New Blog

I should have posted this a loooong time ago, but I've had a new, self-designed blog up and running through Wordpress for quite awhile now. You can find it at www.giramonda.com.

I'm Not Waiting Til I'm 85...

"Instantes" (Instants)

If I were able to live my life anew,
In the next I would try to commit more errors.
I would not try to be so perfect, I would relax more.
I would be more foolish than I've been,
In fact, I would take few things seriously.
I would be less hygienic.
I would run more risks,
take more vacations,
contemplate more sunsets,
climb more mountains, swim more rivers.
I would go to more places where I've never been,
I would eat more ice cream and fewer beans,
I would have more real problems and less imaginary ones.

I was one of those people that lived sensibly
and prolifically each minute of his life;
Of course I had moments of happiness.
If I could go back I would try
to have only good moments.

Because if you didn't know, of that is life made:
only of moments; Don't lose the now.

I was one of those that never
went anywhere without a thermometer,
a hot-water bottle,
an umbrella, and a parachute;
If I could live again, I would travel lighter.

If I could live again,
I would begin to walk barefoot from the beginning of spring
and I would continue barefoot until autumn ends.
I would take more cart rides,
contemplate more dawns,
and play with more children,
If I had another life ahead of me.

But already you see, I am 85,
and I know that I am dying.

(Translated from Spanish by myself)

-Jorge Luis Borges

Quest to Cycle...

...I have some periods of free time coming up and I'm planning to use that time to visit people across the state of MO and beyond. And, I've decided to head out on bike to do it.

Someone asked me why. Here's why:

to do something I love: traveling...
while doing something I love: exercising...
all while doing something I love: being out in nature
while doing yet another thing I love: new things that lead me to new places

Cruisin Indy Style

Check out this vid of me cruising around in a street legal two-seater IndyCar. Just one of the many perks of covering the Indy Racing League!

I do have to warn everybody now... I've got in my head to become an IndyCar driver now. So, I'm going to be making a habit hitting up the local go-kart joints. That along with my Muay Thai boxing training of course!

Anyways, here's the vid:



Also, check out this awesome shot of Scott Dixon I managed to get after he won the 92nd Indy 500:



If you're interested, check out my coverage of the race at domesticfuel.com. Just do a search for my name and all my posts should come up.

Another nickname...

I just had a friend call me the "Perpetual Traveler." Hahaha... I liked that one too.

Fav nicknames to date:

Lala - given to me by the fam many moons ago

Pluto - given to me by my good friends on Madrid Lane.

Renaissance Woman - Dustin's fine remarks

Perpetual Traveler - in the words of Bart

Learn to Fly...

...or swing around like a monkey. It all depends on how you look at it. Either way... I'm determined to learn how to do this! It's called Parkour:



Here's another one



I don't know why it says "Hated" at the end... whatev...

Courage in the Face of Disaster

We've all been hearing reports about the cyclone that barreled through Myanmar. The Death toll has reached 100,000 and is still climbing. Yet, the government still won't open its borders. And to think I was right there, literally next door, just a little over a month ago. Read the account of one CNN reporter. It's pretty unbelievable.

In our Behind the Scenes series, CNN correspondents share their experiences covering news and analyze the stories behind the events. Here CNN's Dan Rivers details his remarkable personal story to CNN Wire news editor Ashley Broughton after returning home Friday from five days in Myanmar, reporting on the aftermath of Cyclone Nargis.
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Rivers and his crew met this injured man while reporting on the tragedy.
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(CNN) -- Hiding under a blanket in the back of a car at a police checkpoint. Hopping on boats instead of staying on a road. Constantly looking over your shoulder, knowing that at any moment you -- and those with you -- face the possibility of imprisonment, torture, even death.

It sounds like a spy movie. But CNN's Dan Rivers, who sneaked into storm-ravaged Myanmar without the knowledge of the nation's secretive ruling junta, says the reality is even more frightening than it appears on the silver screen.

Now out of Myanmar, Rivers said Friday that his experience raises a question: If the government is chasing down a journalist reporting on a natural disaster, what kinds of problems are aid workers facing?

"The whole country is kind of a basket case," Rivers said. "Combine that with a disaster on this scale and a government that won't let anyone in -- they're turning a bad situation into ... what really is criminal negligence on a massive scale." Photo Look at satellite pictures of the damage by the flooding »

He is concerned, he said, that many more may die as a result of the government's self-imposed isolation.

Earlier in the week, he said, his crew videotaped government workers dumping bodies of the dead into a river. A government not engaged in such activities, which amount to a kind of cover-up, should have nothing to hide, Rivers noted. "Why should they be trying to hide a natural disaster? It's not their fault. It just illustrates the mentality of the regime. It's so suspicious of the outside world." Video Watch how some aid is getting through »
Don't Miss

* U.N. furious after aid seized in Myanmar
* U.S. mulls food drops to devastated Myanmar
* In Depth: Crisis in Myanmar
* iReport.com: Are you there? Send your photos, videos
Impact Your World
o See how you can make a difference

Rivers arrived in Myanmar on Monday morning, a few days after Cyclone Nargis ripped through the Irrawaddy Delta region, putting more than 2,000 square miles of land under water and killing tens of thousands of people.

