phone. eventually I just took a stab]

me: ... [someone]! Is this [someone]?

her (sounding a little angry): - [someone]? who's [someone]?

- ummm.... ok, well you're going to have to give me a hint or something, cause I really have no idea.

- what? you don't know who this is? Aren't you going ot meet up with us later?

- Well, if I knew who this was, I probably would...

[so we chat on for a while, me trying to get any kind of information out of her, her really doing her best not to talk at all. After a few more attempts to get me to try to guess who she is, she says to me:]

- I'll give you five seconds to guess who I am. 5... 4... 3...

- You're giving me a countdown?! What kind of phone call is this?

- 2... 1... so do you know who this is?

- no! I have no idea! How am I supposed to figure out who you are if I'm doing all the talking?

[then she talks a bit and asks me a few more questions. after another 5 minutes she starts with the countdown again.]

me: - you know, these countdowns would be a lot more intimidating if something actually happened at the end. Like you could hang up on me or something.

- 2... 1... so do you know who this is yet?

- umm.... no.

[she still didn't hang up on me though. after another minute or so she said she'd call me back and give me another chance. so I hung up and stood on the sidewalk trying to figure out what had just happened. I enlisted the help of my friends and we came up with some very detective-y schemes to identify the mystery girl. (just a word of advice: don't mess with my friends. cause they'll track you down in no time.)
So I called her back. my first guess was wrong. so I hung up on her (I know, I'm cold. no countdown or anything.)
My friends and I schemed a bit more and I was able to find out whose cell phone she was using. So I called the number and asked to speak to the owner of the phone. I figured they'd be on my side. I should point out that I didn't actually know the owner of the phone. We had never met. But I knew it was a woman. When I called the number there was a guy's voice on the other end.]

me: - hi, can I speak to [the owner of the phone]?

[first he tried to tell me that HE was the owner of the phone, but he really wasn't too convincing and I didn't even have to resort to the intimidating countdown before he passed me over to the actual owner. funny thing though, her voice sounded strangely familiar. And I don't mean "familiar" like I'd met her before, I mean "familiar" like the voice of a person who had just given me 2 seemingly-threatening-yet-ultimately-pretty-lame-cellphone-countdowns.]

me: um, is this [the owner of the cellphone]?

[she didn't answer but passed me back to the guy]

him: - yeah?

me: - was that [the owner of the cellphone]?

- yeah, don't you even know who you were talking to?

- well, now I do. but do you know who you're talking to?

- ummm...yeah, this is Ryan isn't it?

- yeah, but which Ryan?

- Ryan [not my last name]?

- oh, because this is Ryan Lash.

- oh.

[we both started laughing and he passed me back to her she apologized profusely and that was just about the end of it. One of my friends pointed out that after all that giving-me-a-hard-time-because-I-couldn't-recognize-her-voice thing, she really wasn't very good at recognizing the voice of the guy she thought she was talking to.

As a footnote to the whole thing, today I had dinner with both her and the guy who she was trying to get ahold of. He and I had a good laugh about it. She didn't think it was quite as funny. Especially when I was recounting the dreaded cellphone-countdown. I mean really. Who does that? And if you're going to actually go through with the countdown, you should at least be serious enough to follow through on the hangup.... really now.

2:15 am

2005-03-15T02:13:00.000+02:00

And suddenly I find myself back in the night-shift schedule...
I really tried to avoid it. Since it's the Baha'i fast right now and I'm not eating or drinking during the day, it seems like a bit of a cop-out to work all night (sipping tea) and then sleep all morning. But at least work is getting done. Things that I thought were going to last me the rest of the week are finishing up now. Which is all the more surprising considering how much time I've been putting into some, shall we say, extra-curricular activities...
All I know is that trying to learn html and php by staring at endless pages of code pulled from your favorite websites is not really the best way of doing things... especially in the wee hours of the morning.
So perhaps it is time for bed.

recent photos

2005-03-14T01:53:00.000+02:00

a photographer taking photos wouldn't normally be so noteworthy, but seeing as how virtually all of my flickr photos are from at least 2 years ago, I thought it would be nice to let you all know that I just posted a set of pics that I took 2 weeks ago. check it out.

