Disco Underworld #12

disco under w o rld

issue #12 october 2009

Just 2 o photog f the 15 ar raphs t you’ll ists and th ei find in side T r he Gol d Edit io

brigitte bouquet dutch ceramic artist

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The Gold Edition #1 What is it? An A4-sized 100 page magazine printed by PMP Print in Auckland on 130 gsm stock with a 300 gsm cover. Who is in it? There are 15 stories of the people who have been featured in disco underworld over the first 10 issues and over 50 of their beautiful photographs.

When is it being published? It will be published at the beginning of November and in your mail box in time for Christmas if you order before the 20th of October.

BRIGITTE BOUQUET “I was doing something I liked and was happy every day... but I kept having all these dreams in my head about big ceramic sculptures...” THIS PAGE: Frozen River OPPOSITE PAGE: Frozen River detail

Where is it being sold? Entirely online on our blog. You can pay via Paypal or bank transfer.

amanda ratcliffe new zealand photographer

How can I get my hands on a copy?

Amanda Ratcliffe is making a name for herself as a photographer in the New Zealand music scene. Photographing established and emerging musicians at a variety of venues and locations, she is a familiar face on the Hamilton music scene. Behind the camera, Amanda is also an online album/ gig reviewer, radio DJ, MySpace blogger and NZ music advocate.

Click here :) NOTE:

Facebook fans who won copies of The Gold Edition: Marie Young, Emma Dyer and Amanda Gray. Congrats! We’ll send you out a copy when it’s published.

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We will not be publishing a digital issue of disco underworld for November, to give us time to concentrate on publishing The Gold Edition. If you have a problem with this email my mum: [email protected].

“It’s very much the local music scene in New Zealand that has seen my work as a photographer noticed and in turn, made a writer and radio DJ out of me,” she said. Always on the hunt for new talent, she particularly enjoys watching local musicians’ first performances

at smaller venues. “I admire any musician who feels totally comfortable with themselves to go out there and do what they believe in – even if it’s something that people don’t understand at the time. Those are the ones who inspire me and make me want to push myself and forget about fitting into a certain mould,” Amanda says. As musicians can be nervous and self-conscious in front of the camera, Amanda takes a documentary approach to band shoots. This raw style captures impromptu moments on and off stage. A particularly memorable shoot was the Knives At Noon EP release gig.

“There was a lot going on at the time, so in some of the photos they’re yelling at people across the room. Viewers connect with pictures like this because the subjects are doing what any other person would be doing in the same situation.”

“There was a lot going on at the time, so in some of the photos they’re yelling at people across the room.” THIS PAGE: Knives at Noon

AMANDA RATCLIFFE Article by Amanda Gray

“I admire any musician who feels totally comfortable with themselves to go out there and do what they believe in - even if it is something people don’t understand at the time.”

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emma kidd



issue #12 features

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Jason Burgess

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Mike’s Space:

L o s t . 30

Legal Alien: living and experiencing life in another culture

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michelle ransom

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direct address disco underworld, october 2009 Next issue’s theme is “Vice”. October!? This issue of disco we are looking at Legal Aliens, those of us who live and love in a country which is not that of our birth. It’s an adventure, and I always

get a thrill out of living in a country that isn’t my own... for a little while anyway. The people in this issue have lived away from home for over a year, and they share their experiences and outlooks in this issue.

Drop me a line if you have anything to contribute: [email protected]

The next digital issue will be out in December, as we are busy getting things organised for The Gold Edition, the very first print issue of disco. Special thanks have to go to Amanda and Blanca for their help this issue. That’s it from me, please enjoy this issue, and if you have any thoughts/photos for next issue’s theme be sure to send them through,

Click on the cover above to read the first issue of Music Sandwich! Free music downloads, up and coming musicians, music videos... what more could you want!

Stacey Photo by Jo Sowry

[email protected]

www.music-sandwich.com

Cover image by Emma Kidd. Read her article on page 18.

disco underworld is published by Online INsight Limited © copyright 2009. By reading and interacting with our magazine and website, you agree to the terms laid out under the “terms of use” on the site www.discounderworld.com. Editor: Stacey Childs [email protected] Contributors: Mike Woodruff, Blanca González, Amanda Gray, Dillie Baria, Stacey Childs.

