July 7, 2010

This is the part where I explain where I’ve been for the last week

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I decided to work on Canada Day and take Monday off instead. It was strange to be pro­duc­tive when it seemed like every­one in this city was out cel­e­brat­ing in the stran­gling heat. At this time of year, I can’t help but think of euca­lyp­tus oil first kisses blue blan­kets shy embraces, con­stantly unsure of whether the mem­o­ries made me happy or sad. Canada Day will never be the same.

I was left feel­ing com­pletely dis­con­nected from the world. In my room, I won­dered what Aaron was doing at his place this year. The fire­works pop­ping out­side my win­dow were so loud it was as if they were going off in my back yard. I didn’t bother to look. It was still just another day.

cat in bag

Dolly can never resist sleep­ing on unfa­mil­iar objects, such as John’s duf­fel bag.

The sec­ond plot was John pass­ing through Ottawa for a bach­e­lor party. It ended much ear­lier than expected after two days of debauch­ery that got too much for even him.

So we had a lot of extra time together over the long week­end though we didn’t do any­thing spe­cial. It was mostly games, sun­shine, dri­ving, three sea­sons of the IT crowd, pop­corn, and duets. Also, three movies were watched: The Hangover (which I agreed not to watch until we saw each other again), The Prince of Tides (to switch gears a bit, and my third time see­ing it this year), and The A-Team (which is what we decided on for a movie in the the­atres, and the likes of which is gen­er­ally only pal­pa­ble dur­ing the sum­mer in the com­pany of other male friends).

I sort of…unplugged. Drifted off in the haze and lost my mind for a lit­tle while.

ginger rose tea

Ginger rose tea. Delish.

I also invited Heather and Sergey to pho with us because they had yet to meet John, and every­one got along swim­mingly. I shouldn’t be sur­prised; Heather and Sergey are type to find some­thing inter­est­ing about any­thing, and John’s the type to say inter­est­ing things.

John explains

John with his sher­bert and hol­i­day scruff, say­ing the kinds of things that make him pop­u­lar to everyone.

Now I’m catch­ing up on work and sleep and alone time.

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May 14, 2010

On being single for four years (or two days)

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  • John: What are you up to tonight?
  • Me: Some mas­tur­bat­ing, some cry­ing, maybe both at the same time.
  • John: That’s a page out of last night’s play­book for me.
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December 15, 2009

Protected: Reversal of Fortune

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November 16, 2009

Birthday Weekend

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At The Japanese Village

I prob­a­bly looked like this the whole week­end, cause it was non-stop awesomeness.

The Japanese Village

Last week, Aaron asked me if I wanted to go to The Japanese Village. I thought it was just to hang out, since we hadn’t had a guy’s night in a while, so I didn’t clue in that it was for my birth­day until the day of. Aaron told me I could order any­thing I want, as it was his treat, but I ordered the only thing I ever get when I’m there; the filet mignon cooked medium rare, which I think is the best in the city. It was good to hang out with him and Trolley again.

And, of course, silli­ness is always present with these guys around.

John in town

Chilling on the couch

John’s been work­ing two straight months, with­out a week­end off. The last time was when he came to Ottawa to visit. Between all the activ­i­ties, we only had enough time to watch one movie — American Graffiti — and between the two of us, we could sing every song that came from this film based in the 60s (me cov­er­ing The Platters, him cov­er­ing every­thing else).

I usu­ally only get to see him once a year, so twice in two months was a spe­cial treat.

Cranium Party

I’d love to do games nights on a reg­u­lar basis, but peo­ple aren’t avail­able on the same days, so I used my birth­day as an excuse to get as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble together for a giant Cranium party. I told them that instead of giv­ing me a present, they should just come to the party. It worked, and we had enough for four teams of three. Some peo­ple also brought snacks, like honey mus­tard pret­zels, car­rot cup­cakes, and freshly baked choco­late chip cookies.

It was the high­light of the weekend.

