So, there was some pretty intense silly photo-taking yesterday evening as we recovered from the little hotpot lunch party we hosted at our apartment yesterday..
Category: exchange
Flare, flare, flare
Today, three of the boys from Hong Kong decided they would jump out of a plane at 13,000 feet with a 60 second free fall, bodies arched and adrenaline pumping. We spent the morning in a little hangar emblazoned with posters of people screaming “ROCK AND ROLL” with their hands, newspaper clippings of senior citizens who dived and lived to tell the tale, and a man who received a heart in a transplant operation and decided to honour his donor by making a jump. The posters, my friends and the other men in the hangar kept telling us one thing: there will never be a better time than now. Leave your fear in the locker room, seek intimacy with death to feel more alive.
An instructor said that they make anything from 7 to 20 jumps daily. How many times can we be reborn?
A Visual Love Letter
first attempt at making a video and already at risk of making a huge fool of myself…happy valentine’s day, to my main man, family (and all you other lovers out there) ;)
Will You Or Won’t You?
Today was a freak weather day – the sky crying with the sound of wind, sun that needed squinting at, the crescent moon that never went away. Yet, somehow we plonked ourselves down on the grass, apples and salami sandwiches in tow, with our thick coats on but undone, wind running wild through a bad hair day. We had so much work to do, but the library could wait. As we rested our heads on our backpacks, the weather decided it wanted to run in opposite directions, straddle the worlds of hot and cold. We wondered if we could do the same with our lives.
ps. can you see the moon in the first picture? way past it’s bedtime but it came to hang out with us…naughty naughty!
My Days On Loop
Everyday: 1. Get dressed 2. Check for sun 3. Think of home
Travelogue: An Uncommon San Francisco
As we drove into San Francisco, my heart did a happy jiggle for two reasons: finally, a visual reunion with skyscrapers, and with the city I fell in love with in 2003 for it’s colorful, pretty streets. This time, I wanted to revisit old loves and have a more intimate experience with San Francisco. It started the moment we got off the amtrak service bus, felt the buzz and breeze, and jumped around in excitement. Definitely not an expert, but most of the places I hit this time are slightly more off the tourist track, and I loved my relaxed weekend there. Did my homework for this trip, hopefully this will be useful for any other explorers waiting for their own SF love affair. Picture heavy and long!!
Ice Cream Sunsets
In three months and five days I will become an illegal immigrant in this country. It looks like I’m on the losing end of admin battles, which means that I have to live harder, savour every afternoon on the grass, remember everything more desperately. It feels like I’ve been robbed and have no choice but to live on the remainder that has been spared.
Somewhere along this week I felt that I’d finally made the transition from visitor to resident. I stopped saying ‘going back to the apartment’ and started saying “heading home”, realised that I now know the quirks of this new habitat — how long it takes for hot water to come out of the shower, the exact bend of each curve on the bike path, where the black cat with the red collar takes its afternoon naps, where everything is in the kitchen. Finally I’ve started bumping into friends in corners of school, recognising classmates on the M line bus, developing suppertime guilty pleasures with the lovely girls of #2089. Everyone has warm, smiling eyes.
Going to San Francisco for the weekend, and hopefully all bad feelings will at least temporarily disappear? Yuelin sent me this, from homer’s iliad, over whatsapp, and I’ll try to live by it this weekend. Seems apt for the situation: The gods envy us. They envy us because we’re mortal, because any moment could be our last. Everything is more beautiful because we’re doomed. You will never be lovelier than you are now. We will never be here again.
Stop Motion Wheel Rotations
1. Days here begin with the sun. My room gets a full blast of sunshine around 8am, so I wake up to wonderful warmth, and beautiful cast shadows on the wall to my right. Then, a ride to davis commons, via a secret route that takes me there in under ten minutes, without sight of a single road vehicle. On the menu, santa barbara cobb salad from Habit burger grill – get your greens with tomatoes, eggs, bacon chips, avocado and bleu cheese crumbles.
Lessons For Another Life, pt 2
on my little beat-up turquoise bike, on the bike path behind my apartment block. my ankles say hello.
Dat and I went biking today around Davis, had a (huge) cobb salad and pinkberry pomegranate frozen yogurt for lunch, and basically ran errands/bummed around the whole afternoon. It was a beautiful day in Davis — I was woken up by the sun pouring into my room, and it was so balmy outside I couldn’t bear to be indoors. Took my new-old-used-bike for spins in the parking lot before we set off for the davis commons. As someone who is only ever part of traffic by being in the passenger seat, it was so liberating zipping across lanes and getting myself where I wanted to go, wind unravelling my scarf. It is only the first day, but I already know this is what I will miss: yellow leaves and sunlight, belts of grass and the infinite sky, moving at the speed of my bicycle along the path I will come to think of as my own.
Lessons For Another Life
Some wisdom from a blank card in the food co-op in Davis, from the first day and happier times.
retrospectif: a notebook 