I’m keeping my blogging to a minimum this Thanksgiving week but I couldn’t help but enjoy the following piece in today’s NY Times. The form is what really struck me, but the content is great too.  I don’t know what to call it — a Op-Ed photo journal essay article?

The piece is entitled “Back to the Land – And the Pursuit of Happiness” and is a — I don’t know a “photo essay” — with compelling prose and a fun electronic format.  According to Wikipedia, Maria Kalman, the author, is an “an American illustrator, author, artist, and designer.”  She’s done children’s books, New Yorker covers, and even Strunk and White.

Check it out!

As an individual we are aware that our life is not that long, short perhaps, around 77 year old is the life expectancy in average , lucky if we get reach 90 or 100. Therefore you better plan your life as soon as possible. Choose which dream that you want to achieve. Your dream must be rational and attainable. Like choosing which bus will take you to the right destination.

Guide your life. Follow the path that you have planned. In the future perhaps you will face one or more obstacles during your journey but its fine. Just do the right thing, keep guiding your life on the track. Take a rest for while if you want and go on again.

As soon as your life is steady perhaps you may want to include people around you or even the special one to support you and vice versa. Let them experience how is your life. Let them merge into one into your life/ your self. Let them and you walk through out the time to your goal or even now your and their goals.

This one is optional for those who are not faith on it. Some people are not recognize any religion in this world, but in other hand they believe in what they called superpower. It does not matter. You may call it Allah, Jesus, Budha, Shiva, or anything. Just pray to your faith. Let them make you stronger during your journey.

Perhaps if you are the one that only believe in your self. Then faith to your self.

Turns out I had some real GEMS in there. Since I don’t have a lot of time (or WORDS) today, figured I’d pull the old picture card.

Teaching them how to be ladies starts early. I didn’t start early enough.

My hair is a bird. Your argument is invalid.

My face is 1″ behind the sandwich — it’s just THAT BIG.

I like the overall look, but have you considered MORE glasses?

My hair in its natural, triangular state.

HMMMYEAH. Not so sure I’d have gone with this for a post.

       We’ve been to the historical town of Weston, Missouri before, and as all small quaint towns go, the people are extremely friendly.  They have antique stores like every 50 feet here. lol.  Today, we browsed one and I was so happy to have found more doll home furniture fodder for a reasonable price.   Well, we also met a victorian Santa, ate at Charlemane’s restaurant which is a german style buffet (on Sundays) I thought it was so funny how Doug kept saying over and over that he didn’t wanna eat in town, but as soon as we hit the door of the place and that home cooking smell met him, he got his grub on.  2 plates full, plus dessert.  enjoy the pictures.

because we surely enjoyed the day there.

        * a portion of the main street*

*I love how the sky reflected off these windows.

*home “grown” charm?*

*despite the glare, i had to take a picture of  “window dawg”  a sweet little dog that sat in a window of a store that wasn’t open.  Yes, please refrain from singing…how much is that doggy in the window?” I don’t think he was for sale. lol.

*will the real santa claus please stand up?”

*this guy made my day,  a victorian Santa claus was sooo authentic looking and kewl.

* He told us, he has been portraying Santa claus for 23 years!  Sometimes as Santa, and sometimes as the Victorian Santa.

*One of the little “friends” we met for sale in an antique shop.  Only 65.00 dollars!*

*or you could play tea party with this lovely wicker table and china.

*battered 70 year old baybeees for sale.  Only 60.oo…. as is.

*we took in plenty of landscaping, eyes focused on this forlorn bare tree in the middle of a corn field. 

*hay rolled up for the winter*

* and a once gallant hard working truck, abandoned to fate.

Below is a section of CNet Asia’s 10 tips on creating a photo essay;

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We spent two days photographing the life of Balinese people, pointing our lenses at not just the sceneries, but also their culture. We visited obscure areas such as a small fishing village which was untouched by tourism, and participated in a religious ceremony that takes place once every 10 years in a temple.

Here, we’re not just sharing pictures that we took while in Bali, there are also tips and tricks from Abbas on how to craft your own photo essay.

