Monthly Archives: April 2003

Essays, Rock Climbing, Etc.

I was­n’t going to write today, but the gen­tle light from the set­ting sun, along with the mild, wind­less chill, has affect­ed me in such a man­ner that I wish only to speak of the bound­less beau­ty that the weath­er can pro­vide. I’m remind­ed of the spring walks home from Ashley’s house, feel­ing the cool air through my hair with the pale orange sky above my head. Pure con­tent­ment.

Progress on my essays has not been going well. I have spent the last half week on geol­o­gy, and still have less than two pages done. I wish the ter­mi­nol­o­gy was­n’t so mar­ket based. Fuck.

I was able to go rock climb­ing for a sec­ond time with Trolley, Cristina, Aaron, Wheaties, Nick, Greg, Amanda, and Simon. It was great to have so many peo­ple go at once, so that we could just won­der around and see how oth­er peo­ple were doing. I was able to scale three more walls that I was­n’t able to last time, which were all 5.6’s. The tips of my fin­gers were raw at the end from belay­ing so much. My fore­arm strength is cur­rent­ly the first thing to give, so I was­n’t very sore the next day. We head­ed out to Perkins after and pigged out on good food. What a great fuck­ing time.

I was able to ask Simon about his tongue stud, and he told me that out of all the pierc­ings he’s had (ears and eye­brow), the tongue was the least painful by far, due to the fact that the nerve end­ings are all on the sur­face of the tongue. Once the spike goes through the tongue, noth­ing is felt after­wards. New infor­ma­tion that I’ll have to con­sid­er.

Tuesday. Brideshead Revisited. Jeremy Irons is one sexy, sexy man.

Dolores has been extra cud­dly these last few days, and I’ve been wok­en up by her turn­ing a few times, before nestling on my legs or stom­ach. I feel bad that I feel so con­strict­ed every time she set­tles down, caus­ing me to toss and turn. It’s as if itch­es only come once a cat has found a pil­low in your lap.

Graphics Presentation, Powermate, Etc.

So…

I just fin­ished my graph­ics pre­sen­ta­tion. I pre­sent­ed to a group of nosy peo­ple in the class, instead of only my prof and TA’s. The peo­ple who watched were quite amazed, it seemed, at what I was able to accom­plish on my own. It made my proud that I was able to write the code from scratch in two days. I admit that I had one of the more inter­est­ing ideas out of the class, being dynam­ic as well as math­e­mat­i­cal­ly stim­u­lat­ing, as opposed to some of the sta­t­ic ani­ma­tions or cheap games that oth­er projects con­sist­ed of. I think I had one of the less­er ambi­tious ideas though, since mak­ing a game look nice would be much hard­er than a sim­ple sim­u­la­tion such as the game of life. The TA’s con­grat­u­lat­ed me after­wards, and the prof, who’s infa­mous for being so soft-spo­ken that peo­ple mis­take him as com­ing out of a funer­al, actu­al­ly clapped at the end. It made me fair­ly proud of my pre­sen­ta­tion, although the praise of Charity, the res­i­dent CS eye can­dy in a fac­ul­ty of the aes­thet­i­cal­ly chal­lenged, made me even more con­tent. It’s as if phys­i­cal attrac­tive­ness gives some­ones opin­ion even more weight. What can I say, I’m a suck­er for a pret­ty face.

A Griffin Powermate is glow­ing seduc­tive­ly next to my key­board, a pur­chase I made over the week­end. I’m cur­rent­ly using it as a vol­ume knob, and I have yet to set it as a zoom func­tion for Photoshop, Acrobat, Word, or Ghostscript view­er. It’s so sexy that I almost put it down my pants.

After hav­ing one of the best brands of Hong Kong milk tea for a few months, I’ve switched back to the leaves pro­vid­ed to me by the med­i­cine shop in Chinatown. I can taste a very dis­tinct dif­fer­ence now; the lat­ter seems to have a more fruity, earthy taste to it, and a weak­er body.

I believe that I have a place for the next year. Nick and I went to look at the apart­ment com­plex across from mine, and we were extreme­ly impressed. It’s 200 square feet big­ger than the one I’m cur­rent­ly in, yet $50 cheap­er. I will even have my own bath­room. It lacks a bal­cony, but a bal­cony is some­thing I’m will­ing to sac­ri­fice for a larg­er liv­ing room. We have the arrange­ments made, and we will try to sign some­thing on Wednesday, to reserve an apart­ment on the pent­house for July. I’m a lit­tle wor­ried that there may be some prob­lems that only pop up after inhab­it­ing the same liv­ing space, but I’m sure that it will be noth­ing I can’t deal with. I can’t even imag­ine leav­ing this city now, because of all the great friends I have here.

I should be receiv­ing a $1500 tax return with the next two weeks. No plans have been made yet.

I Need To Tell You

I won­der if I come off as a per­son with emo­tion­al bag­gage. One of the (very few) things that I pride myself in is my “self-aware­ness”, the abil­i­ty to see myself objec­tive­ly, but this is a char­ac­ter­is­tic that I am unable to deter­mine with­in myself. Has my past made me a per­son of fright­en­ing, unper­son­able dis­po­si­tion? Do peo­ple think of me as some­one with deep root­ed emo­tion­al issues?

I won­der if my his­to­ry even mat­ters to oth­ers. I real­ize that it’s when I let my his­to­ry inter­fere with or affect my rela­tion­ships that it becomes a prob­lem. I’m afraid, how­ev­er, that I let things become affect­ed more than I’d like, more than I under­stand.

