charles lives in san francisco and works in marketing. he's a dragonboater and amateur marathoner. he drinks a lot of coffee, mostly because the caffeine doesn't affect him. he also reads a lot. he no longer plays video games because he fried his last three video cards. he also likes to use brackets and start sentences with lowercase letters. appositives are his favorite language tool. the more complex your vocabulary is, the more charles will like you. it also helps to be able to differentiate between There, Their and They're. his favorite colors are black and orange, mostly because they're the colors of the San Francisco Giants, and also, conveniently, the colors of his dragonboat team, Ripple Effect. speaking in the third-person isn't something he usually does, but he thought it would be interesting, at least for this gigantic paragraph.
the term "csix" was taken from his first ever aol screen name, "c6freejack," but since no one knew of the 1980s epic called "freejack," which starred such dinstinguished actors as mick jagger & emilio estevez, he decided to leave that portion behind. there is no relation to the social network of high tech professionals of the same name, which makes things confusing, but then again simplicity wasn't the objective.
Little kids make the world go ’round. It’s not adults, what with our complicated and wanton desires, but the wee ones who gently coax tribute from their parents and families and everyone else who thinks that no cuteness shall go unrewarded.
Which brings me to my niece. She turned 2 not all that long ago, and the occasion called for a party replete with Disney theme and costumes and about 50 mylar balloons that needed to be carried 4 long blocks by your author because there was no room in anyone’s car and because it seemed like a pretty gnarly adventure at least until they got tangled up in some equally gnarly tree branches. But I digress.
She’s smart and can speak clearly beyond the usual grunting and screaming. She eats like there’s no tomorrow, and upon trying to pick her up the first word to come to most people’s minds is “heavy.”
More importantly, though, this little girl finally made me realize that I don’t hate kids, after all.
In college I volunteered for two years at a Vietnamese community center on Geary, doing my best to tutor and teach despite the pushback and brattiness and budding ghetto-ness of the kids that spent their Friday afternoons there. But it didn’t work, and of all things it made me never want to go near kids ever again, though that’s putting it lightly.
All that changed when my niece was born. She was handed to me about a week out of the womb and was roughly the size of a Papalote triple-threat burrito*. And within a split second, I hadn’t even brought her close yet, she pooped.
Feeling that vibration and realizing what happened (and also being unfamiliar with remedial measures) initially horrified me, but at that moment I realized that these kinds of things happen, naturally. Babies poop and cry, because they’re not quite aware of the intricacies of how to run to the bathroom or wipe up or grab a bite to eat just yet.
Extrapolating it a bit, maybe the punkass kids talking back to me at the community center so many years before didn’t know any better, either. They weren’t aware that I was using my free time to help them and that I would’ve appreciated if they shut their yaps for just a few minutes so we can get through their homework, upon whose conclusion the screaming may begin again in earnest.
So that’s why kids do what they do, and, hopefully, cut the crap as they mature. Now I love kids, and have the patience to deal with them. While I won’t be running a daycare anytime soon, having kids in my presence is no longer something I dread.
And it all started with the poop. Maybe it wasn’t the most sanitary epiphany the world has ever seen, but I’ll take it.
It’s hard to maintain friendships with those you barely see. There really aren’t very many people who you can lose touch with for long periods of time and then suddenly pick up right where you left off.
So when I get a call from people I haven’t seen in a while, I go. College friends, people I could’ve known in high school, people from the east bay, old paddlers, I try to keep everyone relevant.
[These were all kind of a while ago, I'll admit, but a lot happens in a month.]
Pretty much every time you see these kinds of people it goes like “how have you been, it’s been hella long!” So you dig deep to remember everyone’s names, the enormity of the epic adventures you all had previously and whatever you’d recently heard about them on facebook. You string all that into some type of narrative to get past those awkward few minutes of catching up, and then you play it by ear.
When the catching up is officially done, you’re in the present and officially free to act like you’d never parted in the first place. Then you repeat the process when you see them again, months or years later.
And as much as I’d like to see everyone again, it remains impossible, what with budgets and schedules and workloads and babies and stuff. We’ve all grown up and apart, and those of us with the cameras are the only ones observant enough to take notice.
But if you don’t want to lose these people forever, you have to try.
So, if you haven’t heard, about a week ago I was with the dragonboat team in Vancouver. The team did well, we got a medal, lots of good food, all that.
But only after I got back did I realize that I really, really did need a vacation. I like to think that I never burn out, that I can slog through it day after day. But I’d grown a bit too cynical, short-sighted. Too local, even. I needed to get out.
So, besides all the places the team went, I made two very important stops on my own: coffee and a tailoring shop.
The first was, according to some obscure poll, Vancouver’s best cup of coffee at Turks/West/Milano [I've heard it called lots of different things]. I got up early on day two and took the skytrain over.
It was a pretty good view. And a pretty damn good cup of coffee, of which I imbibed several. Sometimes it’s all you need to calm your nerves, which tend to fray with the flow of ongoing projects or rounds of interviews. The view helps, too.
Later on I walked up towards North Vancouver, made the obligatory stop at the Olympic cauldron [which was having some work done but was impressive regardless] before going up Pender, through the Chinatown gate, through the urban oasis of Sun Yat Sen Park [now a mandatory stop on future visits] and, after doubling back, finally arrived at Modernize Tailors.
This shop was in a documentary I came across at the SF International Film Festival 2 years ago, whose employees were approaching their 90s and were looking for a younger generation to continue on the craft.
With a new $650 suit just a little out of reach, I was hoping to at least buy one of the family cookbooks advertised on their website, but the man who opened the door, who turned out to be Bill Wong himself, implored me to return the next day. The problem is i didn’t have any extra time to return, so off I went.
So, that concluded the Chuck-specific portion of this vacation. The team’s successes culminated in a gold-medal performance and meeting a ton of new people, with some highlights below, and the whole album here.
But at least I got to have my own adventure, even if my own personal version of “getting away from it all” didn’t involve an excess of trees and streams and the like.
