Hues With Me?

Foreword: Bayani Fernando aka BF has used pink to paint footbridges, bus corrals, and public urinals for high visibility. As urban legend has it, he uses pink and blue because they are his and his wife's favorite colors.

The Inquirer today printed a short editorial, calling for the rethink of pink. It seems after six-odd years of Bayani Fernando’s use of the color and one “left-leaning,” "pinko" request in congress for an formal inquiry into the matter, the Inquirer now thinks that the MMDA should reverse itself and cease and desist the use of pink.

The Inquirer Editors' rationale?

“Pink is a color commonly associated with femininity. Thus, a baby girl wears pink, a boy, blue. Soft pinks are associated with romance and the blush of a young woman’s cheeks.”

It blathers on about ribbons, breast cancer, and the pink triangle as a marker for GLBTs. In closing, the editorial argues against the color, “not only mar[ring] the city’s landscape but also violat[ing] local and international regulations on signs and signals. We agree. If compliance and discipline is the objective, why not use a more assertive color like blue?”

Color, and its power of persuasion, dear editors, is in the eye of the beholder. I fail to see the direct connection between civic and legal compliance by Filipinos and local or international color schemes. Let me edit myself: I fail to see Filipinos complying with Bawal Umihi Dito (No Pissing Here), the Ten Commandments, and less divine regulations, laws, presidential decrees, rules on decency, morality, and mea culpa, brevity.

But you, dear male editors, may be color blind, making your black and white assessment so easy to make. I, for one, am bemused but thrilled by BF’s work and his colorful attitude. I have heard many stories about the Chair’s behavior and off-color remarks during meetings, and the impression that I get is that Bayani Fernando has a vision, unlike other so-called public servants. His vision is, as you put it, “compliance and discipline” and its execution is steeled in the same. The medium is the message, as they say in communications.

Political will, to all you primary-color minded morons, comes in all hues and saturations. And while red means stop and green means go (except when Makati Mayor "Joblackma" Binay has the lights blink yellow to—in a twist of logic—chromatically remind you who is in charge) there seems to be no precedent for the color pink. Chalk it up to an “Onli in da Pillipins” thing. Paint it any way you like, but judge on merit, and not on unrelated, sexist classification, or the grey non-issue of fences, or the festering (but, apparently relaxing) green of political envy. Bayani Fernanado has done more for Metro Manila than all the black, brown, and white mayors, congressmen, and barangay chairs in his jurisdiction, combined.

One man finally has the audacity to take a stand, both on a color and on a blushing topic like Filipinos’ lack of discipline when no one is watching, and all you can think about is homosexuals and nursery rhymes? Way to think, pink.

(Now, should he run for president? That's another story altogether.)

Related article:
http://newsinfo.inquirer.net/breakingnews/metro/view/20090105-181537/MMDA-chief-tickled-pink-by-fence-critics

Why is Ka Noli so silent?

Another journalist has been gunned down in my country, this time a radio announcer from Samar. This brings to eight the count of dead journalists in this year, and 60 since Mrs Arroyo assumed power.

We, as Filipino citizens, have a responsibility to hear, see, and feel this as a grave threat against our basic freedoms.

Please, please, PLEASE email Ka Noli de Castro, our "Working Vice-President," and plead with him to speak out against these killings.

Go to Open Letter to VP de Castro and copy, edit, and send it to the feedback section of the Office of the Vice President.

Spread the word about those who speak for thousands.

Protect those who seek out information and alert the world.

Stand up for those who have god-given courage, skill, and temerity to bring you your news.

Our journalists may not always cover the things that we are most interested in. We may disagree with their views or even ridicule them for the way that they dispense them. But we cannot, as a free nation, tolerate their harassment or violent treatment, nor can we abide the inaction by local and national government in bringing the killers and the masterminds even within earshot of justice.

Take action. Email Ka Noli de Castro, and ask him to speak out against these killings and for him to take action, too.

Go to Open Letter to VP de Castro and copy it, edit it, and send it to our "Working Vice-President." (http://www.ovp.gov.ph)

You can also scroll down my notes here on FB to find the same letter. This is a simple act that can affect us all. God knows, killing journalists is already changing our nation into the second most dangerous place for journalists, only after Iraq.

For the record, please leave a comment here so that people can see that we don't turn deaf ears and blind eyes to these crimes. Feel free to post this on your FB page or wherever.

