Talking and Walking is a Way of Life

Commercial advertisement

Is your phone staying quiet for too long? Are you embarrassed to be walking alone on crowded streets with nothing to do or say to anyone? Are your thoughts overwhelming? Do you feel alienated among the 50 billion souls you share our planet with? Would you rather have someone familiar to talk to, 24 hrs a day?

Introducing the latest generation of Motoronokiai Smart Phones, the Walker Talker. Available in 69 different colors including the new Transparent Dream, Jungle Safari, Blood Alley, Dripping Make-Up and Meatballs Spaghetti designs, the Walker Talker will instantly become your best friend. And that’s exactly what it’s designed to do!

Flip it open with a twist of the wrist, a move developed in the late twentieth century by Captain James T. Kirk, and your Smart Phone comes to life. As long as it’s open, the phone will emit the standard FCC « call in progress » glow, making it virtually impossible for passersby to tell if you are in an actual call or not. And that’s the beauty of the Talker, ladies: our new model comes loaded with the latest in artificial intelligence. Talk to it, and it will reply! That’s right: you no longer need to depend on incoming calls to look cool.

The Talker’s voice recognition software analyzes your conversation and the A.I. actually speaks back to you. Content is of no importance; whether you are superficial or very superficial, the Walker Talker will keep you talking to yourself by simply returning questions and simple acknowledgments. Gone are the days of inventing a conversation with an invisible interlocutor. People will think you are immersed in a real conversation and envy and respect you.

An optional module allows you to activate the Live Clues function of the A.I. making it give you hints of what faces to make to keep the conversation alive and credible. It will for instance tell you from time to time to Wave your hands wildly, Shake your head in despair, Laugh out loud, Act like you’re in control, Look thoughtful, Let tears come to your eyes, Ignore the stranger next to you and so on. (Sold separately)

What started over 75 years ago as a necessity, talking to yourself on your own cell phone to look busy and important, has now been integrated INTO your new phone for your convenience. Isn’t anybody calling? Talk to yourself while you slide on magnetic walkways or on the air-tram fast transit lines and fool the world - you might even fool yourself.

Never again look like you have no friends.

Get your Walker Talker today and start living with confidence.

Oh and yes, it works as a regular phone too.

 [ Thanks Grabriele for the idea; you’re not so unfresh yourself ]

A very small boy carrying a huge piece of driftwood creeps by in the darkness, the end of his load barely missing the tripod on which thrones Abe. She must shiver at the thought of all the wet sand surrounding us and that would gladly sneak into every open space of her delicate anatomy. I make a mental note to keep the kid in my peripheral vision.

This has been a strange day, one of those « lost before they even started » battles. For many reasons not worth mentioning, I just felt like going straight to bed after leaving work early. But Silvia had been kind enough to come in and work a few hours for me so that I could go shoot the fireworks and I owed her to try.

The kid has now been tamed by an impatient mom and is sitting a few feet away on the beach, building sand castles in front of him and immediately destroying them with intense concentration and a kiai. I focus on the new threat posed by a group of latecomers who seem to be planning a squat down right in my line of sight to the barge anchored offshore a stone’s throw away. I might have to throw the stone at them instead.

Deciding on a location to settle in has taken me quite a while. I considered the slopes above us between the road and the beach and walked back and forth trying to find an empty 2 square feet of grass to squeeze into. But the crowd was already overwhelming and the angle not so great. So I opted for a front row seat and sat down right next to the water, with 150,000 people right behind me and another 100,000 across the bay in Kits.

Of course I could also have gone to Trout Lake for the Illuminares lantern procession, but this was so much closer to home. There’s something to be said about stepping out the door, walking across the street and sitting down on a beach to watch fireworks. And I’ll say it: it’s spoiling.

Canada is shooting tonight’s display. The radio station broadcasting the musical part of the show is already playing loud behind us, reminding everybody to carry out their garbage. I don’t like crowds. They get out of control. They are exponentially more obnoxious then their individual components.

My right leg is cramping slightly, wrapped around that side of the tripod. But this is the position that allows me to be in close contact with Abe; the camera sits right in front of my face, like a night vision goggle on some soldiers’ helmet. I recheck my settings, refocus manually on the barge at full zoom then back off to wide angle, grateful for my parfocal lens and recompose my shot for a tenth time.

Only a few minutes to go. The view is clear, my human obstructions having walked somewhere else. The karate kid is bored and quiet. I’m almost getting exited despite the rough day. This will all have been worth it after all. Thank you Silvia.

As our Canadian anthem starts playing, the crowd stands up and I do so too, bumping the camera a bit. My right leg is numb. I’ll have to reframe.

Then we all sit back down. It feels like a game. I recompose my shot.

Expectative silence. A few whistles. The barge’s lights go off. I lean over and look through the viewfinder, grabbing the remote in my left hand, making sure I’m on bulb. I think I’m holding my breath a little.

A first flash at the barge, then a second, followed by the strange hissing sound of nearly invisible projectiles rising through the sky to their apogees. My grip on the remote tightens. People shout with anticipation.

Then the sky finally explodes in bright surprises and dripping colours. I press the shutter.

It’s odd how I’d never noticed before that on the Canon XTi, this message is actually written in red and green on the LCD screen: « Please replace the battery. »

It’s 2:30 am. All cats are gray and people are few. The streets are wet and shinny from hours of rain, but for the time being only a fine mist fills the air; it feels almost as being inside a cloud. Speaking of which, the clouds drawn on the horizon by city lights of different color temperature are quite eerie. I decide to interrupt my walk on the Seawall and run back home to get the camera.

