boombox.

BOOMBOX from Ely Kim on Vimeo.

friday fun! this is my new boyfriend. xo

(actually, his name is Ely Kim, and he's a graduate student studying design at yale. it's 100 dances in 100 locations in 100 days. i've sent this video to a million of my coworkers and we can't stop laughing. and where did he get that kitten shirt? send pls.)

sicky sick.

weekend.

1. people under the stairs, friday at shelter.
2. samuel had a party.
3. sam jacobs is famous?

gold in the air of summer.

this photo is of two lovely ladies in vancouver, mish & sarah. it was taken sometime in 2006, during a friend's birthday picnic lunch. i look at it sometimes, when i feel lonely for my friends across the world or when i miss the sun way too much. in vancouver, the sun is this amazing presence, warm and golden bathing everything in rich summertime love. when it's warm out, there is no place better than outside with your friends on the beach or on a patio with a cold jug of sangria. the sun sparkles and skips over the water like diamonds and turns dark hair a lighter shade, brings freckles out, gives your body vitamin b and creates this calming soothing barely constrained sense of happiness. basically, it's so pretty you just want to die.

i was thinking today about how it's already been two and a half years since moving here, and how hazy and grey it has seemed nearly this entire time. china is the only place i've ever been in the world where you can look directly at the sun. it's red & perfectly round and doesn't burn your eyes - it's just there, a floating orb in a sky of hazy, sad gray.

how depressing. bring on the sun!

ground control.

some more photos from the weekend, monks & prayers at jing an temple. we bought incense sticks and waved them around for a bit, i hope this means all my wishes (prayers?) will come true.

it's only wednesday but this has already been a big week. last night we went over to jordan's for a lovely night of boggle and arrested development and indian curries. there was supposed to be monopoly but somehow it never materialized. tonight i'm going to go see jose gonzalez, and there's lots going on this week that every night is booked. hopefully i'll find time for sleep? gotta keep workin' to pay them bills, there's an economic crisis on now, did you hear?!

shout!

another blistery day, more photos trickling in from the weekend. on saturday we went to jing an temple and prayed for a great niu year.

the fox & rabbit.

wikipedia says love is both a verb and a noun. love is not a single feeling but an emotion built from two ore more feelings (& our thoughts about our feelings). this diversity of uses and meanings, combined with the complexity of the feelings involved, makes love unusually difficult to consistently define, even compared to other emotional states."

and so all the times we were in love were:
when you made those french fries from scratch, when i biked and you walked, when we pulled the mattress into the kitchen and didn't leave for three days, when we ran across the park and it felt like flying, when you didn't leave when i didn't leave when we both decided to stay, when you introduced me to your mom, when i didn't mind sharing a toothbrush, when you woke me up in the middle of the night to tell me a story, when our friends threw us that party, when you rubbed off all the rust on my fenders as a surprise, when we both wore the same colour shirt by mistake, when we drove over the cambie bridge and said we felt invincible, when i sat on the kitchen counter and you kissed my wrists, when we went to that silent auction and both tried to bid on the same item, when we stood in that crowd and it felt like there was no one else, when you bought me that pencil case because you remembered i liked it, when you flew all day and night just to see me for a week, when i tripped and fell on that ledge and you just happened to walk by and catch me, when i stayed up all night writing that story because it was your birthday, when we did mushrooms and walked up and down the empty streets, when we laughed and laughed and laughed and lost our voices in the morning, when we fought all night and felt like the world was ending, when we sat in the back of the airplane and ignored everyone else, when we drunkenly bought that durian and made a mess, when we found that kitten and brought her home, when we sang karaoke by ourselves until the bar shut down, when we got in that fight and you punched the door and it hurt so much we both couldn't stop laughing, when everything blended together all into one. x

daft punk is playing at my house.

housewarming + dafter party, friday night. all photos courtesy joey gu.

valentines for one.

a very cold, blustery day in shanghai. the sky is grey and it's already starting to get dark. i suppose i'm having one of those mondays where everything i want seems just a tiny bit out of reach.

the weekend was very nice, i had a housewarming party at my new apartment and i got to see nearly every single person i care about in shanghai. there is something so lovely about introducing your friends to each other and seeing them get along - sometimes living across the world from the life you used to know gets lonely, and then there are nights when everything comes together & it all just clicks. we stayed out until the morning and danced and talked and hugged and laughed and wouldn't you know it, last weekend was the first weekend since i've moved to this city that i finally realized that i like it here.

it was valentines day on saturday, the very first valentines day i've spent single in many many years. even though i had originally been planning on writing all sorts of wry anecdotes about how terrible it was, it was actually very sweet, and i spent it with friends doing fun silly things. someone said to me yesterday that making a connection to a very good friend is just as valid an emotion as falling in love, that those connections can be just as powerful. i think that's what my 2009 is going to be about.

ps. i've been re-reading a copy of kafka on the shore - my friend dan posted a really beautiful passage from one of her favourite books the other day and i thought i'd share one of my favourite passage murakami's ever written.

"Sometimes fate is like a small sandstorm that keeps changing direction. You change direction, but the sandstorm chases you. You turn again, but the storm adjusts. Over and over you play this out, like some ominous dance with death just before dawn. Why? Because this storm isn’t something that blew in from far away, something that has nothing to do with you. This storm is you. Something inside you. So all you can do is give in to it, step right inside the storm, closing you eyes and plugging up your eyes so the sand doesn’t get in, and walk through it, step by step. There’s no sun there, no moon, no direction, no sense of time. Just fine white sand swirling up into the sky like pulverised bones. That’s the kind of sandstorm you need to imagine."

smash your head.

yo blogosphere. it's so sleepy in here.

the past few days have been really lovely, the sun has been shining and very unlike shanghai, the sun has been shining it's crazy shine all over my face. we've been biking around the city, drinking margaritas & causing general ruckus. do you like baileys?

i'm hyper because of all the coffee, go go go gadget arms!
ps. i got a MAC. no way!

three things on a tuesday.

a couple of funny things over the last day or so:
1. beijing cctv tower goes up in smoke!
2. daft punk super scam!
3. an opening you should probably check out.

xo!

new digs in two oh oh nine.

some photos from my new place, it's still a bit messy & needs some work, but it's getting there! no internet set up, but after a week of late nights at work and margaritas made in my mouth yesterday, i'm exhausted. looking forward to a lovely weekend of sleep and more sleep. have a great weekend! xo

25 things you don't care about.

so i really feel as though i've been neglecting this blog, but it hasn't been on purpose. over the CNY holiday, i moved into my new place, and it doesn't have the internet! IMAGINE! not having the internet. it's been painful, let me tell you. LET ME TELL YOU.

ok, let me tell you some other things, how about?
seems like alot of people are doing this 25 random things web meme.
maybe you should do it too. x


(item no. 26 should be that i'm so fucking anal about font formatting that i had to make a .jpeg of this list. xoxo)
(item no. 27 should be that i didn't proof read that .jpeg and now i'm soooo angry.)

calm a llama down.

first day back at the office, after a long CNY break! brrrrr, it's cold. can't wait for the summer.