Beautifully Mundane

2011-12-24T16:25:00.001+08:00

Merry Christmas...

...and Happy New Year!

Of night and light and the half-light

2011-10-16T17:35:00.000+08:00

Untitled, Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

Had I the heavens' embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.

W. B. Yeast

The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work

2011-08-07T10:00:00.092+08:00

We spend very large part of our life working. Yet very often (and more emphatically when it sucks) we ask: What's the point of it? In truth, maybe it's not work that we cannot make sense of, but life.

When one works in advertising, the question comes more imminent and paramount with the package offers of long hours, overtime, underpay, the enmity of clients and the stress of deadlines. As the moan and groan are getting heavier and more frequent around, I find myself drawing my thought to the last page of The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton. The perplexity of our question may not be answered, but at least it offers a perspective in which we could find a sense of consolation, albeit tinted with irony.

To see ourselves as the centre of the the universe and the present time as the summit of history, to view our upcoming meetings as being overwhelming significance, to neglect the lessons of cemeteries, to read only sparingly, to feel the pressure of deadlines, to snap at colleagues, to make our way through conference agendas marked '11:00 a.m. to 11:15.: coffee break', to behave heedlessly and greedily and then to combust in battle, to work frantically through the night for a million-billing account pitch (or worse just a thousand one) [My addition] – maybe all of this, in the end, is working wisdom. It is paying death too much respect to prepare for it with sage prescriptions. Let it surprise us while we are shipping wood pulp across the Baltic Sea, removing the heads of tuna, developing a nauseating variety of biscuit, advising a client on a change of career, firing a satellite with which to beguile a generation of Japanese schoolgirls, painting an oak tree in a field, laying an electricity line, doing the accounts, inventing a deodorant dispenser or making an extended-strength coil tube for an airline or brainstorming an advertising campaign for a skincare brand [My addition]. Let death find us we are building up our matchstick protests against its waves.

If we could witness the eventful fate of every one of our projects, we would have no choice but to succumb to the immediate paralysis. Would anyone who watched the departure of Xerxes' army on its way to conquer the Greeks, or Tai Chan Ahk giving orders for the construction of the golden temples of Cancuén, or the British colonial administrators inaugurating the Indian postal system, or David Ogilvy briefing his account executives on how to make Dove the best selling soap in the U.S. [My addition], had it in their hearts to fill their passionate actors in on the eventual fate of their efforts?

Our work will at least distracted us, it will have provided a perfect bubble in which to invest our hopes for perfection, it will have focused our immeasurable anxieties on a few relatively small-scale and achievable goals, it will have given us a sense of mastery, it will have made us respectably tired, it will have put food on the table, It will have misled us to complain about our unreasonable malicious manipulative over-demanding ungrateful clients (or/and bosses) as our worse nightmare [My addition]. It will have kept us out of greater trouble.

Revelation No.3

2011-08-06T15:01:00.000+08:00

Revelation No.3, Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

I see
I find
I feel
I wonder
I think
I guess
I suspect
I suppose
I realize
I reckon
I believe
I doubt
I believe

The Cinematic Orchestra

2011-07-17T21:22:00.003+08:00

Stumbled upon this band, The Cinematic Orchestra (the "orchestra" is misleading, what you see in the above video is just the supporting act for the live performance, they are actually a British electronic outfit). It's hard to categorize them. I can only say their music possess a soundtrack-like quality as their name suggests. When I searched for the lyrics of "To Build A Home", a casual post under the comments touched me unexpectedly, like something struck you and transported you beyond your daily thoughts.

"a man, his life settled, with others in tow, feels like a solitary figure in a lonely world. then he meets her. she, from the first glance, is strangely like home to him. against the stigma, against the odds, he embraces her. he builds a home away from home with her. he sees world like never before. he lives, but in his descent, he grasps the details for what they are. entirely real yet unreal. sadness grips him. the road diverges. he stands at the fork with two tragic paths before him. either way, a part of him will leave and turn to dust."

These led me to the singer Patrick Watson. Here's his "The Great Escape". With this a little enigmatic MV as a backdrop, it could well be a secular hymn for the modern work life, I suppose.

Revelation No.2

2011-06-07T13:50:00.000+08:00

Revelation No.2, Oil on canvas, 8"x10"

What though the radiance which was once so bright
Be now for ever taken from my sight,
Though nothing can bring back the hour
Of splendour in the grass, of glory in the flower;
We will grieve not, rather find
Strength in what remains behind

Ode: Intimations of Immortality, X
William Wordsworth

Status: In a relationship with Virginia Woolf

2011-06-03T17:43:00.002+08:00

...He heard her quick step above, heard her voice cheerful, then low; looked at the mats, tea caddies, glass shades; waited quite impatiently; looked forward eagerly to the walk home, determined to carry her bag; then heard her come out; shut a door; say they must keep the windows open and the door shut, ask at the house for anything they wanted (she must be talking to a child), when, suddenly, in she came, stood for a moment silent (as if she had been pretending up there, and for a moment let herself be now), stood quite motionless for a moment against a picture of Queen Victoria wearing the blue ribbon of Garter; and all at once he realised that it was this; it was this – she was the most beautiful person he had ever seen.

To The Lighthouse, Virginia Woolf

It's just one of many very long lines (or rather flows of rhythmic narrative) in her writings like minutes of uncut cinematic shot coming to a revelatory end.

Considered to be Woolf's most autobiographical novel, words became floods of intense observation of human psychology and creative impetus that was so masterfully composed and orchestrated to the threshold of either to irrigate or to destroy. It's exhilarating. But at the same time you inevitably feel a bit disturbed and sympathize with the burden of her genius (she suffered depression through her life and in the end walked into a river near her home and drowned). You see a mind at work, a soul ventured, lamented and unfortunately despaired, some eighty years ago. It reaffirms my belief: Great art is transcendent, in the loosest possible sense of the word.

George Shaw shortlisted for the Turner Prize

2011-05-27T13:13:00.002+08:00

George Shaw, Scenes from The Passion: The Cop Shop (1999-2000)
Humbrol enamel on board

The nominees for this year's Turner Prize announced, they are Karla Black, Martin Boyce, Hilary Lloyd and George Shaw. I am excited by the news. Two years ago, I posted about my accidental encounter with Shaw's paintings and how they reignited my passion to paint again. And here you are, his seemingly conservative art has entered onto the big (if not the biggest) stage in the art world. I hope he can win it, for paintings, for people who still believe in paintings, for artists who keep true to themselves and ignore the hip and the glamourous of the mainstream while humbly dabbing paints and dirtying their pants.

a very small painting – no. 1

2011-02-24T21:58:00.000+08:00

Shirinat, Oil on Canvas, 4.5cm x 4.5cm

if less is more,
small can be big,
like a whisper
"i love u."

Revelation No.1

2011-02-20T19:52:00.000+08:00

Revelation No.1, Oil on Canvas, 8"x10"

Want, try, think, say, things.

2011-02-04T20:16:00.000+08:00

Martin Creed, Work No. 338 THINGS, 2004

I don't know what I want to say, but, to try to say something, I think I want to try to think. I want to try to see what I think. I think trying is a big part of it, I think thinking is a big part of it, and I think wanting is a big part of it, but saying it is difficult, and I find saying trying and nearly always wanting. I want what I want to say to go without saying.

- Martin Creed

He said the thing I want to say but don't know how to say it.

Chance or Destiny?

2011-01-18T09:30:00.003+08:00

One night into the disappearing Autumn days, I finished work when it's already ten and I had not eaten anything since lunch. I was waiting outside one of those typical Hong Kong style eateries for my takeaway. The road was damp from a shower earlier and painted an amber gloss by the street lamps. My mind and body were in a state between numbness and angst from the tiredness of a day's work and the hungriness which was worsening to a stomach ache. My eyes were following aimlessly on the passersby. The darkness around framed within my slightly blurry vision, a couple was approaching with the breeze like in a movie, cuddling and their gaze fixing on no other. They must have just fallen in love, my instinct told. Their complete absorption in their own emotional world contrasted an analytical question raised in my head from nowhere.

From the possibility of complete randomness to inescapable destiny, what do you believe?

Of billions of people in the world, how many we meet in our life? Suppose we meet a new friend a week and we're granted 80 years on earth, we would be able to know 4320 people. A somewhat regrettably small number in an age when we expect so much. How many friends on your Facebook's friend list? The average is about three to four hundreds, I observed. But how many are those we can truly call friend? How many people whose path we crossed, go on to be someone we truly know and love? How even more scarcely possible is someone who can be the love of our life?

In the first chapter of Essays On Love by Alain de Botton, the main character is calculating the probability of his encounter with his lover Chole on the flight from Paris to London. The answer is one in 989.727. He's being generous when what considered are within the events leading up to that decisive moment. What if they were born in a different country, a different time and even into another sex? We could push the question further back to the meetings of their parents, grandparents, passing cavemen and dinosaurs and on to the beginning of time and fathom the cosmic consequences before life ever appeared on earth. We can rehearse a slight heartache to merely imagine the improbability alone: a bigger big bang, a smaller sun, a different chromosome, a tyranny, a war, a car crash, an unanswered call, a discarded plan, a change of mind, a flight delay, a distraction from otherwise the meeting of eyes and the waltz of two heartbeats.

"...But my fatalistic interpretation of the start of our story was at least the proof of one thing: that I was in love with Chole. The moment when I would feel that our meeting or not meeting was in the end only an accident, only a probability of one in 989.727, would also be the moment when I would have ceased to feel the absolute necessity of a life with her – and thereby have ceased to love her."

When we are in love, we tend to believe that we were made for one and other. I met my wife at work. I remember seeing her name on the company phone list for the first time without having met her, a strange feeling was bestowed upon me for a fraction of a second. I looked back and took it as a sign of predestination after we fell in love few months later. (She had her sign as well.) You could argue it's just a freak sensation, the effect of a chill from the over-cold air-conditioning or the sugar burning from the digestion of the morning's breakfast. I doubt it may be so. But that's not really the point. Love is simply too powerful to make us consign such life-changing event to the hands of mere coincidence. Love makes us into a believer – at last, a higher being has intervened and granted us the miracle of love: the glances exchanged, the mutual longings, the reciprocation of tastes, the fulfillment of your ideals ("she does not only finish my sentence, she complete my life").

I often wonder what atheists and naturalists think when they fall in love. Would they reconsider their world view? (But I suspect not. Actually few of us would have the clear mind and still heart to reason when we're in the hands of Eros. Love has the reputation to be harmful to our sight.) Would they too have a moment of doubting their faith and a "Thank God" slipped out? Would they still hold on to their belief that all things were solely the making of pure chance plus infinite time? They meet their lover like dust gets in their eyes? Even so, isn't it paradoxically miraculous considering the magnitude of causes and consequences that all connect and intertwine like a record-breaking extravaganza of domino display. It takes only a misplacement, a miscalculation, a strong wind, a shake, an overlooked obstacle to ruin the show.

? An impersonal universe without God, implies a closed system where everything is happening in a mechanical way, only monumentally more complicated than the metaphor of a domino set.
? We can imagine a freak twitch triggered the very first cause (well, what caused the twitch to cause the first cause...? It's really the third???...) and what followed an exponential web (and sub-webs) of chain reactions, one after another, until a particular domino piece fall - one so happened to be the love one encountered.
? Doesn't that mean the first predestinated the second, the third and the uncountable inevitable?
? So we come full circle. To believe in chance we are left with no choice but to also believe in destiny?

Where am I? I'm lost in a tangle of hypo-anti-syn-thesis. But what are these really to do with love? A Nobel-prized logician can be the worst lover. Am I predetermined to love differently, had I happened to solve the mystery of fate?

