Pages

home.

Thursday, December 31, 2009


Gawd I love that Southern Drawllll.

I find that it's a bit easier to find a nice pale pink for something, but to find a good shade of blue is hard...it could end up looking too corporate, too nice, too whatever, it's hard to find that one that feels just right.

Anyways...uh new year in like half an hour here in Hong Kong!! 2009 you were sweeeet (for serious!)

A-S-I-A TOUR IV

Wednesday, December 30, 2009

Trip is winding down, I'll be back in Van on the day before the big ol' 2010.

It sure has been nice here in Kuala Lumpur spending time with my family, drinking milk tea (both HOT and COLD!), being in hot weather (and not sweating too hard, something that I am kind of proud of, ahaaaaa) and just experiencing and navigating a new city.



A lonely mall.



This little girl was beautiful!

Hey Van did you miss my face (leaf face!?), cause I kinda missed yours. See ya soon tree face!

A-S-I-A TOUR III, SINGAPORE (Part 2)

Saturday, December 26, 2009

Yo!
So this is what happened on my last day in Singapore:
David was totally awesome and drove (DROVE!) me around and showed me stuff:

What! David Lang drives? Yes it's true! AND! Not only that, talking on a cell phone at the same time! Remarkable.

In front of the door...where we met...David's...GRANDMA!

An educational theme park, Haw Par Villa:

I think all of what you see in Haw Par Villa is painted by hand...with a noticeably small paint brush...

This was hands down the most weird/disturbing thing in the park for me, I still feel very physically weird looking at this thing. The point of the park is to instill buddhist morals and whatnot into you, and my dad said that this thing is to remind men that beautiful women (or hookers I can't remember) can be treacherous and to be a moral man. Uh yeah! I am totally a moral man now.




Driving around aimlessly, we ended up at this awesome beach where there was windsurfing, the water was so warm, and was such a nice way to end the day and say goodbye to Singapore with.

A-S-I-A TOUR II, SINGAPORE (Part 1)

Tuesday, December 22, 2009

So I am back in Kuala Lumpur now after being in Singapore for a few days. It's a pretty dialed city (although it has a hilariously weird national symbol), public transport is awesome (so noticeable after being in Kuala Lumpur), everything works, makes sense, you know, dialed.

So here's what part of it looked like:

Hm I went to the Toy Museum (one of the top 5 most interesting museums in Singapore according to one website! lol)

Isn't this Batman compass so cool?! I want one so bad! I'd never ever get lost again! And I would also possibly be able to fight crime as well.

Seeing so many old toys was interesting, but once you get past that, and you start thinking about how this museum came into being, a guy who collected a buttload of toys and then his wife donated them to the city, I don't know, I felt like, what kind of guy spends this amount of money and time on toys? I couldn't decide if the guy was insanely weird and a bit out of touch, or just really appreciative of...toys in an extremely healthy way.

The museum reminded me of my ...hahaha....beanie baby collection. Ah god! I have sooooo many beanie babies, I got totally caught up in that hype when I was in junior high. I wonder by the time I die if I will amass an even larger beanie baby collection (unlikely though, I haven't bought a beanie baby since I was like 13) and my husband will donate it to say...Calgary and there will be the first ever beanie baby museum and it will be 11 dollars to get in (that's how much this museum costed!) Ah god culture at it's finest!

I also went to the Singapore National Museum. As you may have noticed I saw a lot of museums. This museum was surprisingly good (I tend to think "National" museums are pretty...dull and uninspired). It talked about Singapore's history in food, film, fashion, and other things and it also had some non permanent exhibitions that were well done as well. What was also good about this museum were the explanations for the pieces, really well articulated, enlightening points.

Hey uh, everyone from Clement's third year spring semester core, Plan B 3.0 exhibit, ha uh, holla? Kind of makes the jars in the Plan B 3.0 exhibit look very...homey. Anyways. These jars were super beautiful! They displayed ingredients found in Singapore cooking, and there were some jars where you pulled this thing and you could smell what was inside. So wonderfully interactive! I love smelling food things!


Okay there's more to Singapore that I have to show (later, these mosquito bites I just got are killing me and it's hard to concentrate) and it involves this guy:

lol.

Talk soon friends!

A-S-I-A TOUR I:

Friday, December 18, 2009

Hong Kong:

Hong Kong was a blur of shopping malls. I saw a buttload of Uniqlo's and Muji's and now I wonder how much I'll be craving seeing them in person once I am back in Van.

Seeing so many shops and so many people, and sadly getting kind of bored of looking at the clothes (all becomes a blur after awhile...a very monochromatic blur), I started looking harder at the people. And I think this: the fashion sense in Hong Kong, after being to Japan (albeit briefly so this observation could be very superficial) and talking to my Aunt, I am thinking that it is motivated and defined mostly by status and huge well known brands, rather than in Japan it seems to be motivated more by true self expression (you see a lot more 'stranger' looks in Japan than you would in Hong Kong and a variety as well, extremes like over the top outfits seen in Harajuku and then clean looks like Muji and Uniqlo). It doesn't matter what you are wearing, but who you are wearing, and it seems like the opposite is more found in Japan. I know brands and who you are loyal to is a big thing around the whole world, but it seems to be a really dominating and deciding factor in how a person's appearance is defined in Hong Kong.

Kuala Lumpur:

KL's Twin towers! My dad works on one of the lower floors of one of these buildings. I don't know which one.

Aren't we?!

Islamic Arts Museum Malaysia. Okay I am not closed minded or anything (or whatever), but I didn't think I'd be at all interested in seeing this museum, but faced with a bunch of time in my hands and not really knowing what to do in Kuala Lumpur, I went to this museum on a whim because it is one of those big tourist things to do. I say that I wouldn't be interested because I don't really know much about Islamic Art and it just never really held any interest to me. But this museum was beautiful! There was a section that showed various mosques around the world (little perfect models with insane tiny details that just thinking about make my eyes cry), and holy shit some of them are amazing, AND THEY WERE BUILT FOREVER AGO! Really nice and impressive.

I feel like I've paid more attention to the architecture in Kuala Lumpur than in most places I've been to. Maybe because I had/have few notions about the place and to see impressive structures here and there is neat and a bit of a surprise.

I have been drinking like gallons of cold milk tea, god, so! delicious! And everything that I've eaten in Kuala Lumpur (Chicken Rice, Laksa, Chicken Biryani, etc) has been awesome and super good, and is great when you first eat it, but I am beginning to feel the effects of the heaviness/greasiness of it, like feeling mega tired afterwards and thinking, "Man what did I just eat." Anyways.

A really sort of nerve-wracking thing about Kuala Lumpur is the taxis. With most, okay well, EVERY, place that I've been to, you can hail a taxi, and that taxi will take you wherever you want. But here! HERE! They sometimes don't want to take you there (because they want to stay on a certain side or whatever), and if they do take you, they might put it at a set fee, which is higher than if they were to just open the meter and let it run. I don't really understand why they do it and it just makes for a really nerve-wracking experience, especially being a foreigner because I am super not good at haggling and when you want to get somewhere, you just want to (or at least I want to) get there as soon and as easily as possible, even if it means spending like a few dollars more.

Tiny bit of Singapore:

Went to the Singapore Art Museum. It's in a really neat building, (a restored old school building) and I was really impressed with this piece by Donna Ong (beautiful!) and also this collective (Vertical Submarine) and their stuff made me laugh.

Hey!

It was nice catching up! Let's do this again sometime!