Posted by Michael

Went over to Lamma Island with Jay and a few of his friends.. Great little ferry ride over, with a couple cold beers.

A nice place to get away from the Hong Kong hustle.

Nothing like a good indian meal at Gaylords.

Great fish at Lamma…

Great to hang out with Nelson, Em and Ruby a bunch while I’ve been here. Three solid individuals right here. Happy that you have all finally got to go back home!

Nothing like waking up in the evening to a lazer light show out your hotel window.

Apartamento / October 31, 2008 / Magazines / Posted by Michael

Picked up this great little magazine at the Frankfurt airport before flying over to HK called Apartamento… It’s done by some spaniards out of Barcelona, and is a great little mag.. The premise of the mag is to be “an everday life interiors magazine”. And they start the mag off with a great little essay based on “Hominess is not neatness”… I myself like magazines and books to be around me, not quite tidy and perfect, just there, and have been picked up and read. You need to live in your home, not treat it like a Museum.

2000 was 8 Years ago??? / October 29, 2008 / Life , Snowboarding / Posted by Michael

So I’ve been in Hong Kong now for a 4 days or something? the last 2 I have spent in my hotel in a bath robe trying to finish a catalog.. While working my friend Jeff Patterson found a binder full of old slides he shot and sent me a bunch of photos from 1999-2001 of my friends and I snowboarding.. I haven’t even seen these photos before! Here’s some shots from the 2000-2001 season of me 50-50′ing the McMahan Stadium kink and the montgomery 44 set. Oh yeah, and playing with my super sweet Casio camera watch. That watch was the best, too bad I lost it! This time in my life was hilarious, I was 18 years old living in a house with all my friends called “The Ghetto House” paying $180 a month for rent and snowboarding every single day.. Great days.

The Raveonettes - Beauty Dies / October 27, 2008 / Music / Posted by Michael

Just picked up the new Raveonettes EP Beauty Dies… Reminds me of something from the Lost in Translation soundtrack.. Quite fitting for sitting in a hotel room working in Hong Kong.

01-young-and-beautiful

I Miss the Mountains / October 27, 2008 / Life , Photography , Travel / Posted by Michael

Nothing like an 11 hour long flight.. Flying from Europe over to Hong Kong was pretty special. I took some Melatonin during the flight to try and get some rest. Usually this stuff knocks me out for a solid 8 hours, but after about 5 hours I woke up all excited and opened the window to see Mt. Everest just hanging out in the horizon.. Pretty surreal flying at 40,000 feet looking at this huge mountain.. I got chills up my spine, and remembered how much I miss being in the mountains. I realized how much of my life I’ve spent around mountains, and all the friends and memories from being out in them. If it wasn’t for mountains I most likely wouldn’t have woken up on this flight and looked out the window to see this. Mountains pretty much shaped my entire life up to now… All of my friends, places i’ve seen, my job… pretty much everything. It’s amazing to think about.

Here’s another photo from when I went home to Canada to get a new work visa this summer.. I felt a similar feeling towards these huge ass pieces of rock.

Stockholm Part 3 / October 25, 2008 / Documentary , Travel / Posted by Michael

Went to this amazing Barber Shop the other day in Stockholm… Barber & Books. Nothing like getting a beard trim, and a gentlemanly hair cut while drinking 3 espresso’s rapid fire.

Nothing like a little Hammarströms.

Yeah so what… I ate this for lunch!

Went to the newish Acne headquarters in Gamla Stan to visit Erik. The building is amazing, one of the coolest design spaces I have seen in ages.. It’s in a 200 year old Bank in the old town of Stockholm.. Probably some of the most amazing doors any design studio in the world has..

Inside was pretty sweet too.

One of the many design spaces in the building…

One of the founders of Acne working on his new toy… CHESTER.

Some new perfume boxes… Great typography.

Keeping in touch with friends on iChat..

So I’m pretty sure “Jaffa” is a Kiwi word for hating on someone from Auckland? Right???

So at the Airport in Stockholm this is what you eat & drink.. Prosecco, and tons of amazing Scandinavian tapas.

Back on the road again.

Carl Sagan / October 22, 2008 / Culture , Photography / Posted by Michael

On October 13, 1994, the famous astronomer Carl Sagan was delivering a public lecture at his own university of Cornell. During that lecture, he presented this photo:

The photo above was taken by Voyager 1 in 1990 as it sailed away from Earth, more than 4 billion miles in the distance. Having completed its primary mission, Voyager at that time was on its way out of the Solar System, on a trajectory of approximately 32 degrees above the plane of the Solar System. Ground Control issued commands for the distant space craft to turn around and, looking back, take photos of each of the planets it had visited. From Voyager’s vast distance, the Earth was captured as a infinitesimal point of light (between the two white tick marks), actually smaller than a single pixel of the photo. The image was taken with a narrow angle camera lens, with the Sun quite close to the field of view. Quite by accident, the Earth was captured in one of the scattered light rays caused by taking the image at an angle so close to the Sun. Dr. Sagan was quite moved by this image of our tiny world.

“We succeeded in taking that picture [from deep space], and, if you look at it, you see a dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever lived, lived out their lives. The aggregate of all our joys and sufferings, thousands of confident religions, ideologies and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilizations, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every hopeful child, every mother and father, every inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every superstar, every supreme leader, every saint and sinner in the history of our species, lived there on a mote of dust, suspended in a sunbeam. ”

Benbo George / October 21, 2008 / Art , Design / Posted by Michael

Some great work by Benbo George.

The End Of America / October 19, 2008 / Culture , Politics , Video / Posted by Michael

If you have 20 minutes to spare I would suggest watching this. Naomi Wolff makes quite the compelling case that the United States is weeks away from entering a fascist police state.. A compelling argument she’s making.. It seems mass arrests by the military have already started, WATCH THIS. I can truthfully say that if McCain wins this election I am moving the hell out of the USA as soon as possible.

TOO SEXY FOR USA / October 19, 2008 / Culture , Fun! , Totally Awesome / Posted by Michael

Those Love boards just keep making news headlines around the world… Hahah this time Norways two biggest newspapers have a big feature on how this board is “TOO SEXY FOR USA”. Europe is laughing at the US… I love it.