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2010-02-17T17:49:00.000+08:00

Moving!

2009-11-23T21:39:00.002+08:00

I'm moving my blog to a better home:

http://charitalaw.wordpress.com/

Why the move?
1. It's prettier
2. It has a better interface
3. All the cool kids are doing it

So folks, cancel your subscriptions, and head over to the new and improved version

See you on the other side,

-Charita

Photo Challenge!

2009-11-20T01:52:00.003+08:00

Guess what time I took this picture in Hong Kong...

...that's a line around the block for a bus

Top 10

2009-11-12T21:21:00.008+08:00

I wonder who invented "the top 10" list - no, i don't think it was letterman although maybe he popularized it.

anyways, humans seem to like lists a lot (or at least, some american humans do- anyways, magazines love lists..if it's good enough for mags it's good enough for blogs!). it probably has something to do with psychology and our desire to simplify and organize information. meh.

so here's a list that's totally arbitrary (or if you're studying for GREs then "capricious") - and actually, it's not in any particular order (does that defeat the purpose of a list?)

========================================

Charita's Capricious (that's not alliteration, is it?) Top Ten List
[pic has no relevance to the list...but is a picture of monkeys kissing ever useful? - HK zoo]

Things I'll Miss About Hong Kong

10. MTR - best rail system in the WORLD (oh, well i heard good things about Japan's rail system too). i can never look at bart the same way again. never wait longer than 2 minutes for a train. go to most stops in less than fifteen minutes. it's like going to the future (america's future...assuming america lasts long enough to develop such things).

9. Octopus Card - the equivalent of a debit card that can be used at hundreds of locations including all public transportation, all chain convenience stores, vending machines, and much more! why is HK so high tech? downside - it's easy to get card-happy when everywhere you go you can just "beeep" your money away.

8. Reception - Hong Kong is a geographically small place and there's reception 99% of everywhere, yes, including the subway. yes, including many elevators. how do they it? i don't know. perhaps i should be concerned mobile signals are constantly shooting through my body...

7. Air Conditioning - okay this shouldn't be on here but this city runs on a/c (actually they call it "aircon"). a/c is EVERYWHERE (except outside. they still haven't figured out how to a/c the entire city - but i bet they would if they could). instead of a central a/c unit, often each room will have it's own little (or not so little) a/c thingy. at first i found the constant hum of a/c units everywhere rather distracting, but now it's become a part of life. sure, berkeley has naturally cool beautiful air, but there's something empowering about being able to control the temperature of your habitat with the touch of a button. [ok ok, they have a/c in the states too...but it's not as beautiful. having a/c in hong kong is like having water in a desert...having a/c in berkeley is like...wait, we don't have (or need) a/c in berkeley]

6. Pretty Money - when i first arrived the HK dollars sort of felt like monopoly money (not a good mentality to have toward real money). Three different banks are allowed to print money, so there are different kinds of the same bill. sometimes a 20 dollar bill is greenish, sometimes it's blue-ish (i don't have my wallet with me now so i'm just saying this from memory..i might be wrong). 10 dollar bills are purple and pink with some transparent parts. a five hundy is pinkish...100s are also pinkish, but brighter. very pretty money. you open your wallet and it's like a rainbow (assuming you have money).

US money is all green and whitish - and it smells. why does US money smell? HK bills dont have that weird US dollar smell...now it's bothering me. why do US bills smell so weird?! (and no, i don't intentionally smell my money. it's just one of those things you notice without meaning to). i guess that's another thing i'll miss - not feeling dirty after touching money.

5. No Tipping/ No Sales Tax - yeaaa, call it what you will (although don't you think "stingy" sounds a bit harsh?) it's nice to be able to see a price and just pay it without the extra 10% sales tax or 15% tip.

4. So Many Options! - okay this is super broad so it probably shouldn't count but it's so cool to be able to easily go to outlying islands (less populous, hiking, fresher air, seafood, beaches) or Mong Kok (shopping, shopping, more shopping - actually i hardly go there. waayy too crowded for my tastes. but i like having the option) or Central (westernized stuff. glitzy, skyscrapers, epitome of of BIG city) or Causeway Bay (a sort of hybrid between Central and Mong Kok - cheap stores and spectacular, expensive stuff next to each other) or Sai Wan (older, grungier, cheaper - how most of HK used to be just a few decades ago) - there's so much variety packed in such a little place...i would say it's mind-blowing but there's no room to get blown, so it's more like mind-imploding. From traditional noodle shops to fancy bars and everything in between...

3. Star Ferry - one of my favorite things is riding the ferry across the harbor at night. [relatively] cool breeze, [relatively] fresh air, AWESOME skyline. did i mention it only costs less than a quarter in US currency? now there's some bang for your coin.

2. Double Decker Buses - another fav. every time i get on a bus i scamper up to the second level and sit in front of the big windows to get a semi-aerial view of the trip. usually it's fun and interesting...sometimes if the bus driver is acting too much like a taxi driver on narrow winding roads it's a little scary...but it's still awesome.

1. Being a Tourist - hmm, actually i'm not completely tourist here. i'm sort of a mix of foreigner/tourist/often-mistaken-as-local/cultural pilgrim? haha...i like that term. "cultural pilgrim" - although that's making it sound cooler than it is (wait, actually the word "pilgrim" is hardly ever considered cool. nevermind). well, being here has been incredibly interesting, enlightening, touching, (insert other nice adjectives). Not only is it fascinating to experience another society and culture, but in some way it's partly my culture...or some sort of cousin culture...step-culture? ok, enough of the mixed metaphors. I'm coming to terms with being a Chinese-American in ways I've never been able to really understand or appreciate before. yay.

[Mahjong pieces for Halloween; we borrowed the costume for a quick pic]

So...I would recommend a "motherland" trip for immigrant offspring. Put that on your list of things to do.

Recap #1! CDA

2009-11-05T00:06:00.020+08:00

Cultural Diversity Ambassador Program (CDA)

I joined this group on campus and we did some interesting activities and had an exhibition on campus. We even had an "opening cocktail" that featured a Zimbabwean fashion show and a choir performance of a song written by one of the members. Sorry I sound like an advertisement, I helped write the invitational emails. Anyways, even though it was brief, it had an impact..

Everyone's personal story intersects with history (Mills), so my Chinese-American upbringing with immigrant parents is not uncommon especially considering events that strongly affected many lives, like the Cultural Revolution. I think my grandfather called his story common for that era. I didn't truly realize how common until I came here. Almost everyone I've met has parents or grandparents from the mainland.

I identify as an American, who is Chinese. Yes, that's right, a Chinese-American! haha, sorry to be redundant but it's kinda interesting that people in Hong Kong always refer to me as an "American-born Chinese (ABC)" -which means I'm Chinese but I happened to be born in America. But in fact, I'm an American that happens to be Chinese! And you know what I don't understand: In Cantonese the phrase is "Ngo hai Waa jeoi Mei Gwok jan" meaning "I am Chinese descent American person." Exactly! So why is there so much confusion when I tell people I'm Chinese but I was born and raised in America? It's like they never heard of planes...or immigration.

In the US, people sometimes ask me where I'm from. It's usually a non-Asian person trying to be politically correct. Of course, they want to know my ethnic background, but when I tell them I was born in Anaheim and lived in southern California most of my life they always say, "No, where are you really from?" They always insist on knowing. For some reason many people are intent on discovering the ethnicity or race of another person within seconds of meeting him or her. Sure, cultural background definitely helps shape the crux of our identities, but at the same time...it's such a fluid concept.

So in America, people call me Chinese (actually, people call me "Asian"- but since Asia consists of the most members of the human species they might as well generalize a little more and call me "human"- that's right, I'm a human-American. boom shaka laka) and in Hong Kong people call me American. But I don't mind the labels so much because just being in Hong Kong, in some ways "the motherland," has helped me have a better understanding of the concepts of immigration, identity, cultural assimilation, and much more. It's a common concept but now I can see it from a totally different perspective. I'm getting cultural vertigo.

So for me, the most interesting part of CDA was visiting a charity in Hong Kong called Crossroads Village. The idea of matching resources to need seems so simple, and yet that is something we haven't figured out as a species how to do. We can split atoms, send information around the globe in seconds, microwave meals, build missiles to destroy missiles that may or may not try to destroy our missiles, google earth (we can literally google our own planet!) but god forbid if we actually figure out how to give everyone in our country quality education and healthcare, or if we even come close to reaching the UN millenium goals. We have the ability; we don't have the priorities.

We have such extreme social, political, and economic situations all over the globe that it's hard to believe we all live in the same world. In a single day, I might spend more on a cup of coffee than an entire family in an impoverished area can earn working all week. And I know these things, and it still does not fully register. We always talk about the Forbes list of richest people or whatever, but the truth is WE are all the richest people in the world. Out of over 6 billion human lives, we are on that unwritten global list of the wealthiest people in the world AND in history. In terms of living standards, amenities, materials, we've got more than the vast majority of humans on this planet and all the humans that have lived before us. That's humbling. A part of me feels super grateful, and another part of me just hates all of us.

CDA helped remind me of these things. You know, usually we read an article or watch a documentary and it sits in our mind for a day or two, then after a while we return to our blissfully comfortable lives (although, we hardly ever recognize it as such). So we slip back into knowledge without realization. Everyone knows there are kids starving in Africa; it's probably one of the most common quips at a dinner table. We say it so lightly, because it fails to impact us anymore. CDA helped shift the knowledge back to realization. But it also made me self-critical...I was in this group and doing these activites to heighten my awareness of the situation millions of people in our world faced daily-since birth. I felt like some sort of cultural diversity tourist. I have the luxury to spend just a small percentage of my time learning about these situations that others are born into without choice and without escape.

