Mr. Sanguine's Home

Continued from Aviation Photos 6.

Labels: Travel

This is a continuation from Part 1 of my recent trip on the MV Doulos.



Although the Doulos has seen many modifications throughout its long history, much of the work on board is still done manually. Here the deckhands stow the lines in preparation for the departure from Manila.



Safety drills are practiced regularly, while at sea and in port. The lifeboat crew is seen here preparing to lower a lifeboat in a man overboard scenario whilst underway to Cebu.



Approaching the main harbor of Cebu, a pilot boat approaches to board a local pilot to help guide the bridge crew of the Doulos steer the large ship into the confines of the harbor.



Volunteers are eased into shipboard life through their family groups. Older crew members act as surrogate parents to a group of volunteers. These groups meet weekly for prayer and social interaction.



The volunteers on board aren't just young adults, there are several whole families on board, some with young charges.



A schooling program is available on board, as well as recreational facilities catering to the kids.



I learnt to look forward to the freshly baked loaves of bread emerging from the bakery every morning. They really stood out from the simple fare found on board.



Dr. Carter attending to one of his many patients for the day. The ship had been without a dentist for the last several months and the recent arrival of Dr. Carter was a welcomed one as the list of dental cases started piling up. Dr. Carter also provides dental care in the land missions where teams are sent to remote areas where medical services are sorely lacking.



A glimpse into the world's largest floating bookstore. This is a typical public crowd which can be found on the Doulos on any given day in port.



Visitors, both young and old, browse through the many selections available on board.



Not quite your regular Borders, but there are unused shelves to rest yourself on for a quick browse.



On a typical land mission, a team of volunteers helps build a day care center for a village in Cebu.



Everyone on board is involved in the ministry side of things. Captain MacDonald leads a group of Manila volunteers in a quayside ministry session.



It was but a short stay on board the Doulos for me but the trip left me with deep impressions of the sacrifices many of the volunteers made to spend time away from their homes and families. It was just incredible to hear the many wonderful testimonies from young christians who have made a decision to devote their lives to mission work or just came on board to discover more about themselves.

Labels: Travel

Back in 1978 when I was a kid attending Sunday school, my favorite teacher left to start her new life as a missionary on board the MV Logos. The ship sailed around the world serving as a floating bookstore which brought literature and the Good News to the global community. I remember being excited at hearing the news that she would be spending up to 2 years on board the Logos. The notion of leading a seafaring life visiting ports around the world really appealed to this 8 year old, and I secretly made a decision to do the same one day.



Well, it's 29 years later and I've yet to give up my secular life to become a sailing missionary, but I did get to live out part of that dream 2 weeks ago when I hooked up with the sister ship of the Logos, the MV Doulos (Servant in Greek). It would have been great to visit the Logos but unfortunately, she ran aground off the coast of Argentina during a storm in January 1988.



The Doulos is currently the oldest ocean-going passenger liner in the world. She was built 2 years after the Titanic, which makes this grand dame 93 years old. She started life as the SS Medina in 1914 and has gone through a number of refits and name changes (you can read more about its interesting history here). In 1977, the ship was purchased by a German organisation Gute Bücher für alIe or Good books for All and renamed the Doulos; then, it joined its sister ship Logos bringing books to all corners of the world.



The ship is unique, not only for its mission, but it is crewed entirely by volunteers who come from all over and from all walks of life. During my time on board, there were about 320 crew members hailing from over 50 different countries. They spend up to 2 years on board though there were a number who have stretched their time to almost 4 years. The volunteers often come on board with little in common apart from their wish to do good works and their Christian backgrounds. When I say everyone is a volunteer, I mean everyone from the Chief Engineer to the Captain. Coordination and training of the volunteers is through OM International, with local coordination provided through OM Singapore.



I joined the Doulos while she was in the Philippines the afternoon before she was due to leave the port of Manila for Cebu. It had been a successful month-long stay in Manila with over 20,000 visitors to the book exhibition during the last weekend she was in port. There was a buzz of activity as the deckhands went about loading the ship, these vans travel with the ship and are used for transportation in and out of the port area.



