Tombow Fudenosuke ‘Hard Tip’

For the past year or so, I’ve been following more and more typographers – some people are designers, they make amazing logos and create beautiful fonts, others are hand letterers. I am in love with beautiful script, and am incredibly jealous of people who write menus and wedding invites and random quotes in their distinctive scripts, each a little different from the other.

Anyway. For the past couple of weeks, I’ve had nothing interesting on, so I decided I would embark on my own lettering journey. Let’s just say that I’m still in the practice makes progress part (yeah, no where close to practice makes perfect omg)… But part of the reason (or maybe I just like to place blame) is because I can’t find the right pen. Sigh. I can’t find these bloody Tombow Fudenosuke Hard Tips anywhere in Hong Kong. I’ve tried CN Square (one of the largest stationery stores in the city, complete with one whole floor – out of four – dedicated to art supplies), I’ve tried Eslite, I’ve tried Log-on, I’ve tried Loft. I’m currently using a Tombow Fudenosuke Dual Tip, but I don’t know. I think the tip is too soft. But that might just be me whinging.

In any case, maybe one of these days I’ll post my progress here. For now, I’m a a bit embarrassed at how incredibly bad my hand control is hahaha… And in the meantime, anyone know where I can get hold of those bloody pens here in Hong Kong?

Liberal Arts.

That’s two for two, Josh Radnor, two for two.

I understand that Liberal Arts may not be for everyone. I understand that maybe it’s the slightly pretentious ones who really enjoy it. I also understand if you don’t share a love for literature and perhaps classical music, you might not find it even remotely engaging. But it made me happy that there’s a film where the love of books and reading and also music is essential to the story. Ahhh. I freaking loved it. Yup.

Divide.

Been saying this for a while – I’m so glad Ed Sheeran is back. The new album is awesome.

At this point, my top two songs are What Do I Know & Supermarket Flowers. Yup. I like Eraser and Shape of You and Castle on the Hill too… Yeah. This album is going to be on repeat for a while I think… :D

Gainsbourg Symphonic with Jane Birkin.

I haven’t watched the Hong Kong Philharmonic in a very long time (not deliberately, I just haven’t had the chance to) – in fact, I haven’t seen HKPhil since Samuel Wong left, and Samuel Wong’s been gone for at least a decade. But anyway, tonight I was so moved.

Of course the focal point was the incredible Jane Birkin – if you recognise her last name, it might be because Hermes named a line of bags after her. Watching her tonight, I couldn’t help but think how wonderful it would have been to have seen her perform with Serge Gainsbourg, but well, tonight was still fantastic.

I’m quite in awe of the conductor, Didier Benetti, who I’d never heard of until this concert, and who made the orchestra sing. And I particularly love that Ms Birkin elevated our local orchestra just by changing their name to French – l’orchestre philharmonique de Hong Kong. Bwahaha.

Fabulous way to end the week. Thanks to CL for the ticket, and thanks to Hong Kong Arts Festival for bringing wonderful talent to our little city every year.

Marvel’s Daredevil – Season One.

First of all, I’m biased because I love Charlie Cox. I have always loved him, ever since I first saw him in Stardust. I was also biased with Stardust, because I loved the book so very much. But anyway. I love Charlie Cox, and have done so for many years now. (Having said that though, I have never seen Boardwalk Empire. I had no interest in watching it, until I found that out that Charlie Cox was in it. But yeah, still haven’t seen that show.)

Secondly, I am extremely happy to say that I never saw the Ben Affleck version of Daredevil. It came out during an inopportune time for me – I was working six jobs back then, and going to university – so I just never got round to it. Which is great, because I had no idea what the story was about, no clue as to mythology or back story, and so I could just watch it for what it is. And what it is, is amazeballs.

I love the fact that it’s dark. It’s fantastically dark. It’s not some happy clappy Marvel film kind of thing. The nitty gritty is awesome. And then the action is damn fun. Not to mention Charlie Cox’s flawless American accent, and incredibly portrayal of a blind man. The casting is spot on… with the exception of Karen Page – but then I can’t decide whether I don’t like her because of her character, or because of who plays her. I just… don’t like her. But anyway, back to what makes the show great (and yes, this is me being biased again), the creator and showrunners are Whedon boys. Drew Goddard, Steven S. DeKnight, Doug Petrie, I first saw all those names in Buffy font. But boy these guys have made an awesome show. (Well, Petrie in season two, so I’m getting ahead of myself.)

So yes. I binge watched this when it came out back in 2015. It’s two years later now, and I just re-watched it, and man. I still love it. Netflix ftw.

The Accountant

Backpost: movie watched on 22 November, 2016. The Grand Cinema, HK.