So CDA has definitely been a great experience, especially since I'm only in Hong Kong for four months. It's helped me verbalize the idea that cultural diversity is not simply diversity for diversity's sake, but rather for the sake of understanding and Respect (the theme of the program). They asked us to come up with a tagline so I summed it up as, Respect is deference for difference. Besides being awesomely alliterative, this has two meanings:

1. Respect for differences in culture - attitudes, beliefs, customs.. and

2. Respect for A difference; as in, attempting to make a difference on the basis of that respect and understanding.

[Food Mosaic with pictures from Sohyun, Eric, Leena, and Grace]

Overthink.

2009-11-04T01:24:00.000+08:00

Hey! It's been a month since I've published a blog post, but it's not for lack of trying. Every time I try to write about something, I utterly overthink it to the point of incoherence. I've tried to make posts but instead of causal observations I keep seeing more and more nuances. Race, class, poverty, education, globalization, culture, welfare, inequality, gender roles, etc...yeesh, it never ends. It's frustrating; it's often contradictory. Sometimes I really want to just turn it off- stop thinking about all these things. But I can't. Seriously, I've lost sleep over some of these thoughts. Enough is enough. Sociology get out of my head!

It's funny because I started blogging again because I wanted to record parts of my time abroad, to help me reflect and remember. I didn't mean for it to turn into this. But ever since I came here I've been bombarded with so much it's hard to digest. I've learned things I never knew I never knew (no, that's not a typo...actually it's a line from "colors of the wind"). I thought the more I learned, the more I would know. The more I saw, the more I would want to see. But it's not like that.

Last night was a high table dinner, which took place in the main hall on campus (harry potter status). It's this fancy occasion where everyone dresses up, has this formal dinner and listens to a guest speaker. Our special guest was a famous Hong Kong director named Mabel Cheung and she mentioned a quote by Gabriel Marquez,

What matters in life is not what happens to you but what you remember and how you remember it.

I guess that's partly why I am increasingly hesitant of what to write, because I know it will eventually be a large part in shaping my memories of this whole experience. But that's a pretty pathetic hang up. Some people live in the past always wondering "what if i had.." and here I am stuck in the present, worried about the future when I'll be looking at the past. It's ironic, eh?

Anyways, I've been in Hong Kong for two months and I have two months left. So this can be the mid-term blog.

Weather
Yeah, I know weather is a banal subject but you have no idea how awesome it feels now! From dripping liters of sweat every day to cool AND dry. The temperature drop was so drastic hundreds of people in Hong Kong (elderly) had respiratory and other problems, which is unfortunate because I personally think this is a wonderful temperature (high 60s, partly cloudy, not humid). So, word of advice, DONT visit Hong Kong in the summer (unless you like that 24/7 sauna feeling). "Autumn" starts in November.

Directions
You know how sometimes you can just switch on auto-pilot and end up at your destination without really thinking about it? I can finally do that here! Well, when I say "here" I mean just the HKU campus. It's not a big deal in itself, but then I realized that means that I must feel pretty comfortable here. And if you've read previous posts you know the HKU campus is very much like a maze. I'm like one of those mice that figured out the system and can now find the cheese faster and faster. yay.

The buses still aggravate me to no end. I don't think that will ever change.

Language
Not good, but not as bad as before. Oh, funny story though. There will still be the occasional incident that makes me feel like a complete idiot. So last night I took a taxi with an acquaintance who is ethnically Korean but she lived in Guangdong, China for 9 years and now goes to HKU (that means she knows Korean, Mandarin, Cantonese, and English. How cool is that?). When we got in, she was on the phone so I tried to tell the taxi driver where we wanted to go. He couldn't understand me. I tried three times with no success. Then, she got off the phone and used her fluent Canto to tell him where to go. It's hard not to feel like a cultural mutant or some sort of defective Chinese person at times like that...but it makes for a somewhat interesting blog anecdote--there's always an upside.

I can't remember what other categories I had. Hmm. Fine, to make things easier for myself I'm just going to revert to blogging teen-style

Hong Kong: The Hometown (Part II)

2009-10-06T00:10:00.008+08:00

I've visited my father's hometown village in Foshan, China (see previous post). So recently I visited the place in Hong Kong where my mother grew up from the mid-1950s to 1960s.

Maybe this is how my mother remembers Wan Chai

She sent me an email describing the area:

Our family went to that Dragon Gate Restaurant for Dim Sum every Sunday morning, rain or shine, for more that 12 years. We used to live on 57 Tai Yuan Street flat #2. The building we used to live in was a 7 story building. Right downstairs of where we lived was a dry clean place, and next to it was a bakery. Across street from our building was a wine shop, people used to sit there and drink. Next to that was a stationary store, and that was where my best friend lived.

There used to be a street vendor in front of our building with a man selling oranges. When people bought an orange from him, he would toss the orange in the air. He held a knife on his right hand and peeled the whole orange in midair with one hand. After it was done, he would catch the orange with his left hand and hold the knife with the long strand of unbroken orange peel with his right hand. It was like a Kung-fu demonstration. A lot of people bought oranges from him just to watch that show.

This is the "Dragon Restaurant" - it's quite old and well-known.

This is Tai Yuen Street.

On this street, you see this in one direction.

and you see this the other direction.

This is where the address should be...

Hong Kong Housing Authority Notice

Demolition Notice for 43-63 Tai Yuen Street, Wan Chai, Hong Kong

This is where the dry cleaners may have been.

So what's across the street now?
Massiveness.

Well one thing is still the same; there is still a wine place here. Coincidence?

No more stationary store, but these two stores have knick-knacks

Of course. Ubiquitous.

I felt slightly nostalgic, but can you miss a place you've never actually been to before?

My mother used to talk about growing up in Hong Kong and it was such a faraway, long ago place and time that I couldn't connect. She talked about their cat (every family needed a cat to catch the rats and mice). She said their cat would also attack her youngest brother (when he was very small), and she said he would get mad and use an empty crate to catch the cat, then sit on the crate until he felt he had exacted enough revenge. My mom also talked fondly about their pet turtle that loved when the monsoon came. She said he would swim around in the water. She also talked about how her mother would bring home rabbits, and she would play with it until one day it would be gone and there would be meat on the dinner table. She said she was so sad she couldn't eat it. She also said her mother chopped a frog in half and the legs kept jumping around for quite a few seconds. She told many other stories, but that's just it...to me they were just stories, but to her that was her childhood.

So now I've visited the exact location where all those events took place over 40 years ago, and that entire part of Tai Yuen street is completely transformed (or will be soon). Right before I left for Hong Kong my uncle (the one my mom says was attacked by the cat) was showing me some black and white photographs of their family back then. It was amazing because it was the first time I had a visual of my mom as a child and there were even some pictures with their flat in the background. And now, it will only remain in pictures and in memories.

That's something that continually fascinates me about Hong Kong: The new and the old. The modern and the traditional. You have a street of fruit and vegetable vendors where the walkway is so narrow that you have to inch between the stands sideways at some parts. And right beside it there's a massive skyscraper-like office building with fancy schmancy stores lining the ground floor (oh and starbucks). It boggles my mind. I've experienced so much cognitive dissonance since coming here that my mind has become partially numb to the intensity. There's beauty in contrast.

Hong Kong is chaotically wonderful.

HK is like Narnia

2009-09-28T13:12:00.001+08:00

and this was a wardrobe...

2009-09-26T00:53:00.005+08:00

ABC

2009-09-20T22:45:00.010+08:00

American-Born Chinese
Hi, my name is Charita. Cha-ri-ta. It's like "charity" but with an "a" at the end instead of the "y." Yeah, it's difficult I know. I'm from the United States - California. Yes, I'm Chinese. My parents are from Hong Kong. No, unfortunately I can't speak or understand Cantonese. My parents only spoke English to me at home. Why did I choose to come here? Well, my parents are from here and I felt bad not really being in touch with my heritage, so I wanted to visit. Also, I've never been to Asia, so this was a good chance to come and besides a lot of people here speak English.

I don't know how many times I've intro'd myself since coming here. I've given variations of the spiel above at least 50 times. (Do you remember freshmen year in the dorms? It's like that all over again, except with more explanations). While this experience has been really meaningful so far and I'm really glad I got the chance to come, it's not just one big vacation.

I'm learning a LOT being here - not necessarily academic learning, although that too- but just learning about people, places, things. I know, that sounds so vague. But I want to be honest, it has taken me a couple weeks to become fairly adjusted to this new environment.

I think things are enhanced by contrast, so here's a summary of some contrast that the tourguide books and other travelers might leave out.

[NOTE: Don't get the wrong impression that I have a negative view of the city. Far from it. Early on I fell in love with this place (or at least, in very deep like) to the point that I was vaguely considering the possibility of actually living here for a time in the future - I mean, living here longer than 4 1/2 months. But let's be honest, no place is perfect. And traveling abroad is quite different from living abroad.]

The Adjustment Breakdown

Crowds
[A slice of the view. Almost all of these are residential, some are 60 stories high!]

I'm starting to get used to the crowds. It's expected and accepted. Elevators will be crowded. Sidewalks will be crowded. With 7 million people jammed in 426 square miles, personal space is definitely reduced. It's okay. There's an ironic saying, "A body can get used to

anything, even to being hanged." It's been said that Mong Kok (area in Hong Kong) is THE most congested place on the planet. Go there on a Saturday night at your own risk.

