August 3, 2008
Why you need to cross the border to see fireworks
...Just back from a short trip ("the last hurrah!") to Vancouver. To watch a fireworks show.
Why?
Well, have you been disappointed by the annual fourth of July display in your town? I have. Growing up in Japan, the fireworks "shows" were something that's grand in scale. Like so big that you can admire from across a lake. When I see fireworks here, they always seem so puny comparatively! I get so annoyed when there's fireworks at a baseball field or something, and they're more loud and smokey than they're something to see.
So when I heard that there's an "international competition" being held in Vancouver, and it can be viewed from three beaches, I got excited. Moreover, China, one of the "competing" countries was presenting their show on coming (last) Wednesday! I just had to go and check it out then. Those Chinese pyrotechnicians have to know how to put on a real show, right?
Never mind that there's only three countries competing. And, "the team China" is just a company from China, whose web site presentation has something to be desired.
We rolled in just in time for the show on Wednesday, around 7, being lazy travelers we are... I was worried about getting a decent view from where we could walk from our hotel in downtown, but we got lucky and ended up being the right spot at the right time. As we walked onto the trimmed lawn of Sunset Beach Park, the first batch of shells were being launched with a distant fanfare and cheers all around.
It was a long set, lasting about half an hour? I was still a little worried that it would be a disappointment (they just wouldn't shoot 'em high enough for my taste!), but in the end, I was more than impressed and satisfied.
See for yourself on this video.
I found some stills, too.
(I love crowdsourcing. Who needs a camera when you know someone else is doing a better job?)
(oh, and the pictured above is of this big-ass pool we saw there, called Kits Pool. Biggest ever lap pool we ever saw. We also had the tastiest apple pie ever on this trip at this shop. Lots of superlatives on this trip, you see.)
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February 14, 2008
インドの旅をビデオにしたもの
しばらく日本語で書いていないので、今度は日本語で。
このビデオは今日の作り物です。
インドの旅をどうぞ、ご覧ください。
Posted by Dipika at 2:10 PM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 27, 2006
Greetings from yuletime New York
I was in New York in the early part of December, and this is part of what I put down in my little red book I carried around there... Happy Holidays!
"They've got cars
Big as bars
They've got rivers of gold"
-so sang Shane McGowan of The Pogues in "Fairytale of New York" (my and many Irish's choice of Christmas song). It is true that in this time of year more than any other that New York really comes across as a Big Department Store. I am here on a mission to find good design, an inspiration to my studio back in Seattle, but bad designs abound here in New York as in any other place; from a restaurant's sliding doors that never properly close and no one can figure out how to open, to a hand-written menu and storefront signs that are plain ugly. This fact really shouldn't be a surprise for me, but it hits particularly close home this time. Maybe it's because I am desperate for good examples this time.
Not that I didn't see good stuff here: the museums here are always bigger and deeper than you can ever prepare yourself to, and there's plenty of great street art -- real original graffiti. But at the end of the day, I had to question why I had to cross the continent to come here in search of inspiration. What was it that compelled me so to make this trip?
Then, as I stroll around East Village, Williamsburg, and then Central Park, on this uncharacteristically glorious, warm winter day, it hits me: the appeal of this megalopolis dwells not so much within its authentic sophistication or genuine creativity (these things, like a good cup of coffee or a well-poured pint of Guinness, isn't easy to find anywhere, period), but in the sheer swagger of the place, the attitude of the culture here.
The city is one of the oldest. Sure, there are plenty of other cities in the world with longer history. But if you limit the scope to just the modern commerce and migration of people (which only got going in the late 19th Century), you can't deny that New York has just as much history as Paris or London. History, taken as a culmination of stories, about and on places and people there, compound, tend to lend its inhabitant a sense of place and belonging. That's my theory, anyway, on why in New York, even in today's uncertain political future and security, self-contentment is tactile in the air.
