Long time no see...(1/7)

Laying on the lake bank, I saw the sky after long time. It did not look familiar to me, though we had been so close. Distinctly characterised by the bubbling clouds probably streamed from the rippling movement of the lake, I slowed down my heart to try catching a moment of resonance with the strange world. I have been more like accompanying the flow of the world than walking on my way to try construct my perceived world. This was a strange feeling from all senses but the consciousness appeared to be an innocent victim in this gradual transformation of age. The recognition of life became a stopping-watch-like feature eroding in the silence of state. Every moment was supposed to be memorable, but the luxurious treasure rapidly synthesised with the other uncounted possibilities. The date was no longer too significant in the calendar, and the courageous step came after every other motion of the world. I guess the best way to benchmark a reference point of existence is a navigational stare to the unfamiliar sky (again), as this proves right now at least to be an insulating action for the next-to-be.

Another Clean Development Mechanism...(29/6)

3-5-pair...(6/7)

The Three and the Five in a pair...

July 1st...(1/7)

The first of July, when the sunset glanced at the corner of Hong Kong.

The inconvenience & the habit...(7/12)

As planned, I went to see the film tonight. Featuring Al Gore is one of the reasons I went for it, and it was also interesting to view a documentary about the greenhouse effect...in Paris, I found that the film was still screening at l'Entrepot (a cinema which I have not gone for more than one year), and so everything appeared to be perfectly for a Thurs evening. On the same day, I talked to my colleagues about skiing. It is a good proposal for a family to spend an enjoyable Christmas. The situation for 2006 is that the weather is quite warm in France, and there is not yet any snowfall up till this second week of December. The skiing operators are facing a headache at those 'uncapped' skiing sites on the slope. I understood that the weather was getting warm globally, and that it was something 'reasonable' to me (or to others too perhaps). This is global warming that exists, ok...what I thought was that within a week or two, there should be some snow so that people can still go for their sporty vacation as scheduled at year end. But who guarantees actually?
I went to see the film in the evening. It was like a lecture rather than a film. Quite intensive and precise, the documentary pinpointed the situation in our world. True, we know a general concept about the issue and the possible impact, but a more scientific approach with data support would be a good approach to such a documentation, and there we got. I admire Al Gore's passion and will to work on the issue, disregarding any interpretation of his political and commercial intention. He may be right to do a film rather than preaching thousands times around the world. The approach applies to Hawkings too as he is doing his time theory on screen now. The film was a bit heavy but it was smoothly edited and presented. There are three things I got from watching the film: an update and recognition of the greenhouse effect issue, a good memory of the geography lessons I had in secondary school and a move by the charismatic presentation of Al Gore. Some remarks about the current capacity of Al Gore...he is actually one of the board directors of Apple and an advisor of Google. You will therefore understand more about the filming touch of Davis Guggenheim on the ibook etc. The atmosphere and comfort of l'Entrepot is always a stroke of film fans. There is a website of the documentary at climatecrisis.net but disappointedly there is not much additional information about the issue. The trailer of the documentary was a failure to me, as it projects exaggerated images of the disastrous moments that is simply like a copycat of one for the day after tomorrow. This is one of the few trailers that I have seen worse than the film itself.
At this same day, a tornado hit London...true or not the observation as per Al Gore?
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I still recall the first exhibition I visited in Paris last year at Villettes, and it was one on global warming. How ironic that I conclude my stay here with the same issue. Old problems always exist.

Autumn nerves...(16/10)

This is the colour, the colour when the nerves connect. The elements of colours tune according to the exposure of light, a gesture of awareness of an appearance...
The connection seems to be remote, and overlapping between branches is the source of shadow and unknown. It is the source of discovery, some fun maybe. The colour burns in red, in pink, in maroon, in brown, in dash, in ashes. It goes back to the basic. Home, sweet home.

Bending, branching, blocking, blunting. It looks blurred. I embrace the network of evolution. No, it is yet a stage of metamorphosis. A butterfly shines, it has the collage of colours and glories, but then, time is short. It flies until it finds the old brick wall to cover itself up into eternal silence.

