March 30, 2003

Moving Towards k

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I’ve come to a point in my life where I’ve achieved my sta­bil­ity. That’s not to say that it won’t dis­ap­pear once a new sit­u­a­tion arises, but it seems that my loss of bal­ance has given me prac­tice in regain­ing it.

The future seems so uncer­tain. I don’t have a room­mate for the sum­mer, and I don’t even know if I need one. Everyone is talk­ing about mov­ing in with each other, but none of our leases end on the same month. I might not be grad­u­at­ing in a month if I fail any courses, a very dis­tinct pos­si­bil­ity. That means that my grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony would be delayed, and I would need to reg­is­ter for a sum­mer semes­ter. I don’t even give a shit about the grad­u­a­tion cer­e­mony, but it’s not like I would be going for myself. I don’t even have a job lined up any time soon, some­thing which I am des­per­ately in need/want of.

Yet in the face of such uncer­tainty, I have been able to remain rel­a­tively sta­ble. I’m not sure why this is. Possibly, the taste of good liv­ing I had last sum­mer has cre­ated a kind of hope in me, a hope with no-strings-attached.

What an odd turn of events, that hav­ing a con­tent sit­u­a­tion (and even los­ing it) has made me “hap­pier”. I won­der if it’s just a phase, that I’m still rid­ing off a store of emo­tions, and that once the store in drained, I’ll become a bit­ter per­son. Somehow I doubt it, but one can never tell.

I can now safely say that I am a bet­ter per­son, although if his­tory has taught me any­thing, it’s that any­thing can change.

And yet there is still a wish for change.

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March 30, 2003

Days At Trolley’s, Phases, Etc.

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I woke up at 3:33 ante merid­ian and, unable to sleep, decided to write.

I’ve been busy. I spent the last three days at Trolley’s, sleep­ing on his couch, and gen­er­ally stay­ing up late play­ing Wind Waker. It’s been an amaz­ing game so far, and even though it seems to be too short, it’s been an unpar­al­leled expe­ri­ence. I met Adam and Matt on Friday, so we went out to Minglewoods and sat out on the patio, even though it wasn’t quite patio weather yet.

Dolly and Nala didn’t get along together well. When they saw each other, they tried to stare each other down. Nala’s tail dou­bled in size as she made a low growl. Dolly just hissed back. Apparently, cats intro­duced to the same liv­ing envi­ron­ment are sup­posed to spend around the first two weeks with­out face-to-face con­tact. Dolly stayed for a few hours at Trolley’s anyway.

My trip to Hong Kong has been can­celed, due to the lung virus that’s been going around. Yet another time that my trip has been can­celed. Visiting Hong Kong at least once more has become one of my goals in life now, some­thing I feel the need to do before I die.

I am now offi­cial in one of my typ­i­cal “Jeff” phases, where I start to freak out near the end of the term. Progress on my final project has been dif­fi­cult, not some­thing which is not com­pletely (or at all) my fault. I found out that I was too late in request­ing a marks shift in my graph­ics course, so my 35% midterm now counts. This means that I will need roughly an 80% to pass the course. Since this is my final term, I may not be grad­u­at­ing until I can make up the three cred­its. I believe I have a back-up plan, which involves tak­ing a soft­warre engi­neer­ing course dur­ing the sum­mer that I can use towards my total cred­its. I think that means that I won’t be attend­ing the grad­u­a­tion in July. Things seem very fucked up for me aca­d­e­m­i­cally right now, and I’m wor­ried, one of the many rea­sons I can’t sleep.

I tried rock climb­ing on Tuesday, and even though my left fore­arm was dead from hit­ting the L trig­ger too much, I was still able to scale a few walls. It was a great time, some­thing that I could def­i­nitely see myself get­ting into. Even the act of belay­ing is fun, in the sense of a trust exer­cise. It’s just not some­thing that I can get into right now with­out a job, or any con­ve­nient way of get­ting to the rock climb­ing studio.

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March 26, 2003

I Cry

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I came home yes­ter­day with a note on my desk, and it said that Dolly was being taken for a walk.

My first reac­tion was dis­be­lief. I couldn’t under­stand how some­one could just take my cat for a walk. I was beside myself with shock. I felt vio­lated. I felt insulted. I felt terrible.

