general life updates – Page 47 – my personal timeline

24 years minus 8 days

(shot by my cousin mike)

what happened this year.

well, more like what didn’t happen?

i graduated. i got married. i moved out. i started working. i own a car! i drive a car daily. insane.

i started drinking coffee again on a very regular basis.

i started waking up at insane hours of 6am, 7am, instead of 6pm, 7pm. (well, usually it was closer to 12-1pm, but still.)

i went to italy.

but mostly, i got really, really, really happy, and really really really comfortable with what makes me happy. that was and still is difficult. i wish i could be like maha, and be incredibly social; or be like tim and be a genius in computers; or be like a whole lot of people i know and talk about deep stuff without feeling like i need google; or be like my parents … in every way. but mostly, i got really, really, really happy.

i think i have life up to end of university summed up pretty well. that was an overwhelmingly huge experience, both university and the feeling of completing it. each day that i see tim (and that’s daily, outside of my sudbury trips), i realize how further away i get from that life and it saddens me in a way i can’t explain – i wish i could say with certainty that if i were to go back, it would be the same. somehow i really doubt it… but a part of me still hopes for it.

married life is freaking awesome. i think people should get married more often; especially if they can have their wedding organized by the people who love them most. the party (maha scoffed at me when i called it that; but it really was an awesome party, and i wouldn’t have it any other way. it just happened to also be an awesome wedding.) was perfect; the honeymoon was even better. (i still intend to finish the write up!) and the life together? no words can describe how happy i am. sorry for being so corny – i guess looking back i didn’t expect things to change, for better or worse, but they did – they became awesomer.

working life is freaking awesome. (do you see the pattern?) i got lucky. i have awesome coworkers, an amazing manager, and i do things that i love on a daily basis. its a weird feeling that even when i am most stressed out, and am tired, underslept, and overloaded i still love it. (not being underslept would help – maybe i should make it a resolution to get 8 hours of sleep each night… not that i ever made resolutions, not that i can remember anyway.) i know more about nickel then i thought i wanted to, and i want to know more. AND i got to fly out of downtown. FUN!

driving the car daily is mostly meh, sometimes horrible, sometimes very fun, but mostly meh. i wouldn’t be so upset if i could take the subway or train to work, but its too much work compared to the car. (superkev, feel free to chastise me for being un-eco-conscious – at least we have a cfl in our pre-hallway entrance!)

moving out was awesome; except i am now pretty darn fixated on interior design. and chairs. did i mention chairs? chairs. mmmm chairs. the thousands of hundreds of awesome chairs from all ages, old and new. i have yet to see a chair in the past 3 months that wouldn’t catch my eye at least for a moment! this might be perverted, but if loving chairs is wrong, i don’t want to be right! other than chairs though, i really do love how function and form translate so easily to interior design. it is like a wonderful combination of photography and computers (no, no, hear me out!). there is logic and function in how a room/space should be layed out – its pointless to have no comfortable sitting places, you need somewhere to eat, and somewhere to store “stuff” that you own. it is nice to have a desk to write or use the computer at, and it is nice to have a comfortable bed. and yet, at the same time, while making those things functional and logically laid out (i.e. if one of you is a grad student who works at 3am, its not a good idea to put the desk next to the bed), it is also possible to make them aesthetically pleasant to look and touch and use. light, size, color, texture! ah, i love it. i just wish i could my hands on another 3000 sq. ft. of space to create all the areas i think would be awesome to have. like a dining room!

thank you, 23, for being so awesome. i can’t wait for 24.

mike and maya

tonight my cousin, mike, and his girlfriend, maya, came over for dinner (with appetizers! and a pasta! and a desert! aren’t we wonderful grown ups.), a lot of drinks, wonderful conversation and an impromptu (are there better ones?) photoshoot.

maya reminds me of scarlett johansson so strongly. every time i see her i need to take photographs of her.

