Welcome to MY SPACE!

I've decided to leave the blogger world behind and start my 25th year on this planet with some advancements.

This is going to be my last posting here on Blogger. I've opened up a couple myspace accounts:

myspace.com/wendylaw to replace wenlaw.blogspot

This page will have my usual journal entries, thoughts, events.

and

myspace.com/djwendylaw to replace djwendylaw.blogspot

This page is specifically for the DJ in me. My upcoming sets, news, pics and when I have some finished, my own tracks.

You can also check out djwendylaw.com for this info.

Ciao for now bloggers! See you on myspace!

Wen

Paragons

Paragon: a model of excellence or perfection.

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I've always been a bit of a perfectionist. This characteristic of mine has been a helpful tool in some cases, but for the most part it's been a setback.

I've always thought that if I'm going to do something I had better do it right, or learn to do it right. Except there's way too many things that I want to do all at the same time.

I want to climb like Chris Sharma, ride like Shaun White, and surf like Kelly Slater. The best of the best. Paragons of our time. The difference between me and them si that I want to excel as they do not for competitiveness, but for self validity.

Reality is, I don't have time to excel at everything. Not everything I'm interested in at least.

I'm such a scatterbrain that my most relevant interest changes every week if not every day.

All I have to say about that is simply...'MEH!' At least I'll have fun trying!

I'm curious to know. Do any of you have a paragon you look up to? Why?

Travel Deprivation Syndrome

So I've been feeling somewhat down since I've been back. I have absolutely no motivation to do the things I used to do here in London. All I am motivated to do right now is take the necessary steps to leave again, build my DJ reputation, and spend time with my dog, Madison.

Pretty sad, I know.

Everything else just seems like a waste of time. I have to force myself to go out, be social, be active, and see my friends.

What the hell has gotten into me? I left as one person and came back as a completely different person.

Now don't get me wrong. When I'm out with my friends I have a great time, and will definately miss each and every one of them, but it's time for me to leave London behind once and for all and move on with my life.

Although I've lived here my entire life, I definately do not feel at home in London. I've solidified this feeling every time I've left and come back.

The world is my home and there are sooooo many more places for me to explore and even more things to discover.

Graduation just can't come soon enough...and I haven't even started school yet.

Goals - Revised

These are the goals I need to accomplish in the next few years, more or less in this order:

1. Play sets in both Hong Kong and Thailand.
2. Attend IHMC program in Vancouver, BC to obtain diploma.
3. Play sets in BC.
4. Attend Queen Margaret University in Edinburgh, Scotland to obtain degree.
5. Play sets in Scotland.

As long as I accomplish these goals, I will have a good foundation to start my career off. I'll be a DJ with a degree to fall back on. I have to first concentrate on goals number 1 and 2. These will lead to the rest.

Goal number 1.

I've already made valuable contacts in both Hong Kong and Thailand. I'm confident that when I go back to Hong Kong and Thailand, I will have no trouble getting sets booked. This will help me immensely when I try to get booked in BC. I'll have played internationally.

Goal number 2.

I've already submitted my application to IHMC. All I have to provide them with now is a copy of my high school transcript and 2 reference letters. The reference letters are being written and I go to CCH tomorrow to pick up my transcript. Once I provide them with this, it takes them a week to send me a conditional letter of acceptance. With this letter I have to apply for student loans galore to pay my tuition. (and to help with my travel arrangements...shhh)

So that's what I'm currently working on. Getting the hell outta here.

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As much as I love every one of my friends here in London, I am definately really depressed to be back. Still, to this day, I have not unpacked anything other than my toothbrush. I've just been cleaning my laundry and it's taking every last ounce of will power in my body not to pack everything back up in my suitcase and take off again. Everything is just sitting in limbo. I guess I'll have to be patient.

Oh, by the way, patience is definately NOT one of my fortes.

A Simple Life in Thailand

Jay and I decided to take a side trip to Thailand from Feb 26-Mar 4. We didn't book anything other than a plane ticket. We booked this trip on Feb 24th, two days before we took off for Thailand.

I decided to keep things really simple and pack my bathing suit, towel, toothbrush, camera, sandals and one change of clothes. It was quite liberating having such a light load.

We decided that we didn't want to waste any time in Bankok and wanted to spend our entire trip on an island. Here's the timeline as to not bore you with the minor travel details.

