I have been listening to this song about Bob Ross, who happens to be one of my two favorite artists (Turner is the other one). This song reminds me of why I picked Turner's work to imitate for my painting class, and why I spent so much time into it—that sense of endlessness and that a piece of art can express what words cannot. I see art sometimes as a drudgery (after all, I only painted decently on my still life picture because I sat behind a perfectionist that made me feel bad), but maybe I have been going about it the wrong way.
A long time ago, I drew because I liked it—so much I dreamed of becoming an artist. Coming from a family of pragmatists who could not understand anything except academics (I mean this not as an insult, but my parents never even signed me up for the stereotypical music classes because they were hopeless in that field), this was not much of a dream at all. I never knew what my parents wanted me to be when I was young. I don't think any of us looked that far.
Somewhere in elementary school, drawing became a chore. It was a class, after all, and when people like your art they want more and you feel like you can't let them down. One of my classmates was really good at horses, and I tried to learn her style, and when my classmates asked me to draw a horse picture for her I was absolutely mortified.
I never quite did this with writing—maybe I have been influenced subconsciously but I never set out to copy someone else's style. I write from my heart, but I haven't drawn from my heart very often lately.
I drew a picture of what I thought Veronica's character in D&D would look like (she is a grey elf ranger), and it's one of my best drawings lately (in terms of anatomically correctness and expression). But what I really want to do is draw the pictures that haunt my mind, the same way I put them to words. I want to draw that void where the wind blows through, and the grass flows like sand.
I want to paint that quaint town nightscape, with the lanterns glowing faintly under a hazy sky, set against towering rugged mountains. I want to hear the stories from my art.
And maybe it is true, maybe every day is a good day when you paint.
. . .
I had completely forgotten when I gave Sam her nickname how ironic that would be, but this time I want to talk about the real Sam. I am—I won't lie—quite infatuated with him. What started out as simple gaming buddies turned into quite a fiasco. (And talk about a fiasco—Cain, who quite the benign Youtube-watching, Facebook-lurking guy, has now become a fanatic LoL addict on the verge of becoming a rager too.) I'm finding myself logged in to a particular place not for any other purpose but to catch him online—and on his end, I know he's been pretty much glued to his computer to chat with me when he has lots of other things going on (eating, for example).
I know Khajiit has taken this nonchalantly—even with a bit of joking encouragement—but I wonder if that is really how he thinks. Obviously, I don't want this to turn out like how it did with Yuma and I, and Khajiit and I have completely different rules when it comes to stuff like this, but, well, I still have to ask.
Does it count as cheating if I really, really like to spend time with someone more so than I normally would anyone else? If so, is Khajiit really okay with it? And if not, can I keep it this way—just really good friends—because it's pretty nice the way it is now.
Sometimes I feel a bit silly. Sometimes I wish I weren't so flippant with regards to such serious stuff—and yet, I think I have been this way ever since kindergarten when I decided I had a crush on two cute boys in my class. What can I say? I have always matured faster in romantic-attractions more so than my actual maturity.
. . .
Alas, I am hungry again. Must set out for food.
Showing posts with label Yuma. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Yuma. Show all posts
Wednesday, August 1, 2012
Monday, July 2, 2012
And Who Can Say Why Your Heart Cries
Last week, Dray emailed me for the first time in two years.
Looking back on it, the whole ordeal was ridiculous. I had taken something small and completely blown it out of proportion (and even now, I tend to do that, but perhaps not to such an extent). We still have quite a lot to talk about, even to this day, even after all this time, and perhaps he hasn't changed at all. He is still that hit-on-all-the-girls type of guy. I am.
Well, whatever I am now.
Lately, this blog has been more about my relationships than it has been about anything else. In some ways, it has been inevitable (it's not gossip if no one knows what or who you're talking about). I could write about my university life, but somehow it's less interesting to write about and much more interesting to live it out. I have had so many fun moments (like tonight's outing to see fireworks and have ice cream), but they don't translate to words as well as I thought they would.
My last few stories are all about Nick and Katie, and that is rather morbid to think about.
The same dead Nick Haverford.
In fact the very title, On the Other Side of Saturday, is the same I have chosen for a variety of stories, albeit not all about Katie and Nick.
Some nights, I lie in my bed and I can hardly believe that Yuma and I were once in a relationship. I think about him and I cringe, although I don't know why. Khajiit and I do not have a perfect relationship, but it is such a wholly different dynamic that I can hardly imagine life now any other way.
It is so unfair, isn't it? I broke such a nice boy's heart and I get to go into another nice boy's arms. If there is one thing I could change in my and Yuma's relationship, it would have to be ending it earlier, before I got to hurt him more.
But that's the past.
Tomorrow evening, Khajiit will be boarding the creepy van to Islandtown. In a month, I will be moving into our shared apartment. Last year, when I had him promise to room with me in the fall, I thought we would just be two good friends sharing an apartment. Things sure have changed a lot.
In my latest version of the story, Joss Ritchell saves Katie from her visions of Nick. Would it be fair to say Khajiit is my Joss? In dealing with our various mental health issues, perhaps that is not too far-fetched.
Looking back on it, the whole ordeal was ridiculous. I had taken something small and completely blown it out of proportion (and even now, I tend to do that, but perhaps not to such an extent). We still have quite a lot to talk about, even to this day, even after all this time, and perhaps he hasn't changed at all. He is still that hit-on-all-the-girls type of guy. I am.
Well, whatever I am now.
Lately, this blog has been more about my relationships than it has been about anything else. In some ways, it has been inevitable (it's not gossip if no one knows what or who you're talking about). I could write about my university life, but somehow it's less interesting to write about and much more interesting to live it out. I have had so many fun moments (like tonight's outing to see fireworks and have ice cream), but they don't translate to words as well as I thought they would.
My last few stories are all about Nick and Katie, and that is rather morbid to think about.
Katie Scarlett stood on the half-shielded balcony, where the rain touched her bare legs. She looked over the moss-covered steps leading up to the door. A few days ago, she had almost slipped on those steps, and Nick had held out his arm to catch her.This exact scene I have written about numerous times, but from different time frames. The same steps. The same slippery moss. The same drizzling rain.
The same dead Nick Haverford.
In fact the very title, On the Other Side of Saturday, is the same I have chosen for a variety of stories, albeit not all about Katie and Nick.
Some nights, I lie in my bed and I can hardly believe that Yuma and I were once in a relationship. I think about him and I cringe, although I don't know why. Khajiit and I do not have a perfect relationship, but it is such a wholly different dynamic that I can hardly imagine life now any other way.
It is so unfair, isn't it? I broke such a nice boy's heart and I get to go into another nice boy's arms. If there is one thing I could change in my and Yuma's relationship, it would have to be ending it earlier, before I got to hurt him more.
But that's the past.
Tomorrow evening, Khajiit will be boarding the creepy van to Islandtown. In a month, I will be moving into our shared apartment. Last year, when I had him promise to room with me in the fall, I thought we would just be two good friends sharing an apartment. Things sure have changed a lot.
In my latest version of the story, Joss Ritchell saves Katie from her visions of Nick. Would it be fair to say Khajiit is my Joss? In dealing with our various mental health issues, perhaps that is not too far-fetched.
Joss suddenly stood up, walked over, and pulled one of the gardenias out. He took his pocket knife, slit his thumb, and let the blood drip down onto the petals.
Everyone watched as the blood rolled cleanly off the petals, without leaving a stain.Or maybe I should just sleep.
Tuesday, May 29, 2012
Push Or Knock; Or Roundabout Gone
Some things I wish I felt more comfortable talking about, out of principle, because I know part of my inability to talk about them stems from a societal prejudice: my mental state, sex, and my inner dialogues. One of my favorite bloggers of late, The Bloggess, does all of these perfectly, so if I were completely honest with myself it's not just societal prejudice but also me.
Then again, how many of us are brave enough to talk about sex in a public forum?
The other two are harder to write about, for me, but they are easier to hint at. To skirt around the edges, like in Fragonard's The Swing, which I drew once as a book cover for my French textbook. Both rococo and romanticism I learned from my European history class from sophomore year.
The other thing I remember from sophomore year was a hazy mix of staring out windows and anonymous crowds rushing past. I wrote about it a lot before, things I kept locked up in the depths of my laptop and hid for two years before I showed some of them to Yuma.
. . .
There is an old Chinese legend (one thing the Chinese have no lacking of) that a poet, late at night, could not decide whether to use "push" or "knock" in his poem to describe his character's internal battle when opening the door.
These days, the two words together mean deliberation.
When I was younger, around seven or eight, I always wondered how people remembered all of these proverbs and legends and folk lores and idioms. It wasn't merely enough to know a saying, you had to know the story behind it too. There were entire books dedicated to the formal four-word proverbs and their origins that schoolchildren my age were required to know.
That, added to the pictorial nature of Chinese words, and you have to wonder: why is it not fading away in favor of something much easier to learn?
I like to cite the poetic nature of it—because, to me, no language is better suited for poetry as Chinese is—down to each word imbued with meaning, but who am I to say? I am neither a poet nor am I a proficient writer of Chinese.
. . .
Khajiit says the younger generation of French people are slowly abandoning the rigid structures their language imposes upon them in favor of their own blend of French. What the equivalent would be for Chinese I do not know, but I hope it does not happen.
Because it is a language of thousands of years' worth of stories, legends, and lore, and there is a part of me that finds peace in allegories.
. . .
Writing for many people is ultimately a cathartic process. Haruki Murakami speaks of writing as a poison, and writing to overcome that poison. Natalie Goldberg believes you should write "what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about." Tim O'Brien uses his writing of a fictitious yet real world to make sense of the absurd yet very real world he had to live in. Andre Aciman repeatedly writes about place as a cover to what he really wants to write about.
For me, writing is about making sense of the past. It is about digging up what I have buried in the past—what I have been afraid to face—and putting them in front of me to finally digest after all this time.
I have been told many times, by many people, that I do not have the courage to face reality. That I am weak, that I do not have the determination. Writing is a cheap alternative, a way to pacify those claims without having to make any painful progress. I can say that writing has helped me to name my demons, but in the end, didn't Seymour Glass still shoot himself? How far can you go with writing when your demon is reality itself?
. . .
It is now six in the morning. This far north, the sun has already risen, although I wouldn't know sitting here in the basement of the tallest building on campus. I woke up yesterday morning at 8:25AM, with ten minutes to spare for my morning class, and with an apathy that has set in lately, told myself it didn't matter and fell back to sleep. The next time I woke up—fully, truly awake—it was already getting dark.
On the bus from New York, I thought about how I used to tie myself to the road. The music I listen to, the colors I love, they all have one trait in common: they're hollow. This emptiness inspired historical fictions, with Vermont and their Green Mountain Boys being my favorite, although any road could evoke endless stretches of fields and the nonchalant wind mussing up my hair.
This is my American dream. The loneliness is only a requisite.
For some people, a vacation is a relaxing break, and when they get back from their far-fetched locations they can settle down and work another half year in their fascinating fields. I am from a family fueled by wanderlust—my father, who cannot settle in any one place for long, no matter how tempting the place; or my mother, who takes to trips as other people take to hobbies.
I can stay in one place for a very, very long time if I had to, and if it were the only option in front of me. I would be okay with an entire year without vacations if it meant a regular schedule and the expectation that this is it. But once I am on the road, no amount of travelling will satisfy me. I have been on day-long trips, and week-long trips, and month-long trips, and it is all the same. If I start, I cannot stop.
. . .
Deep in the nights, we talk frankly. Khajiit about his cuts, me about my panicked nature. He tells me to take a deep breath. We talk frankly but nothing much meaningful ever comes out of it. We revert to the same conversations.
My parents say I never write about anything truly meaningful. It could be because I do not show them the extent of what I write, or because I have not, in their eyes, suffered. I have not lived an entire year on pickled radishes and plain rice because I could not afford anything else. I have not woken up before sunrise and come home way after midnight working in a lab to sustain a meagre way of life. Compared to that, I have lived a life of luxury.
I think it is more than that. When Khajiit and I give someone on the streets a dollar, I wonder where our moralities lie. When we talk so frankly of being nineteen-year-olds and of the world giving us more responsibilities than we can handle (Khajiit more so than me, obviously), of, as he calls it, "Everything conspiring against me," I wonder if we truly know ourselves.
Through this year of tumult, political and personal, can I claim that I know myself?
. . .
The first time I formally learned about allegories was also in sophomore year, when my English class read Lord of the Flies. There is something to be said about things coming full circle.
Then again, how many of us are brave enough to talk about sex in a public forum?
The other two are harder to write about, for me, but they are easier to hint at. To skirt around the edges, like in Fragonard's The Swing, which I drew once as a book cover for my French textbook. Both rococo and romanticism I learned from my European history class from sophomore year.
The other thing I remember from sophomore year was a hazy mix of staring out windows and anonymous crowds rushing past. I wrote about it a lot before, things I kept locked up in the depths of my laptop and hid for two years before I showed some of them to Yuma.
. . .
There is an old Chinese legend (one thing the Chinese have no lacking of) that a poet, late at night, could not decide whether to use "push" or "knock" in his poem to describe his character's internal battle when opening the door.
These days, the two words together mean deliberation.
When I was younger, around seven or eight, I always wondered how people remembered all of these proverbs and legends and folk lores and idioms. It wasn't merely enough to know a saying, you had to know the story behind it too. There were entire books dedicated to the formal four-word proverbs and their origins that schoolchildren my age were required to know.
That, added to the pictorial nature of Chinese words, and you have to wonder: why is it not fading away in favor of something much easier to learn?
I like to cite the poetic nature of it—because, to me, no language is better suited for poetry as Chinese is—down to each word imbued with meaning, but who am I to say? I am neither a poet nor am I a proficient writer of Chinese.
. . .
Khajiit says the younger generation of French people are slowly abandoning the rigid structures their language imposes upon them in favor of their own blend of French. What the equivalent would be for Chinese I do not know, but I hope it does not happen.
Because it is a language of thousands of years' worth of stories, legends, and lore, and there is a part of me that finds peace in allegories.
. . .
Writing for many people is ultimately a cathartic process. Haruki Murakami speaks of writing as a poison, and writing to overcome that poison. Natalie Goldberg believes you should write "what disturbs you, what you fear, what you have not been willing to speak about." Tim O'Brien uses his writing of a fictitious yet real world to make sense of the absurd yet very real world he had to live in. Andre Aciman repeatedly writes about place as a cover to what he really wants to write about.
For me, writing is about making sense of the past. It is about digging up what I have buried in the past—what I have been afraid to face—and putting them in front of me to finally digest after all this time.
I have been told many times, by many people, that I do not have the courage to face reality. That I am weak, that I do not have the determination. Writing is a cheap alternative, a way to pacify those claims without having to make any painful progress. I can say that writing has helped me to name my demons, but in the end, didn't Seymour Glass still shoot himself? How far can you go with writing when your demon is reality itself?
. . .
It is now six in the morning. This far north, the sun has already risen, although I wouldn't know sitting here in the basement of the tallest building on campus. I woke up yesterday morning at 8:25AM, with ten minutes to spare for my morning class, and with an apathy that has set in lately, told myself it didn't matter and fell back to sleep. The next time I woke up—fully, truly awake—it was already getting dark.