(corny, i know, but i think they’ll like it.)

italy – third day

the third day in italy started off with a classical italian breakfast in our lovely hotel. the breakfast was had on the side of a canal, on a cute table, with fantastic cappuccino and a lot of small pastries. (by a lot, i mean for italy – there were 2 or 3 of them. usually there is 1, maybe). the breakfast was a fantastic start – the sun was shining, the skies were blue, and moods were high. our plans for the day were simple and good: walk around venice for a couple of hours, have a small lunch in a hole-of-a-wall place (literally), and then head out and down to florence, where we would meet tim’s friend from cali, alex, and his sister lina, who were in italy travelling prior to their study semesters in london. it sounds like such a packed day, and it really didn’t feel like it. the beauty of vacations!

walking around venice was gorgeous. we absolutely didn’t follow any specific guides, other than having vague goals of finding the large bridge, seeing the large square, and having something to eat. otherwise, we stumbled around blindly into gorgeous alleyways, tiny dead end streets, and at times even no people. venice is indeed a gorgeous city, which doesn’t seem to be anywhere close to dying or sinking, despite the worries of some. a wonderful mix of tourist scams and incredible charm makes it a really strange beast – there are almost no “natives” living there any more, and yet somehow it feels incredibly authentic. perhaps it is a well oiled tourist money churning machine, but does not hurt at all.

the best experience of the day was food (as it was usually, with italy). while the sights were wonderful, the food was unique. via our wonderful tour book we found a tiny place that had tiny incredible sandwiches, really cheap prosecco (sparkling cold white wine) in large glasses, cozy benches outside. the space itself was literally a counter. there was no space for more than 3 people to stand near the counter. it was AWESOME! we still fondly regard it as the best lunchtime find in italy (well, i do, at least).

the large square surprised me with a load of birds. i lost pretty much all photographs from this day, except from what you see here – i think from starting lunchtime. which means a lot of wonderful vistas off the shore, the boat back to the hotel were lost… (i had some problems with the card. i can’t figure out if i recovered the photographs and can’t find them, or if i actually lost them. sucks, but oh well! as long as it is not everything.) since i can’t show pictures, and i kinda suck at describing, it was an awesome walk full of holding birds without paying for the bird food, wonderful sunlight, great views of the water, a lot of romantic mush, and generally a great time. plus a boat ride through the entire canal, during daylight (bus-boat, we did not waste money on a gondolier). charming!

on the large square, we ran into a russian man (with an asian wife), who could clearly handle birds. he just picked them up off the ground, and when he saw me taking a photo of his, he gave me one. except i suck at holding the birds, so it got away pretty fast. other highlights include pointing the camera at my own hand as birds continuously land and take off it.

on which note, this square, st marks i think, that was full of birds, was also full of tourists, of course. which mean that it was also full of pick pocketers. great fun at watching them slink around the crowd and slink away as soon as they make eye contact with you. i wish we had a little more time so we could watch them operate!

our trip to florence was an easy drive. we passed through a most incredible sunset view of the city; i’m half kicking myself for not taking a pictures, half realizing that it was out of the question – we were running late, and finding hotels after dark is not fun. the memory is stunning, though. the old florence, the large dome, all coated in golden light. you wouldn’t have believed the photograph anyway, perhaps!

the evening in florence was excellent – we had dinner with alex and lina, made plans for the next day, got drunk at a snobby place, and happily went home in a cab. i was getting sick, but thankfully my sickness was at its peak at this evening; i started getting better from this point on. from what i do remember i almost didn’t go out to dinner, but i was starving… good thing i went – the food was delicious, the conversation fun. tim tried the famous florence steak, which is basically an enormous slab of meat. not much to it!

maybe my descriptions aren’t that great, but i really really really love remembering this. thank goodness for a blog! gosh, i miss italy.

i’m sick

and about to drive to work. hoping to take off at lunch and work from home. stupid cold…

italy – second day, evening.

leftovers from verona:

the drive from verona to venice was remarkable only because we found a really cute soft cooler(tim really wanted one for some reason – i think we ended up using it, but mostly i’m happy that i have an awesome lunch bag).

the evening in venice was strange. we found the hotel easily; they upgraded our hotel room to the best one when i mentioned we were honeymooning. (it was a small b&b place). the view from the window was gorgeous:

and while tim was ok with drinking some wine and figuring out where we’ll eat, i went outside to take some photographs:

and right as i was taking those last few, the rain started pouring down. i ran back in (i was only like 3 minutes away from the hotel), and looked at the grey skies and lamented not taking a single jacket. damn.

after the rain ended it became better:

and we went out for dinner:

the dinner itself was the least tasty dinner; perhaps we did not appreciate the wine sauce enough.

after the dinner we messed up which boat we need to take back, froze a little bit, and got home. the end of day two!

