Bernardo Bertolucci died November 26. He was a great filmmaker, but since this blog is about me, I'm going to make his death about me. There is something unwholesome about that, but I think Bertolucci would approve. Or at least give that little smirk he used from time to time.
Bertolucci is a character in my most recent book, Acting Like Adults. He does not run from town to town solving crimes or anything as stupid. He is a very minor character. One of the protagonists is an actor who gets a part in a feature film. As soon as I decided that the fictional film would be a biography of French writer/anarchist Émile Armand, I knew that Bertolucci had to be the director. I could have just as easily created a fictional director, but this seemed like a project he might enjoy, and his reputation works in my favor. Had I created a fictional character, it would have been based on Bertolucci anyway.
Legally, you can portray a real person in your work of fiction as long as it is not libelous. Bertolucci is described in this book as a great filmmaker, so I doubt anyone would call that libel. Realistically, he was never going to know about it anyway. The only possible trouble I might have faced was in my description of his home. A recent interview with him described the interior and it was surprisingly easy to find his address. In the one in a billion chance he read the book, he might not have appreciated my attention to detail.
My only real concern was his health. He was 76, recovering from spinal surgery and confined to a wheelchair when I started writing the book. He also had cancer, but that disease is a wild card in everyone's deck. If he had died while I was writing, I would have changed him into a fictional character.
Hugh Hefner died in September 2017, long after I finished the first draft. He is not a character in the book, but two of the characters do some work related to his magazine and there is a brief mention of someone making a film about his life. Like Bertolucci, he is very much alive when this story takes place. I was kind of hoping that someone would make a movie about him just after this book came out. That has yet to happen.
They were alive when I wrote the book, as were Jerry Lewis, Jeanne Moreau, Glenne Headly, Martin Landau and Rose Marie. There was a time when I considered having the story take place in the recent past. Had I done that, it might be easier to understand that so many dead people are supposed to be alive.
In the book, one of the actor characters gets a part in a new HBO series about the Civil War called Secession. Other than what would have to be a ridiculous budget, the fictional series in the story sounds like something the real HBO would love to do. There is plenty of room for excessive violence, action and nudity. As far as American wars go, the Civil War is one of the most popular.
More than a year after I created the fictional series, HBO released a real series called Succession. It has nothing to do with the Civil War, but the title similarities put it in the predictions category. I'm no Jules Verne, but this book saw the future more than anything else I have ever written. Of course, the real HBO series was probably in development before I started writing about the fictional series, but along with the rest of the general public, I had no way of knowing about that. And their title might have changed more than a few times. Even when it was announced, I never heard about it. Most HBO shows never make it to HBO Asia. I don't think we get this one, but we have the one about the detective in 1960s Singapore that they probably don't show in America.
But my biggest unintentional prediction in Acting Like Adults is Harvey Weinstein. The lead antagonist is a respected and successful movie producer who does very bad things in private. Everything we know about Weinstein's crimes became public knowledge long after I finished the first draft. Looking at it now, anyone would assume that my fictional character is based on him. But I knew nothing about all the horrible things he did while I was writing the story. I even mentioned him by name, positively, in a previous book, Harmony On Spring Hill. One of the fictional characters in that book is described as “the Harvey Weinstein of Israel”. It was meant as a description of that character's success. Today, it sounds like I'm saying something very different that I never intended.
My fictional Weinstein character might sound like the real Weinstein in hindsight, but I actually based him on Lou Pearlman, the successful record producer who did very bad things in private. I'm not even subtle about it. The character's name is Jay Pearlman. Lou Pearlman's full name was Louis Jay Pearlman. The real Lou Pearlman was from Queens and used his cousin, Art Garfunkel, to break into record producing. The fictional Jay Pearlman is from New York and uses his family connections to break into movies. But Weinstein and his crimes are more famous, so anyone who reads this book will make the obvious assumptions. Five hundred years from now, when children are forced to read this book in school as the last surviving example of literature from the Ancient American Empire, it will be a given that the Jay Pearlman character was based on the real life monster who inspired the Winestine Laws. Those poor children will never know the truth.
Obviously, I'm joking about one of my books being read in 500 years. The only thing they will have from today is Fifty Shades of Grey and The Great Kardashian Twitters.
