Marinating Ideas

  • Lanthos: A Poetry Collection

    Lanthos: A Poetry CollectionHave to admit, have been quite busy with side projects in the last 2 months! So I will just jump into it and with­out any fur­ther ado, I would like to share with the world my entire poet­ry col­lec­tion! 

    ‘You wrote poet­ry?!’ You may ask. Yes, indeed, I did. For many years before I switched over to writ­ing, and paint­ing, and pho­tog­ra­phy. Quite fun­ny actu­al­ly. 

    From over 64 or so I wrote that I thought were good enough to share over the years, 22 have been lost to time and although I am quite sad­den by this, I am prompt­ed to put them out there. Of course I do not think to ever make a cent out of doing this. How­ev­er, one nev­er knows, per­haps some­one who goes through them might feel a sense of com­rade­ship as I would like to think that over time we all come to real­ize we all car­ry a bit of the same artis­tic ener­gy inside all of us. It is just a mat­ter of doing it.  

    Named after an island seen in a dream over 16 years ago, here you have a col­lec­tion of 41 poems writ­ten over three quite dis­tinct & colour­ful life epochs. The ‘Pink,’ ‘Blue’ and ‘Eng­lish’ peri­ods encom­passed over 16 years of expe­ri­ence and both dis­play a chang­ing and (hope­ful­ly) grow­ing per­spec­tive of a teenag­er who grew to man who was curi­ous about what he could do through the medi­um of Poet­ry.

    Share my jour­ney as I once most­ly saw the the world from a roman­tic, can­dle-lit prism, to now, per­haps a more cyn­i­cal, wared soul. Lan­thos: A Poet­ry Col­lec­tion      

  • My Photography Portfolio!

    Today I am launch­ing my new pho­tog­ra­phy portafo­lio! This is some­thing which I have been think­ing of doing for quite some­time and final­ly, now that I had some free time, I man­aged to slap some­thing togeth­er. Which by the way I have to admit, I am quite hap­py how that got slapped.  Not too shab­by if I say so myself. After some inter­est­ing learn­ing curves I can final­ly say that it is a sim­ple, straight to the point can­vas in which to show­case one of my pas­sion­ate hob­bies. I am very excit­ed and hope you take the chance to  check it out it and share your opin­ions! Here is a bit from my “About” page:

    ‘Wel­come to my pho­tog­ra­phy port­fo­lio which includes inter­est­ing and eye-catch­ing slices of life. Feel free to vis­it, browse, com­ment or sim­ple check through my slide show. I have been an avid pho­tog­ra­ph­er since 2005, although only began tak­ing it a lit­tle more seri­ous­ly in 2007 and I am look­ing for­ward to shar­ing some of my work with the world.

    As time goes by, you will see an ongo­ing influx of my work and although I do not con­sid­er myself a pho­tog­ra­ph­er, I do enjoy the art of it.

    For now, this site is devel­op­ment, so please don’t mind the clut­ter, alter­na­tive­ly feel free to check my project site and see my oth­er ini­tia­tives I am cur­rent­ly work­ing on.’

  • The Coca Cola Case: When Goliath Is Anxious

    At the begin­ning of 2010, an extra­or­di­nary doc­u­men­tary caught my atten­tion. In Crude, a group of activists cam­paign and sue Tex­a­co Oil (now Chevron) who dur­ing the course of three decades lit­er­al­ly laid waste through hun­dreds of Ecuado­ri­an vil­lages, leav­ing a lega­cy of con­t­a­m­i­na­tion, count­less can­cer cas­es and ulti­mate­ly death. The movie is a ground-lev­el view of one of the most extra­or­di­nary legal dra­mas of our time, one which could set a prece­dent of how mul­ti-nation­al busi­ness is con­duct­ed. 

    Because of this, a movie event was sched­uled through my Span­ish Peer Speak­ing Group in order to bring fur­ther atten­tion to as many peo­ple as I could. Since then, anoth­er doc­u­men­tary has also caught my atten­tion, one which peo­ple must also be made aware of. In the Coca-Cola Case, a group of lawyers try to bring atten­tion and an end to the myr­i­ad of human right vio­la­tions from an even more unlike­ly cul­prit.

    The Coca-Cola com­pa­ny (Inc. 1888) is a North Amer­i­can media dar­ling and is cur­rent­ly the brand most rec­og­nized in the entire world. A friend­ly, bright & peren­ni­al brand, nor­mal­ly asso­ci­at­ed with shar­ing a good time with good friends. They have spend hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars to achieve this very goal. So very far removed from the real­i­ty of this media empire’s hun­dreds of alleged kid­nap­pings, tor­ture and mur­der of union lead­ers who tried to improve work­ing con­di­tions in Colom­bia, Guatemala and Turkey. Yet in fact, the non-prof­it net­work show­cas­ing this very film, Cin­e­ma Polit­i­ca received a let­ter from Coca Cola lawyers on Jan. 11th imply­ing the show­ing of this doc­u­men­tary to be ille­gal! Come now, you just know, when Goliath is this anx­ious, it’s because he knows David’s is pack­ing heat.

