the fish epic

I have a bunch of these cheap movie tickets that I bought from a friend, so I am watching more movies in cinemas than usual, which is something I am growing to dread.

The most recent film I saw was Percy Jackson and the Olympians: the Lightning Thief, toted by many reviewers so far as a Harry Potter knock-off — both feature a teenager with hitherto-unknown special powers, both are awkwardly going through puberty, both are composed of many books, each of which describe one year of the protagonist’s growth.

The comparison pretty much breaks down here. Why? Because Percy Jackson… really doesn’t compare to the world created by J. K. Rowling.

Roger Ebert once described a poor movie by its “clangs” — when a film asks for one too many suspensions of disbelief due to shitty scripting or acting or sometimes, as in this case, when the plot holes gape so wide they threaten to swallow Poseidon’s fat mother whole:

• Why are all the demigods trained only in combat? No “Athena’s school of battle strategy”? What about Aphrodite’s partyin’ sorority girls — do they fight in steel-plated bikini? Why are sons of Hephaestus fighting instead of manning the smith? What about something along the lines of, oh, Percy naming the seven seas over which his father is dominion? Gee, all the power and might of the Greek gods have just been flattened to a single-dimensional group of teenagers with a single skill-set — how to play capture the flag while waving swords, sitting in leather armour.
• The armour and weaponry need a bit upgrading, methinks. Leather’s pretty crap unless it’s magically imbued. Magically imbued cloth armour would probably provide better resistance. And probably make them blend in a bit better with the rest of society.
• Okay, I get that the children of the gods are supposed to have superpowers related to their parent, and I’ll look aside the fact that nowhere in the old myths were there any suggestion of demigod heroes having any fancy powers like… spontaneous healing, or manipulation of water. I’ll suspend that. But why on earth do they have to like the stuff that their parents liked? How many of us like the stuff that our parents liked? Bellbottoms… no. Celine Dion… no. Affinity for the stuff, yes, but there was not a single character in Percy that deviated from that. It was all… mother’s Demeter? Ok grass sod roof. Dad’s Hermes? Ok thief. Mother’s Athena? Architect prodigy. Right.
• There is strong evidence supporting the theory that brains are not “hardwired” for languages. All the teenage demigods having “dyslexia” because they’re all “hardwired for ancient Greek” reeks of the author shoehorning something in without doing his homework.
• Where are the adult demigods? Why are all the important demigods annoying teenagers? Their existence was sort of alluded to, and they’re all off doing important things, but the world coming to an end and they’re sitting around doing fuck-all. Clang.
• What about new gods? Given the prolific pantheon created in the first couple hundred years of its inception, I doubt the gods have stopped shagging each other in their free time. I mean, they had this serious-sounding pact to not procreate and two of them still broke it within years. At this rate they must have created at least a dozen new full-fledged gods.
• What about demigods from other countries? Why not, you know, Greece, or is that too obvious? Why’s their stronghold in the fucking United States? Surely places under less scrutiny, such as, say China, are pretty sweet breeding ground for all sorts of wacky stuff. Here’s a brilliant chance for the author to show off any trace of worldliness that isn’t so typical of North American culture, and he did fuck-all with it.

As someone who’s tried to create worlds, I have boundless respect for Rowling’s nice, thoughtful fantastical world requiring really only a single suspension of disbelief: “normal folks lack some special likely-genetically-linked trait and would never see magic”. Most everything is built from that premise and it never really falls apart. Rowling’s no Frank Herbert, but her stuff’s pretty good. Her characters grew from the world. In contrast, the story of Percy Jackson can be told with their magical abilities substituted with, say, special gun abilities. The story would still, basically, work. Sometimes that’s the mark of an immature world, sometimes it’s shitty character development. In Percy’s case, it’s a bit of both.

Don’t get me wrong — I totally admire the effort that’s gone into writing the Percy series (here’s me, who’s never written anything longer than a 10-page short story), and I love me my Greek mythical stories so this was a great refresher. Modernifying Greek myths isn’t easy. But for the love of… Zeus, don’t compare it to Harry Potter. Harry’s actually a pretty decent piece of contemporary literature that dares to explore the darker sides of adolescence and humanity in general, not some fluffy bedtime stories that was ad libbed and then made into a movie.

