Leonids Meteor Shower
November 17, 2009
http://leonid.arc.nasa.gov/estimator.html
I will be going to sleep, and waking at 4am to see if I can catch some video (yeh right), but mostly just Eckhart Tolle enjoy the show.
Viewing beautiful nature makes you feel just so peaceful, so lucky to be witness to something epic.
Or insignificant and scared..depending on how your life is going :D Hasn’t happened to me for a while.
Older:
That is so..sick.
The power of words, stories and emotions..novel
July 28, 2009
[ramble]stories are power, words are power, the power to change oneself, its emotions, all the power in the world lying within those emotions, swinging one way then the next to a burgeoning of those emotions..hate, greed, malice, righteous anger and the power to slaughter or the power of life: love happiness, good, the chance to change, begin anew, and so find yourself free of former tethers and that which would bind and chain.
Culmination of abuse, sick physical and sexual.
He was playing with the discarded lumps of wax he collected from the trash heap bellow the back wall of the main house..He could mould faces from the pieces and build entire families like the families down in the village, where boys and girls his age worked alongside their parents and when not working played in the woods and were always laughing.
This was where his brother found him. His brother with the sad face so unlike the wax ones he liked to make. He arrived carrying a coil of rope, and stood just inside the jammed-wide doors all overgrown.
Life as smoke within glass..
July 20, 2009
Love and shadow,
All through, what we,
Have known.
Life can be smoke and glass, shifting turning and flitting, seemingly free, yet constrained at heart. Stuck in a prison fishbowl of observation…or is it
For, the only thing that is truly encapsulated is man made. Man made is the prison we set for ourselves, our own limitations are just that, limitations which may or may not have any sort of relevance on our true potential. Nature, like the bottle I am staring at has leaks, sealing in the hookah.
Le Hippie de Compounde
June 14, 2009
Hippie compound!
One of my friends parent’s have built a beautiful retreat out in the middle of nowhere…literally. Nevada is actually quite beautiful, and I had in my mind some rough-in it desert stuff, maybe I should bring my Vietnamese Pajama’s.
Saw the funniest sign on a dead-town (up for sale $1m), hand painted, with downed tree’s to block the inroads to the..three buildings I believe: gas station, small church and one other.
Sign: “No service
No Gas
No Food
No Water
No Jobs
loll
On the way, we were picking up some booze, had the first “impulse buy” of a keg (credited to Greg) which had a funny stream of thought:
Read the rest of this entry »
Holy crap done with the Vietnam vids / pics: Index
June 11, 2009
May need to buy Vegas Movie Editor or something, Windows Movie Maker is incredibly slow, mainly due to the fact that it takes ~30 minutes to publish a youtubeish video (10 min), and sucks up the program.
I’d have to check whether in Vegas (or some other program) you can publish, and keep editing more video’s…
Need to also compile a giant DVD, replete with scenes, more pics (not included on this blog) and Truc’s vids and pic’s, which she has some great ones as well.
Cheers! Next blog is an adventure weekend to northern Nevada in the middle of nowhere, where a friends parents have built ~8 structures for a retirement area, beautiful.
Edited: Noticed that it was probably a pain to actually read through the whole thing, with a trip etc. it would be more worthwhile to post backwards, so it flows in sequence..added URL links to all the posts to follow one after another, and below…la Index.
Downtown travels:
Plane, Arrival, House Tour in downtown Saigon (Ho Chi Minh), Drinking with the extended family, Durian!
Hookah Lounge in Saigon, Rooftop drinking and Half-hatched Duckling Eggs.
The beach Vung Tura! Sun burns, awesome crab lunch.
Country Side travels:
Off to the Countryside, Walk over, tons of scenery, Home tour of numerous rich and poor homes, more drinkin, Boat ride.
More Downtown:
Return from the countryside, Viet Massage, Cab adventure; traffic mess, shopping.
12 DENTIST! Food poisoned, last days…
June 11, 2009
5/20/09 damn the dentist
Some fruit later on..
Man am I sick…thanks 4000 Heinekens…and weird food.
Well, weird / whatever food..we cruised back to the Hawaiin shop over yonder last night (its just a walk down the street) and it was the exact same crew, lol. Most of them are visiting from all over the world, a dude (who speaks a bit of English, older) from San Jose CA and his 91 year old dad (nice!), a bigger triad looking guy who know lives in Germany etc.
Same weird (heavy but tasty) steak cooked in a Hennessy sauce…note that my guts still aren’t feeling good with the massive amount of ginger-hot pot crap I had to force down my gullet. GAHHH. No more, they over cook, they can throw it away, my guts aren’t adjusting well to purely asian cuisine 3x a day.
Were already 5x beers in from the pool hall, but bring ON the dentist. I’m rocking my new “100% silk sir!” shirt, which cost $12, and I still got ripped off, kicking it, I learned two more cheers “OH GOD _something_!” and “RUN GO EXCELLENT” but I forget these things the moment I learn them..doesn’t have any sort of “stickiness” to me.
THE FUCKING DENTIST
This fucker shows up already hammered and they plop him down next to Sammie. Oh SHIT BALLS. I don’t wanna get back into chugging to “zero,” finishing that sucker off, but you know…I did it 3x, on top of probably 10x more beers (can’t tell, but they had a giant tote filled with beer empties, which is how they do the bill).
