Posts in category "Photos"

Dusting Myself Off Like I Just Stole Third

Thumbnail: Green tea ice cream
Thumbnail: Bronwen with Dolly
Thumbnail: Pumpkins for sale
Thumbnail: Bandit
Thumbnail: Quebec view
Thumbnail: Speciality sushi
Thumbnail: Autumn leaf
Thumbnail: Crab claws
Thumbnail: Sarah
Thumbnail: War memorial
Thumbnail: Spicy pork soup
Thumbnail: Olaf

More than a crazy week, I man­aged to sur­vive a crazy fort­night. Something went wrong almost every day, from get­ting my hair high­light­ed, to almost get­ting killed in a near-miss car acci­dent, to find­ing out that my com­pa­ny was bought out. On top of this, I kept los­ing sleep, which only expo­nen­ti­at­ed the stress. Now is the process of pick­ing myself up and dust­ing myself off.

I still feel over-stim­u­lat­ed, so I’ve been her­mi­tiz­ing. Staying away from peo­ple for a while. I’m lim­it­ing myself to one social inter­ac­tion or extra-cur­ric­u­lar activ­i­ty per week. It would actu­al­ly be noth­ing if I had the option, but I keep get­ting pulled into things because of their annu­al exclu­siv­i­ty, such as Thanksgiving din­ner at Louise’s.

I’ve cut off the woman who gave birth to me. There’s a tremen­dous feel­ing of relief, after hav­ing done it. I’m grate­ful for all the sup­port that peo­ple are show­ing me, as well as the fact that none of them have giv­en me advice as if they know more about the sit­u­a­tion or have more wis­dom than I do.

I hold Pat’s opin­ion in high­est regard because he’s the only one who under­stands from both a cul­tur­al and first-hand point-of-view. He was also the only one who told me, “Good for you”. This, from one of the most for­giv­ing, car­ing peo­ple that I know, con­firmed to me that I made the right deci­sion. ____ offered a unique per­spec­tive too, since los­ing his moth­er at a ten­der age. “You only get one”, he said, although he nev­er chid­ed or judged me about it, per­haps because of the num­ber of times I’ve called him up in tears because of her.

Of the last five times I’ve tried to play table ten­nis, things did­n’t work out once. It cer­tain­ly made the last two weeks a lot more dif­fi­cult to han­dle.

Table ten­nis is the only thing that helps me sleep well, not to men­tion the fact exer­cise releas­es endor­phines that fight the exact depres­sion I was going through. I’m tak­ing it as a sign that I’m not meant to play at the moment, so I’m giv­ing it up until next year.

In the mean­time, I’ve tak­en up Tai Chi. Through the last while, I went back to the Tao Te Ching look­ing for answers, and it renewed my inter­est in Tai Chi, which I see as a phys­i­cal man­i­fes­ta­tion of the the­o­ry. I was also able to clar­i­fy a few of the con­cepts with my uncles while they were here, so I’m read­ing things over with a fresh per­spec­tive.

A Place To Stay

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 1

Thumbnail: Scratch sand 2

Gua sha, or sand scratch­ing, he calls it.

I’m already sob­bing. The cul­mi­na­tion of anoth­er week of stress and lack of sleep. One dis­ap­point­ment after anoth­er.

With the bowl of a porce­lain Chinese soup spoon, he scrapes the mus­cles along the back of my neck.

This caus­es rup­ture of the small sub-der­mal cap­il­lar­ies (petechia) and may result in sub-cuta­neous bruis­ing (ecchy­mo­sis).

According to Chinese med­ical prac­ti­tion­ers, the inter­nal tox­ins in the blood are released and cir­cu­la­tion is improved.

