Posts filed under "cerebral-interviews"
I’m down in Cardiff this weekend. Or as the Welsh like to call it Caerdydd! Road trip down with Stathi and his dancing ass, to brighten up his sister Yiota’s who’s a completely stressed bunny. She’s in the final month and a half of her course, so obviously this is where you stress the most when in University. Then once that’s over you’ve got the great situation of stressing to find a job. Ah the memories.
It’s really funny but Wales is known to be a pretty rainy place. Must be pretty lucky since both times I’ve been here (last time was for Sarah’s wedding) the weather was as stunning and fresh as it is today.
How come no one’s really mentioned this on the blogosphere? Symphony is the new kid on the block when it comes to blogging software, and it’s a complete beauty. It looks as slick as hell and has got some great little features.
As I look at what they’ve done to it I can’t help but smile at the fact that we’ve also, so far on the shuttle team, addressed several of these points as well. We may have gone about them in a slightly different way, but it’s still very cool to see we’re on the right track.
It’s been a bit of a slow development 3 weeks on that front, since the design half of the team is a bit pre-occupied with the real world. I’m making it a point to jump back into it later on this week.
Now why did they change the name from Typeworks? I did like that name, not that I’ll use the system mind you, just wondering is all.
In what shall be now lovingly refered to as my IMPULSE buy of the year, I got myself an A4 wacom tablet today. Am I not beautiful?
You certainly are.
I’m sitting there and Darren walks in and sees how frustrated I was getting with my mouse, and trying to colour in my latest drawing. So he asks me why I don’t buy a graphics tablet? Honestly I couldn’t give him a reason, apart from the fact that they were too expensive. My daddy always says that you should never let money stand in your way….no that’s a COMPLETE lie, he’s more than happy for me to store the cash away for rainy days, I on the other hand don’t have that much restraint when it comes to certain things. Art equipment, books, graphic novels, and as it would seem computer equipment.
I’ve been meaning to do this for a while now, since I took a picture of the tablet, I thought I’d also show people where Broken Kode is made every day. Hey who knows how long I’ll stay in this house. Does anyone else have similar photos of their ‘work’ environment?
About 3.5 years ago I was scared of computers. Well not so much scared, as just didn’t really want anything to do with them. This I guess was due to my brother, who when we brought a computer back in 93 or whenever, decided to methodically trash the thing, and install viruses on for shits and giggles. Obviously my frustration had it’s limits and I just didn’t bother with the whole thing.
Fast-forward to University and I got by using the Uni computers and borrowed a 586 from my buddy Richard who’d just bought a Laptop. I did a bit of word processing, e-mailing and message boards. Very little else. My main creative output was to actually drawing and painting. I would spend days on end on a single drawing. After I’d compiled enough work I decided to set up a website and have an online portfolio like all the pros. The only person I knew that could help me with this project was my brother.
We spent an entire month sorting out my website. I would sketch it and he’d do everything else. I’d ask him if he could make this happen or that happen. He came through in grand style, and that’s when kalscreations was born. It was updated once, and never again. This was back in 2000.
When I graduated in 2001, I decided it was time to get another website up and running. Again I enlisted the help of my brother for this little project. This time however he didn’t last. If anything I was even more demanding than before. You see I’m a complete anal perfectionist. It’s a sickness I guess. He lasted 2 weeks this time before he just looked at me, having reached the end of his rope, and said
’ You know what, if you want that effect, DO IT YOURSELF’.
‘What do you mean do it myself? I don’t know how!’
‘Learn.’
So I did. It was tough. It took months upon months to understand photoshop, it took agest to understand how Flash worked. It took a while to get to grips with vectors. The main thing was persistence. I don’t know what reminded me of this story but I thought I should write it down and say thanks to my bro who pushed me into the deep end when the time was right.
In a bit of an unusual mood for me. I was meant to do a bit of drawing this weekend. That’s not happened. Instead I’ve gone out with friends, played some basketball, done some reading and generally speaking very little creating. I think after close to three months solid of concentrating on my various projects I just really needed the breather. It’s strange but I just really can’t bring myself to write any words on my script, can be arsed to open up photoshop, don’t want to pick up a pencil and concentrate on a drawing.
One project that I couldn’t help but tinker with was the site design ever so slightly; wish I could make my comments details show up in IE (god how I loathe IE bugs, I can never get them to work out, seriously pisses me off every single time I do a redesign, something screws up in IE).
