HE:

A famous visitor dropped by last night and left a bagful of confused fragments in my dreams. We had a party in the woods and slept under the trees with giant gerbils and dark-red foxes. Our pillows made of autumn leaves. Our covers – fallen branches.
His face is real, his voice is famous. People pay money to see him live. He would cynically represent our generation, he would criticize, mock and preach in songs and poetry. And there he was last night, quiet and transformed, covered with the dew, pine cone pieces in his honey-colored hairs.
A symbol of youth and freedom.
There were other people too, and they were spinning, their spirits above the ground, their lips touching when there was nowhere else to go. In the woods. And under the branches.
I often wonder if you dream of somebody so intensely, is that somebody may be dreaming too?

Young Pilgrims

A night-life story.
A night out in Macau starts around 9 in the shared flat of exchange students. Everbody brings drinks and you end up trying the famous students' specials- cheap beers and wines, plus some vodka and whiskey (ridiculously cheap in Macau). Conversations are school-related, travel-inspired and my favorite “How do you say that in your language?”. Really boring commercial music is coming out of lap tops, but we always have fun and end up wasted before even going out. That's the point, I guess.

Second stop is, naturally, the 33 - the classical low-budget drinking spot. Basically, it is a shop with a bunch of chairs outside, right on Hookers' Street by the water. You can enjoy racial diversity down there, with the beautiful Taipa skyline in the background. Exquisite.

Then we walk to MGM Grand, because a night out in Macau is impossible without at least one fancy casino name on the menu. The MGM Lion's Bar is flooded with the same boring commercial music mentioned one par ago, but the live-band makes it better. Recently, they have started playing some Kings of Leon, so it is not all that bad actually. It is weird when you realize that one year ago you were drinking with some hippies in the park and now you are in a first-class Las Vegas casino with a caipirinha in your hand. Life is just one unpredictable piece of work.

So after the casino it is time for some clubbin', right. Well, not much choice in Macau to be honest, there are two or three clubs open until the morning – Cubic and D2 (and D3 but I don't know many people who have been there). The chosen spot is normally Cubic, and for some reason I always end up having loads of fun even though it is the may be lamest bar in the world. The drinks are free, the ladies are not, the music is crap, but still.

This basically sums it up. If you can still walk and talk after this, 7/11 is is open 24/7 and the rooftop hammocks await patiently.

Bukowski

These two babes and Hank Chinaski have just found me sitting here on my own with a bottle of wine. The exact dose of literary genius for times like these. Wild, vagrant and genuine.

Happy Birthday, Anchettt!

Честит рожден ден, Анииии!
Пожелавам ти луда Холандска година, много колела, бири, и мъже с червени бузи (?!)!!!!
Обичам те, и дано скоро успеем отново да празнуваме рожденните си дни заедно!!!!
A kiss for Ani!
A Special dance for Ani

The Drifter

Talking about bumming in Bali, Indonesia.

Stage diving

If you have two empty bank accounts and a credit card running on minus for half a year, may be you will not book a trip to Bali for two weeks. May be not. But me, freaking insane piece of work, did exactly that. The dilemma was not simple: I need to check out of the student accommodation on the 15 June; my flight to Amsterdam is on 4 July; what to do for 2 weeks with no money. Staying at somebody's place is kinda impossible in the current geographical context and the only option I could figure out is get another super cheap but slightly unconfirmed student accommodation in Macau. Or go to a cheap beach and bum around for a while. Of course, I went for the last one. Being poor in a miserable hostel in freaking Macau against being poor on a hammock on the Island of the Gods. Unfair battle, I know.
My strategy for financing these two weeks is so complicated, that I don't even understand it properly. I am being really unreasonable, I know it is a super stupid and self-indulgent thing that I will most probably regret at some later point, but honestly the whole 2010 has been such a damn mess. Add another stupidity from my side and the result will not be that different. Entering a new stage of insanity every day.

What is the morale from this story: never go to the gym hangovered!

Kami going wild in the weekend.