For Mrs. Ishikawa (and others)

2005-03-14T00:35:00.000+02:00

Quick post to ensure there aren't any nasty comments on my blog in the morning.
My apologies to all of my readers (all two of you, and yes Mrs Ishikawa, I am counting the baby in your tummy), but I've been working on a little side project that involves lots of browsing and surfing and filling out lots and lots of online forms. It will be ready for public consumption soonish (hopefully) as I have just a few hours ago verified that it is all working somewhat smoothishly.
As far as hints go, the new side project started when I was composing a little blog entry about how everyone is blogging it up these days and how even respectible news orginizations are getting more bloggy in their coverage as evidenced by the fact that the executive editor of the New York Times, Joseph Lelyveld is getting in on the act.
Of course, not everyone gets to use the New York Times magazine as their own personal blog, but hey, what's the fun in being executive editor of the biggest newspaper in the world if you can't put yourself on the cover? really now.
And then I got to thinking: You know, my first real paying job was with the New York Times... why don't I get to blog about it in the pages of their magazine?
So that's it. I'm working on the cover story for next week's NYTimes magazine. Or something similar...

This photo ran on the front page of the New York Times in January 2000.
Photo by me/special for the New York Times.

Stills from the movie

2005-02-28T21:33:00.000+02:00

A few stills from the movie. As promised.

the 10-day movie

2005-02-27T17:27:00.000+02:00

So i'm working on this documentary video. It will be all of 25 minutes long. So far, it's taken over 15 months.
Meanwhile, 3 friends and I shot and edited a 28 minute short film in 10 days. And most of those days I was working in the office. Of course, we didn't sleep at all the last three days and 30 minutes before our first show we were racing to the theatre, having just copied everything off the editing machine onto a hard drive. 10 minutes before the show I had just finished hooking up the drive to my laptop and my laptop to the projector so we could make sure it worked. But the show went off without a hitch...if only all movies were so easy.

Oh, and I'll post so screen shots later on.

I'm not the only one

2005-02-22T18:15:00.000+02:00

ok, so I'm insanely busy right now and wasn't going to post today (or this week even) but this was just too good not to mention:
You all remember a few months ago a had an interesting mistaken msn identity adventure? Well, he's back!

About 10 minutes ago, an msn window popped up and I the following exchange took place:

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:02:08 PM)
   hey, sorry to ask u this but who are you?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:02:19 PM)
   i was just going through my list and i wasn't sure

I want to sleep says: (6:02:37 PM)
   I'm the guy that you wrote to a few months ago thinking that I was your friend ryan

I want to sleep says: (6:02:42 PM)
   but really I'm not

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:02:43 PM)
   yeah

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:02:52 PM)
   it's weird cuz you have the same name as him

I want to sleep says: (6:02:53 PM)
   but the whole thing was too funny

I want to sleep says: (6:03:03 PM)
   oh, and I went to see spider man 2

I want to sleep says: (6:03:10 PM)
   and it was kind of lame

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:03:16 PM)
   yeah

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:03:18 PM)
   haha

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:03:29 PM)
   i'm not really sure how this happened

I want to sleep says: (6:03:33 PM)
   so you can drop me from your list

I want to sleep says: (6:03:36 PM)
   it's ok

I want to sleep says: (6:03:42 PM)
   it won't hurt my feelings

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:03:53 PM)
   haha, where are you from again?

I want to sleep says: (6:04:02 PM)
   I'm in Israel right now

I want to sleep says: (6:04:08 PM)
   I'm from canada though

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:04:11 PM)
   now i remember

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:04:29 PM)
   man, i really don't know how this happened

I want to sleep says: (6:04:39 PM)
   the internet is funny like that

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:04:49 PM)
   i have so many people on my list that i don't know who they are

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:05:08 PM)
   i thought that maybe one of my friends added you or i just thought you were my friend ryan lash

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:05:19 PM)
   so your name is ryan lash then?

I want to sleep says: (6:05:22 PM)
   yeah, that's my name

I want to sleep says: (6:05:26 PM)
   you have a friend named ryan lash?

I want to sleep says: (6:05:32 PM)
   I was sure I was the only one

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:05:39 PM)
   yeah, he lives in indiana in my town

I want to sleep says: (6:05:42 PM)
   wow

I want to sleep says: (6:05:47 PM)
   that's awesome

I want to sleep says: (6:05:58 PM)
   I'd love to meet him one day

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:06:05 PM)
   i think i tried adding him cuz he has MSN also, but that wasn't his email address apparently

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:06:08 PM)
   haha

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:06:43 PM)
   so what are you doing in israel?

