Is this an only-in-HK thing?

This is one reason I hate when it rains on weekdays:

The color coordination is appreciated, but ... how is this OK?? It's a workplace. Also, umbrellas take like 7 minutes to dry, when semi-closed, yet lay wide open all over the floor for hours. Conclusion, I really really hate it when people do this.

I'm not sure this warranted a whole story in SCMP

Which makes it kind of... funny?

Police are conducting an internal probe into allegations that five officers - including the station sergeant - cooked a hotpot meal for themselves in Tsim Sha Tsui Police Station during an overnight shift this month. 

Alfred Ma Wai-luk, director of police personnel and training, said such behaviour, if proven, was a breach of discipline.

Full story here

Uh, NO.

This from Time.com:

In the week since Wang Yue, the two-year-old girl better known as Yue Yue, was hit by not one but two vans, then ignored by 18 people before finally being rescued by a scrap picker, the Chinese public has agonized over how such a thing could happen, how the suffering of a helpless innocent could be ignored by so many. Several explanations have emerged, ranging from fears of legal liability to a belief that economic reforms have led to a decline in the sort of selfless behavior promoted in under Mao.

This is exactly why I have a fear of getting hurt, sick or attacked in China. People won't help you; actually they might mug you while you're down. Maoism did not result in any selfless behavior for such a thing to be in decline. Maoism made people scramble for themselves, lest they end up with ... scraps.

re: a job

Me: It'd be writing about all the stuff I'm into, like sustainability...
M: And shopping.
Me: Hey shut up! Like sustainability, medicine and science.

Nothing!

Nothing gives me a worse first impression of someone than: lots of makeup

And that's the thing, she concludes.

And that's the thing, she concludes. Just because things happen slow doesn't mean you'll be ready for them. If they happened fast, you'd be alert for all kinds of suddenness, aware that speed was trump. "Slow" worked on an altogether different principle, on the deceptive impression that there's plenty of time to prepare, which conceals the central fact, that no matter how slow things go, you'll always be slower.

-Empire Falls

 

Hate is a strong word

I feel juvenile laughing out loud at this blog. But I really couldn't agree more with these two posts:

http://ihatehongkong2.wordpress.com/2011/06/19/sick-as-a-dog/

In more backward parts of the world, lazy workers are allowed ridiculous leeway by crazy employers who allow multiple instances of having a day off work that don’t involve a trip to the doctor to fetch a note. Employers with this kind of hippy mentality are asking for trouble. How could someone who is sick for a day notgo to see the doctor on that day? There would be something very, very fishy about that…more fishy than a Sai Kung fish butcher. In Hong Kong when you are sick, you must get up and get outside and get to the doctor. It doesn’t matter at all if you end up having to wait hours to see a doctor or that appointment times seem to be as flexible as everything else in Hong Kong is inflexible…or that in going to the doctor you are ultimately doing everything you set out not to do that day…commuting, lining up, waiting, being pushed, yelled at, listening to people eating MacDonald’s in the waiting room…just generally being assaulted by all those aspects of Hong Kong culture you sought to avoid. Anyway…you got pills coming…and pills make it better.

http://ihatehongkong2.wordpress.com/2011/02/27/work-hard-play-hard/

“Work hard play hard” is a pathetic excuse that blankets a justification over everything that people don’t want to really think about. It’s a catch-phrase that paints over a lot of cracks. ‘We can take our six allotted holiday days a year from our shit job where we’re under the microscope of pitilessly cold and heartless supervisors…we can work overtime without warning for no extra pay, undergo appraisals by power drunk morons one rung higher on the ladder than us, ride on dizzyingly overcrowded public transport seven days a week…and feel ok because…we can play hard after our work is done!!‘

So, what do they do when they have a chance to ‘play’? Fuck all that’s good. Their favourite activities, I’ve come to learn, are eating and buying shit. Pretty much the same as the rest of the world I suppose…but hey…this site is for complaining about Hong stinky Kong. I suppose they can’t help it – every slogan, ad campaign, TV show and even the education system itself indoctrinates Hong Kong people to value their environment as one where you can shop for and eat anything. That’s what Hong Kong is – one big gaudy shopping mall riddled with bistros.

Belated 9/11 post

You know what I was doing when 9/11 happened? I was in Hong Kong, watching the Hong Kong version of the Weakest Link. When it went to breaking news. Then I had nightmares every night for about three years straight. Literally. (I didn't make the connection, by the way, until it was pointed out to me years later.) I wished I could stop going to sleep so I could stop dreaming so I could stop having nightmares so I could stop being terrified. I forgot what it was to go to sleep and not be terrified. I also became oddly fearful of the strange act of sleeping itself: How do I know to keep breathing when I'm unconscious?

Of course, I'm much better now, thanks. I love sleeping way too much, and I rarely dream that I have to stab someone to death or that I'm hiding from a killer in a really really bad hiding place.