15:00 arrived at Bankok airport
16:30 took cab to downtown Bankok with a really nice Norweigan couple
17:30 arrived at Hua Lamphong Station, Downtown Bankok
18:00 had dinner at restaurant nearby
19:00 met back at train station to board overnight bus to Chumpon
00:00 stopped for food
03:00 arrived at a 'nap office' in Chumphon to get a few more hours of sleep
06:30 woke up to have some breakfast and took transfer bus over to pier
07:15 off to Koh Tao
10:00 arrived in Koh Tao

I was definately glad to finally arrive....in paradise. It took us a few hours to find a place to stay and for me to find a scuba school I was happy with. I was able to start my academics at 2:30 that afternoon.

The resort where we stayed was called 'Simple Life Villa' and my dive school was affiliated and called 'Simple Life Divers'. The name speaks volumes. It was located on the west side of Koh Tao on Sairhee Beach.

For the next four nights and five days we were definately living the 'simple life'.

Jay spent his day basking in the sun, swimming, and walking around the island, while I was in class and diving to get my open water scuba certification. We met up at night with other people we met on the island for delicious Thai food, drinks, and parties.

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I was able to go diving at three different dive sites during my course. Sairhee Reef, Chumphon and Twins. Open water students don't usually get to go to Chumphon for one of their 18 meter dives but since I was the only student in my class they decided to make an exceptioin. Chumphon is used for the advanced deep dive to 30 meters so I was really lucky. Chumphon ended up being my favorite dive site. There were tons of coral, fish and other underwater creatures. We saw nemos, baracudas, sea urchants. There was even one fish that followed us around like an underwater dog after we pet it. Super cool. Scuba diving was definately one of the most interesting things I have ever done.

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We met many interesting people during our stay in Ko Tao. I found that most of the foreigners on the island were from England, including all of the diving instructors at the Simple Life.

My instructor's name was Andy. He was fun. He made me flood my goggles laughing by holding a sea cucumber up to his crotch as if it were a certain body part. He was telling me that if you squeeze the sea cucumber, a white sticky substance squirts out the end. Thank god he didn't try this out on me. His friends however have squirt him with cucumbers many times. The stuff gets all over your wetsuit and is aparently really hard to clean off.

Ha ha. He dove down deep and got jizzed on! Sucka!!!

I met some local djs that lived on the islands as well. They were also from England. It's not hard to pick up a djing job on Koh Tao since every bar welcomes guest djs. I'll definately be bringing some records with me next time I hit the islands. Because the music on the island was highly influenced by the U.K., it was definately our cup of tea. We had a blast at Lotus Bar, Pure, AC and In Touch.

We also met a guy named Luke on the overnight bus to Chumphon. He was an interesting guy. We chatted for a long time and even got in trouble at the 'nap office' for being too loud. Oops. He was also headed to Koh Tao to meet up with a travel buddy of his, Sully. We bumped into the two of them at a bar called AC one night and ended up hanging out with them a couple more times during the trip. Jay had met someone on our last night in Ko Tao so I let him have our room and I bunked up with Luke.

I felt like I had some sign on my back saying 'It's my last night here and want to have sex before I go!' judging by how the guys at the Simple Life were acting. However, I thought Luke was different but man was I wrong. I never knew English boys could be so persistant. Let's just say that it was an interesting sleepover. Partially my fault I guess.

"Hi, my name's Wendy. I'm living in my own little world where guys and gals can just be friends, there's no need for awkward shut-downs, and people know the meaning of 'No, I don't want to sleep with you!'"

Anyways...

We also met a couple guys from Israel. One of them being Danny. He had been to Koh Tao many times before for extended periods of time. He knew everyone on the island. He taught me how to tell people off in Hebrew. He also made an effort to '7 Ball' me when we played pool at the Simple Life. That's when I'd show him up and tell him off in his own language. I know, I'm a horrible person.

'7 Ball' - when a player wins a game with all 7 of his/her opponent's balls remaining on the table. At the Simple Life, house rules stated that if you are 7-balled you must walk around the pool table butt naked.

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When the day came to leave, Jay and I were super depressed. Our glory days were over. No more sun, no more sand, no more scuba. 7 days is hardly enough in Thailand. We kept thinking of all the possible ways we could stay and make it work. None of them actually worked, mostly for financial reasons. So sadly, we had to go.

This time we decided to take the high-speed Catamaran back to Chumphon, and an overnight sleeper train back to Bankok.

