Hong Kong International Art Fair

On to a more traditional knockoutgirl post.

The fair known also as ART HK 09 (yeah good job PRs, it is catchier than the full name) opened two weeks ago and lasted four days. It was fun. But looking at my camera phone pictures (I use my phone for no particular reason. I had my regular camera with me. I just felt like it was somehow tradition to use my phone), I noticed something about the pieces I choose to photograph. While the most striking pieces were the many strange or shocking sculptures, I find that I am most interested in keeping visual record of the most traditional - possibly most boring - paintings.

Gotta love Damien Hirst butterflies.

I didn't squash the photo; these two sculptures are actually squashed like if you are watching TV in widescreen when the aspect ratio of the show is the old kind... hate it when that happens.

These are actually deconstructed high heels made to look like insects. They are amazing.

Part of a portrait.

I LOVE this. I don't really know what is going on in this painting but it's something cultural... butterflies flying, feathered mask, photo-realism with the surreal...

Detail of a nude.

I thought this was just a giant butterfly done with loads of paint and two canvases slapped together and pulled apart, but I only realized from the photo that it is also a person's face! Wa!

I accidentally started reading a forum thread that was talking about people's poor health and evil pharmaceuticals (on Amazon. Why do retail websites host non-product-related forums? So distracting. You don't need to be everything to everybody.). One person commented that air conditioning is partially to blame for people's staying indoors watching TV and not getting exercise or spending time with other human beings, whereas without the A/C, people are much more inclined to get out of the hot house in the summer.

I agree completely that lack of A/C forces people to go outside and possibly exercise! When my husband and I were living in a particular apartment in Evanston, we didn't have air conditioning for about 1 year, and Chicago summers are hot. That summer I voluntarily (meaning no whining involved) went to play tennis everyday because I was sweating profusely just sitting at the computer. It was really disgusting, just dripping with sweat not doing anything, and I preferred to sweat on purpose under the sun while moving, wearing athleticwear, and trying to beat someone at a game, with the possibility of feeling a breeze every once in a while.

Ah. Evanston which teeters between upscale college town and suburban ghetto, how oddly conflicting it feels. Hippie art fair under the train tracks. Muggings at gunpoint by the moonlit lake. Darkness and light. Take me, free me.

Saturday, very interesting day.

It is the day that I attempted to fast, and I would classify it as successful. It is also the day that I went bicycling for 5 hrs (with like 1 hr "lunch" break in the middle) at the surreally beautiful beyond-Shatin area. Just look at that sky, and sea, and mountains, and pristine techy paradise-of-the-future california-meets-hk sight. It is also the day I was an accessory at my in-laws' mother's day dinner. It is also the day I enjoyed a concert. It is also the day I didn't go to a toga/luau party. It is also the day I was very hungry and kept falling over from fatigue. It is also the day I became very sore.

Throughout the day I had green veggie drinks, lemon water and a watermelon juice (which I think is somewhat kosher for the fast). To make a long story short, I DID cheat a little with half of a glorious shrimp spring roll and two small bites of bread stick. Around 11pm I had at least 2 bowls of miso soup and 1/4 pear...

I would've thought it'd be easy for me to fast, seeing as how I could go through days barely eating anything in college and post-college. But living here and being out is SO HARD because the food is SO GOOD, and you are bombarded with the smells, and I am never attempting a fast again if I have to be out doing stuff.

Next day, I felt SO GOOD and not hungry and got up to this by guru Kris Carr:

"Remember, it’s not about weight, disease reversal, fixing the blues (or your marriage). Start small. Love yourself at the cellular level."

Oh, the torture!

Really, trying to be good about food.

But, again, writing about food.

Currently craving... feel like if I could only choose one sweet dessert to have for the rest of my life, it would have to be the fritters at Peking Garden. Of course I said the same thing about ice cream mochi when I was eating that. I would've probably said the same thing about a Napoleon I was having on Tuesday.

Back to the fritters. OMG. The menu says taro, but apparently it's a mistake (confirmed)because there is no taro inside, just starchy potato/rice paste with some red date paste. Candied. OMG. (That fateful day six pieces arrived for our table of four, and while each person having one pieces would be 6-4=2, instead of devouring the remaining two like I normally would - the other people weren't as into it as I was - I just had an extra one. Ah, restraint.)

