I’m loathe to believe that none of you will check our (once) beloved blog, but if I am to take a cue from my own patronage, I’m thinking the chances that you’ll be checking this before I get the chance to tell you personally are sveldt, to nill. Anyway, the longshort os that your beloved friends, Daniella and I, are in the dreary sour business of escaping. Richmond, parental supervision and the crushing world of “cares.” In the works is an epic detailing the details-pronounced deTAILs-of this coming of age adventure. Thus, keep your heads out of the hedgerow, and make ithome safely, sidekicks.
Ta.
To theatres near you April 18, 2009
My plan: a boring-type post. March 26, 2009
Hello.
It’s been a while. Too long. Really? Too long? I’m not sure that that is a fair statement. It has been longer than I would have liked since my last post. I’m sorry. However, too long implies that something has changed because of my negligence… that it is too late, too much to explain, that too much snow has come between us and the line is blocked. I don’t think this is true. I think that I will write this and that nothing will have changed between us in the time that it took me to post it. This is why the collective is so marvelous. Everything can change, but you’ll still be the collective that I know and miss.
I’ve even drafted a few posts in this time… but not finished them… so they never got published.
Here it is — the end of term. Less than a month until the last exam. ! And then, the plan is as follows:
- 10 pm, April 22nd: finish philosophy of science exam
- 6am, April 23rd: catch flight to Vancouver from Moncton
- 12:30 pm, April 23rd: hope that there is someone to pick me up from the airport, do mad dash to home to collect remaining gear, eat lunch (sushi?!)
- 4pm, April 23rd: Return to YVR to meet friend arriving via plane from Moncton.
- 6pm, April 23rd: Catch bus from Vancouver to Kamloops
- 11:30pm, April 23rd: Arrive in Kamloops, get to camp, set up tent, sleep.
- 5:30am, April 24th: Wake up.
- 7am, April 24th: Plant some trees.
I am excited! But I will not be in Vancouver for very long. I’ll be back at the end of the planting season (late july), and then am taking off to Nelson for the 7th of August. In this time we need to do some hanging out. Is anybody going to be around?
Also, is anybody not working the day of the 23rd? I do not have a ride from the airport yet as my parents are working that day. There is lunch in it for anybody who wants to hang out/pick me up.
I realize that this was not a great post. But it was informative as to my plans, and so we can do some meeting up in Vancouver and story-swapping properly.
I love you all.
- Katy
P. S. It snowed here a few days ago.
Grow Up March 16, 2009
So two Saturdays ago, I got a phone call from home with news that my already slim family has again lost more members. My uncle’s been working away from home in Dubai for a long time so my aunt and cousin decided to go visit him recently. The three of them got into a car accident as they were touring the UAE. My uncle and cousin died on the spot. My aunt was in a coma until the following Sunday night. Currently, she recognizes sensation in her fingers and toes but is immobile because her jaw and most of her left-side body is broken. She’s been moved yesterday to a hospital near home in Korea, but she’s asking to instead go home to England, in which she lived for a bit 15 years ago.
Written out like that in one paragraph… I’m amazed at how dry it all sounds. There has been articles on it in several Korean newspapers – all just as dry – but even as I read titles like, “Korean Family Dies in UAE Car Crash,” I’m not feeling it. This is the kind of shit that happens in second class Korean drama series. My cousin was only 25. She was one of the few cousins I had who I could talk to without feeling awkward. I didn’t know how to respond when I first got the phone call. For some reason, I felt guilty and ashamed. Guilty for having neglected family and old friends lately under the excuse of being busy then ashamed for always having complained about how difficult college-life could be. Always whining, complaining, and asking for attention and comfort. Always just about me, me, me. I wasn’t even sure if I was sad, or regretful, or just pretending to be both so that I could feel sympathetic for myself. Sure, I cried. A dormmate found me and gave me a hug. Then I folded laundry, went to the mall with some friends, went to a dinner with some people from church, stood blankly in my room for a bit, then went over to a friend’s room and asked if he had anything short and funny to watch. All he had was an old episode of that 70’s show. I said it was fine and proceeded to watch and laugh whenever the laughing sound clip played.
