Ultrabear attackku

If the old TV shows were anything to go by, large creature monster attacks happen in Tokyo at least once every week. I miss Tokyo.

The Flaming Lips – Yoshimi vs The Pink Robots

Random Oscar musings

Thank you, Internet, built for the world to exchange information at the speed of thought for the betterment of all mankind. Without you, three girlfriends, deprived of the chance to be on the same sofa around the same television set on a Monday evening, could still partake in such intellectual exchange as this:

“Hugh is soooo hot!” “I love her dress!” “Yes, it’s beautiful.” “Hugh is singing!” “Someone really thought through this year’s presentation, there’s a concept running through.” “Yeah, it’s cool. A good idea takes the creativity further.” “Stop talking about work.” “Hugh is so hawt.” “He looks so good in a tux.” “It’s hard for a guy not to look good in a good tux.” “True that.” “Brad and Angelina are ridiculously beautiful.” “It’s hard not to see them pop out in the first row. They just shine, like natural halo.” “Jack Black is funny.” “Hey, it’s Sarah Palin-Tina Fey!” “Steve Martin is hilarious.” “Yeah, they are paying homage to writers. About time. Writers never get any credit.” “Yay, writers rock!” “Who’s that guy? He’s cute. No, not this one, the earlier one giving the speech for Best Original Screenplay.” “For Milk? He’s might be gay.” “Haiya…” “Hey, how come those two are kissing? Since when was that allowed in Bollywood?” “Slumdog is not Bollywood, it’s a Brit film by a Brit director set in India.” “Oh yah. I keep forgetting.” “What dress is that?” “It looks like a towel hanging over one boob.” “She looks pregnant but only on one side.” ”Uh-oh, technical awards. Pee break.” ”James Franco is cute. And funny.” “Yah, he always does those brooding James Dean-ish roles. He’s really an Ashton who can act. Sweet.” “But he was good as Green Hornet.” (Pause.) “What where Green Hornet?” “You know, in Spider-Man 2.” “That was Green Goblin lah!” “HAHAhahahaha.” “That Japanese guy is cool. Standing up on stage in front of the Academy and the entire world with an Oscar in hand and saying: Domo arigato, Mr Roboto!” “His friends must have dared him. But funny lah.” “These two aren’t as funny.” “But Daniel Craig is hot.” “Very.” “I don’t care what people say, I like Daniel Craig as Bond more than Pierce Brosnan. He’s more man.” “Daniel is really, truly a man.” “Iron Man. So cool.” “Is that Ben Stiller? So funny.” “Hahahaha.” “Brad Pitt is crying.” “Everyone is tearing up.” “This is the Oscars. Maybe they’re all acting.” “Maybe their publicists told them to.” “You’re all such sceptics!” “Heehee.”
“Hugh is singing again!” “My favourite song! ‘At Last’. But — Eeee, Beyonce. I don’t like her version.” “Eeeeee. High School Musical.” “They’re doing a tribute to musicals. Nice.” ”Tell me you weren’t singing along! Hahaha!” “What? Eh, I can’t #!@% believe Slumdog can win over Dark Knight for Sound Mixing!” “Eh, this Slumdog is irritating me.” “I like her dress.” “The red one?” “The back is nice.” “You should have seen Anne Hathaway’s dress.” (Jun joined the conversation a little later.) “Wall-eeeee. I love Wall-e. Better than Panda. More depth.” “That’s exactly what I said! K likes the Panda.” “It’s a bigger message: recycle, don’t be wasteful, save the earth before it’s too late, and get off your fat ass and exercise.” “I said that, too.” “Eh, have you seen Slumdog?” “No.” “Nope.” “You wanna go see it?” “Yes, want to see what the fuss is all about.” “I think it’ll be over-hyped.” “Still gotta see it to know, I suppose.” “Weekend?” “Got the team dinner, cannot.” “Sunday’s out for me.” “Friday?” “Got a colleague drinking thing.” “Thursday?” “We try Thursday.” “Okay.” “Set. Ons.” “Is that Alicia Keys?” “Did she do something to her eyes?” “Or her nose?” “She can’t do that, it’ll affect her singing.” “What? Slumdog again?” “I told you, it’s the whole exotic India Bollywood fascination thing. We see it every Saturday afternoon but to them, it’s fresh and different. Bollywood is now fashionable. Like how a few years ago it was China, but Lee Ang has a hold on that genre. So they do India.” “We should make a local movie, get an ang moh to direct it.” “Slumdog is doing great publicity for Tourism India though.” “Yeah, better than Australia, only one nomination in costume.” ”Wooooooooo John Legend.” “What? Slumdog got Best Song? But they don’t even know what that guy was singing about!”
“Kate Winslet is beautiful.” “Extremely.” “So elegant.” “How long more before Sean Penn?” “I can’t take it any more. I’m going to bed.” “Me too.” “Sweet dreams.” “Dream of Hugh crooning sweet nothings to you.” “Haha. Thanks.” “Night, night.”

