Tiny Little Fractures

I don’t think the words Master Trainer emblazoned on the man’s back gave me any confidence in his abilities. For one thing when I spotted him I initially thought he was one of the old guys who on doctor’s orders, after years of heavy drinking has to come to the gym to try and squeeze a few more years out of a cirrhotic liver. His shambling gait across the gym floor only added to this impression and I’ll admit I was more than a bit taken aback to see that he was the cream of the crop of a personal trainer. Makes me glad I never bothered.

You see a long, long time ago, in a place called Costa Mesa, where the girls in the gym were incredibly hot and friendly I joined 24 Fitness, mostly in a bid to get rid of the excesses of the binge drinking and general lethargy of writing up a thesis that had taken a toll on my BMI. Of course the girls I saw going into the place on a regular basis weren’t too bad of an incentive either. As I signed the paperwork and paid the exorbitant fees for getting my feet through the door the person I was dealing with asked if I was interested in some ‘discount’ personal training lessons, at around $100 an hour or so.

Eyeing some of the hardbodies around I inquired as to who would be my trainer. Without batting an eyelid the guy in front of me said he would be my trainer. 

I laughed out loud, I was that surprised. I tried in the interests of political correctness and politeness to stifle the laugh and replace it with a sneeze slash cough but I’m not sure how successful I was. You see the guy who was offering me personal training at the rate of a $100 an hour, certified though he may have been weighed somewhere in the region of 300 pounds. I mean this boy was big, from one to the other he was two time zones. Now I may not have a washboard stomach (yet) or bulging biceps or 3% body fat but the ludicrousness of what he was suggesting was hard to escape. I mean would you take English lessons from George Bush? Etiquette lessons from either of the two Silvas?

I mean if you are going to pay an arm and a leg for someone to torture you into fitness levels you’ve never dreamed off, you would hope that person has some concept of how much you are suffering and empathize and inspire. Keep an eye on you to prevent injury, etc.

Not wander off to get a donut when you miss a rep and get pinned to the bench by a barbell.

The dumbest statement of the decade 

I saw a rather disturbing thing while on the treadmill at my local gym today. And no it wasn’t the hideously overweight thing that waddles across the floor at 6.30 every day. Someone so fat I still haven’t figured out whether it is female or male, as to how one eats oneself to the point of asexuality I don’t know. No the rather disturbing thing I saw was on the TV screen in front of me, where the figures flashed on CNN showing the projected cost of the Iraq and Afghan war for the next 10 years, a rather jaw dropping 14 trillion dollars.

An impressive figure but one of those that is really in the end too large to comprehend but then CNN did something very smart (I know I was surprised myself). They broke it down, that’s $8,000 per person over the next 10 years. I was so surprised my knee buckled and almost ended up face first on the person next to me. Giving the girl a rather weak smile I straightened by knee with a quick blow to its back and went back to running and tried to slowly absorb this figure. 

Now that’s a fair fucking amount of money and of course it being a true democracy out here when there are costs for such a thing like a war both the rich and the poor (and of course the middle class) will probably pay equally for it. To be honest I don’t want to pay. I mean the Afghan war maybe. After all those Islamasists (as one person I know who despite being nice is rather stupid refers to them as) flew planes into those towers and killed some 3,000 people. Fine, I mean most of the nutcases were Saudi but apparently they were being kept in bed and breakfast by those turbaned nutters the Taleban. So smoke them out, that I can understand.

Of course 6 years after the event apparently Bin Laden is still waltzing around with his dialysis machine and is nowhere being closer to being caught than when he was being groomed by the CIA to fight the Russians. Then we get Iraq, a country that had nothing to do with September 11, a country that was pretty much secular that was invaded on the pretext of a preemptive strike in the ‘war against terror’ by a president who cheated his way into the White House. Riiight…so Saddam (who is..er..was..I will endorse a complete wanker) was captured, executed, no weapons of mass destruction were found and a bollocking shit storm was ignited in the newly liberated land. 

What was really funny was how within a few months of the invasion and it was painfully obvious no weapons of mass destruction to be found, suddenly the nitwit who leads the land of the free was bleating the line of ‘saving the Iraqi people.’ Of course while they are busy saving them they haven’t even bothered keeping count of how many have lost their lives. I mean that’s a bit strange, you go into ‘save’ some people and don’t bother keeping count of how many have died since you ‘saved’ them.

Anyways I could go on ad naseum about how stupid all this is, how those people who lost their lives back in 2001 have still not seen justice, how the old white men have fooled the American people and made a bundle of money but then I’d be here all day. The bottom line is I don’t want to pay, I have better things to spend my money on than paying Blackwater to knock off Iraqi civilians. And my solution is rather simple. Get the triumvirate of fools who started this mess, George, Cheney and Rumsfield pay around 80% of their wealth. I think that would be fair. I don’t know about Rumsfeld but Cheney seems to rake in a fair amount of dough and George is rolling in it. 

So you three wankers, put your bloody money where your mouth is, pay up!

 

 a tad smoky up front

Coming into Simi Valley yesterday was like a ride into the apocalypse. Despite it being around 4pm, the sun was a fiery, hellish ball behind a screen of smoke. The fire season has kicked off here in the heartland again with the Santa Ana winds blowing across the land and fanning the flames. The winds are something else; coming down the Keuhner pass, every second was a fight with the steering wheel. The wind shear tried to fling my car to the left, the curving road, gravity and centrifugal force tried to swing it to the right all the way down the pass. Then there was and me trying to remember my high school physics and alternatively praying to the pantheon of higher beings, fighting to correct the steering and not trying to wet my pants. 

Being the inimitable photographer that I am as I came down the Pass I took a few moments out of my nervous breakdown to take a couple of pictures. Not too impressive, but then this was at 60 miles per hour with a camera phone and a Denali up my ass. So cut me some slack.

This morning was no better, not only was the wind howling around the house but a stray breeze had blown open my bedroom door. I woke up to the sweet strains of the Schizo Schitzu trying to find his metaphorical keys in my garbage can. Stepping outside was no better, the early morning sky was still a muted angry orange colour and the smell of embers was nauseating. I was a bit miffed because of all the ways to enjoy second hand smoke; bushfires are pretty way down my list. And besides, I don’t smoke in the mornings and not having a choice in the matter was sort of pissy in an ironic way.

Right now things are still literally heating up, N just emailed saying he was being evacuated and I’m religiously checking the Ventura fire updates hoping the fire doesn’t spread south to Moorpark. Hopefully these damn winds die down and everything comes back under control…after all I am rather too fond of the pooch to see him barbequed.

 

The sun obscured by a haze of smoke.
 

