a bend in the river...

ServiceOntario, you’re being silly

Mon, 27 Jun 2016 08:57:22 -0700

Today, we went to ServiceOntario to get our health cards. Because free health care. 🤘 🇨🇦

Their site was pretty clear about their strict requirements for proof of residency. They need original docs like bank statements/utility bills to show that you do in fact live in Ontario to get access to free health coverage.

Unfortunately for me though, most of our utility bills is not under my name (or at least my exact legal name – long story), and I’ve always opted for e-statements for all my banking. They did not accept a printout of my bank statement.

The ServiceOntario lady at the counter, of course, tried to be helpful:

👩🏼 Lady: Well, you can get your address updated on your Ontario driver’s license, and then come back and use that as your proof of address to get your health card.
👧🏻 Me: Okay! [pause] Oh wait, do you need proof of address to update my license?
👩🏼 Lady: Nope! You can just tell me your address right now.

At this point, I think she’s also realizing the ridiculous-ness of this – it turns out, there are apparently no requirements whatsoever to change your address for your license. You can make it anything and you don’t have to prove anything!

But once you have that though, that’s sufficient “proof” for all the other things in Ontario! 🤔

Ah, silly, silly Ontario…

I woke up this morning...

Mon, 30 May 2016 07:20:30 -0700

… with a memory of myself in middle school, and wanted to write it down.

This was somewhat inspired by a tweet by an internet-famous chess master, who asked why there is such low female participation in chess. Chess, like tech, is a very male dominated field.

In your opinion why are chess players overwhelmingly male, and how can we encourage female participation in the game? #chess
— John Bartholomew (@fins0905)
May 28, 2016

This is a touchy topic, with many people having their own opinions and theories on it. I’m not here to convince anybody of anything, nor am I interested in getting into arguments with people on the Internet.

But, I do want to share a personal anecdote.

When I was in elementary school, I loved school. I loved every part of it: the actual classroom learning, and all the cool new friends I made (I had just moved to Canada at the time). You wouldn’t believe it if you know me now, but I was this fearless little outgoing (lulz yeah, right??) kid who mostly didn’t care what others thought.

When you’re a kid like that and you love something so much, you naturally do well in it. So, I did well in school. Which of course, made me love school more.

Things changed around grade 6 though.

It’s crazy how so many years later, you can still look back and point to a particular incident in your life that shaped your personality today. That moment for me was in grade 6. That was when I first learned that people can be genuinely mean, and that they can talk behind your back about you to your friends, and that not everyone will always like you :(

I started to really care about what my peers thought. I was no longer confident in my “likeability”. I became much more shy (and still am today) because I was worried what I say/do will make people not like me.

This all gets interesting when you also do well academically. It was in my head (from reading books and watching TV) that doing well in school doesn’t win you any popularity points with the cool kids.

I distinctly remember in grade 8 graduation, feeling embarrassed about having my name repeated multiple times for the academic awards I was getting. I wanted to run off the stage, and wished they had just given it to me privately. When I was nominated to be valedictorian, I outright declined it because (1) I was way too shy to speak in front of people, and (2) I thought it made me look uncool.

And the kicker? I thought these things even when I had a circle of good friends, who I knew wouldn’t think poorly of me for being “smart”. I made certain decisions in school because the other irrelevant people, the “cool kids”, the people I’m not even friends with, the people I really shouldn’t care about… would somehow judge me for what I do.

Looking back now, this all sounds so absurd. It sounds crazy to me too, but I actually thought these things!

So back to the tweet – why is there such low female participation in tech/chess/some-other-male-dominated-field, you ask?

I might be making this up, but gender ratio is probably fine at young age groups (assuming you expose the same thing equally to both genders). Children don’t care what others think. They’ll do things that are fun to them.

But then this annoying thing called puberty hits and suddenly, everyone feels vulnerable. There’re a lot of social pressures to do things a certain way to feel included. This vulnerable age is where, I posit, a lot of girls drop off from tech/chess.

Of course, I’m not claiming that this is the only explanation for the gender ratio in these fields. If you’re passionate about this, you should talk to more women and hear their stories. Like, sit down and genuinely listen.

Based on personal experience though, it certainly wouldn’t hurt if there are more positive female role models to make chess cool, fun and interesting, so that it isn’t perceived as a hit to one’s social status if girls showed any interest in it :)

Do you remember?

Thu, 11 Feb 2016 07:48:45 -0800

Not sure what I was doing the other day, but I found myself on archive.org where I managed to click my way to an old copy of my online journal from high school. One particular entry caught my eye.

