Canadrew

Uh oh
I'm back in Canada
and its snowing
and Im not prepared for such snowiness
I only really have a sweater
oh dear
more updates to come

Photo(s) of the ... sunday

Hey Fs and Ls
So! I'm contemplating and writing away for my final paper for Virtual Worlds adventure. However - in a bout of procrastination I thought I might upload some pictures from the weekend. Thanam took me Jose, Apsara and special guest Mike Weir to an orang asli community center on sunday to help out with a women's community training as part of the 16 Days of Activism. The event was entirely in Tamil, so I didn't understand much, but I got athe strong impressions that it went very well. Here are a few key photos... of the day.

FIMS update

Woo our update for the FIMS website is finally up. Its the update/summary I know you've been craaaaving -- if you are bored and interested in a re-cap of my Malaysia shenanigans, check it out:

1. Gnarly
2. Gnaralicious
3. Radical

Three words I heard myself (and only myself) using excessively while learning how to surf in Bali this weekend.

Jose and I hopped on an air asia flight on Friday afternoon and spent a few days in Kuta, despite numerous travel warnings from all sides. It was a really interesting and generally spontaneous trip that kept me entertained, even if slightly sleep deprived. We stayed in the budget-ish Hotel Sorgawi for 15 U.S. each. The accommodations were simple but overall comfortable and clean. Breakfast was included, and provided me with ample mee goring in the mornings. Honestly, the only drawback were the roosters that start doing their thing at like 6 in the morning. Ugh… the walls were pretty thin, so the Roosters and their cries got a little too close for comfort.

We didn’t arrive until nighttime on Friday, so we dropped off our stuff, and decided to do a little wandering. The wind took us to the monument of the 2002 Bali bombings… a grim reminder of Australia’s aptly timed travel warning. However, the wind also took us to the bar/club Eikon, where Surfing videos were being screened and various TVs and locals slash surf bums mixed freely. We hung around there for a bit, and I tasted Bintang bir – the drink was generally nice and I had several more during my stay. Soon, awkward wanderings back and forth through the crowd got old and we made our way to Bounty – a large club with a pirate ship theme. Sounds like a great premise, right? Anyways, this place was nuts – contrary to Eikon, the Bounty crowd was made up of almost 82% tourists. Actually, many of these were young Aussie guys wearing only boardshorts. It was pretty much the universal style there. By the time we arrived here, everyone there was pretty sauced up, so it was entertaining. I also drank some reasonably priced giant fruity drinks. I wore boardshorts.

On Saturday afternoon, Jose and I braved ProSurf and went for a half day surfing lesson. It went smoothly and I managed not to injure anyone, including myself. While I didn’t stand up on my board the first try, I did manage to get up on my third. So… take that world. But yeah it was definitely a really fun experience! And left me hungry for… well, food.

Wandering the streets of Kuta was really cool, but involved braving a neverending gauntlet of peddlers. I have braved many gauntlets of peddlers and I must say that the ones in Kuta are aggressive! It wasn’t uncommon to have someone try to physically drag me into the store, or block my path on the sidewalk. Also… haha I got called handsome a lot by women trying to sell me boardshorts and sandals. I bought one pair of flipflops. Interestingly, many of the street vendors also apparently doubled as drug dealers? On numerous numerous occasions, after someone would offer us money changing, necklaces or clothing they would redouble their efforts with “Hey boss – hashish? Hashish? Marijuana? Magic Mushrooms? Boss! Boss!” sometimes it would be the reverse – after saying a firm no thank you to drugs, they’d offer souvenirs. Interesting, no?

That evening, Jose befriended two locals, Martin and Tinto (Tito?) while playing soccer on the beach. They invited us to hang out with them that night… so we did. We met them after dinner, and hung out on the beach for the majority of the evening. Our group consisted of the four of us plus a couple from Jakarta on their honeymoon. Haha, for some inauspicious reason Martin and Tino decided to ditch them as the night wore on. While I was originally unsure of our new friends’ motives in hanging out with us, I soon concluded that they were generally nice.

On Sunday morning, Martin and Tino drove us about 40 minutes out of Kuta on the backs of their motorcycles. Wow… I’m not going to lie, I was very scared. I’ve never sat on the back of a motorbike before, especially not in Indonesia. But we survived, and Jose and I ended up going diving at a watersports place that Martin used to work at (I’m sure he got compensation for bringing us there). Jose had never dove before, so we just did a shallow dive a few hundred meters off the shore. Nevertheless, it was a very nice dive, and we saw some cool fish.

We got back to surfing in the afternoon, and took and hour of lessons from our new friends. Things went much better the second time around and I found myself getting up on the board more consistently – plus the weather was beautiful. By the time we started surfing, low tide was… well… getting lower, and so waves were coming in and breaking fast. This made it a little difficult – especially breaking through those on my way out form the shore.

I caught one epic wave – I’m not sure what made it so great, but I managed to successfully ride it almost all the way back to shore. I was very pleased as I swam out towards the sunset.

Ah! To be continued… I’m writing this from a Coffee Bean that’s closing up around me! More to come plus pics.

