to the desert

tomorow i head to the desert for 4our days with two complete
well not complete strangers. i met them
on a day tour here in luxor two days back. and since
there i sno local transport out ther its a 4 day three night
extranvaganza through th e desert. hope

hopefully it turns out well, the tour agencey was abased on
a random person i met on the boat coming aback from luxors
west bank. his busines card had nothing but missseplled
words which would make this blog entry look like engligh.
luror was actually quite plesas

(ack keyboard, will fix it when i get back to the states)

.luxor actually is toursim gon wiled. everyon expects a tip
everything is haggled for from sodays to ticket pricesto to getting on the bus it seems. the food is nothign to write home about. so what keeps
this place going.

teples that are 3000 years old. they are actually quite marvelous.
im glade i got a chance to see them.
but im all templed out.

still have yet sto see the pyramids. but thats probably towards the end
of the trip.

Aswan

keyboard is busted at his computer. such is the
state of random internet cafes.

i'm in aswan now, spent the morning (3am wakeup)
to head to abu simble. it was great, but too short
and too crowded because of police conveys.

afternoon spent at a small set of ruins a ferry
ride away inside the nile. i was the only one there
and got to wander around for two hours through it.

but what did i spend my film on? i took two rolls
of film of people getting on and off the public
ferry.

besides that i've seen pyramids, smoked sheeshas,
and even went to a camel market.

tomorrow to luxur, buy sailboat.

more gear

so i'm taing a class on saturday minding my own business. low and behold icp converted the studio to a second hand camera shop clearing out stuff that the students don't use anymore.

for the past few months i have been trying to reduce the amount of stuff hanging around my home. i think i was up to 15 cameras sitting around my desk.

two weeks ago i picked up a huge mamiya 6x9 super camera. it is huge and weighs about the same as a bowling ball. but i've been quite happy with it.

but i succombed to being the kid in the candy store. i got my self a camera (om4t), a pair of lens (21/2 and 100/2), a fistful of lens caps, a hood, bodycap, some batteries.

will this addiction ever stop.

inertia

an object in motion tends to stay in motion...

last day working here. if they don't renew my contract for the next year, i'll be out of work yet again. though i'm not too worried in getting another gig. i would like things a little more settled so i can plan better.

i'm already considering going to ethiopia for easter. in may, some people are considering touring around italy following lance in the giro -- not sure about that but i do enjoy italy. k-livealittle is talking about headed to alice springs and doing the larapinta trail in june. still would like to head back to china with the family one year or another. undecided on whether to go to mexico again for day of the dead.

if i don't work, i'm not sure what will be come of me either. do i try to be a photographer finally. am i good enough?

are my computer skills even good enough to get work again.

ah the crossroads of life. perhaps i'm thinking too much about it and should take care of the basic things like packing.

flashback: some time in the 9th grade

my first memories of independent traveling wasn't actually wasn't on that first trip with g-thefamilyc going to costa rica -- though that was the first time i was physically travelling.

it was in the ninth grade. p-minusmanic and i worked on a social studies project on africa. we selected egypt as our topic. by some means, we got a copy of fodor's egypt, talked to some travel bureaus in midtown to get some brochures and pretty much pretended we were going to egypt.

it ended up to be a four paged paper tracking our hero going up and down the nile. not quite hemingway, but just a part of my past.

i have no memories of what actually was in that junior high school paper. but maybe that is for the better.

next week, i fly to cairo and spend three weeks in egypt.

published

http://www.amazon.com/Landmark-Spirit-Eldridge-Street-Synagogue/dp/0300124708

so back in january i took a handful of pictures for a-eldridge's book. and it's finally published. yeah. i think i have four images in them, but the main reason kmilford was pregnant and couldn't finish it off. i'll take what i can get.

there is a nice acknowledgement in the book for the photos as well as being a docent for the eldridge street project.

today there was a book signing at the site, good to see the familiar faces again. i took the opportunity to give away some blatant self promotion for my show at the dumpling house.

bleh... what a poorly written entry. i need to learn how to write.

blatant self promotion

Come by thursday night (tonight) to Vanessa's Dumpling House 7:30pm - 9:00pm. I just put a show of some of my photographs.

For the past three years I've been photographing Eldridge Street documenting the neighborhood and it's impending gentrification. Eldridge Street is an eight block span in Lower Manhattan, New York City that serves as a nexus between the Lower East Side, Chinatown, SoHo and the East Village. It is where I was born, raised, and currently live.

The fourteen images are currently up and will stay up until January 18th.

Vanessa's Dumpling House is at 118a Eldridge Street and is open everyday from 7:30am - 10:30pm.

The show is sponsored by the Lower Manhattan Cultural Council's Manhattan Community Arts Fund.

(please forward this along)

flashback: december 2, 2002

i remember coming home late from morgan stanley. i was assisting a class called "roll a day" that semester. i tried to keep up with shooting a roll of film everyday, but i didn't. i did manage on this day, we had already gotten two good dumpings of snow. including one that make skiing at lake placid a pleasure on thanksgiving weekend.

lights on trees and the crisp air look gives it a feeling of christmas in the city

fast forward to this morning to get into the spirit i played the audio tracks of a charlie brown christmas.