Tonight’s agenda is more reading and Smallville. Hopefully this break will have energised my batteries, and I can create like crazy from tomorrow.
Due to this, I generally have no inclination to actually staying late. Ah but this place Anam is different. I got in there, and it’s tiny. Hmm let’s see what it’s like downstairs. Still tight, and then I realised what music I was listening to. Cool and the Gang, the good MJ stuff, some funk, some soul. The DJ attempted putting on some hip hop which lasted 2 minutes with this crowd. Don’t get me wrong some Hip Hop I can handle, but not what he put on and not following on from the fantastic selection ( a lot of which I must say I’d never heard of but Archie asked for a couple of tracks from the DJ so maybe we’ll get some more new music as well).
I liked the atmosphere in there, and the people that worked there were pretty cool as well. Definitely one to do again.
I’ve been coasting for the past couple of weeks. You know the feeling you get when things go around in a circle and you’re a slave to a certain routine. That’s been my life for the past 3 weeks. I’ve been buried in my design and writing. Not much drawing, which is annoying. I remember when this Easter break came 3 years ago. I spent the entire 3 days drawing. Nothing else. Didn’t touch the computer just drew. There’s something indescribable when a piece is finished. It’s more saticfying than any redesign, because if you’re like me I’m constantly tinkering around with a site. I can’t help it, but a drawing, when that’s complete that’s it. All the faults are there and you can’t do anything about it.
One thing I do wish I had when drawing is a control-z (undo), soo annoying ^_^.
I’ve not actually thought about what I’m going to do this 4 day break, but I think I’ll try my hardest to step away from the computer. It occupies such a massive part of my life anyway, so I’m going to try and recreate 3 years ago and see what I come up with.
You know all those stories you hear about English weather being terrible, blah blah blah. For the most part it’s true. The thing is it doesn’t rain all day. That’s not true. The standard however is for a constant white cloud to be above your head 70% of the year. That’s what we call in daylighting terms as an overcast sky.
Yesterday ushered the first real day of spring for us here in London, giving us a glimse of things to come. Some would argue that the winter was just too damn long, and to be honest I can’t wait to get down on the basketball court at Chalk Farm and really get fit again. I work on the third floor, and we’ve got phenomenally shit lifts where I work. The irony of having crap services in a building full of building service engineers in not lost on me I assure you, but I was actually caught out of breathe the other day walking up the stairs, and I it was at that moment that I wished for spring to come and for me to actually get some exercise in.
Today it would seem brings about another glorious day, so I’m going to head over to Hampstead Heath, grab a frisbee from somewhere and maybe some nosh, and chill out before the grey/white sky comes back again.
Allow me this moment to take a second and thank EVERY SINGLE person that’s ever given any time to WordPress. Be it in the help forums, helping out with the Wiki, sorting out a theme, sorting out a plugin or generally trying to get people to use WordPress and Open Source software more.
I’ve been slogging away at version 3. There are a number of reasons for me doing this. For a start I learn soo much every single time I do a design. I’m not a coder, not even close, and yet I’m starting to understand what’s going on every time I decide to do something new.
The great thing about the WP community is the fact that if I’ve got an idea for something, chances are somebody’s already had that idea, implemented it and made it into a downloadble script that I can manipulate and incorporate into the design. Sure it’s frustrating trying to get something to work, that just plain doesn’t want to play ball, but I’m extremely lucky in that if I’ve ever got a problem one of my buddies who are infinitely better at this than I am, come in and give me a shove in the right direction.
I’m tweaking this locally, just playing around with things, but I’m really getting into taking my standard base (in my case Manji, since I know the code upside down, and inside out), and tweaking to try and get things smaller and smaller in terms of file size). Every Kbyte I shave off I have a little giggy ^_^.
I’ve got one final script I need to incorporate but I’m having troubles deciding which way to go. It’s that incorporating of images into a design. This is for the Manji gallery that’s been brewing for so long. Basically all I want is a script that will enable me to quickly add a thumbnail to a folder. Once that image is displayed then I want it to be clickable and to have the exact same surroundings as a single post, i.e with spaces for comments etc. Also I want this space to be integrated and controlled via the control panel as well.
Anyone have any ideas which script/hack/plugin will do this? I know it exists, just wish I knew which one it was…
Like a butterfly Manji2 is going to evolve into something more, and the name, well the name will have to change to reflect that. After a few nights of thinking, I’m prone to saying things and then going back on my word, I think there might be a theme for the Alex King Competition coming soon. Probably won’t get there till it’s down to the wire, but alas good things come to those who wait.
