Me and My Dad: Learning to Appreciate Our Similarities

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.

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

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

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.

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.