Gesamtkunstwerk

the other day i was paying my credit card bill, and saw my diving gear in it. it's funny how technically i haven't paid for them, yet they've already been used, cleaned, dried out for a week, and stowed away. so without further ado:


- bunaken

4 hours from lcct is manado, and 1 hour from sam ratulangi airport is tasik ria resort. being in the east, the sun sets earlier, the skies are clear, and the night is deep. nothing to shoot outside, so here's what it looks like inside.


- spacious foyer for all your gear
- toilet, cupboard and dresser in a connecting corridor
- swanky bedroom

day1: 11sep09
tested out my newly bought casing for leaks. it may seem like 100 bucks for a canggihfied ziploc bag, but within 1 dive, it was all worth it. 4gbs of underwater shots with nooby wb, and it was still worth it.

day2: 12sep09
didn't have the patience to hunt for macro stuff.


- me and bro with siang, trip organizer, who bought the same wetsuit
- pressure makes the gladwrapped lx3 inoperable beyond a certain depth
- spot the crab!


- artsy attempt
- turtle having lunch... should've video'd this!
- beaut lobster

day3: 13sep09
had a little more patience to hunt for macro stuff.


- this sea cucumber raised its head to greet me, but i couldn't catch it
- the colours are less distorted when < 10m
- seahorse(s)!


- anemone families in the middle of nowhere
- that's a lionfish
- that's not a jellyfish

day4: 14sep09
took a van to another part of sulawesi. at a port, amidst huge commercial, fishing and police ships, we pushed off on 2 sampans to see lembeh, critter heaven. had the lunch of my life on the boat roof, replete with scenic view and straits winds.


- setting off
- with tanks on deck
- and gear on roof


- mimic octopus
- hairy frogfish
- some eel which went right under me as i was lying prone


- mantis shrimp
- boxer shrimp
- flamboyant cuttlefish

day5: 15sep09
lepaked half the day around tasik ria, and finally had time to see the quirks of the whole place. headed out to town for a late lunch, a place called city extra, that had its own jetty. here’s the inherent drama of manado - there’re jetties everywhere!


- there's a whole set of these little carvings around tasik ria, they form a band
- monkeys by the lily pond
- sulawesian spa magicks


- the dive centre
- city extra’s jetty - spot the crabs again...
- 1 more fish to learn: barramundi


- farewell to the motley crew

my beginner's dive logbook is finally out of pages.

Seth Godin: Quieting the Lizard Brain from 99% on Vimeo.

• ship: finish, deliver, go live. whatever u call it - finish.
  
• it's important to start. it's more important to finish.
  
• pull through the resistance.
  

manado in 3 days.

looked up at 2.30am to see an odd giant ring around the moon. it morphed very slowly, becoming more pronounced, and at 1 point there was even a (relatively) bright arc of rainbow colours very near the moon itself. i suddenly recalled reading about moonbows...

well, this wasn't it. moonbows:
- occur when the moon is low/near the horizon
- are always in the opposite part of the sky
- require rain falling opposite the moon (or a waterfall)
- happen in seemingly exclusive locations on earth

this was something else instead, a 22° halo. they are:
- much, much, much more common - cheh!
- beyond my cacat grasp of physics to explain the 22°
- caused by light refracted through the hexagonal prisms
- of ice particles in the sky

ice in the sky! more rainy days to come?

popped by the mamak for a quick dinner yesterday, an inconspicuous joint called al-esfan. u can count this a quirk of the waiters there: they never get your order right. until u wonder, by default, just what and how they'll fuck up this time. just like the last time. and the next.

so it was yesterday when exasperation gave way to interest, when second-guessing the blue-shirted vacant-eyed drones with a stoic refusal to write things down became a game, that i finally figured it out - that that's it! that's the whole idea. u never know what u're gonna get. it's a freakin usp. an esp even, given that it's a 360 experience between bemusement and amusement.

a change of perspective - voila - a concept mamak.