As a writer, I thank you. - Carlos

RTR 08 - WEB POSTER

Link

Solb na ang transpo

RTR 08 - WEB POSTER

Link

Solb na ang transpo

0-1-0

Fundamentally, every digital device as we know it is created from binary code, 0/1, which really means On/Off or closed-/open-circuit. This is in tangent to the article on NSA encryption reevaluation that I just read, but as I was fascinated by it, I remembered all the times that I realize that I have no idea how the world works. We've built such a comfortable sconce of things, mechanical marvels and angels pirouetting on microchips, machines that service machines, and pulsating energy, mere information! that actually forms virtual things—quite literally unclaspable facsimiles, concepts held over from our recent history and obsolete memory; of pen and ink, fire and stone, oral history, music, and life with yet uninspired, insinuated lungs.

That we have technologies literally built one on top of the other like some haphazard, damn-the-future-archaeolog

ists-who-will-root-through-this-for-their-PhD-on-some-digital-genealogy-course way is simply stunning.

(I read another article on a new search engine that is trying to one-up—or down—google etc by accepting loooooooong strings of text to find specific articles. Apparently, the google search system has loopholes in that it has a 32-keyword limit, it finds data based on popularity, and others, all of which—according to the creators of this new technology—only fetches 1% of all internet content. Therefore, there is a hundred times more internet than we lay people imagine or have come in contact with. The concept of this search is called deepdyve. )

While I abhor the use of "literally" when people oft mean "virtually," or "metaphorically speaking," or "exaggeratingly yours, Helen," we are at the cooling point of the melding universe of our creation. "Virtual" and "real" are solidifying, the duality is such that floating bits of information can be shooed away and stirred to life like phosphorescent plankton displaying its utmost fragility.

I made a prediction in front of a Facebook worker in Cafe Bean on Sutter St: the next major terrorist attack won't be an A-bomb in a football stadium parking lot during halftime. It will be digital, maybe an EMP, it will decimate our digital lives, and for a second, everyone will stop, tap their mouses, try to scroll, reboot, and give up. Some will give up. Some will inevitably make new stuff up from a DOS floppy disk that he saved and framed for nostalgic purposes. I guess that's why we should all keep a hammer handy.

Hoy! Gising!

Another journalist slain brings up the number of deaths since GMA's 2001 ascendance to the presidency to 54. (Click to read the The Age article.)

As grievous a loss of precious life as this is, this is more alarming when we see that the Philippines is the most dangerous place to work as a journalist, second only to Iraq.

These are not victims of bad spelling, punctuation, or mixed metaphors. These, almost to a victim, are reported to be critical of the rampant, RAMPANT corruption in the Philippines.

Let it be known that Vice President Noli de Castro was one of the most popular news anchorpersons in the Philippines since press freedom was reinstituted after the fall of the Marcos dictatorship.

What does the Veep have to say about this? He had a TV show, "Hoy Gising!" which means, "Hey! Wake Up!" which exposed ineffective governance. I used to watch this a LOT growing up and I know that most Filipinos did, too.

And now, no one can sound the call to government leaders and concerned citizenry alike, not only because they are dead, but because they are being terrorized to death. Contact VP Noli "Kabayan" de Castro ("countryman") to urge him to publicly comment on this and take steps to find the murderers of his fallen colleagues.

Copy, edit, and paste the letter below and visit http://www.ovp.gov.ph/ to send "the working vice president" a Hoy! Gising! email.

=======letter begins=======

Dear Kabayan, Vice President Noli de Castro,

Throughout the years, we have looked up to you as a patriot and a voice for us all who suffered the slow movement of justice and progress. As a young man, you joined DWWW in an era when it was heroic to simply wear the press badge, and it was unthinkable to speak out and stand up against the strangling administration of Marcos and his cronies.

Years later, after a fruitful period of liberty and nationalism, you became the golden voice of Filipino news.

Your run for the Senate (as an independent, a lone voice amidst the machinery of vote-buying and election swindling) you were supported by 16 million Filipinos when you ran for Senator.

When you won, you authored Senate Bill No. 2029 or the "Local Government Transparency Act" which aimed to end corruption through transparency measures in the local government units.

Today, your responsibilities include looking out for OFWs and the working class' housing opportunities and more as Head of the National Price Coordinating Council.