Thank goodness my youngest brother was in town and he also wanted to watch this, or else I might have just let this one slip by unnoticed. It was so damn good. And so much funnier than I expected – and I’m so glad I watched it with my brother, who has the same dark sense of humour I do, because no one else in the bloody cinema laughed.

Ben Affleck does kinda look plasticky – but it works with his character, I suppose, who doesn’t express emotion except through violence. Anna Kendrick was great, except… there was one rather odd scene with both Affleck and Kendrick in a posh hotel room. Nothing actually happens, but there is the sense that it might have, and therein lies the problem. The girl is WAY TOO YOUNG for him. Oh well. It’s Hollywood.

The pacing of the film was fantastic, the story was great, I loved how it came around full circle. As soon as I got out of the cinema, I googled it to check if the story had been adapted, but no, completely original. I wish it had been nominated for best original screenplay, I really think it deserved the nod. There were a couple of shots that took my breath away, and then found out that it was DPed by Seamus McGarvey, who had done Atonement, which I still think is one of the most beautiful films I’ve seen in recent years.

Anyway. I loved it. One of my top ten for 2016.

The Oscars.

Every year there is one day when I bemoan the fact that I don’t have TV. These days, one doesn’t really need TV anymore, what with our local TV channel streaming online, and things like Netflix. However, on this one day, the fact that I don’t have a TV means I don’t get to watch the Oscars. It plays on our local TV channel, but “due to copyright restrictions”, it isn’t streamed. I’m not surprised. Oh well.

I spent the morning (yes, the Oscars are live here in Hong Kong in the morning) watching Netflix and following the results (and reactions) on Twitter. Twitter is really incredible. It makes me laugh so much.

Anyway. I love that Suicide Squad is now “Academy Award-winning film, Suicide Squad.” I love that Hacksaw Ridge won two. I’m so glad that The White Helmets won Best Documentary Short – the actual people who comprise the white helmets should really be given all sorts of accolades, but anything to raise awareness is great… I thought Jimmy Kimmel’s opening monologue was incredibly on point, and the Meryl Streep section made me laugh out loud. And I’m glad that Moonlight opened and closed the show with its awards… despite the controversy. I also think we should give PWC a break. I mean come on. It’s been 89 years of Academy Awards. It’s just one mistake (although a pretty massive one haha). I loved Twitter’s reaction – mostly related to Steve Harvey hahaha…

Alright then. Here’s looking forward to another year of awesome films :)

Bill Paxton

Thank you for Aliens and Apollo 13 and Frank and Jesse, and most of all for Twister, which is one of my favourites despite the incredible unbelievability of it hahaha.

Rest in peace.

Tom Jones

It was with great sadness that Tom Jones cancelled his tour to HK last year when his wife passed away, so it was with great excitement when he announced he was heading back to HK. Except… his show date was on the same day as Guns n Roses in Singapore, as well as both the Dragonland Festival and 李榮浩 in HK. Unfortunately, I couldn’t afford to fly down to Singapore, and I am not a Black Eyed Peas / Iggy Azalea / Leon Lai / Carly Rae Jepsen / 李榮浩 fan… And so when I was gifted a ticket to Tom Jones, I was pretty chuffed.

It was an incredible short show (not quite 90 minutes), but every minute of it packed with old and new hits. Tom brought a great band (fantastic bassist, and everyone multi-talented) though unfortunately the guitar amps were way too loud and so a lot of the music – keys for sure, sometimes even Tom’s vocals – got drowned out by the red hot guitar playing, it was still an awesome night of music.

And for the first time in all my years of watching gigs, I witnessed two ladies throw panties up on stage. BWAHAHAHAHHAHA. I was practically crying with laughter :D

Damn fun night, yup!

When Breath Becomes Air

by Paul Kalanithi.

It’s rare for me to find beautiful prose. I think it’s the type of book I usually read – mostly crime thrillers and biographies, sometimes children’s books, mostly adventure-based – which are story-driven and so it’s rare to have words that pirouette off the page.

I randomly came across an excerpt of When Breath Becomes Air in The New Yorker in the middle of the night a few nights ago. It was a breathtaking piece of writing. So much so that I went and bought it immediately, and read it on my Kindle. I finished it at 9am.

Not all of it was as good, some parts of it were better. I suppose that’s normal. The excerpt was actually from towards the end, which made me suddenly realise we were nearing the end of the book, which made me sad. The most surprising part I think, was the epilogue. It was incredibly well-written, and I totally hadn’t expected that. I hadn’t expected both husband and wife (both full-time medics) to be such good writers…

But anyway. It’s a beautiful book about a talented man who had spent his life training as a neurosurgeon, and then just as he was about to take on the world, was forced to face his own mortality. An incredible read.