ZOUNDS!

it's been unforgivably long since i wrote an update, but i wanted to announce to y'all that i've embarked on a brand new adventure: i'm now the CMO (Chief Marketing Officer) of a biotech company (HK's ONLY biotech company, i might add), Filligent. i joined it after learning that it had invented a CIGARETTE FILTER WHICH ELIMINATES CARCINOGENS FROM CIGARETTE SMOKE without affecting any aspect of the smoking experience (taste, draw, pressure, nicotine!, humidity, etc.) crazily, but, as usual in the pinball machine of my life, i met the CEO and founder, in october, when, after 6 years of research, they were ready to launch this technology! anyway, there's only one term to describe this dramatic life change: ZOUNDS! i'm loving every minute because i'm learning huge amounts. on top of that, i changed career, because i wanted to make more of an impact on everyday people.

btw, i WILL BE SPEARHEADING THE LAUNCH OF AN ANTI-POLLUTION WEBSITE FOR HK SOON. we are meeting with the Civic Exchange Air Quality Concerned Citizens Group, founded by Christine Loh ( http://www.civic-exchange.org/eng/), after CNY, and already have the blessing and enthusiasm of professor anthony hedley, head of the public health department at HKU. Dr. Hedley recently launched HK's most sophisticated real-time pollution index and advises the WHO on pollution standards. http://hedleyindex.sph.hku.hk/pollution/graph.php

it's great to be much more than an armchair activist these days!

on other fronts, i'm still working hard on Ooi Botos Gallery. and in fact, we just mounted a new show called Chinese Carnival, featuring hallucinatory, digitally recomposed pictures from a beijing-based artistic duo. anyway, please check it out soon, virtually, or in the flesh. respectively, www.ooibotos.com  or 5 Gresson Street (at 88 Queen's Road Eastel lik). Since the art market is tanking quite seriously right now, my partner and i recently made the decision to take the gallery in a much more extreme direction by representing artists whose work is much more controversial and difficult. why NOT? since we're not going to sell loads of art this year, we may as well take risks that would be impossible during healthier times. this isn't a strategy that would work in most industries, but it makes a lot of sense in the art world. anyway, watch this space for periodic updates on the crazies i bring into town! insofar as art is concerned, i'm welcoming the economic downturn, because it will winnow away the chaff from the wheat, FINALLY!

as for new year's resolutions: i've decided to work less, pursue many things outside work, such as READING and WRITING. but, most important, i hope to spend more time with Sam, my son. so far, it's working.  look, i finally got to update my blog, didn't i? (i'll update my profile later. i hope patrick will allow me to add a new vocation to the list at AnD -- something like "cultural instigator", since i can no longer claim the title of "designer". for that matter,i hope he won't kick me off the site. this is one case where nepotism could be useful, for once. ha!)