Yearly Archives: 2003

Drinking To LAN

The week­end was fair­ly event­ful. Friday night was drink­ing with Trolley, Wheaties, Iain, and Nick. Saturday night was even more drink­ing with the same peo­ple, except Aaron, Rob, Jacques, and Krista joined us too. It was good to have a nice relax­ing night of hilar­i­ty again and just get to laugh for a few hours, some­thing I haven’t had the chance to do in a while. Jacques and Rob brought a Bubba each and only one was fin­ished, so Trolley and Wheaties are com­ing over tonight to get start­ed on the oth­er.

This week­end is anoth­er LAN par­ty, and about fif­teen peo­ple are invit­ed and we have sev­en con­firmed peo­ple so far. Some are just going to drop by with their lap­tops and play if they can’t stay the entire week­end. We’ll be squeez­ing as many peo­ple as we can into the apart­ment because up to ten peo­ple at a time may show up.

Patches Can Breakdance

Patches stalls

Patches has been hid­ing under my bed less and less. He’s more com­fort­able with his sur­round­ings now, but not quite accus­tomed to Dolly’s aggres­sive play-fight­ing. He thinks that she’s attack­ing him, so he’ll just growl and run away. I’ve got­ten him to be more relaxed by giv­ing him cat­nip. He’ll start rub­bing against me every time he smells it, and when he eats some he does a few kit­ty break danc­ing moves. Sometimes it looks like he’s try­ing to wind­mill into a stall, but I think those are his only moves.

HK Fullscreen, Revisited

I have a tick­et booked to Hong Kong at the end of November. I’ll be stay­ing there for a lit­tle under a month, dur­ing the Christmas sea­son when the entire island looks as if it’s one big orna­ment from the sky, a giant float­ing dec­o­ra­tion. The best weath­er of the year is in December, when the tem­per­a­tures drop to a rea­son­able warmth and one can actu­al­ly walk around with a coat on.

I’ll be try­ing to learn the sub­way sys­tem for the first few days so that I can get around on my own. I’m going alone so I’ll prob­a­bly be liv­ing with my uncle most of the time, and stay­ing at my grand­moth­er’s on the week­ends. I’ll be going home first and stay­ing there for a few days, then fly­ing to Hong Kong, then fly­ing back and stay­ing home for New Years. I’ll meet up with Ken the day before I depart from Hong Kong, since he’s fly­ing up from Ohio.

I can’t wait to get back to the busy mar­kets, taste the Chinese food, browse the end­less shops. I want to ask my grand­moth­er so much, and cel­e­brate Christmas with her. I wish there was some­thing I could give her that she could keep, sim­i­lar to the jade neck­lace she gave me that I’ve almost nev­er tak­en off ever since I received it. There’s an almost inef­fa­ble feel­ing that’s con­jured up in my mind when I think of the mod­ern sky­scrap­ers, the crowds of peo­ple, the very eth­nic faces. Some of my best mem­o­ries are from being in Hong Kong dur­ing Christmas, when there’s an almost mys­tic feel­ing in the air and every­one is in good spir­its.

I’ve been want­i­ng a vaca­tion, from both the good and bad in my life, for so long. Just to get away from absolute­ly every­thing going on right now would be ben­e­fi­cial, almost like a self-imposed exile. I’d be able to dis­tance myself from things and gain some per­spec­tive, some­thing I usu­al­ly believe I’m able to do until some­thing dras­tic hap­pens that changes the way I view things.

I’m not real­ly sure what to expect from my vis­it, although I think that I’ll be changed ever sub­tly, maybe sub­con­scious­ly. One can rarely walk away from such things with­out being affect­ed in some way, per­haps both Tina and Em would agree. I just don’t know how this may change me. I don’t have any ques­tions. I’m not look­ing for answers.

I’m just wait­ing to find out.

Family From B.C.

My aunt and uncle hap­pened to be in town from B.C. yes­ter­day, so they took me out to din­ner and brought their son along. I don’t believe I had met any of them before, although they all seemed famil­iar. A dif­fi­cul­ty I have with the Chinese cul­ture is the fact that every­one is called aunt or uncle if they’re old­er, even if they’ve just been met. Our actu­al rel­a­tives (the aunts and uncles relat­ed by blood), how­ev­er, have a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent name sys­tem, most­ly based on rank and which side of the fam­i­ly they are from. The prob­lem ends up being the fact that I have no idea what the names of these peo­ple are, since we don’t append a first name to “aunt” or “uncle”, and I ran into that spe­cif­ic prob­lem yes­ter­day. I was able to go the entire din­ner with­out hav­ing to call any of them by name though, so I escaped with my igno­rance in igno­rance.

The Hidden Kitty

Dolly hides

Dolly has late­ly been sleep­ing under the rugs. Nick and I will think that she’s miss­ing until we see a large lump in the liv­ing room rug. It’s pret­ty frus­trat­ing because every time I straight­en it out, she’ll just dig under­neath it and mess it all up again.

One thing that she’s been doing for a while is sleep­ing on things to mark them. Every time some­one brings a bag or jack­et into my room, the first thing she’ll do is sniff it out then sleep on it, which I per­son­al­ly see as a viable alter­na­tive to uri­na­tion.