Wednesday, January 23, 2019
Saturday, January 19, 2019
The Amsterdam Apartment
I don't know how long I will be working in Amsterdam, but I hope I can stay in the same apartment the entire time. It is, without a doubt, the best apartment in which I have ever lived. Naturally, it is only part time and temporary. I seem to get lucky a lot, but it is always luck with conditions.
My very first apartment as an adult was a tiny box in downtown Minneapolis. It was too small and in an older building that desperately needed to be updated, but it was connected to the Skyway. I could go to the bank, out to eat, pay the phone bill, go shopping, watch a Timberwolves game or see the Eagles, minus Don Felder, without ever stepping foot outdoors. That was convenient in the dead of winter and heat of summer. My school was not connected to the Skyway, but it was less than two miles away. Ironically, my dance school when I was in high school was practically connected to the Skyway, but I lived much farther south back then. The best thing about that apartment was the freedom. There were very few rooms, but my boyfriend at the time and I could do whatever we wanted in any of those rooms at any time.
My first Hong Kong apartment was a tiny box in Mong Kok. It was even smaller than my first Minneapolis apartment, though the rent was 40% higher, but it was an easy walk to Paisano's, the flower market, the ladies market and Langham Place. It was not connected to anything, and had nothing close to a kitchen, but it was close enough to the MTR, which is convenient on any of Hong Kong's 150 rainy days each year, and only four stops away from the Eagles concert the second time they came here. And if you really want freedom, move 8,000 miles away from your family. Of course, that also meant moving a world away from our friends.
The Amsterdam house is above average by Minneapolis standards and enormous by Hong Kong standards. Without roommates, I would say it is too big. Even with two other people, there is plenty of room. Like every other building on the street, it is four floors with a red brick exterior. Without a number on the wall, there would be no way to tell one building from the next. A few of the neighbors have unique doors, but mine is the same as 90% of every other door on the block.
The street itself is entirely residential, with similar residential streets in every direction. I like how quiet and removed it is from the hustle and bustle, while at the same time, some of my favorite parts of Amsterdam are an easy walk away. I can get to Vondelpark in a few minutes, the Leidseplein in 15 minutes and the Rijksmuseum in less than 20. The Cuypmarkt, Anne Frank House, Bloemenmarkt and Spui are 30 minutes away on foot. The rest of the city is easy to reach with two tram lines a block away and several more tram and bus lines a little farther out. My street, like every other street in the neighborhood, has far fewer parking spaces than cars. Fortunately, I don't have a car. Owning a car in Amsterdam would be counterproductive. The trams and buses go everywhere, and someone else has to park them. Better still, Amsterdam is a great city to walk or bike around and get some fresh air.
Where I come from, four floors would be a mansion, but this is a standard-size house. I call it an apartment out of habit. In China, we call apartments houses, for some reason. Even a tiny box in Mong Kok without a kitchen is called a house when it is obviously an apartment. Everyone in Hong Kong lives in a house even though almost everyone lives in an apartment. I make it a point to call every house an apartment. Now, that has carried over to Amsterdam, despite the fact that the Amsterdam apartment is clearly a house. It is pressed up against the two houses on either side, and all of the houses combined might look like a long apartment building from a distance, but each house is self contained. You could completely tear down one house and it would not affect the house next door. I think if you tore out an apartment, the neighbors might notice.
I don't know enough about architecture to say what style it is, but it looks like a canal house, only it is not on a canal and is far newer than the traditional canal houses. New being a relative term. This neighborhood was built in the middle and late 19th century. While the house is over 100 years old, there are plenty of canal houses from the 17th century in Amsterdam. Unlike the traditional canal houses that are each unique, these all look the same and were obviously built at the same time by the same people. If traditional canal houses were originally built for the wealthiest in the city, these houses were probably built for the middle class.
The ground floor of the apartment/house has two front doors, just like every other house in the neighborhood. I was told that the two different entrances are because most of the owners at the time were merchants who used the ground floor as storage and/or shops. That makes sense since every house on the street has a gable with that furniture hook just like a traditional canal house. One door was for customers and deliveries, which were always brought in the front door because houses on canals got their UPS from boats. The other door opens to the hallway/stairway that leads to what they would use as their private residence. Today, some of the houses are divided into apartments. One door leads to the ground floor apartment and the other to the upper apartment. The houses that are not divided simply have two front doors. I suppose it is convenient if you are rushing downstairs to catch the bus in seconds flat.
