Posts in category "Daily Life"

Small Town Photo Trip

Field 2

Tina and I head­ed to a cou­ple of small towns around Ottawa. She had her Nikon and I was armed with my new Canon 5D Mark II, which is a full frame cam­era and gives me such won­der­ful­ly wide angles. You can see her shots at her flickr set. They give me great ideas on how I can look at things from anoth­er per­spec­tive because they’re so dif­fer­ent from mine, approach­ing shots from clos­er ranges and com­pos­ing with more diag­o­nal angles.

Field 1

This is by far my favourite shot (above), and I’ll prob­a­bly get a large print of it when I have the mon­ey. There’s a series of acrylic paint­ings by Ken Vincent at the Koyman Galleries in Ottawa, and I’ve always want­ed this one in par­tic­u­lar because the colours and the moody clouds speak of pure emo­tion to me, and I nev­er believed I was capa­ble of cap­tur­ing such moments with my last cam­era1. The price — $2300 for a 28“x61” paint­ing — had always held me back, but now I’m con­fi­dent I can get that elu­sive look I’ve been try­ing to cap­ture, myself.

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  1. A Canon Digital Rebel Xt [↩]

People Being Nice To Me

Tao Te Ching cover

Louise gave me a gor­geous copy of the Tao Te Ching. It’s trans­lat­ed by James Legge, with clas­sic Chinese art from the Cleveland Museum of Art. What’s espe­cial­ly cool is that the fonts used for the titles is Avenir, which is the same font I used for my sec­ond Tao tat­too.

Tao Te Ching page 1

It’s per­fect because I feel like I’ve strayed from the path late­ly. It’s been a few weeks since I picked up the book and read a few vers­es.

Tao Te Ching page 2

I real­ly like the fact that many of the pages have no vers­es, and only art­work. It’s nice enough that I’ll prob­a­bly keep it out on my cof­fee table, instead of in my book­shelf hid­den in a clos­et1.

Bamboo bookmark

She also gave me this bam­boo book­mark, with a Confucian say­ing on it. I find it fun­ny because Confucianism oppos­es Taoism, though they both have very good ideas.

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  1. Not that I don’t like to dis­play books, I just pre­fer to keep a neat house. [↩]

Birthday Weekend

At The Japanese Village

I prob­a­bly looked like this the whole week­end, cause it was non-stop awe­some­ness.

The Japanese Village

Last week, Aaron asked me if I want­ed to go to The Japanese Village. I thought it was just to hang out, since we had­n’t had a guy’s night in a while, so I did­n’t clue in that it was for my birth­day until the day of. Aaron told me I could order any­thing I want, as it was his treat, but I ordered the only thing I ever get when I’m there; the filet mignon cooked medi­um rare, which I think is the best in the city. It was good to hang out with him and Trolley again.

And, of course, silli­ness is always present with these guys around.

____ in town

Chilling on the couch

____’s been work­ing two straight months, with­out a week­end off. The last time was when he came to Ottawa to vis­it. Between all the activ­i­ties, we only had enough time to watch one movie — American Graffiti — and between the two of us, we could sing every song that came from this film based in the 60s (me cov­er­ing The Platters, him cov­er­ing every­thing else).

I usu­al­ly only get to see him once a year, so twice in two months was a spe­cial treat.

Cranium Party

I’d love to do games nights on a reg­u­lar basis, but peo­ple aren’t avail­able on the same days, so I used my birth­day as an excuse to get as many peo­ple as pos­si­ble togeth­er for a giant Cranium par­ty. I told them that instead of giv­ing me a present, they should just come to the par­ty. It worked, and we had enough for four teams of three. Some peo­ple also brought snacks, like hon­ey mus­tard pret­zels, car­rot cup­cakes, and fresh­ly baked choco­late chip cook­ies.

It was the high­light of the week­end.

Dim sum with my dad

John and dad at dim sum

On Friday, my dad called me to wish me a hap­py birth­day, and told me he was in town for 10 days. We made plans to have dim sum. ____ came too, which is always inter­est­ing to see his reac­tions to what food is as the token white guy. I had a phoenix talons for the first time1, because I was feel­ing adven­tur­ous, and I have to say that they weren’t bad, but I did­n’t care for them either. They’re too hard to eat, and the sauce was­n’t to my taste. It was strange to see both John and my dad at the same place, and in Ottawa instead of Toronto.

I told my dad he could prob­a­bly sit and observe one of my Tai Chi class­es, so he could see what I do, but he was­n’t inter­est­ed, and I’ll admit that the indif­fer­ence hurt a bit. Afterward, I asked John what he thought as a 3rd par­ty observ­er, and he told me I had a good rela­tion­ship with my dad. I’ll take his word for it.

I needed this

I need­ed this week­end so much. To recharge. To stop think­ing about things. To get com­plete­ly wast­ed. It felt like it was my birth­day the whole week­end, and I won­dered what I did to deserve it all.

  1. It was­n’t the taste, but the look that has always pre­vent­ed me from try­ing them. [↩]

University of Toronto Photographic Art Show

University of Toronto Dentistry art show

If you’re in Toronto, you can check out one of my prints at the University of Toronto Photographic Art Show. Rita Bauer, to whom I owe so much in sup­port, asked me if she could sub­mit the print she bought from me. Also fea­tur­ing the work of some of the amaz­ing peo­ple I met the last time I was down there, such as Jeff Comber, who does awe­some work with skate­board­ers, and Kate Tarini, whose work with panora­mas won her best in show at Maximum Exposure last year.