Closer to God

“Archangel Michael” by David LaChapelle

Abandoned building

Am I the only one who got the wrong idea when they saw this in the meat section of the supermarket?

In Korean boyband news …

2PM Samsung Anycall Corby CFs – 2 versions

Samsung continues cross-promoting its phones with pop groups; here boyband 2PM release a song called “Any color” to promote the Corby line of “any color phones”.

I hope they release a video. The song is actually super-catchy; better than their official single, “Heartbeat”, which is most notable for its zombie-themed butoh-boyband choreography:

[M/V] 2PM “Heartbeat” from 01:59PM

Waiting for the tram

 

 

Little piece of Bangkok

I had dinner recently at Ying Thai 2,  on Lygon Street . It is an odd spot for a Thai restaurant, on Melbourne’s Italian food strip. But actually, I prefer this branch to the original on the ethnically Thai stretch of Victoria Street in Richmond. And the Carlton place is still always packed, and more often than not, with young Thai students, so that can only be a good sign.

It is that authenticity that gives the restaurant its charm. The bright, mismatched pink and green furniture, aqua walls and boisterous Thai chatter give it a very “Bangkok” pop twist , a playfulness that you also find in the trendy little places on Soi Ari or off Sukhumvit.

And the beef salad (with peanuts!) isn’t bad, either

“I’m obsessed with the mess that’s America”

MARINA AND THE DIAMONDS | HOLLYWOOD

If these walls could talk …

Elk “murders” woman: BBC

This from the BBC World News Website (the bolded section emphasized by me):

A Swedish man who was arrested on suspicion of murdering his wife has been cleared, after police decided she was probably killed by an elk.
Ingemar Westlund, aged 68, found the dead body of his wife Agneta, 63, by a lake close to the village of Loftahammer in September 2008.
He was immediately arrested and held in police custody for 10 days.
Now the case has been dropped after forensic analysis found elk hair and saliva on his wife’s clothes.
Mr Westlund told Expressen newspaper: “My family and I have been dragged through a nightmare.”
His wife had last been seen taking the family dog out for a walk in the forest. When she failed to return her husband went out to look for her.
Although the murder investigation was dropped five months ago, details have only just emerged and the police plan to hold a news conference next week to explain what happened.
The European elk, or moose, is usually considered to be shy and will normally run away from humans. But Swedish Radio International says the animals can become aggressive after eating fermented fallen apples in gardens.

Seems like Australians aren’t the only ones who need to deal with an increasingly agressive drinking culture …

Deco dentist, Arabic church, blue building

Clazziquai Project (클래지콰이) – 핑 (Ping)

Addictive!!

Dengue spreads online

Earlier in the week I discovered a great new Asian web resource with CNNGO. Now, a Brazilian one. “Dengue” is a cheekily named Rio de Janeiro fashion/lifestyle magazine, drawing its inspiration from “favela chic” . ( The city’s infamous favelas battled an outbreak of the dengue fever disease last year.) It has now sprouted a stylish internet offshoot. Check out denguemag online here.

Aussie pandas move to house of horrors

This weekend Australia’s first ever pandas arrived from China, a gift from Beijing to the Adelaide Zoo. It struck me that Adelaide was an interesting choice for the great gesture of Chinese goodwill. Surely Sydney’s zoo, or Melbourne’s, or even Canberra’s would have been more logical?

But perhaps it was a shrewd move – with so few other attractions to compete against, the pandas have become the overnight stars of South Australia’s tourism promotions, virtual new symbols of the state. They are getting promoted to the high heavens by their local state government, resulting in a win-win for Adelaide and Beijing.

I wonder if Australia will fall for panda-mania like Thailand, whose baby bear now stars in its own reality TV show? (And come to think of it, the Thai pandas are also housed in a “second-tier” city, Chiang Mai rather than the more obvious Bangkok.)

Is this all part of a sophisticated campaign? A global game of chess or “panda diplomacy”?

But I also wonder if the Chinese are aware of Adelaide Zoo’s “special” history.  A small, somewhat dowdy city of a million people, Adelaide has long been notorious in Australia for its disproportionately violent and bizarre crimes. In 1985 someone broke into the city’s zoo and hacked 65 animals (many of them rare species) to death with a chainsaw.

I vividly remember watching the news on TV as a 9 year-old child, and yet if you meet someone from Adelaide today they will almost always feign no knowledge of the  Zoo Massacre.

