Monthly Archives: February 2003

Emotion As Pain, Unproductive Days, More Music

I feel a bit bet­ter today, but not much. Rest is good for clear­ing my cache of emo­tions. Emotion is pain. Ground zero indeed.

I still had a great time last night though. There were 14 peo­ple at one point in my apart­ment yes­ter­day. I did­n’t get as much gam­ing in as I want­ed, but I sup­pose the host is nev­er the one with best time. I also sobered up before the night was half done, which was a lit­tle dis­ap­point­ing. We end­ed up order­ing five piz­zas, and an entire piz­za was left over. Everyone kept telling me how much they liked Dolly, even the peo­ple who gen­er­al­ly don’t like cats, except for Ian since he’s a hard-core cat hater. It was an amaz­ing night which I’ll have to do again.

Yet anoth­er day of absolute­ly no work done. I have many things to do this week, which is wor­ry­ing me, quite the flash­back from last term. I’ll be meet­ing with Aaron and Nick ear­ly in the week to dis­cuss our tech­no­log­i­cal busi­ness ven­ture. On Wednesday I’ll need to meet with my super­vi­sor to dis­cuss the progress of my hon­ours project, but before that hap­pens I’ll need to meet with my part­ner to dis­cuss what we’ve learned. Then I have three mid-terms on Valentine’s day, none of which I’m pre­pared for. Hopefully I’ll be able to pull some­thing off again like last term.

Sometimes I’ll find a song that I enjoy so much that I can put it on repeat with­out get­ting tired of it, although such songs are few and far between. Songs such as Anger Management by Lovage, 96 Quite Bitter Beings by CKY, or Acid Rain by Liquid Tension Experiment. I was lucky enough to dis­cov­er a band called Nevermore recent­ly, and one of their songs, The River Dragon has Come, is anoth­er song that just blows me away. The last time I found a song like this was last September, so I’m extreme­ly pleased with my dis­cov­ery.

The User

There are times when one may be asked for help in life or oth­er sit­u­a­tions.

The per­son request­ing the help is sim­ply look­ing for an aide, and not mak­ing a claim for any­thing in return. If some­one decides to help this per­son, the helper should­n’t be expect­ing any­thing from the helpee. After all, it is the right for the helper to refuse.

The helpee, when ask­ing for assis­tance, gen­er­al­ly makes no claim about repay­ing the helper. They are mak­ing a request at the hope that some­one will not mind, and assume the role of helper. This is opposed to the belief that the helper should get some­thing in return, be it friend­ship, or mon­ey, etc.

Unless it is stat­ed clear­ly that there be an exchange of ser­vices, then the helper is work­ing by his or her will, for “free”. To expect some­thing in return for help, espe­cial­ly from a stranger, is rather naive. I liken the sit­u­a­tion to per­son A ask­ing per­son B to have $1000, and when giv­en, per­son B expect­ing per­son A to be a good friend for hav­ing gen­er­ous­ly donat­ed so much mon­ey.

The mis­take becomes the opti­mistic assump­tion that every­one is nice and will return the favour some­how. Yet per­son A said noth­ing to per­son B about repay­ing them in any way. At the same time, per­son B could have refused, and walked away.

If the helper ever feels used from such a sit­u­a­tion, her or she only has him or her­self to blame. On the oth­er hand, if the helpee agrees to do some­thing in return before the assis­tance is giv­en, but nev­er deliv­ers, the helper has a right to feel used.

The fact is, unless stat­ed, a helpee most like­ly won’t return the favour. It sucks, but it’s true. If the helper makes the assump­tion that the per­son is “good” and will repay, the helper is sim­ply set­ting him or her­self up for dis­ap­point­ment.

It’s the expec­ta­tion of some­thing in return that is sim­ply a fool­ish thing to believe.

So why would one believe it? One can just say no, instead of scorn­ing the helpee, label­ing them as a user when not giv­en some­thing in return.

Perhaps one needs the hope that there are “good” peo­ple in the world to feel bet­ter. Perhaps one has a hard time say­ing “no”. Perhaps one is blind­ed by the guiles of the oppo­site sex. Perhaps one nev­er learns.

Perhaps one should just stop labelling every­one as a user.

The Daily Life And Daily Emotions

Energy from good and bad emo­tions fight­ing for dom­i­nance fills me. Why can’t I just be hap­py or sad? Why can’t you tell me bad news or good news? I’m left feel­ing uncer­tain and doubt­ful.

I got sort of shaft­ed for my cryp­tog­ra­phy project, so I don’t have a group any­more. I might just end up request­ing to do the project alone, instead of with four oth­er peo­ple. I think that I’m men­tal­ly pre­pared to go through with such a huge step, it’s just whether or not I’ll suc­ceed that wor­ries me.

The con­sole par­ty is com­ing up this week-end and I’m get­ting stoked. We might be going out to a club after­wards, or on the Friday instead. The rides don’t seem to be falling togeth­er too well, so some peo­ple may have to be call­ing a taxi to get their TVs over here. I might be rent­ing Timesplitters 2, cause I hear it has some good mul­ti­play­er action.

I think that I real­ized that Joe Millionaire is the sleazi­est real­i­ty TV show to date. Lying to peo­ple, no mat­ter what about, even if it’s play­ing on their super­fi­cial­i­ty or mate­ri­al­ism, is just plain mean. I guess I see it as being sim­i­lar to entrap­ment, which is ille­gal because of the moral impli­ca­tions relat­ed to look­ing for cor­rup­tion. And this show does it for prof­it. Yet I enjoy watch­ing. I think it’s how nice a guy Evan seems to be. At first when I saw the show, I did­n’t think it would work because I believed that the audi­ence would be sat­is­fied with watch­ing the last episode only, the love vs. mon­ey point being the entire premise. But the more I watch, the more I root for Evan, like a broth­er I nev­er had, try­ing to get that date with some cute girl he hap­pened to meet.

The most con­ve­nient Loblaws for me to get to is closed until the fall for restruc­tur­ing. There are actu­al­ly a few oth­er gro­cery stores that are clos­er, but none are as close to the tran­sit­way, so walk­ing to the bus stop with bags in each hand becomes a has­sle. I may end up going to a much small­er one with less vari­ety, or just doing some online gro­cery shop­ping.