man

I must admit, shitty durian is just as bad as finding out your pet fish died.

On another tangent, today was an interesting day, so interesting that I must document it for the sake of myself, and possibly the 2 to 3 avid readers of my blog (thank you).

After enjoying the gift set #2 at Lotteria (comes with 3 different types of hamburgers, coleslaw, a close to a liter of pepsi, and a 6 pieces of fried chicken - holy moly) with 3 other friends, I somehow manage to get to  a place where my friend An and I wanted to paint our nails with pretty flowers, just like every Vietnamese women has.

Unfortunately the place only knows how to paint solid colors, so we decided to walk to Quan An Ngon for some che because its possible.

Searchin' along for Pasteur along the street, I pass by stores I've always wanted to drop by but only sneezed by in a taxi. I dropped by Veddy's which had many American items including Doritos, Mr. Ben's Minute rice, Post's Golden Grahams, A & W root beer, and Trident cinnamon flavored gum. As my pocket was too small, I only let my eyes enjoy them. After that I saw the stationary store Pi. Delighted having always wanted to go to the seemingly minimalist stationary store, I asked An if we could drop by. Being the great easy going friend she is, she said yes! despite being really sleepy after our gift set #2.

I soon became a tad sleepy, staring at white walls and the 5 stationary notebooks lined against the wall. I played with the cool pens for a bit. An starts talking to the girl that works there, and asks what is up stairs?

A studio.

A what?

A studio, you can go up there if you want.

Okay.

For some apparent reason we end up staying there for a good hour and hour and a half, as we learned it was an OPEN studio where we can interact with the visiting artists, do art with them, be part of their art projects and the likes. I play with pastel for the first time, being dumb and not really knowing how to work with the medium. Both artists are currently pursuing their masters in art and live in Hong Kong. Pretty bomb. Information about the project is here. And here is Pi the store.

A little blah blah's mission is to be a dynamic, stimulating and professionally-run platform for artistic and intellectual dialogue, reflection, and an appreciation of the role of visual art and creative practices in contemporary life. 

broken

social scene is coming out with a new album and will be touring around this summer and I'm pretty damn excited. Including two stops in Asia: Taipei, Taiwan & Singapore, Singapore.

Jul 25 2010 8:00P	The Wall	Taipei
Jul 27 2010 8:00P	Esplanade Concert Hall	Singapore

You can see the rest of their tour dates and new tracks on myspace.

 I missed the chance to see them during my freshman year of college, when I didn't know the band really, and the strokes were playing the same night as they were (so was Metric). I happen to know this only by the pure chance that after getting to the BART station to catch the final train back to Berkeley, our friends stumbled upon friends coming from each show, a rather chance-like rather-fond memory of mine, although I speak to none of those people anymore. Regardless, I've come to love this rather rambunctious haphazard band overtime, as Leslie Feist and Emily Haines were also once a part of them as well. This sentence sums them up well in anticipation of their 5th album Forgiveness Rock Record and a companion EP Lo-Fi for The Dividing Nights.

"I know that some bands write their songs, rehearse them and then record them. Not Broken Social Scene. In recording Forgiveness Rock Record we did it our usual way: swimming in chaos and making it up as we go along"


BSS is:
Kevin Drew, Brendan Canning, Justin Peroff, Andrew Whiteman, Charles Spearin, Sam Goldberg, David Newfeld, Leslie Feist, Emily Haines, James Shaw, Evan Cranley, Amy Millan, Torquil Campbell, Ohad Benchetrit, Marty Kinack, Julie Penner, Lisa Lobsinger, John Crossingham

while

purchasing my 17 cent sugar cane drink in a plastic bag, the sugar cane lady began to ask me a series of questions in Vietnamese:


Where were you these past few days?
Oh, I was in Hue and Da Nang.
Ohhhh okay, when will you go back to America?
In another year or so..
Do you have a husband or kids?
No.
Oh no wonder, that's really good...


Now I suppose I can let a little conversation like this go unnoticed and unmentioned as many other details in my life. But let's dissect this together shall we? Sometimes when my mind wanders as I am biking and the sun is baking, I like to think how strange it would be if I was born here. How the things I see would not be out of the ordinary but rather normal, that this would of been my way of life, and instead of biking to Vietnamese class, I would be biking home to my house to help my mom cook dinner. Or I could be biking to the river to go fishing. Or biking to go to the local noisy market where I can pick and touch raw meat and I would still consider it to be clean and sanitary. But as a turn of events, I don't see it that way. Instead I am an outsider protected by my skin, only when my tongue reveals itself do I get exposed. It is a funny feeling that I cannot really describe too well. My vocabulary and diction cannot began to describe what is feels like to "come back home" as many have put it, but for home to not really be your home anymore, and that the experiences that you've had outside of home have somewhat marred you in a good way. I escape.

Now back to this small conversation on a day the sun decides to beat. She sits outside with her dark aged skin, but rather round opal like face with heavy eyelids that sleep above her eyes. She runs this little sugar cane cart through out the morning, by the late afternoon she disappears and makes me sad. Because only she would press fresh sugar cane would be, the other lady does not, and takes it from a cup in the icebox.

[as I am writing this I lightly say hi to a woman who has taken care of her 4 nieces and nephews with her husband leaving her because he couldn't handle all the kids. that is for another time.]

Now where was I, oh yes the cold icebox. I'm not sure if you understand how an icy chilled fresh squeezed sugar cane drink feels on a sweltering sweaty exposed day where the sun decides to take over. Maybe, perhaps it can be comparable to the time you notice a stolen glance.

No wonder she says. As if to explain why a 22 year old woman like me had dedicated two measly years of my life to Long Xuyen, Vietnam. Because a child and a husband would be the two things holding me back, like it holds back many women in Vietnam. Just reminds me of the sacrifice and dedication women have to their families, unknowingly sacrificing their freedoms because this is all they see in front of them.    There is no sacrifice for the women who have children and husbands. Your life changes when that happens. I've seen it many times in and out of Vietnam.

My mind it wanders again, while I am on a bus sneezing through the molded holes of dusty roads and open living rooms, people in pajamas and kids too small for their bicycles riding it like there is no end. I think about future travels, how beautiful it is that my eyes are witnessing things that they've could of seen. My mind escapes, knowing full well it has the ability to do so.

music

while galavanting across asia, i'm consistantly in search of shows as the music scene is there, but hidden.

Luckily there are a few wonderful websites that assist me in this search and make my life easier and it can make your life easier too. 

For your clicking pleasure:

Taiwan

Japan and good reviews here.

Hanoi, Vietnam

HCMC, Vietnam and this and this too.

Malaysia

 can't really seem to find one for China, but the art website will do just fine.

Of course (duong nhien!), ridden with an awkward conglomerate of hispterdom meets asia, these type of sites occasionally attract the dislikes but who really gives a fuck. 

I just wanna dance.

and

my days seep

into seconds
and I lose
track
of when
the sun sets
and rises
and then
you surface
into the crevices
of my thoughts
remaining
until
it fades into
seconds
and I lose
track
of when.

Friday, April 02, 2010

facts

Via: Online Schools

march

you were just too fast for me.

 [I needed to enlarge this one. Just too beautiful]