equivocality — Jeff Ngan's collection of thoughts, experiences, and projects, inspired by pretty much everything
Viewing entries tagged with "parties"
Pages (3): 123
07 Apr 13
1

Catan Catan Strip-Catan

We’ve started mak­ing wagers in our mul­ti­player Magic games, small baubles or other people’s prop­erty or an half-hour of labour1 to add another dimen­sion to the game­play. For a par­tic­u­lar three-way match, I anted my atten­dance at Catan Catan Strip-Catan cause I couldn’t make up my mind on going. Another busy week meant I was tired of being social — with the pos­si­bil­ity of being naked in such a sit­u­a­tion, no less — but it still sounded like a night that shouldn’t be passed up.

Settlers of Strip Catan

Socks are usu­ally the first to go, but the pair counts as one point. And Brandon isn’t play­ing, he’s just half-naked for rea­sons.

Tiana and Shawn teamed up on me, since they wanted me to go more than they wanted to win what I had offered. However, they’ve also been mak­ing me feel com­fort­able with myself lately (the cud­dles always help), so I was okay with being tackle-out at some point dur­ing the party. I ended up win­ning all my Catan matches any­way, and never needed to take off more than an accoutrement.

  1. Great when you need the dishes done after a party, but I’m more likely to take a mas­sage. [↩]
tagged with #parties #Tiana / filed under Daily Life Photos
19 Mar 13
1

in the arms of men

My wit and my elo­quence are not at their best at this par­tic­u­lar moment, which is why I have no quick riposte to your rib­bing. All my humour is dry and self-deprecating any­way. It’s mak­ing me won­der if you think I can’t take an Asian joke or two. The truth is, I don’t know how to make fun of any­one but myself.

Too bad you’ve got piss tests com­ing up. We’ve got this bal­cony, the right occa­sion, and I don’t drink any­more. Doesn’t mean I can’t lis­ten to your war sto­ries, or dan­gle in the air when you give out bear hugs. Perhaps I’d be less awk­ward when it comes to such bond­ing if I was in high-school JV foot­ball. Seth made the team one year, and scored a touch­down for guys like us.

downtown Ottawa

 

I remem­ber you. Iain and I went to buy a $5 hit off your bong 10 years ago, back when we cut our teeth on prairie fires and five-cent wings and I’ll-never-do-that-again. You were danc­ing to jazz by your­self in a beater and per­pet­ual Kangol when we walked in, but you wore no shame on your face. The world is small when our lives are not.

Last time I saw Iain was at the house­warm­ing, but I still think of him every time I use those crys­tal glasses he gave me that day. He would have wanted them filled with some­thing tight-bodied and twelve-years old. Nowadays all I can take is a lit­tle Bailey’s on my Mayan choco­late Häagen-Dazs. Luckily they’re also per­fect for ice cream.

bachelor

 

I’ve long missed these nights. Breathing fresh air when step­ping out of a stuffy bar. That sud­den calm when com­ing out of the din. Big groups with the chance to change con­ver­sa­tions. Nights that have been replaced by din­ners with nuclear fam­i­lies and one-on-ones. Oddly enough, the only thing in com­mon are sto­ries of how one’s son is learn­ing to play with his dick. The world would have me believe that a man isn’t made by the drinks he orders but by the atten­tion he gives his kids.

If only I didn’t have to go so soon. I’ve never been to the peel­ers in Ottawa, and I can only imag­ine where my bills will end up.

tagged with #experiences #memories #Ottawa #parties #university / filed under Daily Life Photos
11 Jan 13
0

a heavier dose

I’ve been try­ing to stay vocal about my needs, lest I fall back into old life traps and defence mech­a­nisms. It means I’m still apply­ing lessons learned from last year, still try­ing to be open even if it means being vulnerable.

As far as I can tell, this has been work­ing in my favour. Otherwise, Seth wouldn’t be com­ing over on Saturday to teach me how to play the acoustic ver­sion of Sean Rowe’s Jonathan, one of those songs I’ve always wanted to learn before I die.

As a side-effect, it’s been a strug­gle to bal­ance my rela­tion­ship needs with over­stim­u­la­tion. The other night we smoked an apéri­tif in the car before spend­ing three hours gorg­ing our­selves on all-you-can-eat sushi, learn­ing that the small but sig­nif­i­cant priv­i­leges of our class come in plates of bite-sized fatty pro­tein made to order. Then we watched the entire first sea­son of Tim and Eric, Awesome Show! Great Job, and played Magic until 4:30 in the morning.

