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Глубокий труд и советы по борьбе с прокрастинацией

stas_kulesh — Wed, 07 Jun 2017 22:32:02 GMT

Здесь в Окленде я тренируюсь не отвлекаться. Я уже писал о том, как RescueTime + BeeMinder категоризуют время, проведённое перед экраном и позволяют настроить ограничения (цели). С их помощью мне удалось свести фейсбучное время до «меньше 20 минут в день» и нарастить продуктивное время до четырёх часов в день. Это работает, всё путём, но технологии не стоят на месте и многомиллиардные корпорации не зря просиживают штаны. Играя на особенностях устройства человеческих мозгов, разработчики, условно говоря, фейсбучегов, постоянно находят новые способы привлечения внимания. Чаще всего «привлечение» означает «отвлечение»: прерывается какое-то долгоиграющее дело, потом приходится долго восстанавливать фокус. Современные технологии социальных сетей и всевозможных оповещений в борьбе за наше с вами внимание (attention) тренируют наши с вами мозги импульсивно переключаться, не концентрироваться, не фокусироваться. Для большинства из моих уважаемых интернет-читателей этот пост уже слишком длинный.

В мире написано множество книг о том, что в человеческой истории и современной техногенной экономике самые сливки снимают те, кто способен на «deep work»: тех, кто способен, не отвлекаясь, день за днём копать в одном направлении. Способность сфокусироваться, возможно, не уникальный навык человека разумного. Наверняка, обезьяна, высунув язык может за три часа разломать кокос камнем. Однако, тридцать лет заниматься методичным изучением более сложного кокоса — обезьяна не способна. Большинство научных и культурных достижений человечества были получены в результате «deep work».

Определение этого термина довольно простое:

«Глубокая работа» (deep work) — это такое дело, которое ты делаешь регулярно и получаешь удовольствие не только от процесса, но прежде всего от прогресса.

Лучшим примером послужит кинорежиссёр Вуди Аллен. Как известно, он пишет сценарии, продюсирует и снимает фильмы, нередко со своим участием. Деду больше восьмидесяти лет. С 1965 года он снял или поучаствовал в создании 64 четырёх кинолент. Почти каждый каждый год выходит новый фильм. Вуди, очевидно, любит это дело. Зачем так много, зачем так часто? Как он описывает процесс, мол, затем, что когда свежее кино выходит в свет и подвергается критике, режиссёр уже по уши занят новым фильмом, который занимает всё его время, и точно будет лучше. Это «deep work»: Вуди нравится процесс, но больше прочего — важен прогресс, и последнее есть то, что движет вперёд. Так рождается неплохое, а порой даже шедевральное кино.

Со школьной и университетской скамей я усвоил, что в любом предмете можно разобраться, если постараться и сфокусироваться. Это работает на уровне математических задачек олимпиадного уровня. Это работает и в обычных делах: я верю, что могу покрасить потолок, если нужно, могу сделать своими руками стул, починить машину. Я могу собраться с силами, придумать себе проект и, к примеру, склеить стул — и он будет скорее всего лучше, чем из Ikea. Чтобы такой труд можно было назвать «глубоким», необходимо, чтобы одноразовый проект получил, скажем так, протяжённость во времени: чтобы, в процессе создания одного стула, я уже видел его изъяны и планировал следующий, и как только первый стул-проект закончен, тотчас переключался на создание следующего, и так далее.

Звучит, как описание обычного, с пещерных времён известного ремесленничества, однако, я убеждён, процесс одинаков для любых профессий: и для программистов, и для писателей, и музыкантов, и физиков, и лириков.

Есть есть внутренняя уверенность, что вот это всё — жизнь в смысле — неспроста, и должна быть, если не цель, то какой-то результат, то просто необходимо находить время для «deep work». Как с этим справляюсь я.

Место для работы

Раньше, когда быт был проще, когда флетмейтился с дружбанами и работал с девяти до пяти, в любой момент можно было закрыть дверь, надеть наушники и заняться своими делами. С семьёй и ребёнком так просто не выходит. Вот уже несколько лет я снимаю офис в центре Окленда в основном для того, чтобы иметь возможность сконцентрироваться.

Минимум хлама на рабочем компьютере

Переезд с Windows на Mac помог перестать заботиться об антивирусах и постоянных апдейтах. Вместо большой рабочей станции с USB-хабом, несколькими мониторами, эргономичной клавиатуры и Wacom планшетом — вот уже больше пяти лет у меня MacBook Pro. Всё никак не соберусь обновить список установленных программ.

Меньше выбора

Есть неплохое исследование о том, как мозги устают от количества принятых решений. Представьте, что за день вы можете сделать выбор 100 раз, и всё. При этом не важно, какого рода этот выбор: цвет футболки с утра или количество лет на процессе в суде (вы теперь судья). Учёные доказали, что мем «я не хочу ничего решать, я хочу на ручки» правдив и довольно точно описывает состояние усталости в конце рабочего дня, когда мешки вроде не таскал, а думать (принимать решения) не хочется.

Поэтому я купил тридцать пар чёрных одинаковых носков, двадцать одинаковых тёмносиних футболок, пять серых худи и несколько комплектов рубашек и штанов с J.Crew, которые выглядят ОК в любых комбинациях.

Поэтому я доволен Apple: мне не нужно выбирать из тысяч моделей ноутбуков и смартфонов, просто надо дождаться пока начнут тормозить старые гаджеты и купить новое, что там у них доступно в текущей линейке.

Меньше отвлекушек

Стоит ли упоминать, что кроме самых важных (звонки и смс), все оповещения отключены. Инстаграм, WhatsApp, Facebook, почта — все эти штуки теперь ждут своей порции внимания в зависимости от того, когда у хозяина есть к ним интерес и есть на них время.

Дайджесты и отложенные письма

Тим Феррисс советует все домашние дела собирать вместе и делать в один присест в специально отведённое время в течение недели. Тот же принцип применим к электронной почте, например. Не знаю, как вы, а я не нанимался, простите, заниматься сортировкой почты. Unroll.me помогает собирать все не самые важные сообщения в один дайджест. Это же может делать с помощью Zapier.com, но там платить придётся со временем.

Polymail — почтовый клиент, который умеет откладывать письма на завтра (на следующую неделю, на следующий месяц). Так получается, что мой ящик либо всегда пуст, либо показывает лишь то, что нужно сделать сегодня. Бесплатный месяц для Polymail Pro с этим купоном: 3E2JEN, кстати.

Тренировка внимания

Я уже упоминал в начале поста RescueTime. Напоследок поделюсь одним из лучших решений за последнее время. Настроил локальные DNS-записи так, чтобы при попытке открыть новостные сайты, а также reddit, ЖЖ и прочий мусор, браузер шёл в никуда, в localhost. Импульсивные попытки перестать трудиться и заняться чтением бесполезной хуйни пресекаются только так. Всё, что нужно сделать — отредактировать файл ‘hosts’.

На мобильных полно приложений-блокираторов. У меня установлены эти два (и удалены все браузеры кроме Safari):

Для тех, кто немного понимает технически (в Facebook подсказали). Лень выдумывать, что именно блокировать? Вот есть список из десятков тысяч доменов: с учётом порно, говноновостей и всяких других опций. Cейчас буду пробовать.

Дополнение. Бесплатное приложение Gas Mask может собирать комбинации локальных и удалённых списоков ‘hosts’. Например, я сделал на базе списка выше такую структуру:

Посмотрим, как это сработает.

Как заряжать электомобиль дома

stas_kulesh — Fri, 21 Apr 2017 03:53:34 GMT

Здесь в Окленде, среди читателей этого блога, я знаю, есть как минимум пять владельцев электрических машин.

Мы в Electrolease сделали не так давно зарядки, для которых нет нужды менять розетки на 15A (с усиленной третьей ножкой разьём). И не нужны никакие электрики (в Новой Зеландии нельзя вмешиваться в проводку своего дома, этим должен заниматься сертифицированный специалист. Кто-то должен нести ответственность в случае чего. Вопросы страхования прежде всего.) и переходники можно не покупать.

Теперь ~~заправлять~~ заряжать свою электрическую машину можно дома, просто в гараже.

Максимальный ток: 8A.
Время полной зарядки: 8-12 часов.

Пришёл с работы, бросил на зарядку, и никаких тебе вонючих заправок.

Разработано в Новой Зеландии, произведено в Китае. Сертифицировано для региона AU/NZ. Устройство не водонепроницаемое, но водоустойчивое (брызги ОК, окунать работающий девайс в бассейн — не ОК).

Купить зарядки удобнее всего на нашем электромобильном сайте Electrolease.nz

P.S.: Тут я вкратце описал процесс как заряжать электрическую машину дома.