Dim sum with my dad

John and dad at dim sum

On Friday, my dad called me to wish me a happy birth­day, and told me he was in town for 10 days. We made plans to have dim sum. John came too, which is always inter­est­ing to see his reac­tions to what food is as the token white guy. I had a phoenix talons for the first time1, because I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous, and I have to say that they weren’t bad, but I didn’t care for them either. They’re too hard to eat, and the sauce wasn’t to my taste. It was strange to see both John and my dad at the same place, and in Ottawa instead of Toronto.

I told my dad he could prob­a­bly sit and observe one of my Tai Chi classes, so he could see what I do, but he wasn’t inter­ested, and I’ll admit that the indif­fer­ence hurt a bit. Afterward, I asked John what he thought as a 3rd party observer, and he told me I had a good rela­tion­ship with my dad. I’ll take his word for it.

I needed this

I needed this week­end so much. To recharge. To stop think­ing about things. To get com­pletely wasted. It felt like it was my birth­day the whole week­end, and I won­dered what I did to deserve it all.

  1. It wasn’t the taste, but the look that has always pre­vented me from try­ing them. [↑]
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November 11, 2009

Two Messages

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Only a few peo­ple know I have a fas­ci­na­tion with voices, dic­tion, and accents. It’s for this rea­son that I tend to save my voice mails. Well, that and the fact that they can be an inter­est­ing time stamp, because what’s said in them can offer such a tan­gen­tial view of your life. Here are two good ones in the past few weeks.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The first is John, and now that he’s sin­gle, he’s avail­able1 on Saturday nights. I hap­pen to be both these things as well, though him much more recently, so hav­ing him approach me about my avail­abil­ity is awesome.

Audio clip: Adobe Flash Player (ver­sion 9 or above) is required to play this audio clip. Download the lat­est ver­sion here. You also need to have JavaScript enabled in your browser.

The sec­ond is Heather, who has one of the nicest voices I’ve ever heard. It’s always soft and so sweet, with a slight tinge of raspy that gives it a bit of sex­i­ness. Though, as a very shy and mod­est per­son, she would prob­a­bly blush and smile if you ever told her.

  1. This term between us usu­ally refers to talk­ing on the phone, play­ing a game, and watch­ing a few videos. [↑]
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June 30, 2009

Men As An Excuse For God

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I think god invented porn before he came up with men and then made us so he could blame it on some­one else to the wife.

—John’s the­ory, as we were throw­ing around ideas for a cam­era phone that does 360 panora­mas, so that callers could get con­text on who they’re calling

Naturally, this brain­storm ses­sion turned to pornog­ra­phy, as it has dri­ven such tech­nol­ogy in the past; the lack of pornog­ra­phy on Sony’s Betamax was one of the con­tribut­ing fac­tors that helped JVC’s VHS win the for­mat war, dri­ving Betamax into extinc­tion. And more recently, Sony, hav­ing learned from their mis­takes, won the cur­rent gen­er­a­tion DVD for­mat war with Blu-Ray against Microsoft’s HD-DVD, as movie stu­dio back­ing, pornog­ra­phy, and games are undoubt­edly dri­ving this too.

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February 14, 2009

I Want

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I want the view. The city lights beneath me, blink­ing in red and white, to remind me that life still goes on even as we’re uncon­scious of it.

I want to be in the café with Darren, talk­ing about that which only we could under­stand about each other.

I want to be look­ing out the open win­dow of my uncle’s apart­ment in Hong Kong, to hear the peo­ple talk­ing, even through the night. I want to smell the age of the wood, the steril­ity of the concrete.

I want the strings to be play­ing just for me. To guide me, through lay­ers of res­o­lu­tion after resolution.

I want to stay on the beach­front. To feel the cool, moist wind blow­ing through open cur­tains and doors, com­pletely trust­ing of the world. To feel the dark­ness and quiet swal­low­ing me whole.

I want to be rolled up in my sheets with her, pressed together on the couch, naked as we came, as the morn­ing light begins to glow through the blinds.