It left me burnt out and I must have lost two days, yet it still feels like I don’t have enough nights like that, shar­ing real moments with peo­ple who don’t per­pet­u­ally have some­where else to be or some­one else to see. I need more of those times in my every­day life, not just in the days marked on my calendar.

tagged with #friends #friendship #parties / filed under Daily Life Photos Video
01 Jan 12
6

perpetual eve

This day is the same every year. The streets are dead and filled with slush, the stores all closed. No mat­ter where I am, it seems peo­ple are look­ing for a chan­nel on TV to watch a corporate-sponsored count­down, and I always feel alone even though I’m sur­rounded by friends.

If it’s the same every year, it’s strange that my mem­o­ries of New Year’s Eve are so mixed. Jocks harass­ing me on the bus. Bundling up in big coats to share petit coro­nas out­side. Panic attacks. Blonds and red­heads. Rich foods and too much drink. And some­how the peo­ple I love and the peo­ple I hate end up at the same parties.

Sometimes it reminds me too much of my child­hood. My fam­ily hosted the same count­down party every year that became the only real time we spent with other peo­ple, and the only time we ever caught up with our “friends”. Numbers would be shouted in uni­son, cham­pagne would be toasted, noth­ing would change. An empty rit­ual for empty peo­ple. Maybe that’s why I never feel like I belong any­where on this day. It’s like I’m wait­ing to feel what every­one else around me is feel­ing when the ball drops.

tagged with #lonliness #parents #parties #rituals / filed under Daily Life Video
09 Jan 11
10

Jason + Amy Wedding Day

Filmed another lovely wedding.

There were lots of fan­tas­tic lit­tle details, espe­cially in the way peo­ple inter­act with their hands, but my favourite moment is when the pas­tor does a lit­tle tilt, mim­ic­k­ing the kiss between the new hus­band and wife.

tagged with #parties / filed under Random Video
21 Oct 10
8

House Show II

I’m still catch­ing my breath from the awe­some­ness that was the sec­ond House Show. So much plan­ning, prepa­ra­tion, and prac­tice went into one night that I felt like I’d given birth when it was over; I didn’t know how to feel, or what to think.

Darren came up the day before to hang out, and along with Shane, Blais (his son), and Chris, stayed until Sunday. After the show we stayed up talk­ing, pick­ing Shane’s brain about his com­po­si­tion process and influ­ences. Everything went bet­ter than I could have planned, and I’m thank­ful that so many of my friends were there to share the expe­ri­ence with me.

cupcakes

Meet the cupcakes (from left to right):

Black and White (Belgian dark choco­late cake with vanilla frost­ing and choco­late sprin­kles), straw­berry (pure straw­berry cake with sweet cream cheese frost­ing and red sugar flower on top), hazel­nut choco­late (hazelnut-chocolate cake with Belgian dark choco­late frost­ing dec­o­rated with a toasted hazel­nut on top), vanilla (vanilla cake and frost­ing, flavoured with Madagascar bour­bon vanilla with sprin­kles), and key lime pie (lime-infused cake and cream cheese frost­ing with lime zest).

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tagged with #art #music #parties / filed under Daily Life Video
11 Oct 10
5

skies they opened up for us

It’s been a good week­end, full of res­o­lu­tion and epipha­nies and hugs and delec­table food and won­der­ful surprises.

I’m run­ning on autopi­lot again. Sleeping well and feel­ing good. It still hasn’t sunk in that I’ll be in France in less than a month. There are so many projects I’ve put off until I get back.

kids on stairs

 

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tagged with #hope #parties / filed under Daily Life Photos
05 Oct 10
13

Crystal + Jae-In Wedding Day

Shot with a Canon 5D Mk II, mostly using my new 70–200mm f/2.8 IS II. Be sure to watch in high def­i­n­i­tion, and let the video load com­pletely before play­ing because the pac­ing and momen­tum are crucial.

Editing took about 25 hours, and I’m super happy with the way it turned out. There were so many great moments, and the footage has a won­der­fully vis­ceral feel to it. The most chal­leng­ing part of post-processing was colour bal­anc­ing all the footage, which I had to do shot-by-shot. When you’re film­ing for an entire day, you tend to get a huge vari­ety of light sources and temperatures.

