Terence's Time Out

Happy Mother's Day!

2013-05-12T07:35:00.001-07:00

Happy Mother's Day to all you lovely, strong, full of love and life mothers out there. I especially want to wish those new moms a very happy 1st Mother's Day - you deserve it for what you just went through. Haha.

Ever since 2000, Mother's Day has been a bit of a sore spot for me. Having lost my mom at 16, I really didn't feel like being very happy on a weekend that most other people were going out for brunches. Thirteen years later, the negative feelings has not completely disappeared, but I do have another person to celebrate on this special day. Having had the time this year to get to know my stepmother, May, better, I realize I'm incredibly lucky to have another strong female role model in my life.

Thanks to Disney, stepmothers get a very bad rap - generations of kids were raised on the fact that stepmothers marry your dad and go on to destroy your life. I'll be honest, I didn't warm up to my stepmother all that quickly. I only learned of her around my 18th birthday when I started talking to my dad again after a two year self-initiated silent treatment.

My dad, never the one to be great at emotional parenting, thought it would be good to break the ice by telling me he had remarried and that I should say hello to my new mom. Let me give you a piece of advice if in case you ever encounter a situation like this in the future - if you just started talking to your son again after two years of not talking, and he just lost his mom two years before that, you might want to ease into the topic of your remarriage rather than "SAY HI TO YOUR NEW MOM."

I'll admit, I didn't recover from that for a while. And on my first trip back to Taiwan when I was 21, my discomfort with the whole remarriage situation certainly showed. I was terribly immature about the entire situation, and for a person in their early twenties, I had the emotional quotient of a seven year old who didn't get the toy he wanted on his birthday. Needless to say, my stepmom and I didn't really bond at all except for exchanging a few superficial pleasantries.

During my twenties, I had three other opportunities to go back to Taipei, and each time, we did bond more and more. But I was still hesitant, if not hostile, not really knowing whether to direct my anger of the situation at her or my dad, she still received some attitude and cut eye (and for those of you that know me, I throw some incredibly nasty shade when I want to). But just like my dad, my stepmother was incredibly patient, even when she didn't need to be, and still made the effort to bond and get to know me.

I found out a lot about my stepmother this year that surprised and impressed me. She was a Chief Auditor at one of the biggest banks in Taiwan, she oversaw dozens of branches and hundreds of employees. She had worked there for 25 years, gradually climbing the corporate ladder, because she was smart and she had incredible interpersonal skills (which my dad could learn a thing or two from). She and her family grew up with modest surroundings having lost her dad at a young age, she and her four other siblings took care of each other as they either immigrated abroad for education and work - she having taken her MBA in the US.

What impresses me most about my stepmom is her devotion to family. To her own family, she has been incredibly supportive in taking care of her mother. Her mother, my step-grandmother, is a very bubbly and energetic octogenarian, but often loses her memory from time to time. May shows the same patience she had with me and my brother's terrible attitudes, as she often accompanies her during the weekdays and entertains her frequently, and repeatedly asked questions. She is also quite devoted to my dad, even though there are times, I'm not even sure why she's with him. My dad, like so many other men, is quite devoid of reading his wife's anger towards him, which causes some very silly fights between the two.

Since living in Taipei, May and I have bonded over our love of drinking (there are times, she can outdrink me), gossip (she has been my informant on quite a few hilarious Jou family secrets) and being able to talk about life in general. Conversations with her are easier now as we've found more and more to talk about, and to an extent, I'm sure there is some jealousy on my dad's part that I confide more in May then I do him. To be fair, having a heart to heart with my dad can be more painful than extensive dental surgery. I swear, Kristen Stewart has more emotional expression in her face than he does sometimes when I try to have a discussion with him.

Okay, enough dad bashing. I am lucky that I now have another person to celebrate on Mother's Day. Someone who I am happy to introduce to my friends whenever they visit to Taipei, someone who I now email and communicate with voluntarily and someone who I can share stories and laughs over several bottles of wine.

Happy Mother's Day May. Thank you for everything.

Hey G Adventures - let's take a stroll through my gallery.

2013-04-29T17:28:00.002-07:00

Hello G Adventures Team!

So you've read my cover letter and reviewed my CV, it's time to get to the good stuff - the photos.

I'll admit, because I like being upfront and honest, I have not had any sort of professional photography training or done any professional photography work. All of my work displayed below is amateur. But I believe I have a great eye for photography, I also try to learn by experience and teach myself how to improve on my technical and composition skills each time I go and explore with my camera (quite the "autodidact" you can say).

Anyway, you've read enough chatter, let's take a scroll through my photos and you can see for yourself if I'm what you're looking for.

Taken at Angkor Thom, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

A great tour guide I once had said something I will never forget, "Always remind yourself to take a look at what is behind you." Turning around after walking through the narrow west gate of Angkor Thom, I turned back and snapped this fella not two feet behind me.

Taken near Le Hotel du Ville, Paris, France.

There's something about the way that this bubble was captured in black and white that reminds me of a sci-fi movie shapeshifter.

Taken from the top of the Marina Bay Sands, Singapore.

The sky's reflection sandwiches the Singapore cityscape.

Taken at Wat Po, Bangkok, Thailand.

Tradition has it that if you pick up a bowl of coins, drop a coin in each bowl along the temple and you have the exact number of coins to match the bowls, the Giant Laying Buddha will bring you good luck. This woman clearly wanted to ensure she got it right, creating quite the backlog of irate luck seekers.

Taken at the Isle of Skye, Scotland, UK.

The overcast clouds of Scotland provide perfect lighting for this shot of my friend wandering out into the middle of a lake. The stillness of the water and lack of wind that day helped provide a near perfect reflection.

Taken at the docks on Koh Samui, Thailand.

Thailand's three islands in the southwest are the perfect getaway for those trying to escape Bangkok. Here, relaxed passengers get ready for the return to the big city.

Taken in Asakusa, Tokyo, Japan.

Tokyo is often represented in tour guides by this one area - Asakusa and its bustling markets. On the weekends, we see a rare glimpse in this photo of actual pavement as it is packed with locals and tourists alike.

Taken at a carnival in Paris, France.

Memories of the CNE flooded my mind as I bought a few entry tickets to a carnival my friend and I stumbled across while wandering aimlessly through the 19th arrondissement.

Taken on a boat headed to Siem Reap, Cambodia.

Sepia really brought out the general haze of sailing up the river towards Siem Reap. Passengers gathered on the top deck to get some sun and escape from the stale cabin air below.

Taken at Gold Beach, Normandy.

A day going from beach to beach in Normandy and we were rewarded with this spectacular view over the cliffs at Gold Beach.

Taken at the Central Market, Phnom Penh, Cambodia.

I affectionately call this one "Mary Poppins Monks." It was fascinating the respect they got - traffic came to a halt as they walked through traffic.

Taken near Lhasa, Tibet.

In one of the most awesome feats of human engineering, the First Palace near Lhasa stands on top of a steep hill with a path that leads to a shrine at the peak. From the peak, you look back and see the stunning backdrop behind the palace where the old Dalai's use to be able to walk out and meditate to everyday.

Taken in the streets of Bangkok, Thailand.

When the sun sets on Bangkok, the food carts come out to play.

Taken by the Seine River in Paris, France.

1,000 drummers took to the streets to celebrate music. This is just a third of the group.

Taken in Halong Bay, Vietnam.

Passengers take the opportunity to embrace and hide from the powerful Vietnamese sun.

Taken at Ulan Temple in Bali, Indonesia.

Balinese women on their way to a wedding with gifts upon their heads.

Taken in Johkar Square in Lhasa, Tibet.

The wares of the Tibetan traders in the market square. What's your best offer?

Taken at Mljet National Park in Mljet, Croatia.

Leaving a piece of Canada behind with the Inukshuk.

Taken near Inverness, Scotland.

Could it get any more Scottish in this photo? All we're missing is haggis.

Taken in Hvar, Croatia.

They boats were hypnotizing as they swayed back and forth while tethered to the sea floor.

Taken near Central, Hong Kong.

Someone decided that this neighbourhood could use some colour - and it sure worked.

Taken in Tibet.

Hairy buffalo line the river's edge so that tourists can jump on for a souvenir photo.

Taken at Angkor Wat, Siem Reap, Cambodia.

This young monk ponders why he's of so much interest to tourists.

I hope you enjoyed my portfolio / digital gallery and that you had a chance to see my composition and point of view in taking photos.

If you have any questions, or want to chat in person, I'd be happy to meet.

Thanks again for reviewing my work. I appreciate your time.

Tibet - One Year Later...

2013-04-19T12:18:00.001-07:00

During all of my recent job interviews, the topic of my travels has 99% of the time led off every conversation. When I tell people the places I've been, the one that most people ask about is Tibet. It is still hard for me to fathom that I traveled to this remote region of the world a year ago today.

I had the opportunity to go because of my Dad. After he had heard that I quit my job so I can go traveling, he thought it would be a good bonding experience to take me to Tibet and also experience some other parts of Mainland China.

Our journey started in Western China, in the dusty city of Shining. Like most of the China that I experienced, it was a city of extremes:

- a large populous, but many abandoned buildings due to over construction,

- a diverse ethnic mix, but visible factions between ethic Chinese and the Central Asian minority groups that first populated the region,

- and modernization but with issues with social traditionalism and the treatment of women as second class citizens.

Shining stuck out as a collection of metal surrounded by incredible geological wonders and nature's most stunning backdrops. It was here that we experienced the way the Chinese countryside functions - having been stuck in a traffic jam for almost 4 hours and watching the locals force their way around the jam on the one stretch of road leading back to the city.

The trek to Lhasa was also one of breathtaking scenery mixed in with a total kick to my comfort zone's gut. Crammed into a coffin-style bunk (stacked three bunks high with two columns per room) the 24 hour trek up several thousand meters of elevation caused dizziness, shortness of breath and a total lack of any personal space. The best challenge was the struggle to use a squat toilet on a fast moving train where the previous users have been less than careful with their aim. One experience with that, I told my gastrointestinal system that we were going on a full shutdown mode to avoid another traumatic experience with the loo.

Stepping off the train and onto the platform at Lhasa, the blast of fresh air was like no air I've ever breathed in before. Clean. Crisp. Wonderful. Not realizing that I've been breathing at twice my normal speed because of the lack of oxygen, the walk to the tour bus felt like a brutal 5k run uphill.

Over the next two days, I would spend time during the day wandering alongside the town folk of Lhasa, visiting some of the holiest sites in Buddhist culture and observing some of the strict military presence used to remind the Tibetan people, that someone else owns you. But the Tibetan people, mindful that they are not fully free, have very little cares in the world and are among the most happy and friendly people I've met on my year abroad. A mix of not knowing what else there is beyond their borders and a simple style of life, they greeted you with a familiarity that is hard to explain. In the market of the Johkang Temple, stalls would be bookended by military police posts, there to guard against any protesters ready to immolate themselves and cause embarrassment to the Chinese government. But the shopkeepers go about their day, as if the guards didn't exist, perfecting their craft, peddling their art, bargaining with passersby interested in taking home a piece of the local culture.

The next seven days were ones that tested my physical endurance and my comfort zones to an extreme. We stayed in not so great accommodations, some without warm water or heat, some looked like the place you saw in the movie Hostel, and all with very little entertainment in and around the area. During the day, we would spend hours in a 4x4 trekking to the highest peaks and then down to flat desert all in an eight hour period. The high point (literally and figuratively) was being at base camp Everest and seeing this monstrous tip of rock sticking out of the ground and being left breathless at the sight of it (and the fact that there was little to no air). The lowest of lows was when one of the cars in our convoy of vehicles hit a small child who ran into the middle of the road. We don't know what ever happened to him - his aunt scooped him up, and ran off to their hut. The image of his wailing mother, collapsed at the doorstep of their home still gives me chills today.

We ended the trip in Shanghai - completely the opposite of what we experienced in the previous 12 days - a city that went from squalor to splendor in 25 years. Shanghai was where my other half of my family was from before the Civil War torn millions of Chinese families apart. Walking down the same streets my grandparents walked down when they were children, I wondered how they would have reacted to the changes and how emotional it might have been if they had experienced that.

My two week trip in China with my Dad was the start to repairing years of a strained relationship. It is always hard to travel with family members and at the time, I kept seeing my Dad as the same guy he's always been - this annoyance that just would not let me be an adult. I was short, I was brash, I was rude on various occasions during our time together and I'd constantly kick myself for being such a child. This was a gift that I was able to experience this trip of a lifetime, and I was a complete dick in the way I was showing my gratitude. But my Dad continued to be the patient man he always is, and looked past my behaviour while looking for nothing else but a closer relationship in return.

Tibet forced me to learn a lot about how I was living my life in Toronto. How selfish I was, how I had misplaced many priorities which chasing after others that really are not all that important, and how I had been using my "independence" as an excuse for building proper relationships with my family, with friends and with partners. Tibet kicked off a year of self-discovery and reflection that I doubt any other destination I have been to this year would have been able to force out of me. The remote area, the spiritual presence, the lack of a busy lifestyle all made me sit and think, and think, and think...nothing else but that.

I thank my Dad for the chance to see the world's most amazing views, I thank the Tibetan people for their hospitality and I thank whatever's watching over me for keeping me safe and for guiding me through a once in a lifetime adventure.

What a difference a year can make.

Why we should never complain about our job hunt...

2013-04-15T09:44:00.002-07:00

Having been back to the city for almost a month now, adjusting to life back in the city of Toronto has been a slow process. Transit is a joke, the weather has been abysmal, and the city has this duality of familiar yet foreign to me - perhaps I've been away for too long.

The job hunt, on the other hand, has been going well. Due to great friends in the industry, I've been flooded with details about interesting roles back in advertising. The interviews have been more like conversations - chats with strangers who didn't feel all that unfamiliar since we spoke the same ad speak. Some interviews have lasted over an hour and a half which is always a good sign. But the process is always long and tedious, with meetings set on different dates, shifting gears from one agency to another, one account to another. A lot of research and a lot of waiting. And waiting. And waiting...

But I should not complain. I should be grateful for having the opportunity to even be considered for a lot of the roles coming my way. It was definitely not that way for my parents and for many of their generation as immigrants to this country.

I cannot imagine how scared my parents must have been during their first interviews in this country. I remember when either had even the opportunity of a job interviewed, they stayed up late to prepare their answers, repeating them over and over again. As if struggling with their own answers wasn't part of the problem, but having to deal with the language barrier was another hurdle that had in their way.

I remember it took months for my mom to find a role in her field of accounting and the role she finally took was an entry level bookkeeping job at a petroleum transportation company out in the middle of (then) nowhere Markham. And the job hunt was not kind to my father, who had a Masters in Marketing Management and was forced to abandon his hunt and taking a role in a fast food restaurant as a Supervisor. This story is common for any child of an immigrant parent and it still plays out today for all of those people coming to Canada.

