Phuket Pics (Food & Art)

This post is almost a week overdued. Janielle is posting her Phuket pics chronologically, I'm posting mine thematically.

Starting off with the theme of yummy-licious FOOD and vibrant colours and shapes of ART. Feast your eyes on these pics...

You would have thought that this was a sculpture. But no, it was a FLAT painting, on a FLAT piece of canvas. I only had one chance on this shot bcos the seller was quite pissed off. He yelled "50 Baht for one picture!" Of course I didn't pay. So you can say I "stole" this shot

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Sherene was imitating the tiger in the painting. Which one looks meaner?

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Our favourite yummy-licious beef noodle soup

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The fried noodle's not bad too! This one came with pork

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These are 'lighted' paper balls. Not sure how they made them, but I really liked their vibrant colours at night

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Closer view of these paper balls

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These paintings (cloths) by the roadside caught my eye. Loved the effects of the lightings on their colours

.Seeing me snapping away, the seller amazingly unwrapped his latest masterpiece and invited me to take a closer shot. Needless to say, I happily obliged!

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Carved soaps. I've always loved this fine art shapes and colours. Handbags in the background

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Rings. Stones. I don't know their names. Andrew does. I just love shooting them!

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Depth of field on the rings of stones

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Andrew explaining to Janielle on how to value the stones. And Sherene darling, touching and seeing is good enough, ya?

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My Thai pineapple fried rice with seafood. I miss this dish! I liked it with a little tom yam soup and/or thai green curry gravy over it!

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Barbequed pork. Somehow I didn't manage to try this. But looking at this pic, I could almost smell it!

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More spicy pork. Didn't manage to try this either. Ps John loved this so much that he got them frozen and smuggled back to Malaysia

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Mango sticky rice. Managed to shoot this before it was finished! Sherene looked all over for this, but in the end, we found this little stall by accident when on our way to a dive shop. Another authentic Thai dish

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Seafood dinner on our last night in Phuket. We paid little (around RM25 per person) for the dinner. Shot pics of some of the dishes

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La la
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Juicy fried prawns

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Fried stingray. Loved it when dipped into its spicy sauce

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Barbequed barracuda. This was just one half
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Another half of the barracuda was cooked in Thai green curry
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This was what's left of the baracuda at the end of the meal!

More pics coming in no time. Click back often ya?

I'm Back!

Back from the Phuket diving trip this evening. Wow! Was a wonderful experience hovering underwater. Shot loads of pics during the trip. Too much to write. Too tired to type all. Will post up some pics soon.

Back to reality. Not that Thailand is not real, but I've discovered so many people literally escaped where they came from, who they were and left many things behind when they run away to Thailand (from this and my previous Krabi trip). And have you watch Leonardo DiCaprio's movie "The Beach"? Perhaps I'll devote a separate post in future on 'Running Away'!

For me, it was a good time to disengage. Now will re-engage. Things are not slowing down. July is gonna be a real hectic month for me. With CHANGES taking place.

Now for some teaser pics I captured in Phuket....

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Can't Wait to be Weightless

Weightless? Yeah weightless. I can only imagine the day I'm not bound by gravity anymore, and all the weights around. You may be imagining a floating ghost leaving its body. Haha. Well, actually I'm imagining THAT Day being caught UP in the air...

In the meanwhile, I'm going DOWN. Underwater. Yeah, another way to be weightless. At least seemingly.

Going Phuket for diving tomorrow. It's TOMORROW! Yeay!!

Yesterday I read a diving quote that goes something like this: "All of us spent 9 months underwater, but the lucky few get to go back often". I would say lucky and rich buggers! Eventually, the hobby comes with suits, equipments, gadgets, cameras (oh, the casing cost more than the camera, and I haven't get to the flash yet), air tickets, hotels etc. And if you're bringing more than yourself......!!!

Gonna fly underwater. Been patiently waiting for it. And oh, I'm leaving my weights behind.

She's underwater

Nowhere now

Underwater upside down

The rising tide

Won't find her now

She's lost and found

Underwater

-Switchfoot's Underwater

The Hoyts Story

Yesterday was Father's Day. During the service, a video clip of the Hoyts' story was played. This was one very inspiring story I read just before I made the Mount KK climb early last year. If you've never heard about the Hoyt's story, you should. This is a great story about converting adversities to advantages.

