#week51 - Ideal Mistake

51st Week of the Year 2019.

I am writing this on Friday the 49th week of 2020. I’m also planning on catching up on all the whole week year.

Woah! I am terrified writing these words. I’ll try.

Going through photos, I learn a lot. Amazing what a tiny hobby can bring you. I strongly encourage everyone to have one. One that involves a form of art, whatever that may be to you. Writing this now, which was not the original idea, makes me wonder what art really is. Personally, something I never understood. Being rather left-brained, I never considered myself to have the creative spark. Want to draw a blank in my head? This is how you do it.

Imagine walking in the fields, following the pathway to avoid stepping over any of the wheat crops. You stop, and look around. You notice the field, the vast expanse of it. You wonder what it feels like being on the other side of the pathway. What would happen if you stepped in there? You don’t know if you could get hurt, you don’t know what’s in there. You see the stems and leaves but also something spiky at the top. You have a superficial sense of what’s above the ground but you have no idea if it is on the same level or not, whether there are animals, rats, snakes, or maybe mud. You look at it and you feel grounded, lock in place. You breathe. You look up to the sky and notice how beautiful it is. Just as beautiful as everywhere around you and yet you feel there is something more. That’s when you notice that everything is illuminated with the same beautiful light coming from the sun in the distant sky above the mysterious fields. 

This isn’t what I would call a good frame nor one I would normally share. The story of it all is why I chose to haha 😄And probably because when I look at it closely, the family’s facial expressions always leave me staring in wonder with a smile, particularly the little boy.

You see I felt frustrated at what it could have been but isn’t. Something, as much as I struggle with it, I do not control. “Frustration arises from the perceived resistance to the fulfillment of an individual's will or goal and is likely to increase when a will or goal is denied or blocked” (Thanks Wiki 😉). Me? Same same. I was too focused on the ideal photo I should have captured. I saw only the faults in them, the wrong composition, the out of focus subject, the setting…just argh! *points-gun-to-head-and-bam!* Am I wired this way? Hell knows. I shared this photo, accepted it was a failed shot and learned that some pictures can make me feel like that. And the sooner I realize that, the sooner I can see it for what it is and do something. The faster I can go from feeling like shit for not capturing the ideal shot to constructively self-criticizing, the sooner I can try again. Making the ideal mistake. Ridiculous? Maybe. I went back to this photo so many times even though I always set it as “rejected” in my catalogue.

How can something so flawed and so imperfect be anything good right? Haha

Just like that? The glass half empty is now half full. Being strict with ourselves to strive for something is great! But self-imposed standards should not be so strict as to become barriers and miss on the-not-so-obvious thing. Shot on 5/18/19, and last wrote about it in February.

Here’s the raw image.

#week50 - Beauty to Behold

This photograph was taken on the same day as the previous black & white photo I posted on this blog. I was practically standing in the same spot. You can check the other from #week46 to compare and you’ll recognize the surrounding. Same day, same place.

You see, when walking around the city with my camera, I’m usually looking at things, thinking about what I see, what’s there and what’s not, a touch of imagination in between somewhere and capturing the moment. The thing though, is that all this is only from my perspective. I love taking photos, I love sharing them and I love telling the story behind them. I’ll be honest, when I took this photo, I had mixed feelings. I had missed the moment I wanted to freeze, when the girl was looking ahead and taking the first step. I remember it very well and I felt a “meh” moment because I didn’t get it. You get over that feeling rather quickly though since it’s always there and there are always moments you miss getting a photo of and that’s okay with me. That’s where memory kicks in. When we stopped to look at the photos of that day, Maria had an instant reaction to this one. She found it so beautiful, particularly the girl. She said it several times, and I remember looking at her from the corner of my eye, the lively expression on her face, the smile, as she repeated how pretty the girl was. I loved her comment. I loved that she shared that with me and I loved how genuine it was. I understood what she meant and what she was seeing. I felt it. Suddenly this mixed feeling I had about this photo was replaced by a feeling of joy for having captured that which pleased my beloved, for she shared her excitement with me, which in turn made me feel the same. It became a very meaningful picture for me, one to which I became attached immaterially. For her birthday, it was one of the photos I printed and framed as a present. Although, I believe she preferred the original one which you can see here below, without any edits.

I decided to share this because it has had an impact on how I view photos. The whole process. At first I thought I knew what I liked in them and what I didn’t, and jeez did I limit myself. All it takes is a small paradigm shift, and I mean a tiny one, to have a broader perspective on the subject. Most likely it is something I would not welcome from just anybody. When your loved one shares even a speck of your passion, however, it’s one of the most wonderful feelings. It is for me. There’s more in what you see than you think. You look at this very same thing and yet you try to experience it, see it and feel it from the other person’s perspective. You welcome it. Resistance is nonexistent. To go from “meh” to joy in an instant, that’s all it takes sometimes. You see beauty where you didn’t before. As the saying goes “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. I couldn’t possibly relate more to this idea than through this

Open your eyes, you’ll see more.

