tetleytee

On New Years Eve in 1996, my brother and I had dinner with our family and then quickly begged to be dropped off at Mel Lastman Square. To help ring in the new year the city was throwing a free concert performed by the Foo Fighters, and I wanted to be there so badly. I remember discussing a designated meeting area, taking off my glasses and putting them in my pocket for safe-keeping, and charging into that mosh pit as a fearless little asian kid. Elaine and I squirmed our way to the front, jumped around a whole lot, and then did some crowd surfing. Somewhere along the way, I lost my glasses and no one showed up to the meeting area, but I was okay because I stumbled my way blindly to a payphone and pumped in a quarter and fumbled with the home phone number to get my daddy to pick me up. And I had a blast. The joy of being in a concert with all that live music, of being with a bunch of people who were there to enjoy it as much as you, it was thrilling!

Two months ago, I took a trip to Mexico with my husband. We travelled around the Mayan Riviera, exploring ruins and snorkeling in caves, and swimming to find turtles in Akumal Bay. And while I was scared, I tried my hand at scuba diving. It required a lot of patience on the first day, but I was able to complete all the tasks in the pool – clearing water from my mask, finding my regulator airsupply mouthpiece if it fell out, lowering and raising myself in the water, how to breath properly. That isn’t to say that this took effort – the lesson was supposed to last 3 hours and I was there for 6 because I just couldn’t make my way to the deep end of the swimming pool. I kept stopping and scrambling back to the surface, fearing my air supply would suddenly fail me and I’d die a death of suffocation if I couldn’t make it back to the top in time. But with a lot of work, I did it. And I was so proud. I went back to the resort feeling like I’d accomplished something amazing and that I’d conquered my fear.

The next day of certification, we got into a little fisherman boat and made our way out over the choppy water to a popular first-time diver site. It was 10m deep, and pretty wavy on the top. The short ride there was enough to get all the butterflies going in my stomach, and the second I put on all the gear and the weight belt, I felt certain I would drown at the bottom of the ocean. With a lot of coaxing, I was little pushed over the side of the boat and flopped down on the water in my inflated vest, clinging wildly to the old Mexican fisherman captain in a speedo named Alberto. No amount of encouragement could make me go any deeper into the water than just the surface. The open ocean frightened me so much – I feared getting swept out into nowhere by a rogue current, I feared getting eaten by some quickmoving fish (or shark!), I feared just taking in a gulp of water and choking and no one could save me fast enough. My head was full of uncertainties and just thinking of all the possible ways I could die made my breathing shallow and nerves frayed. I was having a massive panic attack. I never let go of Alberto my first time down, and begged to be let back on the boat but everyone insisted that I just needed to get used to the idea of breathing through these tubes submerged under water. How does that NOT sound like certain death people?! Eventually I forced my brain to focus, and began to slow my breathing down. The water was clear, the current wasn’t too bad, and before I knew it, Alberto had slowly deflated my vest a little bit so my head was just inches under the water. And I was okay. My head was in a constant battle with some subconcious that I was going to die, but it seemed under control. I was over the moon with joy.

But trying to get down to 10m, that was a huge struggle. The further down I went the more scared I became. Every time I looked up and saw the surface of the water further away, I knew inside that I was moving further away from being able to breath freely and became more dependent on this piece of equipment that was my only air supply. And to make matters worse, I still had to complete all the same drills I had done the day before in the pool – remove my mouthpiece and find it again, fill my goggles with water and clear it out, control my breathing so as not to bob in the water, constantly remember to breath out when the mouthpiece is removed to ensure my lungs won’t collapse, it was all a lot to take in for my poor body that was already having a freakout. In my state, the proudest moment was when I actually touched the floor of the ocean 10m down. I looked up, had a freak out, calmed myself down but I never let go of my instructor’s arm. I clung onto him for dear life. I just couldn’t enjoy scuba diving because I was constantly afraid I would die somehow. It’s truly a horrible feeling, when you’re given this amazing opportunity to experience something new but you’re just too afraid to try. In the end, I couldn’t shake the fear (I couldn’t breath properly, I was queezy the whole time, and I just looked like I was going to cry constantly), so I insisted on being taken back to the surface. Where I proceeded to throw up constantly due to the boat rocking.

