Picked up Mikiro’s new ride over the weekend. Riding to the store everyday is now a bit more fun for him. Shanghai will be rainning for a week though, so I doubt we’ll ride together this week.

By way of Twitter, I came across this little design piece from Japan.
Bicycle Snack designed by STORE MUU design studio. Wouldn’t that be nice to have around the city streets?
I’m sure this will be put into good use.

Source: shibuya246.com

The boys at REMIX Taipei are at it again. This summer, they are again partnering with dance battle tournament BATTLE OF THE YEAR to celebrate the respected tournament’s 20th anniversary. Much like last year and the year before, REMIX will be coming out with a BOTY capsule, but this year, there will be more items in the capsule titled “BATTLE FOR LIFE”. Products or no products, REMIX is still one of the strongest street culture supporters in Taiwan. Hands down.

After seeing all the recent “licensed” products put out there, is hard for me not to see everything in terms of “licensing opportunities”, due to what we do as a business. I don’t know how it is in different countries, but in Shanghai China, all the ads shown BEFORE the movie were playing on the whole “transformation” theme, EVEN KFC!! They had their Drinking Cups turned into “transformers” and danced about the store… I was like “What da hell is this??” Hmm.. $$$.

The Transformers movie is a good flick, that I’ll say.
However, I also saw how this business has geared this once cartoon/toy-related story towards a much older crowd. Targeting people who saw Transformers when they were young, and not so much the kids of today. What’s with all the mature content and play of language? If I remember correctly, the words “son of a bitch” came out at least twice from ROBOTS. Well, you know where I’m going with this. Anyways. Nothing wrong with it, just saying it is geared towards a different crowd than before.

Back to my occupational habbit thing, every character I was in the movie, to me, was an excuse for new products. Nicley played by Hasbro! haha

Before going to the TRANSFORMERS 2 movie, while waiting for friends to arrive, I walked into Toys’r Us to see what merchandises have already came out related to the movie. Occupational habbit, you know. I saw THIS toy, and only then did I know AUDI’s R8 was involved with the movie. I was looking forward to seeing the car/character, seems like a cool automobile to get “transformed”.

2 minutes into the flick, saw the R8, 20 seconds later, it got sliced into 2 pieces, and end of story. I went “Huh?!” My own conclusion: Audi didn’t pay enough.

Enough money talk.
Apart from the machines, I’m sure most eye balls were on Megan Fox.

Oh com’on, you knew I was gonna mention Megan Fox in this post!
How can I not?!

Flying Förtress will be having his solo exhibition at Genuine Artikle Gallery in Lake Ronkonkoma / NY in July. Opening on July 18th 2009. Make sure you go check out our friend’s work if you are in town then.  If you collect our TEDDY TROOPS, then I’m sure you will love his works!

The last meeting before Taipei Toy Fest products roll out the magic factory.
New samples were waiting for us upon our arrival, and I was made a happy man.
While the Mini-G project was blogged before, not all variants were shown. Frankly, even I haven’t seen the whole line’s samples. yup. Timing is that tight.
Today I saw the one designed by Victor aka Marka27.
First time working with Victor and he gave us a colorful mind of his creative mind.

Went to Red Dot after work, as luck would have it, they were catering to a group of Indian clients tonite at the resturant, so an Indian chef was hired for the evening to prepare the special meal. Tandoori Chicken was on the menu, and I was given a taste. Yummmmy…. Ok, next week, back to Masala Art I go! Ok, why am I obessing with Indian food this 2 weeks?? Hey, good eats are good eats!

Dragon Dance Studio hosted CIRCLE2.0, an underground battle, at Guandi last weekend. We were invited by Yuan of Chairman who was one of the collaborators for the event. It was a packed venue, but the event was much shorter than I’d imagined. We were off to the next spot within 2hrs.

Hopped over to Ms C.’s birthday gathering. Hope she had a good time as we partied til 5am. I walked home after that, the venue was quite close to home anyways.

Shanghai is such a busy city, I rarely pay attention to the scene in the early morning hrs. Is definitely a different feeling when you can see emtpy major roads of Shanghai city.

This is Yan An Road, definitely the most important road of the city. This part here was right outside the cross-river tunnel. Not a soul…. 5am, my friend.

Another street that leads to City Hall…

It was Friday, Tim Wu came over to have dinner with us, and we wanted to check out new dinner spots. The usual Hong Kong-style cafes we had enough, I suggested Indian food for a change. Tim brought us to Masala Art on Da Ku Road.

Tim and Mia were really enjoying it. This was Tim’s “yumm, this is good” expression….
The food was really good. I’m sure we’ll be back again soon.

Gonna drop this Devilock x adFunture cap in the first week of July in Taipei and Shanghai. US will be a few weeks later.

Not so much blogging these days, the studio is busy on getting new products ready for the Taipei Toy Fest next month. This is really a bad time to have new ideas, because time does not allow for the actual executions, but then you feel you wasted an opportunity.

Friends in Beijing held their first Fixed Gear Alley Cat race last week. Just saw some of the photos today via Kidulty. Afar was there, and he told us last nite that the event was orgranized nicely. Hopefully, more of these events will happen in China.

(Photo Source: Kidulty.Com)

Went back to Airwalk Shop to pick up our new toys over the weekend.
After a long time of decision making, Daniel ended up matching up a similar combination as me; black on white. Deep dish rims both ends, Sugino cranks, pretty much your basic Airwalk setup.

To set our 2 bikes apart, Daniel made a last minute swap to a gold front rim. He made Yu to work… Everytime we go there, Yu had to work til 12 something. Sorry, dude. You know us newbies…

An 1:1 ratio GUNDAM RX-78-2 is being built in Tokyo for the celebraition of GUNDAM’s 30th Anniversary Exhibition. Breath-taking even when only looking the photos, can’t imagine standing right in front of this piece.

The exhibit kicks off on July 11th, go check it out if you’ll be in Tokyo during that time.
Well, you won’t exactly have to “go” check it out, I’m sure you’ll see it as you travel around town…

I watched Eagle Eye a few months back, and I watched another movie, Echelon Conspiracy, 3 nites ago. I can’t help it but to feel that they are extremely similar… Not just because they both played with the idea of “Homeland Security”, but the plots and main messages were also very “same”… This often happens in different countries, and I’ve seen enough mirror-ed movies in Asia. However, this might be the first time I see both movies from one Hollywood. Not knocking the movies, just sayin’..