Trivialising politics
25 June 2010 · Comments Off
On my way home after helping out at a work event:
That’s next to the Roxy Art House on Roxburgh Place. It’s a BMW. Art, or did a stag night go badly wrong?
Trivialising politics
Reviews → Au Revoir Taipei
24 June 2010 · Comments Off
I got a free ticket to see Au Revoir Taipei last night, its UK premiere at the Edinburgh International Film Festival. It’s a light-hearted buddy-caper-love story. I liked the contrast with the usually overwrought Taiwanese drama available on teevee.
Kai, a young Taiwanese man, bids farewell to his girlfriend, who’s moving to Paris. Things between them work out in a predictable fashion, and Kai needs to find the money to fly to Paris to see her. He ends up getting his best mate, Gao, involved in something seemingly shady by borrowing money from Big Brother Bao in exchange for delivering a package. There are gangster-ish Ah Bengs with an effeminate leader (he ain’t exactly Omar) and they all wear bright orange suits. There are a couple of hapless policemen whose personal problems outweigh getting to the bottom of things.
All in all, it wasn’t exactly life-changing, but it was an amusing way to spend an evening with my best (edible) friend (read: popcorn). Being bilingual and also Hokkien (but unable to speak the dialect beyond those seven words one should never use), I thought it was pretty hilarious, especially when they subtitled ‘Sui!’ (beautiful) with 水 (‘shui’, or water).
(The film’s dialogue was mostly in Mandarin, but had quite a few lines in Hokkien as well.)
And OMG, the food. The street market scenes and in Kai’s family noodle and dumpling stall made me whimper with need. Also, the boy who plays Gao looks a helluva lot like my wee cousin Kai (who’ll always be wee to me, despite being pretty damn tall). And it’s the same Kai (凯). But Gao is a lot dopier than (my cousin) Kai, I just thought I’d clear that up right now.
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Breaking up on Facebook: the ultimate act of cowardice. The person doing the dumping is obviously a complete and total loser.
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Is there some law that explains the inverse relationship between the cost of data storage and the number of crap excuses made to justify accumulating useless data?
Rustling a distance away
22 June 2010 · Comments Off
Ah! The emergency budget is out. It sounds fair to me. I just wish we could actually see where all that tax revenue went — maybe the data on government spending, if someone is driven enough to crunch the numbers, will help clear that up.
I love politics, but I hate politics too. I’m tired of ‘pundits’ and supposed political lifers behaving like spoilt children and not showing a little patience, maturity, and decency. I have no patience for tabloids stirring shite and people who revel in their ignorance and blind adherence to warped ideology by spouting provocative nonsense just to get in the news. I’m glad there’s a coalition and I hope they try their best to work together.
Orange revolutions
21 June 2010 · Comments Off
Neil’s persuaded me to watch How to Save £100 Billion. I’m rolling my eyes and shouting at the television (yes, I’m shouting at bad economics, not at sport) every couple of minutes. What utter pish — so many of the audience members are just there to spout illogical populist twaddle that makes them look like smug twats who are less intelligent than they think they are. FUCKING HELL. No wonder this country is going down the tubes, the future of Western liberal democratic capitalism is public policy determined by a premium-rate phone line public vote.
Fone, Smiley, Phoney
21 June 2010 · Comments Off
Saw a large Bone plushie in the window of Forbidden Planet. And the complete series in a single volume is for sale too. I want.
A broken slate of grey
21 June 2010 · Comments Off
I really want to go see David Vann and Anthony Bourdain at the book festival, but given that meeting authors has sometimes resulted in my going away and thinking that they are complete and utter twats, I might not. Ah, the wisdom of experience — it’s far better to never allow reality to intrude on an enjoyable book.
Festival season. Ah. Not my favourite time of year in Edinburgh. As grouchy as I might sound, it’s really highly annoying to have tourists drifting about like lost sheep, spreading their collective girth to take up the entire width of the pavement. Yes, it’s the capital and has all these dirty old buildings. On a nice day it looks great. Fabulous. Please give the people who work in Edinburgh the room to walk to and from their offices.
At least there are free events at the Fringe. Most of them will be shite, but I’ve earmarked three that look like they could be fun (and most definitely not scatological). After last year’s Hot Club of Cowtown discovery at the Jazz festival (Kristen, you should totally go and see them play in Austin this August), I’m looking forward to seeing that programme.
Parked in
16 June 2010 · Comments Off
Perhaps it was fitting that I was in a Filipino restaurant when I read the report that Singapore is a little miffed at being put on a watch list for human trafficking:
Thousands of women from poorer Asian countries such as China, the Philippines and Thailand work as call girls and bar hostesses in wealthy Singapore, a bustling port city where prostitution is legal in designated zones.
Undesignated areas are also pretty good for prostitutes if you know where to go (*cough* Duxton Hill *cough*). While I do find it entertaining that the US has ranked itself in the top tier of countries that fight human trafficking (thus seriously calling into question the report’s objectivity), Singaporeans and long-time residents know fine well that the squeaky clean and socially homogeneous image the tourism peeps like to promote is so untrue.
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Oh me oh my, my archives sure are messy.
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People ‘love’ things and people far too easily these days. Sigh…
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You know what Internet-based job boards have done? They’ve spawned the attitude that it isn’t necessary to write a decent cover letter (or any cover letter at all) as part of a job application. No one should apply for jobs using their current work email address, either — that’s seriously bad form.
Reviews → This is How
7 June 2010 · Comments Off
Someone told me that if I didn’t like [a book I can't really name -- oh, the censorship], I really wouldn’t enjoy This is How either. How wrong they were. I was riveted. (And it’s a ‘work’ book.)
The novel essentially plunges you into the mind of a young man, Patrick Oxtoby, who has moved away from home to the seaside, pretty much to start his life afresh. That’s about all I can tell anyone without spoiling the book (and don’t read the back cover copy if you decide to give the book a go).
What I thought was masterful was Hyland’s method of completely absorbing the reader into Patrick’s inner world. There’s no preparation for it, one minute you’re you and the next you’re seeing the world through Patrick’s eyes. For those who have read it, you might be concerned when I say that I sometimes have thoughts like Patrick’s. I reckon many of us have these inner monologues and it helps to put things in perspective.
Patrick may not be the most likeable character, but he is definitely a sympathetic one and I really wanted to find out what happened to him. It’s a real page-turner of a novel and I’m glad I decided to read it after all.
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The iPhone sure knows how to suck the life out of a battery, doesn’t it?