Tag Archives: quirky stuff

I Know That Feel Bro!

Posted on October 15, 2012 | 5 Comments

Got problems? I know that feel bro!

But no one illustrates shared problems quite as awesomely as artist Chris Gerringer.

Gerringer’s I Know That Feel Bro quirky series of illustrations takes fictional pop culture characters and draws them side-by-side, consoling each other in their shared misery.  A problem shared is a problem halved, right? And judging by his drawings, a lot more cute too!

That very basic description strips it down into sounding a lot less witty, clever, funny and adorable than it actually is, so I’m going to let his artwork do the talking with a few of my favourites show below. And any grown man that is unafraid to show their knowledge of Pokemon gets two thumbs up from me!

Half of the fun is guessing the characters and shared connections but I also know that it’s extremely infuriating when you have no idea who the hell certain people are (my video game knowledge is clearly not up to scratch!), so Gerringer’s fun titles and the characters depicted are written at the bottom of each pic. So make sure you get your guesses in before scrolling down too far!

(The top photo is my all-time favourite, Itty Bitty Living Space, featuring Pikachu and Disney’s Genie from Aladdin. Come on, I didn’t need to tell you that one, did I?!)

Second fave, Genetic Experiments. Stitch AND Wolverine… when else would you ever see these two together?! And that’s what makes the series so great.

Addicted To Dots – PacMan and Hungry Hippo

Always Kinda Emo – Eeyore and Cloud from Final Fantasy. Yeah… I know nothing about Final Fantasy but HOW CUTE IS EEYORE. SO SQUISHY.

Being Green – The Hulk and Kermit

Gotta Have Rings – Sonic the Hedgehog and Captain Planet (he’s the hero, bringing pollution down to zero!).

Imaginary Friend – Hobbes and Tyler from Fight Club. Clever.

Nose Problems – Pinocchio and Rudolph. Rudolph’s tiny little ears… squee!

Overbearing Fairies (just the title made me laugh) – Link from Zelda and Peter Pan

Premature Baldness – Professor X and Charlie Brown

Scientifically Demoted – Triceratops and Pluto. Another chuckle out loud moment.

Unintelligible Speech – Beaker and Chewbacca.

…and finally, because Arrested Development always wins…

Blue Yourself – Tobias and Dr Manhattan from Watchmen. To be honest, it could just be a never-nude Tobias and I’d still find it just as hilarious.

And errr… just because… go, Jigglypuff!

Check out the rest of the I Know That Feel Bro series and more of Gerringer’s brilliant illustration work on his website and DeviantArt page – Pokemon fans, you’re in for a treat, trust me!

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Hello Kitty mo liu – the cat’s meow!

Posted on May 14, 2012 | 6 Comments

I was introduced to the term ‘mo liu’ by a few friends on Twitter and rapidly found that it seemed to describe my life!

In English,  mo liu translates to items of frippery, flippant impulse buys that are super-cute but ultimately functionless. I have always been susceptible to pretty things (and indeed, a whole category on here is named thus!) yet in Hong Kong, such mo liu lurks round every street corner, in every market, on the shelves of every shop, supermarket and convenience store. You cannot escape!

Prime offenders are items emblazoned with the likeness of a certain cartoon cat (previously featured on my blog here). And yes, forgive me for I am weak… for I gave into the cute collecting craze again… not once, but two times!

First up, Hello Kitty x Tokidoki at 7-Eleven (the joys of which I proclaimed here!). There was a huge advertising campaign for this and I originally declared myself immune… then I decided I wouldn’t mind Donut Kitty… then I decided I’d quite like Unicorn Kitty and Apples Kitty… and then suddenly all I could think about was how I NEEDED the whole set. Of course, the minute I said I despised Giant Diamond Kitty and Black Star Kitty, they were pretty much the first ones I got… which just fed the addiction more. This is how collecting mania infects you in Hong Kong – you either need to totally abstain and go cold turkey or you just give in and lose your mind for the whole promotion period.

