flickr photo credits: (1) Serenae (2) bionicteaching (3) bionicteaching (4) Serenae (5) Serenae
Five Card Story: Stephen's Story
a Five Card Flickr story by Stephen Shan created Dec 02 2011, 04:34:55 am. Create a new one!
about this story
I was born in Vancouver, the only person in my family thus far not born in China. I had a rough childhood; my parents split up when I was 4 or 5, and with my mom pushing for ownership of the house, I lived with my dad. I was constantly moved around due to my dad's work or financial issues.
I met my friend Ben in Grade 1 at Bayview Elementary, where I also made many other friends, several have since moved back to China as their parents found it difficult to work in an alien environment where language barriers restricted work. I still maintain contact with the core group of friends from elementary, but beyond that I'm fairly socially isolated and have lost contact with some friends.
In my spare time I play computer games and read; though I also do some creative writing, it has become increasingly rare. Most of my time spent doing any of these things all tie in with my interest in history, warfare, and politics. Though many other subjects of interest come to mind, they all tie in with the aforementioned broader topics in some way or another. The book I just finished reading is called Persian Fire, by Tom Holland, and it gives a detailed account of the developments and beginnings of Athens, Sparta, and Persia, culminating in the Graeco-Persian Wars and later lightly skimming the Peloponnesian War.
This summer I visited Europe alongside Ben. It was by far the greatest of all experiences I've had. I was able to explore Rome, Pisa, Lucca, London, Paris, Geneva, and Carcassonne, among other cities, to varying degrees. I was also fortunate enough to enjoy Italian, Swiss, and French cuisine. Some of my favourite foods were the pizzas in Italy, which were(thankfully) less bland and more rich than pizza available in North America. I also enjoyed ratatouille while I was in southern France, as well as a duck-casserole I had while within the walls of Carcassonne. Though many of the panoply foods were very enjoyable, I'd have to say I also enjoyed English breakfast as much as I did the more outlandish dishes. This was mainly because in the month or so in Europe, most of my breakfasts were "Continental" breakfasts with mostly pastries, milk or hot-chocolate, and other sugary foods; these are things I don't particularly like in bulk. I prefer more savoury breakfast foods such as eggs, bacon, sausages, etc, which I was getting more than enough of with English breakfasts in London and Bristol. The only things I really didn't like about Europe were the amounts of smokers in public; I think I managed to inhale as much second hand smoke in that month as I might in a year in Vancouver. Along with second-hand smoke I also found the drivers and manners of people in Europe to be somewhat lacking in sympathy towards pedestrians and tourists respectively.
Lastly, corresponding with the dark picture with the clouds, I find myself generally more gloomy than others. Though I'm not entirely sure what the cause is, my previous school-counsellor thought it may have been depression of some sort. Which, I guess, makes sense when taking into account my less than acceptable attendance near the end of last year and up to this point this year.
share this story
permalink to story: http://5card.cogdogblog.com/show.php?id=26809
Copy/Paste Story
Click once to select, then copy and paste HTML to your own blog/website.
create a different story from these same cards
Do you have another interpretation of the story behind these pictures? Add it to the collection as a new story!