Shop Talk on Putting HOME WORK Together — Part 2
The Ultimate Game of Catch
Last week Lew gave me an X-zylo Ultra throw toy as a birthday present. I took it out in a large meadow overlooking Stinson Beach with my friend Jeff and it flew beautifully. It's a little hoop, you throw it with a spin like a football and you won't believe how far it flies. (One once went 600'.) In fact we lost it, it just went out of sight, on and on, like it had a motor. I just ordered 3 of them. Great fun for beach or large open area:
Another great throwing device, much better than a frisbie, is the Aerobie Sprint Ring. Designed by an aeronautical engineer who worked on the design for ten years. It flies and floats and hangs in the air so you can run to it if it's far away:
Wi-Fi Rules!
Speaking of slick tech: about once a week I go into my favorite North beach cafe in SFO about 6:30 AM, turn on my laptop and am instantly hooked to the web by a wi-fi connection, which is faster than the ISDN in our office. I read the LA Times, NY Times, Google News etc., then check my email. Not only that but I just got a Kensington Wi-Fi Finder, a little $30 device that flashes a green light when you're in a wi-fi zone. I've been driving around the city and finding hookups all over the place. Have gone online in my truck. Electronic poaching.
Think Different
Apple kicks ass! The IPod is just a beautiful device. 10,000 songs on the 40-gig unit. Unless you're hopelessly enmeshed in a windows environment, check out one of Apple's flagship stores. V. cool stuff. It really is an elegant operating system PLUS elegant hardware. We're getting a 20" flat top monitor to run a HOME WORK slide show in our booth at the BEA convention in Chicago,
Latte for the Road
I love finding good caffeine when I'm out on the road. A latte, a capuccino (OK, OK, so I've got some yuppie tendencies), along with a good CD or local country radio, driving through the southwest on a sunny morning -- my idea of close to heaven. I'm always on the lookout for an espresso shop. When I see a Starbucks, I search around the vicinity for the original shop that they are there to cannibalize. Try it. There will invariably be another, cooler, locally-owned coffee place nearby. For example, in Malibu last year, I passed a Starbucks on a side road. I noticed an older shopping center across the street, went in, and sure enough, here was a great little coffee shop with homemade muffins and reggae music.
Trip Notes
I fly into Hong Kong so I have the weekend there before going to the printing plant. What a city! It's sparkling, it's wonderful, it's a jewel of a place (actually comprised of some 200 islands, which you get to on inexpensive ferries). The skyline skyscrapers are cool looking, and much of the city is an intricate network of passages and escalators in and out of malls and big buildings heading up into the hills from the harbor. There's Hong Kong island, and there's Kowloon just across the water. A lot of HK island is still wild. Just a short distance south of the harbor there are mountains and waterfalls. The first day there I take a ferry to Lama Island, walking from one side to the other, have a great fish dinner, looking out on the harbor.
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© 2004 Lloyd Kahn
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| Boat in Lama Island harbor |
The next day I get a ferry to Landau Island, then take a bus across the island to the little fishing village of Tai O, with silver colored sheet metal stilt houses --.a unique local building style.
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© 2004 Lloyd Kahn
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| Stilt houses in Tai O, Lantau Island |
Cambodia
I spend another few days in Hong Kong, seeking out places to eat where there are only locals, using free internet hookups in coffee shops. (With the prevalence of internet cafes just about everywhere nowadays, you don't need to lug around a laptop.) Then catch a plane for Siem Reap, the heart of the old Khmer empire, now a kind of wild west town that is the stopping-off point for the temples at Angkor.
I get the local scene down, eating at places with no gringos in sight (also at a few gringo-oriented places). One night have big Angkor beer, and meal of Lok-lak (stir-fried beef and steamed rice) while watching Eric Clapton perform his "Unplugged" record live in NYC on big TV. Cross-cultural delight. I rent a mountain bike and after a few hours practice in the complex traffic I am pedalling around town comfortably including at night, no lights, you just have to relax and go with flow of cars, motos, rickshaws, busses, bikes...can cover lot more territory on bike than on foot. Like Canadian cyclist tells me one morning (as I have a good latte with French pastry at the Blue Pumpkin Cafe), the traffic is like a dance.
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© 2004 Lloyd Kahn
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| Tuk-tuk in Siem Reap, Cambodia |
The Angkor area is huge, some 200 square miles and there are hundreds of temples. The stone was transported there from distant quarries by 40,000 (!) elephants and then on reed rafts. Angkor Wat is just part of it. It's an awesome place, remnants of a mighty empire that westerners know very little about. The temples were built by the Khmer kings to house their royal lingas, the phallic emblems of the Hindu god Shiva, and many of the temples are adorned with sculptures and reliefs of curvy dancing women with big breasts (at about the same time priests were cutting the hearts out of live people in the Aztec empire -- talk about different strokes).