As someone said, confidence brews appeal, and I remain just as attracted to this city as I first laid my eyes on it, fifteen years ago.
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August 14, 2006
Half Chinese in Kabuki-Cho
D: Dude. It's 1:17am.
A: Oh.
D: What are you reading?
A: This book about Kabuki-cho. In Shinjuku. And the Chinese mafia.
D: Japanese novel?
A: Yeah. And I'm at the climax, too.
D: ...
A: [returning to book]
D: ...
A: ...
D: You really burn through those Japanese novels, huh.
A: そうね。
D: ...
A: ...
D: So what's it about?
A: This guy, he's half Chinese. And he has to hook up with all these different Chinese mafia groups in Tokyo. Hong Kong group. Shanghai group. You know. And he has to figure out how to deal with all of them and go behind them and guess who's on his side.
D: Sounds action-packed.
A: Yeah, you'd like it. They made a movie.
D: There a love interest?
A: Yeah. This girl. You don't know if he's going to betray her, too.
D: ...
A: She's half-Chinese.
D: Is the author half-Chinese?
A: I think so, yeah.
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January 13, 2006
Frame 1:37:22
This is a frame from the movie I am making. Yes! That's what I am up to right this second.
The good news is I already have gobs of footage so I don't have to run around Seattle with a videocamera in this rain.
What is going on is I'd given myself a week to construct a narrative and edit some 40-odd tapes I shot on world travels. After locating these Hi-8 cassettes in Design Kompany's storehouses on Capitol Hill, I'm viewing some of them for the first time. And they're definitely bringing me back in time. Five years, in fact.
The truth is, I haven't spent more than 70 hours on any one project in a long time. But I am really into this. It is fun. I would probably spend thousands of hours more on it if I didn't have a deadline. Which is Sunday. Wish me luck.
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January 10, 2006
Plane and Simple!
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January 6, 2006
Interstellar Limbs
Once in Africa I bore a cramped bus ride for over an hour just to visit a garden. A botanical green caps a mountain in Aburi, outside Ghana’s capital, Accra.
For a full hot summer, our group of thirty artists from America worked in studios in Kumasi, painting or making drums or doing batik. Each day we had the same breakfast, lunch and dinner, but we learned to like fried plantains and jollof rice. We figured out how to get about on jitneys and tro tros. And when we reached Accra a few days before jetting home, we weren't new anymore. We didn't need guides.
That's why I knew I could find my way to Aburi Botanical Gardens. Some of my colleagues spent their last day sunbathing, others bought small wooden trinkets with names like "unity." The morning I took my leave of them, setting out with a camera and comfortable shoes, I felt sure I was seeing Africa raw.
Alone, I found that children didn't clamor for t-shirts, ball point pens, or my home address. They're used to Indians living among them. I was not one of what the locals unabashedly called some of my peers; "black Americans" are the more common tourists. All of us visit the old slave castle at Elmina, where at the water's edge, children field soccer balls beneath palms.
Going to Aburi, I began to relax. Close your eyes, I'll tell you how it went.
Our driver maneuvers a steep slope expertly, stopping the odd time when a wheel needs mending or another vehicle needs to pass. No hurry. The sun is bright, the sky a tantalizing azure.
The baobab trees rise from a base of elephant toes, giant and resplendent. Gnarled roots ensnare patches of earth. A grey, unruly casing engulfs a stupefying trunk, which flies up, up up into the sparkling sun. Tilt your head to follow the line, feel the stretch of the muscles in your neck. The topmost limbs, far above the playground of kites and eagles, float and cry. They flutter, interstellar.
Yet here, where you and I stand closer to the earth's core, gravity contains us. We are breathless before the broad hulk of the baobab tree base. Not even the butterflies stir.
Posted by Dipika at 9:42 AM | Comments (0) | TrackBack
December 15, 2005
Once in Florence
Once upon a time around this time of year, Akira and I bumbled into Italy on a last-minute fare.