Coming up in the next few pages: Vera Alves Emma Kidd

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By Dillie Baria

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M

ost foreigners have interesting reasons for immigrating to New Zealand. Vera Alves’ isn’t any different. It all started with a postcard. An image of Lake Tekapo made Vera wonder about New Zealand the country in the Pacific, that was almost exactly opposite her suburban Portuguese town on the globe. For months, she fed her curiosity by reading up about New Zealand and couple of years later, she was there, looking at turquoise colour of Lake Tekapo from the exact same perspective that the photographer had stood when snapping her postcard shot. The beauty of it took her breath away and she was shocked to see it really existed.



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One of Vera’s main worries about immigrating to an English-speaking country was not being able to find a job as a print journalist with Portuguese as a first language. So before her arrival, she sent off dozens of CVs, succeeding in securing an interview with an IT company. Weeks after the interview, having heard nothing back, Vera decided to give it one last shot by writing an article on the iPhone being launched in New Zealand. She sat on Queen Street outside the Vodafone store, in the cold, her ardor turning to words. She got the job. Three months later, Vera moved to her current job writing for immigration sites and magazines, where she learns a lot about her new home (one in every four people in New Zealand is an immigrant) and has made a lot of friends.



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Vera thought she would be perceived very differently when she first arrived in New Zealand, thinking she’d be one of very few immigrants. To her pleasant surprise, she was in for a literal culture shock, making her feel more at home. “In my circle of friends, my partner Chris is the only Kiwi!” Additionally, her disheartening misconception of being the only Portuguese in New Zealand was soon put to rest when she found an advert in the local paper. A woman called Jenny was looking for Portuguese people to celebrate the Portuguese National Day with. Although Vera found it hard to believe she was Portuguese with a name like “Jenny”, she still got in contact, discovering not only that Jenny (real name Maria Eugenia) was Portuguese, but that there was a 900 strong community of Portuguese people around New Zealand.



As is widely known, Vera finds New Zealanders a very laid-back people – she claims that back home in Portugal, people tend to be quite stressed. “I was shocked to see people were so friendly, I was into a shop and the shop assistant starts chatting like we were close friends! It’s amazing!” Having lived in an apartment in Portugal, Vera is still getting used to having to live in a house. The lack of skyscrapers took her by surprise. Her partner Chris has labelled her a mall-girl, because that was a past-time of hers in Portugal. “Here, we go for bush-walks!”



To Vera, home is truly where the heart is. Albeit living in New Zealand in complete bliss, there are times when it strikes her just how far away home is, and how much she misses her family. “I first realised this when my grandma had a stroke. Although she is much better now, at the time, I stood frozen at hearing the news, not knowing what to do, if it would be too late by the time I flew through flights and through those hours!” The semi-distant future sees Vera moving closer to home. It is something she and Chris are planning on; but for now, they’ve decided he needs to hold on to his good job amid the recession. Vera blogs here: www.paudecanela.net/kiwivera

If you would like to vote for Vera to appear in our print issue, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

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By Amanda Gray

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rench living provided its own challenges for seasoned traveller, Emma Kidd.

“In Lille, I felt utterly alienated for the first two years.”

The Australian multimedia artist was in France, hearing French but thinking in Italian – a legacy of studying etching in Italy. Emma says she “had to go” to

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Europe and thinks travelling alone to Italy was one of her greatest achievements. It was also her first ‘real’ international experience. “Until moving to France, I seemed to find other foreigners to interact with when I felt alone. But there, in Lille, I felt utterly alienated for the first two years.”



