Yearly Archives: 2003

Imbalance

I think Dolly may be inter­est­ed in hav­ing anoth­er cat around the house. I’ve been play­ing some cat sounds, and no mat­ter where she is in the apart­ment, she’ll com­ing run­ning into my room. A sec­ond cat is some­thing I only start­ed to con­sid­er this term. Last term it felt as if I would­n’t be able to han­dle the chores, let alone dou­bling my annu­al vet­eri­nar­i­an bill. Sometimes she seems lone­ly though, like when she imme­di­ate­ly starts to cry when I walk in the door after a day of school, her protest­ing only being soothed after pick­ing her up, and being replaced by a low purr. I’ve always seen myself as a one cat per­son; I think I’d feel a lit­tle imbal­anced if I had more than one. If I do decide to get one, it will def­i­nite­ly be after I grad­u­ate, def­i­nite­ly after I find a sta­ble job, and pos­si­bly after I can pur­chase a con­do. It would be more for Dolly than for me though. I can’t imag­ine find­ing anoth­er cat that is as well-adapt­ed as she is, so the idea scares me a lit­tle.

One time I dis­cussed with Pita whether he would ever con­sid­er get­ting two dogs. He said that he could­n’t, not just because it would be much hard­er to han­dle, but because he would feel more favourable to one or the oth­er.

The idea of favour is one that I haven’t been able to under­stand. How can par­ents love all their kids with­out lik­ing one more than the oth­er, espe­cial­ly when one fol­lows the desires of the par­ents more close­ly. It might be some­thing I don’t under­stand, being an only child. If such a bal­ance is pos­si­ble, would­n’t polyg­a­mous rela­tion­ships work as well? I think part of the mis­un­der­stand­ing stems from my con­fu­sion of rela­tion­al love and parental love as well.

For love is the root of my imbal­ance.

Old School, Frozen Carrots, Etc.

I was exhaust­ed yes­ter­day. I worked almost all day on my graph­ics project, and Aaron came over to work on his Scheme assign­ment. I was able to talk to him for a few hours before start­ing the work. We caught Old School at the Coliseum near his place, but it was still a thir­ty minute walk in one direc­tion. The movie was too pre­dictable, but had some very well done scenes, such as Will Ferrell get­ting shot in the neck with a tranq dart. I thought some parts were almost insult­ing though, like a com­plete­ly gra­tu­itous cam­era shot of Elisha Cuthbert’s ass while she was lay­ing on a bed. It’s not that I don’t find her behind to be a thing of beau­ty, it’s that it feels like the pro­duc­ers are adding shit like that in just to get more peo­ple in the audi­ence. I guess it’s been hap­pen­ing for a while now; ever since Shannon Elizabeth bared her twins in American Pie, teen movies have been becom­ing more and more sleazy. I still enjoyed Old School though, and gen­er­al­ly laughed my ass off.

Watching Old School allowed me to dis­cov­er a decent song called Dust in the Wind by Kansas. I’ve also been down­load­ing a lot of Canadian singer Holly Cole, who has a beau­ti­ful­ly expres­sive, olive oil voice. I enjoy Bagdad Café in par­tic­u­lar. I found two ver­sions of the song, one live and one stu­dio, which are good but with their own unique flaws. I pre­fer the live ver­sion because it has a sim­ple piano and bass, instead of synth sounds in the stu­dio ver­sion, but at one point she becomes obnox­ious­ly loud, as if she was over­sing­ing the notes, the way a trum­pet would sound if the trum­peter was blar­ing. It makes her voice seem almost mas­cu­line, which is a big turn-off. The way she mix­es her vibra­to with her flar­ing is very seduc­tive though. In the stu­dio ver­sion, how­ev­er, she seems to start off one line a lit­tle flat, before push­ing her diaphragm to hit a note with­out going falset­to. It sur­prized me, since stu­dio songs tend to be a lit­tle too per­fect.

I final­ly put up my poster of Dominique Swain. Aaron helped me decide on the linen clos­et door, since the walls in my room are so big they dwarf my mod­est­ly sized poster. I haven’t put it up since sec­ond year because it did­n’t seem to fit into the sim­ple­ness of my room.

I’m not espe­cial­ly hap­py with yes­ter­days entry, but I des­per­ate­ly felt like I had to get some­thing down. It’s a lit­tle too trite for me to be sat­is­fied.