I want to sleep says: (6:06:58 PM)
   working on a documentry video project

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:07:00 PM)
   i don't want to drop you if that's fine with you

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:07:05 PM)
   its pretty cool

I want to sleep says: (6:07:20 PM)
   yeah, you can keep me updated on the other ryan lash

I want to sleep says: (6:07:35 PM)
   what's your name?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:07:43 PM)
   kyle

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:07:47 PM)
   how old r u?

I want to sleep says: (6:07:50 PM)
   27

I want to sleep says: (6:07:54 PM)
   you?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:07:57 PM)
   21

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:08:04 PM)
   i go to college here in indiana

I want to sleep says: (6:08:27 PM)
   what do you study?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:08:29 PM)
   what's your documentary about?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:08:32 PM)
   athletic training

I want to sleep says: (6:08:44 PM)
   video is about Baha'i pilgrims

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:09:01 PM)
   yeah, i don't know anything about that

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:09:02 PM)
   haha

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:09:19 PM)
   i have a couple of friends from canada that go to school here

I want to sleep says: (6:09:37 PM)
   are they all nice and sweet?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:09:44 PM)
   they're cool

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:09:56 PM)
   i like their accents

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:10:11 PM)
   something different from the hillbilly slang here in indiana

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:10:47 PM)
   do you travel alot then?

I want to sleep says: (6:11:01 PM)
   yeah, I've been lucky

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:11:21 PM)
   i can't wait to get outta college and do some travelling

I want to sleep says: (6:11:27 PM)
   where would you go?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:11:34 PM)
   i'm planning to go to australia this summer to visit some cousins

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:11:51 PM)
   i went to scotland two years ago almost for a family reunion

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:11:54 PM)
   it was awesome

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:12:15 PM)
   i wouldn't mind going to palenstine...i have some friends here from there

I want to sleep says: (6:12:27 PM)
   oh really?

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:12:42 PM)
   yeah, our school is really diverse

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:13:58 PM)
   so how long have you been living in israel?

I want to sleep says: (6:14:28 PM)
   about a year and a half...

I want to sleep says: (6:14:30 PM)
   or so

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:14:37 PM)
   is it fun there?

I want to sleep says: (6:14:43 PM)
   it's nice

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:14:49 PM)
   sorry about the 20 question thing

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:14:54 PM)
   i'm just interested

I want to sleep says: (6:14:59 PM)
   but I haven't seen much of the country

I want to sleep says: (6:15:01 PM)
   no worries

I want to sleep says: (6:15:16 PM)
   but I actually need to run

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:15:22 PM)
   alright then

I want to sleep says: (6:15:26 PM)
   it's the end of the work day here

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:15:29 PM)
   nice talking to you

I want to sleep says: (6:15:32 PM)
   you too

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:15:38 PM)
   enjoy your day or night

I want to sleep says: (6:15:39 PM)
   I'm sure I'll see you on the old msn

I want to sleep says: (6:15:42 PM)
   you too

I take a look around, it's evident the scene has changed says: (6:15:48 PM)
   alright, bye

I want to sleep says: (6:15:50 PM)
   bye

and speaking of addiction...

2005-02-02T18:23:00.000+02:00

Well, just when it seems that I've got that whole flickr thing under control, I run out and buy a new camera.
oops.
But at least it's old and funky and russian. And it only cost me $25. I can't wait to go out and take pictures of old, funky, russian things with it.

Addiction is a funny thing...

2005-01-24T03:52:00.000+02:00

funny thing about addiction, just when you think you can walk away, they go and post your photo here.
And then you're back in the office uploading photos until 3am.
Oh wait, make that 4am. gah! damn you flickr!
Oh, in other news. The video that I've been working on for the past 15 months is a shade away from being done. So that's nice too.
Ok, everyone go back here.

Canadians in all their splendor

2005-01-18T04:38:00.000+02:00

In order to show both my intellectual book-reading side as well as my misguided, frothy-mouthed national pride (misguided in that it only manifests itself when I read something on the internet about the latest embarrassing thing that members of my northern nation are responsible for), I draw your attention to this. While I really enjoy Atwood's books, and love that she's Canadian (if for no other reason than the fact that every time she releases a book, the CBC reads it on air, in it's entirety; thereby saving me from actually having to buy the thing. that is, provided I actually lived in Canada and could listen to the CBC. But I digress) this really is one of the more ridiculous things I've seen. Why not just make a stamp or something? Really now.

