Fredericksburg, VA - April 2004. All text,
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Somehow, I got some interesting views simply from looking out hotel
room windows. I actually do go out and look around the places I visit,
don't get me wrong, but at the same time, sometimes the most interesting
view is right in front of you, all you have to do is look. Way back when
I was still an active photojournalist, that was the adage: be in the right
place, at the right time, with the right film and the right equipment.
The
first view is from an Amsterdam hotel
room. It is the Bridge
Hotel, between the Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge) and the Carré
theatre, once my local neighbourhood - the location has my old local Café
van der Laan on the one side, and a former residence (Amstel 69) just the
other side of the bridge. These are the old locks, still in use, in the
Amstel River, the delta where Amsterdam was originally started, eight hundred
or so years ago. It's a pity the city council decided to electrify the
old bridge, it was manually operated as late as the 'eighties, always
a worthwhile attraction in a city that attracts as many tourists as Amsterdam
does.
The other tourist attraction, at this particular hotel, are the gorgeous
young Dutchwomen that staff reception, you'd think they are running a modeling
agency on the side (like I said, Bo, you need a place to stay in New York,
give me a holler.... ;-). Seriously, of all the small non chain hotels
I have stayed at, this is probably the best, in a gorgeous location, and
ten minutes' walk from the city centre.
Several days after being in Amsterdam, I found myself staying at a decidedly
chain hotel in the town of Leidschendam, not far from The Hague, where
I grew up. The advantage of jet lag is that you're usually up really early,
and that's how I captured this wonderful Dutch sky
- special, in that Holland is mostly grey and cloudy, in winter, I suppose
I was really lucky in having three sunny, gorgeous days in a week.
With an almost one year hiatus, due to changes in our corporate structure
due to the merger between NYNEX and Bell Atlantic, I've racked up quite
a few miles on company business, over the years. I go on holiday, too,
occasionally, insofar as my busy schedule gives me the room, and have taken
more and more to making photography trips.
I spent a few weeks in South Africa, for the first time, a country that is sufficiently far
from my "normal" travel route (USA - Europe - Asia) to have to make a special
side trip - what would I do without frequent flyer miles....?
Thanks to my new friend Esther
(I can recommend finding travel companions on the Internet, by the way,
never been disappointed) who showed me right around her home country, I
have a wonderful memory of what may be a troubled country, today, but is
also very beautiful.
It's a pity there's so little wilderness left, but then again, if this
is your home, and you need the resources, and you're not "politically correct",
I guess you don't have that many options. It's easy to recognize the Dutch
influence in South Africa, too - they've fenced places that nobody would
ever want to steal anything from, it's all in the (orderly, Dutch) mind.
Now, of course, they fence with razor wire, and armed guards, but that's
another story altogether. I had, at least, never been to a shopping centre
where security staff wears bulletproof vests - and this in an upscale neighbourhood,
Johannesburg's Bedford. The views across the mountains and flatlands are
simply breathtaking.
You may have noticed that I am moving backwards in time - I suppose
that is how my mind works, these days, not quite as Dutch-orderly as it
once was, after fifteen years in Anglo-Saxon territories. Funny how the
way one's mind works is so much more a function of the environment one
grew up in, and one's cultural education, than one realizes. I've come
to enjoy the way Americans work - they plan afterwards, not that I do not
feel the occasional need to do it the other way 'round, I haven't completely
forgotten my roots...
Backwards in time, then, brings me to where I was before I went on holiday
to South Africa - Indonesia, Jakarta, to be precise. I had the good fortune
to be involved with the setup of our joint venture there, PT Excelcomindo
Pratama, Excelcom
for short, one of the three main providers of GSM cellular telephone service
in Indonesia.
Isn't the logo wonderful? Created by a young Indonesian staffer in the
IT department, not a graphics artist at all, one day we just had a logo,
and I think it shows very clearly the softness of Asian colouration and
design, combined with an understanding of the advanced technologies we
have been shoveling and trucking into the Third World.
But I digress. We started out with views from hotel rooms. So let me
give you one from Jakarta - good illustration for the trucking and shoveling,
by the way, I hadn't seen a skyline like that since visiting Houston during
the oil boom. I counted, in late 1995, something like fourteen new skyscrapers
being built in just that one hotel room window view.