As other passengers, mostly natives, unpacked themselves from the aircraft, they put on sunglasses. They relaxed. They wore clean, well-manicured shoes with labels ending in vowels.
Dazed but optimistic, we followed.
It was winter, yes, but here there were no rain-soaked winds like in our green corner of Europe. Tan earth. Dry air. We weren't in Ireland anymore.
Sure, we could have done with some cassette-tape language lessons and travel guides. But despite the lack of background knowledge, something about this place was comfortable. It was easy to wander aimlessly and enjoy the light, which was always perfect no matter what the time of day. It no longer became so important to get to the next musuem. What was nice, we found, was to pause.
Posted by Dipika at 8:20 AM | Comments (1) | TrackBack
November 29, 2005
Ew!
Today at this cafe I was cornered by a dirty patron.
Late afternoon, short spell of sun. Decide to venture out for a breath of fresh air. But freshness was the opposite of what I was about to encounter. I shall keep the name of the establishment anonymous, as the following was by no means the fault of the locale.
Here goes. I'm sitting at this table and have just opened Remains of the Day to the beginning of a chapter on Dorset. I'm trying to focus on what makes a "great butler" when this balding old dude plops down at the next table. He's wearing sweats and is alarmingly close, already offending my space.
Then he takes liberties.
He reaches down to his right leg and pulls up the sweatpant -- cuff? --, exposing a white, scabby leg and disgusting white socks. Clearly, neither have been washed in weeks. I start to choke on my drink.
Then he lifts his leg onto the table and proceeds to scratch the scabs! He does this slowly and deliberately, knowing anyone whose peripheral vision isn't damaged will have no choice but to see. There are other people nearby. We shoot each other looks.
As nausea sets in, I place my bookmark and gather my coffee, bag, coat, scarf, gloves and hat. I desperately need to move out of eyeshot. This means sharing a table with someone else, as the place is unusually crowded, but doing so is very well worth it.
Posted by Dipika at 5:27 PM | Comments (2) | TrackBack
September 29, 2005
In Middle America
There is a Counting Crows song with a line that goes “somewhere in middle America.”
Okay, so it’s not the same place as “Omaha,” the title of that song, but boy, didn’t I feel like I was out in the middle of nowhere when A and P and I hit Lanesboro, Minnesota, to hop on some bikes.
Corn fields stretch along the highway from Minneapolis to Rocheseter to there. Driving out on a paved line after more than a year without a car and making my daily trek from Capitol Hill to downtown by foot or bus was, well, kind of old school. Reading an atlas. Figuring stuff out. Wasn't this how we passed our North Carolina travel days?
Except for the wider roads, which can accommodate angled parking and SUVs, Lanesboro felt like Skibbereen, West Cork. A cute town with colorful rows of houses and little shops. People who take their time making guacamole wraps. An Irish flag, even, though on a museum instead of a pub.
This was our own little throwback to Main Street, like being in front of Field’s (is it still Fields?, or has the grocery been overtaken by that German supermarket chain LIDL? There was talk. Oh yes, in 2003, there was definitely talk.)
For most of our trip, we listened to Laser 101.7, this classic rock station that seems fixated on Ozzy Osbourne. Akira later told me he saw a “Laser” billboard, and got excited when we randomly tuned in. This is the kid who spent his allowance at recording studios playing drums. Classic.
I don’t know. It’s been less than a week and feels a little strange to be back in this intense “blue dot” that is Seattle.
As in, “So it’s not just my town in North Carolina that’s quiet and rural. It’s not just home where people drive around everywhere, work on farms, listen to the 'Hot Nine at Nine' and put spray in their hair. It’s everywhere. A wide swath of 'American culture' that starts on Seattle’s Eastside and stretches clear across to the other coast.”
As in, "Wrap your head around that."
Roll a new life over
In the middle of the night, there’s an old man threading his toes through a bucket of rain
Hey mister you don’t wanna walk on water, cause you’re only going to walk all over me
Omaha, somewhere in middle America...
