garden gnomes

garden gnomes. this is one of the first unfamiliar sights i encountered when i touch downeded in europe. i was in a metro from munich airport to the city and caught sight of this at a stop on the way.

we don’t have a culture for garden gnomes back home. we got all sorts of other ornamental stuff, like frogs or swans and stuff for feng shui purposes but no gnomes.

my only knowledge of garden gnomes are from fairy tale books that i read as a kid. i learnt that garden gnomes are a german thing and gnomes symbolise helpfulness and the gnomes are said to come alive and help with the gardens at night.

but gnomes are also known to be the object of pranks. another german thing. i don’t know if i understand it well enough, but it is something about stealing the other guy’s gnome and making it reappear somewhere else.

sounds like fun, kan? i am so going to put a gnome when i get my own garden nanti. sorry la, gambar is taken from jauh. i don’t think it would have been very polite to climb into people punya garden to take a picture of their gnomes. nanti they think i’m trying to steal it pulak.

 

if you never change your mind, why have one? ~ edward de bono

just got back from a conference on thinking last week. as intellectual as it sounds and as glamorous as it tries to be, i came away with a slightly disappointed impression that it leaned a tad over on the academic side. of course, the question is if this is a problem at all. it was organised by an academic institution after all. this entire post could turn out to be just me throwing a verbal tantrum.

but i realise a lack of practice. not absence however, i must say that there are a number of industry participation as well. it is just my unresearched perception that too much academic thinking can be psychologically and socially unhealthy.

but hey, pit me against the brains of howard gardner and tun dr mahathir and tony buzan and kevin warwick and edward de bono, and i respectfully zipped by gob, sat on my hands and listened. and for the inspired moments when my wandering mind decided to linger within the halls of the KL convention center, i found myself time and time again impressed by clever lines that i will attempt to use in my everyday preaching.

i had a poster paper on photography accepted for the conference and i spent many idle hours watching from afar the kinds of people who stopped by my presentation panels. from just this observation, i can deduce the following obvious conclusion: people like pictures more than words. while i am sure that the other posters presented immensely ground breaking discoveries, my collection of forty pictures caught an ever passing crowd from those with striped ties and shiny polished shoes, to those drenched in the latest elizabeth arden fragrance, to workers emptying out the recycle bins nearest to my panels.

and here i am constantly asking myself, what were they thinking? (duh, it is the thinking conference after all)

if you have read up to here, i know that you are expecting some smart alec remark on how the whole conference was a complete waste of my time. either that, or some funny politically questionable but grammatically perfect three-line sentence about how all the great thinkers of our generation are at some stage of age related baldness.

or maybe you just want an explanation of the photos on this blog post, especially about the one or two that made you excited this fine monday morning. i guarantee you that i personally snapped these shots and that none of the photos has been edited or modified in any way.

i am not sorry if this disappoints you (which you probably won’t admit anyway. one plenary speaker at the conference told me that people who browse blogs are narcissistic like that), but you will need to make your own mind up (that sentence is supposed to be neutral and thus save me in case ISA decides that some of the pictures are not funny enough).

 

thank you for the music

i am proud to have lived in the same generation as the thriller that is michael jackson. this man is, and forever shall be, a definitive part of my childhood.

your sudden departure is a tragic loss to a world in desperate need of genuine originality as you epitomise.

thank you for the music and rest in peace.

 

the people we meet

this post is dedicated to all the people i met while i was in europe. i actually regret that i have not taken more photos, especially with my roommates. i am glad that some of us have hooked up via facebook tho.

that’s from the meeting i attended. i don’t often put work related pictures on this blog, but he was wearing a lederhosen and i wanted to share that. i have an awesome story about lederhosens and an old german beer house in munich. if we ever meet, ask me.

that’s my free tour guide masa kat munich. well actually, there were four of them and there were a big group of us. i actually found a group picture on the tour website but i am tiny there.

the picture is of jared, but i fell into heidi’s group instead. she’s in the big group picture.

and that’s spike, the guide in paris who’s from the same company. i like the idea of free tours. i know that it would never work in malaysia because we don’t have a tipping culture and we’d be too cheapskates to make it worthwhile for the guide anyway. but i think have free tours in europe is so cool for poor asian backpackers. spike is a history major at a college in paris and i think its so awesome that she takes time to look up trivia and interesting facts to share with us during the tour. i suppose when you work on tips, you really got to impress the customers.

