celebs - they're just like us

when i first moved to nyc, i was so excited about bumping into celebrities on the street. almost four years later, i'm trying to be more nonchalant when it happens - although running into certain celebs still make me giddy and send my texting fingers a-flutter.

it was in conversation with a friend the other day that i realized i've seen my fair share - and even forgotten! just for fun, we decided to list out the celebrities sightings i've had here - in no particular order (i've purposely left out "art world celebrities" - that's a list in and of itself for another time):

jake gyllenhaal, 14th st subway stop - literally ran into him. i was heading out of the turnstile, and he had just come in and was putting something in his wallet. we both looked up at the last second, made eye contact and stepped aside of each other.

matthew mcconaughey, someplace in tribeca? soho? - accompanied my friend who works in fashion media to a launch party for camila alves' new line at macy's when lo and behold, her hunky hubby showed up to support. matthew was close enough for me to pinch his bum. which i didn't.

kate mckinnon, times square - she stopped by a temporary storefront art installation i had project managed (my first project at times square!) and happened to be manning that day. i casually said hi and tried not to spazz out as i offered to answer any questions she had about the installation.

david schwimmer, chelsea - i was manning a booth at pulse art fair with my colleague when "ross" showed up. we chatted with him about our artworks and totally played it cool. turns out his wife is a british photographer who was being featured at the art fair.

williem dafoe, union square - opening night for "moonrise kingdom." packed movie theater. williem was trying to get my friend to move a seat over to make room for him and his companion. we turned him down - that seat was for my friend's wife so we had to say no to williem.

bobby moynihan, upright citizens brigade, chelsea - a friend and i saw him perform as part of "asssscat3000", by far the best improv show series at upright citizens brigade. afterwards, we saw him on the corner smoking a cigarette and complimented him on the show, nonchalantly.

seth meyers, rockefeller center - stepped out of the subway train and found myself walking behind mr. meyers up the stairs and then next to him down the corridor at rockefeller concourse. he was texting on his phone and didn't look up, so we just walked side-by-side in silence.

judah friedlander, rockefeller center - "30 rock" often shot on-site at rockefeller center and i saw judah with his signature baseball cap one night after work.

taye diggs, subway (somewhere between lower manhattan and times square) - this guy got on the train and sat down directly across from me in a fairly empty car. i remember thinking, "that's one attractive man," and then realized he looked a lot like taye diggs. he had shorts and a muscle shirt on so i mentally took note of his unique tattoos to double check later. he kept to himself - kept fiddling with his watch and his bag, and as more folks got on the subway, he pulled his hat down so his brim covered his face.

tyson beckford, times square - "People" magazine held an activation event for "sexiest man alive" in times square and even though adam levine was the one on the cover, tyson was the lovely gentleman at the activation event promoting the magazine and taking photos with fans.

ryan seacrest x 2, times square - new year's eve 2014: walked by ryan seacrest doing his thing on camera while i was working NYE. new year's eve 2015: working NYE again and walked by ryan AND got pushed to the side by him and his entourage as they hurried by.

ricky gervais, rockefeller center - coming back from lunch, walked by him as he was standing on a corner chatting with a friend. saw on his twitter later that he was in the neighborhood shopping for a new guitar.

lenny kravitz, double decker bus in chinatown - having just finished lunch with friends in town, said good bye, turned the corner and there was lenny singing and gyrating on the roof of a double decker bus stopped at a red light. as you will.

taylor swift, times square - working NYE and asked to stop and wait at a barricade. why? oh, because taylor was on her way to the stage and was rushed by me with her entourage.

yo-yo ma, boston :) - this was not in nyc but by far my favorite sighting. two wonderfully talented musician friends got hitched last year in boston, and the husband plays in the silk road ensemble with mr. ma. not only did yo-yo perform at their wedding, but he played a special song penned by the husband for the occasion. as a bridesmaid, it was the one and only time that i will ever share a stage with yo-yo.


cups of coffee: 2

mood:  relaxing

bliss-filled blur

one official week of summer left....it's been a happy blur. just the thought of recapping everything seems overwhelming, so instead i'm slapping photos on here to summarize my summer since it's more fun to look at images anyway.

all photos taken by author, not to be used or reproduced without permission

cups of coffee:  1

mood:  full heart

circus

the circus, marc chagall

sometimes, this is what life feels like....colorful, chaotic, melancholic undertones but also achingly beautiful....strange sadness mixed with delight....

two more weeks until this current grueling schedule ends.

four more weeks until i hand in the *final* draft of my thesis.

mood:  wistful

cups of coffee:  2

"call me maebe"

if you're an "arrested development" fan, then these mock-up valentines on flavorwire may be the BEST THINGS EVER.

this makes me want to give out valentines to everyone i know. and also to strangers.


cups of coffee:  2

mood:  laughing

lent-ing

it's officially ash wednesday and the start of lent!
last year, i gave up alcohol, chocolate and dating for lent.

this year, i'm giving up 2 of those 3 again.

guess which two?

in other news, i'm ready for spring break.


cups of coffee:  numerous

mood:  i need a massage

what. the. what.

which actress would i want to play me in a movie? tina fey.
who is my celebrity crush? paul rudd.