Why I should write more emails

Lead me to a higher understanding:
When I start typing an email to ask someone what to do about a certain situation, usually related to work, 100% of the time while trying to explain the situation, I end up analyzing and answering my own question and discarding the email.

I constantly wonder if Liz Lemon would like me.

To Whoever OK'd This as a Trend:

Thanks a lot. You have added a biggie to the MANY completely unacceptable trends that hapless Hong Kong girls/sheep are subjecting themselves to.

Things To Do in 30 Seconds

Came across this on cable just now. This is what I've always wanted to do/have. To just harmonize with someone else -- who can do it effortlessly -- for no reason, without much thought, not to show off, but to feel soothed by those mini doses of musical tension and resolution. Just cos you're sitting there folding clothes and in the same room.

What the heck is wrong with

TVB Pearl's Chris Gelken? Why does he talk like Professor Snape? Except much more menacing. Sneering and enunciating each British syllable like he's sick and tired of delivering the freaking news all the time. Absolute worst news reader, imho, because he has these annoying, sardonic, patronizing head twitches and lip purses. Gelken in action:

Snape in action:

:(

Language Skills

FTW

Oh, June. You silly month.

How you amuse with your rain, and typhoons, and shoe-destroying rain. And "amber" rain. And umbrellas open to dry on the office floors. And middle-aged women in rubber shoes. And rain.

need...more...storage

A story in the WSJ today said some U.S. states have started auctioning license plates as a way to generate income. This paragraph tickled me:

Other countries have already mined this vein, with big results. A businessman in Abu Dhabi bought a license plate with "1" at an auction for $14.3 million in 2008. Last year, in England, a retired businessman bought "1 RH"—his initials—for about $400,000. Hong Kong sold a plate that read "STORAGE" for $12,000.

lol

Why I didn't like X-Men: First Class

Let me start with a shout out: the secret lair behind the strip club booth is the house in Kill Bill Vol. 2! Bill's Mexico house.

But basically, I have to compare this movie to X2, by far the best of the X-Men movie franchise. And I liked X2 a lot better. It was slicker. It moved quickly without feeling rushed. It wasn't all action but never felt static. There was lots of tension among the characters. You could tell a lot about them when you first meet them. The bad guy was awesomely evil, but his son pure creepy, the short anecdote about the mother said it all. The early, rather simple scene in the White House was fun to watch, a huge step beyond any effects action scene in the first film. And of course Wolverine! Love.

First Class was just plodding and overwrought. The characters were annoying, and their abilities weren't presented with that sense of cool, matter-of-fact, show-don't-tell. Instead we learn about the kids' abilities through a series of show-off sessions. Ack! Remember the first X-Men? When Wolverine is in a cage fighting? His claws come out to slice in half a gun that was pointed at him? And Rogue asked if that hurt? And he said "every time"? And how Rogue almost killed her boyfriend and how miserable she was? And how the first time we meet Jean Gray we see her use her mind to move an object? Those were natural exposition scenes. But in First Class, the kids just show their powers as powers. Gross! Also the movie doesn't even try to conform to the most basic laws of physics. The flying chick's wings - no way could they lift her off the ground. (Also, her tattoo of sorts looks very much drawn on by Sharpie up close.) They also completely ignored the glaring impossibility of Beast retaining his ability while looking normal on the outside (meaning his feet), as he thought would happen if his cure serum worked.

And the bad guys. What is UP with the longish-hair dude in the light-colored suit?! I know these are villains and this is a comic-book movie, but seriously, I expect a little more respect than the level of caricature here. Like how he would just do some SNL Antonio Banderas parody, whoosh around, not break a sweat and have every hair fall perfectly in place with the one smug expression on his face. Ar! Barf. And the red bad guy? The twin of the demon in the Buffy musical episode (which was brilliant, by the way)! But this is why I think there was poor editing or just crappy action, because I could never really keep track of what he was doing during the fight scenes.

I couldn't stand Rose Byrne as the CIA agent. Why didn't they cast some tough chick who could do a whole Sydney Bristow thing a la "Ima gonna kick your ass and then go home and cry."(I love Sydney Bristow.) You know what I mean, any recurring female character in the Law & Order franchise would have been more appealing than an even-frailer-than-normal, deer-caught-in-headlights Rose Byrne. And how gratuitous was the strip-club scene when she took her clothes off? I also found January Jones' character unbearably lifeless, although I was captivated by those eyes of hers. As for the big bad guy, well, casting Kevin Bacon was just too easy. Was it a toss up between him and Sean Bean? Something must be said for the "sexy newcomer" (reference to a short-lived recurring SNL skit - again) who played a snaggle-toothy young Magneto. He looked good. But...his whole character was based on pain and emotion, yet wow were his pivotal moments cheesily done. Moving the radar and submarine, Xavier getting him into the zone, how lame were those scenes.

