Learning song from Chun Yi, legend of kung fu

Om mani padme hum (right-click, Save as to download) ... the words preceding the chant are exquisite. I have been trying to find translation (I had the DVD which I bought after the show but I left it with my things in HK!)...

VS google map/wikimapia screenshot

Here goes, the satellite view:

This article appeared in "The Park Record" recently (18th Feruary 2009):

Nepalese artist finds serenity through craft
After five years in Park City, Kalyan Rai remains idealistic about America

By GREG MARSHALL
Of the Record staff

“Everything is global, it’s all one family,” artist Kalyan Rai explained Friday. “I revere, respect, tolerate and have a yearning for different faiths. As a tender kid, I was taught to not to be fooled. Allah, Christ, Buddha and Shiva are but the same One, born in a human form in different geographical zones, with different names.”

Today, Rai, who was born in Nepal, says that he is secular, but speaks on good authority about different cultures. He has travelled broadly for his art, work and education. Rai has exhibited and sold his abstract geometric paintings in Berkeley, Calif., Japan, Holland, Switzerland, New Zealand, Spain, Germany, and Park City.

With the help of his patron and friend Jim Powell, Rai put on a solo show here in 2004 and was featured in the 2005 exhibit“Seven Painters from the Himalayan Kingdom.” He has also painted a mural for the children’s reading room at Park City Library. Rai came from a long ways off. He attended prim English boarding schools in Darjeeling (Victoria Boys' School, Kurseong : my note) , India, starting at the age of five and quickly took to painting and drawing as a way of coping with a foreign world rife with starched collared uniforms and corporeal punishment. “Any 5-year-old kid would undergo culture shock,” he said. “It was problematic for me. Art was my outlet. We find ventilation or we go crazy. Even in prison, people find art. Likewise, art became a way of expressing the inner world of myself, venting.”

He continued his studies at Visva Bharati University, a school founded by the Nobel laureate Rabindranath Tagore. After graduating, he returned to Nepal and taught art to junior high school students and American Jesuits attending seminary abroad.

When his brother, Mahendra, received a Fulbright scholarship to study urban planning at the University of California at Berkeley, Rai decided to visit. He ended up staying in California for five months. In that time, he participated in two group shows and gained formative exposure to the American art scene.

Today, Rai works in acrylic, watercolor, charcoal and pencil. He likens some of his installation art and mixed media projects to being a Buddhist monk working on sand paintings for days and months only to see it borne to nothing by the winds of diaspora.

“More and more, I find my work becoming increasingly spontaneous as I strive to reflect in my art the many facets of life,” he recently wrote. “In most cases, I put forward images reflecting my intuitions and feelings. Usually I begin with an empty mind and let the impulses flow through me. I become more of a channel or a medium to capture and express fleeting images of the spirit of life.”

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To see some of Kalyan's work, visit: http://www.cyberartgallery.org/?gallery=paintings&ex=11

Jealousy

Mag O Mad

Trying to launch a bilingual magazine for, by and of all mad hatters!

ManBoo Cafe!

Shinjuku District, Tokyo ... I thought they did that only in China (or India)!...

my wake

wake, drink the tea,-
read news, maybe the tv

watch out for
nothing's sure
except the same

bathe, eat, look
the look
on the mirror
face, wash

leave (for work),
settle, read the mail,-

agenda:-
program, perhaps a poetry

(afterthought: the rest isn't so easy)

Grameen Gappo

আমার গ্রাম, তোমার গ্রাম, ফন্দীগ্রাম, ফন্দীগ্রাম!... (my village, your village, "con" village, "con" village ...) Inspired by Vietnam War-era anti-war slogan: আমার নাম, তোমার নাম, ভিয়েত্ নাম, ভিয়েত্ নাম! (my name, your name, Vietnam, Vietnam!)

Bangla Blog

বাংলায়ে ব্লগ ... দেখি কেমন হয়... এটা পরতে হলে বাংলা হরফ থাকতে হবে...

VS map version 0.2

Old school ...

VS map

Here's a rough sketch map of ol' V-I-C-T ... not very accurate (and definitely not to scale). Hope it brings back happy and sad... and above all, funny memories, guys (ex-VS) ... * VS = Victoria (Boys') School, Kurseong (alternate spelling : curse young)... Darjeeling district... (the best tea actually comes from Kurseong, and not gardens near Darjeeling: Makaibari, Castleton,...)

A quick toon character sketch

Mr. Mandrake... Inspired by an old teacher who held us in hypnotic spells with his charismatic personality...

Maid in Vietnam!

Chinglish: the funniest!

This notice at a Shanghai metro station (Pudong) is by far the funniest I came across. 

Funny Chinglish II

More "civilisation" ... these are publicity billboards advertising new appartments in Shanghai... The second one is a howler ... "humanity building"!!! More about Chinglish: http://www.silverladder.com/literature/chinglish/chinglish.htm

Funny Chinglish I

Touring the Shanghai region in China, I came across a few signs which seemed to be literal translations from Mandarin... and the results were hilarious. Words such as "civilisation" and "civilised" were used a lot in strange ways... I don't know any Chinese but I have seen similiar results when quotations or signs are translated into English from Indian languages by ... uh... not so efficient translators.


These three signs are from Tiger Hill, Suzhou where you come across the Chinese "leaning tower". These were not so funny as compared to those I came across in Shanghai metro and other places.

Old Sketches: Buddha

An old pencil study at Indian Museum... art college days... We spent many (mandatory) hours at the Indian Museum of which the Government College of Art and Craft, Calcutta is adjacent to. Actually the same building.

I love the serene quality of the statue. Anatomical details are barely noticeable in contrast to western sculpture. The smooth stylized contours convey the superhuman attribute of the subject, a perfect complement to the calmness exuded by the face of the Buddha.

The drapery is also insignificant, but nevertheless present like an ornament following the idealized contours of the body.

Reading

Books I read... although, there are many I might have missed out...

Books
Title	Author	Details
Mid-2003 - 2004
Leaf Storm	Gabriel Garcia Marquez (ES)	ES, EN translation
Schrodinger's Kittens	John Gribbin	EN
The Mind of God	Paul Davies	EN
Disgrace	J. M. Coetzee	EN
The Life of Pi	Yann Martel	EN
Matryona(?) - Short Stories	Alexander Solzhenitsyn	RU, EN translation
2005
Difficult Loves	Italo Calvino	IT, EN translation
Shame	Salman Rushdie	EN
The Doctor's Wife	Sawako Ariyosho	JP, EN translation
The Pursuit of Happiness [discontd.]	Betrand Russell	EN
The Psychology of Language [discontd.]	Trevor A. Harley	EN
Sophie's World	Jostein Gaarder	NW
Pnin	Vladimir Nabokov	EN
Paradise of the Blind	Duong Thu Huong	VT, EN translation
August, 2005
Robots and Empire	Issac Asimov	EN
August - September, 2005
Contact	Carl Sagan	EN
Reading now ...
September, 2005
"Surely you're joking Mr. Feynman!" Adventures of a curious character	Richard P. Feynman	EN

Continued at My Library (Google service)