August 23, 2010

My cousin Chris

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I’ve only shared about two con­ver­sa­tions in my life with Chris — the last of which was about seven years ago — owing to the fact that we live on oppo­site coasts of the coun­try. But Darren and I rec­og­nized him as one of us: some­one who thinks for him­self and doesn’t buy into the whole Chinese cul­ture unques­tion­ingly. This is in con­trast to many of our other cousins, who seem to love their par­ents sim­ply because they were birthed by them, not nec­es­sar­ily because their par­ents are good people.

Chris hap­pened to be pass­ing by for a wed­ding, so I hosted him for two days. It was inter­est­ing to meet him at this point in our lives. I won­der if I’m actu­ally more sim­i­lar to Chris than I am to Darren, mainly because of how our cre­ativ­ity defines us. It was so easy for me to relate and talk to him. And as with Darren, I actu­ally felt like Chris was fam­ily, closer to a brother than a cousin, which is all too rare among my blood.

As an indus­trial designer he does amaz­ing draw­ings, full of vibrant colours that pop-off the page. I asked him to draw some­thing on my dry erase board because draw­ing is a cre­ative abil­ity not in my pos­ses­sion, and I find the process fas­ci­nat­ing. It was a logis­ti­cal chal­lenge because he would smear his exist­ing work every time he rested his hand on the board for stability.

He’s my exact oppo­site when it comes to health. He’s a vegan, while I’d find it impos­si­ble to give up meat, let alone but­ter and ice cream. He just lit­er­ally biked 100km a day across Canada, while my lifestyle could be con­sid­ered seden­tary at best, with only Tai Chi and some mild cal­is­then­ics in my exer­cise rou­tine. And yet we’re the same weight and shape. It’s sort of eerie to see him draw­ing in this video; aside from a shorter hair­cut, it’s almost like I’m watch­ing myself.

The time he spent here passed quickly, as I intro­duced him to the ukulele. Aside from catch­ing up and learn­ing about each other, most of the two days were spent exper­i­ment­ing and play­ing together. Eventually, we went to a music store and bought him his own Mahalo ukulele, which filled my heart with glee. Darren and Jeff are com­ing up for a visit next week, and hope­fully Chris will be able to hitch a ride with them for our ukulele band before we all head back to Toronto for Crystal’s wedding.

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August 9, 2010

second show

6

I was sup­posed to hang out with Jesse last week­end. We were going to jam and talk and throw around ideas, and I was really look­ing for­ward to it because we always seem to be doing some­thing when we’re together instead of just chillin.

See, it’s right here on his sched­ule, between Floors and Dinner.

Jesse's schedule

Unfortunately, I devel­oped my annual case of strep throat that day and had to stay away from everyone.

Then, on Friday as I was going back through our e-mail cor­re­spon­dence, I real­ized that Jesse invit­ing me to play ukulele meant play­ing a house party on Saturday. We met up about two hours before we were on and had a very quick rehearsal to work out some parts with­out Nic being able to back us up, as well as extra bits and pieces of songs I fig­ured out over the week. Being so rushed was prob­a­bly a good thing; it kept my mind off the nervousness.

Turns out it was an out­door gig play­ing to a group of hip­sters at a bar­be­cue, and we were open­ing. It didn’t go ter­ri­bly well. At one point in the mid­dle of Write Protected I screwed up the strum­ming so badly that we had to stop the song and restart, but we quickly picked up on a count of four and went on with­out another hitch. Jesse remarked that it was good prac­tice for next time, because prob­lems come up that you never think of when you’re in a new environment.

This time it was a tun­ing peg that some­how got knocked in the mid­dle of the set. I only dis­cov­ered this once the song had started — and I was the only one play­ing so I couldn’t stop. It must have been off by an entire semi-tone cause it totally messed up my senses and I had a hard time telling if I was even play­ing the right chords. It was also night by the time our set ended, and I had a hard time see­ing the frets, which only added to the confusion.

Note to self: strum once to before each song to make sure the instru­ment is in tune.

