I attended an interesting summit held by Modernmedia last Friday. The key topic was creativity in products.

The first speaker was the CEO from Tim Thom, a French designing company. He emphasized the importance of telling a love story about your product, and turn it into a best seller: unique, exellent and innovative. The design should be more than the technology but the usage, the simpler, the better.

Then came the second speaker, Pete Heskett from BBH Consulting, also brought up the topic on how to innovate. Comparing to Tim Thom, Pete is a brave and structured thinker, who believed that innovation came from the attitude and approach rather than a flash of genius. He also encouraged borderless thinking.

Later moguls from well-known IT giants from Lenovo to Sony Ericsson gathered at a panel discussion. When the host asked what would be the most desirable item on the screen where it showed: A) a Sony Ericsson cell phone B) a Samsang MP3 C) an intellegent computer D) a yoga computer E)Ming (Motorola cell phone). CEO from Tim Thom wrote a question mark on his paper board, indicating it would always be the next product he desired as a cool product.

The speech given by the CEO of Google China was brilliant, and allow me to say that Li Kai fu was a seasoned and charming speaker. He was more than a manager, instead, he became the image of Google China, the voice of Google China. It was even funny when Kaifu mentioned that he dare not be creative since if he told his staff his opnions his employees would start following him but not coming up with their own creative ideas. So all he did was to create a creative environment and shut up.

"I love this, my favorite." He would say with the momentary passion, sincerely.
"Really?" She questioned as she always did, not believing and not making the conversation float, lazily.

She was lazy, always tired, charmingly effortless in anything she did, like a furry cat. Carelessly she watched him, the cranky, emotional kid inside his body, the need to be spoiled and put up with, she snorted in denial.

In the darkness of the bedroom, where they had sweated and hugged like two lovers before death, he was content in his frustration, drown in the easiness of zero, no hill to climb for our lion, down as the hellish summer silence, his soaked pores sour. She heard it hollowing in front of the air she breathed in, a world of frown and neck aches. He remembered to dump the rubbish can; she nodded to thank him, struggling to focus on the rightness as a girlfriend whose life was to ice the bad habbits of a man. She wanted to spit, with all the distain as the normality.

Weak as a person who only traveled on foot, she rested her head on her curved knees, winking at the weight of her thoughts, the drunkness coming to catch up, lightening a night and inviting the fire.

She busied herself in the livingroom, giving up with the thought of comforting her turbulent mind. She felt tasteless, all alone, like food forgotten the salt, flat and cheap.

But for that moment she was fed with the extreme niddles of fear, when he spun her upside-down, grabbing her feet as if she's not an existing creature, as light as a feather. She resisted with little shrieks from her mouth, then screamed in red, realistic fears, her heart squeezed into a messy gesture of a writer's paper, wrong and full with wronged pollywogs. Stolen a way of behaving like a human, you were quivering in shock, on the red red couch, a favorite color to die for. She did not move until the fear mortified in otherwise giddiness. She moved up, feeling like using a bathroom, in an imagination of flushing a toilet with her waxed private area, the fluid tripping like a mastered plan. Shaking shaking shaking.

Started to like MSN as one can upload as many pics as they like. Here is the new address for the new blog:

http://spaces.msn.com/mamengyao/

My new job requires me to attend as many hell-bent events as possible as all insiders know it is the doohickey of how business rolls ahead in Beijing--the quality of guanxi and the quantity of acquaintances. Despite the intricacy in the variety of events, I became more of a bitter feminist after years spent studying the social species in the international circle.

Last week I was all dressed up at a weekend cocktail of some sort of a Chamber thing. The dim light tapered my wee eagerness to brush elbows, and the grey and black suited and skirted throng made me suffer with the urge to cry. For a silent minute I keened for some bright color among my peers, so that I didn't look like a peacock bimbo. Damn!

Until finally I was introduced to some mid-age lawyer, an overseas born Chinese woman. Since there was not much business talk to invent in my head as: 1) I was an idiot on the attorneyhood and the only thing I did to gen up some knowledge was to watch Ally Mckbeal; 2) I wasn't planning to ruin my intriguing saucy style by sounding like an idiot in front of a serious-faced ABC.

So I started this way, "So how do you like your life in Beijing?"
"It's okay." She answered briefly and calmly.
"How long have you been living here?"
"Two years." Brief answer without a dip for a further expression.
"So do you like to go out?" I heard myself having short breathes.
"When I have time." She rolled her eyes, but not blinking.
"So you like to cook?" My head somehow stopped working and I started stupid questions, trapped.
"Well when I have time." She kept the eye rolling.
"Travel a lot?" Heart attack heart attack!!!
"When I have-- oh I do travel on business sometimes." She rubbed her upper lip with a napkin, as if to scrub off the first part of her sentence.

Then later this week, I was summoned by a friend who had an event emergency for the shortage of attendees. Dropping the dishes I was about to enjoy on a private evening I jumped in my dress and thundered to the venue, only to find the speaker was a familiar (yes, once again to highlight the fact that we were living in a small world), who had a bad reputation of his manhood in the dating climate of Beijing. I wondered suddenly why the hell the fast-changing city had to always recycle the stinky trash instead of saving some room for the newcomers.