 

Pre-flight scorpion

My boss gave me a scorpion. Well he didn’t as much as give it to me rather I asked for it. As P mentioned I probably made all brown people the world over proud and upped my weirdness factor at work by asking for the little critter. My boss had come across him nestled in his kid’s clothes, unfortunately when the clothes were already on the kid (he lives up in the mountains so this wasn’t as surprising a discovery as it seems, well unless you were the kid).

The boss wasn’t really fond of the scorpion, especially since it had nicked the kid a couple of times. Luckily it was only a baby so obviously didn’t have as much venom in its system so no long term damage had been done. This story of course made me aware that in addition to rattlesnakes, cougars and mentally retarded mule deer I had one more creature to keep a wary eye out for on my site visits (as if I needed another threat to my well being).

On inquiring, surprisingly without any raised eyebrows, as to what in tarnation I was going to do with the scorpion the boss was somewhat mollified by hearing that I was going to kill him and take some macro photographs. Now before the animal lovers get on my case, the boss was going to kill the scorpion already so I was just taking on the sin for him. Also I really, really wanted to take some good macro shots of the little bugger…and since it’s a scorpion…I wasn’t really going to do it while it was alive. You know with that sting and all.

So I spent the day with the scorpion perambulating eerily around its jar on a shelf in my office before I took it home. I scheduled the shoot for Sunday following my whale watching trip and let P know to grab me some Kenko extension tubes while I jury rigged a temporary lightbox. The scorpion appeared to have kicked the bucket as he lay motionless in his jar and staid like that for a couple of days.

Sunday dawned and just to make sure that the scorp as dead I poured some water into the jar. To my surprise he immediately arched his back and scrabbled his legs. But it was brief and then he was still, lying in his watery grave as I assumed. Note I know this sounds cruel but I didn’t really have a choice. Remember that weirdness index at the office I was talking about? Well one of the reasons I figure so highly on that is because every time a spider shows up in the office, while everybody is ready to splat it I’m usually to be found on my knees wasting valuable client billable time rescuing it and setting it free outside. So there, I kill with great reluctance!

P rolled over and we had a quiet smoke on the balcony and then experimented with the lightbox, minimum focusing distances, lighting and all that jazz that us aspiring photographers like to talk endlessly about. After a few shots of cigarette packs and miniature cologne/perfume bottles we decided to bring out the main show. Using a pair of tweezers I fished the scorpion out and placed him in the lightbox. P and I noted with some interest that it seemed to be a bit ‘twitchy.’

So there I was taking pictures of the ‘dead’ scorpion moving his little claws around when it suddenly dawned on us that maybe he wasn’t really dead. For one thing he was starting to look mighty alert and aggressive, which is something dead animals rarely do. Loathe to end our photo session I suggested P take over with the camera and I would empty the jar and bring it back just in case the scorpion got more active.

Of course as luck would have it as soon as I walked out of the room the scorpion decided to leg it, obviously emboldened by P’s lack of experience with creepy crawlys. All I could hear as I hurriedly threw out the water in the jar was P’s rather frantic, slightly high pitched entreaties for me to come back as he was ill-equipped both physically and mentally to handle a scorpion. I re-entered the room to find that the scorpion had disappeared behind the TV stand that we had set up our mini studio on. 

A conundrum if I ever came across one. Especially because this was a baby scorpion and the prospect of spending the next year growing old with a scorpion wandering around my room was not a prospect that I was looking forward to. The only thing worse that I could think of at that moment was the possibility of growing old with the last ex. Spurred on by this cheerful thought I bade P spare himself and I put myself in harms way. After all I was the older and more experienced of us two. The first thing that I noticed behind the TV stand apart from a plethora of wires was an old towel that had made its way behind there. Figuring the best thing to do would be to remove that I cautiously fished it out. This was when I made a rather startling discovery.

It appears that scorpions can fly. A fact that I was far from happy to discover as it suddenly the scorpion flew out from the towel, missed my leg by a whisker and landed on the carpet. Needless to say I was shocked. But being the inherent woodsman that I am I quickly recovered, grabbed the jar and trapped the scorpion. P and I had another smoke, this time a bit shakily after all the excitement and debated how to go ahead killing the scorpion. 

I had read that nail remover imbued cotton wool works on insects but I searched high and low and couldn’t find any. We decided to compromise with the miniature perfume bottles and poured them out on cotton balls and placed them in the jar. I’m not sure who suffered more from that exercise though, us or the scorpion. He didn’t seem to like the perfume that we provided much and as P was leaving he was still spiritedly attacking the cotton wool. When I checked on him last he appeared to be dead so now I just have to extricate my sinuses and then pull him out for the photoshoot…maybe sometime this coming weekend.

Of course now every time I’m out on a site not only do I have to be wary of rattlesnakes (which at least rattle) and panthers (which are fairly large)…now I have to look out for flying scorpions. How one protects oneself against that I know not…

There she blows again… 

It may have been a side effect of waking up so early on a Saturday morning that a decidedly odd version of that infamous Sixpence none the Richer was playing in my head. It’s been awfully long time since I’ve woken up late on a Saturday in my own bed…and in fact it looks like it’s going to be awhile until I get to in the near future. The fact that I was hauling my congested self out of bed at six in the morning to see the mightiest animal that has ever existed on the planet may have also had something to do with the bizarre lyrics.

Actually early mornings are starting to grow on me, especially those that I wake up sans hangover and with an exciting day to come. The throaty growl outside indicated N had turned up in his Z, about 15 minutes early which was very un Sri Lankan off him. We scarfed down some McDees breakfast while I gave my camera equipment a final look see. 

Body…check

4 gig card (would prove to be horrendously slow)…check

1 gig card (high speed)…check

1 gig card (high speed)…at P’s…I reckon I should start renting him rental for that.

2 gig card (high speed)…forget…dammit

zip lock bag jury rig (necessary to keep spray off my lovely L lens)…check

batteries (useless performance for some reason)…check

And it was off to Santa Barbara to meet S, J and this chap whose name escapes me but who I’ve pegged in my head as the seasick chap (now I don’t have to explain that do I?). The Condor Express which was to take us out into the Channel and traverse Santa Cruz island was an impressive sight in the early morning light. I yawned, chewed on 10 altoids to keep my sore throat at bay and climbed on board. We all, being the chandyias that we are decided to go to the bow and stand in the full might of the wind as the Express tried to prove exactly how high speed it was.

It was exhilarating, if a bit chilly. The boat bounced through some moderate chop and the back kicking spray somehow miraculously missed us and drenched a rather surprised girl next to us to the bone. Laughing at her (discreetly) and sympathising with the seasick chap, who almost immediately felt dizzy and had to sit down, N and I enjoyed clearing our lungs and lowering our core body temperatures. After awhile we were both a bit cold and bored, but neither of course wanted to admit this to the other. So we stood and froze until finally the captain yelled out “there she blows.” 