as with all things u, or is it just i, never notice in passing. like the counter, for instance. only noticed it last week, when i took a photo. dynamic film mode with outdoor wb at iso400, and suddenly it's beaut visual merchandising. through new eyes, it's a pleasing riot of colours, sweets chocolate gum lozenges cigarettes. and yet, it still took me between last friday and yesterday to take a closer look.

i saw tubes of bold, deep red. fresh cola mentos. wtf? i rotated it, and some thai copy stared back at me. #1, how exotic. i bought one. of course subconsciously, it was #2, the irony of cola mentos, becoz who could forget the viral proliferation of dietcoke/mentos fountains? a wiki check brought up many other flavours: cinnamon, wintergreen, raisin, peach, plum, strawberry/lemon yoghurt, 2 variations of licorice. i'm suddenly astounded, after being turned off by boring mintmintmint so long ago. so it was also #3, the myriad ways of flogging a dead horse until it lives again.

what's next, tequila mentos?

actually started a lenghty verbose report. then rewrote with a new approach. it Was my lx3's virgin expedition after all.


- and there was much company!

day1: 04jul09
we landed at adisucipto to an abrupt sundown, way past dinnertime. our first dinner was also my first encounter with words like tempe and sapi and bebek. first thing u notice about indonesian meals, is u can always go overboard on spiciness. and first thing u notice about yogya, is the cramped roads and narrow roadside stalls on narrow pavements. the good thing about this is i guess, a healthy tolerance and respect for others' personal space.


- 3 beautiful pots of different chili
- signage of our quaint guesthouse
- DIY yumcha with sosro teh celup

what i didn't shoot: toyota territory - 9 out of 10 vehicles are toyotas.

day2: 05jul09
woke insanely early, crossed into jawa tengah for borobudur, and ironically witnessed the dawn at a petrol station. borobudur is a Massive structure. everywhere u point your lens, it's stone. playing out my noobiness, i shot many bland angles and static compositions - stone & sky, stone & trees, stone & mountains - and tampered with the various settings until my battery started blinking. it was barely 8am. fuck. it gave out after 4 shots at prambanan, a visual counterpoint to borobudur. 1 is a vast horizontal expanse of a single structure, and the other is a cluster of narrow temples with tall roofs, amidst earthquake ruins.


- borobudur: dominating the landscape
- stairs, sunlight, and fresh morning air
- the mighty stupas at the top tier


- ancient comic strips (slabs?)
- zen moment with a stone buddy
- prambanan: stabbing into the sky

what i didn't shoot: a graffititown we passed called magelang(?). shops with tree trunks protruding through the roof. breakfast in the land of indo mi. macro of old grimy fingers crafting an intricate silver brooch. homemade cooler: a pail and a garbage bag. sculptures in a museum courtyard, in equidistant rows like tombstones. dramatic sunburst above a war museum's conical roof. guns, lots of guns. a flagpole indoors, reaching up to a circular skylight. crone barbecueing satay on makeshift mini grill, at said war museum's gates.

day3: 06jul09
traipsed off to ngasem bird market. apparently birds used to be a status symbol, third after a horse and a keris, but the place has evolved to include fish, turtles, geckos etc. - making it kind of a giant pet shop plaza. the market spills into a sprawling complex called tamansari, which covers a fucking dense neighbourhood surrounding a hill and the water castle ruins - which feels kinda like malacca's a famosa, just on very high ground. everywhere u'll see ornate doorways to underground tunnels, which lead to... we didn't explore all that, sad to say. lunch at a charming cafe, then my battery died. again.


- taste the rainbow?
- crateful of crawly crickets
- cd sleeve/wallpaper/poster: take your pick


- life in an unlikely place
- tunnel vision
- music, intrinsic to yogya life

what i didn't shoot: a tank of sucker catfish all in a row like floating angels. a shirtless, seasoned batik painter. view of slow, patient traffic from a horsecart. malioboro, shopping precinct. a stall owner resting his kretek cigg on a stool and staking a private niche on the crowded walkway. an entire street of bakpia pathok bakeries, each brand differentiated by Only its number.

day4: 07jul09
with a flight in the afternoon, we had no time to go gallivanting. lepaked around our guesthouse, a rustic suburb(?) called sleman that's totally devoid of streetlamps. we'd only been back in the evening, so we finally had the chance to see its open fields in daylight. found gastronomic heaven I SAID GODDAMN in a nondescript warung. and as we left, the trip was completed with an apt souvenir - the band vierra playing in the background. i'm still listening to it now.


