Boon Vong Journal

I don't often post about Lao Americans. Mostly this is a blog about Laos and Laotians, but I personally am very interested in the subject.

Most of my Lao friends here are people who came to the US as adults, either recently or back in the day. They are more comfortable speaking Lao than English. I'm also friends with people who are Lao by ethnicity but who grew up in America. I feel proud when I see them succeed within the greater framework of American society. They are very American, but are also Lao. The things they write allow me a perspective into Lao culture that I'm seldom able to get from my fellow falangs, yet they can express it not only in the language of America but within the cultural context of modern American life.

Some of the blogs I read are written extremely well with a poignancy about life and it's connection to their Lao-ness that cuts to the quick. I don't link to these blogs. Some of them are very personal, dealing with matters of self identity and family. I think they might well be written for a limited audience. My web crawler sorts them and alerts me to posts.

The photographer and artist below is someone who obviously knows his blog might well be looked at by many people so I link here. Take a look especially at his drawings, you can find many via the link on his side bar. They seem to be from photos but with a soul inserted into the image. They are very realistic, but even more true than a photo if you follow me.

http://www.b-vong.com/journal/



Time and again I think I recognise the people in the pictures only to realize that they aren't some one's kids I saw at the party or down at the Lao store. They are as Lao as the sound of the saat hitting the coke, or the steam of sticky rice in the kitchen or tang jeao padek. And they are 100% American.


http://www.b-vong.com/journal/

When the charger broke

My camera uses rechargeable batteries. Mostly I like it, one charge lasts a long time, no batteries to throw away. I keep everything charged up as much as I can. Never know when there might be no electricity for a while.

So I was sitting in my hotel room minding my own business and my camera battery charger starts doing one of those sparking smoking type things that you just know aren't going to end up well. By the time I unplugged it whatever was happening had finished doing it's thing.

I was concerned but not despondent. Three fully charged batteries might well last quite a while. No reviewing and deleting photos, just turn it on, snap, then off it goes. More than likely the geniuses down at the market could fix it.

So down the the big market in Pakse I trotted, or scooted to be more exact. I walked through the phone section until I found a store that not only worked on phones but had a few cameras and video cams lying around in various states of repair. I told him it was sick, figured that was close enough, and he peeled it apart stuck the ohm meter on it. Ten seconds later he speed dialed someone, hung up and said, "Lao no have" then looking at me and using the probe from the ohm meter to point at one of those tiny cylinders with wires coming out the end said emphatically, "this, this, this, no have in Lao"

Yes he was speaking English, doggone kids. Probably Vietnamese or Chinese or something. No doubt hated English in school but aced it anyway to go to the good college. And that third language without even trying he speaks it a lot better than I speak the language of the market. I thanked him heavily, he smiled, shrugged his shoulders and said, "maybe Thailand". I still had one possibility.

As soon as I got to Vientiane I got myself on down to the morning market. They are tearing it up and it's hard to find your way around now. Huge pieces are construction zones. Shame really it used to be pretty easy, all the stores that sold similar stuff in one place, many ways to enter or leave each section.

The gold repair used to be along the east side back in the day, adjacent to the street across from the bus station but a little further down. Now it's just off the corner on the east side and no parking on the street. The turn in is where they take away all the trash too so it's not always pleasant.






He's the guy behind the counter

I found the gold repair places and sure enough that same guy was there who fixed my telephoto back thirteen years ago. We spoke Lao. I told him I didn't think it could be fixed in Laos. He did the same thing with the call on the cell phone but told me it would be 300,000 kip and the part would come from Udon Thani on the bus. I said great. Then he asked me if I understood and started to write it out so I repeated it slowly and said I understood. Some electronics store in Udon Thani would have to ship it on the bus, it would get left across the street, and he'd go get it and probably pay the money which would then reverse the same route. I thought the charge reasonable.

Lots of love for old TV repair men who have evolved with the times and also young smart Asian techies no matter thier country of orgin.

My Camera

DPReview of the new Pana FZ8

Panasonic just released a newer version of the camera I’ve been using. I was very happy to see not much had changed.
They added another pixel and an upgraded processor but the sensor, lenses, and body are all the same. I’m not so crazy about cramming tons of pixels into a tiny sensor anyway. The new camera is called the FZ8, I’m using it’s older sister called the FZ7, still the best thing I could find in it’s category called super zoom, or sometimes “SLR like“. With enough batteries and a couple huge memory cards it set me back a little over three hundred US. Empty it weighs around 300 grams, too light to bonk somebody over the head with when they steal my bus seat. I protect it because it’s the only camera I have not because it’s worth anything.
My pana (that’s shutter bug language for a Panasonic) doesn’t have interchangeable lenses but that’s just fine by me. I spent years switching from my telephoto zoom to the wide angle while shielding my camera from desert dust and mountain snow. Now I have the equivalent of a 38mm wide to a 430mm zoom all in a very good Leica lens. The image stabilization is nice too, now I can hand hold shots of almost everything. It helps that I can’t use the tripod because it’s at home.
My favourite mode is program mode. I can change any setting I want and other things will sort themselves out automatically. The other mode I use a lot is Manual because it allows me to adjust the lighting the way I want. Sometimes things just have a light filled background and I still want a shot.
One weird thing is that if I leave the camera to it’s default wide angle setting I can get real close, move the zoom to get a little closer and I have to jump back to a couple meters or things aren’t in focus. Don’t know why. The super VGA movie mode was broken from the get go. Oh well. I’ve tried taking some movies, don’t know how to get them up on the blog anyway.
All in all I’m very happy. My last and only other real camera was a Pentax Manual SLR. It had a light meter. It was sturdy but I had to work to get a good shot. I used to shoot with very slow Fuji slide film and I liked the colours better than this camera, I don’t care if they weren’t real.
This camera also has a scene mode that I often use for food. It also has a “simple” as in stupid, mode. Has a big red heart on the dial just to let you know. I’ve never been able to get a good picture out of it, always seems to be some kind of compromise.
Now that I can half way figure out these cameras I look at other peoples equipment when I’m traveling with them for any length of time. They usually use scene mode.
For fixing up the pictures after I shoot I’m still a neophyte. Let me preface by saying I used to think that doing things to an image after shooting was cheating. I don’t have photo shop, but use the stuff that came with the Google picture management software I downloaded off the net. Mostly I use it to crop or to add fill light. Some of the really bad shots have already been sharpened and everything else I could think of. There is also a feature called, “I’m feeling lucky”.
I realize not all the photos are that great, often they are used to move the story along. Sometimes they are just all there is of a person or situation I wanted to tell about. I keep thinking about going back to the villages I first visited and bringing them copies of the pictures. It looks as if I’ll be headed in that general direction Monday.