Lei

Thats the way my love is.

The film is thick all over the bath tub, the tiles and the shower curtain. I spray the bathroom cleaner everything releasing the toxic fumes into the air. It even feels toxic as it hits me and soon I am lying on the floor...

Chocolate. I love it. The taste of pure dark chocolate with the sweet minty center of each and every After Eight square is pure delight. One after another they go in. It is quite simply... unstoppable. One box sits open and all the empty black wrappers lay all over the place. The second box is also open as the twenty-first square enters my mouth sending me into oblivion.

Flash back almost one year ago when I passed out after endulging in too much of the same drug. Traces of the chocolate and mint running down the side of my mouth, all over my hands and fret of my guitar. A red and white guitar whose graphics mimic those of Eddy Van Halens' famed stringed wonder.

That's the way my love is.

The funeral went well. It was time well spent with relatives which I rarely see and actually quite bad on my part as it seems that it has taken such an event in my life to reconnect with the only cousins I have in the greater vancouver area. They, the surviving two sons of my late aunt sat through the ceremony besides their father. Occasionally getting up to bow and pay respect to their mother and all those who have come to do the same. Large displays of fresh flowers stand at the front as the Bhuddist organization sang and prayed for my aunt in her new life.

While waiting for the ceremony to begin, the eldest of the two sons reflected back on the last time we were all here at this same place. A group portrait was taken and he noticed that 'he was the only one smiling'. He wasn't old enough to fully comprehend the situation and so when the photographer told everyone to look at the camera, he did what he thought was normal. Smile for a picture. That time it was my grandfather who had died. This time it is his mother. This time he is crying. They are all crying.

We took the flowers from the front and placed them all around my grandfathers burial site. One plot of land sits empty waiting to be filled. My grandmother stands over the plaque unphased. I wonder what she is thinking. I did not ask though she was not silent. Ashes to ashes, dust to dust, Starla.

I wake up. Traces of the toxic fumes are still in the air but not as strong as before. The solution of cleaning fluid and soap film has dissolved but dried again. A quick rinse and I will be able to make out a clear reflection of myself on the bottom of the tub.

No More Cancer

She sits there with empty blank eyes,
She sits there with empty blank eyes,
She sits there with empty blank eyes,
She sits there with empty blank eyes.

Each breathe is a struggle,
Each breathe is a struggle,
Each breathe is a struggle,
Each breathe is a struggle.

Gasping for air is gasping for life,
Gasping for air is gasping for life,
Gasping for air is gasping for life,
Gasping for air is gasping for life.

I watched her lay in there in her last hours. We all stood around wondering when it would happen. My two cousins, their father, watching their mother slowly depart. My sister was present and so was I. When I entered, I said "Hi." She could not respond but she could hear, the last time she would ever hear.

She wasn't old but she looked very frail. Thin and weak, no strength in her body. My uncle was silent, holding her hand. He did not speak, he could not cry.

No more cancer,
No more cancer,
No more cancer,
No more cancer.

At 11:45pm on November 15, 2007, no more cancer.

Two Sunday Evenings

My friend Manuel spent his last sunday in Canada with myself and some other friends. We went for pork hot pot at a korean restaurant called Spice Island which was really tasty.

Afterwards it was off to Fantacity to sing some karaoke. More specifically, I wanted him to be able to sing some german karaoke. Going back four or five months I had gone to this place with a bunch of other people and one of them happened to be german. He had managed to find a german song in the massive albums of predominantly japanese, korean and english songs. This time however, we were not able to find the german song which me and that other german fellow had sang for the group. So I went up to the front desk and asked them if they knew where the german songs were. There reply was that they had none. I then told them that there was a german song there because I had sang it just a few months ago pointing the the room we had at the time. They just continued to deny any knowledge of ever having any german karaoke songs. So in the end we decided to bugger off to have drinks at a bar nearby.

"Glug glug"

Am I a Puffy fan now? On remembrance day I went to a Puffy AmiYumi concert with some japanese friends. They were performing at a small night club downtown which I had never been to. I did a quick brush-up on what they were all about and how their tunes sounded by looking at their myspace page. Even still, I wasn't really sure what to expect but after seeing their show up close, I'm glad to say it was great. As one of my friends has described, it was like going to a rock concert in Tokyo without going to Tokyo. Incidentally, I had asked another japanese band what costumes or outfits they would wear for halloween a few weeks ago and their reply was for me to go to Tokyo to see for myself at their show live. I still have to check back with their website.

Left: Puffy drummer Kawanishi-san and myself after the show. Right: The keyboard player wearing a panda on his head while Ami and Yumi dance around behind.

These photo's were taken with my old Yashica T4 film camera using Fuji Superia 800 speed colour film changed to black and white with photoshop. This was the first time that I have used 800 speed film because I didn't want to miss any shots shooting in a dark club without any manual controls on my camera. My pocket digicam is pretty bad at high ISO's with low light action photos as one would expect from a Jpop rock band. Even though the Superia 800 was better, it still has its limitations.

Also at the concert were the camera police. Scanning across the crowd in front of the stage at any given time you could see the small lcd screens from peoples tiny digicams anf cell phones taking pictures and videos. Guys from the tour were kept busy for the most part going into the crowd to confront the offending picture takers. As a result, I was not able to get some of the shots which would have been really good closeups of Ami and one of the guitarists when they would jump up on the stage box directly in front of me.

More pics of the Puffy concert can be found here.

Again I see that this site is having technical difficulties and my half done upgrade of the site software continues to sit on my computer here at home. Arrrgh! My apologies to everyone who use this site for I know not what I am doing.

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Tsubame! Congradulations! You've opened pandora's box. When I first read the words Schrodinger's Cat, all I could remember was the geek sitting in front of me in my advanced calculus 121 class. He turned around and laughed out loud after the teacher had made a comment about Schrodinger's cat. I just sat there and thought to myself, oh my god... what a geek...