On the bus from New York, I thought about how I used to tie myself to the road. The music I listen to, the colors I love, they all have one trait in common: they're hollow. This emptiness inspired historical fictions, with Vermont and their Green Mountain Boys being my favorite, although any road could evoke endless stretches of fields and the nonchalant wind mussing up my hair.
This is my American dream. The loneliness is only a requisite.
For some people, a vacation is a relaxing break, and when they get back from their far-fetched locations they can settle down and work another half year in their fascinating fields. I am from a family fueled by wanderlust—my father, who cannot settle in any one place for long, no matter how tempting the place; or my mother, who takes to trips as other people take to hobbies.
I can stay in one place for a very, very long time if I had to, and if it were the only option in front of me. I would be okay with an entire year without vacations if it meant a regular schedule and the expectation that this is it. But once I am on the road, no amount of travelling will satisfy me. I have been on day-long trips, and week-long trips, and month-long trips, and it is all the same. If I start, I cannot stop.
. . .
Deep in the nights, we talk frankly. Khajiit about his cuts, me about my panicked nature. He tells me to take a deep breath. We talk frankly but nothing much meaningful ever comes out of it. We revert to the same conversations.
My parents say I never write about anything truly meaningful. It could be because I do not show them the extent of what I write, or because I have not, in their eyes, suffered. I have not lived an entire year on pickled radishes and plain rice because I could not afford anything else. I have not woken up before sunrise and come home way after midnight working in a lab to sustain a meagre way of life. Compared to that, I have lived a life of luxury.
I think it is more than that. When Khajiit and I give someone on the streets a dollar, I wonder where our moralities lie. When we talk so frankly of being nineteen-year-olds and of the world giving us more responsibilities than we can handle (Khajiit more so than me, obviously), of, as he calls it, "Everything conspiring against me," I wonder if we truly know ourselves.
Through this year of tumult, political and personal, can I claim that I know myself?
. . .
The first time I formally learned about allegories was also in sophomore year, when my English class read Lord of the Flies. There is something to be said about things coming full circle.
Monday, December 19, 2011
The End, This Time Really
It hurts less than I thought it would. Perhaps I had long ago gotten tired of it, and had only held on because of an ideal that no longer exists. It was almost a relief. I am not sure I should feel this way, but it is what it is. It was over a long time ago, he was right, and this time I actually agree.
I finally took off the ring. I saved the photos, but they are now only mementos of the past. There is only one thing I regret, and it's not ending this earlier. I could have saved him from more pain.
But it's over now.
Over, finally.
There is still so much that reminds me of him. I even wonder if he will still read this blog. After this post I might start talking about my day-to-day life again, instead of these incredibly cryptic posts. I would still like to be a part of his life, as the friends we never quite were, because we had rushed into things too quickly and out of them too slowly.
If he is reading this, I would like to apologize. I know it won't make it much better, and I don't expect you to forgive me, but I am really sorry. If I had known how it would turn out, I would have chosen things differently, but as it is now I am just sorry.
I do not have the panic I had last time. None of the heart-wrenching feelings. It has truly gone on too long, and although I still love him, as much as I know how to love anyway, I don't want to hang on anymore.
It's such a strange thing to say.
It's been a year full of surprises at every turn, so I shouldn't be too surprised it ended up this way. I always knew I would be the one, but I never knew what that would imply. Now there is another foolish boy who is saying he won't mind if I hurt him, someone who doesn't believe me when I tell him I don't know how to love.
I am like a black hole, always wanting more, always reaching out but destroying what I get in the process. There is this hole in my heart that stemmed from my past and it's lonely, and it's never satisfied. I never learned how to properly keep a long-term relationship, not just with the people I love but with anyone.
Maybe one day.
But for now, it is the end, and an end that is, although slightly regrettable, at least not that painful.
I finally took off the ring. I saved the photos, but they are now only mementos of the past. There is only one thing I regret, and it's not ending this earlier. I could have saved him from more pain.
But it's over now.
Over, finally.
There is still so much that reminds me of him. I even wonder if he will still read this blog. After this post I might start talking about my day-to-day life again, instead of these incredibly cryptic posts. I would still like to be a part of his life, as the friends we never quite were, because we had rushed into things too quickly and out of them too slowly.
If he is reading this, I would like to apologize. I know it won't make it much better, and I don't expect you to forgive me, but I am really sorry. If I had known how it would turn out, I would have chosen things differently, but as it is now I am just sorry.
I do not have the panic I had last time. None of the heart-wrenching feelings. It has truly gone on too long, and although I still love him, as much as I know how to love anyway, I don't want to hang on anymore.
It's such a strange thing to say.
It's been a year full of surprises at every turn, so I shouldn't be too surprised it ended up this way. I always knew I would be the one, but I never knew what that would imply. Now there is another foolish boy who is saying he won't mind if I hurt him, someone who doesn't believe me when I tell him I don't know how to love.
I am like a black hole, always wanting more, always reaching out but destroying what I get in the process. There is this hole in my heart that stemmed from my past and it's lonely, and it's never satisfied. I never learned how to properly keep a long-term relationship, not just with the people I love but with anyone.
Maybe one day.
But for now, it is the end, and an end that is, although slightly regrettable, at least not that painful.
Wednesday, November 23, 2011
The End, Or Ostensibly
Outside, it is snowing.
There is not much more for me to say. I have wanted a lot and hoped a lot and wished for many, many things, and in the end they were, once again, not mine to begin with. I have horrible doubts now, and yet I wish for them to stay, because without doubts there will be truth, and I do not know if I can take the truth.
I have, once again, forgotten to heed my own advice. I have gone beyond where I should have gone, and have suffered as a result. There is not much left to say, except that I should have known this, and thus, I have no one to blame but myself. I alone could have prevented this. And yet I failed.
I once said to Tea that I wasn't sure about this. I told Yuma that this, whatever it was, was not to stay because I was incapable of it. Yet I still went along. I lost myself halfway and here I am, trying to piece myself together. It is always easier to lose yourself, because there are two people to do it, but much harder to find yourself again, because there is only one person left for that.
This ending is much like the previous one, and so I know how it will go. I know how I will respond and how everything will evolve because despite all these years I have not learned anything in this aspect. I know each obsessive move I will take, and how much they will hurt me in return, and yet I can't stop them. They are ingrained in my heart.
Perhaps this limbo feeling will last for another year. Perhaps shorter, perhaps longer. And then I will see how foolish I have been all along, and perhaps then it will finally end.
All of this has been a horrible, horrible dream. And yet, at the end, I don't want to wake up from it. I will drag the sleep and snooze as long as I can, I will because I always have, because I hate to be the last one. I hate to be left alone.
There were many things I wish I could have said in person, but alas, this end is much like the previous one, and even my method of saying goodbye is the same, because there is no other way. I am the one left behind, this time and the last, and something in me tells me I should not do this anymore. All of this trust, it hurts more in the end, and when the labyrinth is broken I must build it back up again, stone by stone.
But dwelling on the pain will make it hurt even more. Perhaps it is time again to say goodbye to another world, another place that is no longer mine. At least the memories will be kept pristine. And in a few years I will forget the pain and only remember the good, and I will be happy. I will. For a short time, at least, because happiness and love, they are not mine to have, and like Roscuro with his light, they are things I will never truly have.
The snow is still falling. The first snow of the year. I stare at his gray dot and know he will never come back. It is not in people's natures to do so, not for me, at least. I wish I could have said many, many things, and I wish I could have done so much more, but in the end they have all come back to haunt me.
At least the snow is constant.
One year ago, I should have known better. I should have said no from the very beginning.
But now, I do. And perhaps next time, I will know enough to do so.
There is not much more for me to say. I have wanted a lot and hoped a lot and wished for many, many things, and in the end they were, once again, not mine to begin with. I have horrible doubts now, and yet I wish for them to stay, because without doubts there will be truth, and I do not know if I can take the truth.
I have, once again, forgotten to heed my own advice. I have gone beyond where I should have gone, and have suffered as a result. There is not much left to say, except that I should have known this, and thus, I have no one to blame but myself. I alone could have prevented this. And yet I failed.
I once said to Tea that I wasn't sure about this. I told Yuma that this, whatever it was, was not to stay because I was incapable of it. Yet I still went along. I lost myself halfway and here I am, trying to piece myself together. It is always easier to lose yourself, because there are two people to do it, but much harder to find yourself again, because there is only one person left for that.
This ending is much like the previous one, and so I know how it will go. I know how I will respond and how everything will evolve because despite all these years I have not learned anything in this aspect. I know each obsessive move I will take, and how much they will hurt me in return, and yet I can't stop them. They are ingrained in my heart.
Perhaps this limbo feeling will last for another year. Perhaps shorter, perhaps longer. And then I will see how foolish I have been all along, and perhaps then it will finally end.
All of this has been a horrible, horrible dream. And yet, at the end, I don't want to wake up from it. I will drag the sleep and snooze as long as I can, I will because I always have, because I hate to be the last one. I hate to be left alone.
There were many things I wish I could have said in person, but alas, this end is much like the previous one, and even my method of saying goodbye is the same, because there is no other way. I am the one left behind, this time and the last, and something in me tells me I should not do this anymore. All of this trust, it hurts more in the end, and when the labyrinth is broken I must build it back up again, stone by stone.
But dwelling on the pain will make it hurt even more. Perhaps it is time again to say goodbye to another world, another place that is no longer mine. At least the memories will be kept pristine. And in a few years I will forget the pain and only remember the good, and I will be happy. I will. For a short time, at least, because happiness and love, they are not mine to have, and like Roscuro with his light, they are things I will never truly have.
The snow is still falling. The first snow of the year. I stare at his gray dot and know he will never come back. It is not in people's natures to do so, not for me, at least. I wish I could have said many, many things, and I wish I could have done so much more, but in the end they have all come back to haunt me.
At least the snow is constant.
One year ago, I should have known better. I should have said no from the very beginning.
But now, I do. And perhaps next time, I will know enough to do so.
Wednesday, November 9, 2011
Stories Of The Past
German, to me, is a true foreign language.
Whereas I can converse perfectly well in English, slightly less so in Chinese, much less so in French, and barely so in Spanish, I know not a phrase of German. I could not go up to someone in Germany and say, "Hello," in their own language, although I am sure if I said it in English there will still be people who understand me.
I know almost nothing of the German culture as well, and I am sure the bastardization of Oktoberfest that our university pushes out as a feeble excuse to drink (like they ever need one) is not a good representative. There is so much about the land I do not know, cannot ever know because I was not born and raised there. Even if, as a 20-something-year-old, I decide to move to Germany for the rest of my life, I will never know everything that a native German will know.
It is the subtle things. I am not sure I know all of those even in America, in Canada, much less in China. There are so many stories, so many faint traces of the past, that the Chinese value subconsciously, and that I am no longer a part of despite my Chinese heritage.
All I have are the visible things.
. . .
In Vermont, the mountains loom tall.
Not as tall as the Rockies, but mountains have no comparison. They are loners standing their ground. In Vermont, these mountains have seen through a revolution. They have weathered blood and rain. They have stood by as promises were made and vows broken and lives betrayed and dreams born.
As the car drives by, I look out the window. The lush trees of summer belie no hint of what Vermont is to most people, maple syrup and snow. I have told people Vermont is more than that, to many confused looks. I tell them it is a dairy state, perhaps not as famous as Wisconsin but a dairy state just as well. I tell them the history, the Green Mountains and their boys, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold.
This is their land. And the land never lies.
Vermont now is a peaceful state, or as peaceful as it can ever be. The green pastures and overarching trees lull people into a sense of nostalgia. It is the old East, and it still retains its dark past and poisonous shadows, but for now it is peaceful.
We stop at the rest area we always stop at. There is something to be said here, about habits, about coincidences, about many things in life that fit into convenient stories.
But we get off, stretch our legs, go inside and look at the map tacked onto the wall as if it were the first time we were seeing it. We take our hands and measure the distance we have traveled, and how much more we still have to go. We, too, are re-enacting history. We are forging our own terra incognita and charting them to fit the terrains of our hearts.
. . .
Our family is a family built upon road trips.
Ever since we got a car, back in 1999, every trip I had made that did not involve going somewhere half a world away were road trips. I have a special attachment to the land, to the roads. They are what I grew up on, like some kids grow up on sunshine and lemonade and backyard gossip circles.
We were living the American Dream, in a silly, distorted way. We would walk the sidewalk paved in gold and drive down every road. We went out west, we tried our hands at the "work hard and strike it rich" model. We walked out with resilient, optimistic spirits and an oddly-formed humor and our own shot at the American middle class, along with red knots hung on our doors and plastic bags stuffed inside our dishwasher for later use.
I built my dreams on the road. Trips were no longer about the destination, but about the journey in its most literal way. I hated it when the car slowed to a stop, because that meant the journey was over and the destination was here.
And once the destination was here, it would be over all too soon.
The first time we traveled to somewhere not half a world away in a plane, we went to Las Vegas. We hopped out of the plane and onto another car and headed straight for Grand Canyon. We were on the road, the only thing I was familiar with. Arizona roads are not anything like Massachusetts roads, but they are still roads. The desert sings its own song too, one of pioneers and settlers and miracles and tragedies and thousands of years of heritage shuffling in the wind.
But the destination.
The destination was different. The Grand Canyon was something beyond my imagination, beyond even my appropriations of its grandeur.
This was the first trip where we wanted to come back immediately, and the first trip where we were not driving all the time, where we had time to sit and watch the snow drift down without shivering in a car.
. . .
We read an interview of Murakami by Spiegel in class a few weeks ago. Peter said that Murakami was arrogant. He cited the two places where Murakami was asked about other people's books, and once he replied, "It's boring," and the other, of J. D. Salinger and his book Catcher in the Rye, "He did not win his fight against his poison," or something like that. He definitely mentioned the poison.
I do not remember the book as much as I would like to, but I do remember the poison part. I remember Holden Caulfield saying everyone was phony and thinking, that is true, that is very true. I have still not forgiven the backs.
I, too, write from my poison. I draw my sources from the darkest tortures of my mind and place them on paper. The pen is my sword, the page my battlefield, and I am waging war, against my past, against my fears, against my madness.
What that says about me, and about the stories I write, I am not sure. I write about death, even though I have never experienced death that hit too close. Is that symbolic of something? What of Katie when she sees Nick's ghost haunting her mind? Is that symbolic of something?
. . .
Pain is always close to me. So is separation.
Jessica asked me the other day how I dealt with it. The whole long-distance relationship thing. She was missing her ex-boyfriend. I told her we set aside time for each other. And as I was saying those words I felt the hypocrisy inside me.
Over the weekend, I went on a trip with our university's queer group to a cabin in a rural part of the area. One of the nights, we had a talent show, and one guy sat in front of the keyboard while another sang Coldplay's "The Scientist." I heard the words, "Nobody said it would be easy," and I could not stop the tears.
I had not spoke of the late night calls, when we would both be so exhausted and yet so mad at the other and so frustrated with ourselves. I had not spoke of the boxes of tissues lying in my garbage bin, the tear stains still on my laptop, the ribbon tied precariously on the ladder, the coins strewn on a grassy field near the river. Some nights I think I must be psychotic, to know how much this hurts me and yet still hang on.
I still wear the half of the ring, even though I know he does not wear the other half anymore. The other day someone in my English class saw it and asked, "Are you married? Are you engaged?"