At least we were not surfing porn…

(We were doing worse. Ha.)

The importance of being weekend

The importance of it being weekend, one where I did not have to work, one after having worked through the previous weekend and week thanks to a make-or-break face-off-with-our-biggest-rival pitch, I actually rested. Sort of.

Friday evening I paid a visit to my client’s roadshow, before catching up with Eam, R, R’s fiancée and K for dinner and a game of Monopoly. Eam wanted to play Risk, but none of us had it, so Monopoly it was then. I’m not too savvy at this business dealing game, I’m normally happy being banker coz I can do the meticulous thing, but this time I joined in. And fared not too badly, if I may say so myself. Thanks, in part to a deal I made with R — I don’t pay rent on his properties, houses and hotels and all, in exchange for selling him Trafalgar. I’d have made more, if he had allowed me to make a sale of Whitehall for Euston, which K had. He said that not selling Whitehall was part of my rent-escape agreement, though I recall nothing of the sort. Hmm. That’s why contracts have to be in black and white.

Anyway, I had the fortitude to land on both the Electric Company and the Water Works. And Park Lane. So while my home building affairs were at a standstill, I still accumulated some wealth by collecting rent. The game ended when us three girls couldn’t keep awake a moment longer.

Then on Saturday, I was so tired, I slept in so much, when I woke, I practically had to eat and leave the home or be late. Thankfully the evening was a good measure more leisurely: K, Dave and I went for a nice dinner by the river. We even got to dress up a little bit and the duck à la Ton Kin at dinner was incredibly delectable and delightful. Post dinner, we caught a play at the old Victoria Theatre: The Importance of Being Earnest. Extremely enjoyable (even though K and I were nursing a headache), and filled with the wittiest humour (it is Oscar Wilde, after all). We learn it is Dave’s favourite play; he once directed a version of it in school.

Anyway, it’s a sweet, accurately insightful play, one of Oscar Wilde’s most famous, and Lady Bracknell is highly amusing, as always. She is said to have the single line in English drama — ”A handbag?!” — to possess the most varied interpretations, from incredulous through to scandalised to plain baffled. It’s a clever play where everything ties up neatly in the end. (Note to self: start looking for Earnest. K agrees, too.)

The sole mission of Sunday was to nap as much as possible. By evening, I actually felt rested, the knots and strains of the previous workweek relieved somewhat. Until Sunday night when I watched a documentary that was as provoking as it was depressing, about conflict diamonds and its part in Africa and its civil wars. (And even how the developed world attempted to pretend they didn’t exist. Twice.) I’ve heard about blood diamonds before, but to listen to the interviews of citizens whose hands were chopped off simply because they voted, and the footage of the carnage flooding the screens… it’s just sad and disgusting what people can do to other people because of greed and power. Freedom, my ass; those governments didn’t want freedom any more than they want a fancy house, imported cars, luxury clothes all for themselves, never mind that 99% of their countrymen live in abject poverty. It’s also scary to think how you can be going to work one day, and living in fear as absolute anarchy breaks loose the next morning.

I also need to extend my rule of not watching movies of a dystopian nature on Sunday nights (the last time this happened was when Children of Men was showing on HBO; I don’t care if it’s got Clive Owen, it’s depressing) to not watching war documentaries on Sunday nights too.

But other than that, it was a thankfully uneventful weekend. I did have some work to do but I never got down to it. Too tired. I did finally at some point feel rested, though by going to bed at 2am on Sunday night, rendered all of that rest useless. Oh well…

(Another reason I was trying to rest up: I still worry about my eyesight. It’s a little blur and I panicked when I realised it. I over-strained it the week before over an immensely stupid past-time (stupider than playing Texas hold ‘em on a Blackberry, trust me; I’d say what I was playing but it would be too embarrassing) and have been awash with paranoia ever since.)

Oh, and it rained. It finally rained. A glorious shower that lasted longer than ten minutes. It rained on Saturday afternoon before training. It rained on Sunday afternoon after yoga. And it rained again this afternoon, even though the sun was beastly hot in between showers.

Four more days to the weekend.

The late Heath Ledger, best supporting actor

I don’t really watch teen flicks, or romantic comedies, or teen flicks that are romantic comedies. I don’t remember why I saw 10 Things I Hate About You, maybe it was the Shakespeare thing, but I enjoyed it. And I remember thinking that new Australian guy was quite good too, he’ll be really big in the teen scene for cute leading guy roles. And then he was in The Patriot. And the very dramatic Monster’s Ball. And Four Feathers and Ned Kelly. And Brothers Grimm and Lords of Dogtown. Okay, I don’t really need to name all his movies, but I like actors (and actresses) that take on a range of roles, for whatever reasons, stretch their seriousness and bring out their quirkiness, and just not be bland or predictable either way, comedically or dramatically. In short, I like how Heath Ledger made his career moves, like how he followed the controversial Brokeback Mountain, in which he delivered a superb performance, with a movie like Casanova. He would have been so great.