Back to the relationships between characters. In the first two films, you could feel the crazy tension between Wolverine and Jean Gray, the crush Rogue had on him, Mystique's resentful jealousy, Cyclops' devotion, how much everyone looked up to Prof X... and I just didn't care about any characters in First Class and wasn't convinced that they cared about each other. It was emotionally PG-13. Young Mystique's crush on young Xavier seemed shallow. The relationship between her and Beast...based on little. When Alex vengefully said, "They killed Darwin," it just felt like a plot device.

As for the whole 60s era... the film it didn't feel retro. It felt dated. Including the effects.

It feels good...

closing the 20 tabs open in my browser window pertaining to a just-filed story. (I have a major tab problem.)

What's wrong?

You know what I freaking hate about Starbucks in Hong Kong? No? Well let me tell you. It's that they freaking heat up any food by default, with the exception of only salad, I think. Allow me to elaborate. Hong Kong people generally like to eat things hot, all the time. This preference is related to a Chinese medical belief that cooked food, which is close to body temperature, is healthier. At Starbucks, sometimes they do ask first to make sure you do want your muffin or pie or whatever hot, but oftentimes they do not ask and I forget to say Hold the heat. Then they put your order in the oven to heat it up. When it's the chocolate danish/croissant, I usually let it go even though I am secretly pissed. Who the frick wants a hot danish?? But when it's the hummus vegetable wrap, I always go aarrrrr I FORGOT TO SAY NO HEAT! Seriously. HOT HUMMUS IS JUST WRONG.

Today’s grads enter a cultural climate that preaches the self as the center of a life. But, of course, as they age, they’ll discover that the tasks of a life are at the center. Fulfillment is a byproduct of how people engage their tasks, and can’t be pursued directly. Most of us are egotistical and most are self-concerned most of the time, but it’s nonetheless true that life comes to a point only in those moments when the self dissolves into some task. The purpose in life is not to find yourself. It’s to lose yourself.


--Excerpt from NYT column "It's Not About You"

Paid my overdue tuition a few days ago, got a belated email today that said my school de-registered me because I owe them money. Well, that explains why my library card stopped working last week. (But it's working now!)

Think this is a sign I should pay my electricity and gas bills (10 months overdue).

And taxes.

Arrrrr (or why I go to Starbucks)

The rest of my apartment does not look like this. It's just my desk. About five minutes after cleaning it, it looks like this again:

This is the culprit:

Yup, it's all about him:

Even while trying to write this post, I lost the first pic because he rolled onto the delete button. And then he pressed a button on my air con remote. Wtf Korben, STOP! It's not a haystack!

Sai Kung

Last weekend's weather was so good it was pretty much impossible to take a bad picture, even with iPhone:

Overdue post: origami window displays

These were from Chinese New Year (my finger's over part of the lens)... more abstract bunnies in those yucky colors. It's one of those stores below ground connected to TST MTR:

This is a store in Soho. Extremely well-done folding, very tidy stringing, someone's definitely anal:

Hilarious Article

From the NYT:

As if further proof were needed that New York is not the center of the universe.

The United States Postal Service has issued a new stamp featuring the Statue of Liberty. Only the statue it features is not the one in the harbor, but the replica at the New York-New York casino in Las Vegas.

You might think that the post office would have just gone with the original, the one off the tip of Lower Manhattan that for 125 years has welcomed millions of New York’s huddled masses yearning to breathe free. Instead, they accidentally used the 14-year-old statue that presides over thousands of weary gamblers a week.

The post office, which had thought the Lady Liberty “forever” stamp featured the real thing, found out otherwise when a clever stamp collector who is also what one might call a superfan of the Statue of Liberty got suspicious and contacted Linn’s Stamp News, the essential read among philatelists.

But the post office is going with it.

(Full NYT article here: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/04/15/us/15stamp.html)

Count Your Blessings

I am so thankful that: I don't hate anyone in my masters program.

There's only maybe one person whom I dislike, but not on a level where I would not want to be in the same room. But dang, people in my program write the inanest shit on facebook. I just want to defenestrate my laptop sometimes.

Confession: I used to hate three people for no good reason (for many years beginning around age 20). It sucked. And I wanted to exorcize that feeling very badly but just couldn't. Like I wanted divine intervention. They just annoyed the crap out of me (grr!!!). The only reason I don't hate them now is that I never see them anymore. YES.

This Desert Life

I just don't listen to much music these days. These days like the past five years. But today I decided to stick a CD into my laptop, specifically Counting Crows' This Desert Life. And I'm hating all the songs, except I Wish I Was a Girl. It's one of those that are silly and sad and very poppy at the same time.

I wish I was a girl
So that you could believe me
And I could shake this static every time I try to sleep

"Your memory is a monster"

What scares me: being convinced of a memory, only to confirm that I had it wrong all along

March 18 was the day they punched a hole in my marriage certificate. The thing no one ever looks at or hangs on a wall. The thing kept in an old plastic bag, if it's lucky. The only thing I could think, as I paged through the documents held together by a cord strung through holes on the corner of each page: how dare they punch a hole in my marriage certificate. It's done on special paper, you know, the kind you can't photocopy, like money, or college transcripts. They just punched a hole in it all willy-nilly. I hate them, and I hate me.