Our train was delayed by 2 hours but luckily we bumped into 4 German boys that Jay had met on the island. We sat at the train station drinking some beers and had a blast with these boys. They were fun. It turns out they were in the same car as us and had the bunk beds right next to us on the train.

When the train finally arrived, we took our little party right onto the train and continued having a hoot with a couple of attendants on the train. We gave them some beers and the male attendant ended up lending us a memory card. One of the German boys put the memory card into his phone and we were all shocked yet quite entertained when we saw what was on the card.

The card was full of porn . Masturbation, hetero, lesbian porn...there was even one clip of a girl doing a horse! That was really disturbing. This memory card definately kept us entertained for the first hour of our train ride. It was hilarious having the 6 of us huddled around a little cell phone watching porn. The youngest German boy (I think he was about 20) even had to go hide in a corner for a while to...ummm...get rid of a little problem he was having...hahahaha...

So nevertheless, we had an interesting journey back to Bankok.

We had a couple hours before we had to hit the airport to catch our flight back to Hong Kong, so we decided to check out the Chatuchak Weekend Market. We didn't have much time there so we only got to check out a fraction of it. It was HUGE! It's one of the world's largest weekend markets and has over 5,000 booths selling goods from every part of Thailand.

Then took a cab to the airport, checked in, got a traditional thai massage while I was waiting to board, and went back to Hong Kong.

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I've officially added to my list of goals. I need to get back to Thailand and do the whole Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam tour. I need to do this before I drown into the depths of debt hell. In other words, before I start school. So June/Julyish it is. School starts August 14th.

I hope I hope I hope....

Sea Sick and the Village of Cheng

I was woken up by my aunt at 6:45am (my alarm either didn't go off or I don't remember shutting it off) to give me just enough time to jump in the shower and jump in the car with my aunt who kindly, after not too much sleep herself, drove me to the pier. I was to catch an 8:30am boat to Chu Hoi with a bunch of relatives from my mom's side.

I was definately still feeling the effects of alcohol from the night before. We checked in, got our tickets and had to wait for a while to board the boat. I was definately not feeling well. Everyone kept asking me if I was okay. I kept telling everyone that I was just extremely tired.

After we boarded the boat and left the dock it took about three minutes before I had to run to the bathroom and vomit up all the remaining, unabsorbed alcohol that was left in my system. Boo-urns is right. I would definately not recommend anyone boarding any type of boat a mere 4 hours after a night of drinking. I could feel the internal fluids rocking side to side with the motion of the boat as they slowly ate away at my stomach. But I purged them soon enough, and descretely enough as to not make a big deal out of it.

Imagine having 16 relatives, some who you haven't seen in almost 10 years, constantly asking you if you're okay, touching your forehead to make sure you don't have a temperature, making you pop pills galore, staring at you with that worried, desperately concerned look on their face, all while you have an extreme lack of sleep and are still significantly drunk from the night before. No way, no how. That thought alone made me want to vomit some more. So I kept quiet about it.

I felt considerably better after that and an hour of sleep on the boat. I woke up hung over, but at least I wasn't drunk anymore. I was still tired, but that's become a normal feeling for me. I can deal with tired.

We took an hour-long cab ride (where I passed out again) to the Cheng family village. My family has had a piece of land there ever since before my grandpa was born. He was actually born and raised in a little house on that same piece of land. Before my great grandma passed away, my grandpa promised her that he'd have another house built on that land and that he'd keep it in the family because it was her wish to do so.

This piece of land sits right in the middle of the Cheng family village. My guess is that there's about 500 people that live in that particular village. No one was able to tell me for sure. What I do know is that everyone who lives in that village has the same last name and you guessed it, Cheng. So that means, somehow, somewhere along the line, everyone in this village is a distant relative of mine. Super cool. There were a bunch of villages like this one, each with a huge sign at the entrance stating the family names of the people who live there, one after the other. It was definately very interesting to see.

Most of the people who own the land have built new and improved houses that include running water and electricity. My grandpa was just recently able to do so as well, for a very reasonable price (approx. 19,000 CAD), from start to finish.

We were all there for the 'housewarming' so to speak. It's a Buddhist tradition to celebrate a new home. We lit firecrackers at the door, and worshipped our ancestors by leaving them food and wine, and lighting insence and paper money for them.

We had some lunch, did some shopping in the area, and had dinner. Then we were back on the boat again to Hong Kong.

