Things you have made with wakened hands, and put soft life into
Are awake through years of transferred touch
And go on glowing
For long years
And for this, some old things stay lovely
Warm still with the life of Remembered Men who made them
- lorea solabarrieta
Audrey: Public hygiene posters are everywhere in Hong Kong. You might have seen posters of Hong Kong’s public health officials posing as hygiene police, holding machine guns.
Lorea: Really? I haven’t seen these, but that reminds me of when I lived in London and Rimmel Cosmetics had this slogan for its make-up line: ‘It’s not Make-Up, It’s Ammunition.’ Kind of a cool concept. Machine guns and make-up and hot women. Fail proof. Smudge proof.
Audrey: Great slogan. But doesn’t that insinuate that women who don’t wear makeup have lost the battle? Anyways, I love these posters because they suggest that public hygiene is a constant battle and it’s somewhat reassuring to know that health officials are trying to fight this problem.
Lorea: They should have these posters in China, not Hong Kong. I mean, it’s bad enough here…. But have you seen the mainland? I used to constantly dodge stepping on spit on the sidewalk. I gave up wearing nice heels. Wouldn’t it be hilarious if Hong Kong had hygiene police? I saw some fresh spit on the street last night. Ugh.
Audrey: The government here should start a hygiene police department and they should hire me as the chief! Most people hardly pay any attention to these posters that are plastered around the city. I am a big fan though, because public hygiene is something I am OCD about. I’m so OCD that when I visited the dentist office last month the first thing my new dentist said after looking at my teeth was, “You must be very clean.” The credit for this flattering comment, of course, goes to daily flossing.
Lorea: Wow. That’s awesome. A dentist complimenting you on how orally clean you are. That’s one way to narrow down the types of guys you’d kiss or date. There can’t be many anally hygienic men in Hong Kong.
Audrey: I haven’t seen posters in Hong Kong on flossing yet. I don’t think flossing is an Asian thing because Koreans don’t floss. They think I’m weird. I always carry antibacterial hand sanitizer or wet wipes in my purse and even though I live in Asia, the paradise of street food, I rarely eat it. I feel uncomfortable eating food that has been prepared in polluted air.
Lorea: I love street food! But, ever since meeting you, I have taken care to think twice about what I touch before handing it to you. You are so American! I used to say to my US friends, that they needed to spend more time in Asia eating street food and getting sick, so their bodies could adjust to embracing new bacterias. Americans, I think, like Germans, grow up in a society that’s very germaphobic. Even though I live in Hong Kong, I’m sure I’ll still get pretty sick if I ever make it to India. Everyone gets sick when they go to India – even Indians.
Audrey: Dirty restrooms also bother me. I once took a road trip around Shandong Province in Mainland China and the memory of some of the restrooms I saw, still gives me the shudders. I don’t know how active the World Toilet Organization is in Mainland China but they have their work cut out for them. Improved hygiene and sanitation are directly linked to social development, but I wonder why the Chinese Communist Party isn’t promoting more public health campaigns. They could have the People’s Liberation Army wage a battle against poor hygiene and sanitation, but what’s stopping them?
Lorea: I once was filming in a village and the only toilet was in the middle of the field, housed in a clay shed. There was no flush. Just a deep hole with years of faeces and snow white worms eating it. Watching Slumdog Millionaire’s shit scene when the boy falls into it, is disgusting. You can’t smell the stench in the cinema, but you can feel it. I’d rather dig my own hole then use a public one! Beijing is a shit-hole. There are things I love about that city, but really, it is SO dirty. I lived there for a year and I felt like I was just covered in a grimy layer of dirt everyday. There’s something about China culture where the people choose to hide the dirt rather than clean it. I once saw a bride getting her wedding photos done. She hitched her white wedding skirt up and underneath were a pair of tatty jeans and dirty trainers.
