Posts in category "Random"

Relationship Advice From Chinese People

My fam­i­ly always ask me if I’m dat­ing any­one right now. They assume I pre­fer Caucasian girls. I tell them I don’t mind either way (the oth­er side of “either” being Chinese girls). That’s when they warn me about main­land girls. Chinese main­lan­ders are com­mon­ly viewed by Hong Kong peo­ple as being low-class, crude, and provin­cial. It’s said that even if a girl from there is pret­ty, they lose all attrac­tive­ness as soon as she opens her mouth. On top of that, they’re gold-dig­gers, just look­ing for a way to get mon­ey or a green card.

They tell me I’ll be fine as long as I don’t mar­ry a main­land girl.

My grand­ma used to tell me to find a Chinese girl, because Chinese girls treat their men bet­ter, or to find some­one who loves me more than I love them. She’s filled with all sorts of fun­ny apho­risms, like “Women are to be loved, not hit.”

This City Lets Me Feel

I’ve been stand­ing on the bal­cony of the fourth floor apart­ment, watch­ing peo­ple walk around in the mid­dle of the night. If there’s one thing that’s always defined Hong Kong to me, it’s the con­stant traf­fic you hear when you’re sleep­ing, most­ly light bus­es run­ning on diesel, and taxis. Across the street, the rooms of the St. Theresa’s Hospital are light­ing up one by one. The sun has­n’t crest­ed yet, but the streets are becom­ing busier by the minute as the sky bright­ens in notice­able degrees.

Boundary street balcony — sunrise

Practicing Tai Chi usu­al­ly helps me sleep and cen­ter myself, but today it’s only a reminder of how painful­ly sore my hip sock­ets are from run­ning around air­ports with all my lug­gage. You nev­er tru­ly appre­ci­ate the short form until you try prac­tice in a Hong Kong apart­ment.

I’ve been up for hours now, and I’m exhaust­ed but wide awake. It’s the jet lag, the med­ica­tion, a rest­less mind, or all three.

Those who know me know that I’ve always felt that Hong Kong is my home­land, even though I was­n’t born here. But for some rea­son, it has­n’t sunk in that I’m here yet.

I guess I’ve been going through some hard times. I nev­er real­ly thought about it until some­one brought it to my atten­tion. The heart­break, the col­i­tis, the grand­moth­er, the dis­il­lu­sion­ment. Somewhat major things, I sup­pose, that weren’t in the front of my mind. Maybe I haven’t been let­ting myself think about them. Or maybe they’ve been affect­ing me with­out real­iz­ing it.

The writ­ten word appears to be the only reli­able thing I have left. My friends are all away. Everyone’s asleep, and I’ve been cry­ing. I’ve been cry­ing in the heart of this beau­ti­ful city.

This city brings my guard down. This city lets me feel.

Death And Turbulence

For some rea­son, I’m always seat­ed by the wings of planes. It suits me fine, as I like to watch the dance of flaps as the pilots check their instru­ments and con­trols. It makes me think of how beau­ti­ful flight is, of what an accom­plish­ment of human­i­ty it is to get this giant con­trap­tion off the ground.

The cap­tain issues a word of cau­tion over the loud­speak­er in his gener­ic voice about cinch­ing up our seat belts because it’s going to be bumpy until we reach 20000 feet. Leaving at 1pm and arriv­ing at five in the after­noon, it remains day­light for the entire flight, as we’re chas­ing the sun around the hemi­sphere.

Flight infor­ma­tion flash­es in pairs on the TV screens:

Ground speed: 857k/h. Time to des­ti­na­tion: 14h 12m.
Altitude: 8000km. Distance to des­ti­na­tion: 15289km.

The man next to me reads People mag­a­zine to take his mind off the sud­den drops in alti­tude. He clutch­es his ster­num every time the plane dips sud­den­ly, and fum­bles around for the vom­it bag. Eventually, he set­tles his head on the upright tray.

Every shake and sud­den move­ment is a reminder of your mor­tal­i­ty.

I used to be scared of tur­bu­lence. Now I can’t tell if I’m used to it, or the fact that I’m going to die some day.

