Viewing entries tagged with "family"   //
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fall and falling

1

Darren and I crashed at the same time. It’s like we’re going through this together. I wish I was back in T.O. with him and Chris, cause some of the best con­ver­sa­tions of the year hap­pened in that car. We’re all in the same place, all young men on the mend.

I’m very pleased to say that Darren’s now the owner of a wild cherry sun­burst Seagull Entourage Mini Jumbo (but with a pick-guard and cut­away). And I’m totally jeal­ous, as I’ve been drool­ing over pic­tures of gui­tar bind­ings and rosettes myself lately. I had bor­rowed Jesse’s ginor­mous1 gui­tar for a bit, and I felt like I was pinned under a piece of fur­ni­ture every time I tried play­ing it. It totally turned me off gui­tars in gen­eral, but as I was walk­ing through the Ottawa Folklore Centre today, I saw a series of much smaller acoustics. I had to keep walk­ing. The last thing I can afford is another hobby and another toy.

moon

Got this shot through the lens of my tele­scope, which is why you can see the cir­cu­lar out­line of the eye­piece. Big enough to make out the geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures like the Mare Insularum splotch on the top left. Taken when still bright out, but the moon shone bright through the daylight.

I had a decent night of sleep for the first time in far too long, maybe because I’ve writ­ten more in the last week than in the three months before that. Strange how clear and calm­ing and inspir­ing it is to be rested. I still don’t know what I’m feel­ing though. It’s like I just don’t know what to think anymore.

A ridicu­lous amount of Starcraft II has been played. John and I have even been play­ing against each other, which is strange for us because nei­ther per­son wants to beat the other (out of sports­man­ship), but nei­ther wants to lose either (out of fool­ish pride). I was far more dom­i­nant in Warcraft 3 because it’s micro dri­ven so we never did 1v1, but Starcraft is macro dri­ven, which John is much bet­ter at. He’s proven him­self to be a very wor­thy oppo­nent with sev­eral good games on me. I’m so glad Blizzard doesn’t record the num­ber of hours played in a person’s pro­file now.

I want to be in France in this sea­son. My neigh­bours just came back from Paris and told me it was really foggy. I wouldn’t mind. Really. I’d love to walk down the stony path of rue Saint Vincent — the set­ting of one of my favourite Yves Montand songs — when it’s cov­ered by a hazy mist and I’m sport­ing a cozy sweater.

I spend 21 hours of the day in my room, and I’m never bored. I don’t go out of the house for days at at time. I have nei­ther the rea­son nor the desire to. I think I han­dle being alone too well.

  1. This word totally didn’t get picked up by spell-check, which means the Firefox dic­tio­nary is pretty decent. [↑]
Date  September 22, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

My cousin Chris

3

I’ve only shared about two con­ver­sa­tions in my life with Chris — the last of which was about seven years ago — owing to the fact that we live on oppo­site coasts of the coun­try. But Darren and I rec­og­nized him as one of us: some­one who thinks for him­self and doesn’t buy into the whole Chinese cul­ture unques­tion­ingly. This is in con­trast to many of our other cousins, who seem to love their par­ents sim­ply because they were birthed by them, not nec­es­sar­ily because their par­ents are good people.

Chris hap­pened to be pass­ing by for a wed­ding, so I hosted him for two days. It was inter­est­ing to meet him at this point in our lives. I won­der if I’m actu­ally more sim­i­lar to Chris than I am to Darren, mainly because of how our cre­ativ­ity defines us. It was so easy for me to relate and talk to him. And as with Darren, I actu­ally felt like Chris was fam­ily, closer to a brother than a cousin, which is all too rare among my blood.

As an indus­trial designer he does amaz­ing draw­ings, full of vibrant colours that pop-off the page. I asked him to draw some­thing on my dry erase board because draw­ing is a cre­ative abil­ity not in my pos­ses­sion, and I find the process fas­ci­nat­ing. It was a logis­ti­cal chal­lenge because he would smear his exist­ing work every time he rested his hand on the board for stability.