Now if I was a blue whale and I heard that yelled out, I would most probably lift my skirts around my ankles and skoot (or whatever whales do) and with good cause because for the last couple of decades that cry was usually followed by a booming sound and a curious burning itch followed I’m going to guess by incomprehensible pain as the harpoon grenade explodes. It is somewhat scary that we puny humans almost managed to wipe out the largest living creature that has ever lived in the course of a few score years, from around 300,000 prewhaling to less than 5,000 now.

The first whale we saw was a pretty young though and thankfully must not have experienced the niceties of the whaling industry. The experience of watching a whale is almost like that of elephants in Yala. The whale breathes on the surface for awhile, entertaining us with its spouts and then with a graceful arch of its back and a goodbye wave of its tailfins goes down deep. We would then wait out the whale until he surfaces anywhere from a few 100 feet to half a mile yonder. The sort of like the safari jeeps in Yala the boat is gunned to where the whale is languishing and the cycle is repeated….well…maybe in hindsight it not very similar to watching elephants in Yala. 

The trip was a fascinating way to spend four hours, a bunch of Dall’s porpoises came by to check the boat out and left without posing for my camera and then we did a perambulation around the island of Santa Cruz. I’m not sure if anybody out there is as geeky as me, but I was quietly excited to see this island close up because of a book I loved as kid, the Island of the Blue Dolphins in which the main character was marooned on one of the Channel Islands. The book was actually based on a true story and looking at that island I could only think that being marooned on such a god forsaken place would suck…there was not a single tree to be seen. I personally like palm trees to be present if I get marooned on an island.

The trip back to shore was dramatic to say the least. We were initially joined by what seemed like a couple of hundred dolphins which took a break from lunching on some bait fish to come leaping over to play with the boat. I’ve decided to petition whoever is in charge of reincarnations that once I die, I want to be reborn as a dolphin. Seriously it just looks like they have so much fun. The speed at which they flew through and out of the water was breathtaking and with such little body movement. N and I couldn’t keep our cameras straight and I almost beamed a little kid in the head taking what seemed like a couple of hundred pictures of the dolphins. 

As if that wasn’t enough excitement there turned up not one, not two but three blue whales. And these guys were not juveniles. That was one of the few times that I have felt true awe in my life. The majesty was just unexplainable, all we could see was the grey backs as they came up to breath but the sheer size was inescapable. There were two males fighting over a female, the female leading and the males following (thus proving that even with a brain the size of a small car, common sense does not prevail). All three gave us a fascinating show with their habit of arching their backs excessively during their preliminary breaths and then on their penultimate breath heading down with a languorous wave of their huge flippers. It truly was a sight I felt privileged to see and that’s no hyperbole.

As we saw the last tail fin whip out of the water and the boat started heading back to shore I looked behind. Seasick chap had his head between his knees and seemed to have missed everything. Poor guy…and that silly song was still in my head.

Whoever said life is weird wasn’t kidding. Work’s currently bollockingly hard, I mean ulcers, stomach churning hard. But the weird thing is I like it, I like getting those billables  out (heck I even made it to the top three in the company in my fourth month) and I like learning about buildings and land use policy and geology and the other myriad of things I have to learn and apply to get my projects through. The life of a consultant is full of stress, but at least for the next couple of years should be interesting.

On a personal level life has taken an upshot as well. For one thing the photography is getting more and more interesting. What was an inkling of a fascination has turned into a full blown obsession. All I seem to think about now is aperture, f-stops, composition and the other bewilderments that play a part in trying to capture that perfect image, you know the one ‘where the whole world holds its breath.’

I’ve also rather encouragingly met a couple of buggers who are fun to hang out with, real chilled out island boys. The type that can drink, joke and take a joke (unlike these pesky, tootsie Yanks).  I still miss my boys, R and his jokerness, which is probably only matched by me, CP who is getting married and will be going down that road of housewifery, Evil, Bounty and PV. Not to mention the girl, who seems to be intent on mentioning coming down to SL every time I’m in touch with her. The lack of communication is more a survival mechanism for me than anything else. The fact that I really don’t have time to text at random hours, etc does in a way help my cause. My take on that is blind faith, if it’s meant to be circumstances and timing will make it happen. If not, well that’s just the way things were meant to be. 

Where my enjoyment really hits a clunker is with the family, speaking to the grandparents is something I try to avoid as well. Again that self preservation instinct kicks in, it’s just too tough to hear that they miss me, especially considering the fact they are old now and I don’t know when I’ll be home again. That I’m thousands of miles from the only family I’ve ever been close to, really close is something I try not to think about, just for the sake of my sanity. The plus point is that my relationship with the sibling is a lot better, which considering the growing pains we had a few years ago is nice.

That’s the trick actually. Everything has a plus point. I look at myself in the mirror and I don’t have to trick myself to be happy, I actually am. Life’s active, fun, I managed to somehow download the new Band of Horses album, there’s plenty of pictures to take, sites to see and friends to drink with. Yet at the same time I miss the grandparents trying to tell me how to live my life, R’s brotherhood,va certain pair of smouldering eyes and the looking glass light of home.

I guess this is what bittersweet is.

Is pretty bloody steep…and P and I have been in the thick of it. Little did we know that his innocent comment to me at Lanka Fest when we met only for the second time, asking if he could assist me at my next shoot would have lead to where we are now. 

From a small outing to Santa Monica for some street shooting we moved onto an abortive attempt at being ‘official’ photographers for the Lanka Day at Santa Monica. Though this didn’t go as planned we still had a blast, P especially got some winning shots with N’s Xti and my 70-200mm F4 L. Then through the usual Sri Lankan randomness we got our first ‘gig’ which we initially thought was to assist the photographer handling the Iraj and Ranidu concert in Long Beach. We were both perturbed to turn up and be told by A that he was too busy with organizational headaches and we were essentially on our own. A conundrum since I had never shot with a flash before and P hadn’t either. 

Some pointers, much experimentation and a Canon 5D in P’s hands and we were off, working the crowd, running around in front of the stage, behind the stage and all sorts. It was all learning on the fly as never before…in the deep end with nary a life vest to be seen. P came off the better man and he got some absolutely amazing shots, I seemed to lose my mojo somewhere as the cheap batteries that had come packaged with my 430ex started packing up. A desperate rush to get workable batteries threw me completely off my dial and though I managed a few decent shots I washed out. But then one must fail to learn to succeed I thought as I consoled myself with the few good shots and admired (a bit enviously to be true) the brilliant stuff that P had shot.

What neither of us had really bargained for was the vast amounts of post-processing, backing up and watermarking that producing the final package that was required involved. Also once the ball started rolling it didn’t stop with a party starter friend of mine calling me up and requesting my presence at a club in Sunset to shoot Lucid Dreams for a 30 minute set. With some valuable lessons in mind such as shooting in RAW, a greater understanding of the M mode and some high capacity batteries the two of us headed down to the Roxy last Friday, P with my 17-40L in hand and me with my 50mm 1.8.

