Monthly Archives: November 2002

Inspiration Comes From Anywhere

I was­n’t real­ly plan­ning on writ­ing any­thing today, but I sud­den­ly have an urge to express myself.

Dina gave me a bot­tle of Godet, and a Russian nov­el for my birth­day. She was the only per­son not relat­ed to me to buy me some­thing. It made me hap­py. Pita asked me why I’ve changed in my opin­ion of birth­days. I explained to him that it has­n’t; I just hate it when peo­ple feel forced to buy me some­thing, which is exact­ly what hap­pens when you live in res­i­dence. I’m at a com­fort­able point now where no one feels forced to get me some­thing, they can just do it if they please. I don’t real­ly rec­og­nize the birth­day tra­di­tion any­way. I’ve always believed that one should give a gift when one wants, not at a set time every year.

A New Mattress, A Dancing Competition, A Bottle Of Ice Wine

I should be get­ting a new mat­tress this Saturday, as my cur­rent one has all the sup­port worn out of all of it, under­stand­ably so, since it hap­pens to be old­er than me.

I went to watch Pita com­pete yes­ter­day, and he won a gold, sil­ver, and bronze medal in the rounds that he com­pet­ed in. They don’t real­ly mean any­thing, since the rounds did­n’t real­ly have too much com­pe­ti­tion. He did­n’t even plan on enter­ing the round where he won the sil­ver medal; he just signed up for it about an hour before it hap­pened, and did an impro­vised rou­tine.

I clicked with a guy who was very dif­fer­ent from me yes­ter­day. It’s odd, because it hap­pens so rarely, espe­cial­ly with peo­ple whom I can’t relate to. It was com­fort­able, since we could just joke around and talk with­out hav­ing to know much about each oth­er.

I have about two more assign­ments, one more test, an essay, and I should be done until exams. There’s going to be a LAN par­ty in the mid­dle of my exams too, so it’ll be a break. I need to prac­tice my Counterstrike, Warcraft 3, and my UT2K3.

Pita and I decid­ed that yes­ter­day was the right time to open up the bot­tle of Ice Wine & Brandy that he had been sav­ing for months. It was $40 for 375ml, which just filled two wine glass­es. It was bet­ter than any oth­er ice wine I’ve tried, most like­ly because of the brandy, which gave it a more rich taste, but numbed my sense of taste more quick­ly. So we had his wine, with my chick­en and rice, and some­how got drunk before we real­ized. This sur­prised us, since we nor­mal­ly drink much more than one sim­ple glass. We end­ed up falling asleep right after­wards, instead of play­ing a few hours of Warcraft 3.

I Lost My Job And My Grandma Died

Well, things just can’t get any bet­ter.

Yesterday I found out that my con­tract, which expires in December, will most like­ly not be renewed. This could mean that I will be out of a job when I grad­u­ate, since my posi­tion will be filled by a full-time employ­ee. If things get busier at the office, then I might be asked to come back again. Until then, I might not know. The avail­abil­i­ty of a full-time posi­tion will not be known until next years bud­get­ing comes around, which is usu­al­ly around March.

This after­noon, I also found out that my grand­moth­er passed away. I did­n’t find out any of the details, which is one of the few times that I’m glad of my igno­rance. It sad­dens me that I did­n’t get to see her one last time, to show her that I cared about her, the next oppor­tu­ni­ty being with­in a months time. Yet she did­n’t last the wait, and my chance, twice pass­ing, has been missed. My par­ents will be attend­ing the cer­e­monies by fly­ing to Hong Kong on Tuesday. I haven’t cried yet, and I prob­a­bly won’t.

And appar­ent­ly, accord­ing to some Chinese tra­di­tion, the death of a loved one means that one can­not vis­it any oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers with­in 49 days of the death. Which means that I won’t be able to go to Hong Kong for Christmas vaca­tion, some­thing which I’ve been look­ing for­ward to with unspeak­able plea­sure. The tra­di­tion is not some­thing that I would gen­er­al­ly hon­our, giv­en the cir­cum­stances, but since it is impor­tant to my oth­er grand­moth­er, I eas­i­ly, sto­ical­ly abide by the rules of the funer­al cer­e­mo­ny.

I will miss the Christmas lights and spir­it, the cool­er, more tol­er­a­ble weath­er. I will miss my chance to pur­chase a much need­ed leather jack­et, to buy presents for my friends, to do some much need­ed relax­ation.

But what can I do? Feel sor­ry for myself? I believe that this is the worst string of news I’ve ever had. There just does­n’t seem to be any act I can accom­plish to make this pain go away, except for talk­ing about it. So many things have fall­en apart with­in the last 24 hours, so many things being changed. There just does­n’t seem to be much to live for right now, since I gen­er­al­ly tend to sim­ply live day-to-day.

A part of me wish­es that some­one tru­ly cared. A part of me wish­es that I felt much, much worse. A part of me wish­es that some­one could under­stand what is going through my mind. Most of me wish­es that some­one would help make the pain go away.

It’s hard for me to under­stand what I should be think­ing or feel­ing right now. Everything just seems so numb. I guess things have just come so sud­den­ly, and caught me by sur­prise.

I’m real­ly at a loss for words.

Sometimes I'm So Tired That I Pass Out

Somehow, I did man­age to fall asleep in class today, and it was great. I felt much bet­ter the rest of the day.

I’ve been rack­ing my brain over a ques­tion on one of my assign­ments. I haven’t worked this hard on one ques­tion the whole term, but I did man­age to solve the prob­lem. I even­tu­al­ly had to e‑mail my prof to get some help, and she was extreme­ly help­ful.

I final­ly watched through the end of Safe. Parts of it made me very angry. Parts of it made me feel very sick. There was a great lack of emo­tion in the film. I felt as if it was sup­posed to come from the audi­ence. When some char­ac­ters did become emo­tion­al, it was very inter­est­ing. It’s not real­ly my choice of sub­ject mat­ter, but I found it to be a movie which was well put togeth­er.

I’m pleased with the way my sto­ry came out on Sunday. I feel that it por­trays the sit­u­a­tion in a prop­er man­ner, which is the most sig­nif­i­cant part. It always seems as if my best work is acci­den­tal, and that I don’t actu­al­ly have any tal­ent, just some good luck.