He’s my exact oppo­site when it comes to health. He’s a vegan, while I’d find it impos­si­ble to give up meat, let alone but­ter and ice cream. He just lit­er­ally biked 100km a day across Canada, while my lifestyle could be con­sid­ered seden­tary at best, with only Tai Chi and some mild cal­is­then­ics in my exer­cise rou­tine. And yet we’re the same weight and shape. It’s sort of eerie to see him draw­ing in this video; aside from a shorter hair­cut, it’s almost like I’m watch­ing myself.

The time he spent here passed quickly, as I intro­duced him to the ukulele. Aside from catch­ing up and learn­ing about each other, most of the two days were spent exper­i­ment­ing and play­ing together. Eventually, we went to a music store and bought him his own Mahalo ukulele, which filled my heart with glee. Darren and Jeff are com­ing up for a visit next week, and hope­fully Chris will be able to hitch a ride with them for our ukulele band before we all head back to Toronto for Crystal’s wedding.

Date  August 23, 2010
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Categories  Daily Life Random

Magneta Lane and my Cousin Darren

0

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There’s been a smat­ter­ing of good music lately, but this is the song that haunts me; Love and Greed by Magneta Lane. I added it to my col­lec­tion on the 12th of October, and it’s already in my Top 20 Most Played. By no means is it the best song on the album; it’s just the one that hit me the hard­est.

To hear it as a track by itself is a lit­tle out of con­text. It comes as 7 of 10 off Gambling With God, their lat­est album, and the songs lead­ing up to it charge at a much faster pace. The dra­matic change of tone between the verses and the cho­rus are effec­tive in sub­tly draw­ing you in, against lyrics that should be screamed more than any­thing else.

My favourite part is when Lexi says, “I don’t want recy­cled love / if I did I’d pour wine in a cup / and get all liquored up / and fuck­ing crawl in front of you” when the gui­tar and bass stop, and it’s just Nadia doing the bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum-ba-da-bum under­neath on her toms.

With the way she says fuck­ing with such sac­cha­rine soft­ness, one can’t help but won­der what intense sor­row could have caused this sullen, hon­eyed voice to spit such profanity.

It’s stuff like this that makes rather plain look­ing Lexi Valentine so god­dam attrac­tive, very much in a Karen O kind of way. I guess you could say I have a fas­ci­na­tion with Lexi swear­ing, because she does it so infrequently.

So...

I gave this song to Darren, and he sent me back this reply:

shit this song is on auto-repeat right now.… ahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

Darren’s the only per­son in the world who sees love the way I do. John knows me in every other way — logic, mind­set, emo­tion, per­son­al­ity, habits, taste — but he doesn’t under­stand my love, which is a big part of me. The only one who under­stands is Darren1 because we share the same quixotic ideas about it. It’s as if we devel­oped this roman­tic atti­tude as a back­lash to how our fathers (broth­ers, who also look the same) raised us with such aloof­ness. This ideal is how we bond.

One time he told me he can’t wait for the day when we’re at his house with our girl­friends, and we’re play­ing Cranium, and we’re just…happy.

This is how I know he’s the only per­son who hears this song the same way too.

  1. Not even my girl­friends have come close to under­stand­ing, aside from Bronwen. [↑]
Date  December 20, 2009
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Categories  Random

A Visit From Big Sister

8

Sushi with Misun

Misun, aka my big sis­ter, vis­ited from France yes­ter­day. We gorged our­selves on all-you-can-eat sushi, and I let her sur­prise me by choos­ing not to know what she ordered for us. Now I wish I had kept note so I could order the same things again.

Sushi with me

It was hard to argue with her about the bill. She kept insist­ing that she pay because she’s older (from her Korean cul­ture), and I kept insist­ing that I pay because I’m the host (from my Chinese cul­ture). I even used the argu­ment that if it’s the elder who pays, then she would always be pay­ing. Unfortunately, the host­ess took her side and refused my money.

She was only able to stay in Ottawa for the night, but before turn­ing in well beyond our bed­times, we caught up as peo­ple can only do in per­son. We’d been keep­ing in touch the whole time we’ve been apart, and now had the chance to fill in the details.