I carried this mass/mess of thought into this unusually cold winter. A time when the passion of the couple I met by chance could have cooled. When the enzyme of love slows, habits gradually replace novelties, differences appear, faults are discovered, the first fight duly arrives, we are not so sure anymore. Our thankfulness turns sore. The conviction of our unmistakable destiny even degrades to the very opposite – total denial. What do we go from here? Is my choice itself also by chance or by destiny? The question seems ridiculous.

Perhaps my very first question is also ridiculous. We human have the tendency to fall from one extreme to the other. Our love is neither the sole making of chance nor destiny, but equally critical if not more, also our own doing. Otherwise, what is love when we are deprived of our freedom to love?

I realized the question sprung were not of any intellectual interest, but the raw feeling of amazement. It triggered a stream of thoughts not to answer, but simply to remind – the lost feeling of falling in love.

To ask such questions, to take this mental voyage to the limit of what we can comprehend, is like shooting us high into the stratosphere where we can glimpse the vast space beyond, the possibility and yet the incapability of going further. For a momentary ecstasy and the confrontation of the sublime, we're pulled, albeit reluctantly, back to earth. But at least, we've been there. We have witnessed the wonder but also its fragility. We have contemplated all the what-ifs, not necessarily to regret but to appreciate the scheme of things:

At the end of the novel Love In A Fallen City (傾城之戀), the author Eileen Chang (張愛玲) marveled that it might take the fall of a city to fulfill the love of her heroine. She might underestimate. It could have taken the working of the entire universe, and perhaps more.

I wrote the song two hours before we met.
I didn't know your name or what you looked like yet.
Oh I could have stayed at home and gone to bed.
I could have gone to see a film instead.
You might have changed your mind and seen your friends.
Life could have been very different but then,
something changed.
Do you believe that there's someone up above?
Does he have a timetable directing acts of love?
Why did I write this song on that one day?
Why did you touch my hand and softly say.
Stop asking questions that don't matter anyway.
Just give us a kiss to celebrate here today.
Something changed.
When we woke up that morning we had no way of knowing,
that in a matter of hours we'd change the way we were going.
Where would I be now if we'd never met?
Would I be singing this song to someone else instead?
I dunno but like you said
something changed.

[I remembered this forgotten song as I wrote. A song of my youth. It was out when things were about to changed.]

The Morning Benders - Excuses (Yours Truly session)

2010-10-16T21:09:00.010+08:00

A song I love lately.

Some C. S. Lewis Quotes

2010-09-12T15:42:00.004+08:00

"Nothing you have not given away will ever really be yours."

"You are never too old to set another goal or to dream a new dream."

"It was when I was happiest that I longed most...The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing...to find the place where all the beauty came from."

On friendship

"Friendship is born at that moment when one person says to another: "What! You too? I thought I was the only one."

"Friendship is unnecessary, like philosophy, like art.... It has no survival value; rather it is one of those things which give value to survival."

On literature

"I can't imagine a man really enjoying a book and reading it only once."

"Even in literature and art, no man who bothers about originality will ever be original: whereas if you simply try to tell the truth (without caring twopence how often it has been told before) you will, nine times out of ten, become original without ever having noticed it."

"Literature adds to reality, it does not simply describe it. It enriches the necessary competencies that daily life requires and provides; and in this respect, it irrigates the deserts that our lives have already become."

"Don't say it was delightful; make us say delightful when we've read the description. You see, all those words (horrifying, wonderful, hideous, exquisite) are only like saying to your readers Please will you do the job for me."

"Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words."

On Christianity

"You don't have a soul. You are a soul. You have a body."

"If we find ourselves with a desire that nothing in this world can satisfy, the most probable explanation is that we were made for another world."

"If the whole universe has no meaning, we should never have found out that it has no meaning: just as, if there were no light in the universe and therefore no creatures with eyes, we should never know it was dark. Dark would be without meaning."

"I believe in Christianity as I believe that the sun has risen: not only because I see it, but because by it I see everything else."

We read to know we are not alone.

2010-08-06T18:24:00.013+08:00

[From 5:00 onwards]

C. S. Lewis:
We read to know we are not alone. Do you think that's so?

Student Chadwick:
Well, I hadn't thought at it before like that, Sir.

C. S. Lewis:
No, nor would I. I suppose people would say, "We love to know we are not alone. Would you?

Student Chadwick:
Well, if you mean falling in love, well, I haven't really, I mean, I probably learn more about love from books than from personal experience.

C. S. Lewis:
[A pause of silence and turns to the window] Go on, I'm listening.

Why love if losing hurts so much? I have no answers any more; only the life I have lived. Twice in that life, I've been given the choice, as a boy and as a man. The boy chose safety; the man chooses suffering. The pain now is part of the happiness then. That's the deal.

I think along the path of life, there are few things that one must feel thankful of. A "life author" is one of them. By that I mean not just a good writer with few books you enjoy, but a great mind that you can connect with, for life. S/he's your mentor, your friend and could be almost like a soul-mate. I'm fortunate enough to find in the writings of C.S. Lewis. There aren't many authors who possess as diverse a body of work as him: from literature criticism, theological writings, Christian apologies, poetry, autobiography, collective letters and essays, novels, science fictions (Space Trilogy) to the classic children books, The Chronicles of Narnia.

I don't consider myself an avid reader. I read very little. I cannot compare him with other great thinkers and writers through out the history of mankind. But often greatness is not to be known by comparison. It stood there. You just know when you see it.

I re-watched recently the movie Shadowlands. It's based on the true story of him and his wife Joy Davidman and how they come to terms with Joy's cancer illness and her subsequent death. The above conversation gives the movie an understated but conclusive end. For an Oxford professor who suffered the pain of losing his mother at an early age and opted for a life safe from the turbulence and possible agony of being in love, it's an unexpected life event to meet an American writer at his middle age and go on to marry her.

"To love at all is to be vulnerable. Love anything and your heart will be wrung and possibly broken. If you want to make sure of keeping it intact you must give it to no one, not even an animal. Wrap it carefully round with hobbies and little luxuries; avoid all entanglements. Lock it up safe in the casket or coffin of your selfishness. But in that casket, safe, dark, motionless, airless, it will change. It will not be broken; it will become unbreakable, impenetrable, irredeemable. To love is to be vulnerable."

"God whispers to us in our pleasures, speaks to us in our conscience, but shouts in our pains: It is His megaphone to rouse a deaf world."

What C. S. Lewis wrote in books and believed in mind, now became a reality that he struggled to live through. "Experience is a brutal teacher, you learned, my God you learned." A cry in the movie after Joy's death. He did experience a period of questioning his faith and theodicy, later recorded in his book A Grief Observed, which helped inspire this movie.

It's worth a watch just for the brilliant performance of Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger (Academy Award nomination for Best Actress). It's a quiet, sometimes slow-paced film. Nothing overdramatic but possibly tear-jerking and even life-changing.

On Growing Up

2010-07-15T13:44:00.005+08:00

I saw it one day on a bus ride.
Under a flyover,
two miniature-like kids running over the forbidding bank
between two opposing roads.
That's it.
It's the picture.
The picture that froze in my mind.
Skipping thousands of reasons,
jumping hundreds of conclusions,
emitting and connecting trillions of nerve impulses or maybe
just one struck by lightning –
The picture of how we're growing up.

Tracey Thorn – Love and its Opposite

2010-05-31T13:28:00.004+08:00

To me, the singing of (my) Everything But The Girl – Tracey Thorn remains to be the voice of 90s'. Her voice seems to emerge from the deepest recesses of her throat and have been just steadied from sobbing minutes ago. Bear with me, I'm an incurable sucker of melancholic vocals and tunes.

From the heart-breaking "I don't want to talk about it" to the refreshing electronic makeover of "Driving" and "Missing", I can almost time-travel into the past. But before an actual time machine was made, we can only grow old forward. And she apparently did. After years of self-imposed hiatus to concetrate on parenting three children she had with her EBTG partner Ben Watt, she released another solo album this May, titled Love and its Opposite. She described it as "a record about the person I am now and the people around me ... about real life after forty." So Thorn wonders in the album's opening track "Oh, the Divorces!":

Who's next?
Who's next?
Always the ones that you least expect
They seem so strong
It turned out she wanted more all along
And each time I hear who's to part
I examine my heart
See how it stands
Wonder if it's still in safe hands

Anyone who is married or have been married could find sympathy with the lyrics. Love (and marriage), can be as strong as death, and can be as brittle as a changing thought.

As the irony is floating in the air, I notice the song is a waltz.

Pringle of Scotland Animation by David Shrigley

2010-02-23T11:12:00.001+08:00

Speaking about Scottish, here's a truly hilarious stuff made in Scotland.

Camera Obscura

2010-02-22T22:08:00.005+08:00

I posted on my Facebook awhile ago saying "Starved of new, good music."
My colleague "Big Mouth" pointed me to this Scottish band.
I am deeply, utterly in love with them ever since.
I feel what we Chinese say"相逢恨晚" (regretting not having met earlier).
Now, one more thing Scottish that has won my heart over (after Travis, Snow Patrol, Belle & Sebastian, Trainspotting, Kenny Dalglish, and their very own accent.)

From the heart of hummingbird to ours

2010-02-04T18:26:00.007+08:00

You can brick up your heart as stout and tight
and hard and cold and impregnable as you possibly can
and down it comes in an instant,
felled by a woman's second glance,
a child's apple breath,
the shatter of glass in the road,
the words I have something to tell you,
a cat with a broken spine dragging itself into the forest to die,
the brush of your mother's papery ancient hand in a thicket of your hair,
the memory of your father's voice early in the morning echoing from the kitchen
where he is making pancakes for his children.

The last lines of "Joyas Voladoras" by Brian Doyle.
A beautiful piece of writing begins with an invitation to consider the heart of a hummingbird, beats and pumps with facts, vigour, and ends inside a little left of our chest.

For full essay here.

Philosophers vs Artists

2009-12-29T19:55:00.005+08:00

I'm reading a book on noted philosophers down the years of Western civilization, from Thales of Miletus to W.V.O. Quine, this is my observation:

The philosophers ask: What is there?
The artists ask: What is not there?

Wally Hermès Yacht

2009-12-16T10:30:00.002+08:00

This is a blog that champions the beauty of the simple and everyday. But when came along a piece of man-made marvel as extraordinary and beautiful as this, the price tag and all its moral concerns aside, I can't help but be awed by its vision, innovation and architecture.

It's Wally Hermès Yacht, a co-project by the french luxury brand Hermès and Monaco based yacht maker Wally. That's why it's called WHY. And maybe that's also WHY you tell yourself to work the ass off for money!

www.why-yachts.com

Hermès × Tokujin Yoshioka

2009-12-11T14:01:00.006+08:00

There's something quintessentially Zen about this.

More of Tokujin Yoshioka's works here: www.tokujin.com

The life of John and Mary

2009-12-07T14:56:00.006+08:00

John and Mary fall in love and get married. They both have worthwhile and remunerative jobs which they find stimulating and challenging. They buy a charming house. Real estate values go up. Eventually, when they can afford live-in help, they have two children to whom they are devoted. The children turn out well. John and Mary have a stimulating and challenging sex life and worthwhile friends. They go on fun vacations together. They retire. They both have hobbies which they find stimulating and challenging. Eventually they die. This is the end of the story.

(Atwood, in Lee, ed., 1985:370)

Is it a story? What is a story? These are the questions the author asked in The Routledge Creative Writing Coursebook (a very good book by the way). "This passage, in affluent societies, is what living 'happily ever after' means, or is supposed to mean..." "Imagine reading long, detailed descriptions of John's hobbies, or of their endless vacations together!... it would bored us to death."

