Oryx and Crake - Margaret Atwood

It's been years since I've read anything by Maggie. It's not as arduous as I remember... Handmaid's Tale, Alias Grace, Wilderness Tips, Lady Oracle. Somehow, they all call to mind a sense of forcing myself to continue reading, when I really would rather have not.

Either I've grown, or Atwood's writing differently - I whizzed through O&C, and thought it was pretty alright. Basically, combine an apocalyptic world, the stories of three main characters, rampant genetic and proteonomic modification, a touch of male hubris, and Atwood's unhurried examination of human misery, stir and voila: you have the book.

An interesting cautionary tale; and rather worth reading.

The Etched City - K.J. Bishop

Another bit of sci-fi by a woman... Honestly, I don't plan these series of a type of book. I literally grab the first 7 or eight books that look interesting. Maybe the library knows this and is organising things to make it turn out this way... Now I'm worried.

Anyway. The world's gone to bits, it is a bit Mad Max-esque, but lacking internal combustion engines. An accomplished healer and an accomplished killer, colleagues and grudgingly friends during the convoluted wars of years past, meet and head off to one of the remaining cities where they might be able to settle down for a bit. Adventures ensue until they get there; he (the killer) works as a bodyguard for a local warlord type; she works in a rundown hospital in a poor part of town.

Time passes, they don't see each other a lot, and things start getting really wierd - like a lotus flower growing out of some guy's navel - and the flower can't be pulled out.

The barriers between the mundane and the fanstastic seem to become increasingly porous as the book goes on; the let down is the ending which seems to suggest that no one knows quite what happened to the main characters - 'some say that, some say this'... I suppose it's a literary trick to prolong the engagement with the fanstastic beyond the end of the book; but it could just as easily be giving up on the tale and telling the reader that it could go either way.

Interesting read, though.

Forest of the Pygmies - Isabel Allende

Wow! It's as good as City of the Beasts! (Somewhere else in this blog, searching might find it.)

Jaguar and Eagle are now fast friends, and travelling in Africa with Jaguar's grandmother. It's not long before they're escaping the clutches of a local despot who is treading all over the pygmies and Bantu in the area.

More of the same magical, lyrical writing that I fell in love with in the last book. The best part is that there is one more book in this series.

First Rider's Call - Kristen Britain

Sci-fi/fantasy, from a women's perspective. Not to shabby at all - a few more 'feelings' and 'emotions' than one might expect on the genre, but not at the cost of battles with orcs and stuff. Nifty.

Second book, but fortunately Ms Britain is considerate enough to have sufficent hints and background that the "First Rider's Call" stands pretty much on its own.

Cool.

Photography exposed - the story behind the image - Life Magazine

A whole bunch of famous pictures, with little stories next to them. Pretty, interesting, very suitable for the coffee table.

I think the descriptions are often too short, but then again, I like words as much as I do pictures.

Yay! Hafsa's gone home!

Very happy to hear that everything went well, and everyone's gone home to rest and recover.

Yay!

Chiune Sugihara

The 31st of this month is the 20th anniversary of the death of Chiune Sugihara who basically became the Japanese Schindler during WWII while posted in Lithuania. At his discretion (and against the orders his bosses in Tokyo) he authorised thousands of visas to Jews to escape the onrushing Nazis.

The only reason I know anything about this is a television special on TV a couple of weeks ago; Wikipedia has a whole story here.

The Camera - Ansel Adams

Now, this is a book on photography. Not only is Adams a pretty legendary photography, he talks about it really intelligibly (and usually intelligently, too). All the little electronic gizmos on a digital camera are pretty nifty, but I can imagine working with an 8"x10" view camera would be really cool.

#1: Composition, #2: Technical mastery of the medium to do the composition justice. Simple as that.

New Complete Sailing Manual - Steve Sleight

I'm pretty sure this is the same book I can't find back after moving to Sydney. That's a shame - it's a really good book.

It's a sailing manual. If you like sailing, (and are still learning to do it), it's fabulous. If you're not interested in sailing, it's probably pretty boring.

Digital Photographers Handbook - Tom Ang

I questioned my own judgement in picking up a book on digital photography printed in 2003. Apparently, 3.3 (and greater) megapixel cameras were in the realm of professional photographers.
Righty-o. I must be a real professional photographer then.

Conclusion: there really isn't a whack of difference between digital photography and film photography. The only thing is that if you stuff up a shot (technically), you can fiddle with it on the computer to recuperate the mistakes. Still, a fixed up boring shot is still a boring shot.

