ITS SUNDAY MORNING

   
FUCK STYLE
Stylish as we think they are, Romans have a fétiche with the tracksuits, I guarantee you. I used to think that they wore them for flights scarifying style in name of comfort, since they are confined to (or in?) a tin tube and no one can see them. But spending a Sunday morning (and a few more days) wandering around the cafés and parks and streets of the roman hoods, I scientifically proved that they just adore them! Fuck style: Wear tracksuits! Yells Rome, to my horror, in my face, this not too chilly February Sunday morning.
Ding dong go the bells, men run or ride, families and older couples pop in and out cafés for espressos and walks. And everyone seems to have a dog. And dogs seem to be frisky and friendly with each other and any other thing they can rub themselves on. People say dogs are like their owners. Maybe they get a kick from the ding dongs... Who knows?

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 B e y o n d   Z ü r i c h

 

G o o d   L u c k

home-made : lets remember

home-made

Line breaks: home-made

Definition of home-made in English:

adjective

Made at home, rather than in a shop or factory.

 source: The Oxford English dictionary 

 

 

D U B A I "IS NOT" T H E U A E

There is so much more just a few kms away from the hi rise city ...

Said Who?

That going to malls is such a waste of time? 

This is what I have learnt today

the social phenomenon of parents and kids on board and aircraft

A POLITICALLY INCORRECT ESSAY ON KIDS AND THEIR PARENTS

 

(So to all those sensitive readers, stop reading here)

I had a situation which many of my colleagues will be familiar with. 

Aircraft. Boarding. 

A kid comes on his own running like he's about to miss the flight, though there are 289 souls queuing to get in behind him. I stop him and tell him to wait for his parents because on his own his not going anywhere. He might have had some sort of attention disorder, or maybe he plain simply did not understand what I was talking about, he runs into aircraft in an attempt to run up and down the aisle during the boarding process -good luck pal-. So again, this time grabbing him by the head I tell him to wait by my side until his parents come on board. In a more assertive tone. He stays three seconds before he tries to run away again. I pulled him backwards by his hair, stopped the boarding process and yelled at him to stay where he is. 

MILANO

And every time I come to Italy and get lost in its streets and the strangers' chit chats it is that I understand just how Italian we are . And so I get emotional.

PROLOGUE
Cracked it, this is where locals mix; high heels, pretty handbag, expensive suits, punks, vegans and runners. And yes, if I was a millionaire, I would have a little apartment in every spot of the world that I love. And this would be one.

NAVIGLIO, Milano: A bird's eye view

In the background, the radio flickers between cheap Latin remixed music that might as well be from the 90's and the football channel. Honestly, I preferred the football, at least it was an Argentinian pretending to speak Italian and I understood him. And it was more interesting than this horrible pop mass produced music.

To my closest left-hand side:  an arcade wooden door full of graffiti. It was dark, N53. By the looks of it, you wouldn't expect anyone to actually live there. But for the 45' I've been here, it's been the busiest door of the 'hood:
*Milanese mum with pram and dog
*Middle aged -I reckon going through the mid life crisized (I am such a literal Nobel that I made up that word, it derives from crisis, means to actually be in a or recently have been in a crisis; hence crisized) recently divorced just got a BMW massive bike- stylish Italian man
*Punk Arab girl
*Indian girl
*Chinese party of three females
Either a diamond in brute this building...Or I don't know.

The street stretches along to the left. Sun umbrellas for sixteen, those that you expect to find in Montgomery Golf Club rather than here. Seems like everybody that lives on top of these cafés restaurants pizzerias goes through that mysterious graffitied door... On top of all these Italian to the core food establishments, what in my opinion, used to be palaces or mansions or big five storied houses. Classic ones. In diverse classic colours: ochre, old pink, sandy yellow just to name a few.