Циклон Кука в Новой Зеландии. Чрезвычайное положение, чего уж там.

stas_kulesh — Wed, 12 Apr 2017 23:55:59 GMT

Здесь в Окленде со дня на день ожидают приход циклона Кука (Cyclon Cook). Таких сильных не было с 1968 года, почти пятьдесят лет. Обещают порывы ветра около 140 километров в час, полуторамесячную норму осадков и серьёзные последствия для Коромандел и Вайхики, острова, рядом с Оклендлм, где в ближайшие выходные запланирован джазовый фестиваль с кучей народу. Жаль, придётся пропустить.

Гражданская оборона на этот раз очень, очень, очень-очень серьёзно предупреждает и рекомендует изменить праздничные (Пасха с пятницы по понедельник) планы. Сидите, мол, дома, сушите сухари, проверяйте запасы воды, сухих носков и свечек.

Не знаю, будет ли это интересно или полезно кому извне Новой Зеландии, перечислю здесь ресурсы, которые посещаю, если торнадо, цунами, землетрясение или циклон случаются.

Погода в Новой Зеландии: MetService
Сайт Гражданской обороны здесь, государственный, официальный.
Землетрясения и цунами в Новой Зеландии регистрирует служба GeoNet
Ветер (как на картинке в начале поста) можно отслеживать на этом сайте
Есть ещё мобильное приложение Красного креста, которое присылает актуальные (и не очень :/) предупреждения
Новости общего плана и трансляцию событий в режиме реального времени можно найти на Newshub
Обвалы, наводнения и закрытые дороги можно наблюдать на сайте национального транспортного агентства
Отменённые авиарейсы — на табло AirNewZealand

Будем надеяться, всё будет хорошо и наши домики не унесёт в страну к Гудвину, и страховые компании не разорятся.

В этом посте на Facebook я постараюсь скидывать актуальные ссылки по ходу развития событий.

Почувствовать разницу можно уже сейчас.

Вот так водопад Радужный (Rainbow), что рядом с Kerikeri, выглядит обычно:

А так он выглядит сейчас, и это ещё не пришёл даже циклон, лишь подступает:

То ли ещё будет. Вот, как выглядит карта ветров в прогнозе погоды на WindTV:

My VSCO Cam Photography

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:30:00 GMT

All of the above is taken with my iPhone 5 and post-processed in VSCO Cam app. More at kulesh.vsco.co

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The Dep River, Russia, 2008

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:17:42 GMT

Here on the Dep River I learned to swim, to fish and to assemble a kayak of the type Taimen. Almost every year my parents and I “conquered” that route which, in fact, was for women and children — “a zero one” according to the complexity rank. Now, in seven years, I still recognize the familiar bends, reaches, hills and cliffs. This is the place where, years ago, a stormy gust overturned my Dad’s kayak, and that is the the very spit where I competed with my brother in throwing cobblestones in the game “who can throw farthest”. Then we invented another game with the funny name “Plop-and-splosh” (in Russian it sounds like “bulk-and-plukh”). The stone, which was thrown at a certain angle to the water surface, would come into the water with a dull sound and without any splashes but a bit later bubbles and bow waves would show up on the surface – this was a plop (in Russian “bulk”). We used to thow until our shoulders started to ache with tiredness.

At some place down the river people saw a pack of red dogs and Asiatic black bears. I remember it was really scary to fall asleep in the tent when there was barking of billy goats over the river, or when an hour earlier a female bear with bear cubs was coming nearer to us on the leeward side but then got frightened and returned to taiga.

One day, near the mouth of the river, which was a favourite place of fishermen living at the hydro power, we tried to fish out at least one lenok out of a huge shoal of them in the shallow water We spent half of the day trying to do it but failed because the fishes were as if contused, they did not take the bait and smoothly moved away to the depth when we, being excited and intrigued, tried to catch them by hand.

Once my classmate and I decided to take a short cut and found a channel which seemed to us quite passable. At the end of it there was an abatis and the water flowed under the obstruction. My knife was of great use in that situation, my Dad made it out of a cutting bit of a cutting machine. We had to cut a couple of pine logs into pieces, we fiddled about for a lot of time and fimally dragged the kayak over.

In seven years I remember everything though the forest has become charred after a forest fire and has overgrown with grass, the old hermit has left his house, and the gardens of the Old Believers have overgrown with young birch-trees.

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Four Beaches in the West

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:15:04 GMT

Summer is coming soon to Auckland. On these warm days one can not only wet feet in the ocean but dip into its cool water wholly. For those who are lazy the choice where to go and have rest for a couple of hours is traditionally not wide: Piha, Muriwai, Anawhata, Karekare. All of them are approximately at the same distance from the city, which is about forty-minute drive away from it.

Piha

It is a favourite place of surfers. They say that waves there are good and, so to say, well-formed, not big but glassy. I understand nothing in waves. From the hill “The Lion’s Head” people in wet suits look like sunflower seeds in a kitchen sink. The sand is brownish-black, compact and very hot on hot days. One should be very cautious about swimming at Piha because of strong current and pits. Those especially ardent about surfing are daily caught several kilometers away from the coast by lifeguards. Needless to say that there is no time for lifeguards at Piha to be bored. Volunteers are constantly wanted to join the lifeguard team. Piha is a good place to dip into the water, to walk, to look at sunsets, and that’s all.

Muriwai

The sand there is volcanic: black and fine like dust. People have to wash themselves very thoroughly after a trip to Muriwai. This beach is also a very popular place for those who like to hang about in the water for twenty minutes for a ten-second wave ride. In addition the beach is home for a gannet colony. Explanatory tables tell that the gannet colony is constantly growing. I cannot stop planning to calculate how much time it will take for the birds to conquer the whole country. Chinese-Maori people usually come to this rocky coast to fish. It is not safe to swim at Murewai, either. But one can easily drive a 4WD vehicle along the beach. The place is nothing special. But there we celebrated Christmas – an alien holiday of the nativity of Santa Claus and some saint. There were barbecue, music and dancing.

Anawhata

Drive along the road to Piha and take the right turn, and after you drive a few kilometers of dirt road and come down a track for about twenty minutes you will get to the Anawhata Beach. A dirty winding road and the necessity to walk make that beach a lot less busy place than other beaches. Near the entrance the table tells something like, “Dear guests, this beach is a live being, so please, let it live quitely”. The text is signed by some dopeheads living on the pitch of the hill. You will ask why I call them “dopeheads”? Because the place is just perfect for various psychotropic and not actually psychotropic experiments. I remember once we met there several guys who were under the influence of hallucinogenic mushrooms. They were happy to see a natural fire. Oh yes, it is prohibited to make a fire (open flame) in New Zealand. So if you want to bake potatoes in the embers of the fire you will have to get farther away from people, for example, to Anawhata.

It goes without saying that swimming is not safe at Anawhata. It is even more dangerous than at Piha.

Anawhata was the first beach I visited in New Zealand. Perhaps, that is why it has been my favourite beach. When I was there for the first time, I obviously could not take good photos yet. And when we got there at the last weekend, the battery in the camera has traitorously gone.

Karekare

On the edge of the peninsula there is a beach with a nonmemorable name “Karekare”. Its character is a mixture of the beaches described above. Black-and-brown sand, huge sand areas, mountains with a lot of walking tracks. Here and there one can see beached jellyfish and algae. I think it is the best place if you want to make a holiday for your dog. Most of all I liked walking through the forest, it was a ten-minute walk from the car park to the beach.

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Sand Dune Surfing

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:13:29 GMT

There is nothing like that in Auckland but there are huge three-hundred-meter sand dunes in the very north. One can easily rent plastic boards with metallized bottom for almost no money and surf those dunes, like in snowboarding. It is, of course, tiresome to climb them. And it is a little scaring to stand at the very top and look down, but other than that it is an absolutely childlike joy.

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Cantonese Capital

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:09:49 GMT

It is warm in crowded Guangzhou. People do not understand my Chinese but my English, I guess, is much better. Guangzhou ranks as the third largest city in China and is located in comfortable proximity to Hong Kong with its overblown economy. Guangzhou is considered to be one of the most comfortable places to live for expats. As in two other cases with metropolitan areas of Beijing and Shanghai, there is no exact information about its population. The estimates of the population for Guangzhou are different and vary from 6 to 20 million people. I can assert one thing that there is an awful crowd in the city.

We arrived in Guangzhou with a sleeper at night. Then it turned out that the taxi-driver wandered out of the way and made circles in the city center trying to find the hotel. At 4.30 at night he asked tradesmen the way. I remember that I was thinking then about the way people worked and how much they got tired at work.

In the morning I was “on the expedition” in search of a subway station. I had to walk about twenty minutes to get to the nearest one. My path lay across “proletarian” districts where I felt the smell of simple meal being cooked, and where children played table tennis – there were two bricks and a stick-crosspiece instead of the net on their table. But the subway turned to be one of the best I had ever seen. The subway cars were warm and quiet. People could easily talk and at that their ligaments were not on the stretch. I guess it was the most advantageous way to travel about the city which was scattered along the river banks. By the way, as for the river, in the evening I found a cheap way to get to our hostel – I got there by a ferry. It really was the cheapest and the quickest way to get to the city center from out YHA hostel.

