sushipanda

Tiffany was recently a part of Viviana’s ICS Lifesource program, and the clip is below. I laughed out loud several times when watching this, since I’m friends with everyone in the program, and to see them act so unnaturally while trying to act naturally is a bit of a riot. So is the little “narrative” that they crafted about Tiff needing to find some artwork to put on her wall, only to have Viviana take her to Urban Paintmob to show her how she can paint on her own canvas. What makes this funny is that it’s Tiff who are the ones promoting Paintmob, and the panda painting that she hangs on her wall at the end of the segment is actually one that she painted over half a year ago, and one that she promised to me for Christmas (and which obviously has not been delivered). Anyway, just throwing it up here because the whole thing is really cute.

Last week I finally found people who wanted to rent my apartment. They are a youngish couple from Hong Kong, and when I first met the wife and listened to her verbally stagger through basic Mandarin, I asked if she wanted to speak English instead, an offer which she appreciatively accepted.

We went over her list of requests: paint the blue wall a pinkish color, dry clean the curtains, install heat lamps in the bathrooms. I was able to push back on getting her a new mattress and she also agreed to not have me provide the fa piaos for expense purposes (a great win for me). When it appeared we had reached a near-settlement, I leaned back in my chair and started digging into the details.

“I plan on leaving my land-line here for you guys to use. Or, did you want to switch your phone number over here?”

She didn’t pause long. “Is it a lucky phone number?”

I wasn’t quite sure what she meant, until I realized that she was asking if my phone number consisted of “lucky” digits. I remembered learning that a lot of people from Hong Kong were deeply superstitious; fearful of the number “4″ and prone to making major real estate decisions based on feng shui.

Two days later, she brought her husband over to sign the contract. I lightheartedly joked about my phone number, saying that it must be lucky because it doesn’t have any 4’s and has a couple of consecutive 8’s. He told me that it’s not that easy, every combination is different for every person.

He pointed around our apartment. “We brought in a feng shui master who said this place has good feng shui for us, but that might not be the case for you.”

I stared at him blankly. These guys were seriously hardcore about this shit. I wanted to say something mocking-like, but I figured I should maintain some good relations with these strange people that wanted to do away with my beautiful blue living room wall and had decided upon my apartment based on some mystical hocus pocus. It also helped that the husband was offering me bottles of MacCallan 12 and Absolut for 50% off.

Two days later, I got a call from their agent. She told me that they had consulted the feng shui master again, who told them that if they moved in two days earlier than the date upon which we had agreed, then they would have even more luck. Would I be willing to accept an extra 1000 RMB for them to move in 2 days earlier?

Duh, of course. Maybe the apartment’s feng shui is good for me, too. I will definitely miss the hell out of that place.

Want to see what the food editor for a city blog in a major international metropolis looks like when he’s eating?

This picture was taken by a photographer for a Chinese magazine during the luncheon at the Four Seasons with the Zagats. This is probably the first that any professional photographer has wasted an entire image with my big face the center of focus. Since it will probably be the last time as well, I had to throw it up here as a souvenir.

I got back to Shanghai yesterday afternoon after three nights in Suzhou, where I attended X|Media|Lab’s “Wealth of Animation” conference. The coolest presentations of the Day 1 Keynote were from Michael Johnson (Head of Moving Pictures Group, Pixar), Duncan Brinsmead (principal scientist, Autodesk), and Dale Herigstad (Founder and Chief Creative Officer of Schematic). It’s clear that there’s a huge gap in innovation and quality between the US and China in terms of narrative animation, technology, and design. The good thing for the Chinese is that at least they concede these points, and are hungry to improve. I think that’s been the model for China’s incredible growth: be humble in the face of a country or institution that does things better than you, learn as much as you can from them, and throw tons of manpower at resolving those gaps. The question I have is whether or not Chinese culture is conducive to strong storytelling and creative design. From my personal experience it’s the pride and reverence in the art and stories of the past that consume the attention of Chinese artists, and not the uncharted breakthroughs of the future. We’ll see, though.

On Friday night I met up with Ryan McLaughlin of The Humanaught and Lost Laowai. Aside from the folks over at Shanghaiist, this was the first time I had a face-to-face meeting with someone with whom my entire relationship was purely through cyberspace. I had some good pizza at the Suzhou Bookworm (smaller but more intimate than the one in Beijing) and met Ryan’s lovely wife Maggie over a couple of cheap Sapporos. After bouncing around with folks from the Chinese animation industry the previous two days, cramming down crappy hotel food and horrible coffee, it was nice to actually have a decent meal with decent folks who weren’t measuring me by how much business potential their interaction with me might bring.

My ticket for the train ride home to Shanghai was for 7 pm on Saturday, but since I was cutting out of the conference early I wanted to go back home early as well. After checking out of the hotel, I went to the train station and got in one of the huge lines for buying same-day tickets for the speed train. After nearly 20 minutes, I got to the front of the line, at which point the clerk promptly stood up, placed a “temporarily closed” sign against the window, and started closing up her booth. I couldn’t believe what was happening. Before she completely shuttered, I rapped on the glass and asked her how long she was going to be away. “30 minutes,” she replied. I wanted to ask her if she noticed the 50 or so people who were in line behind me, and then she pointed to the lettering on the glass: “Operating times 8:00 am-11:30 am, 12:00pm-5:00pm.” I checked my watch; it was 11:29 am. I started to hyperventilate. I looked at all the other windows next to me; they each had different operating times. What I didn’t understand was why those times were only shown on the windows themselves and nowhere else. Whoever organized the ticket queues must have assumed that everyone would go to the front of the line first to check the times on the window to make sure they would get served in time before going to the back of the line. Whoever organized the ticket queues must be the biggest bumblefuck in the world, because who the hell actually does that? Last I checked, people always line up at the back of the line.

I looked behind me at the 50 or so people who, like me, would have to move to another line. Of course, I had the worst, since I was at the very front of it. I started sweating and cursing some more, and all I could think about were the seemingly hundreds of cutesy 3-D cartoon animals that kept getting presented at the animation conference. I had enough of fucking annoying 3-D cartoon animals and I had enough of so many things and processes being so incompetently designed and managed in China. But then I remember that “this is China,” and no matter how loud I cursed or how hard I stamped my feet, no one was going to give a shit unless I started a brawl, at which point everyone would get out of line and form a huge circle around me. I wasn’t sure what that would accomplish, so I did what any seasoned China veteran would do: went to the back of the next line over.

I can’t wait until I have my own helicopter.

Not that she’s Hitler or anything, but this is still pretty funny. My favorite line: “Hurricane Katrina would have made a better campaign staff.” My next favorite: “I’m surrounded by ignorant eunuchs…with cunts for eyes!”

Waking up last Wednesday morning to see that Barack had won North Carolina by a landslide was the highlight of last week. That and the burrito from Cal Kitchen.