April 28, 2003

The Trip Home, Candellas, Amateur Astronomy, Etc.

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The trip home was alright, watch­ing Men In Black 2 (not a very good movie at all) and tak­ing under five and a half hours. I like the fact that I can pur­chase a bus ticket at any time, and not have to worry about book­ing and reser­va­tions. I’ve always liked the idea that I have the free­dom to pick up and go when­ever I please. Of course, this only works when I have a guar­an­teed place to stay at the destination.

My Candela’s came in last week. They are quite nice, although they look rather cheap dur­ing the day­time when they’re off. They give off a decent ambi­ent light when other (more pri­mary) lights are on, but are good at set­ting a mood when they’re the only things illu­mi­nat­ing a room. It’s a has­sle to always let them burn out to pro­long bat­tery life, since that means that I’m usu­ally going to bed with them on, and for some­one who wakes up from the first slit of sun­light pierc­ing the room, it can be an annoy­ing thing.

I found a great astron­omy book for Darren, cov­er­ing every­thing from the small­est detail in pur­chas­ing a tele­scope, to the pat­terns the plan­ets make in their orbits. Astronomy is some­thing that I’ve always found to be mys­te­ri­ously inter­est­ing, a seduc­tive past-time I’d be afraid to be con­sumed by. A few peo­ple I’ve talked to have felt the same way, although some with an even more severe emo­tion. I would have taken up such a hobby as soon as I had the means to, if the area I live in wasn’t so unbe­liev­ably light pol­luted. It’s as if the mayor wants to keep the lights in the city bright enough to have a con­stant day­time. I’m fairly sure that I’ll buy a decent tele­scope even­tu­ally, once I’ve set­tled down in a condo and have a career.

I can’t wait to get back to my plea­sure box and begin fool­ing around with Movable Type. I just hope that my host can pro­vide enough flex­i­bil­ity for it to work.

When I got home, a stack of red envelopes and wrapped boxes were wait­ing for me. My pre­ma­ture exit at Christmas left gifts unopened and money unclaimed, quite a wel­come sur­prise. I got another $50 gift cer­tifi­cate for Futureshop, which will most likely be going towards Vice City as soon as it comes out. I haven’t played a very absorb­ing game in a while, the last ones being GTA3 or Neverwinter Nights, but my favourite is still prob­a­bly Half-Life. And with Half-Life 2 slated for a fall release, well, I find myself becom­ing unhealth­ily excited.

I’ll be split­ting a box of Onslaught with Darren today.

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April 28, 2003

Notable Weather

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The skies here have been dull and whitewashed.

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April 28, 2003

Go

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It’s dif­fi­cult for me to imag­ine being done school, that I can start liv­ing as a free per­son. I’ve been in school for so long that I begin to expect another term in the near future. Yet I’m done (as long as I didn’t fail any­thing) and I have a great deal of options. But what would I really want to do with my life? A uni­ver­sity diploma will only help me get a tiny part of what I want to achieve.

Odd that I live so day-to-day, yet have a few goals planned for decades in advance. Even if I haven’t achieved a sin­gle goal by the time I die, I’ll feel decently sat­is­fied. I enjoy being able to appre­ci­ate every­thing I do each day. A great deal of think­ing needs to be done before I keep going. And while the future seems uncer­tain, while the world seems to be turned upside down, I feel comforted.

It’s under­stand­ing and real­iza­tion that bind my world together, that bring mean­ing to any­thing I do.

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April 25, 2003

I Certainly Do

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I won­der if any­one else enjoys mak­ing love when they’re sad.

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April 25, 2003

Complacent With Complacency

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I was walk­ing through the mall today, when I saw some­one who seemed to be alone. His face was ripe with Down Syndrome, and he moved with a air of emo­tional detach­ment, as if he had eas­ily accepted the cards he’d been dealt.