Below is what Rick Reilly of Sports Illustrated wrote in a 2005 issue:

I try to be a good father. Give my kids mulligans. Work nights to pay for their text messaging. Take them to swimsuit shoots. But compared with Dick Hoyt, I suck.

Eighty-five times he’s pushed his disabled son, Rick, 26.2 miles in marathons. Eight times he’s not only pushed him 26.2 miles in a wheelchair but also towed him 2.4 miles in a dinghy while swimming and pedaled him 112 miles in a seat on the handlebars — all in the same day.

Dick’s also pulled him cross-country skiing, taken him on his back mountain climbing and once hauled him across the U.S. on a bike. Makes taking your son bowling look a little lame, right?

And what has Rick done for his father? Not much — except save his life.

This love story began in Winchester, Mass., 43 years ago, when Rick was strangled by the umbilical cord during birth, leaving him brain-damaged and unable to control his limbs. “He’ll be a vegetable the rest of his life,” Dick says doctors told him and his wife, Judy, when Rick was nine months old. “Put him in an institution.”

But the Hoyts weren’t buying it. They noticed the way Rick’s eyes followed them around the room. When Rick was 11 they took him to the engineering department at Tufts University and asked if there was anything to help the boy communicate. “No way,” Dick says he was told. “There’s nothing going on in his brain.”

“Tell him a joke,” Dick countered. They did. Rick laughed. Turns out a lot was going on in his brain.

Rigged up with a computer that allowed him to control the cursor by touching a switch with the side of his head, Rick was finally able to communicate. First words? “Go Bruins!” And after a high school classmate was paralyzed in an accident and the school organized a charity run for him, Rick pecked out, “Dad, I want to do that.”

Yeah, right. How was Dick, a self-described “porker” who never ran more than a mile at a time, going to push his son five miles? Still, he tried.

“Then it was me who was handicapped,” Dick says. “I was sore for two weeks.”

That day changed Rick’s life. “Dad,” he typed, “when we were running, it felt like I wasn’t disabled anymore!”

And that sentence changed Dick’s life. He became obsessed with giving Rick that feeling as often as he could. He got into such hard-belly shape that he and Rick were ready to try the 1979 Boston Marathon.

“No way,” Dick was told by a race official. The Hoyts weren’t quite a single runner, and they weren’t quite a wheelchair competitor. For a few years Dick and Rick just joined the massive field and ran anyway, then they found a way to get into the race officially: In 1983 they ran another marathon so fast they made the qualifying time for Boston the following year.

Then somebody said, “Hey, Dick, why not a triathlon?”

How’s a guy who never learned to swim and hadn’t ridden a bike since he was six going to haul his 110-pound kid through a triathlon? Still, Dick tried.

Now they’ve done 212 triathlons, including four grueling 15-hour Ironmans in Hawaii. It must be a buzzkill to be a 25-year-old stud getting passed by an old guy towing a grown man in a dinghy, don’t you think?

Hey, Dick, why not see how you’d do on your own? “No way,” he says. Dick does it purely for “the awesome feeling” he gets seeing Rick with a cantaloupe smile as they run, swim and ride together.

This year, at ages 65 and 43, Dick and Rick finished their 24th Boston Marathon, in 5,083rd place out of more than 20,000 starters. Their best time? Two hours, 40 minutes in 1992 — only 35 minutes off the world record, which, in case you don’t keep track of these things, happens to be held by a guy who was not pushing another man in a wheelchair at the time.

“No question about it,” Rick types. “My dad is the Father of the Century.”

And Dick got something else out of all this too. Two years ago he had a mild heart attack during a race. Doctors found that one of his arteries was 95% clogged. “If you hadn’t been in such great shape,” one doctor told him, “you probably would’ve died 15 years ago.”

So, in a way, Dick and Rick saved each other’s life.

Rick, who has his own apartment (he gets home care) and works in Boston, and Dick, retired from the military and living in Holland, Mass., always find ways to be together. They give speeches around the country and compete in some backbreaking race every weekend, including this Father’s Day.

That night, Rick will buy his dad dinner, but the thing he really wants to give him is a gift he can never buy.