The only reason I enjoyed it in the theatre was because there was no one telling me they were sure I would love it. Which brings me to the next object of my wrath: Avatar.

Just about everyone who’s seen the movie before me told me not only that it was amazing and awesome and groundbreaking but that I would certainly love it. Usually when this happens alarm bells go off in my head (unless it was a film made by Pixar), but I’m sure my prejudice was only part of the reason I came out seething with more hatred for James Cameron than ever.

Let’s get the good stuff out of the way. I liked the 3D effects. The planet Pandora looked pretty, ooh, ahh. My puny brain appreciates the greatness of the technology. Ok, let’s move on then…

• American army type people being the ugly bullies are a yawn. Tell me something new. And not real.
• The evolutionary biologist in me screams for an explanation as to why the whole world of Pandora turns into a Dance Dance Revolution gamepad at night. Yes it’s pretty. But why? What advantage does it serve itself, or Eywa? To be frank, this is a small clang that I could’ve ignored if only they didn’t try to stuff science into everything else. Neurons in plant matter? Connected to everything so organisms can potentially upload their memory and communicate to each other? Seriously neat stuff! But DDR? Clang.
• Eywa being the mother goddess thing was really cool up until it was revealed that she was real. Then it was only sort of cool, because that is awfully simplistic. Basically Eywa is what us hippies already believe in, except concretified on a different world and given a different name. That’s just fucking plagiarism.

The plot was pretty shallow, but that’s not the worst part. What I hate is the fact people love this shallow, unchallenging movie and call it “deep” and “revolutionary.” Disney is not revolutionary. James Cameron retold a story already retold by Walt DIsney, except he didn’t even have the balls to kill off the main guy at the end. Oh and the morons who want to kill themselves so they might reincarnate on Pandora? How about they open their fucking eyes and look at this beautiful world?

For bonus points, read Charlie Stross’ Star Trek-hatin’ explanation and you’ll see why I hold Frank Herbert and G. R. R. Martin and such high regard.

Last year I received a Christmas letter from M’s mum that briefly chronicled her and her immediate family’s adventures. It felt special — partly because I was mentioned, but partly also because it brought back a pang of nostalgia.

Card-writing was a ritual that involved the whole family. I recall resenting it somewhat; I hardly knew most of these aunts and uncles whose Christmases and New Years were going to be happy and merry at the expense of my hurting hand. Sometimes we got creative and stamped the cards with colourful stars or mistletoes. I used a glitter pen one year and I got glitter all over my hands for days. But I liked receiving cards so I didn’t complained much. (I think. I’d have to check with mum on that.)

In Hong Kong, our windows were covered with security metal bars disguised as decorations. We used to string cards all along it, and watch as our collection grow. Many came from names I didn’t recognise; some of them, mum would look at for a long time before hanging up. Our neighbours across the street would do the same thing. The side of the building was a wonderful display of fire hazard throughout December.

Slowly, the strings of paper cards dwindled. We stopped sending them at some point. I think it was the year we moved to Canada. We sent out e-mails and e-cards instead. Eventually we stopped sending those too.

M and I sent out Christmas letters this year. We printed most of them on card stock and wrote a few special ones by hand (like the one we sent to Gooma and M’s mum and grandmother). Included were some photos that were taken by talented Marlis Funk. I don’t know if the recipients shared the same feeling of specialness, but if even a handful of them did, I did good.

I’ve saved just over 10% of my income in 2009. Woop!

The day after we arrived at M’s mum’s house the tension was thicker than the sweetest oxygen. I left the room crying on Christmas morning. After that, I kept my head low and dared not speak unless spoken to.

The same thing happened last Christmas too, M’s mum confided later, and she was the one who left crying. She went shopping for hours afterward so she might heal. So this year’s impulse for a getaway, though sudden, made all the sense in the world.

