November 3, 2009

8 Views of the Petronas Towers: Missives from Malaysia no.1

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I recently spent a week in Malaysia. The first couple of days were in Kuala Lumpur, a surprisingly laid-back easy city to be in. In contrast to other South East Asian cities, KL doesn’t have the crazed non-stop action, the aggressive shop-keepers, the hustling taxi-drivers. I didn’t see any tuk-tuks, the moped driven taxis, nor did I see any mopeds or scooters. I kind of missed the chaos of these other cities, but it was extremely pleasant to be in a more relaxing atmosphere.

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Thanks to my Malaysian friend’s recommendation, we stayed at the Traders Hotel, which squarely faces the Petronas Towers. Here’s a view from the KL Tower, which has the best view of the city. You can see our hotel on the right. The picture on the right is from the rooftop pool of the hotel.
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I must say, the towers are underrated. For one thing, they don’t mimic the boxy towering behemoths of other famous skyscrapers. Instead, they use a lot of native cultural elements. The overall shape reminds me of the minarets that flank most mosques. Yet the texturing of the surface reminds me of Buddhist stupas that are everywhere in Southeast Asia.

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The best time to see the towers are at night. With the beehive facets, the shimmery steel and the lighting, the towers looked like crystal minarets. It’s a stunning effect.

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And here’s another shot closer to the base.

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One final shot, to show how tall this building is, once the tallest in the world. Like a mountaintop, it’s got it’s own micro-climate at the top.

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November 1, 2009

National Novel Writing Month

Today is the first day of National Novel Writing Month. For all you aspiring novelists, you may want to join in on the fun.  This is the website, cutely abbreviated to NaNoWriMo.  The goal is to write 50,000 words by the end of November.  The goal is not to write a polished novel, but rather to produce 50,000 words.  Just get it out, then in the chill of December, you can edit and polish to your heart’s delight.

I have had a couple novel writing ideas floating in my head for the past decade, but never did put it down on paper.  Strangely enough, I’ve decided to abandon all these loyal veteran plots for an untested rookie tale, one that just came to me a few weeks ago, spurred on by a suggestion from T.  I won’t be giving it away now, but it’s an adaptation of the 12 Labors of Hercules, set in Tokyo.

Predictably, I’ve assigned myself a series of tasks today that have been effective sources of procrastination.  One of them includes writing this blog post.  And to further muddy the waters of marathon writing, I’ve also received several books that I ordered, all aching to be read.  They must be put off save one, Life of Pi by Yann Martel, which I took with me on my recent trip to Malaysia.  It’s precisely the kind of novel I want to write: magical-realism, philosophical, easy on the eyes, funny and compassionate.  As my only dedicated reading for the month, I’m counting on it to inspire me.

Just for the hell of it, let me tell you what books I received.  They will be my Greek chorus for the month.

Dear Marcus by Jerry McGill. Jerry is in the top 3 of most interesting people I know personally.  And I know a lot of interesting people.  This is a memoir in the form of a letter to the anonymous man who shot Jerry when he was a promising teenage performer.  Being a quadriplegic really hasn’t stopped him from being a creative force of nature with the sparkly eyes and sly grin.  This is the book I’m most looking forward to reading.

dear marcus

 

Steering the Craft by Ursula K. LeGuin.  One of my favorite authors writes about how to write stories.  There are a lot of exercises and suggestions on crafting tales.

The Book of Basketball by Bill Simmons.  Simmons is insufferable, a diehard fan of the Celtics who are the hated nemesis of my beloved Lakers.  His writing is fetid with bias, obscure unfunny pop culture references, and the self-satisfied wanna-be blue-collar smugness of all Boston sports fans.  Nevertheless, he’s the most entertaining sports writer I read, and he’s written the definitive book of basketball, my favorite sport.

The Lost Symbol by Dan Brown.  I haven’t even opened the cover yet but I can tell you what will happen.  All you need to know is that the hero of the story will solve some historical mystery, with the aid of a much younger woman.  There will be a suspicious swarthy police officer.  A freakish assassin hired by the helpful man will be lurking about and menacing people.  The person who seems most responsible for the misdeeds in the novel is not your man.  The man most seemingly helpful and benign is the evil mastermind.  I’ll be able to identify all these people by the second chapter, yet I’ll continue reading because that Dan Brown writes a fun novel.

The World Without Us by Alan Weisman.  This book describes in detail how nature would reclaim the built world if humans were to disappear.  I nearly read all of this addictive book a few years back at a bookstore in Santa Cruz and it’s haunted me ever since.

So that ends my procrastination for the day.  Now, on to the novel…

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October 9, 2009

Does Obama Deserve the Nobel Peace Prize?

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Barack Obama just won the Nobel Peace Prize and the news has taken everyone by surprise. Even the President was unaware that he was nominated, according to his advisors.

