Merry Xmas!

I want to wish all my friends, collaborators and readers relaxing and joyful Christmas Season and all the success for the upcoming year 2009!


More posts after the holidays.

Innovations =)

You know those mornings that you just NEED to have your coffee? -Nothing seems to work or to be right until you've reached the point, where you have that hot mug in your hands and can gently take the first sip of it's foamy contents?

Yeah, so it goes sometimes. And sometimes it just gets bit difficult to get there, hmm. Like in the possible scenario, that you equipment just don't fit together? Hå? What's that then, what to do? Like this it was in Bern, in the guest apartment of Theater Schlachthaus. There was plenty of coffee and I had remembered to bring the milk. Pot was on the kitchen table and I happily filled it and....

Pot was too small for the stove. Jihaa, we have a winner!! So, of this realisation followed frenzied search through the content of that kitchen and below you see the imaginative solution to the present problem:

New adaptations of the appliances.

And finally it's brewing!

And my Finnish speaking friends might find the cup amusing with additional "L", at least I did, when I finally had my coffee in it =)

Hong Kong Picture parade

I visited briefly Hong Kong in the end of November. We had two performances of HerStay's "Past is Simulation..." on a Ibsen Conference organized by Hong Kong Open University. Our shows took place in On&On Theatre in Cattle Depot Village in To Kwan Wan area on Kowloon Peninsula.

Cattle Depot is an interesting place. It's low-built red-brick facades look somewhat out of place surrounded with oldish apartment buildings and newer high-rises nearby. Nonetheless, it makes you feel sort of "homey". This place used to be a compound for live-stock and all the local butchers used to come to pick up the animals from here. Nowadays it's a sort of refuge for various art-projects and houses also a museum.

Cattle Depot

On&On Theatre

One of the things I was really looking forward going to HK, was to meet my friend Twinsen. Twinsen was an exchange student on my department in Theater Academy and rented a room in our apartment at the time. This was some three or four years ago and I hadn't seen him since.

Today Twinsen is busy and well-established light designer for Louis Vuitton, Cartier and Chanel etc. on Asia-Pacific area and had only very briefly time to meet me before flying out in Melbourne to open yet another shop there.

We had a very nice evening in Mong Kok, where Twinsen introduced me to the regional vibes, traditional eating-out with noodle-soup, best ice-cream in town and some other specialities. but all in all, the best thing was to have a chance to catch up with him! Thanks Twinsen, I really enjoyed it! Come to Switzerland soon, and I'll return the favor, as I promised!

Twinsen and I in Mong Kok,
-in the middle of the street, actually.

Very traditional chinese noodle-soup with fishballs and mushrooms.

Yet another fishball, a spicy speciality,
-allegedly my dear friend Anna's favorite
-So this one's especially for you girl!!! =)

I had only two days to explore Hong Kong after our shows, so I really saw only a fraction of it. I spend quite a lot of time in Mong Kok area in Kowloon, since our hotel was on Waterloo Road very close by. I like the general atmosphere there really much, but next time I would try to avoid it during weekend-time, when it gets hopelessly too crowded.

Of course I went also to the actual Hong Kong island to check it out. There it looks literally as fancy as in the Dark Knight movie, especially in the night time. The glimmering and shiny high-rises are something that you don't see everyday here in the west. Whoaa. Somehow very much more urbal and "Bladerunner" than in Bangkok or Tokyo. Perhaps, because of the fact that it all seems to be jam-packed in relatively small area. (Of course, the 7 billion people city is much more than just the Central, but it just makes you feel small due to the density of buildings there.)

Central in the evening

Central by nite.

Central from the piers.

On the daytime I wanted to go up to the Peak to have an overview of the city. Good idea, since the day I chose was not so foggy. The little tram that pulls you up there was packed with other tourist like me, but luckily most of them darted to the viewing terrace in the shopping mall as soon as the tram reached the hilltop-station. (There is relatively sizeable shopping mall up there too, since everywhere it needs to be one...)

Some of the cityscape from the Peak point-of-view.

Unlike the most of the tourists, I went out and started to walk around the peak. It's quite amazing up there. Unbelievably green. And you can still hear all the noise and traffic from the city below, but somehow it seems to be very much farther away, somehow muffled. Instead the main input is the singing of the birds the trees.

Greenery at the Peak.

After the Peak experience, I went to Causeway Bay hoping to do some shopping. But in my opinion, HK just isn't my place to shop. Local fashion isn't my style and generally the stuff is expensive too. But I wasn't that disappointed, since shopping wasn't my main target in HK anyway. I enjoyed enormously just to be in a big metropole once again and sniff in all the smells and vibes of Asia. Suck in some of the local lifestyle. Gosh, how I had missed all that!

Somewhere in Causeway Bay.

Going really local: foodmarket at Causeway Bay.

Duckie-ducks...

The logical turn-out for the evening was to return to Monk Kok. There is loads of good restaurants for all the tastes you can imagine -and, if you're still in the mood for shopping, the stores are open until nine or so. We found quite a bunch of good choices for eating out there. And following the rule, -go where the locals are and ask the waiter what he would himself choose, didn't fail me this time either.

And yes, one of the nights I did the Lan Kwai Fong too =)

Mong Kok, Kowloon.

Late dinner on the boardwalk on Soy Street, Beata, Andrea and Maria.

So, on the bottom-line: one week is wayyyyys too short time to even try to get a grip of it all. There would have been so many things to do and see, but that just gives one a reason to go back for more later on, right?

All in all, this time was a all right, especially also for the fact, that for the return flight we got upgraded to the middle class instead of having to fly cramped in the normal economy. Ah, that leg-space!!!

This is just something I found amusing at 7.00 in the morning at London Heatrow.