Feeds

christmas at sea

Posted on December 31, 2009 @ 10:50 am by massimo | Filed under: blog,books,fear,sailing,travel

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

The sheets were frozen hard, and they cut the naked hand;
The decks were like a slide, where a seamen scarce could stand;
The wind was a nor’wester, blowing squally off the sea;
And cliffs and spouting breakers were the only things a-lee.

They heard the surf a-roaring before the break of day;
But ’twas only with the peep of light we saw how ill we lay.
We tumbled every hand on deck instanter, with a shout,
And we gave her the maintops’l, and stood by to go about.

All day we tacked and tacked between the South Head and the North;
All day we hauled the frozen sheets, and got no further forth;
All day as cold as charity, in bitter pain and dread,
For very life and nature we tacked from head to head.

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

a surprising man…

Posted on August 22, 2008 @ 10:52 am by massimo | Filed under: animals,another green world,blog,fun,people,philippines,travel,ukiyo-e,wordpress

I like to edit again an old post written on November the 22, 2006…this fellow had a totally anti-routine life…it’s worth taking a look at his “biography” whic my friend Gino edited recently…
enjoy

Among the strange people I met, Max Maxwell is certainly the most unfathomable. I firstly met Max in Boracay Island, in 1990. Max comes from Bombay and belongs to the Parsee upper-class.
At that time he was a fit, middle aged man who enjoyed beach-tennis, wind surfing and excellent Italian food. He basically travelled between Boracay, Koh Lanta, Laddak and Hong Kong, making his earn out of fashionable batik-shirts, rattan-bags, Tibetan amulets and first rate (yet fake) Ray-Ban sunglasses. Max had an enormous ego, he was desperately scornful and selfish and, for some reason, he always surprised me. He had seen the World, that was the fact! When some harmless tourist, tried to approach him by asking silly questions such us “Have you been…?”, Max’s provocative answer simply was: “thanks for not talking to me!”. And that was all. As I said Max loved food and he was in the selected circle of acquaintances of my friend Gino.
Gino ran the cosiest restaurant in Boracay according to Max’s parameters and one day at Gino’s, for some unpredictable reason, Max allowed himself to talk to me! Max abhorred “stupid talks” but, after a good beer (he used to sip beer always by the same special glass that he-himself carried in a bag), Gino and I had the chance of glancing over his wonderful life…Finally Max decided to present Gino his photocopied biography. The document (his masterpiece) stated the man “born in Bombay during a devastating cyclone” and amazingly went on with Max ”making friends with Miles Davis, art-directing Vogue Magazine, etc…”I still have that rattan-bag he sold me and –still- I wear that  fake,Ray-Ban, and Gino and I still dispute about his reliability, his clever scorn and puzzling behaviour.
On December 8, 2006 I received a stunning report from Gino…

BREAKING NEWS:
MAX MAXWELL DIES IN GOA AFTER COMMITTING SUICIDE. HE LEFT A NOTE IN WICH HE SAYS :
“DON’T BE SORRY FOR ME. I’M THE ONE TO DECIDE MY TIME WAS OVER”

Illustration Friday ’s topic is: routine

fierce

Posted on June 29, 2008 @ 4:10 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,people,travel,wordpress

The train from Jakarta to Surabaya had slowly left in the late afternoon; sitting in my second class berth, I was contemplating the nearby thriving tropical landscape from one of the wagon’s window, when a fellow swiftly entered my compartment. He was an elderly tall man with …

elettricity

Posted on May 10, 2008 @ 5:54 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,indonesia,philippines,sailing,travel,wordpress

Lightnings are electrical discharges, giant sparks of electricity, from mature storms. Lightnings cause a lot of electric current to pass through water; wooden boats are not safe at all since the vast majority of lightning injuries and deaths occur on small boats with no cabin…
The short sea …

gardens

Posted on March 8, 2008 @ 5:00 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fun,travel,ukiyo-e,wordpress

Modern Singapore is a city of concrete, glass, freeways and shopping centres.This city state is one of the Asia’s four “dragons”- the Asian economic boom coutries. The fact that so many western expats live and work in Singapore, lies exactly in its thriving economy, altough the place itself is really nothing special and …

multiple

Posted on February 23, 2008 @ 11:27 pm by massimo | Filed under: blog,fun,philippines,travel,wordpress

In the Philippines, the western wind is called Habagat and the rainy season comes with it. The rains in Boracay were usually a bit oppressive to me, as the dullness went on for weeks, driving my mood to absolute lethargy; moreover I was running out of money quickly. All of us …

theory travel at home

Posted on February 16, 2008 @ 7:36 pm by massimo | Filed under: africa,blog,travel,wordpress

Twenty years ago Madagascar was in my mind: it was the place I wished to go at all costs!
I got hold of guidebooks, maps, and an atlas even; everything that could be possibly useful to me was collected and then recklessly scattered upon my room’s wooden floor…
I spent hours fancying about my …

old manali’s blankets

Posted on February 2, 2008 @ 6:02 pm by massimo | Filed under: another green world,india,travel,wordpress

Manali, at the northern end of the Kullu Valley in Himachal Pradesh, is a hill station situated at a height of 2050 m in the Himalayas. It is a very popular and crowded tourist spot for Indians and foreigners in summer and in winter: actually too crowded according to my standards.
That’s why, …

african plains

Posted on January 20, 2008 @ 4:56 pm by massimo | Filed under: africa,another green world,blog,travel,wordpress

I come from a hilly region and I’m not used to open prairies and plains.
This is the reason why, I can’t forget Amboseli National Park’s breathtaking views, one of the most classic of Kenya: the gigantic Kilimanjaro mountain, with its 5,985 meters dominating the plains.
Noteworthy Kilimanjaro is not within the limits …

« Previous Entries