Yearly Archives: 2006

A Shattering Of Stability

Last Friday, my mom called me at work.

“Do you want the piano?”, she asked.

“Sure”. She must have detect­ed the curi­ous hes­i­ta­tion in my voice.

“We’re going to be mov­ing soon”, she fur­thered. There was nev­er even a hint of mov­ing before, so I had to ask.

“Separately?”

“Yup.”

This is how I find out my par­ents are get­ting divorced.

My imme­di­ate feel­ing was that of resigned sad­ness, and a grow­ing resent­ment as a result of this sad­ness. I wished that they could­n’t affect me like this, that they meant noth­ing to me, but in the pit of my stom­ach, I know that they do.

It’s like won­der­ing if you’ll cry when your grand­moth­er dies, nev­er believ­ing that you will.

Until it hap­pens.

I should have seen it com­ing. A few weeks ago, she called to inform me that she was putting funds in my invest­ment account, so that she would have an acces­si­ble cache of emer­gency funds in case my dad ever left her. Like insur­ance, it’s anoth­er thing to have just in case, hop­ing nev­er to need it. Even in my ear­ly child­hood, there were mem­o­ries I’ve tried to block out. Bloody gash­es, divorce scares, plead­ing for us to stay togeth­er. All I ever want­ed from them was a nor­mal fam­i­ly.

Thumbnail: Parents 1

Thumbnail: Parents 2

Lately, even in the last few years, every­thing seemed to be going well. The last time I vis­it­ed, they were doing things togeth­er. Dancing. Eating. There was even talk of buy­ing a new car. Now the real­iza­tion is set­ting in. That was the last time I’ll have seen them togeth­er. Married. As hus­band and wife. I took a pic­ture of them that week­end, when we went out for dim sum. My dad was order­ing food from the menu, and my mom was pour­ing him tea, arms crossed over his. It’s the last time I’ll see them togeth­er like this, and the only pic­ture I have of them.

I don’t even want to think of what the annu­al fam­i­ly gath­er­ings are going to be like, or how I’m going to vis­it them, indi­vid­u­al­ly, dur­ing the hol­i­days. How I’m going to react if I find out they’re dat­ing again.

All I can say now is that I’m dis­ap­point­ed.

Nick And Ali's Wedding

A trib­ute to Nick and Alison, my old laid-back room­mate (who taught me how to make a mean grilled cheese, offered a sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenge in Counter Strike, and intro­duced me to Lamb) and his new bride.

I would say some­thing about the wed­ding, but the video says it all.

Thumbnail: Brent
Thumbnail: Bronwen
Thumbnail: A Cupcake cake
Thumbnail: Greg and Amanda
Thumbnail: Trolley
Thumbnail: A shot in the mirror
Thumbnail: Signing
Thumbnail: Table settings
Thumbnail: Table six
Thumbnail: Karen in the dark
Thumbnail: Aaron drinks
Thumbnail: Three on the steps
Thumbnail: Final shot

At one point in the night I was run­ning around with my Karachi Outpost strapped on my back, and my cam­corder bag around my shoul­der, feel­ing like a one-man doc­u­men­tary team, even though my focus was on video instead of stills. There are a cou­ple of cam­era issues, such as focus and zoom speed that still bug me when I watch the footage, but until I can afford a Canon XL2 my cheap Hitachi DVD-cam will have to do.

Surprisingly, the eas­i­est part was pick­ing the song, some­thing that can take days itself. I need­ed a sin­gle track that would work through land­scapes, kiss­ing, and drink­ing, three things that evoke vast­ly dif­fer­ent emo­tions, and Tulips by Bloc Party was per­fect. Even the tim­ing of the lyrics worked out. I wish I could say that I was able to obtain a score for the music, ana­lyze it, and symet­ri­cal­ly break down the scenes accord­ing to the devel­op­ment. To be hon­est I just did­n’t have enough footage, so I just put what I could in the parts that would fit, with­out inter­rupt­ing the flow of the sto­ry.