i wish i had a picture with ena, my bosnian-swedish roommate at that hostel in paris. ena, if you are reading this, i hope you and the spanish guy are having a wonderful time with your apartment with a garden! :)

and i wish i took a photo with the bulgarian guy who was eating cheese at the hostel courtyard, just in case he was telling the truth when he told me that he’s an actor and he’ll be world famous someday.

and that is my guide in barcelona and he’s every bit as a hippy as he looks. he’s from a different tour company, but they also offer free tours for the cheapskate traveller. the way the tour is conducted is basically the same but this guy is more casual than the other company. casual is not a bad thing, though. since the group that gathered for the day were mostly young and curious, we moved at a very relaxed pace.

lupa pulak nama mamat ni.

that’s me with some of my roommates (claire and lilian – both on the right) who went on the barcelona free tour. i found out that the tour company is actually on facebook too and has pictures of us on their photo page there also.

my roommates in barcelona were an unforgetable group of people.

the dorm had eight beds and the thing is, i spent quite some time in barcelona and i met many roommates who came and went.

thing was, there were these other three guys who stayed almost as long as i did and we introduced and reintroduced ourselves to new roommates over and over again.

the three guys are spanish, one of the canary islands (see oscar – i remember!!!) and the other two (fernando and pablo) from a district near madrid. i had the funniest time testing my barely developed spanish with them.

oscar, if you are reading this, i hope you’re having fun in barcelona and have found a job already! :)

escrida is left. deretcha is right. i will not forget that. i just hope i got the spelling correct.

two of the guys speak very little english but they were just the funniest. they gave me some spanish mp3s which i know i will never completely understand.

now you tell me – doesn’t the guy in the baju belang nampak macam edward cullen from the twilight movie?

i met these girls for two evenings in barcelona because we’re supposed to go see flamenco together. the one on the right is italian. the one on the left is spanish. thing is, we needed a foursome to get the tour group going and after two days, it never happened. instead, we spent the evenings by the fountain talking about everything from rome to art to boyfriends.

speaking of rome, i have already introduced you to carlo, one of the two femes photographers i met up with. i followed his friends and family to the world press photo exhibition while i was there too, which i pretty damn cool. his daughter andrea, is an intense ball of energy. put her with her cousin and they become unstoppable.

last, but not least, this is one of my six roommates in rome. he’s irish. i forgot his name, but i remember that it starts with an “F”. evidently, he is unconscious. the reason for that is that he came back at 4am the night before completely intoxicated. just how drunk? by 5am, he has puked all over the shared bathroom floor and dragged some of the mess into the dorm. that’s not his bed he’s landed on either. his pants and shoes are in the corridor and his passport is on the floor.

so there you have it, folks. just some of the colourful characters that made the trip all that more interesting. have an awesome weekend. peace. out.

 

to score in a champions league final against manchester united and win the league title is just unbelievable. it’s a dream. this has been an unbelievable season. ~ lionel messi

so here’s a post that i am half afraid to write because i know that some people who read this blog are sore manchester united loser fans just so much more knowledgeable about football than i am.

it was purely by coincidence that the very day that i decided to visit the colosseum, the champions league festival was about to be launched. and so there i was as the limos bearing the UEFA cup president pulled up towards the arch of constantine.

and yes, there i was among the mob of photographers and curious passerbys as the champion’s league trophy was carried to a stand and revealed to the public. the guy in the suit walks up a red carpet, gives his speech and we all clapped. oh what a sun shiny day it was in rome that morning.

the trophy was brought up, enclosed in a clear box and ladies and gentlemen, the champions league festival has begun!

and on either side of the arch were booths. one side, barcelona. the other side, manchester united. and here’s the thing: the barcelona was so much fun. everyone greeted me out loud. everyone was laughing and taking pictures. they gave me complimentary fridge magnets and postcards. they were all happy to talk about the players and recent copa del rey and spanish league winning. mood sungguh meriah sekali.

kat the manchester united booth pulak, the mood was just less exciting. no free gifts. take your own postcards from the table. no excitement. no laughing. the people manning the booth looked like they did not want to be there. i went into the booth and took my own postcards and walked right back out. the only ‘excitement’ that i could see were a few highly intoxicated MU fans being very loud and demanding right outside the booth.

fine, i blame timing. maybe i just got there at the wrong time. maybe if i went there at the right time, the MU people would be all friendly and we’d all be welcomed with big bear hugs and they’d hand out cotton candy and we can all hold hands and sing ‘glory, glory manchester united’ together.

