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Karma Police
----By Tyler : Posted 08/20/08 11:55am EST

I am about as far from superstitious as one can be. I believe in science, sound theories and provable facts. Sometimes, though, things happen that beg me to reconsider my stance on things like karma.

About a week ago now I was driving back to my bungalow around 9:30pm. There is a particularly steep hill just before my house and I was driving up fairly slowly in first gear just as I normally do. About half way up on the steepest section the bike popped out of gear into neutral and I began to roll backwards. The speed gained up as I tried in vain to shift back into first and gained more before I was able to apply the brakes. I was going too fast and swung sideways flipping the bike. After I was thrown from the scooter there was a split second as I flew through the air that I knew things were coming to an end. I hit the pavement on my right side and the bag containing my laptop landed with a mortifying crunch next to me. The momentum forced me to roll over it once, crushing the screen and my small Olympus camera along with it.

All was quiet. The wind was knocked from me and I sat bleeding in the road for a moment getting my bearings. I looked up the road at my overturned bike lit only by rays of moonlight leaking through the palm trees and I was alone. There was no one there to help me, no one to talk to for comfort. Just me, my pain and two newly christened paperweights. I picked myself up, hauled my bike back onto its tires and roll-started it down the hill. Once the engine was running I turned it around and went back up the hill to my house. Given the accident my injuries were minor. Just a sore neck, a few bruises, cuts and scrapes that I was able to clean and patch myself with first aid supplies from my pack. After tending to myself I reviewed the damage to my electronics. Given the durable nature of the olympus camera I expected it to survive, but the LCD display was crushed. The laptop's screen was shattered and it wasn't powering on. Thoughts of all the information that I may have lost rushed through my head in a panic. I sat down for a moment, but I couldn't stay still. I knew there was nothing I could do that night, but I had to move. I drove back down to the beach and tried to call a couple of people, but no one was answering. I sat down in front of a dive shop alone trying to figure out what I was going to do.

Money was already tight and I needed the laptop if I was going to film anymore. I spent the next day running down answers. I extracted the hard drive and opened the computer up to see the internal damage. Everything looked surprisingly intact. I took it to one of the computer guys on the island, but the only thing he could do was suggest I take it to Pantip Plaza in Bangkok to see if it could be salvaged. Which is what I did. I left the next day taking a ferry to the mainland and an overnight bus into Bangkok. I arrived sleepless around 4:30am and caught a cab to my guest house. My room wasn't available until 1pm and there wasn't any place for me to sleep so I killed a couple of hours on the internet and wandered the streets until Pantip plaza opened at 10am. I scoured the massive electronics complex for the right shop to take my computer to and eventually settled on one. The man gave it a once over and said a screen replacement may be all it needed. I watched him as he installed a new screen for 8500baht and shockingly the machine powered on and seemed to be working. Exhausted, but relieved I made the long walk back to my guest house, stopping for lunch along the way. It seemed my streak of bad luck had finally been curbed. As I sat eating, a young Thai woman sat down in front of me and silently slid me a card. It was asking for a donation to the Deaf, Blind and Mute by buying a small handycraft for 60 baht. Wary of Bangkok scams, I politely declined and she left. Immediately afterward I felt very cold hearted and regretted the decision. I did my best to put it out of my mind and continued back to the guest house to get my room. It was 1:30pm, 31 hours without sleep. I sat down on the bed and thought about taking a nap, but before I let myself crash I booted up my laptop to make sure everything was still working. As I was checking through everything with pleasing results I heard a faint "pop" and the machine flicked off. It wouldn't turn back on.

I rushed it back to the shop in the plaza where the man told me the motherboard had shorted and would need to be replaced. It was at this point, combined with the cost of the screen, that repairing the machine became more expensive than buying a new one. Except I couldn't really afford one. After wandering around trying again to figure out what to do I asked the man if I could give the screen back and at least save that money. He would only give me 6000baht for it. I tried to get more at other shops, but no one was buying. At this point it had been 37 hours since I had slept and my attempts to bargain and haggle with the man in my state were pitiful at best. I ended up taking the 6000 and as I staggered out of the plaza utterly defeated at 8pm it began to pour rain. In my haste I had forgotten my rain jacket. I couldn't seem to get a cab to stop and had to settle with a tuk tuk to get back to my room. Needless to say I was drenched by the time I arrived. I finally slept.

