ANITA HAWKINS - Co-founder of the 'We Are ULTRA' collective, sometime writer, performance artist, consultant, eater.

WEEKLY SPECIAL // DAVINA GOH

Davina eats Nga Pyaw Douk in Tatkon, Naypyidaw, Myanmar.

Davina got snapped with this ‘banana, glutinous rice and coconut milk in a teak leaf’ dessert during her time as a newscaster in Myanmar. She was there reporting for Myanmar International TV on the country’s first elections in 25 years and the freeing of Aung San Suu Kyi.

This is an impressive achievement in itself, but it is just the tip of the roaringly impressive Davina iceberg.

Davina is a singing, dancing, acting, writing, animal-saving powerhouse.

Her list of accomplishments runs large. She’s been a ‘So You Think You Can Dance’ finalist, a ‘Cabaret’ musical theatre performer, a traveling scriptwriter, a theatre actor and a full-time events manager. Her Facebook address says it all - facebook.com/davinareadysetgoh.

She’s currently starring in Malaysia’s own ‘Sh*t Malaysians Say’ (part one and two), and can be seen across Malaysian cinemas in the Khairil M. Bahar indie flick Relationship Status.

Davina has also just launched We Are Fanimaly, a website dedicated to promoting animal welfare and re-homing.

And although a very busy and accomplished individual, she still finds time for the pleasure of a good knock knock joke. :)

duuuhvana.blogspot.com

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // JIA JIA

Jia Jia eats a taco at Pinches Tacos, Sunset Boulevard, CA, USA.

Jia Jia is the very delightful Digital Marketing Manager at the Guggenheim Museum with an equally delightful tumblr-in-a-unitard presence. This one landed her in the LATFH book.

Though originally hailing from Shanghai, she is now a dedicated Brooklynite.

When not preening the digital face of the Guggenheim, Jia Jia has gotten busy tweaking the graphics for a host of other museums, and captures the life around her in beyond joyful ways.

An art history grad, she honed her knowledge at The Art Institute of Florence and Bryn Mawr College, where she was also Editor-in-Chief of their first literary arts magazine ‘Virgin Mawrtyr’. It was with this publication that she proceeded to host some intriguing basement driven art shows.

I first met Jia Jia in Shanghai over hot pot where she shared amazing stories of fantastic people and art. I was very much sold on her and quickly decided to partner up in nights on the set of Blade Runner II.

I miss Jia Jia, so it’s a good thing @VAJIAJIA is so active.

Oh, and please meet her love, Coco.

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // IKA KOECK

Ika eats Keropok Lekor at Chawan, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.

I first met Ika on the set of Bella TV, where we were spending our Saturday enthusiastically discussing women and freedom in Malaysia. It was an intriguing and sometimes tense experience, but it was wonderful. And Ika was most certainly a huge part of that.

The first thing I learnt about Ika was that she has a Dutch ancestry and has to spell out her last name to people often - Koeck. The second, is that she has a very large thing for fantasy.

So large, that she writes it.

Ika is a Fantasy Fiction Author. She has written two novels and also spends her days as an Acquisitions Editor. First starting out as a scriptwriter when she was only 17, she’s now deep into her third novel, and explores a heavy interest in the medieval era, Celtic culture, the golden age of piracy, horse-riding and Skyrim.

That first day we met, I also discovered her strength, determination and fearlessness. She told the story of being turned away multiple times by Malaysian publishers. Here Ika pushed onwards and instead looked overseas. There she found chances and seized them. She has now been published in three anthologies and returned to recognition from those that turned her away in the first place. But instead of complaining or being stirred to the negative by this situation Ika channels an elegant understanding, and simply works enthusiastically onwards.

Ika has an e-book, a podcast and that third novel in the works, writes a blog at ‘Canvas of Thoughts’, and is a very healthy user of social media.

Thanks for the joyful EAT Ika!

ikawrites.wordpress.com

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // AVA CHEN

Ava eats an Ispahan at Ladurée, Paris, France.

Or in her words - the “heaven-like pâtisserie!”

As customary on the SHE EATS HERE! submission form we ask you to tell us a bit about yourself, and perhaps leave a note on a favourite food.

But what we got from Ava was much more than that. It was a serious list of must-eats around the world with pictures included! How lucky are we!

Her recent trip to Austria left great memories of goulash, schnitzel, smoked boar meat, home-brewed schnooks and a special Sacher Torte from the Hotel Sacher in Vienna. Too good!