The Three Legged Duck

2005-01-13T05:10:00.000+02:00

I kept trying to think of some way to tie this into a clever entry about the diversity of blogs availiable in the universe and how some are crap and some are gold and then I was going to link you all to this one.
Penned by a dear friend, this is the ultimate in the wild and intimate. It's like going for a ride inside someone else's imagination. A crazy and shimmering look at the world through the eyes of someone who never sits still.
It is simply awesome.

ps. if you don't like it, don't bother trying to tell me. Cause I won't believe you.

672

2005-01-13T04:45:00.000+02:00

well, at least I got work done today.
And the photo posting has slowed slightly. I only posted 4 today. down from the 10 of yesterday...
Although I did find out that if you scroll down my blog a bit, until you can see my little photos over on the left, and then you hit the page refresh button, the page will load 4 new photos. Just like a little random photo album. Oh the wonders of the inter-web.

more flickr madness

2005-01-12T02:33:00.000+02:00

oh my...
I swear, it's just like crack.
Anyway, just incase no one noticed, there are now going to be some random photos displayed over there on the right side. Right over there under my archives.
You can click on them and they'll take you right to my flickr site. Where you can view more of my photos. And leave comments. And feed this horrible, horrible addiction that is eating up my life.

oh, and as of 5 seconds ago, my flickr gallery had been viewed 522 times.
um, make that 523.

America's favorite theme park.

2005-01-12T02:32:00.000+02:00

I don't think that people see all corners of the globe in order for their lives to be complete. I appreciate that not all people enjoy exploring towns and country sides far from their own. But at the same time, I think that this is fairly (incredibly) stupid.
It seems that Guy Trebay, crack reporter for the New York Times, has just uncovered that there is a big wide world out there beyond the horizon! And just how did he come to unearth this gem? Because, apparently, Americans go there! Who knew?
And how does Mr Trebay feel about these strange and mysterious lands that lie beyond the boarders of his own? From his article: "For recreation [William Sofield] ventures mainly to South Asia where, along with garden variety worries like Delhi belly [Delhi belly? is this guy for real?], it turns out that visitors run an increased risk of encountering earthquakes, landslides, cyclones, tsunamis or floods."
O My GOD! Good thing there aren't any of those in America!
What a dork.
But it gets better: "As has never been clearer [one assumes that he is referring to the tsunami in Southern Asia], risk is the constant, the unwelcome reality underpinning all the tempting commercial come-ons and the brochure blandishments."
Uh, Mr Trebay? Risk also happens to be "the constant, the unwelcome reality underpinning all the tempting commercial come-ons and the brochure blandishments" of automobile ownership. Or eating.
Really, it's amazing that this guy even gets out of bed in the morning.
But really what annoys me about it all is that, while acknowledging it as an incredibly dangerous place, where theives and kidnappers, bad food, worse hotels and even nature itself conspires against you [well, as long as "you" is an American you], he neglects to mention (or seemingly to realize) that the Big-Wide-Scary-World (including what he so charmingly refers to as "what used to be called the Third World") is an actual place. Where actual people live. People that don't work in hotels.
Again, from Mr Trebay: "For the past quarter century she has spent six months of each year traveling mainly to what used to be called the Third World [there it is!], she said, places where 'fishermen are actually fishing and not selling T-shirts.'"
Imagine! Fishermen who catch fish! Somebody call the New York Times! oh...um, nevermind.
As if he assumes that most fisherman stand around all day hoping to sell "My aunt Sally went to the Andaman Islands and all I got was this lousy t-shirt" t-shirts to chubby American "global nomads". bah.
...
I think this little rant has gone on long enough...
here's a little photo from "what used to be called the Third World":

300

2005-01-10T01:43:00.000+02:00

Just great.
I'm in the throes of a great photo-posting addiction.
I've hit 300 views on my gallery, and my last picture seemed well-loved. And while I won't be running out of photos to post anytime soon, I do worry that I'm not getting any actual work done.
Oh well. There's always tomorrow I suppose...