The Riverside district in Guangzhou is famous for its multiple cafes with tasty food and a variety of drinks, where one can easily overeat and overdrink. When it gets dark, old and young gather there to taste fish delicacies. There are lobsters swimming in a basin, spitted squids and octopuses on braziers. I will digress from my story and tell about street vendors who sell some “nonsense” on sticks. I do not know what the reason is but the sellers are Tajiks or some national minorities looking like Tajiks. City waifs and small-fry pickpockets are usually of the same “suit”. It is a rather strange observation if you take into consideration the fact that each nine out of ten Chinese belong to the ethnic group “Han People” (consonant with “khan”, especially in Russian (homonyms) — a title borne by medieval Chinese emperors and Mongol and Turkic rulers: usually added to a name).

Here is a funny fact for lovers of homonyms. In China there are about ten million people that represent the nation Hui – “a dick” in Russian.

Well, I am to return to the post’s subject. I spent more than a week in Guangzhou. After all that time I visited the largest amusement park in Asia where I tried a roller coaster after which my legs were sinking under me; I also took the night cruise on the Pearl River under the sparkling lights of skyscrapers and many-colored trees. I ate exotic food in a cozy small restaurant on Shamian Island and climbed White Cloud Mountain to look at the misty city landscape; I had coffee in Starbucks and got Vietnamese visa.

In contrast to monstrous Hong Kong, that metal anthill made of glass, concrete, cars and running people, Guangzhou is more humane. I will tell you the rest of the story in my photos.

In subway and in other public transport there is a public service advertisement on the zombie-box. It calls to wash hands before eating, not to litter, not to speak on the phone loudly, switch off annoying ringtones, give away corrupt officials, and, as you can see in the picture, be careful with eating mushrooms, something like a phrase from a Russian fairy tale, “Do not sit down on the stub, do not eat a doughnut! (an unknown mushroom!)”

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Hong Kong: Suburbs

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:02:14 GMT

There are no cars here, on Lamma Island which is near Hong Kong. As soon as you have sailed up to Lamma Island you can walk up the hills and view the outskirts. Mainly, the view is traders and barges that can be seen in the distance. The island has an area of 13.55 km2 and is 7 km in length, the height of the island is 353 m. Only about six thousand people live there.

The post is continued with photos and comments .

Lamma Island is half an hour away from the central part of Hong Kong. In the photo, there is another high-rise building which is being built in the port.

When I was ferried I took one of my film cameras (Smena) and shot a few pictures through the glass.

There were high-rise buildings of unusual proportions scattered on the shore. All of them had striking views of the ocean. I shouldn’t wonder if they are extremely expensive.

The tubing of a gigantic high-power station with the output of 3.736 MW rises over the island like a huge iron from the classic animated series “FLCL”. The output of the station together with the output of wind-turbines which have recently been put on the top of the hill can be compared with the size of Bratsk hydro power plant.

Tourists ride on kayaks and pedal catamarans in the bay.

City dwellers buy up flats in a small village.

Local fishermen live in usual Chinese conditions.

The state of some corners of the village leaves much to be desired.

On the top of the hill there was one of the most affordable hostels, in which I almost stayed by mistake. There was a good distance from the hostel to the city, notably half an hour to cycle and half an hour to ferry. But as for the view it was just superb from there.

This is quite an affordable stay for hippies and for people of different ages that are keen on a “green”’ way of life. It can be seen by soaking/drying water skis on the roof and a fashionable painting of the shed. Something there reminds me of Raglan, a surfers’ town.

A lovely view of the power station during the sunset.

They say there is a hangout for outsiders on Lamma Island due to the ban on personal building. However, the city is growing and urbanization is inevitable. It is a common belief that there will be a “city-garden”, and it can’t be helped. You can see fisher’s floating platforms in the photo.

Owners of small yachts and cutters run around in the coastal zone.

Hong Kong: city, people

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Cinemas in Kathmandu

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 02:00:29 GMT

In the center of Kathmandu there are both: shabby cows rambling through the town and youngsters with mobile phones strolling about. There is a great contrast between scales of living in Nepal, the same way as in any developing country, though. Next to a huge black jeep, one can see a toothless old woman keeping dirty barefooted children off.

The situation in the country is not stable. Maoists have got out of forests and taken their seats in the Parliament, but there still are striking workers, malcontent peasants. Every now and then, members of the royal family are smuggled out of the country. After 11 PM there are only dogs, streetwalkers and policemen in the streets. The foreigners are asked not to leave hotels if it is not absolutely necessary. By these and other reasons, guards being on the door at the biggest movie theater in Kathmandu inspect visitors for bombs, knives and other harmful things and substances.

After buying the ticket for 250 rupees (about 3 USD dollars) and passing the inspection, a well-to-do Nepalese can drink something in the theater bar, buy some beer, popcorn and something sweet for his girl. The choice of films includes films by usual Bollywood, local Kollywood and imported Hollywood. Perhaps, in the capital, the matters stand in a better way but the mean monthly income of an ordinary Nepalese is about 500 rupees: two movie tickets for the film about Bond.

There are, of course, cinemas in back streets here and there. The prices are lower there and the art is more affordable. Quite by chance, on my way from a stronghold of globalization, notably a school of design and fashion, my eye fell on the advertisement hoarding representing Indian superheroes. That’s how I hit on a common cinema for people of modest means. One cannot find there American movies, the most expensive tickets cost 60 rupees and the cheapest ones – only ten. In the beginning of the show boys try to filter into the theater and a lean guard keeps them off by shouts and clips on the back of the heads. The youngsters lose the change in a tiny room in the corner.

There will be a special post with bright pictures, explosion and beautiful Indian girls.

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How Movies Are Filmed in Nepal. Part 1

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:24:43 GMT

Here in Kathmandu, local cinema is called Kollywood. The cost of one movie, as I was told by a manager who decided to audition for the part of a tour guide, is 10-50 thousand American dollars. In just a few months, a crew of 7-10 people manages to make a ready product. Detective stories with a lot of killing are well-liked. In one year, the studio makes up to about 70 (!) films. I got to visit and participate in the making of the movie “Dasdgunga,” about the to this day mysterious death of Nepalese leaders.

The story is so fishy that the movie did not pass censorship right away and was approved for showing only in January of this year, one year after its making. In short, the plot is based on the death of two representatives of the top of the government of Nepal: Madan Bhandari and Jivraj Ashrit. In the 1993 incident, they died in a car accident. The driver, Amar Lama, somehow survived, but was killed ten years later. The murderer was not identified.

The main part of a detective with a difficult life is played by the star of Nepalese theater and cinema Anup Baral. The director is the round-faced Manoj Pandit with kind eyes. They say he’s also pretty famous.

Meanwhile, we look under the cut at a series of 35 photographs with commentary.

Make-up took over an hour. Mustaches got combed, faces got powdered and after three hours of waiting for lights to be ready, filming began. I included the best picture from this period in the “The Culture of Modern Nepal” series.

An extra playing a guard watches as the workers set the lights.

Meanwhile, a scene was being filmed in the hallway. A driver is being led to be interrogated. The blinding light of a projector hits the characters in their backs.

Most of the first day was spent on setting the lights.

The workers of the studio spent over four hours covering, setting and adjusting do-it-yourself reflectors made from rags, white panels and mirrors.

Speaking of the necessity of a professional set, lighting equipment and super-expensive lenses and cameras. Any available resource is used in Kollywood. The room was whitened in one day, rags, mirrors and ropes were brought from storage. The intensity of the projectors’ light is set using black discs with a hole in the center.

A static stage, the set is ready. We are witnessing an interrogation in the basement of a Nepalese security service.

Before starting to film, the director and the actors discuss the details.

The director accentuates the attention on something of moderate importance.

The equipment, as you can see, isn’t cheap. The camera, no matter what, is rented, and there’s a special person designated to watch it. One films, another controls, the third watches over so that the camera doesn’t get dropped.

The operator seemed like a nervous person, smokes one after another. There is something in his position that opposes the power of the director.

The detective wearing a hat strictly gazes into the eyes of the suspect. They sit close to each other, so their eyes are a bit crossed. On the chair with an umbrella during the filming sits the suspected Amar Lama and sweats.

The director and operator occasionally check how the light falls on the faces of the actors. Sometimes they asked me to show them what the photographs looked like: sometimes the shadows were too rough, sometimes there was too much light.

The terrifyingly quiet partner of the main character. At some point, judging by the circumstances, they attempted to play bad cop/good cop. It didn’t really work, the suspect laughed a couple of times.

I don’t know why they gave the main character of Asian decent, who doesn’t have very abundant facial hair, a stupid mustache. But a special person adjusted it almost every other set.

The director’s assistant. Anup Baral’s companion at the teaching workshop. A sweet person with pretty decent English.

