Sri Lanka, Wadduwa. This long stretch of sandy beach boomerangs right towards some coconut trees at the end of the trail. Mostly the home to fishing families. Seafood in beach restaurants is relatively cheap here because they come off the fishing boats in the morning before they get priced up as they make it to the shops and hotels. I envy those who live by the sea who get up to the breaking waves, coffee in hand and the ocean as far as your eyes can carry you as the sound of the ocean blends in with the morning music at home. It is how these seafarers live. Their money comes from the sea, every morning and sometimes at night depending on the type of catch.

I had gone to the Blue Water Hotel for a coffee – a 5 Star hotel by the sea in Wadduwa. They usually bring you a plateful of biscuits with it and it comes with the price of the coffee at 500 Sri Lankan Rupees about the price at Starbucks but without the ocean view and the biscuits.

Can one living by the sea with the sound and view of the ocean ever get enough of it? Those who live by the sea in their homes cemented and bricked up living beside those in their shanty tinned roofs and mud walls, do they know what they have, where the ocean will never disappoint them and will feed them every day and will never allow them to go hungry. Or will they want to sell and live in the city instead as the price of their properties start to increase with the area designated a tourist area and new hotels appearing next to them? 

I walked past the large swimming pool of the hotel to go for a walk along the beach, passing tourists on the way out. Tourist: must be the season ‘cos like flocking birds they cross oceans to be close to the fishing villages in Sri Lanka and to have a little of something that the big cities cannot give them. They swim in the pool, take walks along the coastline, mostly staying away from the locals, instead more comfortable talking to the many stray dogs they meet. One of the strays looked up at me as if to say, “hey haven’t I seen you before”. I patted her. Soon there were other dogs in line each taking their turn for a pat on their head.

Too young too old. I noticed 3 ladies, probably European, walking close to the breaking waves, getting their feet wet. I noticed they did look my way earlier when I was playing with the dogs. I thought, “would one of them want a boyfriend”. I continued walking. I also did wonder how clean the beach was, considering the number of strays on the beach. There were cows resting on the sands and pigs roaming inland under the coconut trees. I soon came to a string of fishing boats lined up close to the ocean’s edge. Fishermen mending their nets. I left it too late for a long walk as the sun was setting. It got darker as the sun edged closer to the horizon.

I passed the “Saffron Hut” a small hotel, unlike the “Blue Water” which was monstrous and laid back from the beach such that you could not see the ocean. You had a good view of the swimming pool as it snaked around its grounds, but you had to walk past the lawn to see the ocean, unlike the hut: it nestled next to the ocean. It had “garden” like wooden tables with its benches dug into the sands next to the ocean. You could have your meal sitting on the beach with the smell and sound of the ocean for company. It felt like the Hut was part of the ocean.

It was then that I thought: I want to live here. Next to the ocean. Wake up in the mornings and walk up to the ocean with my morning coffee. Dig myself into the sands and have my breakfast. Can there be too much of a good thing? Is it just my mind making it an experience to treasure everyday. Do the people who have lived here for decades know what they have, according to my mind, which is clever at making a beautiful image. The perfect image sometimes does not translate well into reality. But I do like this place, by the ocean, a long stretch of sand, and waking up to it every day, by the Saffron Hut where I can have my meals.

Curious I keep walking and soon come to a village. A House made of brick walls and cement, single stored, with no border walls separating them. They look like an Anselm Kiefer installation of brick walls and rooftops. A teenager walks up towards the ocean and I call out to him. He is tall slender and dressed well in a collared T-shirt and dark denim. He gestured that he did not speak English but called out to a friend who does. The friend was talking to 2 others by the fishing vessels. He came over.

I asked him if there was any land for sale around here to build a house. Not in the interior but beachfront where I can see the ocean in the mornings. He pointed to some around me that was recently sold. They consisted of large lots which were not what I wanted. I wanted just enough land to build a house and wake up in the morning and see the ocean while sipping my morning coffee.

The teenager in the dark jeans said there was a plot up ahead that belonged to his sister that might be for sale. Let’s go, I said. The sun was getting close to disappearing into the ocean. The plot of land faced the sea. It had the foundation of a previous home being there, the walls all missing. I noticed the village homes all had freshly rendered cement on them but not painted. I asked the teenager what is it with the foundation of a building on this plot and he asked his interpreter to tell me that it was the big Tsunami that came recently and destroyed the village. It was the big 9.0 magnitude earthquake-tsunami of 2004. I gathered also that the 2004 tsunami was a repeat of something similar about 2000 years ago documented in Sri Lankan Chronicles? I did not ask him if people died. I asked him how far did the water go inland and he said up to the road next to the railway line. Pretty much right through the village.