the m word

2005-01-04T01:58:00.000+02:00

So, one of the downsides of working nights is that I never see my roommates. I get home at 4am and collapse into bed and by the time I'm up they've left for work and I won't be home again until they've long since gone to bed. So back at the beginning of December I didn't even notice when Max, my Ghanaian roommate, went home to visit his mum until he had been gone for a week. Even then, I wouldn't have even noticed that he was gone execpt that someone remarked that I must be enjoying having the apartment to myself (my other roommate, a wonderful guy from the phillipines, is home even less than I am. He spends 5 nights a week at his brother's house). So when Max got back from Ghana I continued to not see him for days at a time. No big deal.
Well, this morning, as I was on my way to work I ran into a friend of mine. She told me she was on her way to my house to see Max.
Me: "Oh, he's at work."
Her: "ummm...no, I'm pretty sure he's home. They only let him out of the hospital yesterday."
Me: "..."
Her: "You knew he was in the hospital right?"
Me: "..."
Her: "He was there for three days."
Me: "..."
Her: "He's your room mate! Don't you ever see each other?"
Obviously not.
So I finally found out that my roommate, upon returning from Ghana, had come down with a little case of malaria and they locked him up in the hospital for a few days. And I know how much fun being malarial and hospital bound in Israel can be, having suffered the same fate during a brief trip through Haifa in 2001. No fun. Although the russian speaking nurses are entertaining.
So anyway, what kind of a crap room mate am I?
Especially after I tell you that I had stuck my head into the kitchen this morning trying to locate the source of a particularly offensive smell and determined that it wasn't my mess so I'll be damned if I'm going to clean up after him. I'm going straight to room mate hell.
But I've heard that Max is doing fine and probably won't even cough on me when I get home later tonight. Or release a flock of malarial mosquitos in my room. Maybe I'll sing him the malaria song... my sister might have to help me remeber all the words. I get lost after "...nacho cheese doritos..."

confessions of a flickr addict

2005-01-04T01:25:00.000+02:00

So, I signed up for flickr the other day (which is why I have suddenly sprouted photos on my blog) and I have since become a bit of a flickr addict. I sit in my office dropping photos into my gallery just so I can see them pop up on the communal flickr page. Then I rush back to my own gallery to see how many people I've lured in. It's horrible I know. But I just can't help myself.
For instance, my latest photo got 7 views and 1 comment in less than five minutes and my page has been viewed 92 times since I first started posting.
And I'm sure I can hit 100 before the night is through.

silence

2004-12-31T03:29:00.000+02:00

I've been very reluctant to say anything at all about what's going on in Southern Asia. I have a lot of firends in the region (as far as I know, they are all ok) and I work with people here in Israel who have lost friends, family and loved ones. It's all just so far beyond my ability to comprehend. And so I choose to say nothing.
Because saying nothing is always better than saying something colossally stupid.

Go Canadian

2004-12-30T16:17:00.000+02:00

this is the awesomest.

Ong Bak

2004-12-30T01:07:00.000+02:00

So, over a year ago I blogged about a movie that I seen on a bus in Thailand. Well, you'll all be happy to know that it will soon be coming to a theatre near you*.

*unless of course you live in south east asia... in that case, this movie is so old they were showing it on the buses between Bangkok and Yasothon over a year ago...

what does a cow say in japan?

2004-12-28T02:30:00.000+02:00

This is so rad.

(just follow the "enter here" link on the left)

Beautiful day

2004-12-27T20:34:00.000+02:00

Beautiful day today. Stunning, just stunning.
Sat with a beautiful girl and savored a lazy breakfast and sweet coffee in the sun.
Went for a walk through old Haifa and saw ladies selling produce and men smoking in doorways, children running in the strees and shady-looking guys peeing in alleys.
Lamented the fact that, despite being here for almost 15 months, I really don't know the city or it's people at all. Talked about the sense of community that exists in old neighbourhoods like these. In places where people watch out for each other and know each other's business. And are expected to know each other's business.
Beautiful friend, who haapens to be North American, commented that in North America, if you one wants community, one must sign up for it.

Later on we were serenaded in Hebrew by an old woman wearing a flowery bathrobe and little pink slippers and who had eyes like pools and crooked fingers.
Lamented, again, that despite being here for almost 15 months, I still don't speak a word of Hebrew.