- rumah palagan by day
- intrepid shooters unfazed by the sun
- warung kepiting dogen, in the middle of nowhere


- shyng-spotted: a flower in a flower
- paddy... or lalang?
- abstract shadow play

what i didn't shoot: my gang. i finally realized i've an impressive knack for not shooting people (which drives mom nuts sometimes). so here's an obligatory group shot...



to end: windows
found an interest in this theme a while ago. windows and doors make interesting subject matter - and i think it's simply becoz it's natural to wonder "what's on the other side?" we all gotta start somewhere, so here's a collection of yogyan windows.


- under the eaves of rumah palagan's neighbour
- unfinished brick, recycled curtains
- blue and black, prob the same wood


- tamansari tunnels echoing behind wooden grilles
- i imagine it's real menacing in the nighttime
- verdant

more at: flickr | shyng's | cheeheng's pt1, pt2, pt3 | yenc's | sm's facebook.

u can't capture too many details in the periphery.

i notice every time i eat,
i look at the clock.

instead of looking at the time
to see if it was lunch.

even in the middle of the night,
i look at the clock.

before having my suppersnack
with maybe a sudoku.

laptop

ie6, shoot me

phone

glasses

airasia stubs, rupiah table, adisucipto health form, h1n1 leaflet

post-its under that stack (yes finally found it!)

sosro teh botol bottlecap

sketchbook

half-baked ideas

kneadable eraser

pencils: 4H, H, HB

sign pen given from syam

ball pen stolen from some hotel

credit card bill, unopened

a lot of envelopes, empty

sony card reader

old sony camera

coaster with pic of houses of parliament

coaster with crappy ad for medical research volunteers

notepad made from unfinishd exercise books, most prob sejarah

a glass globe (wtf?) that says "birkart globistics" (wtf?)

a speaker in the corner

cacat woofer

street directory

big black file

canson bleedproof pad + bank pad (DAMN, long time no see...)

khaled hosseini - a thousand splendid suns

insurance stuff i don't wanna read

alanit namecards

copics: marine green, pale green, chartreuse, willow,
garnet, cadmium red, canary yellow, honey,
cream, neutral gray 5, prussian blue, salmon red

pencil case, sharpener, sharpie, fineliner, and 1 more black copic

the celestial zone vol 9

news clippings: sg lembing article, lexus is250 ad

half-arsed collection of postcards

prisonbreak s2

dead headlamp bulb

watchover voodoo doll: monkey king

a speaker in the corner

behind laptop - dust

in front of me - scrap paper, written: "scuba gear?!"

i've had my trusty digg screensaver for about a year now. but increasingly, i don't wait for the 10 minutes of inactivity to trigger it. now news is one of the first things when i start up. it's 1 click to open firefox, and another 1 click for 20 of the latest tweets. as my email is loading i'm also loading a queue of new tabs. then it's an eclectic mix of delicious (no, not that delicious) reading through the morning.

like today - essex girl saved from lightning by ipod. solar eclipse of the century (6mins 39secs, 22july). uber workstation, making of. evolution of a photographer. a voxel short film. it's a freaking flow of knowledge, even with out-of-my-league bits like mimicking the osx dock with jquery. and it's just a dip in the stream, as they say. so here's the link dump - courtesy of twitter, bit.ly, ow.ly, is.gd, tischen, and other whatnots.

speaking of which, d'u know if those shortened links have an expiry date?

• funniest msn status messages - messquoted


• art student stereotypes - blankanvas


• bk MAKES me read their copy - cpbftw


• skinny soho/apartment - archinect


• #lyttlelytton, in vein of the bulwer-lytton contest - twherelse?


• deaf violinist for a shampoo ad - grey thailand


• and on twitter forming link currency - techcrunch