I want to be down­town in the warmth of sum­mer, with the energy of those around me as if the night would never end.

I want the rit­u­als accorded to those who love and are loved in return.

I want to walk out of the the­atre into the deaf­en­ing night air, my mind rac­ing and hum­bled from the performance.

I want to ride with John. To speak with­out think­ing. To feel with­out car­ing. To con­fide with­out worrying.

I want this feel­ing to last forever.

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December 17, 2008

At the Ontario Science Centre

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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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October 29, 2008

Emo

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I’ve had the strangest day. Or week. Or month. Or something.

Not strange in an odd of way, but strange in a con­fus­ing way.

It’s like I don’t know what I’m feel­ing right now. I don’t even know how I’m sup­posed to feel. Maybe it’s the uncer­tainty of my life right now that’s doing it. The insta­bil­ity that makes me want to go home and hide in the com­fort of my chaise, behind the warm glare of my Macbook Pro.

All day, I think of being at home and fin­ish­ing my projects. Then I get home and pro­cras­ti­nate — not watch­ing TV, or movies, or read­ing, or clean­ing, but lit­er­ally sit­ting around — because all I think about is talk­ing to John.

It’s only after I’m off the phone with him that I feel like I can begin my evening and be pro­duc­tive. I can talk with­out think­ing, with­out wor­ry­ing that he may judge me, with­out feel­ing like I’m being patron­ized, with­out car­ing whether I’m repeat­ing myself, with­out fear of offend­ing him, with­out even hav­ing to make sense. Like a small ses­sion of ther­apy, where I need to fig­ure things out for myself, but which can only be done after I’ve put it all out there to some­one else. It helps me more than I can under­stand or explain. Unfortunately, he gen­er­ally remains unavail­able until later in the night, and by the time we’re done, it’s already passed the time I should be in bed.

Even this was only writ­ten after he called me on his way home from ini­ti­at­ing new pledges at his old fra­ter­nity. And it’s already an hour later than when I planned to be asleep.

In any case, I couldn’t even bring myself to cry today. It just wasn’t in me. It isn’t what I’m feel­ing right now. Or not the only thing.

And when Death From Above1 came on, all I wanted to do was dance.

  1. Back when Iain and I first saw them in con­cert open­ing for Billy Talent, they didn’t have the gra­tu­itous “1979” suf­fix, as it was before the legal dis­pute. I refuse to acknowl­edge them as any­thing else. [↑]
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October 5, 2008

Awkward Brunch

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The time my words dig a hole out of which my best friend must climb.

If you pay spe­cial atten­tion at 1:21, you can see John’s face when he sub­tly shakes his head as if to com­mu­ni­cate to me, “YOU ARE MAKING IT WORSE”.

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August 21, 2008

Four Day Vacation

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I’m in Toronto right now, at John’s house. He has the cot­tage for his birth­day week­end, so I took two extra days off work to see him. It’s kind of strange how much I’ve been see­ing him lately. In the past, we’d go over a year with­out see­ing each other because he was in Windsor for law school and I was in Ottawa with­out a car. But now that he’s been called to the bar and I’ve obtained the Civic, things have worked out.

We plan on going to the Ontario Science Centre today — some­thing I’ve wanted to do for a while1 — then dri­ving up to the cot­tage tonight. We’ll spend two days at the cot­tage2, maybe take a day trip to another town, and drive back on Sunday. Aaron also called me yes­ter­day about his co-ed baby shower on Sunday, which i’m not sure if I’ll be attend­ing yet, since I’ll have dri­ven eight hours that day.

Sunsets and Audiobooks

The drive was absolutely amaz­ing. The weather was per­fectly cool, and the sun took its glo­ri­ous time set­ting over a few hours. I think the most sat­is­fy­ing part is get­ting to the sec­tion of high­way where the 417 splits to the 416, and one can stay in the left lane and accel­er­ate through the turn, leav­ing all the traf­fic behind.

