2017-05-02
I'm over 11.000 days old and never had a girlfriend. I'm an only child and my parents are working all the time. Somehow i'm ok with myself ever since i can remember. I always had crushes on girls at school, but i was just not ready for anything in life. Instead of relationships i had time to focus on things that have lead me to who i am. But this also means that i had barely any friends. It makes me sad, to be honest.
My crushes were always part of a motivation chain to make me do things, as stimulation from another direction. Basically to tackle a problem, by thinking differently, from other points of view, to find a solution, by creating proprietary tools, or combining things that weren't meant to be together. Most of the time i ended up with something that had an own life, a replacement for a girlfriend. You could say i found a new hobby.
I wasn't someone a girl would have want to date anyway. Because i was overweight in my school days, and i was not really in the position to invite anyone anywhere. Our rented apartment is full of stuff that we accumulated through moving from a much bigger place. And money doesn't grow on trees. There is only so much time for everything.
And when i tried to communicate my feelings, i was never mature enough to handle it without to be sad for a long time. It made me everytime a little bit colder. I was in a fragile state, and i didn't want to be broken by little things. Luckily, at some point, i found porn on the internet, and my needs were covered. There you have it, i'm a virgin.
As an only child with working class parents, i had to be creative and i had to learn a lot on my own. Not because i wanted to. Just because i was alone. In the end, i got more done than others. My parents don't have many socializing skills either, and a day has only 24 hours. It's too late for a lot of things. It took me some time to understand it. I changed a lot since studying at university in 2006.
And this may be one of the reasons why i'm so obsessed with Jessica Clements. To kickstart something new again. Elton John and Bernie Taupin wrote a nice song: "I hope you don't mind that i put down in words, how wonderful life is while you're in the world."
2017-04-27
Back then, when i was doing more stuff on the internet, i had a blog in German. But eventually, i took everything away that didn't make me happy. There was too much content accumulated from many years. Some things i wrote because i just wanted to write something. There was bad and good mixed together. I already wrote two books in my life and made it available through self publishing: "Sketches on toilet paper" in 2008, and one year later "The Principle of Hope" in 2009. At some point, i divided the content into blog posts for everyone free to read. You can imagine the mess.
This blog started fresh in late April 2017, because of my crush on Jessica Clements. Some posts are backdated to make it less empty. I have a couple of internet domains unused, since i stopped throwing projects against the web, to see what sticks. I got motivated to do it again, because i wanted to know some of her thoughts, but Jessica Clements doesn't share them. There are good reasons for not doing it, but you don't have to put everything out there too. Just enough to show you are real. Without this blog i would be a blank canvas, especially for people who don't watch a lot of videos, since i removed almost everything else. I do care about it, because you are reading this.
Jessica Clements is not doing it, probably because she thinks that there is no money in blogging. YouTube makes it easy for her to fill the wallet in comparison. As a model, she is more skilled in presenting herself visually rather than literally. Jessica Clements talks about "fashion blogger style" and wears the matching clothes in her videos, but then it stops without a corresponding blog to make it complete. For me it's just another way to have fun. And with a larger footprint i can cut through the noise again.
My first homepage in 1998 did have a news section. But the revolution came with the RSS standard. It made blogs convenient to consume by getting new posts of all your favorite bloggers through a single RSS Feed Reader. This saved time and helped democratizing journalism. From 2004 to 2010, i even had a blog hosting service, called "Blogy", built with Perl code completely written by myself. In 2005, it also got featured in "Internet Magazin", a German computer magazine, which no longer exists either.
2017-04-24
Back then, in 2005, when TV series LOST started to be aired the first time in Germany, i liked it, but i lost interest along the way, because first, it took them a couple of years to produce all six seasons, and second, the commercial breaks are not helping. The original version in English is much better anyway. Now that on demand is possible via video streaming, it is the second time i gave LOST a full run. The first time i binge-watched i skipped boring parts, but this time i saw it basically from start to end, because i just wanted it to be done, and it was worth it.
Another TV series i binge-watched was Stargate Atlantis. I liked Stargate SG-1, because as a child born in 1986, i watched actor Richard Dean Anderson in "MacGyver" on German TV a lot, and he did a good job again, as main character Jack O'Neill. But Atlantis is without the cast of SG-1, so it took me some time to like it. Stargate Universe is another series of the franchise, which i liked much more, because it's everything i wanted it to be, but sadly made it only to two seasons, till it got cancelled in late 2010.
2017-04-23
Over a week ago, i bought A4 sized 80 g/qm paper in a pack of 500. The special thing is that they are not white, because they are not bleached. This will make my origami cranes less bright and give them more depth, when captured in difficult light situations. The paper is not grey either. There is an yellow tone in white. A bright cream color to be exact. I like it a lot. And these are the specs of the recycled paper by manufacturer Xerox in the German language: "Bleichverfahren: ungebleicht, Weißegrad: 70% ± 2.5 D65/10, Opazität: 95 %, Dicke: 102 µm +/-6, Fasertyp: Recycled"
FYI, the information density is quite high in some of my blog posts. And if your English is not good, Google Translate isn't going to help, especially not with technical terms. I stopped publishing in German a while ago, because it's just a barrier on the internet. I may not come across like that, but i want to make friends: At the age of 10, i wrote on a piece of paper, dating back to April 1997, which i found during a cleanup in the living room, that i like "to take beautiful photos, have fun and friends to play with". Browsing through old stuff is like going back in time for a moment.
