{"id":1545,"date":"2012-04-18T00:22:40","date_gmt":"2012-04-18T08:22:40","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/libidot.org\/blog\/?p=1545"},"modified":"2012-04-18T00:22:40","modified_gmt":"2012-04-18T08:22:40","slug":"a-new-phase-in-life","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/?p=1545","title":{"rendered":"A New Phase in Life"},"content":{"rendered":"

I still live in Tai Wai but have moved to a building called Festival City, Phase II.<\/strong> This brandnew maximum-security residential complex is nick-named “the shield”\u00a0 because it is shaped like a\u00a0tall weapon that cuts right through the urban environment.\u00a0 It\u00a0was built in three “phases”\u00a0and the last one is still under construction. Each phase consists of\u00a05 huge apartment blocks, each stacked with 50 floors\u00a0of bright and clean apartments , with 4 apartments on each floor.<\/p>\n

It could now become a question on the analytical skills\u00a0section of the\u00a0Hong Kong college entrance exam–given that each apartment holds an average of 3 dwellers, how many apartment dwellers can we find in the Festival City? And then: How are those dwellers\u00a0going to interact with each other, if at all, those who paid an arm and a leg to rent or purchase\u00a0one the highly overprized little cubicles ?<\/em> (The essay question)<\/p>\n

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We\u00a0moved here\u00a0three weeks ago and will report on private whereabouts and the social affect of futuristic high-rise culture. I start with a\u00a0glorious view from the living room.\u00a0I have previously shared dark thoughts about living in Hong Kong’s dense highrise buildings and imaging the sex lives of others–how it is perhaps even futile or impossible to cross the boundary to grasp other\u00a0people, other\u00a0bodies, other races.<\/p>\n

I am reminded of a talk by Trinh T. Minh Ha \u00a0from her book “Elsewhere, Within Here: Immigration, Refugeeism and the Boundary Event,” where she describes “the boundary event” as a process of self-torture where you try to cross over to another culture and confront\u00a0an obstacle like a big wall.\u00a0This wall may become a mental fixation and determines life expectations and moods. Then sometimes it is simply the case that you have not realized that\u00a0you are already living on the other side.<\/em> This is how I feel about myself and the Festival City. I definitely cannot imagine that I live here, but somehow it is true.<\/p>\n

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I still live in Tai Wai but have moved to a building called Festival City, Phase II. This brandnew maximum-security residential complex is nick-named “the shield”\u00a0 because it is shaped like a\u00a0tall weapon that cuts right through the urban environment.\u00a0 It\u00a0was built in three “phases”\u00a0and the last one is still under construction. Each phase consists… Continue reading A New Phase in Life<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,7,13],"tags":[25],"class_list":["post-1545","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-announcement","category-research-proceedings","category-travels","tag-hong-kong","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1545"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1545\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1545"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1545"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/libidot.org\/wp\/wordpress\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1545"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}