The past is some­thing that I rec­og­nize as being sig­nif­i­cant, and I try to keep it only as that. It is some­thing that I learn from, some­thing which can affect me and my deci­sions today, but not some­thing that I should present­ly be deal­ing with.

So, is it?

Well, I’m not com­plete­ly sure. On a night like tonight, when the mid­night sky burns bright enough to illu­mi­nate my room, I can’t help but feel unheard, unheard in some­thing I wish to express. What becomes this need to be under­stood?

It’s a voice I wish to have, to bring me clo­sure, to let me be free.

It has tak­en me three hours to write this final thought, along with the resur­fac­ing of many dis­tract­ing mem­o­ries. Things still feel unre­solved, of course, but I have suf­fi­cient­ly quelled my mood until there is a more appro­pri­ate time to express myself.

When I see you again, you will under­stand what I’ve become, and what you’ve done to make me this way.

Event Horizon

I was talk­ing to Eugene, or Yoog as I used to call him, the oth­er day after hav­ing no con­tact with him for over a decade. It was good to rem­i­nisce about the good times we had so long ago, me going to Australia for the first time to meet a friend of my moth­ers’, and him com­ing to vis­it from Australia, to stay with me.

It was odd to hear that I affect­ed his deci­sion to shift the focus of his card col­lec­tion to base­ball, as odd as it was to find out that one of my ex’s would scream my name in her mind while mas­tur­bat­ing.

I’m sur­prised, aston­ished, at how much influ­ence I could ever have on any­one. I still can’t believe it, since a card col­lec­tion can be such a sig­nif­i­cant part of a young boys life, and unat­trac­tive Chinese guys aren’t gen­er­al­ly the object of any­ones’ fan­ta­sy.

The more I think about it though, the more I real­ize all the lit­tle things that I’ve done to affect peo­ple, whether it’s some­one’s choice of uni­ver­si­ty (which, I feel, is no small deci­sion), or how I could ever bring some­one to tears.

I’ve felt like my life has been so worth­less for so long that I’ve been blind­ed to the part I’ve played in the life of oth­ers. It’s only with this new infor­ma­tion, this cat­a­lyst, that I’m able to begin to real­ize that I’m not so worth­less after all.

There have always been peo­ple whom I admire and respect. It’s only these peo­ple who real­ly have an affect on me. After all, hear­ing hurt­ful words from a per­son you look up to is much worse than from some­one you don’t have any respect for. I’ll always won­der if it’s respect which allowed me to have influ­ence on oth­ers, or whether there was some oth­er rea­son, such as love or friend­ship.

And per­haps, with time, there will be more.

The Sex Lounger, CHUO FM, E.S. Posthumus

The weath­er has been beau­ti­ful late­ly. I’ve always found the brisk­ness of ear­ly spring to be inde­fin­ably nos­tal­gic. The grey pave­ment seems to be fresh­ly laid, from the absent snow which so recent­ly cov­ered it. The yel­low grass, the cloud­less skies, it all seems to be such a poignant sign of the change in sea­son.

I was sit­ting on Trolley’s sex lounger yes­ter­day in his hot apart­ment, and I felt a slight draft com­ing from his win­dow. Trolley’s apart­ment always seems toasty to me, so it was refresh­ing to feel a breeze from the out­side. It remind­ed me of this great quote from Moby Dick:

Nothing exists in itself. If you flat­ter your­self that you are all over com­fort­able, and have been so a long time, then you can­not be said to be com­fort­able any more. But if, like Queequeg and me in the bed, the tip of your nose or the crown of your head be slight­ly chilled, why then, indeed in the gen­er­al con­scious­ness you feel most delight­ful­ly and unmis­tak­ably warm. For this rea­son a sleep­ing apart­ment should nev­er be fur­nished with a fire, which is one of the lux­u­ri­ous dis­com­forts of the rich. For the height of this sort of deli­cious­ness is to have noth­ing but the blan­ket between you and your snug­ness and the cold of the out­er air.

I hap­pened to tune into CHUO FM on Sunday at around 11:30 pm when I was test­ing my alarm clock, and I was fas­ci­nat­ed at what I heard. I gen­er­al­ly don’t like the radio at all, but this pro­gramme had me hooked. A male voice, appar­ent­ly a co-host, whose host had not showed up, had the show to him­self for the hour. The pro­gramme was ter­ri­ble. This per­son had a decent radio voice, but the things he was talk­ing about, the tricks he used to avoid dead air, every­thing he did made the show inter­est­ing­ly bad. I had to lis­ten until the end, because of how rarely I expe­ri­ence some­thing so poor­ly done, yet so pub­lic at the same time.

I was lucky enough to dis­cov­er a group called E.S. Posthumus, and there does­n’t seem to be an offi­cial web­site, or any web­site for that mat­ter, in which I can find out more infor­ma­tion. They seem to be doing well, with songs on sound­tracks like Spiderman, Minority Report, and Unfaithful. One of my cur­rent favourites is Tikal. I rec­om­mend­ed them to Jeff and Nick, since I remem­ber how Jeff was get­ting into the instru­men­tal stuff right now. He told me that he had a four tier sys­tem of know­ing whether to keep a song. I should prob­a­bly try doing that, since I cur­rent­ly have over a gig of songs I haven’t decid­ed whether to keep or not.