September 29, 2003
An afternoon at LACMA
We went there for French masterworks from Pushkin Museum, Moscow. See some Matisse for the first time, like Gold fish and La Dance-unbelievable combination of colors, rushing all blood into your brain. By the way, my favorite Matisse so far is in Buffalo! Also some decent collection of impressionism, including this one, this one, and this one. Well, if you’ve seen a lot of French paintings at Louvre, Orsay or Washington Art Gallery, you would feel this exhibition is a great addition to your experience of impressionism. And of course, no exhibition should go without Picasso and Van Gogh. We see this one, this one and this one today. There are also some old french school at show, like some paintings from Poussin and Jacques-Louis David. The exhibition reminds me of the close western tie Russians used to possess. Zealous aristocrats and Patrons not only collected French paintings, but even had those French painters come over to St. Petersrburg to draw for them. Think about it, going across Siberia! I trully believe art is a universal form of communication.
The other special exhibition ended today is works of Modigliani and his poor artist friends in Montaparnasse (Left Bank in Paris) at the beginning of the last century. Amedeo Modigliani
was an Italian-born Jew, and learnt classical painting in Italy, then came to Paris and mingled himself with this interntational circle. His numerous portrait works, heavily influenced by African primitive art, have long faces, long noses and blank eyes or one-open-one-close eyes, which are very alien-look, to me. However, it gave all paintings a strong surreal, dream-like touch, though his models were from such a low stratum like cleaning woman, circus clown, servant or peasant. He makes you realize human being, regardless of economic and social class, are all so beautiful in nature. Reportedly, in Picasso’s deathbed 60 years later, the name was murmured again and again is “Amedeo Modigliani”. Picasso also used to be an active member in Montparnasse, together with Diego Rivera, Marc Chagall, Fernand L�ger, Matisse and Chaim Soutine. And that’s where Cubism, constructivism, and Fauvism were coming to being. You think French are so avant-garde in everything? Acturally, almost all these modern art forms are innovations of xeno-artists from Italy, Spain, Russia and Mexico. But without Paris, I doubt if they can make it.
LACMA was the most unlike museum I ever went. Huge outdoor cafteria crowded with thousands of people, life Jazz performance brings in the spirit of carnival since it is so loud and hilarious. You would think you come to a park or beach for sunshine instead of to a museum.
September 25, 2003
Poor people’s luxury life
In the weekend, we went to Redondo Beach. Sitting on cozy armchair against the ocean and sunset, we sipped hot and fragrant Chinese tea. In our stylish sunglasses and light jazz music, Bin worked on his new sleek notebook and I flipped through “City in Civilization”. Later we started to call friends far away from our new Sprint cellphones, and telling them we were enjoying sunshine on beach at this moment. One friend just gave birth to her first baby days ago and was struggling with breast-feeding and the other told us how cold and stormy Buffalo had become. And they both were so green with envy on what I’m enjoing, ” what a luxury life you have!” they sighed.
Ok, here is the story behind the scene - how the luxury moment was built up?
first, to avoid paying $7 of parking fee by the beach, we drove our car around the area for half an hour and finally found a small residence street with free parking. Now we had to carry all our stuff and walked a while to the beach. Following is the equipment needed to build right atmosphere
hot tea on thermos (to keep us warm), bottle water (for healthy) and soda (for fun), so not to pay over-priced drinks on beach;
medium-size radio (with powerful speaker) to play easy jazz channel;
two portable canvas arm chair (must have cup holder!);
big bag for notebook computer, Papers for reference, 1169-page “City in civilization”, electronic dictionary;
a large and thick blanket to lay out on beach to place stuff on, so things would not touch sand;
two heavy coats to keep us warm (it is late September, and it is not always pleasant breeze on the beach!)
So before the spotlight was on and we entered the romantic scenes, you will see two persons (Bin and me), carrying load of things looked like bedrolls, bottles, shabby bags and old coats, staggered towards the beach. Well, you could not but shaking your heads: oh, poor God, not another two homeless people!