I swear this had nothing to do with the actual recently announced $500 prize, damn dog, this thing is getting bigger and better. Work has already begun for a week now, and the proof is in the e-mails…….ooh cryptic.
Finally got around to sorting this out. All I wanted was a holder page. It’s been on my mind for like 1 month, but I always found other things that took preference in completing. Now that a date for it to go live has been set I’ve got my work cut out for me. I’ve not built a complete Flash website in a year, as I’ve been diving deeper in CSS, PHP and WordPress. Let’s see what’s been happening on the flash landscape shall we.
- As some of you will have noticed I went back to my one coloumn jobbie after toying with a sidebar. I wasn’t 100% convinced that my previous re-design was the way to go forward, so I sat down and wrote a list of things to do/complete for this here site. I was really surprised at just how much stuff I have to do. I mean we’re talking hours of work here. Most of it is content to be honest, but part of it also involves getting v3 up and running.
- I must say that it all falls into perspective when you write everything down and just have a look at the list. Best thing I’ve done this week however is using my moleskin book as my personal organiser.
- I’ve got MASSIVE news on the future of Manji2, and a couple of surprises for Manji-proper. There have been hints over the last month or so. Those of you awake at the wheel might have picked up on some rumblings.
- After watching the Star Wars trailer, I’m actually kind of excited. I promised myself I wouldn’t let Lucas do this to me again, but the bastard just keeps chucking CGI at me, with lightsabers and wookies. What the hell am I supposed to do? Hint: Remember how bad Episode II was? Yeah, that’s better, back down to earth.
- I’m on page 26 of my script, which is amazing news. I’ve never actually ever reached this far, where the previous 26 pages weren’t utter crap. The script’s not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but at least there’s something down on paper, which is a lot more than I had 2 weeks ago when I revisited my script. 500 words a day is really tough work.
- Saw Constantine yesterday, I’ll post a review later on this week.
Seems everyone and their dog is trying to come up with ways to maximise their productivity. I can sympathise completely. I’ve been searching for the past year for software, (open source generally) that might fit the bill. The route to go I guess would be using a Personal Information Manager, or PIM.
I’ve downloaded and installed my fair share of this type of software. I’ve got Info Angel 1.6 before they sold out like Moveable Type and went from Freeware to commercial. I’ve got a copy of Virtuoso, and Essential PIM.
I keep waiting for new on Chandler but that project seems to be as slow as an old person on the tube.
Owen has been giving this some thought I see and has come up with another solution using ShirusuPad . I’ve tried this, and the text is too small in the post-its. Generally speaking it’s a nice little package but it’s not organised enough for me.
I even read the post on using WordPress as a PIM, which I wasn’t really happy with. Tasks by Alex King might be something I might give a try sometime in the near future.
I’ve tried writing on paper, but I never actually go back and have a look at the bloody things often enough. Question: Does anyone have any alternatives I’ve not mentioned here?
The main problem for me is that I know exactly what I need to do in most cases, it’s just that I’ve not got a decent enough structure to deal with everything.
Earlier this week an idea hit me, why not allocate a specific amount of time on any one task. Once the time is up move on to the next topic, regardless of whether or not it’s finished. You can come back to it later tomorrow, or if you’ve got enough time left after the end of the scheduled things to do that night/day. 1hour, no more no less.
So far it seems to be working a charm. I get a lot more done cross-platform. i.e on all the various projects I’ve got going, over a longer period of time every little bit helps.
Now see this is weird. I’ve been having some issues getting gmail e-mails to get through to Lebanon. Seems it’s really random whether or not the e-mails I send or receive on my gmail account get through or not.
I know it’s gmail related because I used my work e-mail address and it all went smoothly no problems. Has anyone had any problems with gmail eating up e-mails? I’ve gone and set up an e-mail via my hosting plan, the thing is though that with Dreamhost everything takes a set amount of time. Like a mysql database takes an hour to get going, same deal with setting up an e-mail address.
Also while I’m on the subject, maybe someone can shed some light on something that’s been annoying me for a while now. Every once in a while something will happen and I won’t be able to connect to my website. The browser comes up with a message to the effect of site does not exist, and I’ve got to reboot my router, and turn off my computer and kill the cache and wait for a while and do all sorts of other rubbish before I get to see my bloody site again. What’s annoying as you might have guessed is that it’s only specific to my site. WTF is that all about?
