Nothing Tuesday

Boredom is like self-pity if not worse in its ubiquity. Both are rooted in laziness and cowardice, and as existing states are sticky and have high opportunity costs

LONDON

I try to make a conscious effort to do fun things in London because these places and people are precious and therefore my limited time with them is precious. The photos here were taken over 2 separate days meeting friends on the weekends and stuff like that. I guess it's really self-indulgent but it's not like this whole website isn't anyway...

My room:

When I realised that this year is the only time in my 21 years that I've had my own room I felt a bit deprived but it's alright, I'll make the best out of it, wiping down the floors by hand with wet tissues and vacuuming every hour like a freak.

I like Zix's room too:

Coffee, Cake and Company:

The first Friday of reading week break I woke up in the afternoon and we talked to Bong on Skype for a bit until it made more sense to just meet halfway between our houses at Kaffeine.

The obvious thing to do after was to visit our favourite resident of Great Portland Street:

Came home and Xiu's friends were over so we all hung out in our kitchen:

Then we went to dinner at Hix, ate steaks and tried 3/4 of the dessert menu. The restaurant decor is quite hilarious and the tables are a little too big but everything was quite delicious.

All the neon tubes.. might have inspired this scene which happened two weeks later in my room:

Before going to Istanbul I told Xiu about it over pancakes and chorizo hash at Riding House Cafe, which is becoming the brunch standard here:

On Saturday we went to White Cube Gallery at Bermondsey to see Anselm Kiefer's show. Large monument-scale canvases, messy textures, every single type of rust imaginable, and a whole lot of Latin words in charcoal scrawls. Got creeps from the sheer dirtiness of the artworks but of course you're not supposed to regard high art in such base ways. X was pretty excited about the polished concrete floors, which are totally different from normal concrete floors. OK

Walked through random streets and housing estates towards Borough Market, appreciated the first peach blossoms of spring along the way:

Borough Market standards: Roast's pork belly sarnies, carrot+orange juice from the opposite stall, Posh Banger Bros, Monmouth Coffee and more...

Tacita Dean's video installation at the Tate Modern: good place to lie down on less than polished concrete floors

Score Settling: 

I love this artwork, it is part of No Lone Zone in the Level 2 Gallery:

Also included in the exhibition is Margolles’ Score Settling 2008, which responds to a series of murders committed by drug dealers in the Sinaloa region. Glass fragments, collected by the artist from shot-out car windscreens, are fashioned into jewellery resembling that typically worn by narcos, those responsible for the killings. The work evokes the memorial value of the vestige, and the glass fragments possess a haunting testimony to an absent body.

The write-ups in each class box were written in Spanish so it's not so obvious what the scores are, but the work is very interesting and beautiful regardless of its context. 

The funny thing is how I barely think about any of the things in these photographs except when I look at them. I might barely remember things if I don't document them somehow in writing or photography. And even though people and concepts can reinforce themselves throughout your life I think aesthetic objects, or experiences are really temporarily immediate to us because we can't move them or use them across different times and spaces as much as nonmaterial objects. 

Broke My Hand

Ugh

Being sick is the lamest thing in the world. Had Aristotle class in the morning while feeling/sounding like a zombie, probably not the best thing to do but I really like learning about philosophy of emotional states.. After that I came home and talked to my older sister on Skype and then went to sleep around 3pm. Now I have just taken out my laundry and cleared our trash, also drank another shot of cough syrup and will be going to bed now.

To my common cold or throat infection or whatever: Get the hell out of my system tonight because I am only allowing myself one day of such complete lameness. Whether I feel better or not tomorrow I will wake up for tutorial, get supplies for pancakes and spend the rest of the day feeding my beloved friends in the name of Shrove Tuesday.

The Last Reading Week Ever

Things I wanted to do but did not:

- read Lights Out in Wonderland and a Singaporean novella Aporia (bought it at Booksactually, on a whim because of its name)

- Visit Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Modern, Lucian Freud at the National Portrait Gallery, and David Hockney at the RA

- Check out Dover Street Market

- Clean up our roof for springtime parties

I did, however, read The Last Tycoon while on my way to Istanbul, on a flight I booked 14 hours before departure. The rest of the week was spent doing a grand total of nothing in various places including Bath, a rented Ford Focus and in my room. I really wanted to do more over the weekend but after getting smacked with rain and wind at the Lulworth Cove my body has taken ill and my mind is just steaming in frustration and boredom right now.

Valentine's 2012

Airport >> Surprise flowers from bros >> Skype Valentine >> Dinner @ Dinner 

No romantic intentions whatsoever on this happy day of friend lovin' xoxo

Dat Shit Cray

Hey Boy

 

  Nicolas Jaar - Hey Boy (Bluewave Edit)

Hey Boy
Why you didn't call me?
I waited for days
I can't believe you didn't call

A. You're gay

B. You've got a girlfriend
C. You kinda thought I came on too strong or
D. I just wasn't your thing
No ring

Madrid #4: Reina Sofia

Why Wait?

Why should a human being with all its capacities abandon active agency, to let other powers determine what happens? If we are able to do so much for ourselves why do we put ourselves in passive positions in the making of our own destiny? Why do we endure the pains of waiting and why do we even hope that it can be ended?

Waiting is difficult to some extent but it is even harder to accept the impossibility of perfect happiness, if we are aware of our imperfect souls and its limitations. All we can do is sit around, sleep it off, distract ourselves and kill time - until something or someone presents us with our object that we cannot create for ourselves, which is perfect because it is mysterious, and beautiful because it is given.

Madrid #3: Take U 2 The Candy Shop

Too much jamon / Too much candy

Madrid #2: Baby Blue Skies