Five of us crammed into M’s car and drove to the hot springs nearby — we are quite lucky to be near so many here — and we soaked for several hours in the sulphurous pools. It was good to float. (Well, I tended more to sink.) I love water. I suspect I would wilt and die if I could not live near a large body of water.

I could scratch off this item on the list but, to be frank, I was a little disappointed. The hot springs I grew up knowing about were not mere swimming pools filled with steamy hot water that smelt funny. In the manga I read as I was growing up the hot springs had stone steps and stone walls and was mostly a wild place, except for the little bathhouse that neatly blocks its entryway. There were no spas or restaurants that gouge you simply because there’s nothing else within reasonable driving distance.

So I’m amending this goal to be “visit a (more) natural hot spring” because damn, this kinda sucked.

My mum complained the other day that papa’s tropical fish hobby is very expensive. Grandma joking calls him a bai ga zai, (literally “the little son who wastes away the family fortune). I laughed at the time, but soon I was struck by an important revelation: my hobbies are not any cheaper.

One of my favourite past-times is checking out photographs of beautiful interior design. Design*sponge has a neat little section of “sneak-peeks” which are typically galleries showcasing the homes or workplaces of designers, and I have a whole section in my feedly dedicated to fancy houses.

Fancy houses and furniture doesn’t come cheaply, though. Especially pricey is the stuff I love: mid-century modern pieces made from wood, metal and leather. I bought this coffee table (from MCMF) just now for a whopping 300 Canadian Dollars and that’s considered “cheap”:

It's smaller than it looks :-/

For comparison, consider that a good dining room set — table with six chairs — sets you back $10k.

Of course, I can get and have gotten IKEA furniture, which often has that similar minimalist Scandinavian feel. And I love IKEA. I really believe it has its place. Many (though, fewer and fewer over time now) of its pieces boast excellent modularity and can work with other IKEA or designer pieces, and is great for, say, a low-budget household with a bit of student debt. But if you’re after good quality (e.g. solid wood), the price point often goes way up, even in IKEA.

Some time ago I was trying to elaborate to a male friend what, in terms of fashion, I found attractive. At the start of the conversation, I stated that I didn’t like “mainstream fashion” because it is too “effortless.”

But, he interjected, it takes them hours to do it! We clarified that to mean “lack of creativity.” If I had hours to get ready every morning or a bottomless wallet, I could look just like them too. Another friend has a deathly fear of looking mainstream (though really, barring a lobotomy, she has nothing to fear) — because they all look the same. If I sound snobbish… well, I am.

I came to realise that I despise it because of the thoughtless embrace by a large subset of the population. And the fashion of the day isn’t all bad. The ladies on magazine covers tend to look pretty OK, if a little thin. And a roomful of mid century pieces thrown haphazardly together makes me feel the same way. So it’s not the look, but the lack of intent on those who thoughtlessly dress in this way. I call this zombie fashion.

I think I actually despise any action committed without thought, but I suppose purchasing decisions come up most often due to the nature of your purchases sticking around. The objects I acquire are a reflection of my values and ethical code. Whether I want to or not, and whether they know it or not, other people view me accordingly.

I’m not fashionable. But I do have my own style. It took me some effort to develop, and it’ll take me some more effort to describe it.

In robotics and computer animation, the term “uncanny valley” refers to the creepiness of a creature that is very life-like but not life-like-enough. When we see an object that very closely resembles a human-being, we become acutely aware of anomalies which signal to us that the object isn’t entirely human. Most of us can tell pretty quick if we’re looking at a human corpse, and soon thereafter we feel kinda weird looking at it.

When I first began looking at interior design photos to get ideas for myself, I was a bit concerned with my own ability to create these rooms. I mean, I knew my creations wouldn’t be as awesome, but I’m also aware that there is often an uncanny valley somewhere between being a noob and being awesome. I guess you can call it the trying-too-hard valley.

Over the holidays I’ve gotten tired of just looking at photos of furniture, though. I’m delving into the section of DIY “befores & afters”. One day, I tell myself, I’m going to totally remake something I’ll keep forever. It’ll have lots of character and my kids will fight over who gets to keep it when I die.