Never have I had such an adrenaline filled 30 minutes (well I have but not for awhile). Once the boys got on stage and started rapping both of us were in the crowd, on stage, ducking and weaving, composing, recomposing, chimping, changing shutter speeds, dialing up and down on our flashes and shuttering away. I still have little idea about what their music was about because I was on my own high. Over 300 pictures in 30 minutes and my arms were aching from constant moving around trying to get that perfect image, Paper with his hat on, the girls in the crowd, Love crooning away, everything had to be immortalized.
 

The crowd going wild

There was a moment of humour once their set was done, I took a picture of the above two fine young ladies and moved over to have a quick chat. The Asian one asked how she could get copies of the pictures to which I graciously responded by handing her my card and telling her to drop me a mail. As I was going to take a few more pictures of them and close the deal P bumbled in like an eager puppy, tongue practically lolling out, handing out cards and flashing like crazy. Kids I tell you, completely ruined my set-up…but eh…not a big deal and it gives me something to take the piss out of him every now and then. 

Of course as usual post processing was a bitch and has to be stuck in between work, gym, getting my car maintained, a sorry excuse for a social life, recovering from hangovers and of course sleep. We finally got some pictures out to C today and he wants us for another show in Malibu. On top of that we have other gigs on the way, the Red Bull Air Races on Saturday in San Diego and all kinds of fun things in the pipeline.

When the ball is rolling, gotta keep it going.

A millisecond later and this would have been an absolutely beautiful image. I still like it though!

Well not totally down but it’s getting there. After all the world’s stock markets have plunged, the City people are losing jobs and even champagne sales are down in London and I share some responsibility in that. I’m sure you must be wondering what on earth a land use consulting, former non-profiter, environmental scientist has to do with the plunge of the world’s markets. You see before I went to Sri Lanka in 2005 to lose part of my liver and most of my mojo I worked from late 2004 until the end of 2005 as a sales representative for a sub-prime mortgage bank over here in sunny SoCal. Why? Because the money was brilliant and more than enough to fund my excessive debaucheries in Vegas, San Francisco and eventually in Sri Lanka. Of course there is a price to pay for all things but that’s a different story.

You can barely take a peep at the business section of any paper or website these days without bit hit in the face with how the sub-prime mortgage market and its collapse in the US is going to well…destroy the world. Well I participated gleefully in that market when it was at its peak and what a market it was. There was the thrill of hitting multi-million dollar targets, from $5 million initially to a whopping $30 million a month at our team’s peak. There was also a very attractive Filipino girl that I worked with that was the icing on the cake (yeah she was married but so what, technicality). Times were good, the money was rolling in, I had a fast sports car and who cared if we lent to people who couldn’t pay back.

It did eventually get to me though. At heart I’m a reasonably decent human being and seeing people getting fucked on a daily basis, the greed of the brokers, the number of lines we were asked to cross and the stupidity of the average borrower became too much and I cracked. I should have ended up in Angoda but I’m back here reasonably well adjusted and happy (well as happy as I can be out of Sri Lanka). I do feel a smidgeon of guilt however every time I read the news about more stock market plunges. Too think our little deal makings are having repercussions like that befuddles me. I truly am very sorry for the ignorance in which I worked back in the days and for the way that’s hit the poor suckers who bought those toxic bonds that those Liar Loans were packaged in.

If it’s any consolation to those who have lost bundles on the market these days there’s an incredibly beautiful half Latino, half Filipino stripper in Vegas who to this day must be utterly astonished by the rather extravagant tip left for her by me one drunken night in Sin City. Incidentally I’m still a bit pissed about it and have henceforth kept my hundreds (oh wait I don’t have those anymore) strictly separate from my ones.

Just you know, to be on the safe side. Precipitated by my office suddenly seeming to take a liking to the Tiesto podcast issuing from my speakers and appearing to dance along to it. It was to be fair a pretty small earthquake (3.5 on the Richter scale) unless of course one was actually experiencing it first hand. I’m a tad spooked, not spooked like babbling on the floor, cowering in fear, needing a change of pants kind of spooked. But spooked enough to buy me one of these, now should I calculate the pooch’s needs as well….that’s the question…to which I should really find the answer before the Big One…possibly…hits…

So R akki forwarded me this email the other day of the 10 most obvious questions people ask and some smarmy answers. Very kindly she sent it to a bcc’d it to a bunch of people saying it reminds her of me, can’t even defend myself because I don’t know who got the email.

Off the 10 my personal favourite was the below: 

At a funeral: One of the teary-eyed people ask…

Stupid Question:-

Why, why him, of all people?!

Answer:-

Why? Would it rather have been you?

Of course I have been in that situation at cricket matches where I’ve had people ask me what I’m doing there, in the morning asking if I drank too much the last night and to be honest I do give snarky answers. Most notably I pissed off one of my bosses when she said “oh you’ve had a haircut!?” and I replied “no, no…I just got run over by a flipping lawnmower.” I think the straight face that I delivered it and the snort of laughter from my coworker pissed her off and I got a bit of a talking to. American’s don’t have much of a sense of irony.

The latest was a few nights ago. I suddenly jerked awake. The first thing I noticed was the Frans Lanting print above my head swinging back and forth. Before that really registered I noticed, not with mild disinterest, that the whole room was shaking. One, two jerks and everything calmed down. I looked up at the print to make sure I wasn’t going to be brained by the print falling off, turned over and snuggled into my duvet. As I was about to resume my blissful sleep, the unc knocked on my door.

“That was an earthquake!” 

“The fact did not escape me”

“What are we going to do?!” 

“Well it’s over now, so I’m going back to sleep….”

"Oh…" 

Seriously some people…

If I just lay here
Would you lie with me
And just forget the world

 

My one shitty picture off my phone

I was strangely unmoved while the whole of the Greek Theater was up in arms singing along to the Snow Patrol anthem. It was an odd thing watching them play in the US. Not a bad thing mind you, after all I’ve been trying to see them live for about three years now and this time I wasn’t thwarted by unexpected job offers, procrastination, geography or any of those other factors that made me loose my noodle before. This time R, myself, A and D were sorted months before with tickets and we made it there without any hitches (minus of course the bloody 283 dollar speeding ticket).

Honestly one could not ask for a better place to watch a gig than the Greek, nestled in the hills of Griffith Park, it’s a small intimate venue with an amazing if slightly toasted (courtesy of the recent Griffith Park fires) view. The badu were also amazingly hot, though as usual with my luck I had a smelly Persian girl (obviously the one Persian girl in the whole of California who isn’t fit) and her dubious looking boyfriend sitting next to me. The band was brilliant as well and I could go on about Gary Lightbody’s voice but it might be a bit gay…oh yeah and there were these two songbirds, the Watson Twins who sounded ethereal and were umm…yum. 