September 19, 2003
I want a lawer
Since we moved to LA, I haven’t got much time to do my study. No, I’ m not busy in basking in the sun or strolling on beach, nor being indulged in fancy mall or food. I have been engaged in calling and writing to complain. We have to complain our cellphone companay who overcharge us, we have to complain our credit card company whose agents gave inconsistent information result in our finacial loss, we have to complain our former landlord who tries to withhold our security deposit, and we have to complain our current landloard who failed to fix plumbings in time…. And these things are so time-consuming and frustrating that I only wished Bin could make enough money to hire a personal lawer. However, I’ve become so quick and fluent in filing complaint letter and I almost started to enjoy this kind of writing, here is one I just finished tonight, for your pleasure:
To Whom It May Concern:
We are tenants of *** Ave, Apt.* and we just moved in 20 days ago. We write to acknowledge you of our very unpleasant experience in past two days and demand a certain way of compensation.
On the evening of Sep. 16th, around 7 o�clock, we found the sink in our washroom was clogged; furthermore, there was filthy water slopping over from nowhere into the sink. We called David, the maintenance man, and were told the waste water come from other apartments in the building. Since he was badly injured that day, he told us he would call up a plumber. David called again at about 8:00pm, and said the plumber would come in the evening. But as we waited and waited, nobody showed up. Meanwhile, we had to scoop the dirty water out of the small sink once it was filled. We kept our eyes on the sink until 3:30 in the morning and went to sleep. At 7 o�clock in the next morning (Sept. 17th) we were waken up by sound of drippings, and it was already too late-the toilet table, the floors of washroom and bathroom were flooded with waste water from other apartments (we were told later by the plumber that four households share the pipe). Everything (Jia�s contact lenses, lenses solutions, accessories, jewelry, cosmetics, headwear, new towels and tissues, some medicines, unused shampoos, and laundry) in the drawers and closets are soaked in the dirty yet still warm water. While feeling extremely sickening, we had to clean them immediately with our clean towels and bare hands, not to mention we had to stand in the dirty water on our bare foot. We called David again and were told the plumber would come in half an hour, but nobody showed up, as usual. We called Michelle at 9 o�clock; she said she would find a plumber ASAP. We did not hear anything until 11:30 when Asieh, another manager called to tell us a plumber would be here in 20 minutes, but he did not make his appearance until 1:30 pm. It had been 18 and half an hour since we reported the problem, and we had been in panic and been sickened for more than 18 hours, not to mention our anger and depress by our damaged belongings.
We feel we are entitled in every sense to some compensation. First, it is not us who made the pipe clogged and we were totally victims in this incident, which might be caused by the old plumbing in disrepair per se. Second, though we reported the problem as soon as we found it, we waited so long to have it fixed, while we were promised again and again that the plumber was coming ASAP; we could have had called for a plumbing service. Third, many of our personal belongings are damaged because of the delay; for items we did not feel to throw away, we had to spend a lot of time to clean them. Fourth and the most importantly, we suffered from this extremely sickening situation, both physically and mentally, for 18 hours, we totally lost our appetite for that day and Bin caught cold because of dealing with water in the morning.
We fully trust our property managers, who are from decent and credible **** company, would understand our sufferings and give us a proper compensation. If you need any further questions, please contact us at ***-****. We are looking forward to your response.
Your attention and consideration will be highly appreciated
Sincerely
Bin Zhang, Ph.D
Jia Lin
September 16, 2003
What’s on your ads?
My Cingular cell phone does not get any signal at all in my new apartment. So I decide to switch to Sprint since I was told by Bestbuy guy that I must get good Sprint signal if I could not get any from Cingular.
While I was waiting for activation of my phone in a sprint store, I tried to be friend with the sales girl, so I asked her who was the guy in their ads poster.
“oh, nobody. Just a Sprint man. Why?” She shrugged.
“I thought he is a comedian or something. Is he on TV commercial too?” I asked.
