Benedictus #2

May your heart purr like a bumblebee
May all your backyards have a tree
May you always be HIV negative
I hope you meet a nice guy who
Treats women better than I do

-from Sister, by Dan Bern


Click here for Benedictus #1.

Vancouver Rain #1

Camera: Pentax K10D
Lens: Pentax DA 50-200mm f/4-5.6 @ f/6.7
Details: ISO 400, 1/45s, handheld panning, pre-focused on puddle
Location: Kingsway near Willingdon
Lunch: Sashimi and sushi

Practice Versus Theory

How is it that we can treat a complete stranger or a pet with unconditional kindness, but then turn around and be cruel to a family member, friend, or a co-worker?

This incongruity—the dichotomy of what we know in theory versus what we practice—has been weighing heavily on my mind. Perhaps it's a case of "as long as it's not in my backyard" thinking. The tsunami survivor, the little boy in the newspaper with leukemia, the impoverished—they are low-hanging fruit on some faraway tree, and hence easy to "love" because, ultimately, they are somebody else's problem.

Up close, our warts and bruises are all too apparent, perhaps dashing—certainly changing—our expectations of each other, this intimacy often bringing out the worst in us. People aren't the ideal gases we learn about in high school chemistry. We are real and complex, and have a tendency to run yellow traffic lights contrary to what we tell our kids.

My line of thinking is that to be genuinely kind, it's crucial we apply what we learn in the lab to what's really out there.

***

I came across Jacob Needleman's latest book, Why Can't We Be Good, at the Metrotown Chapters store. It'll be my next purchase, maybe it'll shed some light.

***

I twice gave to the Red Cross recently. I wish they would stop making and sending me those Canadian scenic calendars, the ones with lighthouses.

Two Thoughts

What matters most in life, and especially in death, is that I once mattered to somebody.

***

Guilt is Nature's way of preventing us from making complete assholes of ourselves.

Another Year Gone By

Discharged

Good news. My mother was discharged from the Acute Care Elders unit. I went after work with Betty to pick her up. She has more follow up exams next week. If there's one good thing that came out of all this, it's that she received a very, very, thorough physical examination.

***

Daily Summary:

Dissed by somebody: 1
Compliments received: 2
Compliments paid: 1
People whose feelings I hurt: 0

All in all, a decent day at work.

The Matriarch

I dropped my dad off at the hospital this evening. He's spending the night with my mother. He took with him some baked goods, two slices of pizza, and a thermos of tea.

She had fallen face-first onto the sidewalk while out for a stroll to mail a letter two days ago. Her legs had buckled underneath her. She somehow managed to make it back home. While my dad was cleaning the blood off her face, Shaula had the presence of mind to call me on my cell, this week being Spring Break for the kids. I phoned my mother, who, as it turned out, downplayed the severity of her injuries.

When I saw her after work, I was taken aback by her bruised face. The left eye had swollen shut, and the area around that eye and her forehead were scratched and discoloured. In hindsight, a 911 call should've been placed immediately after the incident, and I should've taken her to the nearest hospital the moment I got home. My sister-in-law was absolutely correct in saying that my mother needed to go to Emerg as soon as possible: she might have suffered a concussion, develop a blood clot, and probably needs a tetanus shot.

I took her to VGH that evening and she's been there since.

Her vitals are fine, but she has a viral infection of some sort, this perhaps explaining the loss of strength in her legs and her recent complaint of a general lack of energy.

They've since subjected her to a battery of lab work, given her a CT Head scan, X-rays of her chest and left wrist (no broken bones there), an ECG, and a tetanus shot.

The findings are: She

1. has an infection, but not urinary in nature (my mother has had a lot of blood in her urine of late)
2. had broken her occiptal orbital and cheek bones
3. has a subdural hematoma. This needs monitoring.

***

Instead of the regular family dinner fare, we've been eating KFC and pizza for the last two days. Betty and I and brother number two are doing the dishes.

My mother's absence—now that she's been away for two days—elevates her, in my eyes, to matriarch.

St. Patrick's Day Parade 2007

We went downtown this Sunday to take in our first St. Patrick's Day Parade. We split up early. Betty and the kids went to check out the stalls, which left me free to take pictures.

This year's parade route takes the procession northbound along Howe Street, then eastward along Smithe, before heading down Granville.

Thinking myself smart, I stationed myself at Howe and Smithe, with a due-south head-on view right down the middle of Howe Street. Such a vantage point ought to minimize any difficult-to-capture horizontal motion, or so I thought.

Well, was I ever wrong. I've come to the conclusion that taking good parade pictures is no easy task. Aside from all the movement and the fat-headed spectators and officials who obscure the line of sight, the number one determinant of good or bad shots is definitely location.

The problem with where I was situated was that the participants and pipe bands were already starting to make their turn onto Smithe well before the crosswalk, amounting to close-up horizontal motion and prematurely turned heads [did I just coin a new phrase?]. And this was the killer: because I was looking right down the middle of Howe Street, this meant capturing a swath of sky and then having to override the camera's meter reading depending on whether the sky was cropped out of the frame or not. I was constantly fiddling with the exposure compensation button on the camera and messing up. (A fixed exposure setting would have been of no use because the incident light was variable.)

As it turned out, the best pics were those taken post-parade, at the stalls. Today also marked my first foray into candid street photography, a scary endeavour not for the meek or socially inept.

***

A Celtic Celebrant Eating Sushi

Stovetop Snaps #1

To be a boy. A human boy. Hahahaha! The audacity! The outrage!


