Mutually Awkward Podcast #6: Junk Boats & Psychics

 

 

 

I haven’t promoted the podcast too much on here lately but remembered to as Peige and I just recorded Episode #7 tonight. But that still needs to be edited. In the mean time, here’s Episode #6 from last week! We talking the things mentioned in the title, junk boat parties and visiting Hong Kong psychics, as well as a lot of other good life-stuff. It’s hard to believe that with six episodes of Mutually Awkward now existing, that means there is now six hours of us talking on the internet. Not a bad way to spend an afternoon, eh? You can message the show with comments or questions on our Tumblr.

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Mutually Awkward Podcast #2 + My 200th Blog Post!!

 

This podcast is seriously starting to become a form of therapy for me – which is helpful because I’ve been in some dark places lately. It’s weird because I was in a pretty bad depression around this time a year ago too. Is it cyclical possibly?  Or is it because these extra long Hong Kong summer just get draining?

Well, anywho, we recorded episode 3 tonight but that has to be edited. In the meantime, if you’re looking for some new podcasts to listen to, give episode 2 a go. We talk about dating, OkCupid experiences and playing music. So relevant stuff! And it gets awkward…. but in a good way. You can click on the image below to stream, download or iTunes it.

 

 

Post-Blog Posting Edit: 

Upon sending this out, I was notified that this was my 200th post for the blog. Woo! If I had known beforehand, it definitely would have been longer. I guess I gotta make post #201 pretty darn special, eh? In the meantime, it’s quite a feat to have 200 postings up on here. I started on here in 2010, which was a continuation of my LiveJournal which went even farther back. While I just called my new podcast that I co-host a form of therapy, this blog has been around for me much longer and I’m glad it’s been here for me – because even writing a review of an awesome gig or a fantastic movie seriously helps me through bad days and I’m grateful that it is something positive for me to turn to. Onwards!

 

 

Mutually Awkward Podcast

 

It’s been a few weeks since my last post and quite a lot of things have happened since then. The top three of ’em are as follows:

1) I moved out of Jordan in Kowloon and to a new serviced apartment in Sheung Wan on Hong Kong Island.

2) Despite the new apartment, I will only be living there for two months as I’ve come to the hard, scary, exciting decision to leave Hong Kong after 2 1/2 years and return to the States.

3) I visited Korea for the first time – well, technically the second, but you can check the travel blog for that –and had a reunion with someone five years in the making. That post is coming soon.

4) And as the title of this post states, I’ve started a podcast with my fellow California-turned-Hong-Konger best friend Peige, also called Mutually Awkward. The podcast will be in the style of my favorites (Frank & Erik Internet Famous, Nice Man, Next Weekend Show, Hey Girl Hey, Uhh Yeah Dude), meaning it’s pretty much a show about two friends chewing the fat and having good conversation about the world around us and our experiences in it. It’s something we’re both pretty excited about. For now, we record together here in Hong Kong but in two months the show will become recorded via Skype between two continents, which will definitely lead to some interesting recording hours. You can give it a listen by clicking the image below. If you decide to iTunes it, be a pal and give us a rating or a review!

 

 

 

Hong Kong Scout Centre

 

Shortly after my parents’ divorce when I was a kid, my father had my brother and I signed up for the boy scouts at a form of father-sons bonding now that he had become a once-a-week parent. For the most part, it was an awesome experience, in which I learned  a lot of lessons in comradery and basic outdoorsy stuff (knots!). It was great until our scout leader went into retirement and out troupe was taken over by over-protective mothers who felt all activities should all be held inside for safety reasons. But those were the dark latter days – all in all, it was a great experience. And it just so happens that I happen to live a few blocks away from the Hong Kong Scout Centre in Jordan, Kowloon. It’s connected a gigantic hotel and though I’ve always walked by with curiosity, it was this weekend that I finally decided to wander in. Though not a museum of scout history (or perhaps I didn’t look quite hard enough?), I saw a few interesting things.

 

The HK Scout founder.

The good ‘ole days.

 

Before I found out where this place was, I would wonder why I always see uniformed kids frequenting my neighborhood. Makes me wants to see if my dad has any of my old Boy Scout photos saved up.