You must be interested	Catch the morning light
You can’t be objective but you can be fair	Focus on the story
Break rules with intention	Take note of minor details
Composition skills	Think about how one picture links   to the next
Editing and sequencing	Use words to give viewers right perspective

Tags: Photo Essay, Sony Corp., Indonesia, CNET Networks Inc., photograph

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Check out the article – HERE
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Up-State, NY, 2008, ©SLI

Life has a way of taking you onto a path you weren’t expecting. The woman who bought 2 of my small buddha prints at the Hoboken Open Studio Tour in Oct. wanted me to shoot her nude. Which I thought – great a paid photo session… It turns out she has breast cancer ... So Jene and I will be working with her on documenting her ordeal at her request. This is not something either of us has done before. The name of our joint venture is Labor Of Love Pix* which seems fitting as we can’t with good conscious add to her financial burdens. We are helping her turn something bad into something good. She wants to help others understand that a women is just as much a woman without breasts. She will undergo a double mastectomy and have reconstructive implants.

*(Labor of Love Pix is the name we chose for our wedding – bump, birth and beyond portrait photography and this certainly goes beyond anything we expected to photo document).

Maybe this is what I/we were meant to do. Every picture tells a story and this may prove to be one of the most challenging projects Jene & I undertake. Already it has opened up the subject of discussion between Jene and I. How we would feel if I were in the same position as this woman (and many others). My initial reaction was that I would probably leave Jene. Knowing how much I/we enjoy foreplay and not having the same sensations I didn’t know if I could be with him. We talked into the wee hours of the night and fell asleep in each others arms. Of course, I thought about it more and knew that I would need to rely on his love and his strength to help me through this painful experience. Jene told me he knew of a woman who’s man left her when she was diagnosed with breast cancer and he couldn’t understand how you could leave someone you love. Life is precious and life without your own breasts is still life. Therefore it is still as precious and meaningful. This is heavy stuff – even when you are not the one going through it. I’m sure I will become bound to this woman, a stranger for all intents and purposes, a woman who has reached out to me/us to help her tell her story. It’s not a unique story, she is not the first woman I know with breast cancer, just the first that will weave us into her daily life. We, as photographers will get to know her on a very intimate level and I told her tonight after scheduling our second photo session that I will try to stay objective in order to do my job. That I may even seem distant at times. I’m not sure that is possible because I am trying to capture her feelings, emotions and desires and in order to accomplish that there has to be a connection between us. Once I worked with a model on one of my personal projects – ‘Inner Sanctum – cause and effect’, the model opened up to me, welling up and we spent an 1-1/2 after the shoot ended talking about her lost love.

Cancer effects everyone who is connected, and it effects everyone differently. It is no longer the tabbo subject that it was years ago. You don’t have to go through it alone – support groups, even blogs and chat rooms have sprung up to help people through their ordeals. There are no whispered conversations any longer, it’s a disease that attacks a part of your body but it doesn’t define who you are or limit you as a person (other than some physical limitions). People live with cancer and live longer – cancer free after surgeries and treatments.

We bought a mini cassette recorder to record our conversations. This will enable her to recall what we speak about for the book she wants to develop.

Jene will not be a part of this second session because he just had rotator cuff surgery on Wednesday and is not very mobile. We will photo document her with family, friends and her lover before her double mastectomy. Planning to be with her when she goes into the hospital. I know meeting her mother will be traumatic for me, as I find it difficult not to put myself in her shoes.

I will be journalling about this from the prospective of photographers/story tellers as we go through all the transitions with her. I think it’s important to get her story out.

Putting together the preliminary storyboard for my photo essay was a difficult exercise, as I was trying very hard to come up with an overarching story or narrative for the viewer to follow. I was thinking very linearly about it, similar to the way I think about outlining a written essay. I came up with an idea to allow the viewer to learn about the sight in a similar sequence to how I came to understand what the site was about. This meant first looking at form, then materiality, then objects and then processes. This seemed to make sense to me as building a story.

