suzhou: venice of the east

I've been struggling to define my blog. But what's the point, personal blogs are not "in" now. They're for nobody. The unknown. So, instead of catering a particular kind of audience, I am just going to treat this as a blank canvas. Obviously this is mainly going to be where I practice my photography skillz. (yep, with a Z) Bernice said that my photos are kind of cliché, but I am trying to get into photojournalism and they are nothing but clichés. Well, we all try to better ourselves. Someday, maybe I will be brave enough to post things on Facebook again.

sharing is giving

I belong to this school club called Computer Task Force and every semester they have a dinner night to thank the members for volunteering. The dinner was something that people always looked forward to. For me, it was the only occasion where I could sort of dress up. And of course, I ended up overdressing. People in CTF just don't really care how they look. I am not saying that it is a bad thing, in fact, I admire that.

This semester we all went to the Korean House. The food was amazing considering that it was "all you can eat". The reason why it was "all you can eat" in quotations was unfortunately the owners refused to give us food because we were eating too much. I understand that they may be losing money, but hey, you promised an all you can eat meal. So do it. That created a lot of drama that in the end I am pretty sure that we are banned from this restaurant. It is unfortunate but we are simply students, we aren't made of money. There was a lot of sharing. Sharing of life stories, food, jokes... just everything. It was really nice to get to know people whom I knew of but never talked to. It was also nice to know that there are people who are struggling in school as much as I am. It was also nice to know that there are people who are simply amazing at everything they do. It made me a bit home sick as well. There is always food in the middle and amisdt all the grabbing-as-much-food-I want, there is always eye contact between people. Or a "is anybody going to eat that" phrase going on... there is a constant flow of communication. A constant flow of information passing around. A constant flow of satisfaction from all the good food and happiness.

I thought that it was funny because this meal was basically 95% meat. And if you have ever been to one of the CTF dinners, it was always about meat. I don't know, maybe it's because meat is expensive and hard to prepare, or maybe we are all just carnivores at heart. My poor Everett, he's a pescetarian so he didn't eat much that night.


I am really glad that I joined this club. The people there are really nice. Even though they don't really care about you, it really feels like family in there. They seem like they don't care, but they listen to you during rough times. Even if you are not pouring your heart out, I'm sure you'll still feel like home. It's somewhere I go when I don't feel like dealing with all the crap from school. The people there can definitely put a smile on my face no matter how sucky my day is. I hope you can find a place like that in your university because I think that it is very important to feel like you belong somewhere. Think of it as a second home! Kind of.

the unknown

Sometimes I wish life is as black and white as a calculator, and that you could only get exactly one answer with whatever you punch in. Unfortunately, nothing is ever like that and there's always a bunch of grey areas.

And I tend to overanalyse those grey areas.



you are still young. you can still afford to make mistakes



I am very lucky to have a family like mine. A lot of the Asian parents would probably kill their kid if he/she didn't get straight As and got a B+ in English. All my parents want is for me to be happy and content with my life. I am truly grateful to have them in my life and I love them all.

hands

I just got home from work. It's almost 1 in the morning.

I won't tell you what I do at work because I'd like to keep certain details about my life to myself before I start broadcasting everything to the public. The only thing I would say is that I do a lot of dish washing (that gives out a lot I know). I don't know what major restaurant doesn't own a dish washer nowadays, but trust me, my work place uses manual labour at its fullest. Everytime I end my shift, my hands look like the bark of a tree. I'm not a big fan of lotion, but since I started living in the coldest city I could possibly live in, I have to put stuff on my face, body, hands etc. Thing is, after awhile, the stuff I put on just stops working. It reminds of this one episode in How I met your Mother where the dreamy bachelor Barney Stinson explains to his best friend Ted Mosby that in order to tell a woman's age, one only needs to look at her hands.

So here I am sitting in front of my laptop, typing away with my wrinkly hands that look like they would peel at any moment. And I can't help but wonder: how old do you think I am?

hello world;

This is one of my numerous attempts in mainting a blog; none of them worked out, so I think this is going to be my last time. I am going to make an online journal of my life and hopefully it will document the adventures I have. I have also decided that this will simply be a window to my life, so I will try my best to not post photos of myself. Good news for all I guess, since I'm not photogenic.

So here it goes.