The Cam­era…

A few months ago, when I was back­pack­ing in Brazil, I received an email from a woman who was inter­ested in my trav­els. I replied and we started chatting.

The woman turned out to be Aga Mag­dolen, a global soul cur­rently located in Toronto, who was doing a doc­u­men­tary about “Third Cul­ture Kids” (kids who grew up in for­eign coun­tries). Although I’m just a trav­eler by choice, we talked and she was still inter­ested in my story, and wanted to inter­view me for her documentary.

Aga arrived in Ottawa Fri­day evening with Max, the cam­era­man. We headed to Fatima, a North African restau­rant in Que­bec. We had a whole room for our­selves and shoot while eat­ing (Gosh, the food is good!).

I’m more a behind the scenes kind of per­son: I love writ­ing, draw­ing and tak­ing pic­tures. I don’t mind being in a few pic­tures, but I don’t nec­es­sar­ily enjoy pos­ing. And I’m used to ask ques­tions to peo­ple, not being inter­viewed! But strangely enough, I didn’t hes­i­tate to do the doc­u­men­tary.

Aga’s enthu­si­asm, for a start, is quite con­ta­gious. She is a global nomad her­self so she knows what she is talk­ing about. She has one idea a minute and fol­low up on them. She is cre­ative, ener­getic and inspired… and God, she even speaks more lan­guages than I do: we chat­ted in Eng­lish, French, Span­ish, and I had to stop here because I didn’t speak Pol­ish, nor Ital­ian, nor Ger­man… she beats me!

Max, the cam­era­man, was the sweet­est guy. He obvi­ously knows what he is doing (which I quite admired, con­sid­er­ing how many wires they were every­where!) and is well-traveled himself.

Basi­cally, two peo­ple to make you feel comfortable.

So, we sat and chat­ted, and I for­got to be self-conscious, shy or even mute for a sec­ond. Aga asked me about trav­el­ing, look­ing for place to call home some­where in this world, and how I decided to even­tu­ally move to Canada. We talked about liv­ing the global life, its ups and downs. Before we even real­ized it, it was close to midnight.

The next day, we met early nearby the Big Spi­der, one of my favorite place in Ottawa. Then, we moved to one of her friend’s place to shoot my blog, my draw­ings, pass­port and my busi­ness cards (each of them has a dif­fer­ent pic­ture of mine printed at the back). Finally, we shot in Chi­na­town and had lunch at a small Viet­namese place.

A very inter­est­ing expe­ri­ence, and it got me think­ing a lot. I’m still not sure why I need to travel the world for a few months, once in a while, to feel alive. I still don’t know what pushed me to move abroad instead of mak­ing my life in France. I don’t even know why I like to be a chameleon in this world.

But appar­ently, I’m not the only one. It is strangely comforting.

Shoot­ing At Fatima’s

I Have Wires Everywhere!

Early Morn­ing Shooting

Max, Always Focused…

The Big Spider

Arrang­ing My Busi­ness Cards…

Here I Am!

My pass­port, busi­ness cards, cig­a­rette box…

For­tune Cook­ies Read­ing At The Viet­namese Restaurant

Shoot­ing In Chinatown

Related posts:

1. Above Ground
2. Best Of Paris (2÷2)
3. Costa Rica, Pacific Coast
4. Lama Tem­ple (雍和宫)
5. The Tem­ple Of Heaven (天坛)