However, when I met with Professor Spirn, I realized that I wasn’t focusing enough on the value of individual photographs—that I was trying to build a big picture by showing everything, rather than pulling out just the best shots and crafting a narrative around those. It was very interesting to see someone else arrange my photos and see connections between ones I had never considered pairing. I need to go back now and really pull out just the best photos, and create a story that is less linear and less like a written story that needs that precise sequencing.

It’s tough for me to narrow down my batch of photos to a small group for my essay, because I feel so attached to many of them that have contributed significantly to my understanding of the sight. There are also many that I like just as pretty photographs, but I know I won’t be able to use all of them. I need to find the ones that are both beautiful and meaningful. Hopefully I will have enough that fit both criteria.

For this week’s looking assignment, I choose Roy DeCarava and Langston Hughes’s The Sweet Flypaper of Life. This book is really amazing. I don’t think I’ve come across many like it. I’m very curious about the process that went into creating the narrative. I tried doing a little internet research on it but didn’t come up with anything. It seems like Roy DeCarava pulled together a set of photographs, and then Langston Hughes wrote a story to go along with it. I guess this because the pace of the Hughes’s narrative is so unique. It’s got a very conversational feel to it, as if the narrator is saying what comes to her mind at that moment, rather than having set off from the start to tell a single story. It makes me think that Hughes wrote each line at the same time he first looked at each photo—rather than looking at all the photos and writing at the end.

The photo essay would be entirely different without the story and the words. This is because a photo essay in itself doesn’t generally have a narrator beyond the photographer. I’m not sure I would perceive drastically different meaning from the photos in terms of their greater significance, but I certainly wouldn’t immediately think of the photos as a portrait of one person’s family.

Here are the 6 pages I chose:

I chose this set of six pages because of the way the photos have been paired with each other, and then with words, to create a narrative that would not come across by any one photo alone or even by the same set of photos without any words attached. This device of pairing is used throughout the book in a similar way, but I think these pages are a particularly good example of it, especially the two photos paired with “Some are looking out on parades.”

After three straight years of living in this house and me complaining about our ratty, shallow sink, we finally decided to replace it. We bought a shiny new enameled cast iron 9.5″ deep sink a couple of months ago, and then weekend after weekend there was a reason it couldn’t be put in. My parents were out of town, house guests were visiting, someone had the plague.

We are really good at excuses.

I took some before pictures hoping to capture the nasty that was this sink, but my point-and-shoot abilities didn’t really do it justice. I think we CAN agree on one thing, though:

Just very shallow, and very MEH, and very caked with Florida’s specialty: HARD WATER DEPOSITS. No amount of vinegar could get rid of it. And the sprayer never actually worked.

So we yoinked it out:

And Matt and my dad set about the task of redoing all the plumbing underneath to accommodate a much deeper sink.

Meanwhile, my mom and I kept the girls entertained:

And, fine. Maybe we kept ME entertained too:

I swear to you, Roo got that almost empty bottle of seltzer out of the fridge HERSELF.

They set in the sink and I about CRIED tears of joy at the simple beauty of it.

It was perfect! Everything was going to be OK! Finally, one project was going to go just as pla–

What?

Suddenly there were HUSHED TONES coming from the kitchen. And no one wanted to look at me. Or answer my “WHAT? WHAT IS IT?” questions. (I totally wasn’t freaking out or ANYTHING, can’t imagine why they didn’t want to tell me what was up.)

(Ho hum.)

The drain is set too high in the wall.

In other words, we need the water magically to flow along the arrow:

FML.

Which … HA!

WHY DO YOU HATE ME, HOUSE? WHYYY?

Not much to be done beyond hoping the dishwasher draining doesn’t back up into the sink. If it’s horrible, we can always (HOLD ME) cut into the wall and try to set the drain lower.

Meanwhile, if anyone knows any good ways to defy physics, I’m all ears.