Back to the night shift

2004-12-25T02:34:00.000+02:00

So I'm back to working the night shift. Means I'll be working from 2pm till 2am for a while. Back to showing up in the lunchroom fresh from the shower. Back to lonely walks home in the dark and the silence. And back to calling security everytime I need to pee.
On the other hand, I do get to play my music as loud as I like.
hope you're all having a great night.

Three degrees of Baha'i seperation.

2004-12-21T01:35:00.000+02:00

So I watched the movie Six Degrees of Seperation the other night. And while the movie was certainly interesting, I didn't think they really explored the whole six degrees* thing very deeply. I mean, if everyone in the entire world really is connected by less than six people, why marvel at the fact that you're so connected to someone who lives in the same city as you? lame.
But it got me thinking about connections. About the people I know. And especially about the Baha'is that I know.
Granted, it's much easier to be connected to a lot of people from all corners of the globe when you're working in the centre of the Baha'i world. But I'm still constantly amazed at the number of people I meet here who I have friends in common with. Even more surreal is it seems that I have just as good a chance of having a friend in common with someone from Africa or Asia (or Eurpoe or South America or Australia) as someone from North America. Just the other day I met a guy whose parents and sister I met in Bangkok last year. Before that it was a young woman from Los Angeles whose friends I had met in South Afirca. And before that a guy whose mother I had met in a tiny village in rural Malawi.
Sure, it helps that I have been able to travel a lot. It also helps that the worldwide Baha'i community is only 6 million and not 6 billion.
But it sure makes the world feel like a much smaller place.

* The title of the movie comes from the idea that all people in the world are connected by only six other people. So it means that you are connected to everyone else on earth though the friends of your friends of your friends of your friends of your friends of your friends of your friends. or something like that.

now with pictures

2004-12-14T22:34:00.000+02:00

and what's a photographer's blog without some photos?

only a matter of time...

2004-12-14T22:27:00.000+02:00

I'm just a little confused as to why this is so unbelieveable to me.

I'm temped to buy a whole box of them a shoot an interview from 10 angles simultaniously. Wouldn't that be...um...rad?
Or strap a few to my mountain bike and go carreening down a mountainside...
I wonder if they'll ship to israel?

more than meets the eye

2004-12-14T19:34:00.000+02:00

Back when I was a kid, I was really into transformers. Of course, as I grew up I sort of lost interest. But man, I would give anything to have one of these.
On a side note, I just met a photographer from LA who was here in Haifa doing her Baha'i Pilgrimage. Nice to sit and chat with another real, live, photographer (even though, as my friend Jamal loves to point out, I only used to be one).
But now I'm all excited to be shooting again and have started carrying my holga around with me and shooting random pics on my way to work. This morning's take was: a lightswitch, a garbage can, some hebrew graffiti and a photographer from LA. Maybe I'll get around to posting some of them here.
Oh, and my friend Calla is coming in January to work on a piece about the wall they're building around the west bank. So that should be fun too. I just wish I could go with her down to Jerusalem but alas, work and things prevent such a trip. Perhaps next time.

hoodie.

2004-12-14T01:34:00.000+02:00

Couldn't resist this one. Seems that the fine people from the Oxford English Dictionary are trying to find the origin of the word "hoodie"so that they can include it in their fine publication.
Hoodie.
Oh, and also plausibilize. Though, I find it less than plausible that that second one is even a word. Though perhaps it's inclusion in that list serves to plausibilize it.
word.

r.e.b.l.o.g.g.i.n.g.

