Monthly Archives: October 2003

Family From B.C.

My aunt and uncle hap­pened to be in town from B.C. yes­ter­day, so they took me out to din­ner and brought their son along. I don’t believe I had met any of them before, although they all seemed famil­iar. A dif­fi­cul­ty I have with the Chinese cul­ture is the fact that every­one is called aunt or uncle if they’re old­er, even if they’ve just been met. Our actu­al rel­a­tives (the aunts and uncles relat­ed by blood), how­ev­er, have a com­plete­ly dif­fer­ent name sys­tem, most­ly based on rank and which side of the fam­i­ly they are from. The prob­lem ends up being the fact that I have no idea what the names of these peo­ple are, since we don’t append a first name to “aunt” or “uncle”, and I ran into that spe­cif­ic prob­lem yes­ter­day. I was able to go the entire din­ner with­out hav­ing to call any of them by name though, so I escaped with my igno­rance in igno­rance.

The Hidden Kitty

Dolly hides

Dolly has late­ly been sleep­ing under the rugs. Nick and I will think that she’s miss­ing until we see a large lump in the liv­ing room rug. It’s pret­ty frus­trat­ing because every time I straight­en it out, she’ll just dig under­neath it and mess it all up again.

One thing that she’s been doing for a while is sleep­ing on things to mark them. Every time some­one brings a bag or jack­et into my room, the first thing she’ll do is sniff it out then sleep on it, which I per­son­al­ly see as a viable alter­na­tive to uri­na­tion.

Balderdash Englightenment

I’ve late­ly been get­ting into dis­cus­sions where I gen­er­al­ly show a strong sense of con­fi­dence in my con­vic­tions. The role of dis­tance in a rela­tion­ship relat­ed to the lev­el of com­mit­ment, as a sub­ject per­haps, or instruc­tions in becom­ing a more socia­ble per­son, as anoth­er. I’ve been answer­ing ques­tions of life, love, and hap­pi­ness almost as if I know the answers. Yet I can’t fig­ure out where these opin­ions are com­ing from, or even where I’m get­ting the strength of my beliefs.

Have I gained so much strength so as to affect my think­ing? Have I become blind­ed by over­con­fi­dence? Or do I con­sid­er my expe­ri­ences to be suf­fi­cient enough to give advice when peo­ple ask me? This may pos­si­bly be the case even though I gen­er­al­ly don’t like to give advice, since I only speak when I feel that I have a suf­fi­cient under­stand­ing of the sub­ject.

The truth is that I don’t know where my assured­ness is com­ing from. In the last few weeks I’ve felt an odd sense of wis­dom, and my cer­ti­tude seems to be com­ing from this feel­ing. Perhaps an over­flow of emo­tions has caused me to feel this way, and every­thing I’m feel­ing now is tem­po­rary. The most impor­tant thing I try to keep in mind is the fact that I may be wrong in almost any­thing I believe. I need to keep an open mind. Yet late­ly I feel as if I do know much more about the way things work, the way life goes, the way the world turns.

I think of what I do know now, and try to remind myself that there is still a great deal I don’t know. I sim­ply have a strong trust in my judge­ments, deci­sions, and con­vic­tions made with the lim­it­ed amount of infor­ma­tion one always has in fore­sight. I’ve late­ly become more cer­tain about my life, and the direc­tion I want it want to take. I cer­tain­ly know what I want, but I try to remain flex­i­ble.

In the last two months I’ve learned more than I have in year before that, and the sud­den surge of con­fi­dence I’ve gained in my opin­ions seems to be relat­ed to this. I real­ize that I’ve learned a great deal through the course of my life.

But I have much more to learn as well.

Beautiful Viewtiful

I snapped and bought Viewtiful Joe. I’ve been wait­ing for a game like this with old school play mechan­ics for a long time. Capcom height­ened the sen­sa­tion, and added in a bunch of great effects and depth. It’s a very dif­fi­cult game, but extreme­ly sat­is­fy­ing. I should real­ly stop spend­ing mon­ey like this, because I’m start­ing to look for things to sell.

Patches Arrives

Dolly vs Patches

Aaron brought Patches over Monday night, and he’s been stay­ing under my bed for most of the time. The tent that he has is sort of his secu­ri­ty blan­ket; he’ll hide in there when­ev­er he wants to be alone. Dolores is a lit­tle wary of his pres­ence, and she’ll fol­low him just to keep track of where he is most of the time. So far, it’s just a few hiss­es and growls, since Dolly seems to want to test Patches with chal­lenges, while Patches just groans. Sometimes it sounds like stock cars mak­ing a turn at Daytona when they growl out of sync.