Thank you for all your wonderful comments on “Smell”. I felt very bad about not responding to them, but I don’t have a sliver of time at the moment. I am working feverishly on Cosima Inc.’s website, and hope to have everything finished by the end of the week.
Love, Cosima
I have just watched Perfume, and remembered a topic that was floating around the blogosphere a while back. I don’t know if it was a meme, but several bloggers wrote about their favorite smells.
In Perfume, the lead character has an extraordinary sense of smell, and goes on a mission to preserve scents he loves with rather grueling consequences. The movie is a very good adaptation of the book. If you can, read the book first and then watch the movie. I found Ben Wishaw performance, who plays the lead character Jean-Baptiste Grenouille, especially powerful.
Jean-Baptiste Grenouille goes to great length to preserve scents, but for me one of the most enduring aspects is that it is fleeting. Depending on the smell, fleetingness is a godsend (think rotting meat under mid-day sun) or heightens the preciousness of it. Of all the five senses, the sense of smell seems to be the least important, but I think I would miss it very dearly if I would loose it.
I am constantly stumped for an answer if people ask me for my favorite book, song, or holiday destination, but I definitely know my most favorite smell.
The best scent of all is that of a newborn baby. I will never forget how little man smelled when I first held him in my arms. He smelled of amniotic fluid, which is better than any expensive perfume. Mother Nature has some very powerful tricks up her sleeves to ensure that we fall in love with our children from the beginning. I was rather cross, when a mid-wife wanted to bathe my baby in Johnson & Johnson baby bath.
I think smell is also a key ingredient in any erotic encounter. Even just a kiss, placed wherever you prefer, lets you come close enough to smell your lover’s skin. Not to mention the smell of a room during sex. Just imagine how different and less satisfying the experience would be without your sense of smell.
Next comes food, and there are very few food smells that I dislike. Isn’t it wonderful to lift the lid of a cooking pot on a stove and be hid by waves of goodness? Or the smell of home-made cookies wavering through the house, or ripe mangoes as you cut them, or freshly picked tomatoes, or… I could go on and on.
On some days, my morning includes a visit to the neighborhood coffee shop for a cappuccino, quick read through the newspaper, and the occasional chat with a friend or stranger. The coffee shop serves as a meeting place for the neighborhood, and I think one of the reasons why everyone loves to go there is the aroma of freshly brewed coffee. For me it is connected with a feeling of calm and comfort, a short break from the worries and stress of daily life, a little indulgence.
Yesterday, I was at the ocean front, a light breeze was coming from the water, and I was thinking that the salty ocean air has one of the nicest smells. It’s very strong, and after a few hours at the beach it’s in every pore. I associate precious memories with it, of days at the beach with family and friends, taking a swim in the ocean, or boat trips along the shore.
I have many more favorite smells, and the more I think of it, the more I am aware that many of them are connected to precious memories of a person or place. I wonder what comes first, a smell that we then associate with the moment we experienced it, or the experience itself and the smell that came with it, or both at the same time?
I view life as a mix of going with the flow and occasionally stepping back, assessing, and adjusting course. It’s quite a change from a few years back, when I thought that life is best steered with sheer will power and forging ahead without looking left or right.
It is something my son taught me. When I was pregnant with him, I thought that I could do it all: work in a demanding job and be a good mommy, but experience has told me otherwise. I stepped back and set priorities, and the number one priority was and still is my son. I also decided to see where life would take me next.
I am very grateful for the change I was forced to make, because I don’t think I would have been happy, if life had just continued as before. I call it my early mid-life crisis, and I am glad that it came when I was thirty and not forty-five.
Hong Kong is such a business and work-oriented city, and it is very easy to get sucked into this race for more money, a better career, or the next big deal. But then, once in a while, you have to ask yourself, if these things are really worth the time and effort, you invest into them, and more importantly what you loose while pursuing them.
Still, most of us have to earn money, and I am no exception. I am also someone who gets extremely unhappy when I am not financially independent. A former colleague of mine told me, half-jokingly but still with longing eyes, that she would like to be a tai tai, which is the Cantonese term for being the wife of a very wealthy man. “I want to have high tea at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel with girl-friends, instead of going back to work after lunch”. I have nothing against chatting away the afternoon at the Mandarin Oriental, but I would like to pay the bill with my own credit card.