Camera: Pentax K10D
Lens: Pentax FA 50mm f/1.4 @ f/4
Details: ISO 400, 1/30s, handheld
Support: From the top rung of an Adorama LadderKart
Stove: Frigidaire
Photographer's Underwear: by Calvin Klein
Note: First of a series of bare-bulb photos taken on top of our stove.

From The Archives #1

This was the family pet, Spike, AKA "Lucky" (~1982 - ~1994). He had to be put down. For his last meal, my mother made him pork chops, his favourite.


Nope, I didn't use Photoshop to add a faux vintage look to the photo. The image quality was typical of the technology back in those days. :-(
The print has also been mishandled over the years. I'm the aggressive-looking chap on the right.

***

BTW, today marks exactly one year of blogging. What's the next big thing for me? Photos, lots of 'em. Stay tuned.

I'm Doing Alright

I always feel uncomfortable whenever somebody says that I've done well for myself (not that this happens often). Relative to whom or what?

Two instances come to mind.
- A family member mentioned to his acquaintance that, financially, I've done well myself. This was shortly after my previous employer got bought out by my current company and a small windfall blew my way.
- My cousin declared to an older couple that, like her, I'm married with children, and have done well for myself.

Why this uneasiness about a compliment? I guess I've never measured myself by how much money I have, or by my progeny count. The $64,000 question [pun intended] is whether or not I would have a different attitude had I been the male equivalent of a bag lady. Or the male equivalent of Paris Hilton. I don't think I can answer that.

Sure, I get the infrequent "more-is-better", "wouldn't-it-be-great-if-I-had" pang from time to time, but they last no longer than a urinal flush. But this much I know, I do not want to be measured by the number of bathrooms in my house.

Tell me instead that I take great pictures (lie if you have to!), or that I have responsible, sensitive children—now that's praise I can handle.

A Few Pictures From The Trip To Vancouver Island

I was initially hesitant about taking my camera gear with me on the trip to Port Alberni—as a rule, funerals are rather sombre affairs, not exactly chock-full of Kodak moments. To boot, the forecast called for rain. But came along my Pentax did.

I took this picture of Third Avenue from just outside the Chinese Canadian Society building, where the reception was held. Nothing special, just a shot of the town's main drag. Almost makes the place seem like a big city and not the dying town it really is. I was surprised to see so much traffic for a Monday afternoon.

The mountain to the north is part of the Beaufort Range.



This is the ferry terminal at Departure Bay, Nanaimo. I took this shot for two reasons, the first being the magic and dreams the terminal once promised a younger version of yours truly, the bay being the gateway to Vancouver, the "big city". The second was to show Diana Krall fans who've never been to Nanaimo what the place looks like (at the very least, the congested part of it).



Here's the money shot, the reason I decided to lug my camera along. These are the mountains northwest of Vancouver, captured with a telephoto lens (at a 200mm setting) from aboard an undulating ship in fading light, and shot through a thick, non-optical quality bow window. I figure it turned out okay.

***

Betty took the bus this morning and sat behind a lady who had her hair tied up in a bun. Unfortunately, Betty spent the better part of an hour staring at the lady's linty, flakey, and obviously never-washed hairless area behind her ears.

My Aunt Florence

If there's one thing I've learned recently, it's that things really do get old and break.

***

My aunt Florence died on February 16th from non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, at the age of 77, eleven days after being admitted to the hospital, and three days after admitting to herself that it was finally time to inform her identical twin sister—my mother—that her life was about to end.

She went to the hospital February 5th to get some test results, but never went home.

I drove my parents to the Emergency Department at VGH on Valentine's Day. My aunt had apparently suffered a heart attack while being prepped for a battery of tests and ended up staying in the Cardiac Care Unit. She was lucid when we arrived, albeit feverish, but nevertheless managed to crack a joke. I said little more than a hello before being shooed away by the nurse (there was a two-visitor-at-a-time limit). It was unnerving to see her—basically my mother—lying there dying. My cousins informed me that they had just been given her prognosis: she was at the last stage of the cancer and had at most two to three weeks to live. My aunt's husband, who worked alongside my father at their grocery store for over 30 years, was a broken man.

Florence died two days later, at noon on a Friday, while I was at work complaining about my tuna salad sandwich.

***

The service and burial took place in our hometown. My aunt had recently moved from there (last October, to be exact) to be with her younger daughter and son and their grandchildren. One of her last wishes was to be laid to rest beside her parents. It was granted.

Because my aunt's condition took a sudden nosedive, she was spared a protracted body-wasting battle. She looked good, arms peacefully crossed, hand over hand.

As the coffin was being lowered, her son-in-law, Tony, was near the edge of the grave, gently rocking the infant car seat holding Aunt Florence's three-month old grandson. Diminished, life goes on.

***

The reception was at the Chinese Canadian Society building, formerly the Jehovah's Witnesses' Hall, with food provided by the Pine Cafe (a local Chinese institution). The experience was for me like the penultimate scene in Cinema Paradiso, when Salvatore returns for Alfredo's funeral. On the wall was a photo of my father when he was in his fifties. And in person, but without the bad makeup of the movie, were Mrs. Yuen, still pretty after 30 years; the once young buck Tony L., still strong, but greatly greyed; the red-faced Fook G., now with a walking stick; and Monty M., still worthy of a few mean laughs but much, much, older.

And in some weird way, I love these people and wouldn't want them any other way.

***

I told my cousins that their mother was always kind to me. They confided that I was one of her favourite nephews.