Thing is, I have come to realize I'M NOT NORMAL. Normal people are NOT like this. They do not have these insane cravings for certain dishes, like obsessively salivatingly. I mean, this is a revelation. I've always been 10 times more ravenous when it comes to eating junk food or any other food I like. I've always wondered how people can hold back and not "stuff their face" when eating chips or Corn Caramel, which is literally what I do. I used to think people are just being polite, but now I realize... there's something wrong with me.

It's not until I get really REALLY "this time it's for real" serious about no sugar that I realize just how bad my addiction is. I tried doing no sugar, bread, alcohol and caffeine but literally cannot because of my job but I also really crave it like crazy and find myself cheating even outside of work. However, I have cut WAY back.

For example, last weekend out for dinner, my mom ordered garlic bread, which came in six pieces. I am obsessed with garlic bread. But I was so good I only had one piece. Normally, I'm not kidding, I would for sure have had five pieces in five minutes - leaving one just out of the goodness of my heart to the other diners. Which makes me realize how gross I "normally" eat.

Went to H&M's new Kowloon flagship store media event on Friday night, 20% discount on all clothing. Four things I purchased: 1) white tee that's super me, 2) tulipy tissuey skirt with lavendar animalish print that's super me, 3) navy shorts that can be let down to be a little longer, very Abercrombie actually, 4) tattoo-print cardigan, obviously me...

I could do one of those mix-and-match editorials with these four things, a la "a week's worth of outfits" haha...

Good test

(Detailed and accurate test with 24 possible results!)

Your result for The Which Lost Character Are You Test ...

Kate

You scored 63% kindness, 41% courage, 50% seedy past, and 67% secretiveness!

JUST SAYIN'!

After multiple people urged me to watch Susan Boyle on Britain's Got Talent , I made an occasion of it by actually turning on my home computer - seeing as how my work one has no speakers (and I am too low-tech to figure out where to plug in my headphones. Forgive me, I work on a PC from the stoneage, not very user-friendly to begin with).

OK before hearing her, I had already read that she sang I Dreamed a Dream and wowed everyone. I knew her voice was especially surprising given her appearance, general spastic demeanor and possible channeling of William Hung in the department of naive confidence. Oh and apparently she has a disability, although I am not going to make assumptions about what that is referring to.

Looking at the screenshots, I tried to imagine a buttery I Dreamed a Dream coming out of this woman's voice. I tried but could not imagine it, partly because of the song. I wouldn't consider it the easiest song to blow people away.

So finally, I get home and it's my chance to hear the person who's caused so much hype, to be truly surprised, and... People! The segment was totally packaged to be a tear-jerker, first of all, with the background music. There was also the "cutting away" to the audience's reactions (initial disgust, then awe), which I'm guessing were taken entirely out of context (as in, those poor people's disgusted facial expressions were made during a truly disgusting moment and not when Susan Boyle was speaking).

On to the singing. UGH. I get it, I get that she is confident and has a good personality. Kudos, really! Screw everyone who ever made fun of her, because that's not nice. But her voice only comes as a surprise because she didn't SOUND LIKE WILLIAM HUNG... but that's IT. This is making me all frowny face because it's not talent... it's just... better-than-william-hungness. I don't know how else to put it. The vibrato is scary terrible. She has no low notes. Actually, zero technique. And no emotion to go with this super depressing song. Why is everyone reacting? Because of the darn packaging of the segment! If this were American Idol she would've been one of the BAD ones. Got Talent is a less cynical show than Idol so they decided to go this route with Susan Boyle, but... still... this is such a stretch. She can't sing.

Interesting chat convo from a while back...

[This was December 26, I think.]

me: are u working today?
A: ya...in office...my life sucks...
me: hey i am in office too
so that means my life sucks
but i think u r the first person i know who's working today (other than my colleagues)
A: they are independent, and somewhat overlapping, but causal, but just happened both to be true for me....if that makes sense..haha

Super quick post re: BSG

Watched the series finale of Battlestar Galactica two nights ago.