I also like when you can tell he's drunk blogging

http://tomshone.blogspot.com/2011/02/casting-doubt-on-true-beliebers.html

I always find myself holding back my adulation for Tom Shone's blog. But I...just...can't. I heart the guy's words.

Oh and today's made me LOL: http://tomshone.blogspot.com/2011/02/history-in-offing-either-way.html

Wow...

On Joan Didion:
"She considers herself too shy to be a good reporter, but photographers she has worked with say her shyness sometimes makes her subjects so nervous they blurt out extraordinary things in their eagerness to fill up the conversational vacuum."

You know what's really unhealthy?

When you feel like you're gonna have a heart attack or pass out while clicking "send" with an assignment attached to a professor.

I'm so disgusting

I'm having one of those weeks where I can't stop eating. What I ate today, SO FAR (it's only 5pm!):
-3/4 bag of crispy M&M's
-3/4 box of Lotte Pepero "Nude"
-1 roasted veggie sandwich from Simply Life
-1 coffee
-1 banana
-1 large bag of "Hot Wave" potato chips
-2 Haribo coke bottles (I only had 2 left)
-approx 3 glasses of water

Kind of festive?

More display-case origami. Basic rabbits. Really nice that they are strung up, in large quantities. Pretty. Really bad that this Chinese New Year theme confuses with Valentine's Day, unless this visual runs through February. Or maybe bad that it's ambiguous.

I swear

Yogi Tea's Ginkgo IQ "clarify your mind" tea makes me sleepy, every time. So annoying.

Siem Reap

Feel like doing one of these blog things thanks vli :)

How many have you read?

Have you read more than 6 of these books? The BBC believes most people will have read only 6 of the 100 books listed here.

Instructions: Bold those books you’ve read in their entirety, italicize the ones you started but didn’t finish or read an excerpt.

1. Pride and Prejudice – Jane Austen
2. The Lord of the Rings – JRR Tolkien
3. Jane Eyre – Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series – JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird – Harper Lee
6. The Bible
7. Wuthering Heights – Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four – George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials – Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
11. Little Women – Louisa M Alcott 
12. Tess of the D’Urbervilles – Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 – Joseph Heller 
14. Complete Works of Shakespeare 
15. Rebecca – Daphne du Maurier
16. The Hobbit – JRR Tolkien
17. Birdsong – Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye – JD Salinger 
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife – Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch – George Eliot
21. Gone With The Wind – Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby – F Scott Fitzgerald 
23. Bleak House – Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace – Leo Tolstoy
25. The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy – Douglas Adams 
26. Brideshead Revisited – Evelyn Waugh
27. Crime and Punishment – Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath – John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland – Lewis Carroll
30. The Wind in the Willows – Kenneth Grahame
31. Anna Karenina – Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield – Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia – CS Lewis
34. Emma – Jane Austen
35. Persuasion – Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe – CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner – Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin – Louis De Berniere
39. Memoirs of a Geisha – Arthur Golden
40. Winnie the Pooh – AA Milne
41. Animal Farm – George Orwell
42. The Da Vinci Code – Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude – Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney – John Irving
45. The Woman in White – Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables – LM Montgomery 
47. Far From the Madding Crowd – Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid’s Tale – Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies – William Golding
50. Atonement – Ian McEwan 
51. Life of Pi – Yann Martel
52. Dune – Frank Herbert
53. Cold Comfort Farm – Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility – Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy – Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind – Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities – Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World – Aldous Huxley 
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time – Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera – Gabriel Garcia Marquez 
61. Of Mice and Men – John Steinbeck
62. Lolita – Vladimir Nabokov 
63. The Secret History – Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones – Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo – Alexandre Dumas
66. On The Road – Jack Kerouac
67. Jude the Obscure – Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’s Diary – Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children – Salman Rushdie 
70. Moby Dick – Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist – Charles Dickens
72. Dracula – Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden – Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island – Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses – James Joyce
76. The Bell Jar – Sylvia Plath 
77. Swallows and Amazons – Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal – Emile Zola
79. Vanity Fair – William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession – AS Byatt
81. A Christmas Carol – Charles Dickens
82. Cloud Atlas – David Mitchell 
83. The Color Purple – Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day – Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary – Gustave Flaubert 
86. A Fine Balance – Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web – EB White
88. The Five People You Meet In Heaven – Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes – Sir Arthur Conan Doyle 
90. The Faraway Tree Collection – Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness – Joseph Conrad
92. The Little Prince – Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory – Iain Banks
94. Watership Down – Richard Adams 
95. A Confederacy of Dunces – John Kennedy Toole 
96. A Town Like Alice – Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers – Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet – William Shakespeare
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory – Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables – Victor Hugo

In Pajamas

Home sick today. Not homesick, like I miss HK homesick. But at home, sick. As in, the food here is so dirty everything that goes in wants to come back out.