And on an almost as recent trip to Nanjing, China, Ava curated a high recommendation urging us to stop by the Nanjing Dapaidang. Here, she exclaims, impressive traditional snacks are “exquisitely delicious”.

Though on top of it all she holds dear a Sichuan meal in her father’s hometown of Chongqing, China.

But aside from Ava’s clear passion for food, she also holds a solid one for entrepreneurship.

Currently pursuing an MSc in Entrepreneurship in France she has long nurtured a dream of starting her own business. Ava is largely influenced by the success of her family, an older cousin who runs a thriving trading company in China - and is also steered onwards by a certain ideal, “the American heroism of business tycoons [also] influenced me a lot”.

First studying a BS in Economics she has spent time as an English News Broadcaster, and as an event organiser in Beijing and Shanghai. She now spends her moments striving towards her goal of getting her own business up and running within the next couple years; and taking advantage of French public holiday abundance by traveling Europe and creating great food memories like these above!

WEEKLY SPECIAL // ELLEE HURT

Ellee eats in Shanghai, China.

Ellee already has her own Tumblr at ’Baby Hurts’ and Weibo’s as @theonlybabyq, though she has yet to take full advantage of the recently introduced Facebook ‘Timeline’ interface :).

A real sweetie, she is the grand product of Queenie He and Shane Hurt - an amazing and super creative couple getting up to all sorts of fantastic projects.

Queenie, the force behind Ellee’s social media presence, is the lady behind YEHENALA.NET. A designer by trade, she has designed everything from skate parks to iPhone apps. Having also created massive installations for Nike, events where you are only allowed to communicate via drawing, and trained in the art of Chinese mask drawing - amongst her myriad other diverse and intriguing accomplishments.

On top of all this - Queenie was instrumental in the first ever SHE EATS HERE! video and event, ‘The Hot Dog Stand’. She also always has a copy of Wired in hand and is ever excited to share her latest technology-art related Stumble Upon. Steve Jobs is still her hero.

WEEKLY SPECIAL // KITTY VON-SOMETIME

Kitty eats Thanksgiving turkey at The Grumpy Pig, Shanghai, China.

Please meet Kitty Von-Sometime, founder and director of The Weird Girls Project, DJ/professional party thrower and blogger of all things Iceland.

It was a joy to come across Kitty during her recent visit to Shanghai. She was in town to seize some art opportunities and I had the benefit of meeting her through a few delightful mutual friends.

Kitty has a particular love for “cats and spandex” and applies her love for the latter quite heartily on her fantastic initiative - The Weird Girls Project. With TWGP she tackles the issues that women can have with their bodies through wonderfully documented performances. The video and photography footage from these shoots range the absurd to the awe-inspiring (well, they’re all pretty deserving of awe). Now 16 ‘episodes’ in she has also shot a special for UN women, see a behind the scenes video here.

But (as we love on SHE EATS HERE!) this is not all. Kitty writes a well-traversed blog that catalogues her migration from the UK to Iceland, was a super producer for the formidable CCP (creators of EVE Online), had a good fling hosting 90s music theme parties, and is the mother of a young three year old to boot.

And she also grows a mean tomato!

weirdgirlsproject.com
kittys-reykjavik.blogspot.com
gardening-iceland.blogspot.com

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // AN XIAO MINA

An Xiao eats a taco in San Juan, Manila, Philippines.

An Xiao is one multitalented woman.

She describes herself as ‘an American design strategist, new media artist and digital community builder’. And over our short time as friends I have not only seen her accomplish these roles, but so many more.

An and I first met on Twitter, and after a few friendly @’s and RT’s I by chance found myself on a stopover in her home of LA with 30 minutes to spare. These 30 minutes turned into her performance at an exhibition I held, and lots of great times in our 2011 shared home of China.

An has spent the large part of this last year on the curatorial team at the 2011 Gwangju Design Biennale. But here’s where the multitalented comes in - An is also a writer for the likes of The Huffington Post and Design Observer; creates social media art and performance; is the founder of global collective @Platea; co-founder of a Chinese-to-English Twitter translation site; and has even explored the world of Haiku.

On top of all this, she speaks on social media art and creative uses of communication technology; and writes on just these things and how they exist in her many travels at her blog ‘An Xiao Studio’.

Though currently based out of the hills of Manila, she calls LA her home, NY her second home, and nurtures a soft spot for the American southeast and China’s northwest.

