BATTLE STAR GALACTICA

My son has insisted that I should sit and watch the whole series of this made for TV series of a space psi-fi which I did not think much of when I first watched it when it first appeared on TV while i was livng in the US. It was a choice between Star Trek , The Next Generation and this space odessy and I opted for Star Trek being a Trekky back those years.
Having sometime on my hand I told myself why not, if my son the genius thinks the series is worth all the hours there must be something to it and so last night i watched the final part of the series after (over three weeks), where it all came to a conclusion with the return to 'Earth' of what was the remainder of the colonies that had been dritfting through space in their various space ships, 'looking for a home'. With Cylons (machines created by man-robots as well evolved new species) ever on the persuit with the intention of annihilating the human race or what was the remains of it (40,000 or so ),the story unfolded with the most mundane of human dramas to the basic question of the existance of God.
Under the command of the Admiral Adama (Edward James Olmos) commander of the Galactica, the fleet ventured into the unknown recesses of outer space both escaping the Cylons attacks as well as looking for a final resting place for the last groupd of survivors of the human race. It was like a civilization on the run with its own administerative goverment and the common people living their lives within the confinements of their vassels each supporting the other for the survival of the whole. It was like watching the Planet's population in its miniscule trying to survive as food and fuel runs out and not to mention the lives that were sacrificed in the battles against their everpresent enimies the Cylons.
To add to the dilemma of the human survivors, the Cylons had evolved to the extent that they became human replicas and infilterated the human colony which created an envoironment of suspicion among the humans and the hatred for the Cylons fueled an uncompromising vendetta which almost tore the Humans apart preying upon eachother...Needless to say after watching the series for a while one gets to come to see the frailties that we humans harbor within us and the strength we can master up from within us in the times or dire need. The story cast a glimpse for me of how humanity can come to a common faith when all else failed and how individuality can become a virtue or a vice in the face of adversities. The final triumph of humanity in this case was not over the enimy so much over their own beliefs and fears...over themselves, their simple Greed, Hate and Ignorance.
If there was any triumph in the final say it would the triumph of the "Spirit", both for the Cylons and their creators the Humans.

Hangin out in Falcon City, (of Wonders!)

Cannot find any more pictures although took alot of them and cannot download my drawings and sketches cause have not learned how to scan them with the scanner here...I am stuck with writing my thoughts of the last few days after being back from Switzerland.

Yep, thats about how it is feeling inside like the demon is about to break loose just waiting for that excuse and don know what it is or would be yet, trying hard to cap it down like. Maybe its the place, cant put my finger on it but it seems to have no energy or just dead plain old lifeless. I am taking advantage of the solitary quietness of the place and doing my meditation, reflectiobns contemplations whatever you want to cal it as much as I can. Mostly watching and observing my thoughts as they rise and disolves. It is very intrestning how your thoguhts works when you can step back and watch them without any attachment. With any judgement or encouragement: just bare observations.

Questions after questions arises and answers upon answers responded and itbecome like a ringling circus of discussions after awhile over subjects that can be from if my daughter is ok where she is or my persuing the course of action in this life is foolhardy, a waste of a lifetime. The movies i watched, the eel in the tank that refuses to eat, my son and his nose problem my friends in Penang with their daily life... thoughts will rise incessantly like hundreds of channels on Astro network. For years now i have been trying my damndest to understand this most routine of all phenomena in my life. Who or what is rattling the chains in myhead?And how can I stop this never ending train of thoughts? this load of incessant noises hankering in my mind depriving me from any form of peace and quiet. What is worse most are like broken records that keep playing the same lines over and over.

So,for years now i have set upon myself to quest for a way out of this mental gridlock and it has been one long trip often boring as hell and most of the time a great waste of time just sitting there on my arse staring into emptiness looking for a solution and answer, a way. All the while off course it was right there before my eyes, the answers! It did not come in one smackdown drop but trickled drop by drop breath by breath, it is not easy to break the "Seventh seal". The veil of ignorance and enter the prescence of 'Being'.. I touched this feeling in this house. I look inside my heart, i look inside my soul...with thoughts hovering in silence like a bunch of 'Squids' at the gates of Zion. (Matrix, The Movie))

Oh, it's not that I made any big discovery as far mind trips goes and spirituality for that matter, but I discovered little indicators of what and how of my thoughts, move on into deeper layers of my subconciousness without feeling any fears or doubts. Exploring the workings of your mind can be quite disturbing at times without a guide or teacher especially if you are sitting alone in a large house with no one else around and thoughts conjuring up images you would not like to really confront if you can help it. Hey wake up! You will be telling yourself, dont let your thoughts fool you! And you find yourself talking to your 'self'. Fear is the key.

