Viewing entries tagged with "Christmas"   //
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Waiting For A White Christmas

2

I can’t wait until the Christmas hol­i­days. I’ll have a chance to work on projects I’ve put on hold to make time for paid work. A chance to breathe. A chance to do noth­ing. Some seri­ous me time, inside my warm house, watch­ing a movie while wrapped in blan­kets. Lazy maple bacon every day, her­mi­tiz­ing. I may even decide to go home and visit peo­ple I always mean to see when I’m in Toronto, but never have a chance to.

I’m busy with side-work until the new year, and cur­rently not accept­ing new work. On the social end, I’ve come to a point where I’m not only booked, but double-booked, and find myself hav­ing to pri­or­i­tize plans and decide what I’d rather do. It’s been great for keep­ing my brain busy, and whereas I’d nor­mally feel over­stim­u­lated, I’m now rev­el­ing in all these awe­some expe­ri­ences and peo­ple I get to meet.

This doesn’t feel like a tran­si­tion phase, as the tran­si­tion, or what­ever the hell it is, already hap­pened weeks ago. I was at fork in the road, and now that I’ve taken the first steps, I find myself on a one-way path through a tun­nel with­out any exits, won­der­ing what’s on the other end.

Date  October 22, 2009
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Categories  Random

Christmas Wish-List '08

7

Updated tastes for 2008. Many items from my 2006 and 2007 lists are crossed out, which is why cat­e­gories like “fur­ni­ture” aren’t smaller now.

I’ve been told that I’m noto­ri­ously hard to shop for. Not only am I extremely picky, I have eso­teric (and expen­sive) tastes, and I usu­ally buy — and so, have — the things that I want. This year, I real­ized that good gifts are things peo­ple want, but which they don’t buy for them­selves because they can’t jus­tify the cost. It doesn’t have to be lav­ish, but maybe a lit­tle over­priced, some­thing you wouldn’t nec­es­sar­ily buy for yourself.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D Mark II (about $2800) — Yep. This is the big one. I had the Mark I on my list back in 2006. This one is full frame, does dust clean­ing, and records video now. Even though I have a cam­corder already, I want this for low-light and low depth-of-field work that con­sumer cam­corders sim­ply can’t provide.

Housewares

  • Tea Forté Morehouse glass ($25) — A double-walled glass that can be used to keep tea warm (or iced tea cold). Made with a cover for the leaf on Tea Forté pyra­mid bags to stick out. No con­den­sa­tion means no coaster needed. Love the design and functionality.
  • Tea Forté tea trays (×2) ($7) — For hold­ing indi­vid­ual tea tags. Comes in sets of two with four colour choices, but I like bone white.
  • Bodum Assam 1.5L teapot ($50) — My pre­vi­ous, smaller Assam teapot broke (rather eas­ily) as I was clean­ing out the fil­ter. I can’t give up my love of Bodum prod­ucts though. I already have tea mak­ers for sin­gle serv­ings, but I don’t have a pot for when I have guests over.
  • Oxo Candela Flare (set of eight) ($130) — I’d put these on the ban­is­ter that sep­a­rates my hall­way from the stairs. It’s pretty bland right now.

Furniture

  • B2C Expandable Dining Table ($699) — To replace the cheap, scratched-up din­ing table I have in my kitchen now. Frosted glass? More like frosted sexiness.

Gadgets

  • Tenori-On ($1200) — I’ve been wait­ing for this to be avail­able in Canada for more than a year, and it’s finally come. I’ve always wanted to get into music as another medium of cre­ativ­ity. I come from a musi­cal back­ground (as opposed to visual arts), but the Tenori-On com­bines both, in a sim­ple, easy-to-use interface.
  • Aromatherapy Car Diffuser ($16) — For keep­ing the car fresh, with refill­able scent pads.
  • Apple Wireless Bluetooth Keyboard ($80) — I’m hop­ing the next MacWorld Expo will announce an update, not a dis­con­tin­u­a­tion, to the Mac Mini, which I’d get for a home the­atre sys­tem (my TV is soon to be dis­con­nected because I don’t use it enough). If this holds to be true, I’d have to buy a key­board, which I could already use now.
  • MicroFly Tiny R/C Hovering UFO ($20) — Small and easy-to-fly. Something I’d use to play with Dolly.
  • Colibri Throttle Silver Plaid Lighter ($60) — Much to my dis­may, the electro-quartz trig­ger on my old Colibri died. It was one Christie gave me for my birth­day, with my name engraved on it. I’ve been look­ing for a lighter ever since, and this is the first one I’ve ever really con­sid­ered. I’m super-picky about lighter design.
  • Auto LED ($25) — Plugs into the cig­a­rette lighter of the car, and glows blue (which would match the meters of my car). Pull it out, and it becomes a handy-dandy flashlight.