Of course, I make no assump­tions about his sit­u­a­tion. After all, I know noth­ing about his life, and my pseudo-conclusions (I almost never make def­i­nite con­clu­sions) based on purely obser­va­tion could be com­pletely wrong.

However, it made me real­ize how lucky I am to not only have a cer­tain amount of intel­li­gence, but to have lived the life I have lived. Although I agree that igno­rance is bliss, I have become quite con­tent with the lim­ited aware­ness that I pos­sess today. I’m grate­ful for the oppor­tu­nity to have loved and…given up, and to have been loved in return, even if my giv­ing up of such things will mean that I may never love again. I have lived a life of finan­cial secu­rity. I am fairly (although not fully) con­tent with the per­son I have been able to become.

What could I pos­si­bly have to com­plain about? Not much. Only about a few things unre­solved, from a past I’m still try­ing to understand.

Life, as it were, appears to be good. So why do I not feel as happy as I should? Perhaps a chem­i­cal imbal­ance of some sort, although I don’t want to be so arro­gant as to make such a claim with­out more sub­stan­tial symptoms.

I believe the answer lies in the fact that the last few things in my life which need res­o­lu­tion are major enough to leave me only feel­ing com­pla­cent. The next step, past iden­ti­fy­ing such mat­ters, would be to resolve them.

But per­haps com­pla­cency is the best one can do.

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April 25, 2003

Exam Stress, Planned Trips, Etc.

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This has been one of the most stress­ful weeks I’ve had in recent mem­ory. I have to orga­nize my trip home, my trip to the Dominican, my liv­ing arrange­ments, and my study­ing within the next day or two. I’ve decided to take the bus home, since it will be much cheaper than the train, but I haven’t decided when to go yet. I also can’t book a return ticket until I find out if John is going to his cot­tage or not. My liv­ing arrange­ments have become even more com­pli­cated. Between giv­ing my two months notice and find­ing out whether Nick and I have been accepted at an apart­ment, I have to fig­ure every­thing out by the time I leave for home.

I’ve mainly been study­ing for my two finals in the last few days. I’ve tried really hard at my graph­ics final, so hope­fully I’ll be able to pass it. Otherwise, I’ll be tak­ing a soft­ware engi­neer­ing course in the sum­mer to make up for the lost cred­its, which will delay my grad­u­a­tion a pos­si­ble eight months. Geology hasn’t been going well, as I’m find­ing it extremely dif­fi­cult to con­cen­trate. In the end, all that mat­ters is that I’ve tried my best.

Trolley and Wheaties have bought Canadian domains, and reg­is­tered with the provider which hosts me. It will be inter­est­ing to see what the domain is finally used for, aside from their met­ric time system.

I will be going home soon, and Dolores will be tak­ing up res­i­dence at Trolley’s for the week. Hopefully, she will get along with Nala by the end. I look for­ward to play­ing Magic: The Gathering at Coffee Time, meet­ing JG, talk­ing with Sam, hang­ing out with Darren and John, blaz­ing, and just gen­er­ally relaxing.

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April 25, 2003

Like British Humour

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I real­ized that my writ­ing is very dry.

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April 20, 2003

Talking To Cats

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I had the plea­sure of tak­ing care of Nala while Trolley and Wheaties were home for the long week­end. She greeted me with loud protes­ta­tions, angry that her care­taker had left her alone in the house for two days so far. Alas, it was only me who had arrived, a stranger she hadn’t got­ten com­fort­able with yet. She fol­lowed me around at first, and watched as I filled up her food and water dishes. After a while she real­ized that I was the only one com­ing. “Where is my slave?”, she demanded, and ran off to sleep under the kitchen table.

I tried to talk to her, to let her know that her com­pany would be back in two more days. I asked if she was alright, if she was bored or sleepy or energetic.

It felt…a lit­tle odd…to be so ver­bose with a cat. I con­sider myself to be a sane per­son. At the same time, I real­ize that cats can­not answer back. A strange lit­tle paradox.