Outside of the scene, of course, you have to sit quietly and wait for it to end.

The view of the set.

In my search of an interesting angle I climbed to the top level using a rocky ladder. The director is explaining something to Anup.

The director, Manoj Pandit.

The actor playing the main part, Anup Baral.

Dayahang Rai, the actor playing a secondary character, the driver Amar Lama at the interrogation.

It’s normal to smoke in the police station basement, there’s nothing to explain here.

The detective’s assistant repeats the text. He did not have many words. Mainly he goggled his eyes.

The person who controls the operator’s work. As you can tell, he wears the headwear of a brahman and not all work can be done by him.

Working on the key moments with the director.

Since you scrolled through to the end, you will probably be interested in finding out a bit more.

You will recognize some scenes right away. Some of the phrases were repeated so many times during filming that even today, a year and a half later, they seem familiar to me.

The guys and I spent several days with the crew. Pasha (r0ver) ended up with a short but good combined report. In my remaining posts from this series you will see the second day of the filming process and the dungeons of the film studio where development, printing, editing, voicing and everything else without which a movie can’t happen take place.

Part two

Part three

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Hong Kong: City

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:22:55 GMT

For a few days of my stay in Hong Kong I kept roaming about the streets of that super city and could not help but strike dumb. During long Easter holidays I’ve sorted out my archive files and processed a few dozens of Hong Kong photos. For convenience, I will divide them into three posts which will be entitled as “city”, “people” and “suburb”.

The central part of Hong Kong reminds an anthill made of glass and concrete. High-rise buildings in new districts grow like mushrooms. In China, people like adjectives in the superlative, for example, a building is the highest and the tunnel is the deepest and the longest. That love for the superlatives is deeply rooted in the tradition of Great China.

Those, who have been to such megalopolises as New York or Tokyo, must be familiar with the feeling of reverence for human engineering achievements. One is seized with awe when, throwing back one’s head until the jugular vertebrae crunch, he or she tries to figure out how many floors there can be in this or that building. The tempo of life certainly depends on the city size and on the population density. In Hong Kong, everybody is in a rush exactly like in detective stories of Darya Dontsova (“I rushed to the police station”, “I’ve done my shopping in a rush” or “I rushed to work”).

For a long time Gaulung (Kowloon) have been considered one of the most densely populated area of the world. The population density here is about 40 000 people per km2. I counted one day that if the population of that district is to be arranged on plane there would be a man every five meters. There would be no room to move. Regarding the size of the megalopolis, Hong Kong is fifth in the rank nowadays (graph).

The post is continued with photos of Hong Kong city labyrinth. All the photos are clickable.

Balconies and windows are hanged with air-conditioners. Nothing saves people from heat and dampness but air-conditioning only.

The height of the International Commerce Centre 2 is 417 meters.

Traditionally: where there is the rich there is the poor.

In the distance, one can discern a small fragment of a green hill hidden from view by the buildings and the smog.

My favourite picture of the series. This is how the Asian city jungle looks like. The piece of live greenery is lost among the reinforced concrete constructions. This is a city for those who are organized, active and accelerated. No doubt that it can be considered one of the centers of our civilization: you can find here all things that are the newest, the most beautiful, the most technical, as well as the dirtiest and the poorest.

Next time I will show Hong Kong suburbs (it will be Lamma Island) which strongly differ from the cement boxes of the city.

Don’t miss the post with photos of Chinese twin city Shenzhen which is just “across the road” from Hong Kong, on the Canton side.

Keep abreast with the updates, or “stay tuned” as Sergei Dolya says, there will be two more posts of the series.

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How Movies Are Filmed in Nepal. Part 3

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:17:01 GMT

Here in Kathmandu, while the workers of the Nepalese film studio were setting up the lights, I walked through all the rooms, took pictures of what the personnel of the studio are busy with. See the photographs with commentary in the rest of the post.

Mini-reports from the set can be found in previous posts from this series: first, second.

This is what the filming pavilion looked like after several hours of the crew’s work with setting up lights and decorations. The room with awkwardly white-painted walls is supposed to create an atmosphere of an interrogation room in the basements of the Nepalese intelligence service. See these photographs in the first post.

Meanwhile, in the dark and cool basement of the studio, a worker diluted chemicals for the development of the film. As far as I can remember, digital movies are not available to everyone, so most movies are made using film.

In a small boxroom with a strong smell sits a lady who is in charge of chemicals. Her work involves marking in a big record-keeping book how many kilograms of white crystals have gone to one project or another.

Giant tubs with chemical soup will be lifted to the highest point and connected with pipes to the development apparatus.

Another worker of the development shop who is in charge of a giant machine through with film is ran for development checks in with some book.

It’s a serious apparatus: it hums, clunks, rollers spin. This person was very concentrated on what he was doing, maybe even a bit hostile.

Occasionally this light began to shine dimly. After which the keeper of the apparatus came and looked at the buttons for a long time. The shop smelled of chemicals, on the floor here and there were whitish dried puddles with salty edges.

A fingerless chemist from the laboratory had a lively interest in the model of my camera. He then took his Canon 400D out of his backpack and after a brief conversation became engulfed by the newspaper. A person with a North Face jacket and a camera that costs about one thousand American dollars slightly amazed me. The average salary in Nepal is about $170 a year. Apparently the movie industry is a profitable business here, too.

In the cutting room, a Nepalese in gloves cut the film, measuring the footage in accordance with tables with numbers on a piece of paper. Carefully, with a razor, he cleaned the edges of the film, after which he glued one of the sides and squeezed them on a special pressing machine. The glue, the consistency of which looks like the well-known super-glue, melts the film very well: it gets a death grip on it. Cleaning the edges with a razor is essential so that the thickness of the strip remains the same where the film had been glued. Otherwise the mechanism of the projector can stall.

A young guy about twenty-five years old (as with any other Asians, it’s very hard to determine the age of the Nepalese) was preparing lists for the editing procedure. They are what a special person will use to cut the film, and another to glue it into a whole reel of film.

Brochures for Nepalese movies with the smiling faces of actors with a look very similar to a European one are all over the studio.

A lady with polished robot-like movements marks the places where the film was cut on it.

She runs the film back and forth and marks something on a huge list of numbers on the screen of the monitor.

I’m not sure that these devices are used by anyone, but I found a whole room full of old projectors in the back part of the building.

For some reason, the hole in the door is covered with rags and tape. The feeling of a basement of a Russian research institute did not leave me.

In the sound-recording studio, audio-tracks for the video are edited on real macs. There is a quiet, soundproof room with microphones behind the glass. The actors have already recorded their lines, and I got to watch only the work of the audio editor. Typical Bollywood sounds of gunshots and ricochets could be heard in the room.

I’d like to remind you that over seventy movies a year are made in this studio. They are as low-budget as they can be, but, nonetheless, they find their audience, since for most, movies aren’t a cheap form of entertainment. Naturally, like in any developing country, a huge contrast is seen between the poor and the rich: black jeeps drive by the proletariat movie theater, and cows that run in different directions scare off pigeons.

The arrangement of the chemical laboratory. Notice the dust, dirt and spiderwebs in the corners.

Ever since childhood, the process of film development has fascinated me. So after touring the building, I once again went down to the basement to watch as the mechanisms, with humming and quiet, rhythmical rattling, pull kilometers of film through themselves. On which are faces, terrors, intrigues, investigations.

Part one

Part two

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Hong Kong: People

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:14:37 GMT

An Asian businessman at the Kowloon Waterfront Promenade.

There live more than 7 million people in cramped Hong Kong. They get born, hurry to their scheduled affairs, laugh, cry and die. Today I am going to post photos of some people living in this striking city.

“Pirates” on board of a sailing vessel “Aqua Luna”.

In spite of a great number of people in every place of Hong Kong, for some reason, the city seemed to me “uninhabited”. May be, that was why I got photos of individuals and not pictures of omnipresent and constantly hurrying crowd consisting of dark-haired units of a new communist-and-capitalist world.

Appreciate the color-and-type decision in the stand signs of an underground passage in Hong Kong metro.

A night guard next to a laundry in the center of Kowloon.

An Indian paterfamilias in 3D-glasses in the amusement park.

A tired tourist at the Kowloon Waterfront Promenade next to the Avenue of Stars. In the Avenue there, I found out that Mark Dakaskos had “girl’s”palms, and as for Jackie Chan, we were “palm twins”.

A man staring into the distance. You see it yourselves, though.

A man sleeping under the sign “”Crossing the Victoria Harbour” with Star Ferry is one of the fifty places of a life time”. That what they wrote in “National Geographic Traveler”.

A group of builders busy with the renewing of a decrepit high-rise building in bamboo scaffolding.

A nice Chinese girl with the Diana lomo camera which was no less nice than the girl.

Children rejoicing at soap bubbles in Hong Kong Disneyland. I showed pictures from there but it was long ago.

At the same place, in Disneyland, a boy is enjoying with rather primitive “races” created after the cartoon “Cars”.

