An ode to quirky plumbing:
Glory days of heat
Though forgotten now, were sweet
Warmth pooled by my feet
Now the ice comes out
From my mouth springs forth a shout
Get in and get out
Friday, January 29, 2010
Thursday, January 14, 2010
Autobiography
Actual personal biography submitted to the Quebec Engineering Competition Innovative Design Category, held this year at Sherbrooke University from January 21-24.
1.3 David Ting
The son of two engineers, David has continued the family legacy by enrolling himself into the Chemical Engineering program at McGill University. Born and raised in Southern Alberta, David was raised alongside the cattle and the horses at Angry Cowboy Ranch, located at the outskirts of Lethbridge. His parents knew David was destined for engineering when, at age five, he built a contraption that facilitated farm-wide manure transportation. This was indicative of David’s burgeoning interest in design and fabrication. His decision to move to Quebec marked a tumultuous time in David’s life. After being exiled from the ranch for bartering two cattle for the lowly price of 20 bushels of wheat, David packed up his belongings and flew to Montreal before enrolling in McGill. He, however, could not shake his Albertan roots. His choice to enter Chemical Engineering was in hopes to gain a job in the Albertan Oil Sands and to eventually reclaim his family’s reputation for shrewd bartering. His interests in Chemical Engineering are diverse: ranging from the 7-times tables, to manure production, to manure consumption. David has always wanted to be innovative and his interest in design made the Innovative Design category an obvious choice. His interests outside of university include square dancing, horseback riding, and bone-hockey (an Albertan variant of hockey played with cow bones instead of sticks).
Sunday, January 10, 2010
Wednesday, January 6, 2010
Back Home
Soundtrack A: All You Ever Wanted - The Black Keys
"Take a step before runnin', yeah,
Take a breath before you die."
It's still dark out when the cab pulls up. Everyone is asleep, I said goodbye last night. From this moment until the one where I see my father I'm in what I'm told is called liminal space. Supposedly such a state of transition creates an attitude, perspective, or state of being that will never exist outside of this stretch between point A and point B, life here and life there, so that what is said, done, or thought by a person in this space would be unlikely to occur elsewhere. When this was explained to me, I was thrilled to come to a new understanding of why I love transportational vehicles of every variety, being awake at odd hours, being in a foreign place, being underwater, and swings.
Last night I couldn't sleep. I was completely packed, and lying on the couch just blinking and waiting for time to pass. I'm feeling it now, in the cab; fatigue and simultaneously, a complete lack of desire for sleep. There are people I need to see. I miss a certain fellow and the curls under his hat. I miss Brother and other friends, their easy smiles and inside jokes and, selfishly, their notions of me. I miss my family. I miss being surrounded by people who have abided all my mistakes and will continue to do so because they can't help but love me and if they could help it they wouldn't. But most importantly, in recent months some things have happened; ugly, sad, natural, and phenomenal things that have wreaked havoc on the part of my brain that tells me my family is a secure and unmovable thing. It turns out we are movable. This is harder to bear from a distance, since I can do nothing but talk and listen and hurt from very far away. These things are all braided together, into a rope that is pulling me home. I am nervously eating the snacks that Melanna packed for me.
"All hands on deck now,
The sea is getting rough again."
Soundtrack B: Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Taking off is a wonderful thing. Your spatial relation to your environment changes so smoothly, but so fast. A minute ago you were sitting on the ground looking at the men in reflective jackets with their hand-pylons, then a powerful thing happened, and now the entire city is minuscule and you are leaving it behind for the clouds.
"Home, let me go home,
Home is wherever I'm with you."
I start to feel optimism and excitement seeping in slowly. It's in the recycled airplane air. I know this partly because the flight was delayed almost three hours, and I should be accordingly frustrated but I'm not. They are pumping us all full of it, the tainted happy-hopeful air, and when we land, it will spill out the doors along with us and dissipate in the frozen air. I pass the time by listing in my head all the people I aim to hug and the most probable order in which I will hug them, and following that I rank their respective hugging styles and effectiveness. I'm glad my dad is picking me up from the airport, he really puts his all into it. Number one on all three lists. I imagine a dramatic scene in which I see him looking around nervously from across a crowded arrivals area, shout "Poppa!", and run to meet him. The actual high probability of this makes me chuckle out loud, and then glare at the nearest flight attendant. It's not right drugging people like this.