We believe and dis- believe out of fear! Fear is the conditioner that dictates our state of mind, nailing our feet to the boards so we cannot take another step towards the light of wisdom. Fear is the demon that rules our sense of being who we are or what we are, our beliefs, conciousness, impulses, perceptions, fear lurks behind every choices we make in order to liberate our-self. Fear of death,of what lies beyond death, fear of the unknown of what we do not know about the mysteries of life, of how our minds works...fear locks us in our closet of ignorance. And how do we overcome fear?

It is doubtful that we can..overcome fear not entirely, not while living in this conditioned state of being, however we might be able to make every effor to understand the nature of fear. What is it that we are afraid of? What is the worse that can happen if this fear grips us in its claws? We die? We are subject to suffering or excruciating pain? These are the manifestations of what we fear or the outcome. We fear imprisonment if we break the law. we fear redicule if we fail in what we claim to be good at, we fear disappointment when what we expect so badly does not happen, fear comes in all kinds of forms and shapes and we are the victims of our own self created fears. How do we circumnavigate our conciouness in the ocean of fears?

We can only overcome fear through 'right understanding'.
Whats is right understanding of fear? Read J. Krishnamurti on fear. Just type exactly as it says.
or you could listen to Erkhad Tolle on You Tube on the nature of 'Fear'. It is my belief that each and everyone of us has to at least make an effort to get to know one's fears, their origins and their negative effects on our lives.

drive to Lucern

Maybe it was the cold winter month knowing that the water beneath me must be freezing cold even for the ducks and geese, but my first impression of Lucern, Switzerland was that it was like a modern day fairyland. The narrow streets and the shop walks that is only for pedestrians with not even a bicycle excess is refresshing.
Yes i am looking through the eyes of a tourist, one who is visiting and hoping for recognition as "Being there''.. but I like Lucern simply because it has remained an aesthetic beauty as far as small cities goes.

My son Timo and i entered what to me looks more like a cathederal than a simple church and I sat in the pew reflecting my thoughts about what I was suppose to reflect being in a church. I am in God's house I keep telling myself and I felt like I cannot find God in this awesome building, why? I only felt sadness like God made a mistake somehow when He decided to Have a son even if it was by virgin birth.
But man is gullible! He is naive and worse of all he is fear ridden o belief in the stories handed down to him by those of old all in the name of God.
Te Muslims belief in Isa Alai'Salam as the prophet of God but ther Muslim refutes the cruxifixion of Christ, did you know that? Did you know that for this minor differences in our religious belief Islam and Christianity tells the same story? Worship the same God, and bear lineage t0o the same prophets?.... But who gives a hoot any more??
In all my travellings, being in Switzerland for the past ten days was an awakening experience. It is not doubt that every new place would evoke a new feeeling in youself for better or worse, however being in Switzerland especially in winter was a spiritual blast.
I insisted my son Timo to take these pictures with me in them so that it means more than just beautiful pictures which you could do better getting from the Internet these days. But when you have yourself in the picture, it is a testimony of your being there.
And someone just left their pants there right in the middle ofitall!! and why not?!!
Look up and look around you, there are designs everywhere. Records of identity and preservation of culture in one form or another. Look see and feel what is around you when you next travel in someone elses back yard.

Giger's Country

Switzerland has many name brands like the Swatch, Swiss knives, Swiss cheese and the Swiss Alps, however for me none of these has a greater impact on my senses than the Swiss Artist H.R. Giger.
Morbid? Disgusting? psychosexual infantalism? Demonic? Depraved? A walk on the dark side of the human psyche? Giger is his Art and has outdone Salvador Dali and Picasso in many ways if one is allowed to compare despite the time factors.
Being genunely honest and sincere in one's expression of one's inner landscapes, the smooth and the rough terrains, the gardens and the ravines, the abyss of the human soul, this takes some doing just writng about it but to depict them in paintings and sculptures!
The Art world has hailed a New Master Conjuror, an artist whose works challenges those who strive for the title of El Maestro of the new Millenium in the art world, for me Gigers works has proven that he can claim such a title.
To some Giger's works evokes nightmares while for others it has become a cult. To stand before his work and not feel any form of reaction would be insensitive and unthinkable even for the most jaded.
I envy him, I admire his works, I am glad I got to see a few of them with my son Timo and his two good friends, Severin and Alajdin. It is through their eyesand reactions that I can fully appreciate Giger's works as they were the younger generation of would be Artists and art connosuers, theirs were a contemporary taste.
Whether it be Aliens or demonic faces of witches and whores, there is no doubt a sense of the sensuous and an inner peace free from fear of the macarbe and the unknown. Man and machines sowly merge into one another at many levels of the subconcious and concious minds fullfilling an inner urge to satisfy sexual as well as spiritual urges otherwise taboo in the ordinarily conditioned minds.
The purposeful distortions, reshaped and remoddelling of the human figure, especially female forms is sometimes done with a deeper sense of humour only the artist and those who like him has that audacity to evoke and manifest what they perceive without any sense of hypocrasy.
Have you hugged a Giger today?
The guys told me that the last witch was burned at stake somewher in the center of the city below. It is ironic that today a different kind of witch stands challenging the mountains with her metalic pointed breasts and the Warlock who created her is world famous for his creative genius.
I am not sure what that other building is, the one with the red roof. It looks mysterious and almost diabolically so.
Oh well lets not get carried away and get back to the present day reality of getting us a Pizza with lots of Anchovies.
In Sarnen the best pizza is at the Aiola Italian Restaurant at least according to the Giswil Boys.

