Yearly Archives: 2003

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.

Vs.

I remem­ber watch­ing Seinfeld, and not being able to stand Kramer. He seemed to ruin so much of what his friends were doing, like hir­ing cig­ar rollers to roll crêpes, only to have them explode in the faces of cus­tomers, some­how caus­ing George’s girl­friend to break up with him.

It always made me won­der why Jerry would nev­er break off his friend­ship with him, why Jerry would always put up with some­one who nev­er seemed to give as much plea­sure as the amount of strife he cre­at­ed.

I find the sit­u­a­tion to be so com­mon. I sup­pose that I’m con­stant­ly re-eval­u­at­ing my rela­tion­ships, and that as soon as a lim­it is reached, I have no inter­est in con­tin­u­ing the rela­tion­ship. It’s prob­a­bly the rea­son why I get over my break-ups so quick­ly, if not the idea of the sit­u­a­tion, than the com­fort. The fact that I’ve always been the breaker prob­a­bly helps too.

I spoke with Aaron about it, and he explained to me very well that to Jerry, the friend­ship was worth it. I now under­stand that peo­ple see their friend­ships in a dif­fer­ent man­ner, and that what I would­n’t put up with may just be a sim­ple mat­ter to oth­ers.

Sometimes I wish that I did­n’t see every­thing so day-to-day. However, by con­stant­ly re-eval­u­at­ing my rela­tion­ships, I not only clear­ly see the prob­lems with bad ones, but I am able to appre­ci­ate the ones that are good as well.

An idea that has become com­mon in my beliefs is that I should live as a demand­ing per­son, but I should give as much as I get. Perhaps that’s why I stop being friends with cer­tain peo­ple, where­as oth­ers I would die for. I would pre­fer to live with a few close friends, as opposed to a pletho­ra of acquain­tances. Sometimes it still con­fus­es me though, how peo­ple can put up with what I can only see as a ter­ri­ble flaw.

There’s a fine line between know­ing when to be self­ish, and know­ing when to be kind to oth­ers, even if kind­ness means sac­ri­fice.

Haircut

Come on in! We’re OPEN.

Yes.

I hate com­ing here only to find out that he’s closed. I can nev­er remem­ber if it’s Tuesdays or Wednesdays. I bet­ter ask him that. Maybe I should ask him for his card like the one Iain got.

I hope that no one’s in there already. I hope I’m the first one and there’s no wait­ing. Otherwise, what’s the point of com­ing here so ear­ly.

Damn. Two peo­ple. Close the door gen­tly to announce your pres­ence. Maybe I should ask Joe if he has any red­head hair­style posters he does­n’t need. I’m too embar­rased with these oth­er peo­ple in the shop.

The Sun. Front page, a woman just wants her son back. How did he die? Fell out of a 10-storey win­dow. Goddam tabloid press. Why did he fall out? By acci­dent. Boring. Teacher on tri­al for sex­u­al rela­tions with 15-year-old girl. What hap­pened? Mother sus­pect­ed teacher after daugh­ter was spend­ing an inor­di­nate amount of time with him after school. Mother caught daugh­ter wear­ing teach­ers sweater one day. My God.

The old peo­ple in here are too friend­ly. It’s almost as if every­one they know has died, and they’re con­stant­ly look­ing for new friends. Old peo­ple must have a con­nec­tion like that. Their friends must be dying out on them all the time.

Life. The third most want­ed Al-Qaida leader cap­tured. CIA spe­cial oper­a­tions group res­ur­rect­ed, page 12. Are all their cov­er sto­ries on page 12? CIA oper­a­tive on the job, rid­ing a horse in the desert. Same man inter­ro­gat­ing cap­tured American Al-Qaida. Same man was killed a few months lat­er in an upris­ing. How? Customer is done, but I want to read this arti­cle.

Joe greets me as friend. He’s in a good mood today. I won­der why he’s so loqua­cious. Sorry Joe, I don’t feel like talk­ing today. I sup­pose he knows so much about his­to­ry because he’s a bar­ber, and peo­ple always have inter­est­ing sto­ries to tell. I hope he does­n’t argue with the woman today; my hair­cut nev­er seems to sur­vive one of his argu­ments. Please don’t talk to her, Joe. Just con­cen­trate.

I for­got to tell him to cut it a lit­tle bit short­er. It’s half-way done though, so I should­n’t say any­thing now. Maybe he’ll do it any­way, because he rememe­bered how I liked it last time. I hope he does­n’t try to style my hair with the dry­er. I wore a hat in here, and I’ll wear it back out again, but I’ll put it on when he can’t see me from inside the shop. I won­der if he’d be insult­ed if he saw me put the hat on right after.

The brush. The mir­ror. The hair in the back isn’t short enough. Fuck. There’s still colour in the back at the crown. Fuck. It looks stu­pid.

There’s no one in the shop. The woman is dis­tract­ed at the oth­er end. Maybe I should ask him now. I should ask him now.

“Where do you get your posters, Joe? Do you get any red­head ones?”

Yes.

I won­der if the woman heard me. He does­n’t have any now, but he’ll keep an eye out for me. I’m so grate­ful. I hope he’ll remem­ber. I think bar­bers are sup­posed to have good mem­o­ries. Maybe I should have stressed that any red­head poster would be fine. Maybe I should have told him to get me as many as he could. I won­der if he won­ders what I want one for. Shit, I should have told him to get me any that he could find.

I know I have a twen­ty. Why did­n’t I ask for change this time? I hope he remem­bers how much I tip him and just gives me change tak­ing the tip into account. Thanks, Joe.

You do remem­ber.