I hadn’t walked Dolly yet, for sev­eral rea­sons. First of all, I didn’t have her microchipped, so any chance that she gets away would be dev­as­tat­ing. Secondly, I hadn’t decided whether I should take her out yet, since she might miss being out­side too much after her first time. That was a big deci­sion for me, one that I hadn’t made yet, but one which was made for me.

The most impor­tant point is that Dolly had her first walk with­out me. I wasn’t there to see how she reacts with the world, I wasn’t able to be the first per­son to let her outside.

I stood in my room for ten min­utes in dis­be­lief. I couldn’t even wrap my head around how some­one could do such a thing, to walk into my home and vio­late my feel­ings in such a way. I put on my head­phones, put on my fuck off playlist, and sat under my desk, shak­ing my head. This was the most offen­sive thing any­one has ever done to me in my life.

When the real­iza­tion that there was no other first walk sunk in, I started to sob. The shock segued into depres­sion, and I slumped onto the ground, pulling my hair, still in dis­be­lief. I cried for a good while, some­thing I haven’t done for eight or nine years. I cried so hard that my tear ducts felt like they were being sucked of their flu­ids and the walls were start­ing to touch each other. By the end of it, my eyes had the old famil­iar swollen feel­ing, and I was exhausted. I show­ered and tried to wash the mucus from my hair.

The whole sit­u­a­tion has made me more fully under­stand how much I care about Dolly. I already knew how much I cared about her, and I appre­ci­ated her before, but I never real­ized the extent of it until now. I don’t see her as a pet. I see her as a child.

It’s also made me think about the nature of good and bad, and how much of a bal­ance there is. I never really believed that either existed, since one bad thing gen­er­ally spawns a good thing, such as mur­der help­ing to con­trol over­pop­u­la­tion, or geno­cide lead­ing to beau­ti­ful art/culture. Of course, I’ve never been through either, so my thoughts are quite limited.

I just can’t see the good in this sit­u­a­tion. I can’t see how this can be any­thing but bad. I haven’t learned any­thing from this, one of the only pos­si­ble jus­ti­fi­ca­tions for it hap­pen­ing, and I have lost even more faith in humanity.

Seeing the good in this would be healthy for me.

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March 26, 2003

Honours Project, Wind Waker

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I’ve been get­ting a decent amount of work done lately. I’m pretty much fin­ished my graph­ics project, a week ahead of sched­ule, and it looks pretty sweet. I haven’t had enough progress on my hon­ours project yet, since my super­vi­sor isn’t very good at giv­ing direc­tions. I’m pretty wor­ried about my pre­sen­ta­tion for it next week. It’s sup­posed to be 15–20 min­utes long, and I feel like I only have 10 min­utes worth of mate­r­ial, but more impor­tantly, that I’ve exhausted all aspects of the sub­ject. The essay is sup­posed to be 20 pages sin­gle spaced, but I can’t see that hap­pen­ing with the amount of infor­ma­tion out there on Rubik’s cubes.

The Wind Waker comes out tom­morow at 9:30 am, and I’ll be pick­ing it up before meet­ing with my super­vi­sor tomor­row. I’ll be try­ing it out for the first time in the pres­ence of Trolley and Wheaties, and pos­si­bly Aaron and Dina, dur­ing the night. We’ll be pick­ing up some alco­hol, and I’ll be stay­ing the night there. Trolley has a car, so he’ll be able to pick me up, and drive Dolores to his place as well. It will be inter­est­ing to see how she and Nala will inter­act with each other.

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March 23, 2003

Bite The Pen

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I remem­ber being with John in a moment of intense frus­tra­tion. We were sit­ting in Thompson’s class­room, and it was an over­cast day out­side. His blue blinds were cast aside, and we could hear the stu­dents play­ing out­side through a crack in the win­dow. It was lunchtime and we were eat­ing together, a tra­di­tion that grew out of being mutual lon­ers. I don’t remem­ber what actu­ally hap­pened to cause his frus­tra­tion, but he became so affected by it that he chomped down on his ball­point pen out of spontaneity.

The pen cracked, and flooded his mouth with thick, dark ink. Upon real­iz­ing that his stress relief method would cause him even more anx­i­ety than he thought, he quickly ran to the win­dow and des­per­ately tried to spit out as much ink as he could, the ink over­flow­ing in his mouth and spilling down to his chin.

We tried our best to clean him up before any­one could have found out. After all, high school was hell. I remem­ber secretly hop­ing that the ink would stain his teeth (only for a day, of course) to see the extent of his cre­ativ­ity in explain­ing what looked like super accel­er­ated gin­givi­tis to his father.