I find myself in the same sit­u­a­tion around chil­dren. When a kid asks me a ques­tion to which the answer is beyond his com­pre­hen­sion, I don’t know what to say. I become rather embar­rassed that I’ve been placed in such a sit­u­a­tion. Do I tell this child the truth, or do I give a sac­cha­rine answer? Do I attempt to shed some con­scious­ness on a child’s life, or do I let him/her remain in a bliss­ful child­hood ignorance?

Any deci­sion can be thought of in a bad way. I never know what to say, so I gen­er­ally don’t answer back.

I still talk to Dolores though.

For there can be no judge­ment there.

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April 20, 2003

Lamplust, Formatting, Basic

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Studying has not been going well. I find it dif­fi­cult to get moti­vated, both exams being a week away. I’d much rather be try­ing to improve my win ratio or work­ing on my book, than learn­ing about orthog­o­nal view math­e­mat­ics or mesother­mal vein deposits. I might just write off the rest of the after­noon as relaxation.

Using my tax return as jus­ti­fi­ca­tion, I bought a set of Candela’s a few days ago. After see­ing a movie in which a restau­rant dis­plays a beau­ti­ful set of mood light­ing, I was inspired to give some more per­son­al­ity to my rather drably room. My Christmas lights do add a bit of mood, but they are too bright to feel com­fort­able. I also bought a blue sin­gle, in case one of them burns out, and so that I can have a bit of colour at my dis­posal. I don’t like the fact that they run on NiCads though, mak­ing them have the trou­ble­some char­ac­ter­is­tic of mem­ory. I’d like to just leave it on until I go to bed, but I’m afraid I’d have to let them “burn out”, although I’m sure that lithium ion bat­ter­ies would have dou­bled the price as well as the weight, and halved the lifes­pan of each Candela.

My com­puter des­per­ately needs a formatting.

I caught Basic this after­noon with Aaron and Chris. It wasn’t very good; the plot had way too many twists to it. I spent the entire time try­ing to fig­ure out what the hell was going on and admir­ing Connie Nielson’s dis­tin­guished and weath­ered face (oh my).

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April 16, 2003

Getting Dark, AFI, Etc.

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It’s get­ting dark here, but the light hasn’t com­pletely left the day yet. The sky waxes grey with the set­ting of the sun, and a gen­tle rain is mak­ing the pave­ment shine with the yel­low glow of the street lamps. The smell con­sumes me, and I’m back walk­ing the streets on an unrec­ol­lected gloomy day.

I finally fin­ished off my hon­ours project, so I can rest a bit eas­ier now. The one report is worth two courses itself. It ended up being around 22 pages, which isn’t too bad. The only thing that remains is my geo essay, and I only have about a half page left to write. I went to lunch with Aaron and Wheaties to cel­e­brate a com­pleted course at the Elephant and Castle. A great wait­ress served us, and offered a vari­a­tion on the Strongbow I was hav­ing, which was the addi­tion of some lime cor­dial, or some black cur­rant juice. We all got to try both with the Strongbow, and it was decided that the lime was the bet­ter of the two. The remain­ing black cur­rant juice went into the beer, and Aaron told me that it was tasty.

200 more wins to an arch­mage icon.

I’ve been lis­ten­ing to the lat­est AFI album lately, and even though I didn’t much care for it at first, I’m com­pletely addicted now. There’s some­thing about the har­monies in the vocals that make their sound so unique. I’m not quite used to Davey Havok’s voice though, as he sounds like a child to me. Quite uncon­ven­tional Currently, my favorite song is This Celluloid Dream.

A trip to the Dominican Republic may be work­ing out for the first week­end of May. Since it’s the begin­ning of the off-season, the cost of the entire trip, drinks and meals included along with res­i­dence at a four-star hotel, will be around $900 for a week. Apparently this includes scuba div­ing, horse­back rid­ing, jet ski­ing, and a beach-side view. Currently, only Aaron, Cristina and I are com­pletely com­mit­ted to going, but we need an even num­ber of peo­ple so we’re try­ing to find one more person.

