Check in

Lying in bed at the top of the faux mountaintop. Good times.

Around the world between posts

Hello old friend, it seems I've been neglecting you for quite a while seeing as I've literally traveled the world laterally. My trip to Europe got my the travel bug and emptied my wallet since it was a rather expensive one. I did the country hopping thing in western Europe but stayed in hotels with roomies(brzillian & korean guys) . Met an amazing Korean girl named Eunice Lim that I have this Wuthering Heights sort relationship with.- it's girls like her that give me a fair bit of ambition to try and make something of myself in life. Europe was sort of a drunkn blur with all the alcohol I'd consumed on a daily basis there. Once I got back to Canada I got quite a bit into hiking, hiked a lot of local mountains, traversed the west coast trail, then drove out to Banff to see my cousin Brigitte. My last big trip was through Asia and I'd have to say it was the best trip of my liufe. I hadn't planned barely anything yet experienced so much. I had local girls taking me out for a night on the town regularly to experience the nightlife in South East Asia. It was such a strange thing for me to be there since all girls were quite feminine, attractive, and servile like the women of America in the 50's. I can see why there are so many male ex-pats still residing there. Went to some of the strip clubs which were literally like malls but instead of retail store there were strip clubs filled with female uni students dancing topless and thai lady boys who were really aggressive.
Well its 3am and I just churned oyut a really crap post that I'm not going to edit. Consider that 2 years of my life typed out in a 10 minute session on my laptop. Payce.

Aunt Betty Passes Away

So this weekend my Aunt Betty had passed away due to Hepatitis C(problem with her liver). I payed a visit to her while she was on her deathbed at the Vancouver General Hospital(somewhere that I hope to work some day). On the way to the 4th floor where Aunt Betty was, my mother kept lecturing me in front of indirect family about how white girls are "dirty and messy" because shes adamant on setting me up with a "nice Vietnamese/Chinese girl"(who probably won't even understand English). Her ignorance and lack of tolerance is really getting on my nerve's and I have a real hard time trying to keep from lashing out verbally on her in public and in proximity of other family. Anyways when we got to our designated room I saw Aunt Betty in a recumbent fetal position looking rather inflated in the face and much darker in skin colour than typically. I stood around there for two hours with family surrounding the bed watching my relatives tear up at the site of my Aunt being force fed oxygen & nutrition. I remained unaffected emotionally and decided to wander the halls of the hospital till everyone felt like leaving afterward.
Thursday was the day of funeral sessions and out of respect I took the day off work to pay face to my Aunt. The funeral home called "First Memorial" on Kingsway & Fraser was brimming with family, monks for the Buddhist temple she volunteered at, and RCMP officers off duty paying respect to my Uncle Steven's sister. I spent roughly six hours in total chanting Buddhist liturgy with incense, bowing beside the church pews, and sitting through preaching sessions I could not understand.
Later on that day we made our way to the cremation ceremony and I was made one of the six paulbearers. That casket is fucking heavy and it did not help that I was a couple inches taller than everyone else cause I was bent over the entire time. At the crematory we all did our Buddhist rituals again then continued to place the box on the conveyor belt leading to the cremation furnace. Everyone began flowing with tears again. My Aunt Irene, event coordinator of the ceremonies sort of, seemed to be especially broken up at the sight of the flames. We later left for a vegetarian restaurant to have a meal(I had not eaten from 6am till 4pm I out-ate anyone there by told fold I'm pretty sure). An interesting ritual I had not known about prior that I observed was that we payed respect to the spirit of my recently dead Aunt by keeping one chair empty and keeping plates in front of that chair stalked with food and drink as an offering I suppose.
I think something may be wrong with me since I was one of the only ones not crying or appearing broken down. I think that I am incapable of remorse or compassion for others even though I liked that Aunt and had no qualms with her. I'm a pretty bitter bastard. I figured I might at least go into deep theological or philosophical thought on death or something but instead I just stood there and stared off into space. Well I'm going to scour craigslist for a Ipod Nano to listen to my pimsleur Mandarin/Cantonese mp3's then try to motivate myself to hike up grouse mountain today.