Monthly Archives: October 2003

The Long Now Foundation

A group of people who care about the future, and who realise that the way we think about the future also affects how we live life in the present. From their website:

“Civilization is revving itself into a pathologically short attention span. The trend might be coming from the acceleration of technology, the short-horizon perspective of market-driven economics, the next-election perspective of democracies, or the distractions of personal multi-tasking. All are on the increase. Some sort of balancing corrective to the short-sightedness is needed – some mechanism or myth which encourages the long view and the taking of long-term responsibility, where ‘long-term’ is measured at least in centuries.”

The Long Now Foundation was established in 01996 to develop Clock and “Library” projects as well as to become the seed of a very long term cultural institution. It has been nearly 10,000 years since the end of the last ice age and the beginnings of civilization. Progress lately is often measured on a “faster/cheaper” scale. The Long Now Foundation seeks to promote “slower/better” thinking and to foster creativity in the framework of the next 10,000 years.”

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Melvis

Elvis is not dead – he just lost some weight and moved to Hong Kong.

Melvis is essentially a Hong Kong Chinese busker who looks (or at least, dresses) like Elvis (in his Las Vegas incarnation) and performs short and almost incomprehensible Elvis songs at the drop of a hat.

We were out last night, and one of the guys with us saw Melvis in the street and asked him to come in and play for us. He did a very short Hound Dog, and a brilliant A Little Less Conversation. He has a remarkable talent for cutting to the very essence of each song, leaving out frills like melody and recognisable lyrics.

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Prince — live in Hong Kong

Like many others, we scored free tickets to the Prince gig staged as part of the Hong Kong Harbour Fest. I had never seen Prince before, and hadn’t heard much of him recently, but the show was excellent.

Prince on stage

He moved and grooved all over the purple stage, singing a good range of well-known and more obscure songs. The band was fantastic. Just smooth funkiness from beginning to end.

Harbour Fest venue

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Cow Parade in Tokyo

Cow parades have been going on for a few years, in various parts of the world. I was excited to discover decorated cows in Marunouchi, downtown Tokyo, where I worked. So excited that I decided I would try to shoot all 60-odd of them (with my camera).

This was the first cow parade in the Far East, featuring lots of Japan-themed cows, and one or two impressive technology-enabled cows. It was fun hunting them all down – I even found some interesting parts of town that I had never been to before.

In the end, I ran out of time – I only managed to find 61 of the 64 cows. Some of them were sneakily positioned inside buildings, and one was way over on the other side of Tokyo station. Some of the cows also moved around over the course of the parade… Anyway, I had to steal other people’s photos to complete the three missing spots in my photo album.

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Dear Catastrophe Waitress — Belle & Sebastian

Have they been taking happy pills? This is a pretty upbeat set, with their usual great melodies and naive vocals. So far I have enjoyed it immensely. It may not scale the quiet heights of “If You’re Feeling Sinister”, but I think it’s just going for a fuller sound. And it’s much better than the patchy “Storytelling”.

I am particularly amused that they rhyme “I’m a cuckoo” with “Harajuku”, since I used to live in Harajuku (Tokyo) until a few days ago. In fact, I bought this CD in Harajuku the day before I left. (And got a free badge with it.) Ah, good times, good times.

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