I love the French word "train-train". Larousse defines it as "la marche reguliere et monotone des occupations habituelles", or "the regular and monotonous functioning of normal activities".

By definition it's a little dull. It's the humdrum. It's the routine. It's the mechanics of the day.

But I guess part of the Buddhist idea of mindfulness is to focus on the elements of that train-train, and make them amazing.

I'm probably the most un-mindful person on the planet, but the closest I get to it is celebrating the train-train I experience -- here in KL or wherever. Because touching base with this extraordinary ordinary helps me remember all over again that I can be happy right here, right now. Which is what mindfulness is all about.

Sounds, for example, are an inextricable part of my morning train-train. The crow of a nearby chicken-in-the-city. The yapping of a pack of dogs. The call of the mosque. The ooh-ooh bird as I walk to the station. The blind singers at one end of the Bandar Tasik Selatan station bridge, and the harmonica man at the other. The sweet sounds of the birds on campus.

I would love to be the kind of person who can photograph train-train -- who can spot a little bit of extraordinary ordinariness, and freeze it in the moment. These photos, snapped at a nearby mall, begin to do that, I think. A bit, anyway.





I've found myself lost in Bukit Bintang three times this week. Once going to meet a former colleague at Taps, once rendezvousing for a lift, and once finding Outback Steakhouse, where I was due to have dinner with some students. Googlemaps is truly terrible at representing Bukit Bintang. But as I stumbled around, I couldn't help notice that its contrasts -- between the glitzy and the train-train -- are ripe for a photographic exploration over the summer.

And I've been trying to photograph Terminal Bersepadu Selatan -- where train-train becomes a terrible pun, of course -- with the same ambition again in mind. But I'm still a long way off capturing what I want to.