But as I mentioned before watching them play with an American audience was strange. Whereas I was up in arms going crazy for Spitting Games, Run and of course Chocolate the rest of the crowd seemed strangely unmoved. I was especially surprised when this laxness was displayed to Run, I mean I remember singing along with a thousand Brits in Chelmsford to that anthem and watching the Somerset show where the same thing happened. Of course this anomaly was explained when Chasing Cars came on and everybody was doing what I had been doing solo a few minutes ago. Nobody out here knows Snow Patrol for Final Straw, only from Eyes Open.

Fair enough I guess, but it was still an awesome, awesome gig. I just couldn’t get any decent pictures because the disadvantage of having a ginormous SLR is that it doesn’t really fit down my pants and thus can’t be sneaked into a concert. I did wish I had it though when this couple started making out in front of me and the light beams from the stage created this absolutely spellbinding silhouette. It would have been a hell of an image.

Of course it’s a reflection of how crazy my life is at the moment that it took me two weeks after the concert to blog about it…sigh…

I’ve forgotten how much fun it is being in the wilds listening to nature around you. So much so that when I was up on one of our sites taking some site photographs, and heard the rustling around me I briefly shat myself. Primarily because the first thing that popped into my head was the possibility of it being a mountain lion. For one thing the creature was undoubtedly large and another thing was that it seemed to be coming straight towards me. So I stood there trying to figure out how to use a Panasonic camera to fight off a cougar and wishing T-Mobile had better coverage so at least my last screams could be heard by my loved ones.

In the end, rather anticlimactically, it turned out to be a rather mentally challenged mule deer who gandered up, gave me a rather surprised look and then took off running when I switched on my camera to take a photograph (shitty office camera was hugely noisy on start up). I must say though the experience took me back to the good old days, and I do miss the days of wandering around the woods. I should get back to it someday.

 

The car seemed to snake in behind me quickly and almost stealthilty. I glanced at through the haze of the late afternoon and my ubercool sunglasses. Too late I noticed the grill and the antennae poking out of its back. I instinctively stepped on the brake, but it was too late, the lights, cunningly hidden below the profile of the car started flashing. 

‘Fuuuuck,’ was all I could think, how could I have been so careless?! I always, always keep a sharp eye out for the kosas, especially when weaving in and out of traffic. I mean I’ve driven to San Francisco on the 5 at an average speed of a 100 mph without getting caught! I was pissed that I had for once let my guard down and was going to pay the price. I meekly switched my left signal on and took the next exit.

After rolling to a stop at a gas station I put my window down and scrabbled in the glove compartment for my insurance and registration. As the pruny lady officer walked up to the car I attempted my best attempt at a grin, realized that if it was anything like my trademark manic grin she would probably shoot me and toned it down to what I hoped was a winning, wistful smile. 

You were speeding back there.

Yes, yes I was officer, very sorry bout that. 

I contemplated telling her at this point that she looked very fetching in her uniform, but then realized I was still brown, so would probably have been shot…or at least had a nightstick shoved where the sun don’t shine.

License, registration and insurance please. 

Here’s my insurance and license, my registration is umm…on my nightstand.

She was actually a fairly nice cop, she saw I had my new sticker on so didn’t rap me for the missing registration and she wrote me up for 19 over. 20 over and I would have been in all kinds of shit, maybe my smile is somewhat winning. 

Drive safe

Yes sir! Umm..I mean ma’am! (sometimes my sense of humour gets the better of me) 

I watched her pull out and then glanced at the ticket I had in my hand…Officer’s name: Rex…I’m so glad I didn’t tell her she looked fetching.

A girl with the name Rex…would have definitely shot me…

Now I’m no Pradeep Jeganathan, nor do I have the skills of the Domestic Goddess, but I can cook…a bit…

On 07/07/07 as part of a Flickr initiative I wandered down to Santa Monica and Venice Beach with P and A to take some hopefully arty pics. While my primary focus was initially the farmers market in Santa Monica I ended up instead getting most if not all of the pictures for the pool from Venice Beach. 

I did however pick up these nifty little multi-coloured potatoes from the farmers market, together with some delicious blueberries sold by an equally delicious looking young lady (what, I can’t help myself sometimes!). The potatoes were tiny compared to the genetically modified behemoths one usually finds at the supermarkets and they were obviously descended from the multi-coloured brethren found in the Andes. I had a pleasant chat with the potato selling man who had a farm in San Luis Obispo, took some pictures and bought myself some teeny taters.

 

Potato selling man (unfortunately selling carrots in the picture)

After contemplating on whether I want to wander around my neighborhood zoo in the mid afternoon or do some cooking today I decided, taking a squinted peek outside that I would do the latter. I have a tried and tested method for making my ala thel daala. I grab a bowl, chop up an onion, cry a bit and put it into the bowl. On top of that I add some chillie powder, curry leaves, bit of cinnamon, turmeric and some chillie pods broken up. I also add a dash of my grandmother’s curry powder which is smuggled into the country regularly for the family’s benefit.

 

Spice bowl 

I then boil the potatoes in the microwave and chop them up as so.

 

Boiled, chopped potatoes

The rest of the procedure is very simple, a bit of olive oil in a saucepan, high heat, throw in the spice bowl, cry a bit from the resulting mini nuclear explosion of spices, regain composure and start stirring the mixture. After everything’s nice and fried, I throw in the potatoes and go back to stirring with the avidity of a Macbeth witch.

 

Into the frying pan 

After a while I take a deep sniff, clear the sinuses and tap a couple of the taters to make sure they are good and cooked (I actually forgot to do this on this occasion, hence the potatoes are a tad hard, but nothing a good microwave zap can’t fix). Add some salt to mix, give it a vigorous stir, which results in some turmeric flying out of the frying pan onto the pristinely white t-shirt I always somehow end up wearing when cooking and voila!

 

Mult-coloured ala thel daala

P.S. I apologize for the shoddy food photographs; I was too lazy to switch out my 70-200mm lens and ended up taking pictures from a couple of miles away.

Spending last Saturday wandering around San Francisco reminded me how much I miss the place; it’s just such a crazy, weird place, European in its bohemianess and American in its liveliness. On my way to the Civic Center I passed a transsexual, Asian hooker hugging a parking meter and chatting up a bemused tourist. It would have been a brilliant photo opportunity if I had my 70-200mm attached and being in a very dodgy neighbourhood prevented me from switching lenses without being a possible mugging victim. Shortly afterwards I passed two people smoking crack in the confines of a small car in the middle of the day on Van Ness. Again would have been a good photo opportunity but they may have shot me if I had tried. Discretion above valour is something I value.