And what do I decide to do with my day at home, sick? Read Harry Knowles's review of the Social Network, of course. And yeeeeah, he basically wrote the review I would've written http://www.aintitcool.com/node/46685

His short-ish review basically waxes poetic about the opening scene ahhhh it's the scene I can't stop obsessing over either. I think I had a visceral reaction when he said she doesn't need to study cos she goes to BU. Then when she said you're always gonna think people don't like you because you're a nerd, but it's really because you're an asshole... I loved that line. Describes so many people, although replacing the word "nerd" with others. And Harry mentions the opening scene of JJ Abram's Star Trek, which I freaking love.

P.S. Front page byline in the Phnom Penh Post today! YES.

Near Russian Market, Phnom Penh

Christmas in Cambodia

My Christmas present to myself: finally watching the last season of Lost, which I bought at the Russian Market yesterday.

Happy F'n Birthday!

I got dragged to this event last week. Even worse, I got ambushed. My friend said, let's meet at Lane Crawford. Ack! Little did I know, she meant, let's meet at Lane Crawford's 160th birthday bash featuring the most beautiful people in Asia.

Of course, having no knowledge of this tiny little detail, I put on my wide-leg Habitual jeans from 8 years ago, a t-shirt, and Reef flip flops. Yes. REEF. I might as well have been going to the beach, but this was just supposed to be quick dinner between school projects.

I got in through the back door because of course, if you've been following the story you'd've realized, I had no invitation. I downed two glasses of Veuve Cliquot in front of minked mannequins. Literally. In my Reef flip flops. 

It was one of those parties that make you wonder if the average height in Hong Kong is actually 6'1". Yeah that's Susie Bubble up there. I saw a woman go up to her and ask to take a picture. Susie did, but then I swear she dissed her with a kind of "I'm too famous to be chatting with you" turnaround back to her cool crowd.

Then we were required to watch Daniel Wu play ping pong. Don't ask. I refrained from repeatedly asking my friend, "Can we go to Te for dinner now?"

Hurray for MPF

Yesterday I walked by a guy with a big camera pointed somewhere in the sky, and I thought my usual thought: "Look at this fool taking an 'artsy' picture of nothing that he's gonna post on Facebook so everyone can comment on the 'cool' star lens effect.

But I looked up anyway. And took my thought back. Because this fool caught something AWEsome.

HSBC's idea of a celebration? Winter lights facing the harbor?

<-- Yes. I wish they were being ironic.

Protest Prediction: Another Dark Art to Master

Can someone please set up a Hong Kong protest calendar to make journalism students' lives easier?

How can I write for NATIONAL GEOGRAPHIC?

Vacancies on our editorial staff are usually filled by men and women who have had quite a few years of experience in the newspaper or magazine publishing fields. In preparation for such work, many of our writers have made a thorough study of the sciences, journalism, and English, and in some cases know several languages. A solid academic background and a proven record of success in one's chosen field are most important. However, because we cannot know a person's particular talents nor assure employment after a completed course, we do not encourage gearing a career or educational program specifically toward employment by the National Geographic Society.

--from National Geographic's website

Don't you love it when someone tells you in an official capacity exactly what you need to hear? Over the past year or so, if someone asked me what my dream job is, I'd say National Geographic. But a company's frankness and dashing of dreams is much appreciated.

Girls just wanna have fun.
Boys just wanna be sourpusses.

Sigh...

http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=130437287&sc=fb&cc=fp

Mid-article, the writer poses the problem:

These days journalism schools around the country are often challenged to justify a mission that trains students at such a high cost for a collapsing industry that doesn't even require a degree. 

After all, many newspaper companies have been forced to seek bankruptcy protection, including the owner of the nearby Los Angeles Times. ABC News just let go a quarter of its entire staff. AndNewsweek and BusinessWeek magazines were in such tough shape their longtime owners sold them for $1 a piece.

Towards the end of the article is what we are told in j-school ad nauseam:

"If you look around the world, whether it's a developed country or a developing country ... if that country has a free and independent press it's much more likely they're going to be a democracy," he says. "And I think those of us in [the] journalism education field have an obligation to help train people to provide information in the public interest."

And stuff like this:

"I am concerned, as a dean, at the costs and debt burdens these students take on," Wilson said. "But I'm also concerned about training the next generation of people who are going to provide the backbone of democracy."

Yeah... we are all skeptical... but trying to deal and learn to love our choice.

So hard to watch...

but so funny... at least the most embarrassing ones are on Fox News...

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S-6rdjGvj28

I hate forums and comments

There are so many online forums or comment opportunities (such as on youtube) that I find so annoying that it makes me regret reading them... mostly when they are dominated by teenagers who seem to be missing half a brain (as in literally, their brains are still too crap at processing information and that's why they say such stupid things).