Last week, I got the chance to volunteer as an athlete stand-in for the Opening Ceremonies with two friends. It was the last dress rehearsal before the real deal, so they had a ton of lucky people who got tickets to come see the rehearsal as audience members and a bunch of people to pretend to be athletes so that VANOC could do a full run-through end to end without stops. It was very exciting to get to walk in as a member of team Canada, and even more exciting when we saw the Great One himself down in the holding area. What fun! The show was fabulous, we got to see all the performers live and I felt awesome when everyone cheered as we walked into the stadium! At the end of the show, the organizers asked the athlete stand-ins to wait in their seats for a while to let the rest of the crowds clear out. We stayed an extra half an hour until the stadium had cleared before we got the okay to move out, but it turns out the crowds were still outside and the organizers hadn’t directed the leaving audience as to where the possible exit paths were. People were piling out into the open night outside BC Place but immediately became stuck because they didn’t know where the best exit was to get them to the sky train, or to downtown, or to the parking lots. It wasn’t chaos because no one was shouting, but it became crammed really quickly. To the point where we all just started getting more and more squished as more people piled out of the stadium with nowhere to go. I stood there, short and unable to see any exit paths, being shuffled more closely into the people surrounding me, and with no possible moves my brain began to fire warning signs: no one knows where to go! what if a riot ensues due to all these fustrated people? can this platform hold the weight of all these people here? if I lose my friends I’ll just be pushed around forever before finding a way out. I could get crushed if I trip over something and fall. there’s not a lot of fresh air here with all these people surrounding me who are taller than me. The fears and concerns continued to pile up on me and I felt the familiar tensing in my chest. My breathing became shallow as my friends discussed an exit strategy. I grabbed wildly to Heather’s jacket and she immediately sensed my fear: “hey, how are you doing? look at me, it’s okay. stand a little taller, on your tippie-toes. wes is going to find us a way out, we’re starting to move.” I immediately tried to get taller for some fresh air, and once we started moving, I felt better. But it wasn’t until we were not only unstuck, but far from the crowds in Heather’s apartment that my chest stopped squeezing me and my brain had calmed down. I felt embarassed that my friends had to witness this side of me, and fustrated that this fear was slowly taking over me.

On the night of the Opening Ceremonies, I boarded a bus at midnight with A to get ourselves home after the festivities. Two stops from our apartment, the bus suddenly filled up with drunken partiers who were making their way home as well. And when I say filled up, I mean filled. It was rammed. A and I had a seat but it was facing all the standing people and they were loud and rowdy and sometimes unstable and suddenly my head started swimming with fears again. I gripped A’s hand tightly and tried to take deep breathes from the stuffy air until it was our stop. After squirming out of the bus, A looked at me with concern but I couldn’t really explain it. I know it makes no sense logically – I used to be fine with crowds. I used to love rushing into a mosh pit, I’d willingly brave hordes of people for free samples and crammed subways after concerts back home were all part of the norm.

Yesterday I demanded we leave early from the Our Lady Peace concert in Richmond because I was worried the skytrain would be packed if we left at concert end. Who does that! But even though A and I made it onto the subway platform early, it seemed quite a few people had the same thought in mind and were headed downtown to continue the party. Drats! I told A I needed a seat by the window that wouldn’t allow people to be hovering over us, and shoved him forward the second the train opened its doors (before the people even started coming out, I know I’m awful) to secure me said seat. He did a good job though, my husband, and as I sat down and the train filled up with happy concert-goers and Canadian fans (we had won a medal earlier that day), I put on my headphones and began to watch on old episode of Grey’s Anatomy on my video player with my head down to avoid looking at the crowd. The air was warm to begin with because the train was heated but it took a lot of effort to control my panic attack and I constantly felt like I was going to throw up. When the crowd started singing or chanting, I squeezed A’s hand and turned my player louder to drown out the noise. When my brain somehow thought about my fears, I was sent into shivers so badly my whole body shook and I couldn’t see my little video screen because my hand was moving so much.

I’m not sure what’s wrong with me, or why this fear has suddenly taken over my life – right when the city has become the most crowded too, how unfortunate! It makes me fustrated when I think about it and how it’s affecting me; I can’t get onto the skytrain now without my brain having to be actively trying to calm me down. I just want to be the girl who can go into crowds again.

So I got home yesterday after work to find something stuck to my front door:

What's this?

Hurray! A post-it note surprise! Once upon a time when the hubs and I were first going out he used to leave me post-it notes all the time on my dorm door. And because I love notes, our 9 month anniversary consisted of a whole room full of post-its saying “I Love You”. I love the sappiness.

But these weren’t just any post-its (‘don’t forget to do the dishes, thx.’ – kidding, he’d never leave me those I’d kill him), These had a great message on them:

Hey Tee, Here's a game for ya. You can think of this as one of those "random clicking" games that you like to play online, but better b/c you get real stuff instead of a jpeg of it (or useless points). You will be rewarded so...

