Yearly Archives: 2007

At the Bike Park with Tyler

Thumbnail: Classic Tyler
Thumbnail: Park rule signboard
Thumbnail: Ramp
Thumbnail: Shadows
Thumbnail: Concrete island
Thumbnail: Meeting the kids
Thumbnail: Talking
Thumbnail: On one wheel
Thumbnail: Wide shot

Tyler and I decid­ed to com­bine our hob­bies (bik­ing and pho­tog­ra­phy respec­tive­ly), so we head­ed to the local skate and bike park after work. It’s amaz­ing to see him on his bike. It’s a part of him, an exten­sion of his body. I got a ride home while he rode his bike, and even though we left at the same time he beat me there. He was pret­ty burned out that day, due to it being his first time out this year, he still man­aged the ener­gy for some great shots.

At the park, we met these 15-years-old kids. As Tyler noticed, you can tell a lot from some­one from the bike they ride. The kid with the most skills (black shirt and jeans) had a used bike, some­thing he put togeth­er him­self. The oth­er two kids had shiny new bikes with hel­mets. Tyler said it revealed how their par­ents were sup­port­ive of their hob­by, but weren’t as hard­core in their hearts.

The great thing about Tyler is that he had no qualms about ask­ing these kids, ten years his junior, how to do cer­tain tricks. He has such a con­fi­dence that he was­n’t embar­rassed about it at all.

Thumbnail: To the dirt
Thumbnail: Private property
Thumbnail: The dirt park
Thumbnail: The starting grill
Thumbnail: On the hill
Thumbnail: The 360 Kid
Thumbnail: More image than substance
Thumbnail: Tyler with tongue out
Thumbnail: Comparing bikes

The ses­sion was an exer­cise in motion pho­tog­ra­phy. It’s very dif­fer­ent from dif­fer­ent what my usu­al por­traits and still shots. Being placed in such a sit­u­a­tion forced me to learn how to use AF Servo, which turned out to be more use­ful than I could have imag­ined.

The con­cept of motion is so sub­tle. You stop a frame in motion, and from look­ing at the bike you can’t tell which direc­tion they’re going. It’s the mus­cles, the expres­sions on their faces, the direc­tion of con­cen­tra­tion that tell you what a bik­er is try­ing to do.

Embracing My Emotional Reactions

I laugh when I’m ner­vous. Especially around girls I’m attract­ed to — total gig­gle­fest. I also laugh uncon­trol­lably around peo­ple I meet for the first time. People low­er their guard when there’s laugh­ter, and I sus­pect my mind sub­con­scious­ly finds humour in every­thing to put peo­ple at ease around me.

Around peo­ple I hate, I’m dead silent. That’s how you know I don’t like you: if I don’t talk. The mere pres­ence of one of these peo­ple forces me to ful­ly con­cen­trate on not drilling a 4‑inch hole in my tem­ple with a cord­less DeWalt.

Pat’s dif­fer­ent. He told me once that if you ever see him shake his head and shrug his shoul­ders, you’re in his black­list. In an act of faith, he’ll give every­one respect and will even go so far as to stab you in the front, but he gives up if you cross his line of ethics. He’ll nev­er be involved with any­thing relat­ed to you after that. It’s not that he hates these peo­ple, like me, he los­es all inter­est. This is prob­a­bly even worse than my reac­tion which, because his is cold. You mean noth­ing to him. I try to let go as well, but I can’t. In the back of my head I cling to the hope that these peo­ple can change. Sometimes I also won­der if these peo­ple ever lis­ten to them­selves and can under­stand exact­ly why I hate them, because it’s so obvi­ous to me.

I also cry in emo­tion­al sit­u­a­tions. It does­n’t have to be any­thing par­tic­u­lar­ly sad or hap­py, just a time when emo­tions are high. Intense sports games, Tim Horton’s com­mer­cials, some­times just because some­one else is cry­ing. I can hide it pret­ty well though; peo­ple don’t under­stand if you start cry­ing in a seem­ing­ly innocu­ous sit­u­a­tion.

As frus­trat­ing as these emo­tion­al reac­tions can be, I know they make me who I am.

I used to try des­per­ate­ly to remain cere­bral and log­i­cal — like Pat — but my emo­tions would always get the bet­ter of me. Now I’ve learned to embrace them. I could only do this after accept­ing myself and becom­ing con­tent with who I am. They give me some­thing Pat does­n’t have: intense inspi­ra­tion. That rush, when your stom­ach churns, when your head is burns, when you heart flut­ters.

They’re a part of me, and they make me who I am.

A Weekend with Darren

I had Darren over from Toronto for the week­end. We were going to do a movie marathon at the the­atre — three in a day — but the movies all sucked. Disturbia? Georgia Rule? Please. Instead, I bought the first sea­son of Six Feet Under, and we fin­ished the rough­ly 11 hour sea­son over two days. Now I can re-watch it with Bronwen and lend it to Pat. To be hon­est, I’d seen up to the sec­ond sea­son before, but I was too stoned to remem­ber most of it.