The author aims to point out that a proper story, one that's able to engage us, requires two sets of things:

1) A close-up realization of Where, When and Who: the immediacy, the specific and minute-by-minute vividness, the very features that makes the story real.

2) A sense of danger, encounter, incident, disruption. (Why we aren't happy reading happiness is another case, and possibly a mystery.)

Isn't it the same with the story of our life? I wonder.

While we constantly devote our attention to the grand scale of things, like education, qualification, promotion, vacation, pension, shouldn't we at least spend a few minutes to savour the happenings, the intensiveness of everything that's going on around us? The air we're breathing in may smell sweetly different from yesterday because of the change of seasons. The glass of water you're drinking may be reflecting a marvel of light that once inspired Newton's optics and the Impressionists' palette. The beauty of nature, the good will of a stranger, the grin of your loved one that belongs only to you, every bit of our fickle reality could be easily and silently missed.

We all wish that life is mellow, flowery, nice and death-free, like in Disneyland. But of course reality bites. And even fairy tales have the dodgy part before the happy ending. While we're complaining to the Author, it may ease our pain by turning our thought to the possibility that without all the unexpected, the risk, the turbulence, the suffering, life could be equally unbearable on the extreme scale of another end – namely, boredom.

How audiobook can change my mood

2009-11-27T20:10:00.006+08:00

I thought audiobook never worked, at least for me.
It demands relentless attention. Only if my mind wanders off for a second, the flow or the plot is lost.
The same can be said for reading, but you can easily pick up from where you left off.
It's not so much a nuisance to move your eye balls than your finger to reverse your iPhone.
And after all, I guess a native English speaker would find it difficult to grasp every single spoken word, let alone a Chinese like me.

I tried anyway, for the first time in my life, an audiobook of Alain de Botton's How Proust Can Change Your Life, narrated by Samuel West.
No doubt it's as good as a book can be. It has all the usual elegance and wits of de Botton.
Lapses of attention did occur as expected, and when it happened, the narrating retreated to become almost like a background music.
That doesn't matter. And that's probably why I found it rather delightful.
To West's credit, by his lively narration, the continuous stream of tuneful British accent and the mere impression of absorbing knowledge and being so intellectual,
my mood was changed, before my life.

Sky covered with quilted blanket

2009-11-25T18:46:00.006+08:00

I saw this the other day. The sky was covered with a quilted blanket.
It's closer and more overwhelming than it looks in the picture. ( iPhone camera has a wider angle lens than our human eyes.)
It's something between unreal and surreal. It gave me a strange sensation that could be what philosophers called the moment of sublime?

I don't know how to say. I paint.

2009-11-23T10:00:00.000+08:00

You can't miss this sight, if you go from Sogo to Time Square. On the street of transit between two busiest spots in Causeway Bay. There used to be the famous Japanese department store Mitsukoshi of the '80s and '90s. Then it was torn down and gone with time.

A badly designed hoarding was erected, with mindless assembled stock photo faces looking up in anticipation of yet another shopping arcade. "Feel it", "Sense it", "Live it", it says, as empty as the space that has prolonged its presence.

The construction should have been completed by now. But the first concrete is yet to be seen. Among the hustle and bustle of shoppers, it became an existence of its own. And our existence is never in question, never mind others', as long as the shops are open. Except one morning in 2007, a 60-meter crane fell, killed two and injured five. A ripple soon faded into normality.

I pass the site twice everyday, to and off work. I don't know when it started haunting me. Was it the loveliness of the little window opened to let the tree be? The vast yellowness of the vinyl covering and how the flood light made radiance of folds on it? Or simply, I looked up and saw a kitten also looking up, among other printed faces. It was the time my cat was dying.

There's sadness, seems also hope. There's demolition, but also construction. It's night but there's light. A trace of nature surviving in the tides of culture. A person's remembrance of the dead trying to go beyond the hoarding – the veil.

Then words stopped. Language failed. To speak the unspeakable.

I don't know what to say. I sing.

2009-10-14T13:33:00.004+08:00

BMW Unstoppable

2009-10-02T14:24:00.006+08:00

The music, the voice-over, the ride. Orchestrated to the right frequency that gets my blood rushing and lifts me from the ground for a few second. That's the power of advertising, in a good way.

I love doing ad when you're not just talking about the product, but something more universal, some human spirits that connect us. But how many clients today see that, and think it helps selling their brand?

BTW, I really love Scottish accent.

Ólafur Arnalds - Ljósið

2009-09-29T16:34:00.001+08:00

This is beautiful.

Congrats on Your Wedding

2009-09-06T03:00:00.000+08:00

Love is a miracle.
It happens everyday, everywhere.
I'm thrilled and grateful to know one happens today.
On the far corner of Seattle, by the river,
my sister, Ting Ting Lo marries to Philip Schoesler.
I congrats them here with this "double-happiness".
"白頭到老,永結同心!"

A Letter To Day

2009-09-04T14:03:00.006+08:00

Dear Day,

How's it going?
I know letter is so yesterday,
but I write anyway.
Because though I see you everyday
we seldom talk, face to face.
Some say you are a gift to me,
that's why you're also called Present.
That kind of makes me continuously tense.
I'm supposed to treasure you always, every moment, now?
Honestly, I all too often failed.
It seems that you are always available,
in the name of Tomorrow.
In fact, you are but one and only.
Tomorrow you'll be gone.
Forever.
And One Day, ironically, you come no more.
It's kind of sad, but it's true.
So please tell me, remind me or even shout at me:
Love me like I am your very last.

From
Now On

A Letter To Morrow

2009-08-28T13:54:00.004+08:00

Hi, how are you?
(Or should I say: how will you be?)
I always feel we are a bit distant.
Of course, we've never actually met.
But you know you mean a lot to me.
In fact, a lot of things I do today is because of you.
Do you know?
Do you care?
I sometimes worry for you.
Will you be sick?
Will you be bad? Or even worse?
But that's really your problem, not mine, isn't it?
So thank you, anyway.
You give me hope.
That's probably enough.
See you tomorrow.

Best wishes,
From Today.

Moon turns to an UFO

2009-08-15T16:03:00.003+08:00

Two days ago, as I was on a taxi home, I saw the biggest moon in my life.
It's abnormally huge above the skyline veiled by some thick clouds.
I had one tenth of a second of thought that it's an UFO.
Goosebumps all over me. It's strangely creepy.
I was filled with excitement and awe to come home and told my wife as she had the exact same experience many years ago.

Guess what. Last night,
I dreamed the moon turning into an UFO, over and over again.

The Reminiscence of a Sunbather

2009-07-25T23:43:00.018+08:00

I went to swim during my lunch hour.
I didn't feel like pushing myself too far and opted to lie down after few laps.
The sun is not particularly strong.
As I closed my eyes and was soaking up the heat,
I realized I hadn't sunbathed for a long long time.

Blood red, orange, yellowish brown, blood red again.
I loved how we could still "see" the sunlight getting stronger or less through our eyelids
as blankets of cloud, thin and thick, in and out, was sheltering.
My mind went completely off for like eternity before a sense of happiness woke me.
It's in the shape of light.
The light that was dancing in the pool water.
You don't need to go to black hole to see how light was bent.
Swirls of light twisting and turning, onto the side of the pool, and off swimmers' flesh.

Then I thought of my past, good times, happy times.
I thought of what my first experience of beauty was...
Is it a picture of Mount Huang I saw on a calendar,
the singing of Karen Carpenter,
or rather my first experience of ugliness
when I was forced by my mom to "inherit" my sister's pants?
It's a hideous orangey brown.

I thought of my wife's face,
how one late afternoon light caught her face
and the outline was golden.

I thought of sunset
(our shared symbol of sublime beauty).
One time me and a friend were completely captivated by a beautiful sunset on our trip to Cornwall.
We felt it's an imperative to savour that very moment.
We pulled over on the side lane of a hectic motorway,
(it's meant for broken car, maybe lovers' fight, but definitely not taking picture!)
It's a risky romantic thing to do,
as cars and lorries were shooting past us (possibly with swearing).

I thought of this thought itself.
I thought when one was thinking, the world seemed to revolve around us.
I recalled at the age of 18 I think, one day I was on the backseat of a bus after school,
I looked, in the frame of my eyes, was a picture as banal as any other day –
some twenty to thirty people's back wobbling in front of me.
But time froze at that moment. A sense of awe, or the sublime beckoned.
A question was asked. But I wasn't aware of what exactly.
Later I figured it was something like this:
"Why everything exists, rather than nothing?"
"Why I am not that guy or that girl or he or she but a 'me' opposing all these otherness?"
From that day on, a part of me was awaken (or newly born).
Thought wakes up thought wakes up thought...
I realized, all these thoughts were reminiscent of some of the best time in my life.

I opened my eyes and sat up.
I wanted to know what the time was.
A piece of paper writing"out of order" on the public clock.
I knew anyway it was time to go.
Cool!
I thought,
Happiness cost exactly HK$19.
(The pool's entrance fee.)

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 2)

2009-07-18T01:11:00.011+08:00

So it's a guessing game. Love, art, poetry, even the art of story-telling in novels and movies. An affair of seducing. A balance act between disclosure and cover-up.

I have this habit of always preying over everything that's happening to me, the street I'm walking on, the man who's sitting next to me in a cafe, the sky that's changing every seconds, hoping that I can perhaps, just perhaps, catch something extraordinary. But of course that's not very often. Most of our days (which consists most part of our life) are just plainly mundane. But from these exercises, something unexpected shows up, at first I cannot quite make sense of what it is. The longer and harder you look at things, the stranger and more beautiful they become. Like a window opens, and you peep into the secret and heart of what you see. It became a "vision", as I've said in other posts.

Maybe Nature is the same. She's hiding something from us. She want us to give time and attention to her. We must give before we take. That is the Natural Law. But our time is fast and limited. We have better things to be occupied. We seldom "see" anymore. We lost the ability to savour things. To "waste" our time on things or people by observing them, talking to them, discover the unfamiliar in things with which we thought we are familiar. So painting maybe just an excuse for me to "waste" my time seeing. (Much like we "waste" our time watching craps on TV as an excuse for doing nothing.) Since the wasting process has this end-product called painting, it can serve as a signpost to the thing itself. Just to say "hey, look at this, it's worth your second look (and thought)."

Having said that, of course a painter is never a passive courier of the "vision" which was bestowed on her/him. Art is personal.

The next day, as the little melodrama between the lovers dies down, anger is replaced with regret. The girl now feels sorry. "Why am I such a petty person? Can I be less egocentric and self-indulging. Why all the trouble when I can just tell my true intention straight away?"

I kind of feel the same. So I've said it, or I haven't?

The sign, the light and the other side (Part 1)

2009-07-16T18:20:00.007+08:00

Finally, I finished my first serious painting in thirteen years. Titled "The sign, the light and the other side", 610 x 762 mm, Oil on canvas. As I pondered what I could say about it, my thought was quickly drawn into a dilemma before every little words were gathering and forming a queue.

To ask a painter to write about his/her own work, is to place s/he in a paradoxical situation. When one paints, s/he has picked a particular medium over others to express (or simply just to "put down") something s/he "sees", feels, thinks or whatever has in mind. That is the best way. To do it other way would be self-defeating or self-deflecting (if there's such a word).

In a relationship, a girl (mostly girls, agree?) has certain desire in mind that she wants her admirer to know, say having a romantic night out this weekend, or as trivial as noticing her new lipstick colour ("No, that's nothing trivial! it's bloody important!" You can almost hear her screams). The last thing she wants is to spell it out. Instead if her admirer can see through her mind, by her subtle moves and signs, apparent unrelated suggestions or just telepathy out of his wholehearted devotion to her (Yes they believe it exists!), that will be immensely satisfying. She has found the proof of his love.