*snort* yea, right.

i was on a flight from frankfurt back to KL on the night of the game itself so i did not get to watch the match. instead, i was greeted at the airport by a panda eyed J. he and KL had been up all night watching barcelona kick MU’s ass the game before coming to fetch me.

of course i knew who was going to win, i said to J as i handed him his souvenir from europe – a barcelona unicef jersey :)

 

italian mozzarella

i got to meet up with some famous photographers while i was in italy. it was actually SL’s idea since i was missing the photo awards ceremony back in KL, and since these guys can’t make it to KL either, that we’d have a mini award ceremony of our own in *ahem* campo di fiori, rome itself.

and so i emailed carlo gianferro and giandomenico marini and we agreed to meet up on my second evening in rome (technically, my first evening since my first day was in castelfusano, but that’s another story altogether).

the meeting was supposed to be at 7pm but i left the train station early since i was quite sure that i would be getting quite lost. and yes, i did. i took a bus that overshot my stop by two stations and had to backtrack on foot. by the time i found the place, i realised one critical dilemma: all italian men look the same to me and i have no idea how these guys look like.

(no SL, they did not arrive on a vespa, or two :))

here’s one word of advice when lost in rome: have a gelato. no seriously, over the following few days, i found myself constantly dizzied by the streets in rome, but there will always be gelato and thus, there will always be some kind of happiness and hope available.

i bought my first gelato (peppermint chocolate chip) and went to sit at the foot of the giordano bruno statue at piazza di campo de fiori. remember how i told you that things work out if you’d just a gelato? well, over comes this almost bald italian guy in blue denim shirt, looked at me and tried to pronounce my name. close enough. he introduced himself as giandomenico and that carlo was on the way. carlo is always late, he laughs.

how did he pin point me from the crowd? duh, i was the only asian looking girl, hah!

carlo eventually arrived and we went to one of those cafes that looks out to the piazza. the waitress brought mozerella and the two guys attempted to explain to me what mozerella is. no, it’s not like the mozerella cheese you get at home. from giandomenico’s description, it is a cheese that is almost a cheese and has been removed from the process at one point. that’s why the consistency of the one i had that evening was not solid like the ones back home. it’s texture is almost like jelly. mozerella is eaten just like that with maybe a bit of pepper or diced tomato or olive oil.

sorry la, takde gambar. aku tak nak jakun ambik gambar semua benda depan these guys. he he he.

the two guys are super fun to hang out with and tak lansi langsung. they are both good friends and giandomenico was telling me how when carlo first started taking pictures, how awful they are. they were just terrible, he tells me. and fast forward some years, here we are, carlo won first place in this year’s world press photo awards. how awesome is that.

the two told me stories and jokes and more mozerella trivia and i realize how fluid the italian sense of humour is. they tell me about other photo competitions they’ve been in and exhibitions and projects such as abusidarte, which i’m not sure people in KL would be able to stomach, but hey it was apparently a hit in rome.

and as the sun set (sun sets at 9.30pm in rome in the spring before the solstice) and the lamps came on around the piazza, we chatted some more about art and travel and the people we meet.

and of course, more mozzarella.

 

wonderwall ~ oasis

today is gonna be the day that they’re gonna throw it back to you
by now you should’ve somehow realized what you gotta do
i don’t believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now

backbeat the word was on the street that the fire in your heart is out
i’m sure you’ve heard it all before but you never really had a doubt
i don’t believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now

and all the roads we have to walk along are winding
and all the lights that lead us there are blinding
there are many things that i would like to say to you

but i don’t know how
because maybe you’re gonna be the one who saves me
and after all, you’re my wonderwall

today was gonna be the day but they’ll never throw it back to you
by now you should’ve somehow realized what you’re not to do
i don’t believe that anybody feels the way i do about you now