I LOVE this picture:

The blue background makes it look like a bizarre tableau: there is so much going on in the photo. What is Bush saying to Putin? Why does Chilean President, Michelle Bachelet, look so concerned while talking to Stephen Harper?

Apparently, for the group photograph, the leaders got to choose the colour of ao dai they would wear – holy product of gender encoding (not that I expected the men to choose pink, but there were a few other colour choices)! The men also chose not to wear the traditional hat: probably a good choice, I think… Let’s just be glad they didn’t all squeeze into the much tighter, modern ao dai that I remember seeing when I last visited Vietnam.

Here’s another photo that made me laugh today – check out the Hello Kitty in the background. Might be a bit hard to maintain a blog with these beauties (or do anything, really):

Apparently there was an “International Nail Expo” in Tokyo this weekend – had I only known…sigh…