Before con­tin­u­ing down my shoul­ders, he rubs on some Vic’s VapoRub. It lubri­cates the process, cools the skin to ease the burn­ing dis­com­fort, a mix of east­ern and west­ern tech­niques. The patch he rubs turns a mud­dy mix of red and gar­net, and from this he tells me that I’m work­ing too hard. I have to look after myself bet­ter. Relax every day. Take an hour to exer­cise or walk. The first step to a healthy mind is a healthy body. The colour indi­cates that I have a lot of tox­ins built up in my body.

The dark­er it is, the more it’s sup­posed to hurt, but I feel noth­ing.

I take a sip from the mug that he hands me, full of pale yel­low liq­uid. It burns going down. Flavourless, but maybe that’s just the con­ges­tion.

“It’s spicy”, I mum­ble, no longer speak­ing Chinese. It’s too much on my mind. I need to express myself with­out lim­i­ta­tions.

“It’s just gin­ger-water. If you can’t take it, you can add some sug­ar.”

I don’t reply. The unas­sum­ing con­som­mé rais­es the inter­nal tem­per­a­ture, killing the sick air. To quell the spasms in my chest, I take slow­er, deep­er breaths. It does­n’t work.

“I admire you, uncle. One day I hope to be a father like you.”

He breathes a short but heavy sigh. I can tell that these words pain him more than any­thing else I’ve said. He tells me, in Chinese, “Uncle does­n’t make a lot of mon­ey. I make sure I spend a lot of time at home”.

“I like you, uncle. I hope that no mat­ter what hap­pens, we can still be friends.”

“No mat­ter what hap­pens, you’ll always have a place to stay with us in Hong Kong.”

To Steep

Thumbnail: Bacon grease

Thumbnail: Breakfast

Thumbnail: Dolly's milk treat

All true tea lovers not only like their tea strong, but like it a lit­tle stronger with each year that pass­es.

—George Orwell

On Saturday morn­ings I wake up a lit­tle past sev­en, no mat­ter how late I was up on Friday. Get dressed, check the mail, read the news, go upstairs to cook break­fast in a pan of grease. Everything is timed per­fect­ly. The toast is start­ed two min­utes before the eggs are bro­ken into the pan, but only after the bacon is done. The tea starts steep­ing two min­utes before that. Everything is ready and warm with­in 25 min­utes.

Dolly gets a treat on the week­end morn­ings: a bit of Fancy Feast, or half-and-half mixed with water. Cats are lac­tose intol­er­ant, so they can’t drink straight milk, but they’re drawn the fat that their noses can smell.

Bacon, bread, egg, bacon, bread, egg. I eat my break­fast in order, going clock­wise around the plate, but I always save a few sips of tea for the end. Even though I’ve giv­en up the Hong Kong style milk tea, Orange Pekeoe is an appro­pri­ate black leaf sub­sti­tute, round­ing out the meal.

It’s a lit­tle rit­u­al that keeps me sane. At the end of break­fast, sat­is­fied and full, I can reflect and recharge, down to the dregs.

Every year, as I grow old­er, I find that I let my tea steep a lit­tle longer. Maybe life has got­ten a lit­tle too com­pli­cat­ed, and I need the tea as a dis­trac­tion, or per­haps life has become too sim­ple, and I need the com­pan­ion­ship of a rich mug to stim­u­late me.

Strange how a teapot can rep­re­sent at the same time the com­forts of soli­tude and the plea­sures of com­pa­ny.

And I’ve nev­er need­ed this more than I do now.

A Bittersweet Comfort

Thumbnail: BBQ pork
Thumbnail: Washing veggies
Thumbnail: Cutting onions
Thumbnail: Shiitake mushrooms
Thumbnail: Washed veggies
Thumbnail: Bone China bowls
Thumbnail: Soup close-up
Thumbnail: Soup extreme close-up

A bowl of egg-noo­dles, with bar­be­cue pork, shi­itake mush­rooms, shrimp, car­rots, bok choi, and green onions in a chick­en broth, is con­sid­ered com­fort food for most Chinese peo­ple. They say that com­fort food soothes the mind by act­ing like an opi­ate, hit­ting the recep­tors in our cen­tral ner­vous sys­tem. We go to it in times of stress, and in addi­tion to keep­ing us full, it keeps us paci­fied.

