friends forever.

Thanks A :)

A couple weeks ago, I got the nicest card in the mail from a very dear friend - which just goes to show, that no matter how far you are, friendship doesn't really have any limits.

Seeing this card, it instantly reminded me of a place I had gone with another friend to catch up and hang out. A friend who, for the past three years, has managed to live within hours of me. Whether it was London-Paris or Tianjin-Beijing, I can always count on him to make the short trip to come visit!

So just where did we go? What more ideal place can there be, than the Friends Café in Beijing.

migrating from meizhou.

From Beijing to Shenzhen, a 3-hour flight.
From Shenzhen to Meizhou, a 6-hour bus ride.

As Hakka people, we have a tendency to migrate around, in a way, like nomads (or as my friend I had once said, yous a bunch of gypsies!), hence my family's move to Canada from India, and before that, the move to India from China. As a matter of fact, the Chinese characters for Hakka, 客家 [kèjiā], literally translates to "guest family", always being on the move is practically our innate nature!

So it's no surprise that every three years, like clockwork, my grandparents decide that Canada is too cold and take a getaway trip out to their native village of 梅州 [Méizhōu]. Last year I was fortunate enough to coincidentally be "in the neighbourhood"   -  and thus the chance of getting acquainted with another notch up in my family's history.

kaleidoscopic kolkata.

As we got to the city of Kolkata (previously Calcutta), also the last stop on our India trip, I felt a little blue... but also a little relieved - almost four weeks of taking malaria pills daily were starting to take its toll, and I did not feel good. But I trucked on, wanting to experience as much of my mother's hometown as I did my father's.

We had actually revolved our entire trip around the visit to Tangra, aka the Chinatown of India or, the pocket of Kolkata where you can find most of India's Chinese-descendents. Timing our trip was key, in order to be in the perfect place to celebrate Chinese New Year.

kindred of kanpur.

A blast from the past
for my pops, no doubt.

Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh. And my father's hometown.

Walking through this town, it was the first time I ever felt like we were really out-of-towners. Being in a smaller, less-touristy city, the occasional foreigner around was usually a sight to see. As soon as we had walked onto school grounds, we were surrounded by hushed whispers and stolen glances our way from little groups of students. These pre-teens even came up to us and asked if we knew Emmanuel - my guess, probably the token Chinese kid. It turned out that it was his father (an "uncle" of ours) who had been driving us around town and later, we'd actually be meeting this "Emmanuel" for dinner.

An old classmate of my father's third eldest brother, had become the new headmistress at their high school. Watching her and my aunt re-count through tales of old teachers and past classmates, it really made me wonder what the future would hold for me in 40 years... Will I still remember the names of principals, teachers and peers from past biology or French literature classes? Will I be able to walk through the old hallways and remember where my locker used to be?

My dad walked into what was now the Media/Audiovisual room and told us how it used to be the student council courtroom. Being the President during his time, he had a makeshift judging panel with his peers to use as they passed judgement on other students, handing out punishments for those who deserved them...now I know where he gets his look of "no mercy" from.

Methodist High School.

If there was such a thing as the 
West Beverly Hills High of the South West.

The ol' bread-winner
(also on Kanpur's Wikitravel page!)

Seeing the Chung Fa was by-far the highlight (mandarin pronounciation: zhōnghuá - 中华). This was where my father and his 5 siblings grew up, shot the shit, engaged in shenanigans, caused all sorts of ruckus, all the while living above a thriving Chinese restaurant. The owners who had taken-over bought the place next door as well, expanding the restaurant, taking away the makeshift second-floor and giving it a new facelift. As my aunt explained the old layout, I tried picturing my dad as a kid, in his school uniform, poking around the kitchen, gobbling down some fried rice my grandma made, or sitting out on the patio, enjoying an ice-cold lassi.

The Liu family's backyard.

