Yearly Archives: 2005

Bachelor

Megalomania is watch­ing a man with a brain in a jar court a woman who laughs like a mule, and believ­ing that it’s the sto­ry of one’s life. Weakness is los­ing a thought to a pret­ty face. Concupiscence is the inter­pre­ta­tion of awk­ward rough­hous­ing as a pre­lude to fuck­ing. Jealousy is won­der­ing why one nev­er had the same oppor­tu­ni­ty, and accep­tance is real­iz­ing that one did.

In the end, it’s not the sit­u­a­tions we relate to, it’s the hope­less­ness of being stuck with the deci­sions we make. Of being caught between the risk of set­tling, and the fear of not doing any bet­ter.

Happiness is free­dom from both.

Today I Hit The Snooze

I also dressed down, and stole a drink from work. Two of my best friends final­ly met each oth­er. They got along famous­ly, bet­ter than any of my oth­er friends in the past. I sup­port­ed one on the biggest deci­sion of his life. The oth­er told me that I had always been her hope­ful out of the round of inter­views for my job, over a chick­en sand­wich and some onion rings. I learned the four Cs of dia­mond appraisal, and saw a car­bon spec through a loupe for the first time.

I met two cats; one rolled into my lap while play­ing Double Dash with the best kids in the world. A fam­i­ly inspired me, and I dared to dream of some day hav­ing my own.

HK Fullscreen, Revisited, Again

Here I am, try­ing to get anoth­er entry down, but there’s a movie play­ing on OMNI.2, one of Canada’s pre­mier mul­ti-cul­tur­al chan­nels. Although the pro­gram­ming of OMNI.2 is aimed for 22 dif­fer­ent eth­no­cul­tur­al groups in 20 dif­fer­ent lan­guages, Saturday nights are always in Cantonese. Almost just as invari­able are the roman­tic come­dies of Hong Kong cin­e­ma that they broad­cast around this time.

It makes sense of course; stud­ies have shown that by 2017, vis­i­ble minori­ties will top 50% in Toronto and Vancouver, with Chinese peo­ple mak­ing up over 500,000 of that per­cent­age. Add to this the grow­ing fas­ci­na­tion of younger peo­ple with the Asian cul­ture, and recent flicks from Hong Kong are the per­fect way to build a strong mar­ket pres­ence.

Unfortunately, the movies are most­ly trite: a col­lec­tion of pre­dictable, sac­cha­rine love sto­ries with lit­tle artis­tic intent, and the one on now is no dif­fer­ent. I have to admit though, as sim­ple as these movies are, they still affect me. When I see the char­ac­ter­is­tic neon build­ing signs, home­ly food stalls filled with wok hey, and claus­tro­pho­bi­cal­ly busy streets of Hong Kong again, I’m filled with a cer­tain inex­plic­a­ble roman­ti­cism.

And I can’t seem to get over it. All I want to do is go to Hong Kong again and share the expe­ri­ence with some­one. An expe­ri­ence that’s heart-rac­ing­ly poignant, like the ado­les­cent mem­o­ry of a first date, when you’re build­ing up the courage to hold some­one’s hand. Perhaps, like Humbert Humbert in Nabokov’s Lolita, the mem­o­ry of my child­hood has frozen some­thing in me. A mem­o­ry that’s beau­ti­ful.

Simply, pure­ly, beau­ti­ful.

It's A Rainy, Overcast Saturday Morning

I’m only awake now because I’m too used to wak­ing up at half past six on work­days. A mug of Hong Kong milk tea (made with con­densed milk for extra creami­ness) has always been my week­end com­fort food, but I ran out of loose leaves a few weeks ago. Usually, I sit at my desk and write after break­fast, fin­ish­ing off the tea from break­fast, but instead I’ll be going to my music for inspi­ra­tion.

I’ve run into a string of good music late­ly, or maybe I’ve just been hear­ing things in a dif­fer­ent way. None of my playlists seem rel­e­vant again. More details when I have more time.

It’s good to be sober.