Monday, May 28, 2007

in saigon

just a tiny update. had already spent one week in bangkok and toured the ankor wat in cambodia ( which was absolutely amazing) and it's my third day in saigon now. i celebrated my birthday here two days ago with yoshi and paola with some great italian dessert and then went to a club called Apocalypse Now and partied the night away.saigon is my favorite so far compared to the last two places, but i wonder what i will think of hanoi where we will head to later this week. at any rate, thai and vietnamese food is just great.street food, though not the cleanest, is definitely a must try.
visited the war remnants musuem in saigon today and i was certainly taken aback by how little i know of the mad brutality that happened during the vietnam war. i am glad i gained some awareness today.

talk to you later.

Tuesday, May 01, 2007

which story?

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i suppose there are times when we all scramble in the dark for hope, freedom and even power. in the process of doing so, every one of us writes a different story to achieve that end. the korean guy in virginia tech writes a story of violence, death and blood,
and other people had to suffer along with that story, including a holocaust surivivor who died trying to save other kids from the killer's outbursts of wrath. life is open ended, with many possibilities, and sometimes, making one absolute choice takes away the other choices. for example, the choice to kill, or that to to commit suicide.

and the story has to end, just like that.

i assume there are also many loners like him in society, unloved, ignored and feeling like grand losers. all we can ask for is that these people will somehow find, in their own unique way, the choice to write a story of hope, rather than that of despair, darkness, and death. the story of hope can then become a reality, whether it be through faith in God, therapy, music, films, miracles and awesome friendships. the journey could be a labyrinth and a process, but hope is attainable, i believe. then the story can move on, and we can then read it together, and pass it along to other people, other children, while sufferering and pain slowly fade away.

and i thought it was quite an interesting occurence that when a guitarist friend of mine first switched on the TV after he got out of North korea after performing for a music festival, the news of the virgia tech killings by the south korean guy was one of the the first things he saw.
for more details about his journey to north korea please visit his website at http://www.jasoncarter.net/nkoreablog.html
based on my conversations with him last week, he seemed to have a rather blissful tour , as he also said in his blog
" I felt that I had tasted a piece of ‘Heaven’ in North Korea, a sense of peace and place that was becoming increasingly rare in an ever-changing and crazy world."
of course, that is an outsider's experience of north korea, and there are many things happening beneath the appearance of an orderly and "blissful" society that has no access to outside news and information. however, i thought how interesting , surreal and pleasant my friend's visit as a musician had been. he also talked with nostagia about the simplicity of life over there.
yea i thought the simplicty part could be brought to our modern day's way of life. simplicity could be elusive , but i thought it is worth experiencing again, like the dreams, melodies and sleigh bells of childhood.

and maybe as i go on my travels in cambodia , vietnam or even laos, with yoshi and paula (a new travelling companion i encountered recently ) we will experience and re-discover such simplicity ?

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