Traveling in Asia has been a mengelmoes of undocumented randomness. As much as I love to write (occasionally) I'm not a 'dear diary person', I enjoy the idea that some events and people in our lives go undocumented and 'forgotten. I understand that this proposition - to resist using mere words in an attempt to describe, analyse and understand every damn thing that happens to us, will most probably be beat and left for dead by avid bloggers and dreaded scrap-bookers alike. However, it works for me for a multitude of reasons, those being:
1. Events, people, landscapes exist in their own right as I saw them and understood them at the time.
2. the above exist as memories which change shape over years, growing and expanding in significance as I'm subjected to even more of the world and its inhabitants.
3. I don't morph into 'that person' who spends the whole holiday desperately searching for that 'it' photograph like Crack fiend searching for his next hit.
4. And finally, maybe it's time to learn to purposefully document smells and textures.
I once worked with a guy who had claimed to have 'traveled' the entire world. He worked on Carnival cruise ships which docked in "every" harbor (you can imagine, dear reader the 'jungles' this here pioneer explored). Why, he sported photographs of himself busting grins in front of the Eiffel Tower, Great Wall of China, remains of the Berlin Wall, Robbin Island, Big Ben blah, blah, blah (vomit a little in mouth) and so on. He lacked the social graces one hopes to gain by traveling and learning about other cultures. This same American man had the great ambition to eat out at every Hard Rock Cafe on the Planet. Dear reader, doesn't that excite you beyond belief? I tell you, the jealousy that grew in me like a terrible gangrene every time he spoke of his noble ambition, ate away at my core and left me as the bitter and jealous person writing this very blog. But, enough about the strange beings I've met along the way as these clowns surely have no place in my Asia blog, but then, what does?
Her Pale African Skin
Pale skin adorned by eyes,
reflecting the uncertain color of the Umkomaas River.
Indeterminate coloring like its traveling waters which run and stand in those places,
caressing those bodies and witnessing those things that they speak about.
"Those waters are dirty, they flow through the
Townships -
Those people shit in it
and shed their diseases" like a man (those men) who enters virgins in hope of a cure.
The bile-green waters like the flooded murky portals on her pale "oppressive" face
continue to race toward the bounding main, where a plethora of colors and their diseases merge.
And succumb
to the ebb and flow which apologizes for nothing,
yet considers all in it's retreat and returns with force,
offering gifts.
~Samantha King~
How are you celebrating Halloween today?
I'm not celebrating Halloween. In South Africa we don't normally observe this holiday, it feels strange to take part in a celebration I know
very little about and which I have no sentimental ties to and memories of. Sure it might just be another dress up party and an opportunity to drink and party but, there is absolutely nothing that excites me about Halloween! I did however attend my first Halloween party at the local ex pat bar - Deepin. I threw together a white trash outfit and everyone's first guess was...Britney Spears, so I went with it, meh!P.S. Halloween may be something to write home about but VDay (which is coming up soon) is!
We're celebrating the the big V, that being Victory, Valentines and Vagina, at a party in Seoul on Friday, November 16th at the Wolfhound in Itaewon. All proceeds will be going to the Dashi Hakkye center which supports women who have been victims of sex trafficking . VDay in Seoul 2007
Want details? e-mail me biatch!

on Identity for a White South African Girl - 13 years post-Apartheid