I wish I knew the answer, but I am not so sure it is all that I need anymore. Yuma once said he was living through things day by day. I am not that kind of person. If I let things fall day by day, I will eventually lose it. It is what I do with everything.
Here, yet again, it is the journey, not the destination. I must remind myself that, and yet the destination blurs with each day.
. . .
I do not actually know much about my past.
For the past sixteen or so years, I have gone around piecing together my identity. Where do I belong? There is that generic statement of my heritage, what am I in terms of Chinese or American or Canadian or some mix of the three. But for me, this question is personal. It is tied with my longing for the road, my sense of safety among the land.
It is a question of where I belong, physically, not in terms of ethnicity or some arbitrary, culturally-entrenched definition.
If there is a past for me, it is a constant search for a place I can call home. Somewhere along the way, I have lost it, and I am now on the trek to rediscover it. Everything else is blurry. What places I have been to, what people I have talked with, they are constantly replaced with the new places I go to and the new people I talk with. I remember snippets, like Polaroids pasted in a scrapbook.
But this time, I do not want to let go. I do not want to forget. There is something here that is worth hanging onto, something that vaguely reminds me of what I never had.
Something not visible.
Whereas I can converse perfectly well in English, slightly less so in Chinese, much less so in French, and barely so in Spanish, I know not a phrase of German. I could not go up to someone in Germany and say, "Hello," in their own language, although I am sure if I said it in English there will still be people who understand me.
I know almost nothing of the German culture as well, and I am sure the bastardization of Oktoberfest that our university pushes out as a feeble excuse to drink (like they ever need one) is not a good representative. There is so much about the land I do not know, cannot ever know because I was not born and raised there. Even if, as a 20-something-year-old, I decide to move to Germany for the rest of my life, I will never know everything that a native German will know.
It is the subtle things. I am not sure I know all of those even in America, in Canada, much less in China. There are so many stories, so many faint traces of the past, that the Chinese value subconsciously, and that I am no longer a part of despite my Chinese heritage.
All I have are the visible things.
. . .
In Vermont, the mountains loom tall.
Not as tall as the Rockies, but mountains have no comparison. They are loners standing their ground. In Vermont, these mountains have seen through a revolution. They have weathered blood and rain. They have stood by as promises were made and vows broken and lives betrayed and dreams born.
As the car drives by, I look out the window. The lush trees of summer belie no hint of what Vermont is to most people, maple syrup and snow. I have told people Vermont is more than that, to many confused looks. I tell them it is a dairy state, perhaps not as famous as Wisconsin but a dairy state just as well. I tell them the history, the Green Mountains and their boys, Ethan Allen, Benedict Arnold.
This is their land. And the land never lies.
Vermont now is a peaceful state, or as peaceful as it can ever be. The green pastures and overarching trees lull people into a sense of nostalgia. It is the old East, and it still retains its dark past and poisonous shadows, but for now it is peaceful.
We stop at the rest area we always stop at. There is something to be said here, about habits, about coincidences, about many things in life that fit into convenient stories.
But we get off, stretch our legs, go inside and look at the map tacked onto the wall as if it were the first time we were seeing it. We take our hands and measure the distance we have traveled, and how much more we still have to go. We, too, are re-enacting history. We are forging our own terra incognita and charting them to fit the terrains of our hearts.
. . .
Our family is a family built upon road trips.
Ever since we got a car, back in 1999, every trip I had made that did not involve going somewhere half a world away were road trips. I have a special attachment to the land, to the roads. They are what I grew up on, like some kids grow up on sunshine and lemonade and backyard gossip circles.
We were living the American Dream, in a silly, distorted way. We would walk the sidewalk paved in gold and drive down every road. We went out west, we tried our hands at the "work hard and strike it rich" model. We walked out with resilient, optimistic spirits and an oddly-formed humor and our own shot at the American middle class, along with red knots hung on our doors and plastic bags stuffed inside our dishwasher for later use.
I built my dreams on the road. Trips were no longer about the destination, but about the journey in its most literal way. I hated it when the car slowed to a stop, because that meant the journey was over and the destination was here.
And once the destination was here, it would be over all too soon.
The first time we traveled to somewhere not half a world away in a plane, we went to Las Vegas. We hopped out of the plane and onto another car and headed straight for Grand Canyon. We were on the road, the only thing I was familiar with. Arizona roads are not anything like Massachusetts roads, but they are still roads. The desert sings its own song too, one of pioneers and settlers and miracles and tragedies and thousands of years of heritage shuffling in the wind.
But the destination.
The destination was different. The Grand Canyon was something beyond my imagination, beyond even my appropriations of its grandeur.
This was the first trip where we wanted to come back immediately, and the first trip where we were not driving all the time, where we had time to sit and watch the snow drift down without shivering in a car.
. . .
We read an interview of Murakami by Spiegel in class a few weeks ago. Peter said that Murakami was arrogant. He cited the two places where Murakami was asked about other people's books, and once he replied, "It's boring," and the other, of J. D. Salinger and his book Catcher in the Rye, "He did not win his fight against his poison," or something like that. He definitely mentioned the poison.
I do not remember the book as much as I would like to, but I do remember the poison part. I remember Holden Caulfield saying everyone was phony and thinking, that is true, that is very true. I have still not forgiven the backs.
I, too, write from my poison. I draw my sources from the darkest tortures of my mind and place them on paper. The pen is my sword, the page my battlefield, and I am waging war, against my past, against my fears, against my madness.
What that says about me, and about the stories I write, I am not sure. I write about death, even though I have never experienced death that hit too close. Is that symbolic of something? What of Katie when she sees Nick's ghost haunting her mind? Is that symbolic of something?
. . .
Pain is always close to me. So is separation.
Jessica asked me the other day how I dealt with it. The whole long-distance relationship thing. She was missing her ex-boyfriend. I told her we set aside time for each other. And as I was saying those words I felt the hypocrisy inside me.
Over the weekend, I went on a trip with our university's queer group to a cabin in a rural part of the area. One of the nights, we had a talent show, and one guy sat in front of the keyboard while another sang Coldplay's "The Scientist." I heard the words, "Nobody said it would be easy," and I could not stop the tears.
I had not spoke of the late night calls, when we would both be so exhausted and yet so mad at the other and so frustrated with ourselves. I had not spoke of the boxes of tissues lying in my garbage bin, the tear stains still on my laptop, the ribbon tied precariously on the ladder, the coins strewn on a grassy field near the river. Some nights I think I must be psychotic, to know how much this hurts me and yet still hang on.
I still wear the half of the ring, even though I know he does not wear the other half anymore. The other day someone in my English class saw it and asked, "Are you married? Are you engaged?"
I wish I knew the answer, but I am not so sure it is all that I need anymore. Yuma once said he was living through things day by day. I am not that kind of person. If I let things fall day by day, I will eventually lose it. It is what I do with everything.
Here, yet again, it is the journey, not the destination. I must remind myself that, and yet the destination blurs with each day.
. . .
I do not actually know much about my past.
For the past sixteen or so years, I have gone around piecing together my identity. Where do I belong? There is that generic statement of my heritage, what am I in terms of Chinese or American or Canadian or some mix of the three. But for me, this question is personal. It is tied with my longing for the road, my sense of safety among the land.
It is a question of where I belong, physically, not in terms of ethnicity or some arbitrary, culturally-entrenched definition.
If there is a past for me, it is a constant search for a place I can call home. Somewhere along the way, I have lost it, and I am now on the trek to rediscover it. Everything else is blurry. What places I have been to, what people I have talked with, they are constantly replaced with the new places I go to and the new people I talk with. I remember snippets, like Polaroids pasted in a scrapbook.
But this time, I do not want to let go. I do not want to forget. There is something here that is worth hanging onto, something that vaguely reminds me of what I never had.
Something not visible.
Sleep Deprived
I am surprised this is not a previous-blog-post-title.
To be fair I have stayed up later than this for more consecutive nights, most of them involving Yuma coincidentally also staying up very, very late and even more coincidentally we would be talking with each other. Those were the days I fell asleep in my afternoon classes (hello, econ) and generally felt like my head was exploding.
Well, hello, college.
In what could possibly be either a really good decision or a really stupid decision (or both, they're not mutually exclusive), I joined Fish Wings' computer club. I have not had a good track record with computer clubs, and I definitely have not had any track records with a computer club that requires weekly office hour commitments. So this could turn out to be a major time-sink (three hours a week is a lot of time, and although I could always program or whatever during that time, the nerdy people + constant availability of various games I refuse to download onto my lappy because it will suck all remaining spare time from me = not a lot of work done).
My weekends are also paaaacked. And not even with partying like Jessica is doing every Friday (along with the rest of her very, very busy schedule). I'm doing things like learning self-defense and planting trees.
And debugging Eclipse. Because this thing will always find some way to tell me, "Hey, I know you've been using me the same way 100 times now and I haven't given you any trouble, but guess what?"
Ubuntu does that to me sometimes too with the header style.
Maybe all this technology is realizing that I am an aspiring electrical engineer and has decided to repeat my FSAE subteam leader's favorite phrase, "Electronics always fail."
At least blogger is semi-functional and only does weird cursor jumps.
To be fair I have stayed up later than this for more consecutive nights, most of them involving Yuma coincidentally also staying up very, very late and even more coincidentally we would be talking with each other. Those were the days I fell asleep in my afternoon classes (hello, econ) and generally felt like my head was exploding.
Well, hello, college.
In what could possibly be either a really good decision or a really stupid decision (or both, they're not mutually exclusive), I joined Fish Wings' computer club. I have not had a good track record with computer clubs, and I definitely have not had any track records with a computer club that requires weekly office hour commitments. So this could turn out to be a major time-sink (three hours a week is a lot of time, and although I could always program or whatever during that time, the nerdy people + constant availability of various games I refuse to download onto my lappy because it will suck all remaining spare time from me = not a lot of work done).
My weekends are also paaaacked. And not even with partying like Jessica is doing every Friday (along with the rest of her very, very busy schedule). I'm doing things like learning self-defense and planting trees.
And debugging Eclipse. Because this thing will always find some way to tell me, "Hey, I know you've been using me the same way 100 times now and I haven't given you any trouble, but guess what?"
Ubuntu does that to me sometimes too with the header style.
Maybe all this technology is realizing that I am an aspiring electrical engineer and has decided to repeat my FSAE subteam leader's favorite phrase, "Electronics always fail."
At least blogger is semi-functional and only does weird cursor jumps.
Tuesday, October 25, 2011
Two Birds With One Very Linear Stick
Here is the problem: whenever I have about more work than I can handle reasonably (or when I think I do), I want to procrastinate. Aside from RSS and Gaia and about a bunch of other things blogging is the next one.
But! I can make this productive! I have a linear algebra quiz in about two and a half hours, and I can take notes here while I blog (and/or mindlessly type).
This is inspired by Yuma's rather nonfunctional blog now, and I would link, but it contains his real name and mine, which would make all of these nicknames rather silly and pointless.
Anyway.
Determinants and eigenvalues. The chapter where I actually learned new things.
My other work consists of writing the two paragraphs I have blocked out for my paper today (I have the topic sentences and the research, so that should be easy), as well as another location-specific paragraph that I need to do a bit more research on that hopefully won't take too long, and hopefully I can tackle another part of my paper (bring it to three full pages) as well.
Then I have reviewing for my Java midterm, so I need to start on my assignment as well, since it's been said that having that done before the midterm is good review.
My mom suggested I listen to French radio, so I could do that in my spare time. I also need to start researching for Robot On Moon (hey, ROM is also Royal Ontario Museum!), and sign up for a project for FSAE, and talk with the person in charge of notes, and review at least calc and hopefully physics too, and finish my letter and send out the food, and write my story, and fit in all my Halloween parties, and figure out my linear algebra assignment eventually, and stop typing "assignmnet" every time I mean "assignment" because terminal doesn't recognize it and spits at me every time I do so.
But. First. Fooooood.
But! I can make this productive! I have a linear algebra quiz in about two and a half hours, and I can take notes here while I blog (and/or mindlessly type).
This is inspired by Yuma's rather nonfunctional blog now, and I would link, but it contains his real name and mine, which would make all of these nicknames rather silly and pointless.
Anyway.
Determinants and eigenvalues. The chapter where I actually learned new things.
- The most generic way of finding the determinant of a matrix is to take one row/column and add all the (entry * cofactor of entry) for that row/column.
- Cofactor = (-1)^(row# + column# of entry) det (matrix without entry's row and column)
- This technically works with 2 x 2 matrices, but what you're essentially doing is ad - cb anyway.
- This process is officially called the cofactor expansion. I always think of it as the "reduce the matrix the determinant way."
- SPECIAL CASES:
- if one row/column is all 0, then obviously expand along that row/column = det(matrix) = 0
- if the matrix is an upper/lower triangular matrix, multiply entries along diagonal (this one's easy to see)
- det(k*matrix) = k^n * det(matrix)
- det(transpose of matrix) = det(matrix) since rows/columns preserve
- det(matrix A * matrix B) = det(A) * det(B); and the extrapolation of det(matrix^k) = det(matrix)^k
- Row operations & determinants:
- 1. interchanging = -det(matrix)
- 2. multiplying one row by k = k det(matrix)
- 3. adding mults of one row to another = det(matrix)
- 1 because of signs of cofactors; 2 because of factoring; 3 because of same entries in two rows
- If det(A) = 0, no inverse (gasp!) and otherwise, yes inverse where det(A^-1) = 1/det(A) (sort of like the "inverse" of a number).
- Matrices can be blocked off to make calculations easier (if applicable). Only helps if you can make a square block of 0s.
- Adjoint of a matrix is the transpose of the cofactors matrix (matrix with cofactor of each entry in place of the corresponding entry).
- For matrix A: A * adj(A) = det(A) * I = adj(A) * A and adj(A) / det(A) = A^-1, where the proof of the second comes from the dividing everything by det(A).
- det(adj(A)) = detA^(n-1) where A is n x n; derived from above formula
- Cramer's Rule: so confusing to write... (to find nth x, replace nth column with constant column in coefficient matrix then find det (that) / det(A)) however it's more difficult to calculate for larger matrices and therefore only useful in theory
- Diagonalization is useful for calculating powers of square matrices (that can be diagonalized).
- If a square matrix can be diagonalized, then P^-1 * A * P = D, where P is an invertible "diagonalizing" matrix (so many terms) and D is the "diagonalized" matrix.
- P = eigenvectors of A and D = eigenvalues of A, in respective order (eigenvalue 1 matches with eigenvector 1 in column location).
- Eigenvalues: AX = xX where x is a constant (the eigenvalue) that is usually lambda but I can't type it easily.
- Generally, eigenvalues are found by solving the characteristic polynomial, which is det(xI - A) = 0.
- The eigenvectors are found by solving for X when the eigenvalues are plugged in for (xI - A) * X = 0.
- side note: tr(A) is the trace of A and is the sum of all diagonal entries
- For P to exist, # of eigenvectors = # of columns in A (or the total multiplicity of the eigenvalues, or the # of rows in P)
- Similar matrices are similar (no pun intended) to A and D pairs, but the other matrix need not be D.
- if A ~ B (~ = is similar to): A^-1, A^T, A^k ~ B^-1, B^T, B^k for k >= 0 respectively
- if A ~ B: det(A), c(x) of A, and eigenvalues of A = those of B; by this the matrix A has similar properties to the eigenvalues of A, e.g. if x^2 (the eigenvalue of A) = 5x, then A^2 = 5A.