When I was interviewing other people for ad jobs the one thing that would irk me the most would be how underprepared some of those candidates were. If they had put in a fraction of the time most immigrants put in on their interview prep, they would have the role, no problem.

I put a lot of time prepping for roles that come my way. Most of this training does come from my university days, but I'm inspired by my parents who put every effort they had into trying to land that job so that they could provide a better life for me and my brother.

We've got it easy, folks.

Oh the places left to go...

2013-04-11T20:51:00.005-07:00

It's been three weeks since returning to Toronto and already I have this voice in my head asking: "Where to next?" While most would be worried about a mild case of schizophrenia, I find this voice to be reassuring. It means that I'm still curious and hungry to explore.

October will mark my 30th birthday and one of my goals was to have traveled to 30 countries by that time. This past year off made that goal a reality, so it was time to set newer, even more ambitious goals: 40 countries by the time I'm 35. 50 countries by the time I'm 40.

Both are completely achievable - I mean, I've only been to 15.3% of the world so far*, so it shouldn't be that difficult to brainstorm other places that I need to go. So I sat here for an hour, staring at a map of the world and plotted out my wishlist outlining my next 10 years of travel.

As I scribbled away on my notepad, I was like a child writing down his letter to Santa weeks before the big day. Giddiness swept through me as I furiously wrote, erased, re-wrote, scratched out and charted with arrows each change and addition made to the itinerary. This was the most amount of fun I've had in three weeks.

A lot consideration went into picking out the destinations including major world events, weather/seasons, people I know who live there, planned life changes. But we all know, even the best, most well-thought out plans never quite work out to what they should be. Who knows, maybe I'll take another year off somewhere in between and knock off more countries than I expected. Or something even more unexpected might occur: a relationship, god forbid, even kids could pop into the picture and ruin everything. (Can you tell I'm not kid friendly?)

So here it is, my big (scary) audacious travel plans until 2023, who's in with me?

2013 (+2 new countries):
- Iceland (September) - 30th birthday gift
- Bahamas (October) - Giving thanks to good sunny weather
- Taiwan (December) - Visit the fam that I love so much

2014 (+4 new countries):
- Russia, Finland (February) - 2014 Winter Olympics! 3rd Olympics!
- Peru (April) - Machu Picchu baby!
- France (September) - Bordeaux Marathon - wine served at water stations
- Denmark (December) - Christmas Markets, Legoland, Little Mermaids

2015 (+5 new countries):
- Ireland (March) - St. Patty's Day
- Norway, Sweden (June) - Scandinavia during the summer so it won't be so cold.
- Luxembourg (September) - So tiny, you have to visit.
- UAE (December) - Dubai

2016 (+9 new countries):
- Trinidad & Tobago (Jan/Feb) - Carnival
- Brazil, Uruguay, Argentina, Chile (August) - Summer Olympics! Olympics #4, and since I'm in the neighbourhood...
- Greece, Turkey, Israel, Jordan (October / November) - Take a few months off to travel the Aegean and the Middle East
- Taiwan (December) - Pit stop to recharge my soul.

2017 (+3 new countries):
- Burma (January) - Just 'cuz
- Mongolia (April) - Just 'cuz
- China (June) - Great Wall, Beijing, Xi'an then get out.
- India (December) - I'll be in some need of some craziness as I approach 35.

2018 (+3 new countries):
- South Korea (February) - Winter Olympics! Olympics #5 - if it's still there!
- Australia, New Zealand (December) - Take the month off and discover the land down unda and Gandalf land!

TOTAL BY END OF 2018: 30 + 26 = 56 (+16 countries from goal)

2019 (+3 new countries):
- Sri Lanka (February)
- Nepal (September)
- Maldives (December)

2020** (+5 new countries):
- South Africa, Tanzania, Kenya (April) - Climb Kilimanjaro
- Egypt, Morocco (September) - See the Pyramids along the Nile and to see the marketplace in old Algiers...(I know, wrong country, but I liked the song lyrics.)

2021 (+4 new countries):
- Hungary, Slovakia, Slovenia (September)
- Fiji (December) Just 'cuz

2022+ (+2 new countries):
- Ecuador (April) - Head to the Galapagos
- Aruba (October)

2023 (+2 new countries):
- Cuba (February)
- Laos (May)
- Taiwan (December)

TOTAL BY END OF 2023: 56 + 16 = 72 (+22 from goal)

* 30 countries / 196 countries in the world.
** Summer Olympics to be added in as a destination.
+Winter Olympics to be added in as a destination.
BOLD indicates countries I have not been to

Goodbye 2012, you've been awesome.

2013-01-01T07:18:00.000-08:00

Happy new year's everyone! I'm sad to see 2012 go because it has been such a great year for me. It was a year for taking a break and doing some soul searching. In fact, I feel I've done more personal development in the last 10 months than I have since graduating university. My eyes have been open to new experiences, awesome destinations and evaluating my strengths and weaknesses.

It was this time last year that I made this life changing decision. Stepping away from my career and taking some "me" time was an out of the box move for me. In writing that resignation letter, I experienced such a mix of raw emotions. Looking back on it now, all of those emotions had been repressed for a long time and had just begun to bubble up to the surface. In putting my career ahead of everything else in life, I was becoming a very unhappy individual.

When I boarded the plane in early March, I was still not used to the idea that I was leaving a very comfortable life for the uncertainty of new experiences that were ready to challenge everything that I had learned in my 28 years on the planet. Being thrown into uncomfortable circumstances really makes you ask yourself the tough questions and come up with answers you might not like. These truths were a shock to my system but it was a wake up call that only helped me to progress and improve. Here are some of the things I learned:

It is okay that I let myself be emotionally exposed.

Everyone has baggage. From failed friendships, bad relationships, the loss of loved ones and betrayal by people you've trusted - baggage comes in all shapes and sizes. My solution has always been to repress those experiences or ignore the issue. For example, there have been countless times I've just alienated a person that I have had a fight with as opposed to being direct with my feelings and showing how hurt or upset I am with their actions. As much as I thought it was an emotionally mature way of dealing with things and by keeping up appearances, it was the most immature thing anyone can do to resolve (or not resolve) conflict. Other moments have challenged me as well and it has led to a lot of tears, both good and bad. The last time I cried this many times in a year was when my mom passed away back in 2000, but it felt good to let it all out. Keeping it all bottled up inside was making me into such a miserable person, I was barely able to look at myself in the mirror.

I can be a know-it-all but that I have so much left to learn.

This is something I've struggled with all my life. The combination of being stubborn, a lot of education and an A-type personality has amounted to an ego with a terrible "I'm Right, You're Wrong" mentality. In traveling to new places (ten new countries, with three more in 2013!) has really helped me understand that I should shut up once in a while and listen to what other people have to teach me.

That with traveling, everything works out if you just don't stress about it.

I've always thought I was a decent traveler but it turns out I can be a bit of a stress case (especially when traveling with certain personalities). In any case, a big area of discovery comes from letting small things go and allowing yourself to just play with the cards that you're dealt when traveling. If you miss a flight, there's always a next one. If you lose something, it can always be replaced. You'll lose more out of the experience if you latch onto the material things you're missing out on rather than living in the moment.

I learned that I am extremely proud of my cultural background and cannot wait to share it with others.

Having left Taiwan when I was just four years old, I didn't have much of a chance to absorb what it meant to come from this background. I shunned my Taiwanese side after my parents' divorce because of my then dislike for my father. In the last five years, I have come to really appreciate this tiny island off of the coast of China and that there is a whole side of my heritage that I have to be proud of. I've embraced my mother tongue this year and have made great strides in relearning Mandarin. Although I'm still at a 6th grader's level of comprehension, I'm impressed at how much I've learned in four months. I fell in love with the food as evidenced by my 10 pound weight gain and a softer belly than when I left Toronto (it does not disappear no matter how hard I work out). I find myself fascinated with the history that is Taiwan, not only from my fathers' ancestry (Chinese from Fujian province) but from my mothers' side (Nationalists from the Mainland that retreated to the island back in 1949). In fact, I find myself being a better Canadian for embracing my Taiwanese background because it allows me to share with others this vibrant culture and incorporate it into the mosaic that is Canada.

I learned that my family means more to me than I've let them or others know.

In living with them for about five of the last ten months, I've come to love being a part of a family again. I chose to close myself off from family after my parents' divorce and my mom's passing and quickly forgot what a great feeling it is to have people who truly love you around you 24/7.

As much as I love making fun of my dad, I find his emails to bring a smile to my face each time I read them. The one above was sent to me the day after I came out to both him and my mom - it was an email that I sat reading for almost an hour even though it is six simple lines of text. It has taken me a while for me to share this aspect of my life with them and almost two weeks of sleepless nights to craft the right thing to say in person. Finally, after three bottles of beer, I finally worked up the courage and blurted out what I've been holding in for a very long time and all before the clock hit my 29th birthday. Their reaction was nothing short of extraordinary. Having worked up so many different scenarios in my overly active imagination, ranging from the bad to a complete and off the handle rejection, I was astounded by how easy it was for them to look past my sexual orientation and say that they love me no matter what. It was a good hour and so of talking, of crying, and of repeating some of the same things over and over again, but I felt more loved and an enormous weight lifted off my shoulders. As much as Taiwan is a liberal society, there's still a lot for my parents to learn on the issue. But I am so very lucky to have parents who are willing to learn with me as I grow more comfortable in my own skin.

So that's it for my reflections on a wonderful year. I want to thank all of you for being on this journey with me. I want thank my friends from back home who've shown me so much support in my decision to get out there and travel. I want to thank the friends I've traveled with this year for sharing in the laughter, talking through the difficult conversations, and drinking our worries away. I want to thank my new friends that I've met this year for allowing me to get to know you and to share our stories. And I especially want to thank my family for taking me in and making me feel completely okay about being a 29 year old unemployed man living at home with his parents for a year.

My wish for all of you is that you make 2013 a year in which you have an AHA! moment about your life's direction and I look forward to reading your retrospective at the end of next year!

Cheers!

The Jous go to Tokyo

2012-11-20T01:26:00.001-08:00

It has been too long since I've properly sat down and put in the time to do some blogging. Part laziness and part distraction (Mandarin school was getting quite intense with the workload) attributed to what was a two month hiatus of typing my little heart out. Time to catch up on some of the things I've been up to in the last couple of months.

For anyone who have been on my Facebook page have seen at least a post or two about my Grandma Jou. In her mid-70s, she is the matriarch of my Dad's side of the family. She was born in Taiwan when the island was under Japanese occupation, and was one of the few thousands of children lucky enough to get an education all the way through to high school. Having been educated by the Japanese, she is fluent in the language, which allowed her to work as a tour guide for Japanese visitors in the 50's and 60's. She is a woman who is fiercely independent, something I greatly admire, and when she's got an opinion on something, well, she lets you know it. (I guess that's where I get it from.)

What's most impressive is that she raised five kids in a time when Taiwan was one of the poorest countries in the world. Under military rule and still mostly an agrarian nation, there was little income for any family to work with. She and my grandfather were able to send all of their kids to school and see to it that they all received university degrees. Furthermore, they all were sent to Japan to receive Masters degrees and today, my Dad's siblings are all pretty successful - two work in business, two are doctors and one is a pharmacist.

The Family Jou in Ginza.

Recently, my grandmother has been diagnosed with lung cancer - her third time battling this disease. Unfortunately, the prognosis doesn't look great this go around, but she has a positive outlook on the situation. Her optimism comes from her deeply rooted belief in a branch of Buddhism called Nichiren Shoshu, something she acquired in her youth when the Japanese influence on Taiwan was still very strong. This school of Buddhism comes from Japan from the teachings of a 13th Century Buddhist monk named Nichiren. It's main temple is found at the base of Mount Fuji in Japan, and my grandmother was determined that her entire family was to go on a pilgrimage with her to say a prayer at the Mecca of her religion. Of course, everyone obliged.

It is a shame we didn't get a chance to do more things in Tokyo due to our limited amount of time, but we did spend an entire day in the Ginza district, another epicentre of sorts for those who adopt shopping as a religion. Since my grandmother has to use a wheelchair, it took us most of the day to get from one end of Ginza to another. The street is the 5th Avenue of Tokyo, lined with shops after shops of luxury brands and department stores that rival that of Harrod's and Saks. I could barely afford anything on this street, but I wasn't doing any window shopping - I was mostly people watching. This is where the best dressed residents of Tokyo come and parade their fashion sense for visitors to see. Tokyoites are much like their Parisian counterparts, due to their overwhelming appreciation for food, fashion and culture. At one point, we were even treated to a conga line of classic cars, driven by men clearly going through midlife crises with passengers being either their daughters or second wives (cough...mistresses). Ginza was buzzing - and to think that there's a recession still going on here.

The vintage car parade.

I have to give my grandma props - she went a whole day almost 10 hours of sitting in her wheelchair and shopping while I was about to drop from exhaustion at around three in the afternoon. Even after this amount of shopping, she was still up to having a family party in her hotel suite - the eight of us feasted on food and wine bought at the fancy department store earlier that day. In Japan, the premium department stores all have food stalls in the basement selling incredible looking (and tasting food). I basically ate with my eyes walking through the various displays.

I want to go to there.

With no rest for the wicked, we headed out for the temple the next day at about 7am in the morning. It was a three hour drive to get there, and I'm pretty sure all of us, except for my grandmother, were slightly hungover. We get to the Nichiren temple two hours late due to the horrendous Tokyo traffic. Like most of my traveling companions know, whenever I'm in a moving vehicle, I behave like I've just been roofied - so I was mostly passed out the entire way to the temple.

To say that the temple is nothing short of impressive is an understatement. With Mount Fuji serving as a backdrop, three large gates lead up to the main temple - which is about the size of a football stadium. Once inside, you are led through hundreds of pews to your seat facing a gold plated wall. Upon the ringing of the ceremonial bell, hundreds of monks stream through the doors on either side of the altar and the panels of the gold plated wall start to fold back to reveal the most elaborate altar I've ever seen. Standing three stories tall, there are two smaller altars that need to be manually opened by a monk before the formal prayers could begin.

The Nichiren Temple. Incredibly big.

If this didn't impress, then the full hour of simultaneous chanting was something to experience. Everyone had a small book of scripture that they have memorized and chanted to rhythmically for the full hour. I had no idea what they were chanting, even though I was able to make out a few of the Chinese characters in the scripture. With a string of beads wrapped in their hands adding in clicking sounds as they rubbed against each other, the prayers sounded like a hypnotic piece of music.

Mount Fuji appears after an afternoon hiding behind clouds and fog.

And just as it began, it ended in the same fashion, the altar doors were closed, the wall panels folded back into place and the procession of people exited quietly. Strolling through the temple's expansive gardens and monk dormitories, the experience was enchanting. This being the third religious holy site that I've visited in my lifetime, it was equally as breathtaking as the Vatican and the Potala Palace. There is a sense of serenity in the gardens, plenty of places to go and meditate, away from the noises and sounds of the city.

