Qingming in Kaiping
Last Monday was the Qingming Festival or “Tomb Sweeping Day” in China which is held on the 104th day after the winter solstice to honor departed ancestors and for people to enjoy the spring weather. As we were given the day off work I decided to take a short weekend trip out of Shenzhen to the little-known city of Kaiping (开平) located about 3 hours away by bus. The area is famous for its castle-like dwellings built by overseas Chinese in a mixture of western and eastern styles. Read more
Expat Subculture (and why I dislike it)
If you’ve lived abroad long enough you’ve undoubtedly encountered other foreigners who are also there either by choice (like myself) or because they’ve been sent there by their employer. In my experience a lot of them tend to fall into 1 of 2 categories – those who go out of their way to integrate with the local culture and those who band together and try to recreate a feeling of “home” while constantly moaning about how much it isn’t. Read more
Asian Music Videos Made With iPhones
With its many sensors (touch, proximity, direction, sound, camera) the iPhone has become a versatile platform for both developers and artists alike. Apps like Drum Meister, Bassist, iDrum, NLog Synthesizer, I Am T-Pain, Ocarina, and BeatMaker (to name but a few) turn the iPhone into a veritable collection of musical instruments in a single device which you may or may not look stupid using! Read more
Apple Farm Cafe in Wonju
A friend of mine has recently opened a quaint cafe in Wonju, South Korea (1 hour from Seoul) called Apple Farm / 사과농장. It serves hot/cold drinks and light food daily in a cozy relaxed atmosphere where even well-behaved pets are allowed: Read more
Japan – The Strange Country
Continuing my series of quirky videos about Japanese culture here’s a beautifully executed infographic introduction to the country created from a foreigners point of view (by Kenichi Tanaka, a Japanese designer): Read more
Redesigning Randomwire
Apologies for the site downtime yesterday – it appears the server was having a major panic attack but hopefully things are stable for now. We’ll be moving to a new server in the near future which should hopefully improve matters.
On a related note I’ve been thinking about making a few changes to Randomwire to make old content more accessible and better highlight interesting things to new visitors. Read more
Future Living Inspired by Past Extremes
I’ve long been fascinated by the density of housing which can be found in many parts of Asia, and in particular Hong Kong where high-rise living has been taken to the extremes of both human and technological limits. I find it remarkable how people are able to adapt to their particular circumstances, be they due to space or resource constrains, and still retain their sanity (mostly). Read more
Shenilicious Urbanity
One thing Shenzhen is not noted for is its architecture. If ever you wanted to see a vision of communist urban planning turned into a nightmare of concrete uniformity then this is the place to come. It’s like a bunch of uninspired architects were given a massive budget and then vomited a million lifeless tower blocks over green pastures turning them grey. Read more
Things That Interest Me
To get a sense of what you want to do in life a good place to start is to look at what interests you (and conversely the opposite). This is exactly what I attempted the other day when I basically made a long list of stuff I like. To make things a bit more visual I then thew the list into Wordle which generates pretty “word clouds”. Read more
The Japanese Tradition
For the first time in two years since I moved to China I was struck down by a rather nasty case of food poisoning last Friday which scuppered any prior plans for the weekend. It did however leave me with plenty more time to waste surfing the www and I came across this hilarious set of videos about Japanese culture that I felt compelled to share. Read more