Open your mind, you’ll sense more.

Open your soul, you’ll feel more.

Beauty to Behold

R

#week49 - Chicken Run!

You see dirty I see clean.

Around this time of the year, Maria and I decided to start cooking more frequently at home. We are both foodies with the additional perk of me loving to cook. Cooking for her is always a pleasure! I was lucky enough to have the best compliment I could ever dream of when making her my shrimps with garlic butter sauce🍤which she put high on her list of favorite dishes, right next to her moms! What an honor!🤩However, grocery shopping in the local supermarkets, the likes of City Mart and Marketplace, always seemed a bit steep. I work in food & beverages so i knew that we were getting ripped off, often for below standard quality produce. Seriously, you go to those places and you can find the meat turned green & smelly, the veggies dry and the salad looked like it spent one too many hours sunbathing 😆With a touch of exaggeration of course, but you get the picture…

We decided to give local markets a try. It’s where we found the best local products, meat, fish, all of it! You can bargain the price, you get to choose which one you want, you get 20+ happy smiles during your shopping experience (something even the most expensive luxury shop in the world cannot give you), you interact with the people, they genuinely smile at you and welcome you, foreigners shopping in their local neighborhood market, and you go back home satisfied and in good spirits! What more do you want? You go to spend money and you feel richer on your way back home! No better way to put that. Damn, my dad will be proud of me if he reads this 😂 I loved going to the market with him as a kid to get fruits, cakes and “alouda”; a sweet milk based cold beverage with psyllium, agar (a jelly like substance), vanilla extract and some pink food coloring, because let’s face it, which 6 year old (or oldie for that matter) wants to drink white milk from the market. Everything is better in pink😛But carrying the bags and waiting for him to choose the perfect tomatoes, potatoes and a whole list of veggies that can put me to sleep to this day was simply a pain in the a$$! Sorry pap, love you❤️

If you’re wondering why I started this post with that sentence, keep reading. Basically, in Myanmar, hygiene, especially food hygiene, is not a forte. You may go to a tea shop as well as a good restaurant and you never know when you might come out with a waterfall through your butt crack 🌋Imagine that!😈No but seriously, it’s a thing here. And eating outside can also be tiring after some time, not to say that I have tried all restaurants in town, but that feeling when you miss a home cooked meal..aah!🥗 Like I said, the expensive places, the supermarkets, are to me personally, no good for buying food. Except maybe pasta. The local markets are a treasure trove if you enjoy finding and choosing your own products. You get it fresh, you clean it well, you cook it delicious and pray you don’t fall asleep on your plate by the time you’re done. Believe me, this can happen😅 Our first time buying meat was in a market off the side of the road in Yangon. We went to look for an apartment and came back with nothing but a dead chicken. It was the biggest kitchen I ever bought! At least 5-6kg, with the head, legs and everything on. The only missing thing that made it stand out from traditional chickens was the feathers and the running around🐓💨💨We got that, went back home, and I was in for 5 hours straight of cooking; on the menu was coconut chicken curry, chicken teriyaki, grilled chicken legs, slow cooked chicken breasts and a chicken soup. We had enough food for a week! No eating outside, no being sick, no missing home meals. Damn that was awesome!

Side joke: I’m sitting at work and I hear the following “country road, take me home…”🎵📢 This is a sign! It must mean I’m on the right track 😂Try listening to it while reading this.

The lady pictured here was preparing our chicken. Of course we didn’t make it early, being the pandas 🐼that we are. We arrived there when they were about to close, around 2p.m and we didn’t have a wide range of choice. The big chickens were all gone. We were happy with our shopping trip anyway😊While taking this photo, it’s what came to mind. Where and how she was sitting, on top of a pile of crates with outstretched mats, the chicken arriving by “bicycle”, attached to the back of it (I’ll add the photo of that too in case you don’t believe me), spread out all over the place, and that’s where we step in. We come, look, point, weigh, pack, pay, smile (very important so they remember you & you get a discount next time) and leave. Honestly though, I never would have thought that I would buy meat from such a place. At first glance, it turns your insides, you judge and you want to run away from it. Then you pause for a minute and wonder; they all get it from here, don’t they? They’re all having the same thing. Aren’t they eating this and living off of it? Why can’t I? Let’s give it a try!

Can you guess what we did next?

We bought fresh fish and shrimps too! Haha 😂 It was utterly succulent!

How wrong were we to judge? As wrong as it gets. All it took was the courage to see it, the will to try, clean it, cook it and enjoy it.

I’ll let you make up your own mind on this one.

Over & Out!

R

#week48 - A Doze of Sleep

Myanmar, the land of “anytime-anywhere naps” 😴

Anyone who knows me knows my sleeping issues. I have always struggled with it, for two reasons primarily; first, according to my mam I am hyperactive by nature, and was never the easy-to-put-to-sleep-kind-of-baby, and secondly, as a young kid, I was introduced to computers & games. Naturally, I found sleep to be a total loss of time. Of course this sleep v/s loss of time debate rages on inside me, but not for computer games anymore 😅 That has been translated into many different night owl occupations 🦉 An iota of it is enough for me.