Sometimes I feel like burst­ing out from frus­tra­tion in such a “self-destructive” man­ner. Usually, I can never bring myself to act out on such an impulse though. I always see the results of the destruc­tion before I do any­thing, and in the end it never seems worth it.

It leaves me with my emo­tions bot­tled up inside me, and a des­per­ate need to opine. Sometimes I can find relief through this medium. Sometimes it’s not enough.

Sometimes it doesn’t do anything.

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March 23, 2003

Everyone’s Doing It

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It’s break-up fuck­ing season.

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March 23, 2003

Lonely Thoughts, Cryptography Presentation, Etc.

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I feel…alone. I wish I could speak to some­one who could under­stand. I wish I could express my feel­ings the way I wish. What a per­fect time to write.

I’ve been work­ing on my graph­ics project all day. I have almost every­thing done now, with the cells co-ordinating their move­ments in a 3D Game of Life dance. They grow and shrink as the rules dic­tate, and although I have some bugs to iron out, and some bells and whis­tles to add, it shouldn’t take too long.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion went alright. We didn’t quite for­mally rehearse, so I spoke for 15 out of the 20 min­utes allo­cated to us, when three of us had speak­ing to do. We were fairly rushed at the end, but I think that we got our points through well. I felt that I did a great job at open­ing the pre­sen­ta­tions, and at explain­ing my part. Mike, Pat, Iain, and I went to get loaded before the pre­sen­ta­tion, but unfor­tu­nately, the shock of the sit­u­a­tion sobered me up rather effi­ciently. After all, it was the first pre­sen­ta­tion I’ve had to do through all of university.

I feel bet­ter after play­ing a few games with Darren. Somehow we made it under the 300th mark, with a 55–7 record at level 14. I believe the height of my addic­tion was most evi­dent when I was watch­ing a movie where a man gets trapped in a bath­room by some triad mem­bers, and the first thing that I thought of was the item box, and town por­tal­ing to a safe location.

I might going to the Dominican Republic when school ends.

I’ve lis­tened to some of the Tool songs off of the strings trib­ute album, and they’re not very good. The strings are greatly lack­ing in energy, and some­times bare lit­tle resem­blance to the songs they’re pay­ing homage to. One can tell that the com­poser is inspired by Tool com­pos­ings, but the instru­men­tal­ists are insipid in their performance.

The Honest Lawyer yes­ter­day was relax­ing and frus­trat­ing at the same time. I never I had a chance to really savour the fries this time though, since I felt so guilty about munch­ing on Wheaties’ last time. All in all though, I think I’d rather not have gone.

I’ve always thought that Beth Gibbons had an amaz­ingly attrac­tive qual­ity to her, not only from the dis­tinc­tive tim­bre of her voice, but also from the grace and gen­tle­ness of her fig­ure cap­tured in her pho­tographs. I’m try­ing out some of her lat­est side-project work with Rustin Man, and so far the sound has been amus­ingly unique, a mix of acoustic gui­tar with bit­ter­sweet melodies.

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March 21, 2003

Occidental Fetish

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When I think of the Chinese cul­ture, a very spe­cific image comes into my head, of a father dom­i­nated fam­ily, par­ents who don’t know their chil­dren, and closed-minded individuals.

I think my upbring­ing has exposed me to such a one-sided aspect of Chinese life. Almost every Chinese fam­ily I’ve met is like this. It wouldn’t be so bad if I saw the kids as grow­ing up and sur­pass­ing such lim­ited indi­vid­u­al­ism. And yet most of the Chinese peo­ple my age just seem to be falling into the same child­ish mind­set, a prod­uct of parental (mis)guidance, in my hum­ble opinion.

It almost makes me sick.

When I read about Chinese his­tory, I’m fas­ci­nated about how wis­dom is held in such rev­er­ence, and how schol­ars are so respected. The same virtues seem to hold for Chinese peo­ple today, except that they don’t truly under­stand why aca­d­e­mics are impor­tant, or why one should learn an instrument.

I wish I didn’t have such a lim­ited view of a cul­ture with such great his­tory. I wish I could be exposed to an amaz­ing Chinese fam­ily. I wish some­thing could change my view.

All of this has cre­ated such a dis­taste of Asian look­ing girls in me. It’s as if my mind makes an unfair association.

I’m stuck.

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March 21, 2003

Moody Days, Y’z Dock, Etc.