Weather
I'm starting to get used to the heat and humidity, either that or it's cooling down. When I first came I was in a constant state of dripping sweat. (And some of you know I don't sweat very easily. So feeling beads of perspiration leaking out of the pores of my body was as foreign to me as the rest of Hong Kong). The temperature was in the 90s and humidity was like 80% so even if I was outside, not moving, and in the shade, sweat would be bursting out like water from broken floodgates.

You know how your bathroom is after you take a really long, hot shower? It's like that. The few times I wore glasses, they would steam up once I stepped outside. Hot + Wet = Hong Kong in the summer. One of the main reasons I liked the typhoon was because it made Hong Kong slightly cooler and slightly less humid (cloudy and windy..ahhh). Even the rain was nice because when you got wet, it was like all the benefits of sweat (the body's natural cooling system) without the actual icky part of sweating. woot.

Warp Speed

I'm starting to get used to the pace of walking, ordering food, paying, getting on/off buses, flagging down buses-everything and everyone moves faster here. Hong Kong is not for the timid. Even their old people are faster than our old people. Actually, I think some of the old people here move around a similar pace as young, able-bodied people back home. Sad eh? I think some Hong Kong locals would attribute that to Americans being fat, and they're probably right.

Lost
I'm getting better at navigating through the city. In the first two weeks by myself, I got lost practically every day. Hong Kong is a really old city, so unlike LA suburbs (or even most of Berkeley), things are not in a grid. What we think of as intuitive directions don't apply here. Same with the campus. It's not simply a matter of walking from one building to another on the ground floor, because the school is on a hill. You have to climb staircases, take elevators, sometimes enter certain buildings in order to take a bridge to another building. Every time I had the thought, "Oh, I can probably take this route instead" it generally resulted in spending at least half an hour wandering somewhere, unwilling to go back and insisting on using my new route (like columbus?), but eventually admitting failure and resolving to never wander from known paths again...until next time when I think "hey, this might be quicker..."

Sometimes I feel like a rat in a maze here. But I'm learning the maze, and I even gave a Chinese man directions the other day. booyah! Actually I can't take credit, because a lot of people here have been so amazing at helping me find the right way. Several times, when I asked for help, instead of telling me the way a local would actually insist on walking a block and showing me the right route. Amazing huh? Sometimes people realize I'm not local and probably pity me. Sometimes. But that leads to the crux of this post...

Language
[doesn't really relate, but it's a funny pic]

The hardest thing by far to get used to is the fact that I am living in a place where I don't speak or even understand the dominant language. BUT, as I mentioned earlier, my parents are from Hong Kong and I am ethnically Chinese (whatever that means). People automatically assume I'm local, or that I at least understand Cantonese. It's very much a judgment based on physical appearance because people who don't "look Chinese" (ie: hapas, and non-asians) are treated as foreigners - given forks, English menus, often addressed in English. On the other hand, I just look like an idiot everywhere I go.

People keep saying "oh you can learn Cantonese there, you will pick it up fast" blah blah. Ok, first of all, Cantonese is a tonal language. TONAL - meaning, words (sounds) are distinguished by the pitch/inflection with which you say them. It's not just any tonal language..it a tonal language that has NINE tones (it's "simplified" to SIX tones - Mandarin only has 4). What does that mean?

It means nearly every single word in this language has multiple meanings depending HOW you say it: If you say a word with a high inflection (1) it means something different from saying it with a high but rising inflection (2). These are different from a flat mid-range pitch (3), which again is different from a low and falling inflection (4), which is different from an inflection that goes low and then rises (5), versus the syllable that is a low but steady (6). SIX!! There are freakin SIX tones in this language!! And it's a monosyllabic language, so you're trying to hear an inflection from a noise that lasts for a fraction of a second. Are you trying to say the word "steep" or "car"? Are you trying to say "four" or "die?" Is that word "light" or "wait?" To non-tonal language speakers those words pronounced in Cantonese sound the same, but depending on how you utter that syllable you can be saying something completely different or just making a random ass sound.

Native speakers speak the language intuitively, so they don't even know how to describe what tone they're using. Hopefully you have a patient friend willing to repeat a word five million times until you can say it right, only to forget five seconds later because English speakers are preconditioned to process language in a completely different way.

So basically, I can get used to everything else here...the crowds, the weather, the pace, the weaving pathways, but the language barrier is frustrating me.

Language in a foreign land is like sight in a human.

I'm feeling pretty blind in Hong Kong.

T8

2009-09-15T01:38:00.000+08:00

Warning
T8 stands for "Typhoon warning level 8." The level of warnings are 1, 3, 8, 9, and 10. At 1 and 3 the typhoon is still hundreds of miles away- it might be a little windy, a little rainy, but basically mickey mouse stuff. At T8, the typhoon is or will be quite close and the city shuts down. What does that mean? It means no classes, no work, (most) people stay inside. T8 won't cause much damage. It's enough to be inconvenient but not enough to kill anyone, unless a tree falls on you. From what I've heard, T9 and definitely 10 can be quite bad but those don't happen too often. Also, even if at any given moment it's not raining and it seems like the weather is fine, that can change in an instant. It's like we're tiny little ants and someone keeps messing with the sprinklers.

Even before it began pouring rain the wind was so strong at one point it blew me off balance. I was actually blown into a person walking beside me. I felt like a damn leaf. I don't know how some of the very thin (light) Hong Kong girls manage to walk around in those conditions (I think some just take taxis home). I saw some little dogs walking around in the underground tunnels, and I seriously felt concerned for their safety. Of course, this is all from the perspective of a Californian who is unfamiliar with experiencing typhoons/hurricanes.

Geography
Typhoons (aka hurricanes in the US) tend to follow certain patterns. I won't pretend to know anything about meteorology, but basically Hong Kong is lucky because they don't often get very strong typhoons because Taiwan and the Philippines bear the brunt of the force (remember the devastating typhoon that hit Taiwan recently?). But Jed informs me not all areas of the Philippines gets hit by typhoons, so important things to consider on your next trip.

View
Last night, the T8 was raised and I tried to photograph the view from the dormitory roof (16th floor) during a calm spell, but with little success. The president of the photography club joined me, and said it's difficult to get a good shot. A lot of professionals have special equipment for taking pictures in/of the rain. Basically..we needed a really strong backlight, but oh well. It was fun trying anyways.

Then we tried getting a picture of the street view from the limited safety of an overhang. I say limited safety because the rain looks like tiny bullets zipping through the air. When the wind blows hard enough you can physically see the rain going SIDEWAYS under the illumination of streetlamps. The drops ricochet off the ground, the roof, basically anything with a physical mass. When the wind gusts hard enough it creates a sort of howling sound as it blows through trees, windows, doors, etc. BUT, all of this is happening while the air is quite warm--about 80 degrees fahrenheit (27 celsius), so I'm still walking around wearing tank tops or t-shirts and shorts everywhere I go. Because of the temperature, the air feels warmly wet, or wetly warm..I can't decide which. It has a level of comfort hard to describe.

My room is on the 9th floor of the dormitory. I can lean out my window gazing at the droplets zooming away into darkness. It's as if there's a blanket of raindrops enveloping the world- and it seems strangely peaceful. My dorm is surrounded by many trees on the side where my window faces out. The sound of raindrops crashing into the thousands (or perhaps millions) of leaves creates a constant whooshing sound...like a waterfall- or applause heard from a distance. It's loud considering I can hear this from the 9th floor of the building.

leaning out the window

Of course, on the ground floor it feels much more aggressive. The wind howls and the thick, heavy doors slightly shake.

rain vs. Rain
I'm sure the physical size of the droplets are larger here. I don't have scientific proof but when it smacked me in the head it did not feel like rain, it felt like a rock of water. The rain here makes all Los Angeles "rain" seem like a mild drizzle. In a few hours here it's probably rained more than it would in the entire year in Cerritos. Tidbit: In Chinese, typhoon is literally called "big wind."

The Water Breakdown
Cerritos < Berkeley < SF <<< Hong Kong

This Old House

2009-09-09T21:30:00.000+08:00

When my grandfather became older and had more money, he built a big house to replace their previous home in the village in China. The new house was the tallest house in the village and so by village standards it was considered very large and grand. It is three stories high, but the third story is really just a deck. It has two different gated entrances, and a fountain outside the house in a sort of courtyard. Even the local television station filmed it to show how the villages were developing in those days. Since then, other bigger and newer buildings have sprung up, and this old house has become a bit shoddy and worn down. In fact, you can hardly see the house from the street today. But once inside the the outer wall, one is transported to a different world away from the noise and smells of the surrounding streets. The house maintains a sort of reminiscent grandeur, or maybe that's just my imagination. It was in this house my dad and I found some old photo albums in a cabinet. Some of those photos are posted on facebook

3 generations of my family got their water from this well. You can see the reflection of my father and me staring down.

This fountain used to have Koi fish in it.

Fancy gate for the house. In many places in China and even Hong Kong, there's a metal gate AND a door for the house.

See how high the ceiling is? For the villages in China this was very rare.

An alter with pictures of my great-grandparents

It was super hot and humid, so even after I took a cold shower downstairs I would be sweaty again by the time I got to the second level bedroom.

This is the "third level" or just roof deck. It's actually quite big. This is only half of it. The other half had many large potted plants. My dad's shirt is hanging from a rack of bamboo sticks.

This is the entrance to the balcony from the second floor, but it's not nearly as nice as the third floor deck.

This is an old photo taken when the house was just built.