I forgot the Oscars were this morning. I actually played this song on my iTunes because I saw it and thought it’s been so long since I heard it. Then a few minutes ago, I found out he got the Best Supporting Actor Oscar. Yay, and yet bittersweet.

Rufus Wainwright – The Maker Makes

Bloomin’ crazy about blooms

“Spring is sooner recognised by plants than by men.”
          — Chinese proverb

We threw out the fresh flowers I bought for Chinese New Year last week. They were golden, luscious and full chrysanthemums (but not pompons; some years I buy pompons which are globular and cute), and they lasted pretty long (actually the top of the bloom was still bright yellow but the bottoms were getting kinda brown), which is more than I can say for a lot of the other flowers florists import to celebrate the Spring Festival.

Flowers that grow in cooler climates can’t survive here. As much as I’m tempted by the pots of hyacinth and narcissus bulbs, and even the cut irises, the bulbs don’t grow after the flower wilts and, unless you place them in a constant air conditioned environment, the irises, which are not cheap, wilt pretty fast. (We get wonderful ginger flowers and heliconia here, but they aren’t very Chinese New Year-sy…)

The one flower that I really wish grew here, the flower that appears most in Chinese art and literature since ancient times, is the peony.

There is no official Chinese national flower, though through the times, it’s been a close fight between the peony 牡丹 (mǔ dān) (or 富贵花 (fúguì huā) and the plum blossom 梅花 (méi huā), which you can buy stalks of during Chinese New Year (but they don’t bloom as prettily here, probably coz of the heat, so most people go for the pussy willow).

The Qing Dynasty did name the peony the national flower in 1903, but the plum blossom was given the title in 1929 by the then government, the Republic of China (not the same as the People’s Republic of China). The issue came up again in the 1980s and in 1994, with the peony proposed as the national flower after a nationwide poll, but the National People’s Congress did not ratify the selection. Another attempt was begun in 2003, but to date, no winner has been declared.

But Chinese culture aside, it is a beautiful bloom.

When I’m overseas, peonies always make me stop. (Actually, most flowers would make me stop.) And honestly, maybe half the time they’re not even peonies. Gardenias and magnolias are other blooms that I wish could grow here, but that I’m not very familiar with. I can’t tell a gardenia from a peony. They’re both fat, luscious blooms. And so gorgeous. Maybe they’re cousins. Maybe one day I’ll go compare the classes and subclasses or whatever flower families there are.

The closest I’ve come to having magnolias are the fabric ones at home in my sad attempt at flower arrangement when that Asian-fushion-ikebana-inspired look was quite trendy: a plain white rectangular ceramic vase, a couple of bamboo sticks, a couple of tall twisted twigs, and a few stalks of fabric flowers. (Actually they looked fine, except that they’re now many years old and getting dusty; methinks it’s time to visit the home department store…)

What I’m still curious to know is what flower this is.

I was in Tokyo this time last year (has it been a year already? geez), and there was this giant earthen pot with a tree of these sweet flowers growing out of it. I thought it was one of the most beautiful sights until my friend pointed out that it was a huge flower arrangement and not a potted plant.

I didn’t believe him at first, but then I realised that there weren’t any leaves on the branches. He said he saw workers putting the branches into the pot, and a few days later, there was a different tree of flowers in that pot.

The sight was still really pretty, but its beauty kinda takes on a different quality. It’s a mix of feelings because it’s still so beautiful, and yet at the back of my mind, I know it’s not living. It wasn’t just a few cut flowers in a vase to brighten a room, but a tree. (It was a little heartbreaking, but maybe that’s just me.)

I’m thinking it might be a magnolia, or something in that family maybe? (That’s the flowering tree on the left, and a magnolia tree from Wikipedia on the right…)

Anyway, since I can’t have a peony (or gardenias or magnolias), the flower that, when I finally get my own flat (hahahaha), I would have a pot of by the window, is the lotus.

At least now I can afford it (the flower, not the flat) and not have to resort to visiting the park at 2am and absconding with a few muddy stalks plucked from the pond. (But that’s another madcap story.)

A walk in the parks

Since my office closed an extra two days during Chinese New Year, I found I had some spare time in my hands. Since I rarely take leave to hang around doing nothing — my days off are very precious, to be saved for a holiday somewhere hunting mola mola or being lost in a museum — I actually had a couple of days without the weekend activities to just spend hanging around and relaxing.

I did pop by the office on one of the mornings, which elicited a “aiyoh, you ah” from Chweets, but it was a nice mood. No frenetic or crazy rush, no bustling like a fish market. Just nice and quiet, like one of those times I was back in the office on a Sunday. (People who sometimes work weekends may know what I mean.)

On the first day, after a most leisurely lunch, I took my dog to the botanical gardens. (One Chinese New Year I brought him to a very busy public beach and it was gross; there was human poop in the sand, presumably from the campers on the beach. I don’t visit that beach anymore if I can.)