I did, how­ever, learn from the last show to bring a side-table to use as a step­ping stool. Usually, I sit when prac­tic­ing, but at the 160 Workshops show I had to stand; not being used to the pos­ture meant I was con­stantly adjust­ing the uke in the arm between verses and com­ing in late in the bar as a result. I brought a lit­tle Ikea side-table this time, and it worked really well.

Even with all the glitches, as rushed and under-rehearsed as we were, it was a fan­tas­tic time and a great experience.

The next set was in the base­ment, with a girl and guy look­ing like they were kids dressed up and pre­tend­ing to be Ziggy Stardust, singing to generic elec­tron­ica. And peo­ple were lov­ing it in their slow-nodding, hip­ster kind of way, although the weed and booze may have helped (Audra would later remark to me that it was hard to tell how into it peo­ple were cause of how cool every­one was try­ing to act).

I also missed see­ing a very drunk Tina cor­ner Jesse. I could totally see this being her scene.

Pizza with girls

Check out Audra sport­ing her styl­ish Hurley cap.

Jesse was being inter­viewed later that night and also wanted to stay to see Matt play, so the girls and I headed to grab a bite to eat. Audra bought us all pizza and drinks at a nearby pizze­ria, which had the BEST CRUST I’ve ever tasted.

Before the end of the night, in a good mood and feel­ing safe, I admit­ted to Em my crush on her boyfriend. She took it well.

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July 19, 2010

Visiting Pita

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Pita is soon mov­ing to the west coast of Canada, so I went to visit him in Montreal on the week­end. We lived together in res­i­dence in uni­ver­sity and for two years in an apart­ment down­town, but hadn’t seen each other in years. I’m prob­a­bly the only per­son to still think of him as Pita, the nick­name given to him from the first week of res­i­dence. There were two pairs of room­mates named Jeff and Peter, so every­one decided that one pair should have nick­names to make the dis­tinc­tion, and that ended up being us.

Pita's house

He’s mov­ing out in two days, so his house is a jum­ble of packed boxes and mis­cel­la­neous items.

Read the rest of this entry »

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March 4, 2010

New Hampshire: Day 3

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Thumbnail: Corn chips

Thumbnail: Real tacos

I’m free again after my train­ing, and Dave takes me to his favourite restau­rant in Nashua to meet up with Sid and his girl­friend. It’s a small, family-owned Mexican joint with bright colours and an appro­pri­ately accented waitress.

Over din­ner, we com­pare our regional dif­fer­ences. I ask them what it means when some­one says “A quar­ter of one” (12:45), because they don’t say “a quar­ter to one”. I ask them if they take their shoes off when they get in the house (some­times, depend­ing on the host), because I noticed no one did when I was in a house1. I ask them if they have bub­ble tea (there’s one Vietnamese restau­rant that serves it), because it’s all over Canada now. I tell them New York Fries serves pou­tine (What’s New York Fries?). I pull out some Canadian bills and show them the braille (Oooooooh). At one point, Sid calls me on my “eh”, con­trasted from their “huh” used at the end of a sen­tence to empha­size a point.

Thumbnail: Downtown Manchester

Thumbnail: Cross button
Thumbnail: Kelly and Dave.
Thumbnail: Chelsey and Ed
Thumbnail: Greek donuts
Thumbnail: Dave's notes

Dave and I drive to down­town Manchester, the biggest city in New Hampshire, to a bar/café called Republic. Every month, Dave orga­nizes the Collective, a group of cre­ative peo­ple with a cer­tain energy, and a void in their lives when it comes to some­one with whom to dis­cuss their endeav­ors on a prac­ti­cal, non­threat­en­ing, phil­an­thropic level.

I repeat a person’s name after being intro­duced to them, a trick I learned from the client spe­cial­ist course I took in New Hampshire four years ago.