Audrey: Why does poor public hygiene get on my nerves? First of all, I agree that cleanliness is next to godliness. In addition, good public hygiene cannot be overemphasized because it saves money and lives. Just think of all the illnesses and sick days we could prevent if everyone washed their hands properly and covered their mouths – NOT with their hands but with tissues or with their elbows – when they sneezed or coughed.
Lorea: Cleanliness cannot be godliness because there is no God. Or if there is, maybe all the Gods we worship are linked to this one, ultimate GOD? Don’t ask me about religion. I’m confused. And I don’t want to work it out.
Audrey: I believe there is a God and I DO think God wants us to be cleanly, in every sense of the word. Besides, great public hygiene makes a place so much more appealing as a business and tourist destination. Case in point: Tokyo, a city known for cleanliness. If only other cities would follow suit.
Lorea: I think Tokyo and Singapore are too anally clean for me. I need the grunge, graffiti, street food and strange smells, every once in a while to make me feel alive. Except roaches. I hate roaches.
Audrey: I feel perfectly alive without graffiti or grunge.
2012 is the Year of the Dragon. Many couples want a baby in this lucky year. But… this creates tension between Hong Kong and Mainland Chinese women.
Check out Freedom Lab’s debate about making babies in Hong Kong.
Freedom Lab attended a thought-provoking talk by Timothy Garton Ash, the director of the Free Speech Debate, at Hong Kong University today.
Ash described the Free Speech Debate, which is an Oxford University project, as “an attempt to facilitate [and] to promote a serious multilingual, global conversation about free speech norms, using the possibilities of the Internet.”
The motto of the Free Speech Debate is, “Thirteen Languages. Ten Principles. One Conversation” and the basic premise of the project is to get as many people as possible to have a conversation about free speech or the freedom of expression.
The core philosophy behind this project, as explained by Ash: “In an increasingly interdependent world, where information and ideas flow across frontiers, pollution flows across frontiers, energy flows across frontiers, trade flows across frontiers, we have to get into a conversation about what should be our shared values – universal values – because otherwise the world is going to be a very nasty and dangerous place.”
To frame the conversation, Ash and his colleagues have put together 10 draft principles as norms of global freedom of expression. “Each principle then has a series of discussion for it, and a series of case studies, which illustrate and question the principle,” said Ash.
Principle #7, “We respect the believer but not necessarily the content of the belief”, resonated the most with Freedom Lab because we believe respect is crucial when it comes to having an open and constructive dialogue with others.
Although the state has been the traditional suppressor of free speech, Ash mentioned that private powers including big companies like Facebook, “are equally restrictive.” Because Facebook has so many users – roughly 800 million – it could stand as the world’s third largest country by population.
“What Facebook does is more important than what France does,” he said, reminding us about the growing influence of private powers (and the growing wallet of Mark Zuckerberg).
Ching Cheong, a Singaporean journalist who was jailed in mainland China for 1,000 days and has just published a book on his experience, raised an important thought when he asked, “What are the values that transcend cultural lines?”
Most in the room agreed that it was hard to define a ‘universal’ value on free speech when the world is so diverse – politically, economically, culturally.
As Lorea Solabarrieta, Freedom Lab’s Founder admitted, many people in China might say that the concept of Freedom of Speech is a Western philosophy. Ash said, “Free Speech was institutionalized and embedded into law in the modern West,” but Freedom Lab raises the question, “To what extent is the concept of free speech mentioned in Chinese history?”
- Audrey Yoo, Freedom Lab collaborator
The Woman stands tall. Imposing. Four metres up. Stunning. Nothing to say. Yet you cannot help but feel her pain.
She is Exposed. Vulnerable. Misplaced. Here, all alone, yet not alone, in Hong Kong’s Exchange Square; the domain of money-obsession, trading and collection. She will not find her peace here.
She is under close scrutiny, like the financial markets around her, drawing silent admiration and awe from busy passerbys. They don’t stop. They’d rather ignore her than face the passion that seeps from her pores, less it detract too much from just getting on with the day.