The entire clip took about three sol­id days to com­plete, half of which was just get­ting the scenes in the right for­mat to work with in Adobe Premier 2.0. I was plagued by video for­mat prob­lems and asyn­chro­nous audio issues. It was also the first time I was able to try this lat­est ver­sion of Premier since I was run­ning 1.5 for a while. The process real­ly pushed the capa­bil­i­ties of my sys­tem; load­ing only Premier with the whole sequence took up 1.6 gigs of RAM. Render time was about 20 min­utes on a dual-core AMD 4400+. Uncompressed video size is almost 2 gigs.

Influences were Michele Gondry from the Hardest Button To Button video, as well as the smart and wit­ty stylings of Spike Jonze.

Dreams For Cash

Thumbnail: March of the elephants
Thumbnail: Floor design
Thumbnail: Grass angels
Thumbnail: Iron circle
Thumbnail: Journey tablet
Thumbnail: Ring table
Thumbnail: Paper bird

There’s some­thing about these small-town stores. They car­ry every­thing; books, art sup­plies, fur­ni­ture, can­dy.

The baubles, the African stat­ues, the organ­ic cat­nip tins, the eso­teric wire sculp­tures, they all go home with some­one. Some of them will be thrown out in less than a year, oth­ers become heir­looms passed from gen­er­a­tion to gen­er­a­tion.

In all their tiny beau­ty, they make a dif­fer­ence.

The peo­ple who work there are nev­er the same, but there’s always one thing that’s con­sis­tent. You can see the inno­cence in their faces, a warm feel­ing of rus­tic integri­ty. They all say hi, and go back to what they were doing, nev­er mind­ing your wan­der­ing pres­ence in the store. I think I’d like to be one of these peo­ple some day. Maybe when I retire.

Selling dreams.

Sex Drugged

Man does not live by words alone, despite the fact that some­times he has to eat them.

—Adlai E. Stevenson Jr.

It’s after din­ner, and while her par­ents are putting the dish­es away down­stairs, she’s going down on me, lying on her pink sheets, pants pulled down to my knees. Her broth­er’s in his room next door, and I’m pressed up against the wall that sep­a­rates us. In my quick­ened breath she hears that I’m on the verge of moan­ing, and keeps me in check with an embar­rased shush.

Without a means to express my plea­sure, all I can say is that I love her.

It was­n’t true. I was just lost in the moment, addict­ed to the heat of her tongue.

A week lat­er, we broke up.

This is why they have the insan­i­ty plea. When you catch your wife in bed with anoth­er man. When you tell some­one that you love them, because you’re intox­i­cat­ed, get­ting the best head you’ve ever had in your life.

And to this day what I regret the most was­n’t the con­flict I caused in her fam­i­ly with my even­tu­al absence, or the tak­ing of her vir­gin­i­ty, or dat­ing some­one else the day after we broke up.

It was that I could­n’t con­trol my words for those ten lit­tle min­utes.

This Is How They Love Me

Thumbnail: Shirt and tie

With presents that come fold­ed to per­fec­tion, boxed in white wrap­ping paper, and spe­cial wash­ing instruc­tions. This is the safest gift for some­one my age, unlike the guess­ing game that music, toys, or games has become.

This spe­cial­ly processed, pure cot­ton fab­ric is designed for easy care and a crisp, con­fi­dent look that lasts. The soft­ness, absorben­cy and breatha­bil­i­ty of cot­ton, enhanced with inno­v­a­tive care fea­tures, ensure opti­mum wear­a­bil­i­ty. Engineered for no-fuss, express han­dling. Requires almost no iron­ing. Today’s quin­tes­sen­tial busi­ness shirt: time-sav­ing, ener­gy-sav­ing, trav­el friend­ly.

We rec­om­mend using a mild deter­gent. Spin briefly, then hang to dry. Gently pull col­lar, cuffs and seams into shape. Touch up with a medi­um iron.

Not that I’m com­plain­ing. If it’s one thing my par­ents have been able to give me, it’s finan­cial free­dom. Never hav­ing to wor­ry about how I’m going to pay for rent, or board, or edu­ca­tion. It’s not easy for Chinese par­ents to show affec­tion, an influ­ence of the cul­ture they grew up in, so they buy me things instead.

I’m the fam­i­ly pet.

The dog they can love and take care of and want around, but not have to actu­al­ly talk to or spend time with.

These are my treats.