Posts in category "Photos"

New Hampshire: Day 2

Thumbnail: Training

The train­ing is light and relaxed. I avoid wear­ing my name tag, but not the awk­ward round of intro­duc­tions every­one has to make around the class. We fin­ish ear­ly for the day, and I won­der if there’ll be a test at the end as part of my cer­ti­fi­ca­tion.

I vague­ly remem­ber that Dave Seah, my online men­tor and per­son­al coach, lives in New Hampshire. We met four years ago when I joined 9rules, and imme­di­ate­ly devel­oped a con­nec­tion. His writ­ing, ideas, and achieve­ments have always inspired me, and he’s been the only per­son to make a guest post on my blog.

I call him, and as fate would have it, he lives 10 min­utes from my hotel. For years, I’ve won­dered if he had a New Hampshire accent, and I final­ly find out he speaks just like me.

Thumbnail: Factory 99

Thumbnail: Photo studio

Thumbnail: No parking
Thumbnail: Mailboxes
Thumbnail: Climbing stairs
Thumbnail: Metal star
Thumbnail: Creepy aloe

Thumbnail: Photo studio

Dave picks me up and whisks me away to Factory 99, an open artist stu­dio con­vert­ed from an old fac­to­ry, to meet Sid. Sid is a pho­tog­ra­ph­er try­ing to turn his pas­sion into his liv­ing. I see his pho­tos, and pick his brain about off-cam­era flash­es, expo­sure, post-pro­cess­ing, back­drops, and light­ing for much longer than I should have. I can’t even explain how many ques­tions he’s answered. I feel like I’ve been through a work­shop, and leave with an urgency to try every­thing I’ve learned. It’s easy to see why Dave is such good friends with him, and the syn­er­gy con­tin­ues.

Thumbnail: Dave on brick
Thumbnail: Creep statue
Thumbnail: Factory
Thumbnail: Fence
Thumbnail: Triangle manhole

From there we take a stroll to down­town and onto Main Street. It’s only sun­set, and many stores are closed, a sign of the eco­nom­ic down­turn. It’s a small city we’re in1, and there’s almost noth­ing of note, save for the tri­an­gle man­hole cov­ers.

Thumbnail: Dave's house
Thumbnail: Basement studio
Thumbnail: Daves drawing
Thumbnail: Jeff with cat
Thumbnail: Fortune

We make a quick stop at his house, nes­tled among ever­greens and a cosy part of town, to check on a turkey he’s been slow cook­ing. I final­ly get a chance to see his stu­dio in real life. I rec­og­nize the lap­top he pur­chased for his project. I see his hand­writ­ing. His gun vault. His OLPC lap­top. His cats. All the lit­tle details I’ve glimpsed from his pho­tos are in front of me now.

Thumbnail: Korean appetizers
Thumbnail: Unagi
Thumbnail: Bibimbap
Thumbnail: Kalbi
Thumbnail: Dave approves

We look for a place to have din­ner, and decide on some Asian food. He takes us to a Korean/Japanese restau­rant. I let him order every­thing for the both of us. Just from hear­ing him describe the una­gi, I can tell he’s one of the few peo­ple who ana­lyze and study and appre­ci­ate food the way I do.

Over our steam­ing bowls of rice and tea, we talk as if we’ve known each oth­er our entire lives. I real­ize just how sim­i­lar we are, how we’re at the same stage in life, both self-aware, emo­tion­al­ly intel­li­gent, won­der­ing the same things, fig­ur­ing out the mys­ter­ies of life, and try­ing to sus­tain our­selves on what we love doing.

I don’t feel so alone any­more.

  1. Compared to Ottawa, at least, at only one tenth the pop­u­la­tion [↩]

Slow Down Honey

Thumbnail: Egg yolk

“Try to hold you in bed you shrug away instead oh I don’t know why.” I found this song dur­ing a recent tran­si­tion, and it’s stayed with me since. It fits so many moods — con­tent­ment, sad­ness, lon­li­ness, morn­ing, mourn­ing, and moult­ing.

Thumbnail: Bloody Mary

In a way, I’m forc­ing myself grow and improve, and this scares me. In the book my ther­a­pist rec­om­mend­ed, it explains “Change requires will­ing­ness to expe­ri­ence pain”, and I’m going through this exact­ly. I’m con­stant­ly step­ping out of my com­fort zone, and at this point, it’s much more trep­i­da­tion than excite­ment. It’d be so much eas­i­er to fall into old men­tal habits, as unhealthy as they are.

Thumbnail: Games night

On morn­ings like this, I sit in my liv­ing room with the cur­tains open. It makes me self-con­scious to be sit­ting there with hous­es across the street get­ting a clear view of me in my PJs and mussed up hair. But it reminds me that some­one else is out there. That the world is full of life, and vibran­cy, and peo­ple just like me.

