Monthly Archives: October 2003

Ah Mui

I had no idea what I was going to name this entry until I saw Shaolin Soccer again.

I’ve dis­cussed weak­ness in the past, and how it is frus­trat­ing to be a “weak per­son”. Now I real­ize that I’ve con­fused weak­ness with accep­tance, that accep­tance is not a sign of weak­ness but of strength.

It’s not easy to accept some­thing that is imposed. Sometimes it is all that can be done and one must allow a cer­tain dis­com­fort involved to be present. Sometimes accept­ing is the best solu­tion, even though one may not like it. However, it’s easy to be a weak per­son. It’s easy to give in, easy to let things go. The dif­fer­ence lies in how much of our­selves we give up and how much we’re will­ing to give up, and being able to dis­tin­guish the two becomes a task based on expe­ri­ence and the peo­ple involved.

I believe that I’ve been both weak and accept­ing in the past. Both are still pos­si­ble, although I think that I’m more accept­ing now due to an increase in con­fi­dence.

Being able to dis­tin­guish the two in myself has become ever hard­er.

I'll Take The Win

I final­ly beat Pat at table ten­nis, although he was run­ning on fif­teen hours of sleep over the last three days due to four midterms. I real­ized that I was let­ting him play offen­sive­ly when I was adapt­ing to his game, instead of play­ing more aggres­sive than him, forc­ing him to be defen­sive which is his weak point. It’s tricky play­ing him because he uses a strong and pow­er­ful fore­hand grip that lim­its his back­hand capa­bil­i­ties, but plays most­ly off his back­hand. I end up hav­ing to adapt to his unique shots every time I face him. I can feel myself improv­ing, espe­cial­ly the con­sis­ten­cy and spin of my serves, which is always a good thing.

Worthy Exchange

This was not what I meant to talk about tonight.

There are too many…frustrating peo­ple to deal with late­ly. So many things piss me off, man­i­fest­ed in so many dif­fer­ent ways through dif­fer­ent per­son­al­i­ties. I’ve nev­er real­ly liked peo­ple in gen­er­al, which has usu­al­ly made it hard for me to make friends, although this has caused any actu­al friend­ships to be rather sol­id. I’m start­ing to believe that “hate” isn’t too strong a word. Even though I feel like I’ve been able to come a long way in my tol­er­ance of oth­ers and of the human race in gen­er­al, there are still times when I feel like putting an axe through some­one’s head.

Everywhere I go in every­thing I do, I run into at least one per­son I can’t stand. I can’t begin to explain myself, because every time I try I get flus­tered. Even at the table ten­nis club, when all I want to do is for­get every­thing and focus on a sin­gle goal, I run into annoy­ing, cocky, social rejects. Even when I sim­ply try to relax and hang out with my friends, there are peo­ple there who just seem cre­at­ed to rub me the wrong way.

It’s all made me appre­ci­ate the friend­ships I do have. Even when I think of all the vex­ing sit­u­a­tions peo­ple put me in, I feel I have lit­tle to com­plain about. My clos­est friends com­plete­ly make up for the fuck­ing idiots I have to deal with all the time.

Sometimes, that’s just hard to keep in mind.