Photographer’s Note:  Their range stretches from the Canadian plains to Argentina. But they are indigenous only to the New World. The great saguaro is the icon  of the southwest deserts, but it occurs in numbers only in Arizona. The real cactus workhorses of the southwest are the cholla and the far-ranging prickly pear. Most of the time they look near death. But in Spring, the red or green or magenta  flowers of these tough ones are a bit like jewels among the thorns. Be careful—don’t lean over too far when checking out one of these winsome, beautiful flowers.  A failure of balance could be almost fatal. Tough and spiny and sunbeaten, the cactus flowers of the desert Spring are something else. Much else. Here’s a cactus sampler.

SRE

Fearsome Pad

Orange Cholla

Green Cholla

Magenta Flower—Beavertail Cactus

Bright Faces—Mammalaria Cactus

Faint Pink—Horticultural Cactus

Four Magenta Suns

My two week trip to US was decided at a very short notice over what was supposed to be a regular status review meeting on a Monday evening. I was asked to be present in US office the following Monday to finalize 2010 budgets and plans for a newly kicked-off project. Flights were fully booked for the weekend and hence I was forced to leave a day early on Friday. I considered it as a good omen for my secret desire of getting a weekend free for shooting the autumn colors in US. October was over and so was the fall season. Though my colleagues from US had already warned me that I was reaching a week late to witness the colorful autumn, I still had hopes to catch at least some glimpses of colorful foliage of the passing autumn and I was hoping to spend some time over the weekend shooting for the same. 

We landed at Philadelphia airport around 3:30 pm on the Saturday. It was drizzling outside. The skies were dark and the forecast for the next day was same – overcast skies with no sign of sunshine and intermittent drizzles were to be expected. Temperature was rushing downwards to cross the zero degree C mark. It was a tell-tale sign that winter season had already set-in. It became dark by the time I checked-in to my hotel room an hour later. Yet my hopes were still alive.

Like an obedient child the Sunday behaved exactly as forecast by the weather bureau. My colleague called me around 10:00 am to say that given the weather forecast I should forget my plans to go out for the autumn shoot and instead visit the King of Prussia Mall that was a few blocks away from my hotel. I was left with no choice but to spend my time in what is termed as one of the largest shopping malls in the US with over 400 stores spread over 2,793,200 sq feet of retail space.

My cell phone rang at 3:00 pm while I was sitting in the food court nursing my tired feet and bored eyes after the three hours of aimless walk around the King of Prussia mall and feeding my empty stomach with the second six incher veggie-lover subway. My colleague’s excited voice over the phone told me that weather bureau had just announced that there will be bright sunshine for about two hours beginning 4:00 pm and therefore he is coming over to the mall to pick me up and take me to the Valley Forge for the autumn shoot. My heart almost jumped into my mouth and I rushed to the exit of the mall and waited there for my colleague to arrive.

Valley Forge is a National Historical Park in the state of Pennsylvania. While we were driving towards the park, the cover of clouds started dispersing and the sunshine was spreading over the park area.

We were greeted by the colorful boundary wall of trees as soon as we turned right on Valley Forge Road from the expressway and were approaching the visitor’s center.

There was vast open grass land on one side of the car park.

On the other side were well maintained walking tracks for joggers and bicycle lanes for bikers.

Valley Forge National Historical Park is the site where the Continental Army spent the winter of 1777–1778 near Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, during the American Revolutionary War. The National Historical Park preserves the site and interprets the history of the Valley Forge encampment. Originally Valley Forge State Park, it became a national park in 1976. The Park contains historical buildings, recreated encampment structures, memorials, museums, and recreation facilities. (Please refer http://www.nps.gov/vafo/historyculture/index.htm for more details).

We took the driving directions from the Visitor’s Center and started moving over to the recreated encampment structures.

We soon reached a site where Gen. Peter Muhlenberg’s Brigade anchored the outer line of defense.

The park authorities have recreated the log huts and young people in military costume are posted there to recreate those times. 

Army records and eyewitness accounts speak of a skilled and capable force in charge of its own destiny. Rather than wait for deliverance, the army located supplies, built log cabins to stay in, constructed makeshift clothing and gear, and cooked subsistence meals of their own concoction. Provisions, though never abundant in the early months of the encampment, were available.