The main front door opens to a vestibule/hallway with plenty of room for all the coats, hats, boots and umbrellas you need when you live in Amsterdam. From the hallway, there are stairs, one of many closets and two doors. One door leads to a tiny bathroom. The other door leads to a long, open room that covers the entire ground floor. The space is divided into dining room, kitchen and living room, but there are no partitions. The furniture is the only indication that you have gone from one room to another. Had there been a wall between each room, they would all look cramped. The open space makes it look much larger.
The dining room table is next to the two front windows, with views of the houses across the street. The kitchen is essentially up against one wall, but it has every appliance I need and plenty of counter space. An island with a sink and cabinets is the only thing close to a dividing line that separates the rooms. Beyond the kitchen is a long living room. It is narrow, but spacious. Tall French doors open to the surprisingly large backyard. All of the glass on the doors and windows makes the living room look bigger. From the street, each house is narrow and crammed together, but most have long backyards with gardens and patios.
The backyard looks like someone came in and manicured it yesterday. I don't know who takes care of it or how often, but everything is clean and trimmed. The patio furniture is clearly not new, but cleaner than furniture that spends its days outdoors should be. There is another empty storage closet, for some reason, and a separate rack for firewood. There is a working fireplace in the living room, but I was not about to mess with it without any instructions. It is obviously wood burning, but I can't just look at it and tell what kind of ventilation it has or if the flue is clean and open. It was never that cold anyway.
The second floor, which is called the first floor in Amsterdam and most of Europe, can be reached by either the stairway at the front door or another stairway from the other front door. Once up the stairs, there is another hallway that separates the stairs from the rooms. Every floor in the house has walls and doors between hallways and stairs. I assume this is for heating during the winter. It probably also helps with air conditioning during the summer, but this house was built long before air conditioning existed. There are also plenty of walls and doors between all the rooms on every floor except the ground floor, but it looks like there used to be a wall between the kitchen and living room. Someone obviously remodeled the place in the last century.
The second and third floors – or first and second – have pretty much the same floor plan. Stairs/hallway, bedroom facing the back garden, office/extra room facing the street and a bathroom in between. Each of the rooms facing the street has a tiny balcony that can't really do much beyond hold a few potted plants. The bedroom balconies are large enough for a storage closet and small patio furniture. I have no idea why there are closets on the balconies, but this house has closets everywhere.
I chose the bedroom on the third floor because my only roommate, so far, had already chosen the second floor. They are both essentially the same, except my room has an extra flight of stairs to walk up. She turned her front room into a gym, with an exercise bike, all kinds of portable equipment and some kind of machine I have never seen before. I have not decided what to do with my room.
My bathroom is spacious. All of the bathrooms, except the one on the ground floor, were renovated sometime in the last ten years. I get the feeling there used to be more rooms on each floor, but then they knocked down a few walls and made everything bigger. They definitely went bigger with the bathrooms. I doubt they had whirlpool bathtubs, double vanity sinks and showers that could easily hold three or four people in 1880.
The fourth/third floor is smaller than the others. That is where the roof gables out, so there is only a bedroom and bathroom. That bedroom has a sloped ceiling, which is great for lighting, but I chose against it because it is noticeably smaller and does not have that extra room I don't know how to use. I suppose it does not really make any difference since I will only be in the house part time, but as long as I had the option, I went with the better of the two. If we eventually find a roommate who cannot stand the top floor, I will be perfectly happy to switch.
One of my favorite parts of the house, aside from the kitchen, bathroom and backyard, is the roof. Even with the gables, all of the roofs in the neighborhood are flat. Some have nothing on top. A few have solar panels. And some roofs, like ours, have a terrace. Our terrace has a sofa, several tables and chairs, large plants and yet another storage closet. The closet is currently empty and I can't imagine what anyone would store in it. From the roof, we have views of all the other rooftops in the neighborhood. Since every building is the same height, we can see for miles and miles. Unfortunately, there is nothing like the Eiffel Tower in Amsterdam, and St Nicholas Basilica is too far away. If there were no backyard, the roof would be the perfect place to host a barbecue. Maybe some day I can be there on a day without too many clouds so I can watch the sunset.
