Wednesday, February 28, 2018

Lantern Festival 2018

Chinese New Year started on February 16. There were parades through Tsim Sha Tsui and lion dances at just about every shopping center. I never planned on going to see the fireworks over Victoria Harbour, but they were canceled this year as a show of respect for a bus accident on February 10th in Tai Po. One of the deadliest car accidents in Hong Kong's history, it killed 19 people and injured 65. Most of the time I feel like a foreigner here, but I was a proud Hongkonger when the lines at the Red Cross went around the block and they had to stay open late because so many people wanted to donate blood.

I have mostly avoided the New Year crowds this year. China is a loud place at any given time, but downright intolerable during the New Year. Between the music blasted at full volume, the officials screaming into loudspeakers at full volume, the salesmen screaming for everyone to buy their wares at full volume, and the people screaming into their phones at full volume, I have to wonder if the Chinese are so loud in public because they are going deaf or if they are going deaf because they are so loud in public. It would be a nice time to live in Hong Kong with ear plugs.

But I do go outdoors from time to time. At this time of year, New Year decorations are unavoidable. Some of them are amazing. It's all about bright colors. March 2nd is the Lantern Festival. In addition to bright lights, bright lions, bright dragons and bright dogs, there are bright red and gold lanterns everywhere. Some bring wealth for the new year. Some bring good health. They all bring good luck. Every fortune teller, fortune stick and fortune card says nothing but good things will happen to you in the coming year. No one ever seems to have bad luck. At least not until after the year starts. None of the lucky signs ever warned me that last year would suck.

I might go out and brave the crowds on Friday. I like the lanterns. It is the noise I'm dreading. But, if nothing else, I have to find out how rich and healthy I will be this year.

Friday, February 16, 2018

Hong Kong By Phone part 2

Even when I meant to take pictures while I was out, I mostly forgot about my phone camera. I'm just not used to photographing train stations I use all the time and streets I have walked a million times. I'm going to have to force myself if I want to take more phone photographs. Phonographs? That's already taken. Telegraphs?

Lily and I had some free time on Saturday. She thought it would be a good idea to go to some of the parks I don't get out to very often. When you take your daily walks in the same place all the time, it gets tedious. Hong Kong has more than enough parks to keep it interesting. Most of them require spending time on the MTR.

We went to the Hung Hom Promenade in the morning. That is a neighborhood I rarely go to, and the small promenade has nice views of Kowloon Bay and the East Harbour rather than the usual Wan Chai and Tsim Sha Tsui. There is some construction around one of the hotels right now, blocking a few paths to get to the promenade, but the promenade itself is unscathed.


Hung Hom Promenade, Whampoa


You can easily see the new cruise terminal at the old airport from the promenade. Something I discovered about my phone is that the pictures look terrible when you zoom.


Kai Tak Cruise Terminal


We took the MTR from Whampoa to Lok Fu, which is six or seven stops. The green light shows where we are, between the second and third stop. The red lights show where the train goes. The white lights show the interchange to the Tsuen Wan line and the fastest way to get from Whampoa to Central. It's all very simple and informative. I don't know why people think it is confusing.

A great thing about the Kwun Tong line is that it's not nearly as crowded as some of the others. There would be a dozen heads in this picture if it were the Tsuen Wan, Tung Chung, West, East or Island lines.


MTR Kwun Tong green line


It's an easy walk from the Lok Fu station to the Kowloon Walled City Park, which does not look like this anymore.


Kowloon Walled City


From exit A, turn right and make a left on Junction Road. That is where the street ends, so you can't miss it. Walk down Junction Road for a few minutes until you see a playground. Either keep going until you see the entrance on the left or turn left at the playground, Tung Tau Tsuen Road, to one of the entrances on the right.

The signs in the station tell you to take exit B to go to the Walled City Park. If you follow those signs, you will go to the bus stop, which is fine if you want to take the bus. Walking out of the station from the bus stop is complicated if you don't know the area. Exit A is signed and simple.


Kowloon Walled City Park


The Walled City mostly looks like this now, which I think is a vast improvement.


Mountain View Pavilion, Kowloon Walled City Park


Two stops from Lok Fu is Diamond Hill. Right next to the station is the Nan Lian Garden and Chi Lin Nunnery. Both are open to the public, free and beautiful places to pretend you are not surrounded by a city of 7 million people.