Her sense of alienation gave her the incentive to expand her creative pursuits - illustration, printmaking, painting and the photographic practice of lomography. “[It] made me explore myself, made me work harder on finding who I really am and what path I really wanted to take with work and life balance,” she said. Emma began participating in international sketchbook exchanges where pages of Moleskine notebooks are sent between artists in a set rotation. Each artist contributes drawings, collages or paintings to the notebook and the progress is discussed in a group blog. Coming up in the next few pages: Feature Story: Legal Alien Michelle Ransom



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Emma works under the name ‘ben conservato’, which means ‘well-preserved’ in Italian and is also a reference to Emma’s second passion, cooking. Previously a chef, her last major experiment with food was jam, hence the name. One of her favourite foods is cake. “Cake would be it. I am particular though. The different things I like have to come from that particular patisserie or bakery. Here and also in France. But all types of cake are welcome,” she said. At present in Australia, her creative schedule is not dictated by a 9-5 routine. Her online ‘ben conservato’ identity includes an expanding Flickr photostream, Moleskine exchange blogs and two Etsy online craft stores. Emma’s ‘ben conservato’ Etsy store sells her screen prints, lomography, photography, prints and etchings. Her ‘Velvet Ribbons’ store sells vintage clothing and handmade cuffs and purses.

Her illustrations recently featured in the Etsy publication, ‘We Are Scared’. The Halloween special edition was part of the regular ‘We Are..’ series, where 15 Etsy illustrators are chosen monthly to interpret different themes.

Emma’s attitude towards Australia has changed since returning. “My country is very young and very old at the same time. We are all immigrants and the politics surrounding my country

and the Aboriginal People just astonishes me,” she said.

“My country is very young and very old at the same time.”



“It is true what they say ‘you cry when you arrive and you cry when you leave.’”



Now comfortable with her Australian identity, she nevertheless misses her French husband, who is currently away skippering and Lille, despite its bad weather. “It is true what they say ‘you cry when you arrive and you cry when you leave.’”

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“I am a Gen Yer, working to get money, following my dreams. No children, still strangely not interested. Thankfully my Dad has stopped asking me about that.” Visit Emma’s site: www.benconservato.com

If you would like to vote for Emma to appear in our print issue, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

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“When I ask where home is, I’m asking of course, something far more profound, and difficult to answer: Who am I and where do I belong?”

I

Legal Alien: living and experiencing life in another culture

Feature article by Blanca Gonzalez

www.cuttingsonablog.blogspot.com

have lived outside Spain, my country of birth, for almost 10 years. I'm still not sure of how this happened. As a child, I never travelled far on holiday, and I didn't even have a gap year before University. I guess I wanted to travel, but I didn't really imagine myself doing it. But then after University, I was somewhat lost. I had always been a very good student and that was all I knew how to do. However, this time, it was clear that everyone expected me to face the real world.

I wasn't ready to embrace reality fully so I decided to settle for something in the middle and went to England to learn the language. You may think that going to live in another country was facing the real world in a rather drastic way. The truth is, at the time, I just thought I had a very good excuse to have a small adventure, and I didn't know how hard it would be to live abroad. Of course, I didn't realise how fulfilling it would be either, and I couldn't have imagined that 10 years later I'd have created my own home away from home.

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For a while, my life in a new country felt temporary. I never really decided to stay. It just sort of happened that way. I studied, I made friends, I had a boyfriend, I got a job (not a good one), I said goodbye to some friends, I met others, I got a better job ... And one day, I realized that my place was in this other country that wasn’t mine. That I had grown up and finally taken the first steps into the real world, only I had done it away from what I had always known as home. I had built my own space in which to grow.

When I ask where home is, I’m asking of course, something far more profound, and difficult to answer: Who am I and where do I belong? And so, more and more I wonder: Is home really a place, a country, a city, a house? Is it a familiarity with the customs of the region where you live? Is it the ability to communicate with those around you? Can you really feel at home in a foreign country? For a long time, I thought of home as the place where you choose to live. Then, home became a

Since then, inevitably, the question of what home means has never been far from my thoughts. When a friend in England reminisces about a childhood memory of a TV program that I never knew. When someone in Spain tells me about the latest gossip and people I’ve never heard about. When back in Spain, I sit with my friends over coffee as if I’ve never left or when I do the same with a relatively new friend here and talk about the many memories we already share. I'm always wondering where home is.