Looking at my purchases this way is a wholly new experience. Is this item fit to re-gift to the next generation? What, in my household, would my children or grandchildren covet?

The answer right now is “very few.” I’ve been wearing and buying zombie fashion and zombie furniture until very recently, so the transferable value of my belongings is fairly meagre. I can see my kids bickering over the Petrof piano or our awesome Yamaha receiver/amplifier, but my mum bought the piano and Matt picked the receiver, so I feel a little like I’m cheating.

I do predict that they will love the cookbooks M and I will write. Which leads to my next expensive hobby.

Unless he’s real animated about some conversation (such as tropical fishes), papa scoffs down his supper of rice and sung (communal plates of foodstuffs that go with rice) and is usually finished when the rest of us are just starting. Grandma says it’s a result of being sent to boarding school when he was a lad; a table of hungry teenagers pecking at limited amounts of rice and sung and they’re all gotta learn to eat real quick. Sometimes it seems he gets impatient with our snail’s pace and would start divvying up the rest of the sung, which makes mum’s blood boil a little and she would ask him why he ate up so quickly? We’re trying to enjoy our food here, and I would nod dutifully, suddenly becoming aware of the flavours of my current mouthful if I wasn’t already. Papa would kind of roll his eyes. Sometime he goes to watch some ballgame on TV for a bit. More often now he goes to feed his fish, since it’s usually about that time of day, and he would talk endlessly, lovingly about them. Or sometimes he criticises with surprising detail the supper he just scoffed down.

I guess foodism has been in my genes like that. M being a great cook helps a lot too.

As an aside: fellas, there are few things that impress a girl more than knowing how to cook a few dishes or fix a broken toilet. Life skills are amazingly attractive.

So, even when we get busy, we like to cook. We cook good food. We like to cook for a lot of people because then we can eat a variety of things. I get depressed looking at an empty fridge. As a result our grocery bill is up in the $700 in a good month.

When I told my mum this, she revealed that she, papa and grandma share a grocery bill of about $450 per month. I chalked it up to buying mostly organics, but there are few excuses for eating three goat legs at $50 a pop. That’s just extravagant.

And then there’s the booze. Since M and I starting having meals together, our bar has rarely ever run dry. Local wines are, thankfully, cheap and good, but I still think of it a a bit of an awful, indulgent thing.

So mum, don’t fret about pops. We’re way worse. Fret about us instead.

I don’t know what we’re going to eat if I lose my job and have to go back to school or have a kid or something. Might be I have to start eating my coffee table.

GIR (formerly Minsc) is a terrier mix of about a year old. He loves to run around the couch, dig, and chew on things. He came from Korea to teach me about minimalism and keeping tidy.

After the initial 72 hours of his arrival passed, it was clear that he wasn’t house-trained. The fun surprises we came home to stopped being fun pretty quickly. (Although it was a good excuse to burn yummy-smelling incense.) For the next two months, when we’re at work during the day, it’s the kitchen for the bugger.

So he’s come to hate the kitchen, which is no surprise and really sort of cute. His reactions, whether to something pleasurable or disgusting, are hilariously exaggerated, especially if you consider the awful futility of his predicament: no matter how hard he wriggles, he’s going to be in the kitchen. I mean, we’re bigger, so we get to boss him around. That is the way of the world.

We could never get used to the whining — it’s such a sad, pitiful sound — or the noise of his feeble little claws clashing on tile, wood and recycled plastic as he scrambles to jump over or dig under the baby gate we erect between him and us. Even his favourite toys do not amuse him. We don’t know for certain what he does during his time in the kitchen, but gauging from his bleary eyes and untouched water dish, he seems to simply sleep it out. Once upon a time he would search through the recycling bin for toys, but he’s since stopped doing that.

Lately, though, we decided that he could stay in the living room instead. It seems to relieve a great deal of anxiety, judging solely by the greatly reduced amount of whining emitted when we put up the gate. That is usually a good thing.