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I’ve been rather rest­less the last few days. I can’t seem to con­cen­trate, or do any­thing pro­duc­tive. I think it’s the fact that I’m so oddly mood­less, that I don’t feel like doing any­thing in particular.

I feel…dirty. I’m unsat­is­fied with my XP theme, and I won’t have time to pol­ish it until the sum­mer. Whenever I try a new theme, it’s either not sim­ple and clean enough, or it’s too bright. I’m using the nxPro theme right now, with Y’z Dock to replace my short­cut icons, which is the sweet MacOS tool­bar for Windows XP, com­plete with trans­parency and 32-bit icon support.

I actu­ally for­got about a geo class I had ear­lier this week. That wor­ries me, because I’ve never for­got­ten a class before, even through high school. Usually when I skip some­thing, I’m very con­scious of my skip­ping it. This is one of the classes that I can’t skip any­way though, so I’m a lit­tle wor­ried. Maybe it’s a sign of my get­ting older. I’ve always found myself to be very “con­scious” of things, and I almost never for­got about any­thing. I remem­ber my dad telling me how some­times he would peel an orange, and then throw the orange in the garbage and start to nib­ble on the peel by mis­take. Scary.

A bunch of peo­ple are going out to the Honest Lawyer tomor­row to cel­e­brate Aaron’s and Iain’s birth­day. I have a cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion tomor­row as well, which might con­flict with the time every­one is meet­ing to have some din­ner. I’ll prob­a­bly present my sub­ject (I think I’m sec­ond out of four) and just leave. I’m sup­posed to stay for other pre­sen­ta­tions for peer eval­u­a­tion, but hope­fully my other group mem­bers will cover for me.

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March 21, 2003

Like Being Beaned

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I watched Swingers with Aaron, Trolley, and Nick on Tuesday, and I real­ized that it’s a movie that makes guys flinch more than watch­ing some­one take a kick in the pills.

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March 18, 2003

Making The Best

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I went out to cel­e­brate St. Patty’s day with Aaron, Wheaties, Trolley, and Nick. I had such a great time, that I can’t even begin to explain. There were so many enter­tain­ing parts to the night that I wouldn’t be able to recall half of them. We did some drink­ing at Aaron’s place before going out, and the pub we even­tu­ally went to nearby was dead. The ser­vice was ter­ri­ble, the atmos­phere actu­ally worked in a neg­a­tive way, with a ter­ri­ble DJ and drunken bums, and the beer wasn’t even a rich shade of green, more of a pale watery colour. A good time was still had though, one of the best times of my life.

At one point, Trolley was chas­ing Aaron and I down a hill, with Nick in an aban­doned shop­ping cart being pushed in front of him.

I came upon a sort of epiphany though, not only through the events of the night, but through the con­ver­sa­tions we had. Everything made me real­ize how sim­ple my life has cur­rently become, how I live for noth­ing but my friends, and a bit of hope.

If I was to die tomor­row, I would have no regrets, about any­thing in my life at all. I haven’t worked very hard to get where I am now, which includes a very com­fort­able lifestyle. I have been very lucky. I’ve been able to relax, and take things easy, and still go through high school and uni­ver­sity with­out being held back for fail­ing courses. I enjoy what I’m doing, I think I’ll enjoy where the present is tak­ing me. But if my life were to end, then so be it.

I won­der if any­one would find this mor­bid if they found out. It seems like I’ve accepted my death already, although there’s always the pos­si­bil­ity of a death scare cre­at­ing an urgent sense of alacrity in me. I can’t really see that hap­pen­ing though. Sometimes sui­cide doesn’t sound that bad. There’s just no rea­son to live or die, so I accept what I’m given, and make the best of it.

Perhaps this is the answer, as well as the meaning.

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March 18, 2003

I’ve Been Busy

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I wasn’t able to accom­plish any form of work today, and even though I feel com­pletely exhausted, I have noth­ing to show for it. I did man­age to get my graph­ics pro­posal approved, how­ever, which will be to imple­ment a 3D Game of Life in OpenGL.

I went to Iain’s place yes­ter­day, since Jeff had to can­cel on me due to sick­ness, and we watched Rushmore. The walk home was great; the tem­per­a­ture was beau­ti­fully brisk, and the fad­ing sun­set lin­gered in the dark­ened sky.