Games

  • Rez ($20) — One of the most under­rated and genre-busting games of the PS2.
  • Devil May Cry 3: Special Edition ($20) — DMC has always been one of those series I hear about, but never got a chance to try. The spe­cial edi­tion adds game­play and fixes var­i­ous issues.
  • Metal Slug Anthology ($20) — I love the arcady feel of Metal Slug. Something you can turn on, and play with your brain off. The entire series in one game? Yes, please.
Date  December 2, 2008
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Categories  Random

Christmas Observer '07

0

Another Christmas with Shirley and her fam­ily, although this time Bill’s fam­ily came down as well. I spent Christmas Eve night and Christmas day at their house, par­tak­ing in the Christmas expe­ri­ence with those who believe in the impor­tance of such a ritual.

Presents under the tree

We were wrap­ping presents (from “Santa”) until mid­night on Christmas Eve. The tree must have been raised the two feet off the ground to fit every­thing under­neath. Negotiations went on through the night as to what time to wake up, but the kids woke us up at 6:30 any­way. Looking back on the pic­tures of 2005, you can tell how much they’ve grown in just two years.

Loads more pic­tures behind the cut.

Read the rest of this entry »

Date  December 27, 2007
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Holiday Stretch

4

Hi there.

I’m already in hol­i­day mode. Sure, I have one day of work left — Monday — but my brain has checked out. I even took the day off yes­ter­day and made it a long week­end because I have extra vaca­tion days left, and they can’t be car­ried forward.

The chaise lounge on which I do my writing

This is how I spend most of my time nowa­days: on my new chaise lounge from EQ3, with a mug of tea by my side, in a gen­er­ally unkempt man­ner. Unshaven, with the flour­ish of a cowlick in my hair.

Last year, in which I declared that Christmas is dead, I stayed home out of spite, not directed at any­one but myself. This year, I’ve decided to go to Shirley’s for Christmas Eve and Christmas, and Pat and Jen’s for New Year’s.

But there’s a stretch of a sev­eral days in between in which I have no plans. Even though it’ll be a chance for me to do some extra writ­ing, work on my photo projects, maybe even relax a bit, part of me wishes I was busy like every­one else.

I know I don’t have any­thing to com­plain about. I’m lucky enough to be spend­ing the “impor­tant” days with friends who are impor­tant to me. I’m even lucky enough to have a choice of where to go. But I know that dur­ing the stretch, when other peo­ple has some­where to be, some­where to go, I’ll feel some­what for­lorn. They’ll have a place where they belong.

Maybe I’ll belong here, at home alone, on this won­der­ful chaise.

Date  December 23, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos

Christmas Wish-List '07

4

A look into my cur­rent tastes, updated for 2007. This list is some­what shorter than last years because the ones I haven’t checked off still apply, and I’ve been guilty of some spend­ing this month; The first two sea­sons of Robson Arms on DVD (which I des­per­ately waited two years for), sea­son six of Trailer Park Boys, my mit­tens, a RAZR 2 (the cell phone I’ve had for five years died), an elec­tric tooth­brush, and var­i­ous gifts.

Photography

  • Bogen / Manfrotto Background Support System 314 ($280) — To quickly set up dif­fer­ent coloured back­grounds in my pho­tog­ra­phy room.

    Bought it on sale, which was still $260.

  • Arca-Swiss Monoball Z1 Ballhead ($475) — My cur­rent tri­pod isn’t strong enough to hold most of my lenses in place, and the lock­ing mech­a­nism is extremely chintzy. Very frus­trat­ing when work­ing with dark shots. A ball­head would give me tremen­dous flexibility.
  • Gitzo GT3530LSV Mountaineer 6x Carbon Fiber Tripod Legs ($625) — Carbon fiber tub­ing makes for an extremely light and portable set of tri­pod legs. Packed with all the impor­tant lit­tle fea­tures like an anti-leg rota­tion sys­tem, the Gitzo leg lock­ing sys­tem, and remov­able rub­ber feet.

Furniture

  • Rubix Cube Ottoman ($129) — A black, two-toned square ottoman to go with my leather couch.

Housewares

  • Bodum Assam 2-Cup Tea Press ($25) — I have one of these at home, but it would be great to have one at work too, so I can make more than one cup of tea at a time.