- if A ~ B and B ~ C then A ~ C
My other work consists of writing the two paragraphs I have blocked out for my paper today (I have the topic sentences and the research, so that should be easy), as well as another location-specific paragraph that I need to do a bit more research on that hopefully won't take too long, and hopefully I can tackle another part of my paper (bring it to three full pages) as well.
Then I have reviewing for my Java midterm, so I need to start on my assignment as well, since it's been said that having that done before the midterm is good review.
My mom suggested I listen to French radio, so I could do that in my spare time. I also need to start researching for Robot On Moon (hey, ROM is also Royal Ontario Museum!), and sign up for a project for FSAE, and talk with the person in charge of notes, and review at least calc and hopefully physics too, and finish my letter and send out the food, and write my story, and fit in all my Halloween parties, and figure out my linear algebra assignment eventually, and stop typing "assignmnet" every time I mean "assignment" because terminal doesn't recognize it and spits at me every time I do so.
But. First. Fooooood.
Wednesday, October 19, 2011
The Past Few Weeks
I have been going to my classes every other class. Sometimes it is intentional, like today, when I skipped my linear algebra class to attend a soldering tutorial that was probably more informative and productive than any single lecture I have gone to for linalg. (I stripped wires and made pretty twists with them and soldered them together with decent speed! That has to be one of the more productive hours I have ever spent in a long time).
Other times it is accidental, like today (again), when I woke up in the morning and it was 9:45 and my java class started at 9:35, and I was groggy and on the top bunk without any proper outdoors clothes on or any breakfast in my stomach, and the earliest I can have all of that done would be by 10, and then 5-10 minutes of walking to class would leave me with 15 minutes of lecture time left. So I promptly fell back asleep.
I asked Jessica later on about what the prof talked about in class today, and she said, "Calling a private property in another class with a public method." Which is, well, what we learned on Monday. I even have rather nice notes for that day.
I think it was on Monday, too, that I left my java class and, after buying yogurt and granola for breakfast, hurried to my linalg class and read the part in the textbook where I thought we had gone over the class before. And I went into class an hour later and proceeded to hear about the same things I had just read.
As Yuma puts it, "Why are your classes so useless?"
I like to believe that it is only so because I am in this limbo mode right now where I can't actually take the exciting classes. But I do have some neat classes next semester, like intro to computer engineering and engineering economy, as well as differential equations which I've heard is actually tough (or maybe they are making it up just like they are making up how difficult linear algebra was going to be). Also I will have no more English classes next semester and, as long as my 93% fixed schedule (based on rough approximations) is not changed by the higher beings who design the electrical engineering curriculum here, I will never have an official English class again.
Or maybe they do this English thing at grad school too. Who knows. I think they should do it every year but I suppose the workload (essay-writing) does add up.
. . .
I found a couple of tunnels under my school. This would sound so much cooler if I also put in, "I sneaked past -insert integer here- security guards and ducked under the camera and picked the lock on the grate and lowered myself into the tunnels," but alas, that was not the case. These tunnels are university-sanctioned, opened for the special purpose of allowing us to get to our classes without freezing ourselves to death when it is -40 degrees Celsius outside and the snow is piled higher than your head.
On the bright side, some of these are steam tunnels, which means they'll be extra-cozy in winter. On the not so bright side, they have operating hours, unlike the buildings themselves, so any late-night cramming session during finals time will necessarily involve walking through the snow.
I am not sure if our school has drains, which I have heard is also a good place to explore in the winter, but those are definitely not sanctioned and will require a lot of time and effort and luck to discover.
Roofs, however, are open (free?) to people who find the doors open at the right time. It is apparently not a rare occurrence. I have yet to be on a roof but that should be fun too.
. . .
Boys are weird creatures. I am sure this has been stated before (I vaguely remember this particular statement or a variation of it on my blog, and possibly on Kathrya's blog too although I can't remember if either is true), and I am aware it is a gross generalization, so I will restate this. Some of the boys I have encountered lately are weird.
The other day I went to the basement of the math and science building, and these two guys were selling white coffee to fundraise for some student group (I think it was Malaysian or some other Southeast Asian group, the guys told me but I don't quite remember). I asked them what white coffee was, and one of the guys explained (different coffee brewing process + condensed milk), and then took off the "$1" sign and said that they were running low anyway, so he gave me a free sample. Then they packed up so quickly and left the table before I even left.
Today, as I was walking down the escalator, one of the guys in my class walked past me, obviously in a hurry. He then held the door open for me, even though I was not even close to the door, so I half-ran to get the door so he wouldn't wait too long.
Maybe the midterms are addling with their brains.
I would love to extend this to girls too so this doesn't resemble a gender stereotype, but unfortunately I am not meeting enough previously-not-well-known-and-probably-will-never-know-well girls to have any concrete examples.
. . .
Thanksgiving weekend was good. It involved lots of fish (alive, raw, microwaved, hot-potted, stuffed-toy-ified), a trip to the depths of Chinatown, friend-visiting, mall-bridge-hopping, movies (some good, some dreadfully slow), and a variety of other things that may or may not be appropriate to put on here. A blackboard was acquired, kitties were petted, and a bunch of pretty much useless RAMs and hard drives were lugged back up the hill.
I might write about it, but definitely not from my perspective and not with any clear-defined names.
And we can also definitely glaze over the late-night drunk on deliriousness hours of insanity.
It was apparently also Denise's birthday on Thanksgiving weekend. It was a rather sad event for her, at least on the day of her birthday, because none of us were there (Sam went to her cottage, other people were otherwise occupied with their families) and she was sick. To make matters worse she spent the weekend at the studio working on one of her many, many projects.
Sam organized a belated celebration for her by taking her to a dumpling place (and inviting all of us). They were really good dumplings (I haven't really had a vegetarian dumpling in a long while, and the ones there were delicious), and Denise and Sam ate two platefuls. I would have ordered a plate myself, but earlier that day I had gone to the-dorm-with-a-good-caf and had gotten myself onion rings and cheesecake and chicken and noodles and broccoli and iced tea, and normally I could have dealt with the main meal but the combo of onion rings and cheesecake was rather filling already, so I was stuffed by the end of the meal.
So not many dumplings for me. So sad.
. . .
I am really tired now. I slept at 4 in the morning, because I wanted Yuma to read me a chapter from a story and he didn't want to, so I stayed up doing silly things. This is probably directly related to my inability to attend my java class this morning, which apparently was pretty silly too, so it all balances out.
I bought four books from the book fair yesterday, all on math and science, and I can't wait to read them. I also signed up for about a million email lists from various clubs around my school, and plotted them all on my calendar in hopes that by virtue of them being there, I will do them.
So far I have not gone to the computer-recycling club, nor the outdoors excursions club, but I have asked Jessica about the two competitions I was interested in (both require teams).
Maybe if I sleep more...
Other times it is accidental, like today (again), when I woke up in the morning and it was 9:45 and my java class started at 9:35, and I was groggy and on the top bunk without any proper outdoors clothes on or any breakfast in my stomach, and the earliest I can have all of that done would be by 10, and then 5-10 minutes of walking to class would leave me with 15 minutes of lecture time left. So I promptly fell back asleep.
I asked Jessica later on about what the prof talked about in class today, and she said, "Calling a private property in another class with a public method." Which is, well, what we learned on Monday. I even have rather nice notes for that day.
I think it was on Monday, too, that I left my java class and, after buying yogurt and granola for breakfast, hurried to my linalg class and read the part in the textbook where I thought we had gone over the class before. And I went into class an hour later and proceeded to hear about the same things I had just read.
As Yuma puts it, "Why are your classes so useless?"
I like to believe that it is only so because I am in this limbo mode right now where I can't actually take the exciting classes. But I do have some neat classes next semester, like intro to computer engineering and engineering economy, as well as differential equations which I've heard is actually tough (or maybe they are making it up just like they are making up how difficult linear algebra was going to be). Also I will have no more English classes next semester and, as long as my 93% fixed schedule (based on rough approximations) is not changed by the higher beings who design the electrical engineering curriculum here, I will never have an official English class again.
Or maybe they do this English thing at grad school too. Who knows. I think they should do it every year but I suppose the workload (essay-writing) does add up.
. . .
I found a couple of tunnels under my school. This would sound so much cooler if I also put in, "I sneaked past -insert integer here- security guards and ducked under the camera and picked the lock on the grate and lowered myself into the tunnels," but alas, that was not the case. These tunnels are university-sanctioned, opened for the special purpose of allowing us to get to our classes without freezing ourselves to death when it is -40 degrees Celsius outside and the snow is piled higher than your head.
On the bright side, some of these are steam tunnels, which means they'll be extra-cozy in winter. On the not so bright side, they have operating hours, unlike the buildings themselves, so any late-night cramming session during finals time will necessarily involve walking through the snow.
I am not sure if our school has drains, which I have heard is also a good place to explore in the winter, but those are definitely not sanctioned and will require a lot of time and effort and luck to discover.
Roofs, however, are open (free?) to people who find the doors open at the right time. It is apparently not a rare occurrence. I have yet to be on a roof but that should be fun too.
. . .
Boys are weird creatures. I am sure this has been stated before (I vaguely remember this particular statement or a variation of it on my blog, and possibly on Kathrya's blog too although I can't remember if either is true), and I am aware it is a gross generalization, so I will restate this. Some of the boys I have encountered lately are weird.
The other day I went to the basement of the math and science building, and these two guys were selling white coffee to fundraise for some student group (I think it was Malaysian or some other Southeast Asian group, the guys told me but I don't quite remember). I asked them what white coffee was, and one of the guys explained (different coffee brewing process + condensed milk), and then took off the "$1" sign and said that they were running low anyway, so he gave me a free sample. Then they packed up so quickly and left the table before I even left.
Today, as I was walking down the escalator, one of the guys in my class walked past me, obviously in a hurry. He then held the door open for me, even though I was not even close to the door, so I half-ran to get the door so he wouldn't wait too long.
Maybe the midterms are addling with their brains.
I would love to extend this to girls too so this doesn't resemble a gender stereotype, but unfortunately I am not meeting enough previously-not-well-known-and-probably-will-never-know-well girls to have any concrete examples.
. . .
Thanksgiving weekend was good. It involved lots of fish (alive, raw, microwaved, hot-potted, stuffed-toy-ified), a trip to the depths of Chinatown, friend-visiting, mall-bridge-hopping, movies (some good, some dreadfully slow), and a variety of other things that may or may not be appropriate to put on here. A blackboard was acquired, kitties were petted, and a bunch of pretty much useless RAMs and hard drives were lugged back up the hill.
I might write about it, but definitely not from my perspective and not with any clear-defined names.
And we can also definitely glaze over the late-night drunk on deliriousness hours of insanity.
It was apparently also Denise's birthday on Thanksgiving weekend. It was a rather sad event for her, at least on the day of her birthday, because none of us were there (Sam went to her cottage, other people were otherwise occupied with their families) and she was sick. To make matters worse she spent the weekend at the studio working on one of her many, many projects.
Sam organized a belated celebration for her by taking her to a dumpling place (and inviting all of us). They were really good dumplings (I haven't really had a vegetarian dumpling in a long while, and the ones there were delicious), and Denise and Sam ate two platefuls. I would have ordered a plate myself, but earlier that day I had gone to the-dorm-with-a-good-caf and had gotten myself onion rings and cheesecake and chicken and noodles and broccoli and iced tea, and normally I could have dealt with the main meal but the combo of onion rings and cheesecake was rather filling already, so I was stuffed by the end of the meal.
So not many dumplings for me. So sad.
. . .
I am really tired now. I slept at 4 in the morning, because I wanted Yuma to read me a chapter from a story and he didn't want to, so I stayed up doing silly things. This is probably directly related to my inability to attend my java class this morning, which apparently was pretty silly too, so it all balances out.
I bought four books from the book fair yesterday, all on math and science, and I can't wait to read them. I also signed up for about a million email lists from various clubs around my school, and plotted them all on my calendar in hopes that by virtue of them being there, I will do them.
So far I have not gone to the computer-recycling club, nor the outdoors excursions club, but I have asked Jessica about the two competitions I was interested in (both require teams).
Maybe if I sleep more...
Tuesday, October 4, 2011
Weekends
Last weekend (it seems so far away even though it's only Tuesday), I went on a camping trip with a group of fellow engineers (and other people, who were mainly engineers' girlfriends/boyfriends). We left on what must be one of the most awful days to leave for a camping trip: it was rainy and cold. But luckily, we had plenty of firewood (and people bought even more after they got drunk), lots of food, and enough alcohol to put a liquor store to shame (we had plenty of cases of all sorts of beer, and other things people brought like rum and gin and vodka, and our coordinator brought boxes of wine).
I was probably one of the few (if not only) people who did not drink, but the food was really good. Our coordinator made chili, and we roasted spider weenies over the fire (and accidentally dropped what was probably an entire pack of hot dogs into the fire) and made s'mores until we ran out of chocolate and biscuits. Someone even roasted a pepper (and said, "It smells really good!" so everyone took turns smelling it).
I had way too much food for the night (I think maybe 4 or 5 hot dogs plus a ton of marshmallows and a tub of chili), but it was so good I couldn't stop eating. I probably burned all of the excess calories off during the night though, when I was freezing so badly I had a blanket wrapped around me, a down jacket on, and was still shivering through much of the night.
We talked about a bunch of silly things, like previous trips the other people had gone on, air force experience (a lot of people in our group had been in the army in some way), and generally Islandtown and other places. Then people started making up really dirty limericks and singing lewd songs, and cigars got passed around. I didn't like the smoke, plus I had drank too much lemonade, so I joined the bathroom excursion.
We hiked down the road, through many, many puddles (my boots are all disgusting now), and arrived at the bathrooms. When we got out, we saw that there was a playground nearby, so our temporarily appointed VP Acquisitions (we had VPs for almost everything, from VP Fire to VP Innuendo) decided it was a great idea to steal two of the kiddie cars in the playground (apparently the goal of VP Acquisitions was to get a golf cart, but that was too difficult), so two of the girls hauled the cars to our campfire.
I spent the rest of the night warming myself by the fire and stopping myself from eating more food. So obviously when I got up in the morning I went right back to the fire and, as the bacon was the only thing ready, I ate bacon. We had all forgotten to turn off the propane stove the night before, so we only had a little bit of propane left. Someone suggested we cook bacon over the fire, so we did that (in a pan and not on a stick, sadly). There was also instant oatmeal made in such huge batches that it looked almost homemade.
I must have ate 8 strips of bacon. So. Much. Food.
Then the group of girls I shared a tent with (and one of their friends and her boyfriend) decided to take a walk to the lake, and when we got there we wanted to walk around the lake. So we hiked through mountains of trash and sand and long reeds, and got to see the lake from all angles. When we got back, there was spaghetti cooking on the fire (food was definitely one of our themes), and it was delicious too. Too bad we had to leave soon after, but not before we finished the rest of the marshmallows, all of the beer, and someone roasted a banana.
On our way back, we talked about more trips (including a skiing trip that I'd love to go on), deteriorating bridges ("please don't stop under the bridge!"), and people who drank too much beer and needed to go to the bathroom (one guy was almost desperate enough to emulate Mario). If it were any warmer and drier I would have wished it lasted longer. As it were though, I was plenty glad to return to my warm, cozy room and actually sleep on a proper bed.