But what we need now, Kabayan Vice President, is help in securing press freedom and vigilance against corruption and poor governance, as you once did in your days with DZMM and ABSCBN. The Philippines ranks the highest in journalist deaths, second only to a war zone, Iraq. Surely, you remember the fear of retribution when you uncovered and reported on irregularities and inaction in your time as the most popular and influential newsman in the Philippines.

We need your voice and your action again today to stop the violence against journalists who are alerting our countrymen to the misdeeds of our elected officials. Please make a statement denouncing these killings and intimidation of the greatest symbol of our liberty, the right to free speech.

Your historic Senate Bill 2029 will be useless if the transparency you advocated will be overshadowed by fear and stained with the blood of your fallen colleagues. Please act on their behalf, as they have acted on the behalf of the Filipino people.

Sincerely,
Your name here

====letter ends=====

Copy, edit, and paste this onto the comment field on http://www.ovp.gov.ph/

"Evil prevails when good men do nothing."

An OpenLetter2.0 to ABS-CBN (A Philippine News Organization)

An OpenLetter2.0 is a letter that you can copy, edit, and send to the prescribed recipients to add your voice to the content of the letter. By swarming the recipient with the same letter or sentiment, we can show that we are watching, thinking, and acting.

Carlos

=======letter begins==========

Please stop comparing Jojo Binay (or any aspirant-du-jour) to Barack Obama. Obama is an outsider who is promising change in business-as-usual Washington. Binay has used his wife and, sure enough, his son to get around term limits and perpetuate his hold on Makati. Makati, despite being the highest revenue earning city in the Philippines, is still Manila-as-usual with undisciplined policemen, traffic enforcers, and PUV drivers. If not for Ayala's high property values and the trickling down from Binay's "pro-poor" projects, he would have been voted out a long time ago.

send to: feedback@abs-cbnnews.com

Abstinence As An Option

Prop 8, California's vote on whether 'marriage' can be applied to couples of the same sex, should never have been put on the ballot. Again: since when has life and love been something to debate? It is indeed a cruel world thrust upon our generation—and generations before—where we align ourselves on the death penalty, abortion, and now, same-sex marriage upon such a simplistic Either/Or tableau.

What is on the ballot IS NOT, "Do mothers have the right to kill their unborn child?"

It IS NOT, "Is homosexuality deviant and therefore an affront to what 'marriage' or 'family' is?"

It IS NOT, "Does a heinous crime warrant the ultimate punishment?"

What IS on the ballot is fear, mistrust, intolerance, an insecurity that society will not support ME when my life is in others' hands.

If you voted, whether 'yea' or 'nay', the fact that our capacity as humans to show compassion and solidarity is defined by a show of hands is an indictment of us all. We will point fingers long after any decision is made, because a decision was foolishly required.

California should have abstained on this. Unfortunately, the excitement that "my vote" really mattered in a historic election bubbled over into a giddiness that overlooked voters' ability to—in case of defeat—accept the democratic outcome. After all, you could practically hear the marching band on Election Day playing "If God Be With Us, Who Can Be Against Us?"

This is one case where snubbing the ballot would have drummed just as loudly, if not louder.

Nervousness

I've been feeling
a nervousness
ka-thump ka-thump

accelerated heartbeat

signaling

flight
or is it fight?

Ever since Sunday
My last Fare-Thee-Well
A mix of Footie and Bbq
Old friends and new
and some I barely knew
Some I expected but never came
Some I hoped would
ka-thump
ka-thump
but wouldn't

That's when I felt
nervous
out of control

It is Wednesday today
And I have seen stars
A planetarium filled with gaping eyes and glinting eyeteeth
and stars

(It is Tuesday
And I saw the moon, waning above a silver beach
and mdma within reach
Mellow yellow I stared into the bonfire
relaxed
kaaaaaaathump—too relaxed)

And it's Wednesday
and I'm
ka-nervous-thumpthump

Is it a residual high
brought on by the sun disappearing into an artificial vanishing point on a domed ceiling?
Is it the sensation of standing and tilting into a digital sky?
(Oh Planet-are-you'm, ka-thump, ka-boom)

Tethered mind
tie gone slack
today you are taut
s t r e t c h e d
to reasonable limits
under navigable forces that command black holes
and the ambiguity of Me
My here and there though neither at once
In quadrophenic stasis
I feel as though I feel
everything
hence, I guess
the nervousness

Ka-thump

For nothing ka-thump
really changes ka-thump
Time doesn't travel ka-thump
Life follows no lines ka-thump
The miniverse ka-thump
Nor the universe ka-thump
neither expands ka-thump
nor collapses ka-thump
as it matters to us ka-thump
Even the oceans ka-thump
on a slow boil ka-thump
shall not affect ka-thump
the grand ka-thump
grand ka-thump
grand scheme of things

In here, in consciousness and knowledge, there is no light and dark. Only movement.
And there is no justice, no judgment.

