A Week To Remember

Damn! This was a hard week on Lisa and I physically and emotionally. Last Friday we took our two dogs for a routine grooming. I was working hard on a new L'Oreal commercial when I got a call saying our little chiuahua, Chiquita, had to be rushed to the hospital because she had a massive seizure. She was treated and stabilized by the time I was able to get off work and everything seemed to be under control. The next morning I was working on Stephen Fung's short film when I got a call from the vet saying that Chiquita had another seizure and the medication they used to control it had made her stop breathing. They were saving her as I rushed into the clinic. She was in dire condition and looked like she was not going to make it. My heart was broken because she is the most adorable little dog in the world and I felt horrible because there was nothing we could do. They were able to revive her but she was in a deep coma which she did not seem to be coming out of. Normally, most dogs wake up after 5-6 hours but Chiquita was still comatose after 12.
The next day was the hardest. I was working on a Canon commercial and could not get away at all. My thoughts were on the little one all day. Lisa had called in the afternoon informing me that she did not seem responsive and there was a possibility that she might wake up at all. If that was the case, we needed to decide in the next 24 hours to put her down. Again, we were totally devastated. Being confronted with making that call was hard to swallow. I told Lisa to keep her hopes up and wait till we were both finished with work late that evening to decide. I tried to keep strong for Lisa and Chiquita but it was hard not to shed a few tears in my dressing room during lunch. I finished the job and rushed back out to the clinic. It was not a good sight. She was lying on the table still in a coma and "paddling". This is an involuntary movement of the legs, that mimics swimming. They said she had been doing it every hour for the 10 mintues or so and then would go back into the coma.
Not knowing what else to do, I remembered a Qi Gong techinique that I was taught as a teenager to help my mother when she had an aneurysm around 15 years ago. I did the Qi Gong for two hours while I waited for Lisa to get off work. Just as Lisa arrived, Chiquita suddenly lifted her head. It was a crazy moment because I wasn't sure if it was an involuntary movement or was she actually trying to wake up. Over the next two hours she tried to move two more times. We were so relieved that she was coming out of her sleep! To think we almost put her down! We went home exhausted but excited to see the improvement in her condition. Over the next day I visited her a few more times and she got better and better each time. Now she is in stable condition with normal stats. She is blind, which may be caused by slight brain damage from the seizures but she may regain her sight over time. She is still in the hospital and will remain till we can get Hong Kong's only animal neurologist to examine her.
I must say this experience was extremely difficult on Lisa and I. It would have been much less stressful if we weren't so busy working. Hopefully we are though the hardest part and can now focus on how we can keep this from happening again. What a week!

Rivers of Suzhou

I've been in Suzhou for the past few days finishing up my last days on the movie Shinjuku Incident. Three months in Japan and the past few days out here in Suzhou have really made this project a serious adventure.
Today I had the day off so I went to check out the "Ancient town of Tong Li". Suzhou has been called the Venice of the Orient because of the numerous rivers and canal that wind through the town. The remains of snow from the severe winter storm that hit last month, made the scenery extra pleasant.
Other than the canals, Suzhou is famous for it's gardens. They are so famous that UNESCO has named Suzhou a world heritage site. That's a good thing because with China's rapid growth, places like this are rapidly disappearing due to greedy developers.

In ten years, scenes like this and old school people like this will probably no longer exist. Sad but these are the harsh realities of modernization and Westernization. Check out that sewing machine!
Had tea in the Southern Garden Tea house. Built in 1898 this place made me feel like Wong Fei Hong from Once Upon a Time in China.

Drank the famous Bi Lu Chun green tea and admired the view of the river below as they did back in the day. Bi Lou Chun is famous in the region and has a flavor that is heavier than most green teas but still equally as refreshing.

And since sex has been such a hot topic in the HK entertainment world recently....
For some reason in Tong Li Town there is an "Ancient China Sex Museum". A few years ago, I stumbled across the Shanghai Sex Museum and found it pretty interesting. Since then I been to the one in Paris, New York San Francisco and now Suzhou. Suzhou is the biggest with tons of art and paraphernalia charting the history of sex in Chinese culture.

There are captions for everything but the English translations are pretty hilarious.

This speaks for itself.

The caption for this said it was a nun's pillow with special compartment. Must be for those lonely nights in the monastary. I wonder if the nun who developed the Wing Chun Kung Fu style had one of these.

I thought this was a Buddhist swastika but upon closer look, I noticed the text was in German. Must have been a Nazi pervert who drew it.

Now if that's not graphic, I don't know what is! So my question is, if sex has been part of Chinese culture for thousands of years, why is it such a taboo subject now?
Tomorrow is my last day on the film and in Suzhou. Suzhou is a beautiful place and I'm glad we got to wrap it up here. What's next?.....I have yet to figure that out.

VOTE!

When I was younger, I used to think that politics and government didn't really concern me. A bunch of guys in suits rambling semantics about policy and stuff I didn't care about. But as I got older, I realized how naive I was. If you want to advocate change in this world you have to get involved, and that's politics. If you don't vote, assholes like Bush get into office and fuck the world up. If you don't vote, our medical system will fail. If you don't vote, we fight wars based on lies and thousands of Americans die.
America has never had a worse image problem and we can blame that on the way the politics game is being played now.
I've finally made my decision for '08 and I'm voting for Obama and I'm proud to say that I have just joined his support team. I firmly believe that he will be the one to shake things up for the better, which is exactly what our country needs at the moment. Someone to change the rules for the better. Watch the video above to see some more reasons why I'm for Barack. I wish I knew as much as the guy in the video.
For more info check out this site:
www.asianamericansforobama.com
or this one:
www.barackobama.com

Rats!

Hope the Rat year is filled with lots of cheese for everybody. Spent the Chinese New Year in Beijing hanging out with Cousin Martin and some old friends. On New Year's eve, we went out to a friends house in the out skirts of Beijing, very close to where I shot The Banquet. We went out on the frozen river to shoot off fireworks. I didn't know you could buy fireworks this big. It was insane. Since we were a bunch of naughty guys, there was no order to lighting them off. Midnight came and everyone went crazy. There were so many going off at once it felt like a war or something. Now that I think about it, it was kind of dangerous, but when the hell are fireworks ever safe? Anyway, it was a fun and exciting ten minutes of chaos and I'm happy to have made it out alive and with all my fingers. Check out the video I shot above.
Also went to check out the famous "Bird's Nest" Olympic stadium as well as the Aquatics building. Pretty amazing and beautiful structures. Didn't get a shot of the Aquatics building because they shut down the lights just as I was getting my camera. But I must say it looks awesome as a giant glowing blue block at night.