. . .
Next weekend I am going on another trip, except this time I am going to Beavertown (I had bought the tickets last weekend, and I am so excited). I already have my outfits planned out, because, obviously, this is the most important part. Well, also because Yuma said he would be in charge of planning the events, so that does not leave me with much left to plan for.
I told this to a guy I had met online a couple weeks ago (who knew about my situation with Yuma), and he said, "Bring pepper spray."
I hope I won't ever have to use that.
That aside, I am really, really excited. I'm hoping I will finish all of my homework before Friday, and then maybe skip out of my last class on Friday so I don't need to be at the bus station at 12 in the morning (although that is also a feasible option, if I had to), and then I'll skip my Tuesday tutorial so I can have three and a half days (and four nights!) in Beavertown.
But that means I have to work now, so off I'll be.
I was probably one of the few (if not only) people who did not drink, but the food was really good. Our coordinator made chili, and we roasted spider weenies over the fire (and accidentally dropped what was probably an entire pack of hot dogs into the fire) and made s'mores until we ran out of chocolate and biscuits. Someone even roasted a pepper (and said, "It smells really good!" so everyone took turns smelling it).
I had way too much food for the night (I think maybe 4 or 5 hot dogs plus a ton of marshmallows and a tub of chili), but it was so good I couldn't stop eating. I probably burned all of the excess calories off during the night though, when I was freezing so badly I had a blanket wrapped around me, a down jacket on, and was still shivering through much of the night.
We talked about a bunch of silly things, like previous trips the other people had gone on, air force experience (a lot of people in our group had been in the army in some way), and generally Islandtown and other places. Then people started making up really dirty limericks and singing lewd songs, and cigars got passed around. I didn't like the smoke, plus I had drank too much lemonade, so I joined the bathroom excursion.
We hiked down the road, through many, many puddles (my boots are all disgusting now), and arrived at the bathrooms. When we got out, we saw that there was a playground nearby, so our temporarily appointed VP Acquisitions (we had VPs for almost everything, from VP Fire to VP Innuendo) decided it was a great idea to steal two of the kiddie cars in the playground (apparently the goal of VP Acquisitions was to get a golf cart, but that was too difficult), so two of the girls hauled the cars to our campfire.
I spent the rest of the night warming myself by the fire and stopping myself from eating more food. So obviously when I got up in the morning I went right back to the fire and, as the bacon was the only thing ready, I ate bacon. We had all forgotten to turn off the propane stove the night before, so we only had a little bit of propane left. Someone suggested we cook bacon over the fire, so we did that (in a pan and not on a stick, sadly). There was also instant oatmeal made in such huge batches that it looked almost homemade.
I must have ate 8 strips of bacon. So. Much. Food.
Then the group of girls I shared a tent with (and one of their friends and her boyfriend) decided to take a walk to the lake, and when we got there we wanted to walk around the lake. So we hiked through mountains of trash and sand and long reeds, and got to see the lake from all angles. When we got back, there was spaghetti cooking on the fire (food was definitely one of our themes), and it was delicious too. Too bad we had to leave soon after, but not before we finished the rest of the marshmallows, all of the beer, and someone roasted a banana.
On our way back, we talked about more trips (including a skiing trip that I'd love to go on), deteriorating bridges ("please don't stop under the bridge!"), and people who drank too much beer and needed to go to the bathroom (one guy was almost desperate enough to emulate Mario). If it were any warmer and drier I would have wished it lasted longer. As it were though, I was plenty glad to return to my warm, cozy room and actually sleep on a proper bed.
. . .
Next weekend I am going on another trip, except this time I am going to Beavertown (I had bought the tickets last weekend, and I am so excited). I already have my outfits planned out, because, obviously, this is the most important part. Well, also because Yuma said he would be in charge of planning the events, so that does not leave me with much left to plan for.
I told this to a guy I had met online a couple weeks ago (who knew about my situation with Yuma), and he said, "Bring pepper spray."
I hope I won't ever have to use that.
That aside, I am really, really excited. I'm hoping I will finish all of my homework before Friday, and then maybe skip out of my last class on Friday so I don't need to be at the bus station at 12 in the morning (although that is also a feasible option, if I had to), and then I'll skip my Tuesday tutorial so I can have three and a half days (and four nights!) in Beavertown.
But that means I have to work now, so off I'll be.
Friday, September 30, 2011
Busy, Busy Days
I went to the tech fair this week, and talked to several companies about internships and such. I had printed out 15 CVs, because Yuma had told me to print 40, and I think I still have 6 or 7 left. Thank goodness I didn't print 40. I would probably need a few more for the volunteering/exchange expo this weekend, if that, but otherwise I wouldn't need them until winter, and by then I hope to add a few more things on there.
I still need to research these internships I've learned about though. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow, if I get the chance.
Tomorrow I am going to buy tickets to Beavertown, unless my dad plans a spontaneous visit, which I hope he won't, and if he does I can always say that I will be out that weekend with friends. Which is technically true, if you discard the notion that Beavertown is so far away. Then I'll take the metro to the expo, because it is apparently along the route, and then I'll come back to Fish Wings to go on a camping trip sponsored by my department that will last half the weekend. Apparently this is the first time our department has done anything like this, and we're going to a place that even the coordinators have never heard of before they organized the trip.
In Yuma's words (sort of), if anyone died they would never host something like this again.
Yesterday I went to the SWE-like-group's committee meeting, and we agreed on a potluck dinner/drinks/karaoke night some time next month. And today I got a nomination form for class rep (I need 25 people to back me up), and signed up to take notes for other people in my class. I also emailed a group about being a math tutor, and another group about participating in their robot team.
Jessica, who has also signed up for all of these things (well, in the sense of plenty, not the sense of exactly the same), was wondering if she wanted to take on any more or if it would be too much for her to handle.
It does seem like there aren't enough hours in the day, although my classes are still going by as slow as ever. I can't believe a month has passed and I really can't believe how little I learned in linear algebra.
But there is linear algebra homework due on Sunday, and a debate I need to research for on Monday, so I will need to get most of it done before I go on the camping trip tomorrow. Less blogging, more working.
I still need to research these internships I've learned about though. Maybe tonight, or tomorrow, if I get the chance.
Tomorrow I am going to buy tickets to Beavertown, unless my dad plans a spontaneous visit, which I hope he won't, and if he does I can always say that I will be out that weekend with friends. Which is technically true, if you discard the notion that Beavertown is so far away. Then I'll take the metro to the expo, because it is apparently along the route, and then I'll come back to Fish Wings to go on a camping trip sponsored by my department that will last half the weekend. Apparently this is the first time our department has done anything like this, and we're going to a place that even the coordinators have never heard of before they organized the trip.
In Yuma's words (sort of), if anyone died they would never host something like this again.
Yesterday I went to the SWE-like-group's committee meeting, and we agreed on a potluck dinner/drinks/karaoke night some time next month. And today I got a nomination form for class rep (I need 25 people to back me up), and signed up to take notes for other people in my class. I also emailed a group about being a math tutor, and another group about participating in their robot team.
Jessica, who has also signed up for all of these things (well, in the sense of plenty, not the sense of exactly the same), was wondering if she wanted to take on any more or if it would be too much for her to handle.
It does seem like there aren't enough hours in the day, although my classes are still going by as slow as ever. I can't believe a month has passed and I really can't believe how little I learned in linear algebra.
But there is linear algebra homework due on Sunday, and a debate I need to research for on Monday, so I will need to get most of it done before I go on the camping trip tomorrow. Less blogging, more working.
Monday, September 26, 2011
Electronics
As Nathan puts it, "Electronics always fail. Don't just take it from me. The guys who go on to become CEOs at Ford and [some other big car company whose name I have already forgotten] all say that they know shit-all about electronics and electronics always fail."
Very encouraging.
He then proceeded to show us a network problem he was having with the black box on the car. We spent a good hour there watching him put things together, and it was pretty fascinating (I never knew about breadboards before but they are the neatest things ever). Then we watched as he ran the program and explained that, once again, it was not working and he was not getting the data he needed.
Not to mention that the team is going on a pre-race event at Lakeside in a week, and he needs to get it working by then so the other teams working on the car can have the data they need.
I have a sort-of-like-SWE group mixer tomorrow evening, and there is the tech fair all day tomorrow, so I might go there on Wednesday night, if I'm not going to other companies' info sessions. I do want to check out the other parts of the car, and maybe do some data analysis, since that is always fun.
The rest of the meeting went by pretty uneventfully. I was hoping to see Peter so I could ask him where we were supposed to be on Wednesday for our English class, since we're starting on our research topics already, but he wasn't there (probably because there wasn't anything very important going on for those who are already on the team). I did see someone else from my English class though (what is with my English class and cars? I now know four people aside from me who is/will be on the team, out of a total of 25).
In other news:
Already.
I feel kind of silly because the past few posts have all contained some mentioning of grades, and while I do care I don't want to care too much to the extent that I won't get to do all the cool things I want to do on campus (EWB, FSAE, SWE-like group, youth outreach groups). Maybe all of this can be solved by writing shorter blog posts. These things take quite a bit of time.
Very encouraging.
He then proceeded to show us a network problem he was having with the black box on the car. We spent a good hour there watching him put things together, and it was pretty fascinating (I never knew about breadboards before but they are the neatest things ever). Then we watched as he ran the program and explained that, once again, it was not working and he was not getting the data he needed.
Not to mention that the team is going on a pre-race event at Lakeside in a week, and he needs to get it working by then so the other teams working on the car can have the data they need.
I have a sort-of-like-SWE group mixer tomorrow evening, and there is the tech fair all day tomorrow, so I might go there on Wednesday night, if I'm not going to other companies' info sessions. I do want to check out the other parts of the car, and maybe do some data analysis, since that is always fun.
The rest of the meeting went by pretty uneventfully. I was hoping to see Peter so I could ask him where we were supposed to be on Wednesday for our English class, since we're starting on our research topics already, but he wasn't there (probably because there wasn't anything very important going on for those who are already on the team). I did see someone else from my English class though (what is with my English class and cars? I now know four people aside from me who is/will be on the team, out of a total of 25).
In other news:
- Today marks the first day I ate breakfast, lunch, and dinner at a school cafeteria. I had an egg and blt English muffin sandwich and milk for breakfast, smoked salmon and shrimp sushi and peach yogurt for lunch, and pizza and lemonade for dinner (all the fancy stuff ran out by the time I got there). I am still $22 behind my spending schedule for the day. Tomorrow I will be $37 behind. I really, really need to increase my food intake and quality somehow without overeating. Or maybe, as Yuma says, I should exercise more. Maybe I could go up and down the hill every day like I used to?
- I found this really neat math genealogy website, and when I traced my math history professor, it went all the way back to Heisenberg and Gauss and Möbius and Copernicus and lots of other cool mathematicians. Also a really interesting thing was that when I started going really really far back (like 1400s) I would find that a lot people studied under the same people and then taught the same people and other mixed-up things like that. It's less common now because of all the people who are able to study math at a high level, but I suppose back then when learning was still a privileged thing to do, it was more common.
- I have, through some crazy notion, signed up to be part of a debate team in one of my 200-people-large classes. Only 20 people are debating in total. That is crazy, considering I usually never volunteer for anything even when 10 people are called for in a 25 people class. And it's on a topic I never did any research on. But I have lots and lots of time, I suppose. Which reminds me:
- I want to somehow pick up physics again, because I really don't know all that much about it and I believe it is rather necessary to know physics as an engineer. I have been telling myself that I need to get onto that but it's not happening yet, so I think I need to actually assign a fixed schedule, sort of like a class time, so I can get it done. Maybe two hours a day on Tuesdays and Thursdays, then an extra hour for reviewing calc. I could get that fitted into my calendar easily.
Already.
I feel kind of silly because the past few posts have all contained some mentioning of grades, and while I do care I don't want to care too much to the extent that I won't get to do all the cool things I want to do on campus (EWB, FSAE, SWE-like group, youth outreach groups). Maybe all of this can be solved by writing shorter blog posts. These things take quite a bit of time.
Sunday, September 25, 2011
Samosa Fridays
During dinner on Friday (at this retro diner-like place mixed in with a convenience store), Denise and I split a vegetarian dish that included stir-fried eggplants and other veggies, chickpea and pasta salad, hummus, and pita bread. I punched in my portion of the cost into my budget manager (the one I rediscovered today while cleaning out apps on my phone) and said, "I'm over my limit for food today already."
"What did you buy?"
"Well," I said. "I bought an omelet in the morning at the café, and it was really expensive, but it had really good Swiss cheese and—uh—what did I have for lunch?"
It took me a good five minutes to remember. "Samosas. I bought samosas. Three for $2. That's what I ate."
I still have over $1000 left in my meal plan for the semester, and I have to use it up or else it will expire. The problem is I don't wake up early enough to eat breakfast (or if I do it's a quick bowl of cereal), and sometimes I would go out to eat. Islandtown makes that really easy, especially since Fish Wings is located downtown and there are so many good restaurants around. The other day Denise and I went to this pub and they served the best jalapeno poppers I have ever had.
And the poutine here is heavenly.
Also I don't really eat on the weekends, because I hold crazy schedules and sleep in the early mornings and wake up at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon. Then I make bacon and onion and eggs and whatever else is really easy to cook.
I think I need to buy a bunch of pre-made meals from one of the cafeterias and stash them away for the weekends.
Also, as I was walking back from the metro, I heard the tell-tale party music of our engineering weekly drinking party. The last time I was there they had this really complicated drinking game involving a map of the world, except with bizarre names for the countries. I wonder if anyone (if there is anyone, that is) who is reading this can tell me what the name of that game is?
My mom called me later that night, and among other things, said, "Why are you eating out? You should eat as much as possible from your meal plan." Which is very logical, and would have been easy to do back home, but when you walk down a street and it's filled with all sorts of restaurants and eateries, and you're really hungry because you haven't ate anything for hours and all you've had was a glass of wine, it's not that easy.
Plus I would have needed to sneak into another dorm's cafeteria, since mine does not have one and the engineering one closes early on Fridays, and I didn't want to go through the extra effort.
So I really need to get the planning for food part down.
My mom also said, "I don't except you to get a 4.0 (she was talking about GPAs), that requires too much effort and it's not worth it, but you should aim for above a 3.9."
Gee, mom, there is such a huge difference between a 4.0 and a 3.95.
Ridiculousness aside, I still miss her. We talked for over an hour over Skype (and was interrupted twice by Yuma trying to video-chat me on gchat), and we probably would have kept going if it weren't so late and my mom was at her parents' place, where internet is limited. I won't be able to see her in person until summer comes around, and if anything does happen to me it will at least take her a couple of days to get here. That is something I still cannot wrap my head around.
I talked with Nora last night and she said she was at Gaussianville, which is around 7 hours away from Islandtown. A lot of my friends back from Lakeside are going to Lakeside University, and they are 6 hours away. Beavertown is 6 hours away.
This distance isn't too far. But it is far enough.
Since I slept most of the day away, I don't have much to say about my day. But Zephy sent me an email a few days ago (or was that yesterday? I can't remember) saying that her tag will be forevermore small because I will never have an occasion to talk about her. So here I am, mentioning her so her tag might grow a bit.
Yuma will be back in a few minutes. He is such a silly, strange boy. I don't know what he wants anymore, but I'll take his happy days one day at a time.