The salmon of doubt: hitchhiking the galaxy one last time - Douglas Adams

Ah, posthumous publications. Are they a last attempt to share the writer's brilliance, or a cynical cashgrab by the administrators of the estate and copyrights?

In this case, who cares. I'd forgotten why I liked Douglas Adams. He's pretty clever, and great fun to read. He reminds me (or vice versa, logical linearity isn't that important) of Terry Pratchett. Something to say, and a funny way to say it.

Yay for the guys and girls that put together the myriad jottings.

Somewhere East of life: Another European fantasia - Brian Aldiss

Criminy, did it again. Book three in a series. I suppose that's a risk of patronising the fiction section of the local library branch - they might not have everything in order.

Great vocabulary in this one; and a rather interesting twisty story. It's a good thing it ended when it did, though. The twists started getting a little routine, and the foil of the guy having his memory poached seemed to be running out of steam a bit... that is, after he'd been to backwater somethingistan trying to save a lost ikon from a mad guerilla (who he stabs in the throat), wandering almost randomly through Madrid, Budapest, and goodness knows where else.

The plot was almost like a Dali - the bits are recognisable, but the way they hang together is pretty different. Good fun.

The toughest Indian in the worlds: Stories - Sherman Alexie

No, there aren't too many motorcycles in this one. There are a lot of pretty odd stories though; what's he trying to do -make me feel guilty for being white?

Alright, that's the self-righteous "I didn't subjugate anyone" knee-jerk reaction out of the way. This guy can write some truly disturbing stuff - some of it sounds like a matter-of-fact record of hardship; some of it is truly whacked '60s paranoia story stuff.

Good or bad? I dunno. He's got the variety of styles down; they all share a common theme but are not boringly repetitive. I suppose it is good in that's interesting, but not necessarily pleasant.

The Best of Outside: The first twenty years - Editors of Outside Magazine

There's a real breadth of stories in here, and while I felt skeptical at the claims of the magazine being an outlet for intelligent commentary, by and large I was won over. Even Tim Cahill's piece wasn't as painful as his books, possibly because it was an order of magnitude shorter.

Flash point - Paul Adam

A semi-fluffy thriller starring an intrepid photojournalist, some monks, some Tibetan guerrilla fighters and the new-born Dalai Lama, in a wholly unsubtle editorial on Chinese repression of Tibet.

I wonder whether the book is a vehicle for the editorial, or if the editorial is just to lend verisimilitude to the story.

A short history of tractors in Ukrainian - Marina Lewycka

Okay, imagine you're an 84 year old man, and you think you have a shot with a 30-something Ukrainian woman with enormous breasts. What would you do?

Well, in this story, he 'helps' her go from Ukrana to England - as do numerous other men, apparently. He chews through his pension to buy her things, like travel visas, a blender, a car... And she marries him! Lucky guy, huh?

Nah, not quite, and the story of the buxom blonde bursting into the life of an old Ukranian migrant to England provides Lewycka a wonderful foil to do all sorts of things in one book: exploring a relationship of sisters born on either side of the end of the war; tracking through the dual personality of mechanisation as machines of agriculture and as machines of war; thinking about the changes in Eastern Europe and whether the rampant mode of capitalism from the early days of the Western model really need to be imitated for societies just starting down the path...

The tractors in the title got me interested enough to take the book, the notes on the back made me worried that it was going to be some girly maudlin story about families bonding in the face of hardship or some blather like that, and I ended up quite liking the book after all. Better than Updike's stories, that's for sure.

Trust me: Stories - John Updike

Wow, what a lot of dysfunctional relationships in one book. There are many short stories, apparently spanning decades of the Updike's writing career. They're all quite well written, though his capacity to write about miserable relationships and cheating spouses boggles my mind. I know it goes on, but why on earth write 30 stories about it?

The title is "Trust me", and apparently that's the theme of the book - trust, in relationships between husbands and wives, parents and children, and whatever else. It seems to me that the stories together say that people can't be trusted.

Not my favourite collection of stories, but not a terrible read overall.

When getting a wedding outfit takes 10 minutes

Chronologically, this picture comes before the Procession of the Pink Pants, probably a few days previously. I could check the EXIF data on the image, but that would mean switching windows... but who cares about how lazy I am. The guy in the orange pants is me. I happen to think the purple jacket is a dashing statement. The little guy is Kee - Nek's uncle who owns the guest house where we stayed. The bald guy is Glen - Liz's friend (not in the way that 'Liz's friend' was interpreted in SE Asia) who accompanied her kind of as the muscle. Liz is a little bit little, so it was a safety/comfort thing.
The guy you can't see because he's holding up a piece of material is the tailor. Lovely fellow, lent me the purple jacket on the condition that I not sweat in it. Righty-oh, no sweating in 30 degree humidity. I'm all over that. Think of home, Rob, in February.