— From "Omaha" by The Counting Crows
Posted by Dipika at 5:49 PM | Comments (0)
August 27, 2005
14 Minutes to Edmonds
Cabin fever. Head to the dining car. A guy gets on the loudspeaker. "Hurry up," he says. "Get snack at bistro bar before close."
People start to queue.
Try to look out window but it's getting dark. Teen couple walks by. "Bet you couldn't get this view from the highway," she says. Stars in her eyes.
Find seat. A lady across the aisle cranes her head sideways, stretches a leg. "What kind of shoes are those?" she says to the guy wearing them.
"K Swiss." Sounds about forty and like he works in software. For most of the trip he's ignored this lady, probably his mother.
"Ya like 'em?" Thick Midwest accent.
"They're all right." Shuffles his feet. "They're supposed to be hip."
"What?" Her face balls up in a crinkle. Either she doesn't like the shoes, or she doesn't get it.
"Hip."
"What?"
"Hip. HIP. Somebody told me that."
She stares at them a second. "They're hip 'cause someone told ya?" Snickering.
"Yeah, well they said that after I bought 'em." Getting impatient.
Now the woman next to him says, "Cause he's not hip." She has blond hair and has been reading Gangs of New York.
The older woman goes, "Do you ever have trouble with the laces?"
"No," he steams. "What trouble would I have?"
BISTRO CAR CLOSE. THANK YOU. The train rolls into Edmonds.
Posted by Dipika at 12:13 PM | Comments (0)
August 24, 2005
Vancouver, B.C.
They have a "sky train" in Vancouver, British Columbia. It's like a monorail, the Yamanote line in Tokyo, maybe, but way less crowded and in the shape of a line, not a circle. Generous public spaces here.
There are bike rentals for the likes of us to scoot oceanside at Stanley Park, dotted with people fishing -- "Look at those!" -- or collecting bottles or rollerblading. Seagulls are fat. A public pool next to the ocean is good for kids, say our friends visiting this city from Japan. They are pleased.
We can hear the whoosh of water lapping against the seawall between chants from the Hare Krishna people, who are running a "Festival of India." (Thin cover for their mass recruitment, of course.) We park to watch the sun shrink and then go dark. Kids are silhouetted now as are the boats, sailing slow like skaters with just the jib unfurled.
Posted by Dipika at 10:24 PM | Comments (0)
July 31, 2005
Jackson Heights
While in New York City last month, we took a evening excursion to Jackson Heights, a neighborhood that is home to many Hispanic and Indian immigrants. I always liked ethnic neighborhoods (other than the East Asian kind everywhere, which I am usually a bit weary of), and I wasn't disappointed when we got there. An elderly lady in sari here, a group of Punjabi girls here checking out the latest Bhangra in a CD shop here, and plenty of yummy-looking restaurants everywhere.
We also noticed off the main street in the residential area, there were real people living in the area; people (presumably) working in New York City, not just immigrants, but working-class families, young professional couples, students. Balconies with clotheslines, a few new condos, charming old houses probably there since the time the area was a magnet for newly arrived Jews and Italians, now seemingly occupied by young struggling artists. A real melting-pot, in short. Jackson Heights is, I learned upon coming home, one of the last bastion of 'walkable community,' a holy grail of today's environmentaly-minded hipster politics.
Alex Marshall, author of "How Cities Work: Suburbs, Sprawl and the Roads Not Taken" says about Jackson Heights:
"It's been a ladder for an emerging middle class for most of its existence, and it still is. Latin Americans, Koreans, and Indians have replaced or merged with Italians, Jews, Germans, and Greeks. These changes have often been wrenching sociologically. But the bottom line is that Jackson Heights is still where new immigrants come, get their first jobs, and move up" (How Cities Work excerpt taken from the author's web site).