The latter reason is the one most of my friends know and the one people usually guess right. I presume many people think about this life long enigmatic question…unless you take my girlfriend for example, who is a one-of-a-kind sleeper! If there were Olympics for that…she would win and sleep through the medal ceremony! Haha 😂 She’s so gonna kill me for this! 😵But okay, I learned to do that and learned to enjoy it as well. Pandas 🐼 all the way!

Let me explain why I’m writing about this; I have always considered sleep as the last thing on my to-do list but have come to realize how much others value it. I struggle to understand whether this is a condition, a pre-requisite, a necessity, a habit or simply an enjoyable part of life for them. My girlfriend needs it. Deny her and you’re in for some serious trouble. Some require it to function efficiently. Others get sick if they don’t get enough and some simply enjoy that freedom of sleeping 12-15h whenever they can. In Myanmar, I have noticed many people take naps, usually after their lunch, but you will often see a guy asleep in the most awkward place and position; on bicycles, market stalls, motorbikes, on the floor, on a piece of cardboard, in the grass, in the car with feet out the window (one that always cracks me up 😂), or like our friend here, on chair under his repair shop. The goal is never to find a place to sleep. The goal is to sleep. Wherever you are.

The third reason I don’t like to sleep, is that I don’t feel “safe”. Weird I know. But personally, I have a lot of nightmares. Ask anybody who’s slept next to me or in the same room and I bet most of them have a story which goes like; “You jumped so violently! You were sleeping and then you sat upright breathing heavily..what happened? Are you okay?”🙀 I know I’m probably describing the average nightmare reaction, but it’s something that scares me. So yes, I do that. Not knowingly of course, but it’s enough for me. I don’t like it because it’s not nice to me😅

One thing that’s creepy but which I love to do is watch people sleep. The people close to me mostly. I enjoy just sitting and watch my girlfriend sleep, or my sister, or a cousin or a baby. They look so innocent. And that occasional smile that crosses their face in their sleep…the sweetest thing ever!😊The sleep while I doze off. A few minutes feel great. They get a few minutes and wake up grumpy as fuck!😂It’s funny to me. The locals here, I have yet to figure out which is it. I have tried surprising asleep members of my team, some wake up instantly while others looked like they woke up from a half-day sleep marathon. They leave me perplexed. And every time I see a random guy sleeping somewhere, in the most unusual place, I wonder how can he possibly be comfortable there? That cannot be a nap it will take me forever to even feel comfortable enough to let the tiredness get the best of me and nap. Are they sleeping then? Deeply? I wonder…

If my mam reads this…woohoohoo! I know i know…I’ll try to sleep more.
Next week!😂

See ya!

R

#week47 - Eye Language

You’ve seen people. You’ve seen them in real life and in still life. You’ve seen photos of them distracted by an activity or photos of them looking right back at you.

I’m sure you’ve seen those of animals too. How captivating is a photograph of a lion looking at you as if it was going to “jump” out of the screen. You can hardly take your eyes off it.

What about when you look at one in real? Have you ever done that? I’m sure we all have. It’s made us al happy as kids when the animal we so want to attract the attention of looks at us. But have you tried more than that? Look at an animal and wait until it looks at you. You wait until it looks and you wait some more. You go beyond the mere initial satisfaction. You wait..and you wait some more. One of you will eventually look away.

But what happens in that short time that your eyeballs met? What was going on in your head? Did you feel lucky that it was staring at you? Did you feel scared? Did you wonder what it was thinking? Did you wonder if the animal was wondering what you human were thinking? How is it feeling? How are you human feeling? Is that a coincidence? Is there something more?

What else?

We can look a person in the eyes longingly without breaking eye contact. We can do that and we do. But what is going on?

There is a video of a woman, who sits in a chair in the middle of a crowded room, an art exhibition, with eyes closed, facing an empty chair which can be filled by any random person of the public. Someone comes and sits, she opens her eyes and they both sit in silence looking each other in the eyes. Her name is Marina Abramovich and I strongly recommend you to see it. It’s one of those things I would like to try someday. You know, like the list of things that you have to try once before you die. I wonder what language do eyes speak. What can you see in a person through their eyes? What can you feel? What can they? Trying to imagine it brings the following thoughts; a second will yield nothing. 30 seconds, you’ll feel stupid and giggle. A minute, probably uneasiness. 2 minutes, probably awkwardness. 4 minutes you start wondering. 5 minutes you begin to feel comfortable. 10 minutes you start to become curious. This is, I believe, where communication begins through eye contact. At first you look but you don’t see. After some time, the world stops, you focus, and your genuine curiosity kicks, which makes you want to understand. Truly understand.

