passion is in fashion

Nothing (Nothing!!!) to cheer one up like a good food week.   I had one such good week this week, thanks to dad!

Dad was in town for business meetings, which means business dinners.  I have met some of them before (they are buddies), and one of the “zong”s  had a daughter about my age.  And so, off we go!

A gathering of northern Chinese businessmen means a massive amount of drinking.   They would toast each other about every five minutes with shots of baijiu (ultra strong Chinese grain alcohol.)  Part of a being a good businessman is performing the delicate balance of drinking in good faith and not getting sloppy drunk in front of your partners.  If one doesn’t drink, one would never be able to do business in China because they wouldn’t trust you – or even like you!  Even my counterpart, a fresh-faced girl who is still in college, was so practiced in this process that she toasted everyone at the table.  Precocious!

On the last night I made dad escape the alcohol-ness and take me to steak.  A really nice view and yummy food.  Neither of us could finish our delicious steaks – that only means I am eating it for breakfast right now!   Haha!  I am also listening to my favorite NPR show Wait Wait Don’t Tell me… is this heaven on earth?  I think so!

When I was little I drew people exactly like this.  I never understood why they didn’t look like real people.  One day I was scribbling in the corner of my German kindergarten and was determined to find out.  Looking at my teacher closely, I realized I was missing the entire body.

Christian Louboutin Ad Campaign F/W 09/10 by Peter Lippman

Selfridge’s is the legendary UK institution on par with Saks or Neiman.  My hotel was only a few blocks away so I happily trotted on over.

The cool thing about Selfridges is that it is truly a melting pot of everything.  The Wonder Room consists of high end jewelry such as Cartier and Chanel Haute Joaillerie, on the other side is high street shops like Topshop and Karen Millen.  Other than shopping, the place also had like seven places to eat and drink!  Truly a great way to spend a rainy day. 

All was not well, however, in this wonderland of eating and shopping.  By the afternoon it had become overly-crowded.  There were literally lines in front of Chanel and Louis Vuitton.  Very silly.  I also found the salespeople to be generally quite rude.  A combination of English snobbery and suck up for middle eastern ladies.  (Ha – more on this later.)

As a birthday gift to self I bought a pair of little earrings from Tiffany.  Yay.    I never really wear anything dangly but this one is simple enough that I can handle.  All done with shopping and I was ready to get the form for the VAT refund.  That’s when I descended into their customer service area in the basement.  Little did I know, Selfridge’s is much more like a crappy discount shop in this matter.

Have you been to the DMV lately?  Well, it’s the same idea.  The room was tiny, packed with ugly sofas and particle board furniture.  I could not even find a seat.  I took a number (a number!!!!) and sat down to read Newsweek magazine (thank god I had something to read with me.)  I literally waited for 30 minutes when they called my number and took me to yet another area (yet another area!!!) – the VIP room where supposedly the wait was shorter.  I was having none of this.  My time is very precious I would never have shopped there if I had known the process was like this.  I spoke with the supposed manager on duty.  He was useless, of course.

Looking around the room I saw an interesting phenomenon, namely, the number of middle eastern ladies in burkhas and diamond watches.  They probably accounted for more than half of the customers waiting in there.  I overheard the conversations.  They bought up Chanel jewelry, Dolce and Gabanna handbags, and all kinds of accessories like it was going out of fashion.  They also make yearly trips to London for shopping.  As one customer service representative cheerily noted: “See you next year!”

Bottom line: Selfridges is an excellent store run by monkeys.  My salesperson at Tiffany, Alisa, however, was a sweetie!

Called for the theatre.  Went to Leicester Square during the day and bought tickets for Tom Stoppard’s Arcadia.  I loved Shakespeare in Love, so I was excited.

It played at Duke of York’s Theatre on St. Martin’s Lane.  The place was old and adorable.  (Pictured above: are those people waving at me?  Haha!)  I went with G who was tall and easy to spot from far away (key when operating in a foreign country with spotty telephone signals).  Our seats were the “second best” seats in the house, but basically that means they were ground floor all the way to the back.  Full house on Monday night, and the thing was not even particularly touristy — I was thoroughly impressed with the cultural stamina of the Brits!

First part of the play was hilarious.  I was laughing as it was a Judd Apatow movie.  Good-natured-slightly-provocative humor all done in a wholesome way.  The accent did take some getting used to though.  The actors’ accents totally bump up a notch when they are on stage.  “Carnal embrace” suddenly becomes “caaaaarnal embraaaace” and so on.

Intermission was fun.  I am taken quite a liking to the British drink called Pimm’s, and promptly had one there.  I didn’t know that I was supposed to ask for it to be mixed, and thus was my first drink of Pimm’s in shot form.  I stood next to this circle of Brits having a lively discussion about the play.  Oh, the literary ones who take theatre as casual entertainment!  May I also – one day!

The second half of the play was more confusing.  Somehow the actors managed to heighten their accents even more.  There were discussions of entropy and iterated algorithm, together with ideas of ordered chaos and irreversibility of actions (burning was a constant theme here).  It reminded me a little bit of the Thomas Pynchon’s The Crying of Lot 49.  Anyway, all themes very relevant to international-sprawling-early-twenty something lives, but too much to think about after a giant shot of Pimm’s.

Thoroughly enjoyed the evening.  Plan on getting my little paws on a copy of the play to read for pleasure, to account for what I missed in between the haughty accents.

The Abercrombie and Fitch store in London is in the heart of Mayfair, right next to Gieves and Hawkes and Savile Row.  (However my friend T refers to it as the “low point” of the neighborhood.)  The place is interesting.  In a nondescript white building without any signs or those typically Bond Street flags out front, yet it is instantly recognizable by a) the two good-looking muscular young men out front and b) an overdose of A&F cologne from miles away.

It gets better.  T and I wandered inside just to see what the big deal is.  (It is such a big deal, you see, there are British teenagers hanging out in front of the store, at all hours, for no reason.  The Bond Street version of mallrats?)  The store is divided into two floors.  On the top floor, a girl and a guy dance excitedly and somewhat inappropriately.  They are wearing lumberjack button-downs and denim.  Are they just overly-enthused, very good-looking salespeople?  No, as we found out later by asking the other, more normal-acting, but just as good-looking salespeople, they are professional dancers.  They can be found during store hours.

On the way down I stopped in the fragrance room and sampled the Laguna Beach body mist. It smelled like Jolly Ranchers being breathed on my face by Hayden Panettiere. Here the store also sells its California fragrance, which is spritzed on the mannequins every hour; it’s a noxious concoction that, I assume, is distilled from mink sex glands and the tears of broken-hearted teenage girls.

- Mike Albo on the new Hollister flagship in the NYT

Hello world!  Back to HK after a whirlwind of travels.  In case you were wondering, my blogging software is blocked in China, so it was not like I could write even if I wanted to.  Instead, I did a wholesome combination of meeting up with dad and friends who also happened to be in Shanghai.  Perfect timing, and so much to tell!

So where was I during all this time?  Shanghai (lots and lots, caught the eclipse), Hangzhou (near the lake, as well as deep in the heart of its industrial village), Nanjing (however briefly, it was lovely).  Complete recounts of my travels coming soon!

xoxo