What an eyesore to tolerate! When the speaker was whooshing his arms up and down like a police stopping the traffic, playing his game with phoney smile and pracitsed humor, my peer and I were staring at each other blankly, unsure to swallow or just puke the yck out on his face.

Twenty minutes of schmoozing was right after the speech, a Chinese version of the "Postmodern Sleaze" replaying. My girl friend secured me from some possible bad behaviors of showing my disdain on "Oh you look so familiar! Have we met?" and frenzy of name cards exchanging.

We finally perched on a night club couch, laughing away the dreaded evening. The band was great and we stimulated the dancing muscles of the shy teens by jumping on the empty stage first . And yes we were a group of nuts playing teenage fun on adult checks.

Wish my Beijing had more to offer.

Raining in the Fire

We cosmo creatures don't know how to deal with the rain. We only get out to feel the liveness of wet grass. My black sneakers were jazzed on the top of green, fresh by the tearing summer sky. Steeled souls, are very much chained in this vanity city, where nature and beauty is rarely apprecited, where fate is roomed on face value.

I am not talking; I have lost my mouth. My tongue is cut into pieces, and my giddy nerves, giving away to the energy waiting for a good burn. A cage, a concrete bubble, a humiliated console, a wide, suffocating web, a bruised faithless can. Here you are so unreal, so high with your own sacred thoughts, so holly with your loneliness, so light being someone that is none.

Cease fighting against yourself, no matter how hard it gets to the real. The result must be shocking, in the end you are your runninng figures on a computer keyboard. Flow me, float my thoughts, turn me into Muriel Spark, yet not quite. Women, the magical word, your language kills.

The day you lose yourself entirely, you scoop up the world. Afraid the moment would come; afraid it never comes. Right and wrong, good lesbian lovers, till death do they apart. We are so trapped, in a game we mean and a way we rain. Life is big, wild with the infinite and yet tiny with human sins.

Looking and keep searching, how would your life just immerce in rain? Sentences already broken into sparks of your fire, hotty warm, like the modena depth of a womb. You do not give a shit of how they civilize you, how they reason the demons in you; you are only a floating river, your salt melting into the big sea, where you ever belonged.

Yellowed memories, still haunting, became certain color you avoid. You are fear yourself, trying to tame the uneasy wolf. At night, they haunt, and you are not an ordinary creature.

A friend and I travelled long way to HartSalon 798 for the longing play of Vagina Monologue, which was played by two Britishes and one American gal and an African-American. The place was cool although it's a bit hard to see what's going on as seats were on the same level except those in the back, and the actors were using the stage floor a lot to convey hot love making. I enjoyed it at the beginning, then got a bit uneasy as my friend found it too much fight and too much bloody kissing and cuddling, and fibbling on bed, and she left early, and the American guy beside me was approaching closer to me to get a clearer view, which, annoyed me to certain extent. I spilt my beer on his seat pretending it was a "opps" accident and thank god he moved his bulk.

I loved the script, the dialogues, the confusion of being a woman in a relationship, and the womanhood itself. The complex of the love scene has always interested me and it churned the waves of my river when they showed that love died in a relationship, in being too close, in the loss of the lost. Hardly using any word, the sorrow was there communicating a whole. I felt like crying, felt like letting out the sorrow, felt like jumping on the stage and screaming.

But the play was a bit dry without a depth it should have had. Didn't mean it was no good. In fact I think they did it quite well and they put tons of energy in making it perfect. But there was too much acting in it, in the way they screamed, laughed and fighted. And honestly I would have enjoyed it better when the actors' appearance and outfits could match better with the story. Guess they showed us their version of the monologue as they were only in their early twenties.

Well I didn't manage to stick to the end either as my feelings got thicker and the play gradually weaned me out of my emotions by its lack of tensity. So I walked out during the break. Strolling along 798 in the early evening, feeling a bit wan with emotions squeezing my chest, I suddenly wanted to write my own play or play it even by myself. I felt I could do it, and I felt I had it in me already--I had felt it or experienced it in the past.

I perhaps would call it "Fish with wings" or "Hairy".

Lonely night, crowed with too many thoughts of love.

She didn't quite remember how it happened. She remembered she was walking home in her summer saddles, a new pair in brown, and SOHO in the night was beautiful, upheaving itself towards the soft wind. It smelt summer already; she saw gals giggling with their young love outside on the bench and, chairs, tables and people were laid outdoor to welcome the romantic summer. All seemed perfect among the concrete CBD except that she needed to get laid.

Her neck was hurt, that kind of hurtness that blew her a dreaded feel as if she had got numberless little tumors in the veins planted inside her long-suffering neck, annoyingly angering her. I want to be healthy---there are so many things to do, she yelled with a coldly disdainful front. She yelled again.

Then suddenly, she was in a movie, in a life project, in a dead code. She saw herself walking fancy walk on the street, people around numb-faced, the entire world mercied into black and white. She was floating, given a power to see the truth, that moment short but immortal, that she sensed her death and undying soul.

