Kereta Api Parahyangan – Bandung to Jakarta by Train

Posted on 22 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

The train from Bandung to Jakarta makes for a much more relaxed experience than the trip by road. Some of the scenery you will pass, particularly close to Bandung, is another reason to favor the train. This is a well traveled route and there is a train every few hours. Transit time is about three hours.

Hungry? The food is quite good and is reasonably priced.

Kereta Api Parahyangan 01

Kereta Api Parahyangan 02

Kereta Api Parahyangan 03

Kereta Api Parahyangan 04

Kereta Api Parahyangan 05

Kereta Api Parahyangan 06

Kereta Api Parahyangan 07

Kereta Api Parahyangan 08

Kereta Api Parahyangan 09

Kereta Api Parahyangan 10

Kereta Api Parahyangan 11

Kereta Api Parahyangan 12

Kereta Api Parahyangan 13

Bandung, Jawa Barat, Indonesia

Posted on 22 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

Bandung was a nice place to start to reintroduce ourselves to Indonesia. Here, on Jalan Cihampelas, Yu-Gi-Oh greets visitors to the display of children’s clothing. Jalan Cihampelas is alternately called Jeans Street and it is here that you can find bargains on clothing of all varieties. Modernity has come to the area in the form of the Cihampelas Walk shopping mall. Not the same bargain prices but everything you would want to find in a mall can be found there.

A trip from Jalan Cihampelas to the Bandung Electronic Centre was further than we expected but we got to have a look at some of the city sights that were not in the lists of the guide books.

The Dago Tea House, or Dago Thee Huis for the Dutch, is a great place for a quiet meal in the Sundanese manner.

The Dago Tea House also offers shopping options, including wayang golek.

The items for sale at the Dago Tea Shop are worth a look.

We ended up with a wooden mouth harp, whose Indonesian or Sundanese name I have forgotten.

The Padma Hotel is still a nice place to stay. The hotel has become bigger and the area nearby has seen a lot of new construction since the hotel was the Chedi but the service is still first rate. It is still green on the back side of the hotel.

The Hotel Padma is still a nice place to stay. The hotel has become bigger and the area nearby has seen a lot of new construction since the time the hotel was the Chedi but the service is still first rate. It is still green on the back side of the hotel as well.

Picture Me At Gedung Merdeka (Bandung)

Posted on 20 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

What tourist visit to an historic site would be complete without pictures of other visitors taking their own photographs in front of relics and antiquities? A visit to Gedung Merdeka, the site of the 1955 Asia-Africa Conference, captured some of these memory creators.

I felt obliged to picture Mary at Gedung Merdeka in front of the first panels of the Palestine exhibit.

Bandung Museum Konferensi

Posted on 20 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

Bandung was the site in April 1955 for the first major Asia-Africa Conference. The site of the conference, Gedung Merdeka, is now a museum commemorating this historic event. Just above we see how it might have looked as President Sukarno addressed representatives of the twenty-nine nations assembled there. This conference is credited with placing the groundwork for what developed into the Non-Aligned Movement.

The actual conference chambers are preserved as shown above.

The Palestine exhibit is not part of the permanent collection here, so we were fortunate to visit at the right time. The Asia-Africa Conference declared its support for the rights of the Arab people of Palestine in 1955. Indonesia has long recognized the nationhood of Palestine.

Pasar Bendungan Hilir – Jakarta Pusat

Posted on 18 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

Bandung and Jakarta had changed a lot in the nearly seventeen years I had been gone. The big buildings I remembered are now hidden behind and alongside even bigger and taller buildings. The Djakarta Theatre (bioskop) had more screens, carpeting, and a computer system for selecting seats and printing tickets. All of the scruffiness of Ratu Plaza was gone. They could now hold their own amongst the more recently built malls and shopping plazas. The taksi operators did not have to be coaxed to use their meters. A lot had changed. A lot had become more modern.

I was happy to find that modernity had not greatly affected the familiar neighborhood market, Pasar Benhil. That looked very much as I remembered it.

The same selection of everything you could want was available inside and there is the food court in the dimly lit section on the ground floor to complement the wide assortment of items available from vendors outside. We found colored pencil sets for gift items and also bought fireworks before chancing to find a watch for my daughter at a stall outside the main section. It was nice to find that the pasar had not changed much and could still elicit pleasant memories of our time here in the 1990’s.

Apparently the presence of the older style market in the midst of all that is new and stylish in central Jakarta is not lost on those that produce film and television program material. As we exited the interior of the market we ran into some crew from Screenplay Productions getting set up for shooting some “action/comedy” scenes.

We left Bendungan Hilir without concern, knowing that the pasar was still well served by a number of bemo routes, though our departure was by other means.

Song for Healing

Posted on 13 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

Music can be a significant tool in healing “soul wounds.” It allows us to share things from an emotional level which cannot be communicated any other way.There is a beautiful example of this described in this interview. Angel suffered for many years the aftereffects of an incident he was involved in as a soldier in Iraq. The song he wrote was part of the healing process. The song was written about a specific incident but it carries a powerful universal message for all of us.

Interview with Angel 22m05s 13-Dec-12


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Here is Angel’s song, to download or play;

Driving By As I Watched You Bleed 3m27s 13-Dec-12


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The Hard Places – Augustin Pictures

Posted on 11 January 2013 by Mark Timpany

I received an email request from the creator of my favorite Afghanistan film, Afghanistan – touch down in flight. Lukas Augustin is seeking initial funding for another film, this one documenting the work done by Tom Little in Nuristan.