“The thing I’d most like,” Rick types, “is that my dad would sit in the chair and I would push him once.”

The text in the picture says "Father. How do you define a father? It's simple. You take Dick Hoyt's picture and put it in the dictionary and let the rest of the world follow his lead..."

Life Quote

"The secret of life is to have a task.

Something that you devote your entire life to,

something to bring everything to,

every minute of the day,

for your whole life.

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And the important thing is,

it must be something you can't possibly do."

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-Sir Henry Moore, English sculptor, painter

Halftime

The first half of the year has three weeks left. I felt that I've done so many things but with very little fulfillment. But I've been praying all year long to find my 'point of engagement' and I think it's coming....in the second half.

It's halftime now and I need a break. To recharge. Find my space. Thankfully I'm having my getaway next week. It'll be a good time away from everything, as I prepare for my new job. Yes, in case you don't know I've been blessed with a new job in July. It's about time to move on. Change. New progression. Sowing a new seed. Seven years...hmmm...

As I look back on myself, how I handled a project over three years ago and now, I see a massive difference. And as I look further back on myself ten, fifteen years ago and now, I would have thought they're two different persons. That's why I don't linger on criticisms. They don't know.

I'm still a dreamer (a stubborn one for sure). Same ideals, same direction, but different processes. Tired, but stronger. Freer?

Sing to me of the song of the stars

Of Your galaxy dancing and laughing

and laughing again

When it feels like my dreams are so far

Sing to me of the plans that You have

for me over again

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And I lay my head back down

And I lift my hands...

-Switchfoot's Only Hope

Btw, it's my darling's birthday today. Happy Birthday! You put motion in my heart like the most joyful of songs. =)

Miracle in the form of a Baby

Last Tuesday the 27th May, we received the surprise news of my bro's baby being born into this world, 2 weeks earlier than expected. Went to their house on Wednesday evening with my family to visit them.

Wanna write about this amazing power the little baby possessed. No one could captivate our hearts and attention (all together) like this lil fella. No one ever has this spellbinding force and influence over my family before. With the baby's presence, I could felt the atmosphere changed! Even the news of his arrival made my mom ran frantically from one corner of the house to other corners for no particular reason! Yesterday my dad awanted to take a bus to my bro's house to see the baby (cos my mom took the car). My dad riding on a bus?? That's absolutely shocking....but he didn't cos I kindly availed myself to fetch him there instead.

Back to last Wednesday. For the first time ever, I held a newborn baby (2 days old). It was a beautiful moment. Something so tiny, fragile and helpless, yet a bundle of joy and blessing. I couldn't help but realised I was holding something fresh from the oven called "Works of God"! I was holding something absolutely pure and holy.

I pondered on the pure-ness part. How no one has ever thought of even one bad thing about little Joel (that's his name). No mistake has ever been made. No bad historical past, a literal clean new record, new book... waiting to be written. How nice!

Pondered on how fragile and helpless he was. So dependent on mom and dad and guardians around him. One mishandling, and he could be badly hurt. And there's nothing he can do or say about it. He's at the mercy of those who handle him. My bro's friends around dared not carry him. The key is to support the head. For me, it was an amazing feeling to carry a newborn, especially when he's part of the family.

Also pondered on the miracle of life. How could anyone say there is no God?

My bro was very brave. He was by Emilia's (wife) side in the delivery room. I cannot imagine myself doing that without passing out! I cannot even tahan the scent in hospitals, let alone be in the delivery room! Anyway, my bro said when Joel came out, he was hairy, said he looked like me when I was a baby. He has this cool mohawk hairstyle! And red skin.

Yesterday (Sunday) evening, we went to see baby Joel again. He's forever sleeping I tell you. We tried to wake him but he just couldn't care less. Finally after dinner he woke up, and for the first time I saw his eyes. The lights had to be dimmed, cos he couldn't stand bright lights.

Now you must wondering why I'm writing so much about a baby not my own. You must be thinking I should quickly make my own. I tell you, when MY baby is born, I wouldn't care about writing (I imagine words will be too cheap), and may even forget your existence! ;)

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All in all, the baby has brought a closeness among my family members. My sis' baby is coming out in December!

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My dad is smiling as he held baby Joel

Joel sleeping. See his mohawk hairstyle

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Sherene carrying the baby

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