boo and poo’s land

every time i walk along the busy sidewalks in the heart of san francisco, my mind keeps telling me to come to these same spots during the wee hours of the mornings with my camera. that way, i’d find many great photo ops with no human beings in my sight. i just truly love how the san francisco runs without human beings in my sights. last night, after we were kicked out by borders as it was closing at a local mall, we were one of the last people to leave the mall’s grounds. i told my darling to take a glance at the empty floor of the mall’s 3rd floor. all the shops were closed in and it was pretty dead yet i knew that the photo would look wonderful. but i didn’t bring my camera with me this time. that lead me to me thinking, how wonderful it’d be to work as a graveyard janitor for a few months with my camera daily. i’m sure that a regular janitor may not even care about how lucky he is to see all eerie, quiet moments everywhere. i think that’s something i’d LOVE to be in his shoes just for that moment because many people don’t even get the opportunity to get that glimpse of moment in their lifetimes.

blah blah blah… i guess it’s just one of those things that keeps fluttering in my mind occasionally because very often, i don’t see many photos of these kinds of eerie moments anywhere…

After almost of two months here in the elite America from the world (maybe with exception of China and the strong Euro countries), Susie and I are starting to get settled down. We did a few ‘bandage’ repairs on a few eye sore places around our home. I just started teaching ASL just two weeks ago at a local high school here. After the academic experience in Madagascar, I’ve been pondering whether I would like to teach in the future as a new career from my design career. I have to say that I’m bit burned out from doing the design stuff for a while, yet I don’t get the motivation to do the new design at this moment. Heck, I got myself a new Macbook Pro, and the Adobe Studio is waiting to be dissected by me. Yet, I haven’t been able to find the passion in it that I did back in the past years. Also, I have been rummaging through my belongings in the storage room and I kept getting the same question, “Why did I have this?” while my new friends at Madagascar aren’t able to get these luxuries that I got 10 years ago. Definitely, the trip to Africa has given me a humbling experience despite my addiction to globe-trotting experiences. So far, I think Madagascar journey has been a wonderful chapter, especially when my darling, Susie, has been going through some ‘hellish’ moments there. At this moment, with my usual I will just follow the path whatever I see in front of my eyes, though I do have the itch to escape out of America. But with the majority of foreign currencies going banging hard against our weak dollars, I’m just glad that I’m going to stay hermit in America for a while This is such a jolly time to save $$$ for the education, family, and nature!

just before we left for africa, i have been following tessar lo’s paintings (http://www.tessarlo.com) for some time through his sister, alice. since he was having a breakthrough with the LA art scene, i just knew that i had to get a commissioned painting from him before his schedule gets too crazy. while i knew that his paintings emphasize the colors of emotion, they do remind me well of my darling as she likes to be emotional occasionally. so i decided to surprise her with mr. lo’s painting by the time we get back home from africa. i thought it would be a nice present for her by the time we get back home.

mr. lo and i have corresponded through a series of emails when i was back in madagascar and finally, we have come to the correct image of what i would like to see for susie. since susie was born in the year of tiger and she absolutely LOVES to sleep as well. also, her mind likes to flutter around sporadically and the fact that she is an introvert, i thought that it would be a perfect fit for a girl and tiger to be associated to represent susie.

once we got back home, the painting was ready, but it was waiting in LA and i have arranged with mr. lo to pick it up in LA because we had a wedding to attend in LA a couple of weeks later. but unfortunately, mr. lo was out of town and had his roommate take care of it. for the past two weeks, i had told susie that it took me almost a year to prepare for this surprise. she was being suspicious occasionally about the surprise and begged me to know what was it…

finally, when we got to the place where i was supposed to pick up the painting, i told susie that we were going to tessar’s place to pick up something and immediately, she knew that it was a piece of artwork. but the question still remains, what kind of artwork???

so, here is the painting that susie and i have found to be very sorrowfully beautiful and we hope that you do agree…

The whole painting

Close details of the girl sleeping

Close details of the tiger - you know how the tiger is supposed to be fierce… but in this painting, she shows to be sad yet her massive body indicates that she is capable of conquering the world.

mr. lo did a marvelous job using the background to captivate the beautiful aura of a dream. also, notice how her dress ‘melts’ into the background.

I have always loved to see how can one get a different perspective from standing at a different angle. I just think that many people tend to look at the painting directly at the T-intersection.

Once Susie saw the painting, her face just glowed and I am elated because if she didn’t like it very much, I would have been doomed to spend $$$ for nothing and she’d be going crazy on me!

Anyway, I will post up a couple of pictures of the murals that my students and I did in Madagascar at the school sometimes later. Also, Mr. Lo was gracious enough to contribute some painting supplies for the students. thank you, mr. lo!

last night we just arrived in new york city all the way from seychelles… that’s 4 planes (3 layovers - seychelles - mauritius - paris - dc - nyc )  20 total of flying time yet almost 30 hours of transit!

so after 6 months of being away from USA, it’s nice to be back in the ol’ familiar surrounding here as well as the super-fast internet access!

won’t be typing my journals here for a while as we’d need some time to settle down in SF soon this week!

we are in windoek, namibia.  our flight to maun, botswana got cancelled out this morning, so we are using our free time in windhoek to get online and update our blog. 

