Hong Kongers Book Fair
Hong Kongers Book Fair, an independently organised book fair set up by Hillway Culture was cancelled the day before its official launch. The landlords claimed that they had violated a sub letting clause in the contract, the reality has more to do with the current environment around publishing in Hong Kong.
Hillway Culture who organised the Hong Kongers Book Fair are looking to keep local Hong Kong culture alive. And what were the books that would have made landlords and the government concern? The diaries of local political prisoners, locally drawn graphic novels, a phonebook of Ukraine and translations of Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm. You can support the book fair organisers and exhibitors through this online shop.
I can recommend their ‘Hunted and Endangered’ Hongkongers Book Fair shopping bag and Hongkonger passport cover that misquoted A.A. Milne (its actually from Disney’s Pooh’s Grand Adventure The Search for Christopher Robin and was most likely written by children’s screen writer Carter Crocker).
If ever there’s a tomorrow
when we’re not together,
there’s something
you must remember.
You’re braver than you believe,
stronger than you seem,
and smarter than you think.
But the most important thing is
even if we’re apart,
I’ll always be with you.
While the literary detection might be wrong the sentiment nails the terrible present facing the Hong Kong people.
What Putin’s Russia does with artillery, Xi’s China does with a cowed judiciary, triads, law enforcement and toadying transnational business elites.
Mid Night Racing Club
Before Fast & The Furious Tokyo Drift raised the international profile of Japanese illegal racing there was Mid Night. This video tells the story of the Porsche 911 Turbo that was at the centre of the club. What I also found interesting was the emphasis on big American muscle cars at the top of the scene rather than say Japanese tuned Mazda RX7s, Nissan Fairlady Zs, Italian sports cars or the big engined German saloon cars like the Mercedes-Benz 300 SEL 6.3 and the Mercedes-Benz 450SEL 6.9. Given how on it the Japanese police usually still are on enforcement I was surprised this could go on, let alone have the impact that it had.
The end of the salary man
The Asia Society and Adecco try to put lipstick on the pig of how middle class ‘iron rice bowl’ jobs are disappearing even amongst the most successful corporate organisations in Japan, Korea and Singapore. This is the end of a social contract between society, exploitive corporations and governments who collaborated in creating directed economies. This has been tearing away at the fabric of society, a large number of middle aged men are now homeless. They spent their best years not present in their marriages and when made redundant were kicked out of their homes on to the streets.
Helihome
In the family farm house were my Mum grew up there hung a jigsaw picture that was of a painting of the post-war American Antarctic Expedition. It captured my imagination with its Trucker Sno Cat vehicles, pallets being moved off bright orange freighters onto sled and a bright orange Sikorsky helicopter.
I spent a good deal of my early childhood looking at that picture. So if you had asked 6-year old me to come up with my dream camper van, I would have likely come up with something like the Helihome. The Helihome was designed in the early 1970s by a Florida aviation company using ex-Vietnam war surplus US marine helicopters.
Orlando Helicopter Airways my 6-year old self salutes you.
BMW 7-series production footage
I love manufacturing footage. This b-roll of the BMW 7-series production line is particularly interesting. I thought back to the old Japanese animated cartoons of the automated processes that put a mecha into action as the pilot was put into the head. The degree of automation in this line looks like the science fiction of a few decades ago. Which makes me wonder, how has automation been so advanced in some ways and so basic in others. Why are smartphones still reliant on an army of women to hand assemble the devices? Why is UK industry like food services still so reliant on agency workers earning minimum hourly wages?