The goal of the game is to find all 5 items. Here's the clue: !(Microloft and Kevin's Place). DeMorgan's Law might help: !A union !B = !(A and B). From our conversation last night.

Now a lot of people might be all “what in the” but the boy is a nerd and I love that he’s a nerd, and he loves that I’m not a nerd, so he included an answer sheet just in case. I love that man!

Hurray for an answer sheet!

So eagerly I entered my apartment, threw down my bag and began hunting! My first stop was to survey the room.  Like any good point and click game strategy, you need to first view your surroundings for anything that could look out of place. I did this also because I couldn’t understand what the clue was.  I honestly tried to solve it too, I stared at it for a long time.

What’s not a microloft and also not Kevin’s place? Well, they’re both studios but a microloft is 270sqft and Kevin’s place was about 400sqft.  So OUR place is not a microloft and not Kevin’s place. But clearly that logic doesn’t help me any way.

So when a strategy fails, I basically resort to where would the hubs hide me presents? My first obvious spot was the bed, since it was actually made and my bear with sitting in the middle. Sneaky!

Hi Bear!

Cookie!

Hurray! A cookie!! Now that I knew my prizes, I was eager to find the rest of them. Who can say no to cookies! So I wandered to the bathroom. A good point and click game will spread out the items in the different surroundings, so I figured the bed area was done. In the bathroom, I had no luck with the cupboards so I took a peek into the bathtub.

Thank goodness he decided to put the cookies in ziploc bags. Phew!

While munching down on a cookie (brain food?) I went to the kitchen to see what I could find. I opened the fridge and rummaged through the contents. I opened all the cupboards and shifted to the pantry drawer. The cutlery drawer. Below the sink. Inside the oven. Inside the toaster oven. Inside the microwave. Inside my pots and pans. I was started to get fustrated (and worked up a sweat – who know finding random items in the house like this would actually be more work than playing point and click games on the computer!) when I lifted up our chef pan and found another cookie. Huzzah! (I forgot to take a picture here)

With three down and two to go, I decided I had scoured every area except the desk. So I shuffled through all the papers, all the clothes on the chairs, all the binders on the shelves under the table, inside the boxes, and behind my plant. I came up empty handed, so I became confused and started scouring through my clothes drawers and closet, his closet and his clothes, the shoe rack, basically everything. In a point and click game, when you get stuck and don’t know what else to do, you always just start randomly clicking on things. Don’t say you don’t, I won’t believe you. Fustrated and already down to one cookie after eating the other two, I gave up and went downstairs to the lounge in our building where the hubs was patiently waiting for me.

“If you were a cookie, where would you be?”

A came back upstairs with me to survey my findings: two empty ziploc bags and a half-eaten cookie. We went through the clue again, and while it made so much more sense to me when he explained it, I’ll spare you guys the details because it involves actually being around to listen to the conversation we had the previous night. So after thinking through the clue (and him being extremely impressed I found three cookies by sheer brute force method with no logic whatever), he told me that one of them was under the table. When I told him I had already looked under the table, he said “no really. like UNDER the table.” Like, taped to the bottom of the table. I did not think to crawl under the table and then look upwards because that’s a lot of effort and who does that!!

Under the table?! Really?!

The last one was kind of a cheat too, because microlofts do not have a storage unit, but ours does. Except our storage unit requires a separate key because it’s in a separate room on the other side of our floor. I honestly would’ve never figured that one out. But off I went to the storage room to retrieve my last lost cookie. Hurray!

Storage Room Cookie!

Thanks hubs for the fun game. I love post-it surprises, and I love baked goods.

As I was writing thank you cards, I re-read one from my aunt where she wrote in Chinese: 百年好合

tee: ‘bat leen ho cup’?
a: ‘bat leen ho hup‘
tee: what does that mean?
a: a hundred years of being together
tee: give me another sentence with the word ‘hup’ in it
a: um…
tee: ‘hup an fun’? (which means to sleep)
a: … yes. may you sleep for a hundred years.

100 done, another … 60 or so more to go. Oh boy.