I have lived in a few places over the years, but this is the first apartment/house I would ever want to buy. The houses where I grew up in Minneapolis were in nice neighborhoods, but too suburban for my tastes. The apartments were always too small, and only available to rent. My first Hong Kong apartment was tiny. The current one is bigger, but it feels more like a model house than a home. It does the job, but I would not want to live here forever. The apartment in Paris was beautiful, but too opulent, and probably far too expensive. Even if I could afford to buy it, I would never want to live in one of the most expensive neighborhoods. I always stayed in a hotel in Tel Aviv, so ownership could never be an option. The Barcelona apartment was nice, and in a lovely neighborhood, but I hated the bathroom. I don't know where I'm going to settle down permanently, eventually, but I could see myself living in Amsterdam – or Paris, Tel Aviv, Minneapolis, or even Hong Kong. The Amsterdam house is the only building, so far, where I could picture raising a family and growing old.
All I need is a steady job, someone to start a family with, a way to convince my friends to move to Amsterdam and enough money to buy a house that is not for sale. I think I might be staying where I am for a while.
My very first apartment as an adult was a tiny box in downtown Minneapolis. It was too small and in an older building that desperately needed to be updated, but it was connected to the Skyway. I could go to the bank, out to eat, pay the phone bill, go shopping, watch a Timberwolves game or see the Eagles, minus Don Felder, without ever stepping foot outdoors. That was convenient in the dead of winter and heat of summer. My school was not connected to the Skyway, but it was less than two miles away. Ironically, my dance school when I was in high school was practically connected to the Skyway, but I lived much farther south back then. The best thing about that apartment was the freedom. There were very few rooms, but my boyfriend at the time and I could do whatever we wanted in any of those rooms at any time.
My first Hong Kong apartment was a tiny box in Mong Kok. It was even smaller than my first Minneapolis apartment, though the rent was 40% higher, but it was an easy walk to Paisano's, the flower market, the ladies market and Langham Place. It was not connected to anything, and had nothing close to a kitchen, but it was close enough to the MTR, which is convenient on any of Hong Kong's 150 rainy days each year, and only four stops away from the Eagles concert the second time they came here. And if you really want freedom, move 8,000 miles away from your family. Of course, that also meant moving a world away from our friends.
The Amsterdam house is above average by Minneapolis standards and enormous by Hong Kong standards. Without roommates, I would say it is too big. Even with two other people, there is plenty of room. Like every other building on the street, it is four floors with a red brick exterior. Without a number on the wall, there would be no way to tell one building from the next. A few of the neighbors have unique doors, but mine is the same as 90% of every other door on the block.
The street itself is entirely residential, with similar residential streets in every direction. I like how quiet and removed it is from the hustle and bustle, while at the same time, some of my favorite parts of Amsterdam are an easy walk away. I can get to Vondelpark in a few minutes, the Leidseplein in 15 minutes and the Rijksmuseum in less than 20. The Cuypmarkt, Anne Frank House, Bloemenmarkt and Spui are 30 minutes away on foot. The rest of the city is easy to reach with two tram lines a block away and several more tram and bus lines a little farther out. My street, like every other street in the neighborhood, has far fewer parking spaces than cars. Fortunately, I don't have a car. Owning a car in Amsterdam would be counterproductive. The trams and buses go everywhere, and someone else has to park them. Better still, Amsterdam is a great city to walk or bike around and get some fresh air.
Where I come from, four floors would be a mansion, but this is a standard-size house. I call it an apartment out of habit. In China, we call apartments houses, for some reason. Even a tiny box in Mong Kok without a kitchen is called a house when it is obviously an apartment. Everyone in Hong Kong lives in a house even though almost everyone lives in an apartment. I make it a point to call every house an apartment. Now, that has carried over to Amsterdam, despite the fact that the Amsterdam apartment is clearly a house. It is pressed up against the two houses on either side, and all of the houses combined might look like a long apartment building from a distance, but each house is self contained. You could completely tear down one house and it would not affect the house next door. I think if you tore out an apartment, the neighbors might notice.
I don't know enough about architecture to say what style it is, but it looks like a canal house, only it is not on a canal and is far newer than the traditional canal houses. New being a relative term. This neighborhood was built in the middle and late 19th century. While the house is over 100 years old, there are plenty of canal houses from the 17th century in Amsterdam. Unlike the traditional canal houses that are each unique, these all look the same and were obviously built at the same time by the same people. If traditional canal houses were originally built for the wealthiest in the city, these houses were probably built for the middle class.