Five years ago a handful of designers decided to band together and relaunch their sites on the 1st of May. It’s a nice idea and keeps things fresh and gets a target into people’s heads. Everyone needs a target and this date is as good as any really.
The 2005 version of the website is live and kicking.
I’m going to be sorting out one of my 2 sites for that date for sure, however BK version 3 will come out sooner. The reason I’m going to go to another design will become very clear once I get it done. I’ve been tinkering about and I must say less is definitely more.
Site Number 2 will go live on the 1st of May for sure, it’ll be mainly flashtastic with a bit of WordPress thrown in there for good measure.
Ok so I’ve finished the design for the site, would you believe I’m getting itchy again. I don’t know what’s wrong with me. It’s taken me soo long to get it the way I think I want it and now I’m having second thoughts. This is not normal. There are sites that haven’t had any modifications done to them in years. They get slightly updated here and there, and here I am already thinking about Version 3 of this site. I’ve promised myself that I wouldn’t get round to it until I complete a 3D model of CoCo. Until that happens and the image that I’ve got in my head actually becomes a reality, no redesign.
I guess my problem is that I do actually enjoy the design process, and I’ve got too many ideas. Always generating ideas, always wanting to try new things since I guess it’s really good fun, and a great learning curve. There are several areas of BK that I’d like to sort out, but I guess it’ll be something that I build upon. Rome wasn’t built in a day, and both content and ideas take time to accumilate.
I know it’s a complete waste of time for me to start building another site from scratch just for the fun of it when my current incarnation really doesn’t have anything wrong with it, but I guess it’s just a need for design I’ve got right now, inspiration calls. I know I’m not alone since Paul is forever creating beautiful designs all the time. Seriously he’s list of themes he’s made for his site are beautiful to look at. I guess I’m not the only one that gets itchy fingers.
Update: After sleeping on it, it’s not the design that’s at fault, I think I found out what I was unhappy with, and that’s the lack of detail. It’s too simple, which to be honest wasn’t actually the route I was going for. I wanted playful, and lively, fun, but simple wasn’t really one of them. As it’s gone that’s what I’ve ended with simpley because I wanted it to be useable. Right it’s time to bring it all together. Into a tight package. Live and learn I guess.
About 2 months ago I sent out my flower for the Building Letters edition for the Tsunami Relief effort.
Seems the flower was accepted which is nice, because I’ve given money and this is something I actually did that I’m proud of giving, since nothing I create is lost, just archived waiting to be used later on.
My flower is part of the Fleurons of Hope font set. It can be found here: MyFonts website
Now I can understand they took liberties with how this is shown, but I wish they’d just contacted me to ask me if it’s ok the way it was presented. It would have been nice to have recieved an e-mail saying ‘Yeah thanks it’ll be included in the set’. I found out via Typographica and had to scroll through all the fonts.
I only hope they get the colour version correctly in the magazine and that the mag sells lots and lots. Just in case people are wondering what the original looks like:
http://www.brokenkode.com/building-letters-tsunami-relief-update
Now here’s an interesting situation for me. I just got an e-mail from Godaddy, my domain registration site, and they’re asking me whether or not I want to re-register iliosnare.com. I bought the domain last year and I’ve not touched it since then. I’ve thought about it, but I just wasn’t ready to do with it what I wanted. I’ve got a much better idea about what I want to do, and I’ve collected enough material for it as well.
I’ve always wanted one portfolio site and one blog. Broken Kode is my little wordy playground and I’ve learnt soo much because of it and switching over to WordPress. I feel I’m ready now to do the deed and jump in with both feet into the online portfolio for all my illustration.
The thing is I’ve got two site names that I can use, either Emmortel or Iliosnare. Either in my eyes are cool. Emmortel will always be part of my domain registered names, since it’s what I chose when I joined Dreamhost.
The question I’m pondering is whether or not to actually use iliosnare or just forget about it and use Emmortel as the portfolio site.
What a fantastic day. Went on a course today called ‘Communicating Design’ and it’s emphasis was on how we as engineers could basically better communicate our designs to each other, architects, clients, everybody. It’s the first workshop I’ve been on like this in a good long while. The great thing about it is that I was able to actually get a lot of drawing done and that freedom was astounding. I absolutely relished the opportunity to actually draw freely during my peak productivity time.
Let me elaborate on that. I’m a morning person. During the brighter months of the year I’ll get around 5 hours of sleep and the rest of the day I’ll be active as I can, to get as much done in the day as possible. My best hours as a morning person, is the morning. I know I’m being profound today. Unfortunately I don’t get that chance during the day because I’m at work, and so I’ve really had to try and change my style in the last few years to accomodate for my passions in the morning and in the evening.