Quoting the Watcher (IMHO best TV blog): "That's it. 'Battlestar' got into my soul. No other show has reached into the core of my being and made me physically feel so much: Fear, nausea, anxiety, excitement, tension, exhilaration, joy. Sometimes I cried, other times -- as during much of the first hour of the finale -- it made me want to stand up and cheer."

I felt nausea and anxiety through almost every episode... it's just too freaky.

Love this guy.

Butterfly Dreams

Coldplay concert last night was SO GOOD. Of course I couldn't get good photos or anything with it being dark, except the "Lovers in Japan" butterflies (yay posted!). The media comp was in the most expensive section but still way too far away booo.

It's really not fair how talented Chris Martin is. Freak.

I love how the first pic has the big screen...

I read about 75% of Kitchen Confidential by Anthony Bourdain but am a little disappointed. It's supposed to be scandalous but it's not THAT scandalous. I have a feeling it's not the book, it's me, I'm just jaded. Also, Bourdain was quite self-congratulatory over and over again... which I don't like AT ALL in a memoir... I LOVE self-deprecation. Is that weird?

Well now I'm reading Outliers, you know, another bestseller churned out by the guy who wrote Blink. His books are great fun to read, but I actually sort of detest Blink. It's a pop psychology book that could've been written by anyone who did a few hours of research and interviewed a few key people. It's formulaic. And actually, I don't think Blink really had one overarching argument, just that, in general, intuition is powerful. Uh... yeah. I am finding Outliers much more interesting and pointful - so far. Definitely recommended so far! hee.

By the way it's not for the faint of heart

Seriously this weekend has been really very interesting and cool and great... I hate to say it, even, because I'm so not a "birthday" person, but lots of fun stuff occurred this weekend, one of which was...

In Bruges.

OMG. V.Li had couriered to me about 15 movies two weeks ago. Courier, because it's just fun and hilarious, OK? Anyway, I finally popped one in which I'd been very interested in seeing.

So I think this completes the trifecta of recent funny assassin movies loved by me: 1) Lucky Number Slevin, 2) Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, 3) In Bruges

Edited to add: LOL just found out In Bruges was nominated for best original screenplay for 2008.

birthday weekend and other notes

I'm not much into my birthday, although I think this year's was pretty good. Got some really nice gifts :) Had several birthday-related meals. My innards are champagne-laden. Played Guitar Hero. Good.

On Saturday I went shopping by myself, which is actually my favorite mode of shopping... I had to go to buy Murad face stuff and they don't sell it in many places in HK so I had to go to Harbour City's Lane Crawford Faces. OK I have never gushed about Murad in my blog but I really ought to because I absolutively swear by it. Like the infomercial interviewees say, Murad acne complex has changed my life. I'm making it sound like I had really bad skin before which isn't exactly accurate, but it was far from blemish-free. And blemishes are day-ruining bastards. About 2 months after using Murad acne complex, my skin was comPLETEly clear and has pretty much stayed that way for the past 1.5 years. As in, it has changed my life. Oh and have I mentioned that I have tried EVERYTHING? An amassment of an enormous collection of trials and errors since the age of 13.

So anyway I ran out and went to Faces to buy it, and of course the Murad counter has no customers... since no one knows about it here, no surprise (the Bliss counter also empty teehee), which, if I really think about it, just means all the better for me, since I am now possibly like their best customer. I had extensive discussions with the salesgirl about the products because I also wanted to get the brightening serum and an eye cream (ever notice how you manage to run out of every face thing at the exact same moment? It's one of those cosmic mysteries). So the deal's done and she throws in, like, HK$500 worth of samples. UH, YAY.

Also: dilemma. I really need some advice about this. I get a free facial from Murad. I don't know if I should accept the offer, because I am terrified of going to the facial and they expect me to buy something! Oh and they just called me and told me to go pick up a birthday gift from Murad HAHA I'm feeling very locked-in to this relationship.