An inhabitant of the Lamma island which I wrote about yesterday. As you can read on the sign in the background, the land is a property of the state and one can neither dig nor even just go there.

An elderly Chinese man at the waterfront is showing the other bank of the Victoria harbor to a child.

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One day in the mountainous part of Vietnam on a motor bike

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:07:28 GMT

It was the season of pouring rains in Hoi An on my birthday in 2008 and I decided to do something special. I yielded to the reasoning of two ex-soldiers and bought a mountain tour in the middle part of Vietnam. Those two guides were to outfit us and ride us quick as the wind on their reliable Suzuki bikes.
Four years ago a small company called Easy Riders consisted of two Vietnamese with rather powerful motor bikes. One of them could speak English well enough, he was an interpreter during the Vietnamese war. The second one, a sturdily built man with a scar on the cheek, kept silent all the time but in the end it was he who managed to sell that entertainment to us.
Quite by chance, I came across one Scandinavian who had just returned from such a tour. The same guys took him back to the hotel next door and he described what it was all about: it was a few day ride on a motor bike about the mountainous districts of the country, the raincoats were outfit, personal things were packed to prevent them from soaking. The only thing for us to do was to negotiate the price. The man with a scar came to his “work” perfectly ready. Without a single word (to tell the truth I thought him to be numb at first) he described the route by means of sign language, then he took out a thick notebook with maps, photos and multiple “hurray-comments” of previous clients.
If only my memory does not fail me, we agreed that we would pay 150$ a day per a person. Early in the morning, one day before my 26th birthday I tied my rucksack to a motor-bike’s side and we ran across rice fields and through dense forests. The agreement was that I would tap him on the shoulder if I needed to stop and make a photo.
The post is continued with a few dozens of photos with comments. Real Vietnamese jungles, pioneers and a mountain village where smaller nationalities live.
There are the steel horses of our Vietnamese friends: “Easy Riders”. The company still exists, all the more so with a high appraisal of 4.5 out of 5 it is described on TripAdvisor. Good guys, still working! Here is their site: easy-riders.net. By all appearances, that business seems to be doing well. I see many new motorcyclists-guides in the photos of tourist sites.

Red pioneer ties. As you can guess, bicycle is a cardinal vehicle in the countryside of Vietnam.

A farmer is pasturing geese in the field. The weather at the time of our ride was awfully rainy. Water was everywhere: rain from above, puddles below.

A schoolgirl is going back home, children are fishing in a pool near the road.

That construction is to be sharply taken out of the water, the small fry is thrashing about in the green net (see the previous frame). I asked a fisherman if he was seining those fries to fish some big fishes later. He said he was going to eat them and I felt uneasy. What could I say! One needed a lot of such fries to be full up.

Vietnamese pastoral. We are going in the direction of the mountains. Pouring rains caused the rivers flowing down from the mountains to burst their banks: “high water”, and turbid, too.

I have to say that roads in that part of Vietnam (west from Hoi An) are made to last. They are good roads.

One of the rucksacks came loose and we stopped to tie it up again and stretch our legs.

At some place between the bridge and the entrance to mountain gorges we dropped in at a mini factory where thin rice noodles were made.

A cemetery with figured graves. Clouds were hanging low above the cemetery, we were going up the mountain road to the pass.

That part of jungles was made quite “habitable”: there was an electricity and the amount of storage ponds was constantly increasing. I will tell about it a little later.

Judging by the information drawn from the Internet there is an active building in that part of Vietnam. The system of cascade hydro power plants provides most part of the Asian country with electric energy. It is amusing that the banner is done out in the Soviet style which is yellow text in the red background.

I could not help it and made several photos of all-absorbing jungles.

When I watched the jungles I, whether desired or not, remembered films about the Vietnamese war. It must be awfully scary to war in such conditions.

Obelisks (like the one shown below) erected here and there recall the past and victims of hot war.

Late in the morning we stopped for lunch.

Simple food of workers and peasants happened to be quite saturated. Strong and hot coffee was especially good: any way, it was easy to freeze on the run even in a raincoat.

We went farther into the mountains. It became clear that the weather was not going to become better. Quite the contrary, it was becoming worse and worse. We had to stop our cross-country motorcycle race a couple times due to landslips like the one shown below.

Or even like that one: the road was absolutely impassable. We had to wait about half an hour.

Asian unruffled calm always impressed me: if we had to wait that was OK, we dismounted from our motor bikes, waited and did not torment the builders with questions. It was quite obvious that we would not continue our journey before we cpuld do it.

Jungle which my eye could embrace was boundless.

To feel the scale of the picture I recommend to find a human figure near a stream. In truth, that stream is a mountain river in a Vietnamese dense forest.

I think that “a house in the village”, I mean a Russian “dacha”, would be overgrown with trees and grass in half a year the way one could never find it again.

We stopped to refuel, warm ourselves, have a bite and look at the life of an ordinary village not far from the stopover. Those Vietnamese fuel filling columns were rather amusing. They comprises glass containers with markings and one could easily see if there was any gas or not. We started for the village.

Goods of a general country store in the “display window”.

A dog near an outer door. Simple folk live in this part of the country and their living is very plain.

No post about Asia can do without a picture of an Asian child.

A boy wearing a helmet is playing with a bicycle tire out in the pouring rain. It may be odd but it is my favorite photo in the series.

A small store near the road. Vietnamese like football very much, watch football matches and know Russian players by their names. I don’t know as many players as they do.

Motor mechanics from a repair shop near a gas station. It was bucketing down all day, the camera got wet and the picture became dithered.

Some smaller nationalities live in this village which is away from civilization. Their distinctive feature is matriarchy.

In the village, “ladies choose cavaliers”. Young boys appear as brides and are given away in marriage to girls. There are many young men loafing about the village. The task of a young unmarried boy is to do some work about the house and, by his full age, become a hunk of a man.

The villagers earn a husbandry livelihood (which, in fact, means “pick up a scanty livelihood”). They grow coffee, cayenne, papaya: everything grows well in jungle heat and moisture. Women make 70% rice vodka, we did not fail to warm ourselves with it. Man, the drink just got at me to the marrow!

As I have mentioned Vietnamese people like football but the football is kind of “armless-legless” here.

Vietnamese eat dogs. A good fat dog costs like a bad electrical stove. That is the reason why dogs here look rather miserable, hang around the door or shrink into a corner.

Children are always happy to show off. Camera was wet through and started to become misted inside.

From the village, we went to the nearest settlement hotel for a night.

It was a small town and there even was a game club with the Internet. I visited it and wrote on that very day:
When I had dinner I watched news on TV about the summit meeting between the leaders of Vietnam and Russia. Indeed, small people rule the world. Medvedev spoke rather funny and used all six dialects of the local language. The guide translated that they were going to work on the formation and development of technologies, and strengthen something. The other guide showed a bullet wound already healed over and said that after the war he was deaf in one ear. It became scary to have a drink with a person who could rise in arms as easy as raise a beer.
In the village Internet club, teenagers were playing Counter Strike until sweated, and I was preparing to have my 26th birthday just in few hours.
In the morning the guide with a scar was unwell, so the second part of my birthday trip I spent in attempts to get out of that drowned area to a relatively safe town – Danang. Posts about the flood in Vietnam were popular in due time and were even mentioned in BBC news in Russian: Flood in Vietnam and Vietnam Under Water. It came all right in the end, everybody survived.

As you can guess, I am done with photos made during months of my Asian journey 2008. Next, I am going to post photos from my journey to Australia and to some islands in the Pacific Ocean. It may interest you.

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Sunset at Piha Beach and Other Stuff from My Camera

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:05:38 GMT

Here in Auckland it’s summer, summer, summer. My back’s been burned twice already, despite sunblock with SPF 45 and higher. But it’s alright, soon it’ll already be cold at night and we’ll have to spin the electric meter at night. Although, who knows. They say that you can’t get away from global warming nowadays and the climate will inevitably change. Last year, for example, the summer here was the longest and driest in the past eighteen years. And this year, not long ago, a previously unseen temperature of +32° was registered. That’s just some casual sand in the wheels of those who think that it’s heaven here.

We bought a refrigerator from this farmer in the marvelous town Drury. The apparatus spent eight months in a garage, and ants infested it. They froze pretty quickly. Also, on the farm, there’s a huge sandbox with nonchalantly scattered children’s toys. I didn’t see any children, but I did see over five cats who use the structure not for building sand castles.

There is a large metal drum on Mount Eden that points and indicates the distance to famous cities of the world.

In Shakespeare Regional Park, while chasing after the frisbee, I bloodied up the bottom of my foot with a seashell. Instead of sand, the beach there has mollusk seashell ridges, various scallops.

Almost every time that I go to the shop on the corner for milk, this cardboard guy who offers ice cream with a maniac’s smile scares me.

I’ll talk about the boxers soon.