I was quite careful about not leaving wires accessible, since they are a well-known puppy-attractor — something about the soft gooshy black plastic brings these natural chewers no small amount of joy. And since we knew he was big into shredding paper, we hid away our notebooks and post-its on higher shelves or on the other side of the gate. But I was not prepared for the destruction of at least two tape dispensers (we don’t know from where he got the second one), a few plants, a jewel case and its inserts, a CD (not the one contained in the previously destroyed jewel case), a wireless mouse, an old telephone charger I left on the side table for all of ten minutes, the plums and coasters I left on the dining table, or the walls themselves.

It was after GIR put a few holes in my mouse that I realised how attached I was to certain belongings. The sleek, slim gadget has set me back a good $40 not a year ago. At the time, all I could think about was that I was, in a way, $40 in the hole. Which wasn’t entirely correct: the mouse still works fine; I just had to remove two chunks of plastic which were bent out of shape, and sand down the bottom so that it would once again slide around a surface smoothly as a mouse is wont to do. The clicking doesn’t work a hundred-percent of the time and the cover falls off quite frequently, but it’s still a perfectly usable pointing device.

As I reflected on my own anger, I realised its futility and irrationality. Quite frankly, it was my own fault for leaving him with super awesome fun chewables; how could I blame him for being what he is — a dog in heart and soul and mind and body? How could I even fathom changing his very canine nature and scold him for the one thing that brings him pleasure when he so misses his beloved humans? And what’s $40 to me, anyway? I’ve already dumped fifty times as much into the dog’s well-being to-date, and much more on myself over the years. And it’s not like I can’t replace it if it was really broken… some might even say that’s cheap for a mouse!

So I meticulously smeared bitter apple on the wall corners and table legs and basically any part of the piano I thought GIR could reach. (I’m not sure what I would do if he chewed on one of my musical instruments, so I’m doing everything I can to prevent it.) Everyday after breakfast, I make sure to place the plants on the dining table and tuck in the chairs so that he can’t jump onto the chairs to get at the plants. I put away in boxes all my arts and crafts things, which, being in rolls of paper or tubes of plastic, are sure to make awesome doggy chew toys.

All of which actually keeps my living room fairly neat.

If I concentrate on not looking at the horrifying stains in the carpet, I can almost enjoy my stay there. I have ideas for ditching my ottoman, getting a smaller couch and two minimal or modern chairs, which should help the spacing issues greatly, but for now, it’s really not bad.

I watched my own blood gush from my arm into a little plastic baggie a couple of days ago…. Just in time for the Hallowe’en season.

Last week our communications manager sent out an e-mail with some alarming news. Blood supply in Vancouver and across B.C. are at a critical low. So, for one, try not to get into serious accidents; for two, please give blood.

My heart beating thunderously, I checked over the e-mail again for location and contact information.

My heart was beating thunderously largely because I was very much alive and capable of giving blood. That notion made my heart beat even faster since I’m irrationally afraid of needles. Thus, while I’ve entertained the idea of giving blood for a long time and went as far as making it one of my 101 goals, and it really doesn’t take much to do it, I just… haven’t gotten around to it.

But I couldn’t put it off any longer: I was cornered by my ambition and phobia. So I called myself a nancy, muttered “get over it” and dialed the number, making an appointment for the next day the clinic was open. (I was too chicken to do it on the same day, though that was probably a good thing in retrospect.)

When I arrived, the receptionist knew right away I was a first timer. “You look lost,” she said, with the affection of a nanny who has known me all my life. I filled out forms and had my finger pricked by a lady with purple bangs. A drop of my blood was pipetted into a glass of blue liquid — copper sulphate — to see if my blood sucked or not. It rocked. The lady helpfully reassured me that the pricking was the worst part.

Liar.

After the next lady quizzed me on my age and weight (with utmost kindness, and amidst stories of her working with high school kids in a blood drive) I was sat down in a leather chair. They asked me to furl and unfurl my fingers, to keep the blood moving, I guess. I didn’t look, but after the lady stuck the needle in my arm another lady handed her a clean tissue. I think I squirted a bit there. Fortunately I wore black.