A note about the tea cer­e­monies. The first one was the Chinese ver­sion, which allows rel­a­tives to hand red pock­ets or jew­el­ery (usu­ally gold and jade) to the new cou­ple. The sec­ond one was Korean, named Paebaek, and is much more elab­o­rate. Relatives line up for a for­mal bow, tea serv­ing, then throw a hand­ful of dates (rep­re­sent­ing girls) and chest­nuts (rep­re­sent­ing boys) to be caught by the bride and groom with a blan­ket. The num­ber of dates and chest­nuts caught sig­ni­fies how many chil­dren they’ll have. No sur­prise that grandpa only grabbed chestnuts.

Then the bride is given one of the dates they caught, and the groom has to take a bite out of it from her mouth. The per­son who ends up with the big­ger piece is the one who will wear the pants (which is why you see the bride tena­ciously try­ing to keep the big­ger piece for her­self). At the end, the groom has to carry his mother and mother-in-law around the cer­e­mony table, then carry his new bride out of the hall.

Also, this:

dad at wedding

 

tagged with #father #parties / filed under Random Video
27 Sep 10
2

House Show II: Invitation

Owing to the suc­cess of last year’s house show, I’ve invited both Shane Watt and Jesse Dangerously to come and per­form again next month. Not only will there be awe­some music and an assort­ment of mini-cupcakes hosted in my liv­ing room, it’ll also be Jesse’s birth­day party.

This will be a col­lab­o­ra­tion across Eastern Canada, as Shane will be com­ing from Montreal (with a poten­tial secret guest), and Rosie will be trav­el­ing from Halifax on man­dolin to join Audra, Nic (also com­ing from Montreal, as Rockefort F. Loopfrog, the beat­maker), and I as part of the Dangerson Famile. However, I don’t think Dolly will be mak­ing an appear­ance because the sheer num­ber of peo­ple in the house last time really freaked her out.

second house show flier

I had a lot of fun mak­ing this flyer, fea­tur­ing Mr. Cupcake. The great thing about Avenir is that it sup­ports so many vari­a­tions of the type­face, which lets you make movie and con­cert posters in the clas­sic style of a full-justified col­umn of information.

tagged with #art #music #parties / filed under Daily Life
26 Aug 10
2

Will you sign my banana?

No bet­ter place for a bach­e­lor party than in the mar­ket, where peo­ple see you in a giant banana cos­tume and assume you’re either get­ting mar­ried or lost a bet.

Before going out drink­ing, they went paint­balling, though this still didn’t pre­clude the groom-to-be from hav­ing to wear the bright yel­low cos­tume in the field.

banana hug

One of sev­eral bach­e­lorette par­ties we ran into that night.

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tagged with #parties / filed under Daily Life Photos
27 Jun 10
23

Bobby's number two

I’ve been itch­ing to play around with some new footage lately cause I love edit­ing and it’s been a while since I had a good story to tell, so when Tiana invited me to Bobby’s sec­ond birth­day party, I couldn’t resist. I also recently pur­chased some new gear in prepa­ra­tion of a wed­ding I’ve been hired to film in the Fall (with a sec­ond one poten­tially lined up), and I’ve been look­ing for an oppor­tu­nity to field-test a new bag, shoul­der strap, and monopod.

I tend to get really shy at Tiana’s par­ties cause I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t know any­one else there, but she does a good job of mak­ing sure I’m never left alone for too long and included in most con­ver­sa­tions. She’s also the only other per­son I know to actu­ally design cus­tom invi­ta­tions. This time, how­ever, she was sport­ing a perky new hair­cut, and no longer a veg­e­tar­ian (for now). Such is the power of St. Hubert.

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tagged with #kids #parties / filed under Daily Life Video
15 Jun 10
6

Cranium Party, the Third

So out of the 26 peo­ple I invited to the third Cranium Party, 9 said they couldn’t make it, 13 said they’d come, and 4 didn’t RSVP at all.

Out of the 13 peo­ple who said they’d come, only 3 of them showed up, and one of those was Jessica, who was sort of co-hosting this one with me, so fuck yeah she was there1.

That means that includ­ing me, we had four peo­ple, which is the bare min­i­mum to play Cranium.

