Yearly Archives: 2004

Double Nervousness

It’s fun­ny to be ner­vous about talk­ing to some­one, and then real­ize that they’re just as ner­vous when the time final­ly arrives. The dou­ble ner­vous­ness makes for some awk­ward paus­es.

I had the chance to wit­ness (as opposed to being involved in) such a thing once on the bus. A guy and a girl, who must have been in their ear­ly 20’s and both rather obvi­ous­ly attract­ed to each oth­er, sat in adja­cent seats sep­a­rat­ed by the aisle. I could just hear the thought process­es going on in their heads as pause time seemed to stretch out towards infin­i­ty. Every so often, they would turn to each oth­er and say some­thing. Of course, they’d blurt out things at the same time and strug­gle to see who would get to talk first, result­ing in fur­ther awk­ward­ness.

I think that the key to rec­og­niz­ing this kind of ner­vous­ness is all in lis­ten­ing to what’s not being said.

More Gosu Than You

It’s always fun­ny when some­one tries to play a mind game on me. For some rea­son they nev­er work, so I real­ly don’t mind them.

The secret, often con­fused with apa­thy, is actu­al­ly the will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice every­thing, or the accep­tance of such. Unless one is pre­pared to give up every­thing, there are no guar­an­tees about what will hap­pen. When one accepts the fact that they may lose a rela­tion­ship, then one has noth­ing to lose.

It’s this pow­er, this weight, that guar­an­tees a vic­to­ry. Bluffing such a thing is unpre­dictable and gen­er­al­ly not rec­om­mend­ed. Of course, know­ing the oppo­nent inside and out is an advan­tage. It’s like see­ing his or her hand in a card game, and some­times, this is enough to win if one is unable to pay a high a price as a rela­tion­ship.

Such a strat­e­gy may leave one with few friends, but who’s a friend who plays mind games?

Love Them Or Leave Them

I have a love/hate rela­tion­ship with Hong Kong films. I’m glad that OMNI 2 has become an eth­ni­cal­ly diverse chan­nel, but every time a Hong Kong movie comes on, I’m not sure whether or not I should make some pop­corn or put an axe through the TV.

I love the movies because they remind me of every sin­gle thing about Hong Kong that has so poignant­ly affect­ed me (and I feel smart when I get the jokes).

I hate the movies because 90% of them end up being crap like Love Undercover 2: Love Mission. It’s all a reminder of the sad state of affairs that Hong Kong pop­u­lar cul­ture is in right now.