Tokyo - 1939

Tokyo - 1939, originally uploaded by Everything and the rest.

My maternal grandmother went alone to Japan by boat when she was only 14 years old. When she came back to Taiwan for vacation, she met my grandpa, fell in love and went together back to Japan, where they both became students at the University of Tokyo (東京大学) which was a privilege at that time. They had two children in Tokyo. And this picture was taken when my first aunt was just born. My grandfather always carried a camera with him, taking pictures of everyday life with his wife and his children. Photography was a leisure not accessible for everyone at that time, I wonder how he picked his camera, if there were photoshops, how he used his camera, developed his films...

Last year, I rediscovered this vast amount of family photographs, witnesses of their time, meticulously kept by my third aunt who keeps literally everything, from the kimonos that my grandma wore, to the earlier publications of Life magazines. I spent that summer trying to understand my family history in its details through those images, and I decided to scan one by one those pictures that were already half eaten by worms. This was my way to get closer to a part of myself that I wasn't really aware of, trying to be a memories' keeper myself for my children one day. My cousins in Taiwan seem to be less sensitive about those memories. Or maybe it is just me being more sensitive due to the geographical distance, thus this emotional emergency to be linked before everything is gone. But it was a failure in scanning and indexing those pictures, I just did ten percent of this collection. I prefered to spend my time with my lover... and I regret it. At one point or another, you always think that you're mature enough to discern your own priorities, but you'll never be mature enough.

Looking at those pictures made me realize this japanese heritage that was anchored in my taiwanese family. In this picture, my grandma, 26 years old, was a modern woman, and like every japanese ladies, wearing stylish western clothes ; my grandpa was more of a traditional japanese man with his yukata - a form of kimono, and his geta - wooden shoes ; my first uncle looked like a teddy bear and my first aunt, just born, was wrapped in some beautiful japanese fabric. Half of my family speaks japanese, and when we speak taiwanese, we always strangely add some japanese words in the conversations...

I always thought that I was special. Compared to my cousins in Taiwan, I had the chance to be born with two cultures, having taiwanese parents but growing up in Europe. But when I listen to my family's history and contemplate those pictures, maybe this double culture thing isn't just about me, but runs in the family.

Few years upon their graduation, when the war was coming, my grandparents moved back to Taiwan. My grandfather died few years later. I'm wishing, looking at this pic, that I could have had the chance as a kid to play with him, with his wooden shoes, listening to the sound of them knocking on the floor, but my mom probably wished the same ; she was only six when she lost her father. He left my grandma with eight children and several mountains. She then worked hard in those taiwanese landscapes, selling wood and growing fruits and vegetables. Taking care of that business wasn't easy for a woman and a widow at that time. Nevertheless, she managed to give my uncles and aunts a good education. Some went ballet dancing, others were playing piano, other went abroad for studies...

And the result, after two generations,
Me, living in Belgium, managing on my turn, a company that I hope successful so I can tell my grandma that she shouldn't worry anymore...

She's now 97 years old ~ 阿媽

Tokyo - 1939

Tokyo - 1939, originally uploaded by Everything and the rest.

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Madonna Confessions Tour 2006

hihihhhohohohohohhehhehehhe

Il fait chaud!

Bush Lied, People Died

Just read and think...

La mauvaise education - Bad Education

Lorsque j'ai compris que mes parents etaient des personnes sensees mais aussi sensibles, je me suis rendu compte qu'il y avait toutes les chances que je le sois aussi. Malheureusement, la nature s'est legerement gourree dans l'equilibre entre les elements. Je suis devenu au fur et a mesure, une personne insensee et ultra-sensible qui passe son temps a trouver le sens de sa sensibilite.

