Hallgrímskirkja, Reykjavík

Been a little too busy lately to indulge much in extracurricula, so this entry’s going to be brief. I wanted to post this picture of Hallgrímskirkja — Iceland’s most photographed church — a while ago as an example of patience.

Hallgrímskirkja took 38 years to build. 38 years! I haven’t even been on the planet that long, so it’s hard to fathom tackling a project for that length of time. As you can see, Hallgrímskirkja is an unusual structure. I imagine when it was commissioned in 1937 that this particularly stark design raised a bit of a ruckus, but at least the architect’s vision eventually came to fruition.

As I get older, I have a greater appreciation for architecture because there is an underlying conflict that we expect things to stand the test of time… but scramble to build them in the least amount of time. If you live in a city, the most visible example of this is the glut of condominiums. Both Toronto and Vancouver are cities of cranes erecting a soul-less condo building every 15 minutes.

I reckon the best way to restore your faith in engineering is to get yourself to a place where old and new co-exist, but the aesthetics of the old don’t eclipse the new and vice versa. An example? Say, Valencia, Spain.

The story behind screech: http://www.screechrum.com/story.asp

I finally edited this videoclip (titles, brightening), three years later…

Original post: June 28, 2004 - Seattle-Vancouver Orkut Shindig

The sun was beating down but I managed not to get scorched today, thankfully. Starting with a mid-afternoon Intercounty baseball game at Christie Pits, followed by a wander around Port Credit after a batch of fish and chips, then exploring the marshland at Rattray Conservation Area and walking the beaches of Lake Ontario, I was outside the entire day. My camera was happy to cut loose after a series of cloudy weekdays.

The batch of uploaded photos can be found here.

The weekends are never long enough, are they?

Toronto vs. Oshawa at Christie Pits

Toronto vs. Oshawa at Christie Pits

Port Credit

a landing at Port Credit

flora at Port Credit

marshland geese at Rattray Conservation Area

Humber Bay Arch Bridge

Today marks five years of writing online. FIVE YEARS!

2002 - 105 posts
2003 - 226 posts
2004 - 344 posts
2005 - 431 posts
2006 - 624 posts
2007 - 324 posts as of today

My first post didn’t exactly set the internet on fire; I was babbling on about being a university student and not getting enough sleep and incurable procrastination. In fact, I set up a blog to continue a fine tradition of procrastination and work avoidance. It’s still there, for posterity.

When Claude from Blogging in Paris wrote about her third blogiversary last month, she posted pictures of all the people she’d met through Flickr and her blog. When I got a chance to comment on that post, I thought it was hilarious that I was sitting in Claude’s living room on my computer while she was on hers, typing out the comment and talking to her at the same time! What a couple of geeks we are!

By the way, meeting Claude was an absolute riot — if there was ever a reason to have a personal website, meeting fellow bloggers like Claude is definitely one of them. And only in 2007 could retirement mean shooting 20,000 photos, posting them online, and sharing technical information with a Canadian girl “just passing through Paris on her way back from Iceland”, then writing about it practically in realtime.

This website will always be a work in progress. Earlier today I was fixing old posts, uploading old photos to Flickr to replace Blogger-hosted ones, reformatting text, filing posts in categories, etc. I didn’t get far, maybe only a month of posts. It sounds like a lot of work for something that doesn’t pay the rent, but it’s a personal project that I take pride in and it’s brought me a lot of joy over the years. Sometimes I get lost in the archives, reminiscing when my nieces and nephew were babies and toddlers, the adventures I’ve had while travelling, people I’ve met, photos and video I’ve taken of special events, and reading funny comments people have written. Sometimes when I can’t remember details from a certain time, I return to this website and use it as reference.

So much has happened to me since I started writing here (from Blogger), I can scarcely believe it. Even when I was working on fixing posts from July 2004, just three years ago, I noticed that the subject matter was completely different: writing about taking a ferry to go to work, griping about whether or not to go to my friend’s wedding alone or find a date to drag along, and experiencing an earthquake. As I work my way through the archives, I’m marking my favourite posts — also a work in progress as there are currently 2,054 including this one.

I can see my writing and photography evolving over the years, too.

The #1 draw to this website these days via search engines is aviation-related, mostly people researching Piper Tri-Pacers. I love that people stop to read David’s four-part story of how he bought Zero-Two-Papa and flew it up from Tennessee. Not only is it an interesting story, it’s a way for me to share a bit of David with people around the globe who also love to fly like he did — the old-fashioned way, with wires and fabric-covered wings.

