Sunset in St. Lucia

7 days in heaven on earth. Sun, sea, sand, drinks, stress-free. Oi. What could be better.

Cookies?

cookies
Originally uploaded by shannon.gerard

Random thoughts on marriage and existential crisis

After half way through prepping myself for the movie "Revolutionary Road" by reading the book, just one thought keeps popping up in my head, ie, may be marriage is an idea that is well-intended, like Communism, yet it's ill-equipped to be practiced by human race. Because human nature is not designed to be happy with only one person forever. This is very similiar to the idea of communism, the ideal is that everyone is equal, no one is richer or poorer than others. It sounds like a great idea on paper, yet, it's something not designed for the human, who by nature is greedy.

So, just a thought on that.

Moving on to the other subject, Happiness with the captial "H" (aka the existential crisis), which is a topic that usually lingers in my mind, I would say every couple months. The light bulb that went off was that may be there isn't such a thing as Happiness. It's dark yet liberating at the same time. Imagine if we could assume happiness doesn't exist, there's no need to find it. This thought, as ironic it might seems, actually might gives us peace of mind, which might leads to true happiness. Most of the time, the ultimate reason why human can't be happy is when they try to find Happiness, they can't find it. The frustration of not able to find it, actually makes them unhappy. May be by accepting the fact that happiness might not exist, letting go the concept of finding happiness. Instead of searching and experiencing the lows of not able to find what we are looking, and just be. By doing that, may be that's the way to be truly Happy.

I kinda dig this thought.

Hot Docs 2008

Just want to jog down few thoughts here after watching few docs this year...

• Kids and Money by Laura Greenfield
Luv how the filmmaker make it to the point, and the composition of how she frames the interviewees etc. It's short and to the point.

• Emoticons by Heddy Honigmann
The pace is a bit slow. But I got the msg about how Internet was usually seen as a bad thing to teenagers, but for some it's actually could be therapuetic and help them to cope the harshness of realities.

• Tiger Spirits by Min Sok Lee
Excellent documentary about the renuification of North and South Korea. Give me more insight about how isolated North Korea is - even to people in Korea, it's own country.

• Mechanical Love
I see it's an interesting topic. The pace is a bit slow. And the conclusion is ambigious.

• Peter and Ben by Pinny Grylls
Sweet documentary about animal bonding with human, just luv it. Reminds me of sweet films like Lars and the Real Girl and Punch Drunk Love.

• The Art Star and the Sudanese Twins by Pietra Brettkelly
Great doc about how Vanessa Beecroft tries to make her art in africa, the acting of paying people to act in her art, could suggest the modern day slavery. And the controversial adoption just let people in or out of the art world do a double take on her and her art.


All in all - loved the experience. Documentaries have always been my interests and passion. It would the project that I would be most proud of if I could make a documentary, in this life.

Quote on Happiness

"A pinch of self-delusion, it turns out, is an important ingredient for the recipe of happiness." – Eric Weiner (author of "The Bliss of Geography")

More Photos Shortlisted - Yay!

A city shot of Melbourne city centre
Originally uploaded by Toad Lily.

This online site called Schmap has asked to publish a picture from my trip to Melbourne. It's a shot of the City Center on a beautiful sunny day. It's not a huge crazy site, yet I am glad they picked it to publish. And just got an email today from them that 2 other pictures from New York City are selected. Pretty nice! Ongoing travel photography experiment is definitely the lifetime goal.

May 19. Cloudy. 26 C. HK Airport.

Just arrived here at 6 am this morning. Typing this entry while I am waiting for the transfer to Singapore, then Cambodia. Reflecting on the past 2 months, it has a been a heck of a ride. This vacation was in the plan, yet, back to Toronto for 2 weeks, then head out to Europe again is an awesome surprise. I guess that's life, you don't know what you don't know.

I took advantage of my idle time here, browsing through this book called "1000 places to see before you die", found some great inspirations for next turn of travelling. It helps me to pinpoint down few places I want to go in Europe. Here's the list belows:

- Rome
- Milan - "shoooes..."
- Barcelona - Picasso Museum, Miro, Gandi
- Paris

GOLD baby!

After 4 days and nights of hard work, and lack of sleep, our efforts (Alex and myself) pays off. We took home GOLD in the Direct Category and will be getting some tan in Cannes. Bought bikinis and catching up with practicing French.


See our work on National Advertising Awards website

Lilies for Lily

Derek got me lilies and I am running out of vase. They still look great in my ikea water jug.

New Year. Birthday. Yuk Yuks.

2007 so far has been good. It might has to do with something that 1) my birthday is on a saturaday; 2) My new company allows the birthday girl to get a freebie day off; and 3) at 29th, I have a group of great friends and an adorable puppy roommate.

Thanks to my peeps who came out with me to laugh our butts off at Yuk Yuks. It was a female stand up star in the mix which was pretty amazing. Despite it was a freezing night with bone-chilled wind and wind chill of -20 C, everyone seems to enjoyed themselves. And just that, adds to the fact that 2007 would be a fantastic year.