To say I was dis­ap­pointed is an under­state­ment. I spent a great deal of time and energy mak­ing the invi­ta­tions, and clean­ing the house so my guests could be com­fort­able. Not to men­tion all the food I bought, most of which went bad because there weren’t enough peo­ple to eat it (and espe­cially when the guests who do show up also bring plenty of snacks).

We did end up play­ing a good game, but it was entirely not worth all the preparation.

Jessica offered to host the next one at her place — very nice of her because that really means she’s offer­ing to shoul­der all the respon­si­bil­i­ties — but I feel like Cranium par­ties are my thing. An invi­ta­tion is not only an invi­ta­tion to play, it’s an invi­ta­tion into my social cir­cle. The guest list is tightly con­trolled; any­one on it is either a very close friend, or some­one I can tell has the poten­tial to be. I want to have all the respon­si­bil­ity, because it’s one of the ways I can show these peo­ple they’re impor­tant to me.

At the same time, some peo­ple are already ask­ing about the next one2, which I find strange because the impres­sion I get is that it’s a low pri­or­ity, never some­thing peo­ple put in their sched­ule and plan around. I’m pretty sure most only go if noth­ing else comes up on that day.

That’s fine by me — not every­one loves doing bad impres­sions of Christopher Walken as much as I do — but when peo­ple say they’re going to be there and don’t show up, it’s a com­plete deval­u­a­tion of my efforts. I’m seri­ously ques­tion­ing if I’m going to host another Cranium party any time soon. If I do, the next invite list will undoubt­edly be much shorter.

At the very least, the day was sal­vaged with some bub­ble tea, Chinese food, and qual­ity time with Jessica.

  1. She’s also the only per­son to make it to all Cranium par­ties up to now. [↩]
  2. I pur­posely don’t make them a reg­u­lar thing because I want them to be spe­cial. [↩]
tagged with #friendship #parties / filed under Daily Life
19 May 10
6

Audra's 34th

For Audra’s birth­day we headed to the Savana Cafe, with some choco­late ice cream cake at the William’s res­i­dence after leav­ing the very rude ser­vice we were given.

I also got to meet Jesse’s dad, Jim. He reminds me very much of his son in terms of their intel­lect and inter­ests, and I found it quite novel to talk to an older ver­sion of Jesse with a soft voice and grey facial hair.

Dinner table

Across the table is Jesse, Caitlyn, Ariel, Ira, and Jairus. Jesse’s dad to my right.

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tagged with #friends #parties / filed under Daily Life Photos
28 Mar 10
7

Tiana's 29th

Also fea­tur­ing Bobby Hurricane.

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tagged with #friends #kids #parties / filed under Daily Life Photos
23 Feb 10
2

Cranium Party 02

Cranium Party invitation

The sec­ond Cranium Party went exceed­ingly well, even though not a sin­gle one of my core friends was there. In fact, aside from Jess, it was an entirely dif­fer­ent group from last time, and none of the four groups of peo­ple knew each other, but that didn’t stop it from being an awe­some party and every­one got along famously. Through the night, I heard peo­ple ask­ing each other, “And how do you know Jeff?”

People brought all sorts of snacks, but more impor­tantly, they also helped me eat them. Of note was Audra bring­ing a tub of green tea and honey vanilla Häagen-Dazs ice cream, which I had never even heard of before.

To make it inter­est­ing, I told every­one that the los­ing team would have to per­form a tal­ent. Some came pre­pared, oth­ers came with the atti­tude that they wouldn’t lose.

Audra’s tal­ent is speech writ­ing, but since she couldn’t per­form that, she did a ren­di­tion of a song she wrote with Jesse three years ago about their cat Zoey. And the song wasn’t just a short jin­gle, it was a full piece with proper song struc­ture and clever rhymes. If only I wasn’t laugh­ing so hard that I kept shak­ing the camera.

Sergei didn’t have a tal­ent pre­pared, but since I knew that he used to study mar­tial arts, I asked him if he could demon­strate what he knew. He sug­gested that he could blow out a can­dle with a punch, and no one was left unmoved.

Shawn brought his beau­ti­fully carved didgeri­doo to play as his tal­ent. Even though he didn’t lose, peo­ple were still intrigued enough that they wanted to try it. And, of course, Jesse added his own flavour at the end.

tagged with #parties / filed under Daily Life Video
Viewing entries tagged with "parties"
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