The New Year (or Feed Me Hot Peppers, I Must be Dreaming)

If I've learned anything this past year, aside from equity valuation and yield curves, it's that life will amaze you.

Everyone knows that you can spend countless hours fretting and planning, tossing and turning sleepless in bed, worrying yourself sick, and life will turn around and render those hours inconsequential by resolving everything, and then some.

But what I've learned is that you can spend hours dreaming your wildest dreams, envisioning the impossible, painting these fantastic pictures in your head...and life will scoff at you. But it won't be ridiculing your dreams; instead, it'll call you an underachiever, a pessimist, and a darn fool. It will take the most ridiculous path towards achieving dreams you didn't know you had, dreams that are far wilder than anything you ever imagined. Sure, it will hurt you along the way, and teach you a thing or two. There will be dark times when you're sure it's led you astray, and darker times still when you're sure it's all but abandoned you for the wolves. But when the fog clears and your legs feel ready to give out beneath you, you'll find nothing short of a paradise, El Dorado, Shangri-La that you never knew existed.

And so, coming into this new year, I've resolved to let life do its winding and twisting through the hills and valleys as I ride along. Regardless of where I am, I'll be focused on the moment and making the most of it. Sure, I'll have hopes and fears, but I'll have them knowing that there is so much more out there, and that maybe someday, I'll find out that my fears were misguided and that my dreams were, well, understated. And because I'm roommates with a chili fetishist who enjoys torturing himself with the spiciest dishes imaginable, I'm also resolving to eat more spicy foods, to, y'know ... (forgive me) spice up my life.

The Great Wall

Note: 100% fiction, even though a few random details may seem to be very in sync with my life.

I was born in Chinatown until I met her.

It was in a small apartment two dirt-stained flights of stairs above a store that sold barbequed meat. My father was a graduate student at the time, and was attending class the very moment I decided I was afraid of the dark. The womb was very dark. Our eighty-two year old neighbor, who had shaking hands but was once - thank whoever the incense is for - a nurse, delivered me. And that is how I came about, in the ointment-lathered hands of an octogenarian above a shop that made money by burning animals.

Every evening around five, old ladies with heavy sweaters and white hair would come to see the store's dead parade, burnt to a delicious golden brown. There were ducks hanging by their necks in the window, their small, beady eyes now represented by a crisp, mysterious hole. Usually there were hunks of barbequed pork, too, sauce dripping from the winking, penetrating hooks. $6.50 a pound, a handwritten piece of cardboard proclaimed beneath. On the weekends, a gleaming behemoth would resume its rightful throne behind the right half of the window, and continue the succulent dynasty of roasted suckling pigs.

I visited the store often with my mother. I mean, we lived right above it. Usually my mother would order a hunk of barbequed pork from the butcher with the grease-stained apron. By which I mean, both of them had grease-stained aprons, and the aprons were always greasy. At three years old, I had developed a jaundiced suspicion that they never washed their aprons. I also didn't trust the neon-orange cuttlefish swimming in their ocean of oily sauce. To this day, I still can't eat squid, or octopus, or anything rubbery. My friends used to ask me why I wouldn't try just one piece of fried calamari. I argued back with baseless but impassioned rhetoric. They haven't tried living in Chinatown.

When it rained, the floors of the barbequed meat store, as well as the stairs leading up to our apartment, would be painted with a mosaic of shoeprints, the grey, watery mementos seeping their way into the blue and white tiles that were designed for a public bathroom. I wasn't allowed to go out when it rained unless my mother said it was ok, not even to the playground in the park. Especially not to playground in the park. The plastic slide and rubber swings were dirty, and strangers wanted to kidnap me. I would also get sick if I didn't wear my jacket with a winking green frog on it. In retrospect, that winking green frog was probably creepier than any of the hobos in the park that asked my parents for spare change.

So, anyhow, I survived. Between getting horrible acne from all the grease that floated up from the meat shop straight onto my face and getting $2 in a red packet from an uncle for my birthday (he tried redeeming himself by saying it was lucky), I managed to eke out a childhood and somehow found my way to college. That's where I met her.

