Izumi Sakai, I miss you....

Izumi Sakai, a.k.a ZARD, died on May 27, 2007.

I randomly picked up a CD to cool myself down from the humidity in any typical
summer day as today.  This random choice made me stay with her songs
for the whole day.  Love her, just as how I loved her some fifteen years ago.

RIP.  Remembered.



Zard's "Don't you see" (Live)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1a4-3NURZRA&feature=related

A Spanish Version of "Don't you see"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGvVo_NWmpU&feature=related

Fan's English Version of "Don't you see," with some very interesting
alterations of melody
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_I9mrTJcHys&feature=related

Live version of "Field of View"'s song "突然"--one of my FAVORITES!  Zard
once redid it, with a different style. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yM7B0CIlE9Q (field of view)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tDhAxv9bfUE   (Zard)

I also found that "Field of View" and Zard performed the same song "Last
Goodbye."  See how different styles they were! 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DxizLeyhIvA  (field of view)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9_Ke3W3iD4U&feature=related (Zard)

The below is for ZARD.  I bet she'll like it.  "My Hometown"
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VQgw2Wscz-k

A Visual Memory of New York (2)

well, what's the "thing" upright on his head?



poor goddess said "it's too heavy...."




open an eye, close an eye 睁一只眼儿闭一只眼儿



I wish I were her.

female warrior--but I was terrified....

A wall of postcards sent to the artist himself continuously.  I guess this guy shared the similar biological clock with me.  Oh, no, mine is more "normal" than him, I think.  :-)  I am wondering whether the postman would finally get mad at the end of this artistic project.

I am always amazed by impressionism painting.  At the Met Museum, there is a huge gallary of this genre of painting.  Here is an example of the magic: Viewing closely to the painting--who knows what is it?

Here is the answer--an apple tree!

My flight from Pittsburgh to New York City was cancelled because of the huge snow.  But thank God, the returning trip was not.  I was waiting for the flight at the JFK, enjoying the typical winter noon sunshine through the window, while eating chocolate coated raisins.  They were so good!

Actually, I was very close to the airplane. 



From above, Pittsburgh was geometrically beautiful in snow.

 --Fin--   
Good night again  :-)

A Visual Memory of New York (1)

At the end of the last month, I travelled to New York to attend the annual meeting of the Bibliographical Society of America at the fancy Grolier Club, followed by a dinner at the Harvard Club.  I enjoyed the conference very much--smart but very kind people, comfortable settings, and of course, great food ^_^  I got fed very well at the reception and the dinner.  

On the following day, I decided to walk around New York City.  It's actually my second time being in NYC.  To be honest, I'm not quite into cities of metropolitan style, with tons of tourist crowded here, there, and everywhere around the cliche attrations, such as lame CBDs, mediocre skyscrapers, and repeating monuments.  But walking around a city is always a good way to adjust my first impression of it.  On that day, I ate at the very local Cuban sandwich shop, walked around 40 blocks all the way along the Madison Ave, and finally visited the Metropolitan Museum (Met).  I started to walk from around 2:00 p.m, until 10:00 p.m.  Eight-hour walking without even one-minute rest.... Standing ovation to myself!  ^_^

Here are some random shots of New York City.  (You can click to see larger picture)  Most of them are different from those "main-stream" pictures of the city taken by a "regular" tourist.  By the way, I have some vulgarness, by all means.  My vulgarness refers to enjoying taking pictures of Met artifacts...... Forgive me though.....I only have four hours in the Met.  So, recording them seemed to be unavoidable to me.




"rose rose I love you"

 


conference venue at Grolier Club

 


under the age-old subway (well, this line is not "sub"way though)

 


never, ever advertise with human being's faces in subway station



Thanks to my advisor, I got to know this very local and highly recommended best Cuban sandwich shop in town.  It's, indeed, very small, and very close to the Times Square.  But tourists never know it.

 


Haha, you know what it is.  The newly released promotion video of China was displayed at the Times Square.

 


street corner under murky sky

 


a shop on Madison Ave.  is it a bad pinyin?




I'm too old to wear any clothes sold here.  See that dress pastiched with Chinese newspaper?  Oh my Lady Gaga.....


