The Amazing Race International Versions > TAR Asia
It is Realisophie! TARA 2 Racer
realisophie:
Some updates …. from events I've been involved in recently....
Did you know that only 3% of the world’s oceans are left untouched?
And remember it’s a 7:3 ratio for ocean is to land mass.
On 8 March, the first WWF Ocean Summit was held for the first time in Hong Kong.
A roomful of sea lovers and professionals from all walks of life came in to discuss and give insights on how to improve the waters around Hong Kong. From a diver’s point of view, the reefs surrounding Hong Kong have a very unique geological position, with warm currents coming in from the Philippines.
Warm currents = coral reefs and fish
Therefore, not many people realize this, not even the locals, but there is a diverse range of marine life that SHOULD thrive in these waters (but sadly don’t), so diverse that Hong Kong has the potential to be a marine park or diving spot like the Great Barrier Reef! I kid you not!
You see, even with a few statutory laws imposed in Hong Kong, like many other countries, there is overfishing. There is NO law currently governing the amount or size of fish you can catch, which means once you’re in the water, you can literally fish out anything you like! Trawling is also still allowed and as catch get smaller, so do the size of the holes in the nets. This act results in more juvenile fish in the markets and when these run out, where will the fish come from then?
There is also NO law restricting the proximity of fishing boats to the coastline. Once a friend of mine really thought the rock he threw from the jetty actually landed on a ship! And until today, there is no fine and regulations for ocean violations for any shipping company or boat that pollutes the waters around Hong Kong. Come to think of it, we even litter our own sewage right into the ocean, kind of like having your backyard for a toilet ;-((
So some of these reasons and a dozen more put in-placed, we have poor visibility and marine life is unable to survive in most parts of these waters. Yes there is a marine park, but even indigenous fishermen can apply for special passes to fish and … hmmm I really wonder how many of them actually throw the “smaller” fish back into the sea?
One of the speakers at the summit gave a very interesting view of how local government officials treat environmental issues. Sometimes you feel like the various departments don’t talk to each other to verify problems. Okay from the personal experience of this speaker, he said that an official once commented to him that, “People continue to wash harmful soap chemicals into Stanley beach because it’s impossible to buy biodegradable soap in Hong Kong.” In response to that comment, the speaker said to the official, “Oh yeah, like when the transport department said the reason electric cars are not popular or recommended in Hong Kong is because they are TOO quiet. Therefore they are dangerous and can easily cause accidents!”
Some other reasons for the extinction of certain marine species in our waters are due to local culture. Years ago, the Chinese Bahaba, Sawfish and Horseshoe Crab used to thrive here. But now, you’ll only see the “saw” of the Sawfish hanging in Chinese temples, and the other two is almost unheard of or seen in this case. The Yellow Croaker, a very well-loved local fish, also disappeared 20 years ago in Hong Kong and the East China Sea.
If you checked the IUCN Red List, it’s not common to find commercial fish on this list. But the Hong Kong Grouper and Mud Grouper are on it. Wow! That’s putting Hong Kong on the map!
Talking about extinction, Hong Kong also used to have sharks in Tai O, Cheung Chau, Lamma, Junk and Tungling islands. Imagine that! And yes you guessed it, the sharks were fished to make ‘Sharks Fin soup’!!!
By this time, you’re thinking fish farms are the way to go. Well, yes and no. More commercial fisheries actually fish for smaller fish from the ocean, take it back to the fisheries to feed the bigger commercially sold fish. So the chain just continues in a tragic Catch 22. To help these fisheries even more, there is tax relief on fuel to the fishing community, resulting in too many people “chasing” over a small catch.
Instead of spending HKD100 million on artificial reefs and “restocking” on marine species, people should learn to let nature take its course. But with help along the way would be great! If only there would be complete restrictions on certain coastlines, reefs can grow and fish can finally have a haven to replenish. Regulations and compliance with FAO Code of Conduct for responsible Fisheries should be more heavily implied too. Something as simple as enforcing heavy penalties could do the trick!
Take it from me- I grew up in Singapore, where chewing gum is banned and even not flushing the toilet is a SGD500 fine. Result = clean, green, healthy city
The local authorities are often afraid of the local fishermen protesting about losing their livelihood. But if things don’t change anytime soon, ocean resources are not imperishable.
There are many things in life that can look great on the surface, like the sparkling blue waters of the ocean. But under the surface, it can be completely dead. Dig deeper and help your community today!
Support the activities of your local organizations like WWF!
