A Hilarious Look at Sushi Etiquette

http://www.atomfilms.com/af/content/japanese_sushi

Biatch

I've decided to celebrate the 10th post of this blog with a picture of everyone's favourite , Bai Ling. Move over Paris Hilton: Bai Ling was in this business before you could even pronounce "c-o-c-k".

Quite a picture I must say. She looks like a cobra in some sort of a bizzarro ballerina's outift. Hmm, delectable.

Good Laughs

I forgot to mention this. Go to this blog, Bent Yellow Boy, scroll down to the entry titled "Celine Dion as fag hag" on March 20, and watch the music video. Note the trademark wind-blown hair.

I was like "holy crap" when I saw it. Goes to show how the 90s really was the golden age of civilization.

Really funny stuff. His whole blog is.

It's All Uphill From Here

Poster for my design project: it's worse than it looks

Design demonstration was on Wednesday and no parts of my machine worked. The humiliation was however brief (thankfully). The elaborate ritualistic burning of the machine that I had for so long planned never happened either--I thought I could for once do without all the negativity and strive for a small measure of fineness. So I went to New Ho King and doted on a plate of beef & brocolli instead.

Thursday was eventless; I skipped classes and made a creamy leek and potato stew and had people over. Good times.

More good times on Friday: went to Kensington Market with Aliza and met up with newly-hitched Sam. It was gray and windy, altogether a terrific day for coffeeshop-lounging and conversations galore--movie snobbery, new apartments, enticing prospect of drinking forties on a Annex patio--all of this over expensive coffee, which I drank not entirely without guilt. Kensington Market is gentrifying, and we've got blood on our hands.

Today was one of those days when you thought you'd been working hard but got little done. A supposed study session at Future's degenerated into people watching; saw the Failed Artist, Sandra Oh's mom (no not really), and an awkward blind date where a golddigger worked a professor; discussed the role of dogs and babies as the facilitators of social interactions between otherwise lonely but staunchly aloof urbanites.

There is this web service called China Bridal that hooks up rural Japanese men with women from China's northeastern rustbelt; and there is this advertisement I saw in the Spectator (the voice of elitist conservative Britain) that markets "elegant Japanese ladies" to successful British men. Here is the real problem: that the world is full of lonely people all over, including all of us, to a certain extent.

And that includes my rowdy neighbours and their group of obnoxious parties animals. You sad bastards, I sit quietly cursing.

p.s. I need a blog name that's actually not lame. I'm open to suggestions.

Having the March Blues

That battered garbage bin at the back of my apartment reminds me of me.

Rule, Nerdlandia!

Those of you who know me well probably know that my design project is due for a public demonstration on Wednesday afternoon. For those of you who don't know me that well, the aforementioned design project is to build an automated grain-packaging machine, part of the core curriculum of my engineering education and a major source of misery in my life.

I'm posting this information because 1) the demonstration is open to members of the public and 2) you should come. If you are the type of guy/gal with tucked-in shirts and pocket-protectors who wetdreams about groupies with Jay Ingram and Natasha Stillwell, you are probably foaming at the corner of your mouth already; all the cool robotics will inspire hours upon hours of good dinnertable conversations afterwards. If you belong to the rest of humanity, however, a deep foray into the heart of Nerdland should also prove entertaining--the human dynamics in engineering (my division in particular) is most defintely different, and the whole human carnival will also, for better or for worse, provide hours upon hours of dinnertable entertainment. Do dress down though: khaki pants, white socks and trainers are the prerequisites; engineers hate Mr. Fancypants.

Natasha and Jay, light of my life, fire of the groin (barring the Eww factor)

So if you live in the fair city of Toronto, do come to the UofT campus on the coming Wednesday at 2 pm (location TBA). Interested parties should drop a line in the comments section. Now I must go back and battle with stepper motors and solenoids.

I can't believe I gave up St. Patrick's Day for this.

Toronto & South Dakota: Recycled News

Take note, everyone. Richard Florida's Creative Class theory is not all bullshitty polemics afterall. In the, well, not-quite-latest news, Toronto Hydro has announced plans to turn the entire city of Toronto into a wi-fi hotspot, with downtown coverage operational possibly as early as this fall. The city will thus become one of the few North American cities (after Philadelphia, New Orleans, and San Francisco) to have city-wide wireless Internet coverage.

San Francisco, people! The semi-mythical land of coffee-swigging sandal-wearing so-hip-it-hurts lesbian artists of colour! Tasteless cultural stereotyping (which I seem to have a knack for) aside, is Toronto really there yet?

Richard Florida would say: "getting there", and I with my shameless Toronto boosterism would gladly concur. The attraction of Wi-Fi on the "creative class"--hi-tech professionals, artists, web-designers--hardly needs to be emphasized more. Who hasn't dreamed of a languid afternoon spent in High Park? Who hasn't dreamed of a languid afternoon spent browsing useless websites? Why not spending a languid afternoon in High Park WHILE browsing useless websites? Finally wikipedia-nerds will get out and get some sun.

The whole creative class thing sort of leads into this piece of news from South Dakota, whose government has recently banned abortion in all but life-threatening situations. Get this: if you dad came in your room one day, raped and impregnated you, you wouldn't be able to get rid of that child. Kudos to their common sense: South Dakota has been suffering the worst of rural flight, with most of their college grad voting with their feet and leaving for places where, you guessed it, rape/incest victims actually have rights.

Some people just don't get it. South Dakota has been trying to fight brain drain with tax breaks and free land. But really what does a piece of South Dakotan land mean for a well-educated and progressive-minded college-grad? Nil. Nada.