This made me LOL at 2:52am, Sunday night

http://www.bestweekever.tv/2010-10-06/most-unnecessarily-dramatic-quote-in-new-york-times-history/

(I'd actually read that NYT article a few days ago but didn't make it to the last paragraph I guess... hahaha)

The best thing anyone can do to me is doubt me, beat me, get me really mad.
Something a professor said to me a few days ago lit fires in my eyes.
Something a professor did today put daggers in my eyes.

Not wronged, but all I can think about is revenge, revenge, revenge. Revenge of the ego.

They'll see.

And that's me. Soft until I have something to prove.

Things I can't stand in class and at the library

Thing I can't stand in lecture:
When someone sitting near me in the back row is freaking hunched over and texting the whole time.

Thing I can't stand in lecture and in the library:
When people freaking 1) take their shoes off next to me; 2) their feet smell; 3) they put their freaking nasty feet up on the chair next to me and start texting the whole time!!!

Illusions are powerful motivators. The problem is they are constantly shattered, only to be built back up again, meticulously, stupidly, with purpose. The evolution of an illusion looks like the sound bars on a stereo, up up up then disappearing in silence, but quickly back up again, the cycle never ending, always volatile.

Oh illusions, motivate me today.

garble

I know I haven't blogged in ages... just when everything hits you all at once, full force, information overload, it's difficult to sift through all the images and emotions and come up with a coherent presentation of "what's on my mind." (Kind of like how it takes me a few days to decide how I feel about certain movies because of their complexity... Inception... Eternal Sunshine... Kill Bill 2....)

Despite all the imperfections, I'm thrilled to be learning again.

nom

When someone asks me what my favorite food is, I usually have to think really hard and regret not having a prepared answer. Well, tonight I make it official. My favorite food, regardless of nutrition facts:

Portuguese egg tarts hot out of the oven. At Macau Cafe with a hot milk tea... omg.

Wind-in-the-hair helps

So. I like Paramore. Emo pop rock, yeah, I'm a dork. I have always found it astounding that the lead singer Hayley Williams is only 21. I guess she just plain looks older than that, but her stage presence and voice, as well as some of their songs, are so much more mature than that. Then today I was reading Paramore's Wikipedia page and learned that the band was basically formed when three of the members were 13, around the time Williams began taking voice lessons. Suddenly, everything made more sense. She's been a trained singer since a young age. None of this just happened for her. She studied. She's a student of the discipline. This explains why, from the first time I watched the music video of their song Decode*, I thought two things:

Thing #1: "Wow, this girl's really pretty!"

Thing #2: "Oh my gosh this girl has really good singing technique with regard to mouth shape/tongue/facial muscles."

*I must clarify that I am not a Twilight fan or anything, and therefore do not particularly like this music video, or this song, for that matter. My favorite Paramore song by a mile is Hallelujah.

mi me ma mo mu

I like a lot of Post Secrets. The site really does what it's supposed to do - making us realize that other people have the exact same secrets/problems as us, exposing the impenetrable lives of others, or just displaying abstract thoughts that have been put into perfect words and maybe perfect images. But this one, ha! Yeah. This sums it up, about the "high art" that is opera.

Good but weird.

I have mad respect for people who genuinely do not give a crap about other people's personal lives. Yet I find this lack of curiosity very very strange.

Rant/question/idea/hope of the day

(Scene from Clueless - Travis donating his bong for disaster relief)

Can someone please tell me how to donate a very large amount of old clothes, books and objects in Hong Kong without either ending up 1) wanting to just leave it all in front of World Wide House on a Sunday; or 2) wanting to scream? Meaning, the charity either does pickups or is centrally located, and takes everything. And also, which charities are most reputable? I don't even care if the recipient tries to sell the stuff and pockets the money, as long as it doesn't end up in a landfill.

In the States, we used to queue up in our car at Goodwill. Once you reached the front of the line, a guy unloads your truck, or you hand him the stuff out your window. He puts it in a big pile, except some stuff that goes in a *different* pile, which I know is the "clearly just trash" pile. I know this cos this is where he threw our old tennis balls. Anyway, what does this say about the US? It says that people perpetually have way too much stuff. It says that everyone drives, especially big cars. It says that despite years of environmental awareness, tennis players still have no real way of recycling all that rubber. But most important, US charities have efficient, organized systems of donation.

Maybe I'll set one up here.

I'm sure Goodwill in the States throws out a large quantity of stuff when I'm not looking, but today I heard from V.Li that Oxfam here has turned down her mom's clothing donations because the items were too old. Also, I once called the public library here and asked if I can just drop off a bunch of books, and they said no they have to be approved. And if they aren't accepted, do I have to haul them away? "Yes." Call me lazy but books are heavy. I have no triceps. (Trust me. I tried to do a push-up last night.) OK I know carrying books mainly involves biceps, but still, bird arms. It's not like libraries here have parking spaces, even if I had a car. It's not like I can just waltz in with a pile of books on the off chance that the government wants my free donation of reading material. In the US, the library takes everything. If there's stuff they don't want, they just put them on racks as free stuff for the taking or sell them for $1. I don't think it's inherently wrong of charities and libraries to NOT accept stuff, but it's just less friendly, less convenient that the donor has to figure out how to get rid of it - again, it's all about having a system in place to take care of the excess.