flowers make me happy

realization of the day: i am very happy when i have fresh flowers that i can cut and arrange. i had my G test this morning (passed, from the first time! wooo!), and then worked until 7, so i was pretty stressed out and tired. upon coming home to a clean apartment i decided that instead of vegetating in front of the computer/the tv/the book i should do something that would take my stress away.

turns out pruning flowers is one of the many things that work very well to make me feel calmer, happier and relieve my stress. after spending around an hour cutting and trying to arrange all the various flowers that my mom gave me (it was her birthday, and she basically gave me some she didn’t really care for, plus some pretty ones – like the sunflowers) into the vases that i had on hand. after that i decided to take photographs, and turns out that i took like 38 photographs that i liked. so, there you go! diny, enjoy the chairs.

here are my favourite ones, you can see all of them here. (i culled the vignettes into this set)

now about my g test.

well, let me tell you, i was worried. most people (as in 20 except for 2) that i asked didn’t pass it from the first time. i don’t take failure well, despite knowing that its stupid to stress out about a test that DOESNT EVEN AFFECT YOUR GPA OMG. (and you can retake endlessly for just some small amounts of money). and yet, there was, sitting in the parking lot and trying really hard to calm down. i borrowed the russian translation of dale carnegie’s book (compilation of all 3 of his most famous ones) from my parents, so i tried to read it.

the guy who was testing me (i think his name is randy – thank you, randy!) was a friendly looking young guy, unlike the person who did my g2 test. he asked me how i am, and i honestly replied “nervous as usual”. i think this confused him, as he asked “this IS the first time you’re taking this test, right?” (it already said this on my form). i replied in the affirmative.

the test itself went nicely, with some awesome happenings. i pulled out of the parking lot with no problems (went really slow as there was a young kid who i saw running around before, so i informed the guy that the reason i’m going this slowly is because there’s a kid behind us, and i’m worried about him). fast forward to driving on the highway, and no problems. (i did apparently make some errors on the way there, but all minor things). so we’re going on the highway, and he says “please change lanes left and then right whenever its safe to do so”. i check stuff, see that its safe, and change lanes. obviously i’m going 100km/hr on the dot, so is the person in front of me. and then i see in my rear view mirror a pick up truck with a flat bed trailer (like the small one) speeding toward me. my first though – “ok, change lanes to the right so that you get out of his way”. except, the crazy pick up truck swerves to the lane to the right of me, without dropping speed. at this point i’m thinking “shit, he’s gonna pass me on the right and i’m very screwed, especially if he honks or breaks badly”. what he did was worse (or better? since i passed?). he passed on me on the right alright, but he did it without dropping speed, signaling lane change, and with his flat bed trailer SWINGING WILDLY, missing my car by maybe a meter. i actually said “holy shit” outloud, because that was some horrible driving there. randy didn’t say anything, so we continued on our merry way, while i’m kinda going “oh shit did i just fail?” inside.

what was remarkable is that he didn’t ask me to do any kind of parking. at least now i’m a pro at this parallel stuff, thanks to our wonderful street. anyway, we park and right away he goes “congratulations, you’ve passed!” (let me remark, this is BAJILLIONS YEARS OF LIGHT BETTER than my g2 test, where the guy just sat there for like a minute silent and writing stuff on his paper, until i couldn’t stand the pressure and asked with a shaking voice “so did i fail?” and he was like “oh no”. turns out i had 2 mistakes out of 15. but that was g2). i’m not sure how many “points” i lost on this test – i still have the paper, but it doesn’t say which errors are more crucial.

anyway, randy, wherever he is, i’m hoping he’s having a good one, because turns out that exams/tests still make me crazy. great! :P

coconut chair and italy

when we were in italy, one of my most favourite moments was toward the end of our trip. we were in the italian rivierra, in an area called cinque terre. tim was napping, it was sunset time and happy hour on beach. a wonderful small place where we got coffees and drinks previously was serving free snacks on the bar (which i didn’t realize until i asked how much was it to try). i got a glass of prosecco, and they were so kind as to give me a small bowl of coconut. i have never thought coconut is tasty. apparently, that’s cause i never considered trying it.

i’m been jonesing for some fresh coconut since we came back. “strangely” enough its hard to find in canada, so i’m not sure when i’ll get this one sated. at least is pomegranate season…

this chair, called the coconut chair, brought the memory back. in case you’re curious, the chair costs an insane $3,700 or so. i think i’ll find my coconut faster than i’ll even get to see this one in real life.

chair poster

thanks to my loving friends and coworkers my chair addiction is steadily being fed.

first, work allowed me to take an eames chair home. they didn’t need it.

then, scarf gave me a book of modern chairs.