A walk on the cold side...

The snow seems to have receded over the last few days since i arrived in Giswil and I told Timo's Grandpa that it was because i had brought the Sun with me from Malaysia to warm things up a little.
The stark contrast between the dark colors of the mountain sides and the snow fields in the valley made for a very ideal subject for my minimal style of monochromatic landscape paintings.
Taken with a Sony digital camera this reflection of the sun over the surface of a wet road is like a illusion of the foreground being a lake or a body of water.
Timo and i took a walk a few kilometers from the house to a nearby lake area and as i walked across the sparsely snow covered field I was reminded of my Indian Summer's days in Wisconsin out by Lake Michigan.
However the distant snow covered peaks of the Alps makes the face of this lake more colorful and less stark as that of Lake Michigan. I told my son that most people failed to note that in painting a body of water like this lake it is a matter of painting the shapes of colors of the reflections in the water.
What is great about the cold weather for me is the fact that it makes you feel the cold air in your chest and it clears your siuses, it felt almost like an inner purifier. However the worse part of it is the aches and pains I get in my joints when I wake up every morning.
Most of us who have had the opportunity to travel to the winter countries we tend to take for granted of what it felt like walking on snow covered grounds. The slip sliding, the cruntchy sound and feeeling, the almost soggy slushy cold stuff, most in the east could only imagine and dream about.
"Winter never dies, not as people die, It hangs on in late frost and the smell of autumn, and in the heat it flees to the mountains...
Summer never dies. It sinks into the ground, in the depths of winter buds form in sheltered places and white shoots creep under dead leaves. Some of it flees into the deepest hottest deserts, where there is a summer that never ends."
From the book "Wintersmith" by Terry Pratchett
It about 'Balance', winter and summer, hot and cold, right and wrong, the 'Middle Way' and with unconditional Love and indibutable Truth there is only the stillness of inactive action..

This i came to realize in Giswil, Switzerland while taking a walk on the cold side...

How do you spell 'Fondooo'?

My "Winter Scene" in Acrylic painted for Timo.
The winter of Wisconsin, the winter of London and Wales, England, the winter of Fairbanks, Anchorage and Sandpoint, Alaska, the winter of Sendai and Tokyo, Japan and now the winter of the Alps in Switzerland...AAhh sometimes life can be sooo cold.
Sooo..lets have a Fondu why dont we... after all this is Cheese country where everything from breakfast lunch and dineer is coated with cheese in one form or another. Yessir.I almost feel at home here being the Cheeseburger buddha and all... But notice the Thai hot sauce on the side there? Gotta keep the balance in this cold weather.

Thats right dig in the bottom of the pot there Angy, like a good curry, the bottom of the pot is where it is at, where all the thick and zesty stuff are found accumulating being slowly burnt.
The room where we hang out is like a loft and has a small kitchen of its own. Pine wood walls and floorings and most of the furnitures adds to the Swiss kind of ambiance which is simmilar to the Japanese in taste.

Outside it is till cold no matter how one looks at it, it is not going to change but inside it can be cozy especially the bed. Drink alot of water Dad my son kept reminding me, so your skin wont itch at night cause they are dry.

Saying farewell to the Rooster..

Somewhere along the mountainside in Switzerland I came upon the Rooster proudly standing beside a hen enjoying the setting sun sheltered under a snow covered roof.
Somewhere behinds the cold smow covered peaks the sun casted her final rays upon the cold landscape before sinking for the evening.
Somewhere in the distant mountains, the Master has gone herb gathering, whereabouts unknown...
Somewhere along the road, father and son stood making the final connection of bonding for good.
Somewhere in the fields of dreams another miracle of life had been fulfilled...

And somewhere over there on top of that hill is Giger's Art Gallery/museum that I got to see..