Here is what I record. No, these are not sunset or sunrise shots, nor are they daytime trick shots. They were really taken at 2:45 am on a dark rainy night, with exposure times ranging from 1:30 to 3 minutes and their white balance adjusted to the left to offset the orange cast of my auto setting. Once again, I am reminded of how much light exists out there at night, invisible to our imperfect eyes but very real nonetheless, casting shadows and highlighting new colors in a parallel world made of time and patience.

They’re big, they’re high, they’re sharp and they reign over the local landscape like as many kings on their respective kingdoms. They are the volcanoes of the Cascades mountain range.

My last visit to the American part of the Pacific Northwest dated back almost two years. I had driven around Mt. Hood, observed Mt. St. Helens from a distance, glanced at Rainier from the highway and marveled at the fact that Baker was not only so close to the Canadian border, but to Vancouver itself. However since then, even nearby Mt. Baker had remained out of reach and almost hypothetical.

It took a very serious reason to lead me back south across the border. I went to visit a very dear friend whom, I thought, might need some company and support. It turns out that while company is always welcome, support is for the weak, and weak she isn’t. Kudos to her, and my utmost admiration and respect.

From Olympia, WA, we decided to go for a ride to Mt. Rainier, despite the heavy rain and low ceilings. If we couldn’t see it, we would at least stand at its foot. A pleasant drive lead us from the bottom of Puget Sound into rolling hills announcing the proximity of the giant. The forest got thicker and greener and the clouds seemed to be thinning, but still nothing appeared above us. The mountain remained invisible, hidden in its lingering shroud.

Wildlife was everywhere even before entering the park. The rain had stopped and the sky was hesitant. The slope steepened, the road began to twist and turn and we arrived at Paradise, highest civilized point south of the mountain, altitude 5400 ft.

Deciding to go for a short walk on a looping trail, we hoped for a sneak preview of the Nisqually glacier. By the time we got to the view point, the clouds were lifting further, revealing the mountain’s base and some blue glacier ice soiled with brownish debris. We grabbed a bite to replenish our energy supply and chose a new hike, longer and higher, but conservative enough for our shape.

A deer passed nearby, then a mountain marmot came out of nowhere, crossing the path just behind us to go gorge on flowers below. The clouds were still receding. Finally, 4,392 m high Mt. Rainier appeared in most of its majestic height.

But energy was fleeting. This was enough for a start and quite a remarkable effort in itself. We walked down to the car and headed slowly back to the lowlands, stopping here and there for more deer and marmot pictures, for elks, for hummingbirds and for pizza.

The following day, the rainy drive back to Vancouver took me six and a half hours! Traffic is an evil thing. But I had food for the road and music to play.

Here are the first pictures (but you should start the slideshow at the top), I’ll post the rest soon.

There’s a lot more to sunset than meets the eye. From immemorial times, mankind has watched sunsets with a twinge of the heart and a sigh, while sunrises were left alone and generally ignored. Why is that?

As a race, we are dreamers, yet we do not know very well how to empower ourselves and make our dreams come true. We rely on hope and we pass our wishes on to faith. But when the time comes to act and think bold, we get caught up in the moment’s difficulties and lose sight of the big picture.

That’s why sunrise has always been relatively unseen. By the time the sun rises, we are busy stressing out about the day that lays ahead, focusing on immediate goals that speak more of survival than greatness. Sunrise, for many, has become a symbol of labour, heat, struggle and harsh reality. It is a time of day at which we must painfully awaken, attempting to chase a night’s dreams away by drowning them in coffee and diluting them with the brutality of a newspaper. It’s time to perform and to act. It’s time to long for the next sunset.

At night, on the other hand, when the blazing sun finally dips under the horizon, all that suffering is momentarily left behind. We can relax. The colours last longer than in the morning as if the sky knew that time has finally lost its cost and the pace of our lives can slow down and soften. Whatever our performance of the day, it is over now and it will not matter again until dawn. What is done is done, what is said is said, what is missing can still be found in the new dreams of the falling night. Hope or despair can invade the heart, and sunset will make these emotions stronger and more real than the sunrise ever could, because souls are left with nothing to do but ponder.

Sunset is a time to evaluate, a pause in the race, a break in the routine. And as Christopher Columbus said of the ocean, it will bring each man news hopes, as sleep brings dreams of home.

I’ve said it before, we live in a wonderful age. Even if one can’t afford to travel (that would be me these days), there still are amazing virtual options to explore the world, options that weren’t available to us only a decade ago. Google Maps, for instance, continues to innovate and impress me. You can now, in select U.S. cities, get a street level photographic view of an address. That’s right. Anywhere in town!

Let’s say you’ve just booked a couple of nights at the Penguin Hotel in Miami Beach (yeah, I stayed there overnight, years and years ago, on my way back to Little Cayman) and are wondering what the hotel looks like, and if it indeed faces the beach as advertised? Well wonder no longer and type Penguin Hotel Miami into Google Maps. Voilà! Drag the mouse on the picture to scroll around the 360 degree view, or click on the street arrows to move along.

Planning a photo shoot from San Francisco’s Golden Gate Bridge and wondering if the city will be too far away in the background? Go to Google Maps and check it out!

And then of course, there are my recent non-Street View favorites, like the ray spotted swimming among surfers on Bondi Beach, Sydney, and the urban core of Everest’s Base Camp.

For more amazing views of our Earth from the sky, read my previous post Google maps and our Amazing Earth .