What do you feel here when you look at the cat in this photo? You can look at all the details you want and make a mental picture. That’s alright. But then zone in on the eyes and stay there. I believe two things will happen; either your mind will start going around uncontrollably and you will have all these thoughts, ideas, images popping up and you’ll drown in all of it or you will focus, see and feel. Needless to say that I aim for the second option, but often fall victim to the first one..

Everything I want to say here cannot be put in words…it is way too complex. It’s a mind game in way. One you are bound to lose if you try hard. The only way to win is to not play it. Contradictory? Yes, that is how our brains work. That is how our thought process works. It’s fucked up. It’s a mess. The ironic part is that it took me a long time, it took so much needless effort whereby I hurt the person I love most to realize this; you cannot fight it. Think about it? What are you fighting? Yourself? This is so confusing, isn’t it? The title to this chapter should be confusion and self-questioning. Self discovery. Understanding. Love. Words are simply not enough. Especially when your words are nothing but words. It should be called “the glint in the dark” or something along those lines.

Do you have any idea what a photo can tell you? What can another beings eyes tell you? You think you need words and so much of this and that for you to know or understand. You always want more, don’t you? You’re not used to taking the least and making the most of it. But what if that’s what you had to do? What if this was a call to action? What if all you were left with were you and yourself? Can you imagine what that is like or does it seem too extreme and too unrealistic? Think about it… I guarantee you, it’s worth taking the time to think about it. Call it a thought experiment.

I took this photo during a walk in downtown Yangon with Maria…yes another one. What the heck. I love this woman. She gets the best out of me without knowing it. If you cannot look at a photo and do what I say here then close your eyes and think of the person you love most. Picture him or her and picture yourself looking deep into their eyes. What do you feel? It’s worth taking the time to do this. Believe me. Believe…

What do you see?

R

#week46 - Fuzzy Innocence

I have decided to switch things up a bit and go for a black and white photo this week..

I was very reluctant at first because I thought colors gave this site more appeal. But then again, it’s my story to tell, you’re the reader, and you get what I put out here. So here it is! 😁

I know, I know, it’s blurry and you’re like WTF?! Let me say that this was not done on purpose, it was totally by accident. I was trying to snap the boy, but didn’t have time to focus well so this is how it came out. Buuuuut…I love it! Don’t ask me why, I looked at the photo and didn’t even feel sad that i didn’t capture it well. I loved it when I saw it. I remember the moment vividly. He was running from one side of the alley, hopping along as he did so, in our direction where we were standing with Maria. I saw it, barely had the time to kneel down, didn’t even have time to look into the viewfinder and just snapped away. They were a couple of kids playing around happily with large smiles on their faces and twinkling eyes. So much energy. They didn’t mind us, foreigners standing there, looking at them, one holding a camera, waiting something to happen. They simply went about their fun time. I think we also felt like kids witnessing that, smiling for no apparent reason.

Looking back at this picture it evoked memories of my own childhood, when no computers and phones were around, when I was just running outside, climbing trees, the gate, the garage structure, walls, you name it. Getting sweaty and dirty was part of my life as kid (still is in the heat of Yangon as an adult😂), with my grandma shouting in the distance “Rouslaaaaaaan! Don’t run too fast you will fall. And don’t get dirty again! Stop climbing that! I will tell your father if you don’t listen to me!”…yeah yeah yeah keep shouting grandma, love you, but no f#!@$ given right now 😂It’s okay to get shouted at for this, totally worth it! I loved running, climbing, getting filthy and what not that presented itself in the form of some physical feat 🏃🏽‍♂️💨💨💨I felt innocent. I felt free. If I could do it then I should at least try.

You see these kids were playing in a place that probably even their parents never ventured into before. The alleys between the downtown blocks were so abandoned, they were only for trash, rats and whatever people did not want. I will try to go for another walk to take some photos in those alleys that are still abandoned one of these days to show some before and afters here. However, there are a small group of people in Yangon who want to give life to these otherwise life-deprived places. They scout for an alley, choose one, clean it up, fix it (pipes, pavements and so on) and paint it, often with the help of neighborhood kids. It’s absolutely wonderful what they do when they come together. I need to make an album of these. It’s incredible and so worth seeing what humanity and creativity combined can bring into this world! The children who enjoy these newly reborn places probably don’t even understand what is going on. They see it in a way for some time and then they see it changed. What they would have otherwise avoided or been scared of, became their yard, their place to be, play and express themselves. The change comes as a blurry and fuzzy transformation, one they probably cannot fully comprehend but embrace with pure joy. Innocent as they are, they are clueless about this. Ignorance is bliss for these kids. The only thing that matters is they are happy and enjoy the environment where they are spending their time. I call this “fuzzy innocence”.

The juxtaposition of this blurry kid in the photo bringing to mind such clear childhood memories is exactly why I find this photo so perfect!

Do you have anything like that that you can relate to from your childhood? Gosh if a kid was reading this and could contribute, he or she would be my hero! I would love to hear it not from past memories, but from fresh ones! The chances of that happening are, of course, infinitesimal. Oh well... Who cares? I still consider myself a kid in many ways. Probably too many 😂 Let me hope. Let me wonder. Let me dream. Let me run free…

Cheers,

R

#week45 - Stand Your Ground

Protect it at all costs. Stand your ground!

