Monthly Archives: October 2002

It Was Beautifully Dark, Cold, And Wet When I Went Outside Today

It remind­ed me of home, when I would walk back from Ashley’s house on the shin­ing pave­ment.

I got 14 hours of sleep today, and I still feel a lit­tle drowsy. My exhaus­tion must be catch­ing up to me.

I fig­ured out that I have four mid-terms and three assign­ments due next week. I real­ly should be work­ing hard­er. I got today off both work and school, since it’s a school hol­i­day, and I made up my work hours on Tuesday. I was only able to fin­ish one assign­ment today, since I gen­er­al­ly just felt lack­adaisi­cal.

It’s amaz­ing to find out what peo­ple blame for their mis­for­tunes. The lat­est sniper killings have the Washington Post going on about how the deaths are com­put­er game relat­ed, the con­nec­tion between “I am god” to “god mode” in games. I wish peo­ple would under­stand that any­thing can cause some­one to mur­der, and that it’s not pop­u­lar cul­ture that sim­ply leads some­one to take a life, it’s most like­ly a men­tal heatlh issue that devel­ops with­out rela­tion to a game. Popular cul­ture may pro­vide an idea for a method of mur­der, but the idea that a game can spark some­ones will­ing­ness to kill seems com­plete­ly ridicu­lous to me.

The Big Brothers Test

I had an intense inter­view with my Big Brother case­work­er, Stephanie, today. It last­ed for three hours, and the ques­tions ranged from whether I had firearms in my apart­ment, to what my rela­tion­ship with my par­ents is like, to what I dis­like about peo­ple. It’s quite a long process, and can­di­dates are very strin­gent­ly cho­sen. I first had to fill out an appli­ca­tion form, fill out a police report form, and give them three ref­er­ences. They then send my ref­er­ences a ques­tion­naire each, then inter­view me. They also need to inter­view Pita, to make sure that my apart­ment is a suit­able envi­ron­ment for a lit­tle broth­er to spend time in. Stephanie told me that they have to reject quite a few can­di­dates, based on the grounds of imma­tu­ri­ty, improp­er lifestyle, or even health issues, for exam­ple. After all, both the orga­ni­za­tion and the big broth­er are respon­si­ble for the safe­ty of the child.

It’s odd that this will be such a test of my respon­si­bil­i­ty. I always believed that I would be the one to dic­tate what I was ready for. After all, after months of con­sid­er­a­tion, I did decid­ed to adopt a cat, even when I held back while peo­ple were encour­ag­ing me to. I don’t believe that there would be any oth­er rea­son for being declined as a can­di­date. My suit­abil­i­ty as a big broth­er will be deter­mined by a board of peo­ple, and it will be the great­est test of my matu­ri­ty to date. It will be quite objec­tive, of course, since I have no part in the deci­sion mak­ing.

So why am I not ner­vous? Could it be that I am final­ly gain­ing some con­fi­dence? I did ad-lib the inter­view, and I feel that I answered the ques­tions very well. Perhaps I sim­ply real­ize that I answered every­thing to the best of my abil­i­ty, and that I can’t change the out­come when it arrives. Or sim­ply that, although this would be a great expe­ri­ence for me, it’s not the end of the world if it does­n’t work out.

I think I can opt for all three.

Good Games, Black And White, Safe, Dolly

I feel exhaust­ed even though I got about five hours of sleep. I stayed up play­ing Warcraft 3 last night, and end­ed on a great note, cause Darren and I were able to defeat two mem­bers of clan n1, of which both mem­bers have win-loss ratios of about 90%. It end­ed their 26 game win­ning streak.

I saw some­thing two days ago that made me wish I car­ried a cam­era on me all the time. I was tak­ing the bus east towards home, when I saw out­side, right next to a bus stop sans the shel­ter, two adorable blond girls who seemed to have set­tled down on a cement curb. They both seemed quite con­tent there, cling­ing to their thin jack­ets against the cool six degree wind. I guessed that they were about 12 or thir­teen years of age, though I was­n’t sure if they were home­less, as they were dressed in a very neu­tral man­ner. The thing that made the sit­u­a­tion seem odd­ly poignant was the fact that one was hold­ing a Chinese rice box open in one hand, with a pair of chop­sticks in the oth­er hand, while the oth­er would point to morsels of food, and would con­se­quent­ly be fed by the steady hand hold­ing the chop­sticks. For some rea­son, it real­ly struck a chord with me, and I wish that I had the abil­i­ty to cap­ture such a del­i­cate moment. I could see it in black and white, not in sepia.