Women followed the army to be with their husbands and contribute actively to the cause. The women present at Valley Forge included hundreds of enlisted men’s wives who followed the army year round, and some general officers’ wives on extended visits. The army compensated full-time women followers for rendering such valuable services as sewing, laundering, and nursing.

Under the direction of military engineers, the men built a city of 2,000-odd huts laid out in parallel lines along planned military avenues. The troops also constructed miles of trenches, five earthen forts, and a state-of-the-art bridge over the Schuylkill River. 

We were amazed to see how meticulously the National Park Authorities had re-created the historic times in such a manner that the young generation can really see and feel the history. At the same time they had ensured that the young generation gets attracted to the park by creating sports facilities such as jogging, hiking, and biking. 

Soon the two hours of sun-shine were coming to an end. We decided to visit a deer park on the way and then get out of the park before it started getting dark.

We left the park soon after we spotted the deer but my heart was still roaming in the park.

Thank you God for giving me those two precious hours of sunshine and such an amazingly beautiful park nearby the hotel I was staying in.

     ”the single mommy with her most precious possessions live on edge because of the two  shootings.  One in which their little friend’s daddy was killed,  and the second which a nearby apartment was sprayed with bullets.”

~~ an entry from Sweetiegirlz weblog, February 2008

Temecula California february 2008.  The girlz and I awaiting  our move to Fort Leavenworth.  

 Our move to Temecula in Jul 2007,  from high crime area,   San Bernardino had turned ugly. 

 The neighborhood had turned deadly, with Little A’s friend’s father getting shot dead in the parking lot of our apartment complex. 

 Another shooting 2 weeks later had really put all of us on edge. 

The girlz and I never stopped living our normal lives though.

  It was in this month where I discovered that my camera could be my distraction. I had loved taking pictures in Hawaii, but I resumed with this first photo essay.

  My daughters and I  went on nervously living life until the moving trucks came to reunite us with their daddy. 

  Here is that first essay:

Since then,  I have posted almost 2 years of photo essays.  the images of some of my favorites are in the links at the top of the page.

Rich people keep weird crap in their fridges.

Like, whoa.

I mean, apparently.

I’ve never been in a rich person’s house and looked in their fridge.

Last night I was talking to my best friend who recently abandoned me moved to California to work for Disney as an inventor or Mickey Mouse enthusiast or programmer or something (he’s got a Ph.D., so it could be ANY of those.) He’s all put up in some bizarre corporate housing for a month, with magic beds that unfold from the wall like an 80s sitcom and internet roughly as enjoyable to use as AOL pre-3.0, while he looks for a more suitable place to live.

He sent me a link to the floor plan of a studio apartment he’s looking at, because, like, is there something better to be doing online at midnight with friends? So I’m looking, and I jokingly remark, “But there’s no fridge shown in the floor plan! BALEETED.” Basically, I thought I was being a smart ass.

“YOU’RE RIGHT!” He said. Then he explained that tons of apartments out there don’t provide a fridge. You have to rent or buy your own.

So it has a washer/dryer included, but no refrigerator.

Seriously? What the hell do I need a washer/dryer for if there’s no place to keep the pudding I will end up spilling on myself? (Sorry, I can’t do those shelf stable Handi-Snacks puddings. Jell-O or bust, dudes.)

Now, because it’s midnight and I’m on the internet and the baby just woke up to nurse AGAIN, I’m interested in the going rate for refrigerators these days, because I’ve never had to buy one before. (A house I have bought, but never a fridge.) So I hop on over to Sears.com to get the party going.

For poopoos and hahas (that’s how we say it in front of the kids, and this IS a family blog, after all) I ranked them by descending price, revealing to me the most expensive fridge they sell is around $8000.

EIGHT. THOUSAND. DOLLARS.

Are you kidding me?

(Of course, what do I know? Probably rich people have $20000 refrigerators and this is a regular person fridge but I have absolutely no idea. The cheap fridges started at $400, if you’re curious, which I’m not sure why you would be, because this isn’t exactly a fridge-buying guide, but now you know, so you’re welcome.)