Lost in Translation

2009-09-09T17:54:00.000+08:00

Does this mean I can feed non-feral pigeons?
(The yellow bubble says, "Feeding pigeons causing dirtiness to public areas: $1,500 fine")

For the most part, people in Hong Kong are relatively quite fluent in English. Many people of the younger generation can communicate fairly well with English speakers, but people in the older generation often have fewer English capabilities. This linguistic generational divide could be a study in itself, but it's also interesting to note that better-educated (which often means wealthier) locals can speak English better than those less educated (service workers, manual laborers, etc). So by merely observing the the English-speaking capabilities of a local, one could roughly ascertain the quality of his or her education level, which would be indicative of his/her socioeconomic status. (Although, it's also been noticed that the females tend to speak English better than the males. Why may that be? Are females naturally better at languages? Perhaps they're more talkative? Maybe they're more receptive to the English lessons? Maybe more females at HKU tend to have a higher socioeconomic background than the males? I really don't know. It's all speculation.)

Oh, and of course there's a massive variety of accents among Chinese speakers (probably more so than in any other language). Mainland Chinese who come to Hong Kong have an accent when they speak Cantonese, and vice versa. Native Chinese speakers can easily recognize these different accents, but people who can't even hear the differences between Mandarin and Cantonese would not notice this, but apparently it's a pretty obvious difference. I imagine it's a stronger accent than some Southerners have in the US. And if you've been reading the prior posts, you already know I've encountered an Indian accent in Cantonese. Seriously, it's mind boggling. Not only do people have accents across dialects (which are essentially different spoken languages) but obviously in a country as massive as China they have regional accents even among the same dialect. I was watching the evening news with my floormates and it showed a clip of some people in Beijing talking to the reporter. My friend, a local student, commented that you can recognize people from Beijing because they make a certain sound often when they speak--it's sort of like an elongated "r" sound. So basically, language is interesting.

So why is this post lost in translation? Because last night when I was walking down the street, I saw an older Chinese woman wearing a hot pink t-shirt covered with glittery words, "ON YOUR KNEES MUTHA FUCKA." Best shirt sighting in Hong Kong ever. I wish I got a picture of it, but you're just going to have to use your imaginations for this one.

F.O.B.

2009-08-31T23:43:00.000+08:00

Today I was in the computer lab surrounded by the gentle hum of ambient noise. Suddenly, the peace was broken by the jarring sounds of English (with an American accent). Being immersed with locals, one quickly becomes accustomed to the cadences, decibal levels, and accents of the words spoken all over the city. In the US, English spoken with a "foreign" (non-american) accent sounds out of place. But here, English NOT spoken with a Chinese accent sounds out of place. The people in the lab speaking loudly in American English were a group of exchange students and they were blatently disrupting what was moments ago a peaceful, harmonious computer center. And it hit me...we are the fobs here.

I criticize them, but I also find myself constantly feeling, acting, and sounding very foreign and out of place. Every syllable that comes from my mouth feels raw. I'm not sure how to explain it, but I've become intensely aware of not just my foreigness but my Americaness. My lack of integration is very stark in every interaction. In the US, when various groups of particular ethnicities gathered together it often sounded very loud and disruptive. But here, it was suddenly the opposite. The local people are entirely civil, considerate, and even helpful while the Americans seem loud and obnoxious and sometimes convey a sense of arrogance. It probably is not arrogance (surely, on my part it's not), but the lingual and cultural barrier can warp signals, and a lot of things get lost in translation. And so I think what seems to be disruptive behavior (whether in the US or Hong Kong or anywhere else) is not intentional or particular to any nationality or ethnicity but rather it's the experience of being in a foreign land, with a different language, different pace, different courtesies and cultural subtleties that can't and won't be assimilated immediately, if ever.

"Chee-saw hai been doh?"

2009-08-30T22:34:00.000+08:00

"Where is the bathroom?"

While I was in China, one of the things that I found particularly hard to adjust to was the bathroom (or the lack thereof). I was only in China for less than 3 days, and in that time I saw three separate occasions of someone peeing in public. One of the times was in an area where there would not be much foot traffic, so I suppose it was not so bad. But the other two times seemed rather unsanitary.

From Shenzhen, China (at the border between China and Hong Kong) we had to take a two and a half bus hour ride to Foshan (the distance is about 100 miles). However, while we were on the freeway (they don't have many freeways, yet) there was a traffic accident that completely stopped all traffic for literally one and a half hours. (I timed it: 10:40 am - 12:10 pm). Now, even by China standards that was pretty long. My uncle said that while traffic hold ups are very common, they usually don't last quite that long. Once an accident happens, it takes the ambulance/police/etc very long to reach the scene because roads are very crowded. In fact, when we first stopped I was beginning to get antsy after 15 minutes of not moving. I've been in LA traffic during rush hour a few times, which is the worst traffic in the nation...so I thought I knew bad traffic, but that was nothing compared to this. The other people on the bus didn't even murmer until after about 45 minutes of dead stop. At around 1 hour they started to get antsy (remember, my threshhold had been 15 minutes). My dad told me that many years ago when my uncle died, our relatives from the village came out to the Shenzhen area to attend the funeral, but it took them TWELVE hours to get back to Foshan because traffic would not move. Thank god it didn't take us 12 hours, but still...in one and a half hours I could have driven to San Diego from Cerritos.

So anyways, because traffic was stopped for so long a lot of people got out of their cars to try to find out what was happening, hang out, smoke, whatever.

I snapped a picture of that scene and accidentally captured something else people were doing outside their cars.

Later when traffic started moving again, I saw several small wet areas at the base of the barrier. I guess that guy wasn't the only one that had a full tank.
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While on the bus, at one point we all heard a dull pounding and someone yelling. My dad said someone was stuck in the bathroom, so he went to open the door for the person inside. A little, old woman comes out speaking very loudly and gesturing. Turns out, the door wasn't even locked, but she just couldn't figure out how to turn the latch from the inside.

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While we were in Foshan, my dad showed me a marketplace. It was very crowded and a lot of trash littered the floors. At the entrance of the market, which adjoined a busy side street, I saw a couple waiting as their child squat over the floor. The kid was peeing while people walked by on both sides, and cars and mopeds zoomed by a few feet away - all of this less than 20 feet from stands of fruit and vegatables.

Here's a picture of that market entrance. The woman with the white handbag is in the approximate area where I saw the kid go

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One of the main purposes of the visit to Foshan was to visit my grandfather who is in the ICU of a hospital. It's a very nice hospital by China standards. The cost of care for him in those facilities are US $200 per day. I'm not sure how expensive hospital stays are in the US, but for this area in China this is essentially the best care money can buy. While I was waiting in the hospital lobby I saw an older woman with a toddler. She pulled down his pants and carried him outside. I looked out the window to see what was happening (although I could have guessed) and saw her holding the boy as a stream of liquid went from his body to the side of the wall near the entrance. They were at most maybe 5 feet away from me and I could clearly see everything through the large windows. It makes sense now why they made us change our shoes and wear a cover before going inside the ICU. During my entire stay in China I viewed all liquids on the floor with great suspicion. This wariness came with me back to Hong Kong, although I've never witnessed anything of the sort here.

This is the hospital where we visited my grandfather. The entrance is at the top of the brick stairs

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If it seems odd that so many people fail to use the bathroom (there were bathrooms available in the hospital, but for some reason the old woman did not choose to utilize one of them) then I should describe them to you to give you a better picture. Ever use a restroom at a gas station in the US? It's kind of like that except there's no toilet and no toilet paper. Of course, in fancy and westernized places they might have toilet seats and toilet paper, but in most of the bathrooms they didn't have that. In the women's restrooms there were stalls, and this is typically what it looked like inside. I didn't actually take a picture so I'm using this photo from http://ultimatetoiletblog.blogspot.com/

Also, most were not this clean.

So if you've been reading previous posts, now you know why I was so relieved (npi) to be back in Hong Kong.

"Ho Sik"

2009-08-30T00:25:00.000+08:00

The phrase "ho sik" is Cantonese for "delicious." Food here is pretty cheap by US standards. I'll let the pictures do most of the talking this time...

Last night my cousin showed me this super cute/yummy/hidden cafe that's on the 15th floor of some random building. To get to it we walked down a rather dimly lit road...but once we stepped inside it was like being transported to a different world!

The name of the restaurant with the logo is questionable...but the whole place was adorable

It felt more like a living room than a restaurant

The view from the 15th floor and the reflection of the cafe in the window See the lines outlining the edges? The whole cafe was like that to give it a cartoon feel.

This was the orange & cumin grilled chicken, potato covered with bacon bits, and salad

This was the spaghetti with sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, and serrano ham

DESSERT! Chocolate cake made fresh! It was SO GOOD. It oozed liquid chocolate

Even the elevator on the floor was decorated in the same cartoon style. And that concluded a wonderful dinner in a hideaway awesome cafe.

Now for a contrast. Below are some foods eaten during my trip to China

This is a dessert of a jelly substance of milk and ginger sauce

So actually this dessert can only be served in south China because the milk comes from buffalos. The person who made this ad messed up because they just put the image of a cow.

This is also a dessert of an eggroll containing mango and shrimp sauce. It was mango sweet, shrimp creamy and the outside was crunchy...strange combination

This was a dish during dim sum. It's taro cake. Tasted GOOD!

So whenever they got a dish of chicken..the head always came with it. Come to think of it, the head often came with a lot of things we ate....

No..this is not squid Snakes!! Both the pictures above and below are of water snakes. I tried it (dish above)...

and it wasn't bad. It was a bit chewy and the sauce was good...

That's it for now. More to come on food!