There are departments handling various tasks to keep the ship going, and one may be assigned to the galley, engine room, welding shop, ministry offices etc... the list goes on. Every single person among the 300-odd crew members contributes to the smooth running of the ship. Here the deckhands have a timeout from loading the ship.






Pushing off from the berth in Manila during a sunset departure for Cebu.



Getting a helping hand from a tugboat. The Doulos is devoid of any thrusters which help modern ships manoeuver in the confines of a port and needs a push or pull in the right direction to get it going.



A member of the bridge crew keeping a lookout during our 2-day voyage to Cebu. Many of the volunteers who come on board have no prior experience of sailing on a ship, let alone operating one of this size. Most learn quickly on the job and pick up new skills along the way.



Preparing hot dogs for our first lunch at sea, this former lawyer from the Netherlands is 5 months into his 2-year stint on the Doulos.



Kim Chye was one of the Singaporeans I met on my week-long stay on the Doulos. The former caretaker had come on board with his wife and is almost coming to the end of his time on the ship. He has been engaged in full time ministry work for almost 10 years and finally convinced his wife to join him in the missions field when they came on board the Doulos in 2005.



With his past experience working as a welder in a shipyard, he was a natural choice to run the welding shop on the Doulos.



The welding shop produces metal parts and provides repairs that are required throughout the ship.



I spent quite a bit of time with Kim Chye during my short stay, not only because of his general hospitality, but also because of the continuous stream of great food which he and his wife often turned out from their tiny galley. Here everyone is cramped into their cabin for a popiah party. Everything was home made, down to the skin used to wrap the springrolls in. David, a retired dentist from the US, and his wife Nancy join other Asian volunteers to get their first taste of this local delicacy.



Stay tuned for the rest of the images from my Doulos trip. There are plenty more pictures of the vessel and her activities, enough for 2 or 3 more posts, I'd like to share.

Part 2 of my visit to the Doulos may be found here.

Labels: Travel

If you ever look at my iPod play chart at the bottom of the sidebar, you'd quite often find U2 amongst the playlist. I've been a fan for as long as I can remember and when the opportunity to catch them on their Vertigo tour Down Under came up, I jumped on it immediately. Made a short holiday out of it, Adelaide isn't a place one can spend too much time in. The crowd was surprisingly tame, perhaps due to the fact that quite a number of people around us were strung out on weed. The puff of smoke you see in the image is probably someone blowing out a cloud of happy smoke.



Kanye West was the opening act which we were fortunate enough to miss due to the rather late arrival of my cousin who was holding our tickets. Apparently we didn't miss much, guess I'm just not into the hip hop, r & b, whatever he was playing.



A RAAF P-3C Orion graced the occasion with an impromptu fly by. The aviation buff in me had to take a snap of it though the compact camera I was restricted to using did not really do it justice. I think only myself and 10 others in the crowd of 60,000 noticed when it started flashing its landing lights when directly overhead. This concert was a historic event for Adelaide, apparently it's the largest ever held in South Australia.



The cascading backdrop which dominated the stage was approximately 100 feet high and about 120 feet wide. The 12,000 individual LED spheres reproduce moving images and were a sight to behold, especially when up close, it could literally turn any venue into a city of blinding lights.



I'm not exactly a regular concert goer, my last rock concert I attended was Richard Marx (that was a strange time in my life, don't ask) at the National Stadium back in the 1980s! Was a little apprehensive about our choice of tickets but it worked out pretty good in the end. We had opted for the general admission tickets which let us stand anywhere in the field of the stadium and we ended up only about 50 feet or so from the extended stage, not bad for getting in after the concert started! Here's Bono and The Edge doing their thing.



I thought the Coexist logo was cleverly done, let's see if peace ambassador Bono gets anywhere with it. Interestingly enough, there's some controversy surrounding the use of the symbol.