I got through the rest of the week the same way, keeping myself busy and bubbly but pausing every now and then so as to not be drained by my own optimism. Whenever I’m on the phone with my dad, I’m struggling to crack jokes and keep my voice chipper. I just feel like it’s not my part to be the depressed one. He’s probably taking it the hardest since my aunt’s been more like a mother to him than a sister. I could tell he’s lost his usual calm. He’s losing almost everyone around him; my mom and I are all he’s got left. It’s strange when you hear your dad admit that he is “sad and scared” for the first time. He’s asked me to stay in Ithaca during spring break while he’s in Korea helping to settle everything down – it’s at least one less thing for him to worry about. Another dormmate asked how I can seem so unaffected by what’s happened… unaffected… am I? Maybe I’ve gotten immune to feeling sad for other people now. Or maybe I’m just not hit by the reality of it yet. In part, I’m dreading this isolated week of spring break but in part, I’m relieved that I can just take this time to cocoon and organize my thoughts. Daniella has also suggested naps. I’ve taken my first one today (I never nap during the school year). It helped.
I need to learn to write fun posts and not just downers like this. I will find something funny to write about. I promise… I think.
Dear Vancouver March 15, 2009
Hi, Vancouver.
I don’t know what it is, but when I’m around you, I feel important. I feel loved and admired and necessary, and I feel I understand you in ways that others overlook while you see things in me I never knew made it past the cold read. Each drop of rain or brisk flutter of air lends itself to the ensemble I admire and there is absolutely nothing I would change. You make me feel surreal, so much that I expect to turn around and see cameras following the way my scarf pulls at my hair while I do a long-eyed glance over my shoulder and I therefore calculate every step I take just in case you see me. I enjoy those long-panning, traffic-stopping moments. You humble me, you hug me, you’re the perfect friend, and a lovely place to be. You’re there when I am alone in the crowd and when I’m part of the crowd. I like that you understand that I sometimes say things I don’t mean but you always know what I mean to say. You make me smile inside and out.
The trouble, I suppose, is how misplaced your perfection is in my storyline. When I pull back to see every side and every still, you are my biggest influence and yet I feel I can’t put you in check without completely redistributing your very vital being and I cannot let myself do that to you. Now, I find myself at an impasse which brings me to realize that I haven’t been completely honest with either of us. The truth, Vancouver, is that I’ve been seeing someone else for a while, on and off, and it hasn’t been as picture-perfect as you and I. I see us as a deep-souled match that will exist in everyone’s envy, and that I value. Unfortunately, this other hub I’m in is a chemical one. It’s something I feel attached to on a moral level even though I know it’s a downswing. I just don’t feel it is fair of me to continue splitting my attention between you, and between the other and I.
It’s all about how you feel, right? I cannot forever wrap myself in transparent reasons and I feel the more I let you go, the more I know it’s the right thing to do. I have simply found my place, and it is over there. I don’t yet like who it makes me, but I have been sculpting my character around all things good for too long and it’s not who I really am, even though it’s who I really should be.
Nonetheless, Vancouver, know that I have always been perfectly happy with you and that will never change. I think the comfort we have established throughout our sailing has created a sort of odd rift which makes you the only place I consistently wish to leave. No one compares. I just need a place to feel sad, lonely, and afraid, and I don’t want that place to be you.
You sit on my mind as consistently as your coordinates on the globe. Love always.
Am I Posting Again? February 22, 2009
First: I miss you.
Now: New Post on my other blog, one for here on the way. Why do I have another blog? I can hardly handle one. Maybe I’ll claim it as an experiment.
My Collections, a curatorial project February 16, 2009
I made a blog for a project I am doing for my Criticism and Curatorial Practices class, “Museums, Galleries and Alternate Spaces”. The assignment was to create a collection. I am still contemplating my final presentation.