China: The Hometown

2009-08-28T22:51:00.000+08:00

I went with my father to a village in Foshan, China where he and his brothers were born and where many generations of the Law family has lived (21 generations were recorded in the genealogy book). My dad told me that a long time ago a general came to the area and told his three sons to settle the land. One of the sons set up camp in the place where the village is today. I was told the word Law (or "Lo") means gatherer. Also, there used to be four families in that region, but one of the families got chased out by the others who took their land. I believe the other two tribes, besides the Law clan, were Fung and Chan (or Lee?). My dad told me the Fung and Law families were settled next to each other, so they had a lot of fights over the border. He showed me the street that used to be the border of the village.

So actually Foshan is a fairly developed place - it's near Guangzhou, which is the capital of the Guangdong Province (Guangdong is also called Canton - hence, "Cantonese"). The village where my family is from used to be at the outskirts of Foshan, but over the years Foshan has grown and gobbled up surrounding towns and villages. While other parts of the city are fairly developed (especially compared to many other cities in China), their village is one of the few areas that has not really been touched, so a lot of the buildings are super old and the roads are pretty narrow and shoddy. Eventually they're going to have to knock down the buildings and completely rebuild the area because the infrastructure is essentially crap. Frankly, the whole place reeked of some pretty foul odors and in some places it honestly felt like people were living in squalor.

I didn't think I was a particularly ignorant person when it came to living standards. I've seen poverty in documentaries, photos, movies; I've read articles and learned things in classrooms; I've seen homeless people and beggars and parts of TJ, Mexico that made a little middle-class suburban kid like me feel uncomfortable--but there's city poor and there's village poor...and none of that truly relayed to me the latter. There's first-world poor and there's third-world poor (I know it's not PC to say third-world anymore, but there's nothing PC about the way they have to live- it's literally a different world). And the thing is, what I saw didn't even come close to the worst. The parts I saw were junky, but pretty average for many areas throughout China. That's not to say there aren't parts of China that are super fancy and modern. I'm sure Beijing is a nice place, but 99% of China is not Beijing.

Ok, I'm not being fair. I was only in China for less than 3 days, and I was only in that one area (although we did travel to the countryside one day). The country is so freakin huge living standards are bound to vary greatly depending on the region, city, and even neighborhood (actually everything varies greatly in china...dialects of language, religion, ethnicity, etc...it's difficult to make generalizations about a population of over one billion people on a land mass that's so expansive it's like a hundred different countries smashed into one). But I know that what I saw was not atypical, so while there are manynice parts of China I did not see, there are also many many horrible parts that I did not see. But I think that trip has given me a sliver of better understanding about the country.

Another thing that struck me was that for the first time I was seeing, meeting, and interacting with Chinese people who were NOT immigrants. All my life the only Chinese people I ever knew were either immigrants or children of immigrants. It seems obvious right? but growing up in the US I never fully realized that the group of Chinese people I was interacting with only covered a narrow spectrum of the general population. I mean, I knew it, but I never really thought about it. So being in China definitely made me readjust my perspective of China and Chinese people. I could pass my judgments on Chinese immigrants, Chinese residents, the Chinese government all I wanted to from across the ocean in the US, but when it comes down to actually being here and seeing how some of them live...it's different. And it's not simply being more or less right...it's being more right than I thought and more wrong then I could ever know at the same time. It's nuanced...it's messy. I think that's part of China. There's theory and there's life, and sometimes they don't coexist very well.

Before I went to China, I was in Hong Kong for a day...and I really admired it. It is a wonderful city. After going back to Hong Kong from China, I was so freakin relieved...I stood in the bathroom in my Uncle's apartment and just marveled at how amazing it was. Which leads me to a future post that will cover some of the differences between the two.

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I don't really have any pictures of the really crappy parts because I didn't want to pull out a camera and take pictures of the living conditions of these people right in their faces. Actually, at the time, it didn't even occur to me to try to take photos to show what it looked like. I was so overwhelmed by the sights, sounds, smells, and DAMN HEAT (and the pollution was horrible). But to give a comparison, it made the homeless people in Berkeley look lucky in some ways. At least they get to sleep in a park, and a lot of them probably even have more posessions then some of the people I saw. Is it possible we all live in the same world?

British Ex-Colony

2009-08-25T23:17:00.000+08:00

Knowing Hong Kong was a British colony and seeing the remnants of that rule are two different things. I think a lot of people have the misconception that Hong Kong and China are essentially the same since Hong Kong was returned to the mainland in 1997. Both people from Hong Kong and the mainland are considered Chinese, so culturally there are many similarities. But Hong Kong has a very different history and even to this day remains essentially autonomous from China under the "one country, two systems" policy. In '97, when HK was first handed back to China, there was a great deal of concern about the handover so the Chinese government promised they would not change anything for 50 years. Hong Kong has its own government, immigration rules, traffic rules, currency, etc. To go from Hong Kong to China or vice versa, one must pass through customs and there is a duty free store at the border. But I digress, the difference between Hong Kong and China are innumerable and will be posted later.

After the communist takeover of China, a lot of people tried to get out of the country and move to Hong Kong--my father's family included. They went from their village near Foshan to Macau (at that time still a Portuguse colony) and from there to Hong Kong. It was very difficult to get a permit to leave China but my grandmother begged a local official every day for many weeks until he finally let her go. She took my dad with her, who was 4 at the time, and after they were out of China it was easier to get other family members out.

Anyways, here's the cliffnotes version. In the 1800s, Brits got mad China wouldn't import opium which led to opium wars. Britain took over some land (what is now the Hong Kong and Kowloon area). But they wanted to expand their domain so they leased a chunk of land to the north (now the New Territories) from China for 99 years (which expired in 1997-hence, the handover). During that time, the British developed the area and it became an important port city. So basically, there are a lot of British influences:

In Hong Kong:
1. They have double decker buses. It's fun to ride on the top and see the city above and below.
2. They drive on the left side of the road, which means pedestrians generally have to look right to see oncoming traffic. You don't realize how much the "drive on right-side" becomes ingrained in you in the US until you're almost hit by traffic in a country where the system is flipped.
3. Often, they use British pronounciation and spelling. BUT, not only do they speak English with a British accent, they also have a slight Chinese accent. It's really quite bizarre to me, as an American-born Chinese, hearing a the magical voice on the subway have a mixed British/Chinese accent. But not quite as bizarre as hearing an Indian speak Cantonese with an Indian accent. My brain almost exploded when I heard that. Just one of many things I've encountered lately that in retrospect obviously exists, but I had never been exposed to in my life.
4. Speaking of English, it's almost everywhere. A lot of signs have both Chinese and English, so even someone like me that is completely Chinese illiterate and can barely speak or understand Cantonese can get around.

There are many many more examples, but those are the main ones I can think of for now.

Hong Kong is truly a place where the East meets the West. It sounds so cliche but it's true. My dad has said several times that the British where good managers (when it came to Hong Kong). They developed a system that worked well, and because of that Hong Kong became so successful-one of the leading financial centers in the world. Among other things, Hong Kong has a good healthcare, education, and legal system (I found out my dad can reapply for his resident card, which means I could potentially get a resident card in the future. Haven't been following any news since I've been here, but if US healthcare is a bust then this can be my fallback plan.) Even HKU, founded by the British, is considered the best university in asia (didn't know that when i applied-who told me i wouldn't studying here?).

Hong Kong: First Day

2009-08-21T21:28:00.000+08:00

Hong Kong is amazing. I am completely and utterly astounded; I don't know if I can do this experience justice. To be constantly flooded with new sights, sounds, and everything else in this place that is so incredibly different from the US is exhilarating exhausting.

My first sight of Hong Kong was right before our plane touched down at the airport this morning. It was around 5 am, before daybreak, and I was awed by the sight of the incredibly beautiful aerial nightview. I've flown many times before, mostly between LAX and Oakland, so I've become familiar with the sight of city lights lined up in neat rows and columns - thousands of dotted perpendicular lines in a massive glowing grid. Hong Kong was totally different. Kowloon is part of the peninsula stretching from mainland China. Across the harbor is Hong Kong Island, and these two portions are where the majority of people, buildings, activities, etc reside. While other portions of Hong Kong have some activity, it's a mostly mountainous region. One of the effects of this demographic concentration is a night, aerial view of large gaping portions of darkness where there are mountains and water outlined by softly lit winding roads and shorelines. The peninsula and islands are engulfed in a ribbon of lights. This creates a scene that looks haphazardly artistic. Simply put, it's chaotically gorgeous.

After we dropped off our luggage in the apartment, we went to a nearby restaurant for dim sum. The restaurant seemed so fancy I wanted to take a picture but I thought it would be inappropriate. There were circular designs across the ceiling that framed the lights. There were at least three widescreen tvs across one wall (but I was later told this was considered an "average" restaurant in Hong Kong). The aquarium held a really really large fish. I could have sworn I've seen that type of fish at an aquarium in San Francisco.

You can't really tell because depth perception doesn't translate well in pictures, but this fish is MUCH larger than my dad's hand. It was at least four times larger than the average restaurant fish. Massive beast...could easily feed a table of 20.

Unlike the dim sum back home, the food here was not greasy at all. It was so much tastier but at the same time lighter. Instead of sinking into a food coma, I felt refreshed. My uncle and dad told me this was because places in Hong Kong used less MSG because people here are particular about their food and they wouldn't get much business. To top it off, not only was the restaurant fancier, the food tastier and healthier, it was also cheaper. The bill was about US $4 per person (dim sum back in California is easily $7 per person--unless I'm eating with Jed, then it's closer to US $10).

