Sigg collection at MPlus

Since it opened in 2021, Mplus has been one of my favourite Hong Kong museums, despite being quite tricky to get to. One reason for my liking is the constant updating of its exhibitions meaning, it isn’t showing the same things over and over.  So on my day off, I decided to spend a day there.

This year, one thing that caught my eye was the third Sigg collection, showcasing modern art from Chinese artists dating from the 1990s to the 2010s, expressing the effects of China’s social, economic and cultural opening up.  

The exhibition took up a large sized area, there was a mixture of two and three dimensional art along with audio visual pieces.  I liked the text overview to each new artist in the space along with the short descriptions on each piece.

My favourite piece was 2000 AD by Yue MinJun, containing two dozen or so identical life size bare foot male figures in identical clothes, reminiscent of the terracotta warriors of Xian.  Rather than intimidating the figures looked comical but also a reflection of today, people have become identical all pursuing the same outcomes.

Overall it was an enjoyable day out but rather pricey at HK$190.

Doom by Niall Ferguson

I just completed another one of my second hand books, “Doom - the politics of catastrophe” by Niall Ferguson. It is centred around the recent Covid pandemic and Ferguson analyses how authorities reacted to it compared to previous natural and man made disasters. Let’s see what the highly regarded economist and historian has to say.

The book was completed during the darkest mid point of the pandemic, before any of the vaccines were rolled out.  His main comparisons were the Spanish flu of 1918 and the lesser known Asian flu of 1957/58.  He in particular looked at government responses to more recent disasters such as Chernobyl and the deadly Boxing day tsunami of 2004.

Ferguson is very fair in his analysis, although blame can definitely be attributed to governments, there was only so much they can do.  Plus in the case of Covid, there was a natural lack of information early on.  Once the information was available it was too late. 

He doesn’t dive deeply into the science but he makes it clear that the transmission rate of the virus was but one part of the problem. It’s a very readable book on how past calamities have been dealt with and he does leave us with some best practices on how to deal with future ones.

Alfred’s Self-Teaching Adult Piano course

 If any of you are considering learning to play the piano or electronic keyboard, I thoroughly recommend this book. It is written in a very readable way and the lessons and examples are easy to follow. Also the author assumes you have no previous musical knowledge. Enjoy!

Teeline - update 1

As you know, I have been teaching myself Teeline shorthand lately and I’m still on it. It’s been slow progress as I’m coming to the end of chapter 6. It has been a fun journey so far, as well as being a useful skill, it gives me an insight into the intricacies of the English language and the psychology of how we read words.

The book I’m using “Teeline Shorthand - made simple” is major reason I’m still carrying on with this task. It is very well written and has very helpful exercises to help practice what I’ve just learnt. 

I devote about an hour to my Teeline, most days a week, usually before I start work, and I also spend several hours on it on one of my days off.  I’ll let you know how I get on in a future post.

In praise of ….. reading books

 In an age of social media, internet memes, gifs, tweets, wikipedia and even AI why do I still read books, especially hard copy ones? I will tell you why.

Flicking through the pages

As you may notice I’ve been borrowing books from Hong Kong’s various public libraries and been buying second hand books on my recent UK visit.  I also have the Amazon Kindle app on my smart devices, although I hardly use it.  It’s hard copy books that I like, even though they caused the death of trees.  First, no power is needed, then, reading text on paper does less damage to one’s eyes.  There’s also the sense of achievement in finishing a book of several hundred pages. To mitigate the ecological damage, I’ve been either borrowing them from the library or buying second hand.  I find reading a book is extremely relaxing whilst I’m waiting for something or queuing, that’s why I regularly have a book in bag.  I find that the Kindle is only useful involving books about programming languages where I can copy and paste the code. Therefore I’ve gone back to hardcopy books.  

Afterwards

What do I do with them after finishing the bought ones?  I tried donating them to Hong Kong public libraries but it no longer accepts new donations of English language books. So I’m trying to sell them on Carousell.  

Call me a luddite but hard copy books will remain with us for a long time.