beads and beats

Yesterday was wonderfully productive. We took the ferry over to Lamma Island (again) which I originally introduced in this post. It was just as beautiful the second time, and this time we were on a mission! Fumbling round on the internet for a map of Lamma a few days ago, I found a website for a lady who offers glass classes on the island. Bowls and figurines and lead lighting are some of her other classes, but we opted for glass bead making.

  

Without any real street names or maps, Lamma is hard enough to find your way around, letalone when you are searching for an address that is just a number and the name of one side of the entire island. Just when we thought we were on the right street we found a number 63, then an abandoned shed, then a number 69. The address we got was “top floor, 65”. It was amusing for a moment, before we realised we had no idea where to go. Asked four different people for directions and finally found out that we were in the wrong place. Once we got on track and climbed our way through the terraced warren of 3-level housing buildings, we stumbled onto the place we were looking for. Ascending the staircase I noticed empty tins of cat food all over the place, and before I noticed the hairs collecting on my shoes, the smell of cat completely filled my noise and almost halted me. Once you get past the feline introduction (made even stranger by the fact that I could not see any cats) you round the corner into a small studio. It is wonderful.

Here's one I prepared earlier.

A small bathroom, room for a fridge, and tables and chairs and materials. A massive balcony the same size as the indoor area overlooks the breathtaking seaside views that Lamma is blessed with. It is an artists’ dream. I can imagine Hemingway writing here, my mother painting here, this old cat lady making beads here. It so perfect it’s almost stereotypical. Anyways, making the beads was great too. It took us two whole hours to make four beads, though, so next time I look at an entire necklace of glass beads I will certainly have a lot more respect. I am not so great at this new artistic medium, but I would be totally keen to make a bowl or lamp – something bigger. The glass looks like candy and it’s all about colour. We very much enjoyed the artistic process.

Moving on, we had the best vegetarian burgers of our lives, and then caught the ferry back to central just in time to catch the train to the Hong Kong Arena to see Eric Clapton!!!

HELL YEAH ERIC CLAPTON

He was insanely good – off the charts good – rocked my world good – I’m going to the record store and buying his entire discography good. Very very good. The funniest part was probably when all of the more mature (read: older (read: old) ) audience members got up and started dancing quite funnily (read: badly) in their tie-dye pants and waist-length grey hair and circle sunnies. I hope I still love my favourite musicians that much in a hundred years time. They did Eric proud, they certainly did.