                        Here starts my adventure in the Metropolitan Museum :-) 

the wonderful exhibition of Oceania arts.  it's a totem I guess.

 


again





"Look at that!"



No caption here ^_^

  



"Hey, buddy!"





A painting




closer look--can you see something on the fields?




even closer--here we go--how magical!!!





^_^ Myself in the mirror^_^





a random shooting of a passer-by "what are you doing?"

Thank you for viewing.  :-)  To be continued later.

Good night!



Recording My Dreams

Last November, I suddenly came up with a weird idea--recording my dream whenever I have one.  Then I bought a very fine notebook with Monet's painting on the cover.  Oh my Monet, forgive me.... ^_^

So far I have some thirty pieces on my dreams, in the form of words, or combo of words and images.  Sometimes when I felt it's impossible to render the fabrics of dreams into actual words, I just scribbled on paper, like an idiot daubster. 

Today I flipped my lovely Monet notebook with "great interest" for half an hour.  Hereby I concluded as follows:
(1) My dreams are in very real settings, but with tons of nonsense.
(2) My dreams sometimes bear highly twisted plots.
(3) Many people appearing in my dreams are unclear about their identities.  I remembered them by their names, but not faces.  But they rarely told me their names.
(4) My dreams have much better structure than Inception or Mulholland Dr.  HAHAHA!!!!!

Reviewing dreams is really fantastic and magical experience.  But I 100% reject all kinds of theories--psychoanalysis, mysticism, symbolism, literary critisism, post-modernism, and other whatsoever-sm--to intrude my intuitive appreciation and interpretation of my dreams. 

When I fill all pages of my Monet notebook, I gonna have a longer report to you here.  That'll be probably next year or so.

Katie Couric spoke Chinese

Last night I watched the online broadcast of the "CBS evening news with Katie Couric."  At the very end, Katie said "ming2 tian1 jian4, wan3 an1" with the English subtitle "See you tomorrow, good night" at the bottom of the screen.  I was surprised!  Well, her tone was funny, but totally understood :-)

Katie Couric speaking Chinese is definitely not an improvisation.  Yesterday's evening news program highlighted who's visit of America~~~who? HU....President Hu!  And, the last report yesterday was about Chinese language learning in American elementary classroom.  So I guess Katie Couric just followed the flow, and lightened the audience a little bit. :-)

Katie Couric speaking Chinese is quite unexpected, though.  As an audience of China's most watched prime-time news program for some twenty years, I speak from the gut, that the anchors of CCTV's "Xin wen lian bo" will never ever say "See you tomorrow, good night" in English, even if one day all alive and dead presidents of United States together visit China!

British Actors

Recently I have been watching "Yes Minister" recommended by one of my friends who just graduated from Oxford.  It's a British series of political comedy aired during the early 1980s.  Well, I have a pitiful small vocabulary of praise something.  So, the expression I will use to describe this show is "I had a crush on IT."  (You know what I mean by this misuse! ^_^)  Oh, I just love it!!!

I guess I have a special fondness for some British actors for no reasons.  Jeremy Britt's version of Sherlock Holmes, Colin Firth's Mr. Darcy......They drove me crazy!  By looking at "Yes Minister", I got to know other two British actors, Paul Eddington and Nigel Hawthorne.  How can they be sooooooooo funny and charming?  But sadly, they all passed away in the 1990s.

Funny things I saw from books

No joking.

Funny?  I found this page from an old English book at the Bibliotheca Zi-Ka-We (aka. 徐家汇藏书楼) this summer.  You all know an amusing example in Chinese-English translation--- 好好学习天天向上 to "good good study, day day up."  We seems to be so proud of this way of translation as our very own invention.  But, now I do think this American guy who wrote this article on Chinese language, actually led the way!  ^_^

What's the "unique charisma" there???

All right, I see Wittgenstein is the only game in town.  But I don't see his "unique charisma" from THIS picture.  Why This picture is so good?  I have no idea.
Should you realize that we have been surrounded by this kind of nonsense and "from-the-middle-of no-where" captions (or interpretations) for so long?  Cliche and cheesy rhetoric!