I asked for details of the land and cost and he said his sister lived next door and he will ask her. I waited for him to get back. He came back with his sister. She did not speak English well but I think she understood what was being said. She wore a red tight figure-hugging T-shirt. Her complexion was a smooth oily brown. Her long hair was neatly pulled tight and coiled up behind her head. Her face was chiselled like a tourist. I whispered to myself. Her smile was like the ocean in the morning with my morning coffee…. Can there be too much of a good thing?

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Nothing that comes of your/our mind is real.
We objectify everything that is totally subjective to begin with.
Even the objects we perceive is only “real” to us because
of our 5 sensors and processed by our brain to say it is an object.
Just some electrical activity and processing in the brain.

As in art – we again go from an idea (subjective, not real, invisible) then
process it in a 100 ways and finally manifest it into a painting.
The object that we create called a painting is no different from how a city
is created – from the unreal to the object.
So even a city is made from a lie.

Our personalities are made from a lie. We see we experience, we think, we process, then decide how it is turned out and the conclusion is incorporated into personality. It could have turned out like in a 100 ways,

So we think we built the best thing for us to live in – the city – but really it was just
a foolish idea that made it. So does the city reflect the mind of man, like a painting
the mind of an artist?

So if anything that starts from the mind is unreal – then what is real?

Was nature created by mind of man. That tree outside your window – did mind create that tree.  That tree always was. The Truth exists in things that were always true – that did not come out of the mind of man.

I experienced this because i am a painter. I paint blindly with my mindbodysoul. I place value in chance and spontaneity to show me what is real, because the thinking mind is not present in these things. Or a mistake has an element of Truth in it, because it was not intended – i did not think myself into it.  It just happens. But when a painting comes to an end there is something natural that comes to an end – always.  I experience it every time.  There is something true in the lie in me.

There is something of that tree in me – that is always true. So I live by way of the subjective lie putting out work out there that has been processed and manipulated. Made up like society is made up by the mind. Let my mind be conditioned by the rules of the system that has been created by a mind like mine to live in.

That unreal structure has rules you need to follow because the mind that made it says so.

2 operating systems running in parallel, simultaneously: society (living space created by mind) and nature.

There is something unreal about what the artist does. something insignificant. An object. The painting. An illusion of the mind. Nothing of the Truth in it? Perhaps.

But the process itself of making art, when it is wired up to the spirit – can help you experience everything that is true in what you do. It can help you find the pattern and experience the universe in you.

To the viewer – can you get this from a painting? Or is it just a lie to you?

An Aboriginal Song,

Tree……….
He watching you,
You look at tree,
He listen to you,
He got no finger,
He can’t speak,
But that leaf……,
He pumping, growing,
Growing in the night,
While you sleeping,
You dream something,
Tree and grass same thing,
They grow with your body,
with your feeling.

It can be same with people when with them you experience the Truth in the lie of things. This was the case with the painter John Hoyland.  There was something of the natural in his presence and his paintings.  There was something natural in his “thinking” mind.

John Hoyland

Albert Irvin

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Galle face hotel was founded in Colombo, Sri Lanka in 1864.

“Celebrity guests include Mahatma Gandhi; the first man in space, Yuri Gagarin; John D. Rockefeller; former British Prime minister Edward Heath; Princess Alexandra of Denmark; Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh; First Prime Minister of India Jawaharlal Nehru; Indira Gandhi, Prime Minister of India; journalist Eric Ellis and photographer Palani Mohan; future British RAF officer and MI6 agent F. W. Winterbotham;[21] Prince Sadruddhin Aga Khan; then-Prince Hirohito of Japan; Roger Moore; Carrie Fisher; Richard Nixon, US President; Lord Louis Mountbatten, 1st Earl Mountbatten of Burma; Noël Coward, English playwright, composer, director, actor and singer; Josip Broz Tito, Marshal of Yugoslavia.[22] In January 2018 Prince Edward and the Countess of Wessex stayed at the hotel during their five day official visit.” and me.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_Face_Hotel

As you come in the main entrance you will see a bust of Arthur C Clarke (1917 – 2008) as the hotel used to be the favourite haunt of the science fiction writer.