Kind of ninety degree or to my nine o'clock (oh oh time has made me so technical) there's an iron bridge. Nothing majestic. More like an improvisation back in the glam days.
Underneath : the canal.
On the other side of the canal (ten o'clock now) more of this old houses that host food establishments on ground floor, lovely colours on the facade and all sorts of characters on the inside.

Same same same eleven twelve one two and a half  o'clock around.

Three o'clock there's another bridge that links both sides of the maybe in a different time of the year canal (oh did I forget to mention it's dry and looks more like a Patagonian ocean bed than a canal? Full of pigeons eating rubbish) this bridge instead is concrete. I find it more charming . Three four five o'clock more food establishments. Loads of competition. So I will focus on mine coz that's where I am and what I can describe.

Here is where Milano's glam ends. In a way. Luis Vuitton, Chanel and all the haute couture mates are long ago left behind. Corso Genoa is the transition. Or maybe that starts earlier but this is where you realize that you are walking down a normal 'hood street, where normal people actually live and they are dressed up normally -despite you and I hating average normal dressers. Beautiful Elite models Vogue cover girls and world class brains from European banks and other organizations in their fancy suits and even fancier retirement plans that I do not envy at all (I do love those handbags though) are back in Milano, that Milano you have in your head around the Duomo and etc's.

I am here. Facing the south bank (that's just a random guess but since there's Southbank in London and Brisbane why not in Milano?)  of the once a canal and looking at the étrange mix of neighbours come in and out, lost tourists passing by, locals choosing the happy hour of the day (FYI happy hour here extends from 5pm til like closing time. Happiest hour ever, prosecco included), zipping Pinot's and Prosecco and enjoying an €8 all you can eat -al fresco, metal tables, plastic china&silver for Italian home made food... Sin if you ask me- and all you can drink (in glass glass) :)
I hope they they switch the radio back to football. This industrial pop rap is killing me. So is tiramisu. Or turn it off, some locale close by plays music from like the fifties, totally vintage and I love it.

Dogs are social.
People are social. They talk to each other from one side of the canal to the other, maybe they yell, coz they all do it at the same time too, so at times it can be quite loud. But it's Italy. Never loud enough though, if you can still eavesdrop on the conversation passers by are having...
They ride bikes of all kinds and colours. Same as their hairs and shoes. Wanna be's from the city walk hopping from pond to pond popping their heels in the stones that maybe at once the emperor himself walked by.
And after sun goes down runners come out.

Runners seem to be males. As if running was forbidden for milanese woman, who are only allowed to walk prams or ride funky bikes commuting style (how are they so hot then? Dunno)

Food is delicious. Salads pasta pies Cake... Doesn't get much better than this

PS
At my two and a half , if you just look at it in a 'panning kind of look' it looks like some alpine locality. Maybe, just maybe , 'coz we are not so far .


IT GOES ON IN THE METRO

The occasional musicians from some country no local likes, the limping one, the seller, the gypsy and all the usual suspects come and go by asking for money. I like the accordion player. But don't like to feed the masses. It's hard to tell though when someone needs it or needs it -as I do a beer- you know what I mean? I always think of my bro the musician and tend to tip'em . What goes around comes around. It might not be the best reason but at least is a reason.

What I love about locals here is that they wear glasses, they read, and they hide behind the books as if a books could stop them from hearing the accordion or the limping fake leg or the crying sick baby. Super-powerful books that Italians read, whatever. And once again this homey feeling. Can someone that's so much apart in time and space be so much the same? How do the genes work? How does this info travel?

Maybe because they're from the north maybe because God actually creates and we mix: Can't help but loving it here with all it's incongruousness: they queue on one side of escalator and on the other they climb as if we were in UK!

 

Where streets have no name

YET EVERY TREE is botanically signalled

Angkor Wat (Hindu? Buddhist? What are you, what am I?)
Trimmed as neat as a soldier's head. It commands you to relook at yourself, within this environment, to reevaluate yourself upon such an expression, such symmetry, such decadence ... such perfection. Even before you are done with the amazement, you are ordered to question life in ways have never done before.