At one point, Ed asks us how we know each other, and Dave explains, along with a story:

When my sis­ter and I were kids, we imag­ined what it would be like if we were more of us, so we needed an older sis­ter and a younger brother to round out the sib­ling expe­ri­ence. As the old­est brother, I needed to know what hav­ing an older sis­ter was like. And we also chose per­son­al­i­ties to go with them. I think the older sis­ter was a heavy­set, strong girl with a deter­mined, moth­er­ing ten­dency toward us. Her name was Daphne, and she was the type to play field hockey or lacrosse when she went to col­lege had we known what that was back when we were kids. The younger brother would be a slen­der, artis­tic type that was a styl­ish and care­ful dresser; “met­ro­sex­ual” was the term we’d have used, my sis­ter com­mented recently, had we known the word. His name was Leland.

And when he met me yes­ter­day, he thought, “That’s Leland!”. Now he’s won­der­ing if he’s going to run into Daphne in the future.

After two hours of bril­liant con­ver­sa­tion and exchange of energy, we go our sep­a­rate ways. These are my peo­ple, and I feel the need to start some­thing sim­i­lar in Ottawa.

Thumbnail: Me and Dave

I take a pic­ture of us because I leave tomor­row, shortly after the end of the course, and won’t have a chance to see him again. I offer my house if he ever wants to get away and change up his frame of mind, and he returns the offer.

In 24 hours, I’ll be home sweet home again, but cer­tainly wish­ing I had more time to talk, and relate, and feel as if there was another kin­dred soul in the world.

  1. Not even in my hotel room, which I found very strange. [↑]
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March 3, 2010

New Hampshire: Day 2

8

Thumbnail: Training

The train­ing is light and relaxed. I avoid wear­ing my name tag, but not the awk­ward round of intro­duc­tions every­one has to make around the class. We fin­ish early for the day, and I won­der if there’ll be a test at the end as part of my certification.

I vaguely remem­ber that Dave Seah, my online men­tor and per­sonal coach, lives in New Hampshire. We met four years ago when I joined 9rules, and imme­di­ately devel­oped a con­nec­tion. His writ­ing, ideas, and achieve­ments have always inspired me, and he’s been the only per­son to make a guest post on my blog.

I call him, and as fate would have it, he lives 10 min­utes from my hotel. For years, I’ve won­dered if he had a New Hampshire accent, and I finally find out he speaks just like me.

Thumbnail: Factory 99

Thumbnail: Photo studio

Thumbnail: No parking
Thumbnail: Mailboxes
Thumbnail: Climbing stairs
Thumbnail: Metal star
Thumbnail: Creepy aloe

Thumbnail: Photo studio

Dave picks me up and whisks me away to Factory 99, an open artist stu­dio con­verted from an old fac­tory, to meet Sid. Sid is a pho­tog­ra­pher try­ing to turn his pas­sion into his liv­ing. I see his pho­tos, and pick his brain about off-camera flashes, expo­sure, post-processing, back­drops, and light­ing for much longer than I should have. I can’t even explain how many ques­tions he’s answered. I feel like I’ve been through a work­shop, and leave with an urgency to try every­thing I’ve learned. It’s easy to see why Dave is such good friends with him, and the syn­ergy continues.

Thumbnail: Dave on brick
Thumbnail: Creep statue
Thumbnail: Factory
Thumbnail: Fence
Thumbnail: Triangle manhole

From there we take a stroll to down­town and onto Main Street. It’s only sun­set, and many stores are closed, a sign of the eco­nomic down­turn. It’s a small city we’re in1, and there’s almost noth­ing of note, save for the tri­an­gle man­hole covers.

Thumbnail: Dave's house
Thumbnail: Basement studio
Thumbnail: Daves drawing
Thumbnail: Jeff with cat
Thumbnail: Fortune

We make a quick stop at his house, nes­tled among ever­greens and a cosy part of town, to check on a turkey he’s been slow cook­ing. I finally get a chance to see his stu­dio in real life. I rec­og­nize the lap­top he pur­chased for his project. I see his hand­writ­ing. His gun vault. His OLPC lap­top. His cats. All the lit­tle details I’ve glimpsed from his pho­tos are in front of me now.