More interesting than the price, though, are the pictures from inside the fridge that are supposed to entice me to yearn to make it my own. The special spaces! Deep freeze drawers! An ice dispenser that will inevitably get broken within one week of the warranty’s expiration (in the wrong direction)!

It’s morning now, so I’m not sure this is going to be as funny as it was to me after midnight, but check this shizz out, y’all.

Rich people leave things uncovered:

I love how they’ve arranged the figs to resemble a pair of ducks.

Rich people have 2-3 of every type of beverage:

Get me one that dispenses sangria, and we’ll talk.

Rich people are prepared for fancy entertaining AND pregnancy at all times:

Is that a bag of celery? Wilted asparagus? … Frog legs?

Rich people have excellent taste in dessert:

Well, they’re no Jell-O pudding snacks, but they’ll do.

Aaaand … there’s not much point to this post beyond me needing something better to do on Friday nights, which I am just realizing now after I’ve written the whole thing out.

(Anyone a little bit curious about the food they show in the $400 fridge? I’m thinking last week’s pizza and the purple stuff from an old Sunny D commercial, when it was still Sunny Delight, before these punk kids started abbreviating everything under the sun. Those were the days, no? I wore an onion on my belt [as was the fashion at the time ...])

So. What would you keep in YOUR $8000 fridge? (Because falling back on audience participation as a means of closing off a post is always a way to win their undying adoration! You heard it here first, folks.)

Long Island, NY, 2009, ©SLI

A photo essay is a set or series of photographs that are intended to tell a story or evoke a series of emotions in the viewer. A photo essay will often show pictures in deep emotional stages – wiki says

Photos Essays can be categorized into  two or three types. The most common are based  on political, social and humanitarian themes. Their content and context, deal with either a crisis, a disaster,a truth, a phenomenon, a revolution, an event etc in our civilization. The observer is presented with a story that is far from his normal life. Strangely this distance,measured in the realm of imagination, makes photo essays fascinating. The observer aided by the text and the frames in the photo essay, relates to the vivid story and relives the event, crisis etc. Here the theme is central to the whole experience.

Through the amazing Photo essay on Street Children, If I were rain, I discover the power of photo essays…

    First, you must sit the purtiest you ever can sit.  Make your eyes really big and soft.  If you can squeeze a doggie tear out, it helps.

If at all possible, you must never appear to be begging.  If you do, the humans may put you outside…or worse! In your kennel.

If a human does notice you begging,   pretend to only want crumbs.  If something falls from the human’s hand it is fair game…eat it.

Do not fight over the human food.  the human children will drop more than one piece and they will not even notice this good food they have dropped until it is too late!

If you are bossy, the human kid might make you do a stupid trick in front of their friends.  Do not appear too bossy.

Other forms of begging have rarely proved successful, and are highly controversial.  It’s better to go with the basics

   Keep a close eye on your humans.  They know begging techniques we have never even heard of!

 When you score the human food, eat it all up before they change their mind.  Humans love to play tricks on us doggies

If the humans are laughing and taking a picture of you…you have been tricked!   Remain calm.  You can pee on their rug later for revenge.

  Remember, you must be grateful.  Humans have the best food.  It is worth the trouble of begging.

http://vimeo.com/7551835

So I made this Audio Slide Show along side a story I wrote on the non-profit Team in Training and it’s participants in the ING New York City Marathon. Enjoy..

Norwegian photojournalist Jonas Bendiksen spent six weeks living in the slums of Nairobi, then Caracas, Mumbai, and Jakarta.

His remarkable panoramic images take us inside slum families’ lives, revealing the profound human impulse to fashion not only shelter but a home.

