last nite, i opened e window in the deep of winter (well, sorta). it was fucking freezin but i decided to try my luck at star gazing.
these few days, it's supposed to be raining meteorites - some gemini BS, not quite sure their name but supposed to be a meteor shower that's very nice and pretty.
i saw lovely stars last nite - amazin how clear they look after your eyes get accustomed to the darkness. but no shooting stars yet, not like e ones i saw in the white desert in egypt.
anyway, will try again tonight...hehe. this time, with a thicker coat.
anyway, the sun's out now! lovely. yippeE!
this is the view of outside from my apartment. trust me, when e weather gets grim, it gets fucking grim.
that's the building directly opp mine. you see those tiny yelllow figures? those poor constructionw orkers on the rooftop. it may be a rooftop garden they're working on - not sure - but poor guys, it's freezing out there and e winds are really gusty. (this building is v v new).
1) gorgeous sunshine today 2) great gym workout today 3) msn with perry - lovely lovely friend and very reliable 4) stomach better bit today
i can't help but say that i m disappointed w a good pal who's dating now again. i feel that it's a big mistkae. big mistake. sigh. i feel disappointed w her cos she's like disappearing - y do girls just disappear whenever they find a man? i think it's just stupid. well, whatever it is, dont come looknig for me when you have trouble because i dun fucking have time for fairweathered friends.
i dun wanna pin my hopes on friends. better to rely on oneself.
the art and history museum, the museum of the reformation and the last one, the rath museum which has temporary exhibitions ( it has a philip de champaigne show).
eating out at geneva is so frigging expensive. having a slice of cake is at least 4 or 5CHF (swiss francs) - 1CHF is about 0.8SDG.
i did not particularly like the swiss pastries. i dun know y but somehow i found the pastries cafes or shops, not that aesthetically pleasing. strange. the cakes look nice, but not quite fine or 'polished' enough.
i hung out at this particular GLOBUS departmental store which is supposed to be e oldest departmental store at geneva. i hung out at the food court, which has the most wonderful ambience and if u 're lucky, you can find a place that faces outside, on the cobblestoned square.
even tho the weather sux in geneva, it's like having a soggy piece of pastry; the weatehr's coming down like a flat pastry, and the weather's damp and moist and cold!
but oh well, i had a good time cos the people were so nice!
this shot i took random when i was just walking on the street near e lake and it has CHINESE faces. weird. oh well, i dunno leh, i'm very partial to chinese slights. but this one, i think probably isn't.
i took this shot at the top of the ST PIERRE CATHEDRAL atop a hill (i'm atop the roof too). the view's v panoramic but it was frigging cold and the winds were strong. st pierre's a great spot at geneva. just lovely.
this is one view from e top of the cathedral.
this is a shot of the old town where st pierre cathedral is atop the hill. i was at the opera house. they were going to show the enchanted flute, pity expensive.
this is russian church which was built thx to the financial assistance of one of the russian czar's sis-in-law who died like, aeons ago.
nice quaint cafe. not q sure they were serving but it was some kind of genevoise cuisine.
lovely architecture. i love e colours of this particular building; that light yellow with magenta windows
i m sitting in the apartment now. just back from geneva.
i love geneva. ok, not quite love but i do like geneva very much. it's not v tres belle BUT the people are tres simpatico and sympatique. oh, they are so incredibly polite and what have u...
u don't think people are racist there at all, except for the ones w the germanic faces - oops. i mean, u know u travel around e world and see how black people are treated like shit but in geneva, u see them looking quite happy, pleasantly and they get along w other white people well, even as macdonalds where they work together and smile together. u feel that white people genuinely are nice to black peoople and not afraid of them in geneva.
no wonder geneva is the wiorld's 2nd best city in terms of living standards.
no, je ne veux pas Paris. Je l'aime, GENEVA...but only if i live in the old town...
it's about a belgian lady who goes to japan to work (she was born in japan but loves the japanese culture so much that she wants to do that), and what happens.
great wonderful wonderful, is all i can say.
the show was adapted from a novel by amelie nothomb and made into a movei in 2005 and it was really big (i think). in fact, the novel won some book prize in france.
don't watch this show and not expect not to be outraged. i saw it and felt outraged by the ludicrous stereotypes, yet somehow,amidst the storyline, there are layers that you can pick and dissect and think about.
there is no sex in e movie but the whole movie feels v sexual - being hurt, pleasure, pain, hurting others, etc...all set in the context of the japanese office.
must watch!
i've put the synopsis below - there are spoilers, so read it if it interests you.