Just

A Hearbeat.

Implosions of Faith

Wall Street crashes to the lowest point since 9/11 as banks collapse from rotten housing loans as foreclosure claims 7,000 homes a day.

In other news, Al Qaeda is reported to be imploding from a lack of support from its key constituency, mostly intact Muslims, who are frustrated that the radical group victimizes its own people.

Coincidence? Parallel? Green and red wires to the same bomb? Was bin Laden heavily invested in Merrill Lynch?

Maybe this would be a good time for the Taliban to look to a new demographic that is frustrated with capitalist greed: Americans.

Recruiting wouldn't be a hard sell. There's a property boom in the mountains of Pakistan, Osama's HQ, but I doubt it's the place Uncle Freddie and Aunt Frannie would want to move.

You get a great retirement plan. And more or less, Americans that are getting screwed by the housing crisis already speak the language.

hyprecise

Won't you be my girl sally

The Police Live, Boston

best drums ever. just listen to the kick

Dead Ahead

"Hulloa!" is what I call out to pedestrians and car drivers when I can see that they're not looking. This usually happens after they have looked down a street and see no glare of headlights or taillights and presume that the street is clear. Granted, that here in San Francisco, pedestrian is king, but this is a democracy, and therefore, common sense rules over assumed rights.

I've come down the hills of the Haight towards Van Ness at near-midnight in a cold wind and have had to almost come to a stop for a group of 15 crossing the road, if not for the pleasurable experience of having pedestrians stop for me, giving me right of way. "An optimist," Tim Coppola quips, "is a San Franciscan who looks only one way when crossing a one-way street."

A candidate for the Darwin Awards, my boss would probably say, is a person who crosses Market Street before the walk sign goes green, and still fails to look in the direction of traffic.

As you might have guessed, I did make unwanted contact recently with a pedestrian. It was on the east side of Market at New Montgomery. Here's what happened:

I had just crossed Third and was coasting towards New Montgomery; the light always turns red before I get to the intersection. By some chance, the light held at green for longer than usual, and the bike lane/right turn into NM was clear of cars.



I decide to gun it. I look up at the light and it was still green. My peripheral vision says there are no cars counter-flowing up NM and I make a last check that there moving obstructions coming down Montgomery or Post.


And that's when I saw him. He was on the far end of the North-South pedestrian lane, stepping onto the street before the No Walk had turned to Walk. He was looking straight ahead or at his PDA. Not at me. I'm the yellow cut-out below. He's the blue spot on the street.


I shout out He-llow! which maybe I should not have done and instead, should just have tried to avoid him, but instinct kicked in and told me I should give him a heads-up. Naturally he backed right into my path. It's like Neo visiting the Oracle in her apartment. Did I foresee the act of fate happen or did I cause it by foreseeing it and calling attention to it. Either way, it happened.

The green splash is where I hit him. How do I know this? Because I got knocked off my bike and stumbled into the dark green newspaper dispenser on the right, where I audibly whacked! my bike helmet. (If you don't wear a helmet, don't bike. Especially in traffic.)


I'm still on my feet and so is my khaki-garbed obstacle, probably still in a sugar and saturated fat from the McDonald's blueberry bacon muffin (store on the right). I steel myself and turn to him, "Watch where you're going, man!"

At this point there are 4 or 5 other pedestrians who are looking at the otherwise comedic aftermath. When I say what I said, they all say, "You ran a red light!"

No way, sirs, ma'ams. If I ran a red light—and red lights on this intersection are synchronized with the crossing green lights—then how come I ran into McFatty 20 feet away from the street corner and not into them???