Of course nothing beats my first trip to Shaky Town what seems eons ago in 2003. It seems like yesterday but Chinky Pinky, R and I were so different back then. R was just starting his obsession with PKS, I was coming off a 2 year relationship that ended up on an earth shatteringly sour note and I think CP was in the same boat. CP and I had driven up to see R and we decided to book a room in the City and party it up. With our absolutely non-existent local knowledge we booked a room in the Tenderloin district.

That first bus ride down to Pier 39 will always be one of my more fond memories of the City. R, CP and I planted ourselves at the back and started to have one of our usual random conversations. About five minutes in an overwhelming odour of urine started to permeate through the bus. Initially thinking that it was emanating from outside none of us paid any heed but the smell kept getting stronger and stronger and eventually we peered down the bus in consternation. 

Halfway down was an old Chinese man whose trouser leg was soaking wet and a puddle off pee dribbled around his shoe. Three of us exchanged slightly concerned looks, R especially with his lack of experience with big city crazies had a bit of a wild gleam in his eyes (I was pretty calm after having had enough of this kind of experiences after three years living in London). Things started to get a bit ugly then when a mean looking kalu baduwa in front of the old guy turned around and started cussing him out. She yelled at him for a few minutes and then got out at the next stop.

It was then that I had to start wondering what I had been drinking the night before. The old man started muttering to himself in Thai or Vietnamese. He continued getting himself more and more worked up and to top it off started spitting. What really gave us pause for thought was not that he was just spitting, but that his spit was green, a fluorescent green. I swear at that point R grabbed my hand in fear; I still hope to this day that it was CP’s hand he intended to grab and not mine. The crazy old guy continued alternatively spraying radioactive waste around and swearing incomprehensibly. A few stops later he thankfully shuffled off the bus leaving a mélange of odours and three very shocked brown people behind. 

I’m going to take a wild guess and say I would have been the one to break the silence with an inane comment but R and CP were too far gone to say anything. Of course after all this excitement one would have been forgiven to assume the rest of the trip would be sans too much more excitement. Alas, it was not to be. There was a chap in the front of the bus who could have been kindly described as being a bit overweight, well overweight somewhere in the region of a couple of hundred pounds. He was busy reading a paper which as the bus jolted to a stop he dropped. A few things then happened in rapid succession, he bent over to get the paper, the bus lurched again and his grey trackpants fell around his ankles. Unfortunately in his haste to get out the door in the morning Mr. Fatty appeared to have forgotten a vital item of clothing. So CP, R and I were treated to a real life San Franciscan, gigantic kalu ass. What was even more disconcerting was that he seemed more interested in picking up his paper than his pants.

At the next stop the three of us got off.

A less impressive, but smokey fire  close to home
 

Oh but someone always does. I was up on a site visit in the Calabasas Mountains today when lo and behold a thick column of smoke was rising in the distance. It appears the California fire season has started (well it’s debatable as to whether it ever ended, as we had fires in December and February). This one is currently raging around Griffith Park which is thankfully miles from us. I haven’t had the misfortune to have too many hairy experiences with wildfires though the fam have a couple of times. They not once but twice had to pack valuables into cars and await a possible evacuation order as flames jumped into the air a couple of hundred feet away from the homestead.

My personal experience with wildfires was nonetheless surreal and involved driving home along the 101 through the Valley as the hills on the sides of the freeway glowed and sparked in the night. There was plenty of time to enjoy the Danteish views as well as the technically 45 minute journey took around 4 hours. As it was a stick shift car I could barely feel my legs at the end. The cruel irony was that I had to wake up the next day after 4 hours of sleep and head back into work on a train that rattled through some Apocalyptic terrain. Everything was black and there were even a few minute fires and embers that glowed on the tracks, something that did not really fill me with confidence. But fire is a part of life out here in Sunny SoCal, I just wonder what this summer will bring.

Photography is a tough to become good at, well as most things are I guess. But to me being essentially a scientifically minded person, the arts have always been dark mysterious fuzz to me. This despite the fact that there are a fair amount of arty people in the family. But if there is one art form I’m starting to love and really get an understanding of its photography, heck I’m even considering it as a future career (assuming I can get good enough, heck even that greatest of greats Frans Lanting started in his thirties). Of course a major part of photography is an ‘eye’ for a potential image. It’s easy enough to imagine a good composition in your head when presented with amazing scenery or a beautiful person or a striking bird. However what I see when I peruse the works of the greats is producing a quality image in a more mundane situation.

For someone like me however a great deal of luck is needed to produce a picture in such a situation and that did happen on the way back from Big Sur (more on that later). N wanted to get some nuts on the 146, don’t ask me why but apparently that highway is the place to get nuts. I wandered outside the isolated shop I noticed the lines of crops on the other side of the highway…hmmm…might be an interesting picture with the highway providing a horizontal line and the crops at right angles to it. So I started clicking away, after a few tries I knew when I had to press the shutter to get a car where I wanted it in the frame. Quite pleased with myself I looked to the right and couldn’t believe my eyes. Centering the camera I held my breath, whispered a quick prayer to the gods of good timing and pressed the shutter. The result?

 

Serendipity

Driving, this is in no particular order, though the last is most definitely one that really gets my goat, chicken and any barnyard animal you could name. In no particular order,

Rant over….

 

Ane happuwa!

Ane aimath happuwa!? 

There I was at the Curry Bowl digging into the lunch buffet with N when A and some other chap charge in to inform me that someone had backed into my double parked car. Following them out with an indul hand, I found some fat, brown, hobag aunty looking at my bumper disconcertedly as if wondering how it got there. Following her gaze I noted one or two minute scratches and kindly, with the patience of Job enquired what in tarnation she did.

I just didn’t see your car 

It was with great self control that I didn’t ask the obvious question as to how in the name of fuck could she not note the fact that there was a great, big, black RAV4 right behind her considering that reversing involves looking in the goddamn rearview mirror. She looked so retarded and pathetic when she asked me if I could move my car so she could back up I didn’t have the heart to point out she had around 3 feet to get her minivan out if she actually bothered turning the steering wheel a bit.

I just smiled sweetly at her, fished my keys out with my left hand, the right still being covered with curry and reversed the car into a spot that had opened up, actually ended up reversing into the space at a ridiculous angle and had to put up with some ribald comments from A about my dodgy parking abilities (fuck you I was trying not to get curry over my car). The fucktarded aunty who had a fairly large bump in her fender shamefacedly sloped off. 

On entering the Curry Bowl I was informed with great joviality that she had actually backed into my car not once, but twice. That sort of amazed me, surely if one is backing up and hears a thud, what one does is stop, get out and check to see if there’s a toddler under your wheel.

