Cosima Underwater

The wet season has begun in Hong Kong, and while most people complain about the high humidity and discuss which dehumidifier to buy, I find the current weather fascinating.

Ok, it’s a little moist… but it doesn’t rain… yet. Everything… the air, clothes, bed sheets is damp, and one has to run the dehumidifier once in a while to prevent mold growing in the closet. But other than that, the clouds are rather interesting to watch, and as an added bonus the moist film lying on everyone’s skin keeps wrinkles at bay :).

Part of the reason why I like this weather so much, is that it let’s me sense nature even in such a densely populated city as Hong Kong. Because a large proportion of Hong Kong’s land is mountainous, it has an odd combination of dense, urban development in the flat areas and natural, subtropical vegetation on the slopes behind them. At the moment, the higher peaks are hidden by low hanging clouds and the vegetation of their slopes has turned into a lush, deep green.

One of these mountain ranges is directly behind the high-rise I live in. All my windows are open, and I can smell earthy, moist jungle and hear birds singing.

Hong Kong also has a surprisingly large number of protected country parks. Some of them are directly adjacent to urban areas, others are located on outlying islands or in the hinterland, and require a little bit of traveling. I think we will head for one of them during the Easter holidays, before the temperature rises to its usual summer level in the mid-thirties (95 Fahrenheit).

image by Hong Kong Observatory

This is an earlier post about typhoon season, which I like even better :).

As promised here, a second installment of my current obsession…

Below is a screen test for “Der blaue Engel” (The Blue Angel), which made me laugh out loud. Marlene Dietrich plays Lola, rehearsing a musical number and getting angry at the no-good piano player (Please scroll down to the end of this post for the translation of the German bits).

Marlene Dietrich had already starred in a few movies and theater productions, when Josef von Sternberg casted her to play Lola in “Der blaue Engel”. He had seen her on stage and insisted on her getting the part against the opposition of studio executives. The film was an overwhelming international success, and started Marlene Dietrich’s movie career. She knew full well whom she had to thank for it. Josef von Sternberg succeeded in getting the best out of his willing pupil.

This site has English-language excerpts from Marlene Dietrich’s memoirs on the production of “The Blue Angel”. It’s maintained by Marlene Dietrich Collection Berlin, which holds the estate of Marlene Dietrich, brought together from five warehouses in Europe and the US after her death. The massive collection contains costumes, private clothes, correspondence and documents, promotional and private pictures, audio recordings, and private home videos. Only a small part of the collection is exhibited in the Berlin Filmmuseum, which I visited a few years ago. I was struck by how petite Marlene Dietrich must have been. Her costumes and clothing, among them her famous barely-there stage dress and one of her tuxedos, were very small.

The video below is a clip from “The Blue Angel” in German with English subtitles. I agree with the person who put it on Youtube… it’s “Marlene at her best”.

And finally Marlene Dietrich singing “Ich bin von Kopf bis Fuß auf Liebe eingestellt” (I am tuned for love from head to toe), which she also frequently sang during her later singing career.

She must have been able to sing it with her ears closed and doing a handstand. This video shows her singing the English-version “Falling in Love Again” in 1962… and she wears the barely-there dress.

Ok… I stop now :).

EDIT: Suze, Here is the translation for the German bits in the first video:

You think that’s music? Again!

…

What do you think you are doing? You think that’s playing the piano? You want me to sing to this dirt? Belongs to the washing trough, but not here! You understand? Idiot!

…

For heaven’s sake! This won’t do! Don’t you understand? The world has lost a genius in you (idiom, said mockingly)! Because of you, I have to sing the old rubbish again. That’s all you can! If you play this wrong, you’ll get a hack!

Who will cry, when two people part?
If another is already standing at the next corner?
You say “Good Bye” and think secretly to yourself
Finally, I am rid of this relationship…

At the end Marlene Dietrich asks “Did it fit?”. Apparently being worried about the time it took to play the scene.

Yesterday my mom called me from Berlin.

Mom: Have you seen the latest news from Berlin?

Cosima: Yeah… the EU leaders were in town to celebrate the EU’s 50th anniversary.