Some of that, right there, being built by my now almost-ex, Isabelle, who
is an architect with one of America's leading architectural firms. That's
all sort of stopped, now, of course, both the marriage and the Jakarta
building boom - the Indonesians have enough office space to last them another
fifty years, and no money, the marriage.... well, that's another story,
probably talk about it once the lawyers are through... 8-(
Indonesia, of course, is a special place for me - the former Netherlands
East Indies is where I hark from, my father stemming from a family of sugar
planters. While I never had the time to really discover the place (I was
at work about 99% of the time), being in Indonesia, and working there,
certainly gave me a better understanding of what the country and its people
are like. An amazing place, Asia, and even though the economic boom seems
to have come to a rather forceful standstill, it is a powerhouse of people,
with drive, education, and advanced skills, and what's more: they have
little to lose. I have not, at least, been anywhere else that can boast
a 747 as a commuter plane (between Singapore and Jakarta, a one hour ride),
and the Pasaraya department store sports more electronics and accessories
than Sears in White Plains.
At the same time, Jakarta is a very polluted, chaotic, and crowded city,
with native villages (kampungs) arrayed between stretches of tower blocks,
while it is slowly easier to find a Burger King than an Indonesian restaurant.
There is a lot of Indonesia, however, so it is easy to get away from the
crowds. And it is full of amazing sights - in North Jakarta, Satelindo's
satellite ground station adjoins the Sunda Kelapa harbour,
where schooners bring in timber for the construction industry, all sail
and manual labour next door to 21st century remote control. A travel tip:
Indonesia's national airline, Garuda, flies from Los Angeles to Jakarta
several times a week, stops in both Hawaii and Bali, and its fares are
competitive.
Let me not torture you with even more pictures on this page, and even
longer loading, thanks for your patience and interest - more travel stuff
soon! (for now, you can get to my old picture page by clicking the first
link below)
What do I do? I help develop, as a member of a small team, callautomation platforms for our internal use. They comprise all sorts of stuff,from speech recognition, call processing and switch control right throughto the customer interface. I'm a systems engineer, and responsible forintegration and hardware engineering of our platform.Fun stuff, if you're that way inclined ;-)
With our overseas subsidiary, I assist in the integration of InformationTechnologies in our joint ventures, hence the travel.
Finally a holiday, away from it all in South Africa
The
first view is from an Amsterdam hotel
room. It is the Bridge
Hotel, between the Magere Brug (Skinny Bridge) and the Carré
theatre, once my local neighbourhood - the location has my old local Café
van der Laan on the one side, and a former residence (Amstel 69) just the
other side of the bridge. These are the old locks, still in use, in the
Amstel River, the delta where Amsterdam was originally started, eight hundred
or so years ago. It's a pity the city council decided to electrify the
old bridge, it was manually operated as late as the 'eighties, always
a worthwhile attraction in a city that attracts as many tourists as Amsterdam
does.
- special, in that Holland is mostly grey and cloudy, in winter, I suppose
I was really lucky in having three sunny, gorgeous days in a week.
It's a pity there's so little wilderness left, but then again, if this
is your home, and you need the resources, and you're not "politically correct",
I guess you don't have that many options. It's easy to recognize the Dutch
influence in South Africa, too - they've fenced places that nobody would
ever want to steal anything from, it's all in the (orderly, Dutch) mind.
Now, of course, they fence with razor wire, and armed guards, but that's
another story altogether. I had, at least, never been to a shopping centre
where security staff wears bulletproof vests - and this in an upscale neighbourhood,
Johannesburg's Bedford. The views across the mountains and flatlands are
simply breathtaking.
for short, one of the three main providers of GSM cellular telephone service
in Indonesia.
.
Some of that, right there, being built by my now almost-ex, Isabelle, who
is an architect with one of America's leading architectural firms. That's
all sort of stopped, now, of course, both the marriage and the Jakarta
building boom - the Indonesians have enough office space to last them another
fifty years, and no money, the marriage.... well, that's another story,
probably talk about it once the lawyers are through... 8-(
where schooners bring in timber for the construction industry, all sail
and manual labour next door to 21st century remote control. A travel tip:
Indonesia's national airline, Garuda, flies from Los Angeles to Jakarta
several times a week, stops in both Hawaii and Bali, and its fares are
competitive.
