childhood

Spectrogram

I just discovered spectrogram viewer on Audacity and my vocal sweeps inadvertently drew some violin arches and a content-looking long-haired chubby-faced girl with my voice (lower right)!

spectrogram of voice

I love spectrograms! Half my lifetime ago, I would watch my favorite songs on the Winamp spectrogram for hours.

So I guess it should surprise no one that last week I had a wonderful time at Oberlin Acoustics Workshop this year, learning, hanging out and doing bridge rocking frequency taichi with brilliant minds and people I admire!

Asian parenting (un)encouragement stickers

I should sell actual stickers of these. I’d make bank. Oh wait, Asian parents would just print bootleg ones at home.

asian parenting encouragement stickers

And now the beautiful gai mou sou blown up for your viewing pleasure.

feather duster of pain

Kwan girls flashback: the Roach

kwan girls flashback

Apparently this happened when I was a toddler. Then my sisters ran to my mom because they thought I’d eaten the roach, and my mom laughed in their faces and said, “That’s just a black crayon!”

School’s out for a couple of weeks, and I’m home in Austin, visiting my family (my nephew!! ❤ ), prepping for my first sprint triathlon, eating barbeque, working on violins, and getting up in the middle of every night to smash our resident roaches.

Happy 77th, Golden Gate Bridge

In retrospect, I’m really glad that I chose to direct all my creepy photo-collecting, drawing, stalking, and obsessing at an inanimate object, and not a classmate. Well, the latter still happened… but let’s not digress.

To anyone who tried to tell me otherwise, admiration of an inanimate object is not completely futile. This bridge gave me goals and taught me to draw! (And maybe lost me some friends? Eh, totally worth it.)

So, let’s ~~make fun of~~ examine some of my Golden Gate Bridge fanart of over 10 years ago!

Happy Birthday, dear bridge! The Golden Gate Bridge turns 77 in a few days. If you’re out there in San Francisco, pay it a visit for me.

More words that lacked English counterparts in my childhood

My sister thought of a couple more and drew some nice pictures to go with them! She says:

chinese handwriting credit goes to mom, who saw my awful attempts and redid all of them.

Thanks for contributing, Mimi & Mom!

I’ve also thought of one more!

I know the bloggy trend nowadays is to give a trigger warning for corporeal punishment, even if it’s just by feather duster and/or knuckle, but I’m with Russell Peters on this topic.

Ahh, the ol’ knuckle to the head. The hands of my father could contort into a talon of justice! I have tried but it doesn’t look as menacing. I think it’s a perspective issue. Once I think it’s all in position, I turn my hand in to check, but then it just look like I’m tightly gripping a subway pole. Not very menacing.

If you don’t get this is all about, I’m trying to figure out which Chinese word it actually is. Below is my very credible analysis.

Yeah, I have no idea. I start to wonder if my parents made it up… any other Cantonese kids gotten the joy joy? Any idea what word it is? Leave me a comment!

Meanwhile, I’ve just looked up “talon of justice” to see if I made it up, but apparently World of Warcraft beat me to it. It’s a stun spell! Weirdly appropriate, I must say. Not so for the English word of the same pronunciation…

fix it with shading

drawings by MJ Kwan