A Cool Artist

Caitlin Atkinson

Check her out!

Gingas

This is what living in Scotland can do to your sense of humour...

The Pursuit of Happyness

OMG, is that little kid cute.

It was a great movie, I thought. Will Smith was amazing, the plotline was touching and ultimately inspirational. There were a few very amusing moments. Basically, it shows a man who takes a huge risk and manages to overcome obstacles to get what he wants.

I do wonder at the lack of social and racial analysis in the movie though. I can't imagine they didn't have any impact on his life.

The Long Afternoon

I have just spent a pleasantly idle day reading a book about the pleasantly idle lives of a rich English couple living in Southern France between 1912-1942.

"Why do we organise our lives so that the happy days are surrounded by years of dutiful frustration? Why are we so ruled by convention?"

Written by Giles Waterfield and based on some details of his grandparents' lives, it's an interesting book. The writing seemed a bit stilted, but that invoked the livestyle they led. Helen is a huge hypochondriac and Henry rather weak.

I miss many things about Aberdeen, much as I used to complain about how cold and dark it is. But one cannot cling to one's past and I am sure I was right to come here and gain new experiences, and I shall be back to see you all, I hope very soon.

So true.

Visas, and passports, and guarantors, oh my!

So, my passport has run out of space and time. As Candace likes to bitch, as if it wasn't a pain in the ass enough to be one of the few countries without ten year passports, they aren't even really 5 year passports, since most countries require that you have 6 months remaining on your passport to let you in. Not Hong Kong, thankfully. Just one month and an outward flight. Which is how I ended up here on a passport with only 3 months left on it. And an ugly passport at that, seeing as I got it after being mugged in Italy, had to have the damn thing extended, thus making everyone who looks at it have to go to page 11 to see the actual expiry date, and ensuring that in my photo I look sweaty and annoyed by the process of getting an emergency passport in a foreign country.

So, a new passport is a good thing. However, it is also a pain. You have to submit it in person only between the hours of 9-12. Which, since I am on vacation is not really difficult but must be a pain if you are working. My bus managed to get hit by a car on the way to Central though, making me wonder if I'd make it on time. So I went and got my unsmiling photo, and as per usual they tried with my glasses and then without. And then I went and waited in a queue.

First, I had to get one number to hand in the application. This goes off fine. Then I need a guarantor. New number, new queue. First she gives me a lecture. Since I have recently (SEVEN DAYS AGO!!!) arrived in Hong Kong, they'll do it for me THIS time. But in 5 years, I had better know someone! Then you get to fill out five years of addresses and employers. Hahahahahahaha. Have you got space on the sheet for me to write a novel? Fuck, that one year in Vancouver I temped for 4 different agencies! I can't recall the house number or even the damn street I lived on there!

Then they kindly tell me to pick up my new passport two days AFTER I am due to fly out of Hong Kong. Fun!

Between providing high school transcripts for my Hong Kong visa (who knew they even existed?) and not smiling for photos, and guaranteeing my identity... I tell ya. But I am about to have a shiny new 48-page passport to have a shiny new work visa stamped in.

I have a crush on Russell Peters

Baaaaaaa!

Just a hint, if it says baa and not woof...

Spacebook and Myface

This Hour Has 22 Minutes and Gunter explore the exciting new world of online social networks.

In other news, I interneted drunk last night. And Candace sleptwalked. Hahahahahaha. Ahhhh, ladies' night!

How am I THIS lazy even on vacation?

So, I'm finally getting around to blogging about my last weekend in Seoul...

The weekend kinda started on Wednesday, when Vanessa, Sarah, Alex, Roger, and Amanda came to Bricx to smoke some hookah and drink some cocktails. Apparently I introduced Roger to Bricx, which is a fair trade for being introduced to the eggman/McDs breakfasts. Yum. I can't handle smoking and drinking in the same evening apparently - it makes my whole body, especially my fingers, tingly. Fun, but I had to take off by 3am. Geckos Mike had some wandering hands after the shots... ;)

Then Ladies' Night on Thursday. Brilliant. I love Ladies' Night. It was a very late night. Fun, fun, fun. A great way to say goodbye to some amazing people. Spent a lot of time talking to Mike. He and Amanda and I ended up in her room at 7am listening to jazz and drinking a bottle of Malibu until we dozed off. We went for a late brunch the next day at Indigo. Yummy.

Friday I had dinner with Joel. He was going to go home after, I was going to go home early. We went to Pattaya and then went to B1 for ONE drink. Then we went to Queen. We thought we should go say hi to all our peeps at Geckos... Some interesting photos were taken, most of which Sarah might not appreciate me putting on the internets ;) The next thing you know we were back at B1. TJ was there with a friend of his, who was hitting on me. I wasn't interested, but didn't expect what was going to come next...



So, I went to the bathroom. Bathrooms in Korea are often unisex, with a stall for the gals and the urinals in the main part with the sinks. In the bathroom was a friend, T. He had pulled his zipper so far down it had gotten stuck (fair enough, this has happened to me too). So he is trying to do up his pants while I laugh at him until he asks me for help. And so, just as I lean down and yank up his zipper, the hitting-on-me guy WALKS IN. Now, we all know what he's thinking and I will grant you that the whole thing looked amusingly dodgy.

Our party moved on to Queen, which has got to be one of the most fun places to dance in Seoul. (It's on Homo Hill, one hill over from Hooker Hill and Africa Alley, just in case you need directions!) We danced for hours and then at some point Sarah started insisting that we go to Old Town Seoul, because she had never stayed out late enough to make it before (all the while insisting that she was getting up early in the morning to go running...) It was very, very sunny and bright when I made it to McDs for a sausage egg mcmuffin. It was late enough, in fact, that there were normal, everyday people at McDonald's actually having a breakfast that was occuring after a night of sleep and an early morning alarm.

