For Tom’s birthday, we gathered at Tim’s for grilled chicken breasts, pork chops, roast beef, and some pleasant conversation. I always find it interesting that the topics we discuss are so different from the ones at parties. Subjects tend to be more intellectual, whereas conversations at Pat’s house, let’s say, are much more jovial and carefree.
So currently it’s:
7:00am — Two mesalamine pills for my colitis and two snorts of corticosteroid for my hayfever
3:00am — Two mesalamine pills for my colitis
7:00pm — Two snorts of corticosteroid for my hayfever
Dinner — One multivitamin to make up for the foods I can’t eat due to colitis
11:00pm — Two mesalamine pills for my colitis and 20mg of cetirizine hydrochloride for my hayfever
I expect to be wearing adult diapers and using a walker any day now.
Four of us piled into my car to make a venture out west, in search of ghost towns. Areas that weren’t developed enough for the Canadian railway to go through, and the lack of major transportation eventually killed them.
What we found were not-so-abandoned places, black flies biting us all over, and dead ends.
Still, it wasn’t a total loss. There’s something to shoot almost anywhere, as long as you can change your perspective. And riding in a car with three new people means you get good conversation, if not good photo opportunities.
They’re in France now, and I feel like a part of me is missing. I know they aren’t gone forever, but they’re so far away that I can’t just drive over to their house on a whim to talk anymore. They were people who really understood me, who introduced me to so much of the world, who inspired me, who gave me confidence.
Before getting on the bus to Montreal, Frédéric told me that we’ll go on lots of adventures together. I hope it’s sooner rather than later.
It seems like every weekend I make plans, because I think “I haven’t seen this person in a while and I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to hang out with them again.” But it doesn’t seem to stop, because there’s always another person to see, another thing to do, and by the time I’ve caught up with the last friend, it’s been months since I saw the first friend again.
This is the first weekend that I’ve had free. I just played Black and White 2 for five hours, and it feels good, considering that I haven’t really played a game in a while, let alone be able to lose myself in one. It’s like I don’t get a chance to relax for more than 45 minutes at a time before I’m off doing something else.
A lot of my older co-workers tell me they don’t even have time to relax on the weekends. It’s one of those things that comes with having kids, having a house, having a full-time job. Is this what being an adult is about? Not that I mind; for a while now, I’ve wanted to be this busy so I could forget about things, to move on.
And then, I realized that I have.
Frédéric, Misun, and the boys are moving to France to explore a new business venture. To say goodbye to everyone, they rented out a karaoke bar and had a party. The night was a cacophony of sound, for the kids were given free reign of the dance floor and ran around in circles, while the adults took turns singing and eating.
This is my first “5×5″; a video of five vignettes at five seconds each. It’s a helpful guideline for putting together footage that doesn’t necessarily have a consistent theme. It’s also very restrictive, as five seconds is barely enough to see what’s going on in a particular clip, and that means you really have to find the essence of action. I generally don’t make 5×5s because I always have a story to tell, but in this case, it’s fun just to see how people sing. This is very different from the Chinese karaoke parties I was witness to as a kid, where the adults take their singing very seriously, so everyone is very quiet, attentive, and quite rehearsed.
The one who stole the show was Akio, who had heard Frédéric, Misun starting a duet of Ne Me Quitte Pas, took the microphone from Misun, and started repeating the line he had just learned.
I told Frédéric, “It’s amazing that you’re not nervous up there”, and he told me, “I just said to myself that I want to have fun, and it wouldn’t be fun if I didn’t sing, so I wasn’t nervous.” I wish I could do that.
My throat has developed something of a raspy tinge from talking all weekend. I’ve never had particularly strong vocal chords. I told myself I’d speak as little as possible today; we’ll see how long that lasts. Maybe I can drink some honey tea instead.
It wasn’t so much that I overbooked myself as plans going on for much longer than expected. Which pretty much means I didn’t get any work done, so I won’t be going to Toronto next weekend so I can catch up. Not that I really want to anymore, as the last two days have left me feeling overstimulated and satisfied. Anyway, Dan took a quick look at my chart for this month (on his own initiative) and told me not to do anything big on the 15th and 16th because it’s “risky”. I never let my horoscope determine what I do, but maybe this is the way the universe tells me to stay home.
I didn’t even have time to do my weekly grocery shopping. I’m eating stale bread and canned soups today.
The best part of the weekend was having an excuse to use the Numi Dancing Leaves teabuds and teapot that Louise bought me last Christmas, something I’d been saving for special occasions. Amazingly, I got three full steeps — which translates into six cups — out of one Golden Jasmine bud.
Those things I had been trying to forget got lost somewhere in the before I even realized it. Isn’t that what forgetting is about?
Sometimes I need these weekends. They recharge me, they give me hope, when hope is so fleeting.
I’m trying to ride that feeling, and let it carry me forward.
My fish is bulimic. He always stays at the bottom of his bowl. When I drop food pellets in the water, he swims towards the ripples, nibbles on one, then spits it back out. Then he slowly floats to the bottom of the bowl again, resting his fins flat on the pebbles.
Along with the first spider of the season (which I killed tonight), spring has brought hope. For some reason, I think it’s going to be a good summer. I can’t even explain why. Maybe I miss the heat, or I had good memories of last summer, or this is happening again1. I’ve been listening to the songs I discovered last summer in anticipation. Like this one, by Jenny Owen Youngs:
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Holy crap. Listening to this song now is…fucked. I always thought it was a good song, but never really related to the lyrics. Until now.