I texted M continually to keep my spirits up. I explained my fright of needles to a nurse and she laid a tissue over my arm so I wouldn’t see it, but it didn’t help — the mere thought of having a needle stuck in my arm made me want to cry. Every squeeze of my hand reminded me of the stiff bit of metal stuck to the inside of my elbow. I pictured in my head what the needle would look like and blinked too late to get rid of the image. The nurses gently touched me on my arm and told me I was doing great, just keep pumping that arm, thank you very much.

Losing blood rapidly probably contributed to further deterioration of my mood, which evolved to the next stage of discomfort — nausea. I tried to ignore it at first. I thought about all the people who needed that blood, how much nausea they felt, called myself a nancy and kept going.

When she checked on me next, I was glad I told her I was feeling nauseous, because within the next five seconds my vision dimmed. “We have a ten!” she yelled, moving toward my needle-bound arm. Two or three other nurses came over. One of them spoke to me as I stared at her and watched her face recede into a dull, colourless flat world. I was losing resolution, I thought amusedly. Need to twiddle with that cable in the back. “Keep your eyes open, look at me,” she said, and it sounded like she was yelling but she didn’t look like she was yelling. I could hardly hear her through the din of some annoying ringing noise just behind my head, yet everything sounded very quiet. “Keep your eyes open,” she said again, and I opened my eyes wide as I could, staring into empty nothing. It wasn’t really black. I suppose that’s what the colour “null” looks like.

I felt towels on my neck and forehead, the wetness pushing back the nausea with every droplet of cold water on my brow. My chair was being tipped back so my heart was lower than my limbs. “You can stop squeezing now,” one of them said. I laughed (or wanted to at least) and stopped moving. The needle was out a while ago. I was probably making a mess on the armrest. “Take a deep breath,” another said, “then blow out slowly through your mouth.” As I did so, I could slowly make out the blur of her face again. I smiled at her when she said there was colour in my face again. She smiled back, a knowing smile that alluded to the hundreds or thousands other fainting nancies she’s met in my chair.

I am a little disappointed that I didn’t see my baggie at the end of the day; they’d snuck it away when I couldn’t see. I do know that the sloshing machine didn’t beep to signal that it was full, though. The lady said that I was very close to the finishing mark, so I’m guessing that I started blacking out at 450mL. Not a small amount of blood — that’s nearly a full pint of blood (taken from a half-pint).

In the mean time, I will repeat the call for donation — if you can give, please do. Unless you have extremely low blood pressure or are miniscule like me, you’ll walk away with nothing but a bruise on your arm (and probably an elevated ego for having helped save the lives of some three people). And if you can’t donate today for whatever reason, donate as soon as you can. You can also donate plasma or platelets if you want to cling close to you haemoglobins. It’s really a heck of a lot simpler than making a monetary donation.

Since getting my first e-mail address in, oh, seventh grade, my e-mail-checking habit has seen a slow but steady escalation.

From once-daily (during my designated dial-up time after school) to casual-camper (having the email window open at all times in the high speed era), recently I have graduated further to completely-neurotic (having my browser/phone notify me whenever a new piece of mail arrives). Part of that, I rationalised, was my job as a web developer and a student politician before that. The other part was just a reflexive, unthinking drive to install gadgets that “increase” my “productivity.”

Since my workflow was wide open to interruptions, I found that I produced some of the best work late at night — when no one else was around to offer friendly interruptions. This was in third and fourth years in university when I pulled all-nighters to finish term papers. In fifth year, I had to pull all-nighters just to finish regularly assigned readings and homework.

The gospel I’m about to sing comes as no surprise (especially given the awful, double-quotation foreshadowing). Yeah. I’ve “quit” e-mail for the last month or so and I’m quite glad I didn’t wait any longer.

But what do I mean by “quitting e-mail”?

This is what it means:

I’ve also turned off the notifiers on my phone. Unless I’m desperate for some response, I check my e-mail only a few times throughout the day (personal e-mail: twice; work e-mail: four or six times). In essence, I initiate the action of checking e-mails, not the other way around.

Relatedly, I unsubscribe to a ton of mailing lists which were fast becoming a burden. Anything I haven’t read in detail or even opened the last three times I received it got an automatic boot, and some stuff which I felt were interesting but still a waste of my time were vetted out as well. My inbox now feels very minimalist.