This is approximately where I stood (albeit more to the left). The big circle is Sleepy the Street Crosser, and the small ones are the ones that I dodged by some miracle of translocation and invisibility. Look at how far this point is from the intersection. I clearly had at least a half second through the intersection before the light turned red.

Ah well, it is a moot point now. Everyone is safe and sound, and though I haven't inspected my bike for damage yet, it's run well to 25th in the Mission and back to the TL, where I live, so No Blood, No Foul.

The only point I want to make here is if you wish to live in a safe environment, it doesn't happen by doing less of something like paying attention; it happens with vigilance, awareness, and common sense.

The Light at the End of the Metaphor

Just when I had bought CFL light bulbs, I got hit with the news. In a switch, The INS has turned that 'Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses' into 'Give me your lucky, your 1 of 3.'

You know that flame that rides atop Her Ladyship Liberty's cone? I wanted to replace that flame with a compact florescent. I wanted something long-lasting. It would save money and it was the right thing to do. Mother would approve of the low wattage, and I had found that IKEA ones have a mild glow that almost incandesce.

So there I was, looking to the future; five, maybe ten years that we could watch that baby burn and see whether the music, when it's over, herald the light's adieu.

Instead it was the "I" in the INS's invisible I N K , that would make my legal goodbye legible, and would make the inevitable flip of the script.

Five dollars for each bulb. A social experiment meant to accrue the due, passing the savings on to—me, true. But now what am I to do? Post a personal on craigslist? "Expedited expatriate needs to pass the torch; they passed on me so I'm passing the savings on to you; fully paid; some installment necessary; ask not which Watt! what you can do is ask rather what your country has done for you."

"Give me your tired, your poor and huddled masses." With luck, they won't pass the dim bulbs onto you. Just the ones that last and pay you back.

My agency's commitment to social responsibility

One of the main pillars of Wikreate as "360° communications meets social networking" is the establishment of our commitment to our community. Our concept of social networking goes beyond having business relationships with professionals in advertising.

Our goal is also to strengthen corporate social responsibility and give back—or in the case of our newest pro bono project, help NGOs like the Ayala Foundation, USA (AFUSA) give back.

AFUSA and GILAS

Ayala Foundation's shining star right now is GILAS (Gearing Up Internet Literacy Access for Students) which is designed to provide internet to the Phillippines' 6300 public schools. As of May 8, 2008, GILAS has connected 1,750 public schools, giving hundreds of thousands of students a chance to go beyond the dusty trails that lead away from their home towns.

The Philippines is an archipelago of 7,107 islands at low tide. But topography is not the only barrier to solving the lack the web connection. A shortage of funds, and an abundance of mismanagement and bureaucracy in national and local government makes it difficult to deliver the most basic services to 90 million Filipinos. Computers and pipes and tubes is forced low on the list of priorities.

Ayala Corp and Ayala Foundation, Inc., are strong advocates of civic duty, ethical business practice, and grassroots development to improve the lives of the people. It is because of these high standards and care for others that we are proud to make their mission our own.

The importance of internet activity to Wikreate

The experience and success of Wikreate relies heavily on the internet. It allows us to conduct business with suppliers abroad, deliver creative solutions instantaneously, and keep in touch with friends and news sources. The wiki platform is a new, powerful tool that allows more, open, and fresh work between collaborators that is as rich as the bench of players is deep. Such is the Web2.0 mentality that, face it or not, will rule the offline world as well as the online.

For this GILAS project, the media is the message and the message is:

* Connecting the best and the brightest volunteers
* Shining light on the undiscovered
* Teaching the underprivileged, and,
* Giving hope to the near-forgotten islands of poverty.

Wikreate's call to action

There are 3.5 million Filipinos in the US. Presently, half of these are living in California. The challenge is to reach these using little more than AFUSA's database of 7,000 emails, a smattering of volunteer groups on Yahoo! groups, and the tools that will open up the hearts and minds of the new generation of Americans who have ties, or once had ties, to the Philippines.

Seven thousand contacts. Seven thousand, one hundred seven islands. At low tide.

A connection with the past

I didn't know whether I've said this in a previous blog, but whether I have or not, it doesn't matter because what I'm about to say is true.

I've missed the intentional and oft invasive manner of the Egyptians. People that you meet on the street will take your hand and be your best friend for at least as long as it takes to make a sale. Like I told my friend, the cosmopolitan universe of Egypt has lasted long before there were steamships to take white people over there. Ever since the Romans were expanding their frontiers and coming home and made a detour before they arrived to their mothers and wives, they passed by the oldest city in the world to experience something older than they.

