I’m Not Sorry
Whoopsie! I kinda didn’t get a chance to blog on Wednesday, though I had all good intentions.
You see, I was stupid busy at work.
And then.
I was invited to a sneak preview of “The Avengers”
And it was awwwwwwwesome!
Category: latent childhood
I’m an alien. I’m a legal alien.
I’m a New Mexican in Singapore.
What a whirlwind visit I’ve had here in Southeast Asia.
I think I’ve lived a year in a week and on Sunday, my last day in residence, I have a lot of thoughts going through my mind.
I have had some of the best food of my life. I have sweated more than I thought my pores were capable of. I’ve felt more at home than anywhere I’ve visited. I’ve felt more alien than anywhere I’ve ever visited.
I’m not sure where to even begin speaking about it all and rest assured over the next weeks and months it will slowly come through my writing. Or, perhaps, even years. My mind and Muse need to ruminate over it all.
But let’s get down to basics.
After eight days and twelve thousand miles away from home, I need some Mexican food.
On Friday as I visited with my ex-pat friend now living in Bali, we agreed that Mexican is just one thing you don’t get here. You can find just about everything else, but Mexican is a no.
While shopping the enormous Mustafa Market in the Little India district of Singapore (it truly is a store where you can find anything), I happened to stumble across this:
While Old El Paso is my least favorite brand, it’s at least something, right? Salsa! Here! Yes!
Only.
No.
Turn over the jar and you see this:
Made in Spain? For General Mills Switzerland?
Remember that old Pace commercial: “New York City!?! Get a rope…”
Yeah. Times a thousand.
I shan’t be sampling the Spain/Swiss salsa. I’ll simply have to enjoy another day of chili crab, delicious laksa, chicken rice and everything else wonderful here and then next week I’ll see about getting my chile meter back up to green.
Eek! A Monster!
Oh, but it’s such a cute little cross eyed monster.**
Look at him all rawr with all the nose holes and the rectangular mouth.
I just want to pat his little growling head and feed him raw meat. Yes I do.
I suppose I should actually find a way to tame this little beast because he’s about to climb into my backpack so we can board an airplane.
That’s right folks, Oh Fair New Mexico is set to hit the road. Or rather, fly the skies.
This time we’re going *international*.
Whew! Very exciting times!
I’m a embarrassed to admit that in my little life, the only times I’ve been out of the US was the many occasions dancing back and forth across the border in both Juarez and Matamoros.
And of course, I spend every day at work calling every country code you can think of. I travel the globe via telephone lines, but when I was hired this was to be a non-traveling position. Ah well.
I’ve had a passport for decades and even had to renew it. But I’ve never, not once gotten that bad boy stamped.
Well that’s about to change. The Boss Man and the Big Boss Man have seen fit to put a ticket in my hand and a Bon Voyage banner across my tuchus.
Next week, I’m headed to Singapore. I’m going for work but I’m as excited as though I was having a vacation.
The Good Man was able to rearrange his schedule to come along so it should be big fun (when I’m not suffering the slings and arrows of my employer).
Actually, the work part of the trip should be fascinating too. I’m attending an event put on by one of our biggest suppliers. They are bringing local in-country reps from each of their offices across Asia. So people from Taiwan, Hong Kong, Japan, India, China, and so on are flying in to meet…well…me.
My company gives their company a lot of money, and I will be the senior representative in attendance, and oh I also run the entire program (i.e. I control the money) so I guess I’m worth meeting? Weird. Really, very weird.
I suppose if I’m the one in charge (a concept that should worry you endlessly) then I’d better behave myself.
That’s going to be really, really difficult.
Geez, I even went out and bought professional clothes for this event (I work in Silicon Valley, “professional clothes” is a concept no one cares about).
I am alternately nervous and so freaking excited I can hardly contain myself.
There! I’m going to be there!! Yesss!
**In case my little monster is unfamiliar to you, it’s a universal power adapter.
Singapore image found in seveal places across the web. If it’s yours, please do let me know and I’m more than happy to either take it down or give you credit.
Hope Is A Diamond
It sure is.
The San Francisco Giants 2012 baseball season begins tomorrow at 4:10 Pacific time.
With 162 games stretched out in front of us, hope is something I have heavily stocked up.
Oh yeah. I have hope.
Welcome back baseball, my love. Oh how I’ve missed you.
Top image of AT&T Park is Copyright 2011, Karen Fayeth, and subject to Creative Commons, found in the far right column of this page.
Bottom image is from the MLB Facebook feed and all rights belong to Major League Baseball and Mr Bud Selig.
Today’s Theme Thursday is: Hope
Everything Old is New Again
Take a look at this photo. It’s not my photo. I came across it yesterday and I kind of liked it.
It’s got that color saturation and green tinge that you see in a lot of these new square format apps for the iPhone and Android (my personal favorite is Hipstamatic).
Actually, I like this photo a lot. But I didn’t heart it on Instagram. I didn’t like it on Facebook. I didn’t re-Tweet it either.
Because this photo was found inside a frame and mounted to a wall at the Cantor Arts Center at Stanford University.
This photo is part of their Walker Evans show.
This weekend, my photography group took a field trip to check out the exhibit. Going in, I knew very little about Walker Evans other than he had captured a lot of powerful black and white images from the Depression. I purposefully didn’t study up before my trip because I wanted to learn about the photographer through his photos.
Well. Knock me over. I was really, seriously and deeply educated by the time all was said and done.
First of all, Walker was a writer, and then moved into photography. He did both for most of his life. So take that you scallywags who say an artist should pick a medium and not dabble. Feh! Also, I really came to appreciate Walker’s sense of irony. You have to get up close and look around the frame of his photos to find it, but it’s always in there.
That said, the part of the exhibit that gave me the “holy crap!” moment of connection was at the very end when I saw the photos tucked away on the back wall.
It seems that in his early seventies, Walker Evans was left tired and uninspired and found himself unwilling or perhaps unable to create.
And then he got himself a Polaroid SX-70 camera and an unlimited supply of film.
“I bought that thing as a toy, and I took it as a kind of challenge,” Evans explained. “It was this gadget and I decided that I might be able to do something serious with it. So I got to work to try to prove that. I think I’ve done something with it.”
As I stood there looking at the photos, I was at first jealous. Jealous of that “unlimited supply” of Polaroid film. I am completely devoted to the Polaroid camera and used several different versions growing up and well into adulthood. I shot Polaroid until the film was no longer available.
Thanks to the Impossible Project, it’s still possible to buy Polaroid film, but at almost $24 a pack, that easy carefree snap-whatever-you-feel-like and just buy another pack mentality has to be reined in.
So I stood there feeling jealous about having all that free film on hand.
And then…my hands came up and framed either side of my whaaaat? face as I realized…
I have access to an instant camera and unlimited film. But in a different format. Sames tools, different age.
I have Hipstamatic on my iPhone. And Instagram. And a bunch of other toy camera apps.
All of these beautiful color saturated photos. They can still be made! I can still snap with reckless abandon! Oh dear god I have this gadget and I might actually be able to do something serious with it.
Oh my goodness. Oh. My. Goodness!
This realization left me dazed and confused and happy. So happy.
And inspired.
Top photo, “Untitled, 1974 Unique Polaroid” by Walker Evans and used here under Fair Use.
Quote from The Ongoing Moment by Geoff Dyer.
Bottom photo, “Power” Copyright 2012 Karen Fayeth, and subject to the Creative Commons license found in the far right column of this page. Taken with Hipstamatic app for iPhone.