Yangon is full of beautiful old colonial architecture, built between 1824 and 1948 and left behind after the British rule ended in then Burma. I often wonder what it looked like before the British arrived, for during their rule, Rangoon, as it was known back then, underwent a rich architectural development following different styles, but predominantly adopting the Art Deco style.

Walking along the streets in downtown Yangon, you can see many of those buildings, many of which look like they are about to collapse anytime (one actually did just a couple of months ago). I personally find it fascinating to be living in a city where you can find this mix; the new meets the old. Of course this statement can be countered in so many ways, particularly when the new looks totally out of place, ruining the lasting beauty of the old. Unfortunately in many streets these art deco buildings have been pulled down to lay the foundations to cheap Charlie looking, giant plain boxes with a weird mix of colors that house countless workers. I am in no way against accommodations being built, I am no one to criticize that, but damn…just a touch of taste wouldn't hurt. It's such a rich city with such a variety of vibrant life all over the place, why not preserve that? Why not stand your ground for what is your home?

Fortunately, some have opted for that option. They took over the old, went in with a broomstick, a paint bucket and some goodwill (and a couple of trucks worth of green notes for sure) and gave life to what was, until their arrival, abandoned. Some.great examples include two hotels; Excelsior and Rosewood. If you are curious to see in pictures what I mean by that, click the link on Excelsior and see for yourself. It's a video made by the General Manager, and my friend, Philippe Arnaud, where he compiled overlapping before & after images. MAGICAL!

Why destroy what took so much effort to be built beautifully with intricate details nowhere to be found in todays architecture?

Architecture is art thereby making its liking subjective. This is what I like. I like old things, I admire the details. I’m not saying I don’t like the new, but the details appeal differently to me from the old stuff. I like to see people making an effort to preserve it, for it is what defines us today. We came from somewhere, in every sense of the word. I cannot collect old colonial buildings haha 😂but I do enjoy walking into vintage shops and visiting flee markets where I let my mind run wild with excitement; all these things I never saw before, the things that simply arouse your curiosity as to what they serve and to imagine how the heck did a person come up with that sh!t?! Don’t you like that? It’s just soooooo freaking cool! In Yangon, they have decided to implement a historical marker program called the the Blue Plaques which defines what it does by this “Yangon Heritage Trust, Yangon City Development Committee and supporting partners honor key heritage sites throughout Yangon by installation of the commemorative Blue Plaques.”

This photo I shot downtown on a day we went for a walk in the downtown streets with Maria, shows this old man standing straight up in front of his house right in the middle of the step. As we passed, I wanted to snap a photo of him, it inspired me, but he really didn’t look like he fancied that idea. I mean, look at the expression on his face! Don’t you feel the same? 😅He had this thing emanating from him. I would not be able to describe it myself. It was almost intimidating. His gaze followed us from the moment we turned the corner onto the street until we passed him. Only when we passed the old fella did I dare turn around and snap a few pics of him with the building, at which point we both laughed and briskly paced away from him 😄It felt like he was being very protective of his treasure, no one was gonna move him from there. He simply stood his ground.

If you’re in Yangon, go for a walk downtown. You will not be disappointed.

Till next week,

R

#week44 - Connecting Everywhere

Photographing Yangon.

This photo was taken in the Kandawgyi park. We went for an afternoon walk with Maria as we often do on Sundays to see the city, another part every week. This time we went to this park where they were having the Makers Market, a regular event gathering people selling different items from food and clothes to arts and handicrafts. It’s fascinating!

Growing up in Mauritius, it’s not the kind of activity one is used to. To see that all of this was there, and people living in the same city were making so many different and cool things was a pleasure to discover! This platform allowed people who didn’t know about these to connect with the ones making them. Furthermore, we met a lot of friends we had not seen in a while. We were both so happy to see another close friend with her kids and had fun altogether. It allowed us to enjoy a sunset sitting on the pier, watching flocks of birds flying over the lake and behind the trees, another thing we’ve been wanting to do but never found the time for, primarily because we’re such pandas and can spend the whole day being just that 🐼 While sitting there a group of young local guys came over to us to ask the usual random questions, what is your name and where you come from, to which the answer usually leads to a football reference; Barcelona, Spain -> “Aaah Messi! Barcelona!” and for me…well I don’t say Mauritius because it is just too damn hard to explain where it is and most people have no idea so I say France instead and that lights up their faces exclaiming “Ohh! PSG!! Neymar!! Zidane!” haha 😂 Then they sang for us 🎶 It was fun…until the mosquitoes got thirsty and forced us to run for our blood 💉 Walking around the park, we found some guys break dancing Myanmar style under a big tree with a stereo on the ground next to them. We enjoyed the show for a few minutes.

Why am I saying all this?