Funny side note: during pool a friend of the uncle shows up (who is way taniuchi’d out, bright red and wasted by the time were only an hour into the drinking at the restaurant), some other dude who..works for him? Hands him like $600 USD equivalent in stacks of 100.000 bills…wtf baller? Sammie’s new husband…I gladly divorce her in Vietnam, muahahha. The kid then keeps another half stack…
This dude (the friend of the uncle) then hands half of that stack to the triad looking fucker when we get to the restaurant..maybe I’m not too far off?
YET I DIGRESS!
11 4-star Dim Sum..Ahhh
June 6, 2009
5/19/09 Dim Sum
Eggs in the morning, holy fucking hung over. First time I ever “slept in” (8 AM, hah) late.
When we were bumming around, suddenly while I was about to upload pic’s to facebook, Sammie goes LETS GO! Huh?
Dim sum apparently with the uncle..nothings really ever planned, its funny and silly depending on the day.
I keep telling Sammie to stop picking at her skin that’s peeling..
Excellent Dim Sum, I spent 495.000, which was ~$28, my treat to the little cousin, Uncle and Sammie. Excellent thick and rich Jasmine tea.
Everything there was ~1/2 off of normal Dim Sum, but we were in a beautiful white-table cloth place overlooking the city. Air conditioned (thank the lord), plates were changed out every so often, and the Dim Sum (like everything in Vietnam) is very fresh.
The lunch hotpot was great…very heavy (too much almost) Ginger sauce, with raw meats of slivers of steak which just melted in your mouth after 20-30seconds in the pot (More like a large hot-plate). Had octopus (the only time I’ve EVER enjoyed octopus was here in Vietnam) and squid. Man I need to lay off the shell-fish…
I am also FAILING epically at rolling egg rolls….they are really Rice rolls, with rice paper which you first dip into water, place veggies / pineapple (lovely, then meat a bit of noodles, wrap and go.
I got only a SINGLE roll, I was a mess :D
5/18/09
Woke at 6AM, breakfast of EGGS! Holy shitballs, its SaigonIHop.
It’s the duckling eggs, which I can taste the difference, but at least it’s a nice heavy breakfast. It’s mixed with no meats, but with spices and some odd veggies. First time in weeks for this food.
I’m reminded of the beautiful book Shogun, by James Clavelle, which is a great treatise on old-world Japan, and the culture clash of the Portugese and specifically the English. (methinks I need to look into Adsense…haha)
Anyway, the captain is for about 3 months relegated to Japanese foods: slivers of fish, soup, and veggies. He then gets on a portugese ship with a FEAST laid out for him, including “grob” (beer), and procedes to MAUL himself eating half the table, making himself delirious with booze and food, effectively incapacitating him (which was the point of the feast). Its fucking hilarious, ALMOST how I felt.
Anyway, I’m paying for lunch, I want some damn prawns! :D So they cruised to the market, and we’ll see how it goes.
I look down, am writing this blog, and I finally got a little contingent of mosquito’s come through and MURDER my right foot, WTF? I got 8 in a 2” circle on the right ankle, and now just noticed FOUR more in other area’s throughout my right foot…probably a spider actually, with how many bites were evident.
9: Return from the Countryside, Massage
June 6, 2009
5/17/09 Continued! Ants, towels, Massage disaster..ish
MORE ANTS!
Sadly ambers Japanese rice-crackers, which have lasted this whole time (though diminished from my munching on em) are INFESTED with fucking ants. Sealed with a plastic baggie, and elevated on the TV, I thought they’d be fine..well, NOPE. So that helped me be all pissed as well.
CHEERS FINAL cliff bar! I was pissy that I couldn’t have any food, but I’m always pissy when I’m hungry.
Got a new towel after some confusion (why does he need two? Sammie’s Vietnamese is VERY limited), showered, ate my damn cliff bar and mellowed.
We then had stuffed squid and..something, rice, and a little bit of octopus. I can’t eat that type of food as a staple in my diet, so I was rather hungry. But, I went out, and got a massage..this was funny.
60,000 for an hour, which is 3.3$ without tip.
I don’t speak a lick of English, and I got lost (almost) two days ago trying to find the spot, so this time I got it. White man = skip the line (muahhaha).
8: the Countryside, such beauty in the jungle
June 6, 2009
5/17/09
Country (18th)
5/17/09
(5/16/09) Up all night packing, as I was expecting dirt floors, no running water, a 1.5 mile hike with my backpack (hellooooo shoes for the first time) etc. We got up at 5:30AM, my stomach was in Shambles all last night (the beach food, then the early morning breakfast of greens apparently made Sammie’s mom sick as well, so pepto bismal and NOW every day / meal, a family member asks “How is his stomach.” “Word gets around quick” as Sammie said, haha.
½ hour cab ride, to a bus with AC, thankfully, unthankfully the AC vent is busted right in my direction, so its actually Cold on the ride up. I use my awesome asian hat (of which I overpaid for) to deflect some of the AC. Two hours later, we arrive at the lounging coffee shop to await the hot cousin’s friend, and her dad (the darker uncle). I felt like I was going to break the little hut with my weight, “You break you buy!” is a national motto, but it twas all good.
The uncle came over, grabbed beer, then made trips on his scooter to grab all of our stuff.
Then we “hiked” over path’s (mainly concrete then hard packed dirt), very scenic, I had to gob my exposed skin with sunblock to avoid a purple suntan. The shoe’s would have been worthless, as its an “easy” walk really, about 1.5 miles.