Because of this environment—this constant motion of strangers through their land—their behavior has been influenced to accept and accommodate the influx of tourists and people from far away entranced by the history. The resilience of those who live in its shadow, and the transient nature of its survival, is an energy in and of itself, generating the fascination from within.

They speak many languages in Egypt (although getting into a taxicab whose driver doesn't speak a word of English or Filipino except for 'Coca Cola' isn't rare at all, so check and double check your transportation's multiliguisticality applications) and hawkers and touts on the street will not stop at rattling off some Romance or Baltic tongue to wow you into buying something.

This is not ever to say that all Egyptians you meet are marrying you off to their sister, brother, goat, or date palm). I guess that depending on their social status and the nature of their business, some will befriend you because networking is as (or more) important to them than the fast buck that they may or may not make depending on how fast they are or gullible you are. For example, I befriended this bunch of gentlemen, Aly Baba and his son, Hussien, and nephew, who ran a restaurant in Luxor. A great and educated bunch, they welcomed me with the class and suave of international men of mystery. They are certainly into being your friends for the long haul. People like these, whom you can make a mental, emotional, and/or philosophical promise to hold dear and are likewise throwing themselves into your path, as a fellow tourist of Life itself, are the ones you should keep.

People who have 6,000 years of heritage have no misgiving about eternal life and the issuing religions that market this wondrously incongruous concept. More than anything, the transience that they see in the everyday is but a 24-hour cycle of their God, Ra. So fleeting, so predictable, so essential, but so insignificant. The mere occurrence of the sunrise and sunset can never live up to the presence of the life-giving spirit.

If you're unsure about people, and their intentions, maybe you should go to Egypt, and get the depth and breadth of sincerity, warmth, and love that has existed fall this time.


I traveled on the Nile for 2 days like this, just drifting with the ancient tide.


Thanks to GNU/Wikipedia for this image

The Biking 351st

I have always envied cyclists, in-line skaters, skateboarders, and to a lesser extent, skiers, snowboarders, and surfers.

Independence has always been HUGE for me. Be it that I was over protected, the youngest of five children, or raised with a sense of pride that grows without the benefit of sunlight, I have always—will always—want to do some things entirely on my own. Biking is the perfect example of this innate desire; as of this month, now known as "The Biking 351st" and heretofore known as "April," I am an independent traveler.

I went to Egypt all by myself last September and the mix of fear and excitement still fills me whenever I look down at the mid-cuts that I wore from Cairo to Dahab. I wore those shoes out good. And along with the fear and excitement swells a sadness. A sadness that all my walking in this nascent West Coast City will destroy these shoes and render them more decrepit than the 4,000 year-old rock, stone, and sand formations that it climbed. And where I am now—it is the farthest that one can go from that first step of civilization without crossing a dateline and being sent back to it. I will preserve these shoes as I pedal myself on to much newer, but ironically, more familiar things.

I first took a journey completely alone when I was a child of but 11. We lived in a suburb called San Juan in Metro Manila, about 10 miles from the financial and medical heart of the city, Makati. The reason I mention the word medical is that my mom went into surgery to remove her cataracts in a procedure that nowadays would be considered obsolete, even archaic. She was bedridden and blind for days, gauze pads over her eyelids. On the first day of her surgery, a summer in 1990, I went out of my house. Walked about 300 meters to the busy traffic in Pinaglabanan, and boarded my first jeepney solo. At EDSA, I had to find a bus that advertised my destination: Ayala.

Different modes of travel force you to think vastly differently. Driving or riding a ca, we think of one way roads, intersections, and signal lights. On buses, we think of landmarks, bus stops, and transfers for our way back. Walking, we think of shortcuts, diagonal lines, holes in cyclone wire fences.

I picked up a Japanese proverb in Egypt, "He who travels alone travels fastest." Riding my bike around the city has given me a whole new perspective of the streets and the people and the traffic. For now I have to look out for both pedestrian and automotive traffic. I also have to look at landmarks, intersections, but I also have to look out for potholes, inclines, Muni streetcar tracks, opening doors from parked cars. I also have to learn not to look when a car zips right by me with six inches to my left. But as with all my modes of transport, I have learned to love the independence, the mobility, and now, the pleasure of wind in my face, the levitation from the hard, dirty pavement, the autonomy expressed in speed, my contribution to being a responsible member of my planet, these are things that are unequaled by walking, driving, or riding a bus. I am a singing, smiling, sustainable development on two wheels, healing scabs and all.