The gardens of the temple. Super serene.

Most of all, my grandmother was truly happy with having her family accompany her to this holy place, you could see the energy in her eyes. I've never seen her so happy. I was very lucky to have had the chance to travel with my family, especially my grandmother, since this will most likely be her last trip overseas. I learned a lot about the sense of one's duty to your family, the importance of caring for those who gave you so much. I was grateful for the lessons learned and being able to observe the interactions of this dynamic family with very different personalities. While they didn't convert me to their religion, I could see how this faith has shaped the foundation of their life. I am impressed with the amount of faith they have in the Nichiren - it's something that I don't think I'll be able to achieve with any religion.

Goodnight Tokyo.
Strike another item off my bucket list of things to do: this Jou family trip is something I'll treasure.

Chapter III: Lhasa - Temples, Incense, Praying...Oh my!

2012-11-18T01:30:00.001-08:00

After 24 hours of a sleepless journey from Western China, arriving in Lhasa was a blessing. Taking a deep breath after taking my first step off the train and onto the platform was required - at almost 3,500m above sea level, there is a notable difference with the air you're taking in around you. It reminds me of Thanksgiving in cottage country Ontario where the air is clean and crisp, but in Lhasa, you struggle to try to get all the air that you can.

While the air deprivation helped in the light-headedness, I was on a different kind of high. It was the excitement of being in a place where not many tourists even get to go. One of the reasons for that is attributable to the first of what I call the three "S"s of Tibet - Security.

The minute we stepped through the station, we were whisked to a checkpoint. In China, there are a few realities one must embrace at any checkpoint. There are no lines, just a mass huddle of people not only shoving each other, but also sticking their passports into the Customs Officers' faces hoping for immediate approval. While being shoved every which way by people two, three times my age, I somehow found a moment to look around and noticed the reality that Tibetans had to live with - the constant supervision of the Chinese military. One can count at least two to three dozen officers outside the station along with the two or three groups of patrols, their boots' perfectly syncronized click-clacking like a metronome.

One of the few pictures I was able to take of the security
posts at Jokhang Market.

The security didn't let up after we left the train station either. During our entire stay in Tibet, convoys of military vehicles would surprisingly appear out of nowhere to remind everyone that this land is a part of China. Tourists would be reprimanded when taking photos of or anywhere near a patrol - I nearly made this mistake when pointing my camera towards a building just as a patrol walked by. Looking out the window of our tour bus and seeing the third convoy pass us with in a matter of 20 minutes, I wondered: How does one cope with living under this constant watch of the military eye?

The faithful on their way to temple.

And the answer is quite simple - the second of my "S"s of Tibet - Spirituality. The Tibetan people, faces toughened by the elements and decades of Chinese occupation, escape into their deep faith of Buddhism in order to forget about the realities of the men in green uniforms. The city is dotted with temples and shrines dedicated to their worship, incense is woven into the air and everywhere you look the faithful are spinning prayer spinners while on their knees praying to the heavens on the two kilometre devotion path around the city centre.

The Potala Palace is the Mecca of the traditional Buddhist faith. Having only been to one other spiritual epicentre of a religion, the Vatican, the Potala Palace offered a different kind of feeling of majestic beauty. Rather than the marble of the Vatican, stone and wood are the building blocks of the Potala palace. Built in the 17th century, the palace is divided into three portions with the dominate colours of red, white and mustard yellow dividing each part of the palace. Climbing this palace is not an easy feat - you're easily winded if you don't pace yourself and it's hard not to feel slightly inadequate upon seeing 70-80 year old monks passing you up the steps.

The Potala Palace.

At the top, the Potala offers you a spectacular view of Lhasa - flanked by mountains, a plateau and a large river, the sight is truly breathtaking. Which brings me to my final "S" of Tibet - Serenity. Now it may seem strange that I would place Serenity along side Security, but I found myself staring at landscapes and listening to the sounds of nature during my entire stay in Lhasa. The gardens of Nobulinka certainly provided much of that serene atmosphere. As the summer home of previous Dalai Lamas, Nobulinka is a vast swatch of gardens that you rarely see in a climate as harsh as this. Beautiful foliage surrounds the summer palace, clearly a perfect place to meditate and collect your thoughts.

The weather here was incredible during my stay.

From the top of the Potala Palace looking at the mountains and the river.

Lhasa is a beautiful city, its traditions kept alive by the faithful and perfectly curated by the military to keep a fragile peace. The most uncomfortable experience I had in Lhasa was at the Jokhang Market and Temple. The oldest temple in Lhasa, it was built in the 7th century and had been the seat of the Dalais for centuries before the Potala. This market is famous for Tibetan monks protesting the occupation of their homeland by China. Most of these monks set themselves on fire by dousing themselves with gasoline. Within every hundred metres or so, there are large tents with two to three dozen fire extinguishers and a phalanx of guards - all prepared to deal with the horrific situation of a man on fire. But the people of the market go about their lives as if the guards aren't there. The peddle every type of artifact you can think of - pots, pans, prayer beads, prayer spinners, all to make a buck that they will likely donate back to the temple.

The many things you can get at the market.

Lhasa was definitely the highlight of my Tibet trip. While there are other points of breathtaking moments (most likely because I had very little oxygen left to breath), there were also moments of deep sadness which I will share in the upcoming posts.

Spinning the golden prayer cylinders.

Me and My Dad: Learning to Appreciate Our Similarities

2012-09-11T06:33:00.001-07:00

Recently, I was reading an article about written by a guy who wants his kids to know 25 key things about life and his love for them. It also featured a few videos of awesome dads - some have built roller coasters for their kids in their backyard, and some dress up as Spiderman to go trampolining with their son in public. After a few laughs and some tugs at the heartstrings, I reminded myself about how lucky I am to have my dad and how he's given me way more than just 25 things to remember about life through his everyday folksy Taiwanese parent advice.

Not sure my Dad would have done this when I was 5, but then again, he likely doesn't know who Spiderman is.

It has been a while since I've blogged about him. In fact, it was about 5 months ago in which I wrote a blog about my shortcomings as a son and how I was looking forward to traveling with him in Tibet this past April - you can read it here. Now that I finally have my life back to normal after several months of traveling, I had better put some thoughts down on "paper" about our always growing relationship.

On the Tibetan Plains. With our shades. Rockin' it.

Compared to six months ago when I landed in Taiwan, I've been able to check my attitude and speaking tone with him better than before. Still, there are a few slip ups where I let out an outburst, usually it is after one of his moments of advice where I feel like I am still a 8 year old child in his eyes. My mom once told me that his parental nagging will never change - "your parent will always treat you as if you were still their baby and that their love for you can never change in that respect" - and then she bluntly told me, "You're just going to have to live with it."

Well, ain't that the truth. As much as I see it as an annoyance at times, I was completely blinded to the fact that these little tidbits of wisdom he's been trying to pass down shouldn't serve to irritate me but to show me how there's someone out there who loves me so much that they would take the time to pass on advice that he would never share with someone else (I believe one of his commandments is to never trust restaurant chopsticks and bring your own disposable ones. He's pretty OCD about germs and dirt.) And if anything, it provides constant entertainment for me as I learn more and more each day about how his mind operates, that we're not so different in personality and that I have so much left to learn from him.

My dad and I are alike in many ways. A couple of years ago, on a trip from Ottawa to Guelph, my brother pointed that out to me and I spent about two hours of that car ride trying to convince him how I wasn't but failed to convince anyone. Here's a rundown of how similar we are:

- My father and I are both the first borns in our family, which has resulted in an ability to be somewhat dictatorial and critical over how our siblings should behave. However, he has mastered this and his siblings very rarely question his authority. My brother, on the other hand, disposed my rule long ago and sometimes treats my advice as how I treat my dad's (oh, karma.)

- My father and I are pretty OCD when it comes to cleaning and organizing. I realized this when I organized my table before I left for my European adventure only to come back to see that he organized it in a completely different way. He's also a great suitcase packer, I mean, I'm pretty good, but he's Olympics level good.

- My father and I are hopelessly impatient. We both walk at a pace that's twice as fast as regular people and always want to be the first in line (I noticed this as we were always the first to hop off our tour bus to get the best photos when we were in Tibet. And yet, he somehow always gets his way where as I've been slapped on my hand several times for my anxiety.

First off the bus = first to get this picture of the Tibetan mountain ranges. #Winning.

I'm happy to say we've been able to find things that we can bond over - our love for photography, drinking beer and weird news articles. His high praise for some of my photography made me feel really good, as it's been a while since I've received a compliment from someone I truly care about.

Over the past six months, I've had the chance to appreciate the time I've spent with my dad and to learn what an great man he is. I'm sad it has taken me so long (almost 18 years since my mom and dad divorced) to realize this fact, but the truth is that there are dads out there that would have given up on his children after a divorce and start a new family elsewhere. After all of the shitty things I've done and said over the past 18 years, this is a man who's been able to let all of that slide. He's picked himself up off the ground from every emotional punch I've thrown at him and refused to hit back.

My dad never gave up on my brother and me, even with the huge number of barriers that some threw up in his way to connect with his children, he never let us go. This is why to him, we'll always be children - it's the memory he's held onto to get to this point.

A rare photo from our time in Taiwan. This, as my mom says, is how I will always look in his eyes.

So with this post, I am saying with a blog that I've never been able to say in person, which is to say that I love my dad. With 18 years of catching up left to do, I'm happy that at 28 and with him at (almost) 57, we will have our remaining years to try to fill in that missing time - it's something I'm looking forward to.

Croatia Sailing - Eat, Sleep, Swim.

2012-09-08T08:23:00.000-07:00

It is about time that I tackled my European adventure posts. I am still pouring over the 2000+ photos that I took on my two months abroad in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, France and the UK and I am still not done. (Sigh, life is hard.)

With this daunting task ahead of me, I thought I should at least attempt a blog about one of the countries I've visited. Croatia wins as it is where I took the least amount of photos. There are two reasons why I only took about 200 photos on this leg of my journey. First, I was paranoid about getting my camera submerged in water, and well, when you're on a boat, that fear is constant and real. And second, I was asleep on the deck of my sailship for most of my time in Croatia getting an awesome tan.

I was literally glowing from the amount of sun in the Adriatic.

Croatia didn't start off all that well. My flight into Zagreb from Barcelona was delayed and by the time I got into the alphabetically last of the world capitals, it was 10pm and the sketchy bus from the airport took me to an equally sketchy bus terminal in central Zagreb. I'll be honest, daytime Zagreb is just as meh as nighttime Zagreb. I was warned about this from several friends who've been to this Balkan country that the capital is nothing to really write home about. What I did appreciate was the Viennese architecture that was prominent throughout the city. When the Balkans were absorbed by the Austro-Hungarian empire, the Archdukes used their influence from Vienna to try to mold Zagreb in the same fashion. Having lived in Vienna in 2005, it brought back some nice memories of my strolls down Mariahilfestrasse - it was the only way to brighten up my opinion of the Croatian capital.

Really cool clock at the Zagreb Cathedral.

Perhaps I'm being too harsh, there are some highlights like St. Mark's Church and the town centre, and the best museum I've seen in a while called the Museum of Broken Relationships. My official travel opinion is that Zagreb is good for a pitstop, one day is good, two max. Anymore than that and all you'll find yourself doing is drinking.

It was tough to get through the huge tourist crowd at St. Mark's Cathedral.

An exhibit at the Museum of Broken Relationships. I want this clock.

The real reason I decided on Croatia as a destination on my European adventures was that I booked a sailing trip along the Dalmatian coast on the advice of my friend Sandy. She has always wanted to do a cruise in Croatia and suggested the Busabout tour to me. After a lengthy train ride, which included a four hour delay due to a fire on the track (which we then went through after the fire was put out and got me to thinking how safe the track was after it had been on fire for four hours...anyway) and an amazing conversation with Pavel, a seminary student, 34 years of age, (we talked about politics, the church, and reality TV for eight hours nonstop), I got into Split. Pavel was kind enough to show me where my hotel was in the city and without his help, I would have been seriously fucked because this place was so well hidden that I needed to solve the Da Vinci Code to figure out where to go.

My cruise took me on the following itinerary:

Split -> Hvar -> Mljet -> Dubrovnik -> Korcula -> Macarska -> Omis -> Split

Finding the boat on the first day was quite the task - there's a billion fucking ships in this harbour. Being the competitive person that I am, I turned this into a mini-The Amazing Race challenge and ran around with my luggage trying to find my elusive boat. I finally stumbled across the Busabout boats out of sheer luck and was covered in a layer of sweat from the 15lb backpack I'd been lugging around. Resting in the air conditioned cabin, I had a chance to meet some of the other people on my boat including Jacinta, who happened to be the person I ran into on the dock and gave instructions to on how to find the boat. (She later explained that she was a bit freaked out over the fact some random Asian man was directing her to her boat just on first impressions.)

The beautiful Split Harbour.

The underground market in Split.

Our first stop was Hvar, known as a party destination for all Busabout cruises. Having docked in the early evening, we didn't get a chance to wander around much. That evening, we all went out to drink at a bar where they specialized in lemon vodka shots that were prepared by the patron putting on a helmet (worn by countless thousands of others and had never been washed) and the bartender slamming the shot glass on the stupid patron's helmet causing mild concussion. I had two and I wasn't sure whether or not I was drunk or suffering from double vision.

Hvar Harbour at Sunset.

Hvar at night.

Mljet was a nice break in between Hvar and Dubronik. Everyone was nursing a bad hangover except for us old farts (we called ourselves The Breakfast Club because we were the only ones who showed up for breakfast everyday.) One thing I would never want to experience on a boat is a massive hangover as the only recovery would be to hang your head over the railing and puke the entire day. Mljet had an amazing national park which surrounded a large green salt lake but getting to it was about a 25 minute hike. Naturally, we were all gross and sweaty from the hike and as a result, jumped into the water as soon as we were done with our photo shoots.

Turquoise waters. I wanted to stay here forever.

Dubrovnik is really a must see city. Walking along the old fortress walls provides the best view of the coastline and the entire Venetian inspired city. The terracotta tiled roofs provided a cool colour contrast between the blue waters of the Adriatic. We happened to be here at the opening of the summer festival in the city and as some of our boatmates found out the unfortunate way, they stumbled right into the middle of a school performance as the stage was just the village square they just so happened to walk across. The were booed. The rest of us found this hilarious as we were all hammered from the 3 litres of house wine at dinner which cost less than the bottled water.

I'm not sure where I am...

A coastal city in Italy? No, it's Dubrovnik.

We were then off to Korkula which I'll be honest, I was glad we were only there for one night. There really wasn't much to see and the only interesting part was that we were taken to an old castle turret that was turned into a bar. Now the climb up to the top was interesting as it was up a narrow ladder that girls, if you decided not to wear underwear that night, you'd be giving everyone behind you quite the show. If you didn't get a view climbing up the ladder, the view from the top was fantastic - as you can see from the sunset photo below.