The time I most felt like I knew what it was to have a sis­ter was when we brushed our teeth together in the bath­room. Afterward, we com­pared grey hair, me laugh­ing at her three strands, as I have a steady diet of salt added to my pepper.

Misun's note

When I woke up, I found this cute note, with our faces (includ­ing Dolly’s) drawn on it.

Date  October 16, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

The Case For Nature (vs Nurture)

2

When I was young, my dad had a fight with his brother over open­ing a con­ve­nience store next to a phar­macy (my uncle is a phar­ma­cist) in a plaza that my grand­mother owned. Both types of stores have lots of com­pet­ing prod­ucts, so the argu­ment was about who would be the one to open their store. I guess my dad won, because he bought the con­ve­nience store and ran it for quite a few years.

After that, I didn’t see my uncle or his fam­ily at all. For so long that I com­pletely for­got that I had a cousin, Crystal.

When my grand­mother came from Hong Kong to visit one year, she reunited the fam­i­lies again, and I saw them for the first time in a long while1.

At that time, the pop­u­lar thing to do was play cards. I had the rep­u­ta­tion as being the fastest, most dex­ter­ous dealer out of all the kids. But when I went over to my uncle’s house one day and we were play­ing Asshole, I noticed Crystal deal­ing exactly the same way I did, except faster, with­out even pay­ing attention.

It was at that point that I real­ized, “This per­son is my family”.

The only other time I had such a stark real­iza­tion was dur­ing my trip to Hong Kong ear­lier this year. At an inter­na­tional buf­fet, we grabbed some dessert from the cart and ordered some tea. My uncle, aunt (both sib­lings of my dad), and I were sit­ting at the table, with deli­cious pas­tries in front of us, but none of us were touch­ing them. When some­one asked my uncle why he wasn’t eat­ing his dessert yet, he said that he has to have tea with his sweets. And it turns out that was the exact same rea­son me and my aunt were wait­ing too. One of these lit­tle quirks that one never expects some­one else to have, and some­times we’re even ridiculed for it, and yet here we were, three peo­ple doing the exact same thing for the exact same reason.

I gen­er­ally believe that humans are more likely a prod­uct of their expe­ri­ences, with a touch of inher­ited qual­i­ties too. After all, I’m almost noth­ing like either of my par­ents. It was only these two expe­ri­ences that made me admit that there’s a lit­tle more of us that’s inher­ited, that we’re a prod­uct of our genes, than I would have believed.

  1. I even dis­cov­ered that I had a new cousin, Darren, who was Crystal’s brother. [↑]
Date  July 17, 2009
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Categories  Thoughts

(Mis) Understanding Art

18

Few peo­ple in my fam­ily seem to under­stand my art.

When they look at my pic­tures, they make com­ments about the qual­ity, or whether or not they’re smil­ing, or ask how much money I make. It’s never about the mean­ing, or my intent, or what I’m try­ing to express. Only one of them saw what I was going for in com­pos­ing this photo of my grandma and aunt with the poster in the background.

They also talk through my videos when watch­ing them, when every bit of pac­ing is impor­tant, miss­ing sig­nif­i­cant estab­lish­ing shots.

Maybe it’s the cul­ture. Very few Chinese kids are allowed to be artists, as it’s seen as too risky or imprac­ti­cal. My gen­er­a­tion of fam­ily seems to be full of accoun­tants, and engi­neers, pro­gram­mers, or any­thing else with secu­rity. Even though piano or vio­lin lessons are com­mon (I can’t think of a sin­gle Chinese friend who didn’t take piano lessons at one point), it’s more of a sta­tus sym­bol to be able say that you can afford the pri­vate lessons and instrument.

This is prob­a­bly why I feel like I don’t relate or can’t speak to most of my fam­ily. When they don’t under­stand my art, they don’t under­stand me.

Date  April 3, 2009
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Categories  Random

Grandma's Story

5

I’ve been try­ing to get a bet­ter idea of grandma’s life, so I’ve been ask­ing her as many ques­tions as pos­si­ble in the last three weeks. Her mind tends to drift and she gets lost on sub­jects; lit­tle snip­pets from the rest of my fam­ily sort of fill in the blanks. I’ll add more if I can get any­thing else out of her.