On the first day alone we went across the entire length of Hong Kong and then some. From the airport we went across the harbor to Lam Tin, which is on the eastern side. Then we went back across the Harbor to HKU on the northwest side of Hong Kong Island. We wanted to check out the campus and thought it would be nice to walk over to see my dorm. The booklet says the dorm is close (10-15 minutes walk from campus), but that is a bloody lie. Going uphill + 90 degree temperature + humid = pain. But pain cements memories...I think. Actually the heat isn't too bad. There's a lot of air conditioning everywhere.

Then we went to Central, walked around a bit, rode the Star Ferry back to the Kowloon side then went to HKUST (another university where two of my cousins work. It was BEAUTIFUL. The entire campus is on a huge hill that overlooks the water and smaller islands.

Some people call it a "Rolls-Royce University."

Look how tiny these palm trees are!

We also ate dinner at the university. This was dessert. The one in front is from some sort of flower. The yellow one was sweet and now I can't even remember what it was called. The striped one is coffee flavored and the last one is red bean flavored.

So that's all for now. I was hoping to have a really awesome first post because it was a really awesome first day, but so much has happened and it's impossible to describe everything and upload pictures. I'll try to be more organized in future posts.

Funeral

2009-07-18T14:08:00.000+08:00

Today, Papa Frita the parakeet died.

We didn't have a shovel so we used spoons to dig a hole. It reminded me of the movie Shawshank Redemption when he used a tiny pick to dig through the wall of his prison cell.

It's funny. At 2, we don't understand the concept of death. A toddler is slightly bewildered when a creature that was once alive stops moving. At 12, the death of a pet is a devastating event because we didn't just lose a pet, we lost a playmate, a companion--a friend. At 21, the death of a pet would be sad, but not the end of the world. By now we've become jaded by all prior deaths of fish, turtles, birds, dogs, etc...So what will be the mentality toward pet deaths at 42?

Bus Ride

2009-06-03T14:48:00.000+08:00

This morning I took the bus to work. Nearby sat a middle aged man with a young girl. The man was talking to a young boy sitting across the aisle.

The man asked the boy, "What's your name?"

He shyly mumbled something.

"What?"

The boy repeated himself softly.

The man asked, "Andrew?"

The boy shook his head and smiled. In a louder voice mixed with frustration and amusement he repeated his name, "Avondré!"

"A-von-drey" The white man said. "That's a nice name."

The little boy beamed. The man motioned to the little girl beside him, "This is Melinda."

The little boy continued to shyly smile while wriggling in his seat. The man and the little girl got off the bus and Avondré took their spot beside the window. He was very small and his legs dangled off while he kept turning his body around and looking out the window. When the bus braked, Avondré was so small that he would slide off the seat and barely catch himself in time. This happened a few times until a particularly jolting halt when the boy was thrown into the air and smacked his head on the opposite seat with a yelp. His mother turned around and sternly glared at him.

"I was sitting back!" he insisted in response to her wordless warning.

"You were not sitting back." It wasn't just a statement, it was an accusation. Contrite, Avondré pulled himself up and sat further back on the seat.

This might be one of those incidences where you had to be there, but trust me. It was very cute. That was one of the cutest children I have ever seen.
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If you didn't know already, I should tell you that the bus/bus stop is one of the best places to just let your mind wander...
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Later, I was on another bus in Oakland. I watched a guy bobbing his head to the music in his earphones. Next to him sat an older man with a ragged, white beard who wore dirty, shredded clothes. As the old man was mumbling to himself it occurred to me how important context is. Actions in themselves are not "crazy," it's when they are contextualized that judgment is passed. Someone bobbing his head and softly whispering lyrics is behaving in a socially acceptable manner if he is rocking out to his ipod; someone bobbing his head and mumbling to himself is seen as "crazy" if he is dirty, and raggedly dressed. A man walking down the street talking a mile a minute is perhaps a businessman if he speaking into a bluetooth, wearing a suit and holding a briefcase; a man walking down the street talking a mile a minute is a lunatic to be avidly avoided if he is in dirty, smelly clothes and pushing a shopping cart.

We don't judge actions so much as we judge situations.

Writer's Block

2009-04-14T13:10:00.000+08:00

I have it. It doesn't feel good. I have a take-home midterm due this week. I have 3,000 words to answer three questions, but I'm not feeling it. As I was trying to overcome this block, I realized the irony that I have no problem spending an hour or so typing an entry or comment on a blog, but when it comes to a structured essay I feel stuck.

The work suddenly seems tedious and unwanted. Why is that? It's not the material--I enjoy learning these theories. It's not writing itself, clearly I enjoy writing. I think the block lies somewhere in the obligation and pressure to write these essays. Instead of willingly devoting my time and energy into crafting an engaging response, I'm given this "assignment" and instructed that part of my grade depends on my product. Worse, I cannot answer in any manner of my choice but rather I'm given sub-points within each question that must be addressed.

I understand the need to lead us with thought-provoking questions, but why is it so damn constrained? I'm no longer just talking about the midterm prompt--school in general has become such a regimented system filled with calculations, percentiles, and scores. My colleague mentioned the other day that in college instead of learning the material we merely learn how to get by. Instead of learning the academics of the system, we're learning the system of the academics. We've lost sight of the original end-goal as we were diverted into a sludge of rules, syllabi, and grades. Perhaps this is the iron cage.

The Ten Commandments

2009-04-12T11:18:00.000+08:00

Tomorrow is Easter Sunday, and without fail a major network is showing "The Ten Commandments" (1956) starring Charlton Heston. I remember watching this every Easter when I was little, but I haven't seen it in probably over a decade. For me, this movie is to Easter as "It's A Wonderful Life" is to Christmas. This movie was epic in its time--now considered a classic. I forgot how interesting this Bible story was. I guess when you grow up hearing certain things over and over before you can even read for yourself, it becomes a sort of predigested and readily accepted "truth" in an impressionable mind. Actually, this "The Ten Commandments" movie flexes its creative license because it has details and plot embellishments not specified in the book. The way this movie portrays the story, Moses could have been crowned Pharaoh but instead chose to be a slave with the other Hebrews when he found out about of his true origins. If that were the version, he should have just become Pharaoh and pulled a Lincoln. Anyways, its still an interesting movie for all its plot hiccups.

Wow, I just realized...Moses was a revolutionary. Instead of working for reform within the system, he sought radical change by opposing the preexisting, Egyptian system of slavery. Instead of accepting that one group was the slaves and another group was the slave owners, he insisted...what was that often repeated phrase?

"Workers of the world, unite! You have nothing to lose but your chains." Wait, he didn't say that.

"Let my people go!" That's the one.

Hmm. So, Moses was in a position of power, which was forfeited when he murdered an Egyptian for beating a Hebrew. Then he ran away, did a lot of thinking, talked to God, pulled a Rocky and went back to Egypt for round two...which stretched into 10 rounds of plagues on the land until the Pharaoh finally freed the Israelites. That's theory in action.

Invisible

2009-02-26T09:35:00.001+08:00

While I worked as a tech assistant for the school, one of my jobs was to monitor a lecture hall from a sort of panoptic booth. I could see everything in the auditorium from the high vantage point. I admit, this position suited my scopophiliac tendencies. I liked to people-watch. It was a chill job and I often stayed after everyone in the class had dispersed because it was a comfortable, peaceful environment--I occasionally referred to the booth as the "Fortress of Solitude." The booth was wonderful...but the world below was less so. Staying at the booth late led me to observe an aspect of the university campus that I think not many students ever think about or notice.

Janitors. They're the people that mop, sweep, scrub, and pick up after the rest of us. The people that come into buildings after everyone else has left. The people that spend much longer than four years at a university, but may never get a degree. The people that can't go home even after finals are done. They are the people that get no respect, no applause, no recognition. They are the people you will never notice when they do their job, but whom you'll immediately notice if they don't. They're the people you only talk to if you've lost something--if you want something from them. They are the people you never make eye contact with and shuffle past in the hall as quickly as you can. god forbid some of their cleaning cooties get on you.

Walking past the aisles of the 700 person lecture hall at the end of the day is shocking. The amount of trash and crap left behind is astounding--bags of chips/cookies/sandwiches, water bottles, papers, coffee cups, etc. There are multiple trash cans at all the entrances/exits, but literally mounds of trash are created on the floors. Who are all these inconsiderate people that treat the campus as one big trash dump? If students were forced to sit in their own filth for a week would that make them more aware of the basic courtesy of cleaning up after themselves? And so the janitors clean up messes that are easily avoidable for wages that are unliveable for people that are ungrateful.

Story of an Era

2009-01-16T16:50:00.000+08:00

The following is a sort of lifetime reflection article written by my grandfather, and translated from Chinese by my father. Since my grandfather doesn't blog, I shall post this for him.
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A Declaration of Love – Together on a Stormy Path
By Law Ping-Yiu (December 2006, 85th Year-old Birthday Celebration)

I began working in Foshan (Buddha Hill) as a boy-servant when I was barely thirteen. Five years later I went to Hong Kong for a better opportunity. It was there on that Mid-Autumn Festival Day in 1941 that a blind date was set up for me to meet my beloved wife, Miss Lam Shou-Chun. A few months later the Japanese invaded Hong Kong and we had to flee back to our hometowns. She went back to Jiang-Mun (Gong-Moon) and I to Foshan. Somehow the heaven brought us together and we were married later. We were fully aware that we had to work hard to overcome the tremendous difficulties of those days. It has been 65 years since we first met and I am now 85. Whenever I ponder upon our life in the middle of the night I can’t help but to be thankful that in spite of my shortcomings I have been spared from major blunders. This is the story I want to share with all my friends and relatives.