On one very slow intersection, the local rascality earns a little side money by washing windows. It should be noted that they’re polite and fun people. I apologized in advance to the hero of the photograph below since nobody carries cash around, seeing as credit cards are accepted everywhere. But this did not stop him from wiping the windshield just in case, asking about my camera and posing a little bit. I did not get a chance to ask for his e-mail, the light turned green.

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Brewery “Captain Cook” on Rarotonga

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 01:01:34 GMT

When traveling I always taste the local food, especially local alcoholic beverages. My stomach is far from being satisfied with that habit. When I traveled to China, my stomach was upset for fifty days out of a hundred and twenty spent there. Once I even was in the hospital because of food poisoning, as I was said. But I did not stop tasting new food. People get just one bite at the cherry of human life. In addition, it is really delicious to have steaming piping hot rolls with peanut sauce and fresh home-made Vietnamese beer for breakfast, you know. Or in Katmandu, I remember, there was tonba with momo which is a type of dumpling with the filling made of chopped beef and served with chili sauce.
I have never understood people sitting in a Belgian pub and ordering some green-bottle beer with one and the same artificial poster taste. On Rarotonga which is one of the Cook islands, we used to order a local lager “Cook” or, as some of the menus said, “Captain Cook”. Fresh, tasty and cheap. Sure, one day we decided to see with our own eyes how it was being made and went to a tiny brewery located only one block from the center of Avarua.
The post is continued with a dozen of photos with metal mash-tuns and beer kegs and comments.

Against the background of plastic bottles with glued faces of the famous sailor, there are various sorts of malt and barley in glass jars. The brewery makes two types of light beer and one type of dark beer. The owner generously fills beer mugs for visitors, so it is pleasant to drop in.

One of the owners of local bars, where tourists daily and nightly wear out the seats of their trousers and “rub” terminals with their Charge Cards, came to get fresh beer.

Part of the brewery territory was intended for a beer bar. By the time I was there, the brewery had been working for less than a year. The anniversary celebrations with the island music, ukulele and ololo-singing were to start soon. Women were going to decorate themselves with flowers.

As you see, It is a “village” bar, and everything is very simple. I like it this way.
Alexander, a Russian tourist, is checking the quality of a souvenir T-shirt with the image of Captain Cook.

Kegs with the product. If am not mistaken they cost a hundred dollars a keg. People on the Cook islands use the same kind of dollars as in New Zealand.

After the owner of the brewery let us have all the variety of the product, he suggested making a little tour. In the picture, you can see a shop where bottles and printed matter were held. As far as I understood, the labels were attached manually. The equipment for the process automation was rather expensive and the owner could not afford it at the time.

That is a production department of the brewery “Captain Cook”. As you can easily guess, these are the tuns where beer is made.

The owner explains the mode of operation, notably the way how that thingamajig crushes corn.

It is necessary to maintain certain temperature and pressure inside the mash tuns. The full cycle of making beer takes 12 days.

Russian tourists were not embarrassed to ask questions like, “What is this button for?”

I did not get what that rubber glove hanging on one of the controllers was for?

Glass containers for the lager “Cook” is collected in the whole territory of the island. It is not advantageous to deliver them from the mainland. The glassware’s price is tenfold higher than the price of the drink.

In the end of the tour we were given beer labels and I noticed that Captain Cook in the label had a red nose. I asked if he had it red because of the print or if it had been red in reality? The owner laughed at the joke, poured more beer to us and invited to come again. Of course, we came again, at least once. Light lager with smoked tuna from a fresh catch was just perfect!

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Industrial China – A Factory Country, 2008

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:58:58 GMT

Here in China, factories, plants and hundreds of millions of people work with a vengeance for our satisfaction. Sitting in comfortable chairs, in comfortable clothes, at comfortable desks with a modern notebook, the West rarely bugs the East about the worsening quality of the planet’s condition. Having successfully achieved progressive communism after many decades of sacrifices and a struggle with an invisible enemy, China is currently busy with its own development and isn’t too interested in the issues of the environment.

For some reason I have a feeling that there will come a time when the problem will solve itself: gigantic atmosphere-cleaning plants will be built and will restore the balance to the planet’s unstabilized ecosystem. Before you know it, all over the world these structures will stand next to every factory. At a reasonable price, of course. Why not? It’s a good idea, a profitable one. And the compassionate white community with high moral values and the habit of worrying about reasons that are, so to speak, “just there,” will be happy, and investors will have a place to put their money.

But for now, the developed part of China looks like one giant factory. Each square meter is utilized to maximum efficiency for the production of something useful. On the way to Shanghai you can see how some sort of rootlets is grown between the train tracks. Possibly the same ones that are later served in eateries. The area that feeds the twenty-million Shanghai, which is nowadays called no differently than “New York on steroids,” is three times as large as Shanghai itself.

The southern, Cantonese districts to which the hyper-economy of Hong Kong and the adjacent Shenzhen and Guangzhou is accessible work 24 hours a day. The landscapes resemble scenes from Japanese cyberpunk shows: a forest of pipes that extends to the horizon, the sky is sliced up with wires, the surface of the ground with roads. According to various sources, up to seventy percent of all the world’s clothes is produced in this place. The locals say that there is a real clothes fever in the labor villages: because of the selling of real and not-so-much Calvins and Kleins, there is as much money as mud there, people are indulged in entertainment, and the law, while workers, manufacturers and the mafia rest, humbly stands out of the way. The most pronounced hedonists in Macao are the Cantonese.

The photographs you have just seen were taken on the way from Guangzhou to Hong Kong, and from Macao to Nanking on the way to the Vietnam border. I will talk about Shenzhen, the mirror city of Siangan, and about Macao, which has surpassed Las Vegas in gatherings at playhouses a long time ago.

Bonus: Satellite photos of the central part of China.

In their measures, a four-million settlement is only slightly bigger than a city-type village. In the images, it is clearly visible how cities produce smoke. In addition to this, you shouldn’t forget that this is where everything that we use, from toothbrushes to iPhones, is made here.

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How to take a great photo

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:45:36 GMT

When we were in Kathmandu and took the master class by Maksimishin, we discussed the “problem of a great shot”. How did it come that some photographers were lucky to take great shots, and some photographers were to wait for years until they could really make the one.

I am not here to retell the whole discussion because the argument was heated and the examples included about five names. But in short, the main idea is as follows. You don’t need to wait for the situation when you, such a cool photographer, are at some place out in the street and suddenly, bang, an elephant in drawers jumps out in front of you, just at the right time for you to take a cool shot, and here is that great photo, on the National Geographic’s cover. It will hardly happen. A great shot is a result of great work.

One can wait for the muse to come and suffer from waiting so long. In reality, the process is much more prosaic and work-intensive: you just need to make up your mind to do it and start doing it yourself. Almost any creative process comprises 99% of the chore, 0.99% of creativity and 0.01% of luck. When we talk about photography, we are to decide the above problem like this. Choose the place, the texture, the light, the situation, the format. Then work on the shot until you really get it. You need to work for a long time and, if it is possible, hard and no matter what. If you fail, then change the place, the texture, etc. That is the way how you, perhaps, will take a great photo, or a couple of great photos, which can be shown to people. The spectator will be surprised, “How did he/she manage to seize such a great moment? What luck!” Doesn’t it seems to you that it sounds like we are in fishing, honestly!

In Nepal, when I noticed a rather interesting back part with a film billboard on a corrugated fence, I chose the position at a busy corner during the rush hours and was standing there for 40 minutes. I tried different angles, exposures and apertures – I made about a hundred of shots, and one of them, as the minimum, I consider a “lucky” one. Do you think it is quite normal? I do.

The post is continued with some MB of those photos. You can see the dynamics of the shot development and the attempts to catch something worthwhile.

The shots in green frames are now in the folder named “OK”. The red framed shot is in the final series. All photos are clickable.

In total, I have taken 89 photos, then I have chosen 12 out of those 89, and finally I have chosen only one out of 12.

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Friedensreich Hundertwasser’s Last Creation in the Art Backwoods of New Zealand

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:43:59 GMT

Here in Kawakawa, judging by the vastness of multi-colored foofaraw and trees that grow on roofs, people are quietly going mad. The small (the population is slightly over 1000) roadside town north of North Island is decorated with every color of the rainbow. A long time ago there was a coal mine nearby, but since then the resource has run out, and now people make a living mainly from farming and feeding travelers. There are quite a few authentic New Zealand cafes with pretty good coffee and croissants in the town. Many people stop by to eat, since the settlement is located approximately halfway to Auckland.

Kawakawa is also called “Train Town” since trains occasionally pass by on the road that passes through it. Nowadays tourists are given rides on the eighty-kilometer section of the old railroad. Family/children’s entertainment.

Of course, the most popular site of Kawakawa is the public restroom built by the Austrian architect and painter Friedensreich Hundertwasser, who is famous for his unique style. His canvas buildings are called “ecological,” “organic,” “biomorphic,” “natural.”

