is this it

I learned that the mea­sure of a man is his abil­ity to stir-fry bok choi hearts.

That High Fidelity is the new (500) Days of Summer.

That it’s nice to be needed.

That I still won­der if I’m forgotten.

That it’s not so much that I don’t have any­thing to write about, but noth­ing ever seems impor­tant enough to put down on paper nowadays.

That I say oh my god a lot.

That food poi­son­ing is like a lax­a­tive for both ends.

That I’m allowed to miss her.

That it’s okay to think oth­ers are cute too.

That I’m doing the whole Swingers thing with Lisa, where she’s try­ing to con­vince me I’m a big fuck­ing bear.

That I can’t read signals.

That it doesn’t mat­ter whether or not you’re invited, as long as you’re happy where you are.

Jealous Jeffrey

It’s the first day we haven’t talked, some­thing nei­ther of us expected until some time next month. I think an ounce of Jäger will serve as com­pany instead, and maybe a diges­tif for the healthy salmon (who must have swam 100000km before being caught) that was thanked for din­ner. It burns the stom­ach and the throat, but doesn’t keep me warm.

Sometimes, she teases by call­ing me Jealous Jeffrey. It’s likely she’s gone to bed cause she has to get up early tomor­row, fallen asleep after a pil­sner she grabbed from work. But the mind wan­ders, and I think of her at a Sigma Nu party, being hit on by some frat boy with a popped col­lar and a striped wrist­band around his forearm.

I never worry though, not cause I know she’s mine, but because she does.

Lover/Dreamer

(+5 bonus points if you get the album reference.)

Thumbnail: Heart in the window

I really do have love to give! I just don’t know where to put it!

—Quiz Kid Donnie Smith, Magnolia

Okay, I’ll admit it.

I need to love. I need it, the way I need to eat.

This is the same part of me that notices the faint out­lines of hearts drawn in car win­dows. Also, the same part that mar­vels about that ado­les­cent point in life, when one would draw some­thing so sim­ple and insignif­i­cant because the only worry was whether or not some­one liked you back.

So when I don’t have some­one to love, it fuck­ing kills me.

No One Gets My Humour

Sometimes, my sar­cas­tic humour is so dry and sub­tle that peo­ple who don’t know me very well think I’m being seri­ous. I try to say things that are so ridicu­lous they can only be taken as a joke, but it doesn’t always work. Example:

Yesterday, Jairus made pulled pork sand­wiches (took him 8 hours!) that smelled soooo good they made me hun­gry, even though I had just eaten a huge din­ner. As we were watch­ing A Jihad For Love (about the coex­is­tence of homo­sex­u­al­ity and Islam), Jesse said, “Too bad these Muslims wouldn’t be able to enjoy this deli­cious pulled pork sand­wich”. I said, “Oh, cause it’s pulled”, in a tone like I had just real­ized some­thing, but what I thought was a jok­ing man­ner. Everyone turned their heads at me, Ian said, “Cause it’s pork, yeah”, and he lin­gered on that yeah really slowly, like he was embar­rassed for me, then every­one turned back to the TV. I’m pretty sure they all think I’m an idiot now, and that I thought Muslims have some­thing against ani­mals when they’re slow-cooked in vine­gar sauce.

Pretentious with a Dash of Random

Hi, how’s it going.

When talk­ing about hair­cuts, I always say, “My styl­ist”. As soon as this comes out of my mouth, I won­der if this makes me sound snooty and pre­ten­tious. Most peo­ple seem to say, “hair­dresser”, which I imag­ine is the same thing, with the for­mer being a way to charge an extra $15–30 for a hair­cut. But the only rea­son why I say “styl­ist” is because that’s what the recep­tion­ists say (“…and what styl­ist would you like?”) when book­ing appoint­ments. But styl­ists are so dif­fer­ent from bar­bers, in my expe­ri­ence. And my styl­ist has gone for courses in the US, so I’m think­ing this actu­ally gives him the title.