I’m going to watch Safe tonight, with the beau­ti­ful Julianne Moore, and her irre­sistable tit­ian hair.

Dolly is becom­ing more com­fort­able with me, as she’ll some­times crawl under my cov­ers and nes­tle between my ankles. She’s even slept on me a few times. One time I woke up and found her hug­ging my arm. She purrs all the time; when she’s on my lap, when I’m feed­ing her yum­my food, or even when I’m play­ing with her. Glad, I am, to have found such a com­fort­able kit­ty.

The Rules

Aaron told me that he did­n’t think I was spoiled today. I was a bit sur­prised, since even I think I’m spoiled to an extent. I real­ize that I take many of the priv­i­leges I have for grant­ed, but I’m always thank­ful of the finan­cial free­dom that I’ve been giv­en. We seem to be able to talk for hours on end, and it’s worth get­ting in trou­ble at work for it.

One thing that we dis­cussed was the rules about accept­able dat­ing habits. The rules that he fol­lows are dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand. One seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal rule is that you can nev­er date a friend’s sis­ter. It’s hard for me to under­stand some­thing like this, because I’ve nev­er had sib­lings of any kind. I think that the prob­lem would lie in whether a break-up would hap­pen; where would one’s loy­al­ty lie, since you’re so close to both peo­ple? I believe that if both par­ties are mature enough, they will be able to remain friends after some­thing like that should hap­pen. I real­ize that it may not always work out that way, but I believe that the deci­sion of the risk would be up to the friend and the sis­ter.

He also told me that he would nev­er date any of his friends’ ex-girl­friends, and that it was an unspo­ken rule among his friends as well. I guess the rule seems very rigid to me, as I’m sure there should be excep­tions, such as who was at fault, and why they broke up.

There just seem to be so many rules that peo­ple fol­low, good or bad. I know some girls who won’t date guys short­er than them. I can’t even begin to com­pre­hend this; it just seems so amaz­ing­ly shal­low, or per­haps I’m just over­sen­si­tive about my lack of height. I also know Chinese girls who won’t date Chinese guys. The only expla­na­tion I can find for this is that a girl may not like the Chinese cul­ture, so they asso­ciate Chinese guys with this. Yet how can every Chinese guy be com­plete­ly set in the Chinese cul­ture? The expla­na­tion just does­n’t seem to work.

One of my Caucasian ex’s said that she would nev­er date a white guy, because they always seem so shal­low. I was offend­ed because I would­n’t be dat­ing her, had I sim­ply inhab­it­ed pale skin. She real­ized that she was wrong to sim­ply asso­ciate white guys with being shal­low, based on her past expe­ri­ences.

It’s still some­thing that’s hard for me to grasp. Perhaps Chinese girls don’t find the “look” of Chinese guys to be attrac­tive, which is some­thing I could under­stand more. I still believe that one can be attract­ed to any­one though, as long as one keeps an open mind.

An inter­est­ing point that I once dis­cussed with Aaron was whether Caucasian girls found Asian guys attrac­tive the way Caucasian guys find Asian girls attrac­tive. We came to the con­clu­sion that, no, they do not. It lies in the fact that the mon­goloid race has a gen­er­al­ly slim­mer build, some­thing which guys find attrac­tive in girls, but some­thing which girls sure as hell don’t find attrac­tive in guys.

It’s a good thing that I’ve giv­en up for now.

When I Procrastinate

I was able to accom­plish noth­ing school relat­ed today. I’m just too damn tired. Eight and a half hours of work, fol­lowed by three hours of class. I did get a free piz­za out of it though…the infor­mat­ics depart­ment was cel­e­brat­ing a data­base trans­fer, and ordered too much piz­za, so they con­sid­ered that I was a stu­dent and gave me one. Not too shab­by.

I found out that red­heads need 20% more anes­thet­ic than most peo­ple, because they are more sen­si­tive to pain, or less sus­cep­ti­ble to the anes­thet­ic.

I got home and Dolly was just crazy with ener­gy. The poor kit­ty had no one to play with her all day, and she lost her toys — again — so she prob­a­bly slept most of the day. I found one in the coat clos­et, so I played with her as much as I could before I got tired and hun­gry.

I stum­bled across Jenny the Lam’s page today, and was pleas­ant­ly sur­prised. It’s refresh­ing to have entries that aren’t just rants (ha! I’m such a hyp­ocrite), but with some thought behind them as well. I’ve always enjoyed the naked way she seems to express her­self, but she seems to have gained some more depth to her writ­ings. It’s giv­en me much to think about, which is an extreme­ly good thing.