A Fitting Opening

I have a long wordy post waiting to be written later tonight, so I thought I'll just do a quick little update for now. This is MAD MEN's opening title re-design by Paul Rogers. I saw this over at Laughing Squid and thought it looked great but I am wondering whether it is official or not. Still it looked amazing and is totally post-worthy so I couldn't hesitate. I can't wait until the show comes on air again.

A Glimpse of Xiamen

After seeing some photos of Hankou at 0000, I felt like doing a post or two of China. Perhaps I have been reading way too much of The Economist lately, but I cannot help but feel that the world (America?) has such an antagonistic distorted view of China as the big bad dragon that threatens to challenge America's hegemony. When people of think of China they focus way too much on Beijing, Shanghai and Shenzhen that they forget some parts of China is still rural and traditional. As if on cue, my father just returned from a trip to XIAMEN (廈門) where he took many wonderful photos which I will share you today. Apparently, Xiamen is not too far from Hong Kong at all and sits across the strait from Taiwan. I had to wiki that due to poor Chinese geography from so many years of British education at the ex-colony. I am going to blame the Brits for my ignorance! Heh. That aside, it is only when I see pictures of old buildings that I dream of being an architect and follow my parents' footsteps. It would be wonderful to apply ANDO TADAO (安藤 忠雄)'s thinking of marrying the old with the new. That said, it is sad to see that despite China's growth at breakneck speed, it sometimes does not have the matching wherewithal and knowledge to preserve whatever old relic that survived the Cultural Revolution.

Happy Belated, Dad

Happy weekend everyone! The post on fashion vloggers is from late Wednesday before Blogger ate up the post. I am so glad Blogger's up and running again after being down for two days in a row. A record! It did disrupt the schedule of blogging once a day which is rather disappointing because Thursday's post would have been exactly on my father's birthday. On the other hand, no worries, I am not going to force anyone to read on endless drivel on my dad, The Boar Father. Haha, I kid, I kid. But no in belated celebration, I much rather talk about what I associate with my father the most fashion/design-wise, which is 無印良品 or Muji.

For those who don't know much about their history, they conveniently have a wikipedia page. My dad loves the brand's merchandise so much that he even has the membership visa card. Truth to be told, I am not sure how well the North American crowd is familiar with the label because there are some Michigan friends who instantly recognize their well designed pens (even with their famous lack of conspicuous labels), yet many others draw a blank even when I mention it explicitly. The label only has that one store in New York City in North America so I don't blame them at all while it is  everywhere in Asia (at least in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taipei, Tokyo and Seoul - cities that I have been to recently that I can personally vouch for). They have a wide variety of high quality items ranging from the edible to furniture. Everything is just supremely well designed and it stands out from other "life style" stores just because everything is well done and impeccable. You can be assured to expect the best from the brand and its offerings. I use to fantasize that if I did become an industrial designer I would either work at Apple or Muji for life, quite happily. The brand is synonymous with efficient, sleek, timeless, minimal design in Asia just as Apple is in the U.S.

In my books, Muji can pretty much never do any wrong. This is why one of my favourite things to do in Hong Kong is to go shopping around Muji with my father (and with the Muji card we get great discounts and air mileage points, natch). This is also one of the moments why I love and am endlessly grateful of the fact that my father is a man of the arts, a professional architect, who appreciates the beauty behind a well designed good and the tremendous efforts behind the design process to make it look, work and feel just perfect. It is also a major plus that since the clothes are designed by the Japanese, their clothes fits my father's über slender frame perfect to a T (he claims to be the same exact weight since his college days, pfffffft). Alas I don't have much Muji products with me at the moment to have personal items to show everybody but my favourites are their yuzu & apple gummy candy, their clothes and their amazing collection of stationery. Words cannot fully describe their awesomeness and I am thankful for the very first time that pictures are worth a thousand words - a thousand of my unwritten words that I don't have to force you to read...until tomorrow, muahahahaha.

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