“I had built my own space in which to grow.”

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language, the ability to communicate and participate fully that made me feel at home in my adopted country. A year travelling in South America fueled new questions. I felt at home in many of the places I visited, even though I didn’t stay in any of them for very long. More surprisingly, I was at home on the road, and it was incredibly easy to live as part of the traveling community. But how can you belong anywhere if you keep moving? Home wasn’t a place anymore, home was being on the move, looking forward to the next adventure. But before long, I felt a sense of detachment from my surroundings, I stopped investing in building a home, not even a temporary one, as I knew I’d be moving on.

Coming up in the next few pages: Michelle Ransom Mike’s Space: Lost



And so I decided that maybe others were right, that to find home, you have to stop moving, go back to your roots. I thought that going back to the place where you started from, you'd be finally arriving home. But that place is in the past, and you can never really go back. Even if you don’t move, others do, people and places will change. You may never feel completely at home in a foreign land, but once you leave, it'll also be difficult to go back to the way it was in your own native country. All this wondering and searching just shows my fear of not belonging anywhere. But I may have been looking for home in all the wrong places. Maybe we can only feel at home when we build one for ourselves wherever we are, and in order to do it, we should look within, and not outside ourselves. I'm starting to think that being at home is knowing that you are where you are supposed to be, at least in this very moment, even if you won't stay there for ever.



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michelle ransom

Interview by Stacey Childs

Ed’s note: Normally I send the people featured in these pages a series of questions and go about making an article based around their answers, highlighting the interesting things and ignoring the dull. But Michelle’s answers are brilliant: hilarious, touching and honest, and I think they work best just as they are…

Coming up in the next few pages: Michelle Ransom cont. Mike’s Space: Lost

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1. What are you currently doing day to day?

Case and Point: Typical first interaction with Madisonian...

One moves cities, countries, or continents for love or money.

Me: “Hi, I’m new and happy to be here. Can you tell me a little about Madison and how to get to know folks?”

That’s it. Test it out on anyone – it is foolproof. For me, this time it was love. We moved to Madison, Wisconsin (three hours north-west of Chicago) for my sweetheart to take an ever-elusive tenure-track faculty position at a decent university. Since then, I’ve been trying to break in as an outsider to build a freelance consulting business that will allow me to reside with my family in this damn small city and keep sane at the same time.

Them: “Are you a University of Wisconsin Alumni?” Me: “No, but….” {The rest of the answer isn’t heard, and the person turns their head away to locate the bar/snack table/bathroom and purposefully saunters off}. Oh did you ask what am I doing day-to-day? Trying to cope with the professional rejection that has come my way for two years in this town, er, city.

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2. Ten years ago where were you? Just arrived back from a volunteer gig in Economic Development with Voluntary Services Overseas (VSO.org), in Skopje Macedonia, sponsored by USAID and British ODA, where, among other things, I was coaching a group of Albanian women in Zitoshe, Macedonia to group their cows together to start a cheese cooperative. Oh, and a five month backpacking adventure in SE Asia… and then in 1999 I was going to save the world (or just the 800,000 customers of a electricity company in New Brunswick, Canada) from the starvation, thirst and other evils of the inevitable Y2K disaster. (I was implementing software if you hadn’t guessed).

3. Where will you be in 10 years? Toronto. A glass and steel high-rise condo with three pieces of furniture and great cookware.

I’ll be extremely cool, and my 13 year old daughter won’t be too embarrassed to be with me. No jokes. That’s it. I’m done with being a foreigner. At least in the UK (7 yrs) and Macedonia (<1 yr) I got to keep my Canadian identity as I had an accent. Here in the US (6 years off and on), it is assumed that I am an American and I feel like I am DISSOLVING. I am an INVISIBLE MINORITY, and I hate it. I feel like I’ve punked out by living in a place where I disagree with the values – I’m a hypocrite and a cop-out - I’ve chosen love (my best friend) over my principles and values. That’s why I’ve got to get back to Canada. I can’t dissolve anymore, or there’ll be nothing left. I can’t even go back to visit, I get too wistful and sad. I visit Canada alone, as my sweetheart keeps our dual-citizen daughter as hostage so I’ll return to the U.S. urgh.