South Dakotan legislators need to be lectured by Richard Florida before they once again sabotage themselves. Meanwhile the exodus of their young talents is only going to continue.

If you see a guy with horn-rimmed glasses working on a iBook who sports a midwestern accent at Future's, try guess where he's from.

And soon enough I'll be doing my blogging at Future's, too.

P.S. The following states are considering a similar abortion ban: Alabama, Georgia, Indiana, Kentucky, Mississippi, Missouri, Ohio, Oklahoma, Tennessee, and West Virginia. Notice a pattern here?

Most these states are already pretty odious places to be in the first place. Someone should tell them that smearing yourself with shit doesn't make you any more attractive.

What a Little Bugger!

Ok. I fixed up the commenting system so even non-members can comment now. Happy commenting; good things will happen to you in the form of better grades and a more explosive sex life.

Starchitect Power!!!

Towards the end of today I was feeling more than a bit feverish, the culminative effect of sleeping for two hours a day for a week. More cowbells won't help now, sleep would. Nonetheless to celebrate the end of a tough week I went for sushi and succeeded in not letting my face fall in the food. Afterwards I stumbled south to catch the Frank Gehry retrospective at the AGO. Bad idea perhaps, but this is what I call mental opium: I can never get tired of standing in front of magnificent buildings and letting my napoleonic alter ego pretend that I designed it.



I can't say that I'm a big Frank Gehry fan; I've always been queasy with the whole nihilistic undertone of deconstructivist buildings. But man, anything is preferrable to the sad pathetic excuse of an art museum that is the current AGO. The fact that I was one of the only two people there speaks volumes.

The AGO kindly designated what felt like its storage room to this meagre exhibit of 5 buildings. Adding salt to injury, visitors had to pass through that dreadful concrete walkway with the dreadful picture of that dreadful Henry Moore sculpture, past that dreadful sculpture court, where, even more dreadfully, two women sat gazing at the Henry Moore's, full of admiration ("Is that a phallic object?")

On display was the Stata Center (pictured above) at the MIT. I thought I rather liked it compared to the other Gehry projects: playful, packs a punch, but not too destructive. The building meets the sidewalk more or less like a normal mid-rise does, and the overall form is just conventional enough to blend in with the street wall. There's even an amphitheatre-like entrance that is apparently intended for students to loiter and people-watch--a small concession to the common man that many demigods of architecture nowadays refuse to make. All in all, a "comfortable" building for where it is.

Interestingly Gehry had based the whole building's concept on an Orangutan's village, because many professors expressed the desire to have a building with a "hierachy" built into it. The laws of the jungle still rule. Chuckle.

I never really liked his signature stuff though. You know what with all the titanium and wood. Irrational, bewildering for no good reason; plus the sensitivity to context is pretty much none-existent here. Looking closely and you'll see that his Walt Disney concert hall in downtown LA is built entirely upon a foundation of a concrete platform. How is that a friendly gesture to pedestrians who can only see a blank wall as they walk down the street? Downtown L.A. is not the most lively place to start with; that building just about puts the last nail in the coffin as far as the immediate surroundings are concerned.

Fuck, he's Frank Gehry. Starchitects like him get to make expensive personal states like that.

In the last room was Transformation AGO. I honestly thought he wasn't really trying with that building (did anyone else feel that way?). An improvement no less; plus the art gallery can always do with a bigger over-priced gallery shop.

As I stepped out of the exhibit they were showing a video clip with Adrienne Clarkson interviewing Gehry for the CBC, where he kept bitching about the poor-Jewish-little-me. Yeah, his name was originally Ephraim Goldberg.

The entire exhibit took me half an hour. Don't spend 10 bucks on this thing unless you have a membership. Wikipedia puts together a better Gehry retrospective than the AGO does.

I walked up Spadina towards my apartment in the early March dampness, face burning, feeling slightly unsteady because of the fever while trying to balance the hang-over-in-a-bottle cheap wine I had just bought. As I rounded Spadina Circle I secretly wished that Toronto had been a more beautiful place.

Manifesto

So this is it. The blogging fad has claimed its latest victim. Be happy though that Siqi, unlike more than 90% of humanity out there, doesn't complete suck at writing and has something semi-interesting to say from time to time. Like what I stepped on while walking on St. George today (I'm sure you wanna know). But I digress.

Unfortunately this will also mean the end of my MSN space, much loved (by MSN space standards) but perpectually malnourished as it is. Fret not: this is better for wasting your time. Notice that "Next Blog" button on the top right corner?

Why a blog? And why now? Lately there has been a lot of unhappiness and a lot of soul searching about what I'm doing and why I'm doing it. Engineering is a drain; and not to come across snobbish or anything, it puts people at the risk of a lifestyle that solely revolves around cheap Spadina eateries, classes, and the engineering cafe (aptly named "the pit"). Terrible thing really, but worse still is the de-sensitizing effect: you stop noticing what interesting movies are on and what's going on around the city; soon enough you stop noticing that you just forgot to take a shower last night.

I guess writing is therapuetic this way. There is just something soothing about putting all the transient good moments of a day on paper--a good meal, a midnight walk through the Annex, a good movie, or (the hilarity of) stepping on dog shit; and they in turn force you to look for them in the first place. So here I am.

Forgive the Caban aesthetics of this minimalism. I wish as I never before that I had actually learned something in Grade 11 computer graphics.

So stay tuned ladies and gents. Now I have to stuff myself with pork pot roast and study.

Just a test

Don't worry, I will have better things to say.