Thumbnail: Korean appetizers
Thumbnail: Unagi
Thumbnail: Bibimbap
Thumbnail: Kalbi
Thumbnail: Dave approves

We look for a place to have din­ner, and decide on some Asian food. He takes us to a Korean/Japanese restau­rant. I let him order every­thing for the both of us. Just from hear­ing him describe the unagi, I can tell he’s one of the few peo­ple who ana­lyze and study and appre­ci­ate food the way I do.

Over our steam­ing bowls of rice and tea, we talk as if we’ve known each other our entire lives. I real­ize just how sim­i­lar we are, how we’re at the same stage in life, both self-aware, emo­tion­ally intel­li­gent, won­der­ing the same things, fig­ur­ing out the mys­ter­ies of life, and try­ing to sus­tain our­selves on what we love doing.

I don’t feel so alone anymore.

  1. Compared to Ottawa, at least, at only one tenth the pop­u­la­tion [↑]
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February 19, 2010

Brunch with Jason

1

Brunch with Jason Shim

Before get­ting on his train, Jason asked me if I was a hug-person. It was the right ques­tion, because I’m most assuredly a hug-person, and we embraced before he stepped out onto the platform.

We grew up at the same time in the same neigh­bour­hood — a small sub­urb some­where in the mid­dle of the 500km that sep­a­rates us — but never had a chance to meet until he gave a pre­sen­ta­tion in town for the HR Council for the Nonprofit Sector. Until now, we only com­mu­ni­cated through blog com­ments and e-mail exchanges.

When I first met him, it struck me how much tall he was, and how much deeper his voice was than I expected.

Jason is like me in so many ways, some­thing I find extremely rare. We share a strong self-awareness and a pen­chant for self-improvement, as well as the same views on love and tastes in women. Perhaps it could be said that Jason is an extro­verted ver­sion of me. We could dis­cuss things we nor­mally reserve for our close friends, and con­tinue as if we had already known each other’s sto­ries for years. He’s a true kin­dred spirit, and many times I felt like believ­ing in him meant I believed in myself as well.

Brunch was filled with such stim­u­la­tion that I for­got to take a pic­ture, so I set­tled for this one when I went to see him off at the train sta­tion. I’m so glad I was able to cap­ture his per­pet­ual smile, that same smile I see in his pic­tures when he trav­el­ing the world, in Budapest, Ghana, New Orleans, and other places with names too for­eign for me to remember.

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January 5, 2010

Protected: Pursued

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October 8, 2009

Ottawa Foodies Pot Luck

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Digging in

Thumbnail: Roof-patio view
Thumbnail: Cheese on baguette
Thumbnail: Cookies
Thumbnail: Pie
Thumbnail: Pizza
Thumbnail: Pulled pork
Thumbnail: Rhubarb pie
Thumbnail: Salad
Thumbnail: Spread and toast
Thumbnail: Tofu stew

Cherry tomato pizza

Tiana brought me as her guest to the Ottawa Foodies pot luck, run by Pam1, and held on a rooftop patio right on Bank Street. It was a true potluck, where no one knew what any­one else was bringing.

The Ottawa Foodies usu­ally gather in the Ottawa Foodie forums, where they dis­cuss recipes and restau­rants in Ottawa, so this was the first in-person meet­ing for many. Many didn’t know each oth­ers real names, so there were intro­duc­tions like, “Hi, I’m MissMuffins862”, or ‚“Hi, I’m Thomas, aka BagelRapist”.

I don’t think Tiana was quite ready for the food dorks, the type of which I was already some­what accus­tomed to dur­ing my time at the com­puter sci­ence pro­gram at Ottawa U. I’ve deter­mined that food dorks are just as bad as wine snobs and com­puter geeks. For example:

There were two guys who got into a heated argu­ment about the kind of fat used in Mcdonald’s french fries. One of these guys also preached to me about the ben­e­fits of good rice, (and me — being Chinese — knew absolutely noth­ing about rice). There was one guy who said, “I’m doing a doc­u­men­tary on the youngest head chef in the ———- region”. I asked “Wow, how did he get that posi­tion?”, and his reply was “His par­ents own the restau­rant”. Then real­iz­ing the fact that nepo­tism ruins the cred­i­bil­ity of his ini­tial state­ment, he fol­lowed this with “He also made a flow­er­less brownie at 11.” Tiana asked, “Did he invent it?”. “No, he fol­lowed a recipe”. At that point, Tiana and got silent and we just looked at each other.

