One hour, seven minutes, four seconds, thirty-four dollars.
As the eminent diagnostician Dr. Gregory House once noted, an addiction is merely academic so long as it doesn't interfere with one's work.
I acknowledge that I have a problem with Internet access. How else to explain the fact that I'm actually using one of the ship's Internet terminals, paying a rate of exchange that would make even a legbreaking street hustler tut-tut and comment about the need to observe the mores of basic human decency?
But I've been at sea for a few days, now. And here at 4:30 AM on Tuesday it's nearly the end of the working day on Monday back home; lots of emails (I correctly reckoned) piled up that were (a) business-related and (b) too complicated to be dispatched from the touchscreen of my iPhone later today in Japan.
Interesting thing, this shipboard Internet cafe. Like all others of its ilk I've used, it's a room off of the ship's library. Unlike any experience I ever had, when I visited after dinner last night, the library was being used as a dressing room for the ship's lounge entertainment.
I want you to imagine, dear reader, that creamy showgirls were peeling out of their gowns and into dance leotards, their need for a fast costume change obliterating any care for modesty. This is a more pleasant mental image than the reality of nervous male passengers being led in by the ship's entertainment director, and putting on ballerina costumes and wigs.
Overall, these men bore the mask of having been recently admonished "Why can't you just relax and be a good sport about this?" by someone they know they're going to be trapped in a small cabin with for another five days.
(Important rule of going on a cruise: have nothing to do whatsoever with any sort of onboard entertainment. Gamble if that's the only alternative. And if you must, then take your chances with the ocean. It's the place from whence all life springs, after all. The lounge of a cruise ship is where drunk people go to sing "Muskrat Love" in foam mouse costumes. Choose wisely.)
It's a fine ship. Naturally, all but a handful of the 1200 or so passengers are Asians, so I'm having the same experience I had in Beijing: I'm the guy who is definitely Not From Around here.
The sensation is intensified by being in such close quarters. I've quickly learned to do as the locals do: be slightly impatient and indifferent to other people, by American standards. If you want to allow someone to get off the elevator, someone will step around you, shoulder the exiting person aside, and tap the elevator button to send it skyward with just one passenger aboard. Etc. So I simply slap a hand on the door, allow the gentleman to glare sternly, and wait until the four or five people have had time to board.
I'm not kidding about the Exotic nature of my Western good looks. And by "good" I think I'm optimistically upgrading myself from "bizarre." We were warned that many of these passengers have never seen Westerners before and might do a lot of staring. They forgot to say "and take pictures."
Big sideburns on a Westerner are like having a woman who's 6'9 _and_ has a full beard. So I've been getting a lot more attention than I really enjoy, frankly. I made the mistake of eating a quick breakfast in the cafeteria restaurant on my first day and so many cameras were pulled out (nothing short of people walking up and popping the flash from six feet away without a word) that I abandoned the meal.
(From then on the policy became: if you shoot me, I get to return the fire. I'm usually pretty timid about taking other people's pictures so it's been a chance to work some undeveloped photographic muscles.)
Speaking of undeveloped photos, my Aperture and iMovie libraries attest to the fine time I had yesterday in Jeju. What a marvelous island. It's very much like Hawaii in the sense that it's a beautiful place with both a distinct local character and ample resorts for people who want to truly relax and enjoy some precious time off. If it weren't a 13 hour flight away from home, Jeju would be on that list of places I'd go for a true non-working vacation.
It doesn't matter how many photos I took. I got the handful of shots that I came for. Once again my Nikon D80 proved to be one of my very best all-time consumer purchases. We stopped at four or five different sights and as usual, each place turned into an endlessly engaging game of hide-and-seek.
We came to a Buddhist temple on the side of a cliff. We'd passed by a touristy sort of one on our way elsewhere (sort of like Buddhaland Wacky Coaster and Wild Water Park, in spiritual terms) and when we expressed an interest, our driver Wan said that he knew of a much better one. "No admission!" he said, smiling.
Well, it was bloody marvelous, is what it was.
"What's that building over there?" I asked, indicating what appeared to be a modern block of condos within walking distance.
"Rich people stay there, when they come to visit the temple," Wan explained. Hie English was very good but it's the last 5% of every language that's the killer. I don't think I could really put across the subtleties of the question "Why do they come here?"
"Rich people, they have many problems," Wan said. "They come to rest and pray."
What I would have liked to have known was the nature of this desire. Do they come simply to de-stress? Is it like a retreat? Or do they come there to think and pray in the way that a Westerner would define those terms?
I left my shoes at the temple's steps. And my hat. Wan told me that it was OK to leave it on but I confess it was less about the temple's traditions and more about my own comfort levels. Something forces me to remove my hat when I enter a church and this same software left my hat on top of my shoes.
I guess I'm spiritual rather than religious, to use the popular term. But I don't use it as a way to deny the appeal that religion has for me. I enter a place like this and feel things that are openly irrational and yet absolutely real. I felt the same things in there that I felt atop a temple in Belize that had been abandoned a millenium ago, and inside a simple suburban Catholic church last year when I started taking my Mom to Mass every week.
Structure, location, denomenation...they're not the point. It's the knowledge that you're standing at the endpoint of a line that stretches back seemingly endlessly. For tens, hundreds, even thousands of years people have come to this place and left their prayers, which somehow leave a residue that builds in potency for layer after layer.
Eventually, it hits you as an power sense of awe and humility. You are but one breath in the life of the Univese. Countless have come before you and countless will come after you, but you're still incredibly inportant because you're the one that's here right now, allowing the next breath to take place.
I did think about my Mom and my Dad while I was in there.
Back to the pictures. The attendants assured me that the temple had absolutely no prohibitions on the use of cameras and after seeing a small but steady flow of visitors snapping photos with cameras, phones, and camcorders, I was assured.
How different the experience would have been, had I come here with a tour group. We would probably have had a strict 20 minute time limit. I would have been there with fifty noisy and feckless tourists, all of whom were dumped off there at the same time. I would have had neither the time nor the quiet I needed to simply fully enjoy the space and have my Moment, and then walk around, exploring the site and getting pictures.
Here the game of hide-and-seek began. I knew that there are many fantastic pictures hiding in this facility. After you've finally overcome your sense of awe, you realize that if you don't come away with at least a half a dozen images that instantly become your desktop wallpaper, it was a failure of the photographer.
A camera in my hands forces me to appreciate a location far more fully. I can't speak for the other tourists who came and went along with the occasional practicing Buddhist. But I wander with my senses fully open. I'm aware of light, color, detail, shadows, context, how one element relates to another.
I can't say if I accomplished any real art with my D80 in that temple. But when I got back to my cabin and dumped my memory card, I zoomed immediately to the temple photos and was gratified by the results.
I need to come up with a word that explains this sense of photographic narcissism. Narcissus was so taken by his own image that he stared at his own reflection until he died of starvation. I was so taken by one specific image that I put it into fullscreen display mode, turned off all of the toolbars, and just stared at it for a full minute.
Actually, I don't think it's narcissism or pride at all. Staring at that photo reminded me of the fine and full experiences I had there. And yes, it's now my desktop image.
Onward to Japan. A full day on another island, this time a recursive one as it's an island _off_ another island. My own batteries have recharged from yesterday's photo and video junket and whoops, I've just realized that my camera batteries haven't.
Off I go.
