The roof is not on fire...

Despite how hot mel is, the roof is not on fire. Nice hundred dollar bill you stripper.




A few days ago, (well before I went on my trip to the states, so more like 13 days ago) Mel lead a small expedition (just me and her) up to the 34th floor and beyond. Weeks earlier when Chinese new year happened, Rich and I had gone across town to get a better view of the fireworks (more on this outing in a later post) -- Mel decided to stay home, and in doing so inadvertently found out that the roof of our building is not so hard to access. We decided it was worth going back to see the view during the day. We took the elevator up to the top floor and from there ascended a few more flights of stairs until we came to a door which lead to the lower roof. Each of the four apartments on the top floor has their own little piece of the lower roof which is very simple to get to (just walk through the door). However, as there was a ladder attached to the side of the building we had to assume there was an upper roof which would be slightly harder to reach. Luckily we managed to climb our way over the apparatus intended to prevent just that, and made it to the upper roof unscathed. Here are some pictures of the event.

Here is a veiw of the Kowloon side of the city. Note the never ending array of high-rise apartments...

Here's a cool shot of the construction site, which is RIGHT NEXT TO OUR APARTMENT. Luckily we've adapted to block out the constant sound of jack hammers.

Getting down from the roof, was as hard, if not possibly harder than getting up there. Luckily, once again, we faced the peril with strong hearts and made it down in one piece. Well, two pieces if you count Mel and I separately.

Little Miss Bravery.

Note the harrowing 35 story drop.

My turn...

Sword swallowing, cat burning, and billionaires: TED2007

About ten days ago I set off from Hong Kong on a trip to California, a trip which ends tomorrow when I board a plane back to the far east. The purpose of my trip, well the main purpose of the trip was to attend the 2007 TED conference. Along with that, I also got to see my family, eat larger portions, and have a job interview. The meat of the trip was definitely TED. For those of you who don't know, which is most everyone, TED is a conference held every year in Monterey California where the best (and richest) minds in Technology, Entertainment, and Design, all pay $6,000 for 4 days of free food and non stop all star lectures given on the most interesting subjects. I happened to sneak my way in after As Real As Your Life (my film about video game addiction) was screened last year during a talk given by game developer David Perry. The guys who runs the conference, Chris Anderson, liked the film so much he extended a free pass for me to come the following year.

Behold, Swedish statistician Hans Rolling swallowing a bayonet.

Having experienced the conference I can understand why people pay so much to get in. I guess anytime you get to hear Paul Simon, Bill Clinton, and Will Wright all talk on the same stage that's pretty special. And as the title of this posts implies, the talks did include a famous Swedish statistician swallowing a bayonet, a man who talked about how cool it used to be to hold public kitten burnings, as well as more than a few billionaires. You should go to www.TED.com and look at everyone who spoke, if there is someone you're into let me know and I'll report back on them in particular.
Behold the 'Simulcast', the lounge where you watch the show from if you can't find a seat.

As I'll probably be putting up more posts about TED, for now I figure I'll just brag about all my celebrity encounters. First though, it's important to note that just about everyone at TED is either the CEO/Founder of a company or chairman of this, or President of that - I didn't meet one person who wasn't in charge of something. That said, here are a few:

Meg Ryan (master of the fake orgasm): talked to her about my film and why she should let her kids plays video games.
Matt Groening (Simpsons etc): sat next to him a few times, talked to him about how annoying lines are.
Jeff Skoll (founder of Ebay): Just told him about some stuff that's happening in Hong Kong.
Will Wright (Sim City, The Sims, Spore): Talked about games, he gave me Iraqi money.
Sergey and Larry (the google guys): I actually managed to pee at a urinal between them.
Jeff Bezos (founder Amazon): hung out with his family actually, really nice and surprisingly normal...
Daryl Hanna (Splash!): She fell on me at a party, sort of exciting.
Thomas Dobly (Music Pioneer): Told him how much I enjoyed his "synthesizer medley" (look that one up on youTube).
DJ BT: Just hung out, watched him work, checked out his setup.
Cameron Diaz (Princess Fiona): Listened to her vent about 'creepyness factor' at major events like TED.
JJ Abhrams (creator of LOST): Talked about screen writing, grandfathers, etc.

Admitably, not all of these interactions were particularly deep, although it was cool seeing how down to earth most 'famous' people are. In addition to these brushes with stardom, I also made a few real friends and hung out with a lot of other really notable people who I appreciated even more because I hadn't heard of them.

Oh boy, it's getting late, and I have a plane to wake up for. Goodnight for now, I got to get back to sorting out all the stuff the TED people gave me. Each attendee got a suitcase full of gifts, pretty crazy if you ask me. However, as I don't mind gifts I'm not going to complain. At least I get $1,000 off my next Lexus.
The room with all the gift bags, looks like a communist airport.