Hall of Celestial Kings and Sakyamuni Buddha Hall, Chi Lin Nunnery


This is a working temple, so there are rules and restrictions, but Buddhists tend to be pretty forgiving. Unless you eat in front of one of the Buddha statues. They don't like that.


Lotus Pond Garden, Chi Lin Nunnery


Chi Lin and Nan Lian are a small bridge apart. The garden also has rules, mostly about not feeding the fish. They don't even want you to have a snack near the pond, which is understandable. I'm sure people feed the fish all kinds of poisonous crap.


Blue Pond, Nan Lian Garden


The Pavilion of Absolute Perfection has kind of an arrogant name, and is too gold for my tastes, but it looks nice in the middle of all that green.


Pavilion of Absolute Perfection, Nan Lian Garden


Lotus Pond, Nan Lian Garden


I think this might be the first video I have ever taken with this camera. Taking pictures with a phone is strange enough. Taking video phone videos is too science fiction for me.


Chinese Timber Architecture Gallery, Nan Lian Garden


Kwun Tong is close to the cruise terminal and a few quick stops from Diamond Hill. It is also an authentically Hong Kong neighborhood. When I took this picture, a few people stared at me and then stared at the street below the walkway, probably wondering what on earth I was looking at.


Kwun Tong, near Tung Yan St


We went back to Hung Hom for dinner. Food is everywhere in Hong Kong, but the Whampoa shopping area is ridiculous. If you ate at a different restaurant for every meal, it would take years to make your way through it all.


Taku St, near Hung Hom Pancakes


Above all the restaurants and shopping malls are thousands of apartments, instead of the usual office buildings and more shopping. The shopping malls are mostly underground.


Bulkeley St at Taku St


Some apartments are nicer than others.


Hung Hom Rd at Tak On St


We had dinner near one of the last phone booths in the city. There are probably others somewhere, but I can't think of any. Why would anyone use a phone booth in this day and age? For the Wi-Fi, of course.


Man Tai St, near a Wellcome

Thursday, February 15, 2018

Hong Kong By Phone part 1

My new phone has a camera, just like everyone else's phone. But I almost never use it as a camera. Taking pictures with my phone is still strange to me. Even when I see something I might want to photograph, it rarely occurs to me to use my phone.

On Friday, I was headed to Sheung Wan and for whatever reason, I realized I had a camera in my purse. Before taking the MTR, I went to the West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade. It's a nice looking waterfront park, but they are redecorating for the New Year, so some of it is closed off and there are cones and tape everywhere.


West Kowloon Waterfront Promenade


The park borders the Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter off the west coast of Kowloon. The typhoon shelter is easily visible from the ICC, Kowloon Station, the Arch, the Cullinan and my apartment, which is in none of those astronomically expensive buildings. But I can see it in this picture.


Yau Ma Tei Typhoon Shelter


Kowloon Station, Cullinan, Arch, ICC


You have to cross a busy street to get to the MTR from Nursery Park.


Western Harbour Crossing


Once inside, there might be a few people. Especially on a Friday. Or Saturday. Or Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday.


Kowloon Station


Two MTR stops later, I was in Sheung Wan. I was picking up some snacks. This is exactly the kind of street that has some of the best snacks in Hong Kong.


Wing Wo St, just off Des Voeux Rd Central


From Des Voeux Rd, you are going to pass the Grand Millennium Plaza to get to the MTR. At least if you are on that side of the station, exit E2, I think. I was just passing through, and I remembered about my camera, and they always have one holiday display or another. I'm not really sure why anyone would go there otherwise.


Grand Millennium Plaza, Sheung Wan

Tuesday, February 6, 2018

Hailey's Novel Diary – 2/6/18



Acting Like Adults comes out on Wednesday, with a full release of all formats on February 14. Everyone should buy a copy before the movie comes out and they change everything. Then, buy another copy to see all the differences. I would recommend buying multiple copies of each edition. Sometimes you lose a book or loan it out to a friend and they never give it back. Just to be safe, maybe buy a dozen or two. I have been out of work for a while.

Acting Like Adults is about a group of people in Los Angeles who follow their dreams and want to make it in the entertainment industry; movies, music, TV, theater. Most of the story is how they go about getting there. Some of the characters are more successful than others. Some have more experience. Some have less. People betray each other and their own principles. There is plenty of rivalry, competition and backstabbing. Relationships come and go. Friendships are made, strained, twisted and torn apart. All that good stuff.