After decades of shopping malls replacing the city centers, it seems today's immigrants find America as a suburbia; why is Jackson Heights different? Marshall says that the presence of New York City as a massive economic center that provides jobs is an important factor. Also important is the city's mass transits.
"we see how transportation determines form and thus lifestyle. People live differently in Jackson Heights, and most of New York, because they get around differently. (...) we see the uniqueness of the street-based life that non-car-centered transportation produces. There is a closeness, an intimacy to life, in Jackson Heights that must at times be suffocating but which I often yearn for. We gave up something when most of our cities opted to build highways and Interstates, rather than train lines or subways" (from the same source).
Word up, bro. Word up! The question, though, is how we can bring our communities back to life. Can we build public transportation, and critical mass of demand for it, in today's America? It seems almost plausible in cities like Seattle, yet we see so many obstacles: money, bad planning, bipartisan politics, real estate prices...
Posted by Akira at 3:46 PM | Comments (0)
June 27, 2005
flying tight
While traveling to the east coast for a wedding, I had a chance to experience firsthand the financial troubles our major airlines must be having.
I knew their budget was tight. But it still felt vaguely upsetting to be subjected to the non-frills, feck-you-we're-having-a-rough-time (non)service. The unsmiling air hostess sped past by me with a once-only doling out of water in plastic cups, while in the first-class section two trollies full of drinks went back and forth at a leisurely pace. Sure, it was a red-eye deal, at a modest $250 coast-to-coast, but it did leave somewhat of a bad (not to mention dry) taste in my mouth.
Oh, and did I mention they were two-hour late departing? When we finally left the airport, as the plane inched along to a runway, a high-nosed air hostess declared: "Alright, we'd be more than happy to stop this aircraft RIGHT NOW if you want to keep moving around!"
Needless to say, our flight back was also delayed for a few hours, forcing us to take a cab home from the airport, but that's another story.
By the way, an Irish startup Ryanair, which operates pan-European low-fare flights from Ireland and UK, just got rated as the most punctual airline by the US Dept of Transport. Ryanair was said to have been modelled after the US low-fare airlines such as Southwestern. Ouch!
Posted by Akira at 11:34 AM | Comments (0)
June 24, 2005
Squares
When we were in Times Square at the exact moment this picture was taken, I'm quite sure we were the only visitors within a half-mile who were just not impressed.
Tons of people show up every day here from Europe, Japan, Utah or wherever, to gawk at the skyscrapers and voltage. Why not, they're in the throbbing heart of the city. But maybe not. Isn't Times Square just a big weird space where no real people live? Are the artists and writers and tinkerers in the little enclaves, say, behind Chinatown?
People in Europe might hate Americans, I've heard this opinion expressed several dozen times in a sampling* of bars on that continent, but they sure do rave about New York City. What is the deal, though? I'm not dazzled by it anymore. But boy, do they have a lot of color.
*Note: Sample was not random or statistically significant in any way. Bars just looked good, so I checked them out.
Posted by Dipika at 7:05 AM | Comments (0)
June 15, 2005
DKNY
When I was 23 I had a postcard of New York pinned to my wall. It’s only flaw was a stray pen mark, but I liked the arbitrary line. It made me want to draw. That was then.
Last weekend I took Akira to my favorite parts of the city: Jackson
Heights for Indian buffet, Canal Street, and the park next to the library. He took me to the Village.
Being at Times Square for no reason late on Sunday night taking
pictures of each other wasn’t corny. It was nice. The best part was knowing we were going home soon.
I brushed my teeth when the plane stopped in Minneapolis. I got three seats to myself on the flight to Sea-Tac, so I got some sleep. And was awake enough to chit-chat with the taxi driver who brought us home. Dimpy (“I know it’s a girlish name”) wants to start an Indian garment import business.
No postcards of anywhere on my wall now, but yesterday at the post office I bought four of Seattle.
Posted by Dipika at 7:00 AM | Comments (0)
June 5, 2005
Safety Tips
Some of Akira's family was just in town, so we went to Victoria, British Columbia. A brisk ferry delivered us to the lavish gardens and tea rooms of this part of Canada, where we lounged for three sun-sprinkled afternoons.
