Stuff

A lot of things happened this weekend. I was in Macau to eat, I watched Wong Kar Wai's Days of Being Wild, I cooked a corned beef omelet, and finished a collection of short stories called 10 Women Who Shook the World by Sylvia Brownrigg.

Now where to start? I guess with Macau.

C and I hopped on a ferry to Macau with the sole intention of eating well. And we succeeded -- lunch was at Litoral, a Portuguese restaurant in Taipa. Dinner was at Aux Beau Arts, the French place at MGM Grand. The pork with shrimp paste in Litoral disintegrated in my mouth. The potatoes gratin at ABA looked and tasted like it was taken out of Mastering the Art of French Cooking. If you're ever in Macau, try at least one of these places.

Back in Hang Kang, I saw WKW's 90's hit about the 60's -- Days of Being Wild. Someone once told me it was shot in the Philippines. It's not. Only about 15 minutes of it is *set* in the Philippines; and that part was all very "fake". It could have been shot anywhere. That said, I thought it was pretty good. Nothing compared to In the Mood For Love, but I like how WKW (like Robert Altman) uses the same "troop" of HK actors -- Maggie Leung, Andy Lau and Tony Leung.

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The corned beef in the omelet was brilliant; the egg not so much. It was over cooked.

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Lately I've been reading compilations of "contemporary" American short stories. These are what people call "modern" stories. No formal plot really, just descriptions of characters. And lots of magic realism peppered all over the place. In one story, the two female characters build the world's greatest monuments (i.e, the Great Wall, the Taj, the Golden Gate Bridge). In another story, the "Bird Chick" the main character puts up a production of Hamlet performed by a flock of swans.

As you might suspect, I don't like modern stories. They're too... well, for lack of a better word, modern. The plot (or what the writer tries to pass off as one) does not develop properly. The tone is at best artificial. The whole point of reading short stories (like smoking a pipe, listening to records, and drinking scotch old enough to order their own scotch) is to hark back to an earlier time. A time where men wore hats and women wore stockings.

Hmmm, well, not exactly.

I just mean anytime before the Internet. When people spelled correctly and followed the fundamental structure of the short story. And so I read these "modern" stories, and instead of being propelled to a familiar place, I am left grappling, figuring which way is up.

If I wanted to feel disoriented, I'd read poetry.