Monthly Archives: March 2003

I've Been Busy

I was­n’t able to accom­plish any form of work today, and even though I feel com­plete­ly exhaust­ed, I have noth­ing to show for it. I did man­age to get my graph­ics pro­pos­al approved, how­ev­er, which will be to imple­ment a 3D Game of Life in OpenGL.

I went to Iain’s place yes­ter­day, since Jeff had to can­cel on me due to sick­ness, and we watched Rushmore. The walk home was great; the tem­per­a­ture was beau­ti­ful­ly brisk, and the fad­ing sun­set lin­gered in the dark­ened sky.

It was Pat’s birth­day today, but since I knew before­hand that I would­n’t be able to see him, I gave him a bot­tle of Huge Boss In Motion. I tried some of the oth­er colognes, but none of them seemed to fit him. Most of the brand names are very strong, so I find they don’t match the sub­tle pres­ence of most Asian indi­vid­u­als.

I got my RatpadGS today, and it works amaz­ing­ly well com­pared to my old mouse pad. I had no idea how much I had worn down the sur­face of the old one.

I went to my first NHL hock­ey game last week, and even though I’m a Leafs fan, I still enjoyed root­ing for the home team, watch­ing them win 3–2 in over­time. I’m sur­prised at how much small­er the rink looks com­pared to what it appears to be on TV. I had some great seats, and they only cost me $20.

HK, Fullscreen

I’ve been watch­ing a lot of Chinese movies late­ly. I always find the scenery to be sub­tly poignant, from the den­si­ty of the hous­es, to the con­fine­ment of the liv­ing arrange­ments, to the hom­li­ness of the shops. It makes me miss Hong Kong. It makes me miss see­ing my grand­par­ents. It makes me miss the quaint lifestyle, the diver­si­ty of food, the entire cul­ture.

If I end up going to Hong Kong this year, I hope to be able to tell my grand­moth­er how strong a per­son I see her to be, but I detest my lim­it­ed knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage. I wish that I could express to her in English how much I look up to her. If I had a chance with English, I would feel like I could do the feel­ing jus­tice. I hope she does­n’t hurt my feel­ings. I hope she does­n’t die before I see her next. I won­der who would cry.

I still remem­ber liv­ing with Kenny, hav­ing a great time at his place, play­ing with all sorts of inter­est­ing gad­gets. His par­ents were always good peo­ple, one of the few sets of rel­a­tives I care about.

The feel­ing is almost tange­able. I can close my eyes, and see myself there again, a lost, emo­tion­less, igno­rant boy. I miss the street ven­dors. I miss the smell of my grand­moth­ers house. I miss the bliss.

I real­ize that my feel­ings are prob­a­bly a result of my absolute con­tent­ment when­ev­er I was in Hong Kong. I’ve had some of the best times of my life there, and I remem­ber noth­ing but hap­pi­ness. It seems like I’ve been taint­ed with matu­ri­ty, and I’m try­ing to regain a lost part of my child­hood, the care­free being that is so char­ac­ter­is­tic of young peo­ple.

Tainted.

I like that.

Schoolwork, Pensive State, Scratching Posts, etc.

My cryp­tog­ra­phy midterm was eas­i­er than expect­ed. I was the first to leave, and I was able to answer every ques­tion. Whether I was right or not is a dif­fer­ent sto­ry.

I have only four projects left to do. A cryp­tog­ra­phy pre­sen­ta­tion on mes­sage authen­ti­ca­tion, my hon­ours project on Rubik’s cube time com­plex­i­ty, an essay on gold price fluc­tu­a­tions, and a final OpenGL pre­sen­ta­tion pro­gram. They’re all due one after the oth­er, so I’m try­ing to take one at a time, even though the going is slow.

I went out to sup­port a few friends of Wheaties, in a band called Pensive State yes­ter­day. I did­n’t real­ly feel like going out, but I fig­ured that it would be a good break from being stuck in my apart­ment all day. It was much warmer than expect­ed.

CAt told me about a ver­sion of Autumn Leaves by Eva Cassidy, and I think that it’s my favourite ver­sion so far. Apparently, the song has been com­plete­ly over­done for over half a cen­tu­ry, and I’ve only just heard of it.

Jeff’s com­ing over tonight to catch up a bit.

I’ve been see­ing a lot of use of Moveable Type. I’m not very good with Perl yet, but the code will prob­a­bly be much clean­er than what mine is now, and more mod­u­lar. On every blog I’ve seen, the author keeps one large page of the cur­rent months entries. I much pre­fer to have one entry at a time, so that there can be more depth to my writ­ing with­out flood­ing the page with text. I would also want mul­ti­ple queries from the data­base, so that I can dis­play my rec­om­mend­ed and analy­sis sec­tions at the same time. I’m just not sure if Moveable Type can pull all this off, or whether my host even sup­ports the right script per­mis­sions.

Wheaties, Aaron, and Trolley are all com­ing over on Tuesday for a sort of guys night. We’ll be watch­ing Swingers, and maybe some Basketball.

With dual sisal scratch­ing posts, 3 car­pet­ed loung­ing sur­faces with climb­ing holes, hang­ing sisal toy and stur­dy, wide base? Sweeeeeeeeeeeeet.

The Ivory Box, The Penis in a Jar

The idea of unbal­anced rela­tion­ships was brought to my mind over the week­end. For a rela­tion­ship to work, both par­ties must be sat­is­fied with the rela­tion­ship. If one per­son isn’t hap­py, then the rela­tion­ship is bound to fail, unless work can be done to appease that per­son.

An inter­est­ing idea that aris­es from this is the occur­rence of rela­tion­ships in which both par­ties have dif­fer­ing rea­sons for being togeth­er. For exam­ple, one per­son might like the good time that the oth­er is able to give, while the oth­er per­son might like the intel­li­gence of the first per­son.

I imag­ine that a tro­phy hus­band or wife rela­tion­ship would be like this. One per­son has mon­ey to offer, where­as the oth­er per­son has looks, and both are will­ing to sac­ri­fice for the oth­er.

Even a rela­tion­ship as unbal­anced as this is able to work, as long as both peo­ple are hap­py. And what if one per­son wants one thing from the oth­er that can only be tem­porar­i­ly pro­vid­ed? The rela­tion­ship becomes tem­po­rary itself, although not to both peo­ple.

Yet can such a rela­tion­ship work? That depends on the def­i­n­i­tion of “work”. I don’t think that such a rela­tion­ship can last for long. After all, it is based on the fun­da­men­tals of hedo­nism, to one per­son at least. The oth­er per­son, aware of this or not, will only be left alone in the end.

So, hypo­thet­i­cal­ly, one may look at both cas­es, one case where both par­ties are aware of the tem­po­rary sta­tus, and the oth­er case in which only one mem­ber knows of such sin­is­ter moti­va­tions.

The for­mer can be suc­cess­ful, as both peo­ple have an under­stand­ing of the sit­u­a­tion, although an end­ing of the terms may cause prob­lems such as the end of a friend­ship. The lat­ter, on the oth­er hand, can only lead to pain.

Being con­fused about either can only lead to worse.