Being grandparent-less

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Hey all,

So I was going through some pictures from my recent trip back to Hong Kong and the strangest realization struck me. To be honest, this wasn’t the first time this happened to  me. I came across a picture of my cousins and I with my grandma. And I sit there thinking “Aw, that was nice, I really have to meet up with my grams more frequently next time I go back to HK.” But then I suddenly realized that she passed away last month.

grams

It’s felt surreal, and it still seems like she never died. The same thing happened to me in HK when I walked into my cousin’s apartment. I saw the black and white photographs on the red Chinese offering altar of my grandparents (on my mom’s side), as well as one of my aunts, and realized that all these people were no longer with us. Standing there, I felt sadness wash over me again. I couldn’t help but relive the moments of when I first found out they had passed away.

It may have to do with the fact that I’m all the way on the other side of the world, but you would think that one would remember that they are now grandparent-less. However, I think it’s amazing that I have managed to forget about their passing. My interactions with them in the past, and how unique they are help me to keep them alive in memory. I guess with time, their image will fade, but in the meantime, I just wish that this could happen without getting me all depressed.

While we’re on the subject of my grandma’s death, I really must bring up how my dad said goodbye to her. He couldn’t make it back to Hong Kong in time, so instead, his brothers and sisters set up a Skype call for the two of them in her dying moments. Now I’m not saying that a Skype call is at all the equivalent of being there, but it was because of the technology that we have now that he was able to say goodbye.  My dad actually saw her heart monitor stopping, and was able to mourn with the rest of his siblings. Although I’m a digital native, I sometimes have a fear of technology, but when I see something like this happen, it makes me rethink my standing on the topic.

– Karen

Moving adventures– yeah, it was pretty touching.

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Hey all!

So my family and I recently moved into a new house. And that’s when I realized something: moving is an awesome family bonding experience.

My dad insists on doing the move ourselves instead of hiring movers. I was alright with the plan until I realized that “ourselves” meant him and I, because really, my sister can barely lift her own backpack and my mom is the kind that would want to help, but is usually told to sit down two minutes later.

We started off in the afternoon, and went into the night. And by night, I mean 5:00 AM. My dad and I would load and unload the rented U-haul truck, and then my mom and sister were assigned to cleaning up the house itself. There was a lot of “HEY! OPEN THE DOOR! THIS IS REALLY REALLY HEAVY.” and other frustrated complaints. But then you get to around 2 in the morning, and you’re ridiculously grateful when your sister or mom grabs a heavy box from you to lend a hand. And then the family sits down for food at 3AM, consisting of a bag of bacon, microwaved corn and spring onion pancakes. I haven’t seen my parents eat bacon in years, so watching my dad gobble up a bowl was eye opening.

Now, my family isn’t the closest of families. I mean, yeah, we eat together, we watch TV together sometimes, but when it comes to getting out of the house and actually doing something together, that’s rare. And the move forced us to physically work with one another, and it was sort of beautiful to see. We really were pushed to our limits, and ached for days afterwards. But we did it.

A portion of the living room turned into a storage area

A portion of the living room turned into a temporary storage area.

It’s been a little more than a month since we’ve moved, but there’s been a lot of improvising. I’m taking the basement, which needs a complete renovation, and my parents told me to take their room for now. Which means they moved their bed to the living room. It’s actually amazing having a bed in the living room, and more often than not, I end up watching TV on the bed instead of the couches.

Since I’ll be getting the basement mostly to myself, I also get to decide on how I want to decorate my living room! I’m thinking of making it into a woman cave, but I’m still trying to get ideas on how I want it to look. But I get a blank canvas to work with and I can’t wait!

So if you’re looking for a good bonding experience, I’d suggest moving. But then again, it could have gone the other way and ended in disaster. So maybe everyone should stick to laser tagging.

– Karen

“Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D”: A Review

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agents

Hey everyone!

Literally just finished watching Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. I was super excited about this because I’ve always been in love with the Marvel movies and several of their comic series. When I found out that Joss Whedon was writing this, I was pretty happy because he did The Avengers really well– but remembered that Firefly got cancelled in its first season thought it was pretty great. Stan Lee was also listed as one of the executive producers, so that got a squeal from me.