It was such a laid back course and ultimately I had a lot of fun on it. It’s rare for me to actually say that, but honestly I really did enjoy it. What was great I guess was being away from the computer for a day, talking with people I haven’t seen in a while, and new people I met. And I guess being away from my desk did me an absolute world of good as well.
Well, I know I said I was going to actually stay away from the net for 2 whole days. I couldn’t do it. I had to check my e-mails. I had to see everything was ok on the net. Strange nothing really much to report, a couple of cool pictures from the WonderCon convention, but apart from that no really major things happened.
In the time period I stepped away from the net:
- I got some work on Shuttle done.
- I completed 3 digital illustrations (which effectively makes me down by 1 drawing to be on schedule with my new year’s resolution of 1 illustration a week).
- Would you believe I actually got some more writing down. I’ve even got a clear path of how to go about this writing business. Let’s see if I can keep it up.
- Worked up a mockup both on paper first, then in Photoshop of how the new index file fo BK is going to be. I’m really happy with the changes. Oh sure it’s a bit of a departure, but to be honest once I explain my reasoning everything will become clear. I’ve made sure that everything is there for a reason, so nothing really takes away from the ‘content’.
- Started character drawing for the Iliosnare website. See this actually depressed me, because it showed me that I’d forgotten how to draw basic anatomy. There are several rules, that once you’ve mastered them you’re away, and I’m so rusty I completely forgot some of the basic ones, which ended up me having a complete potatoe for an arm. So I whipped out my Hogarth books again and started rereading things. Which basically means I’ve got to get back into drawing by hand so as to not get rusty and forget things. 2 hours a day I think should about do it.
- Watched the first episode of Joss Whedon’s Firefly. I’ll definitely have a nice review up for that shortly because I’ve been looking for a good sci-fi series to get into. For me Babylon 5 is the king of Sci-fi series for TV. I got Series 4 on DVD yesterday, I know lame as Series 5 has already been released. The thing is though, this is my absolute favourite series of all as well. So many good twists in the story. Watched the first episode of that as well.
- Read half of the Little Prince. Good book so far. Try and finish it off today sometime, and I’ll write a bit about that as well. So the moral of the story kids, is that if you want to get things done, turn off the Net. It’s depressing, but I am addicted to it. Couldn’t even step away for 2 days. I’m going to try and reduce my net time to a specific time allocation every day, like in the days of 56k modems. I might actually get things done that way.
I don’t watch TV, but I’m pretty much glued to the damn internet. It’s a curse to have broadband because you’re always connected. I’ve been thinking about my list of never ending things to do and the more I think about it the more I think about why it’s taking so long. The reason can be attributed to the net. It sucks soo much time out of me that I’ve not actually had the chance to just sit down and do the work.
I’m therefore going to try something novel this weekend. Radio silence for 2 days. I’m going to unplug my computer and I’m going to work on Sublime and my drawings and my designing. I’m not going to get online for cheeky updates of this site or the other. I’m not going to check my e-mails till after the 24 hours are complete, and I’m going to see just how much I’ll have gotten done. It’ll be an interesting experiment to be honest.
So as of tomorrow, I turn off the net.
I know this is old news to some people within the creative community, but for all those that don’t know about this, Epson are doing a promotion for their new printing technologies. The deal is you register and then send them a CD with whatever you want printed out. They then print it out on whatever paper YOU choose and send it back to you in a lovely rolled up tube, no charge.
The quality is seriously amazing. What makes me wonder however is how come they ask for RGB files, and can reproduce the bloody things perfectly!!!! I’m still wondering about that to be honest, how the hell are they configuring their bloody printers. I’ve had so much hassle in the past converting things to CMYK that I’m having a real hard time accepting this printing process of theirs.
Anyway if you’re a UK resident then go to the official promotion page http://www.epson.co.uk/4000sample/. The only bad thing is that it’s limited to one per house hold. Still though, get them sent to you’re friend’s houses.
Only reason I’m mentioning it now is because I just got my second print thanks to Ana. Dudette you rock.
I’ve been giving this all some serious thought and I think I’ll be changing the index page to BK in the near future. I guess it’s due to a shift in how I want to present my posts. Some of my posts I feel are articles that take me hours to craft and I’d ideally like to get into a bit more of a routine about covering certain topics. I’m not touching the individual posts pages as I actually really like those, I’m just going to try and tweak the index page. It’s probably going to have more in common with Pixelsurgeon or Crown Dozen, than a typical blog, but I guess that’s where my thoughts are heading right now.