Friedensreich left his footprints all over the planet. Other than New Zealand, where the artist spent the last 25 years of his life, his architectural projects can be found in Germany, Austria, Japan, the USA, Switzerland and Israel (photos on Google Images). I’ve heard that many people deliberately fly to New Zealand to look at his final project, which he finished one year before his death: a public restroom in Kawakawa.

This is what the entrance to the restroom looks like. A tree grows through a hole in the roof. (The photos of the restroom aren’t mine, I got them here.)

Everything inside is made from ceramic tiles which are laid together using solvent, there are no right angles. It’s as if the floor is moving.

Light gets into the building through a stained-glass window made of empty glass bottles.

More photos of artistic restrooms can be found on Google Images.

Across from the restrooms there is a museum, the entire wall there is covered with near-Maori drawings. The symbols probably mean something.

The bus station for “Clark” school buses in the outer part of the city.

A red sign on a pub where people love the New Zealand beer “Lion Red.” Here people can and like to drink.

You can see the train which was mentioned in the beginning of the post passing through the city in the background.

A farmer’s four-wheel off-road truck that is parked in front of a bar with arcade games.

Second-hand goods are sold in the empty first-floor rooms of the provincial theater of the town Kawakawa. Here and there you can encounter a familiar from Napier Art deco style.

In a Chinese restaurant, a little girl waited for her parent to make fish and chips, the favorite dish in New Zealand.

Because of the amount of pedestrians by the Friedensreich Hundertwasser public restrooms, the traffic significantly slows down.

The ceramic shark which many recognize from the illustrations to the recent post about adulthood. The small sculpture park made in the same inimitable “biomorphic” style in the downtown was closed for the holidays. On regular days, I suspect, children would really like it there.

Kawakawa pleased me with its originality, which was unexpectedly encountered among regular New Zealand farming landscapes.

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Hamilton Hot Air Balloon Show, 2012

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:33:36 GMT

Aeronautics-lovers gather in Hamilton once a year, they are professionals and those who are just keen on aeronautics. The event’s name is “Balloons over Waikato”. The word “Waikato” may be not clear to you, actually it is the Maori name of the place. Last year there was a strong wind during the event, and the balloons were carried away in the direction of the river. As chance would have it, we were late, and were stuck in the morning traffic hold-up in Hamilton (!).

This time it turned out much better. We left early, came in time and viewed the whole show from balloonists’ (a really beautiful word) briefing until the very moment when the balloons’ got beyond the horizon.

To continue with what has been said please view five dozens of pictures with comments below. They are interesting, you will like them.

Before dawn, around five-thirty in the morning, the show participants gathered on an artificially illuminated glade.

Some brought gas apparatuses in trailers, others used carriages to deliver them to the place of the event.

The signs with the balloons’ photos posted about and the table on the information display showed to the participants their arrangement on the glade and the priorities established.

This is a logo of the annual festival “Balloons over Waikato”.

After a short briefing, and analyzing of the weather report and a wind rose, it was commanded to unload the balloon gondolas.

As one of the organizers have noted, the New Zealand festival is one of few places in the world where one can freely observe the launching process of hot air balloons. It has been emphasized that there is no such possibility in the USA. Perhaps it is an important information.

All gas apparatuses are to be tested before the launch. A masculine activity.

In the center of the glade there was set a radio cabin to broadcast the show.

That guy proposed to burn gas “on-camera” and was really pleased with the result.

The day was breaking and people both old and young started gathering on the glade.

As for this “brutal Gandolf” I planned to keep it for one of the posts on any of the following themes: “Russia is shit”, “There is no God”, “Mortgage for louts”.

Gondolas are being transported about the ground.

Spectators started to spread checkered blankets for picnics across the grass.

That’s how a hot air balloon looks when folded.

It was dawning. The first to take the air were professionals: the companies providing tourist services. Three quarters of an hour cost 300 NZD.

The inscription on the orange trailer is “An egg a day is now OK”. The fact is New Zealanders watch the cholesterol level. Doctors recommend to eat not more than a dozen of eggs a week. Perhaps there even exist some low cholesterol eggs which are “harmless”. A ready advertising hot air balloon looks this way.

After the sun rose the television screw from Morning News came.

Hot air balloon show is a family holiday.

Hot air balloons, even being semi-inflated, are really huge structures and an awfully ineffective transportation.

For the balloon cupola not to be moved by an accidental wind gust and the flame not to burn a hole into the balloon’s shell, one of the crew members usually holds the balloon by the rope tied to the top of it.

I liked that a single man was able to hold that huge construction with wonderful ease.

One by one the balloons took a vertical position.

The moment, when an enormous balloon stops being a shriveled cover and starts gaining the shape, can be compared in effectiveness with the moment of taking-off.

As I have already mentioned the spectators were allowed to observe the process in the immediate vicinity with the air vehicles.

The balloon with a nice inscription “hamilton” was the first to take the air.

This is one of my favorite photos in this report.

It is very important to watch the shell’s thin material not to be melted by the flame.

The person in the orange vest on the left is holding a fan to inflate the balloon’s shell which is still “lifeless”.

It seems to me that “web-marketing” in the Ultrait company brings in good return. More than thirty balloons participated in the show in 2012. Every year the organizers promise more participants, higher flights and more powerful balloons.

The very moment when a balloon is to be hold because it has already risen but has not tear-shaped yet.

A Kiwi guy with a mustache is watching the process of hot-air-balloons’ launching.

Pilots, one by one, take the air in their aircrafts.

The shape of the balloon on the left is a kiwi-shape (it’s with its back to you). The balloon on the right, as you see, is a kangaroo. And for some reason it is in mittens. The loudspeaker’s voice said that it was the first launch of that huge balloon, and that such balloons were very hard to make.

There is enough room in the sky. We didn’t have even the slightest feeling that the balloons could collide. But half a year ago, in January 2011, while landing, a balloon hooked a power line, caught fire and crashed down. 11 people were killed in that awful tragedy. No one survived.

If we don’t dramatize the event it’s spectacular.

A small-sized balloon of a single pilot was the last to take the air. There, in the right hand corner, you can see a kiwi-balloon facing the camera.

Over a period of one hour all the balloons left the take-off area and vanished into thin air. Especially skilled balloonists promised to get back by means of their balloonist’s intuition.

I hope you’ve liked my photo report and believe it to be interesting enough to share it with your friends. Thanks.

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Hobbiton, New Zealand, 2012

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:25:05 GMT

Hobbiton is the very place where The Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies were shot.

I took pictures of the home of Bilbo Baggings against the sun and brought together parts of three pictures, the obtained colors don’t look natural but this way it is even more like in a fairy-tale.

Peter Jackson liked one of the farms in New Zealand because there were no traces of civilization. So the Americans bought the central part of the farm and built there Hobbiton town that consisted of forty houses-holes, the most part of which being just dummies. When The Lord of the Rings was made the sets were dismantled leaving behind only gaping holes in place of doors upon a hillside. In course of The Hobbit’s making, the number of sets multiplied up many times and was left that way to entertain tourists

The American landowners hired farm workers to look after the garden, bees, sheep and other living creatures which naturally inhabit Hobbiton. There is a rather big cafe with a signboard “Hobbiton” at the road, and a bus goes right from the cafe several times a day . A small town is cozily located at the bottom land near a lake. No signs of modern civilization are seen around.

I started printing something but isn’t it easier to describe pictures? All the more so because I’ve taken half a thousand of them on that day. Below in the post, there are pictures and comments to them.

At the approaches to Hobbiton there are sheep and hills everywhere, which is a rather usual picture for New Zealand.

Welcome to Hobbiton!

Tourists are given some combined feed for tame sheep. Sheep are soft like a carpet. One can pay some money and see how sheep are cut, or bottle feed little ones with milk. That’s a dull part.

The same picture is outside the cafe’s window: hills and sheep, sheep and hills.

It seems that a photo on the cafe’s wall makes a hint: it will be interesting, that is how the holes of real hobbits look.

This is, in fact, a view of the cafe “The Shire’s Rest”.

A noisy woman-guide organizes tourists. The bus will be soon and everybody will go deep into the farm — to Shire.

A New Zealand farm: fields, sheep and cows.

Bus, go forward, the stop is in Hobbiton. (It is a rephrased part of a Soviet patriotic song, “Our train, rush forward! Our stop is in the Commune…)”

On approaching Shire one can see multiple restrictive signs. It is prohibited to leave trash, climb into the holes, touch and take (steal) things. The fence is under tension (well, for sheep, of course), but the current rushes are quite telling.

There’s, there’s a hole of my dream! Most part of Hobbits’ holes are simply dummies. There is nothing inside, or just enough place for actors of some particular scene, or for a film crew member to shoot it. Most doors are just doors leading nowhere.

A small garden. It is evident that hobbits lived very simple, poor life. The farm workers look after the gardens. Butterflies fly about and it smells like in a forest.

