Lapse. Again.

I think life completely ran away with me these past few months, seems to be a pattern. Or just busy. So here's a summary of what I have been doing, this way I can expand on them later in no particular order or preference!

Finished massive project for Honda - launch of CR-Z at Amplify, The Dream Factory

Went for Jim's dress up party (amongst many others which photos shouldn't feature for a number of drunken reasons!)


On my own again, freelancing and pursuing my feature films and documentary projects (sorry, its still secret)

We bought a flat! Finally! It is gorgeous and has a small garden and we are still decorating - stressful but so heart warming

We went to Glastonbury, worked to build the Greenpeace field and heavily involved in concept, design and build of the Rainforest Showers before the fest started - Lee's idea from our experience in the Amazon, and wow what an incredible 10 days that was. The best Glasto ever: all the pics here with a taster below!

Dressing up for our mass wedding - we married 18 people, biggest ever!


Just hanging out by the campfire with the Greenpeace crew


Night before the crowds descend - we didn't want them to come!

Training home

We escaped to Wales this weekend to hang out with Bobby and get some much needed downtime. It was sunny, so hot and we bathed in the glorious weather all day with some playtime with the new baby donkey, which is just so adorable!

Had a lovely time eating, drinking, talking and hanging out with our wonderful (large) family.

On train back now and our reading time was rudely interrupted by the wail of U2's "Still Havent Found What I'm Looking" for. I look over to Helena was smiles her fantastically knowing grin and looks for her headphones to drown out this groan inducing tune. I look for the culprit and it's the dude sitting behind her- long hair, leather jacket, dressed in black with beer can in hand thrilled to bits with his U2 sesh. I really do rue the day damn product developers of mobile phones thought it would be a good thing to add in radio and speakers.

And I am sometimes reminded that there are stereotypes you can't ignore. Still got an hour to go!


-- Post From My iPhone

Insane ash

The Icelandic volcano has been spouting some seriously powerful ash into the atmosphere, already 6-10km high and has shut down British and many EU nation's aerospace, not a single flight in or out. It is just incredibly insane to imagine that a volcano deep beneath Icelandic glaciers has erupted to such a magnitude and caused such palava.

Mother nature is pissed off.

Stamps

I wonder why no one has thought to make stamps taste nicer - spent half an hour at the post office and had to lick a few stamps, ugh. Not nice.

Raise your voice

So the incredible has happened (as it seems to do everyday in the world) but the Greenpeace and Climate Camp activists have won an epic court ruling to have the government go back to square one with the Heathrow 3rd runway plan and review their entire proposal.

Read the news here. Great news!

Ceylon's mistakes

Fascinating article about how Singapore's former leader views conflict, mistakes and Sri Lanka.

Choosing English brought success to Singapore, says Lee Kwan Yew

The mistakes of Sri Lanka and other newly independent 'failed states' made Singapore go in a different direction, its founding prime minister told the International Herald Tribune (IHT) in an interview. Lee Kwan Yew, now minister mentor, said when Singapore broke off from the Malayan Federation it had a hostile neighbour and population made of Chinese, Malays and immigrants from the Indian subcontinent."The basis of a nation just was not there. But the advantage we had was that we became independent late," Lee recalled in a wide ranging interview with the IHT published last week."

In 1965, we had 20 years of examples of failed states. So, we knew what to avoid - racial conflict, linguistic strife, religious conflict. We saw Ceylon."

"Thereafter, we knew that if we embarked on any of these romantic ideas, to revive a mythical past of greatness and culture, we'd be damned."

Lee was prime minister from 1959 to 1990 when he stepped down. Sri Lanka gained independence from Britain in 1948.Lee said the team that ran Singapore made a deliberate decision to use English as a working language and not focus on Chinese. At the time Singapore had Chinese, Malay and India schools in separate language mediums.

The British has also set up English schools to produce clerks, storekeepers and teachers. "Had we chosen Chinese, which was our majority language, we would have perished, economically and politically," Lee told the IHT.

"Riots - we've seen Sri Lanka, when they switched from English to Sinhalese and disenfranchised the Tamils and so strife ever after. "We chose - we didn't say it was our national language - we said it was our working language, that everybody learns English whatever language medium school you go to. Which means nobody needs interpretation to read English."