Thumbnail: Air-tight tea container

Thumbnail: Chai tea

Darren also gave me a nice tea con­tain­er. It’s rather large, since I buy my tea 50mg at a time, but bet­ter too big than too small. He also got me some chai tea, con­sid­ered a well­ness blend. When I asked him what for, he could­n’t give me a rea­son. I love gifts for no rea­son.

We shared our tat­too ideas, and his was the Chinese char­ac­ter for love on his back. Darren and Bronwen are the some of the few peo­ple I can talk open­ly with about love. We’re such hope­less roman­tics. We tell each oth­er that we’ll nev­er be mar­ried, not to be self-depra­cat­ing, but to be hon­est with our­selves. We have our ideals, and we’ll nev­er set­tle for any­thing less. It’s com­fort­ing to know that we’re not alone in our quixot­ic beliefs.

To Grow from Yielding

The most yield­ing thing in the world
  will over­come the most rigid
The most emp­ty thing in the world
  will over­come the most full
From this comes a les­son —
  Stillness ben­e­fits more than action
  Silence ben­e­fits more than words

—Verse 43, Tao Te Ching

Sometimes, tem­per­ance is the great­est weapon.

When some­one attacks you with words or tries to make you feel any less than your­self, you mere­ly need acqui­esce.

In doing so, you dis­arm them. You rob them of their only weapon — anger — and their words lose all mean­ing and sig­nif­i­cance.

Tai Chi, as the phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of Taoist philoso­phies, fol­lows the same idea.

Then you will under­stand the flow of inter­nal pow­er, and, hav­ing repeat­ed­ly prac­ticed and refined your tech­nique and explored your own aware­ness, you can use and con­trol your inter­nal pow­er at will.

The T’ai Chi prin­ci­ple is as sim­ple as this: yield your­self and fol­low the exter­nal forces.

—Waysun Liao, The Essence of T’ai Chi

When your oppo­nent expands, con­tract. Create a void in your stance, and let them fill that void. By absorb­ing your oppo­nen­t’s ener­gy, you reduce it to noth­ing.

No one proves them­selves more inane than one who match­es ener­gy with ener­gy, force with force.

I’ve final­ly come to ful­ly under­stand such an idea. The the­o­ry made sense, but I nev­er put it in prac­tice, and prac­tice is what makes the under­stand­ing com­plete. It was only recent­ly that I had the chance to apply it. The old me was hot-head­ed with too much to prove. When faced with insult­ing, patron­iz­ing words, I would have react­ed, instead of fol­low­ing the prin­ci­ple of wu wei. The sit­u­a­tion was a test of myself, and I passed.

From this I’ve learned how much I’ve grown.

May Long Weekend '07

Thumbnail: Oktoberfest sausages
Thumbnail: Barbecue ribs
Thumbnail: Silicon brush
Thumbnail: Chicken drumsticks
Thumbnail: Shish kebabs
Thumbnail: Barbecue thermometer
Thumbnail: Fruit flan, blueberry bonanza, key lime pie

While writ­ing this, I real­ized that my RSS sub­scribers will lose most of the entry; more than half of it is in the cap­tions of the pho­tos, which are embed­ded in the link tag. Almost all my pic­tures have cap­tions actu­al­ly. I may try writ­ing a WordPress plu­g­in or mod­i­fy Lightbox JS 2 to dis­play the cap­tions in sub­scrip­tion feeds.

Pat and Jen had ten of us over for the Victoria day week­end. They put the extra leafs in the table and it was twelve in all. Potato casse­role, ribs, drum­sticks, sausages, sal­ad, corn-on-the-cob, and I don’t even remem­ber what was on the oth­er end. It was fun­ny to see how proud Pat was that there was too much food to fit on the 12 per­son table. I can under­stand though; there’s noth­ing more sat­is­fy­ing than being a good host. I pre­fer the host role to the guest role actu­al­ly. It’s when I can be in con­trol of the sit­u­a­tion, and I’m much bet­ter at mak­ing sure peo­ple are tak­ing care of than being tak­en care of myself (I think a sense of impos­ing is what con­tributes to this).

I won my first game of Settlers of Catan. The qui­et ones are the ones who win, they say, so I tried to keep my mouth shut amidst all the joc­u­lar smack-talk. The guys also played Capcom vs. SNK 2. Even though we all come from dif­fer­ent back­grounds, every sin­gle one of us knew how to play. Very telling of how per­va­sive the Street Fighter series is to our gen­er­a­tion.

The guests help clean up with­out ask­ing, they thank you for hav­ing them, and in return, the hosts thank you for com­ing. You can tell a lot about peo­ple, not just from their friends, but their com­pa­ny as well.