I love postcards

They are pretty much the perfect gift/souvenir...at least for me. Here are two that I got recently. I wish I were there!

Follow me.

Helsinki, December 2009

Dirrrty New York Part II

Sunday brunch at Max Brenner.

Alice Cup!

Hug mug!

Pieces of NYC

Spring Break 2010

The Park

Comme des Garcons

Hearst Tower

Central Park

Tulips

Cafe Sabarsky at the Neue Gallerie

Basta Pasta

Dirrrty New York Part I

I took the weekend to visit NYC because I did not have anything due for class the following week. This is what happened on the first day.

My friend's apartment. I felt like I was visiting an elder in Shanghai. The apartment is in Chinatown, and it smells and looks like old Shanghai.

Breakfast. I've been craving smoked salmon egg benedict at Clinton Street Baking Co &

Restaurant. It was good but the biscuit instead of English muffin was not quite what I was looking for. Sarabeth's smoked salmon egg benedict, on the other hand, is pretty good.
Hello Kitty from Opening Ceremony for Jenni.
Soho. I liked the doodling on the wall. It looked like it was painted from a giant crayon. Walking through Soho, we saw this building with all its windows shattered. We thought it was a gas explosion. The next day all the windows were covered with plywood.
Zucchini and potato focaccia from Balthazar's bakery. It was bad.
A building in Chelsea. I liked the little alien on that grey thing.

Baohaus. It was interesting.
We tried to go to a bar but it didn't work out. So we ended up back at the apartment and drank Veuve Clicquot. It gave me major stomach ache. I can't drink anything expensive.

For Sheryl

Alexander McQueen boutique, NYC, 2/19/10

Love-Hate Relationship with my Lomo

I love my Lomo camera for its dramatic colors, lighting, and its old feel. The photos that come out seem to have been taken during another era or developed ages ago.

I hate my Lomo camera for its cost and surprises. It costs around $3 for each roll of film and another $4 to develop the film onto a CD. A couple times the films came out blank probably because I did not set up the film correctly. While in Europe, I had the wrong ISO setting on for a couple of my ISO 100 films. Sometime during my use, the ISO setting was turned to ISO 800 for my ISO 100 films. As a result, too little light went into the camera. A lot of times I would forget to set up the manual focus resulting in many wasted frames.

But sometimes the Lomo produces phenomenal photos that are incomparable to unedited digital photos or even heavily edited digital photos. There is just something pure and real about film photography.

London Eye, London

Louvre, Paris

Helsinki Central Railway Station, Helsinki

Rosenborg Castle, Copenhagen

Bascilia of St. Mary of Health, Venice

Cai Guo-Qiang

If we have ever talked about the type of art I like, I have probably said Asian art is inferior to Western art. Asian art, to me, is inferior because Asian artists lack individuality. Chinese paintings (you know those ink, scroll paintings) all look the same; they all seem to be painted by the same person or produced from a factory. In a way, Chinese paintings are like the manuscripts of the Middle Ages. The only Asian artist that I can name off the top of my head is probably Hiroshige who I know from studying Western art.

Last week, however, I was pleasantly surprised when I visited the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. They are currently exhibiting the work of Cai Guo-Qiang who I had never heard, but should have, before last week. Cai Guo-Qiang has exhibited at the Solomon Guggenheim, Tate Modern, Sackler Gallery, the Met, and won at the Venice Biennale. His large-scale installation works are unusual, provocative, and expressively beautiful. I got the same feeling at Cai's exhibition as when I visited the Saatchi Gallery.

Inopportune: Stage One

Hello & Happy New Year from Taiwan

I hope you like these photos I took of Taipei 101's New Year's fireworks. It was really amazing but way too short. I waited one hour for three minutes of fireworks. And then it took two hours to get home.

Helsinki

My camera failed me in Helsinki. It took acceptable night shots in Paris. But, in Helsinki, the shots came out blurry even during the day.

Uspenski Cathedral

Copenhagen is enchanted.

My friend and I arrived at the train station in Copenhagen at around 12 pm. It was quite an easy journey from the Copenhagen airport to the city. The train only took around 10 minutes.

This is the view from our hotel room. It's the Marriott Copenhagen by the water. It's not in the center of the city but it was only 10 minutes away by foot. It had a fantastic view of the water and the island across from mainland . After staying at Happy and Young hostel in Paris, I will never stay in a hostel ever again. I showered in a stall that flooded with other people's hair and had my luggage opened. So I had to pick a nicer hotel this time around.