    ‘Why would they allow this?’ If peo­ple are dying, why would they look the oth­er way? The answer is ter­ri­bly sim­ple. It’s greed. Hor­ri­ble, dis­gust­ing, all-encom­pas­ing greed. For exam­ple, the doc­u­men­tary inter­views a num­ber of work­ers, some of whom earn $15 for 15 hours of phys­i­cal­ly demand­ing labour, while in com­par­i­son, the  top brass of Coca Cola in Atlanta gets paid almost $5,000 AN HOUR and that’s far from the the worst this film offers as proof. The actu­al focus is that in order to keep wages low, Coca Cola has gone as far as to use para­mil­i­tary forces to sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly mur­der any­one who wants to change the sta­tus quo. So far at least 9 men, all union lead­ers and all Coca Cola work­ers, have been killed while the com­pa­ny looks the oth­er way, wash­es their hands and claims no lia­bil­i­ty. 

    Again, to help out, anoth­er movie event was sched­uled by Speak Span­ish To Me. With 1200+ mem­bers, just pass­ing the word via email is a step in the right direc­tion. With a bit of luck, the word got passed to two movie groups in Toron­to and we all went to see the movie last night. The audi­to­ri­um was packed and as expect­ed the doc­u­men­tary showed the out­right greed of mul­ti-nation­als who will throw as many wrench­es into the legal sys­tem as nec­es­sary to slow down any jus­tice to the men who have been mur­dered in cold blood. Going on for five years now, the case is just start­ing to get clos­er to a res­o­lu­tion, how­ev­er if you don‘t want to wait, we as con­sumers can and must speak in the one and best way they under­stand, through their mon­ey cof­fers!

    In the end, our col­lab­o­ra­tion was to get edu­cat­ed and if I say so myself, mon­e­tar­i­ly speak­ing, the group’s funds we con­tributed paid half their rental expens­es! But on a seri­ous note, I high­ly rec­om­mend every­one to make the time to see this doc­u­men­tary and for us and most peo­ple who saw the movie last night, I think we are all switch­ing refresh­ment brands… water it‘s start­ing to look par­tic­u­lar­ly healthy. And that’s the real thing.     

  • A Birthday Gift Story (First Useful Painting)

    Rewind to The View From My Old Buildinga few years ago…

    Okay. So while sip­ping green tea in my lone­ly apart­ment, a friend of mine rang me out of the blue and asked ‘So, what are you bring­ing to the birth­day par­ty?’ Sur­prised by such for­ward­ness, I answered the only way I could, with a heart­felt, ‘Who the hell is this?’ Tsk, tsk. A few awk­ward moments lat­er, and hav­ing estab­lished the per­son in the oth­er end to be in fact my friend Kristi­na, who in fact had a birth­day par­ty com­ing up that evening and who in fact I had no gift to give to. I decid­ed to per­form gift surgery in a hur­ry.

    ‘How long do I have?!” To which she replied that I was expect­ed at her apart­ment along with every­one else in under three hours. Now, at this point I lived too far from a round trip shop­ping excur­sion and the clos­est places of busi­ness where my legal ten­der was accept­ed was a McDon­ald’s and the cor­ner con­ve­nience store. Both not high in the gift car­ry­ing depart­ment hier­ar­chy. I was total­ly fried.

    Kristi­na had been a good friend, lis­ten­ing to my sto­ries of woes and wine and she was was going through a bad spot after break­ing up with her boyfriend and I thought  a nice gift would  cheer her spir­its. Sad­ly, I was pret­ty broke and had no clue about what to get her.

    Sud­den­ly,  I remem­bered some wise word I prob­a­bly made up or hear some­one else said: ‘If you can­not buy a gift, then MAKE a gift! AHA! Eure­ka! Prob­lem solved! Then I sat down and sipped on some more green tea in the jubilee of an idea well thought. 5 Min­utes went by. Shit. No idea of a gift yet.

    Mak­ing a gift is hard, you see. If you are tal­ent­less, if idea can explode in your face and not only you look cheap but also tact­less. Spe­cial­ly when you have no idea where to start. So then, I thought of doing a draw­ing, yeah, that’s it, some paint­ing! It made sense, it would unique and world­ly. Yes! A paint­ing, that sound­ed like a great idea. I had done some draw­ings & sketch­es while a kid, how­ev­er I had to deal with the stern issue that I sucked. But hey, it’s the inten­tion that mat­ters right? Right.

    So I found some water paint, took some white card­board –yeah, I did­n’t even have a can­vas at the time– and searched my vicin­i­ty for a sub­ject.… Uh… Noth­ing in liv­ing room… The kitchen? God, I need­ed to clean the kitchen back then. It looked as if a war-zone had walked in, seen the mess and thrown up in there. Geesh, still noth­ing. Noth­ing. NOTHING!

    ‘Mmmm…’ per­haps my idea had not been as idiot proof as expect­ed. Then, I looked out my north expo­sure win­dow from my 11th floor apart­ment and there it was: A sun was set­ting. ‘That’s nice…’ Eure­ka!  Paint the sil­ly sun­set! Damn, how come I did­n’t see it before?! Guess you had to wait for it, no? And so I did.

    Mashed paint on of that card­board of mine like a mad man who is expect­ed short­ly at a birth­day par­ty and even fin­ished on record time too! Just under an hour. On my way, Rid­ding The Rock­et™, I end­ed fan­ning the paint­ing, hop­ing it to dry on the short sub­way hop. Guess what! It did! She loved that tiny 10x 7 paint­ing so much she place it dead cen­ter on her man­tel! I was quite proud of it, if I say so myself.

    Until a week lat­er when a book the size of a ency­clo­pe­dia felt on top if it and crushed it. Still, it was a nice sto­ry. The end.