HFR (How Random)

The timbre of a bell in a fire alarm is equal to or more than the sound of the firefighters' arrival. I learned this this morning, at 2:49. I had some friends over and we were just winding down when a persistent ring rang through the apartment like a banshee in your head. I walked out, confused, wondering whether it were a prank. But the smell of something burning told me it was something creeping up. My neighbor he told me to call 911 and I got on the phone and called and beat on doors and walked down the building trying to get people awake and some did and told them to get out of the building and stay low and told the lady the address and told her there was a fire between the second and third floors and while I was knockin on doors almost walked into this apartment on the floor I will not identify. It was a couple who had burned some food real bad.

And I was like, It smells like smoke in here. Is it coming from here? I said. And they were like, yeah we burned some food, and I said, you burned some food? I said. And they said, yeah, we burned, like, food, like it was nothing. in the meantime, I walk downstairs to get out and the firemen storm in and usher in the first sense of sense in the night, telling them, it was burned food, and telled them where.

I lingered long enough to watch them disable the fire alarm and fiddle with the hallway emergency switch before I thanked them and went up and rejoined my party, who had by then, as you would imagine, were thoroughly spooked out by this strict confluence of events.

When the firemen arrive, I tell you, and you are still alive so that you can see them walking in all calm and shit, you are saved. That is the time to give praise. The whole event was so surreal though. Like, as I would use to like to call it, a Reader's Digest Drama in Real Life story.

Big fan of Reader's Digest, by the way. If you have kids, let them read that. It's got comedy, articles, pictures, and Drama in Real Life. Great bathroom reading.

What is Blogged and Written and Read all over?

So I was going over my friend's blog on interesting things about China. One of the
more interesting ones in this specific entry were the mis-signed announcements all around that one would need tae bo like stretches of the imagination.

To be fair, one must understand that the difference between Chinese and English languages is huge. Most of the western world uses letters that represent phonemes. The letters construct our words into primarily sounds and, secondly, textual signs (one must sound out a word to begin the association between the letters c-a-t and the clawed feline).

For the Chinese (apparently) it's a combination of pictures (like the hieroglyphs of Egypt) and phonetic complexes that consist of semantic elements that indicate meaning and phonetic elements that "arguably once indicated pronunciation."

That said, for a Chinese sign-maker to even begin to translate "Floor is slippery when wet" from Chinese to Engrish, he would probably have actually lose his footing on some slick pavement, knock himself upside on the head, and then write down the first English words that bounce around in his brain. Hence, this sign.

This phenomenon of mis-signing isn't endemic to China. My travels to Egypt were sandwiched between two trips to London, England. The brits themselves have a peculiar manner of expression that positively delights the lexophile in me in their expert use of the language in the observance of brevity and economy, and possibly, a shortage of sign-effective paint.

To wit



Reads: This building is alarmed. Could it have been too much trouble to say instead, This building is equipped with an alarm system. Or perhaps, This building has several klaxons waiting for their heroic moment.



From now on, I guess, it's okay to call homosexuals telephones. (n.p.i.)

Is it too late for a foreword?

Clicking over the photo will bring you to my flikr.com photocollection


Hey, everybody. I don't mean to mislead anyone. I am not in Egypt or England or anywhere else except in the heart depository, San Francisco. I have been back for more than 2 months, I think, and it's time to start updating this blog. I've had a lot of time to think about the things that I discovered about myself and the moments abroad that caused the catalysis in my life.

It's hard to write beyond the actual events that happened to me over there without it getting laborious, extremely personal, and probably dangerous for the government. (That is, the government of my soul, of which I am president for life, parole officer, and animal waste manager.) But I will endeavor to make a soulful account of the happenings in my life. I want to make it more interesting than a simple slideshow of the things that I saw, ate, and confronted with the five senses God gave me.

The vacation, I feel after all, is but a mirror of the journeys that we make on our own and in our souls. The stories are identical—tales of loneliness, happiness, sharing, caution, a taste for danger—what we do with our lives on the outside is merely our expression of our innermost desires and quests.

