Which, I find, is a rather personal question to ask after you’ve just listened to the artist talked passionately about his/her work for an hour (or so). Sure, I can understand the curiosity and everyone in the room who’s listening might be wondering the same, but it takes a certain type to actually word it out. Imagine your friend taking you to a house party in a really fancy place owned by someone you don’t know and you show up uninvited then asking out loud how much they pay for rent. *awkward*

Tonight, after Golan Levin presented his body of work, in what was quite an excellent talk, at the OCAD auditorium, some questions were asked and answered and then there was:

“So, who pays for all the fun and why?”

Golan chuckled a bit, he took it in stride though and said that he often wonders the same. To be fair, the prelude to the question was probably the fact that he started his presentation with a little diagram showing how his work doesn’t fall into the ‘useful’ category because people tend to make money there, thus revealing that he doesn’t really make money doing all this stuff. He answered the question by saying that he doesn’t do the ‘fun stuff’ all the time. “I do other stuff too, I just don’t show you any of that here.”

(photo by @katehartman)

And the thing is, at most of the artist talks, this is usually the answer. They will do whatever they have to do in order to do the art. Exceptional cases are when the artist has a collector / rep gallery or is funded to do specific work by certain institutions. But even in those cases, before they can get that kind of funding, everyone will have done something to make money and they’ll never show as part of their art work. Because it doesn’t matter. Because the work has to come out so you just do whatever it is you need to do to make it happen. Most people understand this, and it’s why we don’t ask.

Perhaps the question about who pays for the art isn’t really about the money or the artist at all.  Maybe it’s a way of wondering how it is that the artist gets to do these cool things but I don’t. Just like walking into a party in a fancy apartment and wondering how it is that people get to live like this but I don’t.

It’s funny how nothing tastes that good when you’re eating by yourself, even if it’s the exact same thing you’d make if there was just another person around.

This little yellow post-it note was folded in half and resting on the street car seat I was about to take on my morning commute. The words ‘in Canada’ was facing up so I picked it up to read the whole thing.

Whoever or whatever the situation this was meant for, I find this little sentence to be so brilliantly stated it could almost be a slogan for Canada, albeit one with an ironic twist (but that’s hip, right?). The fact that it was written for someone makes it just perfectly hilarious. Of course, nice Canadians wouldn’t say this directly to someone, but you do have to let them know the rule of the land somehow, right? I mean, eh?

I babysat Laya for an hour while her daddy was getting a hair cut.  She walked in a circle around my living room for a bit then told me that she has a lot of toys at her house and I can go and play with her sometimes (probably from seeing that I don’t have any toys – poor me).  So I showed her my toy and we took a picture of ourselves using Photo Booth.  Then we had a mini-picnic with her snacks and juice.  After she spilled on herself a couple times, she said to me that there’s too much juice and that daddy has to drink it first.  ”Ohhh!”  It was a rare moment of clarity where you realize a 3-year-old had to tell you what to do correctly.  So I drank some juice for her dad.

Then we jumped up and down in my living room for while, good thing my neighbor wasn’t home.  At her size, she can jump, lie down immediately and then get up to jump again with relative ease, but I couldn’t really follow.  She showed me how to do snow angels on my living room floor.  Lacking toys, she managed to entertain herself with invisible things which she shared with me and I had to put them back on the stairs (which, I guessed, was her imaginary toy box).  She announced that there was gonna be a Chanukah party with dreidels and then packed her bag because we were going to Valentine’s Day.  Everything was always spontaneous, imaginary, and never needed any coherent meaning or reason.

I can’t remember anything from when I was three.  It must have been fun.

Two days ago I woke up to a start of a snow fall on New Year’s Day:

This my third January in Toronto – getting kind of used to it, but that doesn’t mean it gets any better.

(* hunting made easy these days w/ twitter status)

We drove to one of the trucks parked at the Miracle Mile, (S. Cloverdale and Wilshire) and waited in line with a bunch of hungry folks, taunted by the smell of Korean BBQ. It’s a good 20-25 minute wait until you get to order, then another 5-10 minute wait at the window, depending on your order… but, wow, I’d stand in line for longer to get those little tacos. It being California, there is, of course, a vegetarian option: tofu tacos, which are very tasty and, I’ll say, can stand up to its short-ribs counterpart.