It was Pat’s birth­day today, but since I knew before­hand that I wouldn’t be able to see him, I gave him a bot­tle of Huge Boss In Motion. I tried some of the other colognes, but none of them seemed to fit him. Most of the brand names are very strong, so I find they don’t match the sub­tle pres­ence of most Asian individuals.

I got my RatpadGS today, and it works amaz­ingly well com­pared to my old mouse pad. I had no idea how much I had worn down the sur­face of the old one.

I went to my first NHL hockey game last week, and even though I’m a Leafs fan, I still enjoyed root­ing for the home team, watch­ing them win 3–2 in over­time. I’m sur­prised at how much smaller the rink looks com­pared to what it appears to be on TV. I had some great seats, and they only cost me $20.

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March 18, 2003

After Years Of Musical Training

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I found out that I can still count quar­ter notes to the end of phrases per­fectly in 4 based time.

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March 16, 2003

HK, Fullscreen

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I’ve been watch­ing a lot of Chinese movies lately. I always find the scenery to be sub­tly poignant, from the den­sity of the houses, to the con­fine­ment of the liv­ing arrange­ments, to the hom­li­ness of the shops. It makes me miss Hong Kong. It makes me miss see­ing my grand­par­ents. It makes me miss the quaint lifestyle, the diver­sity of food, the entire culture.

If I end up going to Hong Kong this year, I hope to be able to tell my grand­mother how strong a per­son I see her to be, but I detest my lim­ited knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage. I wish that I could express to her in English how much I look up to her. If I had a chance with English, I would feel like I could do the feel­ing jus­tice. I hope she doesn’t hurt my feel­ings. I hope she doesn’t die before I see her next. I won­der who would cry.

I still remem­ber liv­ing with Kenny, hav­ing a great time at his place, play­ing with all sorts of inter­est­ing gad­gets. His par­ents were always good peo­ple, one of the few sets of rel­a­tives I care about.

The feel­ing is almost tange­able. I can close my eyes, and see myself there again, a lost, emo­tion­less, igno­rant boy. I miss the street ven­dors. I miss the smell of my grand­moth­ers house. I miss the bliss.

I real­ize that my feel­ings are prob­a­bly a result of my absolute con­tent­ment when­ever I was in Hong Kong. I’ve had some of the best times of my life there, and I remem­ber noth­ing but hap­pi­ness. It seems like I’ve been tainted with matu­rity, and I’m try­ing to regain a lost part of my child­hood, the care­free being that is so char­ac­ter­is­tic of young people.

Tainted.

I like that.

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March 16, 2003

Schoolwork, Pensive State, Scratching Posts, etc.

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My cryp­tog­ra­phy midterm was eas­ier than expected. I was the first to leave, and I was able to answer every ques­tion. Whether I was right or not is a dif­fer­ent story.

I have only four projects left to do. A cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion on mes­sage authen­ti­ca­tion, my hon­ours project on Rubik’s cube time com­plex­ity, an essay on gold price fluc­tu­a­tions, and a final OpenGL pre­sen­ta­tion pro­gram. They’re all due one after the other, so I’m try­ing to take one at a time, even though the going is slow.

I went out to sup­port a few friends of Wheaties, in a band called Pensive State yes­ter­day. I didn’t really feel like going out, but I fig­ured that it would be a good break from being stuck in my apart­ment all day. It was much warmer than expected.

CAt told me about a ver­sion of Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy, and I think that it’s my favourite ver­sion so far. Apparently, the song has been com­pletely over­done for over half a cen­tury, and I’ve only just heard of it.

Jeff’s com­ing over tonight to catch up a bit.

I’ve been see­ing a lot of use of Moveable Type. I’m not very good with Perl yet, but the code will prob­a­bly be much cleaner than what mine is now, and more mod­u­lar. On every blog I’ve seen, the author keeps one large page of the cur­rent months entries. I much pre­fer to have one entry at a time, so that there can be more depth to my writ­ing with­out flood­ing the page with text. I would also want mul­ti­ple queries from the data­base, so that I can dis­play my rec­om­mended and analy­sis sec­tions at the same time. I’m just not sure if Moveable Type can pull all this off, or whether my host even sup­ports the right script permissions.

Wheaties, Aaron, and Trolley are all com­ing over on Tuesday for a sort of guys night. We’ll be watch­ing Swingers, and maybe some Basketball.

With dual sisal scratch­ing posts, 3 car­peted loung­ing sur­faces with climb­ing holes, hang­ing sisal toy and sturdy, wide base? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

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