Mom: That too…

Cosima: Angela Merkel’s husband hosted all the first ladies, and the press made some lame comments about him “hosting the ladies’ circle” and “being the cock of the walk”.

Mom: Yeah… but haven’t you seen the news about Knut?

Cosima: Knut? Who is Knut?

Mom: Knut is a little polar bear. He was born in the Zoo a few months ago.

Cosima: No, I haven’t.

Mom: Go on the internet, and look at the pictures… show them to my grandson as well!

Cosima: Hold…

Cosima: Awww… so cute!

Mom: Isn’t he? It’s very rare for polar bears to be born in captivity. His mother has rejected him. He gets all the press at the moment.

Cosima: No kidding! There is even a site with videos and he has a blog… and news in English.

Mom: What’s a blog?

Cosima: It’s like a diary on the internet.

Mom: Aah… well, I watched him on TV. Better than battling the crowds at the Zoo. There were 10,000 visitors on his first day in the outdoor enclosure. It was madness.

Cosima: We can all go together, when we come to Berlin.

Mom: Yes, but by that time he will probably be a lot bigger!

“If I could live my life again, I would make the same mistakes. Just a little bit earlier, so that I can enjoy them more.”

Marlene Dietrich

PS: I am going through a Marlene Dietrich phase at the moment… expect more over the coming days.

Stolen from APJ and Kien.

Write exactly whats in your head and don’t change it.

1. My ‘ex’ is still… don’t have an ex… yet.

2. I am listening to… my son’s excited chatter.

3. Maybe I should… do the dishes and get out of my pj’s.

4. I love… my bed, if I could only stay here the whole day.

5. My best friend(s)… is far away.

6. I don’t understand… so many things.

7. I’ve lost my respect for… people who want to make me small.

8. I last ate… four Malkist crackers.

9. The meaning of my display name is… cosmos…order… the opposite of the chaos in my head.

10. Love is… in the little details of sharing life, about taking care of each other, making each other happy, trying to unite… everyday anew.

11. Someday… I am going to die, and it doesn’t scare me.

12. I will always… have my imagination to get me through.

13. Love seems to be… an art one has to practice, not only a feeling.

14. I never ever want to lose… my son.

15. My mobile phone is… charging at the moment.

16. When I woke up this morning… the sun was shining.

17. I get annoyed at/with… my washing machine. It’s leaking.

18. Parties… are either small talk hell or a lot of fun.

19. My pets… are buried in shoe boxes in my parents’ garden.

20. Kisses… more please!

How ’bout you?

One of the few things I truly missed when I came to Hong Kong is German rye bread. Other North Europeans eat it too, but the rest of the world still needs a little convincing :).

A few years ago, I decided to learn how to bake my own, because schlepping 10 breads back on every return trip from Germany was beginning to get a little tedious.

I searched around the internet, and was surprised about the amount of information I could get. Thankfully, there are quite a lot of websites and forums where hobby bread bakers exchange their knowledge and experience with beginners.

The trouble with rye bread is that it needs sourdough as a leavening agent, commercial yeast doesn’t work. Even for wheat bread, sourdough is a good alternative. It improves digestibility, adds flavor, and also extends the time until the bread spoils. Quite a healthy alternative to all the artificial bread improvers that are added to most breads these days.

At first, it all sounded deceptively simple. Grow a sourdough culture from flour and water. Then, make the dough by mixing sourdough, flour, water, and salt. Let the dough rise, and finally bake it in the oven. Baking with sourdough is an age-old tradition, if the ancient Egyptians could do it, I could too… right?

Yes, I could… after a lot of trials and errors. I now have my very own sourdough culture in the refrigerator, and can bake bread that the rest of the family enjoys eating. But I certainly had my share of stone-hard bricks coming out of the oven, and there is still room for improvement.

Which has let me come to the conclusion that baking bread, that is both healthy and delicious, is really a craft, if not an art, for which a lot of knowledge and experience is required. And I am thankful for all the people that keep the tradition alive. The countless hobby bakers, who share their knowledge on the internet, and the commercial bakers, who go against the trend by refusing to use additives in their breads. They are not necessary, if you know your stuff… or even only half of it, like me.

PS: For a German-language forum on baking sourdough bread go here.