“147;not really”
“So what’s on your TV ads? Is it the one with a jerk holding a cellphone walking around asking ‘can you hear me now?’”;
“no, not that one”.
“oh, then it must be the one with Catherine Zeta Jones!”
“nah, not that one neither.” She got a little disappointed.
“I’m so sorry, so what’s on sprint commercial?” Now I get really curious.
“the one about Monkey getting cold you know, the monkey…”
courseoo..the monkey, of couse I remember. It was a quite a while ago…” I do remember that TV ads, but I just never noticed it was for Sprint. Just like I remember Catherine Zeta jones representing some cell phone, but never relate her to T-mobile at all. And I was so impressed by the “Can you hear me now” guy, but I still don’t know which wireless phone he works for.
I’m sorry for these telecom companies who spent so much on advertising campaign,and who produce creative ads and entertain audience. Unfortunately, it is the brand, the most important thing, could not implant in audience’ mind.
So how do I decide which cellphone I choose? From where I get information? Personal channels, mostly. From My friends who get cellphone earlier, salesman in Bestbuy or Circuit city and of course, Internet! What will make me buying? only two things: clear signal in my apartment and cheap plan. From “diffusion of innovation” perspective, I have to be the not-so-cool early or late majority. But still, I represent the majorit who can not remember whether it is the monkey or Catherine Zeta Jones represent Sprint or T-mobile.
September 12, 2003
Welcome to LA
The first person knocking on our door since we moved in was our neighbor next building. The only thing separated our narrow patios is a thin red wood fence with a couple of slits. Primed by traditional movies, I thought a welcome from neighborhood would be some fruit basket or home-made muffin. However, the mid-aged lady looked really troubled. Here is exactly what she said:
�You moved in last Sunday. Every night, you came back after midnight. I could hear the talk, music, phone-ring�I am an accountant�I got up earlier�but now I could not sleep every night�the people upstairs also complain about you�
Bin and I got very nervous. We�ve never been complained by neighborhood whatsoever since we came to this country. And we felt so guilty to make this lady look so tired. I swear we did not do anything fancy or yelling at each other (We did it a few times after midnight in Buffalo, but no one complained). But our normal movement troubled her. Then our promise to her sound so funny:
�I’m very sorry…We will come home earlier and go to sleep earlier�ok, we will keep our window closed��
After we saw her off, after we blamed each other for making the accused noise, we came to realize how ridiculous it is. Who she is that want to change our life style because of her weak nerve? Then I got guiltier, am I becoming the merciless city people?
The second day I got relieved when David, our maintenance man told me the lady complained around a lot. He asked me if I told her there is no such �shitty house made of paper in Buffalo, (House in California built in light material to prevent damage from earthquake)
When we were in small city, when there is not too much excitement (come home early, sleep early), privacy costs nothing because the sturdy building and ample space. But in LA, such a liberal and exciting place while people valued privacy; we can not enjoy carefree life, because so many neighborhoods share this small and vulnerable space. We tried to keep our doors, windows and blinds closed most of time, but still we hear the people talking, toilet flushing, glasses and bowls clinking. This is a very good neighborhood, people are well disciplined, so as babies and pets. Cats never mew, dogs never bark, babies only cry at daytime. It is so quiet most of time that any normal sound turns out so noticeable. We kept our voice down, I only played my new Kawai (piano) when I stepping on the muffler pedal, and I cook Chinese food in microwave (losing all flavor). I wonder sometime if that�s the city life I want. Fun and privacy do not come together, unless you are rich, I guess.
When we drove on I-405 towards South last night at 8:00, the traffic moved at about 25mph. When we drove on I-10 towards East tonight at 7:30, the traffic move at about 5mph. Bin decided never drive out of Westwood again except in weekends. I said we were the inmates of Westwood during Weekdays, Saturday is our parole.
Prisoners of the city: now I taste the helplessness. When we were in Buffalo, we can drive wherever we want, however there is not much to go. LA, there are so much to see, so many friends to visit, we could not go anywhere most of time. Freedom and fun does not go together, unless you have a personal chopper, I guess.
