july

Taipei

design

si, hago diseño

I have been working on some graphic design lately. It's more about helping a friend's friend for the opening of a new restaurant. This is not the finalized logo but just one of the working files. The challenge is to create the figure of a goddess. This is the 3rd version and we decided to go into something rather abstract.

Anyway...

2008

This year I'm much closer.
Happy New Year! : )


NYE 2008 @ Taipei 101

India 5: Udaipur city

It' s a pleasant town by the lake and famous for its palace and temple. As you can probably tell from the picture, the pace is slow here. It's from some detail that you learn that there's something special about this town. "Miniature" is the special art form they master here. If you have the time to draw things nicely on your wall, that probably means that your life is wealthy/relaxed enough that you can afford to have a hobby. Anyway, exquisite colorful pattern of animals, humans and buildings can be seem on the streets, and this miniature art is also the focus of the exhibition in a local museum.

After having breakky with my new friend at the hotel, I headed out alone to explore the city. Yes, despite the fact they can easily invite the other person to hang out together for the day, stubborn people will pretend that they are still very independent and don't need any company. I went out for a walk and the major sites - temple and city palace - are all within walking distances. I met some local kids in an alley while I wandered around and they insisted on showing me their special swimming spot along the lake, I went along, they jumped in, invited me to join as well. The weather is warm, the water seems nice, and I haven't swim since in Pukhet few weeks ago. It's tempting but eventually I turned around and walked away.


Miniature and some nice deco on the door.


Jagdish Temple


Sitting in a roof cafe, having my lunch and chai, and watching "the traffic" goes by.


The traffic gets "busier"...


Day 2.
I am here for only one night and will jump on the 16-hour overnight train to Mumbai this evening. After waking up, I ordered Pakota for breakfast. Pakota is something like tempura that they coat stuff with some powder and then deep fry them. But the difference is, as you can probably guess it again, the coating has the taste of curry as well. I learnt about making pakota before while I was in Australia. At that time we use chickpea powder as the coating but the result is not quite like this one. Anyway, I met Joanna again after the meal. She's about to check out and move to a community near this city. She's the kind of traveller that will actually settle down somewhere and live like a local. I forgot how it happened but we ended up deciding to rent bikes to explore the city and the neighborhood for the day. It's pleasant to ride along the lake, and we went to some village and a museum that display traditional craft work and culture.








What more can you ask for when you have your own island, a boat, cozy tent and a tree?

India 4: Udaipur

It's not really that comfy to sleep but again I chose to spend my night on the overnight train from Jaipur to Udaipur. I woke up a couple times but the 9-hour journey actually passed quite quickly. I always pick upper berth while booking for overnight train so i can be far from the hassle of the aisle. Since I tend to go for the cheaper non-AC carriages, many things would happen in this "open" space. Vendors would jump in and try to sell you some food that wrapped in leaves while the train stops. Beggars would approach in many different ways. Anyway, upper berth is also a good place to observe but not to get involved.

After arriving Udaipur in the morning, I noticed another backpacker leaving the station alone so I went forward. "Hey would you like to share a rickshaw to town?" She's from Poland and has been traveling for around 1 year as well. For some reason she can't take a plane, so from Europe she traveled overland thorough middle east, worked there for a while, and then came all the way to India. Her response was something like "er..Ok..I was thinking about getting the local bus, but since you asked..."

This is how it works for rickshaw drivers to get some extra money. They will offer a low price to take you somewhere, and then will drop you off in one or several gem stores or souvenir shops first. They can get paid by the time you stay in that shop, or get certain percentage from the price you paid. Our rickshaw driver is a good but sincere business man. I booked a room in another hotel already and Joanna has a place that she wants to go as well, but we both ended up staying in the place that our driver asked us to "have a look" before he takes us to where we wanted to go. Hotel Monalisa it is. We each got one's own room but then traveled to some sites together afterward.

People would get the impression that most people don't usually travel alone in India, but I guess that's not true. I'm not saying this just because I travel alone there. Indeed tourists would come and go, and most backpackers would move as a small group. But at the same time India tends to draw certain type of people. People that have some kind of detachment in their personality. This kind of "detached" people would hang around on their own. This's probably why I have problem finding a travel partner here. People who rush around would stay in a group and have their itinerary. People who are alone tend to be the kind of people who like to be alone, or want to hang around in a place for a bit longer. As for me, I'm the kind of people that travel alone, "sometimes" like to be alone, love to hang around but end up rush around. It's hard to find a second person that has such travel behavior. Anyway, this is to explain why I spent most of the time by myself.

I'm a bit too chatty today that this post is now longer than how most people would ever bother to read. Let me stop here and I shall continue it someday. didn't even start to talk about the city yet...

gravity

In case you can't tell, they are doing bungy jumping. This is something i drew a couple years ago and i have no idea why i am posting it here now. I forgot how those characters ended up on it and some of the details are unintentional.

veintiséis

So, 26... um

Don't really have anything to say about it.
Damn I'm getting old.

India 3: pink city

So far i wrote about Delhi and Agra, so maybe I should at least finish the golden triangle. Here it is.


Again, I woke up at 5 and rushed to the train station. My driver was waiting for me outside the hotel, and the sky was still dark when I left.

We managed to get to the station on time but the train didn't. According to other backpackers, this is not unusual since India is such a big county. We then waited for more than 3 hours until the train would finally show up. But I guess the delaying is actually a good thing for me. I found a stange code on my ticket while waiting and another backpacker told me that it means i'm on the waiting list. The delaying gave me the time to sort it out and find my mis-spelled name from a list on the billboard.



Jaipur, is also known as the pink city. As you might have seen in the photo, the city is in red and famous for the romantic pink glow during sunset.






The Amber Fort


View from jaigarh

weekend

Guess it's about time to write something.

Life has been treating me alright lately, but my life has been all about work these days. And time flies when your days are filled with work.

Anyway, maybe more writing to come this weekend....