Well I just booked my hostel to Xi’an and my end-of-this-week trip there is all set. Big kudos to Buddha for having his b-day and giving all us minions a Friday holiday. This will be my 3rd time this year traveling somewhere new for vacation and my 4th time in total (the most recent trip was for work). Since I have yet to post anything from my trip to Taiwan for Chinese New Year and both Beijing and Dubai from last month, here is one photo from each of those awesome destinations. Fun times were had.
Taipei!
Beijing!
Dubai (and Abu Dhabi)
That pizza photo? It was from a ROUND TABLE chain that gloriously exists in Dubai. I could contain my homesick excitement when I first saw in the taxi cab to the hotel.
What is a worst human? A term coined originally by the good folks of Nice Man, they have defined it as this. And today I saw the perfect example of it by the people of Hong Kong and one terrible young sir especially.
As I was walking home with my bag of delicious secret dinner, the cloudy skies above me had begun to drop light rain. But lo and behold, as soon as these tiny, baby drops of harmless liquid began to fall from above, umbrellas immediately popped up everywhere as if it were actual hard pouring rain.
Of course me, being somewhat normal, did not mind that little bit of dampness one bit and in fact appreciated the light sprinkles falling onto my head. Rain is fun as far as I’m concerned. As I waited at a cross signal to cross the street, there right next to me was a guy around my age without an umbrella looking completely mortified in his situation of being caught right below this light mist falling onto him. He was even covering his head with his hands and glaring at the sky in agony as he stood waiting.
Now c’mon dude, if a sensy like me is telling you to man up, you know something is wrong with your life. Stop being such a douche. I even saw an old couple a few minutes later walking around just fine, LOVING the rain. So you, guy at the crosswalk, for not being able to handle baby sky droplets makes you the worst human. As for everyone else with umbrellas… well I guess they’re just bad humans.
I’m typing this on a Wednesday afternoon sort of wondering what I should do today because I had no damn idea that it was going to be holiday. Best part so far was sleeping in. Since I knew I would be able to do that, I randomly decided to check out Iron Man 3 at 10:45pm last night. I was at the movie theater in this section of Hong Kong called Mong Kok. This area is pretty much known to be one of the most worldwide places in the world to be PACKED AS FUCK. The movie theater itself was just a bunch of escalators going up into the screening rooms. The room that was playing Iron Man 3 in 2D was really high – like on the 9th floor. At that point, the hallways stopped looking like a movie theater and turned into an abandoned building that needed a paint job.
As we all filed through (because remember, its PACKED) to the screening rooms, I felt like we were cattle heading to get slaughtered. And we kind were…. oh boy did Iron Man 3 suck.
So an editing project at my job has sent me to Shanghai again. It was meant to be one week but now it will be two. Which is cool. But while it is a beautiful city, all the work has kept me from seeing anything new that I hadn’t see on previous trips here. Hopefully that changes this week. Though one cool place I got to check out was area called Tianzifang. It’s pretty much a maze of lit alleys filled with cafes, pubs and craft shops. Unfortunately, being the non-camera crazy guy I am, I once again forgot to bring my camera for photos. So to give you an idea of what it looks like, this will have to do. I shall definitely be retuning to this place while I am here..
On the night before I arrived in Shanghai last weekend, Beijing band Hedgehog returned to Hong Kong almost exactly one from their last visit. With them being one of the first bands I had ever seen in Asia, I had to go see them again. And I LOVED IT.
Though I won’t be in Beijing until later this month, I’ve still have been blasting their tunes in my iPod for the past couple days. They are GREATNESS. And did I mention I am in love with the drummer, Atom?
Based on Wives and Concubines by Su Tong, Raise The Red Lantern is a 1991 Oscar nominated film by Zhang Yimou and starring Gong Li. Li plays Songlian, a girl in 1920s China who decides to become the fourth wife of a wealthy man. Once arriving at his estate, she is referred to as “Fourth Mistress” by the servants and other wives and she learns the traditions of the new family she has married into. The main recurring tradition in the movie is how each of the wives stand outside their respective houses each night within their husband’s estate. Whomever’s house the servants raise the red lanterns to on that evening is who the husband will spend the night with. When chosen, that particular wife will proceed to receive special treatment from the servants and have the authority to choose the following day’s meal. With this fact, Songlian quickly learns that several of the other wives (and her own personal servant) are against her in a fight for the master’s favor and the movie reveals a plot thick with lies, backstabbing, witchcraft and death.
Though the entire film takes place within the family’s estate, it takes you right into that world of the estate and into their problems. The film is shot beautifully, especially with the many scenes involving the titular red lanterns.
As for the acting, Gong Li is wonderful as Songlian, who begins as a depressed girl without a family to a vengeful mistress sucked into getting even with the other wives. Right from the opening scene of the movie, which involves her crying into the camera and accepting her fate as rich man’s wife, I was already be sucked into Li’s powerful performance and Songlian’s tragic tale of being completely trapped in a horrible life.
Though the story of Songlian is totally gripping, I actually ended up feeling bad for the equally tragic tale of her servant, Yan’er, who initially hates Songlian because she had fallen in love with their master and had hoped to rise from being a servant and becoming one of his wives herself. Their final conflict was most definitely one of my favorite plot climaxes in the movie.
I first heard of it based on a recommendation from a friend and immediately was enticed to watch it after viewing its intense trailer. If you are like me and missed it back in ’91, (I was 5 years old back then, what’s your excuse?) this is a film that should be on every cinema lover’s cinemaddict bucket list. And by a stroke of luck, the entire film is available to watch online in HD!
This weekend was three days of non-stop wonderful rain. It gave me the perfect opportunity to finally do nothing except for watching movies and eating pizza for three straight days, an uneventful event that was MUCH needed. Okay maybe that was for two days – I went to a pretty good show on Friday night that left me sweating like heck from moshing.
Speaking of shows, I actually never posted pictures of the first show I attended in Hong Kong at this awesome venue called Hidden Agenda (which, by the way, is now my favorite hangout in the city). The place reminded me a lot of the venues back home and the bands were simply terrific. This was a night totally worth blogging about but I’ve been sooooo behind in updates that it was just sliding farther and farther into the past. I mean, this was an April event yet I’m not writing about it at the end of May.
But on to it: the main band that night was this fantastic band from Beijing called Hedgehog. Their songs were ear-gasmic and their performance combined with the insanely excited crowd that night made it a show I won’t soon forget.
Other music thingy worth mentioning: one of my favorite bands from 2008, Nightmare of You released their first new song in almost three years. I love their first self-titled album and their Bang EP from 2007 and am glad to say that their newest song is a return to form (and away from their disappointing 2009 sound from their Infomaniac album). The song is called Out Of My Mind and IT IS GOOD.
Well, well, well. I haven’t posted anything on here since the 14th. Ugh… I fell behind again. I’ve just been watching too much damn Netflix since getting a new computer. But so many awesome things have been happening every week this month and if I wait any longer to post about them, it would mean endless catching up. So the time is now! First of all: I went to Shanghai earlier this month! It was rad.
Though my first time in mainland China was all work and half a day of play, it was a beautiful city to visit and I loved how different it was to Hong Kong life. Two major factors that I noticed: less crowded and less English. Both of these facts I liked a lot and left me definitely wanting to return to the mainland soon to wander on my own and explore new scenery.
One particular thing I am happy I got to do in Shanghai? Walk down the street listening to Shanghaied by Bishop Allen! Of course, I had planned to do this weeks in advance.