What lies upon your eyes, the grounds in which you stand, the buildings that have been telling stories for thousands of years and never finish falling apart. No. You haven't been in a place like this before. Or will you ever do again, rest assured.

Sun can be killer. When it is, think what it was like for those erecting and maintaing this with zero robotic technology. All of a sudden your soul feels heavy (with guilt if you are a good catholic girl) or with whichever heaviness you choose to put upon your shoulders. The sun becomes colder than the arctic circle.

Many other little temples
The many other minor temples visited before Angkor Wat, each in a different way, are all screams of magnificent majesty. Only humans believing themselves gods could have, not only foreseen, but carried away such constructions. A clear reflection of what they thought they were.

Bayon(?) 
Bayon looks back at you from e v e r y   s i n  g l e   c o r n e r . Happy to receive you, stern and so imposing.


Confusing on the first level, intriguing on the second, again this questioning phenomena, doubts, imagination: it's all triggered at once in this playground for the mind. And a feeling -still wondering which one it is- cooks up slowly in your stomach. What is it? Will someone ever know ? Will I ever be able to let go form this?

And Angkor Thom (literally, in Khmer, The Great City) Is it the Monastery or is it the Jungle? Eclectic poem, decadent ruin, ruined while trying to ruin the jungle. Jungle keeps winning. Roots taller than people (and though yeah, it doesn't take much to be taller than me, they are taller than many other people). Roots adapting to every building set on stone and blood, bricks give up. Roots grow up. The sky is always there to reach for. Always a bit higher. There go the trees. Higher than high.

Incessantly elevating their bodies and souls to those heavens that belong to Gods that we don't know but that still look after us, minuscule beings, under their shade. Take a deep breath. Relax. Take a while and inhale it, absorb it all . These gods, these trees, they know we need a place to stop and let things sink  in, and here is where that happens.

All expressions are exaggerations, I promise I'm not exaggerating. The centipede was big as my hand, and my tears were real, as real as every day gone by here.

It's dark when I arrive and the ride is fairly short. I can't see as much as I wish. But I feel it enough. Vibrant, with a character that can't wait to show off. Seems like it will have some style too. 

The sun rises right in front of me. I sample a variety of local and exotic fruits: each one of them deserves to be savoured.

The dust of the street and the smog off the exhausts,
The lactic acid of the pineapple and the sweetness of the mango,
The freshly baked to french perfection baguettes and the amok, lok lak and other spices,
The style... NOthing else than remains of French Influence
...It all comes together in one big sticky darkish  cloud, don your light blue mask, blend in:

Welcome to Phnom Penh

Contradictions, horror, poverty, beggars, endless tuk tuk offers (scientifically proven about 472 in 3h).

I name the next bit of my thoughts DISAGREE, because you might.

I don't dine in 5 star hotels/restaurants (not all the time), I dine in USD5 beer included shacks with plastic chairs and riverfront view, only 'coz life happens in the riverfront.

At some of them the risk is that miserable poverty will walk into you. Choking you if you dare take that ready to go spoonful. I walk through this misery every day, trying to ignore as gently and peacefully as their existence. But truth is such misery, such poverty is never gentle or peaceful, not even to the strongest soul or the most stubborn mind. Not psychologically.

There they are, staring at you, them, their potential costumer's meal. Here they are, staring at mine. And yes, I am weak and vulnerable. I can't help feeling awful. Even though I have earned it. I can't feeling blessed, for the chances I had and they didn't.

I invite him in . 'Can you read? (the menu - and I hope he didn't take it bad), choose something, keep me company if you want, because I'm not getting a book from you'. And it was fine with him. And his little -what I thought: sister-

I was beginning to feel better until he started telling me his story, how one day the Khmer Rouge Regime came in, split the family and never saw anyone again. And how when it was over he had nowhere to go, no education, not a thing.