This is the moment when this is no longer the moment...

Five billion years...(5/10)

At the moment, Palais de Tokyo presents its five billion years project with interesting picks of contemporary artworks. It would be a one-year project and along the year to come, there would be moments when the 'isolated' time and space bring up reaction to possibilities...the use of the term 'parasites' for installation pieces is superbly true. The works give a life to the museum, and the museum hosts a continuation of recognition among arts, human and distance. There are parasitic entities existed in every domain of time flow and development, and I am definitely one of those in my life. Some installations are actually quite inspiring and interesting. One section of this five billion years displays imitated constellation photos of the eve of bombardment. Named the day before, it drew my opportunistic attention on my focused shadowplay on the dark side of the photos/drawings. It appeared to be a chasing night of hunters and preys before the attack of the next day.
Playing with running time, some works like twistle (2003) and glassworks (2006) were examining the collusion of seconds and senses. If you face it, you feel it. Flying tape (2006) by Zilvinas Kempinas is a floating tape of memory and record, and under the current, visitors experience a deviated pattern of the recording medium.

Message d'Andrée (2005) is my favorite of the collection. Joachim Koester captured the romantic-pathetic aspects of 'voyage polaire' - the exposure of lights and chance adventure initiated by the Swedish adventurer Salomon August Andrée. The story has been a glorified history of 'people vs nature' in the late 19th century, and during the race of adventurism in the era, Andrée got his support and funding from the movement of nationalism in Sweden, and he successfully launched out the plan to pass through the ice-land to the other side of the continent, but not the plan itself. This was a plot of human ambition perhaps. Something we may see unrealistic can be a golden rule in the past. In all cases, history repeats. Remastering the defect photos left by Salomon August Andrée, Nils Strindberg and Knut Frænkel who lost their lives in 1897 during the attempt to fly over North Pole with their Örnen - a hydrogen balloon manufactured in the workshop of Henri Lachambre in Paris, Koester developed a moving image of black dots and bright lights with noise. This is the beauty of abstraction.

Pebblesonic...(23/9)

Beside the sea, there was a moment of glazed breeze. Populated pebbles of various sizes were off with abruption and collision, they are de-edged and shattered...Facing the Tropic of Cancer, they lied in curving shape, a mosaic collage of arranged sequences. The past and the future, they appeared in order. No hint of spiraling in, it was the hollowing out. The vibrated compression of oxygen dominated the stage of the philharmonic phase. The wave came, and the detachment of pebbles was filled with bubbling love. Was it a glance of sweetness or bitterness? The wave backwashed, and I found eureka, the gospel of moving stones. The turning pebbles conquered the world of land, and a special murmuring of sonic told the story of lightness and darkness. It was stoned. This was the first time I felt being so close with the stone beach and the sound of silence. I will remember this vernissage.

Natural Beauty...(15/8)

Life is repetitive, if you think so. After a puppy journey long time ago, I went to Switzerland again recently and then I recognise that I have been so young...the country is famous for its tranquility and picturesque scenery, and lying at the heart of the Europa, the places are really a bit too dreamy. I took nearly the same route as my previous visit from France to enter Switzerland, but I made a switch of the first stop to Geneva instead of Bern. My memory about Geneva before I re-visited the city had been only the three-leg chair outside the headquarter of the United Nations. I did not understand why my previous memory of the country had been so pale and blurred, but I did enjoy this unconsciousness for fresh idea and understanding about the place. Geneva is a business centre in the western part, and it provides a very pleasant habitat for people. My general impression about the Swiss is a very peaceful and relaxed country, and it actually is. The landscape offers the Swiss an unbelievable beautiful playground of nature. The lake areas beside major cities serve as a placebo to purify the contaminated roughness of human ego and arrogance in the world. I passed by Lake Geneva, Lake Thun, Lake Brienz and Lake Luzerne, and in front of the calmness of waterground, words become useless and stupid.
I re-did the trip from Interlaken to Jungfrau, but rather than climbing up via Lauterbrunnen, I tried the path of Grindelwald this time. Claiming Top of Europe, the tourist centre on Jungfrau is actually located at 3454m above sea level, 700m below the tip of the mountain range. The mountain is indeed much below the height of Mount Kenya (5199m) I went before. A 100% journey for tourists, there is not much special at the centre of Jungfraujoch, but the stunning scenery along the hilly way was a fascinating journey. I still recalled the climax feeling when I first took the train to the top in the summer of 1998, but facing the scenery again this time, I replaced my curiosity about the world with a much deepening respect to the nature and the possibility of our world. The weather was fine throughout the trip and I took a hiking route from Kleine Scheidegg to Brandegg.