But what some of these peo­ple lack in social skills, they make up for in culi­nary abil­i­ties, and the food was amaz­ing.

So I basi­cally hung out with Tiana the whole time, and pigged out on every­thing I could. By the end of the night, my truf­fles, usu­ally rolled in coco pow­der to pre­vent them from stick­ing to each other, had turned into a truffle.

  1. Who also hap­pens to know Tim. Ottawa is really small. [↑]
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September 3, 2009

Goodbye Picnic

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Group left

Thumbnail: Group right
Thumbnail: Assorted veggies
Thumbnail: Cheese salad
Thumbnail: Spread
Thumbnail: Opening bubbly
Thumbnail: Gourmet cookies
Thumbnail: Whipped cream toes
Thumbnail: Cream on roll
Thumbnail: Picture posing
Thumbnail: Bride and groom

To say good­bye to Tim and Pam, as well as Sunday brunch potlucks alto­gether, it was decided that some­thing spe­cial be done. So we found a shady space in the park for the blan­kets and food. It was the first time we had wine at one of the potlucks, and a beau­ti­ful day.

For some rea­son, Jess likes to call me Satan. Maybe it’s because cheese is her weak­ness, and I always enjoy indulging her temptation.

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July 1, 2009

Tom’s Birthday Barbecue

2

Pulling a Lynndie

Thumbnail: Cheese and hummus
Thumbnail: Conversations
Thumbnail: Tim explains
Thumbnail: Fried peppers
Thumbnail: Helbotica t-shirt
Thumbnail: pasta
Thumbnail: Pork chops
Thumbnail: Potatoes
Thumbnail: Roast beef
Thumbnail: Dinner table

For Tom’s birth­day, we gath­ered at Tim’s for grilled chicken breasts, pork chops, roast beef, and some pleas­ant con­ver­sa­tion. I always find it inter­est­ing that the top­ics we dis­cuss are so dif­fer­ent from the ones at par­ties. Subjects tend to be more intel­lec­tual, whereas con­ver­sa­tions at Pat’s house, let’s say, are much more jovial and carefree.

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February 6, 2009

Sunday Pot Luck Brunches

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Gathering in the living room

Thumbnail: One of my smoothies
Thumbnail: Tim cooks bacon
Thumbnail: Wooden trivet
Thumbnail: Pancakes
Thumbnail: Fruit bowl
 

Tim is, as he puts it, cut from the same cloth as his uncle, inso­far as they both enjoy enter­tain­ing. They also live in a four-storey house, which is per­fect for such a thing.

So every Sunday, peo­ple come together for a casual pot luck brunch, where guests are invited to bring food, the idea being that it’s be eas­ier to bring a dish some­where and share with every­one than sit at home and make break­fast for your­self. Last time, I got to try fancy smoked bacon, and a pancake-batter-cooked-in-bacon-grease experiment.

At this point, enough peo­ple know about it that no one has to men­tion ahead of time whether they’ll be com­ing, but there’s enough food for all.

Tim described this pretty well in a recent e-mail:

Dear Everyone,

I’m fas­ci­nated by coor­di­na­tion problems.

Coordination prob­lems are sit­u­a­tions where all the actors involved are more or less on the same side, but there is imper­fect infor­ma­tion. Everyone wants the same gen­eral out­come but isn’t sure how every­one else is going to get at it.

Driving is a solved coor­di­na­tion prob­lem. No one wants an acci­dent so we all want to drive on the same side of the road, but there is noth­ing spe­cial about choos­ing the left or the right side. How do peo­ple pick?