As the end of the sticker redemption period grew ever closer, I started to grow even more insane – 7-Eleven stickers were all I could think/talk/dream about (as evidenced here). This meant that every time my boyfriend called on his way home for work asking if there was anything he could get, my answer would invariably be some frenzied screaming about 7-Eleven. ‘What from 7-Eleven though?’ ‘I don’t know… anything!!!’

Well, 7-Eleven is a convenience store, and convenience stores sell largely junk food… meaning spending over $60 to get my five stickers needed for a toy was pretty tricky. Which was why come the end of February, my freezer was filled with dozens of Dreyers ice-cream cones, my room resembled a Coca-Cola factory filled with bottles ready for shipment, I was practically washing myself in Evian water and there was an entire shelf lined with tub upon tub of mini Oreos. I think we’re still finishing those now. Was the insania worth it? I’ll leave you to decide! But you gotta admit… Donut Kitty is pretty bloody cute!

P.S. I still didn’t get all of them (I want you Adieu Kitty… and Riding With Ghost Kitty… and Comet Kitty!) and I have some doubles… so if you wanna swap, drop me an email!

Secondly, McDonalds x Hello Kitty. This mo liu collection was nowhere near as traumatic as my boyfriend does actually go to McDonalds nearly every day anyway, so nabbing these four was a cinch!

I’m pretty sure Hong Kong is the only McDs in the world where Ronald McDonald is still actively seen hanging around stores promoting, as opposed to having been quietly banished to a dark cupboard somewhere given his inherent creepiness. But hey… cross a child-catching clown with Hello Kitty and anything becomes cute, right?!

This crossover also allows us to appreciate the genius of the pun Hamburglar. As for the other two characters… errr, yeah, me neither… but super-kawaiiiiii!

Actually, I really love this collection. The costumes are really cute in miniature kitty form (Hamburglar is all kinds of wicked-awesome) and the attention-to-detail for a toy given away with fast food is pretty special.

I loved the different drawings on both sides of each box, the minimalist costume design on the back of the packaging and the cut-out golden arches handles – they really do look like collectibles. Which is, of course, what I will be telling my auntie when she screams at me about the amount of random mo liu accumulating dust around the house. They’re an investment, don’t you see?!?!

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Forgotten Fine Art: The Cityplaza Copper Suite

Posted on October 30, 2011 | 11 Comments

In Hong Kong, you can often find pretty things in the strangest places… which often means discovering fine art in the most mundane of anonymous corporate offices.

Such was the case with this stunning series of plaques entitled The Cityplaza Copper Suite by Australian sculptors Joan Walsh Smith and Charles Smith in Tai Koo’s Cityplaza complex of buildings.

I was taken aback by the level of detail in these – you could spend ages poring over these still find even more interesting and clever little vignettes revealing themselves in the copper artwork. The style reminds me a little of Jan Pieńkowski’s silhouette illustrations for the Joan Aiken books I used to read when I was little. Click on each photograph to enlarge and zoom in  and you can check out some of the detail for yourselves!

Each ‘Rondo-Progression’ has a different theme (unfortunately, I forgot to note them down, bad blogger, slaps wrist!) but I believe they were The Arts, Food, Leisure and Work. My favourite is probably The Arts with its striking centre-piece of the two Chinese theatre masks and loads of other dynamic pictures surrounding it – it’s almost like it’s alive with movement!

You can’t really tell from the pictures (which have distorted the light reflections weirdly) but these are made from copper, which is even more stunning and vivid in real life – and I loved the way the light reflected and bounced off these pieces, making them even more vibrant.

It seems a shame that these are tucked away in a place most people wouldn’t even notice so hopefully this post does its bit to show them off to the rest of the world!

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I wish all atlases looked like this!

Posted on October 19, 2011 | 2 Comments

One of my favourite Pretty Things posts on here is still my blog on the gorgeous travel posters by Brazilian illustrator, Fernando Volken Togni – the colour, the detail, the style, everything! (And I updated it to feature his most recent additions to the series so do check it out!)

Inspired by these, and also the somewhat similar Scandinavian postcards I featured from Ikea, I wanted to share with you these lovely pictorial maps by Canadian artist, Marisa Seguin that I discovered via Design Work Life – and just as I wanted Togni’s work on my walls, I want Seguin’s right up there with it!