The pilot’s story itself is okay. Not the most exciting in terms of plot, but it does the trick. We pick up where The Avengers left off, and the world now knows that heroes exist. S.H.I.E.L.D realizes that they might have found another one of these heroes, and must get to him before he gets manipulated or killed by opposing forces. There are a lot of tie ins to other Marvel works, and that was brilliant.

Enough about the plot. You can easily just read that up on IMDB. What stood out to me was how many jokes they tried to write  into the show. I laughed, but it got a bit distracting after a while. (“I’ll show you my thing. No, I mean my equipment. I’ll just hang up.”–> will need to figure out what was the actual quote. This was just along the lines of what I remembered)

It was wonderful seeing Agent Coulson (Clark Gregg) and Maria Hill (Cobie Smulders– Woo hoo! A little Vancouverite love in the house!) again. It actually brought back so many good memories of the previous Marvel films. What else I noticed is that they’re really trying to squeeze in diversity. We got Ming-Na Wen (Chinese) , Elizabeth Henstridge (British), and Iain de Caestecker (Scottish) in the S.H.I.E.L.D team that the story will revolve around. I thought it was really obvious, but well, if this is how we’ll start getting a change from the traditional all American/white cast, I’m up for it. Maybe one day, it won’t feel forced anymore. 

There’s a lot of hints that they drop throughout the pilot for future episodes to reveal. Who is Skye? Where’s Tahiti (though I have a guess that it might simply be the afterlife? Hey, it’s not a spoiler. It’s a guess.)? What are they keeping from Coulson? (Maria mysterious says to one of the doctors that he must never find out about Tahiti…)

Anyway, I’ll continue to watch it. I need to know the answers! It wasn’t the best pilot, but it wasn’t horrible. Oh! And another interesting note that was actually quite smart on their part. They showed Thor: The Dark World‘s trailer during the ad break for Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D! Really missed Tom Hiddleston as Loki, so super excited about that!

I’ve never reviewed a TV show before so this was kind of fun! So if you’re up for it, it shows on ABC/CTV at 8:00PM on Tuesdays for us west-coasters– then you’ll get decide whether it’s good or not!

– Karen

“Gravity”: A Movie Review

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gravity

Hello everyone,

So I just came back from an advanced screening of Gravity, starring Sandra Bullock and George Clooney. Before I knew what this movie was about, I thought that this was going to be some sort of romantic comedy, simply because of the cast. Show how quick I am to judge.

So what is Gravity?

Gravity focuses on Sandra Bullock’s character, Ryan Stone, who is a medical engineer sent to space for the first time. She is accompanied by two other astronauts, one of which is George Clooney’s character: Matt Kowalsky. As she’s fixing something during a spacewalk, they get notice that Russians crashed a satellite, leading to a chain reaction of other satellites and structures to be destroyed from the debris. They had to get out of there. Quick.

Of course, not everything goes according to plan. We see Dr. Stone left adrift in the vast emptiness that is space. She starts to panic, but soon enough, Matt comes to her rescue and tethers her to him. Together, they try to return to their space vessel. This is only one of the first problems to come their way as they desperately try to find a way for them to return to earth.

I watched the whole thing feeling like I was going to have a heart attack at every scene. It was very stressful, but that’s not to say it was at all bad. If I had to name a movie you had to watch in 3D, this would most likely be it. Zero gravity and 3D works amazingly well together.

Asides from visuals and acting, the story itself made you ponder on how small you are. You are so insignificant, especially when compared to the huge unknown void that is space. What is the point?  We see Sandra Bullock’s character going through the same process, and well, I guess you’ll have to see how it ends for her.

Gravity comes out October 4th! If you’re okay with watching something pretty heavy, go watch it. Be prepared though! It’s a beautiful movie, with suspense around every corner.

– Karen

When we die…

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When we die, the weight of our ashes will roughly equates to how much we weighed when were were brought into this world. It’s funny because after the ashes are scattered and we become a part of nature as fertilizer, we’re back to being basically nothing in this big big world. Physically anyway. A full circle?

References:
http://www.rukfuneralhome.com/qa/cremationfaqs –> Average weight of ashes (without urn) = 4-5 pounds http://www.childrenshospital.org/az/Site1281/mainpageS1281P0.html –> Average weight of newborn= ~7 pounds

Post inspired by:
http://therumpus.net/2013/05/improvising-a-bone-graft/