Detours of a south east asian prairie girl

At 16, I wanted to be an airline hostess and travel the world. It seemed very glam.

At 17, I really wanted to be a journalist and travel the world. It seemed way more adventurous and I was already doing a lot of writing in high school. I wanted to tell stories, real stories as they happen.

At 18, I signed up for engineering. Mostly due to responsibility, imagined or otherwise. I was good in math and science and it was a good thing to fall back on.

At 21, I did travel for work. It wasn’t glam nor all that adventurous, but I did work on cool things like submarine detection software and military communication devices. It was a great fun life with little responsibility. I played softball after work, went on pub crawls, and generally did a lot of priviledged 21-year-old out-for-fun things with other priviledged twenty-somethings.

At 24, I travelled for work again. This time, to work on image processing control software for a prime European satellite. Life was good and the location was fantastic even though the trip was short. I had some of the best food in my life.

Meanwhile, my brother travelled the world a couple times over. Among many things, he doved in the Red Sea, camped in the Serengeti and saw Angkor Wat before the rest of the world even heard about it. Hey, what happened? Why wasn’t I doing that?

The answer was actually pretty simple. I couldn’t let go of the call to be a good Chinese daughter. I couldn’t bring myself to abandon what I didn’t love doing in the first place.

It took a few good years to let that go.

Now, it feels like I’ve come full circle. With the help of my loving better half, I’ve dropped the hi-tech jobs and managed to squeeze in the kind of travelling that I’d always wanted to do, on less money. Food has become a huge part of my life and work. Photography is training my brain again to think of stories in a way a journalist might.

Sadly, I’m now too old to be an airlines hostess. Then again, motion sickness would get in the way. So in god’s will and in the end, I supposed it all worked out.

Come to think of it, the grief is even more potent once the conflict within is resolved. Life, shi*ty as it can be at times. Yet I promise to find the zen to a homemade peace. You and I, we do well considering. This Saturday night, let’s drink to what has passed and pass our cheers to the next ride. What do they say? Let go and let god. So we do. We will.

How about that? I actually signed up as a paying member of the Vancouver Art Gallery! That gives me free admission all year round plus attendance priviledges at lectures and special events. Oh, this binary brain is going to so expand.

Do I want to be a zebra, who only stresses out for 3 terrifying screaming minutes while being eaten by a lion, or a bright goldfish with short memory or a blade of grass with nothing to worry about?

Transitioning from how the world sees me to how I see the world.

When it comes to photography, it’s a whole new world. I am supposed to learn how to do a still life photo shoot tomorrow night, with proper strobes and studio lighting setups. A week or so later, I am supposed to do it with real models. In advance of that, I thought I’d better play around at home.

Setup: sheets of white paper, a transclucent red globe that I held in front of my on-camera flash, a LED headlamp from my camping gear supply and a trio of Hello Kitty musician figures.

I half-thought of buying cigarettes to add some smoke to Miss Kitty’s stage setup, but decided to respect the province-wide no-smoking rule.

Anyways, I think the Kitties had a good time despite being batted about by the real cat in the house and I learn quite a bit about lighting and flash photography. Can’t wait for tomorrow night!

Twist my rubber arm, I just might be signing up for a master’s degree in Education in the near future. I. Just. Might. Someone is twisting said rubber arm already (she said, come on! what are you waiting for? let’s do it together! my first course is in the summer!).

All I could do was stammer a slurred reply. What am I waiting for? Well, a lot of things. None of it public and all of it very real. Perchance, perchance.

Thinking of getting a pt job at caffe artigiano so i can learn latte art and how to steam milk so sweet.

3:30 am. eyes wide open. so frakking tired i could cry.