Like I mentioned earlier, I could only sneak in a compact camera which I had purchased specially for the trip. I wasn't real familiar with the use of it but decided to go ahead and do some short video clips with it. I honestly didn't have any high expectations of the results but was pleasantly surprised when I reviewed the clips. Anyways, this is a short compilation of my experience at the show, please excuse the shaky hands, unlevel horizon and freaky panning, I'm no James Cameron. I spent about 2 hours editing it so the least you could do is hit the play button! Mrs Sanguine can be heard mouthing off the words to With or Without You, the last segment of the clip. I think the new beat the band played destroyed what is probably my favorite U2 song. Enjoy...

Labels: Events, Music, Travel

Back from vacation but still Powermacless. My eyes kept getting drawn to the follicly challenged head in front of me while on the flight back this afternoon, especially when Homer came on. Love the pause button on Krisworld.

Labels: Humor, Travel

If you've ever been to the ruins of Angkor Wat, chances are that you'd have noticed the Apsara carvings that adorn the walls all around the temple remains. Traditional Khmer classical dancers bear more than a passing resemblence to these bas-reliefs and are often referred to as Apsara dancers, a somewhat inaccurate term but generally accepted nonetheless. The dance dates back to the Angkor period when court dancers performed in the thousands. Its long history was disrupted when in the post Angkor period, Cambodia was absorbed as a vassal state of Siam and much of its cultural identity was lost. The modern day revival of Khmer dance came about in the post WW2 period when the royal court under the auspices of then Queen of Cambodia, Kossamak Nearireath, sought to reintroduce the art form in Cambodia by reestablishing the Royal Ballet of Cambodia.

More recently, Khmer classical dance was put to a stop when Pol Pot and his Khmer Rouge regime gained power in the 1970s. Thousands of dancers lost their lives in the genocide which followed and many thought that the art would be lost forever. The surviving dancers banded together after the Khmer Rouge fell from power and under the direction of HRH Princess Norodom Bopha Devi, a renowned Apsara dancer herself, brought about yet another rebirth of the dance in modern day Cambodia.



Apsara dance today lives on in the form of the Royal Ballet of Cambodia and other professional dance troupes, in Cambodia and other places around the globe. I was fortunate enough (thanks Chivan!) to be permitted to observe a practice session with the principal troupe of the Royal Ballet while in Phnom Penh and these images are from the 2 short hours which I spent with them.



The dance form is often characterised by delicate and complex hand gestures which represent various meanings or things. Great flexibility is required and the dancers will start a session off by stretching their fingers and limbs. I witnessed some of the dancers pulling their fingers far back enough to touch their forearms.



Performance costumes are far more elaborate than what is worn during rehersals.



A rather mind boggling pose, it's a real joy to watch such contorted movements performed with such grace and finesse. Do not try this at home folks.



An instructor provides guidance to a young Apsara dancer. The two ladies in the background provided the musical accompaniment which included lyrics which are sung. The lyrics describe the story of the dance and are usually accompanied by a full ensemble of gongs, xylophones and other traditional musical instruments during actual performances.



Dancers are selected at a tender young age and put through a regime of dance training as well as schooling. Many of the principal dancers have been with the Royal Ballet for 10 years or more.



After painstakingly seeking out the old dance teachers from around the country, and bringing them together to train a new generation of artistes, Princess Norodom Bopha Devi is said to almost have brought Khmer dance once again to its pre-Khmer Rouge level of skill and artistry.



A chorus line of a different sort.



At 75 and still going strong. This former dancer recounted the Khmer Rouge years where she avoided attention and possible death by practising the hand gestures of the dance as she lay in bed each night.



My time spent with the dancers of the Royal Ballet was one of the many highlights of my visit to Phnom Penh. If you're in Siem Reap in November of this year, be sure to look out for the Royal Ballet dancers as they perform at Angkor Wat during a week long festival to be held there. Ironically, as the beautfiul ruins of Angkor are increasingly overrun by tourists, we might find Apsara dance to be the real remaining untouched treasure of Cambodia left in coming years.

Labels: Art, Travel