The Kalawara Farm
It hasn’t been too long since my self-declared hiatus, but I really want to post a photo.
Maybe I’ll post once a week, as a compromise. A little creativity per week is necessary, right? To keep a clear head…
This is a farm business that the Salvation Army runs near Palu, Sulawesi. It is shared by 75 farmers, who represent 75 families, and they plant, harvest, process, and benefit from the sale of the rice, corn, chocolate, and coffee that is grown on this farm. Pretty cool, and helps those who need help.
My little friend
This is Dini. She and I met yesterday at the Jonooge Primary School near Palu, Sulawesi, Indonesia. I spoke to her in my incredibly bad Bahasa Indonesia, and she stared at me. I spoke to her in my language, English, and she stared at me. I smiled and she stared at me. I walked away…and she followed me. We became friends yesterday. I don’t know what she thought I was, but she, to me, was innocence and beauty and everything worth protecting in the world.
This is Dini. My little friend.
The Team
There they are. Day 1 of the service trip to Palu, Sulawesi, Indonesia, after we landed in the Palu airport. I am supervising, along with my Head of School and his wife, and the amazing Miss Erina, a group of twelve students from my school while they extend their hand to the people of Palu.
Our school has a week wherein all the students are supposed to be working in some sort of service. My students are in Palu, working in a Primary school, two childrens’ homes (not orphanages, because not all of the children are orphans – some live in the home because their parents can’t afford to keep them, but they still have parents), an “agro bisnis”, and a school of 2000 students. All of these places are run by the Salvation Army here in Palu.
I need to clarify one major point here: it is a service week, and my students are working here, but the week is really about exposing the students to a part of their world that is unfamiliar to them. In a very real sense, my students are aware that the world does not live as they do – they are well off, they attend a private international school, they have drivers and helpers – but many of them have never experienced the world that is not like theirs. So…we are offering them an opportunity to make a connection, a personal connection, with that world. Today they met the primary school children and my students were overwhelmed by these children and their love and generosity and attention and beauty and energy. As we debriefed the day, my students couldn’t help but gush about how the day went.
Tomorrow is day three, and it looks like this trip might be life-changing, and life-affirming.
The building you see behind them, by the way, is not the Palu airport. That is the future Palu airport. The current one rivals landing next to an auction house in which everyone smokes and people jockey for your luggage as soon as you have it in your hand. Good times.
Happy Breakfast
A Starbucks Mocha Frap with a blueberry muffin. That’s what I ate for breakfast this morning, in the Soekarno-Hatta International Airport. It was delicious.
One curious thing, though: whenever I order a tall frap, I am served a grande. I don’t know why, but in a country with many small people, they only serve really big drinks at Starbucks.
Abstract Sunday
The lights at Starbucks, on a long exposure, while moving my camera from right to left at a downward thirty degree angle.
Hmm…weird.
WordPress Weekly Photo Challenge: Unique
I don’t like Photoshop effects that make a photo look unreal, unless the effect that the “photographer” is going for is something other than real. I do use it for my photos – specifically curves and levels – to change the contrast, but I try to avoid the bulk of what Photoshop offers me.
I also avoid self-portraits, or, truth be told, any photographs of me. I’d rather be behind the camera than in front of it.
Those two bits of info make this photo unique. I shot this photo of myself, then processed it by layering me on top of the background, then Gaussian blurred the background layer and switched it to black and white. Then I played with the top layer, me, a little be lowering the saturation level. Plus, it’s a photo of me.
I got my hair cut today as well, so I figured today was a good day to “shoot myself”, as it were.
Photo Friday: My Environment
One of the many anomalies in Jakarta culture – a Catholic church in a Muslim country. This is what makes my environment so interesting.
900th post…here’s a temple
I’ve already posted a photo of this temple, Tanah Lot, but I found this photo hiding amongst others and I really like the wider angle on this shot than the other that I’ve already posted.
What do you think?
Oh, and this is my 900th post…whoa…that’s a lot of photos.
A Bali God
This week has been crazy. Too many things happening at once. Don’t ask. I need to spend some time meditating. Thanks for your anticipated concern.
How’d that get up there?
I celebrated my 39th birthday today. My birthday gave me cause to contemplate my current context. I spent thirty-eight and a half years in Canada. Now that I live in Jakarta, my understanding of the lottery I unwittingly won by being born in North America has become so much better developed.
Take this photo, for instance. It is a “river” nearby to where I live, and that’s a “motorcycle” on the second floor balcony of an apartment that is adjacent to this river. This photo bothers me, and reminds me that I’ve had a pretty lucky existence.
There are many things in the photo that should bother the viewer…I’m wondering what bothers you.
The best back roads in Kemang
I’m loving the motorcycle. It gets me to roads and places I’ve not been to before. This is an alley I have been down, but I’ve never come down it from this direction. Good times.
