BOOKED

i was in davao mindanao for a very short visit a few days back and as always never failed to visit one of my favorite places here which is right in front of marco polo's hotel, the avedico shopping arcade. All the little shops here are a hundred percent owned by the maranao muslims selling all the usual cheap touristy stuff... batiks, filipino clothings, trinkets, beads and such. But there are a few shops that sell mindanao muslim works of arts, the most notable being beautiful wooden chests made of local harwood ( nara?) and beautifully decorated with inlaid shells and you can also get the long Mindanao krises and ceramics , some of which may be genuine export potteries from china salvaged from varios ship wrecks . Apparently this place was also a favorite haunt of the former museum negara director dato shahrom and one of the young shop assistants mentioned a few things about this gentleman which i won't really go into here.

but this time i was particularly struck by this hawker selling mangoes just outside this arcade and which have this very beautiful magenta green colors. The exact color of one of those banana varieties that you rarely see now. And this is my favorite color in paintings and It reminded me very much of some of those gauguin paintings in his tahiti phase.

i don't particularly like gauguin's paintings although his life story especially his relation with javanese and tahiti women very much shaped my outlook on women during my student days.

i once saw an exhibition at the van gogh museum (on a quick stop over in armsterdam a couple of years ago ) of van gogh togather with gauguin who of course was close to him at one stage and to my surprise when juxtaposed as such I very much prefer gauguin's than van gogh.