 

A First Date and An Abandoned T-Shirt

This was actually quite a while ago. I had earned some extra money by working a ballot booth at a voting location during the Bush vs. Kerry election. I was pretty happy about it because my only source of income in those days was the daily lunch money that my mom provided. It was about two to three dollars a day and I found it extremely difficult to starve myself at school just so that some extracurricular spending money could be saved up. But with the election cash in my hands, I wanted to use some of my easily earned small wealth to purchase a Legend of Zelda t-shirt at the local Hot Topic located in the West Covina mall. And so that’s precisely where I went.

Once I had picked out the Zelda shirt that I wanted, I brought it to the checkout counter to make my purchase. I remember the cashier guy was a couple of years older than me, like in his early 20s. He was a bit overweight but in a way that suited him, wearing glasses and a trimmed beard. We’ve all seen this guy before. Dressed in a black t-shirt, his type would not be appreciated for another five years or so. He was checking his cell phone and after reading a text, he let out a disappointed sigh. Looking up to both myself and a fellow co-worker, he said, “This girl just dumped me over a text message. We went out on our first date last night and she just said it wasn’t going to work out.”

“Ah man… that sucks,” I replied, offering up as much condolences as I could. He ringed up my shirt and I headed home. Unfortunately, the t-shirt looked awful on me and I ended up wearing it only a handful of times thereafter.

Owl Blogging Part 2

 

Owl bloggin’ just after midnight. Well winter is coming to an end and its been an interesting few months to say the least. From getting into new bands, to traveling to other countries to sit in cafes, to being harassed by fortune tellers (last week!), things haven’t been boring at all to say the least.

Last night I drank a lot of alcohol and went for karaoke but that isn’t the point. Before that, I went to the Central Library in Causeway Bay to return and pick up a new book. It was almost 9pm and I have to say, being at the library on a Friday night is certainly an interesting experience. There are all kinds of different people there and I’m pretty certain that I fit into the Friday night library crowd just perfect. Hopefully that’s a good thing.

I spent the last hour updating Like Like Zine’s tumblr page in an effort to make it active for hopefully gaining more readers and my first post on there was a few pics taken last week of a few issues sitting smugly at Kubrick Cafe in Ya Ma Tae. If you are reading thing and live in Hong Kong, pick yourself up a copy! Or if you want to just read it from the comforts of your glowing computer screen, the Tumblr link above has the online version. I’d love to know what you think about it.

Sup.

 

SUP.

 

So I guess spring should be full on in a few weeks and I’m not too happy about it. Historically speaking, spring is my least favorite time of year. On the bright side, it at least gets me to rewatch one of my favorite Darwin Deez videos.

 

 

Sherlocked in Shanghai

 

With my Chinese Visa expiring at the start of March and me knowing I’ll be a bit lazy in renewing it, I decided to make an impromptu visit to Shanghai last Friday to visit 221B Baker Street Cafe, a cafe completely themed after the popular BBC series Sherlock. 

With me saving for longer trips in a few months and me already having visited Shanghai several times, I made this short trip a weekend affair. After meeting up with my friend who had recently moved there from Hong Kong, we headed off towards the establishment as two Sherlock geeks. I had some doubts on whether the cafe would just have a few decorations based on the series and not a full blown tribute liked I wished. Luckily, it was the latter. Holy cow, was it the latter. The cafe has a partial recreation of Sherlock and Watson’s flat from the series, a table full of his tools, shelves of the original Sherlock Holmes novels, walls decorated with Watson’s blog entries from the TV series and much, much more. After a 30 minute wait for being seated, my friend and I lounged at the bar for almost two hours, drinking Molly Tea (tasting Molly was FANTASTIC), amazing waffles and sipping the Sherlock Coffee.

It was definitely a perfect one-mission weekend travel trip.

 

Finally finding it.

 

Despite the cafe’s name, the actual address is 50 Ruijin Road.

Notice the chibi art.

My coffee.

The menu.

A closer look. As mentioned, I wanted some hot Molly in my mouth that day.

Some cool cards.

Working tools.