The Myanmar government has said 22,000 people were killed. The top U.S. envoy in the country has said the death toll may be as high as 100,000.

Rivers is no stranger to natural disasters and their aftermath. In 2004, he was in Banda Aceh, Indonesia, covering the devastation wrought by a tsunami. In October 2005, he was in Pakistan after a magnitude-7.5 earthquake killed 75,000 people in Pakistan and India.

"I've seen a lot of horrible things like that, unfortunately," he said of the situation in Myanmar. But "it was bad, and ... it's the kind of story you really feel emotionally. In that way, it's easy to write the story, because it just flows out. You feel passionate about it."

In Myanmar, however, "the logistics were horrendous," he said. Getting to the hardest-hit area involved an eight-hour drive on dirt roads.

In some ways, Banda Aceh before the tsunami resembled Myanmar, he said. The region, the closest land to the magnitude-9.0 underwater earthquake that spawned the tsunami, was also home to a nearly three-decade conflict between Indonesian troops and separatist rebels, and people tended to be suspicious of outsiders. Video Watch Dan Rivers' report from Myanmar »

However, after the disaster, "they just opened the whole place up, and it was just carte blanche," he said. "Anyone could go in. I guess I naively assumed it would be the same in this instance," thinking that police, with so many victims and so much damage to worry about, would not be concerned with, say, the kind of visa carried by a visitor.

Within days of his arrival, he realized he was wrong.

Rivers and his crew had been in Myanmar for only a day when a local contact warned them that the government was seeking him -- just after his name was broadcast. The contact said authorities were alerting all hotels to report which foreigners had stayed there.

Still, though, "I was pretty confident we were being careful enough," he said. He and his crew were continually changing locations, moving from hotel to hotel. But he knew that the potential for a problem was there.

That became more apparent during a visit in the country's southern portion Thursday, when members of his crew asked a local official whether a road was open. The official said yes and was going to give them a pass, but he said an immigration official wanted to talk to them, Rivers said. That official took the crew members' passports and were comparing them to a picture of Rivers -- apparently taken from a picture of a CNN screen. Learn more about Myanmar's recent history »

"They disappeared for, like, two hours," Rivers said. "I didn't know what had happened to them." He said he was worried his crew members might be interrogated or tortured, and considered turning himself in.

"I was wandering the street, not knowing what to do," he said. It was "baking hot" -- about 40 degrees Celsius (104 degrees Fahrenheit), he said. He knew no one and was not fluent in the language. People were asking him who he was, where he came from. One person asked whether he was with the CIA.

The situation was "pretty uncomfortable," he said. "I must have looked pretty suspicious."

Luckily, he did not turn himself in -- and later found out that the officials did not know the crew members were from CNN or that they were accompanying him.

When the crew told him the officials had his photo, however, Rivers realized other authorities probably had his picture as well. The group decided to push farther south, he said. At one point, he hid under a blanket in the back of the car at a police checkpoint. It was at that checkpoint they were told that the people in the village they had just left wanted to see them again.

The crew turned around but decided to get off the road and followed a dirt road into the middle of the jungle, Rivers said. They parked the car, hopped on a boat and traveled down the river in two small boats. They reached a small village and were able to do some videotaping, he said. They also were checking on a rumor that there was a speedboat nearby.

While walking, however, they were stopped by a local official carrying a walkie-talkie, he said. The group was told to return to their van and that police would be waiting for them there.

The encounter, he said, was "gut-wrenching ... you think, 'Oh, my God, this is just going horribly wrong.' "

On the hour-long trek back through the jungle, Rivers said, he was genuinely fearful.

"For the first time, I was thinking, you know, this is it," he said. "We're in the middle of nowhere. No one knows where we are, exactly. They could just shoot us and throw us into the river and say we had an accident. ... You start to think about family and what you'd put them through if you disappear."

He said he expected a large phalanx of police officers at the van but was heartened to see only two officers there. The group was asked for their passports. In holding his out -- the last one to offer it -- Rivers said he held it in such a way that his thumb covered his surname. Not noticing, police took his middle name and radioed it in.

"They thought we weren't who they were looking for and basically let us go," he said, calling it a "fluke."

The group was escorted back into town and met with a more senior government official, who appeared convinced they were there as part of an aid group. Finally released, "we kind of hightailed it," driving all night into Yangon, he said.

"It was a genuinely very scary 12 hours," he said. "It really did seem like a week."

Still, he wasn't yet home free. One last search

Sitting in a seat on a flight out of Yangon, having made it through security with no problems, Rivers thought he was finished with the Myanmar government.

But a flight attendant approached him and told him immigration authorities wanted to see him again, he said. He was escorted off the plane to officials who were waiting for him at the gate.

The authorities "basically searched everything I had," he said. They went through his bag and made him turn out his pockets, remove his shoes and socks.