So far I see several kinds of reactions to the news.

1. There are those who are unequivocally happy for him and feel he is deserving.
2. There are those who support him but are puzzled by the timing.
3. Then there are those who support him but feel dismayed that he won.
4. And finally, there are those who don’t support him and I actually don’t care what they think. If he’s a Nazi commie for trying to give every American affordable health care, then I’m sure he’ll be viewed as the Anti-Christ for winning the Nobel Peace Price.

I decided to look at the reasons why people are puzzled or dismayed by his selection and to see if they are legitimate critiques. I also looked at the list of previous laureates to see if there are precedents that justify his selection.

Here is a list of what seems to be the most common critiques.

• The Peace Prize should not be awarded to a leader presiding over two wars.
• Obama hasn’t done anything yet. He needs to accomplish something first.
• He’s just a symbol.
• The award was given for promises as yet unfulfilled.
• He’s just a celebrity and got it on name recognition alone.

Who chooses the winner?

Just to put things into perspective, the Nobel Prizes are not awarded by some public international body. Keep reading →

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October 7, 2009

The Anpanman Mobile

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Was this Batman’s batmobile before he was Batman?  I saw this parked on the sidewalk and had to take some pictures.

The owner is clearly a big fan of Anpanman, the most popular anime character among Japanese kids. Anpanman is everywhere in Tokyo, but I’d never seen a fully tricked out Anpanmobile before. Maybe I just didn’t pay attention before my friend Amritha visited and opened my eyes to the utter coolness of Sweet Bean Bread Man (the literal translation).

Anpanman mobile Some fun facts:

• The character was conceived by Takashi Yanase when he was a starving soldier during World War II, fantasizing about the tasty snack.

• In the story, Anpanman was created when Jam Ojisan, a baker, had his batch of sweet bean pastries struck by a falling star.

• Throughout his adventures, when Anpanman gets injured, new heads are baked by Jam Ojisan.

• Anpanman’s nemesis is Baikinman, or Germ Man. His fatal weakness is soap.

• There have been over 1,700 characters in the Anpanman series. Most of them are some form of food.

• Over 50 million copies of Anpanman books have been sold.

Batman may have a more powerful vehicle, but in terms of coolness, it can’t touch this Anpanman bike.

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September 27, 2009

Konoike Tomoko: Inter-Traveller

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“First off. Get outside. Then go so far away that you start regretting coming to such a spot. Do something really difficult, and somehow or other, make your way back home.”
-Tomoko Konoike

Of all the art exhibits that I visited this summer, Tomoko Konoike’s Konoike Tomoko: Inter-Traveller (sic) was the most compelling, visionary, and delightful. Today was the last day of this exhibit. As usual, my timing is impeccably bad, but you’ll be able to see her latest exhibit, Twelve Wolf Poets, at my favorite sculpture park, the Hakone Open Air Museum, from October 9.

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Konoike flexes her artistic versatility in a multi-room exhibition that reads like a fairy tale adventure. There are delicate paintings on paper doors, animation videos, sculpture made of all kinds of materials, mosaics, murals, paintings, light designs, and even furniture.

Two animated videos were projected on books as if the books came to life. One was a creation mythology and the other was an Odyssey of Mimeo, a haunting faceless childlike character. Mimeo is an innocent wanderer, often traveling with a six-legged wolf. The wolf acts as a totem, along with streams of flying daggers, and also a bee girl. These motifs recur throughout the exhibit.

The path through the rooms/worlds mirrors the creation myth journey of Mimeo. Often, the transition between these rooms required the viewer to pass through low curtained entrances, change levels, or enter darkness.

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In the first room, which was veiled in white, there was a massive winged figure with dragonfly wings, that’s perhaps giving birth. A pair of legs stuck out of what can only be described as a vaginal opening. The bare child’s legs had on a pair of sneakers, and this image can be seen throughout the works. There was even a pair of the same disembodied legs sitting on a bench in the museum lobby.

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The second room was red. It had four large panels on each wall. To enter this room you had to pass through a low red curtained entrance. The paintings were vivid and spectacular.

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Another room was an installation with a surreal dioramic landscape. There was an enormous revolving baby head surfaced with broken mosaic mirror shards.  Around it was a shipwrecked boat, a miniature mountain and flittering winged creatures overhead. Sooo cool.

I thoroughly enjoyed the imaginative presentation of the art, and appreciated the integration of all the pieces into one interactive cohesive journey. It was as if I walked through a fantastical theatre performance.

“Don’t sit there gazing at a painting…get outside and feel the wind. Don’t mutter the lines of some old poem, get moving and create some friction. If you don’t keep playing, traveling all around and causing all kinds of friction, until you’re so tired you can’t speak, you’ll never stoke the fires of a robust imagination.”

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