September 2007 Archives
My parents were in China for the whole month, and my father was in China for the first time since getting married (and that was just in HK). The cover pic (more below) was taken at the Forbidden City.
New York City, from Newark International Airport. Photo taken by Jean-Pierre Sam on September 3rd, 2007
My parents just came back from China. This was my belly, and a t-shirt from the UniQlo Creative Award 2007 (intense Flash alert) collection. All that I can say is that for the equivalent of $15-20 in Canadian dollars worth of t-shirt, it'd be my ruin if I were to live in Asia. But then, I don't, so I am safe.
Among those listed, my mother picked (indeed) Kiyotake Ogawa's "pattern". I thought that the World one (with Antarctica on the back), the Lazio Street and the Pigeons and Man are probably the other best ones.
(My love affair with UniQlo in fact started with a branch way outside of Tokyo, in a town called Ichinoseki, along the northern Shinkansen line. I was visiting my friend Uri, who was out there in the Iwate prefecture, teaching English in a small sleepy fishing town. UniQlo is best described as Gap's Japanese counterpart, at Old Navy's prices, with a certain emphasis on design - at least for North American eyes and fingers, it comes across as being close to the tip of trendy, deserving praise for encouraging volk-creativity with its various t-shirt design contests. UniQlo opened in the USA just a year or two ago, with its flagship store in SoHo, NYC. It shouldn't take long before Toronto gets one, and perhaps even Montreal.)
Press release actually came out today, as I was just blogging about it yesterday. Not enough time to describe the movies at the FNC this year, but here we go with a non-exhaustive list of stuff to see...
- Ploy, Pen-Ek Ratanaruang (Thaïlande),
- Sperm, Taweewat Wantha (Thaïlande),
- Eye in the Sky, Nai-Hoi Yau (Hong Kong) (has Simon Yam!),
- Dainipponjin, Hitoshi Matsumoto (Japon) (has UA),
- I'm a cyborg but that's ok, Park Chan-Wook (Corée du Sud),
- Sur le Yangzi, Yung Chang (Québec/Canada) (probably the movie I want to see the most, from a personal pov, as the director is a Chinese-Canadian, who went back to China to make a film about his country of origin, namely the Three Gorges Dam and the people that its construction has affected.),
- Ice Cream, Jean (Leloup) Leclerc (Québec/Canada) (intriguing!),
- Yi Yi, Edward Yang (Taïwan) (tribute to Edward Yang - while Yi Yi is fun, I believe that the movie that made Yang, A Brighter Summer Day, is like Yi Yi without the happy romance - it is supposedly un-findable, b/c of Yang's odd behaviour wrt commercialization of his movies).
Last week, we had the untimely visit of raccoons! One must recognize that animals of all sorts have been the lot of "inconveniences" that we had to face, among arthropods (the tinier ones), and rodents (how about squirrels going through your refrigerator's leftovers - albeit ones that were contained in trash bags). Raccoons, or rather, a family of raccoons (my roommate speculated that they might've been looking for a relative that was randomly thrown in one of the trash cans, or something). They were at least three, probably four, roaming the balcony for at least fifteen minutes, before I snatched this picture of them escaping by the way they probably came about. Just like a gang of burglars, eh.
Preview preview... The festival is the most likeable of Montreal, after Fantasia, and press release are slowly being released. One of the movies to be shown is a NFB film called Up The Yangtze. We hope that besides anticipated Lust, Caution, there's going to be another Japanese anime in avant-première.
In a very Web 2.0 fashion, the movie Up The Yangtze comes with Google Earth pinpoints!
