Sydney

Coffee in Sydney is good too. I'm still to have one bad cup of coffee in Australia.
Today, Saturday, I took a long walk towards the centre that allowed me to find a relaxed, intimated, more humans in scale side of the city. Up until now, it all looked grand and big and new: the Bridge, the Opera, the Harbour -only at the museums, albeit grand as well, I could find gave some solace in their collections. Today, even walking around the centre, as I was making my way to the very tall Sydney Tower (spectacular view of the city), I spotted some very good XX century architecture, staring with the 1934 ANZAC memorial, dwarfed by the high buildings around its Hyde Park.
As in Melbourne, the best part of my visit to Sydney is seeing my friends here. As a matter of fact I'm staying with them, which gives me an insider perspective of living in this city.
I went to the Blue Mountains for a night and a day. Did some hiking -the most popular of the hiking tracks, but still stunning and not that busy, save for the Japanese and German tourists I crossed at times.
Other than that, I pursued very urban endeavours. Eating out, going for drinks, a great night out of clubbing that ended in one of those dark, sweaty after-hours that I like so much.
Over the weekend, thanks to this city's amazing autumn, we went to the pool and the beach (Bondi Beach). Just great.
Monday early (for me) morning, I'll hoop on a bus that will take me north, up the Gold Coast, for 10 days of surfing -haven't surfed since October, we'll see how much I have to relearn. Back to Sydney for a couple of days after that, before embarking in the second half of the Australian leg of the trip (national parks and open spaces).

Aboriginal

As I wrote earlier today on my other blog, I'm mesmerised by Australian Aboriginal art.
It started at the National Gallery of Victoria and continued, in Sydney, at different museums (National Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art, Australian Museum).
Calling it "Aboriginal art" might give the wrong impression that I'm interested in it from an ethnographic or anthropologic point of view. That is not at all the case. I'm mesmerised by the contemporary creation of Australian artists based on their Aboriginal traditions and heritages.
I particularly like how they navigate between abstraction and figuration. Their pieces depicting real, concrete things, telling actual stories, in an abstract language. Lines that recreate the undulating surface of the desert or the ocean, dots that recall the rare bloom of the desert, spirals showing the serpent of fire, totems and funerary stelae telling the story of the deceased. At the same time, all that can be taken as just lines, dots, spirals, patiently decorated trunks without any reference to the concrete form.
In an extremely simple and direct way, these artists transmit real emotions and feelings.
I have seen pieces of Australian artist in the Western tradition or in a hybrid fashion. However, it's this new and fresh -for me- artistic tradition, which reference I don't know or understand, that has the upper hand. I can interpret what I see according to my own cultural background. I just see it, feel it.
The pictures below are of pieces by Doreen Reid Makamarra, Yukultji Napangati, Elizabeth Nyumi, John Mawurdjul and George Tjingurrayi. They can be found at the National Gallery of New South Wales, Museum of Contemporary Art.

Melbourne

Melbourne feels so confident and civilised. I reckon that I'll find that feeling of confidence almost everywhere in this country; confidence on a society that works and an economic that doesn't seem to have many limits -as the country itself feels too. Confidence and pride.
I spent my days in Melbourne between the city centre and Prahran (pronounced almost like "pram"), But for a morning I took the tram to St. Kilda, to see the beach.
The best of the centre are the laneways, very lively smaller streets full of cafes (coffee in Melbourne is that good), restaurants and any kind of shops. They give you an intimate feeling amongst the tall, new, grand office buildings of the CBD (central business district). I did most of the sightseeing guidebooks recommend: my favourite was the Australian collection at the National Gallery of Victoria, specially the aboriginal art display.
Prahran feels like Palermo Viejo/Soho/Hollywood in Buenos Aires.
On top of that, I got that feeling of vastness and space most Europeans feel when leaving our small, peninsular continent. I was expecting it, as well as how evident it is today this was the last space Europeans colonised: it does feel new and still a frontier.
However, the very best of my stay in Melbourne was to see and catch up with the friends I have there -spending time with them with the excuse of some sightseeing, a coffee, eating, drinking.
Saturday evening, while resting in my room, I realised I was little more than 2 weeks into my trip and I still have about 13 weeks in front of me. It felt exciting and somewhat daunting, I have to confess. I hadn't truly appreciated the fact until then.
I sort of forgot to talk about my experience with immigration as I arrived to the country last Wednesday. I was questioned twice. I guess there is now some risk in allowing Spaniards to enter the country as tourists: we might overstayed.