A bit of the shelves.

Figurines.

RDJ’s Sherlock sadly only got one sad, shadowy corner of space.

The cool room.

Merch.

Character shipping painted on the wall?

I was happy to see a bit of Mycroft love.

Beyond the Sherlock cafe, my friend and I also failed at trying to see a DIY screening of Nebraska and went clubbing for about 30 minutes before the bouncers made everyone stop dancing for some reason. I also got to see the Shanghai Museum on Sunday which was pretty cool. Here’s some extra pics of the weekend:

A bit of the street life while on the way to 221B Baker Street.

Came across a DVD of Captain Jack Harkness holding a peeled banana at a DVD store.

Saturday night’s dinner was at a Chinese Papa Johns. Tasted exactly the same as back home which was BEST.

And of course, the obligatory Bund photo.

 

 

Year In Lists: 2013

 

Is the correct way to say it Year End Lists or Year In Lists? For the time being, I’ll follow what Los Campesinos! said. It’s kind of messed up to be barely writing this one month into 2014 but since it is Chinese New Year this weekend I’m technically not cheating nor am I late.

Anyways, the bulk of these lists are going to deal with films. So lets jump into that first. I don’t quite remember if I wrote my Top 10 favorite films last year, but ever since I signed up for Letterboxd, keeping track of the movies I’ve been watching have been so much easier (ditto with their list creating features). So here we go.

 

TOP 10 FAVORITE FILMS OF 2013

10. Gravity: This movie was a huge technical achievement and it’s result was a eye viewing spectacle. I saw this one twice in theaters and I’m definitely counting on it to win Best Picture this year at the Oscars.

9. Blue Jasmine: Woody Allen went into some dark territory with this one and I loved it. Cate Blanchett completely owned as the delusional Jasmine who loses everything and deals with it horribly.

8. Her: My favorite sci-fi film in ages. Same for being one of the best romances I’ve seen in a long time. From the writing to the camera composition, everything in this film was beautiful.

7. Before Midnight: Along with Before Sunrise and Before Sunset, Richard Linklater’s third film about Jesse and Celine rounds out the series into one of the greatest trilogies of all time. For a lot of people, this film was 9 years in the making and it certainly did not disappoint.

6. The Garden of Words: After a stint in fantasy, Makoto Shinkai’s latest anime feature returns to the roots of his hauntingly depressing 5 Centimeters Per Second by once again telling a tale of angst and distance. Though it doesn’t hit as hard as Centimeters, it is still one of the most beautiful animated films out there and the story moved me towards the end. But why didn’t Tenmon do the soundtrack?!

5. Drinking Buddies: Joe Swanberg pulled a bit from his mumblecore roots for his first mainstream feature, while at the same time keeping his signature style intact. I love pretty much everything this man does.

4. The Wind Rises: Though his last feature was a bit of a disappointment, Hayao Miyazaki came back with a vengeance in a film that solidified his status as the master of animation.

3. Frances Ha: Maybe it’s because I’m in my 20s or the simple fact that I love coming of age flicks, but I just enjoy everything about this movie. And at some points, it was just a complete comfort to see a likewise character who has no idea as to what she is doing with her life.

2. The Way, Way Back: As much as I loved both, this is the film that Adventureland failed to be.

1. The Secret Life of Walter Mitty: While some of the movies this past year were technically superior in storytelling, this is the movie that captivated me the most out of the whole year. Ben Stiller: BEST HUMAN.

 

TOP 5 LEAST FAVORITE FILMS OF 2013: 

5. Thor: The Dark World

4. Iron Man 3

3. Unbeatable

2. Star Tek Into Darkness

1. Man of Steel

Fuck all these movies.

 

FAVORITE GIG OF 2013

Best Coast @ The Hangout: I’m still so grateful that they were able to come to Hong Kong and bring a taste of home sweet home. This show was a bittersweet emotional rollercoaster of radness and homesickness.

 

FAVORITE SONG OF 2013

September by Batwings Catwings

While this song definitely did not give out the same mosh friendly chaos I always enjoyed at their gigs, their sound of the summer was totally best and did it for me the most out of every song this year.

