Tuesday, June 16, 2009

Part 5 - acid attacks & diplomatic immunity

Shane,

Wow! I must admit I've become very caught up in this ridiculous murder/ love mystery.

First - I figured I should tell you a bit about what I've been doing while in hong kong, and I thought it should be time for some anecdotes. I met with one of the professors at one of the big universities here the other day; a sort of 'shoot the shit' session, and he showed me around his students' thesis shows. I've been interested in purusing the Hong Kong art scene, which is very small. And it's reflected by how small their MFA programme is; they only accept between 2 and 4 people a year! Everyone is fully funded of course. We also got into an interesting discussion about the different aesthetics espoused in various East Asian countries; with hong kong artists falling into an interesting sort of interstitial space due to their recent history; definitely not looking like art from the Mainland, which has a very specific, flashy, over-the top extravagance (as I'm sure you've noticed from the various art fairs etc), and very different from say, artists in singapore, where the government actually end up being fairly controlling of what images are seen by the public, so the artists end up reading quite a fair amount of theory and create works that are conceptually more poignant then they are visually aligned with say, artists in China.

OH! And there's a serial acid dropper. 3rd attack in a year - the culprit has been dropping acid from a height into crowds of shoppers, and has injured several of them. Totally random acts of violence, check it out:
http://www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1903746,00.html

And speaking of murders, there was a murder in the next neighbourhood over. A woman was knifed to death in her own home, probably by her live-in domestic helper.

But, back to our dear Rowan. I'm actually quite bummed I missed out on the murder scene. All I got in my 5 pages was a protracted conversation between Rowan and Matt Cater - I'm pretty sure that's where our love interest will be coming from. Basically in the aftermath of the murder scene, the detectives attempt to interview everyone, but the Russian diplomat claims diplomatic immunity and storms off, while Aunt Lucy apparently takes her bedroom in hysterics. Rowan feels alone and bewildered, prompting Matt to sit down next to her, where he reveals more of the complicated social dynamics that you've begun to tap into. He basically says that Rowan has a led a fairly sheltered life, and life with her aunt is much more complicated, and thus may feel more comfortable back in her own environment. This was not something our dear Rowan took to kindly - our lady has been engaged, been to parties and traveled, and will not be spoken to in such a manner! They make up however, when Matt agrees to take her to the Tibetan museum the next day. Matt also reveals that there Reshevsky and Lucy are an item, and that he is only interested in her aunt as a friend, and professionally (what on earth he does however, is still beyond me. Is he a greenhouse specialist???).

Oh, and I was really quite excited when I thought I had spotted a spelling mistake that neither our writer, editor nor the owner of the blue pen, was able to catch. But it turned out it was merely the difference between the British and American spelling of 'stor(e)y' - as referring to the horizontal section of a building.

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