Max likes the botanical gardens. If there’s no one around, I actually let him run around. Otherwise, people, especially kids, love a Jack Russell, and Max is a handsome one. He’s also well-behaved enough to sit and let kids pet him.

Here’s also where you see the different kinds of parents — the sort that watch with cautious trust as I always hold Max by the collar as the child approaches him, and the sort that hiss “DON’T TOUCH!” at their child as he’s approaching the not-moving seated dog who’s held by his owner who’s obviously holding the dog so the child can approach safely. (No wonder there are so many high-strung neurotic people in the world.)

Anyhoo, that day was a cool day and it’s always green at the botanical garden.

I was also admiring the recently renovated Shaw Foundation Symphony Stage is pretty. The shape of the roof which resembles a lily pad, which is fitting because the stage sits in the middle of a lake surrounded by lotus and lily blooms.

Unfortunately, my dog ate my camera battery life. It was flat by the time I wanted to snap the stage.

The next day, working at home and getting my book together, I started to feel cooped up. On a whim, I packed my water, freshly charged camera, and went off to explore the Southern Ridges.

It sounds grander than it is, like some kind of mountainous trek, but we’re a small country so our scale of things tend to be, um, smaller. It really just local parks and hills connected by trails, bridges and walkways to make a pleasant 9 km walk. It’s quaint, perfect for the amateur tropical jungle explorer who needs to be home for dinner before eight.

Expect a good mix of forest (at the Treewalk), flowers (at Hort Park), local flavour (admire the black and whites on Mt Faber), tourist sights (watch Taiwanese tourists make a fuss out of nothing at the cable car station) and cool architecture (Henderson Waves).

Henderson Waves. I had heard about it but never knew what it was until I was there — the highest bridge on the island connects Mt Faber to Telok Blangah Hill Park. It’s nicely designed too.

Anyhoo, I didn’t have time to explore all of the Southern Ridges, a good excuse to go back again, hopefully soon, especially to check out the canopy walk. (For that matter, I’ve not seen the canopy walk at MacRitchie either.)

If you time your day right, you can end off with sunset over drinks at Kha, a restaurant at the entrance of Hort Park. (Not sure what the staff at the chic establishment would think of walkers in sweaty clothes and sneakers tho.)

Those two days were very nice. I wish I had so much leave to burn I’d take them just to do nothing.

Somewhere not here

Dreaming of the beach, lah. Anywhere but in the office at this hour with still a lot to do. Hee.

Bobby Darin – Beyond The Sea

Monday night blues

Leaving the city, past the towering condominiums that line the edge of downtown, past the botanic gardens and the softly lit trees of the old military barracks turned restaurant hub, down the tree-lined road towards home, I get lost in the soothing voice of the son of a Baptist minister and a church organist.

This was playing in the cab on the way home, talk about mellow moods on a Monday night.

Nat King Cole – (I Love You) For Sentimental Reasons

Today was really hot

It was the driest January in 10 years without a decent shower across the island. Unusual, considering that January is usually a wet month with heavy showers that can go one for three days at a stretch.

The meteorological service says the cause comes from further up. (No, not the higher power, or maybe yes, but they really meant) From the Siberia-China area.

An annual accumulation of extremely cold dry air over Europe and Asia is affecting weather patterns in the northern hemisphere as it’s happening a little earlier than normal. It was this front that caused the cold snap in Thailand that killed more than thirty people in late December. This front was also the cause of the amazing strong north-easterly winds here all January that led the populace to react with rejoicing in the wonderful breezes, as well as complaints that the wind was messing up their hair. (You know you’ve generally got it okay when you’re complaining about the state of your bouffant instead of, say, dying from cholera in a country ravaged by civil strife and runaway hyperinflation.)

That was January.

The winds have pretty much weakened for February, which is normally the driest month of the year, and this year is forecast to be more parched than normal.

Then last Friday afternoon, a haze descended from nowhere. The authorities say there’s no indication of forest fires in the region (that’s what usually cause the haze here) and that it’s likely caused by a build-up of dust particles in the air, maybe from the bushfires that have been happening in the last few days.

Anyhoo, I was walking to meet my team for work when I passed some heliconia in a flower bed. (My phone camera sucks and the screen’s not all that great either so I couldn’t tell my pictures were this blur until now.)

The flowers stopped me in my tracks — only a handful of flowers still had colour while the rest were dead. Not wilted, but dried out. Their petals and stamens were all still intact, only parched and hardened. Crispy.

It wasn’t a happy sight…

My younger brother has escaped the heat with his gf and friends and gone snowboarding in Hokkaido while FZ reports that it snowed in London. It’s been ages since I last went snowboarding, even longer since it was on good powder (sigh… powder…).

All this hot weather is also making me miss the cold. I hope this doesn’t continue for long.

I’m going to be like those heliconia soon.