I guess what I want to do is get that fun feeling I was originally aiming for when I designed CoCo. There are certain features that really don’t fit into the current design, that I think are very important. I promised myself I wouldn’t get into the whole redesigning of BK for a very long while, but I just can’t help it. It’s a sickness, that your website is NEVER complete. It’s NEVER the way you want it. There’s always something you can do. What’s worse is by the time you’ve finished designing the thing, you’re already saturated by it ^_^.
First things first however, Shuttle and Iliosnare are my priorities right now, and the minor tweaks I’m doing on Manji.
I want to thank the WordPress Dev Team for all the hard work they’ve all put into the latest iteration of the system. Thank you Ladies and Gents for all your efforts. I’ve personally been using it for a while now (since October probably) so I’ve been using all these little additions. When I do one of my open source reviews on WordPress 1.5 I’ll cover all these features in as much detail as I possibly can.
El Hariri died today. The ex-Prime Minister of Lebanon was assasinated today. When I found out this afternoon I was in complete and utter shock. I seriously didn’t know what to say or do with myself. You’d think I wouldn’t care about a politician. This is different though. It’s different because it means a number of things for my country. In my eyes a number of bad things.
This has seriously upset me, as I’m sure it has a number of other Lebanese the world over, and it’s done so for a number of reasons. For me Rafik El Hariri was the first Lebanese politician I actually knew anything about. I guess the reason behind that was because he was the first Prime I became aware of after the war. My dad knew him as they were both raised in the same neighbourhood in the small city where I was also born, the city of Saida. As a ‘child of the town’ as we’re called in Lebanon, my dad obviously liked him regardless of what actions he took and what situations he got into as Prime Minister of the country. My mum was more sceptical at times and angry at other times. However undeniably the thing that every single Lebanese person will agree on right now , is that his death is ultimately a very bad thing for country. The reason is we don’t really have a simalar figure like him, which his strength of character. Whether you liked him or not, one thing was very clear, he was the main person responsible for bringing Lebanon back on the map. Bringing it back to a place of acceptance. Instrumental in it’s rebuilding. Apparently and I wish I could remember who told me this story, but during the 80s, during the war, various consultancies in New York (I work for a consultancy) were commisioned to do some work. When asked what they were doing, they replied ‘On rebuilding downtown Beruit’. They were commissioned by Rafik.
He was responsible for putting over 20, 000 students through school and University (4 of my cousins are part of that list).
Oh don’t get me wrong I know the man wasn’t a saint. I can fully appreciate that his intentions weren’t always pure. I know he made mistakes. However he won’t be remembered for his mistakes. He’ll be remembered for what he brought to the country of Lebanon and he’ll be remembered for being assasinated.
May brings about the elections. I’m 25 years old and I’ve never voted. I think I know when my next trip to Lebanon will be.
Rest in peace.
Rafik El Hariri
1944 - 2005
Picture the scene, 2000 chinese and me. That was the scene last night, as we descended on Elephant and Castle for the Chinese New Years Party. It’s pretty funny, Sylvane apparently wasn’t ‘feeling’ 100% so he declined to go and Amone decided not to come ‘because she was broke’, so as the night unravelled, it was a party of 6 chinese and me, going to a the most packed Chinese party of the year.
I’ve never seen soo many Chinese people concentrated in one place in my life. It was a whole new experience for me, as before coming to London 2.5 years ago my chinese friends were very limited in number. This was a pretty cool experience, which means I can handle Hong Kong (and China in general) in the future.
Man, there were some seriously CRAZY hairstyles in there. We’re talking the kind of hairstyles that I spent about 2 minutes trying to UNDERSTAND, then I spent a few minutes thinking how the hell you’d explain something like that to your hairdresser, then how you’d make it look the same the next day after you’d washed it. I wish I had a camera in my eyes, taking snap shots because the haircut I’m talking about, damn I’d struggle defining it, so it’d be much easier to show you, but obviously I don’t have a picture.
What’s cool is that tomorrow I’ll be going to the street parade with the traditional dress, and dragons and fireworks and whatever down in central london. One of the good things that came out of the night is that Gladys owes me an apple pie; mental note Jackie better help her out because I don’t trust Gladys to cook a cheese toasty ^_^.