Waiting in line:

The order window:

Here’s one to prove that dining is about good food and that’s all you need:

Eating in a parking lot of OfficeMax (or some similar big box retail, can’t remember exactly).

Tofu tacos and Korean short-ribs tacos

I look at this picture and can salivate all over again. MMM. Hat tip to Kogi for getting their sauces right.

Black Jack Quesadilla

Spicy pork, caramelized onion with Jack cheese (hence the name, presumably) w/ green sauce.

As pictured, we ended up eating from the hood of our car in the parking lot. Others who were in line with us also ate in their respective cars, then drove away after they were done. Very “LA”, but, hey, it works and no one is complaining.

This sugary sin of a breakfast is called the Big Skinny Pancake, a specialty from Mon Ami Gabbi, a french restaurant at the Paris in Las Vegas. It’s a stack of 4 giant fluffy crepes topped with cherries that’s been doused in Chambord and chocolate sauce.

Nothing too special here about these tacos except that tacos in California kick ass.

For the 1-year anniversary of our wedding, I found a Thai restaurant in LA’s Thai Town that specializes in Northern Thai cuisine. The Yelp reviewers had great things to say and the pictures of the place looks as authentically tacky as a Thai restaurant could be, so we got a crew of 9 people and took over the place, eating a feast of Thai food enough to feed a small classroom. Pictures were taken just before we all devoured everything.

Nam-prik-oong is a tomato and pork based spicy paste, you eat it with fresh veggie. It looks innocent enough but caught most people by surprised.

Here’s the Yelp link for Spicy BBQ in Hollywood (at the corner of Santa Monica Blvd and Normandie).

Amongst other things I got for Christmas, this is one probably made me smile the most:

Vietti Barolo Castiglione 2005

For Christmas dinner, and in celebration of my mother-in-law’s newly purchased iron-cast dutch oven, I cooked my very-first beef stew ever: Beouf Bourguignon from Julia Child’s recipe. Like a whole bunch of suckers across America, I too was influenced by that Julie/Julia movie. It took 4+ hours and a lot of cooking tools, but was worth every single minute and effort:

Soon it’ll be time for a detox.

2. I went to a Sunday morning yoga class, and afterwards we all get out the door into the warm sun. It’s a gorgeous, beautiful day – just five days before Christmas – and it’s hard to believe that some people on the other side of the country are buried in snow.

random guy: “don’t you just love that we don’t live in the east coast?”

I wanted to say yes, but I would be lying. Then I took a stroll in the sun down the street all the way to the ocean in my yoga outfit.

UPDATE: I’ve added enhanced, edited version by Darren to the flickr pool! They look even better.

w/ David Bouchard, he shares the studio with us.

There’s more in the Flickr photo set.

This photo shoot was taken in our studio, here’s what it looks like when you’re taking *real* pictures:

Mark “sm-eye-sing” for Darren, thanks Tyra.

Starting a company is like landing on the shore of a deserted island

You have a certain amount of provisions, which you have to make last until you find a way to make the island sustain life—or convince someone to send you more.

You don’t know how big the island is at first or what predators lie in wait.

There’s always a chance someone else will raid your island if it looks fruitful, so you need to shore up your defenses.

Eventually, if you’re successful, you’ll be king of your own prosperous world. If not, you’ll die—or, at least, have to go home.

Either way, it’s a fun adventure (until you get eaten by a tiger).

link

Since the bathroom was not finished, we had to spend the night at the old place and moved the mattress the next day, which started off horribly.  After Mark drove the truck to our place, we realized it had a flat tire and was actively leaking air.  And this was the first time we’ve ever had a flat tire with a zip car.  The zip car rep called a mechanic, who arrived about an hour and a half later and took another half hour to try taking out the flat tire but couldn’t.  The truck had to be towed.  By that point, it was actually becoming quite hilarious.