NOT drive forward a bit and try and back up again to deliver the coup de grâce.

I’m sitting at my computer, dazed and confused as usual mostly because it’s just past 9 a.m., poring over a spreadsheet, look outside and note the slight drizzle coming down. Tab down in Excel and at the same time what sounds like a claymore exploding in the outer atmosphere thunders around me. ‘Fight-or-Flight’ kicks in, though the only thing to really beat up on is my stapler (not really an exciting prospect at the best of times) and there’s really nowhere to run either.

What’s really disturbing to me is that no one else seems to have reacted to what in no uncertain terms sounded like what would be the result of Kim Jong-il finally losing his noodle. I actually considered the fact that my frail mind, hanging on a thread of sanity, had finally snapped and I would be consigned to Angoda for the rest of my life babbling nonsensically and drooling endlessly.

I finally came out from under my keyboard and on querulously making inquiries from my workmates discovered that the source of the cacophony was in fact the Blue Angels flying over the city in celebration of fleet week, which is basically the Navy’s birthday. The culmination of this is going to be the rather exciting prospect of the penultimate race of the Red Bull Air Race World Series. So the plan is drink lightly tonight, wake up early doors (and by that I mean around 10 a.m.), break out the long lens and head down to the Marina Greens to check out the race and hopefully get some exciting action shots. I’ve also made a mental note to down enough coffee in the morning just in case one of the planes veers off course and into the crowd, need to be on my toes, just in case. One never knows…

 

I feel the inevitability of a Flickr Pro account coming up if the shoot is successful. A weekend of alcohol, fast planes and hopefully skimpily clad ladies on a sun drenched green (if the rain lets up that is) is certainly one to look forward to (Touch wood on NOT getting hit by a bus on the way home today, which is a current obsession of mine)…

P.S. Another excellent band popped up on my iPOD, The Beloved , excellent Brit electro-pop stuff to get your shit on with, favourite songs: Sweet Harmony and You’ve got me thinking. The latter is the kind of song that transports you to a beach in Unawatune everytime you hear it.

You would think almost getting run over twice on two consecutive mornings would not be conducive to a good mood, but rather surprisingly I find it is. Perhaps it’s the thrill of cheating death in the mornings when I can usually barely get my jeans on without falling down a couple of times and generally pour juice into my cereal instead of milk. I am hoping though that this trend of missing the front end of fenders by inches will not continue, after all luck has to run out sometime.

On the bright side of life I discovered two new bands on my iPod, something that happens with pleasing regularity. I have close to 9,000 songs on there, downloaded from a spectrum of people from British hipsters, Sri Lankan yuppies and San Franciscan liberals. Every now and then it throws out a couple of random gems and today two outstanding songs popped up, Summertime by the Sundays and Turn by Feeder, two British ‘indie’ (if that term really applies anymore in the real world) rock groups.  I would recommend both groups for some chilled out, sometimes upbeat sometimes shoe-gazer tunes.

This week has also been one of the most sozzled weeks since I left college and I’m sure I’ve burnt up what few brain cells I had left. PKS left on Sunday (sadly I don’t have anybody to laugh at with regularity anymore) back to NZ and R has either been trying to celebrate his new found freedom or drown his sorrows (probably the latter) and dragged me along with him. It’s been a steady stream of rum and cokes and vodka/redbulls since Tuesday. One of the more notable nights was Friday at Voda, a brilliant place where there’s no cover charge, drinks are around $5 each and on top of that it looks a bit like Glo. Five shots of vodka, a couple of them free meant that even though I managed to get a number I for the life of me cannot remember who the girl was. All I can recall is that she was Asian and from Fullerton which in retrospect does me no good as that’s around 500 miles south of here. I do quite like Voda though, especially as a start out point to the night.

I’m currently thanking whoever pulls the cosmic strings for making tomorrow a holiday during which I plan to resolutely steer clear of anything with an alcohol content, try and sweat some toxins out in the gym, lose at poker and watch Himalaya, i.e. be somewhat productive. I also intend to spend a good portion of the day putting my thinking cap on and come up with ideas to make a quick $4,000 (preferably something that doesn’t require me to give up a body part) so R and I can hit up SL in December for a couple of weeks, just to try and maintain some sanity. Why did I leave corporate America and a fat paycheck again?

I don’t think there’s enough caffeine in the world that would enable me to handle my morning ride on the number 41 bus ride from the Marina district into the Financial district without ending up dazed and confused. I’m decidedly not a morning person, the fact that for the better part of my life I have had to wake up at unearthly hours ranging from 5.30 am (on occasions ranging from carpooling with lunatic when I was working in Woodland Hills to doing SAT classes with Mrs. Nannayakare) to 6.00 am during the greater part of my school career has always been a source of endless dismay to me. 

My current wakeup time of 7.00 am is actually on the latter end my wakeup spectrum but still nowhere near what would be my ideal time of oh…say around 1.00 in the afternoon. I did manage to keep this wonderful schedule through a significant portion of college but sadly until I become rich and retire I don’t think that will be possible again.

Digression about my ideal waking time aside let me get to the point as to why my bus ride is difficult at best. My morning commute is like being stuck in a living, breathing FHM or Maxim magazine. As Cricket Captain so succinctly put it I have the dubious honour of living in a part of San Francisco which is home to what has to be one of the highest concentrations of hotties I have ever seen in my life, even compared to London, Paris or Hong Kong (actually scratch that last one, didn’t see a single cute girl there). It was also pointed out that I work downtown, which is where most of the hot girls work, thus I travel on the artery of hotness that runs through the city. 

On my bus itself there are generally more hot girls than were there in the whole of Imperial College. I tend to spend my mornings plugged into my iPod with my eyes resolutely closed and concentrating on keeping my tongue in my mouth. What’s ironic is none of the girls (well 95% or so) aren’t my ‘dial’. They are attractive in a blonde, Teutonic manner…which I find nice to look at, but not nice to deal with. I’m much more drawn to petite brunettes or slim, brown skinned girls with more of an element of cuteness rather than being drop dead gorgeous (they generally tend to have less mental problems). These unfortunately seem to be in short manner out here.

The issues with my morning commute aside; I have to say living in the Marina district has other advantages. The ocean with views of Alcatraz and the Golden Gate Bridge is just a couple of blocks down and I think I’ve found a nice spot to relax on a Sunday afternoon with some good music, a good read and possibly a camera in hand. Below are some pictures I took while wondering around five minutes down from my flat, they are pretty shoddy quality, I wasn’t really trying and I didn’t have my tripod with me, but they should help give people some idea of the scenic advantages of my current abode.