Artfag is cur­rently a red­head. Ummmm…yah.

Jonathan tells me that the full-time job seems promis­ing, but he’s not mak­ing any guar­an­tees. It would mainly con­sist of going around the city to var­i­ous com­mer­cial cus­tomers and trou­bleshoot­ing com­puter prob­lems. The pay will start at around $15 which is not too bad, but not great for a grad­u­ate. He says that I’ll also need a car to be able to get to the loca­tions that need ser­vice, some­thing that I’ll con­sider more if I’m actu­ally able to get the job. He tells me that it’s a good foot-in-the-door for web pro­gram­ming posi­tions in the future. I am very grate­ful, and I’m not get­ting hopes up.

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April 12, 2003

Quixotic

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People who know me know that I gen­er­ally tend not to get my hopes up. I never see the point. If I get my hopes up and things work out in my favour, then I would have expected such an out­come, and I become unap­pre­cia­tive. If things don’t work out, then I feel even worse than had noth­ing hap­pened. On the other hand, if I don’t get my hopes up, I’ll feel great when I get my way, or I’ll feel fine when noth­ing works out.

Yet I can’t help but get my hopes up for what the future may hold. Lately, things have been going well in such a way that I feel com­forted. Jonathan has made a great attempt at try­ing to get me a com­puter related job with a decent salary. I applied to a beau­ti­ful apart­ment with Nick which, I was told, I should have no trou­ble obtain­ing occu­pancy. I will be grad­u­at­ing soon, and free to live my life with a free­dom only matched from the sum­mer days of my childhood.

But most bright to me seems to be the future with my friends. I’ve met a great bunch of peo­ple, of which I immensely enjoy hang­ing out with. They have offered to help me move. They enjoy the same things I do. They are peo­ple I can con­fide in. They have got­ten excited about my ten­ancy with Nick. Who else do I know is inter­ested in my hap­pi­ness? What other friends that I’ve had are so keen in spend­ing time with me?

My friends make the future seem warm and bear­able. Even when I admit to myself the way the future may work out, the fact that I may not get this job and indus­try con­nec­tion, the fact that my rental appli­ca­tion may be denied, I can’t imag­ine any­thing going wrong with these won­der­ful peo­ple. Sometimes I wish that I didn’t feel this way, that I could keep my mind in check. But I can’t.

And I don’t care.

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April 12, 2003

Essays, Rock Climbing, Etc.

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I wasn’t going to write today, but the gen­tle light from the set­ting sun, along with the mild, wind­less chill, has affected me in such a man­ner that I wish only to speak of the bound­less beauty that the weather can pro­vide. I’m reminded of the spring walks home from Ashley’s house, feel­ing the cool air through my hair with the pale orange sky above my head. Pure contentment.

Progress on my essays has not been going well. I have spent the last half week on geol­ogy, and still have less than two pages done. I wish the ter­mi­nol­ogy wasn’t so mar­ket based. Fuck.

I was able to go rock climb­ing for a sec­ond time with Trolley, Cristina, Aaron, Wheaties, Nick, Greg, Amanda, and Simon. It was great to have so many peo­ple go at once, so that we could just won­der around and see how other peo­ple were doing. I was able to scale three more walls that I wasn’t able to last time, which were all 5.6’s. The tips of my fin­gers were raw at the end from belay­ing so much. My fore­arm strength is cur­rently the first thing to give, so I wasn’t very sore the next day. We headed out to Perkins after and pigged out on good food. What a great fuck­ing time.

I was able to ask Simon about his tongue stud, and he told me that out of all the pierc­ings he’s had (ears and eye­brow), the tongue was the least painful by far, due to the fact that the nerve end­ings are all on the sur­face of the tongue. Once the spike goes through the tongue, noth­ing is felt after­wards. New infor­ma­tion that I’ll have to consider.

