Kitty Cat Diary 2011

Kitty Cat Diary | 貓咪日記

The Kitty Cat Diary is a photo diary of my adorkable wife, and it's what happens when a photographer marries a woman who doesn't mind having a camera pointed at her during everyday life. Elena (A.K.A. Kitty Cat, because my nicknames for her all revolve around the theme of a cat.) is my favorite subject to photograph--there's just something very theraputic about grabbing a camera and capturing the person you love the most in the world, while combining that with creativity and aesthetic sensibility. This interaction has brought us a lot of joy over the years and captured a lot of precious memories. If you want to get to know Elena better, her bio is the best place to start.

Since these are spur-of-the-moment snapshots, it's best to enjoy them simply as casual fun instead of serious photography (you can find more serious photography in other areas of my site). A wide range of camera were used to shoot these photos--from professional cameras to casual compacts and smartphones. You can find out what photography gear I shoot with in the FAQ section.

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Kitty Cat in her cozy domestic winter coat. I call her "Grape-Soda Kitty" when she wears it.

Kitty Cat in front of the mirror. I told her she had an alluring look on her face in those photos, and her reply was, "Only you get to see that look. I never look at anyone else that way." *swoon* That's my Kitty Cat.

Kitty Cat tries out the new coffee grinder toy she got, does the dishes, and then heads out.

Kitty Cat at our current favorite South-East Asian restaurant (but that isn't to say it's that good of a restaurant--just the for beggars can't be chooser when living in a city like Fuzhou).

These two are terrible in terms of image quality, since they were taken with an iPhone 4, in a dimly lit room, without flash, but they are two of the most precious photos I've ever taken. Kitty Cat and I were in bed reading--her reading a paperback non-fiction book on how to live an elegant life as a woman, and me reading The Name of the Wind, a fantasy novel, on the iPhone 4 with the Kindle App. We were both leaning back against pillows and being pretty comfy, and I had one leg propped up on my other leg. When she got tired and closed her book, instead of announcing that we should turn out the lights and both go to sleep as she usually does, she just crawled though my legs and then fell asleep right away on me as I stroked her hair while reading my book. It was the cutest thing ever, and I just had to snap a couple of photos. This is one of those situations where no fancy professional camera could have captured this precious moment, because I would have no reason to have it laying next to me in bed. Hence the saying, "The best camera is the one you have with you."

Kitty Cat dragged me out to lunch at this new tourist spot they built in Fuzhou, and it was disappointing. They tried to make the tourist spot look like a traditional Chinese walkway by the river with shops on either side, but it was all newly built and not authentic at all, not to mention they looked like clumsy and crude imitations that you might see in cheap movie productions or crappy amusement parks with shoddy props and backdrops. The Asian fusion restaurant was okay though.

Kitty Cat has been wearing this dress a lot, because she rarely has the right occassion to wear it, and now that she's 40, she thinks she's getting too old for these kinds of outfits. Basically, she's trying to hold on the the last feather on the tail of her youth before she finally admits she's now middle-age.

We were reading in bed (I read on my iOS devices these days more than I do printed books), and I looked over and see Kitty Cat glowing prettily, lit by the bedside lamps. So, out comes the camera and her reading gets interrupted for a few minutes.

Kitty Cat doing a little show & tell of the new clothes she bought recently while in Hong Kong.

Kitty Cat back from her Hong Kong trip, trying to unpack her luggage in the kitchen, but keeps getting interrupted by the camera. Her own fault for changing into something so slinky as soon as she got home.

Personally, I really don't care for capri-styled jeans, but she has a pair, and I just crinkle my nose a bit as a form of mild protest when she wears it.

This is Kitty Cat's elegant look, before going out to dinner with business partners.

Kitty Cat getting ready to go out, and as usual, that's my cue to bring out the camera. It's pretty much been like a ritual all these years.

Kitty Cat wearing my favorite headphone in my headphones collection--the Audez'e LCD-2

Kitty Cat in my mom's backyard in Taipei. I think the firecrackers are just decoration and not the real thing. I personally can't stand firecrackers anymore--I find them to be loud and annoying and dangerous. I think I got tired of them by the time I was in high school. Sometimes, I think human beings are just far too bored, and must invent some dangerous and unnecessary crap to create potential accidents. I have seen no less than 10 houses burnt down because of firecrackers over the years, and I nearly got my right hand blown off by firecrackers when I was little kid, because the adults in my youth were completely clueless about what responsible good parenting is. They would give boxes and boxes of firecrackers to little kids (we're talking like five or six yr-olds) and then tell them to run along and go play. Talk about gross negligence.

On Kitty Cat's birthday, my brother Michael took us out to a nice Thai-styled buffet in Taipei. She turned 40, and it just feels surreal. When I was younger, I used to think 40 is when things start to go down hill--your looks, your health, your motivation and drive, and maybe even your optimism. But now that she's 40 and I just turned 38, it just feels like some abstract number that has nothing to do with us, because I still feel like I'm 17 sometimes. We always joked and said that we'd put a stop to the Kitty Cat Diary when she turns 40, since we didn't want to scare people when she turned into an old hag. But now she's 40, it really doesn't seem like she's changed all that much, so maybe we still have a few more years left before we called it quits?