She was the most beautiful thing I had seen since a dancing lion was lit on fire during a Chinese New Year festival accident. I didn't have half the nerves needed to even go near her, what with her sleek, indigo dress and duchess-like poise. Also, it was a formal, yes, a dance, and yes, I had gone stag. For all I knew, some guy was poised in the shadows to leap out, grab a candle from the centerpiece, and beat the first thing that dared approach her. But my uncle's $2 must have been acting up that night, because the only open seat was at her table. Beside her. I almost died - from fright, not excitement.

To my right was some Korean guy with large, trendy glasses that didn't want anything to do with me. Oh, did I mention it was a Korean students club formal? Anyways, as it turned out, she did have a guy waiting in the shadows. And not just any guy, either - he was the president of the club, and had to go make a speech. Everyone listened. I fiddled with my salad fork, too scared to look left or right. When his speech was over, he stayed onstage while some Korean girl recited some poem I couldn't understand half of. The Korean half. It was a very long poem, and having nowhere to look but straight ahead, I began studying my menu. Grilled chicken salad, seared cuttlefish cutlet, or eggplant for the vegetarians. It didn't say how the eggplant was cooked, just eggplant in wide, bold letters.

"I'm getting the cuttlefish. What are you having?"

I turned my head slightly to the left. "Uhh..." I stammered, "anything but the cuttlefish?"

She let a chuckle escape. "Why? I love cuttlefish!"

"I just, I..." This time, I actually turned to face her. Her hair cascaded elegantly instead of drooping wearily, her skin was delicate and smooth, not oily, and she smelled faintly of jasmine flowers, not barbequed meat shops. "I'm allergic."

The poem ended and the president returned. We didn't say much to each other after that, just small talk that I'd bet neither of us remembered a half hour later. In fact, I didn't see her again for almost three weeks, which is a pretty long time for our decently small campus.

I was down seven drinks the night I bumped into her on my way to the bathroom. "Heyyyyy!!" I exclaimed, "it's octopus girl!"

She remembered me. "Cuttlefish," she corrected, smiling, although obviously nowhere near seven. "Are you allergic to octopus too?"

"Allergic? What?"

"You know, you don't eat cuttlefish..."

"Of course not. It's disgusting. Grosssssss. If you saw how they made them back in Chinato..." I almost bit off half my tongue. She just stood there, silently. I couldn't tell if she was confused or had it all figured out. I put my drink down on the table. "Look." I rubbed my forehead and sighed. "I'm not allergic. When I was young, I watched them dangle from these hooks dripping something that was an evil shade of neon orange, and I just never tried them. I had to look at them everyday going home, because I lived two floors above the barbeque store in Chinatown. I couldn't tell you because..."

"Where?"

I stared at her. I could feel the blood lightly pounding in my head. "Where what?"

"Chinatown in which city?"

"Vancouver..."

"No way! I grew up in San Francisco's Chinatown!"

Five and a Half

Each living moment becomes the past, and the past becomes who we are, and who we are defines what the future will bring. And then the future becomes the present, and the present the past, and the past who we are, and in this way we never stop growing and changing. And so, we can never abandon the past, we can never stop looking towards the future, and we can never stop living in the present.

Just a thought,

since, as of late,

my present has been mingling with my past and changing the future in every which way.

I don't know what's going to happen, but I am so, so, so incredibly excited.

:D

An Unedited Excerpt

from my diary, because every single time somebody asks me what it is I write in those pages, I have no decent reply. So, in an attempt to embody the ineffable, I have posted here the last two paragraphs from my entry this morning, which is in itself both a reflection of the night prior and a worthy paradigm of my entries.

"Unfathomable discoveries, unspeakable sorcery, all are as real as the stone that tumbles by my feet, and life is never, ever, the same.

To each his own - whatever path he or she shall seek and follow - and though mine is distant - no, enormously distant - from having been constructed, I shall forge onwards, through the hills and valleys, the curves, and embrace whatever - or whoever - shall come my way. And in this gallant fashion I shall approach each day - and treat it as if it were not my last - but my first."

The night is always darkest just before the dawn, a friend reminded me once.

Well, dawn has broken free.

