It’s always funny when someone tries to play a mind game on me. For some reason they never work, so I really don’t mind them.

The secret, often confused with apathy, is actually the willingness to sacrifice everything, or the acceptance of such. Unless one is prepared to give up everything, there are no guarantees about what will happen. When one accepts the fact that they may lose a relationship, then one has nothing to lose.

It’s this power, this weight, that guarantees a victory. Bluffing such a thing is unpredictable and generally not recommended. Of course, knowing the opponent inside and out is an advantage. It’s like seeing his or her hand in a card game, and sometimes, this is enough to win if one is unable to pay a high a price as a relationship.

Such a strategy may leave one with few friends, but who’s a friend who plays mind games?

I have a love/hate relationship with Hong Kong films. I’m glad that OMNI 2 has become an ethnically diverse channel, but every time a Hong Kong movie comes on, I’m not sure whether or not I should make some popcorn or put an axe through the TV.

I love the movies because they remind me of every single thing about Hong Kong that has so poignantly affected me (and I feel smart when I get the jokes).

I hate the movies because 90% of them end up being crap like Love Undercover 2: Love Mission. It’s all a reminder of the sad state of affairs that Hong Kong popular culture is in right now.

Open the window. It smells like night.

Beautiful.

I can’t study without rewards. This may possibly be the fault of my parents, telling me from an early age that I’d earn something for every spelling test I got perfect. I told some of my classmates at the time, who would earn nothing but the paltry praise of their parents, and they rather precociously told me that such a system was unhealthy. Of course, I was too young to understand such things at the time, and now I find myself unable to be motivated to study without thinking that I’ll get to do something fun as a break.

I’ve been trying to study for my accounting mid-term all week, and couldn’t actually get started until I knew that there was something entertaining I could do. At first it was playing Chrono Cross, but my emulator was just too buggy. Then it was trying to make a new background, but it ended up being too much thinking for a break. I moved onto Uru, and I’ve been playing it ever since. I have to admit that there are worlds that completely take my breath away. It’s one of the few games that really make me appreciate a high-end GPU. I wish I could be playing with Trolley, but I rather like being able to solve the puzzles by myself. I’m always, always, ALWAYS the slowest one in figuring things out, and never the one who gets the answer if I’m playing in a group.

Dolly always likes to have her own chair. She gets so involved with her sleeping that she gets into all sorts of positions without opening her eyes. Sometimes I catch her rolling her fat ass right off the chair, then give a shake of her head when she realizes what just happened.

I hate it when people use conjunctions in the wrong place. In my accounting class outline, for example, is the line, “Typewritten work will only be accepted”. I know what they’re trying to say, but instead, they make it very clear that the markers must accept any typewritten work. It makes me want to smear shit all over my beautifully typewritten assignment, just to piss them off.

I don’t make my bed more than once a week.

Last weekend there was a training course for level 1 umpires in table tennis. It was dirt cheap, and only two hours long so I decided to go for it. Out of the nine people who took the test, only three passed, including me. The test was open book, unlimited time, but the questions were extremely tricky. Since I passed, I can officiate matches for both club sanctioned tournaments and provincial level competitions.

Ever do something really stupid? Like, something just plain rude or mean. And then feel totally bad about it, even though it was such a small thing and the person probably understands why it was done. And then not be able to think about anything else except for regretting it. I hate when that happens.

Got back from Tremblant today. A bunch of us rented a cabin for the weekend about ten minutes away from the mountain. I went snowboarding, or rather attempted to snowboard, on Saturday. There was a heavy fog at the top of the mountain and visibility was extremely limited, although the temperature hovered around a pleasant -5°C, a far cry from the -46°C from last year. I’ve definitely improved over the last time that I went, although I still can’t carve on the toe side. Every inch of my body is stiff now, from my neck to my ankles, but it was worth it.

We stopped by a little hill made for snow tubing on the way home. It only cost $17 to use the facilities for four hours, and there’s even a conveyor system to drag the inner tubes to the top so people don’t have to walk up, the ultimate in lazy recreation. The hill was divided into eight lanes, each with it’s own characteristic bumps and jumps, and we tried to link up our tubes in various configurations such as multi-person daisy chains and leg locked lines. Possibly the best bang for the buck ever.

Sometimes it feels as if I’ve changed in an infinite number of directions. Every change comes as a result of some unsatisfactory characteristic of my former self. The result, hopefully a series of what I consider improvements, becomes the opposite of traits I once possessed.

Confidence is an example. It’s only now, after more than eight years of conscious work, that I’ve gained some form of confidence, of self-respect. And I appreciate it now, not only in myself but in other people as well. It was my own diffidence that drove me to become an assertive person. This isn’t to say that it’s something I’ve stopped working on. I’m not quite satisfied yet, because I’m still learning to prevent overconfidence, but other than that I think I’ve come quite far.

The same goes for quite a few other things. Having no friends has made me a better one. Being alone has made me a patient lover. Being shy has made me more outgoing. Having gone through emotional ups and downs has made me more stable.

Being weak has made me stronger.

From one of my inside sources, I found out that the hiring freeze at the old government job might be on hiatus and they’re looking to fill some CS-2 positions. Aaron and I contacted our old employers to get together for some lunch tomorrow, and they ended up making reservations for 14 at the Mayflower. Aaron and I both know that this could be an important lunch, so we’ll be putting on the preppy clothes. We actually had to discuss what we’d be wearing, since we dress so similarly.

I sleep with two pillows. The bigger, fluffier one goes under my head, and the smaller, less fluffier one I hug. I’ve been sleeping with two pillows longer than I can remember, and it’s become difficult to fall asleep with just one, which makes crashing at friends places and hotels a bit of a hassle. Sometimes I sleep on my side with the smaller pillow on my back and pretend I’m sleeping next to someone.

I’m getting fuckin excited; John’s on a train headed over here and should be arriving in about an hour. I haven’t seen him since Christmas, and even then we didn’t actually have time to do anything except watch a movie. Before that…we came over for a weekend in July. I’m looking forward to five days of pure relaxation.

When the Nick’s away, the Jeff will dance to Billy Talent while he cooks breakfast.