2017-04-23
In late 2016, i surfed on YouTube through channels, and found this lady named Jessica Clements. I liked to watch her talking. She seems to be attractive and nice, almost funny. I do not care about the makeup chat. But the thing that got me hooked was her birds, it made me watch all videos, because of her voice. Hashtag Rabbit Hole.
In early 2017, i started an instagram account dedicated to edit her photos, to add a twist to them, as an outlet. Because she is out of my league. I still wanted to do more with her, and this was the way i went. I'm 3 decades old, shot over 100.000 photos, over 10.000 videos in my life, and probably just tired of my own photos and videos at the moment.
I even took more care of myself, by doing things like sit ups and crunches, to get me in a better shape. Thank you to Jessica Clements, for the motivation, although she has only contributed passively through her existence alone. Hashtag Girlfriend Goals.
Remotely related, in 2009, my weight was 110 kg, and after less than six months, i got it down to around 65 kg, with a body height of 174 cm. I have never gone back up in weight, because i changed how i eat and i'm happy about it ever since.
Before 2009, my relationship with eating was not healthy. I had mood swings and tried to compensate them with junk food or fast food, which made it even worse. But at some point, i realized i need to change everything, or i will die because of this. Since then, i learned a lot to put my life back on track, and keep it that way.
2016-08-01
As a child born in 1986, i watched TV series "The A-Team" quite frequently, but never got to watch all five seasons. In early 2016, i picked up a Torrent client for a month and downloaded my favorites from the past. I already had some of them in my archive, like Simpsons or Futurama. But i still wanted to have "Stargate SG-1", "Married... with Children", "Hogan's Heroes" and The A-Team.
The final episode aired 30 years ago, it is really old, but i have a sentimental connection with the series, it gave me the urge for justice. I watched the last episodes of The A-Team in a hotel room, while i was in Helsinki to fold origami cranes, and i'm satisfied with it.
I grew up with The Simpsons and probably watched all episodes, back then, when i had a dedicated TV. Now it's not the case anymore, since i wait till the season is over, and have the opportunity to get it all in one step on my hard drive. I never got to watch the newest episodes anyway, because they needed to be translated for the German audience, which takes a while. But now i enjoy the original version.
Another TV series i binge-watched was "Married… with Children", which is quite similar with The Simpsons. Both are showing parents with some kids, where life was not always nice to them, but they can make it through in some way, because it was their passion, which is one of the reasons i like them so much.
2016-05-01
I made a YouTube channel named "Cantonese Craft" where my mother is showing some of her cooking and sewing skills. She does the voice-over in her first language Hong Kong-Chinese, also known as Cantonese. I'm doing the whole video recording and editing thing, because my parents are not deep into tech. My father is always tired after work, but i might get him sometimes on the channel.
I'm just trying to develop another revenue stream for them, so that they do not have to perform physically demanding work anymore. My mother does cleaning in a large hotel on the Rhine, at the kindergarten and some smaller places, while my father is employed in shift work with "polymer processing" in Bonn. My parents were never unemployed for very long. This is why they never had the opportunity to learn German properly, even after all these decades.
You can imagine how it influenced my life. It was like living in two distant countries at the same time. I had to learn different cultures, languages and many other things without any help since the beginning. I was constantly lost and wondering why. But after writing two books, my German got good enough to allow me to draw pictures no one else other than me would understand. And since most people think reading equals understanding, this would lead to nowhere: Just a waste of time.
I learned programming by myself, long before my English was enough for anything useful. This is why i'm using the language here more like in a piece of Perl code, straight, but still playfully: Maybe like Lego bricks. My Cantonese is really bad in comparison. And i better not mention Spanish from my school days. At some point in between, i wanted to learn French and later Italian, but there is nothing left of it, except the yellow textbooks by Langenscheidt.
My parents have met the first time in West Germany, 1976. Both came here separately from the British colony Hong Kong to work hard. Back then, the German currency "Deutsche Mark" was quite strong, compared with the Hong Kong dollar. At the age of 19 and 22, they found each other through mutual connections, and ten years later, i was born in 1986, in a city that is now no longer the capital of Germany.
My first years weren't that bad. Father made enough money as waiter in a chinese restaurant, with a lot of people working for governments as customers, while mother was there for me in my early stage. Even grandma came for a couple of months from Hong Kong to Bad Godesberg. But then they decided to run their own restaurant in Ratingen and things changed.
2014-11-01
Back then, in early 2013, i started to visit London and Paris, because i wanted to cover street style photography during Fashion Week. I have some female fashion bloggers in my RSS Feed Reader since a long time and thought, i need to see them in real life. Maybe i hoped to see more than just beautiful people, and not that many clowns.
But soon i realized, this is not what i want anymore. I had to let them go, because they were not real, just illusions. My last time as "indie" photojournalist covering Fashion Week was in Paris early 2014. In late 2013, i have already prepared myself to fold origami cranes before and after the fashion show events of brands like Chanel and Valentino, just to fill the gaps, when nothing is happening.
I researched places where i can sit down to fold an origami crane and documented everything with two cameras for two points of view, to be later combined into a video. Because the only truth is here and now. I kept doing it, made a lot of them along my way, and this is why the trail of thousand origami cranes began in Paris.
1 |
2 |
3 |
4 |
5 |
6 |
7 |
8 |
9 |
10 |
11 |
12 |
13 |
14 |
15 |
16 |
17 |
18