WEBLOG:
The wife has posted photos she took of the immediate surroundings of our new home (interior still under construction) in her blog (note the last two photos–those are gigantic “gates” to that residential area, and cost several hundred million RMB to construct, and it serves no purpose other than to show off). Our upcoming new home is basically what’s called an apartment community in the States–with security guards at the gates, hourly patrols, community swimming pool, landscaping…etc. The main difference is that in China, they don’t really have laundry rooms since most families still wash their clothes by hand or some have washers in their homes, and they pretty much all dry them on clothes lines on the balcony (so much so that there isn’t much of a market for dryers in China). We’re so used to the American way of doing things that we actually brought a Maytag dryer with us to use in China!
I don’t know what it’s like dealing with contractors in other countries, but in China, it is a nightmare. You can have the most detailed instructions, sketches, Autocad printouts, chalk markings on the walls with different colors, and whatever else for the construction guys, and they will still get just about everything wrong–like erecting a wall where there’s absolutely no mention of it, or put the wall sockets on the wrong side of the room, or building and installing everything crooked, including your walls, ceilings, and floors. When you confront them with their mistakes and ask them how and why it happened, the answer is always “I don’t know. It seemed the right thing to do at the time.” We asked around and everyone we know who’s had construction work done in their homes shared the same experience–one they wish to never have to live through again. During times like this, you feel completely helpless because it is what it is–a developing country that has not advanced enough in technology, professionalism, knowledge, skill, and standards, and the only thing you can do is to watch them like a hawk and try to prevent and catch mistakes as early as possible, instead of having them tear down entire sections later because they didn’t pass the mustard.
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It’s impossible to find good pizza in China. In the minds of the Chinese, Pizza Hut is “real pizza” to them since it’s the only well-known pizza franchise in China. In the States, Pizza Hut is not what we’d call good pizza, but in China they manage to make Pizza Hut even worse by using only a fraction of the necessary ingredients and spices, which results in pizzas that are pathetically bland and scrawny. They don’t even use the necessary herbs that pizzas should have, probably because they’re afraid those foreign herb will taste funny to the Chinese. The average “Chinese pizza” sold elsewhere (than Pizza Hut) are even worse (I didn’t think that was even possible) and use crust that’s basically spongy bread, with barely any tomato sauce, no proper seasoning like oregano or basil, and about 1/4 of the cheese that an average pizza should have. I wonder if I’ll ever come across a good pizza in China. (It’s totally different in other Asian countries. For example, I’ve had excellent pizzas in Malaysia.)
In the city of Fuzhou (where we live), there’s only one Thai restaurant left standing (others have tried and failed), and to call it Thai food would be an insult to Thailand. This is pretty much what’s it’s like for all other cuisines other than Chinese. You want a good steak? Forget it. You want a decent pizza? Better make your own. You want Indian? Better fly to Hong Kong for that. The only places where I’ve had half-way decent “foreign” food in China were in really expensive 4 or 5 star hotels, and they are often so expensive that you could only go every once a while. You’d think that the local Chinese food must be really good since it IS China, right? Not really. You’d find better Chinese food in Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Malaysia, or even in western countries. The problem isn’t about authenticity, it’s about quality and professionalism. As with many products made in China for the local market (you think products made in China for the western market are bad? You should come and see the stuff that are made for the local market), the restaurants and food products here often use cheap and unsafe ingredients, questionable production methods, and lacking quality control. It is so bad that we are now planning with some of our friends to buy a plot of land somewhere outside the city and hire a crew to grow and raise our own food.
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Quickie Film/TV show reviews:
The Wire – Season One/Two– I had heard that this show received all kinds of critical acclaim, so I decided to give it a shot. I had mentioned in the past that police dramas on television usually does nothing for me since they are so done to death. You can only stand another dysfunctional drunk detective with a broken marriage and an asshole careerist boss for so long before you flip the channel (or swap out the DVD) for something that’s a bit more inventive. After a few episodes I started to see what the critics were foaming at the mouth about–it’s the unflinching realism, the way the characters navigate a dysfunctional society, and the heartbreak of wasted potential and lives. What surprised me were some of the lighter moments of comedy gold, and those moments are particularly dangerous because I usually watch something while having a meal, and the hilarious moments in the show tend to sneak up on you since you don’t expect it from such a serious show.
