Posts tagged with "interesting people"

Visiting Pita

Pita is soon mov­ing to the west coast of Canada, so I went to vis­it him in Montreal on the week­end. We lived togeth­er in res­i­dence in uni­ver­si­ty and for two years in an apart­ment down­town, but had­n’t seen each oth­er in years. I’m prob­a­bly the only per­son to still think of him as Pita, the nick­name giv­en to him from the first week of res­i­dence. There were two pairs of room­mates named Jeff and Peter, so every­one decid­ed that one pair should have nick­names to make the dis­tinc­tion, and that end­ed up being us.

Pita's house

He’s mov­ing out in two days, so his house is a jum­ble of packed box­es and mis­cel­la­neous items.

Continue read­ing “Visiting Pita”…

New Hampshire: Day 3

Thumbnail: Corn chips

Thumbnail: Real tacos

I’m free again after my train­ing, and Dave takes me to his favourite restau­rant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girl­friend. It’s a small, fam­i­ly-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appro­pri­ate­ly accent­ed wait­ress.

Over din­ner, we com­pare our region­al dif­fer­ences. I ask them what it means when some­one says “A quar­ter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quar­ter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (some­times, depend­ing on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house1. I ask them if they have bub­ble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restau­rant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves pou­tine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, con­trast­ed from their “huh” used at the end of a sen­tence to empha­size a point.

Thumbnail: Downtown Manchester

Thumbnail: Cross button
Thumbnail: Kelly and Dave.
Thumbnail: Chelsey and Ed
Thumbnail: Greek donuts
Thumbnail: Dave's notes

Dave and I dri­ve to down­town Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave orga­nizes the Collective, a group of cre­ative peo­ple with a cer­tain ener­gy, and a void in their lives when it comes to some­one with whom to dis­cuss their endeav­ors on a prac­ti­cal, non­threat­en­ing, phil­an­thropic lev­el.

I repeat a per­son­’s name after being intro­duced to them, a trick I learned from the client spe­cial­ist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each oth­er, and Dave explains, along with a sto­ry:

When my sis­ter and I were kids, we imag­ined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we need­ed an old­er sis­ter and a younger broth­er to round out the sib­ling expe­ri­ence. As the old­est broth­er, I need­ed to know what hav­ing an old­er sis­ter was like. And we also chose per­son­al­i­ties to go with them. I think the old­er sis­ter was a heavy­set, strong girl with a deter­mined, moth­er­ing ten­den­cy toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hock­ey or lacrosse when she went to col­lege had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger broth­er would be a slen­der, artis­tic type that was a styl­ish and care­ful dress­er; “met­ro­sex­u­al” was the term we’d have used, my sis­ter com­ment­ed recent­ly, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yes­ter­day, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s won­der­ing if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of bril­liant con­ver­sa­tion and exchange of ener­gy, we go our sep­a­rate ways. These are my peo­ple, and I feel the need to start some­thing sim­i­lar in Ottawa.

Thumbnail: Me and Dave

I take a pic­ture of us because I leave tomor­row, short­ly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but cer­tain­ly wish­ing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was anoth­er kin­dred soul in the world.

  1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange. []

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 []

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.