Like them, She is in her own world.
But, unlike them, she cannot go unnoticed.
Like oil, she melts seamlessly at every angle, into every angle. Her dress is slick, rippled against her body, defining her skin. She is svelte, yet curvy, streamlined, luscious. Her movement, a dancer’s. But she’s not really moving.
Golden Goddess, are you a testament to the ostentation of this city? It’s as if the artist took a bucket of liquid gold and drenched you from top to toe, hoping that the paint would never dry and that your body would never harden.
A symbol of hope, perhaps, that the wealth of this city, will never run out.
A standing salutation to success in all its glory. Her stance, simple. Feet together. Almost perfect. But
In the front, she is scarred. Nine random drawers of different sizes, some open, some closed, run down her body. Unapologetic. She has no face. She has no breasts. Perhaps she has no Heart. No Soul. Someone has tried to open her up. But like her drawers, she’s appears to be empty.
But something is happening. There is drama at her feet as she stands in Fire. Her left arm, raised, straight to the sky. Asking for Help. SOS, of Desperation. Intense. The other arm is bent in agony, the hand resting, in vain, on her bald, featureless head. She is futile, defenseless. She is Burning Alive. She searches the heavens and screams with pain; but all we hear is silence.
The flame licks up the back of her contoured, liquid dress. Gulping her legs. Only her bare feet are free, peeping out desperately. They might consider running, if only she could.
She’s trapped. That is her fate. Her hips thrust forward and her back is over-arched. Her body contorts.
Wretched, Submissive. Surrendering to Heat.
She is strong, but weak. She is too young to be old. Yet, she is melting, like only the Old can do.
To stop her from falling and collapsing to death, the artist has given her architecturally-precise, rickety golden crutches, to support her flailing back.
But there is no support for her emotional turmoil.
Despite this, she glints like a newly polished penny in the Sun. She is breathtaking. Fabulous. Her physical oddities and emotionally-wretched gestures aside, she is still a Stunner. Her statuesque being stands on top of a perfectly square base, her ‘Earth.’ It is a small Earth. But one that supports a larger-than-life persona, that is caught up in its woes, and its own self-centeredness.
Perhaps she is a representation of our larger-than-life egos and the futility of our existence. Or she may symbolize the indestructible Being who is by no means, Infallible. The many empty drawers of her body may refer to the deep ‘layers’ of Psychoanalysis when we try to understand Us, but, in essence, these layers are only trivial, behind our ultimately empty thoughts, souls, emotions and pain.
Whatever her reason, she stands Proud as a Stirrer of Emotions. As we stop, stare and maybe draw comparisons between our world and hers, her very existence serves to tells us this:
In our search for Happiness, perhaps we should surrender to the knowledge that Life – and what makes it truly rich -
is Suffering.
RIP
Mike Wallace of 60 Minutes Plus.
One of the Greatest TV interviewers and reporters I grew up watching.
Always compelling – you taught a 10 year old girl how to keep asking questions – always.
You will be missed.
Jessica Sanchez is a pinoy, not a latina, as her name would suggest – but, when you got the whole of the Phillipines AND the latinos in America voting for you, you’re going to win American Idol.
If every Black or Latin American voted in the USA, they could overthrow the white majority.
So, I know that Monsieur Hirst is currently facing charges from 8 cases of plagiarism.
But isn’t the whole idea of art is that it’s open to interpretation?
No-one can really own an idea, can they?
So, how can you sue an artist that’s just better at marketing himself than you are?
Sorry that you weren’t the artist that made millions out of stapling or glueing carcasses and butterflies to a canvas.
The world is never fair, is it?
I was walking up the mid-levels escalator today at around 6pm.
There was a massive line of people. 150 at least.
Then it hit me.
Ben and Jerry’s Free Cone Day.
The economy must be really hitting the shit fan if we’re lining up for free ice-cream.