What sets these apart for me are the strict but stunning colour palettes she has used for each piece. Again, it’s hard to pick a favourite – the icy cool blues and purples of Vancouver, the strikingly vibrant pinks and turquoise of Venice, the dreamy romantic pastels of Paris, the vivid riot of brights that makes up San Francisco or the dusty sepia tones of Seguin’s current base, Milwaukee.

I also love the level of detail that’s gone into illustrating each of the landmarks; sadly, I haven’t visited any of the cities in question (apart from Paris, which I honestly think looks far more charming here than it does in real life!) but if I do, I’ll be toting one of these and navigating my way in style!

Hope you enjoy these as much as I did – and you can check out more of Seguin’s work on her website or buy these as prints from her Etsy shop.

And I loved the Jellyfish one so much, I couldn’t resist sticking it on here too!

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7-Eleven: Use your noodle

Posted on June 23, 2011 | 11 Comments

Oh 7-Eleven. How do I love thee? Let me count the ways…

I love that you’re never more than 5 minutes away from any given location. I love that I can now buy crisps and ice-cream whenever the hell I want. I love your cute collectible promotional toys that I will never spend enough to obtain, although friends and colleagues will harass me for the tokens regardless.

I love that school kids frequent ‘Club 7’ to get their first illicit taste of alcohol, stand outside in the streets drinking it and that staff actually open their bottles for them. I love that we then do exactly the same thing in a loosely ironic fashion and it probably ends up being more fun than a night out in Dragon-I. I love that living it large outside Club 7 is practically a rites of passage in Hong Kong (see above photo for reference, taken in my second month in HK!).

But recently… I love your noodles. Not as much as my boyfriend does though.

Some of the larger 7-Elevens have a hot food counter (or even a stand-alone hot food shop), serving up re-heated street food without having to go to the trouble of wandering around the streets for it. We’re talking curry fish balls, char siu bao, shao mai and strangely-shaped things on cocktail sticks, all washed down with an artificial food-colouring abundant slushie drink. There are even microwaves in-store to heat up the ready meals that are available.

But it’s all about the lo mein. I first tried these when a group of my dancer friends came over to Hong Kong for work and quickly discovered the cheap and cheerful joys of 7-Eleven hot food on the go, especially the garlic noodles, which they chomped down regularly as they explored our fair city.

Fast forward a year later when I casually mentioned this to my boyfriend and he wanted to see what all the fuss was about. I think he’s averaged one a week ever since.

You’re basically paying $7 for someone else to make and season a pack of instant noodles for you. It’s quick, it’s cheap… and it’s bloody tasty.

Noodles in cha chaan tengs often come scattered with a plethora of distracting ingredients you didn’t even want in the first place – char siu, egg, onion, green pepper… and my mortal enemy, bean sprouts. Well there’s none of that nonsense here. 7-Eleven lo mein are salty, spicy (you can tell staff to what degree) and only given a light dusting with bits of yummy dried garlic/onion. Well, I think it’s dried garlic/onion. I hope so anyway.

The sauce is the kind that comes out of sachets and it’s left to the lap of the 7-Eleven gods what kind of 7-11er you get – someone who’s generous with the sauce, someone who knows how long to soak your noodles for, someone who isn’t going to do all this with a scowl on their face.

So yummy, so more-ish, so probably not very good for you at all. Prepared, eaten and thrown away in less than five minutes, no effort expended, no washing up afterwards. It’s the perfect meal, right?!

Cheers to that!

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Posted in Food, Hong Kong, Random, Reviews

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Going down the rabbit hole…

Posted on June 14, 2011 | 3 Comments

You may remember one of the very first posts I wrote on here was about Maison Moschino in Italy, a hotel whose interiors were based on fairy tales. Well, I’ve now found something even better – Alice In Wonderland restaurants in Japan! And we’re not just talking a few perfunctory playing cards here and there, these guys have gone the whole hog… or should that be, the whole white rabbit… and created a fantastical innovative world that’s simply magical. Maison Moschino can consider itself well and truly out fairy-taled!