Today was busy

Today I woke up early and went to work because there’s an urgent deadline that came up on Friday evening that’s due way too early next week. Today I looked at streets filled with peddlers selling roses wrapped in plastic and bows and red netting and fuchsia netting and lavender netting (and sometimes all three) (and sometimes a teddy bear too) and thought that a simple, naked stalk of rose without anything at all was so much more romantic, not that I know anything because I’m horrible at these things and have my entire life got these things wrong so what I say on this topic should just be taken as utter rubbish. And today I spoke to my youngest brother and wished I knew how to comfort him better because he’s quite upset, still, and I probably said all the wrong things (because I don’t know anything about “these things”) and it didn’t help that he’s half a planet away and feeling like crap and I can’t do anything. Today, feeling a little crap myself as I went back to work, I gave in to my macha craving and had a macha milkshake (it was good). On top of the two coffees. Today I hung out with my friends and we went for drinks and chicken wings. And then I got bored and came home and finished some scripts that were given the one-afternoon test (deadline too tight, no time for the overnight test) so I can email them to my boss. Today I thought about my health, my job, my sometimes sanity and sometimes my happiness. Today was a busy day.

The magnificent wonder of Mother Nature

On the one hand, we have narwhals, also known as the unicorn whale for the single spiral tusk protruding from its upper jaw. An excerpt from the BBC Natural History Unit’s new series Nature’s Great Events, the footage shows the surreal beauty and grace of a pod of narwhals making their way through the broken Arctic ice.

On the other hand, there’s the whale shark. Not exactly that old Cole Porter song of “birds do it, bees do it, even educated fleas do it”, but here’s the biggest fish in the world doing what all living creatures must do. Pooping.

And in the name of science, one ought to collect it for the wealth of biological findings — what it eats, how the whale shark digests, its DNA as well as that of its food… but, eeyew…

Happy 200th, Mr Darwin

Today marks the bicentenary of Charles Darwin’s birth, and the 150th anniversary of the publication of On the Origin of Species, the book that changed the world and how people viewed it.

An astrophysicist, immunologist, neuroscientist and, of course, anthropologist, Darwin sounded like he was also a nice guy. A fair person (he was an abolitionist) and a real gentleman (once, after an argument, we went up to his son’s room, sat on the bed, and apologised for losing his temper).

He was a scientist, to be sure, but also a dreamer. Take a peep into his life in this article in this NYTimes.com editorial “The Origin of Darwin”, by Olivia Judson. Or take a tour of the Galapagos today, courtesy of BBC World:

Darwin wrote a travelogue, The Voyage of the Beagle (wanna get my hands on it), for an expedition that was supposed to last two years, but stretched out to almost  five. Starting out in Plymouth, he headed south on the Atlantic to the Cape Verde Islands, then to Brazil and Argentina, and through the Strait of Magellan around the southern tip of the American continent to  Chile and Peru on the other side, and to Galapagos, then across the Pacific to Tahiti and Australasia, the Keeling Islands and across the Indian Ocean to Mauritius.

Wouldn’t it have been great if, during his voyage on the HMS Beagle, he could blog about his evolutionary theories. He could snap millions of photos of marine iguanas and giant tortoises and put them up on Flickr. His videos would go on YouTube. His curmudgeony portrait would grace his Facebook page. And he could Twitter his exact location every day, hour, minute. National Geographic and Discovery Channel would follow him on his expedition and film everything. (David Attenborough and Charles Darwin in the same room — I would love to be there for that conversation!) He could be a busy man (he actually was, he was a local magistrate).

Aside from the fact that he would have little time to think and theorise, imagine how different things would be if he were alive today.

Imagine his reaction if he saw how little of the rainforests are left or how sea levels are rising. Or his horror at the number of tourists tromping around the Galapagos today.

(By the way, 12 February 2009 is also the 200th anniversary of Abraham Lincoln’s birth.)

Keepon dancing

I thought this was just another cute toy video put to music. I thought this was a toy like those sunglasses-wearing dancing sunflowers with guitar (you know which one, you probably had one). Or coke cans that bend and groove when you turn it on. Or, more currently, those crazy dancing donkeys.

But Keepon is really a small yellow robot designed to interact and study social development in children, even those with developmental disorders such as autism. Created by Kideki Kozima at the National Institute of Information and Communications Technology in Kyoto, Japan, it has a simple appearance — bright yellow rubber skin, two cameras in its eyes and a microphone in its nose — intended to appeal to children.

Anyway, the first video is cute. But I didn’t realise the size of Keepon and its scale in this big world until this second video made by Wired magazine. Keepon dancing, still. Whee.

Alas, St Michael

I think that picture of Phelps at a college student party is getting as many views as his victorious Picture Of The Year-worthy ones from Beijing. It feels like the public have pretty much forgiven him. And as far as I know, all his sponsors, save for Kellogg’s, have decided to stick by him, in part because of his speedy apology and show of remorse. It also looks like most marketers and the business community agree with this move. Even then, he should have known better. Any individual in the public spotlight, any individual with a role model image in the public spotlight, in this age of digicams and mobile phone cameras, should know better. As everyone from sportscasters to the late night shows are talking about Phelps’ split second bad judgement moment at a college party (overheard on the Tonight Show: Phelps isn’t corrupting the young, the young are corrupting Phelps!), after all that talk about his superhuman performance in the water, the guy proves he’s human after all.

