being a monkey's uncle

In the beginning of November, I became an uncle for the first time. For those who care for such statistics, my niece weighed 3.3 kg (7 lb, 5 oz) and measured 49 cm (19 1/4") at the time of her birth.


It's strange, this uncle business. You see, before the birth of my niece, my personal universe was an infant-free universe. My siblings are close in age to me, so there are no childhood memories of such paraphernalia as cribs or child safety seats. None of my close friends have any children. I've never dated any one who has had kids. So when, for instance, one of my former roommates would try to explain to me the benefits of hand-made wooden toys versus mass-produced plastic toys for two-year olds, I'd listen politely. But did I truly care? I'd tell myself, "It's not like you actually know any two-year olds. Since when are you ever going to go toy shopping?" When I'd hear new parents talking about things like establishing sleeping schedules for their newborn, it sounded as irrelevant to my life as, say, keeping spiders off a cot in Afghanistan.

Boy, do things change! I've since had a cousin deploy to Afghanistan. (The subject of arachnids never came up in our conversations.) And now, there's a mewling newborn in my life. It is a whole new universe for me. Who knew there is a right way and a wrong way to hold a newborn? Who knew there is a method to change a baby's diaper or to put on a "onesie"? (Even the word "onesie" is new to me.) For now at least, this bachelor is actually enjoying being an uncle. The only thing I'm afraid of? Choosing a Christmas gift for my new niece. If only I could remember the rest of my ex-roommate's advice about children's toys...

a speech from my spider hole

I recently found a website that linked my name to, of all people, Osama bin Laden! That's the sort of thing that gets a person's attention!

I should state that wasn't a comment on my quite ordinary political views. (Perhaps ironically, one of my readers actually set up a website opposed to "aggressive Islam".) No, the truth is quite simple. One of my old high school classmates set up a website to track everyone who graduated with him. So far, he's found about 75% of our graduating class. My name seems to be on the top of his list of those not yet found. While there have been a couple "sightings" of me listed on his website, he hasn't found any concrete evidence of my whereabouts. Hence, the comments about me being as hard to find as the infamous terrorist mastermind.

Have I been truly reclusive since my return from Hong Kong two years ago? That depends. If your only point of contact with me has been this blog, that I must seem like a hermit! Yes my postings have been rare indeed. Finding things to blog about in Hong Kong was almost effortless. Even mundane activities -- like riding a bus -- yielded multiple posts. Compare that to my life here. I have started a lot of posts about the high points of this year for me: my sister's recent wedding and the imminent arrival of my brother's first child. But those posts remain unfinished. There is little of interest for me to say that hasn't been said on either my brother's blog or my sister's wedding website. Sure, I've been to Ottawa, Toronto, and Chicago in the past year or so. But most of my readers have visited or lived in those places too. The mundane activities of my daily life nowadays -- driving in traffic, working in a cubicle -- have so far only inspired entries too negative to ever be posted here. So it's not my being reclusive, but simply the dearth of writing ideas that has made my presence on this blog scarce.

In real life, I've been anything but hard to find. I've seen over a half-dozen graduates from my old high school in the past year or so. Rarely a month goes by without somebody recognizing me at a store, a gas station, or a restaurant. I get plenty of visitors to my cubicle at work. And the amount of time I spend talking on the phone nowadays has to be measured in hours instead of minutes. So it's not like I'm spending all my days in a spider hole, cut off from civilization!

Does that mean I plan to email the webmaster who's looking for me to update him on my whereabouts? I'm not sure yet. I do have a vague curiosity to see how the people I grew up with have turned out. A lot of the people I grew up with must be curious to see how I turned out. If I do email him, it will be at a time convenient to me. Saddam Hussein, of course, had no choice in when to emerge from his spider hole.

we are prepared to experience

Here is the reading I finally found for my sister's wedding. Her wedding is at the end of the month, so not too much time for me to practice. I'll give you the English translation first. To get a sense on how the poem sounds when read aloud, I'll provide pronunciation in two Chinese 'dialects': Cantonese (which I'm using at the wedding) and Mandarin (the dialect of the original poet). I'll end with the original written Chinese.

Sonnet One ~ by Feng Zhi

We are prepared to experience
Unexpected miracles.
After long years a meteor
Or a gust of wind suddenly appears.

At such moments
As in our first embrace,
All past sorrows come before us
And congeal.

We praise those tiny insects
Who, after mating
Or warding off a threat,

Conclude their wondrous lives.
Our entire life is to endure
A gust of wind, the fall of a meteor.

Sonnet One in Cantonese Yale romanization:

Daih yāt sáu

Ngóh mùhn jéun beih jyu sàm sàm deih líhng sauh
Náh sè yi séung b­āt dou dīk kèih jīk,
Joih maahn chèuhng dīk seui yuht léuih fāt yìhn yáuh
Waih sing dīk chēut yihn, kwòhng fùng ja héi:

Ngóh mùhn dīk sàng mihng joih je yāt seun gàan,
Fóng fāt joih daih yāt chi dīk yúng póuh léih
Gwo heui dīk bèi fùn fāt yìhn joih ngáahn chìhn
Yìhng git sìhng ngaht yìhn bāt duhng dīk yìhng tái.

