so i was told

that I can get salmon at a VERY good price at Helsinki airport.
hmmm I wonder on my way back home, if the stores will still be opened…..

Preview of my trip

I’ve been spending lots of my free time searching around and planning my winter trip. I know I know, winter isn’t particularly the best time in the year to stomp around Europe. However, with the early bird ticket for winter, hell yaa. On the other hand, I thought, it would be nice to spend Christmas in Eastern Europe. It should be much more interesting than spending Christmas in Hong Kong, or even US. Anyway, I now have a much clearer picture of what I’ll be doing in each town. If you happened to come across this blog, you’re welcomed to leave me any suggestions.

It’s starting to become a habit of mine. Taking a non-direct flight, and make a at least 10-hours layover at the airport. Last time I did it was at the AMS-Amsterdam, took a 12 hours layover to see the Keukenhof garden and Leiden before heading to Rome. This time, I’ll be transferring at HEL-Helsinki. I never had the thought of visiting Helsinki, especially in December. But this is Christmas time, perfectly appropriate to see the home country of the Santa. Oh, I gotta send a Christmas card back home and sign it off as Santa.

The followings are what I’m expecting from my December trip!

1. Helsinki
My plan in Helsinki is to see the hallmark there (the church with the green dome), kick start my European Christmas Market trip at the square/park, and fill my stomach at the old market hall. I’m feeling the soup kitchen there, as I think after walking around in the cold, a hot soup would be like heaven. Too bad I won’t have time for a sauna, but that’s for another time.

2. Vienna
I remember the last time when I walked out the Centraal station in Amsterdam, I looked to the left and saw an old church/building under a beautiful lightings. For a second, I thought I could be in Vienna. But this time, it’ll be for real! Beautiful palaces and art are filling up my itinerary, I’m very excited to get the chance to stand in front of a Klimt painting, or pretend to be a princess standing inside the Schonbrunn. Also filling up my schedule are the Viennese desserts and coffee. I’m not sure if I’d love the schnitzel, but I guess I should give it a chance… I always thought Chritmas in Vienna sounds very romantic, we’ll see. It’s going to be full of art, culture and food.

3.Prague
For some reason, I expect Prague to be very different from the rest of my trip. I think it’s going to be very Eastern European, and more of a medieval feel…. Apart from the Prague castle and the lesser town, I think what I’ll be doing here will be less of a attraction hopping trip. More of a strolling around and take in the medieval eastern european vibe. I’m also looking forward to see the church decorated in bones, and the Mucha museum.

4. Dresden
This wasn’t in the plan, but it is on my way from Prague to Berlin. Plus, I read the Dresden got a good Christmas Market there. I think it could be nice to visit this famously once destroyed city. There’s something about visiting a historically significant site, even there’s not too much around to see. I’ll also see the green vault, and compare to what I saw in Vienna I guess……

5. Berlin
This is pretty much the whole reason of my trip. I’ve been always wanting to visit Berlin. But it’s so out of the way from other European Cities I visited previously. So I told myself, next time I’m going to Europe, I have to see this city for its design scene. There’s something so nice about German design. Clean lines, minimal, functional with a good quality. Everyone kinda told me it’s not that interesting to see the wall, but I surely think it’s a must-do on my list. Again, it’s historically significant. (I even been to the Omaha Beach in France, so how can I miss this wall?) Culinary wise, I’m hoping to try different bits of everything. A bit of German, plus a lot of ethnical food. I’m going to be in Berlin over Dec 24 and 25, So I surely will get a nice christmas dinner over there. But so far, the place I’m interested is an Italian Restaurant…. it feels a bit wrong to spend Christmas in Berlin, eating Italian food……

6. Copenhagen
A bus will take me to Copenhagen overnight. Not going to stay here long, as it’s hell expensive there. I can hardly find a decent hostel in my budget. so at the end, I decided what the hell, I’ll shorten my stay into two nights, and splurge a little on accommodation. Not an extremely fancy place, but will be a nice change from hostels. I was thinking of a visit to the home of Hamlet, or a day trip to Sweden. However, it seems there will be enough to keep me busy in Copenhagen alone. Palaces and some art with shopping trips in between. But what gets my heart pumping is the food there. I’ve heard so much about Copenhagen’s food revolutionary.All the fresh fish and sandwiches seems very delicious on my screen.