So what's going on, now that we've all been introduced? Well, Kee was very encouraging of the idea that as a participant in a traditional Khmer wedding (particularly that of his niece) really ought to wear traditional Khmer clothing. No matter how silly it makes you look. Glen got to participate in the ceremony too, so he needed happypants too. In this image, Kee is bringing all his skills in convincing and persuading to bear: "Yes, you wear that. It's good."

By gum, I'm sold! And indeed I was, on two lengths of silk (now destined to become cushion covers). That's right, I went to a wedding as father of the groom, wearing cushion covers.
You sort of stand in the middle of a couple of metres of silk, and a helper brings the ends together in front of you, kind of wraps/folds/rolls (the wardrobe girls on the wedding day had a genuine technique, we just faked it for the 'fitting') the whole works into a roll, and then that goes between the legs and is pegged up at the back. Tadah! All dressed.

Glen's tail is somewhat more pronounced as he has a more majestic girth than I do, hence it took a bit more material to get around. The consequence is that the rolled up bit is a lot longer... and ends up looking like that. In the market (one of a couple of markets; this may be the New Market, or the Central Market, but then again, those might be the one and the same. Never really did get the two straight. I know definitely wasn't the Old Market), the tail elicited nearly as much hilarity as the pink pants did.

Once our outfits were established (I also got an absolutely darling belt), we hung around briefly chatting in mutually incomprehensible languages with sporadic translations, but much smiling and laughter. Kee had appointed himself chauffeur on this expedition, and kept us to a rather strict and hectic schedule. Once we were done clowning around, we piled back into Kee's CRV, stuffed the tailor into the trunk (it's a little SUV, and there was pillows over the spare tire. He was fine.), and dropped him off from where we'd picked him up, and went back to the guest house to relive the glory of the day.

The Pink Pants

For all those who've heard about the pink pants, but not seen the pink pants, here are the pink pants as photographed at some ungodly early hour in the morning, probably near 6 am. I think Richard (centre, with the yellow flower) is grinning not because of his impending union with the light of his life, Nek, but because his best mate and best man, Shannon, has been joking about the pink pants for the better part of an hour. The old guy, our holy celebrant at left, was chuckling too. The guy holding the umbrella behind Simone... he laughed at the pink pants too. The cute little kids? They were too polite to laugh out loud. So they made big eyes and ran off to convulse in giggles behind the coconut tree. Nek's sisters, Hua and Boa (sorry if that's misspelt, I don't have a Khmer typeface on this computer) laughed very daintily... at the pink pants.

They'd have been just fine, but I think the orange (!) jacket really sets off the whole ensemble. So did Richard, Simone, Nek, Hua, Boa, the old guy.... It was a riot.

I forgot to mention that Simone had a couple of good chuckles at the pink pants too.

Enough about the pants. I had it on the highest authority (Nek's uncle, plus the tyrannical tailor women who bade me drop my trousers... in the courtyard...) and proceeded to swathe me in the pink silk you see radiant before you. Not the matching orangey silk that I had too. The pink silk. Shiny side out.

So what's really going on in that picture? I'm wearing pink pants. Just kidding. Richard, the guy in the middle, is getting married. His mother and father would normally be where Simone and I are, but they couldn't make the trip from Sydney to Cambodia, so we were subbed in. We're at a guest house down the road from Nek's uncle's guest house, where the wedding will take place. We are (all of us above) going to recreate the traditional procession from the groom's village to the bride's village, bearing all sorts of yummy presents to show her parents what a great guy the groom is. Traditionally we'd have walked a couple of kilometres; for the purposes of symbolism we trudged maybe 300 metres. Soon after this photo was taken, traditional (so I'm told, and I'll have to believe it, 'cos I don't know) Khmer wedding music started playing REALLY LOUDLY. EVEN LOUDER THAN WHEN WE ALL WOKE UP AROUND 4 AM. We therefore had many groggy looking spectators along the walk.

And so, the pink pants proceeded forth... peals of laughter issuing in their wake. And it's not like I could melt into the 5 foot tall crowd, either. Weddings are, indeed, a joyous affair.

Rob in Siem Reap

Me, same place, same time as Simone. The same people are just off frame.

Oh, I'm just messing around with this blog-this thingo. Seems to really smallify the pictures.