P.S. all the ideas to ‘Save Our Seas’ generated from the day-long Ocean Summit is getting complied by WWF Hong Kong and soon submitted to the government. WWF will email the report to all attendees, so I’ll post up some of the ideas very soon. You can try to implement them if you have a similar problem affecting the waters where you live.
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realisophie:
Don't forget Sawaka's song comes out TOMORROW!!! 19 March
Here are the other titles in the album
1. Sunset Of Flames In Copacabana feat. arvin homa aya
2. I Just Wanted To Fall In Love feat.Sawaka Kawashima
3. Sesso Brillante feat.Misa Sugiyama
4. Vernal Growth
5. My Passion For Sandra feat.Hiromitsu Ohbuchi
6. Holon On The Seashore
7. Silhouette feat.Misa Sugiyama
8. Acima da linha feat.Lopez
9. Barcelona feat.Calyn Tsukishima
10. The Angel Wears MM
11. Wine - scarlet
12. Sky Is The Limit feat.Misa Sugiyama
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realisophie:
8 March was a busy day.... after the WWF Ocean Summit, I went to support a friend's friend's film festival. Having organised one myself last year in Europe..... I KNOW the growing pains of the business.
Urban Nomad has been running for 6 years now, low budget, but still bringing in the crowds of film-lovers all over.
This year, it's their first time in Hong Kong.
I was very lucky to meet up with one of the organisers, my friend's friend Dave Franzier. Very interesting guy with just a common love for the cinema like I do. We had a great chat a couple of days after before he went back to Taipei. I can't wait to see more of what's coming out of the local scenes there.
Back to the film screening that night.
Okay Yes the festival is based in Taiwan.... but also features works from other Asian countries. The film I watched on Sat night was made in NORTH KOREA... yes NORTH KOREA..... on a subject you wouldn't even imagine existed! It was about 4 American who defected to North Korea more than 40 years ago during the Cold War. Two are still alive.
The only reason the producer/ director was able to make this extraordinary documentary was because he also ran a travel company that runs tours in the country. The documentary is called 'Crossing the Line' and was shown to mass approvals at Sundance last year. It's a British documentary about a US Army defector James Dresnok currently living in North Korea after having defected during the 60s.
Here is the synopsis ....
Captured by the North Koreans, Dresnok became one of several American GI's to "defect" to the communist North and went on to be enormous propaganda tools to the regime of the time. This film looks back on the life of Dresnok in North Korea and his importance within that regime.
It is hard to deny that this film will have limited appeal as one does have to wonder how well known the Dresnok defection is outside of those from the US who were at a certain age in the early 1960's. I certainly knew nothing of him but was drawn to the film by the chance of learning more about the mostly inward and secretive North Korea. As such the film is quite interesting because it does give an insider's view while also having that insider being a westerner. However the film does not just use Dresnok as the way in to the country but he is the focus of the film and this is both a strength and a weakness.
More details about URBAN NOMAD can be found at
http:urbannomadfilmfest.blogspot.com
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realisophie:
On a more personal note.... I've been meeting very interesting people lately who have somewhat fueled my depleting creative drive in the last few months. To that, Im most grateful.
Until you live in a city like Hong Kong, you can never imagine how hard it is to keep up with things you love versus chasing after the dollar to pay your bills.
I choose to live in the middle. But it's a struggle for constant balance.
This month, I'm so glad it's the HK International Film Festival and I will watch films from around the world. Since I was a little girl and I'm sure it's the same for you too.... films are windows to the world unexperienced, unexplained and unexplored.... except when you can shut out your world.... and indulge in the one unravelling before you.....
realisophie:
Okay another back entry….. Nevertheless an interesting one.
On 14 March, as part of the HK Arts Festival, I went to a dance performance called Ode to Joy L.I.V.E. Orpheus and Eurydice staged by a Canadian-based dance group called Compagnie Marie Chouinard.
If you ever get the chance to watch any one of their choreographed dance performances, buy a cheap ticket and have an opened mind about what you’re about to experience.
Well, I got the cheapest ticket, but not by choice as almost all the tickets were sold out except for the first and second highest prices. I reckoned since it was more of a dance performance, a balcony seat could actually turn out to be a good bird’s eye view. And it was.
Except, well how can I put it in a truthful manner without being too critical of someone else’s art? The show was such a radical modern interpretation of what they termed “a dance performance that questions the birth of language”, it was quite hard to “swallow”.
Sounds interesting right? So I thought. How can one actually show this physically?
This info is taken from their promotional brochure.
Orpheus is the original poet. The Greek myth explores such notions as creation, loss, conscience and eternity.