He believes they were looking for pictures or videotapes, but he had none. They did find a computer flash drive, Rivers said, but it had nothing on it and it was returned to him. His passport was taken -- and his real name seen this time.

Eventually, the flight attendant returned. Although he did not understand the discourse, Rivers said he believed she was telling them the flight could not be held any longer and asking whether they were going to let him leave.

And so they did. "They hadn't found anything on me. They probably just wanted to get me out of the country anyway," he said. "The whole time, I just didn't really say anything."

Speaking from his home Friday and battling exhaustion after about 36 hours without sleep, Rivers said his experience as a wanted man was "really surreal."

"I guess the colorful bit, all this sneaking around in the swamps and getting on boats and stuff -- there were some quite comical moments, when I was literally under a blanket in the back of a car, sweating profusely at a checkpoint, trying to look like a piece of luggage in the boot, and you're thinking, 'How do I get into these situations?' "
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But he said the stubbornness of the Myanmar regime was "breathtaking" -- that, in the face of such a large-scale disaster, they would utilize time and resources looking for a reporter.

"The more resources are spent chasing me, the less they're going to be concentrating on actually helping people," he said. "There comes a point where I've done my job. I've told people what was going on ... staying in much longer would have meant I was getting in the way of the story."

Renaissance Woman

I finally caught up with my friend Dustin through the phone last night. You know, the filmmaker/screenwriter who put together the video just below. Long, thoughtful phone conversations with him were a favorite hobby of mine before I left. Dustin is an excellent listener and an even better thinker and challenger. In our discussion, we hit upon the quote in Shantaram that seemed to completely throw my head into chaos. "Interested in everything, committed to nothing." Ever since, I've been desperately trying to explore why those words affected me so much. Dustin solved that with two words: Renaissance Woman. He told me my unwavering interest in all things new is simply an attribute of people of renaissance.

Renaissance woman. It has a nice ring to it. I'm sticking with it... ; )

Find the Magic

My friend Loic, the couchsurfer who hosted me in France, just emailed me. And, even through an electronic email, I was so affected by his enthusiasm and pure spirit. I said before that Loic is a treasure, a simply stunning person. I can feel his zeal for life through his words... I mean I really feel it. Can you?

For me it's more than busy, and I have taken the time to analyse where
I am, and where I want to go. In a way, I'm impressed to look at what
I have done, but I've also the paradoxical impression that "the more
you learn, the more you realise you have to learn".
So to summarize last months, difficult, full of learnings, magic, and
amazing... In few words, amazing evolutions...

I will leave from my job in september, I'm learning portuguese :), I'm
working more and more with six incredible young senegalese on an
incredible project (www.ndaam.com), with Nigerians on another project
in Niamey, I'm making informal microcredit (to my level) in Senegal,
and enjoying how magic can be the life. I go to work Senegal in less
than two months now... Finally for 4 weeks. So good
! I'll come back to France by the road and the desert, through
Mauritania and Marocco for two weeks of holidays and to see some
friends. To sum up, that's it ! Are you coming for the road ?? :)

You guys haven't met Loic, but, I have... and I just wish I could describe the person he is... but that's near impossible.

A Place to Call Home

A friend of my mine has made a comical little spoof on living as a "starving artist." Dustin is a filmmaker/screenwriter living in Chicago who is working on getting his career off the ground. I met him through couchsurfing. He's become an invaluable friend.

Check out his video. His dry, easy-going performance should crack a few laughs!

Shantaram - The Movie

So this is pretty crazy. I just stumbled upon news that the book Shantaram will be adapted to motion picture. The movie will be released in 2009, starring Johnny Depp as the main character Lin. Kinda crazy since I just read the book not even two months ago. Interesting because the book was such a pivotal, inspiring and thought-provoking book for me.

Here's a recap of my previous postings about the memoir:

Shantaram (excellent you should read it, it's too complex to get into what it’s about right now though). It had this quote – “interested in everything, but committed to nothing.” That line kept echoing in my mind.

“We can know God, for example, and we can know sadness. We can know dreams, and we can know love. But none of these are real, in our usual sense of things that exist in the world and seem real. We cannot weigh them, or measure their length, or find their basic parts in an atom smasher. Which is why they are possible.”

“The truth is often found more often in music, than it is in books of philosophy.”

“The truth is that here are no good men, or bad men. It is the deeds that have goodness or badness in them. There are good deeds and bad deed. Men are just men – it is what they do, or refuse to do, that links them to good and evil. The truth is that an instant of real love in the heart of anyone – the noblest man alive, or the most wicked – has the whole purpose and process and meaning of life within the lotus-fields of its passion. The truth is that we are all, every one of us, every atom, every galaxy, and every particle of matter in the universe, moving toward God.”

“Of course, naturally, God is impossible. That is the first proof that He exists.”

“All possible things don’t exist.”

“Nothing exists as we see it. Nothing we see is really there, as we think we are seeing it. Our eyes are liars. Everything that seems real, is merely part of the illusion. Nothing exists, as we think it does. Not you. Not me. Not this room. Nothing.”

“The sane man is simply a better liar than the insane man.”