Later, we had a visit with old neighbours of my father's - another family of 7 brothers and 3 sisters. As we sat in their garden drinking chai, I wondered what everyday life must have been like with this band of young Kanpurians 40 years ago - class-size play dates? Their own cricket team? Amateur Bollywood films? One brother, in fact, did actually try his luck in Mumbai, having an "uncle" in the movie industry to help get him started, but unfortunately being a star wasn't in the stars for him and he moved back to Kanpur.

I'm sure that afternoon wasn't enough to catch up on 40 years of lost time, but seeing everyone chatting and laughing, one thing was for sure - great friends will always be great friends, no matter how often you keep in touch. 

indigenous to india.

After a long hiatus, I've decided to start my blog up again and to finally finish writing the poor, forgotten entries in my "to edit" list. I apologize to those faithful readers (you know who you are!), but the internet speed in China made uploading pictures a horrendous feat, as much as I would've liked to have kept my travels up-to-date.

Now, as I scrounge through year-old photographs and notes, I do hope the lack of chronological order doesn't cloud my memory too much and I'm still able to regale my tales of $3/night hostels, waterfall-laden trails, and elephant-riding.

I thought it would be best to start off with what was most fresh in my mind, and that was my recent trip to India earlier this year. The trip to India was by far at the top of the "most anticipated" list. Seeing where my parents grew up, piecing together stories of their individual hometowns and spending Chinese New Year how my aunts and uncles used to as kids, was only skimming the surface of my family's origins.  

 

Three weeks.

Eight cities.

First stop: Mumbai.

twenty-six candles.

Boxing Day. XXVI. The number of letters in the English alphabet.

...you're getting pretty damn old!

For the first time in 8 years, I got a hand-delivered birthday card from my family, instead of usually finding it in the mailbox. That being said, one of the great things of being back at home was that I was able to once again, celebrate with an old partner-in-crime. And to add to our traditional joint birthday bash, another fellow April baby :)

April babies #1 #19 #11

twenty-four candles.

Enfin...It took months of pondering for just the blog name to describe my current situation and it finally came to me during brunch this morning.

With weeks to go until the BIG "quarter of a century" birthday, my life is still well on the path to self-discovery (in other words, I’m almost 25 and still “lost”). After about a year-and-a-half of living abroad, I'm starting to feel a little homesick. Thankfully there's family close-by to help me cope. And for those not-so close-by, just wanted to let you know that I haven't forgotten about you! I have been wanting to document what was going on in my life for some time now and coming back from vacation all refreshed, I thought, there's no better time than now (let's just hope this doesn't share the same fate as the Paris blog).

One of the topics at the brunch table this fine Sunday was birthdays. Memorable birthdays, champagne birthdays, upcoming birthdays, were all part of the normal discussion. However, one very (nerdy, but) interesting fact stood out from all the jibber-jabber: the perfect number that is twenty-eight. 

“It’s the perfect birthday”, says J. Keep in mind that my cousin J is in the midst of studying for her actuarial sciences exams, she does have numbers on the brain A LOT these days. For those of you who aren't with it when it comes to mathematics lingo, here's a little math lesson for you:

According to the Merriam-Webster Dictionary, a "perfect number" is: 

an integer greater than zero, the sum of whose integral factors including 1, but excluding itself, is equal to itself

Examples of perfect numbers:

The factors of 6 are 1, 2, 3 and 6 (1 + 2 + 3 = 6)
 
The factors of 28 are 1, 2, 4, 7, 14 and 28 (1 + 2 + 4 + 7 + 14 = 28)

The factors of 496 are 1, 2, 4, 8, 16, 31, 62, 124, 248 and 496 (1 + 2 + 4 + 8 + 16 + 31 + 62 + 124 + 248 = 496) 

After hearing this (and well, knowing that 2-5 is right around the corner), 28 had become the new 25... which means another chance to scratch off all those before-you-reach-25 (or should I say, before-you-reach-28) goals off the bucket list.

Celebrating my 24th with a pique-nique on the Champ de Mars.

And let's face it, reaching my 496^th birthday isn't exactly going to be a cakewalk...