    Julie bought me a Stokes gourmet Formosa tea infuser for Christmas 2008. A lit­tle cham­ber for loose leaves dan­gles from the top, as opposed to a press, which can cre­ate bit­ter­ness in tea.

  • Braun Impression WK 600 Kettle ($90) — A large ket­tle for my tea. Right now, I have to boil water in two cup inter­vals, which takes a while when guests are over.

    Andrew and Alex bought me a sim­i­lar model for my birth­day, and it’s SWEET.

  • Tingler Head Massager ($15) — On Jason’s rec­om­men­da­tion on my recent post about man­ual stim­u­la­tion. The reviews say that it helps put you to sleep, and that can never be a bad thing.

    Found a cheep one at Zone for five dol­lars! Doesn’t vibrate or any­thing but still pretty good. Next is find­ing some­one to use it on me.

Games

  • Orange Box ($50) — A nos­tal­gic trip back to the days of my favourite game ever: Team Fortress Classic for Half-Life. I hear the game­play has changed a lot, but I don’t care. We’ll prob­a­bly be play­ing this at the next LAN.
  • Odin Sphere ($40) — A side-scrolling fan­tasy RPG for the PS2 that I don’t want to miss.

Movies/Shows

  • JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure OVA ($52) — My favourite anime of all time: a com­bi­na­tion of fas­ci­nat­ing uni­verse, and very intel­li­gent action. I cur­rently have a copy in Japanese with French sub­ti­tles. While this helps me learn more French, I also don’t under­stand much the phrases.

    Found a copy of this for download.

  • Reno 911 sea­sons 2–5 ($90) — An hilar­i­ous, orig­i­nal look at law enforce­ment. Trailer Park Boys from the other side of the law. I have the first sea­son (thank you Music World for going out of busi­ness and giv­ing me 20% off), but I’d love to get the rest, along with the movie.

    Bought all of these on a lark. Did not regret the decision.

Date  December 16, 2007
Tags 
Categories  Random

Holiday Observer '06

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Thumbnail: The cat
Thumbnail: Salad
Thumbnail: Tidbit

On Christmas day, I felt like doing some­thing low-key, with­out the large gath­er­ings usu­ally asso­ci­ated with this time of year, so I decided to spend it with Joel’s fam­ily. Hanukkah had already passed for them; it was just another day. Charlotte, who learns from Nigella Lawson, cooked a tremen­dous meal of roast beef, beans, and secret pota­toes. Even the dessert was a fancy form of choco­late pot mousse, made from 70% cocoa Lindt and allspice.

We set­tled down with a lit­tle Gamecube, and I taught them Dutch Blitz, which we played well into the night. By the time I left, my spir­its were up again.

It was a nice mix­ture of young and mature. A place where I could shut off my brain and be a kid, but have a thought­ful con­ver­sa­tion too. They really made me feel like I was one of the family.

I arrived with hand­shakes and hel­los, but left with hugs and kisses.

Date  December 29, 2006
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

Christmas Is Dead

17

This used to be my favourite season.

I don’t even know why. Christmas was always about tedious gath­er­ings. Each parental group of friends and fam­ily — con­sist­ing only of Chinese peo­ple — would take turns host­ing par­ties. As one of the “kids”, I was thrust in a room with the other sons and daugh­ters. People I only saw once a year, with whom I had noth­ing in com­mon. Some years, I’d go to six dif­fer­ent houses in two weeks.

My par­ents would always host New Year’s. Some time ago, with the money I earned from my first job, I bought them a classy fon­due set and fon­due book for them to use as hosts. They never opened the box, or even cracked the spine of the book. It broke my heart.

The things that peo­ple gave me never made things bet­ter. Gifts were always safe.

Monetary cer­tifi­cates. Sweaters. Cheap sta­tion­ary. Nothing per­son­al­ized. Nothing from the heart. Nothing I ever needed or wanted. It was merely a dis­play of how lit­tle peo­ple knew or cared about me. It would have meant more if they gave the money to charity.

The one reprieve dur­ing the hol­i­days was being able to see Darren, sneak­ing out in the mid­dle of a party to get stoned with him, or hang­ing out with John.

Then why did the hol­i­days mean so much to me?

Maybe it was the atmos­phere. The snow. The mem­o­ries of Christmas in Hong Kong. The fact that peo­ple who had noth­ing in com­mon would put up Christmas lights. Something that every­one believed in.