Out the window, I can see a miniature snow-covered Calgary and area, as though it were carved from a Willow tree; a vast expanse of white cut into by the black grid of roads and the edges of little black roofs. And there are mountains here too. They always mark my place like pins on a map. There is a jet of air from the engine moving across my field of view that blurs some of the image beneath it, and suddenly I'm watching a little movie shot with a tilt-shift lens, and I make a note to tell Brother about this. We will go shooting again, and we will go to Wal-Mart in the wee hours again, and we will sing in his car again, and everything will be like it was but also new.
"Man oh man you're my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness,
There ain't nothing that I need.
...
Home is wherever I'm with you."
Landing is almost as good as takeoff, because everything is shaky and when the wheels hit the ground it's like you're careening down the runway holding down the brakes and hoping for the best. It makes you realize how fast you were going, and also how much you are expecting.
Aisle, bridge, gate, terminal, baggage, doors, a deep breath of cold crisp dry Calgary air in my lungs and a big blue sunny sky then Dad.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Soundtrack C: The New Year - Death Cab For Cutie
"So this is the new year,
And I have no resolutions,
For self-assigned penance,
Or problems with easy solutions."
It's an evening flight this time, a careful step in the planning of a return on New Years day. I can feel my pulse under my temples, pumping bittersweet feelings, exactly like when I left only the bitter has switched places with the sweet, and this time the after-effects of alcohol might be slightly involved. It's dark when we take off, and the city recedes again but it's a different movie at night. All that white white white replaced by black and lights lights lights; kind of like a computer chip, and it's mapping where I went and who I saw and what I resolved and what I didn't all in different colours. I feel healthy. Christmas does that. It's all the family, I guess. All the gathering, and goodwill. The whole time there was a consciousness of the window between arrival and departure, which might have made things clearer, or maybe that's my imagination. I'm having a casual conversation about New Years exploits with a guy next to me who I would probably never talk to under normal circumstances, and I'm wondering if ever in life there is a peaceful balance, or if you always miss a little bit too much of where you're not.
"I wish the world was flat like the old days,
And I could travel just by folding a map,
No more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways,
There'd be no distance that could us back."
For me the best part about this is that I have to believe it was thought up on an airplane, speedtrain, or freeway.
Soundtrack D: Wisconsin - Bon Iver
In the cab the driver is asking me about my holidays. I seem to have arrived during some sort of heat wave; the windows of the taxi are open to allow the sounds of seagulls and the warm, humid air to rush in and cloud my mind with the salty, damp smell of ocean and moss. This scent has no place in my thoughts and now the driver is saying in the mirror, "How were your holidays?" He can see I'm distracted and is not annoyed by it, just keeps asking things and waiting patiently for my vague and abstract answers; faltering stabs at conversation. He must know the distraction is a sad one. He must know I'm trying not to let my mind wander. It's too soon to be missing the place where I was, mere hours ago, but I can't help it when the cutoff is so abrupt. The rope that brought me home was a reassuring thing, it was strength and direction, and now it's been loosened and released and I'm floating in between. I can't decide if this trip, there and back, is the best of both worlds or the breaking of them. I'm happy, and lucky, I think, but there are things I can't bring with me and don't want to leave behind. I'm crossing my arms and folding my hands, but I can't get rid of the warm, shadowy feeling on my stomach where his arm was, forever ago or seconds ago. And I don't know how to bring it with me, but I can't get rid of the shape of his shoulder, or those fuzzy hat-head curls, they're etched into my hand. We pull up in front of the palace and through the window I see Parisa dancing.
"That was Wisconsin, that was yesterday,
Now I have nothing that I can keep,
'Cause every place I go I take another place with me."
Soundtrack E: Is There a Ghost - Band of Horses
Kevin and Parisa help me bring my bags up the steps, and I get inside and say brief hellos to everyone before tearing off layers in my room. It is so hot I can feel the red when I touch my face. The house is a mess. My room appears thankfully untouched, however, even though I left my doors open and my mattress in the upright, house party condition. Stragglers from last night's New Years extravaganza have carried the after party well into the following evening, and have since started again. I visit in the living room for a while, until Parisa tells me Melanna is home. When I knock on her door, she looks shocked to see me, and quite suddenly I'm overwhelmed with the relief of her company. We sit on her bed and the stories come rushing in rivers from our mouths. It's late now, but seeing Melanna again feels like sunlight. This is not hard to imagine in her bright room with it's sky-blue walls and the warm breeze drifting in through the open window. She gives me a bracelet from Nelson, which she excitedly assures me will fit my tiny wrist, and tells me I look healthy. She says I am glowing. Eventually I say goodnight, return to my room and throw myself into unpacking.