Kismet = Fate (Urdu language)

“Reality, as most people see it, is nothing more than an illusion.”

“There is another reality, beyond what we see with our eyes. You have to feel your way into that reality with your heart. There is no other way.”

“Dream the future. Plan it. Then make it happen.”

“Suffering is the way we test our love, especially our love for God.”

“Justice is a judgment that is both fair and forgiving. Justice is not only the way we punish those who do wrong. It is also the way we try to save them.”

“A politician is someone who promises you a bridge even when there’s no river.”

“I don’t know what scares me more, the madness that smashes people down or their ability to endure it.”

“The burden of happiness can only be relieved by the burden of suffering.”

“What characterizes the human race more? Cruelty or the capacity to feel shame for it?”
- Niether. “It’s forgiveness that makes us what we are.”

“We live on because we love, and we love because we can forgive.”

“Every time we cage a man, we close him in with hate.”

“Fear dries a man’s mouth and hate strangles him. That’s why hate has no great literature: real fear and real hate have no words.”

The Ship That Sails

I'd rather be the ship that sails and rides the billows wild and free

Than to be the ship that always fails to leave its port and go to sea

I'd rather feel the sting of strife, where gales are born and tempests roar

Than settle down to useless life and rot in dry dock on the shore

I'd rather fight some mighty wave with honor in supreme command

And fill at last a well-earned grave, than die in ease upon the sand

I'd rather drive where sea storms blow, and be the ship that always failed

to make the ports where it would go, than be the ship that never sailed.

*verse from a quotes and passages book my mom gave me for graduation accompanied by a pic from my travels in Vietnam

Post-Americanism

My global wanderings have taken me to just four countries outside the "Western" world. In Thailand, I saw a country that was rapidly developing and "Westernizing", but still clinging to many of its Eastern traditions and characteristics. In Cambodia, I saw a poor nation still trying to rise up and start again from the murderous Pol Pot regime, a nations still struggling after 30 years of civil war. But, even in Cambodia, where (according to Wikipedia) 50 percent of its highways are still not paved, I saw pockets of developed wealth. I noticed, too, how the Chinese ($448 million in 2005) and Japanese ($22 million in 2007) governments were investing in Cambodia's millions of acres of undeveloped land and in the country's prized and ancient ruins of Angkor. Vietnam is on the crux of a boom in development (named a developing hot spot by a new CoreNet Global report). Laos seems to be the only country in that corner which, though influenced by Western travelers, still retains a seemingly pristine and untouched, native atmosphere. Raw, rich, beautiful. Yet, not for long I fear. Laos is getting its fair share of investment and I think it's only a matter of time before what's going on behind the scenes starts reshaping and developing this natural wonder. Luang Prabang is one city already ruined by tourists, save the street-side, all-you-can-eat veggie buffet that costs pocket change.

That's just my small understanding of what's going on in one small corner of the non-Western world. And it just goes to show, Fareed Zakaria is on to something when he speaks of post-Americanism in Newsweek. We're seeing movings and shakings in the rest of the world, many of which are occurring far outside America's sphere of influence:

Americans are glum at the moment, but the facts on the ground-unemployment numbers, foreclosure rates, deaths from terror attacks -- are simply not dire enough to explain the present atmosphere of malaise, writes Newsweek International Editor Fareed Zakaria in his forthcoming book, "The Post-American World," which is excerpted on the cover of the current issue of Newsweek. "American anxiety springs from something much deeper, a sense that large and disruptive forces are coursing through the world," Zakaria writes. "In almost every industry, in every aspect of life, it feels like the patterns of the past are being scrambled ... And-for the first time in living memory -- the United States does not seem to be leading the charge. Americans see that a new world is coming into being, but fear it is one being shaped in distant lands and by foreign people."

He writes, "In America, we are still debating the nature and extent of anti-Americanism. One side says that the problem is real and worrying and that we must woo the world back. The other says this is the inevitable price of power and that many of these countries are envious -- and vaguely French -- so we can safely ignore their griping. But while we argue over why they hate us, 'they' have moved on, and are now far more interested in other, more dynamic parts of the globe. The world has shifted from anti-Americanism to post-Americanism."

Over the last two decades, lands outside of the industrialized West have been growing at rates that were once unthinkable, Zakaria writes in the excerpt in the May 12 issue of Newsweek (on newsstands Monday, May 5). "While there have been booms and busts, the overall trend has been unambiguously upward ... This is something much broader than the much-ballyhooed rise of China or even Asia. It is the rise of the rest -- the rest of the world," he writes.

"We are living through the third great power shift in modern history. The first was the rise of the Western world, around the 15th century. It produced the world as we know it now -- science and technology, commerce and capitalism, the industrial and agricultural revolutions. It also led to the prolonged political dominance of the nations of the Western world. The second shift, which took place in the closing years of the 19th century, was the rise of the United States. Once it industrialized, it soon became the most powerful nation in the world, stronger than any likely combination of other nations.