I also say “cha­cun à son goût” when the phrase is appro­pri­ate. I won­der if this makes me sound pre­ten­tious too. The only rea­son why I say that instead of “each to his own taste” is because I learned the expres­sion first in grade 8 French class. There was a pic­ture of King Henry say­ing, “cha­cun a MON gout!”, as if he was famous for being in demand­ing king. Ever since, I relate the phrase to the French. Sometimes, I imag­ine I’m in late Imperial Russia, when French was con­sid­ered the hall­mark of a civ­i­lized soci­ety, so peo­ple threw in French phrases to impress peo­ple or fit in. I imag­ine myself say­ing, “Ho ho, mon cher, je méprise les femmes pour ne pas les aimer car autrement la vie serait un mélo­drame trop ridicule”, while throw­ing my head back with dainty laugh.

Sometimes my nights are spent like this:
Night spent

My favourite pas­time at the moment is play­ing Flight Control while lis­ten­ing to music. I have a sort of run­ning com­pe­ti­tion going with Pat (high score 99) and John (high score 67). So far I’ve been able to best their scores at 292, but now I’m try­ing to pad the vic­tory even more, because Pat and John have as much of a healthy com­pet­i­tive streak as I do, and actu­ally spend some extra effort try­ing to beat each other. So some­times I’ll just sit down and put some music on and play. I’ve also tried cook­ing while play­ing, but my foods ends up get­ting burnt. There has also been some stand-up com­edy lis­ten­ing while I play, but laugh­ter always gets in the way of fine motor controls.

When I was younger, my par­ents owned a con­ve­nience store. It got held up a cou­ple of times, late at night when my dad was work­ing. He never talked about it, not because it was shock­ing, but because he didn’t care. Sometimes, I won­der how my dad felt with a gun pointed at him. One time they caught the three or four guys involved in one hold-up, and my dad had to go to court to tes­tify. Somehow my dad han­dled it, but going through all of this would prob­a­bly freak me out.

Sexual Secret

Secrets aren’t so bad
We’re too young to feel safe
I don’t deserve all this now
Don’t want to feel I’ve made mistakes

I want to tell you every­thing
I want to tell you every­thing
But if I tell you every­thing
What we can build won’t mean a thing

Secret’s Aren’t So Bad, Magneta Lane

There’s this thing, this sex­ual thing I like. I mean really like. It’s not exactly deviant, but cer­tainly some­thing that some girls may find gross or unappealing.

Even though it’s such a big deal to me, I never told any of my girl­friends about it. Only one of them liked it, and even she didn’t know how impor­tant it was to me, because it was some­thing she wanted from me.

I know most of my girl­friends would have prob­a­bly indulged me (at least once in a while) if I told them, but I never did. Not because it’s embar­rass­ing, but because I never wanted any of them to feel obliged or pres­sured into doing it. I always think that one day, I’ll tell the right per­son because she’ll ask me what I like, and she’ll do it for me because she loves me. None of them have, yet, maybe because it’s never got­ten bor­ing in the bedroom.

So for now, it remains this lit­tle secret I keep, because secrets aren’t so bad. They can be lit­tle gems that bring peo­ple closer together. So why reveal them all so soon?

Surrounding Myself With Great People

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­ally involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting value in mate­r­ial things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too competitive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because other peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

Boxer Briefs

Boxer briefs

She bought me these boxer briefs. Calvin Klein, body cut, light­weight cot­ton construction.

Until then, all the under­wear I had were plaid XS box­ers from The Gap that I could only find online, or XXL from Gap Kids, dec­o­rated with rock­ets, and bas­ket­balls, and skiers. I didn’t think she’d find any­thing else that would work on my small frame.

So this is my first pair of boxer briefs, and they fit. My sexy under­wear, she would call them. I guess it’s hard to find my other under­wear sexy when it’s meant for those 7–14.

Blending In As A Local

When I tell the taxi dri­vers here the name of the street I want to go to (pro­nounced from mem­ory because the names are too com­pli­cated to under­stand), they don’t always know how to get there. That’s why I always have the name of a pop­u­lar land­mark in close prox­im­ity mem­o­rized, and when I men­tion this, it usu­ally gets me where I want to go. Sometimes I get a part-time cab­bie though, who doesn’t even know where this land­mark is. That’s when they ask me how to get there, or what else is around, or if it’s close to such-and-such-a-place adja­cent to such-and-such-a-street. Somehow, they assume that I’m a local.