AND THEN THEY MADE THIS FILM TOGETHER.

it's like my dream just came true.

cups of coffee:  2

mood:  time for bed

age...

facebook friending some of the first-year students in my program. shocking realization that some of them are 10 years younger than me.

TEN YEARS. that's one whole decade.

gosh, i'm old.


cups of coffee:  2

mood:  old

the world offers itself to your imagination....

a lovely poem to meditate on today....

Wild Geese
by Mary Oliver

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

******

a little over 3 weeks left of the semester. the weather is gorgeous. officially registered for my fall classes. meeting next week to kick off the arduous process of thesis researching and writing.

the light of summer vacation is blinking, steadily and ever less faintly, at the end of the tunnel....

please, brain, don't check out now.....


cups of coffee:  2 + 1 green tea

mood: ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh
 

mishmash

my brain has been in a perpetual state of fried lately. i'm constantly trying to keep my head above the piles of reading to complete and papers to write for class. there is always another deadline right around the corner. and yes, i did sign up for all this when i decided to enroll in grad school so really, i'm not complaining.

but since sleep has been compromised and so has my social calendar, blogging sadly has also taken a backseat. here, in no particular order, are snippets of thoughts i've meant to blog but haven't had the time...

• when you attend school for a program in arts administration with a bunch of girls who are all artists and art-lovers, this means no one wears sweatpants to class. NO ONE. even the three guys (2 gay, 1 straight) in my class always look good. and it's not just looking put together - every one of my classmates has their own sense of style, their signature. there's the girl with the braids who always wears large lattice-like earrings. and the girl with the short hair who works for phillips de pury and always carries a kate spade bag. or the black girl from brooklyn whose amazing collection of colorful hosiery astounds me. or the guy who's interning at christie's and always wears a tie and sometimes vest to class. gone are the days of bumming in class.

• my brain feels like it's about to explode. besides the copious amounts of reading we have to do for class, there is so much external reading to do just to keep up with current events, exhibitions, art news.... and with my particular interest in art and social justice/community development, this means i have to stay abreast of public policy as well. keep those rss feeds coming.....

• my supervisor at work, the senior accountant, is hilarious. he's a middle-aged filipino-american man who always says what he thinks.  he has a slight accent where he stretches out certain vowels into nasaly flat tones, like "stupiiiiiid", which he uses a lot. today, when i was eating hummus and pita for lunch and raving about how much i love hummus, he said, "that's fine now but one of these days, you'll have trouble poo-pooing." and then later this afternoon, when the CFO was joking around with him about how he didn't hear what she had said earlier, he responded, "it's not my fault. it's all this hair that's growing in my ears." i love my job.

• want a surefire way to lose weight? first, move to a city where everything is expensive. then, choose to be a student so you're not earning money full-time. better yet, be a full-time student and work 20 hours a week to try and alleviate the expenses of living in said-expensive city. make sure your schedule is really packed - every hour measured out. and make sure your schedule involves a lot of running around from one end of the city to the other, which means you're usually late so you're literally running around. eat simply and not often, due to time and budget constraints. trust me, you'll lose weight unintentionally.

• this city is crazy, chaotic, maddening, inspiring, daunting, liberating, cacophonous and lyrical. in other words - i love it here.

and in the spirit of halloween, here's a recent gem of a find:

http://halloweenorwilliamsburg.tumblr.com/

is it halloween? or is it just williamsburg in brooklyn? you be the judge.


cups of coffee:  1 + 3 cups of green tea

mood:  time for bed

Counting down...

One more week left in Shanghai!
This past week at a glance, seen through images courtesy of Instagram.


cups of coffee: 2? 3?

mood:  holy crap. i have a lot to do.

classifieds

in preparation for my move back across the pacific, i thankfully only have a few items to sell. my brother and sister-in-law are moving into my apartment, and they kindly decided to buy all my furniture and most of my appliances from me. which means i only have a handful of big things that need to be sold, namely a printer and a mini-trampoline.

while placing my items for sale on a popular classifieds site here, i couldn't help but read through the personal ads - this website has some of the funniest, most outlandish, but sadly real personals. here are a few that caught my eye:


It's raining and i am bored.
I like playing cards, you?
seek a tall and fun person.

