Category Archives: Story

06/18/13

The world of Capoeira.

I won’t lie, I was nervous. Terrified even. I knew that Capoeira was difficult to get into and I knew that I would have trouble keeping up in class. But I had already made up my mind to go. So I got on the skytrain to the Capoeira studio downtown. I reminisced back to moments in my life when I had felt just as nervous as I did on the transit ride to my first Capoeira class. Travelling solo for the first time. Learning to play Broadway-level music in my high school pit orchestra. In both of these instances, I worked my hardest and I persevered. I became more confident than ever.

So feeling this nervous for Capoeira was a good sign. It meant that I was on my way to starting something worthwhile.

I was introduced to wonderful world of Capoeira before I even set foot in the studio. Immediately upon seeing me, I was greeted warmly by people who were also there for the class. My colleagues. The butterflies in my stomach disappeared. Seeing all of these smiling faces of people from all kinds of backgrounds made me grin back wider. I experienced the Capoeira community for the first time and I felt I had already been welcomed into their group. Greetings were exchanged through hugs and kisses as more students showed up and together we entered the studio.

Despite its appearance, the studio felt more like a home than anything else. I can’t really explain it. Everyone was helping out by turning on the lights, sweeping, and playing with one another as they got ready for class. It really was like I had stepped into another world flecked with the heavy influences of Brazilian culture. I started to get really pumped for the class.

The class itself was everything I expected and more. It was difficult but I didn’t feel like I lagged behind anyone. When I was in pain, we were all in pain. When drops of sweat dripped down to the floor, I could see the sweat streaked across the faces of my colleagues. When we counted, we counted together (in Portuguese no less). The movements were challenging and graceful. We swayed together in the ginga, blocking off invisible attacks and flexing out our own kicks. I felt like I was dancing and training in a martial art at the same time… and yet, playing Capoeira was unlike any dance or martial art class I had ever taken. It was just Capoeira. And I loved it.

For the last segment of class, we played together in a sparring circle called the Roda. Drums and the tamborine set the rhythm as everyone sings the melody to which Capoeira will be played. A Capoerista enters the roda and faces off with another Capoerista in a series of round kicks, gingas, and escapes. Altogether the game looks like an graceful dance between two colleagues and each capoerista is replaced as another colleague enters the roda. With the encouragement from the instructor, I entered the roda as well, looking forward to future times when I would be able to do much more.

My colleagues came up to me to ask if I liked the class and I told them I enjoyed it tremendously. The music, the movements, the discipline, and especially the community I experienced during this hour was impossible not to fall in love with. I couldn’t wait to come back again.

I raised my head high, waved my colleagues goodbye and walked out of the studio drenched in sweat and feeling the best I had ever felt in a long time.

01/23/13

Learning through Food.

Today was a super productive day (I’m noticing a trend among my Wednesdays) but not in the academic sense, but the learning sense.

I helped harvest, cook, and enjoy a community meal with the Aboriginal Health program on campus. I rediscovered the wonder of the food system and just how much we as a society are detached from our food. Working together to create a delicious meal was absolutely enlightening.

I sat down in the student cafe in my main faculty building on campus and ran into some of my classmates from my degree program. We talked about dreams, passions, and ideas for what we would like to see happen on campus. And lofty wishing aside, we started to form plans to make those dreams into concrete goals.

We want to create a series of workshops for our program classmates outside of class to help each other realize our potentials, come together as each other’s greatest resources, and share our inspiring passions with the rest of the group. Having a sense of solidarity with others who are in the same graduating boat as I am made me feel like the ocean wasn’t so scary to sail off into anymore.

We want to start a UBC Community Food Initiative – one where all of the food/sustainability clubs and organizations can come together to help improve the health of students on campus and also foster a community in this city we call UBC. This, we think, can be in conjunction with the project I’m working on (Community Student Kitchen in the new SUB).

Just that hour of excited chatter taught me so much than any lecture. I know I repeated this sentiment last Wednesday but it’s so powerful that I need to repeat it again and again.

I managed to squeeze in a quick run at the Bird Coop (hooray!) before heading off to Vancouver City Hall to attend the monthly Vancouver Food Policy Council meeting. I learned about a ton of amazing things happening around the city on the topic of food (and even got in touch with working with the council members in my free time :D).

So I came back home all smiles. I had woken up feeling like today was going to be a fantastic day and oh boy was I right. And somehow, everything I experienced and learned today relates to one another. I’m really liking this idea of fostering community and public health through food and cooking (via kitchens). I think it’ll have a big role in what I choose to do (or what lands in my lap) when May graduation rolls around.

