Deng Xiaoping: Perfect Church Window

Beijing, August 2013.

Confucius and his modern followers

Beijing, April 2012.

East meets West

Beijing, April 2012.

Tricycle driver waiting for customers

Manila, June 2011.

How to survive a rainy day?

Manila, June 2011.

Cash or cash only?

Santo Tomas, Batangas, February 2011.

Manila Taxi Driver

Single and available ...

Manila, June 2010.

More kalas

The kala figures (remember how to eat yourself) of Candi Jago are also different from the Central Javanese ones. The eyes are even more bulging, the nose more protuberant, and the teeth and fangs bigger.

Photos from Candi Jago (close to Malang), East-Java, March 2009.

Kala or how to eat yourself

Kala was the faithful servant of Shiva. Legend goes that Shiva was meditating and Kala disturbed him to bring him a message. Extremely unpleased, Shiva shouted at him to go and eat himself. What Kala did. As Shiva found him, nothing was left of Kala but his upper jaw. Ashamed that he had been asking such a thing from his faithful servant, Shiva decided that Kala from now on would reside at the entrance of his temples to remind worshippers what devotion (to god) truly is.

Photo from Jakarta, Museum Nasional, February 2009.

Swim or not swim?

Swim or not swim, that is his question.

Photo from Seminak beach, Bali, November 2008.

Tree-kangaroo

We all come from the sea, then some of us live on land, and later the lucky ones will climb trees.

Photo of—my best guess—a ursine tree kangaroo (Dendrolagus ursinus) from Raja Ampat, West-Papua, October 2008.

Creating a monkey pet

Domestication of animals by humans has been the prerequisite to the development of complex societies. It all started with artifical selection by humans to bring animal populations under their care to produce food (such as pigs, chicken) and commodities (such as wool from sheep and silk from worms), to assist human work (such as water buffalos, cows), to allow for faster and more efficient transport (such as camels, horses), to offer protection (such as dogs, elefants), to experiment with them (such as rats, mice) and to enjoy them as pets (such as cats, goldfish, hamster).

Washing a monkey. Is this crueler than other forms of domestication?

Putting the topic into more general terms. Are modern genetics a form of domestication of the human being? Will humans look like the monkey in the second picture if they can express themselves afterwards?

Pictures from Jakarta's Pramuka Market, October 2008.

P.S. Can somebody help what kind of monkey it is on the pictures? Often endangered species can still be found on Pramuka market.