I remember the feeling I had the day I moved in. It was thrilling, not exactly like this, but similar. For the moment I am happy to be here, and to have been where I was. I want it to last as though every day is the day I get back. I work until there is nothing left to do, and when I finally lie down, it is the night before I left. I blink and wait for time to pass.
"I could sleep,
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?"
I have not yet arrived. I don't know when I will. Vancouver is calling me back home, another life here awaits my return, and it seems I am not waiting to fall asleep as much as I am waiting to wake up.
"I could sleep, I could sleep, I could sleep, I could sleep,
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?
My house..."
"Take a step before runnin', yeah,
Take a breath before you die."
It's still dark out when the cab pulls up. Everyone is asleep, I said goodbye last night. From this moment until the one where I see my father I'm in what I'm told is called liminal space. Supposedly such a state of transition creates an attitude, perspective, or state of being that will never exist outside of this stretch between point A and point B, life here and life there, so that what is said, done, or thought by a person in this space would be unlikely to occur elsewhere. When this was explained to me, I was thrilled to come to a new understanding of why I love transportational vehicles of every variety, being awake at odd hours, being in a foreign place, being underwater, and swings.
Last night I couldn't sleep. I was completely packed, and lying on the couch just blinking and waiting for time to pass. I'm feeling it now, in the cab; fatigue and simultaneously, a complete lack of desire for sleep. There are people I need to see. I miss a certain fellow and the curls under his hat. I miss Brother and other friends, their easy smiles and inside jokes and, selfishly, their notions of me. I miss my family. I miss being surrounded by people who have abided all my mistakes and will continue to do so because they can't help but love me and if they could help it they wouldn't. But most importantly, in recent months some things have happened; ugly, sad, natural, and phenomenal things that have wreaked havoc on the part of my brain that tells me my family is a secure and unmovable thing. It turns out we are movable. This is harder to bear from a distance, since I can do nothing but talk and listen and hurt from very far away. These things are all braided together, into a rope that is pulling me home. I am nervously eating the snacks that Melanna packed for me.
"All hands on deck now,
The sea is getting rough again."
Soundtrack B: Home - Edward Sharpe and the Magnetic Zeros
Taking off is a wonderful thing. Your spatial relation to your environment changes so smoothly, but so fast. A minute ago you were sitting on the ground looking at the men in reflective jackets with their hand-pylons, then a powerful thing happened, and now the entire city is minuscule and you are leaving it behind for the clouds.
"Home, let me go home,
Home is wherever I'm with you."
I start to feel optimism and excitement seeping in slowly. It's in the recycled airplane air. I know this partly because the flight was delayed almost three hours, and I should be accordingly frustrated but I'm not. They are pumping us all full of it, the tainted happy-hopeful air, and when we land, it will spill out the doors along with us and dissipate in the frozen air. I pass the time by listing in my head all the people I aim to hug and the most probable order in which I will hug them, and following that I rank their respective hugging styles and effectiveness. I'm glad my dad is picking me up from the airport, he really puts his all into it. Number one on all three lists. I imagine a dramatic scene in which I see him looking around nervously from across a crowded arrivals area, shout "Poppa!", and run to meet him. The actual high probability of this makes me chuckle out loud, and then glare at the nearest flight attendant. It's not right drugging people like this.
Out the window, I can see a miniature snow-covered Calgary and area, as though it were carved from a Willow tree; a vast expanse of white cut into by the black grid of roads and the edges of little black roofs. And there are mountains here too. They always mark my place like pins on a map. There is a jet of air from the engine moving across my field of view that blurs some of the image beneath it, and suddenly I'm watching a little movie shot with a tilt-shift lens, and I make a note to tell Brother about this. We will go shooting again, and we will go to Wal-Mart in the wee hours again, and we will sing in his car again, and everything will be like it was but also new.
"Man oh man you're my best friend,
I scream it to the nothingness,
There ain't nothing that I need.
...
Home is wherever I'm with you."
Landing is almost as good as takeoff, because everything is shaky and when the wheels hit the ground it's like you're careening down the runway holding down the brakes and hoping for the best. It makes you realize how fast you were going, and also how much you are expecting.
Aisle, bridge, gate, terminal, baggage, doors, a deep breath of cold crisp dry Calgary air in my lungs and a big blue sunny sky then Dad.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
Soundtrack C: The New Year - Death Cab For Cutie
"So this is the new year,
And I have no resolutions,
For self-assigned penance,
Or problems with easy solutions."
