blog of Joe cz Liao

Note that my UCLA shorts’ color match surprisingly well with the curtains of my room

Best Contact, still: joe@liao.cz

If, seriously, you want to send me good stuff:

Rm. 213 J&F Plaza
4-7-16 Kire-nishi Hirano-ku, Osaka-shi
Osaka, Japan 547-0026

Here for three months, hope to learn Japanese with alacrity and become a polyglot(and they say you should use your GRE words so to bolster your learning.) The fixed schooling schedule and the pleasant bonhomie of the common room in this building is an anodyne to my inchoate, indolent life in Hong Kong.

Spent over 60% of my time last week working on the website for Match&Fusion. Soon to be released. Everything besides sushi and gogo-no-koucha (午後の紅茶) is very expensive.

Enough of being verbose. More update to come.

An ongoing process of self-evaluation led me to submit my pictures to various places and see how they stand under the light.

JPG magazine is a photography magazine that publishes members-submitted photos and essays. I learned about it while at school (as a new form of social media w/ specific purposes) and got my first copy while I was in Boston in 2007.

You are welcome to vote for my work there, only if you think they’re worth it :-)

http://www.jpgmag.com/people/czliao

Also, of course, is my flickr page, where I upload my most updated work and pictures from travel :-) Seriously, there are so many amazing talented people on flickr, like this one, that their work have so often inspired me and humbled me to no end…

聽別人說話也是一種交流，交流最需要的是真誠。當我和別人交談的時候，我用耳朵、也用目光傾聽。都說眼睛是心靈的窗子，我的「窗子」永遠明亮燦爛。真誠的目光勝似千言萬語．．．

—節錄自一自閉少年之作業。

Translation:

Listening to others is also an exchange, exchange takes sincerity. When I am speaking with others, I listen with my ears, I also listen with my eyes. They say the eyes are the windows to the soul, my windows are always sparkling. A sincere look is worth a thousand words…

—from the composition of an autistic child.

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I just realized that what I thought I published on my SH trip is actually sitting in my draft box all this time. Without further ado:

[2009.3.13] Too much has happened, in too short a time. I wish I had a recorder so that I could share with you all the amazing things I have heard and seen. I regret that I could only write, and to share this with you so sparingly with my unskillful communication. (more…)

This is a background I made for a website that I am working on recently. I am putting it up here as a teaser :-)

Done with photos I took years ago and a lot of brushes that I got from BrushKing. Please comment.

More at Flickr.

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Having departed from paradise only that morning, the 12 hours in the ‘1st class cabin’ of the cargo ship Spice Islander was twice as close to hell as it already was.

As we arrived at the ship that evening, the loading dock was already flooded by the flesh of men, women and children. Children below our waists were being crushed; old ladies unable to move in any direction were desperately screaming for help; the police with wooden sticks furiously attempting to create some sort of order; and the rest of the people tenaciously resisting those attempts. In short, it was just like in the movies: as if the island was sinking, or aliens coming from right behind, everyone was fighting with their lives to board the last ferry.

The first class had tables, air conditioning which was as good as absent, and a population density of about 8 people per square meter. The floor was covered first with a layer of luggage then another of bodies. It was nearly impossible to move in the cabin. Fighting our way to the bathroom required stepping on things we would usually avoid; returning to our seats after using the bathroom, with our sole still moist, made us feel extra guilty. The benches had small cockroaches crawling around occasionally, which I had to kill and vaporize swiftly before Sandy would notice them. It was a suffering even for the Tanzanian standard.

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The lady at the booth of Sea Express –the most recommended company for the Dar Es Salaam—Zanzibar route– was too uninterested in dealing with me that she somehow ignored my (certainly audible) signals for almost a good minute before looking up. That was enough for me to decide to travel with another company in that sea of competition. For half the price (but also at half the speed), we went with Flying Horse. Trip duration was 3 hours, as written on the board outside the tickets booth, although the sales person insisted that it would only take two, at most two and a half, because the company had just installed a new engine on the ferry. Sure.

The three hour spent inside the 1st class cabin was our most comfortable travel thus far. A/C, wide cushioned sofas, static-free television, and a comprehensible conversation in variously accented English. It was a fitting appetizer for our destination— the other-worldly Zanzibar.
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