"What did you buy?"
"Well," I said. "I bought an omelet in the morning at the café, and it was really expensive, but it had really good Swiss cheese and—uh—what did I have for lunch?"
It took me a good five minutes to remember. "Samosas. I bought samosas. Three for $2. That's what I ate."
I still have over $1000 left in my meal plan for the semester, and I have to use it up or else it will expire. The problem is I don't wake up early enough to eat breakfast (or if I do it's a quick bowl of cereal), and sometimes I would go out to eat. Islandtown makes that really easy, especially since Fish Wings is located downtown and there are so many good restaurants around. The other day Denise and I went to this pub and they served the best jalapeno poppers I have ever had.
And the poutine here is heavenly.
Also I don't really eat on the weekends, because I hold crazy schedules and sleep in the early mornings and wake up at around 5 or 6 in the afternoon. Then I make bacon and onion and eggs and whatever else is really easy to cook.
I think I need to buy a bunch of pre-made meals from one of the cafeterias and stash them away for the weekends.
Also, as I was walking back from the metro, I heard the tell-tale party music of our engineering weekly drinking party. The last time I was there they had this really complicated drinking game involving a map of the world, except with bizarre names for the countries. I wonder if anyone (if there is anyone, that is) who is reading this can tell me what the name of that game is?
My mom called me later that night, and among other things, said, "Why are you eating out? You should eat as much as possible from your meal plan." Which is very logical, and would have been easy to do back home, but when you walk down a street and it's filled with all sorts of restaurants and eateries, and you're really hungry because you haven't ate anything for hours and all you've had was a glass of wine, it's not that easy.
Plus I would have needed to sneak into another dorm's cafeteria, since mine does not have one and the engineering one closes early on Fridays, and I didn't want to go through the extra effort.
So I really need to get the planning for food part down.
My mom also said, "I don't except you to get a 4.0 (she was talking about GPAs), that requires too much effort and it's not worth it, but you should aim for above a 3.9."
Gee, mom, there is such a huge difference between a 4.0 and a 3.95.
Ridiculousness aside, I still miss her. We talked for over an hour over Skype (and was interrupted twice by Yuma trying to video-chat me on gchat), and we probably would have kept going if it weren't so late and my mom was at her parents' place, where internet is limited. I won't be able to see her in person until summer comes around, and if anything does happen to me it will at least take her a couple of days to get here. That is something I still cannot wrap my head around.
I talked with Nora last night and she said she was at Gaussianville, which is around 7 hours away from Islandtown. A lot of my friends back from Lakeside are going to Lakeside University, and they are 6 hours away. Beavertown is 6 hours away.
This distance isn't too far. But it is far enough.
Since I slept most of the day away, I don't have much to say about my day. But Zephy sent me an email a few days ago (or was that yesterday? I can't remember) saying that her tag will be forevermore small because I will never have an occasion to talk about her. So here I am, mentioning her so her tag might grow a bit.
Yuma will be back in a few minutes. He is such a silly, strange boy. I don't know what he wants anymore, but I'll take his happy days one day at a time.
Thursday, September 22, 2011
Some Old Things In Drafts
"I know there's something in the wake of your smile, I get a notion from the look in your eyes, yeah."—Listen to Your Heart, Roxette
Molly Lambert has an interesting way of writing. She starts out with something ordinary, like telephone lines against a sunset, and expands it into something seemingly unrelated, like Hamlet, and then wraps it up with a post title and a link title that are completely different. And the pictures too. They make every post something special, something worth reading (it helps too that the pictures break up the dense text).
I wanted to clear out my drafts because the number of total posts was misleading (some of them will probably never, ever see the light of day) and also because I reread this the other day and remembered Molly. She is something special. She has since left "This Recording," but she was the reason I read through all of those wordy posts even though I knew I had assignments of my own due the next day.
There are days I wish I could write like her. But that takes skill. That takes discipline, tremendous amounts of it. And with my brain addled with lack of sleep and the instantaneous skimming I have acquired by reading through my collection of food blogs, I don't have that quite yet.
It is the difference between the good writers and the great writers, although I am not either yet, and perhaps at this rate never will be.
I still remember this particular post. Telephone lines breaking up the sky. Some sort of strange irony that they are not at odds but instead harmonious. I stared at two pigeons today in the middle of campus, watched them squeeze under the wrought-iron fence, their heads bobbing. I did not know pigeons bobbed their heads before "Pooch Café." Even though I must have seen a hundred pigeons before, if not more.
What else have I never known?
Yuma asked me today if I had read Tea's latest blog post, and of course I have. I am subscribed to her in my RSS feed, I cannot escape it. He said it reminded him of me. What were his exact words? Something about being angsty, and it not being the point that I refuted him with the concrete fact that I was not hurt.
But he is more often right than I am. Yesterday a boy in my English class (for engineers) walked with me to my next classroom, and told me he was going to go to the engineering library. He had taken the long way by walking with me, but he said the shortcut was closed. Yuma said he was "hitting on me," but he has been saying that about almost every boy I have talked with. Is he really right, or is he being insecure?
We are reading The Tale of Despereaux right now. Or rather, Yuma is reading it to me, chapter by chapter, on nights when we can both fulfill our promises. We are on the chapter where Despereaux's mother says, "Adieu." It is a sad chapter. There are more sad chapters following it.
I told him, "When we get to the happily ever after we will be able to live happily ever after as well."
His answer was, "We'll see." It is his answer for the future, for our future. He is living it day by day, that is his way of coping. I am living it by focusing on the end. That is my way of coping.
I told Nyx today that I might be visiting Beavertown during my Thanksgiving, and that if I do I would like to see her before I go back. She asked, "Are you going to see Yuma?"
And then said, "I heard you guys broke it off."
Have we?
Yuma introduced me last night to his going-to-forbidden-places-and-physics buddy as "my ex." He signed off one of his chats to me today as "my lovely." Maybe this is his double life, his way of separating what he feels and what he wants to feel. But I am assuming now. I am taking a literary book off the shelf and remarking on its symbolism without going inside the head of the author.
When he read my blog the other night Yuma said, "I always get nervous when you write about me. I don't know what you are going to say."
Maybe that is part of the problem. There is a part of me I do not speak of, a part I only write of. No matter how much we talk and how much he asks me, he will never know my true impression of him. Sometimes I do not know either. The words come out and they are just right, they hint at something I otherwise would never have guessed. Or they are not right, and I erase them, and try again and again.
One of my other drafts was about an airport terminal. Maybe I will post it some day when I have the chance. It is silly now, because I have fulfilled my flying dream, I have seen the vast blue sky at an altitude above the meanest rain cloud.
Here is an excerpt of it, of one of the very last paragraphs I wrote before I got distracted by something else:
I have not been imagining things for a very long time now. It is because of content—when I am happy, I tend not to want to escape through my mind. At least I thought I was happy. In many ways, I am. I love being able to lean back and knowing that someone will catch me before I fall. I love skipping down the halls and not being alone. I have had one too many solitary hopscotch games.
But there is a part of me that is the loner in the rain, the one who is perfectly happy to be cold and drenched and with no one else to reach out with a hand. The one who can watch snow drift for hours and be at peace, because there is not a soul to take this away. Not a soul to break the news of reality.
It is silly to mention this now. Yuma says there are boys here who will make me happy. Who I can cuddle with and not feel lonely. I always stop listening before he goes on.
Tea said I should only chase after him if I am absolutely, 100% dedicated. And I see why now. It is extremely frustrating to reach out every time and be rebuffed, to want to be upset but knowing it would only weaken my stance. On the bright side I will probably be much better at sales pitches by the end of this.
I am all out of milk now, although not yet out of cereal. I was going to buy milk this morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, but when you go to bed in the not-so-early morning you wake up in the almost-not-morning morning. And other things happen. Like today I went to a roundtable discussion with several other engineers from other years and with some company reps from this oil and gas company, and they have all been mentioning internships and Jessica and I are left with wondering what we should do.
"My GPA will be so good this semester," Jessica said. "I am going to get straight As because the classes are so easy."
I am going to get straight As too, or at least I have to, or else I will not have the 3.7 GPA I need to keep my scholarship. It is a scary proposition, but I have heard it is do-able. At least for this semester, which means I will at least have the money for next semester, and maybe I can live it out that way, or maybe I can just learn to the best I can and not worry about grades, because those things come naturally after learning.
And lots and lots of work. Which means lots and lots of time.
Yuma has repeatedly mentioned that I should just do the things I want to do and not worry about conforming to his schedule. But I cannot do that. Because if he is unwilling to compromise then the only way I will get to talk with him is by compromising myself. It is silly, it is hard, and it is taking its toll on my preferred bedtime.
I suppose that is inevitable.
Molly Lambert has an interesting way of writing. She starts out with something ordinary, like telephone lines against a sunset, and expands it into something seemingly unrelated, like Hamlet, and then wraps it up with a post title and a link title that are completely different. And the pictures too. They make every post something special, something worth reading (it helps too that the pictures break up the dense text).
I wanted to clear out my drafts because the number of total posts was misleading (some of them will probably never, ever see the light of day) and also because I reread this the other day and remembered Molly. She is something special. She has since left "This Recording," but she was the reason I read through all of those wordy posts even though I knew I had assignments of my own due the next day.
There are days I wish I could write like her. But that takes skill. That takes discipline, tremendous amounts of it. And with my brain addled with lack of sleep and the instantaneous skimming I have acquired by reading through my collection of food blogs, I don't have that quite yet.
It is the difference between the good writers and the great writers, although I am not either yet, and perhaps at this rate never will be.
I still remember this particular post. Telephone lines breaking up the sky. Some sort of strange irony that they are not at odds but instead harmonious. I stared at two pigeons today in the middle of campus, watched them squeeze under the wrought-iron fence, their heads bobbing. I did not know pigeons bobbed their heads before "Pooch Café." Even though I must have seen a hundred pigeons before, if not more.
What else have I never known?
Yuma asked me today if I had read Tea's latest blog post, and of course I have. I am subscribed to her in my RSS feed, I cannot escape it. He said it reminded him of me. What were his exact words? Something about being angsty, and it not being the point that I refuted him with the concrete fact that I was not hurt.
But he is more often right than I am. Yesterday a boy in my English class (for engineers) walked with me to my next classroom, and told me he was going to go to the engineering library. He had taken the long way by walking with me, but he said the shortcut was closed. Yuma said he was "hitting on me," but he has been saying that about almost every boy I have talked with. Is he really right, or is he being insecure?
We are reading The Tale of Despereaux right now. Or rather, Yuma is reading it to me, chapter by chapter, on nights when we can both fulfill our promises. We are on the chapter where Despereaux's mother says, "Adieu." It is a sad chapter. There are more sad chapters following it.
I told him, "When we get to the happily ever after we will be able to live happily ever after as well."
His answer was, "We'll see." It is his answer for the future, for our future. He is living it day by day, that is his way of coping. I am living it by focusing on the end. That is my way of coping.
I told Nyx today that I might be visiting Beavertown during my Thanksgiving, and that if I do I would like to see her before I go back. She asked, "Are you going to see Yuma?"
And then said, "I heard you guys broke it off."
Have we?
Yuma introduced me last night to his going-to-forbidden-places-and-physics buddy as "my ex." He signed off one of his chats to me today as "my lovely." Maybe this is his double life, his way of separating what he feels and what he wants to feel. But I am assuming now. I am taking a literary book off the shelf and remarking on its symbolism without going inside the head of the author.
When he read my blog the other night Yuma said, "I always get nervous when you write about me. I don't know what you are going to say."
Maybe that is part of the problem. There is a part of me I do not speak of, a part I only write of. No matter how much we talk and how much he asks me, he will never know my true impression of him. Sometimes I do not know either. The words come out and they are just right, they hint at something I otherwise would never have guessed. Or they are not right, and I erase them, and try again and again.
One of my other drafts was about an airport terminal. Maybe I will post it some day when I have the chance. It is silly now, because I have fulfilled my flying dream, I have seen the vast blue sky at an altitude above the meanest rain cloud.
Here is an excerpt of it, of one of the very last paragraphs I wrote before I got distracted by something else:
I have not been imagining things for a very long time now. It is because of content—when I am happy, I tend not to want to escape through my mind. At least I thought I was happy. In many ways, I am. I love being able to lean back and knowing that someone will catch me before I fall. I love skipping down the halls and not being alone. I have had one too many solitary hopscotch games.
But there is a part of me that is the loner in the rain, the one who is perfectly happy to be cold and drenched and with no one else to reach out with a hand. The one who can watch snow drift for hours and be at peace, because there is not a soul to take this away. Not a soul to break the news of reality.
It is silly to mention this now. Yuma says there are boys here who will make me happy. Who I can cuddle with and not feel lonely. I always stop listening before he goes on.
Tea said I should only chase after him if I am absolutely, 100% dedicated. And I see why now. It is extremely frustrating to reach out every time and be rebuffed, to want to be upset but knowing it would only weaken my stance. On the bright side I will probably be much better at sales pitches by the end of this.
I am all out of milk now, although not yet out of cereal. I was going to buy milk this morning, or maybe Tuesday morning, but when you go to bed in the not-so-early morning you wake up in the almost-not-morning morning. And other things happen. Like today I went to a roundtable discussion with several other engineers from other years and with some company reps from this oil and gas company, and they have all been mentioning internships and Jessica and I are left with wondering what we should do.
"My GPA will be so good this semester," Jessica said. "I am going to get straight As because the classes are so easy."
I am going to get straight As too, or at least I have to, or else I will not have the 3.7 GPA I need to keep my scholarship. It is a scary proposition, but I have heard it is do-able. At least for this semester, which means I will at least have the money for next semester, and maybe I can live it out that way, or maybe I can just learn to the best I can and not worry about grades, because those things come naturally after learning.
And lots and lots of work. Which means lots and lots of time.
Yuma has repeatedly mentioned that I should just do the things I want to do and not worry about conforming to his schedule. But I cannot do that. Because if he is unwilling to compromise then the only way I will get to talk with him is by compromising myself. It is silly, it is hard, and it is taking its toll on my preferred bedtime.
I suppose that is inevitable.
Sunday, September 18, 2011
On the Hill
There must have been a few months since I've last blogged.
I don't remember the exact date, although if I were less lazy I could search it up right now. I do remember why though. I stopped blogging because it just didn't feel right anymore, because I spilled my heart into this blog and suddenly there were things I could not say anymore because I could not let Yuma, who read my blog religiously, see those thoughts.
That is the problem with making your blog known to people you know personally. I had thought of starting other blogs on other sites, but they were too much of a hassle, too difficult to remember and too annoying to upkeep. College applications were coming up, papers to write, things to do with my life, and I didn't really need a blog, did I? Lots of people live their lives perfectly fine without one.
I read a few of Tea's last posts and they were nice. I miss the days when we all blogged like that. Julie doesn't blog anymore either. Neither does Gretchen.
Maybe I just miss those days in general.
I don't know if anyone I know will actually read this anymore. That's alright with me. Actually, it's probably better. I am writing this in hopes that Yuma will never read it, not that this will hurt him in particular, not anymore. But I would rather gain some last control over what I think and who I tell that to.
. . .
