little by little

I found this awesome post from The Stimulist titled “She’s Just Not That Into You” (the title is a play on words of the movie that came out earlier this year) that paints a harsh-reality picture for a relationship where the guy actually becomes the one that’s strung along (I’ve only really heard of situations that are the other way around, but it gives good perspective).

If you haven’t seen the movie He’s Just Not That Into You, you should. I’ve heard complaints and worries that it’s too depressing for women but I wouldn’t say that’s the case at all – there are several different stories lines in the movie, each with its own ups and downs that are all very believable.

This article is a great read – it’s written in sort of a mocking and sarcastic tone, but it sheds light on the insensitivities, miscommunications, and assumptions that happen all too often.

I made my one of those Smilebox scrapbooks I wrote about a few days ago. They’re a simple gift – just a few pictures put into digital “frames” that you can flip through electronically. All these years, I rarely actually buy my parents physical presents, mostly because I know they hardly use them. I’ve bought earrings and wallets and things like that, and my parents enjoy them for a few days, but nothing much more than that.

But every occasion, I send some sort of e-card or picture message, and they love it, much more than anything that I would have spent money on. For Christmas last year, I made a powerpoint of photos from the winter cruise we got back from, and my family loved it.

Hallmark usually has a lot of free e-cards that are simple, but come with pretty music and text. Smilebox is even better because it gives you so much more space for photos and words, and there are actual “pages” to flip through. My mom is big into scrapbooking at home, and I love to look at the layouts she spends hours making – the online version is the closest I can get to creating a real one, especially since I’m not actually at home and don’t have the supplies. The time I spend with them makes the finished product lots of fun to look through. I could give my family these for the rest of my life and they wouldn’t get sick of them haha.

On another note, here’s a Father’s Day message from the editor of The Stimulist.

He talks about why his father meant so much to him: “Not just because we shared a love of politics and good stories, and not just because he’d sneak me out for a double feature on the weekends…I loved my dad because he loved me. I knew from the start that even in the most dire situation he would stand by me…

….there’s a comfort in knowing your dad, or someone else playing that role, has your back…”

Take a look at the guy who designed the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium, a Beijing based artist with more than just artistic ambitions. The article says some fascinating things about him and China that I never knew:

…”In the West, he’s probably best known for the design of Beijing’s Olympic stadium, a mesh of giant steel beams known as the Bird’s Nest. He may have designed it, but Ai refused to attend the opening ceremony, criticizing the Olympics for presenting a fake, whitewashed China to the world.

Last December, Ai took on a new controversy. He announced he was putting together a list of schoolchildren killed during the 2008 Sichuan earthquake – a sensitive topic for China’s leaders. While the Chinese government maintains that shoddy construction had nothing to do with the school buildings collapse during the quake, not everyone is buying their story, least of all Ai. With a network of volunteers, he’s already collected over 5,000 names and estimates that the final tally will be well above the government-released number of 5,335.”

That comment about a “whitewashed” really shocked me. I never thought of the Olympics that way. Sure, I had heard the phrase “all eyes on China” being tossed around in the months leading up to the games, but my perception of that was always positive, rather than critical. Maybe I’m too ignorant – I wish I was more familiar with the culture and government within China to comment further.

This is Ai Wei Wei’s blog. Maybe one of these days I will be able to read and understand it.