This trip to see my heritage has made me realize that I really have no clue about my grandparents, their background, or even their religion. So when we all get back to Canada I'm definately going to make an effort to visit my grandparents more often and talk to them about their past and their beliefs. I found it all very fascinating listening to their stories and watching them going through their traditions. I can't wait to learn more about them.

Tomorrow I leave for Thailand and won't be back to Hong Kong until March 4th. A relaxing vacation away from our overloaded Hong Kong holiday.

I can't wait to catch up on some sleep.

Party Night in HK!!!

I had a bunch of errands to run today to get me ready for my next week of travelling.

First we had to pick up our plane tickets from a travel agency in Sham Shui Po.

We decided to make a stop at Prince Edward station to check out the Ladies Market as well as the Fa Yuen Street Market. I remember going there as a kid and having tons of stuff to look at and buy. As an adult (so-called), you realize that it's mostly cheap quality merchandise for a cheap price. Not really my cup of tea.

After our quick tour around the two markets we went over to Wan Chai to pick up my passport which now had my Chinese Visa attached to it. I needed that done so that I can go with my family to see my grandpa's newly built house in Chu Hoi tomorrow.

All of this travelling around took up most of the day so it was about dinner time at that point. My cousin Julie was just finishing work a couple streets away so we met up with her and went into Tsim Sha Tsui to grab some 'modernized' Japanese. Even more delicious food.

We walked off our food while looking around for cell phones (yet again) and then it was time for us to meet up with Jose.

Jose and his boyfriend Kevin started us off at a chillout gay bar called Rice. (It was later explained to me that 'Rice Queen' is a term used by the homosexual community for men who like Chinese boys, so the name is oh so approprate). It was definately a really cool, chill atmosphere. I was definately the only female in the place but I was okay with that. All the eye candy in the world, not a worry about some drunken idiot trying to throw me lines or grind up against me.

After a few drinks at Rice we felt the liquid courage drawing us to a dance floor. Unfortunately Kevin was feeling too ill to make it to Propaganda with us be we ended up having an awesome time regardless! The music was pounding, the drinks were delicious and the people were gay and great! The only downfall is that this was the most expensive night so far. Each mixed drink at any bar in Hong Kong will run you anywhere between 60-120 HKD (approx 10-20 CAD). We were buying rounds so you can imagine how that adds up. The cover at propaganda set us each back another $120.00 HKD as well, so this was definately our one night out in the HK.

With all of this drunken fun I was having I didn't even remember that I had to get up at 6:00am to meet up with Julie at the Kowloon Tong MTR station by 7:15am so that we could go on a boat to China.

I somehow stumbled onto the bus, passed out, got up just in time to get out and pass out in a cab for the rest of the way home. Good thing Jay was copasetic enough to get us both home safe.

I got home at around 5:30am to see my aunt and uncle still awake (they said they got up early to call Laurissa, their daughter in Canada, but I'm not sure I believe it). They were worried sick when we got back. I felt really bad.

I set the alarm for 6:30am and passed out around 6:00am....so typical of me.....I'm hopeless....

Attempted Chillout Day

The thing about Hong Kong is that it's a place that NEVER sleeps. Everyone is always GO GO GO GO GO! There's no sitting, stopping, relaxing. Everything is always rushed and time is always of the essence.

Since we needed to catch up our lack of sleep, we were late meeting up with my grandparents for dim sum. About an hour and a half late. I'm such a horrible grandchild.

Since I had plans to go to China with my entire family I had to get a Chinese Visa from a Visa office in Wan Chai while my dad and Jay went to the Technology district to check out cell phones.

After uncomfortably leaving my passport with the Visa officials I went over to Shum Shui Po to meet up with them. I figured I'd be able to find a cheap audio interface to record on my 'puter with. That's the one thing I haven't found a cheaper version of yet.

I tell ya, looking at computers, cell phones and MP3 players all day isn't exactly the most exciting or relaxing thing you can do with your holidays.

As soon as I could ditch my parents I met up with a friend I met in the Czech Republic, Jose. He took us out to this delicious Shanghainese restaurant in Causeway Bay.

Jose was informing us about Hong Kong's two favorite sports. Shopping and Mah-Jong. I laughed because it's so true.

Since we didn't all know how to play mah-jong we decided to walk around and, you guessed it, shop after filling ourselves with chicken noodles and dumplings.

After a quick catch up, Jose and I decided we'd go out on the town the following night. He said he would take us out proper so that we could really experience what Hong Kong's nightlife has to offer.

I can't wait!