(what exactly is the correlation between raining, playing cards and height...?)


I am a nice guy. I am bored and alone in Shanghai. I am normal.
Yet, I am lonely in Shanghai and would like to have an "exciting" conversation with someone.
If you are bored, and want some excitement, please feel free to give me a call AnyTime.We can have an "erotic" conversation if you like, or we can talk about the weather.

("erotic" or the weather. huh. "what are you wearing?" "boy, i wish it would stop raining already.")

I like to find a great girl/women who like to leave China together with me when I go back to Europe.

(hmmm.....i like europe....)

as funny as these ads are to read, they were penned by real people, individuals lonely and starving for love and connection in this massive city. i shouldn't forget that.

the hard thing about leaving a place isn't the packing. it isn't the purging of stuff and figuring out what to do with years of belongings amassed. it's the relationships, the people and community i've come to love and cherish. there aren't enough hours in a day to spend with these people i love, not enough words adequate to express my sincere appreciation for who they are, and all the hopes and blessings i am praying for them. all my articulations and gestures seem to fall short of what i really mean and what i wish i could put words to.

so i smile and hug, use words like "love", and hope that somehow, these dear friends feel the intangible deep from my heart.


cups of coffee:  2

mood:  fare thee well.....

and now for something completely random

if i could be any literary character, hands down, it would be anne shirley of "anne of green gables." i had a conversation the other day with a male friend who described her as a perfect role model for young women. i completely agree with him. she is intelligent, passionate, determined, yet also incredibly caring, sacrificial and tender. i strive to embody those characteristics as well but find myself identifying with her fiery temper more often than not...

as for literary heroes, my crush is atticus finch from "to kill a mockingbird" (one of my favorite books of all times) - especially the portrayal played by gregory peck in the 1962 film version. *sigh*

cups of coffee:  2+

mood: sleepy

take your journey

and so it seems change is right around the corner...

the past few months have consisted of mad galloping from one thing to another...and now it doesn't seem as if the gallop will cease. now i can count on one hand the number of months i have remaining in shanghai. now my mind is slowly imagining the rhythms of a new life.

it all seems very surreal and with so many other concerns at hand that need my attentiveness now, it is a struggle to focus and be fully present. i find my mind drifting almost every hour and i must grasp madly at my attention to keep it from floating away, as if i'm catching butterflies with an insufficient net.

besides living in new york, being close to family and wonderful friends, besides becoming a student again and soaking my brain in academia...what i'm most excited about is this sense of a natural, easy, unplanned flow of life, how one thing is leading to the next. i love stepping back and seeing how different threads are interweaving, and knowing that the threads still left hanging will someday be woven in as well. i didn't picture my life to be here. i would never have imagined i would be where i am today, never dreamed that i would embark on a career in the arts as a result of coming to china. i have planned and re-planned my future a million times, finally learning a couple of years ago to give my frantic mind a rest. i am learning how to listen.

this isn't to say that the worrywart side of me has disappeared or that the type-A northeast asian-american voice in me has quit. even as i wait for remaining pieces to fall into place, i fidget with slight anxiety and hesitation, waiting for the proverbial other shoe to drop, for God to pull a cosmic prank on me. my inclination is to do - to move quickly, to take care of things, to wrap up and tidy up. God just doesn't move fast enough for me sometimes. but i am learning to wait - and trust!

the sovereignty of the Almighty and our free will - it's a funny thing how such paradoxical notions can actually co-exist quite harmoniously without mutual exclusivity. it's a funny thing how our life really is not our own yet we are also called to steward and govern our lives well. we are responsible for these precious days.

at the IAM encounter, dana gioia quoted, "traveler, there is no road - only walking." and then he added, "take your journey seriously!"

we are not destined to tread down some path like we're walking off a pirate ship's plank; we have been called to undertake a journey with a glorious Guide. and what a wonderful journey it is!


cups of coffee: 3 (stupid jetlag)

mood:  comfy

i'm a-tumbling

i obviously need another social media platform because twitter, facebook, foursquare, linked in, jumo, instagram and blogging just aren't cutting it. must - be - more - connected!

just set up a tumblr account and am lovin' it. what's different? it's like microblogging/scrapbooking. bits and pieces of images, text and even sound composing a hodgepodge of whatever strikes my fancy. so far, so fun!

