passion is in fashion

Hello world!  It will not be long until I scoot off to the land of plenty, *again*!  Much to clear out of the way before I am free, however.  Here I am chilling at my desk in anticipation of my *midnight* phone conference with the US.  (So conveniently scheduled!)  Tomorrow have much to accomplish at work.  Fingers crossed a grande latte will get me through all of it with unparalleled efficiency! 

Have mostly been staying put in HK since I got back from the US at the beginning of the month, except for one particularly traumatic trip to Dongguan!  I thought Guangzhou was bad, that is until I set foot on the cultural wasteland that is Dongguan!!!  Due to fall in exports most of the factories there have shut down or laid off substantial amount of people.  The subsequent high unemployment lead to even higher crime rate than before.  I hear the local economy is recovering, but even then I would not be enthused to visit.

For next year, my January and February schedules are packed!  Will be visiting Shanghai, Beijing, Jakarta, Singapore, and KL!  Hope my ambitious schedule pans out.    HK is curiously humid and freezing in Jan/Feb anyway, so might as well get out of here!  No idea what I’ll be doing for Chinese New Year, however.  Can’t even think that far ahead!  Haha.

One fun thing to look forward to tomorrow night (last night in HK in 2009!  *tear*) is revisiting Cafe Gray – my new favorite place!  The view is pretty amazing and it is decorate by Andre Fu in my favorite neutral palette!  (Haha if you ever read this blog you will know my mild obsession with minimal modernist natural neutral tones for interiors.)  Our friend is the sous chef there and he takes really really good care of us!  The seafood risotto and some kind of cooked beef something is unbelievably delicious!   Can’t wait. 

Cafe Gray

Nothing (Nothing!!!) to cheer one up like a good food week.   I had one such good week this week, thanks to dad!

Dad was in town for business meetings, which means business dinners.  I have met some of them before (they are buddies), and one of the “zong”s  had a daughter about my age.  And so, off we go!

A gathering of northern Chinese businessmen means a massive amount of drinking.   They would toast each other about every five minutes with shots of baijiu (ultra strong Chinese grain alcohol.)  Part of a being a good businessman is performing the delicate balance of drinking in good faith and not getting sloppy drunk in front of your partners.  If one doesn’t drink, one would never be able to do business in China because they wouldn’t trust you – or even like you!  Even my counterpart, a fresh-faced girl who is still in college, was so practiced in this process that she toasted everyone at the table.  Precocious!

On the last night I made dad escape the alcohol-ness and take me to steak.  A really nice view and yummy food.  Neither of us could finish our delicious steaks – that only means I am eating it for breakfast right now!   Haha!  I am also listening to my favorite NPR show Wait Wait Don’t Tell me… is this heaven on earth?  I think so!

I love them.  Had them for the first time at the Sanya Banyan Tree, which is kind of a funny because they are so completely unrepresentative of southern China.  Three of them came with the turn-down service.  Honey and I ate them all.  We planned on not telling our villa-mate Teddy about them having ever existed, but the failed when we started giggling as he saw the empty plate.

“Coffee: proof that you are alive.” – Garrison Keill0r

Caught the Prairie Home Companion on Sunday night.  Such a folksy and wholesome program.  I did not expect to like it, but happen to love it.  Garrison is enormously talented, and – I imagine – adorable! 

Anyway, what he said about coffee really resonated with me.  Having embarked on Deutsch studies and continuous essay writing lately, I have returned to my favorite chemical indulgence of all time – coffee!!!  As they say, “Behind every successful woman is a substantial amount of coffee.”  However,  because I am one extremely sensitive to caffeine, accompanying my bouts of alertness are inevitable stretches of insomnia.  *_*

I love it nonetheless.

In case you didn’t see it before, here is a very cute coffee-related thingy by Christoph Niemann for the NYT.

Very much in the style of the back page of the FT Travel Unravelled, allow me describe the weekend I just had, which was pretty much the perfect weekend.

Friday was my last day getting off of work at 1pm. I gave myself a break and wore flats to work (omg!!!) so I could easily sprint home to nap afterwards. From around 2 to 6pm I rolled around in bed doing a very fun combination of reading The Post-American World (which unfortunately put me to sleep) and watching The Hills on MTV online while painting my nails hot pink. Yes, my hands currently look like those of a well-manicured teeny bopper. At approximately 6pm I started to pile some makeup on my face to get ready for dinner with friends. Dinner was yummy. Then drinks and clubbing, with an early night ending around 2am.

Saturday went to a Kenzo fashion show. It was paparazzi and local third-tier celebrity-filled. For me, the main event was not the fashion, but rather seeing random female attendees wearing eveningwear and fake eyelashes at 2pm. I found the runway offensive. First, all the outfits looked like woolly embellished sacks. Second, *all* the female models were white. This is Hong Kong. What did they do? Specifically request all white models?

For some accessible entertainment *not* involving embroidered potato sacks, we saw Made of Honor, which was quite mindlessly hilarious and adorable. Went home early to listen to awesome NPR shows like Wait Wait Don’t Tell Me and This American Life.

Sunday I had super yummy brunch, then went for some obligatory weekend shopping. In the afternoon, met up with my cousin who is visiting from Germany. I haven’t seen her in years. She is now engaged (with the most beautiful Tiffany solitaire ring!) to a very German guy who is the epitome of Deutschland – punctual, reliable, and tall (like a BMW if it was a person). Ate at Hutong and accidentally caught the lightshow. Fun! I have never seen it before because I spend all my waking hours scurrying around Central. The ferry ride across the harbor also gave me time to contemplate philosophical topics such as the meaning of life. You see, going to TST makes me very deep…

And here is to wholesome non-alcohol-filled weekends. More to come, I hope.