Finale

(Ok, I decided to add some info to the pictures)
This is some tribute to an Egyptian temple in the Fisherman's Wharf in Macau (the Fisherman's is a water-front shopping and entertainment zone in Macau with nothing local in its architecture - there are Dutch buildings, a Greek amphitheatre, a volcano (??), Spanish houses and etc - you got the picture). I haven been inside the temple yet, but some time in the coming last month in Macau I will go check it out
.
And this skyline is the view from my window. One of the few clear nights in Macau right now. The storms, monsoons and tropical cyclones are having a rave party outside most of the time.

The picture was taken during a field trip in MGM Grand. The bunch of buildings on the other side is the island of Taipa where I attend school. The sky outside implies that the above-mentioned rave-party is about to begin.

By-the-way

I have just realized how my recent 6-7 posts are all about music. The thing is, there is really nothing that inspires me in particular at the moment. And except from the idea that I am coming home soon and I've got this sort of a mental to-do list, my head is in a pretty messy weird state. So these are the safety nets - music, books and films. Especially music. And especially the one listed below.

Aaa... and by-the-way today is Buddha's Birthday.

Add some music to your day

The 10 albums that have been with me in the last couple of weeks, times when all I think of in the morning is the coming of the night, when I can lay down my head again. The climate is crushing me. It is sucking the vital juices out of my body , no matter how many Kiwis I have for breakfast. Every day is like the last 30 second of Dancing with myself. And the only thing that keeps me going right now – lame as it may be - is music. So the ten albums that have become my best friends, my family, my lovers and all those other people I don't spend time with. At all.

1. Two Dancers – Wild Beasts
A bit off-beat, a bit dark, a bit renaissance, but still undeniably indie-pop. The high pitch and the lyrics take me someplace far away from here, from this unbearable humidity, somewhere cool and dark.
2. Surf's up – the Beach Boys
Not sure how I ended up listening to this album but it is really the music that I need right now.
3. This is happening – LCD Soundsystem
I have been waiting for something new from Mr. James Murphy for a while now and the new 2010 release is really a WOW. The beat that gets me moving and dancing around.
4. Congratulation – MGMT
I think I covered that one earlier this month but still, the boys did an amazing job. They have managed to create some slightly old-school sound, and everything old-school is welcomed into my library.
5. Veckatimest- Grizzly Bear
Yet another long-awaited album has come out this year and it is brutally good. I love how heavy and blue it is, how every song is like a continuation of the previous one and how the layers of music do not allow you to get the whole feeling right away. That's why I keep on.
6. Chunk of change- Passion Pit
It was hard to pick an album, because there is hardly a Passion Pit song that I haven't abused in the last couple of weeks. But I think Cuddle Fuddle helped me pick the winner.
7. The Garden – Silver Apples
This is the point when I get totally weird during the day and I daydream for hours about a place where people lounge around a lake, drink wine and explore the multiverse of their minds.
8. A saucerful of secrets – Pink Floyd
Every now and then there are these moments when I get into Pink Floyd for a while... not into Pink Floyd probably but into the mood that their music create. Somewhat out of reason and Earth. Who needs reason and Earth nowadays? Lucy in the sky with diamonds! (that's a different story :))
9. Schoolboys in disguise – The Kinks
So much of the energy of the 70s is pouring out of this record that I cannot stop listening to it right now.
10. The Merriwheater Post Pavilion – The Animal Collective
Any comment is useless, this music from another universe. I cant wait to see them live soon and get collectively “animalized”.

Thanks for tuning in!

This is happening

This is happening! (Ranting "Drunk girls" on the bus, collecting angry glances.) The wassabi among my preferred spices this season.

Little silver centipedes

I am back in that woolly mental state.
The one that barely registers the passing of the days.
When Pink Floyd break in every morning.
The state that tries to erase logic and moderation.
The mental shuffling is on.
The one that pics a new desire everyday
and amplifies it until it bangs on the backdoor of sanity
The self-indulgent one
the self-destructive one
and sadly- the most productive one.
With a Velvet Underground sound-scape
day-by-day
I begin and end as uncanny as the day allows me.
As unstable as the waves dictate
and then I dream of blue sunlight and tribal dances
and wish never to be myself again

Welcome back to the debts of your subconsciousness! Sometimes you need a subtle push, a marmalade ship to take you to the submarine. Your submarine isn't yellow, isn't pink or orange. Your submarine is turquoise blue like the clothes of the tribal shamans in South America. Blue like the faces of the Maya warriors. The descent is slow but you have to be patient. There are people out there, there are songs, there are artists, there are words that are trying to reach you all the time. It's not about finding who you are. You are matter and energy. It is about where you're headed – consciousness. Consciousness is where everything ends and begins, where time reaches a point of singularity. It's the black hole. The trip is long and not everybody gets a ticket to the submarine. Jump on board. Take off your overalls. Everything that happens will happen today.

