The plane ride to China was within a bearable threshold, unlike the grueling 24 hour journeys to the USA.  I am entertained by the H1N1 cartoon they’ve created, the animated characters looking like a Chinese New Year food product advertisement rather than a warning about the disease that has affected people worldwide.

I survive the taxi journey from the airport during which the driver weaves in and out of trucks the size of Optimus Prime. Privately, I suspect he fancies himself as auditioning for 2 Fast 2 Furious, because he drives like (well, a taxi driver…) he is behind the wheel of a Forumula 1 Vehicle.

The next morning, I am having breakfast in the hotel, and something is having my foot for breakfast. I later spot the culprit – a lone Hangzhou mosquito hovering around and having eaten it’s fill, finds its business elsewhere. My foot bears the only trace of its presence. The breakfast area plays Christmas saxophone songs and I think of snow. End of the week, I realize that that same CD basically plays everyday, at any of the eating haunts, and repeatedly from morning to night.

Despite the revolving doors at the entrance which usually hint to me of freezing cold weather, it has been pretty much “like Singapore” and not “hotter than Singapore” as I had been forewarned. Maybe I have some sort of luck with the weather right now, because it has apparently been raining in Singapore since I left. Perhaps then, my perception of this place is somewhat different from the rest, because talking to the locals gets me the information that this is an uncharacteristically cool bout of Summer weather we are experiencing.

The office here is seriously swanky, with a pantry area that looks like a cafe, LCD screens mounted on the ceiling and kick ass conferencing equipment. I love the happy colours, and the chinese logo is a nice touch on the introductory wall that greets everyone who steps in.

Till then, Facebook, Twitter, Plurk, Youtube, Blogger are amongst the sites that I’ve been unable to access in certain places….

Facebook reassures me that they “take my privacy seriously” with their investigation that I really am who I am, since I’ve not  logged in from this location before. I wonder if this happens only in China, because I didn’t get the same screen in the USA.

More on the great firewall of China (and Iran for that matter) here and some other interesting insights on the other parts of China.

Because, I can imagine from the sheer size of this country, there are many Chinas within the whole, and what I’m seeing is barely scratching the surface of what it is like in all the other cities and provinces.

So, things have been a little silent in this space for a while, because I just had an awesome trip to Sydney. And the first thing that accosts me while we head out from the Sydney Airport is billboards, billboards and more billboards. Never really noticed, but when coming home, we don’t really see many billboards in the airport, and that really is rather refreshing on the eyes. I successfully tune most of them out, but one that I really liked was this particular one from Heineken. Excuse the grainy photo – we were moving and high shutter speeds can only do so much.

I know the title of this post sounds rather like an oxymoron – disconnected blogger, but it was a good breather to just disconnect from the Interwebs for a couple of days (although it was also largely through a certain inability to find/stay within the wireless hotspots) and just experience the world. But truly, some things are just difficult to share over a blog (yet another little contradiction as I try to do just that), but I could try to stop marveling over how beautiful Bondi Beach was…

(the two gendered pairs made for an interesting shot)

the eclectic crafts at Paddington that I totally fell in love with,

how quaint the town surrounding Blue Mountains was, how we scared ourselves silly on a railway touted to be at a 52 degrees incline but really, felt like 90…

…or the plush seagulls that stalked and crept up on us while Fish and chips were savoured by the harbour while we ran our toes through the velvet sands of Bondi. It is not funny when you watch them do a 360 degree formation circle around you and start closing in, and I constantly thought of Hitchcock’s The Birds.

And a little drawing for my illustration site in the sands of Bondi. I think I redrew it 4 times, thanks to wave interference, each going higher than the next. So truly, this is a time based illustration.

I will end of this first post with the mandatory travel jumping shot. I think I’m getting better at them, but don’t ask me what my feet are doing. I usually let the music and moment take over. T’was only a first try, good enough but I now wish I tried more variations.

So here I am, defying gravity somewhat. Photo courtesy of S!

More thoughts; less pictures in the next post!

Tags: Sydney, holiday, blog, bondi, gulls, seagulls, paddington’s market, blue mountains, fish market, oysters, travel, tour, sand, doryandfillet

Here is my interpretation and addition to the World Wide Rave for David Meerman Scott‘s book!

It is like a Where the hell is Matt?, just involving a whole lot more different people (and less potentially embarrassing for those with two left feet). Very sticky idea, very cool.

Welcome to Singapore, folks worldwide!

From the left, the Singapore Flyer, the red mass that is the River Hong Bao 2009, the construction is the imminent Integrated Resort (Marina Bay) , the Central Business District (CBD) of Singapore, and all ravers are standing on the pavement of the Esplanade.

Wee bit of a cloudy day, but the hazy background probably brings out the vibrancy of the poster better, so it’s all good! By sheer coincidence almost everyone holding the poster is wearing colours that match the poster. The idea was to get a whole different bunch of folks from different cultural backgrounds and have them in a single shot..we are a multicultural city, after all!

Thanks to ZW for helping out with the photos! A shout out also to our prof, Micheal Netzley, who heads the Digital Media Across Asia class at the Singapore Management University and finding this cool project for us to work on.

P.S. This is the LAST time in a long time I will attempt to manually stitch a panorama together. I went there without a clue as to how it would happen, armed only with an idea. Okay, actually I had many ideas, but this was the one that won out!

…Rave on!

Other places where conversations on this are happening:

• Join in the conversation on this @ Plurk!
• David’s post. I’m absolutely psyched that he loves the panorama and can’t wait to see the video he will be featuring it in!
• Other cool posts from Singapore here.

Tags: singapore, marinabay, esplanade, singaporeflyer, integrated resorts, cbd, central business district, world wide rave, meerman, book, marketing, viral, worldwide rave,