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4. Do you have any vices/ guilty pleasures? Stupid, girly, romantic comedies for the intellectually challenged. Though, maybe that should tell me something…. Hmmm…. Confession time? It is so embarrassing that I go to these movies for therapy, that I make sure to go alone, to the late show to make sure no one sees me. I slip in and out like a foreign agent (maybe another career for me?) Oh, and McDonald’s breakfast hashbrowns twice a year. Embarrassing huh? I have to hide the trash, so no one finds any evidence. And, French films with suicide, infidelity and alcoholism braided into the plot. Makes me feel like I don’t have real problems – it could be worse. Wow. I really do have hang-ups! Do you know a good therapist? Remind me to fire my personal coach.





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5. Who is your mentor/role model/idol? Madonna popped into my head – can you believe that (note to self - get therapist on speed dial). Oh, and she’s a “legal alien” too, isn’t she – gallivanting around in the UK. She’s got great arms, not to mention the legs… what was the question? I’ve always admired her ability to evolve and pick the right collaborators to stay current. She is a brilliant businesswoman and marketing machine. I should take a page….

6. What has been the biggest challenge in your life? How did you overcome it? I think I’m in it…. As a legal alien in the U.S, I’ve been working for two years in Madison to find good work that fits. I build and fix. I facilitate smart teams to do their best work. I reduce costs or increase efficiencies at places whose missions I can get behind (like heathcare).

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However, due to being an outsider, I can’t break in. Some of the outsider quotes: “You’re too aggressive for a woman in the mid-west”, “You’re not from here, you wouldn’t understand us”, “You’re not a Badger??” (the university sports mascot). I need to tell you, that as far as outsiders go, I’m not far off the mainstream. I’m a white, educated, middle-class immigrant woman with English as my first language. What would happen here if I were an immigrant woman of colour with an accent? I shudder to think what other immigrants are experiencing here and in other closed-minded cities and towns across America. As for overcoming it – I don’t know. I’ve hired a coach, am taking some classes so that I will be an alumni of the local university (and hopefully gain access to the insider’s club), have daydreams of running away, but so far I haven’t solved it. Watch this space.





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7. What is the most awesome thing you have ever done?

The second-most awesome thing I did was to be one of five Canadians (out of 600,000 Canadian visitors that year) to be deported from the UK after one year of living there on a two year working holiday visa.

The pipsqueak immigration officer decided he wanted a promotion and deporting a Canadian was apparently the way forward. He told me I was “abusing the spirit of my visa”, and should only have been “working in a pub”. I was

Coming up in the next few pages: Mike’s Space: Lost Jason Burgess

searched, thrown in the detention cell for the day with a crazy man who alternatively muttered and sang, hugging his knees while rocking back and forth. I was threatened over and over that I would be transferred to their overnight detention centre, but then released at the last moment with an onion-skin paper receipt for my passport. “Do you want the police to come get you?” No, thanks, I’ll be here for my deportation flight back to Canada in four days. I gave up my job, my apartment, my boyfriend and got on the plane. About a year later I managed to get my life back and was back working in London (involving going to the British Consulate in Los Angeles for a visa, spending time in Cairo, “accidentally” losing the passport that the deportation stamp was in, sneaking into the UK via ferry crossing instead taking a risk with the finicky airport immigration officers,

buying milk and potatoes on a credit card, and finally finding work at the Canadian High Commission for which I needed no visa. F@$K you, pipsqueak. I was there for five more years, got a better job, a Master’s degree from the London School of Economics, and went out dancing twice a week for jungle and drum ‘n’ bass. Stubborn? Me? Actually, the most awesome thing I’ve ever done was to take a chance on hooking my cart to a foreign grad student, and then after nine years together, reluctantly (on my part) making a baby (and what, I ask you, was so wrong with practicing?) I thought pregnancy was a one-way ticket to chubbiness and slavery. I was wrong - it is so much better than I ever expected. I have to make sense now. I can’t just run away from challenges, and that makes me a more compassionate person who can see the grey areas in life now.

