Everything in its right place. Photos from Vietnam, July 2009.

I.

II.

III.

IV.

V.

VI.

VII.

VIII.

IX.

X.

Last night’s good fun and food.

We had mushroom ragout, bread with olive oil and herb dip, penne in tomato herb sauce, Pat’s awesome chicken recipe and lemon-sugar pancakes (ala Coliseum) with custard and apples. Decadence.

I rarely begin a post with text. Usually it starts with a photo. But this is going to be a little different because this will be a bit of everything. Since returning from Myanmar, I haven’t had the time to sit and not do anything. And I have yet to fully go through all the photos from Myanmar. So this is a break from it all.

This is what I do when I have nothing to do:

Today I began my morning with ca phe sua da and then made some Vietnamese lemongrass pork rolls for lunch. My basil plant is almost botak (bald) now.

I love Chinese product packaging. That’s white rice vinegar, to be added into the dipping sauce for the rolls.

The sliced pork is marinated in lemongrass and ginger powder with some light soy.

Steamed okra in a dressing of soy sauce, chopped chillies, lime juice and toasted sesame seeds. My cat hangs around the kitchen when something is cooking. He is as mean as he looks.

The meat is rolled up with some romaine lettuce leaves, mint and basil. In Vietnam, they usually roll the meat last so you get to see the meat under the translucent rice paper. It’s really just for presentation, but presentation is almost as important as the taste. I’m a sucker for those things. The dipping sauce is made with fish sauce, chopped chillies, white rice vinegar, lime zest and juice and some sugar. The bottom right photo is unrelated to this dish but I couldn’t help not not throwing it into this photo mash up of sorts. It’s rosemary growing in my little compost tray, next to the cabbage and chili.

This is where I dwell. Just some room details.

(I try to be organized usually.)

(Some junk inside the cupboard. Cheap and vintage jewelry from my mom. Cotton buds are morning essentials. And I have far too many photos of my blind dog inside that it looks like a mini shrine.)

(I know. Too many stripes and gray and blue and white and black. That’s the other cat — also found on the street.)

(Bottom right: books I’m reading. Unfinished.)

(Found items and secondhand books. They smell awesome.)

1. Where the Wild Things Are LP Soundtrack – Karen O and the Kids, $18.98 from Urban Outfitters
2.  Everybody needs at least one floaty pen. You can’t write a hateful letter with these made-in-China goodness. Minimum order is 5000pc.
3.  Swingtime snowglobe — who needs a reason? $40 from Robmat.
4. Birds on a branch frame clutch with green interior, $94 from Briana Edelman.
5. Vintage children books for inspiration, from Paul K.
6. Ceramic “Paper Plates”, from Joshua Gajownik.
7. Midnight blue Fairtrade shirred waist tunic, £16 from Topshop.
8. YOKO vintage sunglasses, $18 from Quidvintage.
9. Gentleman shirt bangle, $98 from Yellowgoat.
10. Vegan chocolate cookie dough, from EatPastry.
11. Leather foldover satchel, £50 from Topshop.
12. Temper lace up point plimsole, £15 from Topshop.
13. Darwin Finches by Charley Harper, notecard, $2 from Day-Lab.

Score: 0-13

Daunt Gyi village now has a school with three classrooms made from reinforced concrete to protect against cyclones. The school sits between the river and more rice fields. I wish I had Polaroids to bring with me to give away to the teachers and students. But I was already quite a distraction in the classroom with my camera.

To read more about rebuilding and restoring initiatives in Myanmar, please visit ilovemyanmar. We’re already digging another well in Daunt Gyi. And by next year, Tee Chaung will have its own school. I love how love changes the landscape of everything we see and the way we see.

This last photo is for you, Siama Pat.

I’ve always been fascinated with stars and everything celestial. Give me a blanket and a bed of grass and I could lie under the night sky forever. Yet forever seems like an exaggeration. I’m impatient and messy with my time.

On a moonless and cloudless night in Daunt Gyi village, in all my self-centeredness, I felt as though God made all the stars for me alone. And when I concentrate long enough, it all blurs… like what your eye does when you blow into an ant colony and try your hardest to focus your vision. It’s probably absurd to compare the Milky Way to an ant colony. And it’s more absurd to think that it’s all for me.

But that was how it felt like. Aloneness (yet not alone). Centeredness. It’s when I catch a glimpse of the massive Milky Way, I see how close we are to one each other. And how we’re made for one another. (I say catch because when it comes, hold on to it because it’s fleeting.) An ocean, a time zone, miles and kilometers, geography, skin color and personal descriptions are all ambiguous at best. This is a mere sip from a drop of galaxy in a soup of swirling and colliding galaxies that is the universe.

But how good this tastes. It invites me to drink deeper.

So I’m sitting here in a boutique salon waiting to get my hair cut and the speakers are playing 80s dance pop. This is a far cry from my experience a few days ago. I feel as though I’ve stepped into the future and my mind and heart are trying to make sense of it all.

A year has passed since Cyclone Nargis overturned the Irrawaddy and much of the brown and gray are overcome with paddy green. A little too serene. In the face of a woman who lost five children to Nargis I find myself lost in her strength and hope. She served me food and as I ate she insisted on fanning me.

But before all this we were in Yangon. We were scheduled to conduct a one-day youth camp in a church but before we arrived, the church was shut down by the authorities. Yet this was normal to them. We met at a park instead — in full view of the public and patrolling junta. When the latter came by, us non-native speakers kept silent in hopes of blending in. And they left us alone.

We praised God and washed each others’ feet, literally.

The next morning we put on our disguise, which came in the form of I Love Myanmar t-shirts. From Yangon, we took a boat across the river and then hopped into a taxi towards Bogale. Our bones ricketted with the old Toyota Corolla, crisscrossing paddy fields and villages. At the Bogale check point I hid my camera under a hankerchief and shut my mouth. Foreigners have limited access into the Delta and even more so when you carry a camera. I mostly prayed to be invisible.

From there on, we headed south down into the Delta. We faced the unkind sun and embraced the monsoon rain with hearts filled with hope and expectation. And it failed us not.

It won’t be an overstatement to say I’ve fallen in love with the land, 8 hour journey and all. We traveled along the marshes and more paddy fields. We walked into flooded areas and visited schools. In everything that we did, I prayed we did in love.

So today I’m back in Malaysia wearing the I Love Myanmar shirt not as a disguise but as a step towards solidarity with the people and spirit that left a dent in me. A very good dent. No one goes to Myanmar and comes back unchanged.

Below are images from Tee Chaung village. More to come.

I’m back from Myanmar with a chunk of my heart left in the Irrawaddy delta. I miss the rice fields and smiles and people so badly I don’t really know what to do with myself. I still have some Irrawaddy mud stuck underneath my toenails. It’s a spa, I tell you. Not really. Mud and some cow dung, more like it. But still awesome. I don’t really feel like getting rid of the stains and clay.

I will post up more photos and stories (hopefully) soon. But in the meantime, do visit www.ilovemyanmar.org (an organization set up to help rebuild impoverished and cyclone affected areas in Myanmar) to see some of the work I was honored to witness when I was there.

Although I’ve been r.e.a.l.l.y. busy, I still got to eat. And have some fun. Oh yes.

With the influenza sweeping the country and the thick haze, I realize that I’ve taken the simple act of breathing for granted. Too often. Yet in my foolishness, I’m again reminded that with every breath, life is given and there’s much sacredness to the filling of the lungs. The rising and falling of the chest. Life to the blood. Blood for life.

It’s truly something to be silent for moment to listen to nothing but your breathing. And it’s more than something to be able to listen to the breathing of those you love.