I happen to meet AC Clarke many years ago only as a go-between to see if he would be happy to be interviewed by a journalist who had to cross an ocean to meet him.  I remember he said, “if that journalist can ask me a question that has never been asked in the first 10 minutes I will give them a 2-hour interview.” They met him longer than the 10 minutes I had with him.  My recollections are high walls that surrounded his home, a very large satellite dish on his roof and as big as his roof. I asked the guard if i could meet Mr Clarke.  He went away/came back and let me in.  I saw adverts of scuba diving schools and trips into the ocean.  I remember thinking why would he want to do this, but learnt later he was an avid diver (it is like being in space) and one of his reasons for moving to Sri Lanka.  On a wall, at the bottom of the stairs of the large house leading to the first floor, was a huge picture of the planet earth in space. I followed the elderly guard upstairs.  In front of me was a tall gentleman. We greeted each other. He asked me which country I was from. I told him. He went up to a TV on a desk, turned a dial and a test pattern came up. I recognized the test pattern. He said, “looks like nothing is happening there right now.” He kept in touch with what was happening in the world with his NASA like satellite dish on his roof.  I told him that a journalist wanted to interview him……..

From some chit chat with the journalist who interviewed him I vaguely remember that he had shown a cover of an unpublished book that was completed and on his desk.  It was not a science fiction book but a romantic book, unlike the science fiction books he wrote.  He was uncertain if he was going to publish it.  The journalist was made to read the last line in the book. Mr Clarke thought it was a good ending to the book but uncertain.  It happened to be a cliche and was discussed why it was. I don’t remember any romantic books that were published by AC Clarke. Originality perhaps comes from what you know best and possibly romance was not one of AC Clarke’s concerns. I am but a better man for meeting him and perhaps the obsession with originality and me as far as my mind will allow me comes from such experiences. Arthur C. Clarke and me if only a short interlude.

Galle Face Hotel is under a 2-year restoration program that started in mid-2013.

The bar that was in the main building near the entrance will be enclosed and air-conditioned I gather.  The new restaurant is being rebuilt with columns supporting the roof with an open-air plan. The sea breeze gently greeting you for lunch at the Gale Face Hotel, Colombo, in Sri Lanka. The restaurant will possibly open on July 2014. The columns under construction now for the restaurant can be seen in the pics above.

Galle Face Hotel “is the oldest hotel east of Suez. It is located at 2, Galle Road, Colombo 03.” (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Galle_Face_Hotel”)

You don’t know what you are missing!

Sri Lanka.

Paradise island in the east.

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Buddha Perception

Buddhism shows us that it is all about how we make the unreal into the real in our minds: from the subjective into the object.  We can take an unreal subjective experience in our minds and make it into an object.  We can take an illusion in our minds and make it into an object Continue reading →

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Some new research coming of Disney research center shows that the skin can be a medium to transmit a modulated electrical signal that can be converted to sound by one person touching the other. It says, “the recording is then converted into a high-voltage, low-current inaudible signal that flows into a thin wire connected to the interior of the microphone. This looped, inaudible signal creates a modulated electrostatic field and produces a very small vibration as the finger touches an object, forming a speaker.” Continue reading →

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A premonition is:
“a strong feeling that something is about to happen, esp. something unpleasant.”
“he had a premonition of imminent disaster”
The tangible feelings are an intuition, a (funny) feeling, a hunch, a suspicion, a feeling in one’s bones, etc.

So is a premonition a tangible experience of the mindbodysoul.
Something that the sensors had monitored and created signals for but just that you don’t know about it. And why would you not know about it: probably because it had come under the radar or beyond the limitations of your sensors of hearing, sight, smell,taste etc.

Lets take sound: if you hear a sound or a sentance of words, the ear drum vibrates to the pressure wave, it then goes through the middle ear and the inner ear cochlear and a signal is created in the auditory nerve and it goes to the brain and you hear the sound, and a feeling is created and the thinking processes comes in and manipulates the experience. The longer the mind manipulates the total experience the further away it gets from the purity of the experience.

