nicholas_liu's Xanga

My Effeminate Left Hand

Sat, 16 Feb 2008 00:33:42 GMT

So I got married at the Empire State Building yesterday. All-in-all, the experience was pretty insane. There was a huge presence of press; Jess and I actually appeared on WABC and CW11 news last night (edit: added video links), and we're in a slew of papers today, including many of the Chinese-language ones like the World Journal, a paper from Malaysia (because of my mom, presumably), and the Daily News today and probably Sunday. The most surreal moment for me was when the pastor was performing the ceremony. There was this moment when she was reciting a 1st-century AD love poem when I suddenly noticed how she was outlined by half a dozen video and still cameras. Insane.

Here's the Daily News article on the event itself. Jessica and I are prominently featured in the video. Weird. Jessica was also followed around by Clinique, one of the cosponsors, so there should be something online soon featuring my wife.

Another surreal experience was going up to the observation deck afterwards. Since we were dressed differently from the tourists, and we were being followed around by a flotilla of cameramen and reporters, all these strangers were clearing the way for us. That made me feel guilty. The extremely high level of attention we were receiving totally made up for the relative secrecy of my proposal back in August. I had children, men, and foreign women come up and shake my hand. What the heck. Actually, it was kind of awesome, but I felt almost pathologically calm throughout the moment. If I can figure out how to stay this way during office meetings, first-time encounters, and general conversation, I think I might be able to coast pretty easily through life.

I'm not quite sure why, but I don't really feel married yet. Neither does Jess. Part of me suspects that it's just one of those things that'll slowly creep into my awareness, like the way a growing paunch and male-pattern baldness gradually afflicts married men.

I'm Getting Married in Nine Days

Tue, 05 Feb 2008 20:57:27 GMT

It's true. Please accept my apologies if I've managed to unintentionally neglect and insult you; I do not mean it. You are a close and dear friend of mine. It's just that things have been crazy lately, so I haven't had the time to tell you all in the proper way.

Here's the skinny: Back in late-November, Jess and I won a contest sponsored by brides.com, which is run by Condé Nast Publications. Every year, 14 couples are chosen to get married at the Empire State Building's private chapel on Valentine's Day. The basis of selection is the relationship story: how we met, how I proposed, and what our association with the ESB is. We were chosen and since then things have been nuts.

There are a lot of cosponsors for the event and, also, there will be some press. I'm not really sure how all of this works yet, so I'm going to refrain on publicly commenting for now, except to say that we're really getting taken care of. It's been surreal.

Okay! Wedding time. Talk to you all later. Gong Xi Fa Cai.

Tokyo

Sun, 30 Sep 2007 23:55:41 GMT

There are seven albums, which I recommend going through in order. Sorry about the amount; I could definitely have done a better job at editing, but I figured that it's best to include more and have them organized into bite-sized chunks, so that those of you who have never been to Tokyo can get a fuller idea of what I saw there.

OK, enjoy!

Thank You

Wed, 29 Aug 2007 15:49:10 GMT

Thank you all so much for your congratulations and your good wishes. I am deeply touched and grateful to have all of you in my life.

I probably shouldn't be doing this, but I am updating from work right now. Things have been more hectic than usual with an upcoming two-week trip to Tokyo with my fiancée and a recent promotion. Actually, the promotion hasn't changed the nature of my work at all, but I thought I should mention it here for posterity.

I am leaving for Japan on Labor Day and intend to use digital instead of film for my pictures, which I feel strange about as this will be the first major overseas trip I've taken where I have forsaken my beloved, silver halide roots. I will return to film when my financial situation has normalized. Until then, I am looking forward to visiting the home city of my two favorite photographers, Araki Nobuyoshi and Moriyama Daido, where I will undoubtedly be experiencing massive amounts of performance anxiety as I attempt to compose pictures with my DSLR's dinky-ass viewfinder with eyes leaking with the tears of self-betrayal.

Okay, back to work.

First Date

Sat, 18 Aug 2007 15:34:47 GMT

The visibility on the 86th floor observation deck of the Empire State Building was only 10 miles on Thursday, August 16th. I know this because I was there. So was my girlfriend, Jessica Chan.

When Jessica and I first started going out three and a half years ago, we had planned to go to the top of the Empire State Building as part of our first date. This confirmation that I knew nothing about dating in New York City back then (or even now, but don’t tell her that) can easily be mistaken for romanticism. As a native New Yorker, she’d never been to the top of the ESB; I’d only been there a few years ago as part of an itinerary for some out-of-towners I once hosted with great reluctance.

Thankfully, my touristy intentions were interrupted when a freak blizzard swept into the city in the middle of March. We instead sat glumly in a snowed out South Street Seaport (evidence piece #2) and had some fruit dessert in Chinatown.

On Thursday, the thunderstorm front the meteorologists were forecasting (but failed to forecast 10 days ago when I planned the schedule) missed us by a few hours, but in its stead, we were enjoying a hazy view of Manhattan. We weaved through throngs of tourists and dialects before finding a relatively empty spot overlooking southern Manhattan – including the Lower East Side, where she and I both grew up as children. We looked towards the financial core of the island, our eyes failing to focus through all the smog.