Super giants

Който търси, намира? Цяла година търсих старите им албуми, намерих един, и Itunes не го чете (Itunes на сапун). Но няма значение, "По-добре 2 от 5, отколкото 1 от 5", казва позитивната ми половинка и удря болезнен шамар на другата, негативна, оплакваща се мърморана в мен. Пускам VLC-то, и хайде, пак на топло с моята Австралийска самозабрава. Къде е новият албум? Къде е?!! Скачайте от кенгуруто и марш към студиото!

Man on the moon

President Kennedy understood that the competition with the Soviet Union was not space race but a science race, which was really an education race. Yet the way he chose to get Americans excited about sacrificing and buckling down to do what it took to win the Cold War- which required a a large-scale push in science and engineering – was by laying out the vision of putting a man on the moon, not a missile into Moscow. If president Bush is looking for a similar legacy project, there is one just crying out – a national science initiative that would be our generation's moonshot: a crash program for alternative energy to make America energy-independent in ten years. If President Bush made energy independence his moon shot, in one fell swoop he would dry up revenue for terrorism, force Iran, Russia, Venezuela and Saudi Arabia onto the path of reform -which they will never do with $60-a-barrel oil – strengthen the dollar, and improve his own standing in Europe by doing something huge to reduce global warming.
(The World is Flat, Thomas Freedman)

Rapunzel, Rapunzel let down your hair

In the cold black shadow

A song has been on repeat in my head for a while, before I realized that the lyrics hit right there in the heart of human violence and ignorance.

Why'd you cut holes in the face of the moon base?
Don't you know about the temperature change
In the cold black shadow?
Are you mad at your walls
Or hoping that an unknown force can repair things for you?
Pardon all the time that you've thrown into your pale gray garden?
If the ship will never come you've got to move along

Even a bird would want a taste of dirt from abyssal dark
The prick of a feather could make a kingdom burn and the bloodshed start
The falling apart
Made me a shadow in the shape of wonder
The waves of black
If she's going under I can hold my breath till the sky comes back
Or drown like a rat

To catch a monster
We make a movie
Set the tempo
And cut and cut it's brains out
It will inspire on the burning pyre
Half the distance
Half the motion
Communication
It's easy as the ocean

I mean .. I don't know. I am not like 15 or anything anymore.. but when I get stuck listening to a band and an album over and over and over again... it seems like not much has changed since those glorious times in the first half of the '00's. The intensity, the commitment, the maniacal obsession with a song, the bragging'-about-it-annoying-everyone type of worship. Worship. There you have it. In a way I hope this feeling will never go away and will be as crazy about music in 15 years as am I now. Cause it makes me sing and smile on the bus, it makes me feel as if I am conveying a message out there – hey you, don't grow up, mate, sing your heart out and make other people sing too, sing and dance and the rest is useless noise. ("Tried to amplify the sound of light and love"). And that's why I often geek out and listen to music at home instead of dive into Macau's overpriced nightlife.

Last night, I danced and sung half-naked on the rooftop of our house in the pissing rain. I wish everybody such experiences. Its refreshing. Literally.