MMIX

It took six months for the great fire to finish burning the city. Six months, followed by an explosion to level the charred heaps of twisted steel and broken glass, a grand finale that made time pause and watch in melancholy.

When the dust had settled, I walked among the ashes. Nothing was left, skyscrapers and tenements alike were reduced to smoldering heaps. Everything was the same now, the places I loved and the places I avoided. The wind would blow, and the blackened remnants of the art gallery would collide with those of the securities firm.

There was little choice. I bent down and grabbed a handful of ashes, whatever they were, and locked them tightly into a jar. Cradling this jar, I walked to find inspiration.

I reached a city upon the ocean. There, in a market, I bought a fig and placed it into the jar with the ashes. Then I headed north. In another sprawling city, I opened the jar to catch a few drops of acid rain. From a tree growing next to a cabin in the woods, I plucked a few berries and plopped them into the jar as well.

I kept heading north, allowing the ocean to show me the way. From small towns I found stones, feathers, and a ring; all of these I placed into my jar.

Then when I could go north no further, I turned and trekked south. In a sleepy village I was given a painted seashell and this, too, I kept in my jar. A cold and busy harbor contributed a tiny doll, while a surprisingly quaint industrial town donated a stick of incense. I kept walking until I reached another metropolis, where I placed a folded fan into my jar.

Still following the ocean, I happened upon a dirty aging city still trying to cling on its fading beauty, and I plucked a wilted flower for my jar. The coastline led me to a younger city, where my jar expanded its contents to include a polished coin. From there, I walked until I arrived at a fabled capital, but all that I put into my jar was a single, rough stone.

My travels led me to an urban utopia, a shining metropolis that kindly emptied the contents of its champagne flute into my jar while I stood on a rooftop. Further south, a notorious city imitated the actions of the previous city by emptying, instead, its espresso cup.

By now the heat was sweltering, so I disobeyed the ocean and ventured northwest, inland, looping through towns and cities of all sizes that donated dead ants, a bottle cap, fish bones, and a porcelain spoon. When my loop was completed, the urban utopia left me with one last gift, smashing the champagne flute itself and sweeping the glass shards into my jar.

Now that the jar was almost full, I headed east, stopping for a short while in another bustling city that folded a napkin into a rabbit and gently placed it into my jar. From there, I continued eastbound and walked for a long while before finally stopping at a paradise of sorts, a place where dreams could be realized; there, I was given a piece of chalk for my jar. And finally, I headed south, once again, winding up in an arid and dusty slum. There, I took off the lid and waited for whatever would come. To my surprise, the city smiled, and I closed the lid quickly so the smile would not blow away.

I walked back home. There they were, the ashes, placid and scattered, just as I had left them. I kneeled down, placed my jar on the ground, and waited for the wind.

The still air gave way to a breeze, and picked up. The ashes swirled about impatiently, and I opened my jar, allowing the contents to break free and intertwine with the skyscrapers, the tenements, the boulevards, the alleyways.

When the dust had settled, I walked among the city. Everything was there, skyscrapers and tenements alike were resurrected in something beyond their former glory. The city stood before me in greater completeness than it ever had before. And yet, I knew that the city would never stop growing.

Six months to burn, six months to rebuild.

Countless months to grow. Let's start with twelve.

(The best of luck to all of you in 2009!)

New Beginnings

So it's Christmas eve, the snow outside is a foot and a half high, and I suddenly had the impulse to start a blog. Well, actually, I tried to start one in Shanghai, but that just kept redirecting me to a page in Chinese so I forgot all about it until now.

Anyhow, welcome!, ladies and gentlemen. I will be writing about all kinds of shenanigans in here, and, if it is at all possible, Chang and Trent will possibly be contributing. Actually, we haven't told Trent about this yet, but here's a warm welcome from Chang:

"HEY THIS IS OUR BLOG BYE"

Anyways, we're enormously grateful you're here. It means a lot to us that you are willing to spend your time reading our oftentimes meaningless rants and stories and such. We'll try to write in this often, we promise. Kinda. :)

In the meantime, Happy Holidays!! and thank you so much for being here. We (well, Chang and I, at least) envision this as picking up one of those bottles with messages inside them from the ocean. Except the message is some weird star-pattern. Whoa.