August Rush – Despite the sheer amount of crap produced in the entertainment world, I try my best to steer away from anything that I know is probably so bad that it’ll make me want to put a fist through the wall (films that are made to be that bad “on purpose” don’t count), but sometimes my idealistic nature let’s badly reviewed films through because I’ve disagreed with film reviewers in the past, and I’d rather find out on my own if a film with an interesting sounding premise is really as bad as the reviewers say it is. Well, for this film, I agree wholeheartedly with the reviewers. It’s a real stinker. An insult to the audience. A disgrace.
When my wife and I first saw the trailer for this film, we were so excited because it had such a moving premise, and being a passionate musician, the idea behind film immediately resonated with me. After finally getting around to watching the film, we were so horribly disappointed–a perfectly fine premise ruined by a bad writer and a bad director, who while probably had noble intentions, ended up insulting musicians world over with a barely watchable mess. Nothing hurts a film lover more than a squandered premise, because the same premise in the hands of a better writer and director could’ve been so much more, but now the premise has been wasted, unless maybe a remake happens someday.
So why did this film disappoint so much? It boils down to the way the film treats the audience like they are a bunch of musical morons, and in doing so, the film actually insulted anyone who ever loved music and tried hard to become a good musician. If it was a film about quantum physics, where most people haven’t a clue, then fine, go wild, but most households probably have at least one person who’s a musician or know one intimately, so you cannot get away with writing and direction that is not even the least bit grounded in reality.
I get the whole “it’s like a modern fairy tale” thing–I really do, since I’ve written fairy tales myself as a writer, but when writing, there is such a thing as context and tone. If you depict a story that is based in the real world where supernatural occurrences are not part of the premise, then you must write a fairytale that is based on events that are categorized as coincidences that even if they border on being miraculous, they must never be impossible. If you depict a non-supernatural story about a human child that in comparison, makes every single musical genius that’s ever lived look like a bunch of tone-deaf imbeciles, then it’s just a steamy pile of horseshit. Instead of being awe-inspiring, the whole film becomes a giant leap over a big fucking shark (if you aren’t familiar with the term “jumping the shark” just google it).
But what else is new? This is typical Hollywood treatment, where movies depict modern software using GUI that animates like it took a whole render farm to render, or the infamous cliché of “Can we zoom in on that and clean it up” scenes in crime dramas, where Photoshop on crack from the far future does things that should only appear in science-fiction movies, or whenever someone is operating the computer, they are always typing in non-stop streams instead of using a mouse like real humans do. I just can’t for the life of me understand why filmmakers do it. Is it contempt for the audience? Is it genuine ignorance? Do we chalk it up to bad taste?
Then there’s the rest of the film–a giant sobbing mess that tries to be romantic and poetic, but the execution is all wrong and the result is contrived, pretentious, preposterous, and shallow. It’s the imitation brand of romance and poetry that lacks intelligence, substance, and insight–the fast food version of the real deal.
The Ruin – Overall an entertaining horror film, but I just couldn’t stop thinking “Why the hell didn’t they try using fire on them damn vines?”
The Happening – The funny thing about M. Night Shyamalan’s films is that despite what the critics say, you still feel compelled to give them a try–every single one of them. I think the Shyamalan experience is more about the atmosphere, the moments, instead of a typical plot structure, and in that regard, The Happening is much like his other films. I enjoyed it for what it is, and in fact I think I’ve enjoyed all of his films except for Lady In the Water, which IMO had the wrong execution for that particular story.
Final Destination – For the past several years, I have always seen this movie (and its sequels) displayed whenever I go into a DVD store in any country, and finally I broke down and decided to give it a try. It was pretty standard–nothing to write home to anyone about, except the sudden death scenes were great (almost funny in a way).