Best Table Tennis Celebration

This is so awe­some.

Adam Bobrow (the play­er in blue) times his loop per­fect­ly in the mid­dle of a series of defen­sive lobs against the smash of his oppo­nent, throw­ing off his oppo­nents offen­sive rhythm, and caus­ing him to dri­ve the ball into the net.

I gen­er­al­ly don’t post stuff like this (i.e. con­tent that isn’t mine, as I don’t want to have a tum­blel­og), but I could­n’t resist. As an avid lover of table ten­nis (who has since giv­en up prac­tices for a love for Tai Chi because they’re on con­flict­ing nights), and as a play­er who fre­quent­ly gets destroyed by oppo­nents in the league, I under­stand exact­ly how good it feels to get a sin­gle point when it’s match point for the oth­er guy. After all, it’s not a com­plete thrash­ing if you don’t have zero points. You can tell the ref isn’t impressed, but he does­n’t hand out a yel­low card for mis­con­duct.

I want to see some­one do this after win­ning in push hands. :D

Edit: I showed the video to Norm, my old league team­mate and coach, and also a cer­ti­fied lev­el 5 umpire (the high­est lev­el you can get, which means you can pre­side over inter­na­tion­al and Olympic lev­el match­es; I’m a low­ly cer­ti­fied lev­el 1 umpire). He had this to say:

I watched the game, when the point was over and the guy did his dance I wouldn’t give him a yel­low card for the first 5 sec­onds. But he kept on doing this and it def­i­nite­ly deserves a yel­low card. But then when I saw the score board, I changed my mine again. Seems like the game was lop­sided and he was just crown­ing around for his point.

I have to agree. If he was cel­e­brat­ing a lop­sided game on his end, it would be con­sid­ered cocky. But the fact that he’s los­ing and danc­ing to such a hol­low vic­to­ry means that he acknowl­edges how bad­ly he’s los­ing. Well played.

Name My First Painting

The dead­line for name sub­mis­sions is over, and the con­test is closed. I’ll announce the win­ner over the week­end. A big thank you to every­one who par­tic­i­pat­ed!

My first painting

This is the first paint­ing I’ve ever made. I’ll suf­fix that with “in my adult life”, because I prob­a­bly did some­thing with my hands when I was a kid.

Julie, who’s very famil­iar with the medi­um, got me to sit down and paint with her. I was able to play around with dif­fer­ent tech­niques of strokes and the like. It was inter­est­ing to dis­cov­er the way the colours bleed, the con­sis­ten­cy of the paint, and the tex­ture of the can­vas.

It’s def­i­nite­ly abstract. I agree with Dan’s astrol­o­gy read­ing, in which he said that I see colours dif­fer­ent­ly, but that does­n’t mean I can cre­ate them. Frédéric once told me that it’s eas­i­er for him to paint than pho­to­graph, because if he needs a cer­tain colour, he can just add it to the paint­ing by hand, where­as you can’t do this with a scene in pho­tog­ra­phy. My forté seems to be in cap­tur­ing instead.

Painting does­n’t come nat­u­ral­ly to me. In ele­men­tary and high school, I went direc­tion of music (gui­tar, voice, flute, and piano) instead of visu­al art. In uni­ver­si­ty, when I was­n’t play­ing in bands any­more, I stuck with the writ­ten word, and even­tu­al­ly moved to pho­tog­ra­phy and video when that was­n’t enough.

So the paint­ing cur­rent­ly remains unti­tled. Partially because I can’t put a name to it, and par­tial­ly because I haven’t decid­ed what it is. Which seems a lit­tle sil­ly to me, as my need to cre­ate has always come from the need to express. Even though Jackson Pollock once said, “When I am in my paint­ing, I’m not aware of what I’m doing”, his paint­ings still had a direc­tion, a life of their own, much like an impro­vised jazz solo.

What do you see, and what would you name it?

Leave your sug­ges­tions in the com­ments, and I’ll choose a win­ner next Friday. The win­ner will win the paint­ing! Yes, I’ll even ship it to you. The dimen­sions are rough­ly 8.5″×11″ (or 21.6cm×28cm).