'But how old are you?' I inquired, trying to hide my disbelief. To me, before he told me the story, he was 15 years old.
'31' he shot back at me, 'and you?'
Only after choking I was able to reply my own age. How sad is it that he just looks like a 13 16 year old because he just never grew up! Not enough food. Dear me, dear you, dear all of US! And me carrying these few KG extra.... He could do with'em.

 Then, he went on with the story, a friendly restaurant owner allowed him to sell books inside his establishment, to leave a bag with a set of clean clothes, to take a shower each morning before school and wash up the other set of clothes. 

Until here we are, one evening like any other, talking as if friends. He's desperate to get another 40USD to pay the monthly school fee because he doesn't wanna let go the whole year for not being able to pay the last month. I salute him.

Oh man, you can see in his eyes how hard he tries, but even more, how much harder life tries on him. And just like him so many other "kids" (that probably are 20 years older than what they look, because they starved  so many years).

And as well as I know that comparisons apply only to bitter people (and the only bitterness in me is the sense of humour) I can't help comparing. Thinking parallelisms with my own people. There is misery, there are forgotten places. And also there is fomented poverty and happy poor people. Poor form the soul, that prefer a social plan than a decent job. That prefer free money (for drugs and alcohol, and who am I to judge?) than a decent job.  Even if they wanted to go to school, back home, it'd be free. I rest my case by saying that most people in Villa 31 -THE shanty town– have a satellite tv. Here in Cambodia: little money but a clean spirit.
"English? Is the future, I learn at school"

And that's the dark side of the city and not the annoying tuk tuk drivers. It's the misery, the desperation, the insistence. At the same time, they are respectable human beings who treat you as such and expect nothing less but the same.

The bright side?
There is no violence.
There is no fear.
There is no paranoia.
There is optimism.
There is a moral to be learnt.

That's priceless.
Sorry, what was I complaining about last time we met?

Beautiful Lil' India

He smokes bidis, she covers her head.

There is a library, and people actually still use it. 

There is a colonial look, a great vibe and a romantic feeling. Utopia.

Until there were they, westerners, with shopping bags, presents. -Forgiven, because of the Christmas Season, and because who am I to judge anyway...-

Monsoon. Grey. Apocalyptic. High Clouds. Breeze. Sticky air.

Usually I would take one way to go, another way to come back, not to miss anything. But so absorbed are my eyes by just the one side of the road that I might actually come back the same way to stare at the other side of the road. And it will happen guilt free. (Oh yeah, don't we good catholic -at least in theory and paper- girls know how to feel guilty about it all?)

As I approach the neighbourhood, I feel the looks. Try to ignore is all and the best I can do: keep walking, don't look back.  Stares, flowers, masalas, incense, mangos, 24carat gold, spices, colours, lizards; they all coexist in a chaotic harmony that can only happen in Little India. There would be no harmony if it wasn't for this overly populated by men chaos. I am the only woman I can see in the streets for a long time. I am used to this.

My obsessive compulsive addiction for incense has great chances of receiving a decent fix today.  This place is home for different smokes and aromas. Might actually have to try one of each. My blood boils with excitement.

Next to the electronics' store it smells fresh grassy green, coconuty, minty. Next to the BMW parked outside a store of all wooden deities ever imagined pepper itches my nose.

Chinese platform little black shoes. They have a ribbon on top. Open toes. I am blessing the absence of rats in the streets the moment I almost step into a dead pigeon. Aick. Drops the size of who knows what start falling from heaven.

And how welcome they are. They make the air softer, lighter. 

Meanwhile I share a table at the hawkers food establishment with a group of what seems four Indian workers. They look at me eat my food -veggie curry- with my hands and they can't help giggling like little girls. I know my fingers, no matter how much I lick them (is that allowed by this protocol?) will be yellow until well into the night if tomorrow. Suck it, I don't care, it tastes delicious. 

Little India

Singapore

Sept.2012

MELANCHOLY À MONTRÉAL