I have something on my face...

... otherwise, why would those girls be looking at me at that Zehrs?

Jorghnassen, of course, is the reason why.

We walked by an aisle going to the cash register and I looked straight at her, as she stared straight at me. She stopped talking, and the other girls continued oblivious to her silence. I was wondering if the asian (chinese probably) girls at first were long lost cousins or something because I seriously have no idea why that particular one was staring at me for much longer than a stranger would at another person. Then I realized that none of my cousins are anywhere in proximity of the Wawaloo region, and they didn't look anything like anyone else I knew.

As we loaded the things in our basket to the cash, I looked back at the girls who were still standing at the aisle, still curious at first. Now hiding behind a goddamn clipboard that she was holding, she was peeking from behind it and still chatting with her friend and staring at us. At me. Wha-?

After a few more covert confirmations that I was being stared at, I mentioned it to Jorghnassen. The ill-concealed spying from the girls was rather disturbing. By then, we were already moving away from the register, and he looked back and he thought he was actually the one being stared at. Then I got more disturbed.

Now before you think I'm becoming jealous, it was because Jorgh is teaching a course right now at the university, and the girls (or one of them anyway) are probably in his class. He says the spy-girl looks familiar, and he could probably confirm it next class.

I know I'm not always the most restrained of girlfriends in the PDA department, so I can gather that seeing your prof with a girl who *looks* like a university student (but who is probably glad she's not a university student anymore) holding his arm might look suspicious, and smacks of unethical behaviour if one thinks that student-type is in the same class as the prof is teaching. And I know that one has a right to talk to other people in public about people you happen to recognize in public.

Nonetheless, it's not polite to stare! >:(

A Chinese New Year Tale Told With My Ugly Calligraphy

Happy New Year! That is what I wanted to write to my mum.

I asked Felix last week to help me write the message, as I am nearly completely illiterate (in Chinese). Felix gladly obliged (I think), and sent me an image of the computerized version of the message:


My knowledge of the writing process consists of my parents telling me when I was in kindergarten, "Here's the order of the strokes you should write in. As for the actual characters, here are the million different characters you will need to memorize just to be able to read this paragraph." Of course, the million characters unanimously decided to elude my brain and thus I was stuck with only being able to write my name (at most) and the numbers from 1 to 10. ("100? What's that?" Yeah, I couldn't count to a hundred until grade 2.)

Fortunately, language acquisition and mastery is not limited to the early childhood/late childhood phases, as many, MANY (talented/dedicated/stubborn) people have proven throughout the ages. If my mum can bargain with people in local flea markets in 4 different languages down to 25c regardless of item, then it surely can't be that impossible, right?

I started asking Felix incessantly about the different strokes, such as if the vertical lines were meant to end straight down or had little upward turns at the end, etc. Being as patient as he is, he sent me this other MSPaint file to illustrate:


Oh, OK. So I practiced the writing twenty times before I had something readable, and I sent him back my draft:


The whole reason why I wanted to get it right was because I couldn't write in the New Year card I had made, printed from the Canon 3D website, until I was absolutely sure the writing was perfected. It was far from perfect (pretty ugly, in fact) but I had already been too late in sending the card for the New Year so I just sent it in the way it looks above. The card?


It took me 5 hours to recolour, cut out, and paste together into a functional fancy folding fandangle. And after I had gone over all the ornamentation in the background with an orange gel marker, I realized that I could not put a light pencil draft on top of the gel, which meant that if I were to write the message in ink I would have to get it right the first time.

I messed up the "ma ma" part before I got that far, so I started whining for Felix to help. Thank you Felix!

After sending the card and practicing the writing so often, I kept writing it all week and I am still practicing it. Then I started practicing it on Photoshop. Surely there was some brush setting that would give me that fancy calligraphic result?

The closest I got to a real brush stroke was with the settings of "Shape Dynamics" of "Size/Control: Pen Pressure", "Angle/ Control: Initial Pressure" and squishing the pen shape to an oval with a roundness around 28%. The actual act of making brush strokes is a bit trickier, as it necessitates a starting angle different from the direction of the line. The results are the small ticks at the beginning of the horizontal strokes, while the odd angle that the vertical strokes take was from my inability to keep my hand from making it completely straight.

Unfortunately, the sensitivity of the tablet is lacking. The banana I am referring to is at the end of every single damn stroke - when the real life brush is lifted off the page, it gradually creates a point (or blob) as needed, but this (Wacom Graphire2) tablet does not have enough levels of sensitivity to emulate this point; the abrupt "banana" (or "condom tip") result shows this all too painfully.

Thus ends my tale of Ugly Calligraphy.

P.S. My mum received the card and hadn't called because she "forgot."

Retro-Posted Post-Post... Post?

Here's a June 2006 post whose "Publish Post" button I just clicked today. I don't remember why I kept this in the draft stage and forgot it for so long, since I had written it all and clicked "Save as Draft." Moral of the story: publish whatever. Nevertheless, there's a Globe and Mail article in the post whose link still works, so read of the Demise of the Quebec City China Town.

Yeah, sorry about that. Ugh, well... The author, as far as I remember, writes about the fact that there was a Chinese community in Quebec City around the early days after the wars. They established themselves in Quebec near the old port, at the foot of the Citadel and the old city, and in the St-Roch area. They had built quite a few things there, and had been doing pretty well until the development of the giant overpass. The government made a highway that leads from upper town (directly from the National Assembly building) to Beaupré and beyond, but that meant making giant pillars and the overpass throughout the lower city; many buildings had been appropriated and thus started part of the the exodus of Chinese. Nowadays, you'll find the buildings but not the businesses nor any sign that they existed, despite the historical significance of the area. And the Wok-N-Roll. The old grandma from that restaurant passed on recently, and she was probably one of the last remaining "old ones" that would probably be able to tell first hand of these events. The last thing about the Chinese in QC is that they are still around, but not in any centralized area, so a Chinatown is not feasible to establish at this time. As far as I know, new Chinese immigrants to the city are mostly studying or working in the university, or looking to work in the restaurants.

There should be some discussion on the Quebec Urbain blog and the forum about the defunct Chinatown revival project, though I have no idea where it is.