HK

I love Hong Kong. It was instant. The moment I stepped out into the city, Sunday afternoon, I felt my heart racing and a big smile on my face -and that continued during my two days here. It's a shame I'm not staying longer.
The weather hasn't been great. It's warm enough, but rather misty as well. I went up The Peak and the view wasn't clear enough. But I didn't care.
That was my only truly sightseeing activity. The rest of the time was spent just walking around aimlessly and getting relatively lost, eating and going out for drinks. I think I enjoy the exotism of the Far East on the easier environment given by the still clear British legacy -the island side was Vitoria City, wasn't it? I'm still unsure whether I want to visit mainland China -other than Shanghai, which is on a list for an "awe and horror of contemporary urbanism and architecture" tour, alongside Astana, Baku and Dubai.
I went to Kowloon for a few hours. It feels very different, it reminded me of some provincial Japanese city like Kagoshima. And it's all about shopping. Fortunately, an American (rotary wing) aircraft carrier was docked at the port and its sailors, dotted here and there, beautified the streets with their off-duty martial casualness and youth.
I haven't taken many pictures (not even of the servicemen), mainly because I was too busy soaking the atmosphere of the place.
On my previous post I wrote I could live in Manila. In Hong Kong, I want to live. It has gone straight up to my top 5 on my list of dream assignments -and of course I want to come back. I'm somewhat scouting for possible assignments.
I am not blind to the fact that most people in this city and around have very head lives and that most of its glitter and charm is based on the exploitation of the many.
However, I can only talk about what I experience, and imagine the live I would have here.
Flying overnight to Melbourne. My 6 weeks in Australia are about to start -I can't express how excited I am.

WOW & phew!

I've spent just two days in Manila. What a shock after Koror!
It's huge, chaotic and not very easy to navigate. As in many other parts of this world -both in the rich and the poor- the public space is dirty and badly kept -or not kept at all. I ended up taking refuge in closed, gated, secured environments.
I spent a morning walking around Intramuros, which is what remains of the old Spanish colonial city -wealthy beyond dreams in the XIX century. What remains is very little and not very inspiring, I'm sorry to say. It's not Havana, Santo Domingo, San Juan... That was what I was expecting.
Very little remains, more than 110 years after the Hispanic-American War of our 400 years presence. I was only able to notice the Spanish influence in the religious art and the traditional cuisine -surprisingly, much more than in a good portion of Spanish America. It seems that the religious orders left cooks along side a dramatic take on the catholic faith and its religious art.
I then tried to find theManila Bay (to where one of my great grand-fathers, the merchant navy captain, would have several times arrived from Havana 100 years ago). That proved to be quite a hard, tiring and sticky challenge (it was hot and humid, even for my standards). I did get there, though, and wasn't very impressed. At that point, I decided I couldn't continue playing the righteous tourist and, doing what the Romans were doing, took refuge at the centenary Manila Hotel -stunning lobby and bar: tropical dark woods, well-placed mirrors, good lights. After a decent coffee, hopped on a taxi back to Makati, the upmarket(ish) commercial and residential area I was staying -I thankfully followed a local friend's advice and chose a nice hotel to stay.
I've spent the rest of my time in Makati. Was taken for dinner and a drink in the area. The evening was pleasantly warm and I started to feel more at ease.
I could live in Manila, and would enjoy a 2 or 3 years assignment here. I would find hard adjusting to the "mall-centred" lifestyle, but would find my way around it -and would have what seems like an amazing, complex country to explore.
Next stop is Hong Kong for two nights.

Aware

Today, Friday 12th April, I used my last few hours in Palau to visit a museum, hike up to some mobile phone antennas for about 2 hours to take (more) pictures of the Rock Islands and get beaten up in the form of a Chinese massage.
I'm glad I visited the Episton Museum, for it showed me how wrong I was thinking that there was little of the traditional culture left. Up until now, I could only see the bento boxes, the weak coffee, the chopsticks and baseball bats -I couldn't see beyond them.
The Episton (a former president) is some sort of ethnographic museum of the people's of Palau, the other Carolines and the rest of Micronesia. The displays (bead, turtle conch and stone money, costumes and woven fabrics, rather recent pictures of local dances and ceremonies) allowed me to see that the local traditions and believes are still alive. They are not on display for passing-by tourists and their untrained, unaware eyes.
After the hike (happy I took it, in spite of the probable sunburn), while having a very nice lunch, I could notice several women wearing bead money necklaces, showing their rank and status (in Palau, women are the depositary of personal and communal wealth). Not that I consider my eyes trained, maybe just a tad more aware.
In these 7 days, Palau has slowly opened up a little to me. The not so good first impressions, as I arrived tired and jetlagged, have vanished in the warm and humid thick air. Following a much wiser friend's advice, I've stopped looking for the reasons that took me here. I'm just happy I came.
To the Rock Islands: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j__OhNPutzA