How silly people were dining in the restaurant, transparent confusion through the huge openly desired windows, and single pretty women were alone somehow, so hollow and proud, all the truth missing. She's deadly dead, you see. She's not a spolied writer any more.

Loss, and limited space, and the heavy air, all had taken her over. She's yelling somehow. She's dead. And she's a ghost in June.

Single gals night at a friend's place, a vegetarian feast for four. Considering that my girl friend had never yet cooked for any of her peers in Beijing and her ability to make dishes as her flair of steering a tank, the food was surprisingly original and tasty. The other two gals, at their early twenties, however did a lot of non-vegetarian chats about the sleazy rich Chinese men and their contrived wives. Here is a story to share:

The American gal had a Chinese student who was rich and married to a pretty woman, but the wife was from some place in Hehan and unfortunately her educational portfolio was not as lucky as her look, built up by piles of mingpai. This American gal even saw this woman teaching her daughter how to squat on the toilet!

Another gal commented: "You can take those people out of China, but you cannot take China out of them!" Which is very true. As we are around by more and more rich people we hear more and more funny stories about how they show off their filthy richness by making themselves a big fool in public.

Then the topic inevitably was switched to the dirty Chinese men, those ones who had got money to burn. They have lovers, and they buy women. Bizarrely they are not afraid to blurb it as a trophy. And their wives are left home frustrated with financial security.

Speaking of why Chinese men suck ten reasons were listed last night at the table:

They are sexually frustrated but educated, and very bad in bed;
They have more sick porns than sexual partners;
They snore and spit;
They smell;
They have bad manners with women;
They think they are superior to women;
They are so spoiled and show no respect to their parents;
They don't know how to talk and be interesting;
They are very bad in bed;
Did I mention that they were very bad in bed?

Well here you go!

Thursady afternoon, the third TBJ Restaurant Award kicked off at the Champagne Bar, which as rumor runs is an okay copy of the urbanly hot Centro. So out went this charmed free bird, to find herself embroiled in a flurry of catchups among TBJ teams and old clients.

I was offered ASC wine, tasting good although I secretly wished for Champagne. The first lady waved me over was an old colleague, who quit right after a couple of months of slavery at TBJ and likes to introduce herself as the girlfriend of certain name. With a "hello" missing in her prelude immediately she launched her missile: "So where are you working now?" I grabbed my glass of wine, saying in a jokish way to her: "Hey, relax, don't be so aggressive." She felt a bit embrassed by showing her curiosity in such an egar, restless way, and changed her way of asking: "So are you happy now?" "Very," I said shortly, and helloed the woman standing next to her. As this "girlfriend" lady had curled her hair, glassed her face, and donned a beige suit, she looked a lot feminine, in an uptight professional way, still. I praised her change and she did her bits to me. Out of too many strains and too few topic, she somehow blurted: "Why don't you go mingle? There are a lot hot single guys in the crowd!" I gave her a look, and she made up her mess like this: "I mean, a lot business potentials." Funny little uptight business woman, what is your problem? I winked at her, and it suddenly occured to me that some people they don't change, even the environments around them have changed, but they don't change for happiness and fun. They are so tied up in their own meanness to compare to make others feel bitter, and their belief in the meaning of life is so limited and small. Perhaps it's just a picture for their unhappiness. Well, if I used my girlfriend W's famous phrase, it'd be: "Hey what the fuck? Have more sex man and stop finding fault with me!"

Jon and Gabbie have got a house that make you ache with desire. And they throw fabulous BBQ parties as long as Beijing begins its spring thaw. Fredrik has been calling them my "BBQ friends" as to emphasize how yummy their food was, especially Jon's BBQ sauce, exoticly stimulating to the tongues.

Their assistant and Ayi, a twenty-five year old from a small town, but already mothering her child. She's a tad cute when she scrutinized with two big, winking eyes, a pair of beautiful eyes that give both wonders and shyness. Jonathon refuses to call her Ayi, as the original purpose to hire xiao luo (her name) was to help him with the screen talks. And she also helps clean the house when there's not much talks to do. She grew fast, and kept changing her hair style as a proof of being among movie-stars and hip fashionists. Did she just dye it into a flaming color last time I saw her? Did Jon just tell us that she's divorcing her hubby? Well good girl.

Now that I have had an Ayi of my own, an Ayi who speaks rather loud in her southern accent. She's even louder when I shook my head not able to understand her accent, and she urged me to water the plants no more with funny seriousness on her face. On the first day she came to clean the apartment, I was cooking chicken soup and she immediately furrowed at my masterpiece: "Is this the way you cook chicken? The color shouldn't have been so dark and oily!" But I love her. And she's honest and bizarre, and quite smart in reading my mind.

I also have a Taiwanese girl friend, who put one hundred kuai in the drawer to test her Ayi. Of course the Ayi didn't foolishly mistook the money as some toilet paper which she could randomly wrap in her pocket, so for sure the next day the Ayi was awarded with my girl friend's apartment key.