2010年2月24日 星期三

Monocle Issue 25 Volume 3 July 2009 - Perfect city



She speaks out all I am craving for .......

Monika Sprüth
Co-owner, with Philomene Magers,
Sprüth Magers Galleries
London/Berlin/Köln

What elements would a perfect business city have?
It should be the place in the world where culture merges. Culture understood in a broad context reduced not only to art, music, design, architecture, theatre - The city where all contradictions of the world are experienceable and tangible.

How important is quality of life when choosing a base?
Quality of life has a practical and intellectual aspect. Creative architecture in beautiful urban or rural settings. A house with a view of a lake, a river or the sea. With young children close to good and creative schools. A mix between anonymous privacy and friends who share the same interests and discourse. And, most importantly, to have the possibility to see matches of my favourite football club - the professionals and the youth teams.

Which cities are getting it right?
Cities that understand that their strength is mainly based on their history and culture. Places that are always on the borderline between collapse and never-ending cultural regeneration - here culture can grow. Melting pots: cities such as Berlin, New York, London.

If you could be based in any city, where would that be?
I cannot make up my mind. Objectively, all cities that have charisma and vibrancy like Berlin or London are great, perfect places for our galleries. Personally, my preferences change quite often and it seems the easiest to stay where my football club 1.FC Köln is located: Köln!

2010年2月22日 星期一

14 days of holidays

By the time I sat down in front of the new HP notebook after a tough game on tennis it’s the last day for my 14 days annual leave. It was tired after the game and I felt like pumping out all my energy, but still it is a good way to end the holidays with sport.

The past 2 weeks were different with the last 2 holidays which was a week travelling and a week muscle building – they are going without much planning and on everyday I just do what my intuition tells. Sleep late, wake up late, afternoon may be spent with either weight training in MegaBox or doing some reading on Monocle’s past magazine and Reuters; Night time got myself engaged in wine drinking, putting myself into photoshop or if weather did not go wrong, another sport session.

This is way too different with the past 3 months when I need to calculate how much time left after job and its mental preparation, everything got well-planned and nerve cells never rest. For sometimes life goes unplanned it just helps freshening up your minds to get ready for the coming months of work.

2010年2月21日 星期日

Meditation | Deep thinking

Is internet making us smarter ?

By technological or lifestyle means internet has been fundamental to its development. Simply a click and information floods in your screen. According to the latest online research interviewing 900 scientists, consultants, business leaders, writers, technology developers and internet users by Reuters (2010), majority of them agreed that internet has an indispensible place on improving reading, writing and rendering of knowledge. 3 out of 4 experts in the study said internet enhances human intelligence.

Yet there has been argument of the use of internet on improving our IQ. Nicholas Carr, as a technology writer, attributes there is positive relationship between use of internet and people's stupidity. "What the Net does is shift the emphasis of our intelligence away from what might be called a meditative or contemplative intelligence and more toward what might be called a utilitarian intelligenc ..... Chipping away users' capacity for deep thinking or concentration," Carr said in a release accompanying the study - 'Is google making us stupid ? '. "The price of zipping among lots of bits of information is a loss of depth in our thinking." declared Carr.

2010年2月18日 星期四

Boom de Yada



A beautiful song from Discovery Channel . Another verson below, equally attactive

2010年2月17日 星期三

Rooney vs Sanchez boys

Life should consists of crazy time, mate.

2010年2月13日 星期六

Congratulation !


Nothing is better than having a proposal like this.
I see truth, romance.

Flash-back on the day of Tao's proposal
















2010年2月8日 星期一

Wine tasting


The past sunday has been a day of sweetness and bitterness. It started with the orienteering competition when I was basically soaked with rain for 3 hours till home, and ended with 9 great wines with a bunch of friends in MaWan.

It was tough at the start of the day when i put myself into extreme - knowing it's heavy raining and heard thunderstorm and I was still heading to somewhere in New Territories. I ran around the hill, locating checkpoints, jumped over places where rains had been causing small scale flooding.

Yet never have I thought the day could be well finished with bottles of red wines. Headed to MaWan still with dried-up body at home, I had a night with good wines, good friends and good music. While the exhausted body got charged up with food and rest, the mental exhaustion caused by prolonged stay at adverse condition just revived with stimulation from new and old world wines, musics shared by everyone's mobiles or i-pod musics, and laughers generated within each others.
Not many sundays in your life can be vivid with such contrast.

2010年2月3日 星期三

I knew I knew



A relative of a dying patient coming to me, urging me to save his father. She was lost, because she just could not accept his father's prompt deterioation of condition. One day before he was still alert to everything and even spoke to his family, and 12 hours later, the Glascow Coma Scale has reached the minimum.


She asked me to give injection to pump his heart power up, but an hour before she just accepted conservative management by not resuscitating him. She cried in front of me, and I saw her tears that normally won't be shown to a person who doesn't know her.


I knew


That's love.