The ground floor of the apartment/house has two front doors, just like every other house in the neighborhood. I was told that the two different entrances are because most of the owners at the time were merchants who used the ground floor as storage and/or shops. That makes sense since every house on the street has a gable with that furniture hook just like a traditional canal house. One door was for customers and deliveries, which were always brought in the front door because houses on canals got their UPS from boats. The other door opens to the hallway/stairway that leads to what they would use as their private residence. Today, some of the houses are divided into apartments. One door leads to the ground floor apartment and the other to the upper apartment. The houses that are not divided simply have two front doors. I suppose it is convenient if you are rushing downstairs to catch the bus in seconds flat.
The main front door opens to a vestibule/hallway with plenty of room for all the coats, hats, boots and umbrellas you need when you live in Amsterdam. From the hallway, there are stairs, one of many closets and two doors. One door leads to a tiny bathroom. The other door leads to a long, open room that covers the entire ground floor. The space is divided into dining room, kitchen and living room, but there are no partitions. The furniture is the only indication that you have gone from one room to another. Had there been a wall between each room, they would all look cramped. The open space makes it look much larger.
The dining room table is next to the two front windows, with views of the houses across the street. The kitchen is essentially up against one wall, but it has every appliance I need and plenty of counter space. An island with a sink and cabinets is the only thing close to a dividing line that separates the rooms. Beyond the kitchen is a long living room. It is narrow, but spacious. Tall French doors open to the surprisingly large backyard. All of the glass on the doors and windows makes the living room look bigger. From the street, each house is narrow and crammed together, but most have long backyards with gardens and patios.
The backyard looks like someone came in and manicured it yesterday. I don't know who takes care of it or how often, but everything is clean and trimmed. The patio furniture is clearly not new, but cleaner than furniture that spends its days outdoors should be. There is another empty storage closet, for some reason, and a separate rack for firewood. There is a working fireplace in the living room, but I was not about to mess with it without any instructions. It is obviously wood burning, but I can't just look at it and tell what kind of ventilation it has or if the flue is clean and open. It was never that cold anyway.
The second floor, which is called the first floor in Amsterdam and most of Europe, can be reached by either the stairway at the front door or another stairway from the other front door. Once up the stairs, there is another hallway that separates the stairs from the rooms. Every floor in the house has walls and doors between hallways and stairs. I assume this is for heating during the winter. It probably also helps with air conditioning during the summer, but this house was built long before air conditioning existed. There are also plenty of walls and doors between all the rooms on every floor except the ground floor, but it looks like there used to be a wall between the kitchen and living room. Someone obviously remodeled the place in the last century.
The second and third floors – or first and second – have pretty much the same floor plan. Stairs/hallway, bedroom facing the back garden, office/extra room facing the street and a bathroom in between. Each of the rooms facing the street has a tiny balcony that can't really do much beyond hold a few potted plants. The bedroom balconies are large enough for a storage closet and small patio furniture. I have no idea why there are closets on the balconies, but this house has closets everywhere.
I chose the bedroom on the third floor because my only roommate, so far, had already chosen the second floor. They are both essentially the same, except my room has an extra flight of stairs to walk up. She turned her front room into a gym, with an exercise bike, all kinds of portable equipment and some kind of machine I have never seen before. I have not decided what to do with my room.
My bathroom is spacious. All of the bathrooms, except the one on the ground floor, were renovated sometime in the last ten years. I get the feeling there used to be more rooms on each floor, but then they knocked down a few walls and made everything bigger. They definitely went bigger with the bathrooms. I doubt they had whirlpool bathtubs, double vanity sinks and showers that could easily hold three or four people in 1880.
The fourth/third floor is smaller than the others. That is where the roof gables out, so there is only a bedroom and bathroom. That bedroom has a sloped ceiling, which is great for lighting, but I chose against it because it is noticeably smaller and does not have that extra room I don't know how to use. I suppose it does not really make any difference since I will only be in the house part time, but as long as I had the option, I went with the better of the two. If we eventually find a roommate who cannot stand the top floor, I will be perfectly happy to switch.