In 1958, Thomas Schelling ran this exper­i­ment on a group of uni­ver­sity stu­dents in Connecticut: “Imagine that you are to meet some­one in New York City at noon, but you don’t know where and you can’t get in touch with them in advance. Where do you go?”

Without con­sult­ing one another, the major­ity of them picked the same loca­tion. I won­der if you can guess what it was (where would you go?).

Every week, we solve and re-solve a coor­di­na­tion prob­lem with brunch. Everyone wants a good and var­ied brunch spread. Different peo­ple come every week and no one RSVPs, so you can never be sure what other peo­ple will bring. We don’t con­sult in advance, I don’t assign dishes or types of dishes. The only infor­ma­tion we have is what was at brunch the pre­vi­ous week and my writ­ten sug­ges­tion about fruits, which is mer­ci­fully ignored by most of you.

Yet every week brunch has a wide range of deli­cious foods. Isn’t that amazing?

I think it’s amazing.

Hope to see you on Sunday,

Tim

If I was par­tic­i­pat­ing in Schelling’s exper­i­ment, I would have cho­sen to meet at the clock in Grand Central Station; it’s always stood out to me because of the way it was promi­nently fea­tured in the fan­tasy waltz sequence done by Terry Gilliam in The Fisher King. I had no idea that this was also the infor­ma­tion booth, and it’s this place exactly that most stu­dents chose.

And it goes with the peo­ple at brunch as well. When one per­son eats, another will get up to cook. When every­one is done eat­ing, the dishes are all put away, the pans are all cleaned. With the wis­dom of crowds, noth­ing needs to be said.

I think it’s amaz­ing too.

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December 19, 2008

A Blogger Passes On

7

Many years ago, I received an e-mail from a reader named Winston Rand, look­ing for some blog­ging advice:

Jeff,

I have been to your equiv­o­cal­ity site numer­ous times over the last cou­ple of months and always come away impressed. Having vis­ited many other “blogs” — God how I’ve come to hate that term — I keep com­ing back to yours as my gold stan­dard. Been think­ing of start­ing my own, even have 2 domain names paid for, but being an engi­neer and an IT pro, I’m too hes­i­tant to start until most of the answers are quite clear. That is a strength as well as a failing…

In my quest, I’ve looked at many dif­fer­ent blog­ging tools, host­ing sites, etc., and am still not sure which route to take. My temp­ta­tion is to say to hell with all of them and just post my stuff using sta­tic html pages (Dreamweaver) since I’m not really inter­ested in feed­back or com­ments that much. But I do like the abil­ity to eas­ily inte­grate cal­en­dar, archives, and other fea­tures that most of the blog pack­ages seem to include by default. And who knows, one of these days I may care what other peo­ple think of my work.

Among the pop­u­lar pack­ages, I’ve got it nar­rowed down to WordPress, Moveable Type, and SquareSpace, but I’m wide open to sug­ges­tions and recommendations.

Could you share your thoughts on what you use and rec­om­mend? Any advice will be greatly appreciated.

Keep up your excel­lent work! I look for­ward to see­ing more of it.

I steered Winston towards WordPress, and soon after, he started his own blog at nobodyasked.com. Over time, he devel­oped a sig­nif­i­cant read­er­ship, as he would write quite lucidly about pol­i­tics, humour, and the occas­sional geek talk.

Although our blogs cov­ered dif­fer­ent things in a dif­fer­ent style (Winston called it “[spin­ning] in a slightly off­set par­al­lel uni­verse” when describ­ing my blog in his one-year anniver­sary post), we would check up on each other now and then.

During one of my last vis­its, I found out that Winston has died after a 38-hour ill­ness and 3 surg­eries. While I never really knew him in per­son, I still feel like some­one close is gone.

And I wish I could explain why.

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September 4, 2008

Tom and I

2

We used to have a code: I’d ask him “Hey Tom, you want to van­dal­ize the grave­yard tonight?”, this obscure line from an episode of Married…with Children.

