March 2010
2 posts
Jeremy
I took this photograph at sunrise one morning. It’s on a winding stretch of road which is more or less the main artery through my whole area. Sometimes I pass through at normal speed, at other peak hour times I crawl past at a walking pace, but I always look at it and no matter what chatter is happening in the car or on the radio, it never fails to get my attention. This road is rarely quiet...
September 2009
4 posts
“The word nostalgia comes from a Greek word, which originally meant ‘the...”
– Don Draper, in a scene where Sterling Cooper is pitching to the George Eastman company for the ‘Carousel’ Kodak slide projector account. Mad Men, series 1, episode 13
Bring on the New Bromancing ... Mad Men & Me
This weekend my significant other is away for the weekend at a ‘Buck’s party’, leaving behind the wild weather (high winds and dust storms here) for 48 hours of non-stop football watching, beer, surfing, surfing videos, football re-runs and well, beer. The scene for these activities is a house on a beach more than several hours drive from home. This particular buck’s party...
July 2009
24 posts
“In profile he was several tonnes of magnificence, with a massive head and horns,...”
– A Walking Safari in the South Luangwa, Zambia
A walking safari in the South Luangwa
We referred to it later as The Day of the Buffalo. Our group of five set out just after sunrise on a pleasantly cool and clear morning in search of the lions we had heard calling to each other during the night. Our guides estimated they were about two kilometres away. Seasoned walkers in the South Luangwa, these pros have a level of awareness that enables them to see, hear and notice things that...
“Om Mane Padme Om”
– The original / source mantra of Sanskrit / Tibetan Buddhism. This mantra is to be repeated throughout a lifetime for maximising the effects of burning off karma with the ulimtate goal of creating no new karma for this incarnation.
“I am a simple monk. My religion is kindness”
– Tenzin Gyatsu, The Precious Jewel, His Holiness, The fourteenth Dalai Lama of Tibet
“First, do no harm.”
– Buddhist proverb.
“The problem in the human heart must first be solved”.”
– Tenzin Gyatsu, His Holiness Dalai Lama
June 2009
13 posts
From Graceland to Neverland
Woke up yesterday and in my heart I just knew that Farrah Fawcett was no longer with us. Turning on my computer, I was taken aback completely - like everyone I suppose - to see the Michael Jackson headlines. On reflection though, perhaps it was not or should not have been so unexpected that, like Elvis before him, MJ didn’t survive the age of 50. He had seemed to be heading on a...
“Said he wanted to know about my mission and my past life. He took me on long...”
– Jill Scott, Love Rain from her album ‘This is Jill Scott’
“‘This will unsettle many people. It may even disillusion us, and affect...”
– Melissa Parke MP, quoting Frank Gallop’s observations about the Bali Bombings in her speech to Parliament, 10 August, 2008
India. A love story.
I am shocked at the headlines about the Indian students who are being attacked. I just can’t understand this kind of thing. I wish I could take every mixed up and rage-mis-directed young person who is engaged in creating a race war and take them to the Taj Mahal. Maybe it would mellow them out and they would gain some understanding of one of the great civilisations on earth. India is...
“The priest, also in white with a giant pink hibiscus flower in the front of his...”
– Lousie G. Koke, ‘Our Hotel in Bali’, January Books, p.43
May 2009
35 posts
The first time...
… that you enter the gate that reveals the most photographed building in the world, you are already processing mentally all of the hundreds of images and postcards that you’ve ever seen of The Taj Mahal. It’s a picture that every child of school age sees in geography class. It’s in the window of practically every travel agency. You probably don’t know how many times...
“She was always surrounded by men: rich men, powerful men, diplomats, sheikhs,...”
– Desert Queen, The Extraordinary Life of Gertrude Bell: Adventurer, Advisor to Kings, Ally of Lawrence of Arabia by Janet Wallace (1996), (2004) Phoenix, Prologue, p.xxv