Posts in category "Daily Life"

far, far away from my heart

I’ve been feel­ing nos­tal­gic about Toronto ever since I drove down for ____’s wed­ding. The oth­er day I stepped out­side and the spring air brought me back to Camp Creative when I used to live there, between semes­ters in grade 5–7. At some point this year I hope to dri­ve home again and take pic­tures of those old schools where I spent the days mak­ing gimp bracelets1 and lip-sync­ing as Javert in Les Miserables.

Places are only as good as the peo­ple though, and I’m sure I miss Toronto for ____ and Darren as much as those old child­hood mem­o­ries, when life was so sim­ple that the fact that it was dis­gust­ing­ly hot nev­er entered my mind, even though I was out­side for most of the day.

Ullapool cafe

Scottish faces in Scottish places. This was lit­er­al­ly the size of half the cafe. Off-cam­era is Mike work­ing his mag­ic to con­vince these two baris­tas to let us film inside.

I miss Mike and rainy London nights too. I want to be part of a cre­ative team again, work­ing towards a com­mon vision, with some­one who can com­pli­ment my weak­ness­es with their strengths. It’s been too long since I had some­one to bounce ideas off of, some­one to give me hon­est crit­i­cism and inspire me to improve. Mike does all those things, and I’ve yet to find some­one like that here in Ottawa.

Stores in Chartres

Night shop­ping in down­town Chartres.

I miss France, and Misun and Frédéric, and how they could tru­ly appre­ci­ate who I am. I love the cul­ture in that coun­try, and the fact that you can buy a fresh baguette by walk­ing a minute from any­where. And I’m far from being fin­ished with Paris; there was so much I had left to explore, so many things I’d yet to do. I want to go back as the right per­son, not as a per­son try­ing to escape my thoughts and mem­o­ries.

Kowloon Walled City entrance

Gateway in Kowloon Walled City.

Hong Kong I miss most of all, and my fam­i­ly there. I want noth­ing more than to walk those streets with Uncle Joe or Uncle Eddie. Sometimes, I sit by my back door with the win­dow open and just lis­ten to cars pass­ing by in the dark­ness, pre­tend­ing it’s the din of those high­ways and the diesel of the trucks. Nothing ever comes close though, and it only leaves me feel­ing like all these places are so far away.

  1. Square, cir­cle, and but­ter­fly were my favourites. [↩]

My other Chinese parents

I called Norm tonight. As an inter­na­tion­al ref­er­ee1, he’s a fix­ture in the Ottawa table ten­nis com­mu­ni­ty, and runs one of the recre­ation­al venues in the city. I’ve been try­ing to get in shape for a big project that’ll have me run­ning around a bunch of cam­era gear, and since I’ve giv­en up on find­ing decent Tai Chi instruc­tion for now, it made sense that I go back to the only car­dio exer­cise that did­n’t bore me out of my mind.

I haven’t been to this club — or played any kind of table ten­nis, for that mat­ter — in about five years. I missed it as much as I miss make­outs, and it’s prob­a­bly been about just as long. The only peo­ple who were still there were Norm and his wife, Virsanna, as well as two hoary old ladies who must be in their 80s but still man­age to keep up with the rest of us, their teal sweat­pants adorably pulled up past their bel­lies.

Continue read­ing “My oth­er Chinese par­ents”…

  1. Basically a lev­el 7 umpire, which is the high­est lev­el, mean­ing he offi­ci­ates the top match­es like the World Championships and Commonwealth Games. [↩]

was I more alive then than I am now

I try to sched­ule my time with peo­ple very care­ful­ly; with intro­ver­sion, there’s a del­i­cate bal­ance between iso­la­tion and over-stim­u­la­tion. I always make sure I get a lot of alone time between major events. The only prob­lem is that means I’m alone for too long when plans don’t work out.

On the oth­er end of the spec­trum is the fact that I can nev­er say no to peo­ple if I’m too busy. I’m the one with­out kids, so my sched­ule is a lot more open than most my friends, and I nev­er know when I’ll have anoth­er chance to see them. This is prob­a­bly why I’ve been film­ing for four days straight.

Luckily, this includ­ed a won­der­ful per­for­mance by the inim­itable André Bluteau, whose debut CD is out now, and which you should most def­i­nite­ly pur­chase after lis­ten­ing and sub­se­quent­ly lov­ing.

I added a touch of grad­ing to give the video a bit of creamy 1950s American din­er feel. I’m thor­ough­ly impressed by Apple’s Motion soft­ware, and the pow­er it has to cre­ate object-track­ing text effects. Text can add such a nice­ly sub­tle cin­e­mat­ic touch, though doing 3D trans­for­ma­tions to make words match the plane of a fore­ground object is an exer­cise that will make your eyes bug out.

Andrew Vincent live @ Raw Sugar Cafe

The only thing pre­vent­ing me from mak­ing out with this man was his green hat. Don’t, don’t, don’t cov­er it up.

Also head­lin­ing was Andrew Vincent, who opened his set with Girlfriend’s Dog, a song I first gave to Bronwen when we start­ed dat­ing. It was right before she moved in for the sum­mer, and she had Bear, who was also a Labrador Retriever.

Now I under­stand why I need to much time in between events. After the con­cert, I did­n’t fall asleep until three in the morn­ing, even though I was exhaust­ed. The strug­gle not be shy and intro­vert­ed drains me, but the sim­ple act of being around so many peo­ple leaves me inor­di­nate­ly ener­gized. It’s too much some­times, but I nev­er know what to think of that feel­ing.

so I had to go out and find love of another kind

All I tend to do nowa­days is tin­ker on the gui­tar or uke. It’s nice to have projects, to be able to exper­i­ment and explore and scream. Music is such a won­der­ful medi­um.

And the small rit­u­als1 — mois­tur­iz­ing cal­lous­es before bed, fil­ing nails, tun­ing, clean­ing, adjust­ing the action — always bring a com­fort­ing famil­iar­i­ty when every­thing is per­fect. Not to men­tion that won­der­ful­ly juicy feel­ing when hit­ting cer­tain chords just right.

Larissa

 

Ever since I left my Tai Chi stu­dio, I’ve been look­ing for a hob­by to throw myself into. Something just as com­plex and slow to mas­ter. It’s nice to feel like I’m improv­ing myself some­how, and the best part is I don’t need a part­ner or a sub­ject or any­one else.

  1. Ironic, me being a Taoist. [↩]