Thumbnail: Cat statue
Thumbnail: Magnets of my initials
Thumbnail: Catnip jar
Thumbnail: Mao, The Unknown Story

Even though I’ve received some beau­ti­ful, thought­ful gifts for once, even though I don’t really cel­e­brate Christmas, I’m down. It’s too warm for the snow to stay. I didn’t buy presents for any­one. I’m work­ing the short week between Christmas week­end and New Year’s week­end because I can’t afford any time off.

I sup­pose the hol­i­days are what you make of them.

There have been many gen­er­ous peo­ple — Louise, John, Aaron, Joel, Bronwen, Pat — who opened their houses to me today, but it’s not the same.

It’s made me real­ize that even though I loathed those gath­er­ings back home, I still needed them.

To feel like I was part of some­thing, part of a fam­ily, as dys­func­tional as it was. Because of the divorce, there’s no home to go to for the first time in my life.

Christmas is dead this year, but it’s only a reflec­tion of how dead I feel inside.

Date  December 25, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Daily Life Photos Thoughts

Christmas Wish List '06

0

Thumbnail: Christmas cupcakes

You know it’s get­ting close to the hol­i­days when the fresh cup­cakes at the local bak­ery start hav­ing Christmas tree sprin­kles, so I thought I’d make a Christmas wish-list. Usually I have no prob­lem spend­ing money when I want some­thing, but I’ve been sav­ing my money as a goal lately. I’ve been good too, only spend­ing $120 on myself in November (two movies, a toque, and win­ter shoe spikes) as opposed to the $500+ I nor­mally do.

This isn’t a fan­tasy list by any means; these are prac­ti­cal things I even­tu­ally plan on buy­ing. I just can’t jus­tify get­ting them at this moment. Of course, I don’t actu­ally expect any of these things to show up under a tree on the 25th, since I don’t cel­e­brate Christmas, although this isn’t by choice.

Photography

  • Canon EOS 5D cam­era body ($3800) — The 5D sup­ports a very nice 12.8 megapix­els, but most impor­tantly, it has a full-frame sen­sor that would let me take full advan­tage of my wide-angle lenses.
  • Canon EF 15mm f/2.8 Fisheye lens ($950) — For those extra-wide group shots, and styl­ish fish­eye distortion.

    Bought a used ver­sion of this great lens for roughly half the MSRP in early 2007.

  • Speedlite 580EX flash ($600) — I cur­rently have the Speedlite 420EX, which can used as an off-camera slave to be set off remotely. It takes a flash like the 580EX to act as a wire­less master.

    Bought this flash with an umbrella and light stand in the sum­mer of 2007. Extremely happy with the off-camera results.

  • Macro Ring Lite MR-14EX ($750) — Macro pho­tos have been espe­cially dif­fi­cult because of the exag­ger­ated cam­era shake with a 100mm lens. A nice macro flash would allow me to increase shut­ter speed, and get evenly lit shots.
  • Wacom Intuos 6x11” tablet ($450) — For edit­ing my pho­tos in Photoshop. I have one of these at work, and I can’t get over how much bet­ter a tablet is over a mouse.

    I was start­ing to get shoot­ing pains in my wrist and fore­arm, so I bought this tablet in early 2007 to ease the strain of mouse pos­ture. It has greatly helped, and on top of that, work­ing with brushes in Photoshop is a delight.

Games

  • Playstation 3 ($650) — I’m cur­rently wait­ing on this one, since none of the launch titles inter­est me, but it’s my next-generation con­sole of choice. I wanted the Wii for the longest time (back when it was code­named Revolution), but the lack of HD sup­port and dated hard­ware quickly turned me.
  • Legend of Zelda: Twilight Princess ($60) — I can’t pass up the leg­endary last game in the Zelda series. It’s com­ing out in 12 days for the Gamecube, although I may see if I can bor­row Pat’s/Aaron’s/Trolley’s Wii to play it with the Remote and Nunchuk instead.
  • Neverwinter Nights 2 ($60) — I’ve been wait­ing for this game ever since I fin­ished the orig­i­nal Neverwinter Nights over two years ago. My next pur­chase was either this or Company of Heroes, but John bought me the lat­ter for my birth­day and so we could play online together. It was as much of a gift for himself.

Furniture

  • Saga sofa ($1400) — Getting this in a nice dark-brown leather is one of the options with which I’d like to replace my old Ikea couch. I wasn’t par­tial to leather until I saw the unit in the store, but it boosts the price closer to $1500.

    Bought a Scotch couch in October 2007 from EQ3 in a black leather instead. Sold my old Ikea couch to help pay for this.

