Aventurina King

Red Cliff

Aventurina King — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 19:11:50 +0200

I just finished watching the first half of Red Cliff, a 2 CD Chinese blockbuster that stars Takeshi Kaneshiro and Tony Leung. They are China's two hottest male actors, and up to now, the only apparent reason for the film's box office success.

The movie's bad because the Chinese high-budget war epic has been done tens of times in exactly the same way: screaming violins, slow-motions, pained expressions and blood ... blood ... blood.
It's also bad because scenes are forced to fit a purpose, instead of naturally forwarding the plot. Takeshi Kaneshiro plays a brilliant army strategist with heart. Proof: five minute scene in which he looks up a mare's bottom and pulls a foal out from it. Tony Leung is a general with artistic sensitivity. Proof: he waves a feathered scepter and his whole army makes silence for a young boy's tentative flute playing. Leung then walks over to the boy and delicately peels the flute's holes with his dagger to improve the sound. In the following scene, he restores a stolen ox to the boy's grandfather.

So far, my favorite moment of comic relief: the ruler of the Wu state cuts off a corner of a table. Murderously glaring at his old advisors, he yells: "I have decided to make war with Cao Cao, whoever mentions surrender will end up like this table!!"

Yoga and Hip Hop in Beijing

Aventurina King — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 17:59:22 +0200

I've begun reading "The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama and Howard Cutler. So far, I haven't found it intellectually challenging ( but then again, many self-helpy books pale in comparison with the analytical depth of Nathaniel Branden's "Honoring the Self"). Sometimes questions feel incompletely or simplistically addressed. And yet, inexplicably, reading it leaves me inspired, happy and this evening, after I put the book down, I found myself brainstorming how to help people in my life.

The purpose of life is the achievement of happiness. That's the first lesson of the book and I like it. Avoid what makes you unhappy, embrace what makes you happy.

And there are two things right now that make me happy: Hip Hop and Yoga lessons.
I'm taking a fantastic Hip Hop class in East City Culture Center, between BeiXin Bridge and Jiaodao Kou. Up to now, I had always been obsessed with Hip Hop--as a teen, there I was replaying Britney's "Baby One More Time" MTV, mimicking her school-girl moves--but classes bored me to death.

This class doesn't, although it should. It's practicing basic basic moves for a good two hours on Saturday and Wednesday. Barely any choreography. The last class spent an hour and a half on three basics: the side lift, the back roll, the oblique shoulders (I don't have the vocab for these things!). During the side lift, you push your knees to the left without moving your torso, then comes a hit of the hips towards the left as your torso falls to the right, your torso lifts as your head tilts right, your torso rolls straight as your head follows. Basically, the body looks like a blade of grass straigtening itself after a gust of wind.

The Yoga Yard is on the 6th floor of a building facing Beijing's worker stadium (the stadium now looks like a Christo super-sized Christmas package, wrapped in blue and red Olympic posters). You take a glass elevator that slides up the side of the building. It opens onto a cozy reception area with piles of shoes and Yoga magazines.

My favorite part of the 6th floor is the locker room. You gently brush aside a blue and white patterned silk cloth that serves as a door. Soft light melts through the liquid glass windows. Warm colored tiles shine a silent white. Painted porcelain sinks, dark wooden cabinets, spacious showers hidden by generous folds of plastic curtains. The area breathes a clean warmth.

The Basics: a 22 y.o. American/French Female Freelancer in Beijing

Aventurina King — Tue, 29 Jul 2008 19:24:39 +0200

Here are the basics of my life in Beijing this Summer 2008:

I live in Season's Park, an apartment complex in the East center of Beijing right across from the Embassy neighborhood. I moved in during the first week after its construction ended May 08.
The complex has a swimming pool, a gym, a few fountains, an artificial lake with over-sized plastic water lilies. There is a legion of stray cats and 24 hour concierge service. Guards, "bao an," wear spotless white shirts, black pants and black sailors hats.

I wake up late in the morning. My studio's floor-to-ceiling windows face West onto the Beijing skyline. The sunlight sifts through the drawn curtains. Eyes half open, I grope under my pillow for my American blackberry. My white kitten Davy (full name: Alexandre Dumas Davy de la Pailleterie) claws his way up onto the bed to say hello.