So the goal for the next few months, especially now that my son started school and I have more time, is to make Cosima Inc into a business with a regular income stream, but still not loose sight of the fact that life should be fun. I think it’s achievable, especially the fun part, because having your own business affords a lot of freedoms that are not there when you work for someone else.
Little man has school holidays at the moment, and we have been exploring the city during the last few days. He likes to shop, so I thought we go to Wanchai market, before the place meets the fate of Paper Lane…
…which is was located right next to it. Paper Lane, from beginning to end, had printers for personalized greeting cards, table decoration, business cards, calendars, and lai see packages. If you had anything to print, you knew were to go.
My guess is that the whole area will look like this in a few years…
… the old renovated building looks nice (the only one in the area), but the real “urban renewal” reason is the high-rise apartment block next to it… money, money, money.
First we went to pay hommage to the God of plates, bowls and cutlery in Queen’s Road East. He was watching over a dizzying array of household items on two levels, and I finally found what I was always looking for.
In Wanchai market proper you can get anything. There are hundred of stalls and little shops, and, yes, you can stock up on undies as well. Just duck behind a stall when trying a bra ;).
Tiffany has a stall as well…
We, however, continued the household theme…
But you can only buy so many household items with a five year old in tow. “Mama, where are the toy shops?”
Here…
…there are half a dozen toy shops next to each other. Above is the entrance to one. There are like toy caverns. Relatively small, but shock a block full of toys, on walls, on tables, in boxes, and even hanging from the ceiling. One of them has a very special treasure chest, a glass vitrine packed with old-style metal toys that move when you wind them. Little man became the proud owner of a walking robot and a chain of UFOs… mommy UFO with three little children UFOs in tow. We also bought a doctor’s suitcase. I have been getting immunization shots ever since.
On the way home, we watched a bit of football…
… and were mighty glad that we didn’t have to take the same bus as the people lining up in front of our restaurant window…
I had some errands to run in Central and took my camera along for the ride. The first part shows some of Central’s pedestrian walkways, which connect almost every building in the business district. Have you ever seen the futuristic drawing from the 1920’s in which a city is shown where cars drive on ground level and pedestrians walk on bridges? Unfortunately I have forgotten the painter’s name. In Central Hong Kong that’s pretty much a reality.
In Hong Kong, your business is not really in existence without a “chop”. I am not talking pork chops here, I am talking about an official company stamp. It’s used to sign off invoices, acknowledge deliveries, or any other official company documents. A chop under a document is as legally binding as a signature, but for good measure really important documents are signed as well.
Until a few days ago, I didn’t have a chop. I thought that I didn’t need one. I thought that the signature of the business owner was good enough. Not for PCCW, a local telephone company. I went to one of their shops to transfer my personal mobile phone account to my business. After the clerk had filled out three forms…
“And now please put your chop here, here, and here… and sign there.”
“I don’t have a chop. I just sign it.”
Astonished glance from the clerk.
“Sorry Madam, we also need the chop.”
“But I don’t have one.”
“OK… I will check with my manager. Please wait.”
A call followed to the manager, who apparently confirmed that mobile accounts can’t be transfered to businesses without chops.
So, I left in search for a chop maker and found one a few blocks further down the road. A deal was quickly made. On the next day, I got a round chop with my company’s name in exchange for HK$60 (US$8).
Afterwards, I went to the phone company, and chopped three forms here, here, and there, and also the three sets of duplicates… here, here, and there. And I was beginning to appreciate the convenience of chops. From now on I will chop whenever I can.
The following pictures are from a little lane between the skyscrapers of Central, Hong Kong’s business district, where several essential services are located: a chop maker, a key maker, a shoe shiner, several shoe repair stalls, and also a jade seal carver. However, my chop maker is located somewhere else, in Wanchai, and I would have loved to take a picture of his tiny hole-in-the-wall shop, but a large truck was parked in front of it, eclipsing it completely.
Hong Kong’s remaining street markets are under constant threat to become the next victims of “urban renewal”. Yesterday, I had some errands to run in Central, Hong Kong’s business district, and afterwards did my bit to save one of them.