 for the last few days, we have been staying at a wonderful lodge called sossusvlei mountain lodge which is in the middle of namib desert.  we got to check out the surreal reddish red sand dunes, desert safari ride, and atv-ing up and down the dunes!  it was quite an adventure for susie as she has never ridden an ATV before and she has done it marvelous job going up and down the dunes!  as our airline air namibia given us (and my parents, too) hotel vouchers for the windhoek, we are looking forward to our stay in okavango delta which is a combination of desert and swamps! the unusual about this place is that it doesn’t even run out to ocean at all.. the delta just simply ends at the desert where water dry out or go underground…

i find that it is difficult for me to update this blog when we are always on the move often.  so bear with us if you want to or you could visit our blog in march when we can try to overload this blog with many journal entries!

for the past few weeks, we have had a heavy schedule to follow on a daily basis as we are preparing to leave madagascar for good this sunday!  so we have had to wrap up our mini projects at school, get rained with surprising gifts from our new friends, and of course, prepare for a big trip to the ideal spots oif southern africa soon.  but this week we will be expecting a roller coaster emotional ride and we are ready to embrace it!

so for now, i guess you will have to wait for the next detailed blog hopefully next week.

hne, originally uploaded by gamma888.

it was taken at a secluded beach just away from a tiny fisherman’s village off the canal which is only 500 meters away from this indian ocean.

January 7, 2008

It has been almost a month since the last entry of the journal. December was pretty busy month for us as we had to prepare for our 2 week trip during the holiday break as well as many activities that we got involved at Akama.

Now that we are back home still in one piece, I will try to give you our highlights of our trip from my head as I didn’t get to write down the journals during the trip:

The afternoon we left for our first destination - Toliara (Tulear) via taxi brousse with one of our students, Vazo, whose family lives in Toliara. The trip lasted about 22 hours. Toliara is way in the southwestern Madagascar from Tana. About 3 hours after leaving Tana, the driver hit a 4-5 year old boy who just simply raced across the street from nowhere. Luckily, he only had a broken leg. I have witnessed the whole thing while Vazo and Susie didn’t actually see what happened as they were talking. While sleeping uncomfortably on the mini-bus, Susie and Vazo got little spooked when the driver joined a few mini-buses group during the night drive because one of the mini-buses got stopped by a blocking car who were driving by supposedly policemen. But the driver of the mini-bus outwitted them by turning back and hailing a few mini-buses to follow him so they won’t be stopped by those ‘bandits’.

Toliara: Scorching, hot, humid. No tall trees. Many dried bushes. Outskirts of Toliara have many villages that mainly use leaves and wood for the huts. One of the best designed pousse pousse (pulling carts) I’ve ever seen here with huge wheels and incredibly long handlebars.

Ifaty: An hour drive north from Toliara on a bumpy sandy/gravel road. A couple of times, Vazo’s dad’s car got stuck on the sand, so we had to push it out. Activities: A zebu cart ride to a baobab forest, snorkeling, and a nice ride on a pirogue (a handmade canoe made out of a tree trunk).

Anakao: Cancelled this trip which is about an hour boat ride south from Toliara due to sickness that we probably got from food poisoning. (We were even stupid to try the sausages as our midnight dinner during the taxi brousse ride) So we rested ourselves in Toliara in an A/C hotel room in Toliara during Christmas Day! We got to visit Vazo’s family’s home on that day which was nice.

Ambavalao: a 6 hour drive from Toliara. Our first day of the 8 day tour with a driver and his daughter in his well-maintained Peugeot 405 station wagon. (Ortour Tour if you wanted to know which agency we booked through). Not much to see in Ambavalao other than its famed zebu market and the town to stock up for trekking for Andringitra.

Andringitra: A 3-day trekking for total of about 25 kilometers in this national park. Two nice waterfalls, lunar-like rock landscape, and fuzzy-hair cliffs during the trek. One campsite is very nice with a secluded swimming hole which connects to the waterfall. Andringitra is interesting because in only 10 km radius, the flora on the one side of the valley is accustomed to the frost and humid (small plants) while the other side of valley has rare palm trees due to the hot, dry climate all year around.

Fianarantsoa: Stayed at Lake Hotel to rest our aching bodies and we didn’t realize that Sahambavy Tea Estate which produce Madagascar’s famous tea closes on a Sunday which of course disappointed Susie greatly. We were supposed to visit this estate after trekking on a Saturday, but we decided to go straight to the hotel as we were all pooped out already.

Ranomafana: We got to see a couple of rare lemurs there: golden bamboo lemurs and greater bamboo lemurs as well as a couple of animals and other lemurs. Also, we took thermal bath there which helped our aching bodies from our trek in Andringitra. This is where we actually spent New Year’s Eve and we actually slept through the night!

Antoetra: One of Zafimaniry villages. It is well worth for a day trip for a tourist. I would have liked to take a couple of days trekking to other Zafimaniry villages because their unique woodwork is amazing on their housing and crafts.

Ambositra: Full of wood craft shops. I was disappointed to see that they didn’t have the exact replica of ‘aloalo’ that we saw at a couple of resting tomb near Toliara. The pieces in Ambositra are too touristy if you ask me.

Back to Tana for one night and end of our 8 day tour with the driver.

Next day: We took a dizzy, zigzagging route via taxi brousse to Toamasina (Tamative) where Susie actually got carsick yet she didn’t vomit at all. While in Toamasina, we took a day trip to Canal de Pangalanes which is a man-made channel that is 464 km long! It was built back in 1896 by the French yet the diggers were Chinese, Indians, Africans, and Malagasy. The canal still continues to be the main transportation for many fishermen and villagers who live along the canal as there are no main road along the villages due to the massive area of marshes along the area.

Now, we just got back home from Toamasina yesterday and today we went to Akama to join the festive staff lunch party.

zaf1, originally uploaded by gamma888.

instead of focusing on the man, please notice on the crafts of the house’s wood if you can…