KAREN AND VAN GOGH

Today I spent almost the whole evening with Karen.

We decided to meet for a dinner in Mong Kok after she was done with her work. We met in the MTR station and her first words were: First let’s go shopping!

Well… typically hongkongish.

I’ve never been shopping with a local person, it was fun especially because of the shops we visited – Westerners would have probably never bought a single thing there (to me most of the clothes look like pajamas). I found all of that amusing and kept taking pictures of Karen walking around until I was told that it was forbidden to do that there. No one could answer why.

We ate the dinner in Yoshinoya and  kept talking about Tokyo, she just came from there - I received a nice pen, a postcard and some Japanese sweets. It surprised me a lot that in Japan the second most popular language is Mandarin instead of English, at least Karen thinks so.

Late in the evening we loaded a cart with her books and transported them from the hall to her locker near the lecture theatres.

And that was all; few hugs, promises of keeping in touch and wishes of good luck. I’ll miss her a lot, after all that was the best roommate I’ve ever had.

The roommate with whom I’ve been living during the last two weeks is leaving tomorrow and I’m staying alone again. Or maybe someone else is coming? At times all of the changes – places and people – make me feel a bit sick and I’m almost forgetting whom I really am. Perhaps everyone needs some roots to stick to when a whirlwind comes.

I’ve seen Pialat’s ‘Van Gogh’ (1991), it’s an amazing film and I recommend it a lot! It gives an impression of being real – that was the first thought that came to my mind. It feels like if Pialat wanted to show the essence of the artist’s life and focuse on building the atmosphere – dance, village life and jokes play very important role there. The spectator may feel as if she was seeing Van Gogh’s life through her own eyes; it seems to be real and psychologically probable. I really loved it!