The heroine, whose name is Amelie, returns with her parents to her native Belgium. But she has fallen in love with Japan, and at the age of 20, she returns to take a job with a vast corporation and "become a real Japanese." Now played by Sylvie Testud as a college graduate who speaks perfect Japanese, she is hired as a translator and assigned to work under the beautiful Fubuki (Kaori Tsuji). She idolizes this woman, so beautiful, so flawless, so tall -- too tall, probably, to ever marry, Amelie reflects.
The story of her year at the Yumimoto Corp., based on a semi-autobiographical novel by Amelie Nothomb, is the story of a Westerner who speaks perfect Japanese but in another sense does not understand Japanese at all. In one way after another she commits social errors, misreads signals, violates taboos and has her fellow workers wondering, she is told, "how the nice white geisha became a rude Yankee." That she is Belgian makes her no less a Yankee from the Japanese point of view; what is important is that she is not Japanese.
Consider her first blunder. She is ordered to serve coffee to visiting executives in a conference room. As she passes around the cups, she quietly says, "Enjoy your coffee." Soon after she leaves the room, the visiting executives walk out in anger, and Omochi (Bison Katayama), the boss of the boss of her boss, screams, "Who is this girl? Why does she speak Japanese?" But, she says, she was hired because she speaks Japanese. "How could they discuss secret matters in front of a foreigner who speaks Japanese?" the boss of her boss screams. "You no longer speak Japanese!"
She argues that it is impossible for her to forget how to speak Japanese, but this is taken as an example of her inability to understand Japan. She learns quickly that the corporate hierarchy is unbending: "You may only address your immediate superior, me," says Fubuki. Eager to find a role, Amelie begins to distribute the mail, only to find she is taking the job of the mailman. She assigns herself to updating every calendar in the office but is told to stop because it is a distraction. That's a shame, because she finds she enjoys her simple tasks. "How silly I was to get a college degree," she says in the narration, "when my mind was satisfied by mindless repetition. How nice it was to live without pride or brains!" Eventually she is assigned to clean the toilets.
This is indeed a woman who is lost in translation. But how accurate is this portrait of Japanese corporate life? I searched for a review from Japan, but wasn't able to find one. My guess is that an actual Japanese corporation has been transformed here through a satirical filter into an exaggeration of basic truths: There is a hierarchy, there is suspicion of foreigners, no one who is not Japanese can ever possibly understand the Japanese, etc. The author Donald Richie has lived in Japan for most of the last 56 years and written invaluable books about its society and films; he was able to relax and adjust, he writes in his recently published journals, only when he realized that he would always be an invisible outsider, exempt from social laws because he was not expected to be able to understand them.
"Fear and Trembling," directed by Alain Corneau, may be a sardonic view of Japanese corporate culture, but that's not all it is. The movie is also subtly sexual and erotic, despite the fact that every scene takes place in the office and there is not a single overt sexual act or word or gesture or reference. Sexuality in the movie's terms is transferred into the power of one person over another; Amelie begins by adoring Fubuki, but eventually realizes that the other woman hates her and is jealous of her as a competitor. Fubuki finds her one demeaning task after another, and Amelie responds simply by -- doing them. By submitting.
