Posts in category "Daily Life"

marathon

Eating Coke can­dy for break­fast this morn­ing may not have been the great­est idea, but I think the virtue of hav­ing some­thing to chew (and decid­ed­ly yum­my, at that) was the only thing keep­ing me awake after film­ing two wed­dings in two days, and hence alive after my dri­ve back to Ottawa on only a few hours of sleep.

Sheer force of will kept me going through the week­end, though I’m sure that remem­ber­ing to stay hydrat­ed helped too. I want­ed so bad­ly to pull it all off, just to know I could do it. At one point, dur­ing a gap of time when the wed­ding par­ty was tak­ing a break, I went to my car, put the seat back, cov­ered my eyes, and passed out for about 25 min­utes. Normally, I can’t sleep except in the most com­fort­able of con­di­tions, but such was the extent of my exhaus­tion.

Beginning the sec­ond wed­ding was the most men­tal­ly chal­leng­ing part, know­ing I had anoth­er 14 hour day ahead of me when I bare­ly got any sleep and my body was start­ing to feel the sore from run­ning around with so much cam­era gear strapped to me the pre­vi­ous day.

Me and Mike

 

I was lucky enough to meet Mike, an assis­tant pho­tog­ra­ph­er and cute Italian guy who car­ries this casu­al atti­tude about him that lets peo­ple bring their guard down around him. I’ve need­ed to meet some­one like him for so long, just to remem­ber the world isn’t all tragedy and cyn­i­cism. I also got to see Preston, and even though I nev­er had a chance to catch up with him, it was good to know he was doing alright.

The final tally for the last two days and nights:

Hours slept: 11
Hours spent film­ing: 30.5
Number of movie clips tak­en: 939
Gigs of footage tak­en: 116.93
Number of pounds of cam­era gear car­ried on each day: 19.5
Kilometres dri­ven: 1376.13
Courses eat­en at recep­tion din­ners: 15
Red pock­ets received: 1
Cousins seen: 6
Names for­got­ten: 3
Kitties pet­ted: 1
Hugs given/received: 7
Canon 70–200mm lens­es seen: 5
Cantonese words spo­ken: 29
Years since I last saw Preston: 8
Chocolate cov­ered espres­so beans eat­en: 10
Chocolate cov­ered straw­ber­ries eat­en: not near­ly enough
Ukuleles strummed: 1
Words exchanged with dad: 34
Kisses from aunts: 1
Number of bite marks on fore­arm from try­ing to stay awake dur­ing dri­ve home: 4
Painkillers tak­en: 3

Will you sign my banana?

No bet­ter place for a bach­e­lor par­ty than in the mar­ket, where peo­ple see you in a giant banana cos­tume and assume you’re either get­ting mar­ried or lost a bet.

Before going out drink­ing, they went paint­balling, though this still did­n’t pre­clude the groom-to-be from hav­ing to wear the bright yel­low cos­tume in the field.

banana hug

One of sev­er­al bach­e­lorette par­ties we ran into that night.

Continue read­ing “Will you sign my banana?”…

My cousin Chris

I’ve only shared about two con­ver­sa­tions in my life with Chris — the last of which was about sev­en years ago — owing to the fact that we live on oppo­site coasts of the coun­try. But Darren and I rec­og­nized him as one of us: some­one who thinks for him­self and does­n’t buy into the whole Chinese cul­ture unques­tion­ing­ly. This is in con­trast to many of our oth­er cousins, who seem to love their par­ents sim­ply because they were birthed by them, not nec­es­sar­i­ly because their par­ents are good peo­ple.

Chris hap­pened to be pass­ing by for a wed­ding, so I host­ed him for two days. It was inter­est­ing to meet him at this point in our lives. I won­der if I’m actu­al­ly more sim­i­lar to Chris than I am to Darren, main­ly because of how our cre­ativ­i­ty defines us. It was so easy for me to relate and talk to him. And as with Darren, I actu­al­ly felt like Chris was fam­i­ly, clos­er to a broth­er than a cousin, which is all too rare among my blood.

As an indus­tri­al design­er he does amaz­ing draw­ings, full of vibrant colours that pop-off the page. I asked him to draw some­thing on my dry erase board because draw­ing is a cre­ative abil­i­ty not in my pos­ses­sion, and I find the process fas­ci­nat­ing. It was a logis­ti­cal chal­lenge because he would smear his exist­ing work every time he rest­ed his hand on the board for sta­bil­i­ty.

He’s my exact oppo­site when it comes to health. He’s a veg­an, while I’d find it impos­si­ble to give up meat, let alone but­ter and ice cream. He just lit­er­al­ly biked 100km a day across Canada, while my lifestyle could be con­sid­ered seden­tary at best, with only Tai Chi and some mild cal­is­then­ics in my exer­cise rou­tine. And yet we’re the same weight and shape. It’s sort of eerie to see him draw­ing in this video; aside from a short­er hair­cut, it’s almost like I’m watch­ing myself.

The time he spent here passed quick­ly, as I intro­duced him to the ukulele. Aside from catch­ing up and learn­ing about each oth­er, most of the two days were spent exper­i­ment­ing and play­ing togeth­er. Eventually, we went to a music store and bought him his own Mahalo ukulele, which filled my heart with glee. Darren and Jeff are com­ing up for a vis­it next week, and hope­ful­ly Chris will be able to hitch a ride with them for our ukulele band before we all head back to Toronto for Crystal’s wed­ding.

Transplant

I got the chance to work with Team Emily to doc­u­ment their lat­est artist vision, titled Transplant. The bril­liant con­cept:

This sum­mer, Emily Comeau (a fibre artist from Quebec) and Emily Cook (a book and paper artist from Ontario) will be col­lab­o­rat­ing to cre­ate an immense and inter­ac­tive tun­nel book made from local plant mate­ri­als to install in a bar­ren patch of city.

Transplant is an out­door liv­ing book instal­la­tion. Constructed from found nat­ur­al mate­ri­als both liv­ing and dead, this instal­la­tion is sub­ject to the whims of nature and the designs of man. Each page of this book resem­bles an arch invit­ing the audi­ence to enter the immense tun­nel book. Within the pages are paper pock­ets where seeds will begin to sprout as the struc­ture is grad­u­al­ly beat­en down by the weath­er. Additional arches/pages will be added through­out the exhi­bi­tion as the evo­lu­tion of decay and growth take over. This evo­lu­tion speaks to the ebb and flow of con­struc­tion and decay as the man­made world inter­acts with the nat­ur­al one. The sto­ry of this project is one of trans­for­ma­tion and recla­ma­tion of the urban land­scape by nature. It is the sto­ry of a cycle of decay and rebirth and of a bal­ance that can be achieved when nature’s col­lab­o­ra­tion is desired rather than fought

The sun­light com­ing through the seed­ed paper is such a won­der­ful­ly strik­ing image. This is just the first arch­way, con­struct­ed on the lawn at the Ottawa Arts Court, which is a very high-pro­file place (you can see the Rideau Centre right across the street). More details and orna­ments are planned as the project con­tin­ues over the next year.

My desire to record things comes from the fact that most things in this world are so ephemer­al. This being a struc­ture that can dis­solve in the rain, as well as being an area fre­quent­ed by drunks1 and home­less peo­ple, meant I was pret­ty adamant about doc­u­ment­ing the whole process.

  1. As we were leav­ing the area at the end of the day, some guy just up and peed into the bush­es next to us. [↩]