By midday I have decided which coffee shop I will make my work headquarters. If I am feeling lazy, then I cross my apartment complex towards the East and ease into the armchairs of the Red Hotel's coffee shop, accross Chun Xiu Road. The coffee shop is run by a spectacled Chinese man whose face is round and open like an Indian Buddha's. In the morning, a short, charming waitress with chipmunklike features, Si Si, makes me the world's best iced capuccino: three quarters of the glass is thick milk foam. I cut through it with my spoon, it's like eating cloud.

Si Si and I used to have a squealing fits over handsome Ming Dao, the lead of Taiwanese TV series "The Prince Becomes the Frog." Lately Si Si tells me about her favorite Korean TV show, how it keeps her awake until late at night, how she starts work at 6AM.

If I have downloaded some make-your-booty-move pop songs--example: Will.I.Am "One More Chance," Madonna "Miles Away," Rihanna "Disturbia"--onto my ipod, I'll do the 20 minute walk over to San Li Tun. San Li Tun neighborhood mainly consists of a street jam-packed with over-priced foreign-owned bars and restaurants. On the South of this more commonly named Bar Street is the Bookworm coffee shop. It's the notorious place for foreigners to hang it, and is therefore avoided by weathered Beijing expats. It has a pricy Western food menu and unbearable waiters. The rumor has it they are cold, humorless and ungenerous because they are underpaid and mistreated: an extra shot of milk in your tea will be one US dollar thank you.

I favor a French restaurant, Le Petit Gourmand, tucked in a small road parallel to the Bar Street. It has a patio, red satin covered booths and wall to wall to wall bookshelves. I slip into my favorite booth and begin typing. Why is it my favorite booth? Because the Hollywood spoof novel "Get Shorty" is within hands reach when I'm tired of looking at the screen.

to be continued ...

Dating = Self-Promotion?

Aventurina King — Fri, 25 Jul 2008 16:05:26 +0200

Julia Allison is the 26-year old dating columnist of Time Out New York, and her website, NonSociety, features videos of her and two young female business partners lip-syching, dancing in Times Square, and plowing through tutu dresses and diamond necklaces.

I agree with a few things Allison writes in her columns. The importance of being yourself: I translate that meaningless string into "being honest" (which is another thing she mentions). Being honest with other people: when you don't want someone in your life, it's not time for them to be in your life and you need to have the courage to tell them. Being honest with yourself: taking time to understand precisely why you, for instance, are mad at someone. (90% of the time I discover anger is within me, triggered by memories of painful similar situations, over-sensitivity, remnants of an adolescent willingness to please etc...).

Jullia Allison takes honesty to the next level by writing about the most personal features of her life. I admire her for fearlessly exposing her weakest spots. It hurts when someone tells you you've failed on a professional level, but it takes reckless self-assurance to be unphased by someone snickering at your romantic mishaps.

But Allison pitches all these valuable life lessons as "you need to learn these to get yourself a hot date." First, if you are confident and self-assured ie emotionally self-sufficient and independent, why would you need to cram your schedule with dates? The path to a stable, healthy relationship is learning that spending an evening home blogging, or an hour video skyping with your best girlfriend is just as fun (and often sometimes more) as spending two hours at dinner, analyzing the smallest snicker or most insignificant flat joke in search of soulmate symptoms.

Then, the dating=self-promotion interview collection : reading this, I'm gathering this is how dating works in NY. The downtown bar is crammed with young white-collars protectively wielding blackberries. You get noticed, not because of the high-heels that you can barely walk in (nobody can see those), but because of your backless-frontless minidress. You stand next to one of the blackberry shields and seductively let your body pulsate to the 80s mix. And then suddenly, one of them lowers his shield and takes a jab. You've prepared your repartee: "I like eating bananas over whole-wheat bread. I'm quirky, I like S&M parties." And he, wowed by your self-assurance and honesty, orders you a $20 cosmo with his BB, simultaneously punching in your phone number. Ensues the fancy dinner dance which leads straight to an upper-east side apt, 2 beautiful kids and many, many a day shopping at Bloomingdales.