Finally, she looked like she was ready to leave. I stammered, “I have some things to tell you!”

“Yes?” she said. And, “It’s hot up here,” her voice sounding threateningly girly.

I told her about how, for the first time since our relationship started, I had been hiding things from her, and that when our mutual friend, Laura, and I were supposedly “hanging out” several weeks ago, we weren’t “hanging out” at all, but actually “shopping around.” I told her that I had this vague outline of a speech in my head that sounded much better locked in my head, but now that I was spouting it, it felt more like exposition.

I told her that I learned that keeping secrets from her, even for a good cause, doesn’t pay; I was breaking out, my gut was a wreck, and my chest had been tightening for the last two days. The thing is, I said, I have come to depend so much on you, on talking to you, on having your emotional support. If anything, these last few weeks have taught me how I never want to keep secrets from you again.

Just like before. Like the way our relationship has always been before I started “shopping around.”

By now, she had started searching my person, patting my pockets and rummaging through my camera bag for the item I had been outlining but not mentioning: the ring box. She couldn’t find it.

“Where are you hiding it?” she asked, full of hopeful concern.

I said that I heard that back in the Vietnam War, POWs would hide things like watches in the only place they had left. In their butts, I said.

We looked at each other. I started, “I have a question to ask you--.”

“No.” She hugged me then, and for several minutes, we just enjoyed the view, staring down towards the tip of the island where we spent our most youthful days. It was as if we were holding onto the last moments of our boyfriend-girlfriend stage, and I loved it.

I looked around for a spot to kneel. She said that I shouldn’t, and that if I did she’d have to say no. And then in the secret language of ABCs (American-born Chinese), which is Mandarin, she said, “There are too many people.” That was too bad because I had already started looking forward to being in a bunch of random tourists’ vacation photos. She and I being both relatively shy people, I said, “All right,” and then, “I have to fetch something from my butt.”

I pulled out the suede black box from my camera bag’s secret compartment. (Yes. I am being serious.) I said, “Are you ready for your question?” She shook her head no. I opened the box with the Tiffany’s ring that I felt was a perfect complement for her 4.25-sized finger, and I said, “Honey. Jessica Chan: will you marry me?”

“Yes.” Nicholas wins. Game over.

I slipped on the ring and we kissed. The German tourists next to us with the binoculars failed to notice anything.

As the rest of the evening unfolded, I carried her along the perfectly romantic trajectory I had planned: yuppie Indian food at Tabla, followed by a night at the Hotel Elysee, which some claim is the most romantic hotel in the city. I don’t know about that, but it sure looked very Parisian and Paris was our very first conversation topic on the night we first met and actually fell in love.

-fin-

Puerto Rico

Sun, 15 Jul 2007 08:01:38 GMT

Las Vegas

Tue, 03 Jul 2007 03:34:27 GMT

Circa June 2007.

Lonely Seattle Hotel

Tue, 17 Apr 2007 23:42:03 GMT

I got back from my business trip to Seattle a couple of days ago. Because of the terrible weather in the Northeast -- the fourth rainiest day in New York's recorded meteorological history -- our plane was in a holding pattern for two hours just outside the city.

Finally, the captain announced that we were cleared for landing. As we cut through the stormy cloud layer, the pilots struggled to hold the aircraft steady. "Chop," as they refer to turbulence in the air captaincy, was all around us. Is it strange that the cabin air was roaring with the clatter of loosely bound parts, but that everything still seemed so quiet? Even after we landed, the earth continued to sway beneath our feet.

Well, in any case, here are the pictures from Seattle.

Tre Metri Sopra Il Cielo

Mon, 26 Mar 2007 04:02:54 GMT

I hope you guys enjoyed the Italy pictures. If you have a Google Account, be sure to leave some comments in the albums. I really dig non-constructive, friendly comments.

Over the next several weeks, I will be doing a little bit of traveling for work. This week I've got an impromptu trip up to Boston for a scientific conference, followed by another in two weeks to Seattle. It should be interesting, but I am already exhausted just thinking about it. Plane travel was definitely one of the things that I outgrew after I passed five feet in height.

In personal news, Jessica and I celebrated our third anniversary on the 17th. Amazing, huh? We shared our first kiss at night in the Lower East Side where we both grew up. The Manhattan Bridge was in the background and we both had on too much ChapStick®.

Italy 2007 Photographs

Sun, 18 Mar 2007 23:39:38 GMT

Although I had all the selected pictures and captions ready to go for weeks now, it took me this long to get my crap together. I must say that considering it took me nearly a year to get my Taiwan pictures up, this is clearly an improvement.

I wanted to set up a Flash-based web gallery along the lines of what I did for Taiwan but I couldn't figure out a way to fully automate the process, so I was, like, Well, eff that. Instead I am using Picasa Web Albums. Google just upgraded the free storage amount to one gigabyte, so you should go check it out sometime.

There are three albums. Use the slideshow option up towards the top of each album page. I recommend checking them out in the following order:

Feel free to share these links among your friends. Enjoy.