Tag: china

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Daily Coffee Talk~ 74/365

Sometimes it feels to me that I am cycling through my life in a comfortable pace and watching events happen around me as if on a movie screen.

But every once in a while an opportunity for change and elevation shows itself and somehow because of being so comfortable on the bike, I choose to look away.

Change means risk, discomfort, letting go of what we know, learning to adapt to a new situation and deciding to take the steps towards it without seeing the end of the road. A journey towards the unknown.

Change takes courage, will and determination and ladders are not easy to climb but climb them we will.

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Daily Coffee Talk~70/365

Zeitfeld~ Duesseldorf

It’s time to write my blog before the time runs out.

At some point during human history someone felt the need to start recording time. It was no longer enough to just exist and react to the elements in nature, but some kind of adherence to the changes in the earth’s trajectory and rotation needed to be acknowledged and recorded on a daily basis .

And so here we are thousands of years later, with gps clocks and a total accuracy in the marking of time that has come so far from the first attempt of recording time at the sites of the earliest ancient cave paintings.

And what does it take to relax about the rest passage of time without the panic that drives most to ridiculous acts of misconception?

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china contemplations inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 69/365

Shanghai~ 2019

Hi my friends, today was another packed day with so much to do, most of which was done 😊.

Earlier a conversation stood out to me about our use and our reliance on devices throughout our daily lives.

How many of you actually learn people’s phone numbers by heart? Or do you, like me, rely on the stored contact list on your devices?

Take a scenario where you are traveling and you are about to check in only to realize your phone is missing. You want to show your boarding card but you can’t, you want to show your proof of vaccination, not possible, you want to call someone, definitely can’t. It’s a mini nightmare, isn’t it?

What is it that had caused us to focus our lives away from the big world into small virtual ones inside screens?

Don’t get me started on the meta verse! That’s need its own blog entry.

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CHINA contemplations inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 67/365

Tribal Ethnic Woman~ Yunnan, China

Today this image of the ethnic woman that I took in China triggered in me thoughts of lightness and weight. As I live and get older I feel the weight of my history and all that has happened in it.

I picture my life events as packages and bags that we have had to carry and as time goes on they can slow us down and keep us from moving forward and especially upward.

How do we let go of the weight and find the lightness we enjoyed as children?

Interestingly, most of my dreams that I diagnose as stress induced include suitcases, travel and items that are missing from them and time pressing on the whole situation and turning the level of stress to unbearable till I wake up.

Do we only let go of the weight when we pass on? Or can we start the shedding now, as we live, and be lighter and brighter?

I wish you a light and effervescent day ahead.

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china contemplations inspiration Photography street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 62/365

At the end of the day, when all is done,

When we realize there is no rewind button to press,

What’s done is done,

All there is to do is learn from the past,

All there is to make is a better tomorrow,

And no matter what, there are jewels to be found,

In the sands of yesterday…

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children china contemplations inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~ 61/365

I am still traveling through favorite moments in photography today and these images stand out.

During my travels through Yunnan, I often had a Polaroid camera with me to make instant photographs of people and mostly the children that I could offer to them as small gifts.

This process caused a huge amount of joy and fun at the surprise of seeing their images appear as if by magic and at times like this as in the second photo, an attack of little people trying to get their hands on the magical device, my Polaroid camera 😂.

But as a traveling street photographer, this is a great way of bringing the distance between you and local people you are meeting for the first time and trying to photograph them in a short time window.

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CHINA china contemplations inspiration morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Daily Coffee Talk~60/365

Some of my favorite photography memories come from the times that I traveled alone on journeys to remotes places like in these photos.

These were taken in Yunnan, China, in villages so remote where the locals rarely ever see the likes of me.

On such trips, you meet innocence, curiosity and you feel the invigorating sense of discovery that only comes from being very far from comfort and routine.

I can’t wait till I can travel again and for the world to be allowing for that.

Good night from wintery Germany.

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CHINA contemplations Germany myanmar Photography street street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~18/365

young girl in Kashgar, 2011
woman in old alley, Shanghai, 2013
girl on bus, Yangon, 2016
girl behind train window, Istanbul, 2021

Good Morning,

It is winter in this part of the world and everyone spends a large part of their day indoors, seeing the world through window panes. How much of our lives is actually lived behind such barriers, in our cars, homes, schools, offices, airplanes, buses…

It feels like we see the world and the people around us through a frame, a view finder and that can only be part of the picture. How much does that influence our communication, tolerance, understanding of others, well-being, and humanity?

As the pandemic progresses, this lifestyle becomes more and more the normal way of going on and we are limited to our confined environments and lack of physical contact with others.

How many of our children are living mostly behind screens and communicating virtually with their friends? What influence will this have on our future as a human race?

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china contemplations inspiration life morning coffee talk Photography street photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 12/365

Searching for space~ Shanghai

Good Morning,

This post today is about a life changing moment, one of those that we have at a certain stage of our lives and they end up lodging themselves in our personal history, refusing to fade into the dusty halls of our memories, and maybe just maybe they were more significant than we can imagine and they were meant to be with us forever.

One such moment was for me back in Lebanon at a very young age, maybe 8 or 9 years old. I found myself spiralling into a tunnel of thought about space. I was sleeping on our rooftop under a thin canopy of grapes on a warm summer night with my family; a huge treat and a special event whenever we were allowed to do that. I remember watching the stars glimmering in total darkness and wondering what was beyond them? Were we contained in a bubble of some sort? And how can I ever comprehend the possibility of nothingness if there is one? Everything is existing in something, isn’t it? What’s at the end of that?

These questions have taken me on a life quest of search, research, questioning and wonder. From religion, to quantum physics, to wise people’s writings and mostly my own search during those moments of quiet when the mind can travel towards space, inside of space and beyond space towards the unknown.

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art contemplations Germany inspiration morning coffee talk Photography

Morning Coffee Talk~ 3/265

The early days of Covid-19

Good morning from my desk somewhere in Germany on a cold winter day. It is dark still before 6 am with our very short daylight hours at this time of year. Candles are lit, Christmas lights are on outside and that makes the world around me brighter and cosier.

I created this photo with my daughter in the image at the start of the pandemic when we all was still new, unknown, and in our minds a very temporary state of affairs. Here we are now almost 2 years later, looking at a 4th wave in Germany and watching the world grapple with this virus.

Familiarity is a strange thing, isn’t it? We used to perceive masks as a strange thing as we lived in China, where they were a common sight, but then as we lived there almost 12 years, they became part of the normals. Then in 2019, to wear and see masks around us in the European streets felt extremely strange, until that again became the normal, but is it?

Will we look back at this time of our lives and see it for the strange and impactful part of human history that it really is?

Hoping you are healthy, safe and happy wherever you are…

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