equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
02 Oct 09

Natalie MacLean — Why Subscribe?

Natalie MacLean — award-winning wine writer, speaker, judge, and author of the book “Red, White and Drunk All Over: A Wine-Soaked Journey from Grape to Glass” — com­mis­sioned me to make a video to sell sub­scrip­tions to her wine newsletter.

This was really fun to do, as Natalie is very funny, pleas­ant, and nat­ural, both in per­son and in front of the camera.

Shot with a Canon Vixia HF100, and edited in Final Cut Pro. Soundtrack Pro was used for audio edit­ing, and Magic Bullet used for filters.

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29 Sep 09

You Nostalgia, You Lose

Found this old video of back when I lived on Island Park in a 16th floor apart­ment, with Trolley and another per­son who shall remain unnamed.

Trolley looks so young! It’s not his face, just his hair that does it. And remem­ber when I couldn’t stop lis­ten­ing to that AFI album? Seems like so long ago. I guess you’d only remem­ber if you’ve been read­ing since 2004/2005, when we did stuff like this.

I won­der if I’m still too young to feel nos­tal­gic. It seems like the only peo­ple who rem­i­nisce are those who are much older than me, but I already get nos­tal­gic about my uni­ver­sity days, when things were relaxed, I could sleep in, or skip class, and I didn’t have a mort­gage to worry about.

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25 Aug 09

The Advantage of Having Stubble

(Turn up the sound!)

I never have a lot of it, but when I do, it means I can scratch my cat with my chin.

Once again, taken with my iPhone.

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28 Jun 09

Melodica

A demon­stra­tion of the Melodica app for the iPhone and iPod Touch. There are sim­i­lar apps out there — Tonepad, Synthtopia — but none of them are as sim­ple and pol­ished. That being said, there are a few fea­tures that could make Melodica stand out even more, such as the abil­ity to save com­po­si­tions on-the-fly and layer them under new ones, or the abil­ity to change the sam­ple sound, so I’m hop­ing they’ll be added in an update. Regardless, I’ve only had this app for a day, and I’ve been enjoy­ing it immensely.

Some tips for composing/performing songs in Melodica:

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29 May 09

Goodbye Karaoke Party

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 “5x5”; 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 5x5s 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.

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24 May 09

I Miss Camping

I found this old video of a bunch of us cook­ing burg­ers on the old Coleman while camp­ing in 2004. Back before Trolley or Tyler were mar­ried (or even engaged). I love the way Adam, as the only gay mem­ber of our crew, puts a t-shirt on his head and sidles up to Tyler to join in the mer­ri­ment. Every time I watch this clip, I laugh at this exact point, in the exact same way.

I haven’t been camp­ing in too long. Even though I’m a city slicker, I love to get out and away about once a year. Waking up in the cold, fresh air; talk­ing around a camp­fire; for­go­ing the lux­ury of show­ers and the inter­net; these are the things that bring you back to your human­ity. And often it’s as much about the peo­ple as the event, because there are barely any oppor­tu­ni­ties for us to get together. I miss those guys just as much.

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29 Mar 09

Grandma and Her Parrot

Grandma loves her par­rot. We carry it around for her, and she sleeps with it on her bed­side table. Whenever she talks to it, I can never really tell if she really is talk­ing to her par­rot in an act of senil­ity, or whether she does it to humour us.

A note on the trans­la­tion: The name “Fat Bird” is really “Fat Woman Parrot” in Chinese. The word “par­rot” is a homonym for the last part of grandma’s name, so “Fat Woman Parrot” sounds like it’s refer­ring to her as well. That’s how she got her nick­name as “Fat Woman”.

This is grandma on a good day. I love to see her smile and laugh.

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26 Mar 09

Hong Kong: Nights

Tung Choi Street (or Ladies’ Market), as seen in my Hong Kong: Markets video as the area cov­ered with blue tarp, is for the ladies, and opened all day.

Temple Street, on the other hand, only starts to come alive at night, and is also known as Men’s Street. There are no stalls out dur­ing the day. This is the street that one of my favourite Stephen Chow movies, God of Cookery, is based on, so it was awe­some to be able to see it in person.

Instead of hand­bags, clothes, and posters sold in Ladies’ Market, they sell cheap men-oriented trin­kets like bat­ter­ies, lighters, base­ball caps, elec­tron­ics, cam­era gear, and sex toys. There’s also a sec­tion with rows of stalls for for­tune telling (at 2:12), offered in both Chinese and English lan­guages, and European (tarot) and Asian (face, palm read­ing) flavours.