Ed visited Vancouver over the weekend where we spent a fair deal of time (but not enough, imo) eating and doing touristy stuff. The schedule went as follows:

• Ed arrived at 9:00am
• After much indecisiveness, I decided to go to Nu for brunch
• We get there at 10, only to find that it doesn’t open until 10:30. fail.
• We bum around until 10:30, get inside and sit on the pretty patio. I am freezing. Ed takes a total of two work phone calls while eating.
• We finish eating and Ambrose heads off to do manly things while Ed and I decide to rent a bicycle and ride around Stanley. We head down Robson Street.
• Find some random bike rental store on Denman and rent a tandem after perusing some of the sweet-looking ones outside. What they give us cannot even be called a lemon, it was so busted. Ed takes another work phone call.
• Try to bike around the block on it and it’s a bazillion times harder than it looked. Most likely because our bike was old and the seats were all off and disproportionate to the handle bars. We were a danger on the road, and I thought we would die on several occasions.
• Took the bike back to the shop and decided to get two single bikes. I requested a cruiser. They’re so much fun!
• Made our way to Stanley and biked around, stopping at many random tourist areas and debated running through the water park. Ed got freaked out with all the rock sculptures. Ed takes three work phone calls.
• The bike took us 2 hours, and then we walked down Denman to Mondo’s for 6 scoops of gelato.
• Back home for a short bit, and then off to visit the Vancouver branch of his company.
• We ate dinner at Samurai on Davie. He apparently loves wasabi to the point where its disgusting.
• Hung out at night with some of his work people at Doolin’s.
• Woke up bright and early the next morning to hike the grouse grind. I still suck at it. A lot.
• Didn’t have time for ramen lunch, so we said our goodbyes and he went off to the airport all sweaty from the hike

I had a great time with him in town. Pictures can be found on the tab at the top of the page. Thanks for visiting!!!

This is my maid of honour everyone. Thank goodness she has a good sense of humour.

elaine: so we decided to get titanium bands because they’re cheap and they last forever!
me: just like your looooooooove *holy crap, did I just say that? I didn’t mean that! I hope she didn’t hear me*
both: ……..
elaine: wait, what?

wedding recaps to come soon, I promise. I really should update this thing more often. Also I updated the “Listening To” section to show the songs we used during our wedding. I love all of them – I actually had a lot more that I wanted to use but we had to narrow the list down a lot. For example, I wanted to use Ingrid Michaelson’s The Way I Am as our first dance, but A said it would be too hard to dance to. And by the time everyone left, they all missed the last dance song which was the best song of the night, Flight of the Conchord’s Most Beautiful Girl (In the Room). I’ll tell you more about it later!

While out canoeing in the OC6:

Trevor: where should we canoe to?
RT: how about that freighter at your 2 o’clock?
Trevor: the red one? what’s the name of it? Golden what?
RT: Golden 888 Energy.
[ the freighter was actually called Golden Energy]
Trevor: one of those Asian names.
RT: Lucky Elephant Dragon Energy.

It’s funny because it’s true. Freighters always have weird names.

Thanks Chengy for the fantastic photo!

I’m married! Our wedding was fantastic, and despite the fact that my face was melting in the heat, I had a great time. Highlights included:

• our MOH being the only one to arrive on time, but forgot her dress
• our best man trying to break down my door with a stick
• the minister telling everyone to stand for the bride as my MOH walked in
• the crowd standing around awkwardly after the ceremony because no one directed them where to go
• my beautiful man giving a speech where he cried like a baby
• the lion dance. the most amazing lion dance ever. performed by our best man.
• dancing my last slow dance of the night to flight of the conchords

Thanks to everyone who came. You all made the night fantastic and even if the wedding sucked you didn’t let me know it. I love you all!

FYI, Sungha Jung is the most amazing and adorable guitar player on youtube.

tee: i love this kid.
tee: i want to secretly kidnap him. and have him play guitar for my wedding.
tee: I’d feed him?
jsey: u want to kidnap a kid to play at ur wedding
jsey: when ur against me having kids produce valuable commodities!
tee: …. this is important!

Clearly I don’t consider this a bridezilla moment.

Jason Mraz announced the dates for the second leg of his gratitude cafe tour recently! While I complained that Vancouver wasn’t on his original list, it’s up there on the second! And the best part? John got me tickets for my birthday! Eeeeeeee! So excited! Does this count as a mini honeymoon? A’s rolling his eyes at me…

*heart!*

1. All my bridesmaids now have their dresses. I’m assuming they’re all making alterations of sorts?
2. After hunting all over the city in so many different stores, I have wedding shoes! They’re white, they’re plain, and they’re awesome.
   

   my wedding shoes

3. I finished the cake toppers finally! They’re adorable, I can’t wait until the wedding is over so they can come home with us.
4. I figured out what to do with all the jars, but it requires some additional work so we’ll see if I have time for it.
5. Also including a peak at our invites:
   

   outside envelope.

   I just got Terry’s invites the mail, and it’s so gorgeous!

6. Still figuring out: favours, place cards, and the veil. Also still hunting for: evening dress, if possible.