I debated whether I really wanted to show the entire entry as-is, because (1) it was SO embarrassingly and overwhelmingly pink; and (2) the writing was so silly.

But here it is anyway, because what I read somewhat surprised me.

I was shocked by a few things:

That I was almost swayed from pursuing computer science.
That I don’t remember feeling any of this.

I’m glad I pushed through all of that and went into software engineering anyway. But, it goes to show just how easy it is for girls to be dissuaded from choosing CS.

Things worked out for me because I liked computer science enough. And I apparently received many words of encouragement from my online LiveJournal friends (according to a later post). At the time, I had made a bunch of online friends through a forum which attracted many technical girls who loved making websites. Having that online community and those online friendships certainly helped.

And of course, I got a call from a current software engineering student at the time, which 17-year-old me thought was the coolest thing ever. This I do remember, though perhaps not in the detail I had written about.

Indeed, life went on :) Many other girls may not be so lucky.

So please, if you know a high school girl considering CS, be supportive and encouraging! It costs you no time, and, as my 17-year-old self reminded me, it makes a whole world of a difference!

Oh, and LULZ at me being worried about the job prospects for software engineers in the future. I was young, OKAY?

#2015bestnine

Tue, 29 Dec 2015 12:21:22 -0800

There’s a web app going around where it runs through your Instagram feed and auto-generates a 3x3 grid of your most liked photos in 2015.

Which, is cool. But, it’s not like I have a huge Instagram following where I get tons of tons of likes anyway. So, I manually went through my Instagram and picked out my own #2015bestnine because it’s more fun this way!

It was surprisingly hard to whittle it down to just 9 photos to represent 2015, but here they are!

1) https://www.instagram.com/p/z0BlAtIZ6z/ – Inspired by a coworker and friend, I decided to pick up calligraphy again early 2015!

2) https://www.instagram.com/p/1ZCroWoZ6F/ – I signed up for the STP 2015 and started more serious weekly training with my Sunday Bike Club crew :]

3) https://www.instagram.com/p/3YNKheIZ-q/ – WAC’s basic class has been a big part of my spring/summer months for the past 3 years. This was captured on a beautiful weekend where I spent all of it crack climbing (my favourite kind of climbing) at Tieton!

4) https://www.instagram.com/p/4NLfSJIZ1q/ – It was the first time US Open was held in the pacific northwest, so being the big golfer the boyfriend was, we snagged some tickets to watch the final Sunday round! Congrats Jordan Spieth!

5) https://www.instagram.com/p/44WWrhoZ1u/ – Another successful summit up Mount Rainier (14,410 ft) on the Fourth of July weekend. This one felt way more sketchy than my first summit cause the snow bridges were melting so quickly. I was also less fit this time around. My entire rope team collapsed and popped a bunch of ibuprofen as soon as we got to the summit crater lol

6) https://www.instagram.com/p/6Ig70hoZ-0/ – Posing for the photographer along our 200-mile route from Seattle to Portland - what a fun ride! The weather was also very kind to us given that it was in the dreadful ~30ishC range in the weeks leading up to the event.

7) https://www.instagram.com/p/6OeJVhIZ4U/ – Got real up close and personal with Macklemore at the company ship party :P I even touched Ryan Lewis ;) Fun show!

8) https://www.instagram.com/p/8Cjo-7oZzh/ – Probably the weirdest part of the year. In a strange turn of events, I started watching and (sort of) playing chess. I say “strange” here because I really did not like chess as a kid, but the boyfriend somehow suckered me into following a chess YouTuber.

9) https://www.instagram.com/p/9sMuJQIZyQ/ – A lot of soul-searching happened near the end of year. I ended up quitting my job at a large tech company and went to volunteer at this lovely non-profit startup!

Rainy day 🌧 = calligraphy day. Trying out a new pointy-finger...

Mon, 23 Nov 2015 12:16:36 -0800

Rainy day 🌧 = calligraphy day. Trying out a new pointy-finger nib with lyrics from Adele’s new 25 album 🎶 So much love for her music! Great music to handwrite to ❤️

That said, I still can’t quite find a good rhythm with pointed nibs :( The fact I have to dip a lot makes it hard to make my letters consistent. That, and I totally screwed up the line spacing near the end. More practice needed.

#calligraphy #lettering #adele

Getting into the holiday spirit today 🎅🎶 More calligraphy...

Sat, 14 Nov 2015 19:14:39 -0800

Getting into the holiday spirit today 🎅🎶 More calligraphy practice, complete with mistakes and all. Kept spelling Christmas wrong. Ugh!

#calligraphy

Got some new ink & didn’t feel like going to work yet....

