Waiting For A White Christmas

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.

Christmas Wish-List '08

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.

Christmas Observer '07

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 »

Holiday Stretch

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.

Christmas Wish-List '07

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.

Holiday Observer '06

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.

Christmas Is Dead

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.

Christmas Wish List '06

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”.

Christmas Observer

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.