Let me excerpt the details in his words;

I am at the moment doing a follow up with people who embedded our first short film Afghanistan – Touch down in flight. A lot has happened since then and we have been on many different smaller and bigger projects but this one is new and different for us and we hope you can help us.

Almost a year ago now we were asked by a PBS producer from New York to make our first feature documentary about a man who lived for more than three decades in Afghanistan to deliver eye care to many especially in remote villages. After Tom Little accessed Nuristan for several times, (one of the remotest regions in Afghanistan) he and his team were murdered.
We met the widow Libby Little in New York and interviewed several others and with archive footage and some of our previous stuff we made our first trailer. We hope to get enough pledges by people from around the world in order to go back to Afghanistan and shoot that film.
We think Tom Little’s story needs to be told. We want to see what is this man’s legacy but not only that we want to show what drove that man to dedicate his life to the people of Afghanistan. We also want to raise the question of what will be left of the work of thousands of NGOs and humanitarian aid when the foreign forces leave in 2014. Was it sustainable or will this country descend into chaos again?
As we also showed in Touch down in flight we want to go beyond making a conventional documentary but we want to use also an artistic approach, we want to try new techniques and we hope to present both the Western as well as the Afghan side well.

If you have viewed Afghanistan – touch down in flight you can appreciate the significance of having Augustin Pictures return to Afghanistan on another film making venture. If you have not seen the film, there is a link on the Kickstarter page that let’s you view in HD. Here is the Kickstarter page;

Kickstarter page for The Hard Places

Let me pass along some other Augustin Pictures links;

I hope that you might pass along these links to your friends and associates who have an interest in Afghanistan and film. Afghanistan – touch down in flight captured the beauty of this country which called me back here to work after visits here almost forty years previous. I can only think that The Hard Places will be an equally impressive film.

A Trip Home

Posted on 2 December 2012 by Mark Timpany

Janesville, Wisconsin was where I was born and grew up. I haven’t lived there for over thirty years. A recent trip there raised the question of, “What is home?”

Geese 1

It was already near the end of November but there were still geese who had not started their journey south. They have a winter home and a summer home.

Geese 2

Geese 3

The manufacturing institutions for which Janesville was noted are no more. Parker Pen was sold, moved, resold . . . the large manufacturing facility sits idle. The downtown office where a neighborhood friend’s father walked everyday to his job as chemist has another building in its place.

The General Motors Assembly Division plant is closed and the smaller businesses that used to support it have fallen on bad times as a result.

Beloit, a dozen miles downstream on the Rock River, has made art from the remnants of its former foundries and factories. The Beloit Riverwalk makes a showcase of these former industrial facilities.

Beloit Riverwalk 1

Beloit Riverwalk 2

Beloit Riverwalk 3

The building above never had a wall on this side as I recall. It was one of those places where the furnaces kept it hot even in the middle of a Wisconsin winter.

Interior Design

Beloit’s downtown looks surprising well kept. Making way for some new construction has exposed the interior decoration in this older building.

I found some memories but I did not find home on this trip to my home town. I am still working on the concept of what is home in a world of impermanence.

Lionel Wendt Art Centre – PIX magazine Sri Lanka edition

Posted on 4 November 2012 by Mark Timpany

My visit to the Lionel Wendt Art Centre produced some remarkable results. I had missed the production of Evita in the theatre. I wandered through a student art exhibition which was good but not remarkable. Then I wandered through the rest of the building and upstairs to the gallery.

PIX magazine special Sri Lanka edition – Exhibit at Lionel Wendt Art Centre

I had stumbled across the exhibit associated with the PIX magazine (quarterly) special edition devoted to Sri Lanka. Not all the photographers were from Sri Lanka. All the subject matter, though, related to Sri Lanka and was submitted to the topic Metamorphoses. The styles and subjects were highly varied but all of it was great photography.

Sri Lanka truly is an exceptionally photogenic part of the world and there are photographers who have exploited that quality magnificently. I will take away memories of this exhibition as the photographic highlight of my visit to Sri Lanka.

The PIX special edition devoted to Sri Lanka has since been made available for download. It is found at;

http://pixquarterly.in/Pix_September_Issue.pdf

The photos from the exhibition and a few more can be found in the magazine. Highly recommended.

I left the exhibit with a greater appreciation of the photographic qualities of Sri Lanka and an admiration for those who produced and assembled this collection of photographs.

Colombo, Sri Lanka

Posted on 3 November 2012 by Mark Timpany

Colombo is tropical, located a tad below 7 degrees North. I was impressed with how green it was after spending the preceding five months in Kandahar. The humidity was also impressive.

I spent my time in the city in the old section of the Galle Face Hotel, built in 1864 and normally described as the oldest hotel east of Suez. Anyone of note who has visited Sri Lanka (or Ceylon as it was known before 1972) has stayed there. The hotel’s museum houses Prince Philip’s first car. The view from my window at the hotel was worth the price of admission. The hotel continues to offer excellent service and hospitality. All my Colombo city photos have been taken within walking distance of the Galle Face Hotel.

While Colombo is a big city with an entirely different character than the country’s center, I don’t regret the time I spent there. This city has a lot to offer culturally. My next trip which I hope to be longer will be sure to include some time in Colombo.