Community Radio (Cure); Tagging along for the ride

Hey friends and lovers
Today Thanam (in charge of community work and training at CIJ) took Jose, Apsara and me on a trip to a Organ Asli village about 40 minutes outside of KL. She was going there to conduct a small discussion on community radio to a small group of women from the village. The three of us interns tagged along for the adventure, and I brought my new toy. We weren’t around for too too long, but I managed to snap some cool pictures along the way. We didn’t really get the chance to meet any new people, but on our wanderings through the village I passes many happy kids playing and dancing, innumerable puppies and some friendly people on mopeds. Here are some of my better snappings:

Caring is Daunting

So, I'm back at Coffee Bean, sipping on a hot chocolate (this one is christmas themed, but the only difference i can spot is the addition of small marshmellows), drowning out noise with my ipod and thinking about the days to come. I'm an ambitious boy for these next few weeks. Like strangely really ambitious - which is kind of frightening considering I did nothing today except eat, lounge, skype and be really comfy (if not a little uncomfortably full for awhile).

Jose and I did an all you can eat lunch today at this Indian place in the basement of Starhill Mall. I would LOVE to go on about how ridiculous Starhill Mall is (in particular the basement), but I think that is for another entry. In any case, the all you can eat kebab lunch was RM 55++, and consisted of various meats, naan, daal and drinks. Beer was included, so I had several in an attempt to make sure I got my moneys worth. Strangely, the best part of the meal was the complementary curry dish they gave us. It was amazing, and I'm not sure what it was. It was a curry chicken, but had a Kourma-esque taste to it. Hmm... I suppose I'll never know. Anyways, the result of that lunch was me sprawling on my bed in lazy content for the next like 7 hours. Well, I wasn't sprawled the whole time... among other things was a long Pokemon Emerald Green Session using an emulator on my computer. It's weird... I know.

Anyways, so as I mentioned above, I'm an ambitious kid right now, and my schedule is looking a little daunting. Here's some of what I've got going on for the next three weeks:

• Final paper for my "virtual worlds" directed readings course. The topic is Activism through virtual world technology, specifically Second Life. I've got the paper pretty well planned out - but I have a craaaazy amount of work to do if I want to make it half as good as I ... want ... it ... to ... be (awkward sentence?). I'm choosing to do it about advocacy because I feel it really sums up my life right now - it gives me the chance to discuss the theory I've gone over so far for the course, while going into detail about the educational potential of virtual worlds and the notion of virtual world art (and how these apply to activism and advocacy). I hope to do a long case study section that looks at existing NGOs in Second Life, as well as RL NGOs that could use virtual world technology to their advantage. hmmm... for the latter I'm planning on talking to Take Back the Tech in Malaysia - an NGO focused on ending gender-based violence against women through the use of ICTs.
• Read and summarize about 20 civil court cases for CIJ.
• Fly to Bali on Friday and learn how to surf in three days.
• Help Amnesty International Malaysia in their events leading up to the anniversary of the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Interestingly enough, this will involve putting up posters in the Annexe Art Gallery at Central Market. Weirdly full circle, no?
• Spend some time with some women's organizations during the 16 Days of Activism (Nov 25- Dec 10) with CIJ

Hehe... so much to do. Maybe today was good... you know- to get spending a day eating, lying around, playing pokemon and drinking hot chocolate out of my system before buckling down to the tasks at hand... maybe?
Anyways, I'm not complaining or anything - I'm really quite excited to do all of this. It should be excellent! That is... as long as I don't spend many more days doing hedonistically delicious things :)

Pictures and scandal for Sandy

These are a few pics for the FIMS website... I'd say they give a nice hint at what sort of adventurings we've embarked on lately

aweir22 fiddling awkwardly at a press conference announcing the results of CIJ's survey on media freedom

Jose and Apsara putting final touches on the "Make Amends" exhibit at the Annexe. I seem to be not working under the guise of taking pictures. Hmm...
haha... yeah

How I see CIJ

Zac Hill and I in our prime

Jose and some of the participants of CIJ's workshop/training session in Kuching

Apsara Murale helping out in Kuching

Me... being generally good looking at the nine emperor gods festival in Ampang

Jose and I at 4000 meters

Gayathry speaking from the floor at a public forum on freedom of expression

Jose interviewing Arts Programming Director for the Central Market Annexe, Pang Khee Teik for a short video on Freedom of Expression

Pictures from Genting

So this is what a theme park from the 1970s in the clouds and the only casino in Malaysia look like:

Just flying

OK ok ok - so Miss Phang took Jose and I to Genting Highlands yesterday. Descriptions and photos to come soon! But for now, here's a clip that jose put together of some simulated skydiving that we did

Kuala Selangor, Monkeys and Seafood: An exposé

Hiya!
So I just got back from an adventure out to the small fishing village of Kuala Selangor for lunch and monkeys with Jose and Apsara. We trekked up Bukit Melawati to check out the lighthouse that isn't anywhere near water. For the area, it is very old and mysterious - unfortunately, I was totally distracted by Silvery Lutung, or silverleaf, Monkeys. They didn't attack or try to eat me, so before I knew what was happening, we were best friends. These monkeys were quite gentle, and a lady sold packets of beans for 1RM for people to feed to them. Baby silverleaf's are orange... so great.
Anyways, after snapping far too many photos, we visited a few museums at the park, and headed down to a seafood restaurant overlooking the river. Even though I really don't eat seafood or fish, it was quite delicious. The restaurant is apparently quite well known for its fresh food and reasonable prices -- the building itself, like many many more on the river is on stilts and apparently they are able to catch food right out the back door. Prettty cool! Sorry for the excess of monkey photos... though I'm not going to lie, I'm getting pretty boss at taking them :p