What part does the other play when you are promoting yourself? In my experience, the most "fruitful" conversations were those in which I took a sincere interest in the other person. If you are dating to find someone who can maximize your happiness and vice versa, then learning more about the person in front of you should be the first step (even though nothing can replace patiently enjoying plenty of time together). If you are dating to avoid facing yourself, then anything, including self-obsessed conversation is a valid distraction.

(disclaimer: my behavior is nowhere near the squeaky clean standards I'm promoting in this post, but I do my best)

Egypt: Veils, Scenery and Alleiya

Aventurina King — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 12:00:13 +0100

Part 2 of my travel fest was Egypt. I spent two weeks there and returned to New York barely a week ago (I can't seem to get over the jetlag though, am still up at ungodly hours).

Before arriving in Egypt, I knew close to nothing about the country. Sure the pyramids, obviously the Sphinx, the pharaohs, "Asterix and Cleopatre," the Nile, papyrus, sand sand sand. But aside from those things, embarrassing as it sounds: nada.

When I stepped out of the airport, I thought I was in LA. Blue skies, palm trees swaying over wide avenues. But it was the policemen who gave it away: Egypt is a police state, a dictatorship. The second thing that tainted my LA-cum-pharaonic paradise was the veil. 95% of the women were veiled, 10% of those wore complete veils (only the eyes peer through the black billowing fabric).

The third depressing realization (brace yourself for many more to come) is a direct corollary to the previous one. Many Egyptian men are completely sexually frustrated. Half of my luggage was elegant dresses and skirts. I vowed they would remain right there after I had my first walk on a Cairene street (in a fancy Western neighborhood).

I was wearing a raincoat, loose denim pants, white high heels and a scarf. I don't know whether it was the no-veil or the high heels that did it. But the effect was the same as wearing a thonged bikini in farther Queens. I was getting a new cat call every two minutes, predatory stares by the gallon; some men walked right up to me and snapped their fingers in front of my face. The next day, I took a cab, did away with the high heels and tighed my hair up. The fourth day, I took back the high heels, put on some tight pants, let my hair down. I imagined I was diva: "so much aggressive attention, so little time."

(Surprisingly, this insouciance has carried over into Manhattan where I now unabashedly sing out-loud to my MP3 player on the New York subway)

Egypt is a very poor country. The wages are dismal, unemployment is the norm. According to a recent NY Times article, people can't get married because they don't have enough money for the dowries (most marriages are still arranged). According to a local friend of mine: no jobs = no money = no marriage= no sex = nothing else to do with their time than pray to God. (The veils are one incarnation of that, the male equivalent is forehead scars due to frequent prostration.)

That doesn't really explain religious fanaticism in a satisfactory way. (the following line of questioning comes from another friend of mine). Not all poor, third world countries breed Islamic fanaticism. What is it in Egypt that causes this mass turn to Islam? An expat I met pointed to the Muslim Brotherhood that fights against the rampant corruption in the Egyptian school system and draws in young followers. An Alexandrian cab driver spoke about the El Dorado of Saudi Arabia, how young Egyptians are treated like slaves over there and come back religious. There are rumors of an implicit pact between the Egyptian dictatorship and the local Muslim powers: "leave us alone, we will leave you alone." (When I hear about the atrocities committed by the government, it does seem that the Muslim powers that be have left Mubarak and his son quite alone).

Tourist Egypt: there was some of that in my trip. Most noteworthy was my visit to the pyramids. They were much less impressive than the mental image I had formed of the 7th World Wonder. Moreover, climbing onto the pyramids had been forbidden since the early 20th century. Where is the fun?

It turned out I was sitting on it: a beautiful black mare named Alleiah. I smiled a few times at my guide Ali (above) and he took me off the beaten pyramid track ("you don't want to see those pyramids, they are so boring!") and we galloped around the Sahara desert for an hour. Ali is 28, has two wives (meaning that he earns very very high wages from scamming tourists at the pyramids) and asked me to become his third wife. He offered me three camels. I politely declined.