The Croatian sunset - this was about 10pm.

The Castle Bar.

Markarska left quite the impression because I had the best lasagna of my life here. Down the main strip near the beach, there is a restaurant called Orca - it was well worth the 20 minute walk to get there, I really should have ordered another slice. After our meal, we descended into the Rave in the Cave - a club called DEEP. The inside of a cave was turned into a bar and filled with all sorts of neon lights. It was a cool experience, but because of the intense heat, you were literally dripping in sweat after five minutes on the dancefloor.

Ravers in the Cave.

Omis was our last port of call before heading back to Split. To be quite honest, at this point of my trip, I was starting to look forward to Paris. I was tired of the boat and needed to be on land 24/7. And I was running out of laundry. In Omis, we woke up early (cough, 7am early) to climb to the fortress. 40 minutes of climbing resulted in several people puking along the way (they raved too hard in the cave the night before). This was perhaps the only day I saw more than 7 people at breakfast - when we returned we were all starving for food.

The view from the top.

Yes, I conquered this hill. Still super dark.

Our last night in Split was pretty tame. The group of us that hung out together were not in the mood to get wasted and all decided to have a good meal, walk around the city and bring some drinks back to the boat and have a good chat before we all went our separate ways. I contemplated staying up all night as we finished our talks at 1am and I had to be up at 430am to get to the bus station to catch the early morning shuttle to the airport. I implore you - if you ever have an option of taking an early morning flight out of Split, DON'T DO IT. The bus station was super sketchy as drunk people filtered out of one of Croatia's largest clubs - Imperium. And if it wasn't the drunks, it was the homeless people. Thankfully, I made friends with a couple of Americans who were of the same mindset to gang together in order to make it to our bus stop that was down an alleyway with no lampposts.

Regardless of how it ended, I had a blast in Croatia. While I wouldn't recommend a tour like this to people of my age, I would certainly say that if you have a wealthy friend with a yacht who invited you on a cruise along the coast of Croatia, that you should take them up on the offer.

As a follow up to this story - it was only a few weeks ago that Anderson Cooper was vacationing with his boyfriend along the coast with their friends Kelly Ripa and Andy Cohen when news broke that Anderson's BF was photographed kissing another man in Central Park. That must have made for a very awkward boat ride.

Croatia from the port hole in my room.

One thing I do miss is the Croatian sunset.

The Beauty that is Chinese Characters

2012-09-04T04:54:00.004-07:00

Week Two of Mandarin school and the fun continues. I'm amazed by how many characters I've learned (and memorized) up to this point - my last count was approximately 200 characters (silent happy dance and Woot Woot). However, there are things I discover about this language everyday that make me wish that I had not abandoned it so quickly as a child. One of them, which I continue to unravel as I absorb more and more characters, is the artform in constructing a Chinese character.

A brief lesson on the history of the written Chinese language. Chinese characters evolved from pictograms, simple words like fire, man, female, wood and field all came from what the word looked like in nature.

Fire - looks like a bonfire.
Man - looks like a person walking.
Female - looks like a person with wide hips.
Wood - looks like the branches of a tree.
Field - looks like how rice paddies are organized.

However, throughout what was China at the time, each kingdom and territory had their own written and spoken form of Chinese. It wasn't until the Qin Dynasty in 200 BC that the Emperor decided to standardize the written language so that people from one end of China could communicate with people on the other end, regardless of what dialect they subscribed to.

Since standardization, the base words have been used to create new words and characters. These base words - 214 characters also known as The Chinese Radicals (which a friend of mine remarked would be an awesome name for an indie band) - would be used in different formations to create other characters that would represent other things. It's in fact how I've been able to memorize so many characters - is by breaking them down to their basic meaning and remembering what order they appear in the word.

Take for example the word for "to speak":

To Speak (shuo in pinyin) is made up of the characters for Words, Points, Mouth and Man.
The words are coming from the points leaving the man's mouth.

Cool, right? It's similar to word construction in languages that use alphabets, but there's something more poetic to written Traditional Chinese. Each pen stroke has meaning (which I have yet to master) and each character contributes to a canvas of different elements to create a beautiful picture.

Here's another cool example of "dormitory" (two words):

Dormitory (su she in pin yin) is broken into two characters. Su is made up of Roof, People and Hundred.
She is made up of People, Shield and Enclosure. Many people living under a shielded enclosure - not that hard to memorize.

Finally, my favourite (albeit personal) interpretation of a Chinese character is the word for "love":

Love (Ai in pin yin) is a character you likely recognize because millions of non-Chinese people have it tattooed on their bodies somewhere.
Surprisingly, I find that the character is made up of the radicals for Claws, Cover, Heart and Follow.
While the latter two are logical (follow your heart with love), the first two are quite comical - love would certainly claw at your heart, so you need to have some sort of cover to protect it.

Again, the latter interpretation is purely my own personal thoughts on the word Love (not that I am at all bitter at the concept of Love).

If you're interested, here are all 214 radical characters:

The first time I saw this sheet, I nearly crapped myself.

When I stumble across more words that are of comical note, I will make sure to share with you all.

Celebrating Three Anniversaries that Changed My Life

2012-09-02T18:28:00.002-07:00

There's something refreshing about the beginning of September. It's the beginning of the school year and having been a geek all my life, it was always something I looked forward to. It's the beginning of fall, my favourite season, especially in North America; the air is crisp enough to wear a jacket (I have an unhealthy obsession with jackets) and sleeping with the windows open requires that extra blanket so you don't catch a cold.

This September marks some important anniversaries in my life. One involves gaining independence, one involves a loss and one involves a journey of discovery.

It was ten years ago this September that I packed up a minivan full of my possessions, drove down the 401 past hundreds of farm fields to a small city called London, Ontario. Here, I would attend an amazing university, the University of Western Ontario. Here is where I would gain independence - no one was accountable for my grades, my bills or how I lived my life except for me. While there's not much of that Orientation Week that I remember (most likely due to the copious amount of alcohol that was consumed), I remember meeting a floormate who would turn out to be my roommate for the remaining three years and still an incredibly good friend today. More friends were gained along the way, some were lost, but overall, I was lucky enough to meet some fascinating individuals, some of whom I have had the great fortune of traveling with on my trip around the world.

It was two years ago this weekend that I talked to my grandmother for the last time. Having battled lung and bone cancer for over a year and a half, she died shortly after collapsing on her way back to her room at the hospital in Los Angeles. Luckily, I was fortunate enough to have planned a trip to visit her that Labour Day weekend and had a nice chat before she passed. It was my grandmother that really encouraged me to reconnect with my father's side of the family. It could have been guilt from all of the mean things that were said and done during my parents' divorce, but her one message to me throughout the entire time she was battling her illness was that I needed to patch things up with my dad. If it wasn't for her urging and what I believe is her continued guidance on the matter, it wouldn't have led me to where I am today.

And it was six months ago today that I quietly sipped on a gin and tonic while watching Toronto disappear from my window as I sat on my midnight flight to Taipei. Half excited, a quarter drunk and the remainder anxious, I had no idea what was in store for me in my year off. I had left a comfortable life for the unknown and having always been the person with a plan, not having one made me feel empty and lost. It never occurred to me that I was pretty empty and lost all along, even with my plans. What I was missing was family and having had the chance to be with my dad's side of my family 24/7 for two months made me realize how much I needed these people in my life. It also marked the start of an incredible journey that would take me to new places I had never seen before like Tibet, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Portugal, Spain, Croatia and Scotland. I've experienced some great moments like celebrating with thousands of Spaniards on La Ramblas after their Euro Cup win or taking a dip in Loch Ness while the sun blazed down on us sipping whiskey on the beach.

This weekend has certainly been a time for reflection - this perfect storm of anniversaries have made me appreciate that saying, "everything happens for a reason." Within the last six months, I've learned a lot about my strengths and weaknesses - these next six months will be about how I take that knowledge and determine what I want to do moving forward. May more eureka moments occur, and may more truths shed light on paths that need to be followed.

Alas, Tiger Student, I am not.

2012-09-02T06:37:00.002-07:00

This is my small break after six hours of prepping for my second week of school. After what seems like a lifetime of writing and repeating Chinese characters over and over again in my practice book, my right hand has cramped into a claw-like form. I might as well be half velociraptor.

I must admit, this week was quite the roller coaster of emotions and experiences. From the anxiety of the first day and seeing if I was actually placed properly into a class of my skill level, to the frustration of hours upon hours of written homework to improve on my writing abilities, and finally, to the joy of completing my first exam without feeling like I bombed the entire thing - I'm very glad this week is over.

I enrolled in the program at the advice of my father. In spending so much time here in Taiwan, it would be a shame not to learn something in the process. Having left Taiwan before entering elementary school, I had limited exposure to reading and writing Chinese. Most of my ability remains in speaking the language, and even that sometimes is more Chinglish than actual conversational Mandarin.

So it was a shock when I got my placement exams back and they placed me in the level 7 section (of which there are 10 levels) of the program at National Taiwan University. I immediately thought they had made some sort of mistake; nonetheless, I would go and try it out, see where my comfort level was and hopefully fit in with the other students.

After six months of not having a daily routine, it was nice to get back into one again. Normally, I would wake up at a late hour and laze around the house, go to the gym, write a couple of paragraphs of a short story at the local S-bucks and head to dinner with the family. Now, I am up every morning early, having breakfast, heading off to school to do a couple of hours of studying before my class starts at noon.

My class is an interesting mix of people - three Japanese, one Indonesian, one American and me. We are all at different skill levels in reading, writing and speaking, but within the same level of comprehension of vocabulary and sentence structure. Each of us have our own weaknesses, but we have found a nice groove helping each other out during group exercises and conversational breaks.

Our teacher is a lovely early 40s woman named Mrs. Shen. She's what you'd picture a teacher to be - patient, happy and always eager to help you learn something new. I've asked her for extra work (in an attempt to try to catch up to writing at a proficient level) and she's more than happily obliged, even helping me out with my phonetics, which is in dire need of assistance.

As an eager beaver student, I quickly rush to the library after my three hour class is over everyday to re-write all my notes. It's my way of memorizing the vocabulary that we learned that day - you have to keep re-reading and re-writing the words in order to memorize the characters, there's really no other way to learn. I'm there for another three hours as I take the extra step of teaching myself the bo/po/mo/fo phonetics technique and reacquaint myself with how to determine the intonations again.

All this preparation is done because we are tested at the beginning of every class on the previous class' material. If you don't do your homework or at least review what was taught the day before, you're totally fucked on the dictation quiz. I've been doing pretty average on these quizzes so far, even with the hours of prep time I've been putting in.

By mid-week, my brain is spinning from all the new words I've learned. This chapter is all about things around the house and while it is great to learn how to read and write this vocabulary, it's not so practical if I ever want to use it in business. The phrase: "Put the bowls away because the kitchen is smelly," is likely not something you'll throw out in a meeting.

It felt like an eternity, but once Friday hit, I felt like a sack of Chinese characters had landed on my head; my noggin was about to explode with how many new characters I had absorbed in just that one week. Our week-end exam was almost an hour long testing our reading comprehension, writing skills with a full composition section and a question and answer section with our teacher. I walked out of there knowing I didn't fail miserably, but probably scoring around an 85. Tiger Student I had hoped to be, alas Tiger Student I am not.

Having said that, this experience has been fun. There are "aha!" moments where I know exactly how to write the words by piecing together the root words. There are also "it's all coming back to me now" moments where I feel like I've resurrected a memory of Chinese school in Toronto from the deepest darkest recesses of my mind. Then there are the "wow, I did it!" moments - something I haven't felt in a while when it comes to learning something new.

This is just after one week, there's eleven more weeks of this fun.

Now back to more vocab - there are 35 new words and phrases to remember for my test tomorrow. Aiya.

A week in Tokyo

2012-08-29T08:27:00.001-07:00

Japan has always occupied a parking spot in the curiosity section of my brain. I have snippets of memories from when I've lived and visited the Land of the Rising Sun before but they are incomplete snapshots of what I am sure were incredible experiences.

I've been to Japan twice in my life. The first, was when I was four and my father was studying at Yokohama university. During our year there, I picked up on Japanese pretty quickly and it was a shame that I lost it all when I immigrated to Canada and English quickly trumped both of my previous languages. That was also the first time I went to a Disneyland, met Mickey Mouse and bought his alarm clock, of which still functions to this day (a clear testament to Japanese engineering). The second was back in 2005. At that point, I was still a pissy little shit when it came to dealing with my dad after a decade of having a shaky father-son relationship. He treated me, my stepmother and aunt to a trip to Tokyo and Ito, of which I sulked most of the way through because I was with my father. When I look back on that trip now, I wince at how I ruined the trip for myself and likely for those who went with me. This also shows that when you're 22, you still are not mature enough to act like an adult sometimes.

So when my uncle offered me the chance to go with him to Tokyo last week to help him out with some business he had to do there at the Do-It-Yourself Trade Show in Chiba (just east of Tokyo), I didn't hesitate to say yes. With only a few days of commitment to the trade show, the rest of the time, I had to myself to wander the streets of Tokyo.

Just when I think I haven't gotten enough of temples and palaces, there's always room for more. Senso-ji and the Meiji Temple were both on my must see list in Tokyo. Both are Old World Japan monuments nestled in the hearts of Tokyo's busy neighbourhoods of Asakusa and Harajuku, respectively.

Senso-Ji Temple.

I've been to Asakusa before on the trip back in 2005 - a charming little district with the Senso-ji sheltered by the Kaminarimon Gate and a long path of small souvenir and snack shops leading up to the temple. These tiny stores sell anything from cell phone cases to those annoying dangly cartoon characters that hang off said cell phone cases and one of the weirdest items, and ear wax picker. The food is fantastic - mochi cakes and waffle biscuits are all made to take the form or the large lanterns that hang from the gates leading to the temple.

The temple is a hive of activity. People stand in front of the large incense burner and wave the smoke that billows out of the furnace all over their body for good luck. There are fortune cabinets all around the exterior and interior of the temple. Give the metal tin a good shake and a stick with a number comes out. That number matches a cabinet holding your fortune. As with all fortunes, the user should really try not to buy into every word - I will apparently have good fortune at my current job and love life...neither of which I have at the moment.

Shake the metal tin, get your fortune stick
and get your fortune out of the
matching drawer.

The Meiji temple is a slightly different experience from the hustle and bustle of Asakusa. This temple is surrounded by an expansive park with walkways the size of boulevards and trees as tall as apartment buildings. On a sunny afternoon, it is the perfect escape from the blazing fireball in the sky. (In fact, the weather during the week I was in Tokyo was so hot, I thought I was somewhere in the tropics. It truly lived up to the promise of being the Land of the Rising Sun.)