"For the last 20 years, America's superpower status in every realm has been largely unchallenged -- something that's never happened before in history, at least since the Roman Empire dominated the known world 2,000 years ago. During this Pax Americana, the global economy has accelerated dramatically. And that expansion is the driver behind the third great power shift of the modern age -- the rise of the rest.

"At the military and political level, we still live in a unipolar world. But along every other dimension -- industrial, financial, social, cultural -- the distribution of power is shifting, moving away from American dominance. In terms of war and peace, economics and business, ideas and art, this will produce a landscape that is quite different from the one we have lived in until now -- one defined and directed from many places and by many peoples."

I Have to Give It to the Girls on This One...

This is dead on...

Comments on Pol Pot and Other 'Truths'

I really liked what a friend of mine from the Netherlands had to say about dictators. Here's what Lourens wrote:

Stories about 'the killing fields' are always fascinating to me. It shows what can happen when people or regimes (governments) claim that only they posses the 'real truth'. Therefore we should ALWAYS question those who make that kind of claims. The difficulty is, however, that those claims are often in disguise, or seem so very logical at that moment. And then suddenly a mass movement has started. Those who question such a hype are ignored, discarded, put aside etc.

Hitler is the absolute example (now, afterwards). Pol Pot probably had believers at that time. People often trust their leaders and even willing to fight for them. The First World War was an incredible example. Soldiers driven into death by the thousands.

Dith Pran said it correctly (note: in case you forgot, Dith Pran is the Cambodia journalist who survived the genocide of Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. He just passed away):

"If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

It makes me wander in thoughts to Iraq, the modern killing fields. We were clearly misguided by our great leaders, who claimed their truth. I understand that Americans still might think different.

We are Such Hypocrites...

Everyone is making a big deal about this priest who is arrested in Russia. While it is unfortunate that he is being detained and while I would like to believe he intended no ill-will, he tried to enter Russia with a box of ammo. The priest, Philip Miles, says it was ammo for "his friend's new Winchester rifle." Miles has also been going to Russia for the past ten years for mission work. But, c'mon. If it was some Russian or some Middle Eastern who had the same story while trying to come into the U.S., you bet our authorities would have put that guy in jail. People need to quit acting shocked over the arrest and saying it's not fair. It makes sense. Hopefully, it will get cleared up. But again, c'mon people. Quit having a double-standard when it comes to national security!

A Moscow court on Monday convicted an American pastor of smuggling hunting ammunition into Russia and sentenced him to three years and two months in prison.

Phillip Miles, pastor of Christ Community Church in Conway, S.C., part of an evangelical fellowship, has been in custody since his arrest Feb. 3, several days after arriving in Moscow.

Miles has said he brought the .300-caliber cartridges for a friend who had recently bought a Winchester rifle -- a gun rarely found in Russia. He said he did not know bringing such ammunition into Russia was illegal.

"I'm very disappointed. It's a strange sentence for one box of hunting bullets," he said as bailiffs led him from the court in handcuffs. His lawyer, calling the sentence surprisingly severe, said he would appeal.

Pol Pot Still Haunts Villagers

Most of you probably don't know who Pol Pot is, but he is THE man responsible for the mass genocide in Cambodia in the late 70s. Remember this picture of the pile of the cracked skulls? It was that remains of the victims of the Khmer Rouge at the killing fields... well, that some more bones, some bits of clothing and dozens of mass graves. That was all Pol Pot's doing. Remember the jail I walked through where I could still see the dark blood of victims staining the floors and walls? Again, Pol Pot. The monster died in 1998. But, it seems some people are still worshiping him. Either out of reverence or fear... of his spirit. The Cambodian genocide trial is just getting underway right now too.

ANLONG VENG, Cambodia (AP) -- Ten years after the death of brutal Khmer Rouge leader Pol Pot, his grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort to some in the village where he is buried.


Pol Pot's grave has become a symbol of spiritual comfort for some in the village where he is buried.

Villagers pray at the site, asking for blessings of luck, happiness and even protection from malaria -- despite the mayhem he wrought upon their country. He died on April 15, 1998, apparently of heart failure.

"I know it is odd, but I just do as many people here do, asking for happiness from his spirit," said Orn Pheap, a 37-year-old woman who lost a grandfather and two uncles during the Khmer Rouge's reign of terror from 1975 to 1979.

"I don't know how long I can stay angry with him, since he is already dead," she said. Her house sits 100 yards from the grave.

Officials in Anlong Veng, 250 kilometers north of the capital, Phnom Penh, say only few of the area's 35,000 residents pray at Pol Pot's grave.

For most, Pol Pot is remembered as a murderous tyrant with fanatical communist beliefs. Under his leadership, the Khmer Rouge turned the country into a vast slave labor camp, causing the deaths of some 1.7 million people from starvation, forced labor and execution.

But Cambodians believe in the influence of spirits and superstitious forces on their daily lives and fortunes, which may be why some worship at Pol Pot's grave.

Last week, the grave -- a pile of dirt covered by a knee-high corrugated zinc roof -- was cluttered with clay jars filled with half-burned incense sticks, a sign of prayer and worship.

Many may still view their former tormentor as a powerful figure, said Philip Short, author of "Pol Pot: The History of a Nightmare," a biography of the former despot.

