Thursday, April 14
Instead of publicly humiliating the culprits, I might as well take the time to briefly talk about what's been going on lately instead. I'm still living in Yau Ma Tei. The local police force has been raiding the brothels and heroin dens of Temple Street on a daily basis for the last couple of months. As a result, the aforementioned criminal activities no longer have a presence on my street, and my landlords are probably kicking themselves for lowering the rent of their flat by so much. Soon it will be safe to enter the building across (a former heroin hotspot) and document on film the physical/spiritual pain and destruction brought about by the substance.
In terms of my tutoring 'career', my number of students now stand at nine in all, which means I have the luxury of working just over 10 hours a week - the threshold of not going postal on my students - but make enough to pay the rent, live comfortably and still save a substantial chunk of it. It also helps that I've started working with my pre-teen music idol, so that brings in an extra bit of income to fund, if anything, my ebay habit.
Speaking of online bidding addictions, the latest source of financial damage has come in the form of the Roland PMA-5, a neat little portable songwriting device that unfortunately has been discontinued by Roland. It's like an extremely stripped down version of Reason except I can take it with me wherever I go, thus making it possible for me to toy around with song ideas whilst on the bus/train going from one lesson to the next. This should hopefully speed up the process of completing the ragged collection of songs that I've been meaning to release for quite some time as a loosely connected follow-up to Unwed Sailor.
In regards to my photography, the folks from the Lomographic Society have recently been in touch about using a couple of my panoramic snaps for Horizon camera packaging/promotional purposes. I guess a few of the photos that I sent in for the Horizon book back in February have been shortlisted and now they're considering others for additional uses. Seeing even just one of my photos published in a book will mean a heck of a lot. Of course the publicity will be nice, but for me the real sense of satisfaction will come from the knowledge that a photo I took is enjoyed and appreciated by someone so much that they're willing to place it in a book.
Earlier in the year, my friend Shima and I had also fantasized about the possibility of co-releasing a book that would contain photographs the two of us took last summer when our bands toured around Japan, Singapore, Malaysia and Thailand together. The guy takes gorgeous photos and I managed to get some pretty decent snaps too over the course of our journey so it should make for a pretty beautiful book to behold.
Just the other day I was also toying with the idea of releasing a photo journal of my four and a half years with Unwed Sailor. I have gone through so many rolls of film whilst on the road with Johnathon & Matt that even the scanning alone will be an arduous process, but the end result should be something that would be of interest to not only the fans but also anyone remotely curious about the daily affairs of a small indie band criss-crossing the earth and surviving on grease-fried meals.
So yeah, a lot of things to look forward in the foreseeable future, but for now I should really call it a night. Even though my job allows me the luxury of not waking up until the afternoon, 5:30 in the morning is a little too 'late' to remain online.
Friday, April 1
After giving it some careful consideration, I've come to the conclusion that it's probably better if I leave this site for dead. The updates have been happening less and less frequently as the months have rolled by. I also seem to have lost all interest in my photos (and photography in general). The same can be said of my music. The songs are simply not coming and my fingers just don't move like they used to.
I should've stayed in London and hung on to that monotonous nine to six payroll at the email marketing firm. In hindsight, spamming seems more secure and satisfying than this romanticized bohemian existence. Plus this crowded city is starting to really irritate me. Uploaded are one last set of photos. Tomorrow I will begin putting my cameras up on ebay. You might want to search around for them, or alternatively drop me a line to make an offer. I might throw in a roll or two of my space-consuming negatives as a bonus. Who knows, maybe I'll even give you ownership of this domain.
It was good while it lasted...