Link: http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2009/11/03/planet_slum?page=0,0

My weekends classes, happen with two amazing artists, Zara and Josh. They teach me, rather than learning from me. They usually come over on Saturday mornings. When they do, the crayons, pencils and papers come out. An long session of vivid story telling unfolds. I just listen and watch…(Click here, to read further)

Writer: Loraine Ong
Editor: Benjamin Lim

Do you need an entertainment break from studying too much and too hard lately? Or are you bored of the old, rustic look of KEVII and want something more? You can now enjoy that at a toilet near you! In the guys’ D2 toilet, you can choose to enter the world of “Harry Potter”, or “Star Whores”, just by reading the make-believes. Some stories even bring the interested reader into an entirely different time period; like one of “Jackula”…

The writer personally witnessed this different ‘world’ at the seventh Jackula hour (10pm) on 6^th November, 2009. It took her breath away, partly because of the intrigue at what some D1 and D2 guys had penned down on a stolen poster from a library, and partly due to the stench of urine from the cubicle.

Isn’t it very creative of the guys to kill 2 birds with one stone when they go to the toilet? They can both relieve themselves and add some entertainment to their lives. If you doubt the hilarity of this storyboard, the writer can personally vouch that she had a really good laugh after reading it. The plain poster that reminds the “Gentlemen” of D block (there is only one toilet for the men in this block) to aim properly into the toilet bowl was very capably converted into an anthology of stories!

For those of you interested to find out more, do be advised that the board is very explicit and may offend the more conservative people out there.

Another noteworthy lavatory display device, henceforth called LDD, came from the C2 female toilet. The person who made this handwritten, hand-drawn notice must have had a personal vendetta against foreign bodily fluids. Look at the number of angry faces she drew!

The West Wing also has interesting LDDs..

Have a look at the above, taken from the F2 guys’ toilet. Though I imagine the more literarily inclined readers would have quite a lot to comment about the literary ability of the humble toilet bowl, one must applaud the absolute civility of our longsuffering friend, considering the treatment he receives.

This LDD seems to suggest that guys in GH are shorter than they think, though it is not clear which length this is referring to =p. However, the writer is quite certain this has to do with physical stature =).

Remember, the next time you feel bored and need some entertainment, feel free to take a leak at these toilets. You will be as entertained as your bladder will be relieved.

How much (or how little) do we know about the people fighting for our safety? Do you know what kind of life they lead? Their dreams? Their aspirations? Their personal battles? What are their lives like? What do they dream about? Do they find girlfriends easily? Do they like chocolate? What do their non-military friends and family think about? Why don’t they just follow in everyone else’s footsteps and do an MBA and go for a 9 to 6 job? Do they invest in mutual funds? Who does their taxes? Do they like fast bikes? Do their wives support them? What do they teach their kids?

Pritish Nandy laments the misuse of the word “Hero”, and the dearth of real heroes. But I think we are surrounded by them.

Its not just the soldiers. Even the neighbourhood policemen. The honest ones and the dishonest ones. The rich ones (ha!) and the poor ones. The fat ones and the fit ones.

Its easy to be critical of the system. Its easy to think of these people in abstract terms. Its easy to ignore them. Its easy to think only of ourselves. Its easy to sit back and enjoy your book/ coffee/ free porn/ farmville/ girl/ bike/ Crème brûlée / IMAX movie / whatever.

But when it is presented in front of you in the form of real-life flesh and blood, you do sit up and take note, don’t you? I did. This marvelously impartial photo-essay on how an american soldier made me wish I knew more about our soldiers too.

I would love to do something like that. To take an abstract term (soldier / policeman) and flesh it out for you. Make it real enough for you to sit up and take note.

How? I have no idea.

I think I am good enough a photographer to be able to take the photos. But I have no idea how I am going to get the permissions, the access and the funds.

Can you help?

You guys?

I’m in trouble.

Look what I did.

For the holiday baking! THE HOLIDAY BAAAAKING!

I bought them this morning. Buy one get one free!

It’s just good sense to buy them early when they’re on sale.

But! It’s OK. I’ve only got whole wheat flour, and whole wheat flour doesn’t make scrumptious cookies.

Crisis averted.

What? Oh.

Oh no.

At least I’m still out of –

I didn’t see that coming.

Like I said.

I’m in trouble.