Editor’s Notebook
I was delighted to win an MPAS 2018 award for writing, my second, but both of them for articles I did for Asian Trucker, Singapore. I have never won a MPAS writing award for Asian Journeys. In this age of writers doing top 10 lists that is very disappointing, except that there are many quality writers in this business who love language and love a good story.
A WONDERFUL GIFT
One of the gifts in my life was from those who taught me to read and taught me to love literature in all its many wonderful forms. My mother, my grandmother, some great friends and the occasional teacher found ways of making me love language and love a good story. When I was a preteen, I lived in a house that had no electricity and by the dim yellow light of a kerosene lamp my mother read me stories. They unveiled the wonderful real world and the world of fantasy, romance and daring.
In the 1950s and early ‘60s Williams Lake was almost as isolated as Monuriki. As small as it was it had unlimited space for imagination. In a land of dry hills, dusty streets and arid forests, because of the stories that were read to me, I was immersed in colourful worlds of adventure and discovery. Worlds that I wanted to experience.
LOVING LANGUAGE
Those stories developed a desire in me to travel to Asia, and to be in the South Pacific. In high school, when I day dreamed, occasionally, it was of palm fringed tropical islands. That desire was incubated because of books, the printed word, by the power of writers who loved language. That inspiration was very seldom through pictures.
The power of the imagination can create images that no photograph can.
Today, this is no longer the case. I was on a boat in the Turtle Islands in Sabah and one of my fellow passengers from Norway was so excited. “I want to be in the poster!” he said. “I want to be in the poster!” he kept repeating. The poster of the tropical island with palm trees and sapphire seas like he’d dreamed of in his snow blown freezing homeland.
NO PHOTOS
PR/ Marketing people, and people who listen to them, tell me it is all about ‘Getting the Gram’. Getting pictures in iconic places that you can put on Instagram. Two stories in this issue have big chunks of them written about times when I could not take a picture. Those stories are about experience. You cannot photograph experience.
In Fiji I was given the opportunity to go on a jetski, something I’d never done before. Of course, I was going to go, of course I was inept, and when I hit those waves off Tokoriki heading for Monuriki, where Tom Hanks filmed Cast Away, I was sure I was going into the sea. Not to worry, I’ve been in the sea before.
IT WAS THE EXPERIENCE
My companions left me in the distance, but I persisted and by the time we finished I was keeping up with them. My buddy Sekove kept my phone dry and ‘Got the Gram’ for me, but it wasn’t the pictures that were important. It was the experience.
In Vietnam there was time when I couldn’t ‘Get the Gram’. We swam into a very dark cave and not having a waterproof camera I was unable to take pictures. Didn’t need to. I will always remember the experience. It was difficult, it was stressful, it made me wonder if I could do it, but when I’d done it, I’d done it. I didn’t gram it. I did it.
Take all the pictures you want, standing, still, arm outstretched to capture the moment. If you really want to experience life, get your finger off the shutter release button and dive into places you may not know exist – because they can’t be photographed.
TODAY’S TRAVELLERS ARE VERY FOCUSED ON GETTING THE INSTAGRAMABLE PHOTO, BUT FLOYD COWAN SUGGESTS THAT FOR REAL LIFE EXPERIENCE YOU SHOULD FORGET ABOUT CAPTURING THE IMAGE.