A few days ago, I discovered that my son’s Hong Kong visa will expire tomorrow. When I looked at the sticker in his passport that said “Permission to remain extended until 18-03-07”, I cried out loud. I still have quite a few things to do for Cosima Inc, and getting a new visa means a few hours waiting at the immigration office. I raved about Hong Kong’s efficient bureaucracy here, but getting your visa extended is as painful as in most other places around the world.

On top of that, the only USB port on my notebook stopped working, which meant that I couldn’t connect my webcam, iPod, or external hard drive to the computer. After unsuccessfully trying to solve the problem with the help of a friend, we came to the conclusion that help from a professional geek was needed.

When my son and I arrived at Immigration Tower, a government high-rise in Wanchai, the lady handing out waiting numbers told us that the wait would be at least two hours, and she would suggest having lunch first and then come back. We had already eaten, so we went back down to the first floor onto “Immigration Bridge”, a pedestrian walk-way which lead us directly to a computer mall. In the central areas of Hong Kong, there is an extended system of elevated walkways, channeling pedestrians up one level away from the street. Immigration Bridge leads past a very big gym, and you can see people sweating on treadmills while you walk by. When the gym first opened, there were spectators standing on the bridge, as many as three lines deep, gawping at people working-out… was quite funny.

The computer mall is geek heaven. It has two floors filled with shops selling anything computer related… components, computers, peripherals, the latest little gadgets, and software… only legit copies, after a crack-down a few years back. For pirated goods, you need to go a little further afield :)… not that I ever would do that… no, never… I support Mr. Gate’s charity efforts.

Anyway, if you know what you want, do a little research before, and compare prices before you buy, you can get very good deals. I went to a shop selling IBM ThinkPads, and asked them to have a look at my notebook. They started to do the same checks my friend had suggested earlier, downloaded a few Windows updates I had missed, but still couldn’t solve, nor say for sure if it was a hardware or software problem. They asked me to bring in the computer on Monday to have a longer look at it. But then luckily, one of the guys remembered that I could just solve the problem by buying a PC card adapter with USB ports. I bought the card, which was probably cheaper than a repair would have been, and now have two working USB ports…yay!

We still had another hour to kill, which we spent at a Starbucks on the ground floor of “Revenue Tower”, eating lemon lamingtons, reading a picture book, and observing the lady at the next table restoring her make-up (son: “Why does she paint her face so long?”). Yeah, we were bored like hell.

Back at the immigration office, I discovered that they were currently serving number B199, bad news if you hold B179. After telling the lady at counter 13 that I was late because I had been told that the waiting time would be at least two hours, she told me “Maybe, we will call you later. Please have a seat and wait.” Maybe… oh, boy. After waiting twenty minutes, I went to counter 11, and showed my B179 slip again “Your number was already called. We will call you later.” At least it was not “maybe” anymore. After another fifteen minutes, I went to counter 9 “Yes, we will call you.” After another fifteen minutes I was called to counter 10 (see, peskering people works :)), to be told that I could pick-up the visa extension in two weeks… without waiting… yippee!

I needed a little shopping therapy at the end of the day…

The first name of a sales assistant in one of the shops was Rainbow. When I read her name tag, I couldn’t help but smile. I told her what a wonderful name she had, and how nice it was to meet her at the end of a tiring day. She smiled and said that her last name was even better… Sun :).

Boy, I am swamped with work for Cosima Inc. My living room looks like a warehouse. And still no intern to help me out. How come? …lol

Yesterday, I had lunch with a friend, who I hadn’t seen in quite a while. We ate in a vegetarian Indian restaurant. The food was excellent, the company even better. We had a two hour lunch to catch up with each others lives, and smile and laugh together. From the outside we don’t have much in common. We come from different cultural backgrounds and she is ten years older than me, but when we are together we just click. She is one of the smartest persons I know, but charmingly doesn’t take herself too seriously.

Although there was a dearth in internship applications, I still had help yesterday afternoon. My son helped me to count and inspect the products. Before you think that I am guilty of child exploitation… we didn’t get much done. After a short time it deteriorated into a very giggly session of hide and seek among empty boxes.

See… working for me is fun! All applications welcome ;D!

Get On The Boat by Prince