December 2006 Archives

Merry Christmas People. I decided to go to Yun Nan last minute for the 3day wknd, so I didn't get to everyone, hope everyone had fun. Yun Nan pictures will be up soon. The picture above is Tag Heuer Party a week before. Me and Vivian showed up to the same party but invited by different people in the O&M PR, you gotta love Ogilvy's connections. The party is great, finger food is an absolute delight, I almost had a foie gras overdose. Thanks to Nick for the invite. I did crop that picture btw Vivian ;) so you won't kill me, hahaha.

remember when you're truely happy?

I know the pictures don't look like it, but out of all days, we picked the coldest day on record this year to go to a ski park. Still we had tons of fun. Thanks to Liu Xiao Hang, our semi pro snowboarder art buyer, and my North American best friend Roger Yin, I took their advice and wore enough protection to last me through the entire day. Ban Tong on the other hand, was confined to bed all day on Sunday, hahaha.

its even more painful than it looks...

whoa

Went to two nice restaurants over the weekend, Vineyard Cafe on Friday with Mr Nick Smith, and 楚畹圆(chu wan yuan) with Silvia and Dad.

楚畹圆 is a fairly inexpensive restaurant that serves some delicious southern chinese dishes. Like the problem with all Chinese restaurants in Beijing. It doesn't really use superbly fresh materials to start off with, but what I liked about this restaurant is the quality of their executions and price, you're looking at a 30% compare to other well known restaurants that offer the same dish. The place is next to 湖广会馆 (hu guang hui guan) a place thats well known for peking operas. What I also loved is the fact that it has these two adorable cats roaming around the place, I first found one just caressing across the rooftop, then the second one came over to my table looking for scraps. I picked her up and put in my laps and she's very friendly. I guess this poses a health risk, since pets are in a public eating place, but in a generic "ancient chinese" decor, the cats add personality. Overall, good food, cheap prices, cool cats, dirty floors, lots of smokers, average restrooms... I might go there again when I'm in the area.

Vineyard Cafe
This is Nick's nice little discovery, I don't have the pictures but I have their link. A simple, no frills french steak house, it serves superb steaks and amazing deserts. I haven't tried their wine yet, but the selection seems pretty respectable. The price is what you'd expect out of a typical expat place, nothing outrageous. It has a romantic setting, so its a good place for a date. The bathroom has a sign that says "do not poop" don't really know whats up with that. Overall, good food, amazing apetizer and desert, romantic setting, smaller than average restroom, and barely functions i suppose. Do think I will go back there again.

if you want wifi in Starbucks in Beijing, You have to pay for it...

Rejoiced after 2 agonizing years of not having a laptop when i'm traveling, the company finally decided to let me have a laptop, this way, supposedly, I can do layouts right after photographer's session. Yikes...

Anyways, I got a 15" macbook pro , 2.16mhz, nothing extreme.

Today though, i decided i will do my work in a coffee shop, I will make this laptop worthy being in an art director's hands. Also I figured I can gather inspiration from people watching and internet at the same. So i packed my gear, went out of my cozy home into the city, thinking wifi hotspots are just overlapping eachother like saturday shopping crowd in XiDan. Again... my over optimistic attitude has cost me greatly. Sitting in a starbucks in a promanent part of Beijing, my mac book pro just wouldn't connect. With my sweaty palms, I used up all my network knowledge trying not to look like an idiot in there, and failed. Finally, I got up, walked up to the counter, asked an employee. "uh, excuse me, do I need to do anything to my laptop before connecting to your wifi here?" "No sir" Answered the employee, "It should be hassle free, no setup is required." So of course,

I thought its my fault, I somehow fucked it up. Then another girl picked up the conversation. "Just put in Your CNC" account name and password. Hmm, "C-N-C"... this name is so familiar... sounds like that stupid corporation I posted on my blog a while back... Now, knowing its once again the doings of CNC, I completely gave up all hopes of it ever connecting in Starbucks. I still asked faithfully "you mean,... just put account info like the one in my house internet?", "No, sir, you need a prepaid, wifi card".

Finally, I realized what went wrong, its not me, its not my machine, its the damn lousy CNC again. I can't believe I have to pay for wifi in a coffee shop, in fact I never believed it when Starbucks tried to do it in the states back in 1999, and that was when Wifi is still expensive. How can a telecom company charge people for wifi at Starbucks? Its like.. the two evil empires teamed up together to fuck over the consumers.

I have to say, this is pretty impressive. Some kind of super nerd collective. Also, impressive information organization skills.

This movie came up in a meeting I had yesterday, thanks to patsy I watched it last night. I loved this movie. I hesitated a bit at first, since the name Alejandro González Iñárritu is already quite popular for his formulaic editing trick for all his movies. But the story nils described in the meeting was quite captivating, and besides, 21 grams is one of my favorite movies. Ok, now back to Babel, the one story, or segment that stood out was the japanese girl story, it out shines all the stories in all of his films in my opinion. I won't spoil it here, just watch it.

Just found this artist. The mice plate is amazing. There isn't a lot there on her site, but if you google image her name, there will be a lot of things.