I got up the next morning and spent all day searching for a laptop that met my needs and I could afford, but after looking at my bank account and weighing prices I decided that I couldn't really even afford a cheaper one. That afternoon I booked my ticket back to the island and went back the guest house to relax. I watched TV for an hour or two and left at 7pm to get dinner in a different part of the city. As I sat slowly picking away at my dinner I thought back to the girl who asked for a donation the day before and everything that had happened since. Then the very same girl sat down in front of me and with a look that would suggest she knew more than she possibly could, slid me the card again. This time it said 100baht. I paid her, she thanked me in sign language and disappeared into the crowd outside.

I am about as far from superstitious as one can be. I believe in science, sound theories and provable facts. Sometimes, though, things happen that beg me to reconsider my stance on things like karma.

-Tyler

Speechless
----By Tyler : Posted 08/13/08 6:17am EST

11.08.2008 - Penang, Malaysia

I don't advertise this site to most people I meet. I think maybe I should start. It has been mentioned a few times recently that I am much less talkative than the average person and since it is such a persistent problem for me I thought I would try to explain. “Try”, being the operative word there.

If you have met me in person at almost any stage of my life you'll already know what I'm talking about. Or not, as it were. Basically I don't say much, regardless of how much I have to say. Its never been a secret that I am a much better writer than I am a talker, but why is that? I can think of two reasons. The slightly smaller reason being old social hang-ups that I haven't been able to truly shake since I moved to North Carolina when I was 13. Long story short, I was a very awkward kid. I was shorter, pudgier, I had just gotten glasses, had a bad haircut and my self esteem was around -5 on the 1 to 10 scale. Everyone at the school had already known eachother since kindergarten and I couldn't find any place to fit. I didn't adjust well. There's a lot more to be said on the matter, but this isn't the place. It gradually got better toward the end of school, but even to this day that part of me is still there. Even after all that's happened and how hard I've tried to change, somewhere in the back alleys of my mind I'm still that awkward kid who can't image why anyone would like him. That's why I have trouble making really close friends, that's part of the reason I don't talk so much and still struggle with self-confidence issues. This combined with the other reason I'm about go into, works to all but extinguish my social life which. And that is why I find myself so alone so often.

This other reason being my thought process. I'm not sure I'll be able to explain it well enough for your understanding, but I'll give it a shot. When I say that my head is a mess, I mean it in a very literal way. Have you ever seen me staring off at nothing with a blank look on my face? Of course you have. I do it all the time. My brain is always churning away at something. It never stops and as it constantly moves from one line of thinking to another everything gets... scattered. Words become harder to find in the debris. When I'm talking to someone the conversation can grind to a halt not really because I don't have anything to say, but because picking out my thoughts and arranging them into words with everything else going on can be a real challenge for me. Its like a jigsaw puzzle. I have to dig around in the pile of pieces to find the right ones that fit together and form the full picture. It takes me time. A few people over the years have mentioned that I always look like I'm struggling to find the words and that's because I am. Some days its much better, some days its a little worse. This is why I love so much the things that allow me to concentrate on something singular. Surfing, skiing, kung fu, videogames, fire poi etc. And to a certain extent writing as well. Writing allows me to sit back, focus and organize my thoughts into something expressible. And when I can do that the words pour out like rain.

So much so, in fact, that I have taken the suggestions of a few people and begun writing a book. Its official. The working title for it as of now is “When it Rains” and I'll tell you a little more about the project in the coming days. In the meantime I hope this helps those that know me understand why I am how I am sometimes.

-Tyler

“Well I got a bad disease
out from my brain is where I bleed
Insanity it seems
has got me by my soul to squeeze”
-Anthony Kiedis

One Thirteen Millionth. Pt 1
----By Tyler : Posted 08/13/08 5:49am EST

09.08.2008 - Penang, Malaysia

Today I'm going to do something a little different. Being a lover of photography in all it's forms, I thought I would show some of my nerdy colors and present to you the single most important image ever captured by the human race. I've known about this image myself for about 3 years and for such an important picture that was taken about 4 years ago, I find that most people still have not heard about it or seen it. Or if they have, they do not really understand it's implications. It is called the Hubble Ultra Deep Field. It was taken by the Hubble space telescope in September of 2003 - January 2004. The team at NASA found a section of the night sky that was completely black, devoid of stars to even the most powerful land-based telescopes. They pointed the Hubble into this black area, opened the shutter and kept it open. After hundreds of exposures taking in as much light as it possibly could, this is the image that resulted from the apparent nothingness:

click for full version, but be warned it is HUGE.