During those 12 years in Foshan, we experienced the Japanese war and later the communist take-over. I was lucky to have a stable job. My wife was a typical housewife, doing a good job taking care of the household while I worked. Together we were considered a heavenly match. For a while our life was quite happy. I followed my mother’s instruction to work hard and started to acquire properties. We bought a few acres of land and some building materials and were ready to build a new house. We did not have any big dreams then. We naively thought that we could enjoy the fruit of our labor, never realizing that the change of government policy would take everything away from us overnight.We had already had four sons by the time. I was able to acquire a few acres of farmland. It also became clear that we were not able to do the farming ourselves. Instead we let one of the villagers, Uncle Tat, use the land without really mentioning any terms of use. Later in those horrible “mob rule” days in the early 50’s he never said I had charged him anything for using my land. Loss of conscience and false accusation were so prevalent then but he did not say anything to harm me. I do not know what my life would have become if some different words were said.

In 1954, the place where I worked was closing down. Once again I applied for permission to go to Hong Kong. When it was approved, I was given 30 days to leave. My fifth child (daughter) had just been born and my mother fell ill at the same time. After twenty-some days, mother passed away. And three days before the deadline I finally set foot in Lo Woo (at the Hong Kong border). My feeling at that moment was like winning a heavenly freedom but at the same time losing my dear motherland. For my wife, she had to deal with a newborn baby and the loss of her mother-in-law at the same time, and to care for 4 older children. We then arranged for my mother-in-law to come from Macau to Foshan to help. However, in less than a month she insisted on leaving because she could not get used to the village life. However, she was able to bring my oldest son out with her. In 1956, my wife finally received permission to leave for Hong Kong and was allowed to bring one child along. That meant that the other three had to be left behind. It was my beloved sister (Law Sun) who volunteered to take up the incredible hardship of looking after my three other children. (Actually, she also had 3 and later 4 kids of her own at that time!!!) Can you find people like her these days?! Can one imagine this actually happened??

My wife was coming to Hong Kong via Macau by boat. She was allowed to bring three dollars with her (I was allowed to bring $6 when I left.) During the boat ride when everyone was having dinner, my son was hungry and was crying. What could $3 buy? One sailor was so nice that he offered a bowl of rice to my son, helping out in that difficult situation. I later went to Macau to look for this sailor to thank him, but with no prevail.After my wife came to Hong Kong, my mother-in-law quit her job and took care of the children. The other three in the village were cared for by my sister. Eventually all three were able to leave Foshan and my whole family was reunited in Hong Kong. Since the family was large and we could not find housing in Hong Kong, we moved the children to Macau and asked my mother-in-law to look after them. My wife and I stayed in Hong Kong and worked. Oh, without my sister and my mother-in-law’s sacrifices, our lives would have been re-written!!

After going through all the hardship of the wars and change of dynasties, I learned to see life with a more open mind. Hardship may not be all that bad. One can look at it as an experience or a window to stand up to the challenge in difficult times.

It is inevitable to become frail when one gets old. It comes to everyone anyway, rich or poor, and there is no point in sighing about it. One might as well face it squarely and calmly.

In thirty-some years my wife worked hard every day till late at night to help support the family and to care for the children, especially their schoolwork. She is old now and is in a state of no sense and no pain. Could it be a blessing that the heaven has endowed upon her? Who knows?
In this happy occasion, I want to thank all my friends and relatives for coming to this celebration. May the young and able ones be encouraged to contribute to the society and may peace be upon us. My writing is limited and I may not have expressed my thoughts clearly, and yet I thank you for reading.

Law Ping-Yiu

Cerritos

2008-08-23T12:33:00.000+08:00

I'm sitting in my car under a streetlight. I can hear the dull sounds of fireworks in the distance. Yes, I live that close to Disneyland. You may not know it, but I'm sitting in a very premium spot (alluding to "Everything is Illuminated"-watch it).

I'm home for the weekend. It's the weekend before school starts. There are times when I'm sitting in this suburban prison mentally screaming, "WHY AM I HERE??!" (No, this isn't yet another blog post on the meaning of life--i think i have too many of those--i mean here in Cerritos.)

It's the sine graph of life.

Every time I'm here I'm flooded with contradictory feelings. I feel like I've returned to this familiar land abstractly known as home. This reminds me of a conversation in the movie "Garden State"...

Andrew: You know that point in your life when you realize the house you grew up in isn't really your home anymore? All of a sudden even though you have some place where you put your shit, that idea of home is gone.

Sam: I still feel at home in my house.

Andrew: You'll see one day when you move out it just sort of happens one day and it's gone. You feel like you can never get it back. It's like you feel homesick for a place that doesn't even exist. Maybe it's like this rite of passage, you know. You won't ever have this feeling again until you create a new idea of home for yourself, you know, for your kids, for the family you start, it's like a cycle or something. I don't know, but I miss the idea of it, you know. Maybe that's all family really is. A group of people that miss the same imaginary place.

I lived my whole life in this city, on this street, in this house until I went to college. These are the sidewalks where I walked home from school. These are the neighborhoods where I rode my bike. These are the streets where I learned to drive. This is the house of my childhood-an incredibly blissful childhood.

And it's strange that this is all in the past because, as a kid, you never realize that it ends. Childhood is full of firsts, but it is also full of lasts: The last time I got tucked in for bed; the last time my biggest problem was misplacing a stuffed animal...The last time I thought the world was simple and that everything was either black or white, right or wrong, christian or evil...

When we're young we have so many questions, and adults seem to have all the answers -- or if they don't, then they tell us it'll make sense when we're older. But the irony is--as we grow older, to some degree every time we seem to gain some perspective we also lose some. The things that used to make sense to us as children are no longer applicable. I thought I would get more answers as I grew older, but overall I'm ending up with more questions.

So this is home. More like, this is where home used to be. It's almost like seeing a ghost, but it's not actually dead...or is it?

In the end it's all perspective (isn't it always?)

Every new beginning comes from some other beginnings end.

A Life in Review

2008-05-09T10:17:00.000+08:00

Today I talked to Bob. It started out simple enough. I just wanted to get to know him a little better so I asked him where he worked, where he grew up, etc. He's older than I originally thought, he must be about 70. He came to Berkeley in 1965, a year after the Free Speech Movement started. I was fascinated. The FSM has become a deep part of Berkeley's identity and history. It not only transformed the campus but it also impacted the city and in many ways the nation and that era. But when I mentioned that to Bob and pressed him for more detail of his first-hand experiences, he couldn't tell me too much because he "stayed out of it."

He said it was exciting, but he didn't get involved like many other students. According to him, many students did get involved (he estimated 1/10th of the student body participated. Out of 27,000 students that's almost 3,000 students. Pretty impressive for a movement). So while people herald the FSM as the call for free speech, desegregation, social justice, student voice...Bob remembers the FSM mainly for one thing: it changed his sleeping pattern. Before, he used to sleep every night by 10 pm, but during the FSM he stayed up til 3am on a roof watching the riots in the streets and ever since then he's been a night guy.

I asked Bob about Berkeley, and he told me a lot about how it used to be. He reminisced about the past when it was a nice, well kept city. He spoke about one restaurant in particular, Blake's, which used to be an up-scale restaurant known throughout the East Bay for amazing food, but the owner got tired of the riots from the FSM and left. He said what happened to Blake's represents what happened to Berkeley in general--an overall decline. And it was strange hearing about this town of old from this man who saw it happen. He lived in this same neighborhood for 42 years and saw the changes, while he grew more and more discontent with life. The Berkeley that he once loved has faded, and he with it.

It's interesting where life takes us, and at the same time where we choose to go (or not). Bob didn't intend on staying here for so long, but he has. I'm trying to imagine him as he would have been in his early 20s, fresh from undergrad and ready to conquer graduate school in this new, exciting city. And honestly it scares me that what happened to him has probably happened to millions of others and will continue to happen. Life goes fast. And while that could make it more thrilling at the same time it's incredibly fleeting. When we're that old, what will we look back on? It's not the "failures" which bothers us the most but rather the inaction. In the present, attempting something and not fully succeeding seems disappointing but that's often much better than never trying at all. Success only comes with trying, and failure and success come together. So is it better to try more, fail more, and succeed more or to never try at all? In retrospect, the never trying is the most painful regret.

Random Encounters

2008-04-27T10:24:00.000+08:00

Today I was sitting on a bench on Sproul. A man in a suit sat down next to me. We sat in silence for a few minutes, just watching people walk by. I was about to leave when he said quietly, "It's amazing." I turned to him, confused, unsure whether he was talking to me or more to himself. He didn't look at me or move, he just kept staring ahead in silence. He looked at peace (in more ways than one).

And then my stream-of-conscious went wild. Was this another Berkeley crazy? Should I respond? And then I started thinking about it... it is amazing. Everything and every thing. I watched a child run by, five paces behind him an elderly woman hobbled along with a cane. A baby in a stroller squealed with delight at two dogs being walked by their owners. The sun bounced off the leaves, the cobbled stones, the paint of the buildings, the water of the fountain...and yeah, it was amazing. People, life, problems, beauty...it was all amazing. And I felt happy, just thinking about it. But, is that what he meant? I wanted to ask him. Maybe an interesting conversation would ensue. But then I stopped myself. Because in not knowing I felt I knew better. Even if he meant something totally different, I got a glimmer of understanding from that simple utterance of two words, and I think that's what he would have liked.

