Luica’s Blog

Perhpas it’s because I am a girl, I love stationery. Lucy Mangan’s theory on the matter double confirms this slightly strange behaviour. I had been trying to get hold of a discontinued Rotring 600 (old style - with knurl) ballpen to go with my pencil from the same series for quite a while, and recently found it from a French pen seller on eBay.

I was extremely pleased to receive the pen (after a long delay due to the bloody postal strike) and started reading about pens and pencils on the Internet. To my surprise, my obsession with stationery is nothing compared to a lot of guys. I started to discover blogs specially dedicated to pens and pencils, like Dave’s Mechanical Pencils — an entire blog with more than 150 entries talking about mechanical pencils (no messing around with eraers, rulers, or pencil sharpeners) shows you how much he loves his mechanical pencils!

So I should stop blaming my female hormones for the slightly larger than normal collection of pens and mechanical pencils.

I saw this very interesting article in The Times today.

If all the Wangs in China seceded — all 93 million — they would become the world’s 12th-most-populous nation. The 88 million Zhangs could eat every crumb of the UN’s World Food Programme, distributed annually to people in 82 countries.

China needs more names — double-quick, The Times, 13 June 2007

There was another flash mob mobile clubbing event I missed on Thursday, when more than 3500 people turned up at Paddington station and started dancing to the same tune - ‘What You Do (Playing With Stone)’ - on their personal stereo at 7.18pm.

The next flash mob event will be a pillow fight in central London (venue to be confirmed). All you have to do is to turn up with a pillow hidden in plastic carrier bag and at exact given time pull pillow from bag and fight - sounds like absolute fun! The pillow fight in Covent Garden last year was hilarious.

If you want to bring mobile clubbing to your own city and country, simply sign up at the Mobile Clubbing website. Perhaps I will see you at the next flash mob event in Hong Kong.

This year’s BQ Market was much bigger in scale than the one last year. Not only was Hudson’s grocery store was involved, the New Ark restaurant and bar were giving away free curries and snacks. There were more than 20 stalls selling photographs, bric-a-brac, CDs and books in the morning. There was a fair amount of people coming to see the stalls and buying things. Unfortunately, there were quite a few people losing their vases and dishes due to the strong wind. I lost one of my photos to the fish pond and sold a few of the others in the early afternoon.

A party started at three in the afternoon when there was a live band playing and free food. I have never seen so many people sitting outside and socialising. The weather turned out to be really good in the afternoon and the party didn’t stop until late evening.

I am already looking forward to next year’s market. I feel like I am learning something new about setting up a stall every year.

There is an interesting article on the BBC web-site today — Bonfire of the Brands is about a music promoter and style magazine editor Neil Boorman’s decision to burn all his branded belongings, from his Gucci’s shoes to Habitat chairs and even Simple soap.

I immediately thought of William Gibson’s most recent novel Pattern Recognition. The story’s protagonist Cayce Pollard is allergic to brands and works as a ‘consultant’ to detect the effectiveness of brands and logos.

I can’t help but think that Cayce would have had a hard time if she was moving to Hong Kong instead of London. Branding is everything in Hong Kong, from fashion to gadgets, the nation and even education. Unlike the Oxbridge brand which represents high-level intellectual accomplishments, some private institutions in Hong Kong like to ‘brand’ their tutors as pop idols. I don’t know whether I should be laughing when seeing these ‘English tutors’ posing on their web-sites as if they are selling the latest summer fashions from Gap. It was not funny when I heard their English pronunciation and failed to find any English version of their web-site.

Branding is so important in Hong Kong that even the Government commissioned a Brand Hong Kong programme to communicate Hong Kong’s unique selling proposition to its target audience. In order to keep the momentum going, the Government also came up with a series of tactics to manage the brand:

"A host of domestic and international promotional activities have been carried out under the Brand Hong Kong umbrella. The visual identity can be seen across Hong Kong, from the Peak to the airport. The Brand and its core values have become an integral part of major events such as the HK Rugby Sevens, ITU 2002, the Forbes CEO Conference and the Hong Kong Products Expo. The Brand has gained wide international recognition as a model for location branding, and other cities and countries have sought to learn from Hong Kong’s branding experience."

Hong Kong brand overview

It does make me wonder how long Gibson’s Cayce could survive in this branded city climate and how big the bonfire would be for Boormen.

The first time I saw the Thames Barrier was during a company boat trip in June but I didn’t get to know of its flood defence function until today.

We drove to the Thames Barrier Park for a stroll and I was surprised how quick the journey was. About ten minutes in a car, we arrived in this lovely, quiet park with plenty of green plants. A family even brought stools and blankets for a pretty full-on picnic while skateboarders took advantage of the open space and unintentional ramps. I must remember this place when we fancy a relaxing Sunday afternoon.

I found this Mondaine classic watch at the Design Museum to replace my Tag Heuer until I get back to Hong Kong and change the battery on it. The Mondaine clock design originated in 1940 and was used as the official clock design of the famously punctual Swiss Railway.

I was at work when my brother rang and broke the news to me. In fact, I was burying my nose under the most complicated spreadsheet in the world (given that Maths was my least favourtie subject in school) when I heard his deep voice, saying that Granddad has just passed away.

I only found out that Granddad was admitted to the hospital again yesterday and although my mum didn’t sound very optimistic about his situation, I wasn’t expecting things to move on so quickly. He hasn’t really been himself for quite some time now and once in a while, I received the news about him being admitted to hospital. However, it was strange to receive the news while I was at work. I didn’t know how to react to this news and I still don’t.

Most of my friends know that I am not exactly close to my father’s side of the family, but my granddad was always the most interesting one. According to my Grandmum, he led a legendary life when he was in his youth, being one of Lee Rock’s close associates. There was also a rumour that Ng Man Tat’s character in the movie was based loosely on him! I have no idea whether this is true or not and I guess there is no way to find out now. I only know that Granddad was put into a mental institute in the 70’s - some said that he had a nervous breakdown while others suggested that he was just pretending so as to avoid the ICAC (Independent Commission Against Corruption) investigation. Again, the truth will stay with him now.

The annoying RMT station staff had called a 24-hour strike on New Year’s Eve, starting from noon on 31 Dec. It was outragous that they think they can ruin other people’s New Year’s Eve just because they want more money for doing so little! I don’t know about other stations but the staff at the Bow Road Station must have the easiest life in the world! Every Monday, the queue for buying or renewing tickets is so long that travellers have to wait outside the station for more than 10 minutes and it’s freezing cold! Yet, the guy behind the box office would act like he has swallowed ‘the book of calm’ (reference: if you don’t understand this, you need to watch Black Books - one of the best British comedies) and takes his time slowly dealing credit card receipts.

Anyway, we had to cancel our reservation at Hakkasan due to this mess the RMT had created. We ended up staying home and watching some old video Brad kept from a long time ago. It wasn’t exactly exciting but quite relaxing and peaceful.

Happy New Year everyone!

There are some amazing views from different rooms of my office. Being surrounded by Victorian red-brick houses and being close enough to see both the London Eye and Big Ben, I am always watching out for the right light/time to take interesting cross-processed photos.

Although it took me a coupe of attempts to get the composition and light right, I am quite happy with this. I like the typical LOMO vignetting, the colours of the blue sky contrasting with the red-brick chimneys. I also like the dark shadows of the buildings.