 |
|
|
||||
I have taken this milestone occasion to redesign my website. I would like to say thanks to everyone who visits this site once in a while. Many of the reasons I maintain it are personal, it is a repository for my thoughts and photos as well as a communication hub, but I would surely lose interest if no one ever came here. I appreciate all the positive feedback and comments as well as the silent voyeurs.
In the year since I launched this site, a lot has happened. I graduated from University. I went back to Japan. I moved from Waterloo to London and then to Calgary. I renovated a kitchen. Held a yard sale. I drove from Ontario to Alberta. And back again. I saw Trinidad. I went to Boston. I went to New York. Twice. Rented a car for the first time. I was president of the UW Breakers. And a lot of interesting stuff in between.
I have no doubt this year will be as interesting as the last. Hopefully the new layout will give me new motivation to share stories and information and you more motivation to consume it.
When I first launched the site, I was much less concerned about how it looked than I was about getting something published. I would take lots of photos on my trips and never manage to share them. Ironically, my digital camera was stolen by the time I launched the site and I was much less able to share pictures in a timely fashion. But at least I was sharing them!
Since this time I had time to work on the site, I could create something much closer to a form I wanted. As anyone who does creative work knows, design is an evolutionary process. And though the new style is quite different from my original mental image, I still like it.
The last version of this site was really dry. One of the first critiques I received was "You've got to spice it up". Well, I feel I may have strayed a little far from function as this time I strove for form. There is still much to add, a bit to change, and hopefully not too much to tweak. I will iron out the wrinkles, including some poor colour combinations, as I go.
I would like to add sections on Japan and Japanese, something on Technology and the various little projects I work on or gadgets I have fun with, and even something on Philosophy (or my "Weltanshauung"). A couple of other sections will be surprises. For now, there is only the photo gallery accessible by clicking the top right block (my left shoulder) in the image map. The web mail is my private server so the gallery is the only useful link.
Hope you like the new site!
You may have noticed I am a little more reticent these days. A little more reclusive. Gone are the stories of sleeping in parks, going home with strangers, and chatting with organized crime.
Calgary is not a town of all-night parties or surreal social encounters. It is a quiet, conservative, wealthy prairie town. The nearest city of similar size is a four hour drive due North through fields of cows and grass.
Supplanted from all my existing social networks in a town, despite being my home town, more foreign to me than Hong Kong, it takes time to gain a foothold and establish a new mental order.
From past experience, I find it takes me roughly four months to register my niche in a new environment. Concatonating the three and a half separated months I have spent in Calgary since returning suggest I am close to the threshold. And I can feel it.
All too often we see headlines of human suffering, tragedy, and crime. Fear and despair sell, unfortunately, better than joy. It is encouraging then to see, for once, uplifting news plastered across the front page of your local newspaper. Especially when that news is about nothing other than your cousin's wedding!
[Update: Galleries taken offline. Email me if you want to see the pics.]
Photo above: From December the 15th to December the 29th, I went to Trinidad with my mum and brother to attend our cousin Tyrel's wedding. The wedding was held on Maracas beach and made the front page of Newsday.
Photo above: Having never visited Trinidad before, my brother and I were without opportunity to meet our cousin who grew up there. Until he came to Ontario for the Hindu engagement ceremony held in Kitchener where we met him for the first time.
The official story is right here at www.triniwedding.info. Click on the above photos to be taken to the respective galleries.