The experiences are parallel, for what happens to us out there and in the physical have an impact on our psyche, our souls, and the banks of our tales and wisdom processed and still to be mulled.

The person that actually goes on the journey on the outside is differentiated from the pilgrim who is moving through the less visceral aspects of life only on the level of censorship that we ourselves institute using the our physical bodies as barriers and masks to obscure full expression. Sometimes however, we censure even within, and no acreage ever gets covered substantially.

That said, it's time to start writing about what REALLY happened; to give meaning to a series of events that stretch not only from August 10th to September 11th (which are the dates of my departure and arrival on this particular vacation) but to life in general, using photos from the vacation as a seed that germinates and flowers with memories and insights into my life.

Coptic Cairo

Cairo is broken up into several parts, just like any city, really. Like here, in San Francisco, there is the Tenderloin, where I and a couple of crack addicts lihispanicsve. There's North Beach, which is the Italian quarter, and there are other ghettos like the Russian/Chinese ghetto (Richmond, not to be confused with Chinatown), there's the college student ghetto, there's the white yuppie ghetto, and then there's the Mission, where the latinos stay and tolerate the encroachment of their territory.

Back to Egypt. Coptic Cairo was one of the first places I visited. After having arrived at my Hostel, the Lialy at 4 in the morning and woke up at 9, raring to go, I got my ISIC card. This saved me tons of money since it gives students (and teachers) discounts--up to 50% in the sites like pyramids.

I walked a lot that morning, choosing to take in polluted, congested, and cloudless Cairo by foot. I walked about 5 large blocks until I gave up, had really no idea where I was going, and jumped into a cab. The cab drivers in Egypt are a crazy sort. You can't really tell in the following video, because I probably got into the most sober driver in all of Egypt, but they are phanatical about using their tooters!

There was one time when I was in miserable Dahab at around 4 in the morning looking for a hostel that I could afford, when our cab was on this long stretch of empty highway (which pretty much sums up Dahab) and the guy could not stop honking his horn. No joke. Not a soul in sight, not a car crossing our path, not a sheep or goat to make the constant petting of his tooter justified. And! here's the kicker. Nobody uses headlights there. Ask anyone. Sure, maybe when there's a truck or bus bigger than theirs, they will put on their headlights. But once they have passed each other, they go back off. Don't ask me. I was just a stranger there who could not speak Arabic enough to say ”Watch the F*%$ out!”



So after getting my ID card, I crossed a little foot bridge that went over the Nile and after having lunch on one of those floating restaurants that you see below, I walked over to Coptic Cairo. Not before, however, getting mildly lost (a novelty for me still, at that time) and wandering into the poorer quarters of Egypt with dusty streets, mangy dogs, people conducting domestic business in the open air. I think I saw a goat wandering around, too.



I didn't take any photos, sorry, but I don't really like calling attention to myself by calling attention to people as if they were some sort of attraction. Suffice it to say, though, that they were kids just as any kids should be—playing in the streets and running around in flip flops, some barefoot, wearing their white kaftans (is that what they're called?).

I didn't need to break out my camera, however, to be singled out and gawked at. But still, I would just the same avoid stopping to look at people and take pictures of them going about their business as if to say that in my world, I did the same thing but not in such squalid conditions.

Finally, I got to Coptic Cairo at about noon, which is wonderful on your first day in a country that is so dry that even though it’s 101°F, you’re not sweating as much as you logically should. You do learn to walk a little slower and appreciate a whisper of wind against the back of your neck.

But the area was nice with some shady trees by the roadside. It was really just a couple of streets with historic churches, mosques, and Jewish temples lined up one after another. Some of them, at least the Church of St George, boasts being the oldest Church in Egypt.









I didn't get as educated as I should have. There were guided tours of other churches, which I declined, but I was just content to look around and marvel at the architecture and the interior. The photos you see above are of St George. Notice the relief of the Saint slaying the dragon. In one part of the church, there were artifacts that showcased the methods of torture employed by the Christians during the inquisition or their campaigns into Africa. Quite gruesome.

Above is the interior, which is quite beautiful, with terribly high ceilings and great stained glass windows that were amazing against the rich dark wood of the church. There was no tour of this place, and apparently, it’s a church rarely used, since it’s so old.