A confession maybe? January 18, 2009
Coming back this winter made me realize how I’m starting to change in my time away from home, whether I want to or not. I find myself enjoying things that I’d frown upon while I was in McRoberts or growing out of some of my older fetishes. I’m finding parts of my character that I want to fix, some for better and some for worse, yet I’m finding endless comfort in staying the way I used to be. As I wait for the start of another semester, I’m split between trying to grow into something better suited to life at Cornell or holding on to what I’ve always been in Richmond. Ideally, I’d want to do both but I’m finding it hard not to sacrifice a bit of one to achieve the other.
I’ve learned how to act chipper and give hugs out of mannerism but in the back of my mind, I know that I’m still so socially awkward and conscious of people seeing through the mask that doesn’t fit. I could try justifying myself by saying that the loneliness that comes with living alone makes it inevitable to seek attention and embrace like this. But then I’ll pause to look at myself and see that going out to places and attempting to act like a social butterfly simply drains me. I still cringe at artificial affection but seek and practice it more and more often. Tracks by Akon and Rihanna are infitrating my playlists and taking over what used to be my digital shrine of Radiohead and Feist. My goal to not drink until legal on campus fell apart last summer and I’m no longer excited by good restaurants and coffee shops like before. I keep asking myself, “Well, as long as I’m having a good time, it doesn’t matter… right?” Long story put short: I’m starting to lose track of who I am and what even defines fun for me. Half of me feels bored sick of the Audrey Chun that I’ve been for the past 20 years and wants to radically change into someone new. Half of me feels ungrounded and ashamed of being so easily molded by my surroundings as if I were jello. 
Glop.
10 items or less January 3, 2009
Not a grade A+ movie but it makes an interesting dinner topic.
Essentially, 10 items or less… likes and dislikes.
My past gives me presents. December 30, 2008
I was trolling around my hard drive searching for something I may or may not have written late one night high on REM when I discovered an archive of backups from… well, grade nine. I was reading some of the stuff I wrote, and aside from it being embarrassingly blunt and generally thin on diction, Past Daniella has really impressed Present Daniella. Like, I was a funny person. So, I came across a character sketch I wrote for English 9-10 and it is brilliant. Weirdly, I was all ready to edit it up and sharpen the wit-cil and make it Present Daniella Calibre but as I read it through, things I was thinking of saying (instead of whatever I was thinking at age 14, which was obviously shallow observational stuff..) WERE ALREADY THERE. I suppose I’ve spent the last five years becoming a real person because I haven’t changed at all when it comes to writing aside from perhaps gaining a better grasp of perspective. So if you all won’t mind, I’d like to immortalize this. The prompt was to write a complete sketch based on a list of odd last names.
Mr. Lazer was probably made fun of in his childhood years, although being mistaken for a superhero made him swell inside with joy. Currently, he worked for Northern Paper Products. He has a lovely wife, Marlene Lazer, and three little Lazers at home. More importantly, paper. Mr. Lazer was in charge of slicing the paper into the proper size, 81/2×11, which was his specialty. Those 81/2×11 sheets were Lazer-cut so to say. Mr. Lazer always chuckled to himself about that. Himself meaning he never really had any friends at work. He assumed like the rest of the population they’d assumed it was just too awkward to talk to someone who had a name that was a noun and a silly one at that. And that he probably felt too awkward about his name to laugh it off. But he didn’t care. He loved his job.
Lately, Mr. Lazer was feeling dizzy. He thought it was nothing and went on with his day. His dizziness seemed to be located in his head. Not that most dizziness isn’t, but Mr. Lazer seemed particularly convinced the source of his impairment was his head, more specifically his eyes. The top of his eyes. He passed it off as a headache, popped an Advil Liqui-gel and went on to cutting his paper into the precise 81/2×11 size.
His dizziness was starting to effect his work, he noticed, when a colleague who had never before conversed with him approached, complaining about pentagonal-shaped legal size in bright white. Mr. Lazer assumed he was mad and didn’t really pay attention to his mindless drabble. But he knew something was up. He just didn’t feel like this colleague deserved the satisfaction of letting him know.