Of course, if this kind of thing was ever going to happen outside of Disneyland, it was always going to be in Japan, a land where themed restaurants are no laughing matter (yes, I’m looking at you, randomly pirate-themed Satay King). The company behind the Alice In Wonderland restaurants, Diamond Dining, own several other such eateries – themes include vampires, Phantom Of The Opera and Japanese folklore – but the Alice restaurants are surely the jewel in their crown. Similarly, the design brains behind these beautifully-executed, original and playful interiors are the immodestly-named Fantastic Design Works Co. and their work on Alice is the creative highlight amongst their already impressive portfolio.

The photos speak for themselves. I love how truly immersive these environments are – every last detail has been thought of and just looking at these pictures makes me feel like I’m falling down the rabbit hole straight into Wonderland. The use of the old-fashioned illustrations from the original Alice In Wonderland books lends a classic feel to proceedings in a theme that could have easily tipped over into tacky.

The chandeliers in each restaurant (there are three in Tokyo and one in Osaka, all with different décor) also warrant their own mention. Teacups! Playing cards! Cascading red hearts! Cheshire Cat plushies! I couldn’t possibly pick just one favourite!

The theme doesn’t stop at the decoration though. You’re shown in by The Mad Hatter, served by waitresses dressed like Alice, your menus feature pop-up sections, your beverages come with a ‘Drink Me’ note and some dishes are plated up to look like The Caterpillar, The White Rabbit or even The Cheshire Cat! Check out some photos and descriptions on this blog, which just makes the whole thing sound even more wonderful… well, you’d expect nothing less of Wonderland, right?

This is the stuff fantasies are made of, the ideal imagining of the perfect place to have your very own Mad Hatter’s Tea Party. And all the more fitting here, on Through The Looking Glass!

Images from and more information at Fantastic Design Works Co. and Diamond Dining

Found via We Heart and HomeDSGN

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Hong Kong: Creative Ecologies @ HK Heritage Museum – Like peas in a pod!

Posted on May 2, 2011 | Leave a comment

During our trip to the Pixar: 25 Years Of Animation exhibition at the Hong Kong Heritage Museum, we had a quick scoot round the rest of the place. Emphasis on quick – you’ll have noticed my usual grumble about crappy café quality (see Museum of Coastal Defence, History Museum and Botanical Gardens posts for further moaning) was missing from the Pixar write-up… because this time there wasn’t an eating facility at all!

Sadly, nothing was as awesome as the colourful display of Fei-Fei’s plus-sized cheongsams we stumbled upon when we visited the Age Of Couture Exhibition (a greater aesthetic juxtaposition you could not imagine!). Yes, HK ‘affectionately’ nicknamed their much-beloved actress cum singer cum media personality Lydia Sum something that translates as ‘Fatty’!

This time, we happened upon the Hong Kong: Creative Ecologies exhibition – or what of it had been placed in the foyer of the second floor. Dozens of identical ‘Tin Tin’ figurines, all decorated, styled and re-imagined in different ways by various home-grown artists and designers.

It was fascinating to see how so many people could take one identical thing and end up with something so different yet still recognisable. Designs ranged from the beautiful to the comical to the bizarre to the slightly macabre (I didn’t take a photo of the one that had been mocked up to look like a see-through human body, with all the vital organs glowing inside, as it freaked me out too much), whilst many had a uniquely HK flavour – one had a map of our MTR system, another had silhouettes of our trademark bamboo scaffolding system with workers hanging out un-harnessed and causing heart attacks to Western Health & Safety bodies.

My favourites were the ones who thought ‘outside the box’ and mixed it up a little. I noticed that whilst many of the fashion and accessory designers decorated their models, the artistes chose to do more abstract things – like one completely encased in a steel box, with just that recognisable pointing finger sticking out, or the one that appears to be melting. I was engrossed by the one that seemed to have sprouted alarmingly naturalistic-looking roots and was even growing foliage up top!

The only HK artist whose work I recognised instantly was Prudence Mak. That distinctive bright patchwork style couldn’t belong to anyone but the founder of cute quirky local brand, Chocolate Rain, who you will hear more of later…! Apologies for the picture quality – I haven’t figured out how to minimise the reflections caused by the glass cases – so I’ve compared it with a nice HQ photo from the Heritage Museum’s website so you can see it in all its detailed technicolour glory!