A dance performance
that asks questions about the birth of language
The powers of language
Language and the scream and their links to the body
the links between language and death and how the body arises in part from its tongue
with moments of blinding illumination on the present/ past
(different times that clash), but always justly so, as a matter of course)
concrete images, as if lived in the present,
from a kind of primitive imagination,
A plunge into our human origins,
into the forces beneath language,
with tension, emotion
and very real evidence broken by flashes of humour.
By now you’re like cool! Wished I could see this. Okay first of all, I have to tell you that after the show while I was waiting for a cab to go home, some people behind me in the line started to ask one another what they thought of the performance. The one definite response was, “I hated it and it was too long!”
Yes I felt it was rather long at some parts as well, but this was not the main point. The show was actually SO good at being quite bad. Or maybe another way to put it is that it was so different, even if it’s bad, you just want to know how it ends, like with a bad movie.
Unfortunately, not many locals stayed throughout the performance, I’ll explain why in a moment. Even foreigners walked out in the middle of it or during the interval. I doubt anyone really stayed back for the question-and-answer session too.
Why was it SO bad? Well, actually it was so good in being so bad that it was good to experience it. If you know what I mean ahhahhhahaa....
The stage was pure white, very minimalist, and whatever stage props they used from time to time, I thought it was chosen with tastefulness.
The show began with the sounding of a Swiss horn, held by a male dancer who blew on it, and a female dancer on the other end who helped hold the extremely long instrument. It took me quite a few minutes before I realised this, but she was half-naked. Yes! Just a golden coloured sticker on both her nipples. At first I thought she was wearing a nude coloured tube top, but no….. nothing at all. For her bottom, it was a loose fitted navy blue cargo pants.
As many of the other dancers came on stage, the show started with a lot of screaming! Tonnes of it!
Screaming from one person, from the entire group, with the music, or with the fast erratic dance movements….. and after a hard week, it was actually very stress-relieving to witness that. I guess from how I was feeling that Friday, I could have easily joined them in voice and spirit.
At this point, I was beginning to get very curious, but it was too dark to read the program brochure. I thought to myself, “how could they get this nudity act cleared even in a country like Hong Kong”??
Remember Samantha’s sexy blond boyfriend from Sex in the City, who went full monty in his theatre scene…….. and his performance started getting audiences travelling all the way to Brooklyn? Well, this was quite the opposite. As more time passed, I think some people kind of got a little more settled to not have their eyes focused on the breasts of the half-naked women bouncing around. But for many others, the explicit sexually charged dance movements and sexual positions proved too much to comprehend. And for other really unusual costume choices on the men, they wore SUPER and I do mean SUPER platform high heels with skin-tight black shorts. The men of course all had perfect well-toned bodies, but the heels made them have hot legs too! I don’t think most women would have been able to even walk in those heels, let alone dance in them. But they created a very unusual visual sensation that’s truly hard to describe.
I have to say, some of the choreography with fast beat music was very exhilarating! From afar, I really enjoyed a few scenes that were really well choreographed. The timing was quite perfect with each of the 10 dancers. But after the interval, which gave me some time to read the backgrounds of the dancers and the woman who founded the dance group, almost half the audience seated at the balcony where I was, didn’t come back!
However in justice to the show, I thought the music was superb, it was very unusual and somehow as bizarre as the modern dance movements were, it was a good fit.
So the music started again, and the people who stayed on, I suppose either were just curious to see how it ends, got used to the nudity, or just naughty men. I was still not so comfortable with the nudity because I just couldn’t see the point in it, and even for me it’s very distracting….. but I always watch everything to the end.
Second half, three dancers came out, one of them female. They had a change of costumes and now she is wearing even less, but a golden bikini bottom, furry white leggings and a “snake-like” prop in her mouth. I think this was to represent and mimic movements of the tongue. This was even more errotic than the first costume!!! In the first half of the show, the naked women didn’t really go too close to the edge of the stage, towards the audiences, but now this female dancer actually jumped into the audience and crossed a few rows center front to the back by walking on arm rests in-between occupied seats!!!
I think at this point, the audience (close to her), didn’t really know whether or not to look at her/ the show anymore. It was very bizarre and caused quite a stir.
I’m not sure what the nudity brought to the overall meaning of the performance, but all the dancers have at least 10 years of experience in the field, having performed from circuses to dance theatres around the world. Perhaps the nudity was their way of breaking free from the human form and its restrictions.
So anyway, if I had another chance to attend the troupe’s other dance choreographies, I would go again just for the shock factor. I’m sure to be surprised! I think it was very brave the Hong Kong arts organization didn’t censor the show and I appreciated that very much.
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