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Lynn, QC, PH.

I edit and proofread academic papers and books. I write here and elsewhere. I also talk way too much about P-pop and beauty pageants over at Pop and Pageantry.

Get in touch if there’s a project you think we can work on together.

Category: Stuff I remember

  • Remembering my dad

    I was sick for most of October, and because I was coughing incessantly, that meant IT WAS PEI PA KOA TIIIIIIME.

    I like to joke that taking Pei Pa Koa when you have a cough or a sore throat is the best advice my dad ever gave me. Okay, I say “joke” but I’m … not really joking. We didn’t have the best relationship. It took me a couple of years after he died to really think about why that was: we were both pretty stubborn, he wasn’t around much and let my mother take care of us, I didn’t like the way he treated my mother and how he favored his siblings, and he probably really didn’t want to or was prepared to be a father and never learned along the way. That’s all fine now. There’s really not much I can do about stuff that happened a long time ago with a parent who died more than a decade ago.

    So no, I don’t have very many warm memories of my father. But I do hang on to the few I have:

    • him bringing me a box of cookies* that ended up becoming my favorite
    • waking me up from a nap to tell me that we have Japanese corn for merienda
    • him joking that he was just holding a piece of chalk when I chided him for smoking
    • his excitement when he passed an important professional exam
    • him thanking me for giving him what turned out to be one of his last meals
    • his anticipation over delivering a speech pushing for automation in his workplace

    None of them seem like a lot, but I imagine I would have seen more of those moments had we both taken the time to get to know each other better and stopped being so triggered by whatever the other one said. I know, the dead don’t care, but I’m still here and from time to time, I still wish things had been different.

    *Dare Ultimate Fudge Chocolate

  • Anybody remember Sideblog.org?

    There used to be a website called Sideblog.org, which allowed you to make extra blog posts on a miniblog that appeared on the sidebar of your site’s front page. All you needed to do was sign up and add a snippet of HTML code wherever you wanted theminiblog to appear. Thinking about it now, it seemed kind of like a precursor of the original Twitter, letting you share posts that didn’t deserve a full-length blog post.

    Looking at Archive.org, it seems that Sideblog.org didn’t last that long (or maybe the site wasn’t crawled enough?), because the available version is from 2006. Feels like an idea that was ahead of its time, but I remember how nice it was to have a little space where I could just post things like “I’m hungry” or “Ugh” and not interrupt the flow of my main blog.

  • 17 years later, I still dream about our old house

    17 years later, I still dream about our old house

    In those dreams, I’m living my life as it currently is in that old house. It was a huge, lovely space, with a massive garden and backyard that I wish I’d appreciated more and even a warehouse-type structure in the back that would have made a very nice gym and yoga studio. But we are here and this is now, as I often tell myself when thinking about the past. Still, every now and then, I like to sit with the memory of that house, the warm breezes through the screen windows, the cats that made it a home, fresh ensaymada from the neighborhood bakery, dancing in the family room with my mother, and parties parties parties, so I suspect that the dreams will continue.