This Photo? Or this Photo? How About This Photo?

 One thing that has been particularly vexing for me during this trip to a whole lot of iconic places is the number of young people who spend vast amounts of time getting exactly the right shot for their own personal agenda and ignore the beauty that is not themselves.  We were very surprised to see young people and not just girls standing in front of what is the eight wonder of the world and spending no time looking or absorbing, but all the time posing and flicking hair whilst Angkor Wat looks on and goes, ‘seriously, WTF?”  ….or whatever that would sound like in Hindi or Buddhist.  If an ancient building actually spoke.

Outside the Unification Palace in Vietnam, two young girls, perhaps in their 20’s stood and pretended to pose walk, or pose get called, or pose a fast spin.  In Hanoi, this woman took about 20 minutes to pose at the side of the pool casually ‘glancing’ over her left shoulder.  Some young guys at Cambodia, did what I can only describe as K-Pop’s version of grunge, who didn’t seem to be interested in 1000 years of history, just their own look.

Tonight took the cake!  There was a bar and a restaurant full of people and a young lady spent several chunks of time which added up to around 30 minutes just posing and taking photos and posing and taking photos.

She has probably now posted them to Tik Tok, or Insta or whatever is the lastest, but little does she know, she is now posing for all of us.  

You can’t see the garter around her leg, but who am I to judge?

Incidentally she also travelled up in the lift in that outfit, but again, I am the wrong generation to even understand.

I am going to say ‘hey National, do something that is actually going to make a difference for eyes all over the world, please ban social media!”

Palms of Debate

 The hotel that we are staying in is lovely and most everything seems to happen on the 7th floor.  The gym, the bar, breakfast and of course the swimming pool.  No such suspended infinity pool or my nightmares, but still very nice.

One thing that we have debated is whether the enormous palm trees around the pool are real, or fake.  It is quite the great debate.  I suggest they are real, whilst Sepa is pretty sure they are fake.

I don’t know much about palms, but I would suspect that they need a reasonable root mass to hold them up, so where is that?  How is that?

Before I leave, I am planning to go up to the palm and stab it with a fork to see once and for all, if we get sap or we get some sort of building material.

I have heard that Singapore is really tough on crime, so willful damage is probably up there, but don’t worry, I will be in stealth mode, 

however, if I don’t see you for a couple of years, please send me care packages.

Amazing Architecture!

 The buildings in Singapore are pretty amazing!  There must be some sort of covenant that means not all the buildings are just boring boxes.  Maybe they have something like Melbourne where 1% of the cost of a building has to be spent in making it creative or arty from the outside.  

This building is the ArtScience Museum and it has 4 storeys inside.  It is designed to use no power and it is cool inside from the design.  Apparently they seldom use the lights either.

I actually don’t think this photo does it justice for how huge this building is and on the top is apparently an enormous infinity pool.  Haven’t they seen that movie where Jason Statham kills the villain by sucking him out of the infinity pool and he plunges to his death?  In his togs.  Somethings are just not worth picturing in your head.

One very cool item was the water that gets collected off the roof when it rains and it goes down a concave shaped roof and into the hole and into the pool below.   It was very cool!

How Far it Too Far?

 The first day of the conference was actually pretty good and the people seem to mostly be quite like minded.  I guess there is a certain vibe to being an Apple Distinguished School, so these people are not bogged down the day to day wading that can come from being in survival mode at a school.  I have always found that talking to ADS staff, there is a very fast connection because these people are looking to what is next, not what is hard at the moment.

Today we went to Nexus International School and got ideas to bring home.  Watch out team!  As Sara says ‘Susannah’s ideas creates work for other people’!

The best part of the day was visiting the ArtScience Museum, although it was a bit slow to get started, it ended with a real bang!  We saw the innovation space where kids come and have the opportunity to do heaps of activities that hopefully inspire them to create.

We then went into the Future World Space which was freaken awesome!  

And I do get ‘feeling the moment, but…….. how far is too far?  If you are looking for a measure, this is too far.

Oh So Rude Awakening!