But when all her maneuvers go unnoticed with every minute passing, she gets more and more agitated. How can my masterful Van Gogh get no appreciation? Doesn't my beholder see my beauty? Where is his attention on me? In the end, she can no longer contain her desire (and temper), and reveal the mystery (indeed the revelation comes in great enigmatic magnitude as its decibel).

"Oh, Darling, why didn't you just say so!" Her lover complains, doesn't realize he has asked one of the greatest philosophical question about love, and also art.

The Clearest Moment

2009-07-08T13:58:00.002+08:00

The romantic salmon

2009-06-22T12:00:00.011+08:00

My sister's fiancé Phil, is an American who fishes wild salmon in Alaska. Once we had a conversation around these delectable creatures. He told me the apparent absurdity of their life.

They hatch in the rivers and streams of Alaska. Their body will grow and adapt sea water before embarking on the journey of their life time – swimming across the Pacific Ocean all the way to Australia and heading back ultimately to their birth place. This is the brutal struggle you often see on the Discovery Channel – how they re-adapt back to fresh water, swim and toil up the stream, with miles and miles of rapids and even waterfalls to leap. Not all make it. Most arrive hurt and shattered. In the end, they breed, lay eggs and die. Then the next generation relive the same cycle again under the blessings of their fathers and mothers – their nutrient-rich remains, to be exact.

"What a poor sad little fellow." my sister quipped.

"No, I think it's rather romantic!" I said.

They were baffled. I can understand why. To most people, the word "romantic" means nothing more than the sentiment and feeling associated with love (a candlelit dinner or two lovers walking on a beach being the top romantic cliche). It's the first definition you find in most dictionaries. But look closer, it's actually a tricky word. Here is a list of the definitions given by Merriam-Webster Online Dictionary:

1: consisting of or resembling a romance

2: having no basis in fact : imaginary

3: impractical in conception or plan : visionary

4 a: marked by the imaginative or emotional appeal of what is heroic, adventurous, remote, mysterious, or idealized
b: often capitalized : of, relating to, or having the characteristics of romanticism
c: of or relating to music of the 19th century characterized by an emphasis on subjective emotional qualities and freedom of form ; also : of or relating to a composer of this music

5 a: having an inclination for romance : responsive to the appeal of what is idealized, heroic, or adventurous
b: marked by expressions of love or affection
c: conducive to or suitable for lovemaking

6: of, relating to, or constituting the part of the hero especially in a light comedy

Language can be a tedious matter. Too much analysis can kill off any...romance. Exactly! So I'm not going to make a linguistic fuss about it. (I'm not competent to, anyway.) All I want to do is to sing out my deep down yearning to be a romantic, roughly in the sense of definition 4th above.

Romanticism originated in the second half of the 18th century largely as a revolt against the rise of the Enlightenment and the Industrial Revolution. Briefly put, Enlightenment makes rational thinking absolute, while emotion and other sources of gaining knowledge obsolete. Industrial Revolution projected a whole new model for social advancement which many at that time feared the prospect of machine's dominance over human and ultimately our "humanity". I can sympathize with that.

While I don't take in all the Romantic doctrines, especially the glorification of a misunderstood heroic artist, I do cling to the importance of individual autonomy against the zeitgeist of the time, and the emotional aspects of us as human. We are each an unique individual who thinks, loves, cries, has dreams to chase, and is moved by beautiful things (oh no, I don't mean a LV bag!); not just 1 rational task-accomplishing executive in a corporation, 1 single-minded status-anxious wealth-seeking member of a social class, or 1 out of millions of targeted customers in a "market segment". But I'm afraid that's the sort of person (or specimen) our present world is shaping us to be.

Out of the window and onto the shimmering stream, a parrot was seeing for the first time a salmon leaping out of the water. She realized there's an alternative other than a caged life – a monotonous, calculative, cynical life in a materialistic, consumeristic, pragmatic and utilitarian cage. Breaking free became her pressing desire that no rational exercise could deny. Even that also meant the beginning of worries and risk of losing stable supply of food and all that. But what not.

"If you don't risk anything, you risk even more." – Erica Jong

When we think the salmon's life sad, of course we are asserting our values and judgement on them. We think if I was in their shoes – work and toil the whole life but to go back to square one and sacrifice for nothing but a cycle of the same recycle, what's the gain? I cannot answer for the salmon. But that's the thing. We were brought up to be ultra-utilitarian. The question is: Is everything a matter of utility? Even so, a step back, isn't the same cycle happening to us? Only ours is in the shape of a rectangle – waking up in a [bed], going into a glass-adorned [office-block], being stuck in a [cubicle] for hours, working on a [computer], back home exhausted and staring at a box called [TV] before burying ourselves in the [bed] again, day in day out, until our final burial, in a [coffin].

So at the end of the day, death makes us all equal for that matter (the sum of the balance sheet). We are pondering the life of our reflection in a mirror. Do I want to be a romantic salmon believing in a higher calling or a pragmatic parrot selling her soul?

Am I wandering too far? Sorry, that's the problem with romantics.

Sketches on iPhone

2009-06-02T23:56:00.008+08:00

I have had my iPhone for few months now. And I've been playing with all these wonderful and useful apps ever since. But not until recently, it dawned on me that there should be one for drawing. It's like remembering there's such a thing called pen upon seeing papers. Couldn't be more obvious.

If we human came so long to click, drag and type on a piece of glass, how more primitive and imperative to just scribble with our index finger, albeit it's not steamed.

A search word "paint" brought me a dozen such kind of apps in the iTune store. I found MyPaint Free so far the best among the free ones. Simple and quick. So now my iPhone is also an "iPad". Sketch on the go. Few samples above.

Giorgio Morandi and now George Shaw

2009-05-05T22:16:00.017+08:00

Sometimes one comes to a point of life, you look back and regret.

You don't want to admit it but you have to be brave and be honest to yourself. I know some suggest that we should not regret because we cannot change the past, but the present. I find this argument lame. To regret doesn't necessarily mean we have to live in the shadow of the past. It's precisely the knowledge of the past that teaches us how to live our present. Besides, the most noble thing a human being possess is the ability to regret – the confirmation of the existence of our free will. We can choose, therefore there is always the possibility of another path, for better or worse. Then you can say to yourself: okay, I've been a jerk, should I continue to be a dumber jerk, or CHANGE to be a smarter one? There due comes the possibility of a fresh start, to be the person you always want to be, to do the things you always want to do, or should have done.

This is the profound thought I'm having at the moment.

Crossing, 1996, 30" x 39", Oil on canvas

On Way Home, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

Let's rewind to thirteen years ago, to the time when I graduated from my art+design course. I showed four paintings on my final year degree show (didn't really learn any "useful" skills on design). They depicted street scenes of London at night. But looking closely, they are paintings of light – how street lamps or building lights illuminated the surroundings. The "chiaroscuro", you can say. All of them were real places I frequented between home and school. As I walked by everyday, the familiar scene looked stranger and stranger to me. I saw some invisible presence of something there. I am confused now whether it's the old masters or just me calling it "the vision". Whatever the term is, it's not as mysterious as it sounds. I believe all serious painters (and art practitioners) are familiar with it. Indeed it's the cornerstone of all creative endeavours. I painted or designed shit if I don't have it.

Pass Over, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

The First, 1996, 30" x 38", Oil on canvas

The paintings were well received. It surprised me as initially no tutor fancied my realistic painting style. (Actually not many bothered to paint those days. Some even announced "painting is dead" in the art world.) I thought I did ok. I was a self-doubt (still am sometimes) Chinky in a foreign land, intimidated by the high and loud "exhibitionist" arts driven by the YBAs (Young British Artists, it's 1996, at the high of the tide). I ended art school somewhat disillusioned.

My best mate Steve, a student from Newcastle, said to me when I couldn't get a work-permit and had to go back to Hong Kong, "You are a fxxking good painter, you know man? Don't ever never stop painting!" His funny Geordie accent still rings in my ears.

But I stopped. I decided the only natural survival path is to get a design related job and make a living. And the rest is history. (Don't get me wrong. I love my job. Just a pity I didn't paint all along.)

Eventually the small voice inside me got his reward. About a year ago, I picked up my paintbrush again. But it's all a bit of stop-start. During the weekends, it's impossible not to find more "interesting", easier things to do than waiting for the "right mood", sorting out the subject matters, setting up the easel... oh just a minute, the Premier League matches is on the telly.

Geroge Shaw, Ash Wednesday: 8.30am (2004-5). Humbrol enamel on board

Geroge Shaw, Scenes from the Passion: Late 2002. Humbrol enamel on board

So it goes until one day, I was doing one of my favorite pastime – magazine-hopping in a book store. I picked up an Art World (an art magazine, any metaphor or irony here, I don't know.) I saw the works of a painter I've never heard of – George Shaw. I was shocked. Just like when I first discovered Giorgio Morandi. It's like I painted them myself, only suffering from memory lost. Or like a replica of me continued my unfinished canvases, quietly in a corner of England.

The more I read into it, the more I found our similarities. He felt the same disillusion when graduated from Sheffield Polytechnic before started to paint again in his MA at Royal College of Art in London, and would you believe it, in the year of 1996! I certainly share his sentiment in depicting unpopulated scenes of Tile Hill where he grew up, though the motive is different. His is one of remembering, the lost passions of youth. Mine was the visualization of a presence, between the physical and little beyond.

Without any warning, all the loveliness, passion and meanings of what it takes to paint rushed back to me. What was barren, now flooded. I was immersing myself in these nostalgia of empty streets of Camberwell, lights in the dark of Elephant and Castle, typical yellow brick houses of England, and most of all, the very act of putting paints on a canvas. It's poignantly sweet.

Of course, feeling comes and goes. A little healthy self-indulgence here has no value to me if it doesn't turn to some concrete actions.

Every good painter knows when to stop and call the work finished. Excuse me for this overdone self-retrospective. I'll end here by saying:
Let's not be afraid to admit our past stupidities, just make sure we regret lesser as we get older. When we are driving ahead, it would be foolish and even fatal not to look at the rear-view mirror, wouldn't it?

And my canvases are calling.

"...I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way."

2009-04-18T19:07:00.009+08:00

It was one of those great spring days, it was Sunday, and you knew summer would be coming soon. And I remember that morning Dorrie and I had gone for a walk in the park and come back to the apartment. We were just sort of sitting around and I put on a record of Louie Armstrong, which was music I grew up with, and it was very, very pretty, and I happened to glance over and I saw Dorrie sitting there. And I remember thinking to myself how terrific she was and how much I loved her. And I don't know, I guess it was a combination of everything just seemed to come together perfectly and I felt happy, almost indestructible in a way.

Sandy Bates in "Stardust Memories", written by Woody Allen

I read this the other day and it was painting this picture of Edward Hopper in my head. Not sure why. Maybe the sound from afar to which the dog is turning his head, is that same music of Louie Armstrong?

It's not the parties,
the New Year's Eves
or even the day you married,
but in a day like any other day,
out of the blue,
(more than coincidence,
with someone you love)
you feel happy,
unadulteratedly.

The Cat with Three Legs

2009-04-07T14:27:00.008+08:00

Mimi belongs to the vet my cat seeing. She's a perfectly healthy cat, except her left hind leg were amputated.

Energetic and often vocal, she's more like a housekeeper in the vet, patrolling up and down, and meowing in a low tone to express her discontent of over-crowded dogs (or simply just to get attention).

Every time I see her, I feel lifted. I say to myself: if she can survive with three legs, I can survive with two, no matter what.