In the distance there one can discern other holes. The house of Bilbo is on the top of the hill under a branchy tree.

There in the bushes, awaiting for feedstuffs, cut sheep hide being afraid of everything.

Houses of hobbits are admirably nice. We were discussing the practicality of round doors for a long time. Another point for the discussion was a doorknob-beetle in the center of the door. It is a solely decorative thing, isn’t it? That’s the way I see it.

Those who have read Tolkien’s books carefully know that the drawings on mail boxes reflect the owner’s profession. About 30% of Hobbiton’s visitors have never read the books, and never watched the films either. There’re statistics like that.

A great amount of details around the holes was really to my liking. All those brooms, baskets, benches, jars, bottles produced outward appearances of a village style of living, where everything is meant to be for one’s own home and for one’s own family.

A classic hole of a Hobbit. Pay attention to window dummies at the distance. One can discern there curtains and some large dusty bottles.

These are the details I was talking about: so many things are put on the window and, what is more surprising, behind the window too.

More jars and vessels and a figured window in the door. Each door, each hole, each hobbit house is unique and reflects the character of the owner. The decorators had real fun here.

In the distance, behind the lake there is a town center and a windmill. Tourists are not allowed to go there: it is a new filming site or sort of that. The bridge was designed and built by military men. Somehow the fact became a special pride of the place.

The lake’s view with clouds’ reflection.

The Hobbiton’s view across the lake. This view may be in a new film, so remember the angle.

The time of our visit to the place was not the best one so at some moments I had to take pictures against the sun. I took a lot of triplets and when later I was bringing them together I had to dim lights and lengthen shadows. Well, I got what I got. Yes, it is the very thing which is usually called “HDR”.

The same hill nearby.

Fishing village. While filming, one could see there fishing rods, smoke coming out of chimneys, drying laundry and fish. It was one of the most busy streets of Hobbiton.

Peter Jackson was sure that when there was no wind the smooth lake surface used to transform into a mirror. So I took many pictures of such early morning beauty.

The outskirts of the town, sheep on the hills. In accordance with the book, the actors were traveling here for four days. But in fact it is only five minutes from the physical center of the town. Magic of a cut.

All the pictures, which are meant to gain the favor of readers tired of instagrammas, can be clicked. In the enlarged version of any picture one can see more details. And again I admire the decorators’ work.

One of the views of Bilbo Baggings’ home (under the tree). The door of the hole can be opened, and there is enough place inside just for four people. As for the tree it is absolutely artificial and to make it has costed more than a million dollars. According to the book Bilbo lived under the tree but there was no tree on the top of the hill.

And again we are taking a good look at the details near the holes.

This is a wood yard next to a smithy. Have you noticed anything special next to the ax? Tah-dah! That is it, the Ring. It was brought to Hobbiton by fans from England.

As they said the ring was becoming heavier and heavier when they were flying up to New Zealand. This elderly couple was happy to have their photo in a movie set.

Gardeners are good: houses are not overgrown with grass, flowers bloom, butterflies fly.

Window glass is not even, flower cases are painted in the corners. If it were not for the guide’s hurrying I would have hung there for a longer period of time to carefully view the designers’ work.

A house with a yellow door. In one of such holes there were utility services responsible for lighting, smoke out of chimneys and many other things meant to enliven the set. As I promised, here it is – a butterfly “in-person”.

A wine red door, neatly arranged firewood in a tub and growing sunflower under the feet. Very nice.

A huge tree, under which hobbits were happily frisking about in the first parts of The Lord of the Rings movie.

A roadway marker. Lichen grows very slowly if you remember the fact from the school course of biology. Moss and other traces of aging on the wooden parts of the scenery has been, as I see it, a special task of designers. Looks great!

That is the most popular and famous house in Hobbiton – the main one. This is the place where Bilbo Baggings lived, and where Gandolf happened to drop in.

It really looks like in the photo on the cafe’s wall. The organizers of the entertainment got it right. No kidding!

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Glitchy San Francisco

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:16:55 GMT

At first I did not like San Francisco, and then I liked it very much. By means of such a simple language I want to say that San Francisco is a far from ordinary place. It arouses mixed feelings and there is no doubt that it is really interesting. In the foreseeable future I will definitely return to “Sanfran” as Russian immigrants call it.

When I arrived to New Zealand my hard disk turned to be damaged. I managed to restore only a small part of photos. Only less than 10 % photos turned out to be unaffected by a specific digital effect (it is clearly seen in the post). In the beginning I got upset (that is why I did not post that long) but after, perhaps, the tenth view of the half-damaged photo archive I started to notice interesting frames. I am sharing them today. They are unusual.
One amateur of electronic music has suggested the name for such photos, which seems to me very adequate: glitch photos.
The photos came out as uncommon. Did you enjoy them?

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Sky over Beijing

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:13:26 GMT

It is very easy to breathe in the post-Olimpic Beijing, no matter what. It is easier than two years ago. The authorities have overcome sand storms by way of making a forest shelter belt. The trees have been taken from southern regions of the country. In addition, the authorities have closed hazardous industries and prohibited many automobilists and companies from using vehicles. In Beijing there are more than three million automobiles. The Government’s anti-smoking action has also been succesful: now one can seldom see a smoking person in the center of the city but there are many signs reminding of the adverse health effects of tobacco smoke. And there is no twenty-four-hour smog in the city. It appears only towards evenings. The wind blows it away in nights, and in the mornings one can admire the blue sky which is usually depicted in every possible guide-book.

The blue sky over the red walls of the Forbidden City. October 1st is the beginning of the national holiday of the Golden Week. It is a big family holiday. On this day people usually visit their parents, get together at the dinner table, go sightseeing and have rest from their labours in the bosom of the family. Relatives from the whole country come to eighteen-million Beijing. And on the first day of the Golden Week they decided to visit the Forbidden City, the second important sight of the capital after the Great Wall. I had never seen so many people in the streets. As a result, my planned visit to the former Imperial Palace looked very much like a crowd scene of some film like “The Hero”. The black masses flowed down the steps of the Palace to merge into the masses awaiting in the square.

On the same reason there was no chance to get to Shanghai in the beginning of October. And though there were multiple ways to get to the eastern capital of China, the transport network turned out to be paralyzed with the influx of passangers. But God’s will for everything. At that time Shanghai suffered from torrential rains and floods. Following a good weather I went to the south, to Nanchang. It was a city where the revolution had started, and where one could see second largest squre in China and second tallest ferris wheel in the world.

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Ninety Mile Beach on a Summer Day

stas_kulesh — Tue, 24 Jan 2017 00:04:17 GMT

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The sun in Kaitaia is hidden with low-level clouds today. It is windy but warm. Here have got together windsurfing and paddleboarding (a stand up paddle board with a SUP paddle) lovers, as well as those who love beach running and beach driving.

It is a strip of sand that is actually 88 kilometers long. The fact contradicts the name “Ninety Mile Beach”. There are several theories explaining the fact. The most common theory tells that when missionaries investigated the north part of New Zealand, the beach took three days to travel on horse back when on average a horse could travel 30 miles in a day. But the missionaries did not take into account the slower pace of the horses walking in the sand.

In the 30-s of the last century that part of the coast line was actively used as a runway. The sand there is dense, firm, and compressed by the uniform waves of the Tasman Sea. Ninety Mile Beach is still sometimes used as an alternative road to State Highway 1 when the main road is closed due to landslides or floods.

When the tide flows, almost the whole beach gets under the water. It is prohibited to tent and spend nights on the beach for safety reasons and due to the fact that since the beginning of time maori buried their deadmen in the coastal dunes. Truth be told, many people ignore the prohibition. Often cars left on the beach all night get sunk in a stream and stay there forever. Here and there on the beach you come across frames eroded by salt water.

That is how a car sunk in a stream looks like (from Wikipedia). When we spent a night on the beach (yeah, surely it is wrong to act like that), we left our car in the car park in Kaitaia.

A shark head stranded by the incoming tide.

The end of the beach is beyond the horizon.

Some time in 2008, I took a picture of the other end of the beach.

The surface is firm so one can rather easily drive 4WD here.

It was then, in 2008, that shader and me speeded up to 100 km per hour and leaned out of the car windows.

When the tide ebbs, the wet surface of the beach turns into a mirror.

One can drive the sleek sand surface without fear.

An incredible sense of freedom.

The sky over Ninety Mile Beach.

Haven’t you noticed anything special on the surfer’s photo?

Yes, sure. It is not a surfing board but a paddle board. A paddle helps to cope with the board.

When a paddle boarder catches a wave, he/she holds on to the wave with a paddle.

Such a method prolongs the period of sliding and allows the surfer to catch small and irregular waves.

Long coastal walks is a favourite pastime for the people of the coastal town Kaitaia.

At sunset seagulls chase crabs.

If you want more pictures and more story, here you can watch video taken by Artyom Verbovikov during the trip to the northern part of the North Island.

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