I had the fortune of listening in on a performance of the Tyko drummer in the temple - with each strike of the large bat (I swear it was larger than a baseball bat) on the vat sized drum, the boom reverberated in your organs as it spread out across the courtyard and out into the gardens. I wish I could share with you some photos and video of the event, but I was quickly stopped by a security guard to let me know that no pictures were allowed - quite the surprise in a land where everyone has their camera on them at all times.

Moving away from a taste of the old world to a completely new world attraction, I headed to the SkyTree communications tower to take a look at the tallest structure in Japan and the second tallest in the world - opened just in May of this year. From the base, it looks like a microphone for Godzilla to sing karaoke into. As much as I wanted to go up to the top to look at the skyline, there was an hour and 20 minute wait for it as a shipment of mainland Chinese tourists got there before we did. I shook my fist in anger and decided to save it for another trip.

The Skytree.

I ended my adventures around Tokyo in the shopping district Ginza. On the weekends, the street turns into a pedestrian thoroughfare, so it's neat to walk down one of the busiest streets in Asia or sit on one of the many tables and chairs set out for tired shoppers. Ginza is the Land of the Rising Department Stores and luxury goods as far as the eye can see. However, due to the recession, some mainstream brands have entered including the ever popular UniQlo which takes up a 12 story retail environment that made me slap down some cash when I really shouldn't have.

Finally, a trip to Tokyo is not complete without some delicious Japanese food. I really just gorged myself on noodles and sushi the entire time I was there. I did make it to some restaurants, but nothing beat the $8 - $10 CDN you can spend and get a feast at the local supermarket.

All this from the supermarket for $8 Canadian. That's some good eatin'.

So with all of these fun experiences, I plan on heading back to Tokyo in December with my friends Shelley, Marc and Jean to check out the nightlife the city has to offer...and also to get up early the next morning to see what the world famous fish market is like :D.

Olympics "I Believe" Song on repeat

2012-07-30T06:47:00.000-07:00

I remember the first time I knew anything about the Olympics was in 1992. I was in the 2nd grade and our gym teacher had us run around the gym pretending we were Olympic athletes. Being the precious kid that I was, I decided being a spectator was my contribution to the "games."

Even as a young child, I wasn't much into doing anything really physical. I couldn't even dig in the sand without distain.

Then Lillehammer 1994 happened and I paid more attention to these games as Canada actually medals in the Winter games. This was the year that Elvis Stojko unleashed the dragon and made figure skating two shades less feminine than it really is. And my grandfather was very much into hockey, so I watched the tournament with him, and even though Canada won Silver, it was one of my favourite memories of childhood as I was able to spend so much time with my grandpa.

Through the years, Atlanta, Nagano, Sydney, Salt Lake, Athens, Turin, and Beijing were always fun to follow, but I never really LOVED the games until Vancouver 2010. This time Canada was the focus of the games, and I was determined to go and experience the fun. I was lucky enough to get tickets to the Gold Medal Men's hockey game, gambling on the fact that Canada would be in the finals. The country was slow on the medal count, but the games finished like a fairy tale ending. An overtime goal by Sidney Crosby to capture Men's Gold, the Canadian Olympic Team set an all time gold medal record by a host country at 14 gold medals, and some incredible tales of triumph from athletes like Joannie Rochette, who lost her mom before she was to skate, made you tear up like a 40 year old single woman watching Titanic for the fourteenth time on a Friday night with her cats.

Going buckwild after Canada wins in overtime. One of my best moments of life ever.

I'll admit, for a time after Vancouver 2010, I was in a funk. I wanted to turn on the TV to watch ANY sport that involved three medals at the end. It could have been Olympic speed knitting and I would have watched. I was so obsessed with the Olympics, I had the Nikki Yanokovski "I Believe" song playing on repeat on my iPod as I walked to work and pretended to move in slow motion like the people in the montages on CTV. It made for a slow walk to work.

Just in case you haven't had enough of it...

So, when London 2012 crept closer, and I realized that I would be in Europe for the summer, there was no question that I would stop by this city to enjoy the games. Thankfully, my friends Alex and Sandy have conveniently moved to this city, so free accommodations mean cheap Terence can spend more money on booze. (And trust me, I have).

The Opening Ceremonies
After a day of walking around the city with Sandy and our friend Laura, we went to Canada House in Trafalgar Square to see what it had planned for the athletes. We were disappointed to find that all they had for us were pins (we took them nonetheless) and they directed us to the Maple Leaf bar in Covent Garden. We were joined by Alex, Phil (another friend from uni) and Phil's friend Jamie and we celebrated the Opening Ceremonies with at least 400 other Canadians crammed into the bar. There were several moments of SHHHH! to try to listen to what was happening. Other moments of laughter at the British sense of humour including:

- Free health care promotion (an obvious F you to Mitt Romney who was visiting and made some rather silly comments about the Olympic games)
- the Queen jumping from a helicopter with James Bond
- Three dozen Mary Poppins flying into the stadium

And of course, cheering for the countries as they marched into the stadium. We cheered the loudest for Canada and Team GB, but as we got drunker and drunkier, we started clinking our glasses for Team Swaziland and Uzbekistan...haha...who comes up with these names?

Speaking of drunk, one of the highlights of the bar, was this couple from the West Coast. The wife got hammered and started hitting on Phil and Jamie. She tried with Alex, but Sandy shot her some Asian cuteye and she backed off. They still stole our seats that we had occupied since 5pm. Lesson learned, don't be nice.

However, we were unceremoniously all kicked out right before Sir Paul performed and people were losing their minds. Very unCanadian like behaviour was displayed and we all went home with a bitter taste in our mouths - or perhaps that was from the vomit after nine pints of Strongbow.

Day 2 - 3m Women's Syncronized Springboard Diving
Our only ticket to the games was to the diving event at the aquatics centre on Sunday. We were lucky enough to get seats to this event - little did we know that we'd be watching Canada get it's first medal. It started with Canada doing really well, and in true Canadian style, we lost the lead and China, being the powerhouse they are, won Gold. We were sitting in the nosebleeds but I truly believe our cheers reached all the way to the platforms 4,000m below us.

This is with 55mm zoom. We were still super far.

Alex, Sandy and I wandered around the Olympic Park afterwards and it's massive and quite impressive. The weather was bipolar, so we got waves of sunshine followed by a lightning show and a downpour back to happy sunny skies within a matter of an hour. Mother Nature must have been watching the Joannie Rochette story with her cats.

The Olympic Park is located in London's East end, notorious for being the shady part of the city, has been refurbished to be the most sustainable Olympic Park ever. The stadium, Aquatics centre, Velodrome, football and hockey fields are all located in this park. A big wildflower field also serves as a live TV venue for those coming in and out of other events. Alex wore his Union Jack and I wore the Maple Leaf flag. The spirit of the games made the Olympic Park into a grown up version of Disneyland where everyone was smiling and greeting people with "hello, how are you?" or a "woot! Canada!!!" The Olympic volunteers were so happy, I think they inhaled a bag of happy gas before starting their shifts. Here are some selects from the Olympic grounds:

Wildflowers are present all around the park.

The orbit - telecom tower and observation deck.

Very Polka Dot Door.

The Velodrome.

One Eyed Monster Mascot.

The Stadium.

Jump for the Olympics!

We don't have any more tickets to any of the other events, but with the controversy of the empty seats at the venues, we might get another chance to go! If not, anyone up for Sochi 2014?

One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

2012-07-23T05:19:00.001-07:00

There's a scene in the movie Eat, Pray, Love, where Julia Robert's character, Liz, makes a simple Italian meal for herself and plants herself on the floor of her Roman flat, where she spends an entire afternoon just savouring each bite of her food. This scene is significant to me for two reasons - the first, is that I just finished reading the book on my European travels (Sidebar: did anyone else find it really hard to get through the India part of the book?); and the second is that I had several of these EAT moments in Europe.

Don't get me wrong, I really liked the movie, but I can see how people were pissed that so much was missing from the book. Definitely a rental.

From my acorn-fed jamon in Barcelona to the lasagna I had in Markaska, Croatia, to the (several) cheese and wine combos in Paris, I've gained two new friends - I've named my lovehandles "Carbs" and "Consequences." (Those "C" twins are so evil.)

I stare at this photo when I'm hungry. It's the way of encouraging myself to write a lot of award winning books, gain the income to hire the chef that made this award winning lasagna, and hire a trainer to work off the weight I'll gain from eating this for every meal, everyday.

I've had a great time in Europe so far - besides the excellent food, I've experienced so much in the past five weeks that have opened my eyes to the fact that I am still as not as well traveled as I hope to be, that there are still things I need to work (cough...communicating my feelings...cough) and that I can really get used to this life of just wandering from place to place and not doing anything. Now if I can only find a way of making income out of doing nothing...

Traveling has also given me a couple of story ideas to tinker with and hopefully that will result in the income that will allow me to travel some more, which will result in more story ideas and more income...you see what I'm getting at here? Sigh, it is hard not to get ahead of yourself when you have this much time on your hands to just dream. (Insert the Bob Sinclair Love Generation song from the Lotto Max commercials here as I dream about my next vacation.)

There are several highlights of this trip (besides the food - wait, I said this already) that I can't wait to start blogging about in my following entries - they include:

- celebrating Spain's Eurocup win in Barcelona on Las Ramblas and watching people drunkenly climb the lamp posts and praying they didn't fall to their deaths,
- meeting a seminary student on the train from Zagreb to Split, Croatia and talking to him about everything from politics to religion to Croatian reality TV for about four hours as our train was delayed by a fire on the track (no, not dangerous at all),
- waking up every morning to the sound of the Adriatic waves splash against our boat and then jumping into the clear blue waters after breakfast on my Split - Dubrovnik cruise,

Life is hard when you have to jump off a boat everyday.

- the most random Sunday I've ever experienced which included a Tim Burton-esque circus exhibit, followed by running into a random Brazilian drum band and random carnival rides that made my friend Lindsay and I sick.

Each place I've visited in the last five weeks have left quite the impression. Portugal was a friendly destination where surprisingly everyone spoke English with you, because they are probably tired of foreigners butchering Portuguese or speaking to them in Spanish. Spain was incredibly hot and a great place to meet interesting characters on our Trafalgar tour - including some older Aussies and New Zealanders who insisted that the Spanish speak English. Croatia was relaxing after three weeks of bus tours and an eclectic mix of young Australians - there were only Aussies on this part of my travels, I was quite the minority as an Asian Canadian (or Canasian). And well, Paris, it was all about living the life of a Parisien, so much so that I was even getting annoyed with the tourists and saying my "Pardon!"s with an annoyance that would make any local proud.

What makes life so great at the moment is that my European adventures are not over. There's still the London Olympics and Scotland and all of its foggy glory left to experience!

It's not hard to keep saying to myself - fuck, I'm so glad I decided to take this break.

Taking the time to have a meal outside

2012-06-13T05:47:00.002-07:00

A guy I used to work with used to love eating his lunches outside during the summer time. There was once I joined him at his favourite spot near Yonge and Bloor, where we used to work. It was in a small parkette near a firehall and a condo, a quaint little square that obviously had caught the attention of others as it was packed. During my entire time there, I wondered, how was he able to do this everyday? And more importantly, why am I not doing this everyday?

It wasn't until I quit my job back in February that I was able to truly appreciate eating a meal outside. Granted, I didn't do this while I was still in Toronto - it was still pretty fucking cold outside, but I did more of that in Taiwan, where it was 25 - 30 degrees Celsius everyday. I sat on a Starbucks patio, or a bench in my local park, or just a busy walkway in downtown Taipei - it was just good to eat, reflect and people watch.

So apparently, this has been the best day in London for a while - it's been raining like mad lately, so with the sun out, I decided it was a perfect day to walk around and eat breakfast outside.

What it looked like outside my hotel window this morning.

I indulged my inner nerd this morning and decided to go to the British Natural History Museum. Well, it was also a cost effective move as the admission is free. Grabbing a croissant and a lemonade to go, I headed to the museum which is only a 10 minute walk away from my hotel. This was my first time at the museum as the last time I was here, we didn't have a chance to go inside and look around. When I turned the corner and saw the building, I was just mesmerized. Everything about it was impressive - the gates, the colours of the facade and especially the lush green lawn that surrounded the compound.

A perfect place for breakfast.

Sitting there for an hour was a bit of a challenge and something I still need to work on, which is slowing down. I inhaled my food (likely because I was hungry) rather than savouring each bite. I did think to myself after 15 minutes, so what now? All the other times I had sat outside for lunch, I was either eating with someone, reading something or surfing online. With none of these options available, I had to start training myself to sit back, observe, and enjoy the surroundings like these fine people below.

A small part of me wonders why I didn't do this more often when I was working...

I encourage everyone to take some time out of their day to sit outside and have a meal. Don't make the excuse that you can't do lunch because of work, well, there's always dinner. Have a picnic, sit on your balcony or find a park bench or any bench for that matter and feed your stomach, your senses and your soul. Trust me, it really gives you perspective on what really matters out of your day.

Final Day in Hong Kong

2012-06-11T00:29:00.001-07:00

It's very comforting to know that there's always a Starbucks near with wifi, a cool beverage and comfortable seating to rest your weary, walked to death feet. Surprisingly in Hong Kong, where everything else is super cheap, especially the food, a Starbucks Iced Coffee is just over $3 CAD. But hey, for a small reminder of home, it's kinda worth the deal.

I decided to have a bit of a quiet day considering how much I've done over the last three days in Hong Kong and Macau. With my flight being midnight (and of course, this time, I am sure of when my departure time is...), I had pretty much a day to kill, and it was time to explore a bit more of the Kowloon side of this city.

It's no surprise that the day has been perpetually cloudy (see the exhibit above). It's been pretty much like this for the entire time I've been here. However, walking along the Avenue of the Stars this morning, having this cloud cover really helped because in this climate, you can either fight the humidity or the sun, not both. The Avenue of the Stars is located on the Kowloon waterfront with a gorgeous view of Hong Kong Island. Hong Kong, the Hollywood for Asian cinema, has its own mini walk of fame with the most famous icon being that of Bruce Lee's statue - in honour of the king of Kung Fu cinema. My advice, get there early - like 8am early as tour groups start rolling in around 930am and to get a clear shot of the statue sans mainlander tourists, you're looking at at least a 10 minute wait if you want them to clear out.

Hiya Bruce.

After the stroll along the promenade, it was time to visit Kowloon park, located conveniently beside Tsim Sha Tsui (or TST) station. This park is so big, it even has it's own McDonald's stall selling iced drinks and ice cream. Smart.

Kowloon Park Art Piece.