I lis­tened to some audio CDs of Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking on the way over. The con­cept is that our first reac­tions (made within a few sec­onds) are often intu­itively cor­rect, and that even after think­ing about some­thing for a long time, we end up going with our gut feel­ings any­way. We’re made to believe that the more impor­tant some­thing is, the longer we should take to make a deci­sion. I’m espe­cially guilty of this3. Wally lent them to me in an effort to help me act faster so I don’t miss any oppor­tu­ni­ties. Not sure if they’ll help me, but the way it delves into processes of the human psy­che is a very inter­est­ing lis­ten nonetheless.

Feeding Butterball

Left Dolly lots of food, and I’m hop­ing she doesn’t eat it all. The rea­son why I feed her by hand is because she doesn’t have any sense of how much to eat, and bal­loons up if not con­trolled. In either case, I expect a lot of poo in the lit­ter­box when I get back.

New Game

I bought John a copy of Assassin’s Creed for his birth­day, which thank­fully was on his list of games for which to watch. It was devel­oped by Ubisoft Montreal, the same stu­dio who made Prince of Persia, and plays very much the same way. An open-world con­cept with lots of stealth ele­ments. Certainly a game I could get into. We take turns play­ing, and it’s made me real­ize that I haven’t been play­ing much myself in the last few months.

A Sense of Overstimulation

Life has been some­what over­stim­u­lat­ing lately, and I can’t blame any­one but myself. After spend­ing a day shop­ping for house­wares with Julie last week­end, the house is a big mess, with things scat­tered over the coun­ters and floors. I haven’t even had a chance to write about the last time I came to Toronto. It seems like life is going faster than I can keep up. I’m just try­ing to enjoy it, espe­cially when the weather is this beautiful.

After all, life is for the liv­ing. This won’t last for­ever. I get to look for­ward to some time alone when every­thing is settled.

  1. I don’t think I’ve been since grade 4, so over 18 years ago. [↑]
  2. Last time I was there was two years ago [↑]
  3. John says that I tend to over ana­lyze things to the point of paral­y­sis. [↑]
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August 6, 2008

The Fantasist

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I hope John’s wrong. Not because he’s a pes­simist, but because he’s a real­ist. I came to him over­flow­ing with excite­ment, per­haps with a bright naïveté, only to be brought down in seven words, and the words have been ring­ing in my ears ever since. I use to think he was tact­less and unsup­port­ive. Maybe he is. But he tells the truth, and instead of my hopes, I can only turn to him for this.

That doesn’t change the fact that I’m a fan­ta­sist, who wants this right now.

Who needs this right now.

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July 7, 2008

The Importance of Importance

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I should really be in bed, but whatever.

Tonight I dug up a let­ter John sent me a few months ago after he hurt me like never before:

I’ve been read­ing your blog and call­ing you all weekend…I know you need atten­tion and I’m sorry I’ve been so neglect­ful of you that it’s reminded you of the way your par­ents treated you. Please stop con­tem­plat­ing sui­cide as a real­is­tic course of action in order to rem­edy the prob­lem. I love you and would really miss you and at the end of the day in a self­ish way I’m scared that I’d hate you if you left me here by myself feel­ing as guilty as I’d feel if you did it. I think you have fun­da­men­tally mis­or­dered the pri­or­i­ties we all come hard­wired with. To rank the absence of sad­ness or the pres­ence of hap­pi­ness or what­ever sui­cide would gain you as goals higher than sur­vival is the first error and then to seek those first goals using the method­ol­ogy of sui­cide is the sec­ond. You’re a lit­tle Chinese man who drinks fruit shakes and is def­i­nitely intended to live longer than the genet­i­cally pre­dis­posed to die in his early 50’s Caucasoid over here. Lets keep it that way shall we, I haven’t got your eulogy pol­ished to nearly the degree you’d want it to be.

At the time, I couldn’t get past the first few sen­tences because the pain was too fresh. And his words too poignant. Whereas I’m very vocal with my feel­ings, John is the oppo­site, and for him to say these things made me feel like my heart would burst. I read it tonight because I wanted to be reminded that I’m impor­tant to some­one, the way I need to be.

