Check out these celebrity names images:
Avenue of the Stars 星光大道
Image by InSapphoWeTrust
Just like the Grauman Chinese Theatre in Hollywood immortalizes handprints of movie stars on the pavement, the Avenue of the Stars does the same. The stars are honored by their native names written in Chinese characters and Roman alphabet, with a Westernized name added if they are well known by that as well.
Handprints from well-known actor, and more importantly, Cantopop singer, Andy Lau (Lau Tak-wah, 劉德華).
Just days before, I was driving through South Korea while listening to a radio program on the 1980s Hong Kong pop culture. One of the key memories mentioned there was listening to all the Andy Lau hits - and of girls who had crushes on Andy Lau-lookalike Chinese food deliverymen.
The Koreans usually refer to Hong Kong celebrities by the Korean pronunciation of their names. Andy Lau would be known as Yu Deok-hwa. Similarly, Mandarin speakers use the Mandarin pronunciation, Liu Dehua. I am far more familiar with the Korean and Mandarin pronunciations of Lau's name, to be honest.
Paris 2003 052
Image by mvhargan
This is a different cemetery, but I don't remember the name of it. Unlike Montparnasse, there were no maps available; they had run out. So we had to seek out our own celebrities. Looking at the sheer mass of graves--and they were on all different levels--you can see we had a job ahead of us. Once again I accidentally stumbled over Victor Hugo's grave. It was rather massive and hard to miss, as I recall; but when I say stumble, that is literally what I did. Sandy and I almost lost each other amid the tombstones, she on one level and I on another. The grave in the picture that follows we ran across together.
"Mingle" at the British Library
Image by jaimelondonboy
Everyone had to wear a sticker with the name of a fictional character or celebrity from the list they had. Then they had to go looking for their other half. For instance if you had a "Romeo" sticker on, you had to go to look for the girl with the "Juliet" sticker on her chest. A lot of good names were gone by the time I got there but I chose Mr. Knightley from Jane Austen's "Emma". I had to go looking for the girl with "Emma". :]