The Central Street Market is located on Graham Street, which runs between Queen’s Road, one of the city’s busiest shopping streets, and Hollywood Road, which hosts a lot of art galleries and antique shops.
I bought cucumber and tomatoes…
… delicious pomegranates…
and very fresh shrimps…
Even drive-by shopping is possible ;)…
If you live in Hong Kong, or even if you are just a potential tourist, who thinks that street markets are an essential part of local flair, go here and sign the petition… please :).
I was looking for a picture to accompany my post, and found this picture on Flickr:
I have a million emails to write, spreadsheets to update, errands to run, and also ship Cosima Inc products that are occupying my living room. It’s impossible stretch my legs out when I sit on the sofa, so everything needs to be gone by this evening.
But I try to smile… occasionally… while working away the pile. It’s good to know that I still qualify for an organic juice.
How is your day going?
Evie’s very funny post on getting acquainted with her neighbors tall and stroppy, reminded me of an incident a few weeks ago.
In Hong Kong, the place where you meet and come to know your neighbors is in the elevator…
It’s seven o’clock on a Saturday evening. Cosima enters the elevator, where she meets a young woman and man, dressed for an evening out.
Man (adressing woman): So what do you have in your bag?
Woman (rummaging through a big shoulder bag): Well, there is the feather boa… oh, and here are the hand cuffs, and of course the big sex doll.
Cosima, already grinning ear to ear, bursts into a loud giggle. Men and woman look to her and laugh too.
Cosima: Sounds like your evening is going to be more interesting than mine.
Man (laughing): You never know beforehand.
Cosima: I can’t imagine otherwise. Have a nice evening!
Woman: Thank you, you too!
I had an inkling to what kind of party they were headed, but who needs to know for certain, when wild imagination paints a much more colorful picture.
At the risk of sounding like a total geek, I am counting open source software today. It’s software without restrictive copyrights whose source code is readily available, and therefore can be improved, adapted, or changed. Best of all, it can be used for free.
Most open source software is developed and improved in a collaborative effort. And once the core software is written, lots of people contribute so called add-ons or plug-ins that make the application highly customizable. For me as a user, these add-ons are the biggest advantage of open source compared to commercial software.
I am not a geek, far from it, and you don’t really need to be, to use open source applications. Some of them have rather spotty instructions, but most are very user friendly, come with documentation, and have user forums, where non-geeks like me can ask embarrassing questions without being laughed at.
At the moment I am using the following open source applications, and I would recommend every single one of them:
I use Thunderbird for writing emails and Firefox to surf the internet. There are hundreds of useful add-ons for both applications, that make using them a real joy. Just to give you an example, I installed a Firefox add-on called ColorZilla, which let’s me determine the RGB and Hex code of colors in web pages. If I come across colors that I like while surfing the web, I can determine their code and replicate them for my own blog or website. Well, I don’t really need that, you say, but there are hundreds of other add-ons, and the nice thing is that every user can install the ones that are useful to him. I also think that Firefox loads web pages much faster than Internet Explorer.
My blog uses Wordpress and is hosted on a Linux server. I was so used to working with blogger, that I hesitated to use my own domain, because it wouldn’t allow me to use the new version of blogger. However, since I switched to Wordpress, I haven’t regretted that I did. Most of Wordpress’ advantages can only be seen behind the scenes, at the administrative level. For example, comment reading and reply is a much more convenient than in blogger. And again, there are many useful plugins that can be installed to customize the application.
For Cosima Inc’s web page, I use Joomla which is a bit like a blog application only more versatile in how pages are structured and which features can be chosen for a page.
I also installed FileZilla, which let’s me quickly and conveniently upload files to my webserver. Most of the music for my Musical Monday posts were uploaded to my server with FileZilla.
Today, I also installed Vanilla (don’t ask me why half of open source software names end with -illa), a forum software, on Cosima Inc’s server. I am going to use it as a private messageboard that only invited users can see, and I am hoping that it will make communication between me and the company of my partner much easier.
Seven applications, all open source and for free, on my non-geek notebook alone. I like all of them, and am thinking of adding more. There is this open source office suite that I have yet to check out…