Last year the city’s seething, thuggish underbelly surfaced again when teenagers attacked a 70 year-old blind flamingo at the zoo with a golf club. ( The zoo was home to one of Australia’s only flamingo colonies; the birds were imported in 1903 and are no longer allowed due to tight quarantine restrictions. After most of the birds died in a 1915 drought the three or four survivors at Adelaide Zoo became the only remaining flamingoes in Oz. I remember being really excited to finally see one when I went overseas).

Let’s just hope the pandas have a barbed wire fence ….

Surf Camp!

Just back from the school’s annual Surf Camp, on the Great Ocean Road. It was exhausting, being on call 24/7 around 150 moody 14 year olds, with girls (and boys) having bitch tantrums and putting on their best adolecent attitudes to impress each other.

But the camp did have its undeniable charms;  lessons from South American surf instructors ( teenage girl to me: “He is hot! Mr, how would you rate him one to ten?”), camping overnight in tents in the bush, and my personal highlight; a hike through the stark, surreal world of a burnt-out bush forest, with black charred earth everywhere , stark, twisted black trees and the smell of ashes still heavy in the air.

We  saw kangaroos and echidnas, and a fox hole, but not the dropbears the kids had wanted ( a kind of Aussie urban myth, vicious koala-like creatures that drop onto their victims heads from above). A fast-moving shape in the undergrowth was somehow pinned as a feral “manncoon” , a word that stuck for the rest of the camp – apparently it is the name of the the largest species of domestic cat:

We also came upon this odd, slightly eerie outdoor chapel in the middle of nowhere:

And of course; the beach itself was awesome. Surfing was awesome. Although I am yet to stand on the board and move at the same time, I can totally see the appeal. One of these days, Im gonna take a break over Summer and head up to a surfie town to spend a few days catching the breaks and living the surf-life. Yeah!~

Kelis goes acapella

Kelis – Acapella (Prod. By David Guetta)

After an 8 months- pregnant divorce, a messy child support legal dispute (where she won 20,000 dollars a month from her ex-husband) and with a new record contract, Kelis seems to think motherhood is all worth it, with new single “Acapella” tackling the subject.

Have to say, I ‘m not really feeling it at the moment, although everyone else seems to love it ( I hated “Milkshake” when that came out too!).

But its always good to have Kelis back

Facebook hates me

Facebook has just “recommended” something that it thinks I’ll like:

“Tomorrow is coming”. Its the ” soon-to-be-released 80s story of a banker by day, male dancer by night who finds his first love”.

The website Facebook suggests I click on to promote the book makes heavy use of saxophone music and features quotes like “You will cry, laugh and grow angry” from the author of “Secrets of a Marine Porn Star”, and “This memoir helped me to understand myself as a person better” from the dude off “The Amazing Race”.

Facebook hates me.

Where the wild things really are: Kangaroo drowns dog, injures man

ROBYN GRACE
The Age, November 23, 2009 – 2:10PM
A man has been taken to hospital with deep cuts to his abdomen and face after being attacked by a kangaroo north of Melbourne.

The kangaroo had been holding the man’s dog down in a dam at Arthurs Creek when it lashed out.

Advanced life support paramedics were called to the property at 9.35am.

‘The 49-year-old dived into the dam and managed to free his dog but he was injured in the process,” paramedic Michael Vosbergen said.

“He suffered a deep cut across his abdomen, a deep cut across his face and eye and a number of scratches to his chest, face and arms.”

The man was given pain relief before being taken to the Austin Hospital in a stable condition.

Cool new website for Asiaphiles

Global media titans don’t exactly come with inbuilt street cred, so I didn’t think CNN’s new “Asian lifestyle” portal CNNgo would really be my idea of a good time. But having logged on, I’ve been won over. It is surprisingly hip. The site is designed to provide an entertaining rundown on the trends and vagaries of modern Asian life, through six key cities – Bangkok, Mumbai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Tokyo and Shanghai. And I think it pretty much succeeds.

My first look through yielded a wealth of fascinating info;
an amazing Korean tatoo artist, a run-down of Tokyo “8-bit” bars (where patrons play vintage computer games while they drink, the invention (or not?) of the new Japanese verb “obamu” (“to proceed with cautious optimism like Obama”) and the Bangkok debut of “Foursquare” (apparently poised to supercede Twitter at the new year’s next big internet sensation). Plus this cute Thai condom ad:

 

ONE Condom in Thailand

And there are knowledgeable-sounding restaurant, shopping and nightlife reviews and a fresh, attractive look.

I’m liking it