I realized that one single event, and one simple thing lead to so many things. Have you ever taken the time to think about how starting off with one thing can lead to so many other things which you did not even plan to see or do? I mean beyond the mere accomplishment of getting to the end of that decision of doing one thing. In this case we decided to go out for a walk in this park. We got to connect with many people, known and unknown alike, connect with nature, connect with the life happening around us, see others connecting around us, and connecting ourselves. How cool is that?!

The photo here made me think of all this. It's not a special photo in any way, but the story behind it and what it reminds me of, is this. The daughter and the dad simply connecting over laughs having a good time. We don't need much to connect with what's around us, do we? Yet we often fall in this belief trap.

You know what to do now 😉

Cheers,

R

#week43 - Push Comes to Shove

Here’s the thought trail this photo left behind:

• Woah…surprised 😯

• This looks like hard work

• Where is he going?

• Where did he start?

• It looks so cool

• Who is he?

• What does he have in there?

• This looks so typical of this place, Myanmar

• I’m so lucky to live here and so grateful to be able to see things like this

• This is why I chose to live here

• I love this country and all of the dated perks it has to offer that you don’t see anymore in developed countries

• Maria would say “this is no longer used in Spain since time ago”

• Laugh to myself😄

• I wonder if in Galicia they still have things like that. Need to ask her (never did 😅)

• Would they have the same or slightly different?

• Did he build that himself?

• I would love to see how it’s built

• I would love to see where it’s built, I’m sure it must be in front of his house right on the street or something like that

• Snap!📸

I got a photo of this moment.

All the time I was hiding behind an overgrown branch from where I could stand quietly and look at him doing his thing. I didn’t want to intrude. I didn’t want him to see me, change his facial expression or smile at me because I’m a foreigner or get uncomfortable because I was staring at him with a camera in my hand. Yet, after I snapped the photo, I had another trail of thoughts which was probably motivated by my curiosity in what I was seeing. I wanted to know more about this guy, his story. Why is he doing this? Is it his job or just a chore? Is it by choice or lack of options? It looks like hard work after all. Why would he choose to do this? How long has he been doing this? These are usually the moments where I feel like a total idiot for not speaking the local language well enough to allow me to have this conversation 😪And it’s been 4 years I’m living here...fml

Yangon has a lot of these…it seems they can do anything with their hands and feet. I mean their bodies. Unless something like a motor is required they will have a way of their own to get it done. In Inle, they row boats with one leg while standing on the other. Here a man is pushing his cart filled with barrels and what not to wherever. Food carts are moved on bicycles from one location to another. Bitumen is heated in half barrels and mixed by hand. And then there is my personal favorite, a guy cutting grass for his cows and horses and it goes like this: Wooden plank placed between two trees serving as a table, one end of a long fat rusty blade fixed to the plank and the other end attached with a coconut rope which goes to a wooden-made-foot-pedal under the table and to the top attached to a branch which acts as a spring. Press the pedal, blade is pulled down & cuts grass while pulling down the branch, release the pedal, branch lifts blade up and repeat. How freaking cool is that?!!! I sincerely hope that description allows you to imagine this thing.

The point is, nothing stops them. Something needs to be done. It may not be done by western standards but they will get it done somehow. And if it breaks, they will be able to fix it because they made all of it. It doesn’t scare them to try new things, build crazy things that leave you standing with your mouth agape with incredulity. Why is that? What did this photo make me realize? When push comes to shove, these people get the job done. In their own way, maybe, but hey, that’s perfectly understandable and I admire it!

Cheers,

R

#week42 - Loaded Shoulders

Too cliché? Not really.

This photo shows the daily routine of a simple working class man in Yangon. How many times he does it in a day I have no idea. I only saw him a couple of times during my morning photo walks.

The bus arrives, he gets off with this massive burlap sack, tosses it over his shoulder, crosses the road and heads into a small alley between the half-finished half-broken houses and shops. Maybe I should try to follow him next time, I wonder where it will lead to and what I’ll discover.

Nowadays we mostly see this scene in old movies & pictures, forgetting that in some parts of the world it is still the day to day life of certain individuals. Physical labour. You’ve probably seen pieces of equipment designed to carry nearly everything for you. Forget cars, trucks and forklifts. Stick to trolleys. How many versions of those exist and just what can they not carry? When is the last time you carried a bag of potatoes on your shoulder? Yeah yeah yeah the 50kg you lift above your head during an overhead shoulder press in the gym certainly is an accomplishment, but fuck! If that’s what comes to your mind when reading this, then…well…not much to be done there I’m afraid😂 I lift those too (nowhere near 50kg though haha🤣) but when I saw him lift up that bag, his face stretching in every direction and the effort visible as clear as the day with a break of sweat, he walked away, every step slow and careful so he doesn’t topple over to one side, how he put it down, caught his breath, looked at me as I snapped another shot, picked it up again and disappeared….I was left with a *daaaaamn*. That’s what grandma and dad meant when they were talking about their laborious childhood.