 

HOWEVER, a close second was Prom Night by Anamanaguchi – this was totallay sex.

 

That’s it for now I guess.

 

K.V.

Thinking back to my post about Christmas 2013 and running into and hanging out with a few different girls I used to have big crushes on, I can easily see that I have a “type” more clearly than ever before. And without thinking twice, my type that I am attracted to stems from one person.

A long time ago when I had a moustache and a crappy bicycle, I fell in love with a girl named K.V. This was during a time in my life where my entire existence was only school and work, a time where I didn’t have any friends and was a much more shy, awkward and miserable person than I am today. Even if I was invited out to hang out with people, I just could not accept said invitation due to my extreme shyness. My job at the time was a horrible, overnight stocking gig, where one co-worker called me Johnny Depp due to my Jack Sparrow moustache/goatee combo and my manager called me Bob for reasons to this day I cannot comprehend. K.V. was also a bit anti-social. She also had several weird quirks and of course a boyfriend. Upon first meeting her, I thought she was a jerk due to her approachability but we somehow eventually became friends and close. And I fell for her…. hard.

One night, while walking her car after work, she mentioned that she wanted me to listen to a song about a guy who liked a girl and him confessing his feelings. It sounded like my cue to finally say something but being in my current emotional state at the time, I just couldn’t.

What happened next? Of course, it was disaster. People seeing us together started asking snoopy questions, she pulled away, I confessed too late, we both got really awkward, and I ended up broken-hearted in a must worst way than any of my actual ex-girlfriends.

It took me a long time to move on but her influence really never left me. Hell, many scenes in the extended short film that I wrote are inspired by her. And like I stated in the beginning of this post, every girl I’ve dated or been attracted to since have had her similar qualities of being a bit awkward, independent and for the most part, even being slightly older than me. It isn’t at all on purpose and for the sake of wanting to be normal, I’d rather believe that this is an attraction I developed before meeting K.V. And while I can think of a few people who do fit the bill before her, I don’t think I ever cared about any of them as much as her.

We didn’t speak again until 2012. I searched her up on Twitter one day and after months of being undecided, I hit the followed button one. And we began to exchange tweets. Many. And I found out we actually had a lot of things in common this time around. Lots. Of course, my timing of finally contacting her couldn’t have been worse: I had just left California for an unknowable amount of time and wouldn’t be back again any time soon.

As before, someone found out about our talks and once again K.V. pulled away, deleting her Twitter. We eventually got in contact again through email but those emails faded out too as it always does when keeping in touch from a long distance. Part of me wonders that if I would have had the chance to see her again if I had only got back in touch a bit earlier. I wouldn’t even need to see her to tell her that I still love her in some ways. It would just be for a chance to talk to this amazing person again.

I know it’s possible – hell, many people have come back into my life that I never expected to see again. But it’s also likely that life will continue to move us down different paths, which is fine I guess. That’s just the way things work out.

 

Christmas 2013

 

Well I’ve officially been back in Hong Kong for two weeks now and it’s about time to do my write up of my visit home. It included lots of bicycle riding, lots of commuting between L.A. and West Covina, lots of friend seeing, lots of movie watching, ENDLESS eating and meeting Tommy Wiseau.

One thing that occurred many times during this visit home was how often I ran into people. And this all happened while hanging out in L.A., not while wandering the West Covina mall. Some were okay. The first face I saw was that of “K”, the girl I had been crushing on during the time of right before moving to Hong Kong. Needless to say, it’s amazing how fast those feelings instantly come back. I also ran into other faces I didn’t think of seeing and that was quite nice.

More importantly, I got to see all the faces I had thought of seeing and it was terrific. Though we are all moving through different stages of our lives and becoming a little different, it was great that we didn’t even skip a beat once reuniting. All of our conversations immediately dived right into the same favorite shit we always talked about and it was perfect. Whether it was joining friends at The Smell, a screening at The Room, spending five hours chatting in a restaurant with another girl I used to have feelings for or four hours hours in a Dennys with my friends, everything fell in place perfectly.

This was more of a venting post, but some pictures are definitely on the way.

Christmas 2013, BEST.