Yuma said he would be back late, maybe two or three in the morning. I told him I would wait for him. It always frightens me when I wait for someone, because I don't know if they will actually show up or not. I don't think I have ever admitted it on this blog (although I may have, I don't remember now), but I am a periodically insecure person. Yuma would attest to that. I alternate between believe I can do anything and have everyone believe me, and simply pondering over why anyone would care to even look my way.
Lately I've been thinking that I have never deserved Yuma's love. He did love me absolutely, maybe not unconditionally, but as close as you can without sacrificing yourself unreasonably. I never figured out why. Was it the way I looked? (He does have a preference for Asian girls.) Was it my intelligence, at least in terms of math and science? Was it because I talked with him a lot?
What was it exactly?
I remember telling Tea, a few days before or after Yuma first kissed me, that I did not know if I should really pursue this relationship.
Tea said, "Whatever you do, don't go into a relationship then break up and tell him, 'I've never loved you in the first place.' That hurts a lot."
I wasn't ready back then. Ten months and a world of turmoil later, I know how unprepared I was for everything that was about to happen.
And I am losing him now. I am losing Yuma, and I am afraid again. I am afraid of promising him that I will wait for him for the net four years, even though that is the romantic thing to do, because I am afraid that even if I wait these years I will still lose him.
This time, he is the one who says, "I don't love you," and he has every right to say that. I don't even have the consolation of thinking, "Oh, he's just an idiot who's making a big mistake and I'll show him."
Because I am that idiot. I made the mistake.
I don't know how this will turn out. I want to have him back again, I want to live through all those dreams we said we would share together. I want things back to what they were once again, and I keep on thinking, "I never thought I would want to go back to my high school days again."
Because high school was hell for our relationship, but this, this is even worse.
. . .
On a more cheerful note, Fish Wings, which is what I am calling my college now, has been fine for me. I am taking five classes this year, one of which is only 1.5 hours a week and so is just half a class. I have made friends, both in my dorm and outside, and I have people to hang out with every day if I so chose.
I have been spending a lot of time in the architecture studio, because both Denise and Sam, two of my closer friends here, are in architecture. They have a very busy schedule, not just classes but actual studio work, so I drop by the studio when I'm free and just work there.
Kitty has also promised me that we would go shopping together once a week, although I might have to push off that until later because I still have lots of food in the fridge and no inclination to cook anything. Maybe I should buy more microwavable things though, to tide me over a few more nights.
I will probably be spending more time with Peter too, if he keeps on talking with me. I have already told Yuma and Tea and Reese and everyone I could possibly find who might be interested my freaky connection with Peter (we came from the same places), and considering I'll be joining Fish Wings' FSAE team, which he is also on, I'll probably be seeing him a lot and he'll be talking with me a lot.
And there are other people, like Jessica, who I am going to see a lot because she is in three of my classes. We will be working on our math history homework next Tuesday, and hopefully be as adept at figuring out problems as the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were. And there is Ng, whose name I absolutely cannot say, and who is, in part, the reason for all of this. I do not know what to call him now.
. . .
Yuma is back now. He is acting like he is fine now, that he wasn't ever mad at me because of what I've done. I don't know if I should believe him—and I desperately do, I really want to believe all of this is real. But I don't have much evidence to place my hopes on. I did sort of blackmail him, using his words, by using my health. I suppose it is some evidence for his still caring about me, but love and forgiveness are very different things from caring, and although I really hope this is real and I do have all three of them now, I don't know.
I don't know if this is just his way of placating me. If he is actually thinking, "Why do I have to put up with this pathetic, crazy, useless girl?"
I have fallen a long way from grace. But I do know the only way to make this even remotely true is to believe in it. I am not worthy, I know that. But I'll believe that by some miracle, I will find my wings again.
I don't remember the exact date, although if I were less lazy I could search it up right now. I do remember why though. I stopped blogging because it just didn't feel right anymore, because I spilled my heart into this blog and suddenly there were things I could not say anymore because I could not let Yuma, who read my blog religiously, see those thoughts.
That is the problem with making your blog known to people you know personally. I had thought of starting other blogs on other sites, but they were too much of a hassle, too difficult to remember and too annoying to upkeep. College applications were coming up, papers to write, things to do with my life, and I didn't really need a blog, did I? Lots of people live their lives perfectly fine without one.
I read a few of Tea's last posts and they were nice. I miss the days when we all blogged like that. Julie doesn't blog anymore either. Neither does Gretchen.
Maybe I just miss those days in general.
I don't know if anyone I know will actually read this anymore. That's alright with me. Actually, it's probably better. I am writing this in hopes that Yuma will never read it, not that this will hurt him in particular, not anymore. But I would rather gain some last control over what I think and who I tell that to.
. . .
Yuma said he would be back late, maybe two or three in the morning. I told him I would wait for him. It always frightens me when I wait for someone, because I don't know if they will actually show up or not. I don't think I have ever admitted it on this blog (although I may have, I don't remember now), but I am a periodically insecure person. Yuma would attest to that. I alternate between believe I can do anything and have everyone believe me, and simply pondering over why anyone would care to even look my way.
Lately I've been thinking that I have never deserved Yuma's love. He did love me absolutely, maybe not unconditionally, but as close as you can without sacrificing yourself unreasonably. I never figured out why. Was it the way I looked? (He does have a preference for Asian girls.) Was it my intelligence, at least in terms of math and science? Was it because I talked with him a lot?
What was it exactly?
I remember telling Tea, a few days before or after Yuma first kissed me, that I did not know if I should really pursue this relationship.
Tea said, "Whatever you do, don't go into a relationship then break up and tell him, 'I've never loved you in the first place.' That hurts a lot."
I wasn't ready back then. Ten months and a world of turmoil later, I know how unprepared I was for everything that was about to happen.
And I am losing him now. I am losing Yuma, and I am afraid again. I am afraid of promising him that I will wait for him for the net four years, even though that is the romantic thing to do, because I am afraid that even if I wait these years I will still lose him.
This time, he is the one who says, "I don't love you," and he has every right to say that. I don't even have the consolation of thinking, "Oh, he's just an idiot who's making a big mistake and I'll show him."
Because I am that idiot. I made the mistake.
I don't know how this will turn out. I want to have him back again, I want to live through all those dreams we said we would share together. I want things back to what they were once again, and I keep on thinking, "I never thought I would want to go back to my high school days again."
Because high school was hell for our relationship, but this, this is even worse.
. . .
On a more cheerful note, Fish Wings, which is what I am calling my college now, has been fine for me. I am taking five classes this year, one of which is only 1.5 hours a week and so is just half a class. I have made friends, both in my dorm and outside, and I have people to hang out with every day if I so chose.
I have been spending a lot of time in the architecture studio, because both Denise and Sam, two of my closer friends here, are in architecture. They have a very busy schedule, not just classes but actual studio work, so I drop by the studio when I'm free and just work there.
Kitty has also promised me that we would go shopping together once a week, although I might have to push off that until later because I still have lots of food in the fridge and no inclination to cook anything. Maybe I should buy more microwavable things though, to tide me over a few more nights.
I will probably be spending more time with Peter too, if he keeps on talking with me. I have already told Yuma and Tea and Reese and everyone I could possibly find who might be interested my freaky connection with Peter (we came from the same places), and considering I'll be joining Fish Wings' FSAE team, which he is also on, I'll probably be seeing him a lot and he'll be talking with me a lot.
And there are other people, like Jessica, who I am going to see a lot because she is in three of my classes. We will be working on our math history homework next Tuesday, and hopefully be as adept at figuring out problems as the ancient Egyptians and Babylonians were. And there is Ng, whose name I absolutely cannot say, and who is, in part, the reason for all of this. I do not know what to call him now.
. . .
Yuma is back now. He is acting like he is fine now, that he wasn't ever mad at me because of what I've done. I don't know if I should believe him—and I desperately do, I really want to believe all of this is real. But I don't have much evidence to place my hopes on. I did sort of blackmail him, using his words, by using my health. I suppose it is some evidence for his still caring about me, but love and forgiveness are very different things from caring, and although I really hope this is real and I do have all three of them now, I don't know.
I don't know if this is just his way of placating me. If he is actually thinking, "Why do I have to put up with this pathetic, crazy, useless girl?"
I have fallen a long way from grace. But I do know the only way to make this even remotely true is to believe in it. I am not worthy, I know that. But I'll believe that by some miracle, I will find my wings again.
Tuesday, February 22, 2011
I Haven't Forgotten This Blog Here
It's just that with life going on I kind of put this on the back burner (I think?) while I engaged in other activities such as reading a 150+ pages long play on a silly middle-class guy who wants to be a noble. Which reminds me, there is a new Noblesse update today, and darn it, Yuma, you have me hooked on it so now I cry, "OH WHY ARE YOU SO FICKLE YOU CLIFFHANGERS?!" every Tuesday night.
Not my favorite way to spend any evening. But I'll cope.
Because it is now 11:24pm and I don't have anything immediately interesting to say since act three of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme has 16 scenes and I am only on the 7th (and I need to finish the entire play by Monday), I will instead pull up old things I have written as an offering to the Blogging Deities tosecretly bribe wish for more posts to come.
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY 101:
1. Find “THE ECONOMY.”
2. Whack it with a hammer called “BUBBLE CRASH.”
3. “THE ECONOMY” should now be spiraling into a “RECESSION” which may result in a “DEPRESSION.”
4. Report to higher-ups of the “RECESSION.” Assign all blame to the shortest guy.
5. Watch as higher-ups fire the shortest guy. Propose “SOLUTIONS” to the higher-ups. Do not worry about what kind of “SOLUTIONS” to propose--they do not have to work.
6. Once approval comes from higher-ups, ditch “SOLUTIONS” and instead use money to buy lots of new “LUXURY ITEMS.”
7. The sale of “LUXURY ITEMS” will naturally result in a boost in “THE ECONOMY,” thus kicking it out of the “RECESSION” and sending it off to a new “BUBBLE.”
8. Sit back and receive praise from higher-ups and “MAIN STREET CITIZENS” for your wonderful “SOLUTIONS” to save “THE ECONOMY” from the “RECESSION” and imminent “DEPRESSION.” Everyone will have forgotten that you caused the “BUBBLE CRASH” in the first place because they will be enamored with you and will think you can never cause any harm. (Until the bloggers start picking you apart.)
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY THE HARD WAY:
1. Study economics throughout college and into graduate school, poring over numerous volumes of advanced economical studies and historical graphs and assorted other material.
2. Attempt to use knowledge in current circumstances.
3. Realize all is futile because you are the shortest guy in your group of economic advisors. (Decide to hide behind online personas instead.)
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY THE LAZY WAY:
1. Watch the “CLEVER ECONOMIST” and the “STUDIOUS ECONOMIST” fix “THE ECONOMY.”
2. Add yourself as a co-author in their final report.
Not my favorite way to spend any evening. But I'll cope.
Because it is now 11:24pm and I don't have anything immediately interesting to say since act three of Le Bourgeois Gentilhomme has 16 scenes and I am only on the 7th (and I need to finish the entire play by Monday), I will instead pull up old things I have written as an offering to the Blogging Deities to
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY 101:
1. Find “THE ECONOMY.”
2. Whack it with a hammer called “BUBBLE CRASH.”
3. “THE ECONOMY” should now be spiraling into a “RECESSION” which may result in a “DEPRESSION.”
4. Report to higher-ups of the “RECESSION.” Assign all blame to the shortest guy.
5. Watch as higher-ups fire the shortest guy. Propose “SOLUTIONS” to the higher-ups. Do not worry about what kind of “SOLUTIONS” to propose--they do not have to work.
6. Once approval comes from higher-ups, ditch “SOLUTIONS” and instead use money to buy lots of new “LUXURY ITEMS.”
7. The sale of “LUXURY ITEMS” will naturally result in a boost in “THE ECONOMY,” thus kicking it out of the “RECESSION” and sending it off to a new “BUBBLE.”
8. Sit back and receive praise from higher-ups and “MAIN STREET CITIZENS” for your wonderful “SOLUTIONS” to save “THE ECONOMY” from the “RECESSION” and imminent “DEPRESSION.” Everyone will have forgotten that you caused the “BUBBLE CRASH” in the first place because they will be enamored with you and will think you can never cause any harm. (Until the bloggers start picking you apart.)
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY THE HARD WAY:
1. Study economics throughout college and into graduate school, poring over numerous volumes of advanced economical studies and historical graphs and assorted other material.
2. Attempt to use knowledge in current circumstances.
3. Realize all is futile because you are the shortest guy in your group of economic advisors. (Decide to hide behind online personas instead.)
HOW TO FIX THE ECONOMY THE LAZY WAY:
1. Watch the “CLEVER ECONOMIST” and the “STUDIOUS ECONOMIST” fix “THE ECONOMY.”
2. Add yourself as a co-author in their final report.
Thursday, December 23, 2010
Ring Around The Rosie
A pocket full of posies,
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.
We all fall down.
I saw ghosts of cars today. In the reflection of the bus windows. Car ghosts running head on and crashing into their originals. The car themselves come out unscathed. The car ghosts disappeared.
Did the cars know they were driving into their haunted selves? Did the car ghosts know they were driving into their demises?
Did they know?
Did they care?
Yuma took me to the orchestra room today, and played Imogen Heap's Speeding Cars on the piano. He sang too. I had looked at the lyrics once before but had not noticed them. This time, I realized it was talking about suicide.
Suicide. Such an easy word to say, such a hard word to swallow.
In my dreams—or are they nightmares?—I have been chased many times. I have been on the run many times, from presumed enemies, to win a race, or for the sake of running.
But I have never fallen. Not once. Falling dreams are the ones that haunt my daydreams.
I am suddenly in possession of objects I would deem too dangerous for me to hold. Too dangerous for someone who has such a strong morbid fascination with these objects. But I accepted them with as much grace as I could muster.
What will it be like?
Do I want to know?
My scarf obsession started in fifth grade. Or grade five, as I used to say, before someone pointed it out to me and I subconsciously changed the way I spoke.
My youngest cousin and I were on the streets, with my aunt. We had finished shopping for something, and I cannot remember what it was, but it must have been important because why else would we be out at night in one of the coldest winters I could remember?
My cousin spotted a hat she wanted. We went over, and I, in classic little sibling manner despite the fact I was an only child, decided I wanted a hat as well.
She bought one for herself and one for me. I, in turn, bought the matching scarves and rabbit hair gloves.
My aunt later asked me, “Why aren't you wearing your scarf?”
“It's too short,” I told her.
So she got me another scarf, a long chocolatey caramel vanilla ice cream scarf. And perhaps that was what went wrong. I should never have two frivolous items, because what else could I do with them but want more?
I still remember the Fairweather scarf.
The tube scarf.
And every scarf that caught my eye afterwards.
I gave Yuma the chocolatey caramel vanilla ice cream scarf. It is one of four scarves I still have. He looks nice in it, I think. And anyway, he should have something for his throat, because sore throats are awful, especially for a singing throat.
We shared our favorite songs before. And found out how different our musical tastes are.
I am a melancholy-lyrical-rhythm dependent girl. One who grasps onto the melody and threads it through the lyrics in a silk weave. I do not know how he likes to describe himself musically.
Perhaps not as I describe myself.
The other day I was walking down the street and the trees seemed like plastic toys. The sky was so low it bordered surreal. I remember the air as biting cold, as it always is in December. I had only one year of warm December, where the snow fell as light dustings and winter was just as rainy as it was snowy.
