My Studio Apartment

Looking for a nice and clean studio apartment for the summer downtown Montreal? Here's something that may interest you. This studio apartment comes fully furnished, with a good size kitchen and adequate bathroom and a balcony that overlooks McGill campus. It also has a large walk-in closet; common room and laundry facilities available.

Regular rent $910/mth, yours for $750/mth sublet from May to end of July. Email me if interested and come take a look ;)

Moonlight Cantata

Once upon a time, we did "silly" things like counting the stars. And while we were at it, maybe we had pointed to a round, big object in the sky and asked "Is that cheese?"

It isn't much of a surprise that we have a fascination for the moon; people in the ancient times were just as much allured by its mystery, from which risen myths and legends from all corners of the world. The personification of the moon had come to us in Greek Artemis, Roman Diana, Chinese Chang'er, Egyptian Khonsu, Indian Soma, and so on...

Three millenniums years later, we're still puzzling over the aspects of the moon, that big bright shiny circle painted on the canvas of the night sky.

The mystery of the moon surrounds not only its purpose. Besides debunking ancient's naive stance on lunar eclipse, which they thought was a phenomenon attributed to the works of divine, and breaking to us that the moon isn't actually made of cheese, science hasn't done so much in explaining the nature of the moon.

Can science one day explain why the moon and sun appear the same size in the sky? Can we explain the pin-point accuracy of the lunar calendar? Or why the period of moon's orbit is same as its rotation, and even after 4.6 billion years of spiral and turns it never suffered a degree of offset? Maybe we should just settle for the classic "it's-just-a-coincidence" explanation.

Better insights in understanding the moon came to us from the arts community. The observing and meticulous Renaissance artists noticed that the moon is delusional, in that it appears bigger when it's near horizon, even though it's actually further away from us. To explain such "counter-intuitive phenomenon", the scientific community published many papers using theories from electromagnetism to light diffraction. Nonetheless, laboratory experiments and thought-experiments done by the same group of people disproved their own theories one by one.

Exactly why the moon appears bigger near the horizon? Our best explanation came in the hybrid form of arts and science: its size varies simply due our psychological perception. The truth about the moon lies in us (pun unintended); which ever way you feel about the moon, you're right.

Maybe this is why I find the moon to be romantic in its ambivalent nature... I find its perfection in seeing its asteroid-scarred face. I find its luminance in knowing its dark side. Oh who could forget those the moonlit summer nights? Just bright enough to outline the contours of a lover's face, but dim enough to hide from rest of the world...

Inspired by the moon of March 19th, 2011, and Beethoven's Piano Sonata No.14... Moonlight Sonata.

The Acquaintance

At one time, each one of us is alone in our individual universe however we define it. Then by some probability, causative or coincidental -or if you allow me - a causative coincidence, we make an acquaintance of another person.

Now if you think about that moment, when two specific persons meet at exactly the same time at the same place and introduce themselves to each other, it's quite magical...the mathematical probability of such is infinitesimal. Thus an acquaintance in life is far more special than a winning lottery ticket.

Sometimes I wonder how a particular someone has gotten into my life, I go back to the place and the moment we met. If it weren't for that encounter, our worlds would have never overlapped, our individual lives would have just carried on - for better or for worse. For some, I find it difficult to imagine what that'd be like, yet it was something I was constantly aware of until I made that acquaintance. A world once seen, is difficult to be unseen.

As easily, people can disappear from life, sometimes for reasons unexplainable by words. Perhaps there are just aspects of life beyond our control.

I often wonder what each person is supposed to be in my life. That man standing next to me on the bus, the girl sitting next to me in the lecture, and that cute person at that debate tournament, and whoever else that I crossed path with. How else can I know their roles in my life, unless I go up to and say 'hi'? Why not take that chance, for that the encounter, which is less probable than anything else that may come after it, has happened?

Yet as casual as the first 'Hello' may sound, it's just the beginning of a story, sometimes a short story without much content. Others, they turn out to be longer: an adventure book, a love story, a tragic play, or even a fairy tale, or perhaps a combination of all of the above.

The television gives us many stories that make us laugh and cry, but sometimes it's just better to take that chance and write our own stories with our acquaintances.