Continue read­ing “Slow Down Honey”…

Brunch with Jason

Brunch with Jason Shim

Before get­ting on his train, Jason asked me if I was a hug-per­son. It was the right ques­tion, because I’m most assured­ly a hug-per­son, and we embraced before he stepped out onto the plat­form.

We grew up at the same time in the same neigh­bour­hood — a small sub­urb some­where in the mid­dle of the 500km that sep­a­rates us — but nev­er had a chance to meet until he gave a pre­sen­ta­tion in town for the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector. Until now, we only com­mu­ni­cat­ed through blog com­ments and e‑mail exchanges.

When I first met him, it struck me how much tall he was, and how much deep­er his voice was than I expect­ed.

Jason is like me in so many ways, some­thing I find extreme­ly rare. We share a strong self-aware­ness and a pen­chant for self-improve­ment, as well as the same views on love and tastes in women. Perhaps it could be said that Jason is an extro­vert­ed ver­sion of me. We could dis­cuss things we nor­mal­ly reserve for our close friends, and con­tin­ue as if we had already known each oth­er’s sto­ries for years. He’s a true kin­dred spir­it, and many times I felt like believ­ing in him meant I believed in myself as well.

Brunch was filled with such stim­u­la­tion that I for­got to take a pic­ture, so I set­tled for this one when I went to see him off at the train sta­tion. I’m so glad I was able to cap­ture his per­pet­u­al smile, that same smile I see in his pic­tures when he trav­el­ing the world, in Budapest, Ghana, New Orleans, and oth­er places with names too for­eign for me to remem­ber.

Broadsword and a Ukulele

Broadsword and ukulele

My Tai Chi teacher recent­ly added the Yang style broadsword to the cur­ricu­lum. I’d be lying if I said I was­n’t ecsta­t­ic, as I’ve wait­ed quite a while to learn a weapon form. There’s some­thing roman­tic and exot­ic about wield­ing one of the four great Chinese weapons. I find it delight­ful­ly iron­ic that it’s a gwei­lo who’s cat­alyzed such an inter­est in my own cul­ture. Take THAT, my racist and sex­ist Chinese ances­tors.

As for the ukulele, one day I found out how inex­pen­sive they can be and bought one right away. It’s a Mahalo Les Paul style ukulele (right down to the square tun­ing pegs) with an extend­ed neck for high­er reg­is­ter notes. In many ways, the ukulele is the per­fect instru­ment for me right now; cheap, easy enough that I can teach myself1, and not too hard on the fin­gers2.

It feels fuck­ing fan­tas­tic to be play­ing music in some form again. I did years of piano and flute lessons in ele­men­tary school to high school, and took a very long hia­tus from then till now. And that was most­ly in band, when I could­n’t choose the music I want­ed to play. Now I can play the songs I like, and the advan­tage is that I’ve prob­a­bly heard them a few hun­dred times so I already know them inside-out.

With my years of music lessons and per­for­mances from my youth, it’s not like I’m learn­ing music from scratch, I’m sim­ply fig­ur­ing out how to apply what I already know about tone, pos­ture, tun­ing, vol­ume, fin­ger­ing3, tim­ing, and into­na­tion, to anoth­er instru­ment. Admittedly, it’s been very slow going, and it’s like I’m learn­ing a new lan­guage as I train my fin­gers to achieve a dex­ter­i­ty that was nev­er there before.

The inter­est­ing thing is that my last few years prac­tic­ing Tai Chi has helped me learn the ukulele. In my Tai Chi class, I’ve gained the patience and per­se­ver­ance required to prac­tice the same moves over and over again until they become a nat­ur­al part of my mus­cle mem­o­ry. In the begin­ning, it was a lot of con­cen­tra­tion spent just try­ing to remem­ber what to do next in the form, but now that I don’t need to think about them when I prac­tice, my con­cen­tra­tion goes into fine-tun­ing the lit­tle details. The same prin­ci­ples can be applied to the ukulele (or any instru­ment, for that mat­ter), and I’m try­ing to get to the point where I don’t need to think about what my fin­gers should be doing, and just con­cen­trate on play­ing with the right kind of expres­sive­ness.

Which is why I have a broadsword and a ukulele rest­ing on the wall next to my desk. Any time I need a break, I pick up one of them and prac­tice for a few min­utes.

  1. Because I real­ly don’t have time for anoth­er time-con­sum­ing hob­by [↩]
  2. The strings are nylon, instead of the met­al of gui­tars, so the cal­lous­es aren’t as bad. The health of my hands is also an impor­tant thing to me. [↩]
  3. Though the fin­ger­ing for a stringed instru­ment is real­ly dif­fer­ent from piano and flute. [↩]