2004-12-14T01:20:00.000+02:00

So it seems that this blog has been pretty quiet as of late.
Not for lack of excitement mind you (well, only partly for lack of excitement. mostly cause I'm lazy). I have all kinds of wacky and wistful adventures which now, because of the blog shortage, will be lost to the mists of time.
But I can share this brief snippit:
A week ago three of us decided that it would be a good idea to ride bikes up to the top of the mountain on which we all live and then race down the other side. Jumping rocks and dodging trees as nature intended. Unfortunately, nature also intended it to rain the proverbial cats and dogs down upon us while we were slowly grinding our way up to the top. So we were soaked. And freezing. And really really exhausted by the time we got to the top.
Now, I have ridden bikes in all kinds of dodgy conditions and all kinds of not-really-a-trail trails, but here in Israel they have a whole new level of unmountainbikable terrain.
How to build an Israeli mountain:
1) start with some clay. Make sure that when it's dry it's just like talcum powder and when it's wet it's just like glue.
2) Add a whole bunch of rocks. All shapes and sizes. now sharpen them. Yes, that's right, just like little knives. perfect. Now, make sure that there are enough rocks that you will never, ever see the clay, until of course you get to the flat portions of the trail. Then the clay should be deep enough to swallow mountain bikes whole. nice.
3) Get it all nice a wet. Of course, this part is optional. But it's just so much more fun this way. Cause the only thing more slippery than a wet israeli rock is a whole pile of wet israeli rocks. And the only thing more energy sapping and bicycle coating to ride through than talcum powder is wet talcum powder. weeeeeee.
4) After you have slipped and slid and skidded your bike through the woods and along the sides of cliffs, and followed the trail as far as you could before the mud has coated your chain and caused one of your riding partners to nearly shear off his derailer by putting it through his spokes, turn yourselves around and do it all over again (minus the derailler shearing, except of course now he only has one gear and has to walk most of the way back to the road. in the mud. and across the slippery stones. but at least it's stopped raining).
5) after you get back to the road at the top of the mountain. marvel at how fast the clear skies turn cloudy and begin lashing you and your bikes with rain. awesome.
now you're cold aren't you? of course you are.
6) after surviving the rain and the jagged rocks and the sucking mud, relish the realization that it is all downhill back home. Which is a good thing because 2 of you can no longer pedal your bikes. You may as well stop at the gas station halfway down the hill and borrow their hose to wash of what little mud the rain didn't manage to reach. And while you're there, chat with the nice lady that works there. And if you're nice she'll give you jelly donuts. But only if it's Chanukah.
7) Since it's all downhill home, you can go really, really fast. Even if you can't pedal. It gets even faster when you draft behind the buses. You can't see much, but when they have to slow down for the corners, you can race right past them. weeeeeeee
ahem.
anyone want to come riding this weekend?

Found the other morning at 3am in the office kitchen:

2004-07-22T19:05:00.000+03:00

I found a note in the microwave the other morning it said simply:
Please.
Do not use the MICROWAVE.
Electric sparks are inside.

So I had tea.

guns guns guns!

2004-07-17T01:11:00.000+03:00

After reading this (washington post, free registration req'd) I couldn't help but shake my head and smile. I mean sure, I think we should all watch the caffine intake of armed people. After a half-dozen Starbucks triple-lattes anyone's trigger finger might get a little twitchy. But it's not like they were using the guns that were strapped to their hips.
But then again, maybe it's all perspective. I feel strangely safer when I know there are a bunch of armed people in the coffee shop that I'm sitting in here in Haifa. Especially when they walk in with an automatic rifles slung over their shoulders, find a quiet table in the corner and lean their guns up against the window. The best is when they come to visit the Baha'i gardens. Being a Holy place, they frown on people bringing their machine guns inside. So when the soldiers come, they all pile their guns up outside the gate in a little log cabin and take turns gun-sitting. It's so cute.

Hello? Are you sure I'm the one you want?

2004-07-01T20:57:00.000+03:00

Ok, so with phenomenal timing to fit right into my "isn't the internet a wondrous place of intimate anonymity?" comes today's little episode:
At 3:19:58 pm this afternoon, an MSN message box popped up on my screen and someone using the screen name "new cell # is xxx-xxxx [I've removed the number] for those who want it" typed: "what's up with your name?"
I had no idea who it was, and since their email address (which I have also removed from the conversation) wasn't any help, I played it cool and replied. We ended up chatting for a few minutes and the entire time I had no idea who I was talking to. Finally, I think he figured out that I wasn't who he thought I was and he left, making an excuse that he had to go and wake up his brother.

For your enjoyment I offer you the following transcript (the text has been altered to remove his name and phone number, to protect his identity; and to correct my embarrassing spelling. to make me look smarter):

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:19:58 PM)
what's up with ur name?

(P) in Israel says: (3:20:25 PM)
what's up with yours?

(P) in Israel says: (3:20:49 PM)
making friends?