Remark: I got a lot of traffics coming from search words "cat with three legs". Some as specific as "Can a cat with three legs survive?" So, here's a bit more info about Mimi that may help:
Mimi was nine when she's badly injured and was brought to the vet. But her loveless owner didn't want to keep her because of the prolong medical expenses . So the vet decided to keep her their own. Eventually she got well and has no problem whatsoever in daily life. Now she is nineteen years old.

Look up there!

2009-04-04T21:42:00.005+08:00

Gloom, Groan and Moan, I have better place to go.

The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living to The Metaphysical Possibility of Afterlife in the Mind of Someone Dying

2009-04-01T19:30:00.005+08:00

On a casual day, not outrageously busy in the office, I popped into a blog and read this:

"In a hundred years I'll be dead. So will you. Before that time comes, I want to keep asking the question, "How do we make the world a more fun, meaningful, loving, creative place?"

– Hugh Macleod, gapingvoid.com, Post March 10, 2009

The first fourteen words have been lingering on my mind since.

Then the phone rang, I had a funeral to go.

Amid the noise, chanting and occasional deafening gong as the priest of Tao performing their rituals, the title of the iconic shark by Damien Hirst came to me: "The Physical Impossibility of Death in the Mind of Someone Living".

Most of us, most of the time, see Death like this: a distant relative who will come visiting me one day. But definitely not today. Not remotely tomorrow. With average luck, neither the day after. In the mean time, I won't of course bother to call him asking "how are you?", least about how I should live my daily life. That's about it.

What will be my reaction when I finally see him face to face? Terribly frighten? Maybe. Proud and having no regret? I hope so.

The answer may well depend on what I fill in the blanks after that fourteen words.

No revolution planned. Nothing extraordinary happened. But this brief thought of death did make me feel inspired. A sting in my butt. A kick to seize my remaining days, before the inevitable meeting with our common relative who annoyingly sent me this junk mail attached with a shark.

Few weeks passed, now my line of thought is this: In a hundred years I'll be dead. So will you. After that?

Now Google Earth extends to its Garden of Delight, Hell and more.

2009-03-02T23:52:00.011+08:00

These freaky images are snaps I took while visiting Eden and Hell beside (not "besides") the Garden of Earthly Delights. I'm referring to the painting by Bosch, which is a triptych depicting the central theme with Eden on the left panel and Hell on the right.

Thanks to Google Earth's mapping technology. The Prado Museum of Madrid became the first to open its collection online, allowing anyone to take a virtual view of their 14 masterpieces in ultra super mega high resolution. You can zoom in closer and closer, until it’s like putting your nose right up to the canvas (without security guards shouting at you). The aged paint and cracks become almost physical on your screen.

Other famous paintings include, Velázquez's Las Meninas, Goya's The 3rd of May 1808, Rembrandt's Artemis, Rubens’ Three Graces, Raphael's The Cardinal and more. I suspect other museums will soon follow. Wouldn't it be wonderful when one day all the art pieces in the world can be viewed at our fingertips? Then we could be freely greeted by the famous Smile or the terrible Scream.

You can click this link to see the reduced version by Google Map. But I highly recommend you to install Google Earth. Then you can truly appreciate the beauty of technology and the masterpieces it brings to you, right up to your nose.

"I chose love."

2009-02-23T23:06:00.003+08:00

Just a minute ago, I watched the Oscar winner of Best Score and Best Song for Slumdog Millionaire, A.R. Rahman saying this:

"...The essence of the film which is about optimism and the power of hope in the lives, and all my life I had a choice of hate and love. I chose love and I'm here. God bless."

A new phone called Pomegranate

2009-02-10T12:12:00.008+08:00

Normally I don't talk much about latest innovative gadget. But today I've got a link introducing a phone industry breakthrough which appears to be one on par, if not above, iPhone for the time being. It's called the Pomegranate NS08. A phone claimed to be able to do all the usual mobile phone stuffs plus whole new added abilities like: gps system, movie projector, global voice translator, razor, harmonica and even brewing coffee!

Too good to be true? I leave you to find out.
www.pomegranatephone.com

Andrew Wyeth died

2009-02-02T13:08:00.010+08:00

One of the best-known American realist painter, died on 16th last month, aged 91.

Almost all his paintings were about people and places around him in his hometown of Chadds Ford, Pennsylvania and his summer home in Cushing, Maine. The above is probably his best-known painting, Christina's World, depicting his neigbour who was crippled by polio crawling back to her house, now known as the Olson House.

He painted with tempera, an egg yolk based paint medium widely used before oils. I tried myself in school days (out of curiosity that egg goes well with pigments besides bacon). It proved too difficult for me to grasp. It's similar to acrylic, only dries extremely fast that leaves no room for you to mix on panel. So it's a painstaking process of layering and layering. Patience were short then. Weyth finished about two paintings in a year. You can see why.

One interesting fact worth mentioning. M. Night Shyamalan based his movie The Village on Wyeth's paintings. The village seen in the film was built in its entirety in one field outside Chadds Ford, not far from Wyeth's studio. Can you tell from below their connection?

He is the painter who was loved by the people more than critics. A typical situation reflects what often happens between the "art world" and the general public. An extract from The Wall Street Journal by columnist Terry Teachout may sum up the point:

Part of Wyeth's problem, of course, is that he was so very, very popular. In the ever-relevant words of Max Harrison, "People do not object to artists deserving success – only to their getting it." At a time when the vast majority of serious American art critics believed abstraction to be the One Best Way to paint, it was hugely irksome that America's most successful painter should have been firmly committed not just to representation, but to near-photographic realism. Why did the benighted masses insist on preferring "Christina's World" to the drips and spatters of Jackson Pollock? The answer was self-evident, at least to the art-world commentariat: Most people are stupid.

Though the debate between styles of art seems pointless these days of the postmodern, our appreciation of arts will always be influenced by the critics, media and the overall temperament of our time. The best we can do, I suggest, is to put on a noise-cancelling earphone, stand in front of a painting and listen only to our eyes.

So Boringly Funny

2009-01-29T19:16:00.002+08:00

I felt an unexpected urge to smile watching this.
When things get to an extreme, they can produce a very opposite effect.
How can you imagine the recital of some highly academic book covers could be anything other than boring.
Credit goes to the voice-over and the hypnotizing sound effect.
How far can you bear? I managed to watched it all through.
Love the VO paused when saying "App........lication" at 1:48 and 1:56.
That actually made me giggle out.
No wonder, likewise, comedies are often made up of some extreme misfortunes.

What's a piece of good music?

2009-01-17T04:51:00.006+08:00

As I was listening to this (Coldplay's Postcards From Far Away), it suddenly came to me the thought that good music is like playing the tune you've already known, telling you a sweet story you've heard before, an old friend reunited, but somehow it's just buried under your consciousness. Now it's awaken once again. It surfaces from the sea of the forgotten. That's why it's so soothing and a joy to our heart. It was lost. Now found.

Dream on

2009-01-05T23:14:00.012+08:00

Although you think I cope
My head is filled with hope
Of some place other than here
Although you think I smile
Inside and all the while
I'm wondering about my destiny

I'm thinking about
All the things
I'd like to do
In my life

I'm a dreamer
A distant dreamer
Dreaming far away from today

Even when you see me frown
My heart won't let me down
Because I know there's better things to come
And when life gets tough
And I feel I've had enough
I hold on to a distant star

I'm thinking about
All the things
I'd like to do
In my life

I'm a dreamer
A distant dreamer
Dreaming far away from today
I'm a dreamer
A distant dreamer
Dreaming far away from today
Yeah I'm a dreamer

There are some setbacks in the office and things are getting stuck. Not a smooth start to the new year. 2008 ended with few sleepless nights working till the sky lit up again (In between, a take-away MacDonald's breakfast at 5:00am were a joy). I have no time to think of anything to blog. But in order to breathe life into my already overworked brain, I post this song anyway. To lift my own spirit a bit, and hopefully yours.

Dream on, Dream on. My new year resolution. It may sound vague and easy (or is it?) but I cannot recall any which was purposefully and concretely set out to do survived by the end of January anyway. That's my shortcoming.

There's an Chinese saying: no greater a tragedy than the death of our heart "哀莫大於心死". (Badly translated). The death of our heart roughly means the loss of our love and desire for people or things we once held dear. Once you tasted numbness, you would know the true destroying effect it brings. Sometimes I wonder which is worse: to be a person full of hatred and anger or to shut your heart and feel nothing at all. Put it another way, would you rather hear your love shouting "I hate you" or just a murmur "I don't care anymore" ? To hate, there's an object. To be numb, there's no object nor verb in the sentence. It annihilates. And God forbid.

I'm going a little too far off. I guess what I'm trying to say is: to dream is to keep traveling, not stopping, to the place we always want to be. What's the use of making resolutions if the drive is not there? Why eat if you're not hungry? So, this is my wish for myself and everyone: Our love endures, our dreams alive. Coming true would be a bonus.

(I'm tired, my mind is turning off. Have a nice dream.)

A Christmas present to the world and back to you

2008-12-27T21:18:00.000+08:00

It's Christmas time.
Send a gift to the entire world and back to yourself.
Simple. Donate to Wikipedia.
Click the "Support Wikipedia" badge on the bottom of the side column or go to here.

Leaking World

2008-12-19T20:39:00.006+08:00

The world has been leaking
for ages.
Cracks were plastered.
Plaster cracked.
Cover-ups upon cover-ups,
until the inevitable burst.
From the credit crunch,
to the names of fall:
Freddie Mac, Fanny Ma
AIG, Northern Rock,
Lehman Brothers
and the latest,
down to a person,
Bernard Madoff –
mad and off.
Oh, not to forget
our Iceland
wobbling on melting wealth.
We should have known,
Icesave is of course, not safe.
Greed is a leaking vessel
who can't get no satisfaction.
As we are busy cleaning up
all these mess,
there's one worse coming
if we keep doing nothing.
Credit crunch of another sort –
the ecological bad loans from our Earth.
Oh my global village fellows,
can we survive the day after tomorrow?

Epilogue:
The picture is the view above my head in my office. The pipes on the ceiling have been leaking for months. Though just a drop of water fell onto my desk (or luckily on my head) once every hour or two, it's still a nuisance. We asked the building management to fix it but they just never did. So this was the best solution I could come up. A towel tied around the leaking spot perfectly soaked up the tiny amount of water. At first, one was enough, then more were asked in for help later on.

Day in, day out, I looked up, I contemplated... not sure of what and back to work. Finally, I thought, "What the hell, just post it and call it an accident piece of conceptual art." But somehow my writing took a surprise turn to a poem of some sorts. I lost my bearing on the way. Well, how could it not be? I didn't bring any map in the first place.

Banksy's Village Petstore and Charcoal Grill

2008-12-11T17:05:00.004+08:00

For more eerie creatures – aged and sad-faced Tweety, porn-watching monkey and hotdogs (yes, they are actually alive), visit its official site. The physical shop at 89, 7th Avenue in the West Village of New York City was closed. (All the pets were sold out I guess?)

Wintry Thought

2008-12-06T20:08:00.019+08:00

Finally the sign of winter comes as cold wind arrives from the north. The temperature drops to around 14ºC. It's enough to make many of us put our heaviest clothes on, while we stare in disbelief at some Westerners wearing nothing more than a T-shirt.

Few eyebrows were raised when I told others I actually quite enjoy wintry weather. To some who utterly despise coldness, it's just perverse. Let me clarify here, though I also very much enjoy a sunny day out on the beach, the chill of winter just doesn't bother me much. I find pleasure and beauty on the contrary.

Okay. I've long concluded that people in the world are divided into two opposite camps – Summer and Winter, roughly like Yin and Yang in the Chinese philosophy. On one side, you've got people who are extrovert, bold, hot-tempered, aggressive and most of all, winter-hater. On the other side, introvert, soft, timid, slower, melancholy and winter-dweller. (I didn't say winter-lover. They don't necessarily "love" winter but rather they feel relaxed about it, can be mellow in the cold breeze, the snow and the sight of leafless-trees.)

