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submarines

Posted on April 29, 2006 @ 11:00 pm by massimo | Filed under: ancona, blog, books, fun, wordpress

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beatles aynaku illustration travel ancona

Maybe I could have submit half of my blog for “under the sea”! I might add something else about because I’m thinking of submarines. When I was a kid I use to go the harbour with my parents and watch the ships; among them there was an half wrecked German U-Boat from World War Two, which certainly made me enormously curious…In the same days I was reading Jules Verne’s “twenty thousands leagues under the sea” and listening to my mother playing The Beatles’s “yellow submarine” ! So it happened that I wrongly conceived the childish idea that a submarine must be related to adventurous and romantic underwater voyages and lovely pop music. Only that rotten and rusty U-Boat in the harbour clearly showed itself for what a submarine really is: a warship. Nowadays hundreds submarines carrying nuclear weapons wanders the oceans undisturbed; as a matter of fact they share the actual “under the sea” landscape with the living creatures of the underwater Realm and its worth to remember that the sea bottom also host shipwrecks and refuse of every kind. And -if this is not enough- just think about the “wise” practice of burying nuclear waste under the ocean floor…
Peace and love!

robofish

Posted on April 22, 2006 @ 6:01 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog, fun, japan, news, travel, wordpress

robot japan techonology aynaku illustration adobe

My only trip to Japan dates back to 1994; I spent a month in Tokio and had to leave the country because of the high cost of life. Nevertheless my short stay I precisely witnessed the contrast between the overwhelming technology and the traditional cultural heritage of Japan; in other words contemporary Japanese society is passionately involved with both! Regarding this disparity, nostalgic novelist Junichiro Tanizaki (1886-1965) wrote: ”I would call back at least for literature this world of shadows we are losing. In the mansion called literature I would have the eaves deep and the walls dark, I would push back into the shadows the things that come forward too clearly, I would strip away the useless decoration.” Amid a growing craze for technology, robots have widely appeared in Japan and the Japanese took a playful approach with their robots, descending from centuries-old automatons. Robotic pets are the ultimate trend on the market and are winning people’s heart…
So please no wonder about robofish! Would you believe that robofish already swim into the London Aquarium?

Illustration Friday’s topic is robot

stingray

Posted on April 16, 2006 @ 11:36 am by massimo | Filed under: animals, blog, diving, fear, philippines, wordpress

stingray underwater boracay aynaku illustration adobe

Stingrays are a triangular flat shape with conspicuous spots on a light brown disc; the spots are well-spaced in young but crowded to form reticulated pattern in adult. White ventrally with a long, slender tail, they live in warm waters off sandy beaches where feed on small fishes, shrimps, worms…
…And off the sandy beach of Boracay, Tara and I used to dive, exactly looking for stingrays: it’s wonderful to watch as they take off into flight! It’s worth saying that stingrays have the most incredible camouflage skills. So one day, while almost crawling the absolutely even sandy-bottom, a huge and unnoticed himantura uarnak slipped swiftly the bottom right under our bellies.
Stingrays are not usually aggressive. They rummage on the sea bottom and only attack if they have been stepped on or threatened, but they are venomous anyway, and that lovely specimen really froze my blood!

Illustration Friday’s topic is spotted

speed…

Posted on April 8, 2006 @ 9:10 am by massimo | Filed under: blog, fun, travel, wordpress

Penang Island is the oldest English settlement in Malaysia, predating Singapore. Penang’s major town, Georgetown, is a real Chinatown with far more Chinese flavour than Singapore, Hong Kong or Shanghai.
Those cities …

spring

Posted on April 1, 2006 @ 5:19 pm by massimo | Filed under: ancona, beach, blog, india, travel, wordpress

Spring has broken here since a few days. Spring means to me early and unrequired raisings. There’s nothing to do: as soon as the bright light of dawn filters from the outer world into my …