Food just has a way of bringing everything together.

09/5/12

Colour My World.

It hit me just now: the realization that I live in two different worlds.

First is the world I currently live in. Here, my current home is in India. In this country, I wear Ali Baba pants, hop on and off auto rickshaws daily, and brave places that cannot even be called ‘toilets’.  I haggle for everything and bobble my head.  I walk the crowded streets of Jaipur, with a cow passing me every so often so nonchalantly. This is my day-to-day life at present, but in this surreal world, I’m never still. India is only my current stop. This is a world where I’m travelling constantly to new and wondrous places. Meeting new people from all over the world. Experiencing new languages and cultures. This is life I currently live.

Second is the world I left behind. The world as I knew it back in Vancouver, Canada. Where I grew up. Went to school. Had friends, family, and a job that I loved. Sometimes, I close my eyes and try to remember a regular day for me in that world: I slam the snooze on my alarm and groggily shoo my dog out of my bed as I get ready for school. Here I wear jeans, a nice scarf and pea coat, paired off with a pair of black boots. Standard UBC fashion. I race other transiting students out of the skytrain, down the escalator to get first in line to the direct bus to my school campus every morning and hit a couple z’s on the bus ride there. I hurry to my classes, maybe see a friend during break. On weekends I drive to work. I have a permanent layer of chlorine on my skin. Sometimes I walk. Go for a run in the rain. Tumblr. Cram for midterms.

You know, after reminiscing a normal day for me in my world from a year ago, I’m not so sure which one is more surreal – the one then or this current world of mine. There are a lot of spaces in that old world of mine where I have a ton of time I just spent… procrastinating. Daydreaming about this world now. Even though I have a lot more free time abroad (that’s with my fair share of lazy days too), it feels… fuller. That old world is just a flash of events that don’t seem to interlink – as if I was really dreaming that old life and flashing through the mundane bits. There are definitely parts about it that I miss. But more so than that, there is so much more that I want to bring into that old world of mine from this current one. Every day I spend in India is so full of colour (quite literally – the women here wear the brightest scarves and saris) and when I think back to Canada, everything I remember is in hues of grey and blue. Did I really spend all that time cooped in my room? Why didn’t I go out more? Make use of my time? Get to know my own city?

I often think about the day I return to Canada. November 28th. I wonder how I will feel. How I will see the city. My job. My school. My home. There’s a part of me that’s afraid to go back to that old world – afraid that all of the colour I’ve soaked in this year will fade away with the Vancouver rain. I’m afraid that I will find everything the same as I left it.

I don’t want to see it that way. I feel right now, these are two different worlds that belong to me, but they are very much detached from each other. No one in Canada can really know the people I’ve met or the things I’ve experienced out here just like my friends here haven’t a clue about my life back at home. I’m afraid that when I go back, I’ll feel so detached from that world after experiencing this one.

If that old world is in a protective bubble, I stepped out into this new world eight months ago. I don’t want to just go back inside. I want to pop the bubble. I want the colours of this world to seep into my old one. I want my worlds to merge.

So I hope that when I fly back to Canada, I will see everything with new eyes – as Vancouver is only the latest destination in my travels. A new colour in my life.

09/1/12

First Step.

Today is September 1st, 2012. I am sitting alone in the guest house canteen in Jaipur, India waiting for my breakfast. An omelette, two pieces of toast, and a fresh plate of mangoes and bananas. The weather outside is hot and sunny – a complete 180 degrees from when the monsoons hit the city only a few days ago.

Sometimes, I can’t believe I’m here.

I began my journey abroad on January 26th, 2012 when I drove down to Seattle, USA with my mother to catch a solo flight to Oslo, Norway. I left behind everything I knew – my family, my friends, my job and school – in my home of Vancouver, British Columbia. To this day, the most terrifying and heart-wrenching experience I’ve had has been the moment when I left my mother through the airport security check in Seattle. From that point on, my life changed entirely. In the span of eight months, I have been to sixteen countries on three separate continents – witnessing the wondrous Northern Lights in Tromso, Norway to weaving through the dusty ancient streets of Marrakech, Morocco. Never in my dreams would I have imagined that I have would have done so much this year. And I’m still not done yet!

To commemorate the memory of surreal life this year, I got a tattoo on my left foot: Wanderlust.  My favourite word. I had wanted to get this done for a long time. The pain I went through to get this inked into my skin is something I hold sacred. The faces of all of the people I had met and the things I had experienced came rushing back to me and all I could do was smile (I’m pretty sure my friend and the tattoo artist thought I was crazy). It was as if at that moment, it was not ink but all of these precious memories that were being etched into my skin. It is a permanent memento of this amazing year and for many more travels to come.

