More than a millennium ago, a Vietnamese emperor, Lý Thái Tổ, built a new capital for his kingdom. In a poetic outburst he named it Thăng Long, meaning where the dragon soars. Name changed more times until Western colonialism mutated Đông Kinh in Tonkin. Another less poetic emperor, Minh Mang,...
Sometimes I glance over in my living room, a printed cloth I bought a few years ago in a Negombo market. It’s a batik. As time goes by and especially with exposure to light it fades remarkably. Is particularly noticeable on the black inks.
Two graceful richly bejewelled young ladies, compose, from...
Both are two of the most significant cities in Java. Surabaya is the second largest by its population, its business and its port, base for the Indonesian Navy. The other, Yogyakarta, by the concentration of universities and consequently for students. Here, from time to time, Mount Merapi recalls...
That’s the meaning of Tōkyō, the world’s largest urban agglomeration, with about thirty-six million people in its metropolitan area. Tokyo won the title to Kyoto in 1868, along the Meiji Restoration and the decline of the shogunate, when Emperor was established in Edo Castle. Today the giant TV...
When Siddhartha Gautama finished his reincarnation cycles by a stomach poisoning, some 486 years before Christ did, his body was burnt with sandalwood along the river Chotta Gandak, in Kushinara, present state of Uttar Pradesh, India.It is said, once cremation ceremony was over, eight relics from...
The sensation get across the plane’s door threshold is as to be knocked out with a huge boxing glove. It really knocks. Senses are stunned with the high contrast after all the hours enjoying the cabin air con with a reality that exceeds forty Celsius degrees and eighty percent humidity. Down the...
I let know to the customs official I had to overnight in the country and knowing the article was forbidden I should keep it in the office to retrieve it when I leave. I show him the bottle of blended and by his expression seemed to have seen the devil in person. He looked down at the bottle, tried...
f. Serendip, a former name for Sri Lanka + -ity. A word coined by Horace Walpole, who says (Let. to Mann, 28 Jan. 1754) that he had formed it upon the title of the fairy-tale `The Three Princes of Serendip', the heroes of which `were always making discoveries, by accidents and sagacity, of things...
The woman enters sparingly in the old temple, bows her head respectfully in front of Bodhisattva’s statue, she leaves some flowers and sets a thin smouldering incense sticks that immediately release a deep sandalwood fragrance. Others faithful remain and slowly and ceremoniously repeated the...
Almost, as Male’ has a nearly rectangular shape. In has only two kilometres long by just over one wide, housing a hundred and fifty thousand people, roughly half the population of the Republic of Maldives, which is capital. In fact much of its surface area is land reclaimed from the sea. But there...
In fact, at its highest point, does not exceed more than seven feet, while the average stays at five. So there is a good reason to worry about rising sea levels in a climate change scenario. Moreover, recalling the aftermath of the tsunami of December 26, 2004. Its three hundred fifty thousand...
Some believe he does really existed, as evidence proves. Some believe he is fake; he didn’t exist and is just a myth, a sort of urban legend. Some believe maybe he existed even though hagiographic transcription could be wrong or mistakenly written. Some do not believe anything at all. What is...
Olivier Levasseur, better known in his time as La Buse, still must be laughing from his grave. From his grave? No, because he is not buried there. For a simple reason: the Cemetery Marine of Saint Paul, at the northwest of Reunion, formerly known as Ille Bourbon, did not exist when Levasseur was...
A Thelma et Katia, et bien sûr, a son père Henri.
I was privileged to share some evening aperitifs, with Henri Andrianarijaona. Their hospitality kept me some days at his home in Antananarivo. We used to have them before dinner, with his family - wife and two daughters-, a habit closer to French...