  • 2MORROW side table ($150) — To go with the sofa.

    Bought a frosted glass sidetable from the same series as my cof­fee table from Zone in late 2007 instead.

  • B2C 36″ stor­age ($550) — A place where I can store my books.
  • CONICK pen­dant light ($120) — I’d like to have this above my din­ing table. The light fix­ture I have now is a lit­tle dated.

    I bought a rail light fix­ture from Ikea instead. It’s bet­ter for direc­tional light, and much cheaper.

Appliances

  • Grind & Brew Thermal Automatic cof­feemaker ($150) — This baby grinds, brews, and can be set on an auto­matic timer to do both right before you wake up. Unfortunately, it’d be all decaf for me.
  • Ultra Power Series stand blender ($180) — For smooth­ies. Because lunch sand­whiches get bor­ing quickly.

    Got myself a nice Hamilton Beach Eclectrics Blender at the begin­ning of the year. Been mak­ing smooth­ies almost daily ever since.

TV Shows

  • Six Feet Under ($230 for the com­plete series) — I’ve been want­ing to watch these with Bronwen for a while now. I only got to the mid­dle of the sec­ond sea­son, but it really put the hook in me.
  • Trailer Park Boys ($150 for sea­sons 1–5) — I’ve seen up to sea­son 3, and every year, the Trailer Park Boys keep me guess­ing about how much mad­der things will be in Sunnyvale Trailer Park.

    Bought these up to the sixth sea­son in early 2007 to watch with Bronwen. She loved them. Still look­ing for the Christmas special.

  • Battlestar Galactica ($100 for sea­sons 1 & 2) — I only got as far as the first sea­son, and this is one of those shows that you can’t watch out of order because you’d be com­pletely lost.

Movies

  • Best In Show ($20) — This movie charmed me the first time I saw it. One of those movies you can watch at almost any time. Christopher Guest at his best.
  • Punch Drunk Love ($16) — P.T. Anderson’s sim­ple, beau­ti­ful love story.
  • Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle ($15) — Because every­thing about this movie reminds me of sum­mers with John.
  • Contact ($16) — The begin­ning of my fas­ci­na­tion with astron­omy. And Jodie Foster.

    Louise bought me this for Christmas 2006.

  • Boys n the Hood ($16) — A movie that touches me, even though it’s set in a world com­pletely removed from my own.
  • Waking Life ($10) — I wish I could explain what it is about this movie that draws me in so much. Maybe it’s the fact that every time I watch it, I under­stand some­thing new. Also the first movie I ever saw high. Triptastic.
  • The Breakfast Club ($18) — The ulti­mate teen angst movie. Also cur­rently the only movie to use the term “Neo-Maxi Zoom Dweebie”.
Date  December 1, 2006
Tags 
Categories  Photos Random

Christmas Observer

2
Thumbnail: Shirley's mantlepiece decoration
Thumbnail: Braden with Shirley
Thumbnail: Christmas observer
Thumbnail: Ginger the cat
Thumbnail: Julia
Thumbnail: Snoopy the cat
Thumbnail: Braden opens a DS
Thumbnail: Nicole is happy
Thumbnail: Nicole's got attitude

Stepping back to the 25th, I awoke to the sounds of ebul­lient whis­pers com­ing from down­stairs as I lie in Julia’s bed, which she’d care­fully made for me. I checked my watch, noticed that it was 6:40 a.m., and remem­bered that Shirley put her foot down about not open­ing any presents until seven. The kids were already up, of course, their inter­nal alarm clocks set to spring in antic­i­pa­tion, even after we stayed up late the night before, play­ing wrestling games until the threat of Santa not com­ing put them to bed.

Instead, Santa went all out this year, from Nintendo DS, to mp3 play­ers, to boxes on boxes of clothes, to DDR dance pads, to portable DVD play­ers, to games for every sys­tem. He also left me a mini remote-control Mercedes SLK, and I’d nor­mally say that he shouldn’t have so he could spend more on the kids, but he also left Braden and Bill a mini Hummer and mini Mustang GT respec­tively, so I had to accept the gift in order to race them.

Just being there was enough of a gift. As the kids ran around, unable to decide what to play with first, I started to con­sider stay­ing so I could spend the day, but the respon­si­bil­ity of prior engage­ments and time with the par­ents kept me in check. We had a big greasy break­fast of bacon and eggs, but John was there to pick me up for the four hour drive home before the turkey dinner.

Next year, I decided.

Date  December 28, 2005
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Categories  Daily Life Photos
Viewing entries tagged with "Christmas"   //
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