Friday Five 21-June

1. Have you come to the conclusion that your parents music (music popular in their time) isn't so bad?
As a kid growing up here, I didn't have much choices in music. I spoke Chinese (back then) but I didn't read it so I was never able to read magazines and read about Hong Kong artists and such. Then, when we had a CD player, we only had Mom's golden oldies CD set collection or some of Dad's something-or-another-electro-type thingamajoo. I wouldn't say the music back then was bad, it's just... things I've been listening to since a long long time ago.

2. Is there a song/group/singer you once adored, but don't now?
hm.... not really. I admit being an avid fan for a j-pop/anison artist called Masami Okui 奥井雅美 but it's sort of tapered off partially due to her having slowed down her solo career and focusing on her group JAM Project.

3. Is there a song/group/singer you once despised, but is okay now?
Despise is a very strong word, and I can't think of anyone/group that I despise of... anyway, it's only very recently that I started to listen to other "Western" music (yeah, I was never big on Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, etc...., I was mainly a jpop girl back then), so I really can expand on what I listen to, but recently I found out I'm okay with Imagine Dragons, American Author, Keane, etc... and then I also like the non-vocals like The Piano Guys, Lindsay Stirling, etc...

4. Have you ever heard a favorite song and suddenly had a reinterpretation its meaning?
Back then, being so into Jpop, yet not speaking the language, I remember copying the lyrics (despite my not being able to read neither the Japanese and only some of the Chinese characters), and trying to decipher the lyrics from the little bit of Kanji I could understand (I naively thought all Kanji had the exact same meaning as in Chinese) and the intermittent trashy English.

5. What song would you just as soon never hear again?
Again, that's a bit strong, but I usually avoid listening to Canto-pop or the Hong Kong artists. I remember there was a kiddy show and a male singer was being interviewed and he said "Oh I like creativity and creating new music. I like to experiment. It's so cool to be able to create my own music", and went on to perform his "newest song".

Turns out, being the Jpop and anison junkie that I was, I happened to own a "Character Image song CD" of a certain Anime (they like to do things like these - each character had their own song sung by the Seiyuu/voice cast), and that guy was singing a song from that CD from a minor character. Even the music was the same, he was just singing over the music. Creativtiy and "creating your own music" my ass. I guess they thought not many people would go out and buy Japanese anime character image CDs (it was really expensive back then, the yen was strong at that time, and imports were tricky).

So, I now have a habit of avoiding most Hong Kong artitst as after that incident, I found out many of them simply sang "dubbed" songs. Now there's only one Hong Kong artist that I do like and she really creates her own music. She's cute and a little crazy, or eccentric too.

NOTE: Photos... duh....

Apparently, Photobucket has quit their 3rd party hosting services, so many of my old posts will have the photos.... gone.....

The Flickr mobile app isn't much help in uploading stuff. Meh. I need to find some reliable photo hosting thing. (There's always LJ, but on the mobile phone... hm....)

Hong Kong Book Fair 2017

I made a quick trip to Hong Kong of Saturday just to visit the Book Fair (something I do every year), however, due to my parents being out in Europe, I can't spend the whole day in Hong Kong. So I tend to go really early in the morning and then have to come back on an early ferry.

This year, my pals J and R joined me.

This year, I didn't buy much :-/

But what I got for myself, it's hilarious. So I got myself this Cantonese, explained book. It's even got pictures!

This explains some common idioms in Cantonese that would otherwise make no sense (idioms, of course), if you translate it through Google translate. I thought this was a good book to have handy. It's really fun to read this. I LOLed already so much.

Then I got another book, but not for myself. I remember seeig on Facebook about a new "girls' book" but not about pricesses, instead about power figures and such. I saw this book there and posted on Facebook saying I found it. I had one friend immediately ask for it (she just had a daughter some months ago). However, when I came back to Macau, and late into the evening, another friend asked for it too. I hope there will be no hard feelings, but I only bought one book. Both friends are not in my super-closed knit group of friends. Anyway, I promised the second friend to keep a lookout for this book around town here. It's just that, it's really hard to find specific books in Macau.

Apart from that, we didn't do much in Hong Kong. We had to hurry back due to... my friends buying a lot of books at the Book Fair and it was getting heavy for them, and I had 4.30pm tickets to get back. So all other plans to go elsewhere for some other shopping, cancelled. We had a glorious lunch, then did some supermarket shopping. Yeah. I got myself some rocket lettuce and baby spinach. In Hong Kong. Extravagant? You don't find that kind of stuff in Macau.