Grandma was born in Hong Kong, but she fled to Chiu Chow dur­ing the Japanese inva­sion by climb­ing a moun­tain with her only son slung on her back. For some rea­son, she feels a lot of pride about Chiu Chow even though she wasn’t born in that city, and always points out peo­ple from there1. As a result, she can speak both Cantonese and the Chiu Chow dialect.

Read the rest of this entry »

  1. She says she rec­og­nizes them by their faces. [↑]
Date  March 27, 2009
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Categories  Random

Old Family Portrait

6

Old family portrait

I found this pic­ture at my uncle’s house. It is:

  1. Hilarious
  2. Hilarious
  3. Hilarious
  4. All of the above

How weird is it that I didn’t even rec­og­nize myself. And look at those glasses! They were my first pair, which prob­a­bly means I was around 14 or 15. Apparently, I was still wear­ing my cal­cu­la­tor watch at that age.

Date  March 25, 2009
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Categories  Photos Random

Comfort In Each Other

0

I’ve been get­ting to know one of my aunts.

Aside from annual hol­i­day par­ties where the fam­i­lies would gather, we never spoke. But then again, I never spoke with any of the “grown-ups“1, as they offered lit­tle of inter­est to some­one my age.

We’ve become sound­ing boards for each other. She tells me about how she’s approach­ing my grandmother’s treat­ments — the types of ther­apy, the med­ica­tions, deci­sions on when to go to see the doc­tor — and I tell her about my rela­tion­ships with my mom and dad.

I find it quite amaz­ing that she’s so aware of the influ­ence of Chinese cul­ture in her life. She seems to be adapt­ing to the gen­er­a­tion gap and cul­ture dif­fer­ences, or per­haps keep­ing them in mind, when it comes to treat­ing her own Canadian-born daugh­ter, which is far beyond what my par­ents were capa­ble of. Until I really started talk­ing with her, I believed that all Chinese par­ents were the same; too blind or too stub­born to under­stand how to raise first-generation Canadian children.

It amazes me how strong she is. She’s the one who makes sure my grand­mother eats, drinks, takes her pills, sleeps, and walks. The one who cleans up after grandma when she has to go, but can’t make it to the bath­room in time. She dropped every­thing — her hus­band, her daugh­ter, her real estate prac­tice — to be here indef­i­nitely, and has taken charge of all my grandmother’s care.

I tried to tell her that I admired her for every­thing she’s doing, but she wouldn’t let me con­tinue. She’s hav­ing a hard time keep­ing it together, and is afraid that grandma may see her cry­ing and real­ize how seri­ous her sick­ness is. I wish I could give her some relief, a hug even, or just 15 min­utes to let it all out. I guess there will be plenty of time for that soon enough.

For now, we have each other.

  1. The par­ties were a chance for adults to sing and talk, so the kids did their own thing. [↑]
Date  March 21, 2009
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Categories  Random

Our Own People

1

It’s been a relaxed exis­tence here. Aside from spend­ing time with my grandma when she’s awake, mak­ing sure she eats through­out the day, and the occa­sional visit to the hos­pi­tal, there’s no set sched­ule for any­thing. I’ve only been to this house a hand­ful of times in my life, but I feel remark­ably com­fort­able. There’s no for­mal need to sit at the din­ner table until every­one is fin­ished eat­ing. There’s no oblig­a­tion to talk to some­one. No one feels the need to enter­tain me. I can nap when I want. I can raid one of the three fridges when I wake up at night and can’t fall asleep. I can walk around in my paja­mas all day. I can dis­ap­pear for hours to write. Like we’re actu­ally fam­ily, even though I barely see these people.

My grandma tells me feel at home because we’re “our own peo­ple” as it’s said in Chinese. Even though I always under­stood the expres­sion, I’ve never really felt it until now.

Date  March 12, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life Thoughts

Being Strong For My Grandmother

11

The can­cer has spread to her bones and sev­eral major organs now. We asked the doc­tor not to tell her, but we can’t do any­thing against his moral oblig­a­tion to inform the patient. Either way, she doesn’t know how seri­ous it is, whether it’s from shock and denial, or mem­ory loss.

