two steps behind

I wonder, where would this entrance lead us to? Perhaps it was to the secret hide out of “The Man With the Golden Gun”! I didn’t have the chance to find out because I wasn’t sure if I would made it out of there. Well, I actually was too busy checking out the shops on the island and also taking pictures as much as I could on this island, Phang Nga bay, Thailand, because we only had about 30 minutes for this stop.

So… swoofff, off to take more pictures.

Who would have known that googling the phrase “tying the knot” would bring so many interesting articles to read. The very first link that was provided by google was a link to a wedding photography service.

Tying The Knot

-One of the Top 10 Wedding Photographers in the World.
www.tyingtheknot.net

So, I started to wonder, what does “tying the knot” have to do with “marriage” so I again… Googled for “tying the knot meaning” and was lead to a website explaining how nowadays wedding have their customs and traditions traced all the way back to ancient Egyptians!

Wedding Traditions & Their Origins

- Tying The Knot. This comes from the days of the Roman empire when the Bride wore a girdle that was tied in knots.
The Groom untied the knots prior to the consummation of their marriage.
www.pibweddings.com/traditionsorigins.html

What was I thinking that made me took the picture when I saw the rope tied on the boat?

I guess the message was “commitment” because when tying the rope together it meant to have one “attached” to the other, to add length, to extend, to go beyond… what one rope can do. Meanwhile, there are tension that pulling the ropes away from the knot in opposite direction, proven by Newton’s 3rd law of motion “Whenever a first body exerts a force F on a second body, the second body exerts a force −F on the first body. F and −F are equal in magnitude and opposite in direction”, therefore the only thing that will hold 2 ropes together is how strong would each rope would be able to withhold the tension that is being created with surrounding force.

The knot would never untied the itself, but the strength of the ropes is the key that hold them together… Maybe this is the reason why the phrase “tying the knot” has so many related article with wedding and marriage because it take 2 people’s commitment that the will provide a lifetime of support and cherish each other, as long as they can withhold the pressure from the surrounding and that one rope doesn’t snap before the other.

*a moment of photo taken on the rooftop of the long boat that was taking me and my family to the Nail Island, Phang Nga, Thailand.

It is surprisingly how time can pass from days to months to years. I wonder, would a lifetime be enough for people to enjoy all the amazing things out there in this little planet.

Feeling as if it was yesterday, the time that I took this photo was more than a month ago! It was so isolated, calm, and the most important is… very peaceful.

Time sure can fly! And it isn’t going to slowdown. We can only try to catch up and do our best on the little time that we have to enjoy the most out of this little blue planet.

Sitting next to a table full of “Pla Sa-Lid,” a type of fish, that when deep-fried is very crunchy and delicious. One of many traditional Thai foods which I love to eat ever since I was a kid. I am currently looking at the pile of fish on table wondering how many fish we bought from shopping at the fish market in Phra Pra Daeng, Wat Bang Narm Phung, Bangkok. Here are a quick estimate… 8 Kilo of the fish, average at about 25 fish per kilo. So that would be the sum of about 200+ fish on this table! We sure love fish!

While I was at the fish shop buying (obviously) the 8 kilo of the fish, I asked the vendor how did they catch all of these fish? The answer was fish farming. It is amazing how we can farm about everything that we, human, consume. I wonder what have happened to the lifestyle in the past where we had to go hunt in the jungle for meat or the sea for fish. Those days may have not been very easy but it was sure simple.

That was how I was reminded of the photo selected today of a group of fisherman catching fish in the sea.

In celebration of the 1 year anniversary of TwoStepsBehind… I chose this Panorama that was taken in Phang Nga Bay, Thailand. The island also known as the Nail Island. The picture was taken on Christmas of 2009; the same day that I was reunited and met many of my long lost family members. It was the family trip that I must have mentioned on previous posts.

Looking back a year to date…  there are many changes in the way I process pictures, which hopefully have improved greatly. A year ago, I believed that there would be a day that I could take a nice landscape shot, a panorama of some sort… as my very first post at TwoStepsBehind, Hello Planet Earth, Welcome to Two Steps Behind!, was a panorama of the Vancouver Bridge, Canada. That belief… brought me to where I am today… with the photo which I am really proud of. To me it’s a really big step that was made of many small steps.

