zibili blog

Land of the Rising Phoenix

2011-03-15T21:27:00.003-04:00

Since the first millenium, Japan has been known as the Land of the Rising Sun.

The Kanji for Nihon (Japan's name in Japanese) means "origin of the Sun". The reference goes back to a phrase first used by one of its early diplomatic leaders, in a missive to the Emperor of China, which started: "From the Prince of the Land where the Sun Rises, to the Prince of the Land where the Sun Sets...". The tiny far-eastern country thus dared to invent itself as an equal to the greatest empire in the world at the time, through daring, innovation, education, and vision.

We all know how Japan rose from the devastation of World War II, achieving what seemed to be the impossible, rebuilding and innovating, to become a great economic power. Western countries marveled and wondered how this was accomplished. The focus and drive of the people as a whole, the hard working ethics, the obsessive education, led the defeated nation past many of its victors to heights of prosperity inconceivable before the war.

For the past two decades, that country was visibly slumping, decaying perhaps, and the world wondered if it was witnessing the twilight of Japan as a world power. I certainly did. Nations are supposed to rise and fall, history teaches us. Ancient Greece, Rome, Spain, Britain have all had their time in the limelight, and we wonder if the US is past its prime.

Now the country lies in ruins, devastated beyond belief. A record breaking earthquake, tsunami, multiple simultaneous nuclear crises- it just keeps piling on. And, the worst may yet to be seen. Voclanoes are erupting, aftershocks powerful enough that they would have been breaking news just few days ago, are still happening as I type this.

And yet, I find myself now no longer questioning whether we are witnessing the fall of this country. In fact, because of all this I am now confident that we are about to witness another rebirth, rebuilding, rising from the ashes.

We hear about the Western journalists' puzzlement at how there is no looting. Where people expect price gouging, merchants are in fact seen slashing prices, giving supplies away, and people patiently wait in line. People in major cities, without power, heat or water in some places, ride bicycles to report to work where the trains are not running. They say "we can't complain, we're the lucky ones".

And then there's the elderly man, rescued from the rubbles of his house, where he was trapped for three days, who told the rescuers: "I'm fine, I lived through the 1960 tsunami," and smiled, "Let's rebuild again".

The devastation is horrific, and the loss inconceivable. Yet the character of the people certainly seem to shine brighter than ever before. It feels like the fat, tamed and perhaps lazy circus animal is suddenly finding itself hungry and in the wild, and its instincts are being awakened.

For the next few months, years, or even decades, there will be a lot of work ahead for Japan. Its reliance on electricity, especially nuclear power, will need to be rethought. Its engineering, manufacturing, and architecture will have to be improved, revamped, and the lost cities and infrastructures rebuilt. I suspect it will force Japan to develop further energy efficient technology relying on more sustainable energy and agriculture.

The upside of destruction, as seen after WWII, is that it is also a clean slate on which to restart, rather than patching and fixing what's already there. It's a reason and opportunity to reinvent and improve, and Japan knows this more than any other nation.

I wonder if it wasn't just the kind of trial by fire, that Japan needed to come together and push itself to find its true strength, and to rise again from the ashes. I sincerely hope that, the "fire and ashes" needn't be literal, and a catastrophic nuclear disaster can be avoided. But whether it can be avoided or not, I believe, out of the tragic destruction, a newer, better Japan will rise. Be it the Sun or a Phoenix, it is the Land of Rising. I think I understand that now.

Film developing and scan

2011-02-26T00:16:00.001-05:00

Why is it so difficult to get film developed well, and scanned into a digital file at a resolution comparable to my dslr images, so I can plug them into my work flow?

I've been sending my rolls by mail to Reed Photo in Colorado. For about $22/roll, they scan at high resolution (like approx. 10Mb) in tiff format. But I have to pay shipping round trip in addition.

Many of the photolabs I used to use are no longer doing film processing, or the scans are either low resolution only, or too expensive (per frame scan).

Recently I tried Cameraland in midtown they were ok. $10 for develop and scan to CD only at 1200x1800 jpg only. The scans were not the cleanest (lint and such visible). Ready next day, but wasn't ready when I went by at the time promised.

DOI camera midtown was also $10 for same resolution but they included small thumbnails and the scans were clean, on time. I heard they also have a 1hour (or rush) option. When needed I guess they are a good option.

Lomography store is my current favorite, at $14 their scan is clean and, for $2 they will add prints, or $2 for cross processing. The above two shops will not cross process. For a little extra they also did tiff format for me, but at 1200x1800 tiff makes the file size about double from the jpgs.

2011.

2011-02-22T02:09:00.001-05:00

It's sad. I'm working on revamping my online presence again. Is that the only time I ever update the blog? Crap.

Finally, I got a real blog format curated links again. Crappy google reader wouldn't output pretty, so Curious.zibili for the past two years have been just a google reader shared feed.

Now, it's presentable again. With a new website even: www.AgentProcrastinator.com

Updates and Refreshes

2009-03-07T10:40:00.002-05:00

Dang, it's been more than a year since I've made a note in this blog. I've been LAZY so naturally all my blogging efforts went to shorter and faster things like culling news feeds, becoming addicted to facebook or twitter. To the extent any blogging occurred it happened on a Tumblr moblog at m.Zibili.

So how do we reconcile the twittering, mobile blogging, minute by minute short thoughts, vs deliberate thoughts of a real blog? I do believe there is a place for both. Maybe I just need to sit and think more often.

In any case, I've updated and cleaned up the blogs. I've moved this and my Jungle blog to blogger.

That time of the year again

2007-11-09T01:20:00.000-05:00