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:21:04 PM)
well...i got a new cell phone and i posted this msn name so that my friends could get my # without me having to call them all up

(P) in Israel says: (3:21:21 PM)
that's handy

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:21:26 PM)
basically everyone on my list is a friend of mine

(P) in Israel says: (3:21:35 PM)
I posted this name so that people know where I am...

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:21:36 PM)
and urs?

(P) in Israel says: (3:21:51 PM)
I have friends that I don't keep in touch with so often...

(P) in Israel says: (3:22:04 PM)
it saves them having to ask

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:22:43 PM)
alright, i'm confused

(P) in Israel says: (3:22:49 PM)
me too

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:22:55 PM)
that's good

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:22:58 PM)
this is ryan right?

(P) in Israel says: (3:23:02 PM)
uhhh.. yeah

(P) in Israel says: (3:23:05 PM)
yeah it is

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:23:09 PM)
haha

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:23:18 PM)
what r u doin in israel then?

(P) in Israel says: (3:23:26 PM)
taking pictures...

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:23:27 PM)
is that what u call ur house?

(P) in Israel says: (3:23:37 PM)
my house?

(P) in Israel says: (3:23:59 PM)
ok, ummm...

(P) in Israel says: (3:24:10 PM)
your cel doesn't give it away...

(P) in Israel says: (3:24:24 PM)
and uhhh...neither does your email address...

(P) in Israel says: (3:24:34 PM)
so...ummm...I really have to ask

(P) in Israel says: (3:24:53 PM)
and risk feeling like a bit of a loser...

(P) in Israel says: (3:24:58 PM)
who is this?

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:25:03 PM)
it's [his first name]

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:25:06 PM)
i already think ur a loser

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:25:08 PM)
[his last name]

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:25:38 PM)
did u think i was someone else?

(P) in Israel says: (3:25:58 PM)
I wasn't sure who you were... [At this point I'm trying frantically to remember if I know anyone with his name. I'm pretty sure that I don't.]

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:26:45 PM)
do u talk to strangers?

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:26:58 PM)
especially ones that offer candy?

(P) in Israel says: (3:27:02 PM)
sure, if they're willing to give me their cel numbers

(P) in Israel says: (3:27:17 PM)
so I can call them up and berate them afterwards

(P) in Israel says: (3:27:50 PM)
though, without an area code, it might be tough

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:28:13 PM)
same area code as u right....?

(P) in Israel says: (3:28:25 PM)
I doubt it

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:28:27 PM)
260 [ I figured this was ok to leave in, especially since I googled it to find out where he was in case it helped me to figure out who it was I was talking to. It didn't, so later on I asked about the weather.]

(P) in Israel says: (3:28:42 PM)
mine is 04-972 (I think)

(P) in Israel says: (3:28:50 PM)
I can never remember...

(P) in Israel says: (3:29:00 PM)
I really am in Israel right now

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:29:58 PM)
alright

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:31:49 PM)
how was spiderman?

(P) in Israel says: (3:32:41 PM)
not sure actually, it's not here yet

(P) in Israel says: (3:32:54 PM)
we're a little behind on the whole movie scene

(P) in Israel says: (3:33:16 PM)
should be here soon though...

(P) in Israel says: (3:33:32 PM)
should I send you a review when I see it?

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:33:48 PM)
sure thing

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:33:49 PM)
haha

(P) in Israel says: (3:34:23 PM)
So how's the weather in Seattle? [Here's me asking about the weather. Except that Seattle is 206, not 260]

(P) in Israel says: (3:35:05 PM)
Sorry, Indiana? [so I tried again.]

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:35:35 PM)
oh, just dandy..gotta go and wake my lazy brother up [I think this is where he started to realize that I wasn't just his friend trying to be funny.]

(P) in Israel says: (3:35:51 PM)
alright, this was surreal

(P) in Israel says: (3:35:58 PM)
good luck with the brother

new cell # is xxx-xxxx for those who want it says: (3:37:19 PM)
l8ter

(P) in Israel says: (3:37:25 PM)
yeah

And that was it. I'm wondering if he's going to show up again sometime after he asks his friend Ryan why he was being such a dork on MSN the other day. I'll keep you posted. Or maybe I'll just call him up...

just wondering

2004-06-30T01:35:00.000+03:00

Just wondering how many of you, after reading that last post tried to google yourselves...
Or me for that matter.
Oh, and (mynamehere).com isn't me. There must to a few of us out here...