1 Giant Leap

You never know what inspiration you might find in a yoga class, or anywhere else for that matter. While going through a rather arduous flow series from triangle through half moon and other poses, Wendy played this cool song:



I always find that good music can make yoga poses and long runs seem like a walk in the park.
"What was that song you were playing during triangle pose?" I asked Wendy after class.
"Haha...you must be talking about the song from 1 Giant Leap. It was a movie with a lot of yogi types. It's a great movie, touching on a lot of interesting issues. You should see it," she said.

It took me a few days to remember to look it up, but I'm glad I did. 1 Giant Leap has just released their second DVD: What About Me. Part global travelogue through 50 destinations across five continents and part music video with excellent music by a wide range of musicians, 1 Giant Leap (Jamie Catto and Duncan Bridgeman) embark on a journey to explore the human spirit and our interconnectedness through music, culture and beliefs. It's a visual collage of our views on life, love, God, money and the search for meaning set to a moving soundtrack.

Wyclef Jean @ MO bar

I had been chatting one day with DA and she was telling me about the TOHK launch party preparations. She was telling me that she had spoken to Wyclef Jean's promoter and they had offered to have Wyclef appear at the launch party and play a few songs as a surprise. But Wyclef would only be able to perform on 21 April, so she would have to pass since TOHK's launch was slated for 23 April. "What?" I shouted down the phone. "Move your launch date! Do you have any idea how cool it would be for Wyclef to show up and surprise the crowd with a few songs???" Anyway, to cut a long story short, DA tried to re-jig the gig, but in the end it was not meant to be.

Fortunately for me though, as a result, the TOHK got invites to the invite-only performance at Landmark Mandarin's MO bar last night (MO did a promotion earlier: for every HK$1,000 spent on Veuve Clicquot, they gave away a lucky draw ticket for a chance to win tickets for the night's show). I had only expected Wyclef to play an hour max. That was what he was supposed to do. In the end, he gave an awesome 2-hour performance! I was dancing in the wrong shoes and my feet were killing me, but it was worth it.

Wyclef is a great performer; he had the crowd all worked up and was constantly bringing people to the stage. At one point, he shouted, "I've found my Hong Kong Wyclef!" and dragged a guy up to the stage who then held his own in the rap-along. For all I know, it may have been a Canto-pop star, but I am hopeless at recognising them. The concert started pretty chill, with Wyclef on stage strumming his guitar. But then as he got into Sweetest Girl, he really amped it up and the crowd went crazy. He went from the stage to the top of the bar and, at one point, he was moving through the crowd sitting high on top of the shoulders of one of his crew members. The crowd loved it. He went through a bunch of songs from his latest album, Carnival Volume II: Memoirs of an Immigrant, some Bob Marley, old Fugees tunes, a very crowd-pleasing medley of 80s hits running from A-Ha (Take On Me) to Cyndi Lauper (Girls Just Wanna Have Fun), as well as songs he's done with other artists such as Shakira's Hips Don't Lie and Santana's Maria Maria.

Unfortunately, I only had my iPhone camera, which has no zoom and takes horrible photos in low lighting:

Goodwill Buys

Instant Karma -- The Campaign to Save Darfur benefits Amnesty International's "Make Some Noise" project. Artists ranging from U2 ("Instant Karma") to Green Day ("Working Class Hero") to Black Eyed Peas ("Power to the People") to Snow Patrol ("Isolation") to Avril Lavigne ("Imagine") reinterpret songs from John Lennon's solo songbook.

Was going through julib.com newsletters and came across their write-up on Social Atelier's conscience-raising and fund-raising for Solar Cooker Project T-shirts. The line of T-shirts with direct messages addressing global warming, warm, body image, genocide, gay marriage, poverty and AIDS, will launch tomorrow (14 June) at Fred Segal in Los Angeles.