Back ! ... France, England ; my Agnostic Theism

Aventurina King — Thu, 28 Feb 2008 11:07:34 +0100

I graduated two months ago = SWEET FREEDOM! and my life since then has been quite a travel fest.
I traveled to France, to England, to Egypt and to Astor Place's Japanese food mart.

France: New president yet still same old same old. Although cab drivers' interests have slid from politics to the ex-wife of Sarkozy. My ride from the airport to Paris was embellished by a soliloquy on how nasty she was to him: "she cheated on him for years ... at the last minute, she just plain refused to show up at the Elysee where he was to give his inaugural address, he begged her ... she was the only woman who could wrap Sarkozy around her little finger, and she gave that up!"

England: Family time.
Although I did have a stimulating conversation with a Canadian-based writer. He had written a book about the chemical relationship between the brain part associated with religion and that with aggressivity. ie: "Well it's quite worrisome really, they are bound together." Meaning that we are physically wired to act aggressive under the influence of religion. Which is validated by the Islamic terrorism in the Middle East, yet invalidated by far more many instances of fervent religiousity unaccompanied with violence. (I haven't read the book, therefore I am ill-placed to judge and imagine that the argument is much complicated and convincing then the above.)

In my opinion, aggressivity is a very indirect product of religiousity. I just found out on wikipedia that I am an agnostic theist, which means that I believe in the existence of a supreme being (although in my mind, it takes the form of a blurb of sparkling mist floating around the universe). But that doesn't mean I can kick my recent conviction that religion is a human creation to cope with the inherent loneliness and purposelessness of life.

Religion gives human life purpose, meaning, identity by dictating actions. In that sense, God is much like a father for whom we get good grades, share toys with our little friends. For God, we are giving to people around us, we do or don't work hard to become successful ... Which explains why humans become aggressive when their religion/religious group is undermined. Attacking the structure they define themselves by (whether it be divine or human) is like destroying their identity, and by extension: them.

The same thing would happen though if any of the purpose-giving elements of our life was attacked: our job, our friends, our family ....

My personal variation on the clock-maker argument: life is a wonderful gift, who is the giver? (a big blurb of sparkling mist?)

too much on this subject ... on to Egypt (which actually turns out to be a related topic)

To gloat or not to gloat ... NOT !

Aventurina King — Sun, 19 Aug 2007 02:41:38 +0200

http://www.wired.com/techbiz/media/news/2007/08/online_novels

Marilyn Last Sessions (Michel Schneider)

Aventurina King — Wed, 01 Aug 2007 06:42:30 +0200

I am reading a French book about Marilyn Monroe. I haven't finished it yet, so I cannot make any all-encompassing statement about the curve of its plot or the measure of its depth. I like the book. But up until today, 200 pages in, I couldn't quite pinpoint why I liked the book. I couldn't even begin to describe it. Reading it had been a completely passive experience, one in which I relinquished all intellectual control and was breathlessly dragged along the marble road of polished sentences without looking back.

But a few days ago, in a conversation with my roommate, my reading experience congealed into sentences. It is a historical novel. You don't know what's true, what's not. Although the feeling of Marilyn's presence that coats the open pages is so visceral that I can't help but believe every sentence. I already feel like I know Marilyn. I couldn't describe her face, nor what she likes to eat, nor even which jokes make her laugh. I feel like I know her in a different way. That knowledge is much like the memory of a delightful film you have seen five years ago. You know it's good, but you couldn't begin to describe the plot. The stenciled outline is erased, what remains is the raw, dense sensation of the core.

How does the book achieve this? The chapters are short. As in a puntilistic painting, form or rather meaning is achieved in the assembly of disparate events, thoughts, quotes and encounters. In one chapter, Marilyn spends two weeks in a sanitarium. In another, she is discussing anal sex with her last analyst, doctor Greenson. Ignorant of time, yet loyal to its title, each chapter explores an issue discussed in Marilyn's last few years of analysis. The novel's organization reflects the erratic digging of these sessions.