It made me real­ize that a lit­tle part of me still defines myself through oth­ers. But I don’t care any­more. I have some­one who loves and needs me the way I love and need him. That’s what mat­ters. That’s what makes me feel impor­tant, like my life means something.

Knowing this brings me a great deal of comfort.

And that will be enough to get me through.

(I won­der what he’ll say at my eulogy.)

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March 3, 2008

Emergence Exposition Opus 02

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The last three months led up to this night.

Gallery viewing

Thumbnail: Ysabella's sculptures
Thumbnail: Baby dance
Thumbnail: Ceramic tower
Thumbnail: Ceramic sculptures
Thumbnail: Jacqueline plays piano
Thumbnail: Chocolate truffles
Thumbnail: Louise performs
Thumbnail: Frédéric plays the harp
Thumbnail: Prairie Cat
Thumbnail: Tree sculpture

After attend­ing Opus 01, I knew I wanted to be a part of this.

John, as a true friend, flew from Toronto to be there for the night. Alex, who was doing a med­ical intern­ship at a fam­ily prac­tice in a nearby city, drove there. Even Pearl also dropped by and I got to meet her.

I was so busy talk­ing with my guests that I didn’t even have time to go into the other rooms to see how the other artists were doing. The house was packed with peo­ple again, young and old.

Performances

Jacqueline’s sec­ond piece was Sonata in A Minor, by Franz Schubert (unfor­tu­nately, her first piece was over ten min­utes long, which isn’t allowed on YouTube). I found it to be a rather mas­cu­line piece, begin­ning like a som­bre funeral march, lead­ing to a jour­ney of bub­bling emo­tion, so it was mes­mer­iz­ing to see a girl play it with such con­vic­tion. Pay spe­cial atten­tion to the burn­ing trill at 5:28, which leads back to the main theme.

Misun told me that when she handed Jacqueline a rose after the per­for­mance, it looked like she had run a marathon.

Afterwards, Jacqueline told me after she couldn’t stop look­ing at my penis through her per­for­mance, then quickly cor­rected her­self and said the penis pic­ture, which was hung across from her.

Louise plays the harp by feel­ing only. She doesn’t have for­mal any musi­cal train­ing, so she doesn’t write any of her com­po­si­tions down. It just flows from her fin­gers, and quite well I might add. As a result, her music is semi-improvised.

John kept telling us how not drunk he was, even though you can clearly see­ing him down­ing glasses of wine in this video.

The after party

Thumbnail: Hors d'ouevres table
Thumbnail: Alex plays piano
Thumbnail: Cary and Ysabella
Thumbnail: Alex, me, and John
Thumbnail: Salon window

When the peo­ple left and the doors closed, the real party began for the artists, their guests, and the vol­un­teers. Frédéric and Misun broke out the cold cuts, the fresh and fancy bread, the wine, the cheese and we cel­e­brated a suc­cess­ful night. We had been stand­ing for five hours, so it was time to take a break.

When Dan gave me a read­ing two years ago, and said that I would be mak­ing money off my art within the next 15 years, I never would have believed him.

Note: All media in this post has an extremely warm colour tone. I decided to keep it instead of bal­anc­ing it to neu­tral white, because I enjoy the cozy feel of it, which expresses the mood of the house-gallery.

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January 28, 2008

Waxing John

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The rite of pas­sage for the males of our gen­er­a­tion — the gen­er­a­tion of the met­ro­sex­ual and hair­less porn­star — is get­ting waxed. As an act of true love for Sheila in endur­ing the pain, John asked me if I would clean up the hair on his back and arms. I agreed, as long as I could film it.

Waxing John from Jeff Ngan on Vimeo.

I sup­pose that near the end of the video my sadis­tic side comes out when I start to laugh, or dare I say, enjoy hear­ing him scream.

“This is like true friend­ship”, he says, “Waxing your best friends back when you’ve got a Y-chromosome”.

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