This response has a quietly stimulating result for Fubuki, who is aroused by Amelie's submission. The brilliance of the movie is to suppress all expression of this arousal; we have to sense it in small moments of body language, in almost imperceptible pauses or reactions, in the rhythm set up between command and obedience. Understanding Fubuki better than she understands herself, Amelie is eventually able to win the game by becoming so submissive, so much in fear of the taller, more powerful woman, that a kind of erotic release takes place. She exaggerates the "fear and trembling" that, it is said, one should exhibit when addressing the emperor.
The movie that comes to mind is "Secretary," the 2002 film with James Spader as a lawyer whose new secretary, played by Maggie Gyllenhaal, gradually enters with him in an S/M relationship that she, as the submissive one, finds a source of power (and amusement). Much the same thing happens in "Fear and Trembling"; that it happens below the level of what is said and done and acknowledged makes it doubly erotic, because it cannot be admitted or acknowledged. The film ends again in the Kyoto rock garden, whose message is perhaps: If you could see all the rocks at once, what would be the point of the garden?
here i m, sitting upstairs in haagen daz facing somewhere along e boulevard betw louvre and opera.
i was so fucking fatigued.
someone asked me why i didnt' speak up when people in europe do things that can piss me off.
well, i did and i do.
what instances? when pplk are rude to me, i show it. when ppl are disgusting to me, i show it. e.g 1) when lady at reception ask me to wait when i wanted to check out. i turned to look at her and showed her my face. she asked "did u take anything from mini bar?" i said NO. "cest tout?" (that's all?). she suddenly beamed and said YES. i turned d walked off.
2) a man stopped me on e road and asked me for something/direction along boulevard port royale. i said "i don't understand what you're saying" and walked off.
3) security at museum told me to "stop swinging my audioguide" and to "wear it around my neck". i said "no, i didn't swing it" and no, i didn't wear it around my neck becos i dont need no fucking security man to tell me what to do. BUT i didn't try to explain anything to him becuase he couldn't even understand me. at one point, he asked me "vous parlez francaise?". i said NON, really curt. so that's my riposte, kinda.
4) another person on plane today, sat inside and along e aisle, i placed my coat. then, later a man wanted to sit there and asked him, if that coat's his. the 1st man said no, and simply picked up my coat and put it in the seat in front of him. i was chafed and picked up my coat, gave a really grousy look on my face but of course, i didnt say anything because wat was e point? say what? something sarcastic? i didn't want to waste my time.
nor
5) when they were announcing that people get on the plane; passengers under 'A'. how e fuck did i know where i was? so i finly, walked up to the counter, and the man checked my internet boarding pass and i asked him how wld i know if i were A or B, or whatever. he said "it's HERE!" he circled. i was going to board the plane, and didn't bother.
the point is...you don't always need to have e last say because sometimes u just don't need to fucking care and when that happens, i know that it doesnt bother or affect my that much anymore. that's all i want to say to a friend who asked me "why i didnt say something back"...
went to louvre. instead of the usual wings that i went to, i accidentally chanced upon the arts and decoratifs museum instead. i went in, at first, the security guard asked to check my bag, i was wonderign ifg he was being racist but apparently not - after that, he smiled at me. later, i wentto the bookshop of that museum wing and i thot for a moment the securrity guard was actually trying to SEE IF I WAS SHOPLIFTING. but i told msyelf -stiop being an idiot. i was.
anyway, i took some shots of certain items which i loved but they looked awful in these shots but i'll try to show u anyway.
this is one of those tables which was used by some countess in france and it was covered in BLACK turtle shell something (haha was i really listening?). but black was really in back then...
armoire - old ancient cabinet - i just absolutely love this piece of work. it looks so wonderful, a precursor to rococo style.
this last shot was taken when i was at the arts et decoratifs museum, just overlooking the tuileries gardens, which used to be where the old palace was during the medici dynasty - if u watched queen margot, you'll remember that old bitch dowager who was that bitch queen.
the wheel is set up once again, in the distance u see, at place de la concorde but i missed it - didnt have time OR DIDNT MAKE TIME to go. i've always wanted to sit on it but always miss it, either cos it was not set up by the time i wanted to or whatever lah.