Sat, 07 Nov 2015 23:16:57 -0800

Got some new ink & didn’t feel like going to work yet. So doing some early morning calligraphy practice with Adele’s new song ✒️🎶 I’m definitely more of a broad nib person. My pointed nib hands are still very uneven 😞 #calligraphy #adele #sodarkoutside

Calligraphy practice with chess quotes! ❤️✒️ I used a new (and...

Thu, 29 Oct 2015 09:57:35 -0700

Calligraphy practice with chess quotes! ❤️✒️ I used a new (and MUCH more flexible) nib here, and can definitely notice the difference in the letters produced.
Things to work on: (1) More consistency and “rhythm” in my lettering. (2) Stop blundering my pieces on the board.
#calligraphy #chess

Uncial is my favourite script to write with these days ✒️ And...

Tue, 27 Oct 2015 08:20:17 -0700

Uncial is my favourite script to write with these days ✒️ And chess is on my mind #calligraphy #chess #madeamistake #doyouseeit

Testing my new nibs

Mon, 23 Mar 2015 22:43:10 -0700

Remember how much I hated the Tachikawa nibs because ink simply REFUSED. TO. FLOW?

Well, my brand new Mitchell nibs that just came in the mail exhibited the same behaviour. My reservoir was visibly full, but nothing would flow from nib to paper. Seeing this made me to believe that maybe it wasn’t the Tachikawa nib that was busted, but perhaps I really just haven’t “broken in” the nib enough.

I know brand new nibs have a coating of stuff on them that you gotta wipe off. I had done that to the Tachikawa nibs using alcoholic Purell wipes like this one:

But clearly, that wasn’t enough. So I tried a different method I read about in a book, which is to put the nib under an open flame.

And… that helped! The ink on the Tachikawa nib was flowing much more smoothly, though still not quite the same as the Brause nib. After a while and trying many other things (including practically blackening my nib from holding it under the flame for too long), I just changed the way I held my pen and the way I moved my hand, to work around it.

When I write, I usually hold the pen at a ~45 degrees to the plane of paper (i.e. not vertically straight up). When starting a new letter or inking a fresh disconnected stroke on paper, I currently still struggle with ink flow for both the Tachikawa and the new Mitchell nibs (even after “breaking them in” under a flame).

To get the ink going, I tilt the pen vertically straight. I visualize using gravity to suck the ink to the tip. Once the ink starts flowing for a stroke, the ink will continue to flow for the rest of the stroke, and I can return to writing at the more comfortable 45-degree angle.

It’s a bit hard to describe (and probably much more difficult to visualize) in words. Maybe someday I’ll take a video of this hand motion.

Since no one reads this, and really, so I can remember my little calligraphy journey, I’ll post some test pages from when I was first testing the new Mitchell nibs. For the sake of transparency and personal documentation, here’re some craptacular unflitered practice lettering for y’all!

Testing the Mitchell 2.5mm nib. In the top left corner where I was trying to draw the step ladder for my nib size, the ink wasn’t really flowing.

Testing the Tachikawa nibs after putting it under a flame. Huuuuge ink blot in the top left. But definitely better post-flame than pre-flame. Also, these letters are awful. Much sloppy.

new calligraphy tools

Sun, 15 Mar 2015 08:00:18 -0700

My order of nibs/pen holders arrived earlier than expected! :D

Here’re Mitchell roundhand square nibs, sizes 0, 1 and 1.5. And Brause 76 Rose Nib, which is a pointed nib, for when I start learning the fancy-looking Copperplate script.

I also picked up two oblique penholders (Speedball and Ziller), both of which will come in handy once I start learning Copperplate. That won’t be for a while though since I’m looking to learn italics next. But I was getting Mitchell nibs anyway, so I figured I might as well order the pen holders too to save on shipping.

Initial reactions? The quality of the Ziller pen holder is SO. BAD. For reference, here’s the $1.90 Speedball oblique holder.

You know, nothing too fancy. About what I would expect for less than 2 bucks. Then there’s the Ziller’s Grey Oblique Pen Holder for a whooping $12.95! I really only got it because it claims to fit the EF66 nibs, which are of a smaller size.

In the grand scheme of things, $12.95 isn’t that much, but given that my 2-buck holder looks reasonably solid, I expect a bit more from the Ziller holder.

Nope.

Two issues with it:

It doesn’t even hold the nib size it claims to fit (in fact, none of my nibs fit into it)
It looks like it’s going to fall apart any minute

Look at this thing!

The metal flange is poking out. The plastic looks scratched and cut up. It literally looks like somebody had broken off the metal flange from the plastic holder and then haphazardly stuffed it back in, hoping that it holds.