As Pat and Jen cut, and wash, and cook, they nev­er nib­ble. Everything that’s pre­pared goes into the pot. Not too long, or the veg­eta­bles will lose their firm­ness. With chop­sticks and a spoon, they serve the noo­dle soup in large bowls. One eats from the spoon, which is used to scoop the broth, while the chop­sticks are sim­ply used to put the desired ingre­di­ents on the for­mer uten­sil.

I don’t have meals like this any­more. Chinese food is a com­pli­cat­ed affair. It takes a mot­ley set of ingre­di­ents, most of which is only avail­able on a sin­gle street in this city, so I’m grate­ful for a real home-cooked meal.

Everything about it brings me back to a time when I was a child, liv­ing with my par­ents, liv­ing off Chinese food every day. The con­trast­ing colours of the pork against the noo­dles. The full aro­ma. The savoury taste of broth. Even the dul­cet slurp of noo­dles.

If only my child­hood was worth remem­ber­ing.

Bear

Thumbnail: Bronwen kisses bear

Thumbnail: Bear on the rug

The best friend man has in the world may turn against him and become his ene­my. His son, or daugh­ter, that he has reared with lov­ing care may prove ungrate­ful. Those who are near­est and dear­est to us, those whom we trust with our hap­pi­ness and good name may become trai­tors to their faith. The mon­ey a man has he may lose. It flies away from him, per­haps when he needs it most. A man’s rep­u­ta­tion may be sac­ri­ficed in a moment of ill-con­sid­ered action. The peo­ple who are prone to fall on their knees when suc­cess is with us may be the first to throw the stone of mal­ice when fail­ure set­tles its cloud upon our head.

The one absolute­ly unselfish friend that man can have in this self­ish world, the one that nev­er deserts him, the one that nev­er proves ungrate­ful or treach­er­ous, is his dog. A man’s dog stands by him in pros­per­i­ty and pover­ty, in health and in sick­ness. He will sleep on the cold ground when the win­try winds blow and the snow dri­ves fierce­ly, if only to be near his mas­ter’s side. He will kiss the hand that has no food to offer, he will lick the wounds and sores that come in encoun­ters with the rough­ness of the world. He guards the sleep of his pau­per mas­ter as if he were a prince.

When all oth­er friends desert, he remains. When rich­es take wing, and rep­u­ta­tion falls to pieces, he is as con­stant in his love as the sun in its jour­ney through the heav­ens.

If for­tune dri­ves his mas­ter forth, an out­cast in the world, friend­less and home­less, the faith­ful dog asks no high­er priv­i­lege than that of accom­pa­ny­ing him, to guard him against dan­ger, to fight against his ene­mies. And when that last scene of all comes, and death takes his mas­ter in its embrace and his body is laid away in the cold ground, no mat­ter if all oth­er friends pur­sue their way, there, by the grave­side will the noble dog be found, his head between his paws, his eyes sad, but open in alert watch­ful­ness, faith­ful and true, even in death.

—George Graham Vest

A dog, sim­ply named Bear, meant the world to a hand­ful. His life was filled with plea­sure, though nev­er spoiled, and free­dom, though always dis­ci­plined. In the last year, his health start­ed to decline. He had a glass eye for his cataracts, heavy med­i­cine for his tumors, but through it all, he was hap­py, and there was noth­ing but hap­pi­ness for thir­teen long years.

Bear’s life rep­re­sent­ed a child­hood, and all the inno­cence, insou­ciance, and bliss asso­ci­at­ed with it. Painful, yet impor­tant, his pass­ing is seen as a dis­til­la­tion of matu­ri­ty. This chap­ter has end­ed, so anoth­er one can begin.

Requiescat in pace.