In Continuum.

Go Anywhere

Fold me up
Take me out
I'm portable
Fold me up
Take me out
I'm portable

Out here
We have anything we want
We have everything we want at all
Out here
We just bolt it to the floor
Or tape it to the wall

When you speak of holidays, most Singaporeans would expect you to be visiting the common destinations. Taiwan, Thailand, Malaysia, Japan, China. Of course, if you are a little bit richer and more adventurous: America, Australia, New Zealand, and the likes. If you like to have that romantic holiday setting with a touch of history and art: France, Italy, Germany. More often then not, if you are about to go on a holiday people are going to guess where you are going within five attempts. I am the victim of such ideals as well, because they are like THE destinations you have to visit before you venture out to other more exotic places. At least that is my thinking, anyway.

But as of late, save for the fact that i really want to visit Europe this year, i have sudden wild thoughts about going to countries or places that i never really thought about going. Well, some people out there might be rolling your eyes and thinking "That's a rather common destination too!" But not to me anyway, and after watching Discovery Channel and National Geographic, i have the sudden urge to go to the following countries that i am going to elaborate on.

Rollin' with a satellite
Watching the Cosby Show or Nick at Nite
I'm weary but I'm feeling right
I am a soldier now

Hokkaido, Japan

I am not exactly the kind of person who can stand cold countries. As much as i love and prefer colder countries to warmer ones, i just cannot take the bone piercing chills that surges through every bone in your body. I remember when i visited Vancouver, Canada a dozen years ago, i actually had to have those warm pads placed within my shoes to make my toes feel better. I was wearing about twenty layers of clothes and i looked like a human Piñata. I swear, somewhere in the photo albums there is actually a picture of me shaking my ass off, with my lips turning purple and forcing a smile at the camera on the cable car. All and all, i am just not the kind of person that is very good at taking cold weather.

But, like i always say, you can put on more clothes to keep you warm in a cold place, but you can strip off all your clothes and still feel hot in a hot country. So there you go, my argument on why i prefer colder countries to warmer ones, no matter if i am man enough to take the weather or not.

Anyway, i was watching some random channel on the television when they were talking about Hokkaido, Japan. I have no idea why, but the scenery that i saw on the television, with the towns and the streets completely covered in snow just attracted my attention. The interesting aspect of Hokkaido is perhaps the fact that despite the usually conservative and traditional Japanese, that place actually has a lot of Western influences in terms of their diet and their building designs. I've been to Tokyo Japan before, and the house there are what you would expect from a highly urbanized area really. But in Hokkaido everything is a little different, with a touch of the old Western world and still maintaining the traditional taste of Japan. Of course, not to mention the endless supply of raw fishes and more of those! And you can leave your dinner out of the restaurant for two hours and it won't even turn bad, because it might even be colder outside than inside the restaurant itself. How convenient, i say.

Fold me up
Fold me up
Take me out
Take me out
I'm portable

Fold me up
Fold me up
Take me out
Take me out
I'm portable

Mongolia

When i visited my aunt's house in Taiwan when i went back last year, she showed us a couple of pictures she took while she was in Mongolia. I'm not sure when she actually went there, but she showed us the photographs she took and they were gorgeous. Mongolia has got to be one of the most untamed places in the world, and i have never seen a sky as blue as that ever before. Of course, you might say that it was her photography skills that produced such beautiful pictures. But keep in mind, that later when we were taking group photos with my relatives, she took an awful five minutes to figure out how to zoom. So you see, it has nothing to do with photography skills. There in Mongolia, you need not of any skills to take beautiful pictures. Like i said about India, all you need to do is to wave your camera out of the bus window and take something random, and the result is going to be breathtaking anyway. Save the thousand dollar cameras people, just visit Mongolia for the same artistic result. Hell, the plane ticket there might even be cheaper too.

Out here
we just sing and play whatever we feel
And the feather falling out of bed at night is real
When you're travelling on a box with eighteen wheels

If I can go anywhere at all
If I can go anywhere at all
If I can go anywhere at all
If I can go anywhere, anywhere

Warsaw, Poland

I have two reason why i would like to visit this place. The Pianist and Schindler's List, two movies about the World War II that moved me to tears. Of course, you can group these two movies under the same banner as any other War Movies, because they happened during the time of war. But really, i think these two movies belong to a genre of their own: Holocaust. Both movies tell about the survival stories of Jewish people, and reasons behind their ultimate survival of course the fate of some other unluckier ones. I remember watching Schindler's List with my mother for the first time, and i remember being moved to tears literally because i was just deeply saddened by the film. Not just because of the amount of death, not because of the fact that the film was in black and white, or because of the way the little girl in red was carted off somewhere in the middle of the film. It was because of the atrocities of mankind against our own merely sixty years ago that moved me.

So, I'd like to take that emotion a step further by visiting the places where the Jews were actually executed. Warsaw Poland was where the largest ghetto ever created during World War II, and of course the most famous Concentration Camp in Europe is also located in Poland, called Aushwitz. I remember seeing pictures of the Aushwitz concentration camp, with the shaved hair gathered into bags after bags in storerooms, some of them still braided and neatly tied up in a bunch. Not to mention the shoes, the clothes, and other personaly belongings that belonged to the people that died there. That place is now a museum, commemorating the loss of those Jews during the war. I wonder how it is like to be there myself, to be immersed in that place and to feel the pain and sufferings. Of course, i can only imagine how it is like back in those days. But still, to be THERE...that's something, really.

And if I can go anywhere at all
And if I can go anywhere at all
I mean if I really really really can go anywhere at all
Won't you tell me why..
Won't you tell me why..
Why..
Why Georgia, why?


Cairo, Egypt

Okay, this is a little more common than all the other ones i mentioned. I know i mentioned that i am not really the kind of person who can tolerate heat, but to view the pyramids with my own eyes! Anything is worth it. Even if it means that i have to eat the sand of Sahara, tolerate the stench of a camel hump, change my t-shirt every half an hour due to the amount of sweat, i don't care. I just want to see the ancient structures with my own eyes, and nothing is ever going to stop be from that.

I have to say, however unwillingly, that i was inspired by the Mummy movies. I remember watching it and being fascinated with Egyptian Mythologies. For a period of time i did a little research on my own on their culture, their language and their religion. It was interesting to study those, and to know that relics of the past are still present intrigues me. I guess i just want to feel young standing beside those old rocks and stones piled up so high, smelling the ancient sand and feeling the imaginary time capsule that captures me.

Oh, if i can go anywhere...If i can go anywhere...