Anyway, we ended up getting another truck and the rest of the move was surprisingly fine.  The apartment eventually came together in the afternoon.  Our landlord and her sister got down on the floor and scrub every inches in the kitchen.  The bathroom was usable.  Everything we owned is moved in and today we skipped work to unpack and rearrange stuff.

Even though the two places are somewhat similar in size, we manage to have more stuff than could fit in the kitchen and more clothes than we thought we owned.  Every time I move, I get rid of clothes when I pack.  Then I get rid of more when I unpack.  And then somehow, the next time I look through my clothes, there are always more to get rid of.

The new place is cute.  We have the top two floors of an old house.  It creaks with every step you take and I’m sure our house mate downstairs can track us around the house by listening to sound of our footsteps.  The stove is this a vintage Lady Kenmore from who-knows-when still in great condition but all the markings on the knobs are rubbed off and you have no idea how hot you’re turning it to.  There was an old wall sconce which we were excited about, but then the landlord took it out and the wall is plastered over.  There’s a deck with a view of the CN Tower.  There’s a lot of Italian neighbors and cats.

My favorite, though, is the presidential street corner:  Clinton & Gore.

(photo from Mike Stroud on Flickr)

On the other hand, though, printed stuff: real ink on real paper, holds a value much more than just being sentimental. There’s still a prestige attached to getting printed (regardless of what it is). It’s a mark of validation.

UPDATE:  apparently I was wrong about the magazine industry: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YmGSfVo2NUw (still, that video is compiled by magazine industry lobbyist…)

About a month ago, we did an interview over email w/ an editor of Design Week UK, admittedly not really knowing what kind of reach the publication has. They have a website and lots of writing about design on it. Lots of interview with people and a lot of content. They seem important, but I somehow thought that they were an online publication. I told Mark that it would probably be an online article without even asking the interviewer. “It’s not gonna be printed?” he asked. “Does anybody print anymore?” was my reply.

Yesterday, out of the blue, a friend emailed us from the UK. She’d flipped the pages of Design Week to see our names on it, with picture and the interview, and graciously scanned the page for us. We had no idea when/if it was going to come out, and if it wasn’t for Francesca, we might still be in the dark about it. And, according to her, it is one of the most well-read design publication in the UK. (!!!) 0_0

Surprised, it was printed! And it is online. I couldn’t have been more wrong, and I’ll admit that it looks much better in print.

(thanks Francesca!)

While I don’t really dig the super-white teeth and ultra brown skin treatment they gave me, it’s still pretty cool.

Very humbled and really grateful to the feature writer of Design Week, Anna Robertson, and Andy Cameron who suggested us for them. Our super friend Juan is also featured in the same section.

“There are different species of laziness: Eastern and Western. The Eastern style is like the one practised in India. It consists of hanging out all day in the sun, doing nothing, avoiding any kind of work or useful activity, drinking cups of tea, listening to Hindi film music blaring on the radio, and gossiping with friends. Western laziness is quite different. It consists of cramming our lives with compulsive activity, so there is no time at all to confront the real issues. This form of laziness lies in our failure to choose worthwhile applications for our energy.”

- Sogyal Rinpoche (via SwissMiss)

I’m sitting in a Starbucks in the middle of boystown district of Toronto, surrounded by gay men who make small talk about the shitty weather to each other. I’m killing time. And this is the first time in a long time I can remember killing time – because I usually run out of it. Ironically though, I don’t feel any more productive these days.

We’re moving to a new apartment next week. It’s kind of exciting to have a new place and re-set the things we own into new spot so that we might appreciate them again. Our new apartment is in the middle of Toronto’s Little Italy neighborhood. Our landlord is Italian and her whole family live on the same street. Our neighbor downstairs has a cute grey cat named Sam.

We’ll have to take public transportation to get to and from work now – not something I look forward to but maybe the routine will get me to appreciate Toronto more since I’ll be out of my little 4-block comfort zone that I was constricted to for the past 18 months.

Oops, now I’m out of time. That was quick.