One of my favorite parts of the house, aside from the kitchen, bathroom and backyard, is the roof. Even with the gables, all of the roofs in the neighborhood are flat. Some have nothing on top. A few have solar panels. And some roofs, like ours, have a terrace. Our terrace has a sofa, several tables and chairs, large plants and yet another storage closet. The closet is currently empty and I can't imagine what anyone would store in it. From the roof, we have views of all the other rooftops in the neighborhood. Since every building is the same height, we can see for miles and miles. Unfortunately, there is nothing like the Eiffel Tower in Amsterdam, and St Nicholas Basilica is too far away. If there were no backyard, the roof would be the perfect place to host a barbecue. Maybe some day I can be there on a day without too many clouds so I can watch the sunset.
I have lived in a few places over the years, but this is the first apartment/house I would ever want to buy. The houses where I grew up in Minneapolis were in nice neighborhoods, but too suburban for my tastes. The apartments were always too small, and only available to rent. My first Hong Kong apartment was tiny. The current one is bigger, but it feels more like a model house than a home. It does the job, but I would not want to live here forever. The apartment in Paris was beautiful, but too opulent, and probably far too expensive. Even if I could afford to buy it, I would never want to live in one of the most expensive neighborhoods. I always stayed in a hotel in Tel Aviv, so ownership could never be an option. The Barcelona apartment was nice, and in a lovely neighborhood, but I hated the bathroom. I don't know where I'm going to settle down permanently, eventually, but I could see myself living in Amsterdam – or Paris, Tel Aviv, Minneapolis, or even Hong Kong. The Amsterdam house is the only building, so far, where I could picture raising a family and growing old.
All I need is a steady job, someone to start a family with, a way to convince my friends to move to Amsterdam and enough money to buy a house that is not for sale. I think I might be staying where I am for a while.
Saturday, January 5, 2019
New Year 2019
I came home from Amsterdam just before New Year's Eve. I avoided any New Year celebrations last year because loud noises gave me stabbing headaches, and any celebration in China is going to be loud. I have been to the Tsim Sha Tsui promenade during previous New Years, where the crowds can be louder than the fireworks. It gets ridiculously crowded, but the great thing about Chinese crowds is that no one will pick your pocket or shoot you. But in China, someone is guaranteed to cough in your face. That is why surgical masks were invented.
They always start the fireworks at 23:00, but only in short bursts every 15 minutes. The real show does not begin until midnight. This year, the countdown started sooner than usual. It was like a space shuttle launch where you watch the clock for what feels like hours before it finally gets down to 10. The reason they did this was obvious. As soon as the clock hit 10, the full fireworks started. Naturally, everyone was waiting for 0. Counting down from 10 with fireworks is far more dramatic than counting down while waiting for fireworks. The countdown, after all, was for the clock to strike midnight and a new year to begin. It was not a countdown to fireworks. We are all simply conditioned to wait until midnight for the show to start.
People are usually impressed whenever there are fireworks over Victoria Harbour, but I have always found the Lunar New Year celebrations more elaborate than the Solar New Year. Sometimes they do intricate patterns and displays. This year, it was pretty basic, with mostly bursts shooting off skyscrapers and flares launched from boats. They usually have more boats in the harbour. They might be saving the best for next month. Everyone in Hong Kong recognizes January 1st as the beginning of the year, of course, but the Lunar New Year is a far more important holiday. The crowds get bigger, if that is possible, and the firework shows are more dramatic.
Best of all, 2019 is the year of the pig. According to the Chinese zodiac, this will be a great pig year for me, especially when it comes to career and romance. That is good news, since I took a few hits in the career and romance department in the last couple of years. It specifically says that even working part time will be busier than usual and that my hard work and dedication will get noticed. A hidden path to the future will open up. So that's something. The biggest risk I am supposed to watch out for is reckless driving. I don't like the sound of that.
I don't put any stock in any of it. 2017 was also supposed to be a great year for me, but it turned out to be one of the worst years of my entire life. I'm pretty sure we all get lucky and unlucky from time to time, but we mostly create our own future. If you work hard, you will probably get something out of it. If you sit on the sofa all day, nothing is going to magically change. Name someone you admire. Odds are, they did something with their life by going out and making it happen. Everyone can predict whatever they want. I choose to have a good year.
But I'm still going to be extra cautious on the road. Just in case.
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