Part of the story involves a Harvey Weinstein character. That is a coincidence. A coincidence with really great timing, but still a coincidence. I created the character right before the whole Weinstein thing exploded. He never crossed my mind when writing the character. I knew about some of the rumors, and was not at all surprised when everything came out, but I did not know any details when writing the character.

My Weinsteinish character is a movie producer who treats women deplorably. He could be based on any number of Hollywood power players over the years. Harry Cohn used to brag about bedding every ingénue on his payroll. Sexual harassment in corporate America is nothing new. The character only seems like Weinstein now because of current events. Had this book come out a year earlier, people would think the character was based on someone else.

I think it's a pretty good book. Obviously, I'm not an impartial observer. When you create fictional characters, it's easy to form an attachment to them that the general public might not see. But I have read the book several times and there are still parts that make me laugh, a line or two that makes me feel nostalgic and a couple of scenes that piss me off. With movies, you can have a preview and see if the audience laughs and cries in all the right places. With books, you never know how the reader feels. I hope someone out there reads it the way I do.

Saturday, February 3, 2018

Hailey's Novel Diary – 2/3/18

I have optioned my soon to be published international bestseller. That might be a little optimistic.

I have optioned my soon to be published reasonably well received novel. That also assumes too much.

I have optioned my soon to be published book. That is accurate. It is a book and it will be available soon.

The option part refers to the production company, Vast Entertainment. They have the option to put everything together to make a movie or not. The details are staggering, and require agents, lawyers and people with business degrees to hold meetings and conference calls before any legal documents are typed up and signed. From my end, it all seems far more complicated than it needs to be, but I'm sure it evolved from a century of lawsuits, misunderstandings, accusations, broken partnerships and a lot of hurt feelings.

The production company now has the option to buy the film rights. For the next six months, they can find a studio, producers, other production companies, power players with clout in the industry and/or miscellaneous financial backers to make a movie. Or they can turn around and sell the option to someone else. Or they can sit on it and do absolutely nothing. When their time is up, they can buy the rights, renew the option, renegotiate a completely different contract with me, or what happens most of the time, they can wash their hands of the whole thing. They would only renegotiate or renew if they were close to getting somewhere. Actually buying the film rights is a final step that would only happen if everything else falls into place. Buying the option simply lets them get all the right people together without worrying that someone else will buy the rights.

Somewhere along the line, they will decide what kind of movie this story should be, if they have not already done so. If they are looking at a feature, they will pitch it to studios, larger production companies and name producers. If they think it should be somewhere on TV, they will go to the networks and television producers/production companies.

A far more likely option, not to be confused with the book option, is that they will simply sell the option to someone else. This happens all the time. When you see a movie with three or more production companies in the opening credits, one of them probably bought the option from the original author and sold it to one of the other companies, who in turn might have sold it to another company or studio. Generally speaking, everyone in the actual filming of the movie/TV show only works for one production company or studio/network. Most movies today have multiple production companies attached because they need multiple financial backers, the producers/actors involved have vanity labels, and someone owns the book option that started everything.

In exchange for all that, I got a check. It was not an especially large check, but if any future movie ever enters principal photography, I get a much larger check. If a movie is released and makes a healthy profit, I get more checks based on a tiny percentage of net earnings.

People who know nothing about the motion picture industry have told me that this will make me rich. It will not. The only way this makes me a millionaire is if it gets developed and packaged and filmed and released and becomes one of the biggest box office hits of all time. That is unlikely. Most movies do not become the biggest box office hits of all time. In fact, almost all of them do not. This is not a story with planets exploding and computer animation creatures. It is about people without any power or influence trying to make their dreams come true. If it somehow became a hit, I would probably make more money from increased book sales than I ever would from the movie. My tiny piece of the pie is based on net earnings, which is nothing like the gross earnings that studios always brag about.

Before anyone can count all their piles of money, a movie actually has to be made first. That is pretty far down the road, if it even happens at all. Most options never get developed. Anyone who writes books to get rich is a fool anyway. And writing books hoping that they will become hit movies would be insane. That is like digging through garbage dumpsters to find a winning lottery ticket.

My motivation is to see what happens. The money is irrelevant. It's essentially free money. It is not entirely free since I can't sell the option to anyone else until it expires, but owning the rights is meaningless if you never sell the option. If everything progresses as everyone wants it to, I get more free money, but I mostly get to witness the process. I have seen how movies are made in front of the camera. I would love to see what goes on before the cameras roll.