If he responded with, “No, Jeff, that would be wrong” (the next line from the episode), that meant he’d agree to throw rocks into a lit­tle stream under an over­pass dur­ing our grade 7 lunch break. When we were fin­ished eat­ing in the cafe­te­ria, we’d walk to the stream with the remains of the hour, dressed in bur­gundy tie and pine blazer, heav­ing any appro­pri­ately sized rocks into the water. It was our goal to block the flow of the stream one day.

It was a fruit­less goal, of course, so much like every­thing we did back then, when noth­ing we did ever seemed to mat­ter. A goal we’d never hope to accomplish.

A way of say­ing, “I hope these days never end. I hope I never grow up, and I’m never too old to throw rocks with a good friend.”

Sometimes we’d throw what was left of our lunches into the stream, and be rewarded with the glimpse of a soli­tary fish break­ing the sur­face of the water and snatch­ing a morsel.

By the time we returned to class, the sheen on my brogues would be replaced by a fine layer of dust from walk­ing around in the gravel. I’d wear that dust proudly, because no one ever knew how it got there, a secret code between him and me.

Sometimes I check up on Tommy. Not that he knows. I won­der if we could be friends again. We lead two dif­fer­ent lives, but that’s never stopped me from being friends with some­one. Part of me is scared that he’s never changed, never grown out from the ele­men­tary school Tom I used to know — some­thing all too com­mon in my expe­ri­ence — and I’d just rather not know. It’s enough for me not to con­tact him.

But I still root for him, not because we used to be such good friends, but because I know that if he can make it, so can I.

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July 2, 2008

An End To Therapy

9

I stopped going to therapy.

Because I feel like I’m fixed.

Not com­pletely, but I’m at the point where I can rec­og­nize my prob­lems, bad men­tal habits, and work towards fix­ing them myself. My anx­i­ety — the rea­son why I went to ther­apy in the first place — is under con­trol, and I’ve been delight­fully drink­ing black tea in the morn­ings1. No more sui­ci­dal thoughts either.

I asked my psy­chol­o­gist whether I could hang out with him out­side of the ses­sions because I enjoyed his com­pany so much on a per­sonal level. From life to art to soci­ol­ogy, we would always stray onto a wide vari­ety of other top­ics. Perhaps I found the human mind to be as fas­ci­nat­ing as he did.

He told me that as much as he’d like to, his ethics wouldn’t allow him to do so. I brought up the option of going to some­one else for ther­apy, so that we could be friends, but after a bit of con­sid­er­a­tion, I didn’t like that option either, because I really enjoyed work­ing with him. On top of that, as he explained, he would be avail­able to me if I ever required his ser­vices in the future. I won’t lie and say that it didn’t make me very sad, but I under­stood and respected his reasons.

So after my last ses­sion, we shook hands, and he said “I’ll see you when I see you. Take care”.

And he meant it.

  1. Caffeine, along with many other things, used to trig­ger anx­i­ety attacks in me. [↑]
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June 6, 2008

My Relationship with Frederic and Misun

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I con­nect with Frédéric and Misun in two very dif­fer­ent ways.

With Frédéric, we relate through our emo­tions, our drive, and the need to express our­selves. We also have a ten­dency to feel like out­siders, per­haps because we’re often judged or mis­un­der­stood. In this way we com­fort each other, because it’s as if we feel less odd or alone.

Misun, on the other hand, is like my big sis­ter. She cares about me, takes an inter­est in what I do, and gives me advice the way I imag­ine a sib­ling does. I can share my inse­cu­ri­ties, my dreams, my feel­ings with her, as if I’ve known her my entire life.

Together, they encour­age and sup­port me, although never to the point of flat­tery. In this way, I know that I can trust them to be hon­est; some­thing increas­ingly rare nowa­days, as peo­ple hide behind smiles and empty words. When I’m with them, I feel like I’m wholly under­stood and accepted.

I always leave their house with a tremen­dous sense of hope, because they believe in me the way no one else ever has.

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