back in motherland

... and from now on i shall be blogging at http://laineyinklangvalley.blogspot.com/ 
http://laineyinthevalley.blogspot.com/

haven't decided on the blog title but it will be the same as the url for now ... if anyone has suggestions feel free to share :D

packing up ...

this time next week we'll be our way home to m'sia. sure feels really real now ... yesterday, we drove to charlotte to send our stuff to the shipping company's warehouse there. it was a back breaking task and i'm glad we decided to get this done early in the week. phew. now we can concentrate on saying our farewells. (and the rest of the packing, cleaning, etc.) guess i don't have that much time to blog ... 

strawberry fields

missed strawberry picking season last year - this year we must've been among the firsts since voller farm has opened their strawberry fields only this week. it was a great day. began with 6mile run at the duke forest, lunch at sarah's empanadas and finally freshest of freshly picked strawberries and farm made ice cream. everyday should be like this. :P

sniffles and waste etc.

sitting here watching tv - got a cold coming on. hope that by staying in and resting, i'll be able to nip it at the sniffles stage ... *sigh*

feeling blleeeeeeeeargh. but at the same time, i'm still SO inspired from the 4 days of end on end documentaries we saw at the full frame festival! there was such an amazing range of documentary topics and styles. altogether we watched 16 documentaries and each opened my eyes and mind to an issue, a period in history, a culture or a part of the world i knew very little about before. almost as fun as watching the films was discussing them at various eateries in the downtown :D

20 ticket stubs - managed to use16

we capped of the festival by watching the audience pick winner - wasteland - about an art project that is the collaboration between a brazilian artist and several 'garbage' pickers to create portraits using as the medium 'waste' sourced at the landfill where they work. read more about it here. the film really touched me on so many different levels. 

i remember hearing an aunt use as a threat to a cousin of mine that if she didn't study and do well in school that she'd end up a garbage picker. when you watch this documentary you see the spirit and humanity of these pickers, you get to know them as people who have aspirations for themselves and their children as does any middle class person. it makes you wonder why they're relegated to pariah status when they are contributing members of society - doing an honest job to support themselves and their families. one of the women who's portrait is part of the exhibition says at the end of the film that she no longer feels ashamed of being a garbage picker because she is now 'art'. 

sometimes i get really upset when i encounter cavalier attitudes towards waste. and materialism. don't people get it that all that STUFF that we buy and waste ends up somewhere?? and what makes people think that just because they can afford nice things that they are somehow better than those who pick the things they discard. going off on a tangent, i found out recently that the beautiful beaches of the south china sea resemble a wasteland during the monsoon as the winds bring all the trash from sea to land. i wonder how all that rubbish ended up in the waterways. ... i wish people would buy and waste less. unfortunately, many people associate accumulating stuff with the good life. during the documentary, the artist vik talks about how he came from a lower middle class background and how for years he felt the need to buy stuff. he has since come to the realization that he has everything he needs and no longer craves material validation of his success. 

wasteland was perhaps a fitting end to our time at the festival as the first documentary film that we watched was 'last train home' -  about a chinese migrant worker family - the parents work in a clothing factory in the city and travel home once a year to their village during the lunar new year to see the kids who are brought up by their grandmother. there are millions of such chinese families lured away from rural countryside to work in the numerous factories that produce toys, clothes and other made in china goods that fill the malls, seduced by the myth of capitalism, at the expense of familial bonds. after the excitement of receiving gifts such as a fancy cellphone has subsided, the rest of the time that the parents are home for the holiday is tension filled and awkward. the breakdown in communication between parents and children is especially apparent at mealtime when the parents constantly lecture the kids on how they must study hard and do well in school so that they don't have to work in a factory like the parents. at one point in the film, when the parents had not secured train tickets to go home for the new year, the father in despair wonders at the point of trying since they never have anything to say to each other anyway. in a bitter twist, the eldest daughter, resentful of her parents absence and high expectations, runs away to work in a factory, before she's completed high school. we see her at a night club bobbing away mindlessly to trance music in one of the final scenes. 

nonetheless, nothing is ever quite black and white - i'm referring to my anti-consumerism. so while my own philosophy towards stuff is 'less is more', i could not help feeling very sad when they showed scenes of empty production factories during the height of the global economic crisis of 2008 because it meant that many workers would have lost their jobs at this time. like it or not, the fire has been burning since the world began. ... my hope is that we can slow it down a little so that we're not all burned up. 

i have friends who work very long hours to support their consumerist lifestyles - i don't feel sorry for them - because being able to afford luxurious goods and services makes them happy. nevertheless, it's impossible to not feel a little heartsick to think of those chinese migrant families who sacrifice their relationships for a 'better' standard of living. but ultimately, is it really a better life when the parents work back breaking long hours, live in cramped factory dorms, see their kids once a year, breathe the polluted air of the industrial cities. life for so many in the developing world is a struggle. and it's unfair to hold those who have little control over their livelihoods accountable. but materialism, affects us all. directly - when we fuel or succumb to it - and indirectly, because the quality of this world's environment is made poorer as humankind depletes the earths resources to satisfy greed and consumerist lifestyles - and the disposal of waste products of this activity back into the atmosphere as toxins, and our land and seas, and even outer-space as junk. 

there's a certain kind of liberation that comes with not needing to buy stuff. but i doubt that frugal will ever be 'in' - and less so in countries and amongst people who are recently prosperous. ... nevertheless, there needs to be greater awareness of where we're heading with rampant consumerism. i think that documentaries like 'wasteland' and 'last train home' help to not only educate and enlighten, but also provoke us to think more about the broader issues.

sunday morning brekkie and blog

found juicy ripe mango in fridge this morning. i immediately made some oatmeal and had it with the mango topped with a handful of raisins and a generous drizzle of honey. mmm. the rewards of forgoing a morning run. really wanted to get some adrenalin pumping this morning but decided to save my legs for a long run tomorrow at a more decent/warmer hour. temperatures have dropped once again - not of the freezing variety - but cold nonetheless, at 7am. and since we'll be heading back to the tropics very soon i'm trying to get used to running in steamier weather. 

so far, i'm registered for 2 runs. a 15K in mid may and the 21K end of june. and becos of us, several friends have decided to sign up for the 21K as well. looks like we're slowly assembling a little running posse. ... :D

today is day 4 and the final day of the full frame documentary film festival. attending as a special guest is somewhat of a dream come true. will blog about it when i get some time later. gotta go get ready for my close-ups now! ;)

the week that was ...

and what a week it was!

monday - april 5

we won!!! we're the champions!!! 

scene in cameron right after the buzzer went off

birthday cake before the game

(4mile afternoon run in blazing hot sun at the ATT)

sunday - april 4

up at crack of dawn to celebrate 

easter at the duke gardens

birthday/easter cake :P 

(easter lunch at derek and katie's NEW home)

saturday - april 3

dinner at provence, carrborro 

with don and judy. later we went back to 

their place and popped champagne

to celebrate okm's doctorate

3mile run at duke forest

friday - april 2

good friday - stations of cross service

 

8 mile run at the ATT

thursday - april 1

maundy thursday service at duke chapel

had fun playing with emilia in the morning.

the afternoon was spent running errands, etc.

no real running ... :)

wednesday - march 31

okm's D-day! 

celebration dinner at tyler's tap room 

con la familia crocco arango!

-------------------------------

all done!

that's what okm declared when he called me after his defense this afternoon. i couldn't be happier. thankful & relieved at the same time. and we get to spend a leisurely month here before we go back to m'sia. :)

'all done' - an oft-used phrase of paloma's, our crazy little friend