Temple street is also known for it’s road­side din­ing, where you can order pots stuffed with meat or deep fried del­i­ca­cies. I was warned not to eat any­thing on tem­ple street though, as the stan­dards are too low now1. One might get away with an upset stom­ach at best, and end up with a trip to the hos­pi­tal at worst.

Since Temple Street is noto­ri­ously shady, where there’s more open pros­ti­tu­tion, drug deal­ings, and other unsavoury activ­i­ties, I lim­ited my film­ing on the off-chance that I may have cap­tured some­thing I shouldn’t2. Can you spot the two hookers?

  1. Even my dad won’t eat there any­more, which is say­ing some­thing. []
  2. During the walk through the stalls, I was yelled at once by a ven­dor to put my cam­era away. []
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24 Mar 09

Star Ferry

Hong Kong is com­monly divided in two — Hong Kong Island and Kowloon Peninsula — by Victoria Harbour. One of the most iconic ways to travel between the two sides is by Star Ferry. It’s a pop­u­lar and pic­turesque method of trans­porta­tion, because it’s inex­pen­sive (about $2.2 HKD or $0.30 CAD for a one-way ride) and allows for a great view of Hong Kong’s famous sky­line. A fleet of 12 fer­ries car­ries 70000 peo­ple a day, even though there are many cross-harbour tun­nels and bridges that have been built to allow for auto­mo­bile trans­porta­tion. The ride takes about 10 min­utes, includ­ing board­ing and alighting.

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17 Mar 09

Wong Tai Sin Temple

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.)

  1. That’s the part of the video where the peo­ple are kneel­ing, and you can hear the bam­boo shak­ers. It’s a short clip because I wasn’t allowed to film there. []
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13 Mar 09

Hong Kong: Markets

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10 Mar 09

Hong Kong: Departure and Arrival

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02 Feb 09

French Toast

My intro­duc­tion to French toast with cin­na­mon and vanilla and fresh fruit. When I was young, my mom would make French Toast, but it was plain eggs and bread.

It’s not what you’re think­ing though. The bot­tle of Crown Royal is filled with real maple syrup. Not whiskey((Coincidentally enough though, both liq­uids are Canadian icons.)).

God, it’s nice to have some­one cook for you in your own home.

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02 Jan 09

Krista and Shane at 160 Workshops

This was by far the best con­cert I’ve ever been to in my life, and not just because Shane ded­i­cated It’s A Drag to me and Julie (although that was TOTALLY AWESOME).

It was the inti­mate set­ting, chill atmos­phere and awe­some music that made it unlike any other per­for­mance I’ve attended. This pri­vate show was at 160 Workshops, a house that reg­u­larly opens its doors for craft work­shops to bring peo­ple together in the Ottawa community.

Shane’s songs are always best in small venues like this. They’re per­sonal and sub­tly strik­ing, and the acoustic sound really brings that warmth across.

Shane did a mix of old and new mate­r­ial, then took requests from audi­ence mem­bers, along with some par­tic­i­pa­tion on vocals, spoons, and cow­bell. There also hap­pened to be Canadian nerd­core rap­per Jesse Dangerously in atten­dance, and after some prod­ding, he pro­vided rhymes for Girls by the Beastie Boys, along with beat­box­ing back­ground per­cus­sion for Les Ouaouarons.

And, of course, Krista Muir (aka Lederhosen Lucil) was the head­liner, pro­mot­ing her new full-length album, Accidental Railway. The album includes a huge map for a fic­tional town that Shane made, with names of streets and places taken from mem­o­ries of their tour together.

Other shows with Krista Muir and Shane Watt

  1. At the Workshop Studio & Boutique
  2. At Le Petit Salon des Arts
  3. At Irene’s Pub
  4. At 160 Workshops
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17 Dec 08

At the Ontario Science Centre

Back in the sum­mer, John and I went to the Ontario Science Centre. The plan­e­tar­ium was up-and-running, so we got to view the lat­est Mars land­scape pic­tures in 360 degrees. We also arrived at the Science Arcade just in time to see a girl on the stage with her hand on the big Van de graaff, one of those mys­ti­cal flag­ship images you often see in their advertisements.

We hadn’t been there since we were lit­tle kids, but the inter­ac­tive tests and exper­i­ments are always fun, even when you’re older.

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