Monday, March 25, 2013

Bali Pictures part 3








Mandala Suci Wenara Wana
Ubud Monkey Forest monkeys






Ubud rice paddies

Wednesday, March 20, 2013

My Agent

Life is really funny the way things work out. I went to a few auditions, I got a lot of rejections, I finally got a part, we filmed it and everything, and then it was cut. You might think this is a sad story, but today I got a call from an agent who wants to represent me. He knows one of the producers of the film I'm not in anymore and he saw a rough cut of my part. This isn't exactly the big break I was hoping for, but it's a million times better to have an agent than to go to all these auditions without one.

Without an agent, I can only go to open auditions or I have to be invited by someone who knows someone who saw me do something somewhere. The odds are never in my favor. I got lucky and got into a few auditions, but only just a few. With an agent, I have someone calling up producers and casting directors and trying to get me auditions that I never would have known about otherwise. I'm still competing with a million other girls who all probably have their own agents, but at least now I'll have more chances to compete. The more you try, the more likely you'll succeed.

Monday, March 18, 2013

New Neighbor part 2

I forgot to tell Lily & Kevin about the new neighbor. Sometimes they sleep in the bedroom and sometimes I do. We've been keeping the curtains open all the time since everyone in every other building keeps theirs closed. I don't know if Lily & Kevin close the curtains when they're having sex. It never really mattered before, but now that we have a neighbor who keeps his open, they might be giving a free show.

We don't have floor to ceiling windows like the new neighbor, but it's actually two windows next to each other that give a pretty good view, if you can see anything other than the building next door.

If he is watching them go at it, he's probably wondering why there are sometimes two foreigners and sometimes a different foreigner all by herself. Sometimes Lily & I sleep in the bed together. I can only imagine what he thinks is going on here.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Bali Pictures part 2








Our private villa’s living room
We spent less time here than anywhere else
Except for one memorable night



Most of the bathroom was indoors, but the bathtub and shower were outdoors
We used the tub when we got a professional massage



Our own private swimming pool
We were in this pool morning, noon and night
It is almost the star of my book



Outdoor shower
I love this shower
There's just something about taking a shower outdoors









Villa bedroom
I will always remember this room



The front door to our villa


Usually when you see someone's vacation pictures, you just see boring old pictures. I think anyone who reads my book will see them more like the way I see them. Maybe. Your mileage may vary.

Tuesday, March 12, 2013

Hailey’s Bali Diary


Hailey’s Bali Diary


And now for something completely different.

I wrote a book. There's something I don't say everyday. It's not an epic masterpiece of vast scale and worth. It's pretty short and contains no wizards, vampires or medieval tomfoolery. I don't really know how many pages it is. That's the first thing people always ask. I can tell you the word count, but page count is relative. How many pages is War and Peace? Quite a lot more than my book, but no one really knows because it all depends on the format. And with books that old, different publishers have different editions. Then there are e-books. Every single person reading a book on an electronic device can change the page count.

After I got back from Bali, I sat down to write a blog post about the trip. After I typed for a while, I just kept typing and typing. Sooner than I expected, it was far too long to be a blog post. So I did the natural thing and decided to post it in installments. More than a few of my posts are divided into separate parts because other things often happen in between each one. The Bali trip would have to be in separate parts because it was too long.

I could have never written it all up all at once, so I went back to it and wrote more later. Whenever I went back, I found myself typing and typing again. By the time I was finished, I knew it was never going to be a blog post.

Lily noticed I was doing a lot more typing than usual, especially since I did it on her computer, and I told her I wrote the world's longest blog post about my trip to Bali. She suggested I publish it as if it were a real book. That seemed absurd. It's too short for a book. It's just a really long blog post. Who would want to read such a thing?

As it turns out, there is a sizable market for books by expats about their adventures in foreign countries. The fact that the Bali book has nothing to do with the foreign country where I live is irrelevant. The stranger in a strange land concept is the same. An unfortunate fact of the world of books and publishing is that the author's biography is often more important to the people in charge than the book itself. I don't think JD Salinger would approve of today's book market. But in my case, being an American woman who lives in Hong Kong is marketable.

The Bali book is more graphic than I intended. You might not want to read it to your children as a bedtime story. But I'm ok with it.

Feel free to buy a copy or ten. Tell your friends about it. I only need to sell about a million copies to get rich. That's a joke, obviously. No one makes any real money from a single book. Even people who have written dozens of books have to keep their day jobs. I don't actually expect it to sell very well. I didn't write it for money anyway. Anyone who writes a book to make money is a fool.

“The writer must earn money in order to be able to live and to write, but he must by no means live and write for the purpose of making money.” Karl Marx.

Maybe quoting Marx is not the best marketing strategy.

Sunday, March 10, 2013

My First Real Movie part 7

I called the PA to find out how to get my free tickets to the premiere of my big movie debut. It’s not out yet, but it will be sooner or later and I didn’t want to miss anything. She was surprised when I called her, mostly because she was under the impression that my part had been cut out of the movie. I couldn’t believe it. Nobody told me. She said she would make a few calls and get back to me.