View from the hotel's 9th floor. The spire is from the Church of Our Saviour (Vor Frelsers Kirke). Not only is it unique and decorative, but the spire also serves as a staircase for visitor to climb and see the city. In the distance, which you can barely make out, is the Middelgrunden which is a wind farm in the sea. There are 20 giant turbines and they power over 3% of Copenhagen.

Another view of from the hotel. This picture shows one of the thing I love about Copenhagen--the city is so beautifully unified by the towers and green patina roofs. Each and everyone of the towers is unique but still they bring together a sense of uniformity for the skyline.

A closer look at the tallest tower from the picture above. It is the City Hall.

Don't really know what that building is, but that Christmas tree is powered by these bicycles that you can ride at the base of it. I got quite a work out from trying to light up the tree myself. It shows how Denmark is addressing the problems with energy and the environment. It's such an innovative solution to lighting up the tree. Throughout the city are also bicycle lanes. It's amazing how many people ride bikes here!

On the Strøget, the longest pedestrian-only shopping street in Europe, with another beautiful tower. But I don't know what it is.

The Magasin du Nord, the biggest department store in Copenhagen. Quite fancy with expensive Scandinavian fashion that I, sadly, could not afford.

The Royal Danish Theatre--reminds me of a smaller, less ornate Opera Garnier.

It's hard to believe that the building in the centre with the tower is home to the Copenhagen Stock Exchange. The CSE is the oldest stock exchange in Europe. And that wicked tower is made up of the tails of four dragons twisted into a spire. It's unlike anything else huh.

The Rosenborg Castle--a former royal castle.
It houses the royal jewels but we didn't know that nor did we go in. Since we only had one and a half day in the city, we pretty much just wandered around the city. We thought going into museums and castles would have killed too much of our time. We wanted to see as much of Copenhagen as we could in the short amount of time we had. Thankfully Copenhagen is not a big city so we got to see just the right amount of sights during the time we were there. While I didn't know what was what, I still got to learn and appreciate the city just from the architecture.

The gardens of the castle.
Sadly, most of the leaves were gone.

Child strangling a goose with a lot, a lot, and a lot of leaves all raked into the fountain.

Row houses in a nice colour palette.

A windmill!

This was the sight as we walked to see the ever so famous Little Mermaid sculpture. The body of water that is closer to you is a moat surrounding a fortress.

The Little Mermaid!
...who looks quite sad and Survival of the Fittest featuring the Fat Lady, Justitia, sitting on top of a poor, starving African Man. It was put up for the UN Climate Change Conference. The sculpture is meant to symbolise the rich countries making "the best" decisions for poor countries.

The Copenhagen Opera House.
It's quite monumental and nicely designed. Don't you think so?

The Amalienborg.
This royal palace was kind of disappointing. No crowd was gathered there to take pictures like how people gather at Buckingham Palace. And it doesn't seem to have heightened security that shouts "if you trespass, we will shoot you." Queen Margrethe II, the reigning queen, is said to be quite beloved by the people. She's a major chain smoker and is friendly to her people.

The Marble Church!
I was completely surprised when we stumbled upon this. We were walking in, what we thought was, a residential area. The buildings were all kind of the same then we came around a corner to see this beautiful domed church. It was also free to go in. The inside wasn't as fantastic as the outside but we got to heat up a little bit inside.

The Nyhavn.
It's a canal lined with some very colourful buildings and restaurants. We ate there on our last night. I had a piece of deer, a chocolate cake, and the best mulled wine I have had. The mulled wine had some sort of nuts in it with raisins.

A closer look at the Church of Our Saviour.
It was closed that day but I got a peek of the inside which had an incredible altar piece.

Dinner on the first night.
We tried for like an hour looking for a place to eat that night. It was completely dark by 4 and a lot of restaurants were closed or asked for reservations. We finally found this place after walking around in the rain. That beer was also the beer I've ever had. It was a Christmas beer that is only made during the holiday season. I think it had cranberry juice in it.

The Tivoli!!!

Sadly, we didn't go in but it looked like tons of fun. They charge an admission fee and also a fee for each ride. Walt Disney is said to have been inspired by the Tivoli.

Tivoli at night.
All in all, I completely loved Copenhagen from start to end. I talked so much about it that my friends got tired of me. It was the perfect city for the amount of time we had. We did not need to take the bus or metro during our time there. It only took us 45 minutes to walk from one end to the other. Although the locals didn't seem particularly friendly at first, they were nice and helpful after you approach them. Best of all, they all speak perfect English. That made traveling, asking for information, and ordering food a lot easier.

The city was also a pleasant break away from all the other cities I have seen, especially Italy. I absolutely loved the green patina roofs that are scattered throughout the city, the unique towers, and the brick buildings that were everywhere. Like the title of the post suggests, Copenhagen is enchanted. ;)