Tondo, Philippines

Last October I visited my friend Quacher - a vietnamese Australian living in Manila. One afternoon I left Makati City and took a taxi to Tondo. Tondo used to be the site of Manila's smelliest and largest rubbish dump known as Smoky Mountain. Smoky Mountain has been cleaned up considerably in the last couple of years. A housing project has been completed and the site is no longer used to dump rubbish.

On the day I visited kids flew kites from the top of dirt mounds and listened to this guy as he poked the ground with a wooden stick.

Oh, yet we trust that somehow good
Will be the final end of ill,
To pangs of nature, sins of will,
Defects of doubt, and taints of blood;
That nothing walks with aimless feet;
That not one life shall be destroy'd,
Or cast as rubbish to the void ...

Alfred Lord Tennyson

Staunton St, Hong Kong

I put on my raincoat to make it rain
And sure enough the skies opened up again
I dreamed of you as I walked to the shops
You were dancing with the wallies on Top Of The Pops

Once in a while
Gennady Gerasimov deops his smile
And you can see that his aim's
A portfolio pregnant with gains

He's been up all night
Moving the goalposts

Like a jackdaw with a fiery brand
Spread the news all over this land
Robin Hood and his Merry Men
Are never, never, never coming back again

I don't believe that love should be pain
So could you please rub my back again
I think it's safe to leave tham in the park
Let's blow out the candles and kiss in the dark

Heavens above
Can this sticky stuff really be love!
Don't get dressed yet
Not yet

We've been up all night
Moving the goalposts

Billy Bragg

Staunton St, Hong Kong

when every leaf opens without any sound
and wishing is having and having is giving-
but keeping is doting and nothing and nonsense
-alive;we're alive,dear:it's(kiss me now)spring!

e.e. cummings

Hawker Centre, Singapore

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and desire, stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

T.S. Eliot

Ferry, Bangkok

"Those were my Bangkok days. Full of bodyguards & chilli, durian & grey safari suits, corporate surrealism & steel tipped cowboy boots on the tight brown shirted arresting officer."

Kolkata, India

MTR, Hong Kong

Kids Shopping, Hong Kong

I kill an ant
and realize my three children
have been watching.

Shasho

Kid in Stationery Shop, Hong Kong

I have known the inexorable sadness of pencils,
Neat in their boxes, dolor of pad and paper weight,
All the misery of manilla folders and mucilage,
Desolation in immaculate public places,
Lonely reception room, lavatory, switchboard,
The unalterable pathos of basin and pitcher,
Ritual of multigraph, paper-clip, comma,
Endless duplication of lives and objects.
And I have seen dust from the walls of institutions,
Finer than flour, alive, more dangerous than silica,
Sift, almost invisible, through long afternoons of tedium,
Dropping a fine film on nails and delicate eyebrows,
Glazing the pale hair, the duplicate grey standard faces.

Theodore Roethke

Kid in Mouse Shop, Hong Kong

'And the days are not full enough
And the nights are not full enough
And life slips by like a field mouse
Not shaking the grass'

Ezra Pound