Obviously, I didn't get a lot of stuff done on Saturday... Saturday night is another story, of course. In fact, it was just about the same night as Friday. Went to Wolfhound with Samarra, Laura, Marie, and Hanna for dinner and then wandered to Geckos, Queen, King's Club, and Old Town Seoul. Alex bought me some goodbye flowers :)

Sunday by the time I made it to the bar, I discovered that many, many people were still going from the night before. I managed to miss Jo entirely, found Jeni in quite an amusing state, and discovered that Vanessa and Sarah had joined the shooter's club with a guy they met. After 15 shooters, the guy was getting gropey, Vanessa wanted a tattoo RIGHT NOW, and Sarah was praying in the bathroom. And not to the porcelin god, surprisingly. ;) Alex apparently finds me funny. And he likes my shoes! Take that, Karlyyia! We ended up in Bricx again, as Roger is now addicted. And that's when the evening got interesting. We smoked 3 hookahs, drank many drinks, and played "Spin the Screwdriver". Jane's idea! Watching the two boys spin each other and kiss might have been the most amusing part.

The idea was to stay out until 6am, go to Amanda's and grab my bags, somehow haul them down an almost vertical hill, grab a taxi on the main road, go to the airport with plenty of time to exchange some money into HK$. However, I was nodding off at Bricx (which stayed open extra late cause there were so many of us there spending a small fortune) and I went home early. And fell asleep. And overslept through my alarm. And left for the airport an hour later than I should have. And took forever getting through immigration. And walked last onto a plane that had to be HELD FOR ME! Oops!

The only good part of it was that I don't really recall saying goodbye to people. I think that is probably best. I am glad to just leave it as a great night out, see ya all soon. I miss my Seoul peeps.



Love to love ya!

I'm a Book Nerd. Big surprise!

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Social Nerd   You're interested in things such as politics, psychology, child care, and peace. I wouldn't go so far as to call you a hippie, but some of you may be tree-huggers. You're the type of people who are interested in bettering the world. You're possible the least nerdy of them all; unless you participate in other activies that paled your nerdiness compared to your involvement in social activities. Whatever the case, we could still use more of you around. ^_^
Literature Nerd
Artistic Nerd
Drama Nerd
Gamer/Computer Nerd
Science/Math Nerd
Anime Nerd
Musician
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

Interesting

Going through my Amazon wish list is like peeling back the layers of an onion, exposing what has occupied my mind over the last couple of years...

Lucky

My recent reading has been rather sad, in general. The Known World is just one sad thing after another.

The Caged Virgin by Ayaan Hirsi Ali. It's written by a Muslim woman from Somalia who now lives in the Netherlands. I thought it was interesting, though I found it rather poorly written and argued, with a lot of repition. Basically, she contends that Islam will remain confined in the past until women are treated as equals. Rather disheartening read, though hopeful as well.

Lucky by Alice Sebold. So sad. So horrible. But a very important book to read. I feel like giving it to every man I know.

The only comic relief I've had came from plowing through a Reader's Digest and reading Oh the Things I Know by Al Franken. It's a pretend self-help book. Funny, but nothing too amusing. Didn't make me lol. (sorry, bit of inside joke aimed at Candace there.)

Visualize!

Read my VisualDNA™ Get your own VisualDNA™

The Known World

Oprah calls this book the best one she's read in ten years (I was watching her do an interview with the author when I was about halfway through reading it myself.) It is a Pulitzer Prize winning book that was apparently written when the author was fired. Perhaps it's time for me to get fired from something!!! Who knew it could end up going so well?

Fern Elston: "We, not a single one of us Negroes, would have done what we were not allowed to do." (God and the law)

This book is just sad. One sad thing after another happens. What startled me the most was the idea of Black slave owners. Not something I had thought about before. It is also a book that points out with force how following along with law and religion is so far away from being enough. Conscience must require more from us.

Oprah seems to be reading my mind lately. First she does a show with Edward Jones talking about writing The Known World the day after I started reading it, and then I see a show about rape survivors right as I started reading Lucky. Odd.

Sao Paolo goes advertising-free

Back in December, 2006, the mayor of the 11-million-person Brazilian city of Sao Paolo banned all outdoor billboard advertising, citing advertisers' unwillingness to comply with the city's rules on what sort of billboards can be placed where. Now the rule is in effect, and Flickr user Tony de Marco has documented the eerie sight of a city stripped bare of commercial visuals.

The statute's most visible impact promises to be at eye level and above. The outsized billboards and screens that dominate the skyline, promoting everything from automobiles, jeans and cellphones to banks and sex shops, will have to come down. All other forms of publicity in public spaces, like distribution of fliers, will also stop.

The law also regulates the dimensions of store signs, and will force many well-known companies to reduce them substantially by a formula based on the size of their facades. Another provision, much criticized by owners of transportation companies, outlaws advertising of any kind on the sides of the city's thousands of buses and taxis.

The law, as passed, also applied to advertising banners trailed by airplanes and ads on blimps. But in the first of what promises to be a long series of legal challenges, a court ruled the clause unconstitutional on the grounds that the federal government, not the city, controls airspace.

Photos
Article

This post is random (well, actually, no it isn't.)

How To Talk To a Feminist

Find out here!

I laughed my ass off!

I am Giddy!

I just watched an episode I downloaded myself!!!

I could be more proud of myself, but it's pretty ridiculous already!

Woot!

I have BitLord. I am learning to download. Right now, episode 20 of Grey's Anatomy, Season 3 is 23% downloaded. I am soooooo excited! This totally makes up for my piss poor geography!

How could I forget Texas?!?

Name the 50 States in 10 minutes!