"Evil or good is not the issue," Short said. "He has imposed himself on Cambodians' imaginations, and in that sense he lives on" in the spirit world.

Don't Miss
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Once a jungle war zone, Anlong Veng is now a sprawling border market town bustling with the kind of capitalist activities Pol Pot and his comrades sought to stamp out. Ramshackle shops are filled with clothing, housewares, pirated DVDs and other goods from nearby Thailand.

Cambodian pop songs blare from a coffee shop near Pol Pot's grave, which has been designated a tourist attraction. It is among the few remnants of Khmer Rouge history, which the government is trying to preserve.

Some Cambodians have traveled to Anlong Veng to spit on the grave and curse him in anger, said 37-year-old Sat Narin, who owns a nearby clothing shop.

"Given his bad reputation, he should not be venerated," he said. "But somehow he is popular with some people."

Among the worshippers who seek blessings from Pol Pot's ghost are ethnic Vietnamese who live in the community -- a sharp irony given Pol Pot's massacres of ethnic Vietnamese during his rule.

A 33-year-old Vietnamese resident, who goes by her adopted Cambodian name of Van Sothy, recalled a nightmare in which she saw a black-clad man sitting on a tree near her hut.

When she described the vision to her Cambodian neighbors, they advised her to bring offerings of fruit and boiled chicken to Pol Pot's grave to ask his spirit for protection.

"I have prayed at his grave ever since. I just want to show some respect to the spiritual master of the land," she said.

If Pol Pot were alive, he would likely be facing war crimes charges along with five of his former comrades currently detained by Cambodia's U.N.-backed genocide tribunal. The long-delayed trials are expected to start later this year.


Nhem En, who was forced to work as the photographer at the Khmer Rouge's Tuol Sleng torture center in Phnom Penh, says he is setting up his own museum in Anlong Veng about the communist group -- not to glorify them but for educational purposes.

He too used to light incense and pray at Pol Pot's grave, he said, but "only for him not to butcher people again in his next life."

I Would Just Like to Say...

...that the world is exciting!!!

More on that later...

Set the Powers Free...

"Enthusiasm comes with the revelation of true and satisfying objectives of devotion; and it is enthusiasm that sets the powers free." ~ Woodrow Wilson

Going Light...

One of my main goals since I've returned to the US is to get rid of most of my possessions. Why? Because I want to be back to wandering the world in October and not have to worry about "junk" I've left behind.

I stumbled upon this verse today and found it inspiring:

“Do not store up for yourselves treasures on earth, where moth and rust destroy, and where thieves break in and steal. But store up for yourselves treasures in heaven, where moth and rust do not destroy, and where thieves do not break in and steal. For where your treasure is, there your heart will be also. (Matt 6:19-21)

Killing Fields Survivor Dies

I just learned about the killing fields, seeing the remnants of them myself, last December. Now, I learn that Dith Pran, a Cambodian journalist who survived the killing spree, has died from cancer. The movie, The Killing Fields, was the popular film that told the story of the murderous Khmer Rouge. It was based off of Dith's character.


NEW YORK (AP) -- Dith Pran, the Cambodian-born journalist whose harrowing tale of enslavement and eventual escape from that country's murderous Khmer Rouge revolutionaries in 1979 became the subject of the award-winning film "The Killing Fields," died Sunday, his former colleague said.


Dith Pran founded an awareness project dedicated to educating people about the Khmer Rouge regime.

Dith, 65, died at a New Jersey hospital Sunday morning of pancreatic cancer, according to Sydney Schanberg, his former colleague at The New York Times. Dith had been diagnosed almost three months ago.

Dith was working as an interpreter and assistant for Schanberg in Phnom Penh, the Cambodian capital, when the Vietnam War reached its chaotic end in April 1975 and both countries were taken over by Communist forces.

Schanberg helped Dith's family get out but was forced to leave his friend behind after the capital fell; they were not reunited until Dith escaped four and a half years later. Eventually, Dith resettled in the United States and went to work as a photographer for the Times.

It was Dith himself who coined the term "killing fields" for the horrifying clusters of corpses and skeletal remains of victims he encountered on his desperate journey to freedom.

The regime of Pol Pot, bent on turning Cambodia back into a strictly agrarian society, and his Communist zealots were blamed for the deaths of nearly 2 million of Cambodia's 7 million people.

"That was the phrase he used from the very first day, during our wondrous reunion in the refugee camp," Schanberg said later.

With thousands being executed simply for manifesting signs of intellect or Western influence -- even wearing glasses or wristwatches -- Dith survived by masquerading as an uneducated peasant, toiling in the fields and subsisting on as little as a mouthful of rice a day, and whatever small animals he could catch.

After Dith moved to the U.S., he became a goodwill ambassador for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees and founded the Dith Pran Holocaust Awareness Project, dedicated to educating people on the history of the Khmer Rouge regime.

He was "the most patriotic American photographer I've ever met, always talking about how he loves America," said AP photographer Paul Sakuma, who knew Dith through their work with the Asian American Journalists Association.