I saved the afternoon for museums as they were in close proximity to one another and all had free wifi and air conditioning. There are three points of interest here:

- The Hong Kong Museum of Art
- The Hong Kong Space Museum
- The Hong Kong Cultural Centre

If you're stuck for time, the latter two can easily be avoided. The Space Museum was ancient with exhibits from when I was a child visiting the Ontario Science Centre for the first time. I guess it's a commentary on our progression as a race on space travel. We've stalled in our progress to put people into space. With the shuttle program coming to an end last year, it's so sad that the passion we had for space travel when I was a kid in grade school has started to fall by the wayside.

The HK Space Museum - a sad commentary on our progressions with space travel with horribly dated exhibits.

My walking tour ended with a stop at the Kowloon docks where you can catch a ferry to HK Island, which used to be the main form of transportation before the MTR, now it's mostly a tourist pursuit. At the docks, you'll find the HK Cultural Centre - a quick pit stop for air con and then head outside to take a photo with the famous clock tower. Sneak in one more photo of the view of HK Island. It's worth it.

Clock tower.

I've seen that Junk ship before at Stanley Point!

I've been really impressed with this city - four days was a perfect amount of time to take in the sights, sounds, tastes and the nightlife. It was great to meet up with friends that I haven't seen in a while and even better navigating a city (well, two if you count Macau) solo but feeling like you were a pro. I guess I'm a bit seasoned now traveling on my own. A friend once asked me, "doesn't it get lonely being a solo tourist?" It does get annoying at times that no one is there to take a photo for you, but what I love about being by myself in a foreign place is that I dictate everything - where I go, at what time, what I eat, what I spend. Nothing makes me happier than being a super control freak on vacation.

Of course, there's always a downside to every place you visit - HK is the less hygienic cousin of Singapore, with random water droplets falling down on you as you roam the sidewalks (just don't think about it, and if one gets in your mouth, it's time to take that Immodium). HK is a good place for only a couple of days - not an extended stay unless all you want to do is shop. And there are some social problems that you notice that get to you - including the shocking amount of seniors who pick out of garbage cans and beg on the street.

I'm lucky I've gotten to see some of the major ports of call in Asia like Taipei, HK, Singapore, KL and Saigon. Each have their own personality, grit and polish. Of course, I'm biased when I say that there's no place to me that beats Taipei. It truly has become my home away from home.

This ends my Asian journeys for now, until I go to Japan and Korea with a few friends in the wintertime. Can't wait to see what Tokyo is like in the winter. So for now, zai jian Asia and hello Europe!

Ni Hao, Macau!

2012-06-10T10:39:00.001-07:00

This is what it looked like when I left Hong Kong this morning. Having gotten up at an ungodly hour (6am) to catch the 830am Turbojet into Macau, this sudden downpour was not making me a happy traveler. Looking at the forecast for Macau as I left the harbour, there were calls for thunderstorms. Fuck.

The good news was, once we had reached Macau's ferry terminal, the downpour was merely a light drizzle. Being light on my feet, the goal was to make it to immigration before the mainland Chinese tourists got there (Remember boys and girls, when going to Macau, you must bring your passport).

The port is a wealth of information - not only can you get a great map that highlights a historical walking tour of the main peninsula (see my recommendations from that walking tour below) but the money exchange desk is not busy at all and gives a better rate than on the HK side. All you need if you're doing one day in Macau is approximately 300 - 400 Macau Petacas (approximately $50 CAD).

After hopping on the bus, head for the southwestern part of Macau's main peninsula (the other two parts of Macau are not worth going to unless you're visiting family or want to gamble because that's all that's there. You'll start at the Ama Temple (highlighted above). Get there early as the Chinese tourists are all there as of 930am and take the best photo spots, as again, highlighted above. This temple is actually older than the city of Macau itself and houses all three main Asian religions in here as inspired by the people who lived in the area.

Macau's rich naval heritage comes from a combination of the Chinese and the Portuguese. Throughout the city, you'll find artwork, like this Junk boat above on the pavements. There are stars, moons, fish, mermaids.

The Jesuits make quite the mark on this place as they were the initial people who colonized the area for the Portuguese. They were also responsible for educating the local population (thanks to one Jesuit Priest named Marco Ricci). They then converted everyone to Catholicism and the impact of that are found throughout Macau as one famous church after another (most dating back to the 15th century) can be found.

The Portuguese are also responsible for the colourful facades and the Mediterranean style architecture found in places like the Senado Square, now mostly a shopping district, it was the cultural centre of old Macau. Here, you'll find tourists up the ying yang, but locals also congregate and shop.

After Senado Square, head to Macau's landmark photo - the Ruin's of St. Paul's. Built in the 1600s, the cathedral, the largest in all of Macau was destroyed by a fire. Only one side of the building was spared which has miraculously now been turned into the most popular tourist destination of the city. Don't forget to go in and walk up the walls - here's the view of the Macau Skyline from the other side.

After all that walking around, it's best to have some time to think. While it's not on the historical tour path, the Jardin Luu Lim Ieoc is a must go destination. With a large coy ponds and several pagodas to rest, it's a perfect break to mark the last quarter of your trip around Macau.

The coy pond in the Jardin.

Tourist Tips and Tricks:

- Take the ferry from Kowloon's China Ferry Harbour Terminal - with Turbojets leaving every half hour, and taking only an hour to get there, this is a really convenient way of getting to Macau. The cost should be about 166HKD or $25 CAD

- On the boat, take the time to fill out the immigration cards (offered at the concession stand). Do one for both Macau and for your return to HK since you can't get up to take pictures anyways.

- Once you get to Macau, go to the departures floor to check the times for the return ferry. Make sure to leave before 530pm, as that is the last ship to leave at the daytime rate (saves you about $2 or $3 CAD)

- You can also change money on the departures floor. Better to do it in Macau than in HK as it's a better rate.

- On the ground floor, you'll find a Tourism Office with free maps - take the blue covered "Macau Tourist Map" with a photo of the Ruins of St. Paul's on it. It's a smaller map than the other one (green cover) provided and it has a great historic walking tour route.

- Stick to the Macau peninsula for the sights - there's nothing really to see across the bridge on the other side.

- Take the # 10, 10A or 28B bus to your first destination on the walking tour - Ama Temple. This was a great walking tour guide as it allowed you to go to the furthest point and walk back from there. There are some points along the way that you don't need to see - here are the ones I found to be the best.

Terence's Walking Tour (with timing):

(1) Ama Temple (10 minutes by bus to get there - 5.20 MPC to get there)

(2) Maritime Museum - right beside Ama Temple

(3) Moorish Barracks (5 min walk uphill from Ama)

(4) Lilau Square (5 mins)

(5) St. Lawrence Church (7 min). You'll want to go inside, you can't take pictures, but it's still cool to see. Take a water break here as well. The heat gets to you.

(6) Dom Pedro V Theatre, St. Augustine's Church (4 mins)

(7) St. Joseph's Seminary and Church, Sir Robert Ho Tung Library (1 min)

A devout parishiner prays before Mary at the Seminary.

(8) Senado Square (10 mins) - take a rest here. There's a Starbucks for some much needed iced coffee and air conditioning.

(9) Holy House of Mercy, Lou Kau Mansion are all near Senado Square - mostly photo ops

(10) St. Dominic's Church - go inside and take photos (5 min)

The alter at St. Dominic's.

(11) Ruins of St. Paul's (10 mins) - stop by Koi Kei Bakery for Portuguese egg tarts. 2 for 14 MPC or $2 CAD. Honestly, I don't like egg tarts and I couldn't stop eating these. Buy some for breakfast the next day. Also, go up the face of the side of St. Paul's - great picture of the city below.

Mmm...egg tarts.

(12) Na Tcha Temple and Old City Walls (2 mins) - right beside St. Paul's and a quick photo op.

(13) OFF THE TRAIL - Casa Garden, Protestant Cemetery (20 mins roundtrip back to St. Paul's) - you can forego this part if you want. It was okay, just some rich guy's house. Take a rest at the gardens for water. No need to stop for a washroom - you've sweated out all of the liquids.

(14) Mount Fortress - right beside St. Paul's - you'll want to spend at least 30 mins to an hour here admiring the view of Macau. There's plenty of benches to rest your already tired feet.

Ready...Aim... The view from atop Mount Fortress looking at the Hotel Lisboa.

(15) Jardin Lou Lim Ioec (20 mins from St. Paul's) - a great place to sit by a pond and reflect and take in the soothing sounds of the crickets and secada beetles (I dunno if that's what they are called, but maybe I'm just thinking of Neil Sedaka...who knows).

(16) Tap Seac Square (5 mins) to admire the old colonial architecture.

How can you not love buildings with this much colour and personality? @ Tap Seac Square

(17) Cross the street to catch the #8 or 12 to the Macau Cultural Centre (3.20 MPC or $0.50 CAD)

(18) Walk across the street after getting off the bus and go to the two photo op points of the Science Centre and the Kun Iam Deity statue.

(19) Walk back to the same bus stop to catch the number 3A, 10A or 12 back to the Harbour to leave (3.20 MPC)

Stop 18 - The Macau Science Centre.

Kun Iam looking upon the city of Macau. She thanks you for walking about 20 full kilometres today.

All in all, this tour took me from 10am - 130pm to complete. Not bad for almost 4 hours of continuous walking. Bring a 2L bottle of water - I drank it all by stop 16. The turbojet does not take you back to Kowloon Harbour, rather, the Macau Harbour on the HK side.

Macau is a must see - and a great way to collect a stamp for your passport. Easy and fast to get to, super cheap if you're just going to walk around and take in the sights! You don't even have to book a hotel!

First Stop - Hong Kong. AKA Eat, Pray, Shop.

2012-06-09T07:42:00.002-07:00

Ni hao, Buddha. @ Lantau Island

When I was planning my European adventure, I decided to have a brief pit stop in Hong Kong before kicking off the two month roadshow. I had been to Hong Kong only once, when I was a five year old kid. Needless to say, I remember nothing from that trip. It just so happens that when I visited Hong Kong at that age, the Tian Tan Buddha that you see in the photo above wasn't even built yet. (Fun fact: it was completed in 1993 - kinda takes the "WOW" effect away from it as I had always thought that it was some ancient monument. Still, it's pretty fucking awesome.)

Since Cathay Pacific's hub is in HK, it just made sense to have a brief repose - 4 days, 3 nights before my 16 hour flight to London. HK is incredibly convenient transportation wise (and cheap). With $1 CDN = approx. $7 HKD, my budget of $200 CDN is likely to last me the entire time here (with a side trip to Macau).

I had gathered several suggestions from my friends about what to do with my time in HK, some of them involving friends that now live here. My sample itinerary for my four days started shaping out like this:

Day 1*: Lantau Island, Dinner with Raquel
Day 2*: Bus out to Stanley Point, Afternoon around Central HK
Day 3: Macau and Mong Kok Night Market
Day 4: Kowloon Park and Museums, Avenue of the Stars, Dinner with Sadella before my midnight flight (I wrote a secondary post to cover this part of my journey)

*Travellers Tips located at the bottom of this post.

My dad, after hearing about my spending four days in HK, asked, "what is there to do there besides shopping?" He had a point - the shopping culture around here is crazy, which I found out during my walk around Admiralty and Causeway Bay today. Being the traveller with many more places to go, shopping was at the bottom of my agenda.

Getting into HK midday, I decided that Friday afternoon was probably the best time to avoid the big tourist crowds at the Po Lim Monastery. The trip out to Lantau from Kowloon takes about 40 min on the MRT (subway) and then you'll have to take a cheap (approx. $18 CDN) gondola ride to the Po Lin Monastery, which takes another 20 mins. Given my love for gondola rides (as seen in my previous blog on the Maokong Gondola in Taipei), my excitement was palpable.

The views from the ride were amazing. What's great is that they give you a map with tips on points on the ride in which you get the best views for photos. And they weren't lying...here are some of the great snapshots I took:

The buildings here are painted with bright colours. Nice touch.

On your left, you'll see a stunning view of Lantau Island and the clouds that top the mountains like whipped cream.

On your right, you'll see the sea.

Once you arrive, you're greeted by a recreation of an old Chinese village with stores like Starbucks and Subway for those not eager to try the local cuisine. Pretty easy to bypass this area and head to the Buddha. Along the way, do stop and enjoy some of the arts and craft stores. There was a huge mask outside of one that I had to take a picture of.

You'll soon come across a gate with a path lined with 12 statues - each of these statues are a guardian of an animal on the Chinese zodiac. At the end of the path, there's a sign that causes no confusion of where the Buddha will be.

There's about ten flights of stairs for you to take to get up to the Buddha, not for the faint of heart, I saw one man huffing and puffing his way up while a monk, who was definitely in his 80s, marched right past him with the speed of a teenager. Now that's devotion.

Once you're done with the Buddha, and it's easy for the trip to get cut short due to the fog that rolls in to make the entire area look like heaven, or a scene out of Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon, head to the Po Lin Monastery for some quick snapshots of the amazing temple and even light some incense outside.

As the fog rolled in, I was expecting to see some ninjas fly out of the sky.

Burn some cool smelling incense.

The alter in the temple.

So after all of this walking around (the whole trip there and back took about 4.5 hours), I was one hot mess. That's the thing with being a tourist in Asia, you're constantly sweating and need to take at least three showers a day to keep from looking like a melting candle. A quick shower and change at my hotel and I was out to meet a friend from Toronto. What was supposed to be a dinner (at a great, but eclectically decorated restaurant known as Satay King), turned out to be a night of dart playing at a local bar where I met my friend's new friends from the UK - Chinese people with British accents are so fascinating! We drank until 2am, which, from what I hear is early by HK going out standards. God, I'm old.

Satay King's weird interior decorator had a Moroccan themed style with full sized statues of famous people and pirates. Here I am with Obama.

With that partying, I had slept in until 10am today. One of my friends Rachael had told me to take a double decker bus to Stanley Point and spend a couple of hours walking around out by the bay. It was worth the trip - $6 CDN was all it cost me, round trip for some amazing views of the waterfront and the south point of Hong Kong island. Here are some of the points of interest:

The rocky pier that people write their names on (mostly couples - gag me.)

Blake Pier

Repulse Bay Beaches.

I met up with Raquel again in the afternoon and headed to the shopping districts of Admiralty and Causeway Bay to see what my dad was talking about. The malls here make the Eaton Centre in Toronto look like a shitty strip plaza with a Biway. Pacific Place had the most incredible washrooms ever - no wonder the line ups were long to get in there - with wood panelling and classical music, who wouldn't want to stay in there to rest after a day of shopping? Time Square didn't disappoint either - big department stores like SOGO have set up shop and the mainland Chinese were there shelling out the cash. During lunch at a great noodle place, the table beside us had bags upon bags of merchandise. I could tell by their accents they were Shanghainese, which made me wonder why they would come all the way to Hong Kong just to shop when Shanghai has a pretty impressive shopping district of their own. Oh, mainlanders, you can never understand them.

Noodle soup which I ordered that was supposed to contain beef, but came with mushrooms instead.
Best not to ask questions.