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8. How do you think your culture and upbringing manifest itself in how you live your life now? “There is no one more patriotic than an expat” – Michelle Ransom (that’s me). I’m a product of the propaganda of my nation. My sweetheart has identified the main message in Canadian propaganda as “happy, happy multiculturalism --education and health care are free and a human right”. While I identify the main message of American propaganda as “We are arrogantly the best at everything and most obviously the only nation with a democracy, and free speech. So why would we ever need to look beyond our borders? ”

If you live in or near Madison and need help aligning operational improvement with business strategy contact Michelle, [email protected] Just don’t mention the university or the Badgers.

I live in American as a hypocrite. I grew up anti-American and anti-free trade, shouting “Don’t take our natural resources you Americans!” My family laughed heartily when they heard I fell in love with an American was moving to the U.S. – like a cruel joke. Americans are all about individual rights – “what is best for me and mine”, while Canadians are utilitarians – “the

greatest good for the greatest number of people". As I said, I’m an invisible minority in the U.S. I’m dissolving. I can’t bring up my ‘socialist’ points of view anymore, as they are interpreted as “Michelle getting on her soap box again”. People tire of differing opinions, and eventually say “why don’t you just go back home if it’s so good there?” What I’ve learned is that you can’t choose a city over loving your best friend. We’ll work it out. We always do. If you would like to vote for Michelle to appear in our print issue, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

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Mike Woodruff lives in Los Angeles. When not writing, he enjoys playing basketball and eating Flamin’ Hot Cheetos. You can find him on the internet at www.mutinouswombats.blogspot.com

Read last month’s Mike’s Space here.

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Mike’s Space:

Lost.

pride myself on my sense of direction. I always know where I’m going and how to get there. My parents bought me a GPS for my car last year and it’s still sitting in the back seat of my car, hopelessly sequestered away right next to the KISS lunch box I won last year at an arcade in Redondo Beach. This refusal to utilize technology isn’t stubborn, macho pride, either. When it comes to driving the streets of Los Angeles, I know them well. If I don’t, then I relentlessy study routes on google maps

until I do. This is something that calms me. What is NOT calming, however, is getting lost. I rely so heavily on the comfort of knowing my location that when I do get turned around, it feels like someone just ripped off my ears. Getting lost in Los Angeles? This usually means a healthy sampling of curse words until I can find a street I know. Getting completely and hopelessly lost in a foreign country? This is a different story altogether.





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In 2005, I went to teach English in Seoul, South Korea.

railing. It came within inches of hitting us on the rebound.

The day I left the verdant hills of Kentucky started out ominously. My parents drove me to nearby Dayton at 6 in the morning. It was raining. On the way there, a grey Cherokee cruising along the Interstate in front of us skipped along a pool of water, veered sharply to the right, and slammed into the

Not a good start.

the reality of it. The feeling of claustrophobia and immobility gets to me, especially after 13 hours.

I flew out of Dayton to Chicago. At 1pm, I boarded my flight to Seoul. I had an entire row to myself and quickly made myself comfortable. At least, as comfortable as possible. For as much as I like traveling and the idea of flying, I absolute hate

I made due. It was a flight full of turbulence, romantic comedies, brief rounds of Tony Hawk on my PSP, and several crying babies. I didn’t sleep at all. Since we were heading west over Alaska, we chased the sun, avoiding twilight.



“I needed to go to a city called Ilsan, with an I and an L, but when I told the clerk this, she must have heard Osan” By 5pm, I stepped off the plane into a different country. By 5:30pm cleared customs at Incheon International Airport. By 5:45pm, I boarded a bus. By 6:15, I was totally, hopelessly lost in a foreign country. Memory and critical thinking skills tend to wane after being awake for nearly 24 hours. To the best of my knowledge, here is what happened: When I bought my bus ticket, I neglected to show the clerk the note my managers made for me. I needed to go to a city called Ilsan, with an I and an L, but when I told the clerk this, she must have heard Osan, which is a completely different city in the opposite direction of Ilsan.