I have also been desperately seeking good used furniture, which is, amazingly, even more difficult. As the expat forums have pointed out, Chinese have "hangups" about used stuff. Lame. Like how they have to buy a new doormat at Chinese New Year, or new slippers, or whatever, just for luck. There's probably some symbolic, cultural and practical reason behind this that makes perfect sense if you put it in some old-school context. Like how western brides believe in wearing "something blue" on their wedding day, often in the form of garter or underwear. How crass, considering the tradition originated because blue's associated with purity. But to be fair, another reason it's impossible to find used furniture here is people don't have lawns, so they don't have yard sales. And everything on craigslist is Ikea, which everyone knows is bound to be in pieces once you get it home.

I once said to my husband these exact words: I just think it's dumb that people make things and bury them under the ground.

Which is exactly how Hong Kong works. I'm sure it helps with all the land reclamation projects. Recycling is a mystery here. There are tons of sightings of recycle bin garbage getting mixed with real garbage. Janitor ladies in my husband's office building (IFC y'all!) have confessed this to him this in a hush-hush manner. Yet people also say all of Hong Kong's trash gets sorted at the facilities anyway, and recycle bins are decoys to make us feel greener. But why so mysterious? Let's just lay it all out, literally.

With real flea markets.

People want this.

save them save them

Shrimpers emerged as a prime suspect in the NOAA investigation when, after a round of turtle necropsies in early May, Dr. Stacy announced that more than half the carcasses had sediment in the airways or lungs — evidence of drowning. The only plausible explanation for such a high number of drowning deaths, he said, was, as he put it, “fisheries interaction.”

Environmentalists saw the findings as confirmation of their suspicions that shrimpers, taking advantage of the fact that the Coast Guard and other inspectors were busy with the oil spill, had disabled their turtle excluder devices.

The devices are so contentious that Louisiana law has long forbidden its wildlife and fisheries agents to enforce federal regulations on the devices. Last month, Gov. Bobby Jindal vetoed legislation that would have finally lifted the ban, citing the “challenges and issues currently facing our fishermen.” By contrast, Mississippi officials strengthened turtle protections by decreasing the allowable tow time for skimmers, posting observers on boats, and sending out pamphlets on turtle resuscitation.

--

Full NYT article here.

It fascinates me how much the government and environmentalists obsess over sea turtle survival. Check out the pamphlet on turtle resuscitation: "Sea turtles may take some time to revive; do not give up too quickly." It's optimistic of the government to believe that fishermen and boaters would go through all the trouble to save a turtle that they accidentally injure or nearly kill. Granted, if such compassion and effort is to be found anywhere among people just trying to make a living, it would probably be in the US (Hong Kong? Forget about it). But realistically, I just don't see fishermen and boaters (who are suspected of disabling their turtle excluder devices) reading the pamphlet before bed and going that distance for the species that are getting in the way of their livelihood. Humans are selfish.

On the other hand, as far as I know, environmentalists think sea turtles are doomed anyway. The things we are asked to do for doomed species... there is something comical and tragic about all this. Letting a species die out is unconscionable; fighting tooth and nail in a losing battle is madness. But the world does not operate under rationality. Individual agendas will be forwarded. It makes me feel useless and helpless.

What's Been Owning My Mind

... the soon-to-be-mine apartment. Have been obsessively planning decorating, and I haven't even signed the lease yet (but first month's rent has been put down). Cantaloupe and strawberry... cantaloupe and strawberry...

I love sciences and arts.

One of my favorite pictures from New Caledonia. At the aquarium. They are little tableaus. Living shadowboxes. Meticulously designed and executed. A hand reaches in and spoils the miniature glowing world.

World Cup Karaoke

This is how it gets done.

This pic rocks

Half-candid pic of my grandma and me fixing our hair before having our picture taken. (Sacramento, last month.)

Nat Geo Fix

This photo gallery of bower birds and the photo captions crack me up, especially the second half with its piles of leaves and "carpet of acorns." (Article here.) Also, talk about detachment from objects and others. For the females, the mates, the feats of architecture and the collections of pretty are admired, approved and then abandoned.

I am so sick of lifestyle magazines

I'm so glad I no longer feel it's my professional duty to read Time Out.

Who you looking at?

Noumea, New Caledonia

the voice of authority

"it was on the news. he tried to shake their hands and they turned away. what's wrong with them? what's wrong with the french? they don't care about their reputation. it's really disgusting."