Without even looking at my place right now, I’ll be the first to admit that I’m not a very good minimalist.

This weekend we purchased a sofabed, both in preparation for hosting some guests and to use up a difficult space in our flat. The floor plan shows that this was originally intended as a closet, complete with accordion doors and built-in shelves. The previous tenant correctly surmised that having such a large closet is useless, ripped everything out, and turned it into a home office. We have kept the same arrangement largely because that’s how it was when we got the place. Then we realised that it gets no natural light in the day, which makes it quite awful to be cooped up in there for more than several hours. With laptops it’s become much easier to work in other, better-lit areas of the flat. So the area devolved back into a closet where we stashed junk and paperwork that we promised we would do tomorrow.

Now it’s a guest room, with a bed and the future promises of shelves and place for our guests to hang up some clothes.

However, we still have the challenge of throwing out or selling several pieces of furniture, some of which I purchased as recently as last year. That “awesome” green chair will probably go at the next round of purging. I gave away books I’d never read again, realising that I bought them just for the sake of collecting the series. My mother’s drafting desk will be photographed, documented, and then put in the alley with a note explaining its history and a hope that it goes to someone who will love it as much as we did.

The desk is probably the most difficult item because I’ve grown attached to it. But with the understanding that I’m not attached to the object but rather the feeling of having it, it’s much easier to let go — the sentiment can be replicated using a simple photograph. The actual object, unused and unloved, can and should go to a better place. If nothing else, the desk deserves it.

In this exercise, I’ve found that minimalism is a mindset and a feeling that translates into deliberate acts. Once the mind has changed, the rest follows easily because the actions are all within my abilities. Throwing things out was never my forte, but I can do it in the face of, well, a desk sitting in the hallway and several boxes filled with unused junk. And I can keep doing it even if I had enough space to accumulate junk.

The resources I’ve found most useful are the Zen Habits blog, mnmlist, The Very Small Closet, and an article on self-reliance at the Art of Manliness.

M and I hosted a ten-course dinner party at our flat last mid-winter. Then-named “The Tank,” the condo is a little more than 600 sq.ft. Part of the challenge was to seat eleven people to comfortably dine; the other part had to do with cooking for said eleven people. The kitchen is sized Standard Yuppie: big enough to barely store wine glasses, and they pretty much just expect you to store your dress shirts, not noms, in the fridge.

We drank over ten bottles of wine and ate delicious leg of lamb and garlic-butter Brussels sprouts. Then we opened up the party and drank more mulled wine and spirits and warmed up by the fire amid a fierce snowstorm that started near the end of desserts (Typsy laird). We were lucky that most of the decorations that K put up managed to stay up… It got rowdy.

A few weeks ago we did it again to celebrate mid-autumn. We invited another mix of good friends and ate and drank and were merry. We had two chickens (and made yummy, yummy stock from the carcasses afterward, some of which still lays tantalisingly frozen, biding its time for a Chicken Noodle Soup Day), spanakopita, and a great début for a new recipe for bite-sized caramel apples. After supper, we cut open fresh fruits we’d picked out from the market in the morning. We didn’t get quite as rowdy but we certainly had many good conversations.

I really need to either get more efficient, or find some means of warming the food while it is being served… By the time I sat down for most courses, the food had become lukewarm. The time between courses is also haphazard at best. We served food basically whenever the food was ready. Sometimes that meant a good fifteen minute wait before the tables were cleared. Hopefully we’ll figure all this out before the winter dinner comes around again, and hopefully the solution isn’t just “get a bigger kitchen and get more pans”!

Related to this is my ambition to make and bind a book. I’d worked through the process in my art class, but I don’t feel particularly attached to the content and so am not too proud of the book. I made that book, essentially, to get a passing grade. But surely a recipe book of all my favourite recipes, perhaps with pretty photographs and heart-warming anecdotes would garner a bigger spot in my heart! So it begins. I’ve started compiling my most favourite recipes. I’m sure the stories would come naturally when I write them — good things always happen where good food goes.