You are not looking at stars. Every single point of light on this image is an entire galaxy. There are about 10,000 on this image alone and each one contains anywhere from 10 million to 1 trillion stars. The average star is 1 million times the size of earth and each of these stars has the possibility of planets in their orbit. Now for the real kicker. The fraction of night sky that this image covers: 1/13,000,000th. Let me put that into a slightly more imaginable context. If you took the full moon as seen from earth by the naked eye and shrunk it's diameter to 1/10th of its size that is roughly how large the patch of sky that this image covers is. Now extrapolate that across the entire visible sky and you'll begin to understand.

I did some math for you. That means that when you look up into the sky at night there are at the very least 130 billion galaxies looking back at you. Each one with a trillion stars that are 1 million times the size of your whole planet. And that's just what we can see. Now ask yourself, knowing how incomprehensibly massive the universe really is, what are the real chances that we are the sole life that inhabits it? Have aliens been here? No, that's kind of silly. But, do they exist? The odds are undeniable.

How important does your neighbor's lawn seem now?

To be continued...

-Tyler

“Words are flowing out
like endless rain into a paper cup
they slither while they pass they slip away
across the universe.”
-John Lennon

Touching the Flame
----By Tyler : Posted 07/29/08 11:15am EST

Koh Tao – 29.07.2008

There is a very distinct sound produced when wind meets flame and for a few moments it is all that you hear. The crowd fades, the ocean quiets and all that you see is fire. All that you hear is the roar as it passes around you.

Its called Fire Poi. Two chains (one for each hand) with a weighted end wrapped in kevlar or cotton, soaked in fuel, set on fire and spun around in weaves and patterns. It is an art form that started sans-fire with the Maori people of New Zealand and has since spread to every corner of the world. From the rainy streets of Ireland, to the beaches of Vietnam you will find it. Here on the island many of the local Thais practice it on the beach outside of restaurants or bars to attract patrons. For them it is all about flash; they spin as hard and as fast as they can and since this more commercial version was the form I was most familiar with it never really had any draw for me.

About a month ago one of the Thai diving instructors that I work with here named Off was having his birthday party on the beach outside the dive shop. Eventually he started playing with the fire chains and absolutely blew me away. It was slower and rhythmic with an extreme technical difficulty. The way he moved the fire around him was nothing short of artwork. His girlfriend Sussi went after him and was just as impressive. It was so hypnotically beautiful that it gave me a new respect for the practice and inspired me to try it. I bought a very cheap pair of chains to practice with and on and off over the course of a few weeks I worked through the most basic maneuvers on my own. Eventually, after enough smacks taken to anywhere the chains would reach, my left hand begrudgingly excepted it's new more complicated tasks. Last night on the beach in front of a crowd with Off and Sussi I lit them up for the first time.

Above: Off

There is a very distinct sound produced when wind meets flame and for a few moments it is all that you hear. The crowd fades, the ocean quiets and all that you see is fire. All that you hear is the roar as it passes around you. And in this moment I learned that there is a very real calm to be found in so much controlled pandemonium. The flames focus your attention so singularly on the motions that there is nothing else. The rest of your mind is allowed to breath and you can forget everything, living only in the moment.

There were a few inevitable mistakes that broke things up and when my fire was almost done I spun them out. There were a few black residue marks on my arms from the hits and my pants smelled of fuel, but I was unscathed.

So I did it again.

“I wanna run, I want to hide
I wanna tear down the walls
that hold me inside
I want to reach out and touch the flame
where the streets have no name”
- U2

Starting Fresh
----By Tyler : Posted 07/29/08 11:07am EST

Koh Tao – 29.07.2008

As you'll notice the frontpage is now clear of that massive block of entries and pictures that took so long to load. I'm still looking for a way to display it elsewhere, but I'll have to figure that out later. I wanted to start fresh with a plain old news update.

I'm still on the island of Koh Tao in the gulf of Thailand and I am well on my way to finishing my dive master course. It looks now that I will be here through August despite my flimsy plans to be moving on. This means that I will be heading back to Malaysia early next month to get a new visa for Thailand and hopefully when I get back I will be able to find work as a dive master and do filming work on the side for extra cash. Then I've also got a t-shirt project underway that could provide additional income, but you'll hear more about that later.

With all of this I can hopefully start to at least sustain myself completely here if not save a bit of money. Its going to be extremely tight and there is no question that next month will make or break my existence here. If things don't play out exactly right I could be making that dreaded Statesward journey back to job hunting and $4.10 gas. I'm going to do everything I can to prevent that, but should it be inevitable I suppose I can take comfort in the fact that I was able to drag this thing out for a full year per my original intentions. And what a year its been...

But speaking of “inevitable”...

Before and after, about 19 years.

-Tyler