Schanberg described Dith's ordeal and salvation in a 1980 magazine article titled "The Death and Life of Dith Pran." Schanberg's reporting from Phnom Penh had earned him a Pulitzer Prize in 1976.

Later a book, the magazine article became the basis for "The Killing Fields," the highly successful 1984 British film starring Sam Waterston as the Times correspondent and Haing S. Ngor, another Cambodian escapee from the Khmer Rouge, as Dith Pran.

The film won three Oscars, including the best supporting actor award to Ngor. Ngor, a physician, was shot to death in 1996 during a robbery outside his Los Angeles home. Three Asian gang members were convicted of the crime.

"Pran was a true reporter, a fighter for the truth and for his people," Schanberg said. "When cancer struck, he fought for his life again. And he did it with the same Buddhist calm and courage and positive spirit that made my brother so special."

Dith spoke of his illness in a March interview with The Star-Ledger of Newark, New Jersey, saying he was determined to fight against the odds and urging others to get tested for cancer.

"I want to save lives, including my own, but Cambodians believe we just rent this body," he said. "It is just a house for the spirit, and if the house is full of termites, it is time to leave."

Dith Pran was born September 27, 1942 at Siem Reap, site of the famed 12th century ruins of Angkor Wat. Educated in French and English, he worked as an interpreter for U.S. officials in Phnom Penh. As with many Asians, the family name, Dith, came first, but he was known by his given name, Pran.

After Cambodia's leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, broke off relations with the United States in 1965, Dith worked at other jobs. When Sihanouk was deposed in a 1970 coup and Cambodian troops went to war with the Khmer Rouge, Dith returned to Phnom Penh and worked as an interpreter for Times reporters.

In 1972, he and Schanberg, then newly arrived, were the first journalists to discover the devastation of a U.S. bombing attack on Neak Leung, a vital river crossing on the highway linking Phnom Penh with eastern Cambodia.

Dith recalled in a 2003 article for the Times what it was like to watch U.S. planes attacking enemy targets.

"If you didn't think about the danger, it looked like a performance," he said. "It was beautiful, like fireworks. War is beautiful if you don't get killed. But because you know it's going to kill, it's no longer beautiful."

After Vietnamese forces invaded Cambodia in 1979 and seized control of territory, Dith escaped from a commune near Siem Reap and trekked 40 miles, dodging both Vietnamese and Khmer Rouge forces, to reach a border refugee camp in Thailand.

From the Thai camp he sent a message to Schanberg, who rushed from the United States for an emotional reunion with the trusted friend he felt he had abandoned four years earlier.

"I had searched for four years for any scrap of information about Pran," Schanberg said. "I was losing hope. His emergence in October 1979 felt like an actual miracle for me. It restored my life."

After Dith moved to the U.S., the Times hired him and put him in the photo department as a trainee. The veteran staffers "took him under their wing and taught him how to survive on the streets of New York as a photographer, how to see things," said Times photographer Marilynn Yee.

Yee recalled an incident early in Dith's new career as a photojournalist when, after working the 4 p.m. to midnight shift, he was robbed at gunpoint of all his camera equipment at the back door of his apartment.

"He survived everything in Cambodia and he survived that too," she said, adding, "He never had to work the night shift again."

Dith spoke and wrote often about his wartime experience and remained an outspoken critic of the Khmer Rouge regime.

When Pol Pot died in 1998, Dith said he was saddened that the dictator was never held accountable for the genocide.

"The Jewish people's search for justice did not end with the death of Hitler and the Cambodian people's search for justice doesn't end with Pol Pot," he said.

Dith's survivors include his companion, Bette Parslow; his former wife, Meoun Ser Dith; a sister, Samproeuth Dith Nop; sons Titony, Titonath and Titonel; daughter Hemkarey Dith Tan; six grandchildren including a boy named Sydney; and two step-grandchildren.

Dith's three brothers were killed by the Khmer Rouge.

Learn the Head Fake and Live Your Dreams...

One of my roommates during college just posted this video on my profile in Facebook... It's a video that EVERYONE should watch. It's long, but worth every minute. It's priceless... and it made me tear up.

Randy Pausch Lecture: Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams

Carnegie Mellon Professor Randy Pausch, who is dying from pancreatic cancer, gave his last lecture at the university Sept. 18, 2007, before a packed McConomy Auditorium. In his moving talk, "Really Achieving Your Childhood Dreams," Pausch talked about his lessons learned and gave advice to students on how to achieve their own career and personal goals. For more, visit www.cmu.edu/randyslecture.

"Journeys" are special University Lectures in which Carnegie Mellon faculty members share their reflections on their journeys -- the everyday actions, decisions, challenges and joys that make a life.


Some quotes I pulled from it with the hopes to get you to sit down and actually watch it - BECAUSE YOU SHOULD:

"I'm dying... and I'm having fun."

"Wait long enough and people will surprise and impress you."

"Never lose the child-like wonder."

"Experience is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."

"If your kids want to paint their bedroom, as a favor to me, let them do it."