Due to the wintery economic climate2, they’ve limited my hours at work. So much for keeping the brain busy; it appears that I’m running out of places to hide3. While this came at a time when I really needed the money, I’m glad to have more free time now. It seems like every day I’m rushing to do this or that, with barely a chance to breathe, living to work, instead of working to live. I’m wondering if I can just stop, decide to live with some debt, and just relax.
This was the first night I had to myself, and it was only because other plans fell through. The only chance I had to relax was spending an hour customizing the icons on my new Mac Mini. Aside from a weeknight here and there to catch up with John over some Warcraft 3, I haven’t actually sat down to play a game in a long time. I’m hoping that at some point, I’ll be able to slow down and enjoy things again.
Although I’m not sure if I want that right now.
Grandma’s kids are lined up to visit over the next few months, each staying with her a few weeks at a time. An uncle flew in a few days before my dad and I left, and another aunt has arrived since.
Grandma says the house will be empty when my uncle leaves, completely forgetting that my aunt who’s already there has given up her life to be with her indefinitely. We joke that she’s just another maid to grandma now. Her memory remains patchy; sometimes she’s lucid, sometimes she’s lost.
I wonder if she’ll even remember if I was here.
Leaving was hard. My aunt hugged me long, told me she’d miss me through the lump in her throat, and promptly went to the bedroom to compose herself. Knowing it was the last time I was going to see her, I hugged and kissed my grandma as much as I could. It was an effort not to cry. Even the maid wiped a tear from her eye with the back of her hand, but none of the other men did, and I wonder if they would have, had they not been in the presence of other men.
As we were leaving, she handed me a red envelope, and told us to visit her again soon. It was a relief to know that she’s still unconscious of her terminal condition, but the reminder that I would never see her again broke my heart.
What a strange feeling it is to know that she’s still alive on the other side of the world, while I’m here, unable to be with her. For now, I’m happy and relieved that I had the chance to express myself to her, and film her, and capture her image.
Grandma’s at the hospital. She woke up this morning with pain all over her body, but more severely in her lower abdomen. They quickly drove her to the doctor, and it turns out there’s been a blockage in her colon. This afternoon they performed a procedure to expand the colon, and it went through without any complications. She’s resting at the hospital for the night, and my family is taking shifts to stay with her.
I’ve been stuck at home all day. Everyone else has been at the hospital and they decided to leave me behind. I’m on immune suppressing medications and the hospital is full of germs; getting sick myself is the last thing I need, especially when it means that I wouldn’t be able to see my grandma, as her immune system is even lower than mine right now. I would only be in the way if I was there anyway.
I’m scared. I’ve never dealt with any kind of sickness like this before. The only people in my family who have passed away were always far away in Hong Kong.
And now I’m here.
Grandma has been handling the chemo well. We’re trying to slow the growth of the major tumor so that there are no blockages. She’s not supposed to eat meat, but we want her to enjoy life (along with the fact that we’re glad she’s eating at all because she has no appetite) so we let her.
Most days are unplanned, just seeing how she’s feeling before we decide to do anything.
I’m beginning to sleep a little better now. For the first week and a half, I’d still wake up in the middle of the night, unable to fall asleep again even though I’d be completely exhausted from jet lag and walking around all day. I’m not sure if I’m just getting used to the day/night pattern, or the fact that I’m tapering off one of my colitis medications which has sleeplessness as one of the side effects.
So the current schedule is:
It’s been an endless cycle of people coming through the house, whether it’s family or friends, dinner or tea, a chat or a visit. Spending time with them leaves me somewhat lackadaisical. I don’t want to be anti-social and get up to do something else, but I’m rarely involved in any of the conversations, and the topics are often vapid.
Unfortunately, I haven’t had a chance to hang out with my Uncle Joe much because I’m trying spend as much time with grandma as possible, but next week should offer a better opportunity. I hope to do more exploring then.
It’s certainly a bittersweet existence here. Being in Hong Kong again fills me with wonder, but seeing my poor grandmother going through so much breaks my heart.
As a Taoist, I felt it was only natural that I visit the most famous Taoist temple in Hong Kong while here.
Maybe I was being naïve, but I was picturing something like Washington Square Park, except instead of chess board tables, there would be people sitting around, discussing Chuang Tzu’s parables, or sprightly conversations about the happiness of fish. Instead, it was more like a gigantic fortune-telling, wishing well extravaganza. People go there to worship Taoist deities by burning incense, praying to them for their wishes to come true, and have their fortunes told through the practice of kau cim, which is when they shake a container full of bamboo sticks until one falls out, and the character on the stick is interpreted by a soothsayer1.
It amazes me how vastly different the Taoist philosophy is from the religion. I couldn’t relate to any of this at all. The Taoists here are trying to get a holiday — on Lau Tzu’s birthday, if I understand correctly — because other religions get a day off. This strikes me as somewhat strange, since Lao Tzu is still disputed to be a mythical figure, with an unknown date of birth. I also have to wonder if Lao Tzu would approve of such a ritual.
At one point, there was an old lady worshiping at the entrance of a building, and a woman came out and said, “Ma’am, this is the information booth. You don’t need to worship us.” My uncle and I couldn’t stop laughing.
(This was a quiet day in the middle of the afternoon. Apparently, on special days of the Chinese lunar calendar, it’s packed, and the incense smoke too thick to breathe. Superstition has always been a part of the Chinese culture.)