The country's foreign and defence policy was shaped on the realization that it could perhaps only hold out for two weeks against a foreign invasion. While Sri Lanka is still grappling with issues such as exchange rates, inflation and fuel subsidies, and political ideology Singapore is thinking far ahead, even to issues such as the effect of global warning on a low elevation island nation. Earlier this month a retired Thai diplomat, Sompong Sucharitkul, said Singapore opposed the entry of Sri Lanka to Asean when it was founded in 1967 because the country was viewed as unstable. In 1967 Sri Lanka was ruled by Prime Minister Dudley Senanayake in a shaky coalition with the Federal Party. His attempts to solve the ethnic question failed when proposals to devolve power was withdrawn amidst opposition.

Sompong said a discussion was held on August 06 and two ministers from Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) were in an adjacent room. "I remember one was an economics minister. He waited there anxiously for a signal to join the discussion; but it never came," Sompong told Thailand's The Nation newspaper.

Source: http://www.lankanewspapers.com/news/2007/9/19041_space.html

Breakfast

Very interesting photographic project by a German photojournalist, trying to capture and understand the different types of breakfast we consume (the one above is France):

http://www.designboom.com/weblog/cat/10/view/9327/oliver-schwarzwald-breakfast.html

Cola Life

An initiative by someone who thinks that the Coca Cola world distribution network (which is so massive and robust) should be used to transport and deliver essential goods and items to those in poor countries. So ironic but in deep dark African nations, you find lack of shelter, medicine, schools etc but there is always a Coke sign and a shop selling it. Just such a damn good idea.

http://www.colalife.org/

Beautiful home

NASA Earth images - the most true colour images of the earth released to date. So unbelievably humbling.

Chile quake shifts the world's axis

http://www.aolnews.com/world/article/nasa-chile-quake-shifted-earths-axis-shortened-day/19378491

I am speechless.

Sketch-tastic

Amazing website of sketchers around the world contributing their work.

http://www.urbansketchers.com/

Russell's Rust Bucket

My good friend Russell is the Executive Creative Director at Grants in Colombo and has a great eye - this is taken in Gampola. Russ - just giving you some publicity!

Spacey Days

It's the anniversary of the NASA Space Programme and Space Suit - I love the idea of space travel and the fact that the universe out there is so immense, unimaginably vast and full of planets and peoples/beings we don't know yet.

Anyway, I thought this picture really captured the excitement, energy and innocence of space travel. Great shot with rich background.

Neela on the BBC

My mother was interviewed by the BBC on Sri Lanka and the hopes for private sector involvement to develop aspects of society to help the North and East move forward. It is about sports and how that can be a big contributor - interesting thought.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/business/8518653.stm

Picture taking

I have been thinking a lot about taking photos - portraits mainly, framing people and trying to capture their expressions (cliched yes but true) and its been something I have thought about for a few years but never had the courage to do much of. Sure I have taken tonnes but never with a serious art in mind but I suppose part of the art is in the understanding of the technology you use to bring your vision to life.

Lee takes photos and he is so good at it, he has a fantastic eye for perspective - seeing things I don't.

I have come across this photographer in my web trails (Behance.com) and he is very good, celebrity taker too though not always: http://www.behance.net/Gallery/Portraits/412762?utm_source=Triggermail&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=Newsletter+Feb+10

His name is Joao Canziani, hopefully I can achieve a smidgen of his level one day after all it's in my blood.

Alexander McQueen

A tragic story of a talented individual wasting his life too soon. His work was genuinely home grown fantastic, his Paris line was finished before his death so there is now a scramble of curiosity as to who will take over the Gucci Group owned company.

Tax this mo-fo's!!!!

Now this is a damn good idea: take from the sickeningly rich bankers and put it back into the people who saved their greedy asses in the first place. The organisation only has a small support base but I think we need to grow it - after all the bankers are only going to contribute 0.05% of their earnings but that's still almost £10 billion!

http://robinhoodtax.org.uk/

The Mazzetti Higginsons

So we made our way down to the Prince Arthur on Forest Road in Dalston to meet Glyn, Ella, Ro (Ella's mum) and baby Harper - she has grown into such a person! It was super fun seeing them and feasting on some delicious cuisine. Click here for more photos.

New genre? Oh yes.

Thinking

Advertising is in my blood thanks to 2 generations before me entrenched in it and photography, art, journalism and creativity. I subscribe to a number of incredibly good blogs on the subject - and I think I'm going to start contributing more to it too - after all how else can we start to evoke change? Only from within.