I’m getting pretty annoyed by how much gigs cost in Hong Kong. I’m seeing Bon Iver in October (22nd! BOOYAH), and that cost me 20 pounds. To see Elbow tomorrow in Hong Kong at Kitec (WORST VENUE EVER) will cost around 40 pounds. Tickets to see 30 Seconds to Mars next week will cost between 38 and 54 pounds depending on whether you want seated or free standing. Red Hot Chili Peppers in early August will cost between 30 and 70 pounds also depending on where you’re wanting to be seated. Friendly Fires in mid August is also costing just over 30 pounds.
WHYYYYYYY.
Otto (played by Kevin Kline in A Fish Called Wanda) knows exactly how I feel.
My love of independent animations is definitely at an all time high thanks to the fact that, surprisingly, they’re quite easy to get a hold of a copy here in Beijing.
The latest addition to my collection is My Dog Tulip, an American independent animation based on the writings of British BBC editor J. R. Ackerley. The animation is based on J. R. Ackerley’s memoire of the same name (his dog was originally named Queenie but editors decided to change her name to Tulip out of fear that people would make fun of Ackerley’s open homosexuality because of it). The animation focuses on Ackerley’s 15 year relationship with his Alsation. Each scene of the animation was drawn and coloured on paperless animation technology and features a total of 58,320 drawings.
Though at times alarmingly blunt and honest (for example, Ackerley goes into detail about Tulip’s toilet habits and also the requirements necessary to mate Tulip, including massaging her with vaseline – a side to breeding dogs I think I would have rather not known), what makes this animation lovely is it’s simplicity in style. It is jerky and not fluidly animated, and it is blatantly obvious that everything was drawn by hand.
Reading reviews of My Dog Tulip you begin to get the impression that it’s the Anti-Marley & Me film. In a way it’s a lot more realistic, a lot more honest, but in the same way it highlights the wonderful relationship between man & dog.
Sorry for my lack of presence. I have moved out of my flat in Beijing and I am currently staying in a hostel. Though they do have wifi it appears my room is just a little bit too high up to get any of the signal. So I have to come down to the courtyard if I want to check facebook or update this site which is difficult sometimes as the hostel is pretty full and sometimes it’s hard to get a seat.
Anyhoo, over the weekend Caitlin and I went with some friends to the third Great Aircraft Carrier Party in Tianjin.
The first thing my mother said when she found out I was going to a party on an aircraft carrier was “be careful of the soldiers, Kim!”. Thankfully the party took place on the decommissioned Soviet aricraft carrier Kiev which was bought by a Chinese company in 1996 and since 2004 forms part of a military theme park (China currently doesn’t have any aircraft carriers of its own).
Anyways, the party was really quite fun, though slightly ruined by the horrifically painful 2 hour bus ride back to Beijing… Thanks to some bored French guys sitting behind Caitlin and I on the bus. What makes it so bad is even if you leave the party at a reasonable time like 3am, you end up getting back to your comfortable bed at 5.30am when it’s already light out. Ick. Not the nicest of feelings.
I’ve finally got around to attempting to lace knit. Not easy since after months of trying I could only knit and purl. So moving past the very simple stockinette and garter stiches was a pretty big step.
My life the past few days has pretty much consisted of:
row 1 & 3: [k, k2tog, yo, k, yo, k2togtbl, k6] repeat until last 7 stiches, then k, k2tog, yo, k, yo, k2togtbl, k.
row 2, 4, 6, & 8: purl (until end of row)
row 5 & 7: [k7, k2tog, yo, k, yo, k2togtbl] repeat until last z stiches, then k7.
repeat until you have something looking kind of like this…
The great thing is you can’t really tell just how many mistakes I’ve made (pretty much at least one per row).
But yes, if you have a birthday coming up, expect a scarf. and it will have to be this lovely mahogany colour because my sister bought it for me, it’s really nice yarn, and I have nothing else (and a lot of it).
I’m sitting at my gate at Beijing Capital Airport waiting to board a flight to Hong Kong. I’m surviving on one hour of sleep (3.30-4.30am) thanks to the fact that I just stuffed my face with a grande ice lemon tea and tomato and mozarella ciabatta (my first meal proper meal in about 20 hours – more on that in a bit). I’m also in a lot of trouble with my mother because I forgot to bring my phone out to the festival yesterday and only just realised that my phone has run out of credit. I don’t want to know how many times she’s tried to call me.
So, let’s talk about the Great Wall Music Festival.
We decided to take the 2pm bus from Wudaokou to the Great Wall. I wish we had taken the 5pm bus. We took the 2pm bus assuming that there would be something going on when we got to the Great Wall. There wasn’t. The stages had not been fully set up, no music was playing and drinks weren’t on sale yet. We hoped to be able to walk on the Great Wall but didn’t realise that this would require another 50kuai (on top of the 350kuai already spent on the festival tickets). So after getting there we sat around on a small patch of grass for an hour or so before one of the three stages got set up and started playing music. Also, it was freezing. Leaving for a festival at 2pm in June made me think it would be warm. It wasn’t. I should have brought more clothes. That said it was a really nice day.
Also, I guess understandably, everything was really expensive once you entered the festival area. They didn’t let us bring in any food or drinks (I got away with bringing through some digestives by saying I was diabetic and needed to have food to maintain my blood sugar levels), and they didn’t give us a lot of choice as to what we could buy. FOR EXAMPLE, there was NO vegetarian option. So thankfully Loren gave me the bread roll from her hamburger or I think I would have starved to death (hence the not eating for 20 hours, I had lunch at 1pm, the bread roll and then didn’t eat again until 8am at the airport).
The headliner for the evening was of course Fat Boy Slim. The big part was meant to be the supporting animation on the screen behind him. I have to say it was really good but there were quite a few technical errors that plagued the show. Also pretty much all he did was play mash-ups, we only got a remix of Praise You and Funk Soul Brother towards the end so that was pretty disappointing as well.
BUT that said I had a really great time. For a couple of my friends this was the last weekend that they had in Beijing before heading back home, and so the last chance I get to see them (for now!) and it was a really great way to wrap up the semester.
Sorry for the lack of posts lately. Anne’s excuse is that she’s having fun in Greece. Meanwhile I was distracted by the loss of my wallet and then the fact that this year is now coming to an end. This basically means that too much food has been eaten in the past week.
Last Years Dragon Boat Festival at Stanley Beach, Hong Kong
Monday was Dragon Boat festival (端午节 duānwǔ jié) and the plan was to head to Houhai to watch the Dragon Boat races. This ended up being very different from the typical experience in HK as a, it was in a lake and b, it was all finished by 9am (meaning we missed it all). Though I don’t think it would have been all that spectacular had we been able to see it because I saw the boats and they didn’t even have dragon heads. I suppose I’m pretty biased though because it is such a big deal in Hong Kong – something Anne and I really got to witness last year when we went to Stanley Beach to check out the celebrations (and get hit by incoming boats on the very narrow beach).
The horrible crowds at Stanley Beach last Dragon Boat Festival
But joy of joys, I will be heading to Hong Kong on an 8.45am flight on Sunday. This will be done after probably no sleep since I will be spending my Saturday on the Badaling portion of the Great Wall for the Great Wall Festival featuring Fat Boy Slim (woo!). But I will be seeing my sister for the first time in about a year which I am very excited about. And I have big plans for my week in Hong Kong.