Some of my favorite passages (i love the way the author, Michel Schneider, ends her chapters. Not the incisiveness of the punch line, something more subtle, yet more poignant, like an unexpected caress):

"Upon her return home, in the evening, Marilyn thought about the calm and gentle man who had examined her with a certain coldness. His eyes masked, under their challenge, a fatal gentleness. When, laying down on the sofa, she had asked him whether she was going to do a real analysis with him, like with the Dr Kris, he had answered that they shouldn't. "One must be modest. We are not aiming for deep changes, since you are soon going to go back to New York, to find your husband and pick up your analysis over there." The word modest had hurt her. She had cried. The analyst answered that it wasn't a reproach that he making to her, but a goal that he was fixing for himself. It's still strange, thought Marilyn, strange that he didn't propose that I lie down. It always amazes me when a man doesn't want to see me horizontal. To see my ass when I'm turning my back on him. A glass in hand, looking at the white of the wall and the black of the fabric that covered her bungalow, she continued to remember the session. The Dr. Greenson doesn't have any after thoughts I think. It's good that he didn't propose I should lie down. Maybe he was afraid. Of me? Of him? It's better like this. Me, I was scared. Not of him. It wasn't a sexual fear. "Let's Make Love" it's not only the title of the film. With Yves, I took this title literally. With the doctor, it won't be about love. In fact, she didn't like people asking her to lie down, she was afraid of the night, afraid of beginning it, afraid that it wouldn't end. She often made love, standing up, during the day. "

Maybe I'm too optimistic about the gym

Aventurina King — Fri, 27 Jul 2007 16:13:36 +0200

A week and a half ago, I started going to the gym. Everyday for one hour. The exercise apparently still hasn't sunken in. No bulging calf muscles and my running endurance went from an all time low (10 minutes) to a not so low 15 minutes.

But more importantly, straight back from China, the gym crystallized my renewed impressions of America. Women in tight pants and tops, men in baggy shorts and T-shirts tangle themselves up in monster machines. A large portion bully themselves on the treadmill, staring fixedly, as though for vital moral support, at the glaring flat screen perched atop their buzzing scaffolding.

The American gym is a microcosm of America's worst. Whereas sport brings people together (granted it's around a piece of plastic polymer), gym adherents are alone with the machine (as I am now with my labtop) in their own bubble of self worship. The machine becomes an extension of their ego, the bigger the better. The effect is heightened by a strapped ipod, piping music that inexorably flattens thoughts to the level of the body: building muscle, losing fat.

As I sat on this beach-chair-like contraption, pushing a board attached to 40 pounds of weight with my two legs, I wondered whether there would have been another way to design these machines. At the time I couldn't think of any. Right now, I have this image of one huge massive treadmill, or conversation of treadmills where people would have to face each other and speak while they are running. The present positioning of the treadmill makes conversation uncomfortable. Maybe the machines could be less intimidating. Instead of black, weights could be rainbow colored. The iron frame could itself lose weight to encourage vision and conversation. Maybe the gym would just become one, huge flat gymnasium where people would sweat over exerting their own body weight. Maybe I'm too optimistic.

Bent Words

Aventurina King — Sun, 29 Apr 2007 00:10:02 +0200

Yesterday evening, I attended the Bent Festival. It was much like going to a party I wasn't invited to, the guests were strangers--they were mostly middle aged men, some with mohawks, some with glasses and studious airs--and the chain of events unrolled with nerve racking abruptness. It began in the dark, the surrounding horizon of concrete walls silently cast off its yellow glow. Then the sound of an electric circuit, a concentrate of burning textured sound waves, rang out in the grey darkness. On stage, the performer, a man with sunglasses, was playing with what appeared to be a microwave. On top of it, soldier-like rows of metal prongs, and in between a pair of these, a thin, wavering stub of white current.

The concert's content was noise, or at least noise as defined in my high school music classes. It wasn't easy on the ears, long bands of electrical slashes, at small intervals peppered with decipherable beats and melodies. Following performances featured a girl in elvin attire and a cowboy who has lost his way in time. The former threw out sounds of babies crying cut with electrical grumbling. The cowboy lit a small furnace and the audience watched, curious, as a single wheel of a model locomotive began turning.

I left the cowboy and his locomotive to explore the premises. To the right of the stage, a flock of cardboard boxes hung silently from the ceiling. Further away, microphones had fallen into huge jars that smelled like candy. (see pictures below)