Here's a test. If you found pleasure in the video above, we are alike, "cold brothers and sisters". It's the trailer of the documentary film of the Icelandic band – Sigur Rós. What better place to represent winter than the Iceland? ICE-LAND. The land of ice. (For the "summer people", why on earth did someone decide to live there, it is madness beyond reason.)

When I first saw it, I felt rather like the title saying "Heima", "at home" in Icelandic. I just love the strange landscapes, the remoteness, the vastness, and the cold air that you can almost smell. And of course the music compliments so well with it.

Now here's the band one should at least memorize their name. It's the perfect kind of band that when conversation comes up around music, casual mentioning of their name can intimidate few and show off your distinctive taste and broad musical knowledge. But then again, that' s not the kind of thing that "winter people" do, we are low-profile, you see. What if you are the "summer people"? It's not your kind of music, is it?

Last point, I noticed that the lead singer Jónsi Birgisson wears only a T-shirt in the video. What? In Iceland? ...Whether hot or cold, it's a relative thing. 14ºC, It's summer in Iceland and everyone takes off their shirt and basks in the sun. 14ºC, It's winter in Hong Kong and everyone turns on their heater and sits around it.

What's your temperature? I'm 17ºC, I reckon. Perfectly happy on an autumn day when I can feel the coolness of the wind and the warmth of the sun.

Things I have learned in my life so far

2008-11-07T23:04:00.009+08:00

1. I'm not big enough to be worshiped by myself.

2. The more I give, the more I am. [The more I am, the less I shall think I am.]

3. Marriage is not easy, so as almost anything that is worth striving for.

4. If I don't want to get hurt, don't love (or live, all together).

5. Being vulnerable, I can fear nothing. (Going into a battle, it's impossible to give a good fight when my well-being is my sole concern.)

6. Act first, then feeling comes.

7. If I didn't say "ok! I'm going to stand up, get down the street and buy some milk", and actually do it, I would never have bought a pint of milk.

8. Important things are not things.

9. Material satisfaction diminishes as soon as it was realized.

10. Art is useless, that's why it's so valuable.

11. Ordinary + Extra = Extraordinary

12. Nobody is not creative, just too many lukewarm souls.

13. Being pretentious is the sign of my own insecurity.

14. When cats encounter fear, they make themselves look big by getting their hairs standing. We are more evolved. We boast.

15. The hardest thing for human to achieve is to do good knowing that it's not done by one's own goodness.

16. It's ridiculously comforting to admit to myself that I am nothing but a small chrysalis. Nonetheless in my dream, I saw my wings – wings of a beautiful being.

17. God is there, and He is not silent.

Inspired by the previous post, I thought to myself – why not do my own version of "things I have learned"? I flipped through my old note books, past posts from this blog and my whole life basically. There you have it. Some points are related to others. They are not meant to be all inclusive. Just things I rate more important than others. Well, that's a bit redundant to say. We've been learning billions and billions of things since we saw the first light. But what really matters? That's the question. To nobody else but ourselves.

Things I have learned in my life so far by Stefan Sagmeister

2008-10-21T11:26:00.008+08:00

I incidentally found that the rock star of graphic design (it's a bit limited using this term, he certainly has crossed that, but anyway) have recently published this book sprung from his own diary notes and the same titled talks he gave.

The DIY cover is very clever.
Looks like an extended execution from his previous work on Rolling Stones' 'Bridges to Babylon' album cover.

Here's the list of what he learned in his life so far.

To me, writing a blog is equivalent to keeping a diary.
It does support my personal development.
I'm glad I did.

Love is noise

2008-10-18T10:51:00.006+08:00

I was slow to know that The Verve has it's fourth album (titled "Fourth") out on August.
I was even slower to know that they actually reunited last year.
Maybe I was buried by so many things other than what's happening in the music scene.
Here's the single "Love is noise."
It makes me want to jump up and down a bit.
Love the bizarrely mixed odd scenes in the music video, especially the North Korean parade.
Critics often accuse some bands of lacking progress or repeating themselves.
But for The Verve, we can forgive them.
Just love their original sound and hope they never change.

Buzz around Giorgio Morandi

2008-10-17T10:32:00.007+08:00

I said earlier in my older post that Giorgio Morandi might not be very well-known.
I think I was wrong, or he and his paintings are getting more and more popular.
A new book on him ranked fifth on Amazon's recent best selling artist book list.
His retrospective exhibition is currently held at Metropolitan Museum.
And it's been reported on style magazines.
Following my own painting of toilet rolls appearing beside his on Google image search, a blogger Marisa Polin has put it on her blog along side... well, you know who.
Very flattered.
I'm going to do another experiment: put another still life up here and see what will happen.
It's "Three Jugs" I painted months after the toilet rolls, in a much realistic way as I was fascinated by the reflections.
It's now in the Museum of Modern Art, Frankfurt...
No, just joking. It's few miles away, on the wall of my uncle's house.
As a gift to him many years ago.
This is not a good photo of it. A lot of subtle colours has lost.
I wish I can see it real again, some time, in the future.

Silly Hoarding

2008-10-16T13:26:00.005+08:00

Talking about hoarding, just round the corner another shop is under construction.
A watch shop, and they too try to do something with their hoarding.
You can see they are trying very hard to be smart.
But fell flat. Very flat.
This kind of pretentious crap really annoys me.
Who is responsible for this, the client or the creatives? I'm not sure.
The message I've got here is that either they thought the passersby are really stupid or they are.
"We don't know exactly when we will open. But it will be on time."
In advertising, making a paradoxical statement can win you some attentions, but it has to be conveying a sensible truth.
Nonsense remains nonsense, whatever rhetoric you throw in.
"Before opening we have to work 24 hrs a day. Like IWC watches."
Oh really? I don't see you working this morning when I'm on my way to work, not to mention at night.
Just what sort of thinking is this?
Silly. Liar.

Conceptual-art-like Hoarding

2008-10-11T23:58:00.007+08:00

This is the most (and probably the only, as far as I can remember) interesting hoarding I've seen in Hong Kong.
A lot like a piece of conceptual art.
Drawing attentions from passers-by.
It's a new shop under renovation, near where I work.
Pak Sha Road, Causeway Bay, if you want to pay a visit.
I wonder what kind of shop it is.
I will be really surprised if it sells fans.

The Emperor Qianlong's Review of the Grand Parade of Troops

2008-10-09T21:31:00.015+08:00

Another week of heavy workload.
Thank goodness we got a Chung Yeung Festival day off.
I went to the Sotheby's auction show held in Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre.
I planned to see the Contemporary Chinese Art session which was closed.
Instead there were some masterpieces of Chinese ceramics and works of art on show titled "Legacies of Imperial Power".
I was captivated by one piece – the Dayue tu (大閱圖), Emperor Qianlong's Review of the Grand Parade of Troops.

15 meters long. Meticulously painted.
It depict the emperor reviewing his troops which consists of astounding numbers of soldier on horseback – 16,000, I was told. (Save your trouble, you'll never be able to count.)
No larger than thumb size, one by one in formation, like duplications you can do on computer today. (Each is unique on close examination.)
No Western perspective representation here.
That somehow makes it look surprisingly modern.
It was sold for 67,860,000 HKD, around 8.7 million USD.
15 percent less than expected.
Blame the financial crisis, Sotheby's.
Or should I say the Émile Guimet family – former owner now.
How was such remarkable national treasure in the hands of a French collector?
Well, legal robbery.
By the French army officials in 1900 when the Eight-Nation Alliance occupied Beijing.
The French was controlling the Shouhuang Hall on Mt. Jing.
You can guess what was in there.

Giorgio Morandi Revisit

2008-09-23T20:41:00.007+08:00

Recently, I found that this blog got a lot of traffics coming from Google image search, and they all directed to my older post on Giorgio Morandi.
For some mysterious reasons, my own painting "unofficially" became a Morandi painting on the Google image search. (It's on the third page, not bad uh?)
It's quite gratifying.
Apparently, some people was looking for a Morandi painting and saw mine.
"Toilet rolls by Morandi?"
"That's unheard of."
Click.

About this WWW, I observed:
1. By just a fraction of uniqueness, image generates more clicks and traffics than word.
2. You don't need to find the audience, the audience will find you.
3. The rest is a mystery.

Rocky Took a Lover

2008-09-17T18:22:00.011+08:00

He said 'I wanna shine in the eye of Orion
But I drove my soul through the Black Hole!'
She said 'What a wonderful way to wake me
You weren't so nice last night
You're such an asshole when you're drunk'
He said 'At least I'm OK in the mornings'

He said 'The three wise men came a long way
Following that pin hole in the sky
Yeah that one right there'
She said 'I don't believe in any old Jesus
If there was a God, then why is my arse
The perfect height of kicking?'

He said 'I'll shine for you, I'll burn for you
Yea I'll shine for you, that's what I'll do'

He said 'They're like headlights
In the rear view mirror
They're closer than they seem
And from this gutter we're still staring at the stars'
She said 'Would ya go away and shite
Last night all you did was curse those stars
You said they sang to you of hope'

He said 'The sun gives life, and it takes it away
But like all the greats, it'll burn out someday'
She said 'I don't mind, I don't want to get bored
I don't want to end up beached on this shore
I want to be that star'

And then I'll shine for you. Then I'll burn for you.
Then I can shine for you. That's what I'll do

My all time favourite song. Just never get tired of hearing it.

Ingeniously written, both musically, lyrically. Every line spills out wit and poetry.

Casual teasing between lovers reached up to heavens. The stars smile and were moved.

Check out this Irish band – Bell X1. Not a household name, formerly known as Juniper before the departure of lead singer Damien Rice, whom you may know better.

Yea, why my arse the perfect height of kicking? ...There must be a God.

Perfection. Perfection. Perfection.

2008-09-10T12:57:00.004+08:00

Found at home this forsaken knitting manual. It's a very very old book, probably published in the '70s.

The cover picture made me stop and look. Besides its odd and funny styling, something was not quite right here. The guy on the left half-opening his eyes. The guy on the right looks bored by the photo shoot.

Happening today? Head transplant operation straight away, digitally.

An art director myself, I know nothing gets published until every detail was retouched to an immaculate state of perfection.

By the vehicles of the media, the most influential force on human's perception and psychology of beauty may well be... Photoshop.

This award-winning Dove TVC makes my point.

It's been 2 years old, you should have seen it. If not, share it with your girlfriend.

It might challenge her obsession on her own looks.

I suspect more likely, she'll ask you to start learning Photoshop.

Our Sixth Sense - Humor

2008-09-04T20:24:00.010+08:00

It's a timely reminder in these few hectic weeks. Thank you, it's very comforting.

Sending e-card these days is like telling your buddies you're still a big fan of Backstreet Boys. Not a very cool thing to do. Yet I found this atypical e-card site – Someecard, which is worth our reconsideration. No cliché sentimentality, but healthy banters, plain sarcasm, and something slightly over the top to someone's taste.

Still not fancy sending? At least you can copy a few satirical remarks that might come in handy.

For example, "Congratulations on having just enough Facebook friends to appear popular, but not needy."

Mark Twain said, "Humor is mankind's greatest blessing."

For the sake of yourselves and all fellow human beings, acquire the skill.

On my way to Lithuania

2008-08-30T21:05:00.013+08:00

Because of the Olympics, my colleague Mike asked me what's the English name of Lithuania (He learned it's Chinese name – 立陶宛). I forgot the exact spelling, just remembered it's somewhere between the Eastern Europe and Russia as she's part of the former Soviet Union. I looked it up on the Google map.

