Monthly Archives: November 2006

Rebel Son

Rana pulled me aside the oth­er day and told me, I under­stand your cul­ture now. I under­stand your deci­sion.

She elab­o­rat­ed on a woman at work who had sent her daugh­ter to live in China. It was soon after the baby was born, and the grand­moth­er assumed respon­si­bil­i­ty of par­ent. The moth­er nev­er went to vis­it, only send­ing mon­ey for her upbring­ing.

That day, the grand­moth­er and grand­daugh­ter came to work, hav­ing flown into Canada to vis­it. No one at work had seen the child, two years old now. The whole time, she was ner­vous and shy, clutch­ing the leg of her grand­moth­er. When the moth­er tried to hold her, she would­n’t budge, only cry­ing the rau­cous, uncon­trolled, unin­hib­it­ed tears of a child.

Rana told me this with sur­prise and con­fu­sion in her face. It was hard for her to believe that any­one could do this to their baby. I wish I could say that I was sur­prised.

This child was too young to know bias or bit­ter­ness. She only knew what she felt, a being of pure emo­tion. The woman who was sup­posed to be her moth­er was no clos­er than a stranger, and for the first time, Rana was exposed to this.

I’ve always con­fid­ed in Rana about my own rela­tion­ship with my par­ents. She’s one of the few who real­ly care, ask­ing me if there’s been any news on a reg­u­lar basis, espe­cial­ly since I cut all ties. We nev­er argue, but she’s nev­er ful­ly agreed with me. She always tried to give me a mater­nal per­spec­tive, being a moth­er of three her­self. I’ve admit­ted that I don’t under­stand what it means to be a par­ent, but that day, she real­ized that she nev­er under­stood what it means to be a child of the Chinese cul­ture.

It’s cold. It’s mate­r­i­al. Most Chinese par­ents can only express their love with mon­ey.

In this way, my par­ents showed me that they loved me. They prob­a­bly think they did the best they could, but as a child of the North American cul­ture, I felt noth­ing. I nev­er knew what it was to be loved.

And Rana said, You were the one who rebelled against this.

Senators vs. Leafs '06

They call it the bat­tle for Ontario. The Ottawa Senators against the Toronto Maple Leafs.

One of the pub­lish­ers I deal with at work schmoozed me, along with Joel and Louise. We’ve giv­en them a fair amount of busi­ness over the last lit­tle while, each of us involved in a dif­fer­ent part of the process, so he treat­ed us to a Sens game. Even though my team (the Leafs) got pounced 7–2, it was still an excit­ing game; lots of end-to-end action, close penal­ty kills, and Heatly scored a hat-trick. The Leafs were sim­ply out-finessed. Great seats too. Coincidentally, we ran into Rockstar Jeff at the game.

Thumbnail: Me and Joel
Thumbnail: Hockey rink
Thumbnail: Rockstar Jeff
Full stadium

Eva Avila, this year’s win­ner of Canadian Idol, lead the nation­al anthem. To my sur­prise, I was able to fol­low with the French, but it was all pho­net­ic. Something I learned in grade school, but nev­er actu­al­ly under­stood.

It was a lit­tle dis­heart­en­ing to see how every­thing is so com­mer­cial­ized. Scotiabank place, VIA Rail goals (com­plete with train horn when some­one scores), Jubilee Timex time. Even Pizza Pizza spon­sors a free slice if the Sens win and score six goals or more.

There were prob­a­bly an even num­ber of Sens fans and than Leafs fans, but the lat­ter were def­i­nite­ly more vocal. Any Sens chants were drowned out. It’s easy to tell how gal­va­nized fans get in such a rival­ry from com­ments I received on a pre­vi­ous post.

The best part was before the game even start­ed. Master Corporal Paul Franklin from Edmonton, who lost both his legs in a sui­cide attack in Afghanistan, came to drop the cer­e­mo­ni­al first puck. They rolled out the red car­pet to cen­tre ice, and he hob­bled along with met­al legs. Both sides of the rival­ry cheered and clapped as one, loud­er than any oth­er point in the night, proud of their sur­viv­ing sol­dier.

It was quite a poignant, misty-eyed moment.