A year has passed and I couldn’t believe how much things have changed… or at least just me.

There was so much to learn in a year, and I can say for certain that life is…

to Live and Learn…
to keep going forward…
to give and to love unconditionally

and most important of it all…

to never lose hope.
because I do still believe strongly that, hope achieves the impossible.

In celebration of 1 year anniversary of TwoStepsBehind… I am going to make a slide show, when I have time, to see where has TwoStepsBehind has visited. I know that Apple has those cool programs, iMovie, iDvd… etc to make the globe spin from one place to the next. Let us see how would that turn out!

But first things first… I must thank you everyone for visiting this website…
First of all, my mother for making me realize that I should write a blog so that she could keep up with my where abouts.
Secondly, Qi for gifted me with “HALF” of the Canon Rebel XSI for my Bachelor of Architecture graduation present.

Thirdly, SCI_Arc for exposing me to the world of APPLE and MACBOOK PRO

Forth, WordPress + Flickr + Facebook + iPhoto… for making it so easy to blog.
Last but not least… is Trey, the god of HDR for sharing his tutorial at www.StuckInCustoms.com which became a great inspiration for me. Thank you to all of my reader to continuing reading many if not most of my non-sense posts!

THANK YOU!!!

Cheers… on to the next and many more year to come!

Photos taken at Phang Nga Bay, Nail Island, Thailand on December 25, 2009

A year ago…

Yippy! I see land! Yes! YESS yESS!!!

I was so excited when I hop on the boat only to be tormented by hour long of bounciness during the boat ride. But unlike the other whom seated in the boat as they suppose to, I was on the roof of the boat. So aside from getting dizzy, I also get sun burn!

After reading about all of my nagging, I guess it was worth it because how else would I have the opportunity to take pictures with 360 degree of clean view, no roof, no post, no beam and no water splashing.

If not on the roof, then where? Any suggestion?

Exactly 2 years ago, on January 11 2008 I had a thought of coming to Thailand to work.
2 years later, I am in Bangkok, Thailand working!

It is amazing how things can turn out… unexpectedly.

Below is the photo I took while I was on the roof of the boat during the trip to Nail Island in Phang Nga, Thailand. To only realize later that, I have been here before… but perhaps it was 15 years ago. Not much have change about the place, but I am certainly getting old!

15 years ago, I visited the island with my mother… as for this year I visited the island with my grand mother! Well, there was no scuba diving this time

While I was taking picture, its remind me of the song “somewhere only we know” by Keane.

Back in the junior high school, I was taught to paint a picturesque landscape. Every time that the teacher show us an example, he would start of the with the blue sky (infinity), then mountains (far), followed by a wall of dense trees (semi-medium), then a river bed that has boats here and there (medium) and finally a resting boat as the close up object.

After I saw this view… the DEJAVU feeling came rushing back to me, I had a goosebumps all over as if I have seen and been here before. Or perhaps the goosebumps came from simply having too much breakfast. Which ever the reason(s), the moment itself was very calm and relaxing. So much that… I sat there for hours simply waiting for time to pass and the boat to depart.

Less is more… a phrase that I first heard it in 2006 at SCI_Arc (Southern California Institute of Architecture) during a weekly lecture on Wednesday night. We were like, please not another cliche phrase, I guess the idea of less is more doesn’t really make sense at first in the state where everything get “super size” and that “more is better”!

Not until the class of Philosophy of Technology did I start to agree with the once thought of silly phrase, less is more. The class was offered at SCI_Arc during a summer by Marcos Sanchez, an amazing professor, that brought up the topic of hot media and cold media by Marshall McLuhan

Hot and cold media

For McLuhan there are two different kinds of media: hot and cold media. The hot media are those, which have a large influence on humans and its sensous perception. According to McLuhan these media even possess a “destructive strength” (for example “stone axes” see the point “the medium is the message”). The pioneer of the media ranks the writing, the phon-etic alphabet, the book, the photography and also the radio among this kind of medium. These ob-jects of communication place much data and de-tailed informations at the users disposal, which are mainly concentrate on one sense of the recipient.