One syllable- ONE SYLLABLEruined me. Lesson? If you have a note, use it. I knew I was on the wrong bus in minutes. Highway signs in Korea are in both Korean and English. Over time, I learned to view this as a blessing. That first day, though, it was a curse. A sign next to an onramp to a highway running north read Ilsan. The bus blazed by it, heading south. Oh noes…. An hour later, I arrived in the wrong-syllabled city of Osan. I immediately went to the counter and asked for a ticket to Ilsan. The lady at the counter looked at me dryly. She raised her arms and crossed them in an x. This, I immediately learned, was the Korean gesture for ‘no.’ “Ilsan, no,” she said. “I need to get to Ilsan,” I replied. “Ilsan, no.” And again with the crossed arms.

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“My goal: Get to Ilsan before I passed out from exhaustion.”

I called my manager on a payphone. “Where are you?” “I’m lost. I’m in Osan.” “Ohhh…Osan is very far. Very far. You stay there for the night.” “Incorrect. I’m coming there. Can you pick me up?” “No, you stay in a hotel.” “Absolutely not. I’m staying in my room tonight.” “No.” Psshhh…For a second, despair turns to white-hot anger. It cools quickly into a plan. I hung

up the phone. My goal: Get to Ilsan before I passed out from exhaustion. There wasn’t a bus back to Ilsan, but there was one to Seoul. I hitched a ride on one, then made it to the subway. This was easier said than done. The subway stop I chose was nearly three stories underground, which meant that I needed to lug my belongings down three flights of stairs. I also needed to get my suitcases through the little tollbooths to get to the train.

Since my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, I made the stupid mistake of passing through the tollbooth before I transferred my suitcases. When I found I couldn’t reach them to lift them over, I crawled back under the tollbooths and dragged them through. Several onlookers smirked in amusement before helping me out. Lost? Check. Exhausted? Yup. Humiliated? O.M.G. And this was only my first day.

Nearly five hours after arriving in Korea, I made it to my city. Several people were there to greet me. When they asked me what happened, I just laughed and laughed and laughed. “I just wanted to see the city,” I said. They showed me my room. How things worked. I passed out on the bed in an exhausted stupor. In the morning, I tried cooking noodles in a dish dryer. I thought it was a microwave.

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www.discounderworld.com. jason burgess. page

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positive attitude propels travel photographer Jason Burgess around the world.

Jason Burgess Article by Amanda Gray

Portrait by Johan Dewachter

“Travelling provides me with an overview and a connection to the wider world. The momentum of travel keeps me positive and that’s an important mind state for producing any work, art or otherwise,” he said.

Jason’s freelance photographer and writer existence is a “dream role”, especially with the benefit of business class travel on assignment. In the last 15 years, he has photographically documented his life experiences and is eager to explore more of the world.

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“I don’t have a must-go destination in mind. I have several ongoing projects and ideas for potential road and overseas trips. For me, any opportunity to travel avails new possibilities and allows me access to people and places that are out of the realms of everyday life.” Jason is interested in people – what we are, where we come from and what we leave behind. “I’ve never been in any one



place long enough for full immersion. What I will say is that no matter where one travels, the human condition is the same. It’s the politics, landscape and what you bring to a place that changes.” He easily establishes a rapport with people he meets from different cultures. A smile coupled with learning basic greetings, especially “thank you” and sign language helps overcome language barriers.

www.discounderworld.com. jason burgess. page

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“Genuinely getting along with people is the key to a smooth journey and can open doors to other possibilities,” he said. “Get a person talking about their passion and the rest of the world melts away.” Jason blogs at:

www.burgseyephotos.blogspot.com



If you would like to vote for Jason to appear in our print issue, enter your email here and hit vote. Your vote will count once your email has been verified. Only one vote will count per email and person.

www.discounderworld.com. jason burgess. page

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collette fergus is your favourite from last issue, and the person to be included in the Gold Edition at the end of next year. Check out Collette’s website here: www.thecollection.co.nz Get your copy of The Gold Edition by clicking here.