The houses were some laborious decoration. Not real.
I walk alone from the mailbox to my door. No one walks down that path with me, except for Yuma sometimes, and even he does not reach my door.
On that stretch of road, I can be anything. Anyone.
I can twirl the air and pretend I am holding onto Lillian. Slash slash jump. I pretend Prescott is there, and I am telling him off yet again. I even sing sometimes. I start off with songs I know and twist the lyrics to my liking. Then I change the tune.
Then I reach my door, and halt the show.
As I write, I wonder, will I ever be well known for my writing? If I will be, will they who read my other, more famous works look back on these simple thoughts and try to assign some deeper meaning to them? Will they think, “Now here is a real thoughtful piece, here it reflects some profound theme.”
Death. Life. And everything in between.
But perhaps there is no real reason for this piece. It is not a statement, nor is it a message. It is merely an expression, a method to consolidate musings.
It is, after all, what came to mind first. And as I am listening to Speeding Cars right now, and re-imagining the car ghosts yet again, I wonder if they are at peace. Ghosts freed of their curses, free to go wherever they want.
Ashes, ashes,
We all fall down.
We all fall down.
I saw ghosts of cars today. In the reflection of the bus windows. Car ghosts running head on and crashing into their originals. The car themselves come out unscathed. The car ghosts disappeared.
Did the cars know they were driving into their haunted selves? Did the car ghosts know they were driving into their demises?
Did they know?
Did they care?
Yuma took me to the orchestra room today, and played Imogen Heap's Speeding Cars on the piano. He sang too. I had looked at the lyrics once before but had not noticed them. This time, I realized it was talking about suicide.
Suicide. Such an easy word to say, such a hard word to swallow.
In my dreams—or are they nightmares?—I have been chased many times. I have been on the run many times, from presumed enemies, to win a race, or for the sake of running.
But I have never fallen. Not once. Falling dreams are the ones that haunt my daydreams.
I am suddenly in possession of objects I would deem too dangerous for me to hold. Too dangerous for someone who has such a strong morbid fascination with these objects. But I accepted them with as much grace as I could muster.
What will it be like?
Do I want to know?
My scarf obsession started in fifth grade. Or grade five, as I used to say, before someone pointed it out to me and I subconsciously changed the way I spoke.
My youngest cousin and I were on the streets, with my aunt. We had finished shopping for something, and I cannot remember what it was, but it must have been important because why else would we be out at night in one of the coldest winters I could remember?
My cousin spotted a hat she wanted. We went over, and I, in classic little sibling manner despite the fact I was an only child, decided I wanted a hat as well.
She bought one for herself and one for me. I, in turn, bought the matching scarves and rabbit hair gloves.
My aunt later asked me, “Why aren't you wearing your scarf?”
“It's too short,” I told her.
So she got me another scarf, a long chocolatey caramel vanilla ice cream scarf. And perhaps that was what went wrong. I should never have two frivolous items, because what else could I do with them but want more?
I still remember the Fairweather scarf.
The tube scarf.
And every scarf that caught my eye afterwards.
I gave Yuma the chocolatey caramel vanilla ice cream scarf. It is one of four scarves I still have. He looks nice in it, I think. And anyway, he should have something for his throat, because sore throats are awful, especially for a singing throat.
We shared our favorite songs before. And found out how different our musical tastes are.
I am a melancholy-lyrical-rhythm dependent girl. One who grasps onto the melody and threads it through the lyrics in a silk weave. I do not know how he likes to describe himself musically.
Perhaps not as I describe myself.
The other day I was walking down the street and the trees seemed like plastic toys. The sky was so low it bordered surreal. I remember the air as biting cold, as it always is in December. I had only one year of warm December, where the snow fell as light dustings and winter was just as rainy as it was snowy.
The houses were some laborious decoration. Not real.
I walk alone from the mailbox to my door. No one walks down that path with me, except for Yuma sometimes, and even he does not reach my door.
On that stretch of road, I can be anything. Anyone.
I can twirl the air and pretend I am holding onto Lillian. Slash slash jump. I pretend Prescott is there, and I am telling him off yet again. I even sing sometimes. I start off with songs I know and twist the lyrics to my liking. Then I change the tune.
Then I reach my door, and halt the show.
As I write, I wonder, will I ever be well known for my writing? If I will be, will they who read my other, more famous works look back on these simple thoughts and try to assign some deeper meaning to them? Will they think, “Now here is a real thoughtful piece, here it reflects some profound theme.”
Death. Life. And everything in between.
But perhaps there is no real reason for this piece. It is not a statement, nor is it a message. It is merely an expression, a method to consolidate musings.
It is, after all, what came to mind first. And as I am listening to Speeding Cars right now, and re-imagining the car ghosts yet again, I wonder if they are at peace. Ghosts freed of their curses, free to go wherever they want.
Saturday, December 4, 2010
Generalizations And My Inherent Laziness
When I say "I don't know," half the time I do know, but I feel disinclined to say what I know out loud. It has been a point of contention between my parents and me. They have been trying to get me to say every thought I have, instead of keeping them all within my head.
It doesn't work that way, I want to tell them, but that would require actually saying the words out loud, and that is exactly the problem.
A vicious cycle.
I have been wondering lately if I have been turning this blog into a diary. There are so many "thoughts" posts, and not enough "events" posts or "story" posts. So much inner monologue. Like Hamlet.
So to make amends I will talk about math team, as I have promised (many, many times).
. . .
Since our last math meet was also Argon's birthday, Yuma and I tried out this really cool cake mix and whipped cream cookies recipe. Except it turned out to be more like cake. I think it was because we put all the batter on one tray, because we were running out of time, so the resulting glob of stuff was too thick and therefore did not have cookie chewy/crunchy consistency.
Oh well. It was still really delicious.
On the bus ride to Spearheadville, Bryant, Tybalt, and Dino started talking about college. Which reminds me, Penn's ED results are out next Friday! Can you believe it? Less than a week away! It is both exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time, and I don't know (really) which one is winning right now.
Anyway, college has definitely overtaken our lives. Perhaps things will get better in a month or so?
Once there, we found our normal banished-to-the-corner tables, and started our normal soda-talk, commonly known as, "Did you know there is partially brominated fats in opaque-looking sodas?" And then everyone at the table deciding to drink only the transparent sodas. And then Grob coming over and grabbing the one soda with said fats in it.
We had a short-lived discussion on whether Grob will turn out okay after freshman year, as Micro had. I sure hope so. And maybe he will start taking those headphones out of his ears, because he is missing crucial advice (we did warn him about the soda, but he didn't hear).
Then came the actual competition (and food). I did rather horribly this time, but the questions (matrices aside) were really fun. Team round too, although I didn't really like the geometry question this time. Too much guessing and checking.
I did my French homework after that, so I missed out on lots of conversation (but I did catch Tybalt showing Argon, Reno, and Summer the projectile launch lab—the one with the moving car—because they were doing stationary target launches).
That is all I really remember for now. Oh, and the bus ride home, but that was self-explanatory and I actually don't remember much from it anyway.
It doesn't work that way, I want to tell them, but that would require actually saying the words out loud, and that is exactly the problem.
A vicious cycle.
I have been wondering lately if I have been turning this blog into a diary. There are so many "thoughts" posts, and not enough "events" posts or "story" posts. So much inner monologue. Like Hamlet.
So to make amends I will talk about math team, as I have promised (many, many times).
. . .
Since our last math meet was also Argon's birthday, Yuma and I tried out this really cool cake mix and whipped cream cookies recipe. Except it turned out to be more like cake. I think it was because we put all the batter on one tray, because we were running out of time, so the resulting glob of stuff was too thick and therefore did not have cookie chewy/crunchy consistency.
Oh well. It was still really delicious.
On the bus ride to Spearheadville, Bryant, Tybalt, and Dino started talking about college. Which reminds me, Penn's ED results are out next Friday! Can you believe it? Less than a week away! It is both exciting and nerve-wracking at the same time, and I don't know (really) which one is winning right now.
Anyway, college has definitely overtaken our lives. Perhaps things will get better in a month or so?
Once there, we found our normal banished-to-the-corner tables, and started our normal soda-talk, commonly known as, "Did you know there is partially brominated fats in opaque-looking sodas?" And then everyone at the table deciding to drink only the transparent sodas. And then Grob coming over and grabbing the one soda with said fats in it.
We had a short-lived discussion on whether Grob will turn out okay after freshman year, as Micro had. I sure hope so. And maybe he will start taking those headphones out of his ears, because he is missing crucial advice (we did warn him about the soda, but he didn't hear).
Then came the actual competition (and food). I did rather horribly this time, but the questions (matrices aside) were really fun. Team round too, although I didn't really like the geometry question this time. Too much guessing and checking.
I did my French homework after that, so I missed out on lots of conversation (but I did catch Tybalt showing Argon, Reno, and Summer the projectile launch lab—the one with the moving car—because they were doing stationary target launches).
That is all I really remember for now. Oh, and the bus ride home, but that was self-explanatory and I actually don't remember much from it anyway.
Sunday, November 28, 2010
Why X? Part II
To continue on from the previous list, with the disclaimer, once again, that this is merely a parody and not to be taken too seriously:
But my reason for choosing Cornell rests on one simple fact: when I visited the electrical engineering labs, I saw xkcd on one of the doors. Now I know that xkcd is probably the most over-quoted webcomic for any engineering department, but to actually see it on a door? Wow. (We will ignore the fact that the only other engineering buildings I have seen are Princeton's and Penn's, and I have not entered any of these buildings.)
The two-story white library with the teahouse by the side was also nice. I mean, there is only one college library in the entire world that looks like the library in Harry Potter, right? Right? What other school could have possibly come up with such an original idea? Impossible! I also really liked the green armchairs. Except I didn't like their color. Oh, wait, that's one of the official colors of Dartmouth. Never mind, I really liked the green armchairs.
Aside from that I must regrettably say that I have not been on campus, not even once. And that I know relatively little about Duke. As in, I know it is called Duke, and it has a tower, and it offers limited financial assistance to international students, but that is all. I don't even know how many tulips are on campus, although I should know, because that is the other (non-blown-up) picture of campus I have from the brochures and after staring at that for over five times I should probably just start counting the flowers.
I also love the sheer size of McGill. With over 25,000 undergrads to make you feel your significance. And 8,000 grads. Although honestly that is nothing compared to University of Toronto, which has over 55,000 undergrads and 13,000 grads. Now that is huge.
Why Cornell?Despite many, many failed attempts, I have finally managed to visit your campus (although I did, unfortunately, miss the tour). And I must say, Cornell must have my favorite campus by far. What is not to love about a campus that looks like it copied from architectural styles from all over the continent and dumped them all into one plot of land? Especially when you have Victorian-Gothic (please spare me the Harry Potter references), Neo-Classical, and sheets-of-glass-glued-together-modern all within walking distance.
But my reason for choosing Cornell rests on one simple fact: when I visited the electrical engineering labs, I saw xkcd on one of the doors. Now I know that xkcd is probably the most over-quoted webcomic for any engineering department, but to actually see it on a door? Wow. (We will ignore the fact that the only other engineering buildings I have seen are Princeton's and Penn's, and I have not entered any of these buildings.)
Why Dartmouth?I have to say, when I first visited the campus I was instantly drawn in by the Green. Or more like I thought, "This grass is kept in pretty good shape considering it's probably covered under snow for half the year." My lawn, in comparison, looks exactly the same except it receives much less snow (and probably more sunlight). I love grass. Grass is so good for rolling around in and getting bugs in your hair to freak out your mother.
The two-story white library with the teahouse by the side was also nice. I mean, there is only one college library in the entire world that looks like the library in Harry Potter, right? Right? What other school could have possibly come up with such an original idea? Impossible! I also really liked the green armchairs. Except I didn't like their color. Oh, wait, that's one of the official colors of Dartmouth. Never mind, I really liked the green armchairs.
Why Duke?I love all the brochures Duke sends me, especially those with that one picture of the tower during sunrise or sunset or whatever it is. Since I don't really have any other blown-up pictures of campus I will assume that the rest of the campus is just as magnificent, because Duke doesn't have anything to hide, right? They just thought I would enjoy staring at the tower five or ten times, right?
Aside from that I must regrettably say that I have not been on campus, not even once. And that I know relatively little about Duke. As in, I know it is called Duke, and it has a tower, and it offers limited financial assistance to international students, but that is all. I don't even know how many tulips are on campus, although I should know, because that is the other (non-blown-up) picture of campus I have from the brochures and after staring at that for over five times I should probably just start counting the flowers.
Why Harvard?I am not applying to Harvard, nor does Harvard require a "Why Harvard?" essay, so this is not necessary. I am putting it in here solely because otherwise I would be jumping directly to M and I felt the gap was too wide.
Why McGill?I have previously mentioned that there is a cute red-head at McGill who is also extremely nice and helpful, but Yuma might not appreciate that as a reason for why I want to go to McGill. So instead I will talk about the over-ten-stories tall buildings on campus that are not dorms but, well, instructional buildings. Nothing like a skyscraper-like chem building to make me feel like I'm in the city. Especially when four or five firetrucks pull up right underneath it, sirens all blaring.
I also love the sheer size of McGill. With over 25,000 undergrads to make you feel your significance. And 8,000 grads. Although honestly that is nothing compared to University of Toronto, which has over 55,000 undergrads and 13,000 grads. Now that is huge.
Thursday, November 25, 2010
Happy Thanksgiving
I am thankful for a lot of things I don't really say out loud. Like I am thankful for the fact that I lost my blue and green pen. And I am thankful for my lack of balance when performing simple tasks such as walking in a straight line.
Oh, wait. I'm supposed to be thankful for good things, right?
Well. I am thankful for all of my wonderful friends (and ex-friends made not-current friends solely due to the lack of ease of communicating back in a pre-Internet era). I am thankful for my parents and their awesome sense of humor (even if I don't understand it half the times because they are very heavy on Chinese proverbs/idioms/folk lores/whatever else). I am thankful for Yuma for killing my sleep monsters (they have, unfortunately, been revived as of late).
I am also thankful for the delicious lemon meringue mini pie I helped to make yesterday. And by help I mean "force mini pie crusts into cupcake pan." It was good. Even though I don't really like lemon filling, or meringue.
I am thankful for my wonderfully hard bed because it is really huge and can fit two people on it even though there is only one of me. (I am also thankful that my window is really, reallylow large, but that is another story.)
And I am thankful that I will be getting a new laptop soon. Sony. Hopefully bright blue.
Oh, wait. I'm supposed to be thankful for good things, right?
Well. I am thankful for all of my wonderful friends (and ex-friends made not-current friends solely due to the lack of ease of communicating back in a pre-Internet era). I am thankful for my parents and their awesome sense of humor (even if I don't understand it half the times because they are very heavy on Chinese proverbs/idioms/folk lores/whatever else). I am thankful for Yuma for killing my sleep monsters (they have, unfortunately, been revived as of late).
I am also thankful for the delicious lemon meringue mini pie I helped to make yesterday. And by help I mean "force mini pie crusts into cupcake pan." It was good. Even though I don't really like lemon filling, or meringue.
I am thankful for my wonderfully hard bed because it is really huge and can fit two people on it even though there is only one of me. (I am also thankful that my window is really, really
And I am thankful that I will be getting a new laptop soon. Sony. Hopefully bright blue.