 

The Golden Gate Bridge at Sunset, note the Pelican flocks 

 

 

Similar shot to the one above, obviously couldn’t hold the camera straight

 

 

Close up of the Pelicans

30^th June – 391 miles from San Francisco to Moorpark, luckily I didn’t have anything to do with the driving. A largely uneventful drive, apart from PKS being convinced by us that there was absolutely nowhere to have a pee on the way, apart from on the side of the road, where there were ‘pee screens’ to let the ladies use the facilities discreetly. She was about to pack some toilet paper until the three of us felt guilty about taking advantage of her naiveté and busted her bubble. 

The schizo shitzu was happy to see me and so many new people, voided his bladder in excitement no less that twice in the space of a few minutes. Had a couple of drinks and worked the system so I got the futon for the night, the downside to this was a wet, sloppy nose in the face at 6 in the morning. Despite the 100-degree heat, lack of sleep and tiredness we decided it would be a good idea to go the Magic Mountain. 

1^st July – Moorpark to Magic Mountain, 31 miles, I drove all the way. Went on a grand total of two rides, R and PKS went on the Viper, latter got scared didn’t want to go on anymore, former didn’t want to stand in any more lines. Stood in line for around one and half hours in the atrocious heat for 3 minutes of adrenaline on Tatsu, well worth it though overall I think I’ve had better ideas. 

Magic Mountain to San Diego, nightmare of a drive. Non-stop traffic for the 158 miles resulted in an additional hour or so onto the usual time of 2.5 hours. There were some notable moments in the drive; one was the constant presence of the hicks, shown below. We passed them a few times, but somehow, someway they kept getting ahead of us. By then end of the ride I felt a slight affection and ownership towards them, as sort of hillbilly mascots for our drive. 

 

Also all three of us, R, PKS and moi collectively lost our noodles around Dana point, decided to put the windows down, recline our seats, play promiscuous at full blast and ‘pimp out.’ Ridiculous I know, but it definitely put everyone in a better mood. Got to Diego in time for a quick soak in the hot tub, an even quicker nap and started hitting the Rockstar Rums, since it was discovered we had left the Ketel at home. Convinced PKS that if you went a bit out of town, camped out and was very quiet you would be able to see streams of illegal immigrants crossing the border, and if one was lucky a minuteman taking a pop at one, though this was very “rare.” Felt guilty about taking advantage of her gullibility. 

Realized I had left my shoes at home as one does every so often, so hit the gaslamp quarter in flip-flops. R used his magic skills to get us cheap entrance to a club that I think was called Faces. I was promptly congratulated by some random person for making it in with flip-flops and umm…not really sure what happened after that. I know there was some dancing, some drinking and some wandering around looking for someone to talk to, largely unsuccessfully. Again that experience begged the question as to where have all the cute girls gone? All in all a decent night, not one of the best I’ve had, but then that was to be expected after all the knackering driving I had done. 

2^nd July – Woke up bright and early the next day to hit the San Diego Zoo. Awesome day despite the heat and crowds, got my fill of Malayan tigers, hippos, and innumerable birds. Took far too many pictures, completely forgot to manipulate ISO and aperture values and got very dehydrated, remarked to female R and this was actually more tiring than some of the times I’ve tramped around in the field to take pictures. Once evening time came by one happy couple departed by plane back to San Fran, the other back to Riverside while I headed back by my self to Moorpark.  

The 180 odd mile drive back home was not fun to say the least, at least initially. The dehydration, heat, hangover and lack of sleep had taken its toll and I reached the point where I couldn’t differentiate the lanes. Swung off the freeway just before San Clemente to see if I could get a hotel room to spend the night. 

“I can get you a room for 180 dollars” 

“umm…that’s ok” 

Shortly afterwards I saw a sign for the Pacific Coast Highway and decided to take that on a whim. That’s where things picked up, with the windows down, beachfront driving, setting sun and music blaring. Felt very Californian as I breezed past Laguna Beach belting out along to U2, Fort Minor and Nelly Furtado while checking out the copious amounts of rich totty on display on the sidewalks. Got a few quizzical looks from the rich WASPs driving along side me in their Range Rover Sports and Mercs but I didn’t really give a shit, I was feeling like a new man. After about 20 miles on the PCH I realized I was singing along to Kelly Clarkson and made a quick executive decision to get onto the 405 and mosey on home ASAP. Actually managed to drive around Costa Mesa one of my old haunts, which was nice and got home without further incident, in total almost four hours on the road! Schizo Shitzu was happy to see me, though he voided his bladder only once. 

3^rd July, Monday was very chilled out, headed out with N to have a late lunch and then watch the 20/20 LA open cricket tournament at Woodley Park. Kalu and Dharmasena were there as was Azharuddin, who smacked a few sixes and then flirted with an Indian aunty at the refreshment stand. Air India was hammering the crap out of Punjab Blues in the finals, the latter team that despite the name featured some ex-West Indian players including Jermaine Lawson and Curtly Ambrose. All in all one of the better ways to spend the day on a Monday especially when the breeze picked up and the oven that is SoCal got a bit more tolerable. 

Had to leave the cricket early so I could swing by Sri Lankan delight, pick up the last Kandos Superblende they had in stock and get home in time to pack for the drive back home with R2. Schizo Shitzu was sad to see me leave, sis was less sad, logged another 390 odd miles about a third of which I drove before reaching SF dead tired at 3.30 in the morning. Woke up this morning, watched a most exciting Semi Final and typed this update. Now trying to steel myself to going into work tomorrow, at least it will be a short week with the football final to look forward to on the weekend! 

Total hours – 81

Total miles – around 1300 miles

Total driven – around 750 miles

So I finally got around to wading through some of the pictures I took at the SF pride festival and posted as many as my Flickr account would let me. There was something else about the experience that I forgot to mention and that was the pride the gay and lesbian community in San Fran took in achieving their rights. I felt tingles down my back and almost revolutionary when the rights activists were honoured and the pride the queer community expressed in achieving their rights. Amazing!

“Come to the intersection where the man with the big tits was” 

That sentence uttered in an attempt to guide me back to my party sort of summed up the weird and wacky day Unc, PKS and I had at Pride 2006 today. The Civic Center was a hive of activity for the LGBT celebration and that it was nice and sunny added to the enjoyment. I really thought I would have been more uncomfortable than I was with the transsexuals and cross dressers parading around instead it was a lot of fun. I shot somewhere in the region of 200 photographs, stroked a small silver penis pendant and had an ‘interesting’ Port-a-potty experience. I opened an unlocked one and was greeted by either a man or a woman seated on the loo in a full biker uniform. I think I was more surprised than her/him, managed to blurt a rather rushed apology, buggered off and waited until I saw someone actually exit one before entering it.

I’m at a loss for words to describe the rest of what I saw today but will post some very interesting pictures on to my Flickr account once I’ve waded through and edited the raw material on my hard drive. Until then, hopefully the picture below will tide y’all over!