(while meanwhile ~~everyone else~~ maha patiently listened after i called say “OMG OMG I SCORED A BERTOIA FOR $20!!)

(and my dear ~~boyfriend~~ ~~fiance~~ husband tolerated my putting said bertoias in our living room – and actually thought its a good idea!)

anyway.

third, work gave me another 70s chair, and now i hooked at least 4 more people into discussing the history of chairs with me.

aside: the building i work in was built in the 50s-60s-70s. the aesthetic is late mid-century-modern. there is a lot of side eames shell chairs floating around, teak furniture, old school chairs with great lines and awesome casters. whats hilarious, is that while i’m just happy to see this design gorgeousness, the rest look at it as “old furniture”. i have never realized more clearly how big of a gap there is between what is happening in the “design world” (not the high end; but the more common ikea-target-west elm-craigslist shopping people who like to discuss design on many various blogs) and what is happening in the “real world” (the people who buy furniture without having a “visual” of what they are looking for. or alternatively, people who don’t agree with me ;p ). regardless of this gap, the fact that i own an eames chair (broken-ish and old, but totally repairable) makes me eternally grateful to our building manager.

so, one of the chairs i had in my cubicle (i had 3 which almost became 4, but they forced me to give up one. which is probably for the best.) had to be moved out to another guy’s cubicle until they throw it out (oh the pain, please let me not imagine how the machine will crush it!). out of curiousity we flipped it upside down to check year made. made in burlingont, brought to mississauga from the toronto office. and a cleaning tag. “shampooed and vacuumed in 1973”. 34 years at least. and its more solid than some of the 5-10 year old office chairs we have. that is why i love old chairs so much.

anyway, so this is to explain how interested i have become in design, and chairs in particular lately. so this is so awesome that i have no words.

italy – first day

this is slightly late, but why not.

our departure to our honeymoon was the day after the wedding, in the evening. thankfully we found a hotel that let us do a late check out – like 4pm. we seriously needed that time to sleep, so that was excellent.

walking out of the hotel holding my wedding dress in my hands felt somewhat surreal. i mean, that’s when it hits you that it really IS a non resuable-packaging :-)

the packing was easy. i knew what i wanted to take fairly in advance – i actually ended up under packing for the first time ever, as i didn’t take a rain jacket (and to spoil the surprise shocking ending, of course it rained for like 3 days). with our two small suitcase, dad, my aunt, zhen (tim’s friend from cali who was here for the wedding) and ourselves we headed to the airport. zhen went first – his flight was at 9. our was at 10, and we arrived pretty late. we actually were taken out of the line and ushered to the front because we were cutting it so close to our plane’s departure. :S but, it was all good – we got 2 seats next to eachother!

as it turned out, the 3rd seat was taken by the self proclaimed “congratulations, you’re sitting next to the biggest geek in the world” guy, who exclaimed that after seeing our wired magazine. he was flying to germany (the plane was to munich) for some conference on how computers affect daily life. except he couldn’t. stop. talking. for the entire flight. it would be hilarious and entertaining to watch such stupidity if it wasn’t so painful. (and he seriously wasn’t the biggest geek, i’m pretty positive i know at least 500 people geekier than him – and that’s u of t alone.)

anyway, that aside, the flight was easy. i slept some, tim – not really. our arrival was at 8am, and right away we saw the wonderful efficiency of the germans. NOT. the line into customs was a funnel of our entire plane to 2 agents. it was a free for all, more or less. one nice thing about the airport is that they gave our luggage back quickly (we packed for carryon but for some reason they said we can’t check them), and that you could smoke inside. go europe!

our car rental was upgraded for free (yay), the coffee in the airport was delicious, and soon we were on our way out of munich and into italy.

the drive was around 7 hours long, and i think i slept through most of it.

i need to run so i guess i’ll stop here. quickly: we arrived to verona, got lost, got found after an awesome conversation at a gas station in french and spanish and his italian, and tim slept. i went to the supermarket, which deserves some talking too. here are some snaps from prior to verona.

germany - drive church on the way out