These people (the Khmer) are the kindest, happiest, most mellow people I've ever been around. Maybe all the poison went into the Khmer Rouge -- people are not rude, they are considerate, traffic is a complex gavotte of mostly motos (lightweight motorcycles), bikes, rickshaws, cars, trucks. Every driver is totally aware of the speed, direction and position of every other moving conveyance. It makes Rome's traffic look sedate. The 2nd day in Siem Reap, I get on my funky rented ($1.50 per day) mtn bike, must weigh 60 lbs, and join the hordes of early morning vehicles and pedal 6 mi. out to Angkor. About a mile into my journey I realize I've forgotten my camera -- shit, well, I'm not too big on monuments anyway. I ride the bike through the jungle going to different sites. It's hard to describe. It's way beyond the Egyptions or Romans or any temple complex I know of. Next day I hire a moto driver ($15 for him and moto for all day) and we go out and I shoot about 300 fotos. (I need more words for "awesome" and "amazing.") That afternoon we go south of town to a silk farm in the countryside.
The Khmer people hustle you as a tourist, but it's all good-natured. I've never been anywhere with this percentage of good vibes. I eat a lot of meals on the streets, picking out crowded places, and the food is excellent and cheap (like about $2 for stir-fried meat, vegetables, steamed rice, bowl of soup, bottle of Black Panther premium stout.) I like the rice-based diet. Never have the slightest bit of a stomach problem. (People tend to get food poisoning in expensive restaurants.)
In town at night there's a little band of musicians, all who have been blown up by land mines, one guy has no legs, one's face badly burned, and they sit on the dirty corner and play this wonderful music. In the spirt of the 2 of my 3 sons who are musicians, I give them money twice. They like the fact that I like their music, no one else seems to be listening. Until I got there I didn't realize the enormity and the evilness (and secrecy) of America's destruction of Cambodia and especially Laos during the Vietnam war years. People are still being blown up with old land mines. Who the fuck manufactures (and sells) land mines? Who are the CEOs (and stockholders) of those corporations? May they rot in hell.
Phnom Penh
I decide to go from Siem Reap to Phnom Penh by speedboat. The bus leaves at 5:30 AM and takes us to the disembarkation town. It's unbelievable. The filthiest place I've ever seen. People cooking on smoky outdoor fires, tiny dirty thatched open-wall huts, garbage everywhere, the smell of shit, mud, rotten fish AND beautiful healthy looking little kids running around. Go figure. This is a fishing community and they have these boats with propellers on a 12' shaft so they can raise and lower the prop due to shallow waters. Several of these boats transport us out to deeper water where we board a large speedboat. We go across the very large Tonle Sap lake, then the Sap river to Phnom Penh. It's a six hour ride.
Phnom Penh got its name from Madame Phnom Penh, a wealthy widow who, in the 14th century, found 4 Buddhas resting on a log that had floated down from Laos. She built a small shrine for them, which got added to over the years. I love PP. On one level it's a filthy smoggy chaotic (and lawless) city, but the other levels include the wonderful people, the tropical breezes, the river (it's at the conjunction of the Sap river we came down on, and the Mekong, which is a mighty mighty waterway). The markets are like nothing I've ever seen -- dense, dark in the interiors, fragrant with food odors, silk merchants with high stacks of gorgeous silks. I'm interested in silk textiles and start buying silk scarves, sarongs – $6–$30 range. (Am thinking of becoming a part-time silk merchant -- no kidding!) One night I watch Apocalypse Now on TV with a new appreciation for it. Coppola got so many things right about the river and the war and this part of the world.
I rent a moto in Phnom Penh ($6/day). V. funky Daelin moto but it runs. I have a smog mask, sun glasses, rolled up pants, flip-flops and a Nike hat (mine blew out of the top deck of a Hong Kong trolley.) I just can't believe how the traffic works in this city. It's a 100% spirit of cooperation. To cross a busy street, you veer into the far left (yours) of the oncoming traffic. Everyone coming from the opposite direction cedes that curbside spot to wrong-way motos. Then you watch for a decrease in traffic and when there are maybe 3-4 vehicles coming, you edge out into the middle of the oncoming lane. You hold steady and let the drivers coming pick their route around you. You slice through the traffic on a diagonal, and then have enough speed to get in the traffic of the correct lane. Every driver is courteous, when people have almost-crashes they often smile. Each driver lets all other vehicles go where they are vectoring. I'm amazed I can do it.
I go the Khmer Rouge prison museum/torture compound. I am dazed. Alternately feel like throwing up or sobbing. I've lived such an isolated life in many ways, there's so much going on (and that has gone on) in the rest of the world that never comes close to filtering through to my privileged Bay Area consciousness. Totally shocking was the poster of what looked like nice 14-15 year old Khmer teenage kids, they were the guards and torturers.
There are at least 100 internet cafes in PP. (As opposed to maybe 8 in Frankfurt.)
I find a funky temple one day. the temples (called "Wats") are like walled compounds, with monks and others living inside. The Buddhists are just elegant. The monks come up and talk to you, the statues and tapestries and incense and architecture are all in tune with my sensibilities. One little guy, saffron robe came up to me, big smile and says "Hello, can I ask you some questions? How many children, boys or girls, are you still married, where born, mother and father details, what sports do you do, and what do you want to do with the rest of your life..." and etc.
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© 2004 Lloyd Kahn
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| Tropical fruit stand, Phnom Penh |
One day I go to the National Museum because it has artifacts from the Angkor Wat era. Busy part of city, beautiful terra cotta red building with walls around of solid block. Once inside the building I step into the inner courtyard, Buddha statue in center, grass, trees, birds singing, I feel this strong hit of peace and serenity, good vibes, good chi, perfect fung shui.
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