--overheard comments: mom on the french football team

What's for you, won't pass you

(Taken over the stunning, glorious Rockies in May)

I'd call this strawberry and cantaloupe

Looks like I'm still on my streak of moving on average once a year (now going for 14 years). Yup, I am semi searching for an apartment right now. And I want it to look like this - but oh the grandeur of optimism before I turn it into a pile of crap upon crap. This is the first pic I've come across in a long while that actually makes me think, I can do that, and I want to do that.

Inspiration via ohjoy!.

This year's ART HK

I took pics of only five things at this year's art fair. There were quite a number of booths that had "no photography" signs; and I went with friends so I couldn't really take my sweet time. But I love the pics I took of this Damien Hirst formaldehyde piece (the first of his formaldehyde works to ever exhibit in Asia) with the awesome expressions of people checking it out. His butterfly works are in the background. (Butterflies were everywhere this year! It's so totally overdone now. As well as skulls. Does this mean everyone is just following Hirst, as a way of following the money? Don't even get me started on anything that has Mao or Red Guards.)

Boston

Just because I'm losing, doesn't mean I'm...

So much going on the past month or so... but just feel like blogging about one thing in particular... yup. Lost.

I have watched none of the last season of Lost. So no spoilers ok?

Hahaha. Was reading Time magazine yesterday and came across the article "Preparing for Life After Lost." Didn't read the article because of... you know. Spoilers.

Let's face it, you couldn't wait to find out what was gonna happen in the next episode, even though every episode seemed to just leave you a little bit unsatisfied - which makes one want more more more! Give me more creepy. More melodrama. More nonsense.

Anyway, in the end, I appreciate Lost. Because I appreciate those little things that move the world and give people who are different as can be a common understanding. And it's a little thing that brings us a little bit of joy and anticipation.

I also appreciate the moment in the movie Kick-Ass where the main character, facing imminent death, laments that he will never find out what happened on Lost. So true.

my dream wardrobe

basically, 20 dresses cut like this in different colors and prints would do. (moschino)

the shoes in all their colors would help.

An origami world

art by Bu Hua

Oh man - chat quote of the day

A: doing anything for spring break?
me: not really. u?
A: nope
me: spring break hahahaha
A: i mean easter
hahahaha
me: i reeeeally feel like some of us are stuck in college days - especially me
since i'm going back to school!
A: i see
i'm stuck in college days and not going back to school
maybe that's worse

2009 movies post

OK. I haven't seen every good movie of 2009 (haven't seen the Hurt Locker in particular), but faves are as follows:

-Star Trek
-A Serious Man

Uh, ok. That's it! hahahahaha. Very high-low brow?

Books, Change, Life

I was getting my daily blog fix yesterday when I came across one that posted a list of the 10 books that changed this person's life (or "influenced" said life also works). I thought this would be a fun and easy exercise, until I realized it's really not...

There are books that touched me greatly and altered my thinking for that moment/week/month (some of them academic, as can be expected), but the only thing I came up with that certainly changed my life was Lord of the Flies. It is simply because this is the first book I read for which someone showed me that there is such a thing as symbolism in literature, that it's not just a story. It was like a veil lifted. Like a secret finally whispered. A rite of passage.

Feels different this year

Sometimes, I just feel so incredibly blessed to have such kind, wise and loyal friends, I don't even dare believe it, as if thinking about it too hard will disprove it. They know who they are. But here I quote part of a chat session from yesterday, my birthday, with a colleague who doesn't know about my blog.

V says: ... feel old
not exactly feel old, but feel ill-prepared for my age...
W says: u're 27?
V says: ......... r u serious
W says: ok...u're a few years older than me only, right? (coz i forget how old i am, whaahaha) so u're 29?
V says: yes
W says: i think the actual no. is not important, what important is ur face and ur heart, and u definitely don't look like ur age
V says: wa, u r good at "tum" me
W says: sorry, i'm good at telling the truth that people always forget, hahaa

This made me smile

They can be really lame with words sometimes, but Langham Place - one of my favorite hotels in this city - knows what's up. They get the media. They get what's fun, what's not. They sent me an invitation for the media launch of their "iPod Art Tour." The invite consists of four sentences only. This is one of them:

"Free of speeches but with excellent Champagne, great conversation and fine food from all four-corners of the world – we’d love your company."

Oh yes. I'd love to be there.

Why oh why...

Gianfranco Ferre accessories, always so fugly they hurt my eyes. (At least they are consistent?)

Ugh ugh ugh what on earth are they thinking?

Belated Quote of the Day

March 1, 2010

Someone: "Think I buy on average one H&M item per week... is that a sin?"
--via email

My current reading habits are all over the place, which I think is a very accurate reflection of the direction of my life right now - or lacking thereof. Currently actively reading:

Committed
Land of Desire
Even Cowgirls Get the Blues
2 issues of Time magazine
Lucky magazine March issue

I am normally way too anal to be reading all this, especially magazines out of sequence (I go from front cover to back cover, chronologically, strictly, normally). I haven't felt so "caught in the middle" (channeling Lenka) in ages... work, school, people, life, houses, dimensions