here's my tumblr site:

http://hellocosmos.tumblr.com/

come tumble with me! :)


cups of coffee: none yet but craving a soy latte RIGHT NOW

mood: slowly waking

hello, i love you

conversations on beauty and rehumanization. poetry that transcends the mundane to rub against Divinity's edges. skylines and fire escapes. late night drinks and even later dancing. songs that thread life's moments of joy and sorrow. reunion of friends from different continents. rainy afternoons and red mango. getting lost in the art. dreaming about the future and all that is to come.

much more to share, but still processing and running from one thing to another.

new york, i love you, and not just because the t-shirt told me to.


cups of coffee: 0! (still early)

mood: achoo! sniffle, sniffle.... :(

love and stuff

i loathe valentine's day. always have - even when i had a boyfriend to celebrate it with. this holiday feels so contrived to me, and with the added societal pressures dictating romance and how such affection ought to be expressed - even the best of intentions end up muffled by bushels of roses and an army of teddy bears.

this holiday is particularly ridiculous here in shanghai: roses of every shade (including blue) with glitter-tinged petals bursting from vendor carts on practically every street corner, the wide-eyed stares from stuffed animals' heads peering forth from bouquets (literally, bouquets), each western restaurant attempting to out-advertise the other with their "couples' specials", young chinese couples who already embody the very definition of PDA taking it up another notch today from sidewalks to subway cars....you get the idea.

the weather today, however, did feel somewhat magical. snowflakes have swirled and danced through a silvery sky all afternoon, invoking both serenity and mystery.

saw my parents off at the airport this morning, wrapping up their 3-week jaunt around shanghai and taiwan. the older i get, the more i enjoy my parents' company. maybe it's because i don't easily get embarrassed anymore. or because i've learned to see them not just as parents but as interesting people, beautiful and complicated with all their quirks. or because i realize that life happens fast, and the fleeting time we have with loved ones ought to be treasured.

okay, so maybe that's my real beef with valentine's day. why designate one specific day as the day to express your love? why jack up the prices on dinners and flowers and shroud this one calendar date with all the jittery expectations of what love should look like? i suppose the reality is that we are all busy people and without holidays and occasions to mark our time, we would live in a rush of forgetfulness and frenzy from day to day. the celebration of holidays allows us to step back from our routines and consider certain values and traditions that enrich our lives.

it's not enough to be reminded for one day. whether we are contemplating love or thanksgiving, forgiveness or renewal, the celebration of holidays should prompt us to consider and reconsider the values and priorities by which we live our lives and choose (perhaps yet again) what is worth living for.

mood:  quiet

cups of coffee:  3

dr. horrible

just watched "dr. horrible's sing-along blog" last night with the bro and sis-in-law.

one word: amazing. how did i miss this two years ago?!? oh wait. i live in china.

the soundtrack itself was worth it - pure genius. don't you wish life were like a musical? i do. a few friends and i attempted that for a day during my freshman year of college: skipping and twirling down the main thoroughfare of our campus, breaking into song and badly choreographed dance in front of a bagel shop. needless to say, only lasted a couple of hours.


cups of coffee: 2

mood: baby, it's cold outside

rules for living

inspired by this blog post based on robert's rules of order, i present my own 'rules of living,' gathered from 32 years on this planet and in no particular order:

1. always carry kleenex, mints and dental floss in your purse.
2. write thank-you notes. actual thank-you notes, not just e-cards.
3. take ten minutes a day to turn up the music and dance.
4. eat to nourish your body and spirit. don't scrimp for the sake of efficiency, but take the time to savor the process - from preparation to actual eating. don't worry about counting calories or proper intake from the food pyramid - eat good, delicious, healthy food for the well-being of your entire self.
5. cook to nourish others. don't just feed people - nourish them.
6. moisturize, moisturize, moisturize.
7. be in awe at least once a day. be awashed by childlike wonder, like the first time you saw a rainbow after a rainstorm or came in contact with a puppy. let yourself be amazed by something, and dwell in that moment a little longer than you think necessary.
8. remember people's names when you meet them. or at least try really hard.
9. say "i love you" to the people you love. it's good for them to hear it, it's good for you to say it.
10. write things down when you think of it. you might forget it ten minutes later.

there are plenty more, but i think that's a good list for now.
as i round the corner into my second decade as an adult post-collegiate life, i'm sure there will be plenty more rules of living to be discovered...

cups of coffee: 2

mood: like sands in the hourglass....

i heart glee

LOVIN' glee's rendition of "hey, soul sister". something about an all-boys acappella group....*sigh*.


cups of coffee: working on 1

mood: good morning!

tweet tweet

for those of you who tweet, i've set up a personal twitter account:

http://twitter.com/cosmosnchaos

tweet away!


cups of coffee: 3

mood: brrrrr.....winter is upon us