Categories
in china

word of the day: 地震 = dì zhèn = earthquake

during today’s chinese class, 2:30pmish:

me – teacher, can we stop a bit? i’m feeling dizzy.
heidi – me too, strange.

a little silence followed, while we realized that the whole apartment on 31st floor was gently swaying back and forth.

heidi – is it an earthquake?
me – hum, you’re probably right.

scary mixed feelings: the urgency of getting cover and feeling safe ground, the panic of being too high to reach safe ground quickly, the fear of the building just collapsing on us (i don’t think many of the buildings in shanghai would resist a serious earthquake).

so after a bit of hesitation, we got our shoes on, ran downstairs and rested a bit in the park until we felt calmer… and eavesdropped on passerby’s who seemed to have either felt it too and seen the buildings moving – or not felt it at all.

i ended up canceling the rest of the class because afterwards i didn’t feel too safe up there and took a taxi towards a coffeeshop on nanjing. the driver had heard about the earthquake on the radio, but didn’t feel anything and proceeded to reassure me that in shanghai, earthquakes were very rare.

good.

Categories
links and ideas

when obama wins

whenobamawins.jpg

a very entertaining meme that started on twitter and can now be shuffled on a microsite by kottke.

(seen on tcritic.com)

Categories
in china

blind dating

the description on the back:

It’s amazing to me that a society which has mastered the concept of fire is capable of making a film this bad.

Too insipidly, cloyingly cutesy to be edge, too crass, juvenile and vulgar to be cute, and not funny enough to be either. Additionally, there is not one single iota of genuine wit, emotion, or originality in even one frame of this odious film.

It’s as if someone took “At first sight”, “Daredevil”, “My big fat greek wedding” and “Bend it like Beckham” (among others) and threw them in a blender. Worse than that the film is insulting to every group it portrays: blind people, Italian-American, African-American, Indian-Americans, limousine drivers, therapists. Even the portrayal of prostitutes is somehow beneath the dignity of the profession.

The ludicrous, predictable plot would be easily forgivable. After all, this is a romantic comedy. We’re here to have fun and feel good.

what would your reaction be, if the movie you were about to pick had this (brilliant) synopsis? :D

Categories
photography

split

stumbled upon a flickr set with beautiful photography and a voyeuristic edge: daily contents dyptics.

faces + content of their bags. it’s addictive and beautifully done. i chose this dyptic because i’ve just got myself a little camera like one of those pictured above, the split-cam. the description on its microsite reads “the most schizophrenic 35mm camera to ever land in your palms.” .
sounds promising, can’t wait to see the first roll!

Categories
in china

your daughter’s (olympic) graduation

“…those concerns about China’s human rights are legitimate and justified, but this is not the right time to over blow it into serious confrontation. …… to highlight these problems in the run up to the Olympics is inappropriate. It’s like on your daughter’s graduation ceremony, one of your friends tries to point out the fact that she is actually three months pregnant and doesn’t know who is the baby’s father.”

Great analogy! Unfortunately though, there are a whole bunch of people who are absolutely determined to use this moment to bring their concerns about Tibet, Darfur, human rights etc etc to the attention of the world. They see this as their only opportunity to exert pressure on Beijing and not only will laugh and point and catcall at your daughter, they’ll claim to have impregnated her themselves if it gets people to take notice.

again, from the time: blog.