Goodwill Download

So Madonna's "Hey You" put me to sleep, but at least I slept well with visions of good that would come from msn.com donating a maximum of US$250,000 (US$0.25 per download) to the Alliance for Climate Protection. You can download the song now for FREE in the next 6 days (you don't have to listen to it unless you are suffering from insomnia). Also, check out the line-up for the upcoming Live Earth concerts in New York, London, Sydney, Tokyo, Shanghai, Johannesburg, Rio de Janeiro and Hamburg on 7 July 2007.

Sites & Sounds

It's a wonderfully blush-inducing feeling when someone you consider the ultimate foodie blogger mentions your own blog in an interview on seriouseats.com. Thanks Chubby Hubby!

If you're looking for Mother's Day gift ideas, check out Violet.com, a brand-new gift site that makes gifting so much easier. Of course, you'll find Little Cream Book in their selection.

Was delighted by Bebel Gilberto's new album, Momento. It's perfect for lazing around on the deck of a yacht cruising through crystalline waters on a late afternoon going into dusk; just listen to Cadê Você or her rendition of Cole Porter's Night & Day.


And last, but definitely not least, Heroes is back!!

Google Calendar, Goytisolo, Gotan Project, Ana Forrest

Got a 4-day weekend here in Hong Kong, but having my own business means that weekends and public holidays don't mean much. I spent the day working on LCB: Golf in Starbucks. Didn't get far, only as far as Q (working backwards). As usual, I got side-tracked by quite a few interesting and fun things:

Google Calendar -- What can I say? Google never ceases to amaze me by coming up with new ways to organize and integrate every aspect of my life. I spent a couple hours setting up my calendar. But the real power of Google Calendar won't be realised until all my family, friends, colleagues, work associates are on it. The power of sharing aside, it was really easy to set up. I got iCal to synch with gCal, and then iCal transfers it all to my iPod video. Check it out!



The Anti-Orientalist -- One of the things I miss most about being in Hong Kong is Sundays with The New York Times Magazine (and the rest of the paper). Instead, I get previews to articles on Wednesday and read this rather interesting article on the Spanish writer Juan Goytisolo. Got me intrigued enough to want to read his memoirs, but also got me thinking about our love of the "authentic" in cultures -- usually the more chaotic, colourful side of developing countries. On the one hand, as tourists, we want to experience that aspect of "local culture", but at the same time, economic development and globalization leads to homogenization of cultures. And it's unfair for those of us visiting from economically privileged countries to expect those in developing countries to cling to traditions for our desire to experience something different or novel, not to mention that it helps maintain our higher spending power in those countries. Take wet markets in Hong Kong for example. Wet markets are a breeding ground for viruses (such as Avian flu) and diseases. Yet, they are also what add colour to the city; the juxtaposition of the sleek, gleaming international financial center that is Central with the wet market that is "local" life (never mind that the younger generation now shops at supermarkets such asCity'Super, Wellcome, Park-N-Shop).
Gotan Project -- Been listening to their new album Lunático (you can download tracks from iTunes).


Great stuff, as usual. It's great music for transporting you to a different time and place -- think late night in a smoky bar in Paris' Bastille or tango hall in Buenos Aires. Speaking of tunes that invoke destinations, BL tipped me onto Panjabi MC (which he heard while watching Inside Man), think it would be great for the pool party in India.
Ana Forrest -- By chance, I got to see an amazing and inspiring demonstration by the yogi Ana Forrest (there are links to videos of a similar performance held recently at a conference in Boston on her website). It had been a while since my last yoga class. BL managed to drag me to an hour long Hot Flow class at Pure Yoga and the demostration was right after class. I had no idea who Forrest was, but wandered in out of curiosity. It was truly inspiring to see the amazing control she had over each part of her body. It made me realize the power of breath in focusing the mind and controlling the body. Breathing seems like such a simple task that we don't really think about it. But it only takes one yoga class to figure out how difficult it is to master and how much power is behind such a simple task. Now, if only I could breathe and chew each bite of my food 20 times...