Hey, it's been a while.

As the title states, I've been a pretty lazy trying to update this blog. Life moves quickly and being exhausted after work most days and trying to make the most out of my life left very little time to sit down and collect my thoughts. Yes, I hear the excuses too, and here's to hoping I turn over a new leaf as I hope to turn writing into a living rather than just some hobby to be cast aside when it becomes inconvenient.

Quite a lot has happened since my last update in 2013 (tugs at collar and thinks 'God, two years since my last entry?") Tomorrow is a milestone day for me. One year, count that, twelve months to the day that I boarded a plane from Toronto and set off for two year stint in London. Nope, not the little one in Ontario, the one across the pond. 

365 days goes by in a blink. During that time, I've seen the beauty of the UK countryside, traveled to new European destinations, worked in a boutique agency and on brands that pique my interest and have met many new wonderful friends. It's not all sunshine and roses though, London does smack you with a dose of reality that a place like Toronto will never expose you to. Through all of that, I've come to appreciate three important truths:

1) Never take friendship for granted as it can be incredibly lonely in a big city.

I was skeptical of what my social life would be like over here. Having talked to a few people who have lived here, they voiced the challenge of meeting new and interesting people. Connections through friends and dating apps are very hit and miss. You're forced into the former at times because your well meaning friends think you'll have a lot in common but more often than not, those people have their own lives to lead and were also just meeting you out of common courtesy to their friend. The latter is even worse as there are so many frogs to kiss before you find someone who isn't a narcissist or completely lacking in personality. 

I was lucky to have had my two best friends already living here when I landed. Their kindness extended a roof over my head and food in my belly as I pounded the pavement for work. They, along with one of their siblings, were my therapists while I questioned if London was the right choice in a series of weeks of self-doubt while on the job hunt. Even after I found a job and a place to live in the city, they are still a source of support and thankfully good home-cooked meals everytime we meet up. 

And my luck seemed to have continued in the months following my entry into the UK. Through the apps, I soon met three people I can count as my other BFFs here. They have changed my life here, made me appreciate this city by hearing their experiences, and changed my perceptions of what it means to have good gay role models in your life. Amazing friends are hard to both find and keep around you. Invest in those that make the effort to always be on your team.

2) Be a #TouristEveryday.

One thing I promised myself to do when I moved to London was to act as if I was a tourist with a limited amount of time. Everyday after an interview in the city, I would check out a new museum or a new neighbourhood. I took on the challenge of capturing all 58 Paddington bears on The Paddington Trail while it was on for four weeks around the city of London which made me learn all of the fun landmarks and navigate this notoriously confusing city. 

My coworker once remarked that she has lived in London all of her life and hasn't done half the things that I have. In this city, that is such a shame considering most museums are free entry and that around every borough, there's art, music, food, and culture that's waiting to be explored. 

I share this advice with those friends of mine who have moved to the city and even random people I've met off by chance this approach hoping it'll inspire them to look at this amazing city in a different light. Otherwise, you'll end up as disenchanted as one of the millions of worker drones that buzzes to and from home to work on the (shudder) trains everyday. 

3) Sometimes saying goodbye is the best thing to do.

From the beginning of my career in advertising, I always knew I wanted to move to one of the hubs of advertising and really sink my teeth into the industry there. A Managing Director of mine back at Proximity gave me the best piece of advice - wait until you're established enough to move to a New York or London, otherwise, you're never going to adjust to the standard of living. 

The move to London was in planning stages since that piece of advice back in 2011. It took three more years of planning, saving and hard work to get here. However, the excitement for advertising that I used to feel was cleverly disguising itself as just excitement in moving to London. As I started to work here in London and working on some of the most exciting projects I've ever had a chance to in my career, the excitement started to die. I thought to myself, 'there are people out there who would kill to have the job and the projects you're working on, why are you not more excited?' and I just couldn't muster the energy like I used to.

So I made the tough decision to part with advertising in September. Thankfully, the conversation with my agency's management has been a mature and open discussion. I clearly haven't charted out fully what I'm planning to do next, but I can't continue in a career in which I'm not getting any satisfaction out of. It'll take some time for me to transition into my dream career as a travel writer, and during the time being, I'll have to fill the bank account with some freelance work in advertising (which is thankfully abundant here), but saying goodbye to the industry is the best thing to do, for both my sanity and my stress level.