Find out even more on what makes this fascinating woman tick right here.

@anxiaostudio
anxiaostudio.com

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // CRISTINA LOPEZ MCLAUCHLAN

Cristina eats Sheng Jian Bao at Feng Yu, Shanghai, China.

When eating Sheng Jian Bao, she advises - “Nibble the corner, sip out the soup, and savor.”

Cristina is our star contributor! A major travel fiend - she has not only sent us these EATS but even more from the far reaching likes of Xinjiang and a perfect eating moment in Beijing.

Having lived a previous life in hospitality and catering, Cristina is now Senior Project Manager at an experiential marketing and events agency, and calls Beijing her home. But it didn’t start here, Cristina hails from New Zealand and has lived in the Philippines, Hong Kong, Morocco, Singapore and even more!

This no doubt has contributed to her diverse food loyalties, “…there is no favorite cuisine - just food itself…!”.

Also passionate about creating memorable experiences, Cristina has orchestrated campaigns, launches and galas but shares that her most cherished yet was when acting as a wedding planner - “…seeing that I have assisted in creating a memorable occasion and connected in someway with people is what fuels me to continue to create such experiences”. This is passion we love :).

On top of all of this Cristina is also a guest blogger on ShowShanti (the blog of SPECIAL Shanti Christensen), here she gives a tasty rundown of her eating times in Malaysia. And in the new year she is set to launch her own bit of the web at the blog ‘Flavorful Filipina’. She’ll be cataloguing the things she loves and lives - food (of course!), travel, and health & fitness. Keep watch! We can’t wait to see the surely exciting times unfold.

Thanks again Cristina!

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // NATALIE ZAINAL

Natalie eats a White ‘Cham’ Coffee Ice at Old Town, Petaling Jaya, Malaysia.

Or as she declares, “I’ve been baptized with OLDTOWN White Coffee - Cham ice, yo!”

Natalie is a superwoman.

I recently had the opportunity to work with her through the ‘We Are ULTRA’ collective and her superwoman status was the definite consensus.

With a talent for eyeing the bigger picture, Natalie is a recent fashion marketing grad that has instrumented flashmobs promoting Malaysian talent and crafted winning retail concepts, whilst keeping her heart true to a sweet gula melaka cendol moment in Malacca.

She is also privy to sharing amazing sweet drink and dessert discoveries on a consistent basis. How lucky are we!

low-fat.tumblr.com

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WEEKLY SPECIAL // SHANTI

Shanti eats an ostrich egg topped with caviar at Maison Boulud, Beijing, China.

Shanti is special indeed. A lady with a massive passion for food and family, she champions the ShowShanti project - a grand website (and soon to come cookbook) that explores the creation of cuisine in the homes of families around China. Travelling all across the country she investigates the favourite recipes of families in their own homes, cataloguing the intricacies of each dish and photographing the families themselves. I can’t wait to see the final collection!

Of Filipino and Danish-American descent, Shanti was born in Guam, raised in California, and has been exploring China from her base in Beijing over the last three years. She also hosts inspirational food events and is sure to update her blog with amazing reviews and recipes from around the world as her ShowShanti travels continue.

I love her list of things she loves.

showshanti.com

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cristina eats grilled fish with lemongrass at dali courtyard, beijing, china

cristina eats a lamb shank with pulao rice at heavenly lake, xinjiang, china.

she states “…a specialty usually eaten with one’s fingers, it is a favorite food among the Uygur and Uzbek nationalities in Xinjiang.”

TODAY’S SPECIAL // ARLO

aRLO eats a carne asada burrito at rincon taurino, california, usa.

or as she puts it “in aRLO’s mouf…all meat.” please note the bolding.

a lady with serious skill of line and color. see our favorites, her character design and figure drawing, all here.

our animator du jour, she could kung fu your butt, metroid’s it up, cackles through dawn of the dead, gets down with quin-lingual’ing, and stalks miyazaki in her spare moments.

http://arloramz.com

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TODAY’S SPECIAL // ZEBEK GARBAGE

zebek is a fresh-hot-pink-glorious-flare of great tasting air.

and her favorite eat is bruschetta on a sunny italian day.

the bold ‘hoe-ner’ of the iSCREAMgarbage collective, zebek also gets up to multi-hued make-up shenanigans amongst the work done with her collective.

iSCREAMgarbage has shot up some alluring photoshoots, bootyshaken together a music video, screenprinted a few flamingos, and encapsulated the life of an octopus.

a team of multi-talented individuals, zebek’s collective is a large cast of females and a selection of hand picked males in the fields of art, film, photography, music and hair, with a model slotted in for added measure.

their website is a time of an online experience. and we certainly hope to see more of zebek and her team of creative ‘garbage’mongers writhe across their colorful corners of interwebs.

could we request an iSCREAMgarbage collective ice cream eating shot? :)

More on the lady here.

http://www.iscreamgarbage.com

http://www.ieatmakeup.com

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she eats bbq in shirakabe, japan.