Guys in kilts manned the floors at our hotel.
They must have all been about 22, with pressed shirts and nice smiles. Both nights we got to hear their bagpipes in the lawn outside our window. (What is the deal with the bagpipes, lads? We heard them in Edinburgh, too, but wasn't that in a cheeky, check-out-our-culture, lassies kind of way?)
Not to dig on the Scotland-themed hotel. Great service, and helpful. In a green three-ring binder on our desk was a foldout page with safety tips. Do not invite strangers into your room, for example. Do not display large amounts of cash or jewelry. And remember, do not enter a room that is ajar.
Posted by Dipika at 9:40 PM | Comments (0)
May 23, 2005
Colorado
For the past week I've been living in a rectangle.
Colorado's shape doesn't differ drastically from the frame of this picture. They had warm, dry weather and the sun really saturated colors. Seattle's wet, West Cork's wet and I realize I like it that way. Someone said Boulder has 330 or so sunny days a year. Not a lot of variety, that.
I saw a lot of Boulder people whiz by on their skinny-framed bikes. Might be why my one souvenir is a pink biking shirt. It's made of some material that supposedly keeps you cool. Right-o.
So, climbing up from Denver airport on a public bus, I got a quick whiff of the thinner air.
"Drink water," people said.
"I'll be grand," I said.
Wrong. I don't think I ever got over altitude sickness. Glad to be grounded again in Seattle, I love sea level.
Posted by Dipika at 11:12 PM | Comments (0)
April 18, 2005
Tulip Festival in Skagit Valley
春と言えばチューリップ（？そうかなぁ）、チューリップと言えばオランダですが、ワシントン州にもチューリップの大産地があります。シアトルからフリーウェイを北へ小１時間、スカジット・バレーは海と山に挟まれた盆地で、肥沃な土壌と美しい景観を生かした観光誘致が盛ん。毎年４月には、大チューリップ祭りを開催しています。ちょうど日本から友人夫婦が遊びにきたので、案内がてらどんなものかと見に行ってきました。
フリーウェイ沿いの町Mount Vernonで、まずは情報集め。フェスティバル事務局が設置されていて、ボランティア（とおぼしき）おじさんが親切に今日の見所を教えてくれます。日曜日という事で、混雑を覚悟して行ったのだけど、朝まだ早かったのと、お天気がいまいちだったのが幸いして、観光客はまだちらほら、という感じ。とりあえず、一番大規模な農場に満開のチューリップ（と、オランダ直輸入の風車）があるというのでそちらに向かう事に。
フリーウェイとはうってかわって景色のいい田舎道を15分ほど走ると、標識が見えてきます。農場にはちゃんと木屑を敷き詰めて駐車場まで作ってあって、なるほど準備周到。ここまでくると結構やっぱり混雑しています。案内（なんか人がいっぱい）に従って入場料２ドルだったかを払い門をくぐると、土産物テント、風車を囲んだ庭園等、テーマパーク然してました。ま、わざわざここまでこれが目当てでやってくるわけだし、観光客にとっては演出ありがとうなんですが、「昔はこうじゃなかった」と怒る人もいるんだろうな。
でもやっぱり、というか、期待した通り、畑一面に咲き乱れるチューリップは壮観でした。遠くに山が見えたり、周りの田園調の景色もいい感じ。結局、３エーカーもある畑をくまなく歩き回って写真を撮りまくり、土産に鉢植えのチューリップまで買って、２時間近くも楽しんでしまいました。
お昼はすぐ近く、海岸沿いの風光明媚で知られるラ・コナー村で。クラムチャウダーがおいしかった。このコース、春にシアトルを訪れる人にはお勧めです。
Skagit Valley Tulip Festival 公式サイト
Posted by Akira at 10:23 AM | Comments (0)