Tuesday. Brideshead Revisited. Jeremy Irons is one sexy, sexy man.

Dolores has been extra cud­dly these last few days, and I’ve been woken up by her turn­ing a few times, before nestling on my legs or stom­ach. I feel bad that I feel so con­stricted every time she set­tles down, caus­ing me to toss and turn. It’s as if itches only come once a cat has found a pil­low in your lap.

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April 8, 2003

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

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So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sented to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynamic as well as math­e­mat­i­cally stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­tic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that other projects con­sisted of. I think I had one of the lesser ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much harder than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lated me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spoken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funeral, actu­ally clapped at the end. It made me fairly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye candy in a fac­ulty of the aes­thet­i­cally chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a sucker for a pretty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tively next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rently using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript viewer. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vided to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weaker body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extremely impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rently in, yet $50 cheaper. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larger liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.

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April 6, 2003

I Need To Tell You

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I won­der if I come off as a per­son with emo­tional bag­gage. One of the (very few) things that I pride myself in is my “self-awareness”, the abil­ity to see myself objec­tively, but this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that I am unable to deter­mine within myself. Has my past made me a per­son of fright­en­ing, unper­son­able dis­po­si­tion? Do peo­ple think of me as some­one with deep rooted emo­tional issues?

I won­der if my his­tory even mat­ters to oth­ers. I real­ize that it’s when I let my his­tory inter­fere with or affect my rela­tion­ships that it becomes a prob­lem. I’m afraid, how­ever, that I let things become affected more than I’d like, more than I understand.

The past is some­thing that I rec­og­nize as being sig­nif­i­cant, and I try to keep it only as that. It is some­thing that I learn from, some­thing which can affect me and my deci­sions today, but not some­thing that I should presently be deal­ing with.

So, is it?

Well, I’m not com­pletely sure. On a night like tonight, when the mid­night sky burns bright enough to illu­mi­nate my room, I can’t help but feel unheard, unheard in some­thing I wish to express. What becomes this need to be understood?

It’s a voice I wish to have, to bring me clo­sure, to let me be free.

It has taken me three hours to write this final thought, along with the resur­fac­ing of many dis­tract­ing mem­o­ries. Things still feel unre­solved, of course, but I have suf­fi­ciently quelled my mood until there is a more appro­pri­ate time to express myself.

When I see you again, you will under­stand what I’ve become, and what you’ve done to make me this way.

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April 6, 2003

Talking To Myself, Scary Movie Night, Geology Essays

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I feel like talk­ing, but I doubt any­one would under­stand. Sometimes, I feel like speak­ing to some­one, and hav­ing them lis­ten. Other times, I would rather have them strengthen my con­vic­tions, to tell me what I need to hear back. Tonight, I need some­one who under­stands, who can make sense of what I’m feel­ing, who can pro­vide not only sup­port, but guid­ance as well.

Scary Movie Night 3 went well yes­ter­day. It ended up that Aaron, Cristina, Nick, Jacques, Ngan, Trolley, and Wheaties came over to watch Signs, which I thought was only mod­er­ately scary, and had an inspir­ing, but rather cheap end­ing. The for­mer three peo­ple stayed over to hang out, and I think I scared them off with some overtly dis­gust­ing Southpark episodes. Everyone was wasted by the end of the night, so talk­ing seemed to take a sec­ondary role.

I had a good phone call with John the other day.

There hasn’t been much progress on my geol­ogy essay. It seems like there’s a great lack of mate­r­ial on the inter­net about gold value fluc­tu­a­tions, from a geo­log­i­cal per­spec­tive; every­thing is from a finan­cial view. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that I’ll have half the length I’m sup­posed to. It’s due at the end of the month, so I’ll still have time. The only prob­lem is that time will most likely not help any.

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