He’s not the only one. In local news, the top male and female triathletes have been slapped with a competition ban after being discovered in the same room together at the Asian Beach Games in October last year. They were not found in a compromising position, but the association governing our triathletes has a rule that states that when a visitor of the opposite gender is present in an athlete’s room, the door has to be kept open at all times — part of their code of conduct for athletes (it was their rule not that of the game organisers, which had no rule pertaining to this topic). While many agree they should have observed the rules set to uphold the good image of athletes representing the nation, many felt the ban (it was not stated how long the ban would last) was a little harsh. Maybe there was something about being in Bali (she said the games had received threats, and she could not sleep well when she first arrived).

Don’t cha wish you were there

This is sooo fun.

It’s all fun. It must have been fun to be dancing. It must have been fun to be there. It must have been fun (and very stressful; so many uncertainties in the production of something like this) to be on this project. Nice choreography. Nice range of music. Nice videography. Nice brief (“like you’re in your bedroom jumping around”).

This is a guerilla-ambient-flash mob stunt (sort of; technically it was organised which means it’s not a flash mob) done well. And captured perfectly (“as soon as the general public spot a camera, game’s up”). With incredible impact (“For me, the most exciting thing is the number of people involved and the logistics of the thing.”) Even better, the public, i.e. the consumers, can join in (everybody knows how to mash potato and do the twist).

The best part in this exercise is that even after the event, everyone who caught the moment uploads their videos right onto the same media channel, YouTube. (Sure, that can be orchestrated too but I’d like to think I’m not that cynical.)

Catch the Making Of. It’s quite cool too. “They got me here to do the waltz, but I can do everything else too”.

Now that’s the spirit.

Lou ah!

It’s the last day of Chinese New Year. This means no more louhei, which means “toss”, for another year. Bummer.

But we can’t really gripe about it. According to tradition, yusheng (鱼生 yúshēng), the dish consumed during louhei, should be enjoyed on the seventh day of Chinese New Year, which marks renri 人日 (rénrì), which literally translates to “human day”, but simply stands for  everybody’s birthday.

Today, yusheng is available throughout all fifteen days of Chinese New Year. A lot of establishments actually begin serving it before the first day, to take advantage of the celebratory mood that would have been building up in the air.

Families do it during reunion dinner. Friends do it at gatherings. Office workers do it at company dinners or hold lunches with clients. Some of my colleagues have had yusheng for lunch every day this week, each time with a different client.

Yusheng means raw fish, but its significance comes from the fact that ”fish (鱼)” and ”abundance (余)” have the same pronunciation. This the dish is a symbol of prosperity. This is enhanced when, as the server pours the spices and sauces onto the plate of veggies, he or she has to recite auspicious wishes.

Then the action begins as the diners dig in with their chopsticks to toss the raw fish and salad together, all the while exclaiming loudly more auspicious wishes and desires and lifting the ingredients high. The higher you toss, the greater the good fortune that will befall you. Never mind that a portion of the food will be scattered all over the table, it just means good things are spreading.

At the office dinner, my art director and I sat opposite some very zealous tossers (I think my boss is one of them) and ended up with sesame seeds in our hair. And when the staff came to clean the table after that first dish, my boss stopped them, requesting they leave the mess there “for good luck” instead of sweeping it away. (We Chinese are a superstitious lot with more idiosyncrasies  than you can count.)

Anyway, it’s all done in good fun and with great camaraderie, which is the goal of these dinners anyway.

I’m gonna miss yusheng. (It’s not going to be the same when I start tossing my sashimi salad messily while shouting auspicious sayings at Sushi Tei.)

In The Mood For Love

With its Chinese title from a song of the same name by Zhou Xuan from a 1946 film, Wong Kar-Wai had originally intended to give 花樣年華 the English title Secrets. But marketers advised that it was too common a name and requested him to reconsider.

That was when, while listening to the Bryan Ferry version of “In The Mood For Love”, serendipity struck.

The sultry mood of the song reeks of heavy, humid nights and sticky skin. Of the scent of wet flowers and perfumed rooms.

It harkens back to images of Old Asia. A time when live music played in dance halls and young couples sat awkwardly apart (the chaperone was probably in the row behind) on wooden benches in outdoor cinemas, mesmerised by kung-fu films from Hong Kong or melodramas from Indonesia.

You almost expect to hear P Ramlee crooning a ballad from the old radio perched on the wall. Instead, here’s Bryan Ferry. (Turn the lights low, turn the volume up and lock the doors.)

Bryan Ferry – In The Mood For Love

A little Chinese dress

The West can have their little black dress. We’ve got the qipao.

The qipao, or cheongsam, is a tight-fitting body-hugging (can you say unforgiving?) Chinese dress for women.