I bought a bag of frozen car­rots and pearl onions to try out the last time I went gro­cery shop­ping, since I’ve been try­ing to eat more veg­eta­bles. I found out today that I real­ly don’t like pearl onions. They taste like what I imag­ine an onion would taste like after being soaked in water overnight. I tried to have the car­rots only, but the bag is sup­posed to be a mélange of the two, and the taste of the onions ends up seep­ing into the taste of the car­rots. I real­ly enjoy hav­ing a bunch of onion slices sautéed before adding in a pork chop or what­not to the fry­ing pan, but pearl onions seem to be a dif­fer­ent breed of onion.

The Conversationalist

Does no one talk any­more? It feels as if every­one needs to be doing some­thing in order to be enter­tained. I remem­ber try­ing to get togeth­er with an old friend for some drinks, maybe a cof­fee so that I could find out how he was doing. We were good friends in high school, and since I had­n’t seen him in three years, I thought it would be a good oppor­tu­ni­ty to learn about what he had been doing. When we were actu­al­ly able to get togeth­er, we end­ed up play­ing board games. I had a good time, but it felt odd that I did­n’t have any news from him by the time I left.

I under­stand that most peo­ple are busy with school, espe­cial­ly in fourth year, so that relax­ation time ends up being hard-core play­ing and drink­ing time, which does­n’t involve some­thing as lack­adaisi­cal as talk­ing. I’ve been able to meet some good con­ver­sa­tion­al­ists, like Dina, Pat, Aaron, or Nick, but they’re gen­er­al­ly too busy to speak with. I don’t think any­one is at fault here, I guess I just wish that more peo­ple would be inter­est­ed in con­ver­sa­tion, who could com­mit more time to it.

I think it’s the fact that my brain is exer­cised when I can talk with some­one. Many thoughts that are cloudy in my head become more solid­i­fied. I’m also able to learn so much when some­one has a dif­fer­ent per­spec­tive, and learn­ing feels so good. It’s a pity that I don’t know more peo­ple that I can sim­ply talk to. I haven’t had a nice, long con­ver­sa­tion pos­si­bly in a year, since gen­er­al­ly all oth­er con­ver­sa­tions feel rushed from work or school. No one has the time to talk until 3 am any­more.

It’s going to be a long night.

The Fourth Day

Four con­sec­u­tive writ­ing days in a row. Balls.

Pat called me yes­ter­day to see how I was doing. How fuck­ing amaz­ing is that? When I found out, the back of my nose felt tight­ly con­gest­ed, and the rims of my eyes start­ed to tin­gle. I need to be more like Pat. I real­ized yes­ter­day that he’s like my preach­er; he’s the only one I can talk to with­out fear­ing judg­ment or embar­rass­ment. It’s not that my oth­er friends aren’t under­stand­ing, it’s that Pat is able to see the moti­va­tions that dri­ve the actions one does, with­out wor­ry­ing about whether the con­se­quences are for bet­ter or worse. He’s able to see the good in many peo­ple, and I guess that I need to be remind­ed that I have some good in me on occa­sion.

I think I need boobs. I bought a turtle­neck dur­ing a box­ing day sale. I found it on a table stacked with oth­er mot­ley piles of clothes, in the mid­dle of the store, for 50% off. I did­n’t try it on, since the lines for the change rooms were ridicu­lous­ly long. I got home and tried it on, and it felt a little…large. I tried to shrink it in the wash, but it only slight­ly worked, because it still fit in an odd way. I real­ized today that it might be a girls’ turtle­neck, and that the extra room in it might be for a healthy rack. I’m not com­plete­ly sure, because I’ve nev­er tried on what I know to be a girls’ turtle­neck, and the beige colour isn’t par­tic­u­lar­ly fem­i­nine. I sup­pose I could try to return it since it has­n’t been worn yet, and has­n’t been (notice­ably) washed, but I’d rather have the boobs.

I’ve tried to change the date and time cod­ing in PHP, so that it more accu­rate­ly rep­re­sents when the entries were writ­ten, but no such luck. The serv­er this is host­ed on is locat­ed in Hong Kong, which is about 13 hours ahead, so all the entries seem like they’re writ­ten 13 hours into the future. I found out how to edit the val­ues of the date and time, but only when it’s from a cur­rent time­stamp, and not when it’s being retrieved from a data­base. I might just try to fig­ure out a way around every­thing if I real­ly feel the need to have accu­rate num­bers.

I think that I stop read­ing dur­ing par­tic­u­lar­ly stress­ful school terms. My free time alone is gen­er­al­ly divid­ed between gam­ing and read­ing, and when I need some stress relief then gam­ing is just able to deliv­er much bet­ter. As Doug and I dis­cussed, we’re able to lose our­selves, to just let go of every­thing else and be com­plete­ly absorbed. Sometimes my stress will spill over though, and I’ll feel the need to write.