After my little Faces excursion (also signed up for the Faces VIP card... sigh, have I become their bitch?... and the free gift was a Bliss sample, YES!), on to my next stop, one of my top 5 favorite stores in the world: BCBGeneration... formerly known as BCBGirls... yeah it sells all the lower lines under BCBG... and half the store was 70% off. OMG. I tried on 8 things. Went home with 3.

One of the most eventful things of this weekend didn't even happen to me. Well it's more like, one of the most holy-frick things I can imagine occurring... Tim went to a concert by himself (uh, sorry for outing your awesome level of lonerdom - but hey I'm going to the Coldplay concert by myself this Wednesday! (Only managed to get one media comp, you see.)) and ran into none other than Marie Digby! He went up to her and started talking to her about his friend who's obsessed with her. Hahaha! They took pictures! THEN he was really pissed because he should've asked her to record a birthday message for me LOL omg... I would've flipped. That would've been insane. Woulda coulda shoulda. Heehee.

Quest for the pretty

Our company camera's lens is in the repair shop right now (OK, it miiight have been my fault...) so I borrowed one of my dad's 300 cameras to take pix for work. The one I borrowed rocks... it's small (no big lens or anything) and good looking and the pictures turned out really well. I'm just so happy with how these pix turned out so here... and I'm guessing the camera is way beyond my budget.

Look, I used major zoom and it turned out crystal clear:

And I am very adept at flower function now. "Macro," I know:

This one was just pretty. Hong Kong Park is pretty amazing, really really:

And... I adore this pic:

Finally uploaded the pics that have been on my camera for months...

I took this picture a long time ago in front of Links of London... origami hydrangeas... very cool and very much like what I used to do... ok I'm really interested in display-case origami, for obvious reasons... but I tried taking a picture with my normal camera and got shooed away, wtf! Haha. Just taking a pic of your window display, geez. Why are stores so anal. Anyway, I found this cool... all white, pretty typical... showcases the products very well when the products are colored... by the way, I have grown to love Links of London. They have some really cool stuff, although the prices are outrageous.

Another note about the Oscars

I just want to say that I really enjoyed those category introductions at the Oscars this year. I love those kinds of montages. And they were very well done. Heartfelt. Succinct. Well written. I was very impressed. They actually made me want to keep watching. They made every award seem more significant. And the nominee introductions were nice too.

I really want to see Man On Wire!

1:30AM

I'm usually not up at 1:30 at night. My capacity for sleep is astounding these days, and I get a lot of it. But I'm up now because I took a 3 hr nap after getting home from Slumdog Millionaire. And I'm sitting here and out my window in the apartment building literally a stone's throw away there were a few lights on just moments ago. It makes me wonder what they're doing in there. What they're watching on TV, whether they are happily reading in bed, who they're getting ready to sleep next to, and whether they are in the winter of their discontent, like me.

Went to Jennifer's birthday dinner tonight, bet they're still having fun right now with the ice louge hahaha (I bowed out early le).

Watched Slumdog Millionaire today *SPOILER ALERT*

My opinion... it was filmed well. It's conflicting though, because the story... it's like a fairytale, as V.Li says. But at the same time it shows you some really brutal things. It's like Pan's Labyrinth except without the fantasy adventures. Or Life is Beautiful.

It also seems to have a very intentional goal of showcasing many facets of India, all tied together a bit too conveniently by Who Wants to be a Millionaire. Again, it was filmed really well. But the story... it's as if the writer had to tie a bunch of somewhat unrelated scenes together with some kind of theme... the unifying element will be the questions in Who Wants to be a Millionaire, that'd do it! It's like the default solution when trying to insert a symbolic scene that seems totally out of place, or showing something about a character's psyche--a dream sequence, that'd take care of that! You know what I mean, too easy.

Also, speaking as someone who has watched loads of Who Wants to be a Millionaire (although not the Indian version), the way it was done was pretty off. The last question would not be about novel character names! Too easy. Also, the fact that he had a phone-a-friend was downplayed until the very last minute, which obviously is driven by plot/script needs, was super unrealistic.

My favorite line. The second time she says "I'm Latika" toward the end, but flashbacking to her saying it in the beginning as a girl. I love that kinda crap.