The ridiculous level of poor craftsmanship baffles me. I don’t think I’ve ever purchased anything online and was so blown away but how cheap and low quality it is. Especially considering it was more than 6x the cost of my 2-buck pen holder :(

Ziller, you disappoint.

full gothic script!

Sat, 14 Mar 2015 07:55:52 -0700

Penholder: Speedball Pen Holder (Black)
Nib: Brause C Nib 2.0mm
Ink: Daler-Rowney Calli Ink (Burgundy)
Paper: Clairfontaine Spiral-Bound Graph Notepad (similar)
Reference Book: Simple Stoke Calligraphy by Marci Donley

After the disaster with the Tachikawa nib on Monday, I decided to switch up BOTH the ink and nib for my Morning Scribbles for the rest of the week. Which seems to work better.

But, I still think none of my nib/ink combos are particularly great - there’s just toooo much ink gushing out of the nib when it was first dipped, no matter how much I try to tap the excess off on the side of the bottle. It usually takes roughly the 7th or 8th letter after dipping before the ink flow feels ~right~. So, I ordered new Mitchell nibs to experiment with. They’re the ones used in some of the books I’ve browsed through, and are also much wider nibs, which actually fits the grid size of my paper. No more translating proportions and doing mental math in my head :P

This week, I focused on the majuscule (aka capital letters) of the gothic script. Sorry I haven’t really been reporting my progress daily. I had this grand idea that I could practice before work, then use my commute to work to blog about that morning’s progress - it was brilliant! But, Tumblr’s mobile app isn’t feature rich enough, as in, I can’t insert photos in my text entries - whaaaaat! :( This means I gotta finish my blog BEFORE I even get on the bus. And frankly, I don’t have enough time to do ALL of that in the morning. By the time I get home from work, I crash, so it’s pretty difficult to squeeze a blog entry out of me in the evenings.

Anyhoo, I digress. Back to calligraphy!

I started the week off with more practice of lowercase words:

Then moved on to learning the majuscule of the first half of the alphabet the next day:

To be honest, it was actually a bit intimidating starting the majuscule, as I was just feeling good about my lowercase letters. With the uppercase letters, it certainly feels like I have to start from the beginning, and deal with some initially ugly lettering again. I hate sucking. Even initially. But I figured this is just how it’s going to be whenever I learn a new hand/script (or pretty much anything in life), so I better get used to it!

And finally, the rest of the majuscule:

I ran into a funny misprint in my reference book, where the ductus (aka order of strokes) for the letters Q to W were just completely missing! At first, I thought someone might’ve just ripped out a page from the book, but nope - here’s page 63 ending with the capital P…

And then page 64 begins with Y! WUT.

I remember thinking, what the heck do I do nowwwww? Fortunately, there’s an overall “reference page” showing all the letters for a particular script, so I just guessed the ductus based on what I’ve already learned about the other letters.

So there you go, ladies and gents, gothic script learning – complete! :) Onto the italic hand next!

Sigh

Mon, 09 Mar 2015 09:41:07 -0700

Penholder: Tachikawa Comic Pen Nib Holder
Nib: Tachikawa Calligraphy Pen Nib - Type C (Sharp) - 2mm
Ink: Kuretake Sumi Ink
Paper: Clairfontaine Spiral-Bound Graph Notepad (similar)
Reference Book: Simple Stoke Calligraphy by Marci Donley

Skipped Morning Scribbles over the weekend since I was out doing stuff outside, what with the GORGEOUS weather Seattle was gifted with in such early season.

But I’m back at it again this morning! It’s crazy how “out of it” I felt from just not practicing for 2 days. My sore arms from climbing also didn’t help at all with steady heads. As a result, the writing today look like shite.

Here’re my current issues:

I still can’t get the x-height of my letters consistent. The grid size on my graph paper is unfortunately the wrong size for my nib. So I either just have to suck it up, get unlazy and draw my own guidelines. Or get a broad edge nib that fits my graphic paper.
My nibs, ugh, my nibs. I mostly used the Brause nib this morning, but I decided to give the Tachikawa nibs a try again. And well, it STILL sucks.

(Above) Here I am, trying to write but I just couldn’t get the ink to flooooow. Much ugh.

(Below) Then when I was gently moving the pen around, an entire BLOB of ink fell out of the reservoir! WTF. I got so frustrated with it, I stopped practicing. I’ll get back at it again tomorrow morning.