It is affected by this, but remains rather passive in the behavior. The cold media have a small influence strength on humans. The reason for this is, that they offer little details and information, and are not optically delightful for humans. To use and understand these media humans must actively deal with these media. McLuhan calls the televi-sion, the telephone or the caricature as example for it. Finally we mention the fact that a medium is not only hot or cold, but must be regarded always standing in a relationship to another medium.

To my understanding, the cold media is the one that is “LESS” informative but allow for “MORE” interactivity with the media. I guess that is why I choose to do the black and white version for this photo, to allow interactive with the moment, the space and the time that the picture was taken rather than the hundreds of colors that were in the picture.

Less…
is more…

that’s interesting!

Yesterday’s photo couldn’t have been taken if I were simply just sitting in the boat along with everyone else. Everyone wants to be in their comfort zone and take pictures but I just can’t get the picture I wanted by simply sitting in the boat.

So I climbed the roof and just spent the rest of my 3 hour boat trip on the roof taking photos.

The sun was shining,
the boat… rocking,
the wave… crashing,
the wind… weaving,

and I… am resting.

I have been wanting to visit southern Thailand ever since my last visit, must have been when I was 9 years old. Back then, my mother let me use one of her compact cameras, the kind that you still have to advance the film manually and also bought me 4 rolls of 36-shots films that lasted only for a day. I took pictures of pretty much everything! But when we developed the film, half of them were either over or under exposed! Oh well… I repeated the same mistake again 2 years ago when I tried my mother’s Nikon F3 with 4 rolls but this time it only lasted for 2 hours!!! That was the last time I ever used film for photography, but I do wish that I would get to learn how to develop the film traditionally when I have the budget and the time to do so.

As for the post today it was while we were heading toward Koh Tapuu (Nail Island) about 30 minutes away from the Phang Nga’s pier. While everyone was looking to the front or the sides of the boat… I looked behind and captured this moment,

The moment where everything was left behind… There were nothing to think about except to just point my camera and shoot at everything. It was fun!

Who would have known that this roughly built, patched together wooden bridge would be able to withstand the load of people that walk on it, the wind that blows thru or the storms that come crashing upon it from time to time. I guess we just can’t simply judge its capabilities simply from the way it looks. It looks like a bridge and works like a bridge with its purpose to transport one from one side to the other of this path by crossing the obstacle below… therefore it is a bridge.

It is common for some to doubt the capabilities of the bridge because it does not look trustworthy, but for those who believe in it… get to walk and board the boat that take them to many amazing places that those who choose to stay behind would have never experienced!

I was simply trying to metaphor this with the idea of “LOVE” between 2 persons. Having love as a bridge for the couple to walk; it is important for them to TRUST in the LOVE so that both can surpass any obstacle that would get in the way to finally board the love boat where they get to share their life together.

So it seems that the most important part of this journey is that… one must TRUST in the bridge in order to find a bit of happiness. There is no way that we can test the stability of the bridge; even if we do… we won’t have the time to because the boat is leaving.

Trust is a matter of CHOICE.

Without trust… we stand still
By simply TRUSTING in that LOVE… we, then, start walking,

… one step at a time

Shall we?

Koh Panyee, what an interesting name but what does it really mean? According to our tour guide Koh Panyee means “the Island of the Flag”. Getting interesting isn’t? What flag? We didn’t see any flag!

The story goes something like this… according our tour guide

A family from Indonesia was looking for a new beginning, a new home, a new place to start their new life. The family lead by Toh Baboo, along with 2 more families who had joined Toh Baboo on the quest. This new place they were searching for has a little requirement which is that it shall has full of fish and a place that everyone could live together. The 3 families promised to each other that once such place is found then they would raise a flag as high as possible so that the others could see and join them.

Later, Toh Baboo found the island and… to no surprise – raised the flag!

And that was how the Island got it name Koh Panyee – the Island of the Flag!