Philippines: Manila floods

I spent last week in Manila with three of my good friends from College. We were able to help do some relief work after Typhoon Ondoy and I made this short video about our day.

Relief Work for Typhoon Ondoy (Ketsana) from Austin Brawner on Vimeo.

Macau International Fireworks Display Competition

This Saturday was the first night of the Macau Fireworks Competition. South Korea and Spain faced off, each delivering a 20 minute show. I missed most of the Spanish presentation but I was told it was the weaker show of the night anyway. I was impressed by how large the explosions were. For a minute or two of the show, we were treated to the largest fireworks I have ever seen. The whole harbour under the Macau tower was lit up. The competition will continue for the next 3 Saturdays, concluding with a display by Mainland China on October 1st. If you are interested here is the program







Here is the commercial they have been running for the competition. I love "bringing you the heights of pleasure."

Some pics of Taipa

This is a taste of the endless apartment complexes in Macau. All around me I am surrounded by high rises. Most of them are tile and are stained by the brutal humidity. I believe the pervasive use of tile is leftover from the Portuguese style architecture.



I don't know exactly what they are implying about black people and tequila slammas but it is definitely not PC.



The Chinese like to know their fish are fresh. Some of this fish were pulled out of tanks right within hours of taking this picture.



Everywhere in Macau there are casinos looming in the distance. This is the new Starworld mega resort. Only this half of the hotel is complete on the outside, the other half is still just concrete and rebar. The recession has put a halt on most of the construction in the new Cotai strip area.

My apartment!

Here is part of my living room, going back to my bedroom.



This is my bathroom. As you can see it is not exactly a Kohler classic.



Here is my desk area. To the right behind the curtain is my itty bitty patio that can fit one person at a time.



Here is my bed and the rest of my room. I am pretty happy with my setup, I don't have any roommates so it feels spacious right now.

The big man KJI

Well, I normally wouldn't start a blog with a post like this but I am upset. Tired and upset. I was planning on sleeping in today, grabbing a cup of coffee at a cafe and then coming back to work on my first post about my time in Macau. I was going to tell you about my flight over here, my apartment, and my trip to Hong Kong but it is going to have to wait.

I set my alarm last night for 9:00 am and sat down to finish Lost in Planet China, by J. Maarten Troost. I had been savoring the last few of chapters for a couple of days because I don't really have anything else to read after this and haven't gotten my library card yet. Anyway, I was exhausted last night and towards the last few pages I started to nod off. Not many people know this but I am a habitual sleepwalker. No really, it is bad. Normally I don't travel far, but sometimes I will wake up confused, standing in the middle of a room wondering why I am trying to urinate into a potted plant.

After 375 quality pages, Troost decides to end the book with a questionably fictional scene of himself getting trapped in North Korea when his rented boat dies feet from the coast. From the boat he can see a rally and the soldiers are watching him wearily as his powerless dingy floats closer and closer to the shore. I was able to drag my way through to the last page and finish the book before immediately succumbing to exhaustion. The final passage was not the last I would think about the terrifying consequences of landing on North Korea's shore armed with nothing more than an American passport......

Next thing I knew I was in Kim Jong Il's palace handcuffed to a chair and the Napoleonic dictator himself was interrogating me in Korean. After a merciless browbeating, I was released from the handcuffs and forced to move to a chair to await sentencing. Suddenly, my interrogator went from energetic and terrifying to stiff as a board. At this point the people around me switched from speaking Korean to English and informed me of a little known secret, Kim Jong Il is actually dead and has been for years. North Korean officials just re-animate him whenever it is necessary (Terrifying right? Who would have known...). At this point I was expecting a sentence of at least 15 years of hard labor and I had no doubts Big Bill would not be making a return trip to bail me out.



Luckily, before the verdict could be laid down I started to wake up. Regaining consciousness was not immediate, it took me a couple of minutes to put together why I was standing in the middle of my room muttering to myself. Even when I finally realized what had happened it took me a while to calm down. The dream was so vivid and I am not exactly living in the most comforting environment (I will explain in a later post but let's just say quite a few ghost stories have originated from my apartment complex). Sensing it would take me a little while to get back to sleep I reset my alarm to 10 am and started to laugh a little bit. Before long I was out again.

At 7 am I was shook out of bed by the smooth vocals of Akon and Snoop Dogg. Apparently, my Chinese neighbor woke up this morning and wanted to share his good fortune with rest of us. For the next three hours he played "I Want to Love You" and two other Cantonese pop songs on repeat. Three hours! I doubt he has a clue what one word in the song means, let alone what "winding and grinding up on that floor" is, but as I have learned throughout my travels American pop music is king no matter what language you speak. It was so loud that no matter how hard I slapped the wall it was impossible for him to hear my protests. I gave up and buried my head for a couple of hours trying to get back to sleep.

Anyway, this is my blog I have set up to share with you what I am up to this year. Most of the time I will probably sharing pictures and videos of the year, and relating stories that I find interesting. Macau is an amazing city and I hope you enjoy reading.