Time Square - feed your consumerism.

Pacific Place - I rate the washrooms here a 14 stars out of 10.

That brings an end to two of my four days in HK. Headed to Macau tomorrow for what promises to be a day filled with walking, historical monuments and Portuguese food and drink - a great preview for what I can expect when I actually go to Portugal next Thursday.

And with that - I bid you all a good night.

TRAVELLER'S TIPS:
** Note: Costs are all quoted leaving from Kowloon's Yau Ma Tei Station. If you're staying on the HK side, costs might go deviate by 7HKD as the MTR pricing to cross the bay is that amount.

Getting to Tsim Sha Tsui - EAT
- Take the MTR to Tsim Sha Tsui (otherwise known as TST) 4 min by MTR, or 4HKD - just over $0.50 CAD
- Head out gate B2 - you'll end up in shopping and eating Mecca
- I recommend walking one street down and over and eating at Satay King in Camvaron Plaza (5th floor) near Cameron and Camvaron intersection
- Try the Ribena and Green tea drink and eat the glass noodles with beef curry and try the naan like bread with yellow curry dip. A meal between two people shouldn't cost more than 200 HKD or less than $30 CAD.
- Take pictures of the decor and post your funny comments to Facebook.

Getting to Lantau Island - PRAY
- Take the MTR to Tung Chung Station (35 mins by MTR, 16 HKD or $2.25 CAD)
- Exit at Gate B, Head towards Nyong Ping 360 Cable Car (past the bus depot)
- Head up escalators to the paying platform (note the payment centre at the bottom of the escalators are for the buses only, NOT the cable cars.
- get in Non-Reserved line up - 125 HKD is a roundtrip ticket ($18 CAD)
- must see are the Buddha, Po Lin Monastery, there's a Starbucks with free wifi near the cable car exit if you need it.

Getting to Stanley by Bus - SHOP
- Take the MTR to Admiralty Station (10 min by MTR, 11 HKD or $1.75 CAD)
- Exit at Gate B, exit the station and walk right to the #6 bus stop. You'll know you're there when you see Pacific Place and large office towers across the street.
- Take the #6 or 6X to Stanley (7.90 HKD or $1.10 CAD to get there)
- Sit at the top of the double decker on the left hand side window to get the best views and picture taking opportunities
- Get off at Stanley Market (should take 50 mins depending on traffic)
- If you like shopping, spend time at the market, if not, head to the Promenade and to the left you'll have the beach, to the right, you'll have Blair pier and a Junk Boat cruise. There's also a food area near the pier for you to stop and eat either at a restaurant or at Starbucks (again for the free wifi). A number of restaurants are situated along the pier overlooking the water - they are pricier, but worth the view and the people watching opportunities.

Chapter II: The Lhasa Express - A Day With the Train

2012-06-07T09:24:00.000-07:00

After our three days and two nights in Xining, we rushed to get to our train - the Lhasa Express. From Xining, the train takes 24 hours to get to our final destination. There are two starting points - both from the coastal regions of China - Beijing and Shanghai. The trip from these two points takes a full three days to reach Lhasa. Trust me, after 24 hours on a train, I couldn't imagine spending three days on this moving tin can. I can understand why there was a Murder on the Orient Express.

I was about to murder someone on this Orient express.

The whole experience first starts in the Xining train station. The station is PACKED, full of migrant workers heading back to Tibet. I mentioned before that we were rushing for the train as we were delayed in a car accident, we were to board at 730pm and we got there at 710pm, just in the nick of time. But, this is China, and we were informed that the train was delayed by 30 minutes (this turned out to be untrue, as the real delay time was almost an hour and a half.)

Xining Train Station. Nowhere to sit except for the ground.

We got into our "Comfort Class" cabins - a tiny room with six bunks in total. Someone had already occupied our beds before Xining, so I was greeted with remnants of hair, used tissues and what I'm pretty sure was a nose nugget on the pillow. Having inherited my dad's paranoia on germs, I immediately changed the sheets, stuffed them into the overhead luggage compartment and made a makeshift bed out of a novel (pillow), bedsheets (jacket and sweatshirt).

People have told me there's something romantic about train travel. The hum of the engine, the gentle rocking back and forth, and the incredible scenery that passes you as you zoom along the track. Clearly, these people haven't travelled by train in China. The hum of the engine is replaced by the bodily noises of other passengers (I heard a fart from down the car that still gives me nightmares), the gentle rocking is replaced by your constant moving around in your bunk to find some proper way of sleeping, and the incredible scenery...well, yes, there is incredible scenery outside - I can't really dispute that.

Here's a quick recap of what my day on the train was like:

THE GOOD -
You have a lot of free time on the train. This allowed me to think and write, stare out the window and meet some interesting folks to practice Chinese with. The thinking and writing take up most of my time. During my trip in Tibet, I kept a journal that I scrawled out my ideas for short stories, novels and to keep a track of my travels. I muse over some of the chicken scratch and try to decipher what I was trying to say. You can't really blame me for terrible writing, I was always in a moving vehicle when I was jotting down my thoughts. The views from the window in my room were spectacular as we climbed from an elevation of 3000 km above sea level to approximately 4200 km at our highest point. The landscape morphed from tundra to grasslands to deserts all within a span of a couple of hours.

Farmland. Yes, people actually can grow things here.

Canada? No. Tibet.

A red river. Both scary and beautiful at the same time.

I also had a chance to meet a new friend. Hong was his name, but his English name was Henry. He was travelling with his best friend (who was grumpy due to altitude sickness), and their sisters. Hong and his best friend's sister were both in their early 20s and studying engineering in Wuhan. I had some preconceived notions that because China's government censors everything, the youth might have been ignorant to some of the things going on in the world. In fact, I was the ignorant one. These guys were just as educated as we all were, and actually quite skeptical of what their government tells them. The love Western TV and all have hopes to travel abroad. However, traveling outside of China is a dream for them as VISAs are not given out by the Chinese government to young people, for fears that they'll leave and never come back. Talk about overprotective parenting.

THE BAD -
There's literally no space to do anything. The number of times I hit my head on the luggage compartment doors as I climbed to the top bunk was countless - well, I think I forgot how to count due to the concussion I must of suffered for hitting my head so much. The corridors were lined with people from 5am (when the lights came on - WHY GOD, WHY 5AM?!) and was packed until 10pm. Travelling from our cabin to the dining car took a better part of ten minutes and it was only four cars away.

And this was just the sleeping cabins - I couldn't imagine what life was like in the sitting room only cars. I snuck a peek (the cars were on the other side of the dining car) and the people looked so miserable, I was really hoping they found solace in the fact that they were going to a spiritual mecca and that this trip was worth it. It seemed that I wasn't the only Westerner that was having a hard time adjusting - I had a tough time fitting into the bunks, I can't imagine what the six foot German guys had to deal with (they looked miserable too).

No room.

THE UGLY -
This is summed up with two words: Squat Toilet. Worse - a squat toilet on a moving train. I believe you are required to hold a level four gymnastics license in order to attempt this feat. One has to balance themselves both for the squat and to adjust themselves accordingly for the train movement all while trying to make sure their pants didn't hit the ground and that the poop coming out of your bum hit the bowl and not your pants. It was a multi-tasking experience and thankfully, my dad reminded me to take toilet paper with me before I went because, by the time I went, someone had stolen the roll from the bathroom.

This room was so scary, I couldn't even bother taking a photo for you to share in the disgust. After going the first time, I made a deal with my gastrointestinal system - cooperate and we'll never have to experience that room ever again. I ate and drank very little due to this and likely caught my cold/flu because of this. I do not wish this experience on any of my worst enemies. Well, maybe to my worst boss ever. Just kidding.

Well, I learned a lot on this journey and I'll share with you some of my thoughts that I had jotted down on the margins of my notebook:

- "Always appreciate a good toilet - you'll never know when you'll encounter a squat one."
- "Train travel is fun once and teaches you the lesson of working hard to earn money for a plane ticket."
- "Chinese youth are just like our North American youth - heads down, eyes on a screen, texting away."
- "Best to bring an Ambien on any train journey - sleep is the best activity to participate in on a train."
- "With all this complaining, I'm still one lucky bastard to get to experience this trip."

And an obvious choice for a song to pair with my time on a train is Soul Asylum's Runaway Train. The lyrics to this dark ballad points to a guy who's super depressed, likely over a lover. My theory is that it's more likely he's been on a train from Shanghai to Lhasa for three days. Fuck, I'd be depressed too.

UPDATE: After watching the music video, the band highlights the issue of runaway teens. There's nothing funny about that.

Up next - my Lhasa adventures (much better than the train!)

Looking towards the next two months in Europe and the Future.

2012-06-07T00:26:00.002-07:00

Fifteen days. The perfect amount of time for rests between my two big trips this year. With China, Tibet, Vietnam, Singapore and Malaysia knocked off my travel bucket list, I look forward to my next two months in Europe.

I had some epiphanies on my trip to Asia, of which my need to work on my procrastination was identified and then ceremoniously set aside for a later time (my lack of movement on my Asia blog posts is evidence of that). One of the more important epiphanies is my sense of optimism and how it has changed over the last decade.

When we were young, we spent an overwhelming amount of time thinking about what we'll do when we get older. When I was five, I wanted to be a singer. When I was thirteen, I wanted to be a medical examiner (I had a weird obsession with the show Quincy M.E. before CSI became uber popular). When I was eighteen, I was overwhelmed with the choices of what I wanted to be and do when I became an income earning adult. This focus on the future filled me with hope, optimism and happiness - more than my 140lb body could contain.

I'm not sure at what point which I stopped looking forward and started looking back. I guess, I can't pinpoint a time, but perhaps a period in which this happened. When I was 22, I wanted to be eighteen and have university to start all over again. When I was 25, I wished I was ten years old and had no bills to pay, no responsibilities to attend to. When I turned 28, I wished I was seven again, with my family all happy and together. Needless to say, the latter thought was pivotal in my decision to quit and depart on this adventure.

What happened to make us this way? When do we stop looking less towards the future and start dwelling on the past? We become preoccupied with the niggles of the present and start drowning in the regrets of what we coulda, woulda, shoulda done. This shift in the scales between past and future prevent us from truly reaching our potential - with each shift of the weight back to the past, our hopes and dreams seem to sink with it.

These past four months of being off have provided me with some perspective of what I need to change about myself. I have to stop regretting decisions of the past and realize everything has led me to a point, this point, in which I have an opportunity to make some great life changes. I look forward to my months in Europe where I can live a carefree life, eat amazing food like it's my job and overwhelm my visual cortex with the sights of Europe. I look forward to the new experiences with friends and new friendships I'll forge along the way. I look forward to finding inspiration for some short stories or perhaps a novel. And I appreciate the fact that I'm one lucky son of a bitch for being able to take this trip. I really do.

For those of you curious of where I'll be, here's my itinerary - which is pretty much set:

Hong Kong - June 8 - 11

London - June 12 - 13

Lisbon - June 14 - 18

Porto - June 18 - 19

Faro / Lisbon - June 20 - 21

Madrid - June 22 - 24

South of Spain - June 25 - June 30

Barcelona - July 1 - 3

Zagreb - July 4 - 6

Split - Dubrovnik Cruise - July 7 - 13

Paris - July 14 - 22

London - July 23 - Aug 2 (OLYMPICS BABY!)

Edinburgh - Aug 2 - 11

London - Aug 12 - 15

Taipei - Aug 16 - ...

So here's to looking forward...and never looking back.

Always look forward. Looking back is a waste of time.

Shuhong Lotus Park

2012-06-04T20:49:00.003-07:00

There was a loud knock on my door at 6am this morning. Being the paranoid person that I am, I immediately thought there was some emergency situation going on, which is fair considering we're in typhoon season over here in Taiwan. However, it was not an emergency, it was my dad, excited to no end, asking me if I wanted to go see the Lotus flowers bloom at a park in the city.

Not having any time to wake up and process the request (having gone to sleep at 2am, I was feeling like I was hit by a train for the lack of sleep), I reluctantly agreed and got dressed. We were out the door not 30 minutes later, and after a bus and two line transfers on the subway, we arrived at Sanchong station, located in West Taipei. Sanchong is pretty much deserted at this time, which gave us a good opportunity to take some of the cool artwork on the subway walls. This is what I love about Taipei - artwork is everywhere.

The temple, the temple, the temple's on FIRE!!!Tile artwork at Sanchong Station.

Awesome dragon.

The area had been developed over the past two decades, before that time, West Taipei used to be farmland (think what Richmond Hill used to be). Near the station (about a 3 minute cab ride) is Shuhong Lotus Park. You have to cross a large elevated walkway to get there...it's quite intimidating (see below):

Now, before you start thinking this is a huge space devoted to the Lotus flower, I would like to set expectations by saying that it is more like a pond full of Lotus flowers and lilypads. Nonetheless, they are beautiful.

The pond probably would take a regular person 10 minutes to circumnavigate. All around this path are great opportunities to take photos of the magnificent Lotus flower in bloom. Pink flamingo-like flowers are contrasted by the neon green leaves - stunning for photos that you can later use as Facebook cover photos. Here are a few of my favourites:

Lone pink island in a sea of green.

Pond reflections.

On a clear day...

Water drops on lillypads.

Overlooking Shuhong Lotus Park

So the lesson here is, listen to dad. He has good ideas once in a while. While I'm still groggy as I type in this blog post, I am fortunate enough to have been inspired by such beauty so early in the morning and lucky that the weather this morning was absolutely stunning (considering it's been raining five days straight).

Speaking of being surrounded by beauty, there is one more photo I'd like to share along with one of my favourite scenes from American Beauty. It is true that beauty is everywhere. In the rush of your day, you often miss these amazing sights, I certainly did. But now, a simple red bridge can make me pause and appreciate the moment and what I am looking at.

My beauty moment of the day. The symmetry, the emptiness, the light...it all worked.

And I felt like this crazy from American Beauty...

Chapter I: The Great Chinese Building Boom - Xining, China

2012-05-31T08:07:00.001-07:00

April 21 - that's the day I boarded a plane for the mainland. The trip to Western China would take about 7 hours worth of travel from Taipei to Shanghai, Shanghai to Lanzhou and then Lanzhou by bus to Xining, the largest city in the Western Chinese province of Qinghai. Our tour consists of 21 Taiwanese citizens - I am by far the youngest. I am accompanied by my dad and my 2nd uncle.

Landing in Lanzhou, we're rushed off to dinner where we were treated to Huang He (Yellow River brand) beer. As a beer lover, I wouldn't say that this would top any list of beers I would ask for even if it was the only option at a restaurant. Unfortunately, this beer appears multiple times as we travelled through Western China.

Horses are a big part of Western Chinese culture. Here's a statue of a horse outside Lanzhou airport.