- Rice cooker
- Spatula set
- Strainer
- Coat hanger
- Extra chair
- Wok
- Book holder
- Alarm clock
- Salt/pepper dispensers
- Better laundry soap
Galacticast is Montreal stock! You know, Anglo Montreal is such a small circle, that I bet I know people who know them, or will know them by the end of this year. :P
As some of you may know, Ang Lee's latest film Lust, Caution, premiered at Venice, and was also shown at Toronto (and then, we hope, at Montreal's next film festival of the season, the Nouveau Cinema Festival). The side story that we might be interested in is that the book on which the movie was based on was written by Eileen Chang, who is a family friend of Roland Soong, otherwise known as the blogger behind the ever excellent EastSouthWestNorth. Lust, Caution comes out in less than a week, and Soong happens to be the administrator of the Eileen Chang literary estate, strangely enough reposted Chinese-only articles on the possibility that Chang based her story on real people, and real world circumstances. Also, a translated review of Lust, Caution, and perhaps its inspiration.
Moving from the West Island to where I am, literally the heart of Montreal, a block away from Parc Jeanne-Mance (otherwise known as the "Tam-Tams"), at the confluence of at least five bus lines, must definitely be a life-changing experience.
I slept my first night last Friday, slightly tipsy from the white beer that I had with friends nearby. To tell the truth, I'm still a little bit dizzy since then (and fighting a cold too). The owners of the flat were moving out during the weekend, while we, myself and two marvelous roommates, were slowly, but surely, moving in. It's a wonder that none of our boxes got mixed up.
Finally, on Monday, we had our first "alone night". Naturally, I spent all my time on finding a place for the home server which, among other things, allows metroboulotresto.com to run. I also biked to work on that day. Easy in the morning, hell on wheels in the evening (it's probably much easier without a laptop and half a sack of groceries from Chinatown).
Tonight, I setup a computer for the closet. It's just kinda awesome, I think, to be able to plant a working computer into a closet. Other than that, I lived urban life to the fullest, and went, on the same nocturnal bike ride at around 10PM, to 1- pick up stuff at the pharmacy, 2- pick tickets from tomorrow's Sala Rossa concert, 3- get money from the bank, 4- drop by a Starbucks to see if they sell water bottles, and 5- buy St-Viateur bagels for breakfast. This absolutely summarizes how good fortune can shine upon you.
Laine and Chris (and Cedric) are doing Pointe-Claire!
Did Day 2 of Osheaga 2007, on Sept 9th.
« Accommodements Raisonnables et Communauté Chinoise » aura lieu le dimanche 16 septembre 2007 et débutera à 14h00 (lieu à déterminer d'ici vendredi).
"Reasonable Accommodations and the Chinese Community" will take place on Sunday, September 16th, 2007 at 2PM in Chinatown (venue to be announced by Friday).
E-mail : cedricsam@gmail.com
Facebook : https://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=4748389437
I was not in China this year, and probably won't be back for some time, but my parents are currently there, and I could not help but post some of my father's pics (chosen so that they aren't of temples or other boring stuffs).
Shanghai: lining up at the gas station
La journée de nettoyage du Quartier Chinois, c'est aujourd'hui que ça se passe!
T'was a particularly smoggy day for early September.
Went to Magog, Saint-Benoît-du-Lac, Knowlton (Lac Brome) and Cowansville, in the Eastern Townships.
This issue was in the mail this week, and contains interview (and art) by Adrian Tomine, whose drawings can sometimes be admired on the cover of the New Yorker. Also, a survey of the bizarre phenomenon of "Donuts and Chinese Food" restaurants.
Giant Robot is an excellent Asian pop culture magazine contributed to in large part by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong, and based in Los Angeles, with Giant Robot-branded stores in LA, SF and NYC selling trendy items sometimes featured in its pages.
If you are looking for copies of Giant Robot in Montreal, I once found it at the downtown Chapters' on the specialty magazines stand.
As we went out, we noticed a blue jay in the maple tree in front of our house. It was hammering on something, and it took us a bit to realize that it was in fact picking on a wasp nest, no less! My mother had been wondering where those wasps came from - we had infestations below the front porch, and even once, between the ceiling and 2nd floor right under my father's bedside table (where they indeed did quite some damage, leaving a mark on the wood, which we saw firsthand last year, as we were renovating).
Photos taken tonight in the Montreal borough of Saint-Laurent, nearby Place Vertu shopping mall.