So today is September 1st – at least 12.5 hours ahead of Vancouver that is. People are heading back home from their summer jobs and trips, ready to roll into a new school year. It’s surreal knowing that I won’t be joining them.  A year ago, I was in my old room wondering just what 2012 would hold for me. Now I’m in my room in India pondering the same thing.

So I look at my foot.

02/7/12

I'm officially off to Poland! :D

It’s funny how a simple conversation can spark an entire trip out of the country. I had just sat down in front of my computer with a hot cup of tea, defrosting from my time spent around a camp fire in the snow, when my Colombian friend starts chatting with me on Facebook (she had gone back from the camp fire early because she was too cold). We had a pleasant chat and when I mentioned how much I wanted to travel around this semester, she invited me to come to Poland with her and her friends next Thursday (16th) for the weekend. Excitedly, I said yes and immediately started looking to book my flight ticket so we would all fly together. To my dismay, there was a flight out of Oslo to Wroclaw (apparently known as the Venice of Poland) but the return flight was full. My friend cheered me up by proposing a trip to Belgium for her birthday in March that we could plan for together (and of course I agreed). But I wasn’t giving up yet. I started looking for other flights out of Poland back to Norway on Sunday (19th).

I managed to find one flying late out of Krakow, Poland – which is about 4-5 hours south of Wroclaw by train. I debated if it even would be worth it to go to Poland and take the train down on my own to Krakow. After a little internet research, I was convinced to go to Krakow – both for the city as well as for the fact that Auschwitz was only a little ways away. I must go to Auschwitz if I go to Poland. There isn’t even a doubt in my mind about that.

So now I’m figuring out train schedules and debating when I should part ways from my friends in Wroclaw to head off to Krakow on my own. I’ll probably take night train to Krakow Friday night/Saturday morning – sleep on the train – and arrive in Krakow ready for a free city tour (which I found) and explore the rest of the city on my own for the rest of the day. Auschwitz would be my last destination on Sunday before I fly back to Oslo in the early evening. A sombre note to end my weekend trip, but a crucial one nonetheless.

My first real trip on my own (well, at least for half of it)! It’s great to know that I’ll have company in a strange new country for the first two days at least. And also to know that I have future trips with friends to look forward to. Bought my tickets and ready to lock and load. Must start planning! 😀 SO EXCITE.

And all it took was a simple invitation to spark the start of a new adventure. 🙂

01/28/12

Of Dinner Parties and Good Company.

So I was invited to a dinner party in the flat across from mine tonight, and it was really nice to meet people and have fun. 🙂 Three of them were straight from China, my friend Natalie from Singapore, a Sri-Lankan girl, and a Russian guy. It was surreal to hear so many foreign languages being spoken around the table: Natalie would often translate Mandarin into English for us when our Chinese friends couldn’t find the right words in English. I said a couple things in Korean and Japanese. Our Russian mate taught us a bit of Russian and Norwegian because he could speak it. Cantonese. A bit of French. It was great because everyone mainly used English to make sure everyone was included and understood at the very root of the dinner conversation. Plus the food was delicious. I was given a lot of different Chinese treats that I had never tried before.

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(ASIAN FOOD. There was more than this – I should have taken more photos! Next time.)

The people themselves – all studying for their master’s degrees – were all very friendly and great to talk to. I’m finding the international students a lot easier to connect with than Norwegian first years for sure. I can’t wait until next week where I’ll be able to meet with more people from the international community. Plus swing dancing on Monday! 😀

There will be more dinner (and baking parties) for sure as the weeks go on. As my Norwegian room-mate told me, in Aas, since there isn’t much to do, it is the people that bring life to the town and campus life.

10/18/11

Past the road of broken dreams.

As I’m anxiously trying to catch up with my school work, my mom calls me downstairs. She has on her lap a stack of papers – a time capsule of important documents my dad has collected over his lifetime.

My mom hands me my child immunization record – double-sided in English and Korean – something I asked her in preparation for my trip to Tanzania. Measles, Mumps, Hepatitis B, and a entire slew of shots I had as a child came rushing back into my memory. She told me to thank my dad for storing such important documents safely in his office.

College transcripts. Immigration papers. My dad had saved absolutely everything. She showed me the English-Korean manual my dad had created during his time in the army – a tool that many soldiers found very useful during their time there. She laughed and smiled as my dad passed to her all of the national, school, and newspaper awards for excellence in art and poetry as a child. There were a good ten of them. All very large and prestigious. They dated back to the time when he was in preschool and primary school.