When she got back to me, it turned out she was right the first time. The director cut my part. The fight scene is still there, but I’m not in it. So now I’m not going to be in my first real movie. I can’t really complain. It happens all the time. It was a small part. I wasn’t the star or even an important character, or even much of a character at all. My part was “Hostess” on the English version of the script. My character didn’t even have a name. Kevin Costner was cut from The Big Chill and his character was pivotal. Everything happens because of him. Harrison Ford was cut from ET, and he was the biggest movie star in the world at the time. I only worked for seven hours total, and I got paid for basically nothing.

Still, it would have been nice if someone told me.

Thursday, March 7, 2013

New Neighbor

We have a new neighbor in the building across from mine. Most buildings in Hong Kong are entirely too close to each other, unless you are facing a larger street. There’s not a lot of privacy when you can see into the windows of the building next door. I’ve always been lucky because my bedroom window only faces one other apartment. They can only see into my room and I can only see into theirs. From some apartments, you can see into several of your neighbor’s windows.

People solve this problem by keeping the curtains closed all the time. Chinese people don’t really like sunlight anyway and no one would ever have any privacy without curtains. I like sunlight and I’ve never liked the idea of keeping the curtains closed all the time. Luckily, the neighbor across the way always kept theirs closed, so I got used to keeping mine open. Unless I was changing or doing something I didn’t want anybody to see.

After a while, I just kept the curtains open all the time. I never saw the neighbors open theirs. They had such thick curtains that covered the window so completely that it would be obvious if someone was peeking out from behind them.

Then the new neighbor moved in. I looked out my window one day and could see into their room. Their curtains were actually open. I couldn’t believe it. It was a while before I saw any people. I only just saw their furniture. The window is actually a double sliding glass door that goes to their laundry balcony, so you can see the room from floor to ceiling.

Yesterday, I was putting away laundry and I glanced out my window to see a guy standing in his. He wasn’t watching me. He was just looking out the window and only noticed me after I noticed him. He smiled and waved and I smiled and waved, and we both went back to our lives.

Monday, March 4, 2013

New Year Trip part 6

I’m back in Hong Kong. Far too soon. When you go on a bad vacation, you want to go home right away. When you go on an exceptional vacation, you never want to go home.

Bali was exceptional. It’s a beautiful island with scenery in every direction and more than a few interesting temples. I live in Hong Kong, so islands do not automatically impress me, but Bali is nothing like Hong Kong. It’s winter here, but summer in the Southern Hemisphere. The beaches were warm, just as they are in Hong Kong in summer, but the water was far cleaner. Maybe that’s why the beaches were more crowded. Or maybe people go to Bali for the beaches while no one goes to Hong Kong to sit on a beach.

Tanah Lot is a very famous, 500-year-old temple that sits on a rock off the southern coast of Bali. It’s one of those places you can only get to during low tide, since the path from coast to island is flooded at high tide, similar to Mont-Saint-Michel. Despite being one of the most popular tourist attractions on Bali, the water just off the coast is as blue as anything I’ve ever seen. I don’t know what kind of shipping lanes they have out there, but I never saw any boats anywhere near the temple.

The people were nothing but friendly everywhere we went. Bali is not a large island. It’s about half the size of the island of Hawaii – though it’s shaped pretty much like Maui – but getting around isn’t easy. There isn’t much public transportation, and what they have is not particularly designed for foreigners who don’t speak the language. Most of the big hotels have shuttles to take their people to the main sights.

Before we went, we talked to a few people who were familiar with Bali. They all suggested hiring a taxi driver. Rather than simply hail a cab as needed, which could be impossible in some areas, visitors are encouraged to pay a taxi driver to be their own personal driver for the duration. It’s so common that the taxi driver who took us from the airport to our villa offered to be our personal driver. We turned him down because we were not sure how much we would need to drive around. The next taxi also offered to be our personal driver. We declined again, but eventually realized that we were taking taxis everywhere. In the end, we found a friendly driver who was more than happy to take us anywhere and wait around until we were ready to leave, all for Rp300,000. That might sound expensive, but it translates to about US$30. We thought it was a good deal since our single ride from the airport to villa cost Rp200,000.

I’d like to say more about the restaurants, but we mostly made our own food. We had a private villa with a kitchen, and I did a lot of cooking on this trip. The villa provided meals, so we had the option of letting one of their chefs come to our private villa to prepare everything or simply bring the food that we could prepare ourselves. We also went to the nearest grocery store once. That was enough for the week.

Some people find it strange that I did a lot of cooking while on vacation. It’s worth noting that I love to cook and I live in a tiny apartment with a joke of a kitchen. Our private villa had a real kitchen, which was outdoors but covered. Cooking in the villa was anything but a chore.

I would say the kitchen was my favorite part of the villa, but we had a swimming pool. It wasn’t big, but it was private. Someone came to clean it once, with ample warning. Other than that, we were the only people who went anywhere near that pool all week. Since it was a private villa, it was surrounded by walls, trees and foliage. It was as private as it could be, barring NSA spy satellites. The kitchen was nice, but I used that pool multiple times every day.

The best part of the trip, of course, was spending time with Ryan. Living in different countries, or different parts of the county, is difficult. This trip gave us some much needed time together. Since we had a private villa instead of a hotel room, we had plenty of privacy. That’s extra important when you live in different countries and sleep in different beds.

I took somewhere in the neighborhood of a million pictures, but they’re still in the camera. I’ll post some after I put them on the computer.