Leaving, Mr. Lazer called the wife who promptly made him an appointment with the family optometrist, Mr. V. Humour, MD, who confirmed a case of late-blooming myopia with the uncommon dizzy side-effect. The dilemma was, to keep his job, Mr. Lazer had to face the perils of lazer eye surgery or to lose his job and wear corrective lenses. Mr. Lazer was outraged. But, he thought, the condition could have been caused from prolonged exposure to bright white and his shifts were all during the day when the sun shone through the rickety factory air vent and burnt his eyes raw like snow on a sunny day.
For the sake of his retinas, Mr. Lazer scoffed at the surgery and its copyrighted name and took graveyard shift.
Maybe I can sell this to pay for medical school.
ER- hop! December 27, 2008
Hop!
There I was, in a wheelchair. My right foot was covered in snow but the size didn’t measure up to my left swollen ankle. Isaac took off my socks and pushed me through the entrance to ER. I couldn’t tell if I was happy or shocked that I had recognized the security guard at the door – the chinese McNeil kid with a giant afro who also helped minimally to organize Richmond Idol in grade 12. How did he end up here?
A filipino nurse registered for me. He might’ve been the most annoying guy trying to make me laugh.
“So what happened?”
“I rolled my ankle when I was playing badminton.”
“Badminton? In the snow?”
I paused. “Yeah. In the snow. It’s fun, try!”
“Snowboarding?”
“Sure, let’s go together tomorrow.”
Then I waited again in the general waiting area. Three elderly blacks sat in a row – only the lady in the middle was covering her face with her dry raw hands, saddened. The two on either end seem to chat carelessly, glanced at me occasionally, “why is this girl crying so hard and watching the basketball game on TV at the same time?”
“Agnes Kwan, station 1 please.”
This boy in his light blue Superman shirt was nicer. I contemplated at each question whether he was deaf. His eyes were never off my lips. He reminded me kindly that I really should carry my wallet with photo identification cards and my Care card. I was classified “low extreme injury”, I’m still not quite sure if that’s laughable. But this know:
“Where were you?”
“A badminton facility, Richmond pro on Minoru road.”
He looked at me with more curiosity, “So this was indoors.”
“Yes.” Stupid filipino nurse.
“It’s probably the tendon at most.” I didn’t know what else to say when the boys and I were waiting yet again in another space – again, a TV at a corner, uncomfortable worn-out seats and some old magazine sitting like land mine of germs and diseases.
Migrated to F25 Bed. Then I waited there another 15 minutes for doctor Chan, who came to tell me that I will wait for someone to bring me for an X-ray. Another maybe 10, 15 minutes of waiting. I called mom, Daniel, and Eric. I wished the boys came with me to F25 bed, which was allowed, because talking to someone helped me stop crying. Eric felt bad that he made me run on the court, rallying. I told him I have always been prone and needed to work on better footwork. Also, asian ‘kankles’ didn’t quite help the situation.
The same nurse that brought me to F25 pushed the wheelchair through the Do-Not-Enter door. I passed by Nuclear medicine section, many fire hazard signs, no patient, no doctor, not glaring white but dimly lighten hallway with its glory taken away by the snow and maybe Boxing Day.
A doctor like a silver rat helped me to the x-ray room. He never offered help and ordered me to try and hop to the bed. I laid down. “No, sit up please.”
“Ow!”
“I won’t press on it.” Dude, you just did.
The x-ray machine turned on. I’d hate to say, I could only relate the sound of it to the awakening of a robot. A box of light with shadow of a cross at the center and a red-beam horizontal line focused on my ankle. He played with the ankle, seemed as though the red-beam had to be perpendicular with a certain bone. No more noise.
“Okay. Do you remember where you were?”
“F25.”
I never knew which facial expression to display or where to put my hands when I passed by the waiting room where the boys, well, waited. Then I waited again.
Doctor Chan came back but to another patient. She also busted her ankle – no crack, just rest for a few weeks and visit maybe the physiotherapist. Chan turned around behind me because the silver rat put me facing the wall. ”No crack.”
“Well, you probably heard what I told the other girl. Pretty much the same thing.”
Thanks.
He also told me that I have this kink-bone that’s probably normal and due to a previous recent injury. I confirmed his statement.
“Goodbye, thank you.”
I hop!