It's an evening flight this time, a careful step in the planning of a return on New Years day. I can feel my pulse under my temples, pumping bittersweet feelings, exactly like when I left only the bitter has switched places with the sweet, and this time the after-effects of alcohol might be slightly involved. It's dark when we take off, and the city recedes again but it's a different movie at night. All that white white white replaced by black and lights lights lights; kind of like a computer chip, and it's mapping where I went and who I saw and what I resolved and what I didn't all in different colours. I feel healthy. Christmas does that. It's all the family, I guess. All the gathering, and goodwill. The whole time there was a consciousness of the window between arrival and departure, which might have made things clearer, or maybe that's my imagination. I'm having a casual conversation about New Years exploits with a guy next to me who I would probably never talk to under normal circumstances, and I'm wondering if ever in life there is a peaceful balance, or if you always miss a little bit too much of where you're not.
"I wish the world was flat like the old days,
And I could travel just by folding a map,
No more airplanes or speedtrains or freeways,
There'd be no distance that could us back."
For me the best part about this is that I have to believe it was thought up on an airplane, speedtrain, or freeway.
Soundtrack D: Wisconsin - Bon Iver
In the cab the driver is asking me about my holidays. I seem to have arrived during some sort of heat wave; the windows of the taxi are open to allow the sounds of seagulls and the warm, humid air to rush in and cloud my mind with the salty, damp smell of ocean and moss. This scent has no place in my thoughts and now the driver is saying in the mirror, "How were your holidays?" He can see I'm distracted and is not annoyed by it, just keeps asking things and waiting patiently for my vague and abstract answers; faltering stabs at conversation. He must know the distraction is a sad one. He must know I'm trying not to let my mind wander. It's too soon to be missing the place where I was, mere hours ago, but I can't help it when the cutoff is so abrupt. The rope that brought me home was a reassuring thing, it was strength and direction, and now it's been loosened and released and I'm floating in between. I can't decide if this trip, there and back, is the best of both worlds or the breaking of them. I'm happy, and lucky, I think, but there are things I can't bring with me and don't want to leave behind. I'm crossing my arms and folding my hands, but I can't get rid of the warm, shadowy feeling on my stomach where his arm was, forever ago or seconds ago. And I don't know how to bring it with me, but I can't get rid of the shape of his shoulder, or those fuzzy hat-head curls, they're etched into my hand. We pull up in front of the palace and through the window I see Parisa dancing.
"That was Wisconsin, that was yesterday,
Now I have nothing that I can keep,
'Cause every place I go I take another place with me."
Soundtrack E: Is There a Ghost - Band of Horses
Kevin and Parisa help me bring my bags up the steps, and I get inside and say brief hellos to everyone before tearing off layers in my room. It is so hot I can feel the red when I touch my face. The house is a mess. My room appears thankfully untouched, however, even though I left my doors open and my mattress in the upright, house party condition. Stragglers from last night's New Years extravaganza have carried the after party well into the following evening, and have since started again. I visit in the living room for a while, until Parisa tells me Melanna is home. When I knock on her door, she looks shocked to see me, and quite suddenly I'm overwhelmed with the relief of her company. We sit on her bed and the stories come rushing in rivers from our mouths. It's late now, but seeing Melanna again feels like sunlight. This is not hard to imagine in her bright room with it's sky-blue walls and the warm breeze drifting in through the open window. She gives me a bracelet from Nelson, which she excitedly assures me will fit my tiny wrist, and tells me I look healthy. She says I am glowing. Eventually I say goodnight, return to my room and throw myself into unpacking.
I remember the feeling I had the day I moved in. It was thrilling, not exactly like this, but similar. For the moment I am happy to be here, and to have been where I was. I want it to last as though every day is the day I get back. I work until there is nothing left to do, and when I finally lie down, it is the night before I left. I blink and wait for time to pass.
"I could sleep,
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?"
I have not yet arrived. I don't know when I will. Vancouver is calling me back home, another life here awaits my return, and it seems I am not waiting to fall asleep as much as I am waiting to wake up.
"I could sleep, I could sleep, I could sleep, I could sleep,
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?
When I lived alone,
Is there a ghost in my house?
My house..."
Saturday, January 2, 2010
Travels
Papaya Dog, New York, New York
Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
BJ's, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania
Liberty Bell, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
BJ's, Plymouth Meeting, Pennsylvania
National Christmas Tree, Washington, DC
Peter Pan Buffet, Fairfax, Virginia
Shenandoah Caverns, Quicksburg, Virginia
Chesapeake Bay, Baltimore, Maryland
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