It's a clear day. The sun was setting. As I flew across a vast field on the south of Ukraine, a strangely looking house appeared under the clouds. It's like a fairy floating dwelling in one of those Hayao Miyazaki (宮崎駿) films. I couldn't help but to stop and find out. I asked the locals what it really was and why it was biult in such a way. Well... all answered back in Russian (I took two pictures though). That really didn't matter. Facts are not important in a dream. And we are in a dream land.
The great thing is you might visit there in reality one day, you never know.

In Thankful Memory...

2008-08-26T15:12:00.003+08:00

It's been a terrible week, to say the least. My cat died last Sunday. We had to do the painful decision to let him go. His kidney had lost all its function and his condition worsened. It's been an emotional roller coaster. I've never imagined the loss of a beloved pet would induce such deep pain.

It took me awhile to let the feeling sink before writing about this.

Humans seem to go quiet when they grieve.

But, grief is a place we should never dwell in for too long. Staying there, even time is powerless to heal.

Dose with tears and thankfulness. And move on.

The Taming of the Fox

2008-08-13T18:42:00.013+08:00

"No," said the little prince. "I am looking for friends. What does that mean--'tame'?"
"It is an act too often neglected," said the fox. "It means to establish ties."
"'To establish ties'?"
"Just that," said the fox. "To me, you are still nothing more than a little boy who is just like a hundred thousand other little boys. And I have no need of you. And you, on your part, have no need of me. To you, I am nothing more than a fox like a hundred thousand other foxes. But if you tame me, then we shall need each other. To me, you will be unique in all the world. To you, I shall be unique in all the world..."

. . .

"My life is very monotonous," the fox said. "I hunt chickens; men hunt me. All the chickens are just alike, and all the men are just alike. And, in consequence, I am a little bored. But if you tame me, it will be as if the sun came to shine on my life. I shall know the sound of a step that will be different from all the others. Other steps send me hurrying back underneath the ground. Yours will call me, like music, out of my burrow. And then look: you see the grain-fields down yonder? I do not eat bread. Wheat is of no use to me. The wheat fields have nothing to say to me. And that is sad. But you have hair that is the color of gold. Think how wonderful that will be when you have tamed me! The grain, which is also golden, will bring me back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the wind in the wheat . . ."
The fox gazed at the little prince, for a long time.

. . .

So the little prince tamed the fox. And when the hour of his departure drew near--
"Ah," said the fox, "I shall cry."
"It is your own fault," said the little prince. "I never wished you any sort of harm; but you wanted me to tame you..."
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"But now you are going to cry!" said the little prince.
"Yes, that is so," said the fox.
"Then it has done you no good at all!"
"It has done me good," said the fox, "because of the color of the wheat fields." And then he added:
"Go and look again at the roses. You will understand now that yours is unique in all the world. Then come back to say goodbye to me, and I will make you a present of a secret."

– An extract from The Little Prince

It's more than 9 years ago, my wife brought home a white tabby kitten, rough and feeble. We fed him, washed him. We took him in out of intuitive affection, not knowing how exceeding joy he could bring us. Many sweet anecdotes, few scratches and "love bites" sandwiched between.

He's the smartest cat in the world (comparing to my other one, at least). He talks (he knows when my wife is on the phone and "meow" for it). He has his own little tricks to open door (even sliding door), pick the best part of the food, do his pee and poo nicely, avoid the medicine...

He's no longer just like a hundred thousand other cats. He is unique in all the world to me.

He was diagnosed with renal failure after an usual check-up. We were heartbroken. For the past months, we've been taking him in and out of the vet numerous times. We never thought that a sick animal could bring such a heavy feeling – this magnitude of sorrow when seeing him weakening and...

If he said "I never wished you any harm; but you wanted to tame me..."

I would answer, "Yes, that is so. But it has also done me good. When the sun shines on the whiteness of my apartment walls, it will bring back the thought of you. And I shall love to listen to the sound of every 'meow'."

Someone told me, "Don't love if you don't want to get hurt."

"Goodbye," said the fox. "And now here is my secret, a very simple secret: It is only with the heart that one can see rightly; what is essential is invisible to the eye."
"What is essential is invisible to the eye," the little prince repeated, so that he would be sure to remember.
"It is the time you have wasted for your rose that makes your rose so important."
"It is the time I have wasted for my rose--" said the little prince, so that he would be sure to remember.
"Men have forgotten this truth," said the fox. "But you must not forget it. You become responsible, forever, for what you have tamed. You are responsible for your rose..."

Who's my rose? Who's yours?

Things I learnt from Travis gig

2008-08-02T15:18:00.009+08:00

1. If you want to sound friendly and honest, speak with Scottish accent.

I love the funny sound of Scottish accent. Very down-to-earth. That's also my overall impression of Travis. ("We arrre from Scotland nee England", as Fran had to stress that during the show.) Polls reveal that people believe those with Scottish accents are more trustworthy and honest. Language reflects culture. Maybe they really are, generally.

One thing bothers me though, why when people sing, accent disappears?

2. Music connects us, emotionally.

I am reading two books at the moment – This is Your Brain on Music and Social Intelligence. Found an interesting correlation. A part of our brain called amygdala which is long considered the seat of our emotion is responsible for both our musical enjoyment and social interaction.

That may explain why music moves our emotion so much and we feel "one" with the band and audience when we are listening it live.

In the middle of the show, Fran did an unusual thing. He said, "it's funny that all you guys, total strangers, come together, standing and touching each other, all because of this same love for a band. That's actually quite amazing. Let's do a social experiment. Turn your face to the people around you and say 'Hi' to each other."...Oh, that's when the embarrassment came in. Our rational side took control. Most people reluctantly did as told...mostly to their own friends.

3. If you are really passionate about something, you'll be creative about it.

Their last song of the show was one of their best hit – Why Does It Always Rain on Me. As soon as the music started, two umbrellas were raised above a sea of heads at the very front row. (see one in the middle of the picture?) It surprised everyone including Fran, who couldn't help but smiled at them. That day was a fine day without rain. Some die-hard fans must have prearranged it. It's a small gesture but made a big impression on me.

Nobody is not creative. Just too many lukewarm souls.

5 Favourite Words

2008-07-30T19:50:00.006+08:00

While we are in this postmodern era of visual-worshiping, let's not forget that books have changed the world more than movies do. (Of course, books contain pictures and movies contain words, but you know what I mean.) So, let's take a break from pictures and Youtube today. Just words, words, words.

Words like people, food and music, I prefer some over others.

My top five likings, in no particular order:

LOVE – Simply for what it is and everything that goes with it.

ACQUIESCE – Learned from an Oasis song Masterplan: "...cast your words away upon the waves, bring them back with Acquiesce, on a ship of hope today". Haven't got a clue what it means. Just love the phonetic beauty of the word– act-queer-us. Uhm...

DESPERATE – We need to be sometimes.

PARADOX – Some words just look like the way they mean and mean like the way they look. This is one. Paradox ends with "X", which to me looks like two arrows going against each others (><) – a powerful symbol of contradiction. Above all, I have this compulsory obsession with everything paradoxical – from a quote, an image to a Margritte painting. (I desperately love to have another blog solely for it.)

ETHEREAL – It's ethereal.

A word knows how to paint too.

Abstract Beauty

2008-07-23T11:35:00.008+08:00

When I was an art student, once my art tutor asked me why I didn't paint abstract arts. I replied with some naivety, "To me, everything I look at can be an abstract art – a stained wall, a rusted steel. What's the point of making more?"

Of course, now I know things are more complicated (or cultivated) than that. But I still believe there were some truth in it. If you look at something harder and longer enough, you can discover art in almost anything.

If you don't believe me, take a simple test. Look at your palm. Look, like you've never seen it before. Stare at it. Gaze upon it. Follow every whorls and lines. Let them tell you that this is your hand – the very hand that you made the first touch, held your love one's, and probably felt the first pain.

For a moment. Take everything in. Now "screen cap" this image, imagine you can blow it up and frame it on a pure white gallery wall. Behold. it is a beautiful piece of art. (By the help of Lady Fame, it could be auctioned for a fortune.)

To further prove my point, can you tell what the below image is?

Take a deep breath and click this link to find out. (Hint: it's beauty above all.)

Travis rocks

2008-07-17T20:29:00.002+08:00

It's the Autumn of '97, a girl told me this band rocked. Heard this song, loved them ever since.

Back then, Fran (the lead singer) got more hair and looked like the son of his present self. Oh dear.

On 31st this month, I'm going to see their gig at the AsiaWorld Arena in Hong Kong. With the girl. Now my wife.

Cornstarch's Resume

2008-07-15T19:50:00.007+08:00

Name: Corn Starch
Date of Birth: Refer to package
Sex: Desexed by now
Marital Status: Separated
Nationality: Mexican

Education:
None except the fact that I've been through hell tortured by hours and hours of soaking, grinding and dehydration before becoming who I am today – fine, very fine.

Qualification:
Member of Non-Newtonian Fluid

Work Experience:
I work mainly in a kitchen as a thickener, binder and baking flour. I'm a good team-worker. I mix well with others like water, different sauces and other fellow flours. I've actively participated with enormous contribution in many highly successful and delicious recipes. Examples listed below.

Hors d'oeuvre and Soups:
Prawn Toast, Eggplant Tempura, Hot Sole Mousse with Creamed Watercress, Cream of Artichoke Soup, Chicken & Sweetcorn Soup. (Too much to mention, in fact all kinds of Campbell soup if you insist to know.)

Main Courses:
Grouse with Pear Sauce, Pizza Base, Beef with Orange, Oregano Braised Lamb. (To mention but a few.)

Desserts Cake and Bakes (My Specialties):
Couscous Pudding, Portuguese Cream, Mini Shortbreads, Spiced Sponge, Creme Caramel, Black Forest Cherry Cake, Oeufs a la Neige. (The list can go on and on.)

Ambition and Dream:
Not to be swallowed in sauce, soup or your stomach. But to be free in water and soundwave and freaking DANCE! My awesome Oobleck Dance! (A sample attached.)

Bubbly Bubbly Happy

2008-07-11T16:38:00.011+08:00

It's like colour bubbles floating in liquid air. Happy!

Not getting enough?

OK, got addicted?

It could be one of those Sony Bravia TVCs (Balls, Paints and Play Doh). There's just something in common. If you haven't seen one, here's more stop-motion, colours, joyfulness, and bunnies – lots and lots of them.

Beautifully Dissected

2008-07-09T20:54:00.019+08:00

Not a piece of conceptual art. It's a dissected Leica lens. Looking through it, you capture your image perfect. Cutting through it, a beautiful work of art by itself.

It's funny how things can get really unfamiliar and strange when we see them in a different light.

This prompted me to Google the words "Dissected" and "Cross-section" and see if there's any weird or beautiful image popping up. Here are some of my picks. (Actually I ended up getting most good ones from Flickr.)

Grab a chainsaw (or borrow a laser gun if you can). Cut everything up, every　　　　thing shows up.

Apply to human too, metaphorically speaking, of course.

The Selfish Gene

2008-07-07T13:39:00.008+08:00

This morning, when I was walking out of Starbucks with my blueberry muffin, a lady in front of me stopped and sided before the exit door, expecting me to open it for her. Hurriedly in automatic mode, I pushed the door open and she followed me out without a slight sign of gratitude.

After thought: I still would have acted generously if I had paused and examined exactly what was happening.

I feel sorry for her, for Hong Kong generally. Having lived in London, one virtue that really impressed me was how people of all classes (which they're so obsessed with) hold the door for others even someone is miles away approaching. Don't expect the same here. Instead you will find comical scenario where upon the first person opening the door, the others after will slip past it with silky moves comparable to those of Ronaldo, until, the door is closing to an impenetrable state. Then the cycle starts all over again.