Ngóh mùhn jaan juhng náh sè síu gwān chùhng,
Tà mùhn gìng gwo líuh yāt chi gàau gau
Waahk sih dái yuh líuh yāt chi ngàih hím,

Bihn git chūk tà mùhn méih miuh dīk yāt sang.
Ngóh mùhn jíng go dīk sàng mihng joih sìhng sauh
Kwòhng fùng ja héi, waih sing dīk sàng yihn.

Sonnet One in Mandarin pinyin:

Dì y­ī shŏu

Wŏ men zhŭi béi zhe shēn shēn de lĭng shòu
Nà xiē yi xiăng bù dào de qí jì,
Zài màn cháng de suì yuè lĭ hū rán yŏu
Huì xīng de chū xiàn, kuáng fēng zhà qĭ:

Wŏ men de shēng mìng zài zhè yī shun jiān,
Făng fú zài dì yī cì de yōng bào lĭ
Guò qu de bēi huān hū rán zài yăn qián
Níng jié chéng yì rán bù dòng de xíng tĭ.

Wŏ men zàn song nà xiē xiăo kūn chóng,
Tā men jìng guò le yī cì jiāo gòu
Hùo shì dĭ yù le yī cì wēi xiăn,

Biàn jié shù tā men mĕi miào de yī shēng.
Wŏ men zhĕng gé de shēng míng zài chéng shòu
Kuáng fēng zhà qĭ, huì xīng de shēng xiàn.

And the original, in Chinese characters:

第一首

我們準備著深深地領受
那些意想不到的奇蹟，
在漫長的歲月裏忽然有
慧星的出現，狂風乍起：

我們的生命在這一瞬間，
彷彿在第一次的擁抱裡
過去的悲歡忽然在眼前
凝結成屹然不動的形體。

我們讚頌那些小昆蟲，
它們經過了一次交媾
或是抵禦了一次危險，

便結束它們美妙的一生。
我們整個的生命在承受
狂風乍起，慧星的生現。

shielded in my armor

Last August, while looking at a guide to Hong Kong blogs, I found a new blog listed. The author of "The Greatest Thing You'll Ever Learn..." claimed to be "a nuckin futs Manc girl" who liked to post pics of "muscular men in period costume". This reminded me of one of my old HK classmates who hailed from Manchester. She idolized Aaron Kwok, the Cantopop singer whose concert costumes could come from Elton John's closet. So I decided to click and view the blog. Holy cow! After reading it, I would bet dollars to donuts that it was my old Mancunian classmate's blog. There were several mentions of her job teaching English to young Cantonese children. The blogroll prominently highlighted a Manchester newspaper, a dissident Manchester soccer team -- and an Aaron Kwok fansite that I know she started. Even the domain name of the blog, soup-dragon, could be a play on her pseudonym from class, Tong Siu-je. (The Cantonese word for soup is "tōng".) While I definitely enjoyed reading her blog, I was shocked at how easy it was to connect this supposedly anonymous blogger to a person I once shared fish balls in brown sauce with.

Why am I mentioning this? Because I believed that, unlike her, my blog was much more anonymous. You won't find any mention of my favorite sports teams, political party affiliation, or theological beliefs here. I refuse to pinpoint exactly where I'm living, except to say it's an area outside of Rochester that has plenty of open space. There's no links to web pages I've once posted, no blogroll filled with links to friends' blogs or Myspace pages. I've kept any career-related matters off this page as well. I thought it impossible for someone to find me via my blog. And yet, last Friday, someone was able to do so!


So now I'm starting to think about the idea of privacy, especially privacy and anonymity on the Internet. It's not that I'm doing anything illegal or shameful here! But who'd want someone you've chatted up on a dating site show up unannounced at your house? Would you really want a potential client or coworker to find your posts on a fan site stating how much you're rooting for Pam Beesley and Jim Halpert from The Office to get together? These are the sorts of scenarios I envisioned when I decided to keep my online persona separated -- like an island -- from my daily, offline life.

And yet being found out wasn't an egregious experience. Sure, my initial feeling was shock that someone was able to find this blog by Googling my real name. And my first reaction was to comb thru this blog and make it even better shielded from outsiders. But it's not like being "found out" was unpleasant in the slightest. The person who found me was a classmate from high school. We had a lot of enjoyable discussions in high school and during college breaks. It was wonderful to find out where he ended up and what's he's doing with his life. I'd like to think he also enjoyed reading about the strange path my life has taken in the past few years. If this blog can put a smile on the faces of people I've never thought would read this blog, then perhaps a little loss of anonymity isn't such a bad thing.

october (snow) showers

Last year on this blog, I complained about receiving our first snow fall in mid-November. When I looked outside around 6am this morning, what did I see? Snow! We didn't get the two feet of snow Buffalo got. Since the whole front yard was covered in snow, I know we got a least a couple inches' worth. Part of me knows I shouldn't be so shocked. The leaves have been changing colors early this year, which is usually a sign of an early winter. But still: it's the second week of October. Autumn started three weeks ago. According to the calendar, we shouldn't be seeing snow until it's turkey-shopping time. I know the weather is supposed to be unpredictable in this region of upstate New York, but this is a little much.