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boat people

Posted on December 28, 2008 @ 11:48 am by massimo | Filed under: africa,another green world,beach,news,people,travel,wordpress

Someone told me on the Vietnamese boat people who had landed on Pulao Kapas’ beach many years before.  I came across the boat’s wreck a few days later. The boat’s left over, nearly completely buried by the sand, really struck me. I stopped and stayed by that unplanned and clandestine monument a long while and   felt distinctly the very tragedy that was behind it…
Since a few years Italy is first in Europe for illegal immigration by sea. Some 25.000 desperate people somehow reached our shores in 2008. During the last three days, from dec 24 up to dec 26, about 1500 African  migrants have landed in Lampedusa Island, nearby Sicily.
Due to jingle bells and the like, Italians mostly have not paid much attention to this significant occurrence, while the ghosts of Christmas ideals rerun on Prime Minister Berlusconi’s Channel Five…

Illustration Friday’s topic is: clandestine

goggles

Posted on October 7, 2006 @ 9:42 am by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,india,travel,wordpress

varkala kerala india aynaku illustration adobe

What a trouble for me getting my expensive goggles lost! I am a bit short-sighted and use to wear special goggles. Though they are not really necessary to me they become a fundamental item I rely on every time I jump into unknown waters. And Varkala was a real troubled spot, yes indeed!
Yet I was fit and trained and felt sure: the choppy sea wouldn’t fool me. So I dared the Ocean and enjoyed my self confidence while snaking through the waves for ten minutes or so. No problem. Under these circumstances I knew that the worst of it was getting the shore safely. You need some skill and extra efforts -while the breakers tumble you hard about- to avoid some powerful wave pushing you straight to the sand. Unless you don’t care that much about your backbone…So lulled by the lovely sea I was deeply considering my best strategy when an unnoticed, nasty wave took me and made me cutting underwater capers, once, twice, then it took my goggles away and blinded me, throwing finally my half drowned and wrecked body to the firm land…
Do you know the old song telling “…trouble you can fool me, I see you behind that tree…you want to jump on me…”? I should say that my valuable goggles couldn’t help me to see a real trouble; perhaps it wasn’t only them…

Illustration Friday‘s topic is: trouble

an overloaded skyline…

Posted on July 7, 2006 @ 10:03 pm by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,people,philippines,wordpress

boracay bangka generator fitzcarraldo herzog aynaku illustration adobe

In 1997 I had got an architectural commission in Boracay. I was asked to design a trendy ice cream parlour and it actually was under construction nearby the beach; I liked this sort of timber and bamboo structure, before the developers carved up all the buildings into concrete and stucco boxes for the rich tourists…
The construction was completed in three months: all I had to do was to wait for the huge generator which had to be installed before the opening. This engine was absolutely needed due to Boracay’s chronic lack of electric power, and –really- you can’t run an ice-cream selling without electricity! I was waiting for it since a week and I had no definite idea about when an how the machine would finally land. Surely the generator was expensive and damned heavy, so heavy that an ordinary bangka ( a local kind of out rigged motor boat), would probably sunk down…So I was rummaging on my client’s folly under these unfathomable circumstances, and betting with Gino, when all of the sudden the native master carpenter I worked with, came and excitedly announced that the monster was in sight! It was actually on board an overloaded and half wrecked bangka which forcibly had stopped some 150 mt from the seashore because of the low tide. The engine had to be quickly moved but it was 10 pm, very late indeed according to inhabitants standards, and all the carpenters where soundly sleeping. The master carpenter said that he would get back to wake up the squad and he would arrange the right way to make the machine safely landed. Off course he asked extra-money to accomplish the task and, off course, I said “yes”. I was needed there anyways and there I got in ten minutes, just in time to witness the stunning undertaking of a wild bunch of hard puffing carpenters who by means of their sole physical strength, where slowly and painfully carrying the valuable generator, balancing its weight upon a couple of huge bamboo canes! Do you remember Herzog’s “Fitzcarraldo” ? Remember the insane effort of carrying a ship across the jungle?
No less than this was going on under my very eyes: truly this parade filled the nocturnal skyline oddly…When the dead beat carpenters finally got the firm land, I let myself breath again!The day after I paid extra money and presented the valiant carpenters a case of beers…

pizza connection

Posted on May 6, 2006 @ 9:43 am by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,food,people,philippines,wordpress

“Pizza Connection” was the ironic name of a cosy, Italian beach-restaurant ran by Gino in Boracay Island.
I was in the business for a while, working as a bartender. The …

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 …

barefoot

Posted on March 18, 2006 @ 7:16 pm by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,travel,wordpress

 

In his essay “art in landscape” Stephen Bann writes about Wordsworth’s prowess as a walker. Bann calculates that the great Romantic poet “must have traversed a distance of 175,000 to 180,000 English miles”.
I doubt …

sand flies

Posted on March 4, 2006 @ 6:34 pm by massimo | Filed under: animals,beach,blog,travel,wordpress

Insects are familiar to long term travellers. These sort of folks usually travel on a shoestring and never care too much of comforts, since their only goal is keep on moving. No matter where once sleeps or eats: lousy pension …

flavour…

Posted on December 30, 2005 @ 6:57 pm by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,books,philippines,wordpress

Melville’s novel “Moby Dick, or the Whale” has been a fundamental reading to me! Basically I was astonished by that powerful narrative which is not a newspaper story with the flavour of a novel! I still keep on reading a chapter …

lighthouse

Posted on November 6, 2005 @ 10:08 am by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,india,wordpress

Kovalam is maybe the southernmost beach of India. Since the mid-seventies, Kovalam has been reputed as a place not to be missed among freaks, budget travellers and beachcombers.
The times are changing and the fashion too… never mind! …

escape…

Posted on September 19, 2005 @ 8:42 am by massimo | Filed under: beach,blog,travel,wordpress

A full-moon night spent on a beach is a lovely way to escape daily routine. Full-moon parties are widely practiced World-round and South East Asia makes no exception. If you travel that area and you wish …