As much as I write online, it will never be a substitute for the real thing, though: communicating with people in person. I can feel myself becoming much more sociable again, compared to 2006. I’m meeting more people, engaging in more activities, settling into a comfortable familiarity with Toronto, and making plans.

It’s been a roller-coaster of a ride, the last five years. I don’t know how long you’ve been reading, but thanks for checking in!

The DMC World Team Champions - 4 DJs from Paris.

Video by Paul Irish of http://aurgasm.us/

via Duncan Rawlinson’s The Last Minute Blog

Technorati tags: Birdy Nam Nam, YouTube, DJ

candle glow

One of the best ways to spend a summer evening is on a patio somewhere over a beverage and, in my case, a maple chipotle Chilean sea bass with sweet potato medallions. Mmmm…. a superb way to end a Friday that was unusually busy at work. I don’t want to even think about what it’s going to be like on Monday, and you know what? I won’t.

The Barn - March 28, 2007
The Leaning Barn, Take Two - May 8, 2007

This is a barn on McLaughlin Road in Caledon, near where I take flight training. You can’t see it from this angle, but it’s leaning west like it’s three sheets to the wind and will probably collapse soon.

I was nearby last weekend and made a point to return to the barn to take photos of it before it enters its next life as firewood.

I like the moon off in the top left corner and the tree spilling out over the edge. I added the border and gave it a semi-sepia treatment so it would be closer to how I like to remember it.

View larger.

I’ve been trying to sleep as much as possible lately to try and beat this annoying viral infection, but when I go to bed very early like I did last night I wake up at odd hours and want to do something photography-related. Back to bed!

I was in the neighbourhood of my flight school last weekend, so I stopped to shoot my favourite barn and take in a sunset at leisure instead of speeding by like I usually do. — Caledon, July 22

I’ve had a strange day, and I don’t know what to make of it, exactly. Work was rather fast-paced and I somehow managed to pull a neck muscle in the afternoon — by coughing?? After work I had meant to pick up the car from home and go to a visitation (funeral), but I was sidetracked by an overseas call from a long lost friend which probably could’ve gone on forever except for the time difference and the fact that I was going to miss the visitation altogether if I didn’t get off the phone.

With the phone call still bouncing around in my head, I tried to gather my thoughts while making my way to the funeral home.

Tonight marks my first time to attend a traditional funeral, i.e., not a memorial, and with a *gulp* open casket. Including David’s memorial, which was my first, this will be the fourth funeral/memorial (in 16 months). Tomorrow morning is the actual funeral ceremony (Catholic mass) and I will be working, so I wanted to pay my respects to the family this evening and be there for my colleague. The death was completely unexpected and I’m sure there are people still in shock.

more…

self-portrait sky reflections, Belfountain Conservation Area

For some reason, the coughing subsides when I lie down. (For most people the opposite is true.) So I lay down for a while on the grass and looked up at the sky — a very relaxing activity when it’s as beautiful as it was yesterday. Belfountain Conservation Area is within close range of plenty of small airports and Pearson International; I was able to spot commercial jets, joyriders, and crows superimposed on puffy clouds.

more…

For the seventh morning in a row I woke up wishing for a cough-free day and to be miraculously cured of this throat plague. Alas.

Hacking miserably all the way to the office, as soon as I reached my desk I called the medical clinic to see a doctor and got an appointment for 11:15. I was hoping — as bizarre as it sounds — for a diagnosis of a bacterial infection because then I could take antibiotics and hopefully be done with it. But the doctor said it was definitely not a bacterial infection, it was viral. So, no antibiotics, she says, I just have to let this virus run its course.

It’s been a week but it feels like forever, like this virus has had ample time to play a course of 18 holes all around my throat and lungs and is now looking for teammates to play another round.

Probably the other part of this that riles me up is the memory of David’s PCP (Primary Care Physician) in Pennsylvania — an FAA doctor — who prescribed antibiotics over the telephone. David had been coughing for a whole month because this same doctor kept postponing his appointments by a week at a time, and he never looked at David’s throat. If he had, he wouldn’t have prescribed antibiotics because IT WASN’T BACTERIAL. In fact, if David had a viral infection, those antibiotics could’ve made things worse. As it stood, David’s condition was neither viral nor bacterial, it was because a tumour was growing in his lung and irritating his air passage — a discovery only made by the ER doctor after discussing all the symptoms with David in person.

And those are the operative words: in person.

more…