"Brick walls are there to let us show our dedication."

"Luck is where preparation meets opportunity."

Muslims Embrace Pope Benedict

This sounds like a step in the right direction...

The following op-ed is by Nihad Awad, co-founder of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR), the nation's largest Muslim civil liberties group. He may be contacted at: nawad@cair.com.

As one of 138 Islamic leaders and scholars from around the world who last October signed the first-of-its-kind "A Common Word Between Us and You" open letter intended to promote understanding between Muslims and Christians, I welcome Pope Benedict XVI on his first papal visit to the United States.

While that letter, which was well received by the pope and other world Christian leaders, recognizes the differences between our two faiths, it also states: "[L]et our differences not cause hatred and strife between us. Let us vie with each other only in righteousness and good works. Let us respect each other, be fair, just and kind to (one) another and live in sincere peace, harmony and mutual goodwill."

It is this desire for harmony and goodwill between faiths that leads American Muslim leaders to welcome the pope and to meet with him during his visit to our nation.
Religious leaders have a great responsibility and opportunity to show the best of both our faith and of our nation's religious diversity during the pope's visit. We must demonstrate that our faith in God should be a source of peace and reconciliation, not violence or mutual mistrust.
American Muslims can also reiterate that they respect and love the revered figures of Christianity, including Jesus and his mother Mary.
As God states in the Quran, Islam's revealed text: "Behold! The angels said: 'O Mary! God gives you glad tidings of a Word from Him. His name will be Jesus Christ, the son of Mary, held in honor in this world and the Hereafter and in (the company of) those nearest to God.'" (The Holy Quran, 3:45)
The Quran also reaffirms God's eternal message of spiritual unity when it states: "Say ye: 'We believe in God and the revelation given to us and to Abraham, Ismail, Isaac, Jacob, and the Tribes, and that given to Moses and Jesus, and that given to (all) Prophets from their Lord. We make no distinction between any of them, and it is unto Him that we surrender ourselves.'" (2:136)
The Prophet Muhammad said: "Both in this world and in the Hereafter, I am the nearest of all people to Jesus, the son of Mary. The prophets are paternal brothers; their mothers are different, but their religion is one."
As Americans, we cherish diversity, not only in race and ethnicity, but also in faith. In that spirit, I see the pope's visit as an opportunity for him to learn more about America and its respect for religious diversity.
Unfortunately, some of the pope's past statements and actions have led to tensions between Muslims and Catholics. It is perhaps best not to dwell on these past events, but instead to use them as a springboard to help deepen interfaith dialogue based on mutual understanding and acceptance of differences.
The true test of productive interfaith dialogue comes when we build partnerships to take on the great challenges facing humanity today - injustice, inequality, war, poverty, illiteracy, disease, and hunger. To that end, we must quickly expand and strengthen the constructive conversation between faiths.
Two great faith communities, Islam and Christianity, together make up more than half of the world's population. It is therefore imperative that Muslims and Christians use their faith to make a positive difference in their communities and the world.
By preaching - and practicing - the values of tolerance, love of one's neighbor, justice, peace, and reconciliation, people of all faiths can help reverse the world's disturbing descent into violence and division.
Today the world needs forward-looking political and religious leaders who focus more on the future than on the past. We need leaders who build on what we have in common, not on our differences.
It is our hope and expectation that Pope Benedict XVI is one of those who will help lead our world to a better future.
ISLAM-OPED is a syndication service of the Council on American-Islamic Relations (CAIR) designed to offer an American Muslim perspective on current political, social and religious issues. ISLAM-OPED commentaries are offered free-of-charge to one media outlet in each market area. Permission for publication will be granted on a first-come-first-served basis.
Please consider the following commentary for publication.

Just Play The Game...

"You could not live your life in the fear of the unknown. You made your plans, took the necessary precautions and then you played the game." ~Mohammad, The Teeth of the Tiger by Tom Clancy

This Doesn't Help...

Once again, I've got a ton of catching up to do. And, for those of you who don't know, I am back in the U S of A.

I was just parusing Ben's blog since he's still living the dream and... well, I'm not at the moment. I'm thinking I shouldn't read his blog for a bit... it just convinces me that I made the wrong decision. After trekking to base camp on Mt. Everest, he is back in Bangkok just in time for the water festival!!!

Right now it is Songkran, the Thai new year. Also known as the Water Festival, it consists of drenching every person with buckets of water, nailing them with super soakers, or lobbing water baloons around. It is literally impossible to stay dry if you go outside. The tempurature here is brutally hot, so the water feels great, but it makes it dangerous for me to bring my camera out. I saw some people with good bags around thiers, screwed into the lens filter, and may try that today with the camera on an auto mode. The festival goes on until the 15th, and I dont leave until the 18th, so I may zip out to one of the surrounding towns for a few days at the end.

Life was so much easier over there... I've had hassle after hassle since I've been back. But, I'm focused. And I AM going back out to embrace that HUGE, CRAZY WORLD. Flights are set. Now is the time to save some moola, get the right gear and get rid of EVERYTHING else... and I mean EVERYTHING!!