Remember that sound is a pressure wave. The greater the amplitude of the signal the louder is the sound. But what if the pressure wave comes in with a low amplitude, but creates no sound but the signal is registered and processed by the ear and an auditory signal is created and when it gets to your brain it creates no sound but it does create an impression an “intuition, (funny) feeling, hunch, suspicion, feeling in one’s bones.”

Take natural disasters for example, when one gets a “funny feeling” of having experienced an event but not heard a sound or anything else for that matter but just the feeling, I think the mindbodysoul had tangibly registered the event through the pressure waves in the air. The modulated structure of the pressure wave would have the feeling of the event. Take an earthquake tsunami for example: to have a premonition of it happening it is because you had experienced the the tundering shape of the waves to have that feeling. But how could one have a premonition of a natural disaster that is perhaps months away from the time that it actually happened. It must have happened for you to have felt it, but you know it had not happened yet but you just felt it. You know you have.

I suggest this: now that we know the limitations of the process of hearing, where we hear only from 20 Hz to 20 Khz or when a pressure wave comes in at a low volume and does not register a sound but still registers the structure of the wave in the brain and creates a feeling, a hunch is because the waves were already in the air propagating across the world like a tsunami wave. Before the main earthquake happens the fault lines under tension will slip and “kick” the air above it and generate an air tsunami, a pressure wave in air behaving like a water tsunami. This pressure wave will travel across the world and the sensitive types will pick it up but will not hear the sound of the waves but will create an impression of it in the mindbodysoul. This will be especially so when the epicenter for the earthquake is shallow, like the great tsunami earthquake of 2004 which devastated many countries, where the epicenter was only 33 kilometers below sea level and where there is a greater chance of a air pressure wave being created.

I suggest that dreams can also be created in ones mind like this when one is asleep. Recurring dreams are also an anomaly that needs looking into.

If all the above is true then one can insert a feeling in you with a low/no volume modulated pressure wave. It will slip in like it was your own feeling or thinking.  It is partly yours as you would have processed it yourself, but it is a rogue stimulus.

“the circle of life and death” – November 2004

Just making sure that my work is my own.

siri.

Update:

(‘Sixth Sense’ Can Be Explained by Science (Copyright 2014 LiveScience)

http://uk.news.yahoo.com/39-sixth-sense-39-explained-science-152130689.html#9gpoxEQ)

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You got to experience the shocking reality of the limitations of the mindbodysoul to appreciate total awareness. The Zeitgeist of the 21 century is its technological influence on the mindbodysoul.  It will transform man, woman and child to what they were not in their past.  If Buddha had achieved enlightenment by meditation or silence in around the 3rd century BC, then today it will be technology that will be responsible to guide the individual towards enlightenment. Continue reading →

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Art to Architecture

Brancusi’s “Endless Column” sometime called the ‘ The column of infinity” in some ways describes Malaysia’s economic success and infrastructure development since the 70’s and into the future.

It is progressing at a meteoric space and into infinite possibilities.  Kuala Lumpur has become a city of buildings among thick lush greenery and a very comfortable one at that to live in.

Lunch can cost as little as 1 British pound and the cost of transport for buses and the rail system that crisscrosses the city at a fraction of a pound for each journey. A transport system not unlike that of London but new and modern, taking the best from its former partner Britain and discarding the aspects of the United Kingdom that don’t work. Recently as London announces the starting of selling Islamic bonds to rival Dubai, Malaysia has offered to play a part in its beginnings just as Britain had in the past for Malaysia. Perhaps in the future the 2 countries that were once related could soon be working closely together again in all aspects of each others life’s.

The above railway station was completed in 1910 and located in the previous “Victory Avenue” which has since been renamed.  As the city develops new flyovers and roads, the buildings threatening to hide its domes as the city keeps the old and builds the new around it.

Development is relentless where new building sites are constantly cleared for construction. The first tall building in Kuala Lumpur was completed in 1984 – called Dayabumi.. In 30 years since Dayabumi it has gone to what Malaysia is today which in that timespan the country’s development included the building of the twin towers once the tallest building in the world.

1984 to to 2013

There is also some chit chat about the Klang river that runs through Kuala Lumpur to be filtered clean and developed not very different from the San Antonio Riverwalk.

Below is the Hyatt Regency San Antonio Riverwalk.

more pics of Riverwalk in San Antonio

Malaysia has got its beautiful beaches with Port Dickson being only under an hour away from Kuala Lumpur.  Port Dickson is also getting a makeover with Starbucks overlooking the sea in the town center.  Have a burger in “McDonalds” while staring out into the horizon or “PappaRich” for local food – all with the sea by your side.

