Mats in Vanuatu

 Here are the mats seen on Pentecost Island (part of Vanuatu).  They seem to be similar to the mats used in Tonga as sign of respect, but in Vanuatu the mats are only used during traditional ceremonies. The first five pictures are from a ceremony of becoming a chief, where the chief to be has to prove he can kill, so he dances with an axe in his hand and every so often knocks a pig (tied to a post) on a head. It also involves dancers dressed in mats. The last three pictures are from a wedding, part of which is traditional and also involves dance in mats, but the more modern part of the same wedding, in a church, is without mats.

Tongan attire

 In Tonga people wear mats around their waist at any official situations, like going to church for example. Women sometimes wear smaller decorative things called kiye kiye, also plaited, but men always mats. Whenever I asked what was the reason for this, I was always told that this is to show respect.

I have never seen the use of mats this way either in Samoa or Fiji, which are quite close and of similar culture. I have seen similar mats being used in Vanuatu but only during traditional ceremonies. For example during a traditional part of a wedding, where similar mats were used like money, to pay for the bride (some pigs were apparently used for the same purpose). However, nobody used mats during the church part of the same wedding.

It is also interesting to note that in Tonga men seem to be more conservative in the way they dress than women. In most countries it is the other way around, women are more likely to put on traditional attire whereas men wear trousers and T-shirts. In Tonga women seem to wear western dresses while men come to church in a traditional skirt-like lava lava.

Antonio Gaudi's design

 Here are some chimneys on one of the houses he designed. The house is called Casa Mila, or La Pedrera. On the last picture you can see his most famous structure (still unfinished).

Inside the Sagrada Familia

 Have you ever wandered what Sagrada Familia looks like inside? I myself have seen many pictures from the outside, but none inside. So I didn't know what to expect. Anyway, I did go in and I saw. Here is a few pictures from that visit (if you ever wandered what it looks like inside).

By the way, the entry is not so simple. It is a church, but not just like any church, you have to buy a ticket for twenty something euro to get in and a queue is a few days. When you finally are about to enter, you have an airport-like security check, with taking the belt out of your trousers included.

London in the 1980s

 These were the times when one could see punks with a green Mohican, or cigarette adverts (silk with a plaster on it is an advert for 'silk cut' cigarettes and golden edges for 'Benson and hedges'). In those days a telephone was an apparatus that people had at home and a call overseas cost an arm and a leg, so a company that provided cheaper connections advertised it like cigarettes. There was no Banksy but there was Rob, who left his quickly drawn heads in prominent places in the centre of London, always on temporary surfaces. And of course the lone protester who seemed to be always somewhere on one of the central streets of the West End.  

Jan Malik

 Not long ago Jan Malik died in Cracow. He was a real artist who wasn't worried about exhibitions or selling his stuff, he just carved it and hanged on the wall in his room. He never tried to sell his sculptures. Sometimes one could persuade to do so, but even then he parted with his sculptures with difficulty, as if they were his children. I have seen the wall in his room because he happened to be a family friend and I sometimes paid a visit. I once tried to make a few photos of several sculptures but the pictures didn't come out well. However, my brother Przemek on another occasion succeeded.

Ukrainian icons in Cracow

 They are icons painted by Jerzy Nowosielski, one of the best known Polish painters of the 20th century, in an Orthodox church in Cracow. He was of Ukrainian origin, of Orthodox denomination, and so among other things he painted icons. What is interesting is that I was told that for a long time his icons weren't treated as icons. I was told (in the very Cracow Orthodox church) that painting an icon is a prayer, the painter should start with eyes, the icon is supposed to look at you, whereas in Nowosielski's icons one can hardly see eyes at all. But then he became famous and now some of his icons can be seen in that church.