But she’s awake, and aware, and feel­ing no pain, which is good enough for me. The most we can do now is to try to make the rest of her life as enjoy­able as possible.

She thinks she’s going to be fine. Keeps telling me that she’ll take me to a nearby park when she’s bet­ter. As much as it hurts me to know this won’t be pos­si­ble any­more, it’s reliev­ing to know she’s so obliv­i­ous. We don’t let our­selves cry around her, for fear that she may real­ize how bad it is.

Her face is more sal­low, her fin­gers and legs ema­ci­ated, but she still has her thick, black hair1. Aside from a dis­tended stom­ach, it’s hard to tell that she has such a grim prognosis.

But by far the hard­est part is hav­ing to cod­dle her like a child to take her med­ica­tion. Telling her she’s a good girl if she swal­lows her pills and reward­ing her with ice-cream. That we’re only strict because we care about her. It tears me in half when she gives such a painful look of dis­taste with every pill we hand her, 18 a day.

She used to be so strong. Now we have to be strong for her.

  1. “I used to have even more”, she tells me. [↑]
Date  March 11, 2009
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Categories  Random

Walks With Grandma

7

walks down the street

Thumbnail: School alley
Thumbnail: Building roads
Thumbnail: Convenience store
Thumbnail: Foliage
Thumbnail: Neon sign
Thumbnail: Store parrots
Thumbnail: Parrots
Thumbnail: Schoolgirls
Thumbnail: Villas sign
Thumbnail: Holding hands
 

In the last few weeks, she’s been too weak to leave the house, but we can take her for walks in the after­noon now. Going around the block takes half an hour and leaves her legs shak­ing, but she’s happy to be out. Before we go, she gets dressed and puts on her makeup and does her hair. Even now, she retains the class and dig­nity I’ve always admired in her.

Date  March 11, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life Photos

The Worth Of A Good Night's Sleep

2

My aunt — the youngest child of my grand­mother — has been here for weeks. She stopped tak­ing her clients at work, and has been over­see­ing my grandmother’s treat­ments, as well as mak­ing deci­sions on her behalf.

They sleep in the same bed now, which I think is adorable, like regress­ing to some child­hood time, except the roles have been reversed. Yesterday, she told me my grand­mother had the best the night of sleep in a long time. She attrib­utes it to my grandmother’s hap­pi­ness that my dad and I are here.

This has already made the entire trip worth it.

Date  March 10, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life

Last Chance For Grandma

7

I’m on a plane some­where over the Pacific Ocean, in the mid­dle of this 16000km jour­ney. 18 hours of flight time, one lay­over in Chicago, and two meals.

My grand­mother in Hong Kong is dying. She’s been diag­nosed with colon can­cer, and started chemother­apy last week, slip­ping in and out of aware­ness due to the can­cer, the treat­ment, the med­ica­tions, or all three. So when my dad told me a few days ago that he was book­ing a ticket to fly out to see her, I had to take the oppor­tu­nity to go with him.

This is the woman to whom I mailed the first pay­cheque from my first job. The woman who gave me the jade neck­lace I never take off. The woman who came to Canada by her­self to find an edu­ca­tion for my dad, when the only English word she knew was “delay”. The woman who taught me how to hold chop­sticks prop­erly. The woman I’ve looked up to my entire life.

I don’t know how I’ll react when I see her, because I don’t know what con­di­tion she’s in. The details have been vague.

Awareness is a big thing. I want to be there. I want her to be aware. I want her to know how impor­tant she is to me.

The cir­cum­stances aren’t great, but I’m thank­ful to have this oppor­tu­nity to go. I’ll be able to bond with my dad. I’ll get a chance to see my uncles and aunts and cousins. I was going to go last year, but the trip was can­celed due to unfore­seen circumstances.