Hopefully these will be kept together as a display once the exhibition has ended and housed somewhere else, as they’re far more powerful and dynamic as a collection rather than if they were split up. It’s certainly nothing to warrant a special visit to the Heritage Museum (though apparently there was a Creative Ecologies gallery that I was too hungry to visit), but it’s a cool little diversion nonetheless! Enjoy!

Hong Kong: Creative Ecologies, 5 Feburary-11 May 2011, Hong Kong Heritage Museum, 1 Man Lam Road, Sha Tin, 2180 8188. See Hong Kong: Creative Ecologies Website for further details.

$10 admission, free on Weds. Opening hours: 10am-6pm, 7pm on Sunday and public holidays. Closed Tuesdays.

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Ice is back with a brand new invention!

Posted on February 13, 2011 | 7 Comments

I remember there being quite a lot of hype for these ice-cold Coke vending machines when the first one popped up under Island Beverly (near Sogo) in Causeway Bay. Alas, Hong Kong’s combination of heat and humidity meant the machine apparently didn’t work too well during one of our trademark sticky sweaty summers. It quietly disappeared a few months later.

But that wasn’t the last of these icy Coke vending machines. We spotted one, classily located next to a dingy back alley, on our epic trek round Wan Chai on my quest for Gosh cosmetics. My boyfriend (a Coca-Cola connoisseur… or simple addict… who has fizzing black gold constantly coursing through his veins) decided to give it a go, at $11 a bottle (Octopus card only). I was on hand to commemorate the experience photographically.

Alas, the Coke didn’t arrive via a polar bear wearing shades.

As you can see above, there were handy pictorial instructions, plus plenty of choices of beverage…

The first step was to open the bottle and take a quick sip – I presume this was to prevent the bottle exploding due to contraction/expansion caused by freezing (science geeks, feel free to clear up my ignorance in the comments). This step was boring so no photos here.

Second, slowly turn the bottle upside-down, whereupon ice crystals start to form in your Coke. To compensate for no pictures of the last step, I took two pictures of this one. Yay! Ice magic! You can really see it in the close-up below.

Finally, tip back your head and quaff that frozen Coke right away! Dingy back alley optional.

It was a cool day so everything worked perfectly and the Coke stayed icy for ages. It tastes like a Coke slushie, only you don’t have to put up with a surly-faced cinema employee to get it. It would probably taste even better on a hot summer’s day – providing the technology still works, that is!

I’m sure there’s a scientific explanation for this, but I prefer to think the Coke fairies did it.

What next for vending machines?! Umbrellas?! Oh wait…

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Hong Kong Banksy?

Posted on January 27, 2011 | 5 Comments

If you’ve been in Hong Kong longer than oooh… twelve hours (and that’s a conservative estimate), the sign on the right will be very familiar.

A symbol of Hong Kong’s ceaseless quest for construction, the apologetic workman usually appears overnight on a sign next to a hole in your road. Apparently the touching of helmet is a gesture of apology for the fact that real-life workmen will be ruining your daily bus journeys and attempts at lie-ins for the foreseeable future.

The piece on the left appears to be a clever riff on the sign, in one of Hong Kong’s few examples of graffiti. Adorned with a pair of devil horns and the slogan ‘Sorry we come again’, plus Hong Kong’s international dialling code (the cool kids’ slang for HK itself i.e. ‘Holla! I’m back in the 852!’), it’s hopefully intended as a witty and searing critique on HK’s interminable schedule of building work. Or something like that. What with the stylised stencil-look of the piece, could we have a Hong Kong Banksy on our hands?

If we do, it’s safe to say he ain’t responsible for the “artistry” displayed below.

Pity the poor tourist who asks his taxi driver to pick him up from ‘Stoned Nuttah Lane’ (it should read ‘Stone Nullah’ but they’ve done a quite convincing job). What’s the reckoning this was done by some oh-so-hilarious international school kid en route home from a wild night at Carnegies?

I think I know which type of graffiti I’d prefer.

Update: I think this is the work of Hong Kong street art collective Start From Zero!

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Posted in Hong Kong

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