Girl

First of all, thankyou all for the wonderful comments and hearts on yesterday's heart wrenching blip. I nearly did not post the story, but I felt it needed airing.

Sorry, I cannot remember her name. I was not expecting to collect a portrait blip while fishing, but the beautiful little girl was helping Dad and was intrigued by the big white fella. Not shy at all as you can plainly see.

I had taken my camera with me thinking of a fishing blip, but this image was far too good not to use.

The Bandung story - part 19

Many of you have been very kind and supportive, saying that I should write a book of my adventures, many family and close friends have said the same thing. I guess writing this series was a kind of test, to see how much is actually there, but as I run out of tales to tell, it is plain for all to see that there is just not enough material for such a venture.

Sure there is a lot more material from other contracts, Sweden, Germany, America, Malaysia and Australia, but to be perfectly honest, I cannot see a book. I think I would need somewhere in the region of three hundred pages of powerful stories to make that happen and I cannot see past sixty at the moment.

It was not my plan to write so much on blip, as it really had only small relevance to my blip images. Originally I was thinking two or three pages. To be honest, I have been half expecting the blip police to step in and say, "Hey! Enough is enough, this is a photo site, not a blog!" and of course they would have been right too. It has felt good to get these stories (all true, I might add!) down in black and white and I think I may continue to write the rest of my travelling tales down too, before my mind deteriorates into demensure, but not on blip.

Having written a few pages of my arrival and early experiences in Bandung, I have to re-address the purpose of this document which was to explain, why did I choose Bandung to settle down and call my second home. I conclude that it is not one thing, but a collection of many experiences and a feeling of belonging that is very difficult to explain typographically.

The contract job only lasted about a year, but by the time the job came to an end, Tesa was a big part of my life. Tesa came with me to my next contract, which was in Kuala Lumpur in Malaysia. I had finally reached the location of my dreams, were my Uncle Alan had worked and lived. KL life was in a similar style to Bandung, but a lot cleaner and more sophisticated, but I much preferred Bandung and returned when the KL contract finished.

Tesa and I were married in the UK on new years eve '97 and we had seven years together before we decided to split up, some seven years ago. But I still decided to stay in Bandung despite not having any ties to the city.

My working style was two years on and then two years mini retirement, but after each successive contract, the mini retirement period got longer and longer. This time, it has been way too long and I will have to get back to work soon, if I am ever to get my hands on that Nikon D3X that I dream of. The mini retirement idea came after watching my father work 12 hour shifts for 44 years, only to die a year into his retirement. I decided that I am going to get some now, while I can still enjoy it.

I think I have conveyed my feelings for this location called Bandung and I am sure that you can see it in the stories and the portraits of the people around me, so I will bring this series to a close and hope that you were in some way entertained. Thanks for reading.

Dave