It's funny. It's sad. Imagine this one particular moment of selfishness (or just utter laziness), multiplies by a thousand times, to become the total sum of all she does in her life. What would that be? A negative number, not even a zero.

I don't want to be self-righteous, feel superior and pass judgement on others. I want this to be my own exhortation. It's certainly not some big, philosophical teaching I discovered myself that I want to preach to others. (it's called Altruism, I learned.) No. I just don't want to waste my life DOING NOTHING. To me, that act of not opening the door for others and myself is DOING NOTHING. I may think it's doing me good, saving me some energy?...(I can't even think of anything else.) But in fact I have done NOTHING valuable to even my very ME.

"Hey you
Threw it all away
By holding everything in
...
a perfect combination of good etiquette and charm
You keep the chocolate biscuits wired to a car alarm
Oooooooooh
Selfish Jean"

Fran Healy, Travis

Banksy x Hirst

2008-06-28T00:02:00.002+08:00

Doing a bit of research on contemporary art, found this piece of old news:

Title: “Keep it Spotless”
Artist: Banksy x Damien Hirst
Date: Valentine's Day, 2008
Venue: Sotheby’s NYC
Cause: (AUCTION) RED for AIDS relief
Sold: $1,870,000 USD

Overheard Hirst:
"Deface my art. Sell millions. For the good cause. Fooking Brilliant Idea!"...
"What can you do with my Sharks? Mate."

Viva La Vida

2008-06-27T16:20:00.004+08:00

Now, millions worldwide have listened to it and thousands of review have been written. It's topping Billboard 200 album chart with over 720,000 copies sold in its first week. Can't be too bad. No British music has done that for a long while.

I'm no music expert or critics. I will just tell what touches me musically, and I think that's what music is all about.

I believe most people would agree, the climax of the album has to be Viva La Vida. Today on my way to work, my iPod was playing it just when the bus hit the highway. Fantastic! Do you have the same feeling that some songs are made for listening on a car or a train? Everything you see outside seems like beats and sounds materialized. Cars drum the same beat. Trees harmonize with the chords. Birds soar with the vocal. Your personal music video in the making. Viva La Vida is exactly this kind of song. Escalating. Enthralling. Exhilarating. While the lyrics is about the dethroning of a king, it makes you feel the exact opposite – you are the king of the world!

I like the acoustic version of both "Lost?" and "Lovers in Japan" more. Not sure why. These few lines warm my heart:

"Just because I'm losing
Doesn't mean I'm lost
Doesn't mean I'll stop
Doesn't mean I will cross..." (Lost?)

"Lovers, keep on the road you're on
Runners, until the race is run
Soldiers, you've got to soldier on..." (Lovers in Japan)

The album starts off with "LIFE in Technicolor", ends with "DEATH and All His Friends". Title wise, it's an obvious choice. But more magically (even spiritually), at the end of "Death and All His Friends", It has this extension track "The Escapist". Here we come back full circle to the same tune of "Life in Technicolor", just this time instead of purely instrumental, Chris Martin sings,

"And in the end
We lie awake, and we dream of making our escape"

It's a masterstroke.

Not a collection of songs. But a symphony of Life with 10 movements. Bravo!

Staple it the wrong way

2008-06-16T22:10:00.002+08:00

This was the "freak statement" made the other day by my usual trusted Staple who is happily going about his business normally. My first reaction was one of amazement with a cry out, "what's wrong with you?"

I showed it to my colleagues. Everyone was puzzled. Until there is always one Mr. Knowhow who came along and explained everything. My staple is actually one of a kind possessing built-in function that can change gears from the normal staple's ends in to the advanced version of ends out. This makes a pile of documents less bulky at the stapled ends. Wow! What a revelation! (Excuse me for my ignorance if you knew this mystery long ago.)

This incident alone made me feel that day was worth while living. A simple design solution was found in the wrong place. That's an enlightenment. A lesson worth remembering.

"Wrong can be the other way right."

Ok, I know what you mean, Staple.

Extra and Ordinary

2008-06-09T01:32:00.002+08:00

An extra named Extra
who felt his existence an extra
to everybody and this world
on his way to a film set,
met an ordinary looking girl
named Ordinary
who felt like everybody else that
she's just very ordinary.
Nonetheless, Extra thought
she's the most beautiful girl he ever met.
They fell in love.
One day,
Extra said to Ordinary,
Marry me.
Let's make our life
extraordinary.

- To my Ordinary -

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

2008-06-04T19:04:00.001+08:00

Stay Hungry. Stay Foolish.

The final note of Steve Jobs' June 2005 Stanford University commencement address.

A lot of people may have read it before, but still, I want to put it here.

I wish I could have heard it on my graduation.

I wish I would have always said the same.

There were days when I said to myself, "I have enough."

But now, give me back my crayons and paper, please.

How rich do you feel?

2008-05-29T11:26:00.001+08:00

Attended a conference yesterday, there's a question about what's the goal we wanted to achieve in life. Not surprisingly, roughly 80% said they wanted to be rich.

Apparently, we all think somehow we are poor or at least not as well off as we would like to be (I'm no exception).

Came across this site: the Global Rich List.

Type in your annual income and you'll see where you would sit on a global scale.

See if you feel differently.

Stop-motion

2008-05-24T21:22:00.001+08:00

At the moment, stop-motion seems to be the in thing, here're 2 pieces which caught my eyes.

MUTO a wall-painted animation by BLU from blu on Vimeo.

Enormous dedication.

Enormous production.

me VS the WORLD

2008-05-19T20:47:00.001+08:00

Surfing through the WWW, left me with just one feeling – absolute despair.

Too much to learn, too little ti/me.

Incurable Is Nothing

2008-05-16T20:48:00.001+08:00

Sore throat is something incurable. At least that's what I thought up until today. As far as I can remember, you could never stop it before it inevitably led to coughing, sneezing or even worse – fever.

Last week, funny enough, for the first time in my life I went to see doctor because of a sore throat. Yes, just a sore throat! But deep down I thought it's not going to help. Why? You may ask. It's not cancer, AIDS or anything! Well, my experience convinced me that "oh shit, bad, going to be sick, again."

I found no alternative plot in my past.

The truth is: I could not do anything about it because I had never tried to do anything about it.

Now, that vicious cycle breaks. I'll go see doctor every time I've got a sore throat.

Impossible is not always nothing (Adidas will disagree), but many times, it's something only in our mind.

Autumn in Spring

2008-05-15T20:33:00.001+08:00

Nature must have lost her diary or something.

Autumn popped in this week. Gorgeous weather. Cool, dry and blue sky.

Love the smell that came along. That intense scent/sense of Autumn. Words are useless here. The closest description I can think of – a bit like, you're in love.

That's cute!

2008-05-13T22:21:00.002+08:00

"That's cute!" – the compliments I've got wearing this tee lately. All from females.

This struck me that females, even in their thirties, adore cute things. I know a few friends who still keep stuffed animal by their side. They talk to them, sleep with them, and even goto gym with them. Once my friend was taken aback when someone introduced her little buddy to her.

Advertisers can use more cutie stuffs when talking to our ladies. Why not? It's immature, too playful and not "corporate" enough? Who cares? Apparently except the marketing people. And ironically they are largely female (Just ask how many cute merchandises on their office desk).

We may not be as Kawaii-laden as the Japanese, but surely we are not as grown-up as we think we are.

Loosen up a bit, stay a little younger. What's wrong with that?

Once

2008-05-10T16:54:00.001+08:00

Just saw this movie. Beautiful beautiful movie. Beautiful beautiful songs.

How often do you meet the right person?

Once.

The Omnipresence of Pun

2008-05-09T20:19:00.001+08:00

Strolling around Central, found these 2 pieces of sign. If you know Cantonese, you'll see how the puns work.

"FORM PRINT" => "CONVENIENT" (in Cantonese)

"WRONG design" => "KING" of design

We call it "食字" (literally means "eating word") in Hong Kong. Arguably, THE most overused ad copy trick in the past decade and there seems no stopping.

Young@Heart sing "Fix You"

2008-05-07T17:32:00.001+08:00

I've got goosebumps watching this. Can't quite put my feelings into words. The magic is that such a beautiful song about lost, failure and hope was sung by an elderly man approaching life's end.

When I first listened to this song by Coldplay, near the end, I thought it's like:

"...Tears stream down your face, UPON THE SEA WHERE I will learn from my mistakes..."

And tears filled my eyes.

But I found out later in fact it's "...I PROMISE YOU I will learn from my mistakes..."

I'll stick with my wrong impression though.

Banksy

2008-05-06T19:24:00.002+08:00

Love this guy's works. You can goto here to see more of his street art. And this is an interesting note I found on his site:

"You shouldn't mess with graffiti writers. The longest recorded piece of graffiti was painted by a student in the toilets of his college at Changsha, China in 1915. It consisted of over 4000 characters criticising his teachers and the state of Chinese society.

After completing this masterpiece the student handed himself in and was paraded in front of the school and threatened with expulsion. The student was 22 year old Chairman Mao. A graffiti artist who later founded the People's Republic of China and was responsible for the deaths of over 30 million people." (Chieh Fang, Chinese Army Magazine, December 1968)

Long Live Graffiti Artist!

blowing plastic bag

2008-05-02T22:34:00.001+08:00

Remember in the movie "American Beauty", there's a scene of how the boy next door Ricky Fitts discovers the beauty of a plastic bag blowing in the wind. Here you are, same ingredients plus a bit of imagination, a dragon comes to live on the street of New York.

In Every Sunflower

2008-04-29T22:03:00.002+08:00

This is a beautiful song I recently love. (Sorry, it's not really a video.)

"I wouldn't swap the pain
For never knowing you"

It's true, I believe, for anyone who has ever loved.

From what I was told, this was written about the band's vocalist - Paul Noonan's long term girlfriend, who was killed in a car crash late at night driving to see him after a gig. That makes it even more poignant.

Paul Arden

2008-04-24T19:51:00.001+08:00

"The person who doesn't make mistakes is unlikely to make anything."
– Paul Arden

The best piece of advice.

Sadly he passed away early this month.

Read all his books. Be inspired.

howies

2008-04-23T16:48:00.002+08:00

I fell in love instantly with this brand.

I haven't owned any of their product yet, but I've downloaded all their wallpapers.

They give life back to copywriting. You inevitably felt happier, fresher and more positive towards your environment after sipping through some of their writings. It's optimism full of wits. You know how hard it is to do creative for the good cause. Either they are using shock tactics or just self-indulgently boring.

When today, most ads are very visual-driven, this is a breath of fresh air. Too many brands are hollow and stand for nothing anyway, they (at least it seems to me by brief observation) hold onto some values and beliefs above just making profits.

Giorgio Morandi

2008-04-21T21:05:00.002+08:00

Someone may notice the header image is a painting by Giorgio Morandi. He may not be very very well-known. But once you've seen his paintings, the mug you use to drink tea everyday will never be the same.

I remember my first encounter with the name "Giorgio Morandi". Many years ago when I was an art student, I was stuck not knowing what to paint. I picked up 2 rolls of toilet paper, put them in a "not so mundane" way and started to paint. My tutor saw and said it's very "Morandi". I didn't have a clue and looked it up. Shocked.

roof top2

2008-04-21T16:19:00.001+08:00

In Hong Kong, we crave for space.

The roof top up high is our backyard. We hang our clothes and play with our kids. Taller skyscrapers engulf, privacy is a luxury. But then again, nearly everyone is too occupied to look out.

roof top

2008-04-18T22:30:00.001+08:00

A moment outside my office window.