Posts in category "Photos"

fall and falling

Darren and I crashed at the same time. It’s like we’re going through this togeth­er. I wish I was back in T.O. with him and Chris, cause some of the best con­ver­sa­tions of the year hap­pened in that car. We’re all in the same place, all young men on the mend.

I’m very pleased to say that Darren’s now the own­er of a wild cher­ry sun­burst Seagull Entourage Mini Jumbo (but with a pick-guard and cut­away). And I’m total­ly jeal­ous, as I’ve been drool­ing over pic­tures of gui­tar bind­ings and rosettes myself late­ly. I had bor­rowed Jesse’s ginor­mous1 gui­tar for a bit, and I felt like I was pinned under a piece of fur­ni­ture every time I tried play­ing it. It total­ly turned me off gui­tars in gen­er­al, but as I was walk­ing through the Ottawa Folklore Centre today, I saw a series of much small­er acoustics. I had to keep walk­ing. The last thing I can afford is anoth­er hob­by and anoth­er toy.

moon

Got this shot through the lens of my tele­scope, which is why you can see the cir­cu­lar out­line of the eye­piece. Big enough to make out the geo­graph­i­cal fea­tures like the Mare Insularum splotch on the top left. Taken when still bright out, but the moon shone bright through the day­light.

I had a decent night of sleep for the first time in far too long, maybe because I’ve writ­ten more in the last week than in the three months before that. Strange how clear and calm­ing and inspir­ing it is to be rest­ed. I still don’t know what I’m feel­ing though. It’s like I just don’t know what to think any­more.

A ridicu­lous amount of Starcraft II has been played. ____ and I have even been play­ing against each oth­er, which is strange for us because nei­ther per­son wants to beat the oth­er (out of sports­man­ship), but nei­ther wants to lose either (out of fool­ish pride). I was far more dom­i­nant in Warcraft 3 because it’s micro dri­ven so we nev­er did 1v1, but Starcraft is macro dri­ven, which ____ is much bet­ter at. He’s proven him­self to be a very wor­thy oppo­nent with sev­er­al good games on me. I’m so glad Blizzard does­n’t record the num­ber of hours played in a per­son­’s pro­file now.

I want to be in France in this sea­son. My neigh­bours just came back from Paris and told me it was real­ly fog­gy. I would­n’t mind. Really. I’d love to walk down the stony path of rue Saint Vincent — the set­ting of one of my favourite Yves Montand songs — when it’s cov­ered by a hazy mist and I’m sport­ing a cozy sweater.

I spend 21 hours of the day in my room, and I’m nev­er bored. I don’t go out of the house for days at at time. I have nei­ther the rea­son nor the desire to. I think I han­dle being alone too well.

  1. This word total­ly did­n’t get picked up by spell-check, which means the Firefox dic­tio­nary is pret­ty decent. [↩]

Meeting Sikander and Lunato

I’ve known Sikander for a few years now, but the extent of our inter­ac­tion only hap­pened online. We knew each oth­er through the Ottawa blog­ging com­mu­ni­ty, but at this point, nei­ther of us can remem­ber who found who first.

Now he lives in Toronto with Lunato, which I did­n’t know was­n’t her real name, and whom is now his wife (I think they were just room­mates when Sikander and I first start­ed talk­ing). I’d see lit­tle glimpses of their lives through their pic­tures, along with their per­pet­u­al smiles, kawaii details, and mot­ley assort­ment of friends. It was inter­est­ing to see how two peo­ple from dif­fer­ent cul­tures could get along so well; as Sikander said to me, he used to be a good Muslim boy before he met her.

Sikander and Lunato

Coolest cou­ple ever.

They hap­pened to be in town for a wed­ding, and it was the per­fect chance to final­ly meet in per­son. We set­tled on some gela­to over which to talk; I always mar­vel at how small the cup sizes look, and then how full I am after a medi­um.

Love by Oka

 

We’d send music back and forth over the years, though usu­al­ly it usu­al­ly stays in the ambi­ent, elec­tron­ic genre between us. Funny sto­ry: Lunato told me she liked my video of Hong Kong mar­kets, and it was actu­al­ly Sikander who gave me that music from the Code 49 sound­track (which I slowed down about 50%). He said it sound­ed famil­iar but nev­er real­ized where it came from.

Before part­ing ways, Sikander gave me an album by Oka, an Australian elec­tron­ic reggae/dub out­fit. He once saw them per­form at a busker fes­ti­val in Toronto (though they’re not buskers), and it was the first hard-copy piece of music we shared. A music rec­om­men­da­tion is always gift, and an actu­al phys­i­cal album feels all the more spe­cial.

third show

Jesse sent me an e‑mail this morn­ing, invit­ing me to play a few acoustic tracks on his set tonight at the Elmdale Tavern in Hintonburg. Naturally, I could­n’t say no. I got to his place ear­ly, and in the four hours lead­ing up to the show, we worked out the arrange­ments.

The venue was nice and cozy, with the front tables only a few feet from the stage (which was bare­ly ele­vat­ed itself). There was no kitchen but a bar and a pool table in two main rooms, and this fact meant the place lent itself to peo­ple com­ing to watch some­thing, instead of social­iz­ing and talk­ing over it, as it com­mon­ly hap­pens in a restau­rant or pub with live music.

Self-portrait at 29 10/12

Waiting for sound check.

I was­n’t ner­vous the entire night until the minute up to the very first song; I was doing the main chords and it would have been painful­ly obvi­ous had I made a mis­take.

And since we were unam­pli­fied, we came off the stage and stood at the tables, with Jesse rest­ing his glock­en­spiel on the front-most one. It made the audi­ence all the more vis­i­ble — and me all the more ner­vous — so I just kept my eye on Jesse for tim­ing and vol­ume cues to take my mind off it.

But with a lit­tle more time, expe­ri­ence, and prac­tice, we nailed every track. Also includ­ed was an appro­pri­ate­ly spot­light­ed group high-five after the Videotape-Write Protected-VCR med­ley, which is cer­tain­ly the most dif­fi­cult piece (on my end) due to the fact that I’m play­ing the vamp that leads the tran­si­tion between each piece and the tim­ing is real­ly tricky to get down. I also noticed that I kept strum­ming my strings habit­u­al­ly to make sure I was in tune to avoid the dis­as­ter that hap­pened last time.

A tall, dark-haired gen­tle­man with a cig­a­rette in his hand said, “Good job, bud­dy. It sound­ed great.” as I was walk­ing by to load gear in my car. It was a nice lit­tle acknowl­edg­ment.

August ending

August passed me by.

My Tai Chi stu­dio closed at the begin­ning of the month due to the new provin­cial tax pol­i­cy. I was going to look for anoth­er stu­dio, but I haven’t had a chance. Instead, I took up singing lessons. It did­n’t help that Starcraft 2 came out, and the fact that most of my friends pur­chased it too so there’s always at least one per­son online and ready to play with me.

greeting Audra

 

Continue read­ing “August end­ing”…