I was very much touched by the colour of 'green' in the films of Tarkovsky, and while I was walking down the mountain, I witnessed the much translation of green in nature. This is always something which can peace a mind.
Hotel management is reputed in Swiss, but that doesn't mean that all the hotels are good in the country, at least there is some variation between my expectation and my experience this time. Not sure what is going on in Korea apart from its robust recovery of economy, Korean tourists were influx everywhere in Switzerland. This is something unexpected.

Tropico-Vegétal...(19/7)

Not until the ninth night of the programme of Tropico-Vegétal did I visit the tropical forest in Palais de Tokyo tonight, and quite directly to the point, it was humid and hot inside the exhibition hall...the museum is one of my favourite places for arts and installations in Paris, and indeed paying 20€ for a yearly membership is really a good buy. The museum is spacious in a sense that it nicely (and simply) makes use of the space for the seasonal installations it has, and the essence is the experience and feeling of the visitors and the interaction in between the artworks and experiments. This time, the tropical palace was decently set up, and so there can be indoor forest and plantation, a tropical park, a journey to the zoo as well as a fantasy with the crocodile. The "Land Mark" of Jennifer Allora and Guillermo Calzadilla was quite pleasant especially when it was using the curving area in the museum. The installation is rather simple but the space offers a strengthening effect to it. The video "Zoo" by Salla Tykkä was a funny approach to put the tropical element into a Hitchcock-style thriller. The video attempted to explore the relation between human and nature, psycho and empirical, but obviously, it must be a work sponsored by Canon, and the focus of the Canon camera on the screen makes it a good piece of advertising video. The sound effect in the video is very appalling.

A duo techno-pink group from Brazil named Tetine played in the evening. Their performance was just so-so, and apart from the sexy dressing of Eliete Mejorado and her iMac as control of their sequencing and music, I did not have much recall about the show. Quite disappointed indeed. Their video projection was the copied & pasted and yes, it could improve a bit the atmosphere of the performance and keep it away from total boredom. Luckily, I got a tequila sunset to ease my mood.
I passed by the bookstore in the museum, the one that appeals me quite a lot, and I found a videocassette of Bill Viola - the Passing. It's been long time since I have seen his work.

Tara Expeditions...(10/12)

Salon de Nautique a Paris was held during the week, and I visited the show today. It was a very nice-looking exhibition with a large variety of nautic related exhibits and display...The French is quite a nation with sea-lovers. They concern a lot the sea and the nature, and this can be reflected from the exhibition. The effort spent on site to arouse people's interest in the preservation of the ocean and the environment, the care to the fishermen and the advancement of the nautic equipment demonstrated the important responsibility that they would bear. In the corridor between the halls, there was a photography display of the organisation of tara, and the self-descriptive photos enabled the visitors to give a thought about the natural habitat in this world. For more info, please check also on http://www.taraexpeditions.org/.

