I Need a Camera!!

El Maestro

If you ever decide to shoot me for whatever oddball reason this is where you can find me most often, the bench at the entrance of the Muzium Tuanku Fauziah, USM in Penang. But what good would it do you when I am dead and gone other than put an end to one more boring blogger and wanna be artist.
I received an email from an Indonesian friend who is from Bandung in answer to my call for assistance when I get there. The kid is one of those students who was at the Jerejak resort and SPA doing his practical in Hoteland Motel industry. Most of these Indonesian students were very friendly and polite and it was pleasant to work with them. I had become their "Uncle' and my art was an attraction to them who themselves can draw. However it is unfortunate that this kid is now in Banda Aceh instead, however i hope he can hook me up with any of his buddies when I get to Yogyakarta or Bandung so that i can get settled and learn the ropes as soon as i arrive. It would be great if someone can act as my guide which means I could travel off the beaten path and do more exploration into the villages instead of just visiting the tourist areas.

I am still looking for a decent camera which is pretty crucial for the trip as it would help me capture more wider ranges of images instead of just depending on sketching and drawings. It is ideal to capture all that I can in my sketchbook when I travell, however this can be very limitng as it is time consuming and alot would be wasted especially sights and scenes that i cannot stop to do any work of art from like an open landscape. Or the view like this one of Penang from a Helicopter!

The Penang City Hall or better known among locals as the Esplanade and among even the more locals than locals, as Padang Kota Lama. That tall phallic structure in the background is the Kompleks Tun Abdul Razak or better known as KOMTAR, the heart of the city of Georgetown. In the old days this area is known as Simpang Enam (Six Junctions), with a roundabout where all the six roads meet. Among the most well known landmarks in this area in the old days before KOMTAR was the Craven A (named after a cigarette brand), a 24 hours reastaurant that boasted some of the best local dishes. There was also Kassim Nasi Kandar on the Jelutong road corner that was 'The Nasi kandar' place in sixties and seventies, not anymore.
In the early sixties, seventies and even eighties this whole simpang enam are was alive and it was fun just to stand and watch the traffic especially the 'Tram' Busses and double deckers. The Chinese were Chinese, The Malays were Malays and the Indians and Mamaks were what they were and no one questioned about who they were and as Mahatma Ghandi said, "They know who they were". Today, Ha! just about everyone is worried about loosing their identities or gaining a new one so much so that the very fun of standing and watching the busses and traffic go by is a nightmare as Malays, Indians and Chinese alike strive to become more than who they are at heart or by nature. Friendly happy drivers have become chauvinistic, egotistical maniac who make it their 'Jihad' to out drive the other guy especially if he or she is not of one's own ethnic origin. Helliluyah!!

These colonial reminders are not for us Penangites to marvel at their great architectural and longlasting beauty and now are they for us to identify ourselves with their inherited culture but it is for us to have made it possible if we were united in our course despite our differences. They should be reminders of what we collectively can achieve is our dreams and aspirations transcends our ethnic and cultural heritage. These colonial era landmarks were made possible simply because we had a common taskmaster, the British, under whose leadership we rallied to produce a common heritage. The british did not build mosques or temples or even churches but mostly administerative buildings that served the common people regardless their ethnic origins. If there is anything worthwhile to keep of the colonial era it this sense of unity that we should preserve so that we can still marvel at the traffic passing by without fear of getting knocked over by a Chinese, Indian or Malay for mere racial egoistic tendencies and intolerence.