Reba

I'm an advanced open water diver now. Got my certification after a drift dive, when you allow the current to take you, and feel that your flying (yes, I did straight my left fist up as I shortened my right arm ), a deep dive and a wreck dive. I very much enjoyed them, but I'm happy I'm done.
I'll spend the next days exploring the surface: a tour of the Rock Islands (I'm still mesmerised by them) and the area around Koror.
I can't upload pictures (I will, I promise) or embed videos. But I can post links. Last evening I had dinner at an American-themed steakhouse. It was fun, I only for the slight incongruence of the cowboy hats, the swinging doors and the country music (Reba's greatest hits, including this:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=a_Fz2PnaNNo -trust the link works... Donna and Liza covered this song too).

Palauing

I always wanted to come to Palau, but can't explain why.
I can however come up with two possible answers.
One, the most probable, is that I discovered that Palau existed in 1994, when it became independent, and I found intriguing that countries could still, 5 years after the Fall of the Wall, be under a UN Trust administration dating back to the end of the II World War. It seemed so anachronic back then -I was younger and naif, and was yet to discovered, for instance, that XIX literature can shed light on, and explain, many of our deepest problems. After then, several other new countries have appeared on the maps, but in very different ways.
The second answer is that my grandmother would have mentioned "las Palaos" at some point, when talking about her father, a captain of the merchant navy, who would ordinarily make the return trip from Havana to Manila in the 1920s. As a matter of fact, I like to think that my fascination for the South Seas comes from listening to her stories about him, although I might have to look elsewhere -I only have am adult's recollection of my grandmother's stories. Although I would prefer to establish that link, as I'm the fourth generation of a family of migrants and travellers, I might have to blame just myself.
Whichever the reasons, the fact is that I'm in Palau and I find this mere fact exhilarating. It feels far and remote (the patchy Internet connectivity helps a lot to that -uploading pictures or embedding videos is out of the question).
Not that everything is good.
I'm staying at a jaded modern charmless hotel, full of Japanese and Chinese tourists and a group of noisy Spaniards.
Koror might have the attributes of any nation's capital: a "capitol", where the national assembly meets; a few ministries here and there; a judicial centre, where the Supreme Court seats (at a rather intriguing Japanese building from the 1920s); a national museum (its exhibition showing clearly a preference for Japan among the 4 former foreign administrations). However, Koror seems to be little more than a few streets around the main north-south drag (practically jammed during the morning rush hour, as the road from Petionville to Port-au-Prince was).
In many respects, there is very little that makes this place different from any other of the tropical nations I know. Maybe, the main distinctive characteristic is that the Western/American influence is rather nicely balanced by the subtle pleasant order of the Japanese.
However, theselukewarm first impressions changed once I jumped on a boat and navigated through the labyrinth of the Rock Islands. It's just magnificent and beautiful -worth the 4 flights I took to get here.
Then, in just 2 dives, I crossed turtles, manta rays, grey reef sharks, tunas, tiger fish and shoals of fish -and swam in a land-locked sultry lake with about 5 millions stingless golden jellyfish.
I still can't explain why I wanted to come, but I'm very happy I came.

Almost there

Starting point

It doesn't matter how I got here, because this is just the starting point. Tomorrow morning, I'm boarding a plane in Madrid and, about 24 hours and 3 connections later, I will find myself in Palau.
At the other end, sometime in mid-July, I will board a plane in Santiago de Chile to head back to Madrid, where I will, then, settle (for a while -life as transit). In a double movement, I'm leaving behind the life I came to know and will, in time, faire peau neuve.
This blog will be the diary of that journey. I will post thoughts and splashes of music, I will share impressions and anecdotes, I will upload pictures, and I might tell a few lies. So, stay tuned: this is about to start.