It was the best of times...it was the worst of times...

"It was the best of times,

it was the worst of times,

it was the age of wisdom, 

it was the age of foolishness,

it was the epoch of incredulity,
it was the season of Light,
it was the season of Darkness,
it was the spring of hope,
it was the winter of despair,

we had everything before us, we had nothing before us...."

Charles Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities is one of the great classics of English literature and one of my all time favorites. I haven't read this book since high school yet this passage just seems so relevant after yesterday...But I should start at the beginning of this month since I haven't updated in quite some time.

At the beginning of the month, I was busy working on freelance articles and all was going well. It was the week before the mid-Autumn Festival or mid-September for you folks when I was contacted by an editor of a hyperlocal site for my neighborhood to ask if I'd be interested in freelancing an article for this event. A paid gig! This made me doubly excited since: (a) I thought I'd messed up the initial meet-up back in April and (b) I'd be writing about an event that's been a part of my cultural makeup.

 I was in Chinatown anyways (since I had to work on some of my freelance articles) and thought I'd get a chance at better pictures than in my own 'hood. I was right. It was a hot, hot September day too. Hot, sunny blue skies and very little humidity. A perfect Saturday day in the city. After all the "cool" summer we've been experiencing, the hot searing sun made it feel like summer, if only for one day. I strolled along Chatham Square and found some cool photos as inspiration and even heard a funny story and even last minute snafus from local shoppers. One patron tried to return a box of moon cakes back to the bakery since there weren't any wrappings in the tin box. Unfortunately the last box of a particular kind of moon cake that she wanted was sold out. In any event, I observed and took pictures that I thought might be helpful to my article and eventually found myself in the center of Chinatown, where a fair was taking place in honor of Mid-Autumn Festival. It was a family-oriented event with giveaways and photo-opportunities geared towards kids,  and sponsored by Moneygram and stuff, with paper lanterns for kids, it was nice event. Wished that I could participate in the festivities in the homeland though. Skimming through photos on Twitter and Instagram of the epic parade floats and fireworks made me yearn to want to visit Hong Kong for sure.

In any event, here's my article on the Mid-Autumn Festival.  To be part of an event that's shared by many in the Asian diaspora, is one of the great things when you're a person of color.

Moving along, in September I finally received the news I've been waiting to hear: my diploma was finally ready to be picked up. Just in time for my birthday and knowing that I finally graduated was the best present ever.

It's been a long road. But now what? On the next day, however I received news that the freelancing work I was doing is over. My main contact there has a family emergency and that means shutting down the business operations. But even as I knew that something of this magnitude would happen (i.e., me getting dropped from the company), it was just me being complacent and using this gig as a crutch. To be honest, the pay wasn't that great, but I stuck with it. While I've had a week to let these two events sink in, it's time to move on to the next step in my life.....Got to get into serious job hunting mode now.