I remember thinking to myself how fit he seemed and how straight he walked. I could try to lift that up and break my back in the process 😣Meanwhile my grandma used to do that day in day out all day long every day; carrying bags of tapioca, sugarcane, grass and what not to get enough money to barely cover the food needs for the whole family. They were 8 kids.

Cliché? I don’t think so. Do you?

Settings for the this snap were pretty straight forward; aperture priority, f/1.8, ISO 100, 1/640s.

It’s interesting how looking at a photo can take you on a day dreaming & reflective journey whereby you relate something you see in a photo with things you heard about or read about but never actually saw. As your brain creates the link, it suddenly dawns on you like the break of daylight on misty morning. Next? Unknown feelings that overwhelm you as you try to swim through the waterfall of emotions raining down on you. A beautiful thing when you experience it nonetheless.

Enjoy the swim! 😉

R

#week41 - Lights On!

Failed sunrise time-lapse😞

That’s how I started the day. It usually happens on those days when I wake up all excited & turned on to get out of bed while it is still dark outside to go see my friend, Ra 🔆, that big shiny ball above your head, as he rises up from behind the horizon. Thing is, most of the times, this friend of mine decides to be a lazy ass and show up late high up in the sky, dazzling me with his grumpiness and harsh rays. By the time he shows up, I realize just how much I miss his beautiful colours and soft touch on my skin; the uplifting sort, you know?

Anyway, I learnt that it's all part of the game. I'll still go out to say hello again.

When I first got into sunrises though it wasn't that easy. I would sulky when I wouldn’t have a nice one, as if it was passed onto me from the late rising sun. Every single time. Until I saw this scene.

I was packing my camera gear when I glanced up to notice, guess what?! Nothing. And everything 😅 Weird, right? Not even an hour ago everything was dark and unrecognisable. Yet, as if straight out of a Harry Potter movie, “lumos”🧚, and it lit up. Everything was visible, colourful, animated. The more I looked, the more I saw. The sun was beaming down on everything, bringing life to all that it touched. You know those moments when you catch yourself smiling on your own and feeling kinda silly? Well I felt like a total idiot 🥴...”stupid is as stupid does”, Forest Gump’s mama was shouting in the background.

What the hell was I moody for, like the whole day was gonna be shizzle when it was barely starting. Akin to a bridal veil being lifted off my face 👰🏽, I could see things I probably saw many times before, but this time I was actually seeing them. I know…bridal😅for lack of a more “appropriate” word. It’s 4a.m, half of me is awake and the other half is drunk 😂Don’t judge. In that moment I also felt grateful. The same vague thing you hear on Robin Sharma's podcasts - “every morning take a few minutes to reflect on 3 things you feel grateful for”. Never understood that. Still don't. And in all likelihood as close to it as I got to this day. A moment where you forget about everything else, no thoughts, none. Total absorption in the moment. Kneeling down on this massive bridge, looking bigger than ever and shaking from the crossing train, feeling the cold morning wind on my face, the sun ray warming my hands, glancing up at the crows, down at the boats in the river below - SNAP!📸 Gone was my moment of gratitude along with the train 🤣 Talk about ADHD…hah!

Whatever, I have felt it. Been there. Done that. Move on. My day felt brighter and I had this photo as a memory of that. I’ve been living in Thaketa, Yangon, for a year without realizing all the life that was there. I thought I was in “the ass of the world” as my friend emphasizes all the time. But this morning proved me wrong. And her too!!! My way back home was one of the most enjoyable morning photo walks ever. Life was happening everywhere admonishing how naive I had been to judge a place without really knowing it. I felt stupid yes. But I felt lucky as fuck! I’ve loved living there ever since 😁And I could not wait to discover more of it. It was in the “ass of the world”, and so different from what everyone knows Yangon to be. But I had something most of them did not. Funny how this paradigm shift can shake you, right? I was Tom Sawyer walking back home, seriously I was whistling the song on the way back, snapping photos along the way, feeling as light and as happy as ever. “Grumpiness” outta my way biatch!

This post is not about the photo in itself. Rather the story behind how the photo came to be. How it was made. How a picture can transcend the mere pixels on your screen, pushing you to use grey matter generated pixels instead. This photo changed my perspective on where I was living. It lifted a veil. It switched the lights on!🤩

Cheers,

R

#week40 - Yangon Life

New week, new “let’s-pretend-to-be-creative” ideas!

Yup, that’s what I do…thank goodness not to earn a living. I would very likely be living in the streets 😂 Week 40 of 2019 and I have decided to focus for the coming months on the city in which I have been living for almost 2 years now..WHAAAAM! Aaaaand you’re already thinking; “Damn this is gonna be super interesting!” or “Here goes another newbie pretending to make something less boring”. You be the judge. I’m hiding behind the screen in the meantime with zero fucks given 🤓

Ok, you’d expect that I’d know the ins and outs of my daily surroundings by now, yet every time I step out and consciously decide to not look at my phone (because yes we all warm taxi seats with our asses while we swipe swipe swipe up and down, if your an Instagram user like me, or left and right, if you’re a Tinder user, like *You!* 😈) I find something cool. Seriously guys, you may cram your neck in all its humanly possible ways, you will always see something new. Crazy, right?