Flower at the Duck
There is a duck restaurant in Ubud that has some great food. The name of the restaurant is “The Dirty Duck” in English, but the food is delicious, despite the name. I had some great sauces with my duck – I was the only person at my table to order duck at a duck resto – and my wife had a trio of sates that came with a small pot full of coals to keep her dish hot. It was an amazing experience.
The flowers above are growing in and around the resto. Like many things in Bali, the resto is an inside-outside dining experience. Very cool.
Monkey! MONKEY!
When we visited Ubud, Bali, Indonesia, we had the chance to go into the Monkey Forest. It is a reserve set aside especially for the local monkeys. It was…uh…interesting. Just when I thought the monkeys were kind of fun, one of them would freak out and then the whole group would go nuts.
Also, if you buy a bunch of bananas, the monkeys see you as vulnerable and easy to harm. Most people buy them thinking of some romantic notion of feeding the monkeys like they’re in a National Geographic film, but it always turns out looking like an Abbott and Costello sketch. Monkeys sprinting at the unsuspecting victim, and then the victim turning and running while throwing bananas at the monkeys, hoping to keep them from attacking. As long as it’s not happening to you, it’s really funny.
This guy just wanted to hang out. His eyes are what drew me to photograph him.
Sunrise…again
I’m just heading for a workout, but I wanted to post this. It is another angle of the beach at Taman Sari Bali on the north side of the island. I am hopeful that I can get out and take some new photos soon.
Tanah Lot Water Temple
As you can see, there is no temple in this photo. The people standing knee-deep in water are carrying offerings from the mainland of Bali (Bali is an island…does it have a “mainland”?) to the Tanah Lot temple, which is located on a small, but considerable, rock just slightly offshore.
Their numbers are due in large part to the full moon that was occurring that night…and being a religious people who put great stock in the lunar cycle, there were many, many people all around Bali bringing offerings to their temples at this time.
WordPress Photo Challenge: Beyond
The lotus flower was thought to show a level of detachment beyond that of regular people. The Bhagavad Gita says that the lotus symbolizes one whose actions are untouched by sin and who performs his duties with no attachment. At the same time, the lotus had significance in Greek mythology; the lotus, when eaten, could induce a incomparable apathy. It would take one far beyond the reality of daily routine.
This week’s Photo Challenge is “Beyond”, and this lotus flower was shot at the Pura Taman Sari in Bali.
Photo Friday: Serene
Water: so devastating and so peaceful.
This is the water temple in Bali called Tanah Lot. It is located on the Indian ocean and it is beautiful. The sound of the waves coming in is nearly hypnotic. The Hindus in the area were celebrating a full moon when we were there and they walked quietly through the water to get to the temple to make their offerings. So serene.
On the other side, the side of devastation, my city of Jakarta is still underwater. We got news today that a Kampung (village) in East Jakarta where my wife visited only last Saturday is now entirely underwater. The inhabitants had to evacuate without anything they owned, which was not much to start.
Please pray for the people of Jakarta, that they will find serenity soon.
Playing with photo processing
I took this photo a few months ago, it I downloaded an app on my iPad called Snapseed. It has a “tilt-shift” process that turned my photo of the Selamat Datang traffic circle into what looks like a miniature diorama. So fun, but so weird.
What do you think?
Photo Friday: Pattern
I love the temples in Bali. There are hundreds (thousands?) of mosques here in Jakarta, but in Bali, over 90% of the population identifies itself with Hinduism. Hindu temples all have such interesting repetition, interesting patterns in their construction. This temple, the Pura Ulun Danu Bratan water temple, shows a great example of the repetition in construction.
Yes, I’ve posted a photo of this temple before, but this was shot with my DSLR – the other was shot with my iPad. I like this one better.
A little architecture, a little graffiti
A little bit of both. This is on the corner where Kemang Raya, the main street in our neighborhood, breaks off into two one-way streets. The graffiti, as you’ve seen in the last few days, is in the wreck of a former building. Adjacent to the old building is an old hotel. It sticks out because it is one of the taller buildings in this part of Kemang.
Error…
I’m trying to think of something witty or poignant to say about this,but nothing’s coming to mind. All I can think about is that I didn’t sleep well last night and now I’m so tired that I’m lucky that breathing is a reflex.
A window on art
This is another shot from Saturday morning’s bike ride around Kemang. I like how what used to be a building frames the art that’s growing up around the area. I will say this, though: there is little more difficult than trying to figure out which horizontal line in this photo should be straight. One of the rules of a good photo is that the horizon should be straight. The problem with this photo is that there are a couple too many horizons.
I still liked it enough to post it.
How about you?
A Bali sunset…
…for the end of the first day back to school after the Christmas holiday.
That’s all. Just a sunset.
G’night.