Booked by books

The April/ early May book review and books that remind me why do I love reading



They are tossers, aren't they, men like Martin? They think women are like fucking laptops or whatever, like My old one is knackered and anyways you can get ones that are slimmer and do more stuff now.
(Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down)

Ex-wives: really, everybody should have at least 1.
(Nick Hornby, A Long Way Down)

An then he told me that people who were brain-dead like George Bush or Tony Blair, and the people who judged Pop Idol, never offered themselves up to the gods of Life and Death at all, and therefore they could never prove that they have the right to live, and we shouldn't obey their laws or recognize their decisions (like Pop Idol judges). So we don't have to bomb countries if they tell us to and if they say that Fat Michelle or whoever won Pop Idol, we don't have to listen to them. We can just say, No she didn't.
(Nick Hornby, A long Way Down)

In China today, Bill Gates is Britney Spears. In America today, Britney Spears is Britney Spears- and that is our problem.
(Thomas Freedman, The World is Flat, on the differences between Chinese and American idols)

"I think I'll be a clown when I get grown," said Dill.  "Yes, sir, a clown.... There ain't one thing in this world I can do about folks except laugh, so I'm gonna join the circus and laugh my head off."  "You got it backwards, Dill," said Jem.  "Clowns are sad, it's folks that laugh at them."  "Well, I'm gonna be a new kind of clown.  I'm gonna stand in the middle of the ring and laugh at the folks."
(Harper Lee, To Kill a Mockingbird)

Unmade beds

Congratulations

Over and over, song after song, Congratulations has totally occupied my musical freedom. My iTunes have once again surrendered under this familiar spel of psycho-electro-rock beats. MGMT's new release is not only conceptually and rhythmically inspiring but cruelly addictive. Not only am I unable to stop listening to it, but I cant seem to stop listening to all other albums of MGMT. Sitting at home on a cloudy Asian Saturday, sipping on a Carlsberg, reading Nick Hornby I have been going through Of Birds, Moons & Monsters, Hot Love Drama, Time to Pretend and all the new singles I can't wait to see on videos (actually I cannot say the MGMT've got a song that I do not like but that's not really the question here :D)
I have gotten so far as to check out any upcoming gigs that I may be able to attend. The closest and most probable one is 20-21 September, Barrowlands, Glasgow (or Paradiso, Amsterdam around my birthday if I can get to stay in Nederland for little longer). Yeah until then... Brian Eno.

"these performances, and the new album, are absolutely amazing. mgmt has done what almost no band can seem to do, release a debut album fueled by highly accessible, radio friendly singles, then on their sophomore effort, get weirder, more obscure, less radio friendly, while still maintaining their pop sensibilities and catchiness and actually releasing a better album. "congratulations" is nearly flawless and "siberian breaks" may be one of the best songs ive ever heard."(sweethypocricy09 on youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4aS6jHraUpg)

All the king's men

Step by step, my mind is setting on the idea that in a few months everything will change again. But these are very tiny, timid steps.
I read somewhere that people thrive in the unknown.

El manifesto

You meet us at every major travel spot. In every small but beautiful village there is at least one of us. We could be in small groups, in couples or alone. We travel cheap, sleep cheap, eat cheap and rarely say “no”. In a way, we have an unwritten code of conduct – we pack our bags with great care, we collect trips, we've been places around the world, we love solitude, but we can be friends with every stranger. And we also have a holy book – it comes under different names but it takes us through the same off-beat path. Our greatest value is the appreciation of the big wide world out there, adventure, nature, culture and people. We are pilgrims to the places that others before us have seen, appreciated and written about. We seek the unknown, the alternative, the unspoiled. But we grow in numbers so fast that today our sacred locations are familiar to everyone, mainstream and overcrowded.
Academics study us in detail. Motivations? Destination choices? Influences and information source? Tourism planners do not want us – we are not interested in swimming pools and resorts, we dont have money. Local people? – well – you have to ask them. We'd like to think we are different, but our cheap, trying-everything-local mask is not fooling anybody. We can be an ignorant, hypocritical and destructive force.
We are backpackers.
We come and conquer. You don't believe me? Visit Granada, Bocas del Torro, Katmandu, Pucket, Bali, Marrakech, Cancun, Hoi Chi Min, Chengdu, Koh Phangan, Montezuma, Bayron's Bay, Guadalajara, Wild Coast Eastern Cape, El Bolson, Goa, Caye Caulker, Tofo. These are only a few of the headquarters- they practically belong to us. And that's just the beginning.

(on the picture: Backpacking: Principles & Practice, Puerto Viejo, Costa Rica, February 2009)