 

We have arrived in Singapore for the conference and the shuttle leaves at 8 from the hotel.  Breakfast at 7 means out of bed too early for this sloth.

This photo makes it look like it is quite light, but no!  It is still dark outside and normal people are still sleeping.  All those lights you can see are hallways and stairs and I can count on one hand the rooms that are light up.  Mine.  One.

Pub Street

 Tonight we went out to have dinner and took a lovely tropical ride in a remorques, which is the Cambodian equivalent of a tuk tuk.  It was balmy and comfortable at whatever temperature it was and a walk was a nice option.

 We were half way through our meal when the lights started to flicker far off in the distant sky.  

It didn’t take long before the lovely festive atmosphere in the street was completely obliterated by the rain!

The heavens opened and down it came!  Not just in heavy rain, but in restaurant closing, street emptying rain, thunder and lightning.  It poured so much that the guttering was soon full and puddles appeared across the streets and it was full in about 5 minutes.  The restaurant we were in pulled all their cushions and furniture in and wound down the awnings, while everyone stood around going…….. holy, that is better pressure than the shower I had this morning!!

Call me a skeptic again, but this video below can not be good!  I know a little about how power works and I’m thinking maybe a little health and safety might not hurt considering this light was about shoulder height on me.  An orange cone anyone?

The Temples of Angkor Wat.

 I came to Cambodia to see Angkor Wat and it didn’t disappoint.  It was built around 1150 and started off as a Hindu temple and later converted to Buddhist.  It is an area of 61 km2 and inside is quite a number of temples and a large area set aside for the people to watch games.  There are records in Chinese history of it being visited in the 12th and 13th century and seems to have been pretty much abandoned for around 150 years, only to be re-discovered for the first time by the Portuguese in 1586 and then abandoned again and rediscovered by the French in 1860.  The French cleaned the place up and took it back from the forest and that must have been a huge job, but Cambodia was under the protection of France, so I guess they had to do their bit.  

When Cambodia had their war with Khmer Rouge, lots of damage and looting occurred and heaps of the statues lost their heads to be sold on the black market.  At some stage there was also a gold statue and gems such as diamonds and sapphires in one of the temples, but that would have been long gone by the time the Khmer Rouge got there, if it existed at all.  

Sara and I climbed to the top of two of the temples just to say we had and it was a fair hike to the top.  They had placed wooden stairs, albeit extremely steep wooden stairs, all the way to the top and underneath was the original rock ones.  They would have taken some navigating as they were about 15cm on the tread and about 40cm to the next step up.  I thought that was a pretty interesting design, consider these people are not tall!  Maybe only the really determined made it to the top?  They also went up about 3 storeys, so one slip and……..oops.  No heaven for you.

Inside Angkor Wat is a whole series of carved friezes telling stories and one was how your earthly life affects you in the afterlife, which was a whole lot of really?  So, if you steal and be dishonest, you get nailed into something down there and all the times you are bad, equals how many nails go into you.  If you give the side eye to people (like everyone I know does on an almost daily basis and x15 for teenagers) you go down there, lose your eyes and come back as blind people.  That is fairly harsh, but wait, if you drink alcohol and cut up rough, you go down to hell and get burned alive (although I am picking you are already dead to go there).  If you just drink alcohol and sleep, you will be okay.  Then if you are a cheater, cheater, big fat cheater and you play around on your spouse, by go down there and get bits chopped off and wait for it…….you come back as a lady boy.  Our guides words, not mine.

One of the temples we went to was where the Tomb Raider was filmed and it has huge trees growing out of the temples and you can totally see how that has happened, with the rainforest being so lush around it.  The feats of engineering for 1000 years ago are quite astounding when you consider that these buildings were multi-storey and made from individual rocks that were carried from other parts of the country and pieced together, then decorated  and kitted out.  The fact that they are still standing today after being taken over by the forest twice, is also pretty incredible.

They also had quite large reservoirs of water in man made pools.  Obviously they don’t exist anymore, but to collect and keep large bodies of water like that, would have taken some ingenuity.

I would thoroughly recommend it.