On a completely non-calligraphy related note, here’re some photos from the weekend. The first was taken around sunset on Saturday at Vantage where I was climbing all day, followed by a 45-mile ride with the Sunday Bike Club crew the next day :]

Much sore indeed.

gothic minuscule

Fri, 06 Mar 2015 08:58:01 -0800

Penholder: Speedball Pen Holder (Black)
Nib: Brause C Nib 2.0mm
Ink: Kuretake Sumi Ink
Paper: Clairfontaine Spiral-Bound Graph Notepad (similar)
Reference Book: Simple Stoke Calligraphy by Marci Donley

woot woot. This morning I finally finished learning the full lowercase alphabet (or as fancy calligraphers call it, the ~minuscule~) of the gothic script. I’ve swapped between the Tachikawa Type C 2mm nib and this Brause one several times when learning this script trying to see which one I liked better. In the end, I’m still not a huuuuuge fan of either cause the ink flow just isn’t very consistent. It’s either POURING and I have ink blots everywhere, or I’m just scratching my paper trying to get ink to flow.

I ended up using Brause more cause it was ~less bad~. It could be my ink too. Shrugs. I’ll keep experimenting. I did end up picking up tricks towards the end of the alphabet (I learn them in order) where if the ink stopped flowing and I *know* there’s still a ton left in the reservoir, I’ll just kind of “dip” the nib in the “wet” parts of an earlier letter I’ve just penned and it’ll get the ink going again.

This worked quite well with the Brause nib. I might go and try this trick with the Tachikawa nib and see if I feel better about it. After all, at first glance, the Tachikawa nib just ~feels~ more high quality and I’m really hoping I can make it work.

For the Morning Scribbles the next couple of days, I’ll probably spend a bit more time with the gothic minuscule, writing actual words and phrases with instead of just letters. Then onwards to the uppercase!! (Or in fancy terms, the ~majorscule~) 😎

morning scribbles

Thu, 05 Mar 2015 08:34:13 -0800

I recently cleared out my cluttered computer desk to create a little makeshift calligraphy workstation. My goal is to have something I can walk up to and sit down for quick 30-45 minutes of practice in the mornings.

I’ve been a morning person since high school. I’d muuuuch rather wake up early at 3am to finish a project than *stay up* late til 3am to finish it, which apparently sounds crazy to people. Suffice to say, my most productive hours and most of my best work is done shortly after I wake up, so it was super important to me that I get morning practice time before work.

I’ve setup my desk for 2 days now and it has worked great so far; I was able to slip in some practice every morning before work. Let’s see if I can keep this up 😎

Calligraphy journey

Wed, 04 Mar 2015 23:00:06 -0800

Inspired by a coworker friend and her pretty calligraphy instagram posts, I decided to pick up the pen again.

I taught myself random bits of calligraphy back in grade school, when my cousin gifted me a Shaeffer calligraphy starter set, but I never formally learned it. I also never really practiced methodically; all the learning was pretty haphazard. Upon reading more about it now, I realize how many bad/incorrect habits I have that I’d like to break. Plus, I’ve really only used a fountain pen (since that was what the starter kit gave me). I’d like to learn how to use dip pens now. It’s apparently waaay more flexible, and I get to use cool fancy colours once I get more comfortable with it.

I picked up a few books over the weekend and decided to start from scratch. I’m writing this here mostly because I’ll feel accountable once it’s in writing. This way, I’ll be more likely to follow through. Besides, as I’m going through my practices the last couple of days, there’re sooooo many little things I’m learning that I want a place to note it all down, and track my own progress over time.

I’m super excited to embark on my little calligraphy journey!! :)

My first attempts at using a dip pen with a pointed nib… incorrectly. It was shortly after this page that I decided to start from scratch.

What did the hot dog say when he crossed the finish...

Mon, 18 Aug 2014 18:52:59 -0700

What did the hot dog say when he crossed the finish line?

I’m a wiener!

Dear interwebs, I must be doing it wrong, but how does one...

Sun, 13 Apr 2014 12:03:27 -0700

Dear interwebs,

I must be doing it wrong, but how does one remove the grigri from its packaging?? How exactly do you remove that plastic piece from the biner hole??

Sincerely stumped,

Charing

How to Kiss a Girl: 1. Crash through window 2. Flip coat 3....

Thu, 13 Mar 2014 08:39:55 -0700

How to Kiss a Girl:

1. Crash through window
2. Flip coat
3. Tousle hair
4. Grab her face & kiss her like you mean it
5. Stride in slow-motion
6. Exit like a badass

😍 #sherlock #molly #kiss #benedict #cumberbatch #fangirling #benedictcumberbatch

Some of the best Korean food I’ve had in the Seattle area....

Sun, 15 Dec 2013 18:24:50 -0800

Some of the best Korean food I’ve had in the Seattle area. Good find, Jomanda! (at Sam Oh Joung)