Tag: metropolis
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Morning Coffee Talk~ 13/365
‘The morning process’, how the day starts, what sets the tone for the rest of the day, how do we arm ourselves to handle what is planning to meet us on that day? For me, this time just upon waking is the most important of all. Do you ever feel that you travelled to unknown…
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I just love Berlin~
Vibrant, colorful, artful, tolerant, cosmopolitan, reasonable, creative, culinary, interesting… some words that pop in my mind when I reflect on Berlin. Few days were just a teaser for me and they just tug at me to visit again and again. What a city!
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The Bund~ Before the Day Begins
There is a great magic to seeing a place at sunrise, before the rush of day clouds it. Early in the morning, there is a bliss that relaxes the faces of early risers, as though they are reminded that there is still magic in life, how can there not be? Light colors the sky as…
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The urban flow~ Shanghai
Big cities have this way of resembling beehives, busy, constantly moving. Most of these urban centers are jarring, fast, harsh, noisy, and unforgiving to all that is slow. Not Shanghai. Shanghai has a gentle flow about it, where people just glide by on their bicycles, slow enough to examine life around them and nod with…
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Modernization at any cost
Shanghai, the pride of China, races towards its future, bejeweled with glitzy sky scrapers, glowing with billions of energy consuming lights, employing the largest work force in the world, day and night, 7 days a week and waiting for no one to be ready for this epic change. In neighborhoods like this one, people are…
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At certain speeds the world becomes gentler
For those of us who live in big cities, life can be overwhelmingly abrasive. The speeds we are forced to run at, the massive amount or impressions we need to process on a daily basis, the number of people we meet and pass by, the so many obstacles we have to navigate around to get…
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Motion and the city
I was born in a small village in Lebanon’s north. I saw almost the same faces every day and I knew that nothing was meant to stir after nightfall when we and the village slept. As peaceful as this might sound, it irked me greatly and I longed for movement, for change, for a world…
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Day 2~ July 2nd~ Vietnam
While I was living in New York City a few years back, I heard a story from a friend about eyes that stayed with me since. She said that a native American man came to the city once and realized how hard and unnatural the streets are on the human eyes. He explained that people…
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Day Two Hundred Sixty Nine, October 18, 2011
Living in this giant expanding metropolis, we sometimes forget how impressive its rapid growth is, until someone visits and we play the role of tour guide only to rediscover and be awed again and again by the speed at which the future is catching up with Shanghai. Everywhere you look, new construction sites are mushrooming…
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Day One Hundred Sixteen, July 26, 2011
Shanghai, a city of soaring steel, a Gotham of Asia, a place that races to stamp it’s place in the modern world as a mighty metropolis and uses every resource it has to fulfill its visions of greatness. Every day of the week, of moment of the day and night, workers toil to add more…