Xining (pronounced She-ning), has a history going back 2100 years and was a pivotal part of the Silk Road. It also has the notoriety of being the 2nd worst air polluted cities in China (even worse than Beijing). And it's pretty clear why it gets this distinction - when you stare out at the horizon in the morning, you can barely make out the skyline.

The reason we're in Xining is two fold. The first, is for the attraction of the city itself. Western China's landscapes have been carved out by thousands of years of wind, sand and water erosion. The scenery is as if they were painted on canvas; awe-inspiring, breathtaking views that no camera could capture with justice (more on that later in this post). The second reason, was for pure health reasons. In venturing to Tibet, which at it's lowest point is still around 2500KM above sea level, one must adjust slowly to the altitude or suffer the consequences. Our tour guide's plan was to adjust us to the altitude by going through China, climbing higher and higher as we head into Tibet.

The city is an odd place - a construction boom is visible everywhere you go, the number of cranes seem to outnumber the number of vehicles on the street, and that says something for a place that is in a constant traffic jam. The building boom is a symbol of China's wealth and ability to mobilize a workforce to build houses for ghosts. Why I say that is that when you pass by completed buildings, there are no occupants. One would think that with the population of China, it wouldn't be hard to find occupants for these dwellings. Well, not when the large majority of the population of Western China lives below the poverty line and each of these places cost more than any amount of money one of these people would earn in a lifetime. The apartment blocks are cookie cutter and a throwback to 1970s Russian Communist architecture. If you disagree, let me show you some exhibits.

How inspiring...it's like a GAP commercial for buildings.

All these buildings are done...and empty.

Xining is also the cultural merging of three main groups - the majority Han Chinese, the minority Muslim Chinese and the even smaller minority Tibetans that are relegated to the outskirts of the cities. The groups live a strange co-existance. Observing out the bus window, the groups stuck with their own kind, no mixing or intermingling. Store signs are all in Simplified Chinese, with certain stores displaying Arabic or Tibetan, depending on which minority group owned that store.

Our tour guide is named Bai Ling (like the infamous Chinese movie actress, who tried to break out into North American cinema, but only ended up on Celebrity Rehab). She is a spritely girl, who is only 22 years old - a veteran in the Chinese tour guide industry. She started in the tourism industry when she was 16 - gotta give it to the Chinese for putting their youth to work ASAP. She's incredibly informative, patient and speaks Mandarin without a sharp mainlander accent. She takes us to three key sights near Xining:

- Guide (pronounced Gwei De) National Geological Park
- Bird Island Sanctuary
- Xining's highest point at 3820KMs above sea level

Guide National Geological Park was recently made a national heritage site in 1997. The park is surrounded by walls of rock and clay, carved and chiseled by centuries of wind, water and sand erosion. Everywhere you turned, there was a photo opportunity. In fact, I wished I had more time to set up a chair, and aisle, a canvas and a paint set, and have a day to sit, sip a cup of tea and paint like it was my job. In the centre of the park sits a green lake with a pagoda that serves as a museum for the Guide area. As an interesting sidenote, the 2011 World Rock Climbing championships were held here. I'll let the photos speak for themselves.

The hiking trail through the park.

The green lake with the Pagoda Museum.

Lone tree in the park.

Bird Island Sanctuary is located near Qinghai Lake, one of the largest lakes in Asia (about 16 times the size of Singapore), was another pitstop in our two days near Xining. While there is a stunning view of the lake, and an island that is populated by Comurant birds that use it for nesting, there wasn't much to see and we were back on the bus within 1/2 hour. Nonetheless, there are some cool pictures.

Qinghai Lake

Me with Comurant Island in the background.

Finally, we went to the highest point in Xining, about 3820KM above sea level. Tibetans actually come to this spot and throw prayers papers out the windows, I know this because our bus was peppered with a healthy dose of these prayer papers as we drove up to the lookout point. This lookout is only accessible by one road, which is fine, until there's a car accident. We experienced this as a truck made too sharp of a turn at a high speed and resulted in a 4 1/2 hour jam on both sides. It was quite the spectacle - the police standing around not doing anything, Chinese drivers doing what all Chinese do in a crowded situation by trying to force their way to the front, and maintenance workers focused more on their smoke breaks than getting the truck off the road. Here are some photos:

Truck down.

Everyone just standing around.

Everyone is just trying to squeeze to the front.

Mountains from lookout point.

My dad doing his best "I Dream of Jeannie" impression at 3820KM above sea level.

China was certainly a test of my patience. Smoking was acceptable indoors, common courtesy was left by the wayside, lining up was unheard of (people just rushed) and well, spitting, excuse me, horking, was acceptable sidewalk behaviour. My tolerance for the Chinese was working itself up to a point when I had to remind myself that I am a guest in their home and that I have to grin and bear it. This was my first test in a long series of trials and challenges set up to try my patience. Add to that the beginning of a cold, this short visit to Xining was proving to not be the best first impression of China. My dad also shared this view - while he's travelled to the mainland several times on trips before, he has have very few nice things to say about Chinese tourists. And boy, were we about to encounter the motherload when venturing to Lhasa.

I also shared some small moments of bonding with my dad over photography (probably the very few moments before we started getting nitpicky with each other's photography skills). He still doesn't understand why I have to take jumping photos whereever I go.

As for the song that helped me on this leg of the journey, for this leg of the journey, I picked "Human" by The Killers. Not only did their music video, shot in Nevada, look like the landscape of Guide, but the lyrics covered some of the questions I was asking myself during this first part of the trip including:

"Close your eyes, clear your heart, cut the cord."
"Will your system be alright, when you dream of home tonight?"
"I'm on my knees, looking for the answer. Are we human? Or are we dancer?"

Now there are a lot of interpretations of this song's lyrics from a discourse regarding if we are still what we think we are as organic living beings or programmed by technology "dancers" to the argument that none of it makes any sense at all. The way that this song spoke to me, besides having a wicked ass melody for long road trips, is to go and find your escape from what has made you complacent in life. Are we meant to just live a life or are we meant to experience through actions ("the dance") all our own? Letting go of expectations, wiping out pre-concieved notions and embracing what you're there to experience should be the mantra of any traveller and I was struggling to find that while starting off my journey. In fact, there was a sense of homesickness when I encountered my first squat toilet in a restuarant in Xining, and I hadn't even experienced the worst of it. If I wanted to make the best of my trip, I needed to change my attitude quickly, and this song was a great reminder of that.

Next, I'll take you on my 24 hour ride on the Lhasa Express. Train travel - it's fun once. You'll likely never want to do it again.

Introduction to Volume I - Tibet, China - Patience is a Virtue AKA 7 Days (x2) in Tibet

2012-05-29T22:31:00.001-07:00

I've never been to mainland China ever in my life. The fact that I have not stepped foot on my ancestral homeland for over 28 years of my life had always bugged me, especially since my brother got to go before I did. It isn't a competitive thing with my brother, it's just that he's never liked to travel and the fact that he got to go somewhere before I did, irked me. Okay, maybe it is a competitive thing.

My brother, grandmother and grandmother's brother's son (Uncle Once Removed?) in 2006.
See how he's so cool and non-chalant about being in Shanghai? Grrr... (PS - Alex, I'm just kidding)

When I decided to quit my job, I called my dad to let him know that I wanted to spend some time in Taiwan. He informed me that him and 20 of his traveling companions (yes, they have a tourist group that always travel to the mainland together) wanted to go to Tibet, and asked if I wanted to come. I don't think there was a second of thought between the time I read the line, "Did you want to come?" and typing in the words, "Fuck yea, I do." Please note, my dad then returned with an email that said: "What is this 'fuck'?"

The two sides of my family have two very different relationships with the mainland. First my mom's side of the family. My grandfather and grandmother were both staunch Shanghainese. Their accents and their switching of Mandarin Chinese into Shanghainese during conversations gave their background away to anyone familiar with China. My grandfather, from what I understand, grew up orphaned; my grandmother, was forced to leave elementary school very early to help her family earn income by sewing garments. They married, had my uncle, and escaped to Taiwan during the Chinese Civil War, where they had my aunt, then my mom.

Above is a picture of my grandmother and my great aunt (her younger sister).
In 2006, they met for the first time since 1949, when my grandmother was exiled to Taiwan and the remainder of her family was stuck on the mainland with the Communists. I cannot imagine not seeing my brother for almost 60 years. This is what war does to families.

My dad's side of the family originally came from Fujian province in China. Their ancestors had moved across the Taiwan strait centuries ago and had become the 2nd group of native Taiwanese (after the aboriginal groups) to settle on the island - think of them as the Pilgrim equivalents of Asia. They lived through Japanese occupation of the island. Surprisingly, most elderly Taiwanese you encounter have fond memories of the Japanese as the Japanese were responsible for building a lot of the infrastructure and educational institutions on the island. This exposed a generation of Taiwanese (my grandparent's generation) to higher education, which planted the seeds of the importance of being educated in future Taiwanese generations. This second group of Taiwanese did not harbour the same feelings for the Kuomingtang government that landed in 1949 (the 3rd group) - the divisions between the two groups led to the current state of Taiwanese politics, with the 2nd group making up the Independence Green party movement and the 3rd group supporting the KMT government and longing for reunification with the mainland.

With these roots, I had always been curious to see what it was like on the Mainland, having been to Taiwan so many times in my 20s. Some preconceived notions had already formed including:

- there's going to be a lot of people (this turned out to be very true)
- it's going to be dirty and unsanitary (this was mostly driven by my dad's paranoia and my own OCD tendencies)
- there's going to be a lot of pollution (this was true in the Chinese cities, but less so in Tibet, however, the effects of climate change were quite visible)
- people had no issues with displaying bodily functions (yea - this was sadly true)

Now before I move on in my blog, I know that there will be those people offended that I refer to Tibet as separate from China. I can see how it can be as offensive to the Chinese as if outsiders started calling Quebec a separate country when referring to Canada. Please understand that it is just easier to reference Tibet as Tibet, and not as Tibet, China and that nothing should be taken as a political statement.

Our fourteen trip in China and Tibet took us through to both ends of the socio-economic spectrum. We first saw a city in Western China called Xining - a city going through a growth spurt like every other city in the Chinese interior. Hundreds of buildings were being constructed, and infrastructure projects dotted the landscape. The city and the Qinghai region is also the intersection of three cultures - the dominant Han Chinese, the minority Muslim Chinese and then the Tibetan, who dwell on the outskirts of the city. Outside of Xining, the landscape is the main tourist attractions - years of soil, wind and water erosion have carved the mountain sides and the red clay terrain into works of art.

Near Xining, China - At Gui-de National Geological Park. The wind and sand have carved the red clay terrain into any artist's canvas inspiration.

From Xining, we headed towards Lhasa on an overnight train called the Lhasa Express. This train has two main lines - the Beijing -> Lhasa line and the Shanghai -> Lhasa line. Both mainly serve the thousands of migrant workers who go to the big cities to look for work, then there is the small minority of travellers who want to experience life on the train. My main lesson here was that while it was nice to experience once, it inspires you to work hard and earn the money for a plane ticket. There's really nothing romantic about train travel - especially using a squat toilet on a moving train (more on that in my Lhasa Express blog post).

We arrived in Lhasa on Wednesday, April 25 but it seemed like any weekend, as the pace of life in Tibet is so laid back. It has to be - any activity that requires you to take copious amount of oxygen would likely result in you fainting at this altitude. I'll admit, I had trouble at some points - and I'm in pretty good shape.

Lhasa, like the rest of Tibet was magical. Faith and spirituality was everywhere - devout Buddhists were everywhere and like the Vatican, they made their pilgrimage to this, one of the holiest places in Buddhism and showed their devotion through filling temple coffers with renminbis (China's currency) and praying along the 3 km prayer route around Lhasa. Devotees were on their knees, crawling and praying on this route - my dad's only thought here was - "wow, that's so unsanitary."

Near Jongkar Temple - Devotees repeated this prayer action 1,000 times a day. Stand, Kneel, Hands & Head to the Ground and repeat.

We ventured out of Lhasa for about a week, going to cities like Gyangtse, Shigatse, Gonggar, Dingri and Everest Base Camp (on the Tibet side). Like Xining, the landscape was the tourist attraction here. I don't know how many photos I have of mountains, lakes, rivers, flowers - it was a nature explosion on my SD card. Most of them had to be deleted as the 4x4 we were in wasn't great at helping the focus on my camera. Bad roads, fast speeds, altitude adjustment and a head cold did not make for a happy Terence for a couple of days, and my only cure was to stare out the window and appreciate what it was I was looking at.

Near Gonggar, Tibet - A picture like it was a painting.

We ended our trip in Shanghai, China, the economic heart of China. A city like no other I've seen in the world. It's like a New York that sprang up overnight, in fact, it was. Going to the birthplace of my mother's parents was surreal - it felt like my grandmother was with me, guiding me through the city as if she was saying, "Oh my, this city has changed."

This trip to Tibet and China helped me in many ways, which I will elaborate on in future posts. I realized a few things about myself:

- I need to slow down and appreciate the things around me. Patience has never been a forte of mine, and I had to learn to mellow down in a place where everything was mellow.
- I need to be nicer to my dad. I am in fact, a terrible son. I am rude, abrupt and inconsiderate of his feelings. Years of trying to hate him for my parents divorce certainly did a number on me. I realized I needed to channel that anger into figuring out how to connect with him again, and this was certainly a great opportunity to do it.
- I need to put the camera down and just appreciate the scenery without the lens in the way.
- The only faith I need in my life is to live a good life. I'm not meant to follow any major religion, even one as peaceful as Buddhism

This leads me to the song that I started with each day with while on this trip. Affirmation is a song from the same titled album by Savage Garden, released in 1999. In this song, there are statements that were like gems I found on this journey including:

"I believe your parents did the best job they knew how to do."
"I believe we place our happiness in other people's hands."
"I believe you don't know what you got until you say goodbye."

The first line obviously speaks to my relationship with my dad - he's never been there to parent because of the geographic distance between us, but I realized on this trip, no matter how much abuse I spew out at him, he still loves me. It takes a real man to be able to love someone else so unconditionally that they put up with that kind of behaviour.

The second line speaks to my need in my teens and most of my 20s living up to people's expectations and what others thought of me. Coming from a competitive university culture, my career was all about measuring up or being better than my counterparts and never really doing what it was that I wanted to do, to make me happy. My decision to quit really was the start to taking that happiness back into my own hands.

The final line speaks to all the things I've taken for granted - especially my relationships. I never appreciated what my mom did for me before she died (and never had a chance to say it to her). I never had a chance to tell my grandmother what an inspiration she was to me for being an 80 year old uneducated widower who survived by herself in a country that was so foreign to her. This line also focuses me to appreciate the places I have and will travel to - to remember why you were there rather than trying to remember them later through photographs.

It's an amazing song, and goes well with Tibet and its spirituality. I now start everyday with this song. It's my positive reinforcement. Enjoy the song below - and enjoy the throwback to 90's clothing.