[photo by yymkw]

jesse eats in muncy, pennsylvania, usa.

an eater eats hairy crabs at yangcheng lake, china.

ashley eats a fresh corn, chile pasilla, onion, mozzarella, feta cheese, cilantro pizza on shattuck avenue, berkeley, usa.

she eats a sandwich at trafalgar square, london.

[photo by tezzer57]

an eater eats a deep fried pork taco at adobo, shanghai, china.

(via Anatomical Cross-Sections Made with Quilled Paper by Lisa Nilsson | Colossal)

And @springwise strike again. This surprise book pack scheme is too sweet.

(via Slovenian library creates surprise book packs based on genre | Springwise)

@whoisbma would love to see this explored in a game, has it been?

(via What It’s Like to Live in a Universe of Ten Dimensions | Brain Pickings)

sheeatshere:

WEEKLY SPECIAL // JIA JIA

Jia Jia eats a taco at Pinches Tacos, Sunset Boulevard, CA, USA.

Jia Jia is the very delightful Digital Marketing Manager at the Guggenheim Museum with an equally delightful tumblr-in-a-unitard presence. This one landed her in the LATFH book.

Though originally hailing from Shanghai, she is now a dedicated Brooklynite.

When not preening the digital face of the Guggenheim, Jia Jia has gotten busy tweaking the graphics for a host of other museums, and captures the life around her in beyond joyful ways.

An art history grad, she honed her knowledge at The Art Institute of Florence and Bryn Mawr College, where she was also Editor-in-Chief of their first literary arts magazine ‘Virgin Mawrtyr’. It was with this publication that she proceeded to host some intriguing basement driven art shows.

I first met Jia Jia in Shanghai over hot pot where she shared amazing stories of fantastic people and art. I was very much sold on her and quickly decided to partner up in nights on the set of Blade Runner II.

I miss Jia Jia, so it’s a good thing @VAJIAJIA is so active.

Oh, and please meet her love, Coco.

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I have digitised human historical literature.

(via Luis von Ahn: Massive-scale online collaboration | Video on TED.com)

Mapping Afghanistan Election Data : Building Capacity for Fair Elections (via Development Seed)

rhamphotheca:

Why So Many Monkey Faces?

by Sara Reardon

From the adorably mustachioed emperor tamarin (#11, above) to the demonically bald uakari (#1), the faces of South America’s primates come in all shapes and colors. Some of these differences give the animals adaptive advantages—brown fur is better than white for camouflage, for instance—but many monkeys sport very complicated, multicolored patterns. Using facial recognition software, researchers mapped out the faces of 129 species of New World monkeys and rated them by the complexity of their colors. Then they looked for patterns in the primates’ lifestyles.

Monkeys who live in small groups or alone tended to have more complex faces (indicated by red labels) than those who live in large groups, who tended to have simpler faces (blue lines), the researchers hypothesize today in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B. The reason might be that monkeys with many colors, such as the spider monkey (#3), are more conspicuous to one another, allowing one individual to quickly recognize another from the same species, since such interactions may be few and far between. The next line of research: Can they quickly recognize those bright red or blue butts?

(via: Science NOW)    

(image: llustration by Stephen Nash; S. Santana et al., Proc. R. Soc. B, Online Publication (2012))

#NGO Aid Map increases transparency, efficiency and collaboration between NGOs working on different humanitarian crisis.

(via Vizzuality | Works · NGO Aid Map)

Estimate the potential contribution of any area in the world to climate change

(via http://viz-carbontool.appspot.com/about)

#nofilter how happy am I (Taken with Instagram at Great Buckingham Street)

Seven Core Concepts of Transmedia Storytelling (by budcaddell)

Venn Diagram - Happiness in Business (by budcaddell)

It begins! (Taken with instagram)