James just linked to this article on FasterLouder, and it’s reminded me of the great things about MonaFoma13. As well as bumping into someone i knew from Melbourne everywhere i turned, and enjoying the whole experience of being somewhere exciting for 5 days.
Dirty Projectors – i’d never heard of them, and i was just mesmerised. They were so gorgeous. As she pushed further into the crowd at the front, Nina said they were her favourite band in the whole world, and i totally understood why. Amarina said she felt they gave her a new understanding of music, and they did that for me too.
David Byrne and St Vincent. Who wouldn’t love “Burning Down the House” over a dancing brass band. There are few things i love more than a massive euphonium belting out the bass, and here we had Byrne’s classically awkward dance moves played out by the whole band. They even had a real ..ah what’s that instrument you wave your hands against? The electronic one…
Tania Bosak Barefoot Orchestra were just beautiful. Very theatrical and engaging for me, as they played with alternating between wild dancing klezma and stilted off-key jazz. People at the front could appreciate the artistry and theatre of the event, and all seemed to love it. I certainly did. (Unfortunately this one didn’t quite fill the hall, and they lost the attention of the whispering crowds at the back. Don’t know if it was the sound system, or the fact that they followed the Spanish surf rock band, instead of preceding.)
Ben Skeffler looping harpsichord and cello. Beautiful. Apparently he used to play with Miso, and now is incredibly famous.
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How about this joyful piece from andrea dorfman in Halifax. The same woman who made that previous one.
Cycling is something i love too.
Thanks Andrea!
First attempt to read the car Reg. over the phone:
“i’m sorry, i didn’t hear anything. Please tell me the registration number..”
second attempt
“Did you say ROFL w t f 6 8 3 ?”
another go:
“Did you say LOL w t f 6 8 3 ?”
i was sure the insanely cheerful machine at the other end of the phone line was giving me some kind of internet speak as well as the registration number. In fact i’m sure the eastlink machine with the personality disorder was laughing at me.. in LOLCATS language.
“For F sake,” i cried, “What does it take to get a live human being around here.”
“Now transferring you to an operator.”
.
$5 to drive to Frankston these days.
But all that ART along the way makes it almost worth the cash. The mini-hotel? Hilarious!
photo credit: (creative commons at flickr) Thanks: peter forret, and Vermin Inc.
Ah this could make you smile.. the Spontaneous Tram Choir on the Lygon St Tram.
i hope we’ll see more from this bunch:
from You tube of course.
Ha ha. Thanks Logan for this video.
My favourite new experience in Cambodia and Vietnam was seeing how many people can fit on a moto (motorbike).
In that part of the world, people don’t really ride motorbikes, rather a local kind of scooter or “step-through”. Katie says there’s no age limit to riding them in Cambodia, as long as your feet reach the footrest.
And yes, the whole family will fit on a moto. Very usual to see babies and children sitting in front holding the handlebars. i love it. In Vietnam the children wear helmets .. in Cambodia not.
Traffic here is something else entirely. The one rule appears to be “Give way to bigger vehicles”. Lauli said it was like schools of fish in the sea; you swim with the group, go with the flow.
So far i have seen on the back of a moto:
Desperately seeking comments: Please share your “back of a moto” experience.
My beautiful old iRiver died while i was travelling in Cambodia. It disappeared from my luggage on a bus. Device death by disappearance.
i was sad, i was disappointed. But sooner or later i had to have another music player**.
So i chomped on the ammunition and stole an iPod classic from JB hifi. They took $325 from me but it felt like a steal anyway.
Heaven.
Glamor-tech.
Charming.
and no i don’t have to run iTunes. So Relieved About That!!
Yes, Winamp manages an iPod just fine.
Just drag the files across and there they are.
Yay Winamp.
PS: not perfect, this device.
**Yes i have the iRiver e100, but that’s a kind of joke really. When you put the micro SD card in, all the screen writing reverses to mirror image. Fortunately i can read mirror writing just like da Vinci.
photo credit: Themis Chapsis
Thinking back to my time in Vietnam, one of the best things about travelling is the people you meet along the way ..
And that’s not even counting the flocks of wonderful people in Phnom Penh, lovely exPats and aid workers, volunteers, NGO people, teachers and masterful communications officers!
Really it’s all about the people isn’t it
so tell me .. who did you meet in an exotic location?
photo credit: shapeshift
i’ve posted 17 of my favourite photos up on flickr. Selected from a range of ooh about 3000. Is 100 photos a day too much when you’re travelling? i don’t think so.
Some of these shots were taken without looking .. that is i would point and click in the rough direction of whatever i wanted to capture. Usually it would be terrible, but occasionally it worked.
Here’s a slideshow .. or you can look on the flickr site direct, and add comments etc. Go on.
i postponed the visit to Tuol Sleng as long as i could. Didn’t want to face reality and find out what happened. Strangely i felt conscious of the whole genocide thing as soon as we landed in Phnom Penh .. as though the soul of this country was still deeply wounded and grieving.
At the museum, i ended up stumbling on a small room, filled with dust and storage. i don’t think this room was meant to be open. There was a big box of skulls and bones, not organised for display, just sitting; this was more disturbing than viewing the skulls on proper display.
Many skulls in another room had been given proper display cabinets, with airholes so that the victim’s souls could enter and connect. This was a compromise between giving them proper burial, and allowing the world to see the evidence of what happened.
i took some photos in the not-display room, but felt like i shouldn’t .. so perhaps i won’t publish them here. i’ll put other people’s photos instead.
So the genocide researchers have found 389 burial sites .. most with 500-1500 people. There was one site with 150,000 people and the biggest site had 510,000 dead bodies. Tim and i tried to work out how big that would be.
Really Big.
At the start of the revolution, people were marched out of the cities into the country to become honourable peasants. If the inner bourgeoisie couldn’t be marched out of them, they were killed. Doctors, teachers .. anyone educated was killed.
Ironic, because Pot and some of his henchmen were teachers who’d had a very elitist education in Paris.
These days in Cambodge, they don’t kill people so much, just sell off land to developers and march the peasants off to another part of the city, possibly with a skerrick of compensation. This article at the bbc gives detail, via Kylie in Phnom Penh.
photo credit: blake_lennon
photo credit: tkelly7029
Plus:
Oh thank heavens i’m back home. G Love and Special Sauce is on the stereo, Sam’s getting fish n chips from the new place on Sydney Road .. and the massive heat wave faded away just before i arrived. Tim and Nathan are here, with beer.
Life is perfect.
Sometimes you can have enough of a foreign place and living out of a backpack. Phnom Penh is beautiful in its way, but the poverty gets to me (not as much as it affects the locals obviously), my comfort zones are stretched, the heat and dust wears me down. i needed the comfort of home.
mmmm .. off to Victoria St to get me some frozen lychees.
photo credit: roboppy
