"I chose love."

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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

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

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.