thank you, all, for making 2006 such a fabulous birthday


thank you mom & dad for the birthday noodles
thank you sam for the amazing wine glasses and red wine
thank you jeff & sandy for the beautiful shirt
thank you alia for triple-eyed kidrobot
thank you cat & lisa for charlie the zippy h2o steamer, and the skeletal goblets
thank you mariko & colin for the beautiful chopsticks set
thank you john for one hundred years of solitude
thank you taiko girls & partners for the dinner at the congee house
thank you kyla for brief lives, the uh-hm!!! and driving me around in your lemans
thank you you up there for the hundred dollar bill

thank you everybody for
your texts, your emails, your cards, your love, your everything ... !
you are all amazing, all beautiful,
and all crazy for hanging out with a weirdo like me!

"too many guys think that i'm a concept,
or i complete them,
or i'm going to make them alive.

i'm just a fucked up girl
who's looking for my own
peace of mind.

don't assign me yours."

it was close to 1215pm or 1230pm, eastern seaboard time, when a gunman asked everyone to lie down during a random shooting. multiple rounds were shot. automatic weapon? four people were killed, thirteen injured. a tall young man, sporting a 'retarded haircut' and wearing a black trenchcoat, was reported to have been neutralized by the police after he had fired off several rounds in dawson college, the first english-language institution in the quebec network of CEGEP serving students aged sixteen to twenty years old in the heart of downtown montreal.

traumatized? scarred? disturbed? what could have prompted yet another educational massacre? in a province that has already had to burden the traumatic experiences of two shootings, one in 1989 and another in 1992, rumours are afly but what is the truth behind the reason for such an act to purge. and purge what? what have we forgotten to listen to?

most importantly, what are we willing to change in our systems in order to ensure that such an assailment on the integrity of truth and education does not repeat itself? do we go down the road taken by many public schools in east l.a., forced to ensure a safer learning environment by installing security checkpoints targeted towards knives, guns and weaponry of any sort? do we even want to go there?

or should we look at what i think is the root of the problem? that we start by listening? and most importantly, listening to the ones who need to be listened to?

in a nutshell? bubbles and fun. when they picked up the bubble bottles, i knew that this wedding was going to be of a different nature. unwilling to bow down to the normal pressures that a wedding endow - yes, the stresses of making sure that the little things are being done - the bride and the groom and their entire wedding party of three beautiful girls and three fun-loving guys, made sure that they had fun on their wedding day.

and did they ever! i had never laughed so much and so hard. it was hard to keep the camera steady at some points. but professionalism took over, and i am happy to say that some beautiful images emerged.

thanks for a fantastic day, james and serena and friends!

beautiful dawn
lights up the shore for me
there is nothing else in the world
i'd rather wake up and see ... with you

beautiful dawn
i'm just chasing time again
thought i would die a lonely man
in endless night

but now i'm high
running wild among all the stars above

sometimes it's hard to believe
you remember me

Don't believe everything you read. And sometimes, believe everything you remember. Tonight taught me how not to be a skeptic. As we walked into the IMAX theatre, I remembered thinking - is this going to be a waste of my time and money? But I was proven wrong. And I gladly learnt the lesson. Over and over again, each scene proved to me that classics can be remade into even greater classics. Good job, cast and crew of Superman Returns!