While associated with Chinese culture around the world today, its origins is actually Manchurian, but the Han Chinese were forced to wear it during the Qing Dynasty. (That would be the last ruling dynasty of China, that of The Last Emperor, before Sun Yat-sen and friends overthrew the Imperial monarchy.)

The original qipao was wide and loose and revealed only the head, hands and tips of the toes, easy for all women to wear regardless of size or age. 

Originally a long dress, it was called the 長衫 (chángshān) in Mandarin. Or chèuhngsaàm in Cantonese, which is the origin of its English name, cheongsam.

As times changed, more form fitting versions evolved.

The modern cheongsam was born in Shanghai, the most open-minded and cosmopolitan city at the turn of the last century (and probably still is). After the dynasty fell, the people looked for a more modernised style of dress, redesigning the qipao to fit the female form with a high cut. Upperclass women and socialites took to it faster than you could say “Blahniks”. Accentuating the female figure, they made it fashionable at balls and parties.

As Western styles changed in the 1940s, so too did the cheongsam evolve further, with variations to its style of sleeves. When the Communist Revolution took over China in 1949, the fashion and its trade shifted to Hong Kong where it continued to remain popular.

Today, you’d be hard pressed not to be able to find a simple cheongsam in red with gold brocade in a Chinatown anywhere in the world. While a Caucasian female clad in one of these party dresses will still come across as chic, me in one of those just feels like I work at the Golden Palace Dimsum Restaurant. You know what I mean.

I think it’s really all in the fabric and its pattern.

If it’s red, other things have to make up for it, such as a unique fabric pattern, a touch of imported lace, a more modern design, or the right accessories, e.g.  Tony Leung.

A fabric design or colour that’s too staid might put you at risk of looking like your secondary school discipline mistress, so counter it with undiscipline mistress-like touches (unless that was the point, in which case it’d be fun to match with a quirky pair of retro spectacles).

A geometric pattern would take it out of Old Shanghai, whether you’re going for the retro vintage look, or contemporising it with a variation of the classic design.

Most floral patterns would look inspired by the Far East (the Europeans were inspired by China and Japan anyways). A bold design in one tone or colour is a sure standout.

I saw a dress recently and fell in love. It was a blue floral design on a porcelain white mixed with a dark blue, except that it wasn’t a cheongsam design but a pleated dress with Chinese capped sleeves and collar.

Still, the fabric design was lovely. Elegant, unmistakably chinois chic, yet definitely not old fashioned. It would have been so gorgeous as a cheongsam.

The classic cheongsam design with a modern twist also works to retain its old world charm while staying with the times.

My friend scoffed when I said I saw a dark blue pinstripe cheongsam with bright red frog buttons and regretted that I never bought it. Actually, I couldn’t really afford it, or rather, couldn’t afford to pay that much for a dress I’d hardly get to wear. And that was just at an eclectic modern Chinese boutique, still nowhere close to the price range of Shanghai Tang’s creations.

Being pinstripe, it wouldn’t be an evening dress, but something a private banker-sort might wear to a reception, or on a Friday before painting the town red. It would be a quirky item in a wardrobe of power suits and such.

For that dress, I seriously wondered if I should have listened to my mother and chosen a more corporate career (which may have helped in the not-being-able-to-afford-it department).

Then I was window shopping last month when I saw this. It kinda reminded me of that pinstripe cheongsam, only this was less business-like, tho also not as quirky.

It would have been nice to wear for Chinese New Year. (I already had a dress that I bought end of last year that I could save for New Year, but it never, never, hurts to window shop.) But the Small size was too tight on the shoulders, and the Medium was too loose everywhere else.

And yet, for a few fleeting moments in the changing room, before the realisation of the bad fit sunk in, I felt giddy and light-headed. I thought I had found The One. (I also thought I should go window shopping more often because maybe, like physical activity, it also releases endorphins…)

Alas…

Anyway, even if I had got that dress, a girl’s wardrobe can stand to have a few cheongsams. In fact, I’ve got a weakness for them. And cheongsam tops. And a few ao dais too. And an ao dai-cheongsam hybrid, which I can actually wear to work and dinner. I just don’t have that one classic one yet.

Thus continues my quest for a little Chinese dress. I’m on the lookout, have been for a while already. Sometimes it’s the cut. Sometimes it’s the timing (I told myself once I stopped freelancing and got myself a responsible job, I’ll give myself a treat with my first paycheck, but heyho, look ma, a recession — austerity drive…). Sometimes it’s the budget.

But maybe one day I will be able to make like Maggie Cheung and go buy noodles from a street hawker. Carrying my tiffin. Before getting caught in a passing shower. Only to encounter my friend eating noodles alone at the stall.

Sidenote on Tony Leung again: another amply cheongsam-ed movie is Lee Ang’s much-hyped Lust, Caution. 

Haven’t seen that yet, but I know that if I do, I will go shopping — Tang Wei wore 27 cheongsams in 150 minutes (although they don’t look as gorgeously tailored, it is a wartime saga after all; Maggie Cheung apparently had 46 in In The Mood For Love, though not all survived the editing room).