I smiled with my mom as I looked through all of these wonderful awards. My dad said that his grandmother had had him submit his art and poetry everywhere as a child but as soon as he had entered grade school, his father – my grandfather – never let him practice his talent. So I as I looked at the papers from my father’s past, I couldn’t help but feel sad. He had never been allowed to pursue his dreams by his father in his youth. Along with that, a variety of other reasons led to my father hating my grandfather.

I always knew my father was smart. He was talented, artistic, witty, and very well versed in the arts. He still is, actually. But he’s now a real estate agent and he’s not ashamed to say he became one for the money. When I look at my dad, and the stack of papers in my mother’s lap, I see a road of broken dreams. I see pain. I see sadness. And I see his perseverance through it all.

I’ve never been on good terms with my father. Although, I don’t believe I was ever as talented as my dad was in his youth, I did inherit his love of writing and the arts. Music and writing are my muses, and as a child, I was allowed to pursue them. I was never encouraged by my father. He never really made my recitals or concerts. He’s never read anything I read. He wasn’t very involved when I was growing up. But he was adamantly against either my brother and I pursuing a degree or career in the arts. Ever since I was a child, I was told nothing but horror stories about the dead ends in the arts. We had fights. I honestly believe that the fighting would have been a lot worse if I had been dead set on arts (which I’m not, fortunately for him).

I could easily hate my father, for not letting me take my life fully in my own hands, much like his father did for him. But I know his past. I know his talents. I know, as I stare at those awards, that my dad grew up to be a broken man. And since I understand that, I can’t hate him. He has his reasons. But that’s all the more reason why I don’t listen to him.

I have hopes. I have dreams and passions that I’m in pursuit of every day. It is my privilege – something I am so very grateful for. So even if my dreams right now aren’t what my dad had in mind, I am pursuing them. Because when I see my dad, I want to prove him wrong. I want him to see that I can make my dreams come true – that I can be successful and happy without sacrificing my passions. I want him to understand my passion and be proud of what I’m doing with my life.

I want him to know that even though he couldn’t pursue his dreams, his daughter is.

10/16/11

I made a friend today!

I was coming back home after a very long and arduous ordeal of crashing on campus for the night and waking up at 6:30AM to help volunteer for the Food for All: Food Security and Poverty Conference. The conference itself was informative, fun, and an overall great experience. It just left me insanely tired by the time it was done.

So here I am, finally on the skytrain ride home when I meet Deng.

I have a seat to myself, and he sits in the seat in front of mine. Barefoot, tall, and lanky, he smiles at me and greets me. So of course I smile back. I guess I was still in a social mood from the conference because I start telling him how exhausted I am. He says he’s tired too, and he’d love a massage – but he can’t afford one. So we start talking. His english is somewhat hard to understand but with patience, I get the general gist of what he says to me.

Deng is Sudanese. He came to Canada alone, leaving his mother, sister, and girlfriend behind in Sudan. When I ask him how long he’s been in Canada, he replies ‘a very long time’. I can gather from the brief snippets of his story that he came to Canada to find work to most likely send money back home in order to support his family. Maybe a refugee. I had learned about African men coming to more developed nations in my studies, but actually meeting Deng and hearing his story was an entirely different experience.

I ask him if he is lonely, being all by himself in Canada. He tells me he is. When I ask him where he is off to right now, he tells me he is just riding the skytrain back and forth because he doesn’t want to go home where he would be by himself. He tells me he often gets drunk to fall asleep quicker. I listen with an open ear. Here is a fellow human being, going through his own hardships like everyone else. Although I can’t ever imagine what he’s been through – I can empathize with (if only maybe a little of the extent of) the loneliness he feels. No one wants to feel alone in the world.

So I do what the people in my life do for me. I talk with him. This simple human interaction is the only thing I can offer Deng, just like I would offer any other person who welcomes my company. Even though we have only just met, it’s incredible how friendly and warm he is as we talk. Not at all like strangers.

He greeted me pleasantly, and I greeted him back. This isn’t an act of charity or good will. This is the start of a friendship.

I keep asking him questions from what kind of music he likes to what he spends his spare time doing. He tells me stories with an animated expression. He tells me the vision he has for wanting to start a family and how he would raise his kids (a boy and a girl). I listen and then tell him about my studies at UBC and then listen some more.

Eventually, I reach my stop and we have to part ways. I’m actually a little sad that the skytrain ride is so short – he was so interesting to listen to. He says I’m interesting too.

He offers to give me his email address, and I figure it won’t hurt to keep in touch to chat. When I reach my stop, we shake hands as friends, not strangers.

We hope we meet again one day.