Which is odd, because I know I have an English accent when I speak Chinese, so I assume most peo­ple can tell I’m not from around here. When I was here five years ago, most peo­ple said they knew I wasn’t from Hong Kong before I even opened my mouth. Something about the way I looked or dressed or acted.

Guess I’m fool­ing some­one now.

The Usual Comments And Questions

Pretty much every­one I’ve met so far has said one or more of the fol­low­ing things to me:

You have a lot of white hair. They see it mainly in the sides of my head, where it’s shorter and more obvi­ous. It seems like most peo­ple in my fam­ily dye their hair black, so my grey stands out, even though I’m youngest.

Are you dat­ing any­one? This is usu­ally fol­lowed by, “Are there any girls are after you?”, which is a sort of way of fig­ur­ing out if you want to date, or just don’t have the option.

Is your Tai Chi teacher white? Except instead of white, it’s “guai” or “ghost”. This is the only ques­tion I resent, because I feel like I have to defend the fact that he’s a com­pe­tent teacher, even though he’s a “foreigner”.

You’re a hand­some boy. The word for hand­some in Chinese — “leng” — is the same word for pretty when applied to girls. This one is good. I like this one. More peo­ple need to say this to me.

Aren’t you cold? It’s get­ting very hot and some­what muggy, so I’m wear­ing as lit­tle cloth­ing as pos­si­ble. This is in con­trast to every­one else, who are still wear­ing scarves and coats.

Do your tat­toos come off? Although the lit­eral trans­la­tion is more like “Do your tat­toos wipe off?”. Many peo­ple here don’t know how tat­toos work, which is under­stand­able, since they’re so uncom­mon. Related to this is, “Did you draw it your­self?”. This ques­tion sur­prises me, because the char­ac­ter was drawn by arguably the most famous Chinese cal­lig­ra­pher, Yan Zhenqing, and is so beau­ti­ful and per­fect and far beyond some­thing that I could have done myself.

Replacement Pillow

I sleep with three dif­fer­ent pillows.

The one for my head is reg­u­lar sized, with foam fill­ing, and rather flat because I like to sleep with my arm under there. The one on my left is also foam, but a body pil­low. The one on my right is king-sized and filled with down. I like to sleep on my side pressed between the two, and through the night, I’ll alter­nate between sides, hug­ging one.

When she comes over, she takes the king-sized one. My head pil­low is too flat, and obvi­ously my body pil­low is too big.

So I lose my king-sized, and she becomes my replace­ment pillow.

Protected: Revealing Underwear

This post is pass­word pro­tected. To view it please enter your pass­word below:


The Measure of a Man

I’m still not sure if I feel like a man.

I always imag­ined that it’s a mind­set you sud­denly develop (or a way peo­ple view you) once you have kids, or pass 30, whichever one comes first. There’s this idea stuck in my head that adults are these peo­ple who don’t have fun. They don’t watch (and enjoy) stu­pid movies, or play Warcraft, or talk on the phone for hours. It’s prob­a­bly from grow­ing up with my par­ents, who never did any­thing that made them laugh or smile. Or maybe I’m hav­ing too much fun and free­dom to really feel like I’m grown-up.

There was def­i­nitely some point between get­ting my first job and house, and now, that I started to feel like an adult. It was never a dis­tinct line though.

It’s still for­eign for me to say that I date women, as opposed to girls. To think I’ll ever grow out of say­ing that is very strange.

For now, the only thing I do that makes me feel like I’m a man is when I’m pay­ing and fil­ing my bills.

Walk It Off

Sometimes, I have to get out, even when it feels like it’s 40°C out­side, because I need my music loud, and I need to fuck­ing strut, and the birds clear the way cause they know it’s seri­ous, cause the pic­tures are fuck­ing killing me, so I’ll just keep skip­ping songs until it hits me then I’ll CRANK IT until it hurts, walk­ing it off like it’s nobody’s busi­ness, danc­ing inside to the bass pound­ing in my ears.

I Wanna Be A Trailer Park Boy

Trailer park us

Cause Trailer Park Boys never give up.

Cause Trailer Park Boys aren’t stuck in the rat race.

Cause Trailer Park Boys smoke weed, drink, and eat cheese­burg­ers all day.

Cause Trailer Park Boys love kit­ties as much as I do.

Cause Trailer Park Boys always dream, hope, believe in some­thing better.