I’d also settle for a recommendation of a good master tailor not located in Hong Kong or Shanghai; a tailored cheongsam would ensure a properly perfect fit.

It would probably cost a pretty penny. But in belt-tightening times like these, that might work to my advantage since I wouldn’t be able to eat in one of those dresses anyway.

Yumeji’s Theme

Spanish songs sung by Nat King Cole are heard a lot, playing behind the protagonists of In The Mood For Love and lending a touch of nostalgia to the already textured backdrop of yesteryear.

The soundtrack for the film also features the inspired choice of Rebecca Pan’s (who also plays Mrs Suen in the movie) period recording of the old Indonesian favourite, “Bengawan Solo”, and Zhou Xuan’s “花樣的年華” (huāyàng niánhuá), the song which gave the film its Chinese title, which literally translates to “our glorious years have passed like flowers”. Original compositions are by Michael Galasso.

Of all the songs, “Yumeji’s Theme” is probably the most well known.

Composed by Shigeru Umebayashi, it originally comes from Japanese director Seijun Suzuki’s indie film Yumeji, and has since been also heard on countless television commercials. Enchanting, romantic, with an air of mystique, it is a lovely cello piece. (Turn the lights low and the volume up.)

Shigeru Umebayashi – Yumeji’s Theme

It is a restless moment

Wisps of smoke curling in the air. The monotonous, repetitive sweep of a small metal fan. Steam rising from a bowl of noodles. The echo of heels clicking on pavement.

Admirers of In the Mood For Love (花樣年華 huāyàng niánhuá), a 2000 film by Hong Kong auteur Wong Kar-Wai, find the movie achingly beautiful. Detractors call it unbearably boring.

The story begins in Hong Kong in 1962, where Chow Mo-Wan (the swoonworthy Tony Leung), a journalist, and So Lai-Zhen (the ever elegant Maggie Cheung), a secretary in a shipping firm, meet as next door neighbours renting rooms in adjacent apartments.

Each has a spouse who travels or often works overtime shift, and before long, they begin to strike up a friendship. However, they soon discover that their spouses are having affairs with each other.

While grappling with the infidelities of their respective spouses, rather than confront them, Chow persuades So to imagine what might have happened between their partners: “I wonder how it began?” Slowly, the play-acting begins to blur, even as So maintains “We will never be like them.”

Yet, their need to turn to each other in their hurt suffuses their relationship with a new tension, which they’re unsure how to act upon.

The movie’s beauty stems from the way the camera floats into each scene. Wong Kar-Wa’ achieves this thanks to the mastery of long-time collaborator and camera savant, director of photography 杜可风 (dù kěfēng) Christopher Doyle, together with Lee Ping-Ban.

From the eyes of an outsider, the intricate story unfolds. Strangers passing in narrow alley ways. Separate lives on opposite sides of a thin wall. Every sideways glance has meaning. Every awkward touch is electrifying.

We watch the like voyeurs invading the privacy of the two protagonists as they build their relationship from neighbours to friends to lovers.

Were they lovers? Did Chow and So consummate their adulterous passions? We don’t know because the film deliberately does not reveal it. The audience is left to wonder. And imagine. And come to their own conclusions.

As the NYTimes put it:

The pining here is so graceful that you may be transfixed by it. Instead of explicit physical tangles Mr. Wong eroticizes each movement of his camera, something not many others could do because no one can cut within a camera move the way he does… It’s a great instinct; this is a love story whose intensity comes from the fact that the skin stays covered most of the time.

In his review, Elvis Mitchell describes the essence of the film to perfection, save for spelling the director’s name wrongly and not giving due justice to the revered qipao (or cheongsam) (he calls it beautiful floral-patterned silk dresses).

A pity, for the film is a veritable feast for the eyes with Maggie Cheung’s svelte silhouette accentuated by the elegant Chinese dress. She does for the qipao what Audrey Hepburn did for the little black dress, only she wears a different one in every scene.

Possessing an ethereal beauty that leaves you short of breath, she glides across a backdrop rich with the nostalgia of Asia in the heady 1960s that is the vision of art director and costume designer, William Cheung Suk-Ping.

Arguably, “In The Mood For Love” is a stylistic masterpiece of sheer beauty, capturing a longing that’s so potent, you can barely breathe for the tightness in your chest. Beauty and solitude mix in a bittersweet dream from a bygone era, at once intimate and poignant in its quiet restraint.

The film ends with Chow on a visit to Angkor Wat in Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Standing alone, remembering a method he once told an acquaintance about keeping secrets undiscovered, he whispers his secrets into a hole in a wall, before sealing it with mud. Then walks off.

(For the official USA trailer, complete with movie voiceover, see here (it’s also beside the NYTimes review). And tip for the wise: if you like this film, do not watch its sequel, 2046. It does nothing for this storyline and could possibly spoil the mystique and romance. Or maybe it’s just me. I was quite upset after watching it, it ruined one of my favourite movies for me.)