The Campanile was playing, and it was a beautiful late afternoon.

Pause. Rewind. Play.

2008-03-17T17:00:00.000+08:00

Is it just me? Somewhere inside me, I imagine that it's possible to go back in time and redo life. The desire is constantly lurking in my mind: to go back to a specific point in time which I recall so vividly and just have a second chance. or maybe i'm already on my second chance? Maybe I've already had a dozen chances, and this is what I've made of it after so many tries.

I imagine life to be like hang gliding in many ways. A lot of time and energy is spent in the pure gruntwork. Loading up the trucks, getting there, setting up, carrying it up the hills...and in one day we get a cumulative airtime of a few minutes--if we're lucky. Hours of wrestling, sweating, waiting for minutes of joy.

And there are moments when it totally makes sense and feels right. It's the moment of thinking, this is happiness. But then when you're back home and sore and completely dirt-stained you start to think, what is this about? And at 6 am, when the world is still asleep you think, is this worth it? I don't have to be doing this....

it's an analogy to life in that the moments of joy are almost totally eclipsed by the sweating, anxiety, waiting, and pain...almost. And every time I think, wtf I don't need to be doing this...I will get a taste of flight that makes me want to keep at it - in life and in hang gliding. but for some reason, there's only so much joy in this world. is there a finite amount of happiness one can feel? and i'm at that point where i feel life has nothing left to offer me. that everything to be had has been had and lost. and that just makes me sad.

Surreal

2008-01-28T16:49:00.000+08:00

Life is moving too fast. Has it always been going at this speed? Every time I go home something has changed. Every time I see my parents they're older and grayer and I feel almost guilty to think about my life just beginning to get off the ground and theirs starting to wind down. Are they satisfied? Did they think it would be like this?

..I'm in a house with ten relatives. The youngest is 3 and the oldest is 59. Each person has a different life, a different personality, different interests...some of us share some characteristics. A few have similar physical traits but we're all at a different point in our personal timelines and I wonder how we've affected one another past and future. The four of us in the 20s played with our two younger cousins while our parents reminisced about our own childhood games. Did I miss something? Exactly when did we transition from that age of hiding games, etch-a-sketch, and 8:00 bed times to...this? When you're growing up you don't reminisce. Occasionally we would recall something--last year's trip to Disneyland but I don't know when I actually began to reminisce. I missed some things. I missed my bird, a stuffed animal, but then we got new birds and new stuffed animals.

So what's the age for reminiscing? When do we begin to feel that pang of nostalgia, a bewilderment with the present, a longing for the past? In middle school we marveled about the youth of elementary years. In high school we scoffed at the immaturity of middleschoolers. And in college, yet again, we look back somewhat ruefully at our prime teenage years. So it only follows that in a few years we shall look back upon now with a similar disdain, and I'm just wondering...does it ever end?

Do we ever reach a point where we can honestly say that we've got life pretty well figured out?

The contrasts in life are so extreme sometimes that it seems as if nothing in between could possibly make sense. Some people spend more money in one day than someone else spends in an entire month...year...decade. There's obesity and starvation within a few city blocks. There's hate and love within a household, a room, a person. I don't get it. I don't understand how life can feel so beautiful, warm, and intensely wonderful in one moment and desolate, disturbing, and bitter in another. Is it possible that it's only one world, and I'm only one person? Because I've felt like thousands of different persons so far in my mere 20 years. And there are currently over 6 billion persons alive right now--over 6 billion people eating, sleeping, breathing, living, dying, loving, crying, wishing, killing, and loving on this single planet that's literally a microscopic part of this galaxy not to mention universe. Our entire planet, all the animal and humans species that ever were or will be part of this planet is like a piece of dust in the universe. I cannot fathom this.

i don't think i'll ever get it.

Books are amazing

2008-01-28T13:02:00.000+08:00

I love that feeling of being immersed in a book, a different world, a different life. It's like living vicariously through the characters, although I wouldn't wish to be many of them. But it's interesting to see and at times feel life through another's words and emotions, whether it be an author or characters.

Which brings up another question I've always wondered--why don't more people like reading? So many people love watching movies, but when it comes to reading books they pass. For some reason reading doesn't appeal to the masses the way it use to even though so many movie ideas originate from books to begin with. I've always harbored the assumption that people who don't like books (especially novels) have a limited imagination. I have the suspicion that those people are unable to conceptualize, visualize, and/or internalize the words on the pages. People don't seem to realize that when they watch a movie or show they are above all judging the writing.

The plot, the dialogue, the presentation, the style, all of that goes back to the script which is actually written by a human or several humans--you know, writers. People sometimes think, "oh the plot sucked but the acting was good." The only way actors can come out looking good is if someone has molded realistic, believable characters with plausible dialogue. Sure the actors put their touch to it, and some writers even cater the story toward certain actors but the authors have to first breathe life into the script, the actors are one of the last components.

And if people can like movies even though the plot is subpar, then shouldn't people feel the same tolerance with books? Can't a book be considered decent if the plot is bad but the characters are good? Because actors become characters of stories, and stories can take forms from oral to written to visual. Why so much obsession over the visual? Is it because we've become so accustomed to having everything spoon-fed to our brains that we're even incapable of using the theater in our heads and must rely on an external one?

Breathe. You are alive.

2007-11-19T11:31:00.000+08:00

Last week I was kinda stressed because I had three papers due. On tuesday morning I was rushing to school feeling frazzled, and on the sidewalk at Channing and Dana someone had either painted or grafittied this message at the corner:

and i did. and i was.

Maturity

2007-11-13T10:53:00.000+08:00

It's strange that no matter how much we think we know, there will invariably be a moment later in time that we will look upon our former selves with a touch of disdain. Even now, these words that I write will no doubt give my future self great hilarity. I am fairly certain of this outcome because it has already happened many times to myself and to others. And while things may feel very stressful, very scary, very dramatic, very real right now--it's only the reality of the present. And in retrospect, the enormity of situations and feelings are lessened, neutralized, trivialized. And while this is good in that it allows us to move on with life, at the same time we sometimes don't give enough credit to ourselves and to others. It's easy to write off past situations and feelings due to immaturity or silliness or just a phase. It's easy and entirely too simple to merely think we have grown wiser, smarter, and better than who we used to be. It's easy to criticize others as immature, narrow minded, thoughtless, but then what does that make us? Are we so very mature and open-minded ourselves? In the same way that we now ridicule our past selves is someone currently ridiculing our present selves? Are we ridiculing someone else's present self?

I'm constantly reminded of Plato's "Allegory of the Cave." We can scorn those who only see shadows, but perhaps we are seeing something equally illusory--a rainbow? a mirage? What makes us so goddamn sure that we're right, or at least, more right than the next person?

Now I feel like reading "The Little Prince" again.

All grown ups were children first. (But few remember it)

Time

2007-11-01T09:45:00.000+08:00

In sociology today my professor was a bit late, but tried to be slick and segue into a lecture about Time--what is it, what does it mean, and all that philosophical crap. But it was interesting when he talked about how we have so much anxiety because we don't have enough time. What is time? In olden days they may have said, "I'll meet you at sunrise" or maybe someone stuck a stick in the ground and looked at the shadow or gazed at the sky, so we started attributing time to natural cycles of the sun, moon, seasons, etc.

But originally there was no concept of minutes or hours, these are all social constructions. In our modern era we're always in a race against time. We often feel we don't have enough time to finish our homework, projects, classes. Instead of doing things, we think in terms of finishing things. We look at the clock, planner, calendar to see whether we're on time or running late. Schedules--endless schedules. We look forward to finishing an assignment, finishing a class, finishing the week, finishing school, finishing work...and eventually we're just going to end up finishing our lives. And as my professor shouted these ominous prophecies to the class, people were hurriedly packing their belongings and scurrying out of the lecture hall to rush on with their lives.

This moment in June

2007-04-30T09:26:00.000+08:00

beautiful day in berkeley. i love the weather.

. . . Big Ben strikes. There! Out it boomed. First a warning, musical; then the hour, irrevocable. The leaden circles dissolved in the air . . . . they love life. In people's eyes, in the swing, the tramp, and trudge; in the bellow and the uproar; the carriages, motor cars, omnibuses, vans, sandwich men shuffling and swinging; brass bands; barrel organs; in the triumph and the jingle and the strange high singing of some aeroplane overhead was what she loved; life; London; this moment in June.

-mrs. dalloway

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i know. it's not june, yet. but it's one of my favorite lines of the book. reminds me of when my friend when he said "I'm eating oranges and listening to jazz. Life is good."

it's in the little moments =)

First Year

2007-03-20T16:41:00.000+08:00

A Gigantic Circle

2007-03-18T09:53:00.000+08:00

On Tuesday, I went to a lecture given by Stephen Hawking. I was in the front row and although the lecture itself did not meet my expectations, it was still an interesting experience to be in such close proximity with this monumental figure...a figure which could not even walk or talk without the encompassing assistance of a wheelchair, nurse, and voice synthesizer. How does a man so confined in body unleash such massive insight into the workings of a universe so mind-bogglingly vast? It reminds me of the movie "The Incredible Shrinking Man" and in the end Grant Williams says..

So close - the infinitesimal and the infinite. But suddenly, I knew they were really the two ends of the same concept. The unbelievably small and the unbelievably vast eventually meet - like the closing of a gigantic circle.

Memories

2006-04-20T13:30:00.000+08:00

"Memory is a way of holding onto the things you love, the things you are, the things you never want to lose."

"A memory is what is left when something happens and does not completely unhappen."