This isn't my most well thought out post, however, it's just good to sit down and hash out your thoughts unfiltered. I'm glad and grateful I've made this journey and figured out some more self-truths this year. Here's to another year of excitement ahead, particularly because I have no idea what the hell I'm doing.

London in the evening is majestic. A great time to stroll and reflect by the beautiful Thames embankments.

One thing I do miss about home is not being able to jump on the Blue Jays bandwagon now that they are good again. WTF BJs, the one year I decide to leave...

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.

One bite at a time - Eating my way through Europe

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.

The Power of Storytelling

What's great about funemployment, my term for unemployment on your own terms, is the fact that you have all the time in the world to pursue things that make you happy. I've stated to many people that one of my goals during my year off of travelling is to see what I can do with creative writing. Can I write a book, a play, a short story? It's a scary feeling of entering into a world I have had little training in, especially since I've been focused on business for the last nine years of my life.

With all of this time that I've had, I've been occupying my time with activities that allow me to just listen. Sitting in a busy food court observing people's interactions and conversations (it's not that creepy, I swear). Or watching cool educational videos online (thank God for Youtube). Today, I watched two videos which has had a profound impact on my view of storytelling and how I'm going to delve into the world of creative writing.

TED.com has always been a playground for inspirational talks - at the most recent TED conference, Andrew Stanton, director of Wall-E and the new movie John Carter, talks about the clues to a great story. I've always loved telling stories, mainly because I like to talk a lot. But I've never taken the time to investigate and to think about what it takes to tell a great story. When watching his video, all of his key points made me reflect on the stories I've told, both successful and not so great, and his points proved correct! For those that want the Coles notes, here are the major points, but I highly suggest that you watch the full video:

- Make the audience care. If they don't care, they won't pay attention.

- Make a promise - this is a promise that their attention is worthwhile and that they will get something out of the story.

- Make them work for their meal without letting them know that they are working for the story at all.

- Identify your character's motivations - every good character has one.

- Change is fundamental.

- Create anticipation and tension - this uncertainty will keep the audience wanting to know the resolution.

- Have a theme.

- Invoke wonder.

- And most importantly, use what you know, capture your experiences and values as it will be authentic.

The second video I watched today was the Kony 2012 campaign, which launched not 48 hours ago on Youtube and Facebook, has more than 175K views and is honestly one of the best short films I've seen in a while. This campaign (putting my advertiser hat back on here) has the essence of good storytelling. If there was a tick box beside each of the points I listed from Andrew's TED talk, it's checked every one of them. I encourage each of you to watch the video, which is why I won't summarize it for you (yes, it's 30 minutes, but honestly, you spend more time doing other useless things, you might as well watch).

What got me is how incredible the story was, but the guy who created the video was able to succinctly distill it down into a piece which motivated me to sit, watch the whole thing and take action afterwards. The action steps are simple and I can't wait to see what happens with this movement over the next couple of weeks, especially the event on April 20th. I encourage all of you to get involved.

In any case, I hope that these two videos help to inspire and motivate me to do great work. As I sit in the food court of Taipei 101 after eating delicious xiao long bao dumplings at Ding Tai Fung, I am starting on my first chapter of a book that I hope people will enjoy when I'm done.

Live Beautifully - by Terence Jou

In the midst of cleaning up my house and cooking breakfast this morning, I stared at the two sheets of word magnets that I got from an industry party about two years ago. I had a quick decision to make - throw them out or take the time to create something out of it.

I stared at all the random words - some were funny (i.e. douchebag, lick, beans - for some reason, those were ones that stood out). Others started speaking to me and over the next half an hour as I ate my oatmeal, I started piecing together a short note to help inspire myself as I leave on this journey.

It's strange - as I plucked words out of the sheet and set them aside, they started to speak to each other. Moving them around proved to be easy and the message helps to calm my anxiety about travelling this year abroad.

Here it is - let me know what you think:

Live Beautifully - by Terence Jou

Take a chance,

by the end of it

you stand apart.

Love to dance and play,

think and wonder,

and do more.

Stop complaining.

Don't undermine, snooze, whisper,

but involve, engage, shout.

Stare up, not down.

Say: Please and Thank You like you mean it.

Say: Yes.

Question.

Create.

Experiment.

Amaze!

Cheers, friend.