Posts in category "Daily Life"

Boxing Day '04-'05

Exactly one year ago today, I was doing this. Even though the annu­al par­ty at Chris and Clarmen’s actu­al­ly starts on the 25th, I real­ly see it as a box­ing day par­ty, the way a New Year’s par­ty real­ly starts on the 31st of December.

That night we used the excuse of going to Timmies for all the par­ents as a way out of the house to have a ses­sion. Unfortunately, this meant remem­ber­ing about a dozen drink orders, some­thing that proves dif­fi­cult under the influ­ence.

In chrono­log­i­cal order:

  1. We met up at the house, where Darren’s fin­gers brave the tur­tles
  2. A ses­sion occurred out­side, and on the way to Timmies we intro­duced Chris to Dreamtheater (hence the music selec­tion)
  3. An order is made for about a dozen drinks with great dif­fi­cul­ty
  4. We drove back to play Slap Hand, which is a vari­a­tion on Slap Jack, except the pile is hit every time the cor­rect num­ber is called (and for increased dif­fi­cul­ty we played with +/- rules where the pile is only hit if the num­ber spo­ken is an addi­tion or sub­trac­tion of a dif­fer­ent spec­i­fied num­ber)
  5. Darren ran­dom­ly deals every­one a hand of hold ’em and plays it through, and this caus­es me to make fun of his obvi­ous addic­tion
  6. Darren pre­cise­ly deals a full hand of 13 cards for a game of Asshole, while talk­ing, for which I count my cards in dis­be­lief and final­ly real­ize just how much he plays cards

Other signs of how stoned we were:

  • Darren and Chris’s voic­es drop an octave, while my voice rais­es two (two!)
  • I can’t keep my jit­tery hands under con­trol
  • The way Chris says, “Just awe­some guys. Awesome.”
  • At one point we have to stop to count to the right num­ber in Slap Hand
  • I laugh, a lot

This year, today, Lam joined us instead since Darren is off in Las Vegas.

Dim Sum

Thumbnail: Dim sum 1

Thumbnail: Dim sum 2

Thumbnail: Dim sum 3

Outside it’s snow­ing, but inside it’s a clat­ter of carts and dish­es. Dim sum is most­ly seafood, espe­cial­ly shrimp, but the most com­mon ingre­di­ents are oil and monosodi­um glu­ta­mate.

My par­ents go full out with the tripe and the phoenix talons (a euphemism for chick­en’s feet), dish­es that scare most Westerners, and even some Canadian born Chinese such as me. The dim sum here is much bet­ter here than at the restau­rant across the street, they note. The rice-flower skin of the shrimp dumplings is delight­ful­ly smooth and thin, a demon­stra­tion of the chef’s skill. The mooli cakes, made from fried daikon radish­es, taste espe­cial­ly savoury. Even the buns are steamed well and slight­ly sweet.

The praise of my par­ents is a tes­ta­ment to the qual­i­ty of the food. They have the abil­i­ty to find fault with almost any­thing, the root of years of child­hood despon­den­cy and con­fi­dence issues, but today the food is near­ly impec­ca­ble.

Television Dreams

Short and sweet.

I’ve been falling sleep with the TV on late­ly. Discovery chan­nel, trashy tabloids, com­mer­cials every quar­ter hour. The con­stant chat­ter keeps me com­pa­ny the way old movies on DVD can’t. It’s like the world nev­er sleeps. Someone else is awake, and watch­ing the same thing as me.

It’s one of the things I like so much about you. If you hide that, you’re hid­ing the best part.

The lit­tle girl was tak­en to Humber River Regional Hospital, and lat­er trans­ferred to the Hospital for Sick Children, where she was diag­nosed with what police call “a sig­nif­i­cant brain injury”.

The J is like an H Ricky, Hal-a-peen-yo

This is live.

Sometimes I wake up with a song in my head that I may not own, or even par­tic­u­lar­ly like. Sometimes I wake up know­ing some news before I read it on my lunchtime break. Sometimes my dreams will take off in a strange direc­tion, and I’ll be cook­ing some­thing com­pli­cat­ed or unload­ing auto­mat­ics through house win­dows or fuck­ing some­one I’d nev­er have a chance with in real-life.

Show Me Which Constellations You Know, A Denouement

Eternal Sunshine 1

Eternal Sunshine 2

Eternal Sunshine 3

People always say that this song or that book or some movie is a sto­ry about them­selves in some way. One of my friends is tru­ly deter­mined that his life has been proph­e­sied in the eight and a half minute rock-opera Paradise By The Dashboard Lights. My sto­ry was told in Eternal Sunshine Of The Spotless Mind, but it was­n’t any­thing with as much grandeur, it was sim­ply about a girl.

Interestingly enough, it’s not the sto­ries them­selves, but the details of each sto­ry that give them such relat­able con­vic­tion. In Paradise By The Dashboard Lights, Meatloaf sings about a coerced com­mit­ment lead­ing to an even­tu­al eter­ni­ty spent with the wrong per­son because of a stub­born, but more impor­tant­ly moral, refusal to break a promise. The prog­nos­ti­ca­tion of these par­tic­u­lars sends my friend sweat­ing when­ev­er he hears the song.

For me, it took the form of pangs, from the details of Clementine’s char­ac­ter. The fucked up girl look­ing for her own peace of mind, who applies her per­son­al­i­ty in a paste. A per­son who keeps you off bal­ance, always guess­ing, and con­stant­ly frus­trat­ed. A girl who sends off sirens in your brain telling you to run as far as you can before you get burned, but you stay any­way, against all log­ic, resigned to the even­tu­al fate.

And here I was, wait­ing to be saved, think­ing she’s a con­cept, or she’ll com­plete me, or she’s going to make me feel alive. When it did­n’t work out, I used to say that it was for the best, that I was in it to have no regrets, but it was real­ly because I could­n’t leave. I was drawn mag­net­i­cal­ly, inex­plic­a­bly, to the last per­son to deserve even the effort of all the torn up thoughts.

To the one that got away.

On the week­end, I dis­cov­ered that I could final­ly watch Eternal Sunshine with­out those pangs when I had felt them for so long, even when I already knew how impor­tant it is not to for­get these expe­ri­ences, as Joel fig­ures out while hid­ing Clementine in his sub­con­scious. All the resid­ual emo­tions have passed, and now I can talk, and laugh, and think, and share the expe­ri­ence like an embar­rass­ing ado­les­cent mem­o­ry. It only took two years.

Everybody’s got­ta learn some­time.