Obstables:
1. Can’t afford a meal at Noma in Copenhagen
2. Hard to find any reasonably priced restaurants that intrigue me in Prague.
3. A bit hard to plan what to do in Berlin as it’s the week of Christmas.
4. Not sure if I can handle visiting all those Christmas Market.
5. Can’t get over point #1

Hotels.com… you mada me so angry today.

For every business trip, I’ve always search for rooms from the hotels.com, and booked through them several times. Really liked the special deals they have going on, as i often found better price from them. So for my personal trips coming up this December, of course I searched around on their site and found that I’d like to spend a little more than usual for a 2 night stays in Hotel 27 at Copenhagen.

At hotels.com, they are advertising the room at 117euro per night (with a “save 10%” discount included). Compare to the 133euro at hotel27′s official website, it seems to be a great bargain. Since I trust the website, I went ahead and booked it on hotels.com without double checking the maths…

Right after my, I realized the Tax and FEE is 58 euro! So I quickly went to hotel27.dk and didn’t see them charging any tax……

in short :
Hotels.com charged me 292.5 euro
vs Hotel27.dk would only charge me 265.91 euro

It’s about 30 euro of difference. Why on earth are they charging 58euro for tax and fee when the hotel itself doesn’t even charge a dime?!I know it’s not a huge amount, but enough to make me angry and don’t want to use them again. As the whole experience just makes me feel that hotels.com isn’t being that honest with their customers: while advertising special discounts, they’re totally making it up through their rather expensive “fees”.

Why should anyone use hotels.com when you can simply book right from the hotel? What’s the point of Hotels.com when they are not even trying to save you money?!

SO ANGRY.

up coming trips!

I’ve always wanted to go to see Beijing, the capital of China. I mean being a chinese, I really should head up north and see it, right? I’ve never been to anywhere in China further north of Shanghai. Which I have to say was slightly disappointing to my taste. It was a little too commercial, people a little too rude…. anyway. But I’ve heard Beijing has more old historic stuff, and a bit more artsy. I hope it won’t let me down. ok, I know the Peking duck won’t…

So the Style HK @ Beijing exhibition is kind of like trade show i guess. My Mandarin sucks. I hope I can survive thru it. urgh. I hate speaking mandarin. bu hopefully the sale will be well. maybe I can get a bonus after the show haha.

After the show in October, I’ve booked myself a ticket to Europe for December Can’t wait. and it’ll be my first time flying with Finnair. Went with this airline was because of the promotion. I’ve been hearing lots of great stuff about this airline. I really look forward to get on their plane and see it for myself. Ha, I really hope they would have ipads for passengers by then. hahah

Making a long transfer stop at Helsinki, which should be enough time for me to run into the city, grab some good food, and check out one or two spots to get a feel of this city. It better not to have a snow storm.

Then Finnair will take me to Vienna. Some people told me they don’t really spend much time there. but I really can’t see how can i cut it down below 4 days. There are just way too much museums and palaces I want to see… After days of world class museum at Vienna, I’ll head north to Prague. I think the old town would be very lovely to see, and I got to see that skeleton church nearby.

Then my journey continue to Berlin. A place I’ve been wanting to visit for a while, for the amazing design and art scene. God, I wish Maximilian will be playing in a bar by then. I don’t even care if he’d be just playing in the street. If he’s out playing, I’ll be there.

After the Christmas day, I’ll be at Copenhagen. Damn this city is expensive. So I’ll be staying for 2 nights only before catching my flight home.

So here’s a summery:

Oct 2- Oct 8 : Beijing
Dec 10: Helsinki
Dec 11-14: Vienna
Dec 15-18: Prague
Dec 19-20: Dresden
Dec 21-25: Berlin
Dec 26-28: Copenhagen

Now need to look for hotel,
and bus tickets.

CANT WAIT.

Thoughts on “good design”

One of my favorite things to do on a train is to read, and recently I love reading feedly through my beloved HTC phone. This morning, I came across an article from the blog of 2Modern.com talking about “What is good design?“

This question is always fun and inspiring to think of. Because as you keep on thinking, examples of well designed stuff starts to appear in your head one after another. It’s just so nice to remember all those things that had wowed me and amazed me before.

Then, I looked at my Tweetdeck, and there’s a tweet from @2Modern asking their followers about what they think a good design is. Here is my answer:

I think good design roughly falls into 2 categories: The kind that makes your life easier, and the kind that makes it happier.

So far, that is how I identify good design. It could be some world changing (and life saving) idea such as the needle-free vaccination from IDEO; or it can simply be a spray bottle with wild fun pattern on from Pylones. It either makes our life easier and make this a better place to live, or it simply put a smile on our face.