Et a force de se remettre en question, a force de direction, le sens s'echappe, la sensibilite disparait. Alors j'en discute, je force un dialogue de sourds avec moi-meme. Mes amis, eux, perdent les reperes mentaux qui m'ont quitte il y a belle lurette et la culpabilite - qui est l'un des effets pervers de la sensibilite - s'installe. Elle me dit que je raconte n'importe quoi, elle me dit que je ne suis qu'un enfant incapable de gerer sa vie de post-adolescent et me dit que tout ce que je raconte ennuie mon entourage, pire l'indiffere.

Je ne tourne pas en rond, mais en carre, ou chaque pas me mene a un angle incisif, on prend alors un autre chemin qui mene a un autre angle. On se cherche.

Alors, ma culpabilite me mettant seul face a moi-meme, je decide de la contrecarrer en creant ce blog. Qui en somme a quelque chose d'exhibitionniste (derive d'une certaine forme d'egocentrisme) et de lâche en meme temps. On aime se faire voir, sans pour autant se faire (trop) reconnaitre. Toute l'ambiguite repose sur cette dualite entre l'envie de reconnaissance vierge de memoire d'un inconnu qui tomberait par hasard sur mon blog et le desir inavoue que ceux qui me connaissent puissent encore m'ecouter et me comprendre, la parole directe etant devenu trop honteuse. J'ecris a un etranger en enfouissant le fait que je le connais.

Les messages qui seront laisses par les personnes lisant mes posts ne serviraient qu'a gonfler le taux de narcissisme de la demarche. Autant regarder son telephone portable et attendre qu'un sms peu probable arrive. Mais c'est bien la le sentiment. Nous regardons le carnet d'adresse du GSM, les noms des amis defilent, mais nous ne trouvons personne a qui telephoner sans culpabiliser. Nous nous disons qu'un espace virtuel sera plus approprie, dans l'espoir que quelque chose arrivera, de soi-meme, ou des autres...

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"

Tennessee Williams

Ta yang

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When I realized that my parents were people with sens but also with sensitivity , I understood that the possibilities that I would become like them were high. Unfortunately, mother nature slightly didn’t make an equitable balance between sens and sensitivity. I became progressively, a sensless and supersensitive person who will spend all his time finding the sens of his sensitivity.

By always questioning itself, always trying to find the path, sens flies away and sensitivity melt away. So I try to resolve it, I force dialogue with myself but the results are as profitable as a dialogue between two deaf persons. Then my friends lose all the psychological references they had to understand me, those references which have disappeared from myself long time ago. So culpability - which is one of the perverse effects of sensitivity – comes out just like a cockroach from nowhere. Culpability tells me that what I’m saying is mediocre, it tells me that I am just a child unable to manage his own post-teenager life and tells me that everything I say can’t change anything but annoy my friends, worse, make them being unsensitive to what I say.

I’m turning around and around, repeating myself, but the path where I turn around is not a circle but a square shape, where each step takes me to an incisive angle, so I turn, but then another sharpened corner stands in front of me looking at me, as I do.


For this culpability puts me on a place where loneliness reigns , I decide to thwart it by creating this blog. The main idea of a blog has something to do with exhibitionism (coming from a certain form of self-centredness) and of cowardness at the same time. We like to be seen without being really recognized.. The ambiguity rests on this duality between the desire of recognition from a virgin memory of a stranger who sees this blog by chance and the unavowed desire to let the persons who know us keeping on listening to us because trying to express ourself directly has become shameful. That is how my way of expressing has become: I write to a stranger by hiding the fact that I know him.

Of course everyone loves that when they look at their blog, they will see plenty of comments left by people who have read their posts. But it would only inflate this blog’s narcissism rate. The desire of wanting comments would only lead to the same feeling as when you wait for someone to send you sms on your cellphone. You wait for a time which is psychologically long for you, then you receive something, and afterwards you feel this failure in your actual life.But that is what it is all about. We look at the contact list of our cellphone, the names of the friends ravel, and we wish desperately that we could find someone to talk without guilty feelings. One thinks that a virtual space will be more suitable, in the hope that something will happen, from oneself, from others...

"I have always depended on the kindness of strangers"

Tennessee Williams

Ta yang