Isle of Man...(26/9)

I went to Isle of Man in late September. A very unique and special island with specific self-sustainable nation with an interesting historical background...It has its own format of currency notes, though they always contain the visage of the Queen. The citizens called themselves the Manx and they are proud of their unique status. They have their unique shield with three legs meaning a never falling gesture. The island is a well-established tourist centre and an offshore trade centre. It has a nice coastline and well preserved natural habitats. It is a very calm destination for a life after retirement perhaps. When I look at some old photos of the island in a museum which nicely demonstrated the glory days of IOM being a hotspot of tourism, it gave me a feeling that maintaining a state with tourism only would not be an easy task. The same applies to areas like Macau or Bermuda, and it's the development of other forms of business and economy that can provide life for the society. Something I am not sure whether it is good or not.
More photos of IOM can be found at http://www.kodakgallery.fr/I.jsp?c=jiw1j59.ub153sp&x=0&y=yfuif2

CAP Reform...(22/8)

The book "CAP and The Regions: The Territorial Impact of the Common Agricultural Policy," funded by EU institutions, was released and the view from the authors coincide with UK's proposition on EU budget in previous EU meeting in July...
According to the book, the authors found that "rich core regions" locate in Germany, Britain, France and the Netherlands and so these countries acquire greater proportion of subsidies than other EU less wealthy members like Spain, Italy, Poland etc. Besides, the authors analysed the 2 pillar of subsidies, and it is noted that Pillar 1 (90Bn euros) favours absolutely prosperous "rich core regions" as these areas produce grain, milk and beef, while Pillar 2 (4.6Bn euros) goes the same way as "rich core regions" support more environmentally friendly farming. This is not unanticipatable. With this logic, near 80% of CAP would go to 20% of farmers from "rich core regions", which result in uneven distribution of financial aid.
So what do the authors propose? Pillar 1 aid should be redistributed gradually to Pillar 2, aiming at less direct subsidies and more environmental friendly development to the farming industry. Yes or no, the principle question for me is if the concept of EU works, should we categorise members into rich and poor countries? should the objective be evenly distribution of subsidy to the nations? Or would the simple economic theory of comparative advantage works? The problem rises because some nations find unfair to allocate the shared EU budget, but well, this is exactly the current circumstance faced by EU when executing a collective plan or seeking a judgement. The difference of standard of living and economic environment exactly bring out endless debates and controversary. A more flexible administrative measures according to the economical situation should be thought about, though this is not an easy task.
Another observation is about the farming industry in this world. With the monotonic direction of global economic development, farming industry does not seem profitable in most so-called "developed" countried. With the developing countries like China moving quick to catch the global footsteps of economic enjoyment, the unevitable sacrification of primary production would be a problem of globalisation...
For more information about the CAP reform, please check also: http://europa.eu.int/comm/agriculture/capreform/index_en.htm

Broek in Waterland...(8/7)

A natural habitat 10 km away from Amsterdam in Holland. Quiet village and refreshing natural atmosphere. The place is located in the Noorder region of the Netherland, and it is a piece of water lowland within the dyke... The area was famous in the 17th century as a luxurious residential area for the merchants and sea sailors. You can tell from the style of architecture of the houses in the area that it could be a soho area for the merchants at that time. The region remains much a tranquil residential area at present. Being an advance country of environmental conservation, Broek in Waterland demonstrates a nice landscape of how human living fits into the natural environment. The cleanliness and dust-free region provides a favourable habitat for not just the citizens but also plants and animals like goats, cows, fishs, birds and butterflies. Along the route of the lowland, you will see the cultivation beside the path and various species of birds is a feature specially for the birdwatchers. The land is in general 2 to 2.5m below sea level, and with the well planned dyke system, it is separated with the sea. The last serious flooding should be traced back to 1825. If you have a chance to visit Amsterdam, perhaps you can think about spending some time in the Noorder area just across the main canal.

If you would like to ride by a bicycle, you may have a look of http://www.bedstede.nl/page410.html

Jardin de Saint Guillaume...(5/7)

I spent 5 minutes at the Jardin de Saint Guillaume after work today, and well...this nice garden is actually my little terrace outside the window...a natural habitat it becomes now, with bees transiting everyday between flowers...moments of education TV-like motion that we watched in primary school indeed. The world is so interesting, and it's amazing seeing a micro-ecosystem like this outside my window. Sometimes our eyes are too big that we do not see things clear...maybe. By the way, the last photo above was actually taken on a road junction next to a traffic night at Sevres I passed by last Saturday.