No. The real crazy ass part is that all this cool stuff that I see is most of the time between the same two points; my apartment and my workplace. You can take a cab at different times of the day and you will see different people (or things) going about their day. Dawn, murder of crows flying in beautiful orderly chaos (don’t ask me what this means 🙏🏾). Sunrise, locals setting up shop in the streets, others going to the market. Early morning, tea shops buzzing with life, tea floating around and local donuts on all tables for breakfast. Mid morning, foreigners waiting for taxis on the roadside with that face we’ve all had at least once in our life “I’m sooooo late, my boss is gonna kill me!!!” - one of my favourites, fyi, ask my girlfriend, she can vouch for that…with a punch in my throat. Babe, if you read this, think of our amazing sex and forgive me 😘

Late morning, me getting out of bed 😆ok no, getting her out of it 😛I’m so not getting laid for the next 3 days…😭 by this time I’m usually tackling the second meeting of the day. Noon, a guy riding a tricycle carrying a block of ice from the maker to whoever needs it and no it does melt. It’s Myanmar ice! Early afternoon, nap time for workers after their lunch break. This one is everywhere and anywhere…ouf! I’m gonna spam photos like crazy! Mid afternoon, roads full of buses filled with kids leaving school. Late afternoon, kids playing in the streets with tires and sticks and dogs. Early evening, downtown China town bustling with activity, food, laughter, people, life. Mid evening, Teashops full of half-drunk people chanting vigorously in support of their national hero Aung La N Sang as he kicks his opponents ass in an MMA fight. Late evening, drunk and humorous locals in a street corner playing guitar and singing their favourite songs heartily and they are good. A bit later in the night, equally drunk people pretending to be Adele in KTVs (karaoke clubs/bars). Usually they rock the Justin Bieber ones best 🤪Coincidence?

Basically just a lot of bull$#!* to say that I love this city…to my own surprise. I used to hate it. I liked the simple village lifestyle more. Still prefer it. At least I don’t dislike this one anymore. No matter where you are, if you look close enough, you will find something for you.

As hard as it was to choose a photo for this post because it is so general, I went for one of my favourites from Yangon. There is a fascinating story behind it but that’ll be for another time. Right now, I have simply decided to share it with you because it was one of those moments that made me realize how fortunate I was to be living here and to see the change happening around me. It’s a simple frame and yet there is so much going on in it; the expressions, the colours, what is happening and where, the swing, the setting sun’s light, the mess in the scene which I love because it cannot be hidden (or cropped) and just adds life to it…f/2.8 and ISO 400 because it was quite dark and 1/320s shutter to freeze the kids swinging… Life in Yangon, I love it! I hope you do too, through my eyes.

Till next week,

R

#week39 - Blurred Lines

Blurry. That’s how it feels starting this blog all over again. The first one was deleted from 1&1’s servers because I lost my credit card and couldn’t pay and…well, the rest is history. *sigh*

It took me such a long time to finally get myself to do this. Felt like I lost what I had put so much effort into before. Angry that it’s all gone and I could not even remember what I had written because I’d typed it impetuously. Overwhelmed because I like things to be perfect and just the thought of doing this without planning annoyed me but the planning itself felt overwhelming too… Until this weird feeling came knocking; “why the hell am I torturing myself so much over something so small and inconsequential? It’s supposed to be a simple hobby after all”. Long story short, it was one of those “Aha!” moments of realisation that hits you smack in the face. The best part? It doesn’t even hurt. And that’s how Aha! turns to Hah!

Thank you beloved Corona for keeping me company right now. Say what you want, it helps.

I chose this photo which I shot in a small building in Berlin, which had some light installations on display. It was one of the coolest things I had seen. You all know Brandon Woelfel I imagine? Insta superstar with the dopest bokeh-filled photos. I felt like I just walked into his dream location. They were of all shapes and sizes, hanging from the ceiling, coming out of the walls like tree branches, popping out of the ground like colourful mushrooms. I was in love.

Needless to say that I wanted to get a photo with a bokeh-filled background, which is exactly what the above photo shows. I chose it because of that. Because out of all the blurriness, one thing stands out. A ball. A green f***ing ball 😂 If there’s one thing to know about me it’s that I have a dirty dirty mind (surprise!) and this is just the sort of thing that really gets me. Haha. Anyway, it reflects how I feel about starting this blog for the second time. So many thoughts, overthinking everything, taking it too seriously maybe…it was just a big blurry mess. The only thing I was certain of, was this; I want this blog. That’s my green f***ing ball 😂

Shot at f/1.8 to get that smooth blurry background, 1/320 sec because it was relatively bright (window lights and bulbs). I wanted a well exposed image. ISO 100 to avoid noise in the picture. Bam!

If you have had blurry moments, remember to stop, breathe, and look for your green ball!

Till next week!

R