In a way, the tim­ing is right. I already have my pass­port. I was able to get more than three weeks off work. My col­i­tis has been diag­nosed, and I’m tak­ing med­ica­tion that will allow me to eat very well and not worry1. I have all the cam­era gear I need2. And I’ve been feel­ing so jaded with life lately, it’ll be good to get away, a lit­tle bit of much needed exile.

Before dri­ving to Toronto, I dropped Dolly off at Joel’s house3 The fish has a delayed feed­ing tablet. Extra pre­scrip­tions have been filled. The plants have been watered. Projects have been put on hold, both paid and unpaid, and plans have been can­celed. Even Naveed called me dur­ing the drive, and invited me to Rosella’s first birth­day party, but I’ll have to miss it. I don’t like to do things so last minute, but I have no choice.

This will be the first time I’ve ever gone when it wasn’t Christmas. It’ll be warmer, that’s for sure, and I’m going from a bru­tal Canadian win­ter to rel­a­tively trop­i­cal climes.

As a woman in her 80s4 with such a diag­no­sis on a dif­fer­ent con­ti­nent, it’ll prob­a­bly be the last chance for me to see her.

It feels like soon isn’t soon enough.

  1. I have yet to cal­cu­late the adjust­ment for the tim­ing of my med­ica­tions, since Hong Kong is 13 hours ahead, and the dosage for one of them is care­fully tapered over sev­eral weeks. [↑]
  2. The last time I went to Hong Kong, I wasn’t into pho­tog­ra­phy yet, so I bor­rowed my dad’s cam­era and didn’t know how to use it. [↑]
  3. He owes me a favour for tak­ing care of Sprocket for six weeks while he was in Australia last year. It’ll be inter­est­ing to see how she han­dles liv­ing in some­one else’s home, along with Sprocket and another dog. [↑]
  4. No one really knows how old she is, because they didn’t keep birth records in Hong Kong for girls when she was born. I’m guess­ing some­where around late 80s. She just tells every­one that her birth­day is on Christmas to make it eas­ier. [↑]
Date  March 9, 2009
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Categories  Daily Life

Father-Son Bonding

4

I called my dad on his birth­day this week. After the divorce I would never call him, spe­cial occa­sion or not, sim­ply because I needed to dis­tance myself from the sit­u­a­tion. He did call me on mine last year though, which reestab­lishes a sort of prece­dence and rit­ual, and he actu­ally thanked me for the call.

We made the usual small talk, about work and home.

Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG 2006

He told me he bought a car: a 2006 Mercedes Benz SLK 55 AMG hard-top con­vert­ible with 18″ rims and 7-speed-automatic trans­mis­sion. He’s going to keep the Beemer for win­ter dri­ving. It filled my heart with quiet joy when he said I could drive it the next time I vis­ited him. Not so much because he was let­ting me (for I was always allowed to drive the Sportline 300CE while liv­ing at home), but because I could tell in his voice that he wanted me to try it.

I asked him if there’s any his­tory of col­orec­tal can­cer in the fam­ily, which the doc­tor wanted to know at my last appoint­ment, to which my dad answered, thank­fully, no. He shared with me his own health con­cerns, the med­ical terms of which he only knows in Chinese. These are things I avoid ask­ing about when I visit him, as he pops some pills from a bot­tle kept with the dishes in the kitchen, and I real­ize that I’m learn­ing more about my dad than ever. It’s not so much out of a need for pri­vacy or avoid­ance of embar­rass­ment, but sim­ply out of con­ve­nience, as these top­ics would never get brought up.

It’s strange to bond with him in this way, only after so many years of leav­ing home.

I remem­ber him try­ing to teach me pho­tog­ra­phy when I was younger, but he soon lost inter­est, in both pho­tog­ra­phy and me1. Maybe it’s the dis­tance that makes us appre­ci­ate each other more, and it wouldn’t be the same if we lived in the same city.

In a way, I’m glad to have the rela­tion­ship now, and I’m able to for­get that I’ve never had it for most of my life.

  1. As such, all my pho­tog­ra­phy is self-taught, aside from one trick used to zoom a lens towards the sub­ject so that the edges are blurred that he showed me at the Statue of Liberty. [↑]
Date  February 16, 2009
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Categories  Random
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