Sarawak Tattoo Convention 2007

Now that’s just disappointing.

When I heard it was cancelled, I was all, “We were going to have a what?”

I missed the 1st Borneo International Tattoo Convention back in 2002 because I wasn’t that interested. I wasn’t tattooed yet, see? When a friend from another paper mentioned the convention this morning, I had to go digging to see what I can find because I heard it was cancelled. I also heard why it was cancelled but can’t for the life of me remember why now. It probably has something to do with the government. The government is the default party pooper around here.

Now I’m a big fan of tattoos and the tattoo culture. I follow two excellent blogs:

Needled, which described itself as “High brow for the underground. Tattoo couture.” With so much information out there, it’s always good to have an intelligent, well-written site to turn to for the latest in tattoo culture. Editor Marisa DiMattia is a lawyer, with a special interest in tattoo law.

ModBlog (Not school or work safe) is not focused strictly on tattoos, but body modification in general. It has the good, the bad, and the AAAAAAARRRRGHHHHHHH! Those that are really icky comes with a warning and blurred out photo, but as a general rule, there’s nudity.

I noticed that most of the portfolios on tattoo artist websites are of the freshly-tattooed and painful-looking variety. I guess I can’t blame them. The artists would want photos of their work and the best time to get it is before the client leaves. They may never see them (and their work) again!

I plan on looking up some people at some point and shooting more artistic photos of their tattoos, after it’s had time to heal. Practice for me, pretty photos for the tattooist and client. Cyn and I offered to do it for our tattooist, who is in favour, but we haven’t gotten around to doing it yet.

I’ll call this a reminder to self.

The above photo was taken by Cyn, and the one below by Andrea. Model: me.

The Vanishing Tattoo, Take 2

My write-up on The Vanishing Tattoo should be out in this Saturday’s edition.

There were a handful of people there, including a freelance tour guide who introduced herself as Lyn. She was talking to one of the museum people about the time of the screening and I had to butt in with my two cents.

She thinks that the video would be marvellous for her fellow tour guides, since tattoos are such an integral part of Sarawakian culture and they get asked about it. I know a number of people who are interested in seeing the video because like me, they didn’t catch it on National Geographic either.

I don’t know why the museum people seem surprised that so few people are able to turn up at 3pm Friday afternoon… it’s office hours, for goodness sake. Most people are working!

Lyn wants to organise another screening. The museum tentatively agreed to this. Lyn didn’t have a card but I gave her mine and she promised to call me if she arranges something. I’ve not heard from her yet and I don’t expect to so soon, since I have a vague suspicion that tour guides are as easy to wrangle as writers and cats.

I concluded my article with the phone number of the museum, encouraging any interested parties to call in and pester ask them about showing it again… say on a Saturday afternoon.

The number? I don’t have it with me right now. Guess you’ll have to read the papers on Saturday. *g*

Optionally, you can email me at froget[AT]gmail.com, so I can email you back when I have further information on the second screening. If there’s actually enough people interested, I don’t see why we shouldn’t go ahead and request our own screening.

The Vanishing Tattoo

Too tired to give a shit about much now, but to those of you who are interested, the Tun Abdul Razak Museum will be screening “The Vanishing Tattoo” this Friday at 3pm.

It’s open to the public and I presume it’s free. I forgot to ask that bit, but they sounded really surprised when I called… maybe because they didn’t expect anyone to actually turn up at such an odd hour of the week. The guy I spoke to said he’ll call me back to confirm. A lady did within 10 minutes, and said that they’ll keep me informed about their future events, to which I said “Please do” since events equal possible article.

This is what we’re probably watching. I’ll be really cranky if it turns out to be another Vanishing Tattoo that I didn’t know about.

So if you’re back on holiday or can tangkap ular from work for an hour are available at the time, drop by… or else I’ll probably be the only one there.

To those of you in Kuching, I’m starting to use Upcoming.com to record upcoming events in town (and you can too). It’s similar to meetup.com, except it’s event-centric and they don’t make you pay to be able to use it. If you’re reading this from my blogspot, you have to scroll down a bit to see the widget in my sidebar. It’s also on my website.