Then there is Penang an island in the north west of the country made famous by Wickers World in a 1976 episode called: PENANG: I HAVEN’T TAKEN MY OWN SHOES OFF FOR 45 YEARS…!  The title came about because: “Then there is the Scottish doctor who still lives in the style of the British Raj, surrounded by white-uniformed servants, happily declaring ‘I haven’t taken my own shoes off for forty five years’.  And as it is today more and more people are coming in from the west for what they find alluring here in the far east.

So it is either New York, London, Paris for high Art and high fashion, the pinnacle of the extreme living  and more so also London, Malaysia, Sri Lanka – for an alternative lifestyle as the west starts to experience its tipping point in their ever increasing standard of living. Malaysia’s plan for a deadline of 2020 for the economic plan for the country hopefully will find a balance not for evermore increasing of more than what you already have but rather a balance of comfortable living standards with further economic savings to only maintain infrastructure and the comforts of its population. But the country seem to be one step behind the west learning from mistakes made and not adopted and embedded into its own development finally finding its best by 2020. London hopefully will play a crucial role in being the umbilical to the west from the far east with the Conservatives in British society playing a crucial role, where the past togetherness meets the future once again.

Last Sunday’s newspapers front page reads, “Nothing Like Home”, “Malaysia a good place to raise children, says parents” and “Country becoming prosperous” all backed up by the London based, Legatum Prosperity Index of 2013.  The country’s rank for economy up 10 places to 8 due mainly to the decrease of inflation rates.

A recent partnership sealed by the Weir Group PLC, United Kingdom and the prime minister of Malaysia, witnessed by David Cameron. Old friends coming together again.

Malaysia, its population is about 28 million in a 2010 census.

Malays at about 67.4%, Chinese 24.6% and Indians 7.3%.

It takes some doing for different races and cultures and religions to come together to exists in harmony and the process has found its balance today in Malaysia. It will improve as time progresses towards 2020 and beyond. Malaysia will be a beacon to others of how perhaps the world will unify in the future.

Today’s Malaysia is prosperous and comfortable for most people living in the country. Its economic development and modern infrastructure possibly has some part to play in all of this. You get the sense that all of Asia exists in this one country. And the food: take your pick: Malay food, Chinese, OK, maybe an Indian Curry, what about some Mexican food, ice kachang, eh, maybe some chendol or AW Root Beer float and the fruits: what you want? a whole chilled coconut? What? Kentucky Fried Chicken!

If you happen to be in London catch a flavour of Malaysia at “Makan”, a Malaysian restaurant at Portobello Market

Prime Minister David Cameron call me.

Gallery

Welcome to Malaysia

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I found this article by Winston Churchill in the Sunday Chronicle July 12, 1936, in 2013 in Malaysia on the back of a mirror that needed restoration.

It was an article by Winston Churchill defending J.D Rockerfeller who made lots of money, saying he gave away a lot of money too.  To give it perspective it was about 3 years before world war 2 started.

The Sunday Chronicle was a British newspaper:

“The Sunday Chronicle was a newspaper in the United Kingdom.                                The newspaper was founded in Manchester by Edward Hulton in August 1885.” (wiki) and it folded in the 1960’s.

Interestingly at the flip side of this page was a short story by Somerset Maugham.

It is called “One-Bullet Mike”.

Something comes full circle for me here, as one of Somersets book, “The Razors Edge”, which I found in a corner of a room in India in my early years with half its pages missing was an important book to my personal journey and which I have with me to this day.

It was part story of a young American looking for total freedom: mindbodysoul.

There was something in there of Somersets Journey I think as he tried to evaluate his life’s purpose in one of his books in his later years, “The Summing Up”, where I vaguely remember him writing, “so what have I done with my life but perhaps write one good short story (“Rain”)…….”

but he also said in the summing up:

“The artist produces for the liberation of his soul. It is his nature to create as it is the nature of water to run down the hill.”

“Every production of an artist should be the expression of an adventure of his soul.”

(http://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/W._Somerset_Maugham#The_Summing_Up_.281938.29)

siri                                                                                                                                            4 Nov 2013.

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MALAYSIA – KUALA LUMPUR

KLCC once the tallest building in the world.

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