I love basic t-shirts

Sometimes it puzzles me a little when I look at people’s blog, seeing the fashionistas spend lots of time and thoughts into mixing and matching their clothes to create an outfit to wear for the day. Nothing’s wrong with that. In fact, as a fashion designer, I need to thank everyone who do that everyday. Otherwise fashion wouldn’t be sort after, and I wouldn’t even have a job.

But then, I just can’t understand what motivates people to dress up every single day. Unless I’m going to meet any clients, all I want to do is just to put on a basic t-shirt with jeans and run off to the studio and work. No one really cares what you’re wearing when you’re drafting patterns and fitting garments. The guys wouldn’t be all hitting on me all of a sudden if I changed into heels (nor I am seeking attention from anyone at this point).

Compare to creating clothes, I don’t quite care as much on what clothes I’m wearing. I don’t think there’s anything wrong with stripping down to the basic pieces, and focus on the more important stuff. Sometimes I think people need to prioritize things a little better. Do your job first, and pretty up yourself after.

Actually I don’t even spent more than 10mins to put make up on. I find it a little ironic that I’m in the fashion industry as I’m one of those girls who don’t like to dress up and get all dolled up everyday.

lookalike

It was very interesting that we got a Justin Bieber look-alike at my work’s building. People talked and the words spread out so fast that by the end of his first day at work, pretty much everyone working on the same floor knows about it. lol.

The weather was really nice in the morning. Clear blue sky, all the colours around me just looked really vibrant under the sun. But then it started to rain in the afternoon -_-

Maximilian Hecker

love his music.

One day, I went on to the Hong Kong Time Out website to see what’s happening around town. Then when I go through some past music events, I came across this article about a German musician. The author wrote that his music is fragile and heartbroken. This totally got my attention. So I went onto his myspace and started playing the music in the player. “Summer days in bloom” the piano and the guitar sound sounds very relaxing and refreshing to me. Then it comes his airy voice. Even with all the drums, violin, piano and guita, the song is still very calming to me.

You know how sometimes, when you’re listening to a song, you just really wish that it could hit a different note? But this song is just hitting all the right notes for me. When I was thinking: “ah, how nice if the up coming part would turn that way”, and it did!. I started listening to all of his other songs. His music is very personal. Lots of his songs are soft, sad, yet calming and very elegant. It’s like watching a tragic romance slowly unfolds in front of you. Heartbreaking, yet beautiful, it was absolutely addictive. Some people might thinks the lyrics is too whiney thought.

Read a lot of his interview and get to understand a little bit of his view of the world. The more I read, the more I love about his work. As you started to know the story behind the lyrics, it just all make sense. I think it’s a privilege to get this close to someone’s personal story and emotions.

Of course, I get SO MAD that I found about about Maximilian a month too late. He had a small concert in Hong Kong a month ago…… darn. Anyway, I’m pretty sure he’ll be back one day. Or I’ll definitely go to Germany to see him in concert, or better yet, busking on the street of Berlin.

My favorites from Maximilian Hecker:

Summer Days in Bloom

Miss Underwater

White

Dying

No More Lies to Reach You

Maybe one day I’ll create a collection inspired by his world.

Is foreign language really that cool?

Living in a Chinese speaking society, where people believe in “better English means better live”, is doomed to come across someone who just looooove to throw English words (or any foreign languages) around. They would try to squeeze in a lots of English words within a Chinese conversation. This is one thing I hate a lot about people here. Especially those people DON’T SAY THINGS RIGHT, and think that they’re ultimate cool and all for knowing extra foreign vocabularies. my ass.

Does it really makes you look cool when you can confuse people with foreign words? When you talk to people, it’s about COMMUNICATION and understanding the conversation. Showing off makes you look like an a-hole, while saying things wrongs makes you look like an idiot.

Geese

thoughts

Often I heard people talking about where would they want to live in the future. of course it got me think about where I want to live…

don’t think i want to live in the middle of no where, so it has to be somewhere still close to the city. but would be nice to stay somewhere quite. Then it hit my mind that I’d love to stay somewhere near the water.

When I was living in Brooklyn (New York), I had to cross over the river everyday by the D train. and now in Hong Kong I can see the coastline right from my bedroom. I just realized how much I love being able to see the sea everyday.

so yea, next time I heard that question, I’ll say “somewhere near by the water”.