Yearly Archives: 2005

Answering For Others

Aaron and Karen are noto­ri­ous for their inabil­i­ty to end a phone call with­in the first fif­teen min­utes of pick­ing up. This isn’t always their fault, of course, because most of the time it’s the peo­ple at the oth­er end who per­sist in stay­ing on the line. Sometimes I’ll pre­tend that it’s a wrong num­ber when we’re hang­ing out so that they won’t be dis­turbed. Unfortunately, this time, the per­son was per­sis­tent. It end­ed up being a rude char­i­ty work­er.

My Chinese has a ter­ri­ble Western accent, bad enough for me to be able to rec­og­nize it and cringe. Normally, I’m not so bad, but I was def­i­nite­ly rusty and caught off-guard.

One Of Those Nights

Hi.

It feels like my glass­es are dirty, but it’s real­ly the sur­faces of my eyes.

There’s this inde­scrib­able desire to be amongst oth­ers, after spend­ing time with myself for so long. I’d like to sit in the mid­dle of a café right now, I think to myself, so I could lis­ten the lay­ers of peo­ple talk­ing. I’d like to be slumped down in a soft library chair, decid­ing which book to take home, with the hushed shuf­fling of pages all around me. I’d like to be walk­ing on the streets of New York, dodg­ing the taxis on 42nd and tenth, walk­ing across the streets with the oth­er pedes­tri­ans.

This is one of those nights.

Stepping Through The Shadow, Part 2/2: The Friend Aspect

I choose to live and to
Grow, take and give and to
Move, learn and love and to
Cry, kill and die and to
Be para­noid and to
Lie, hate and fear and to
Do what it takes to move through.

—Tool, Forty Six & 2

Unfortunately, I’m not myself when I’m around my friends.

With them, I’m hap­pi­er, more con­fi­dent, extro­vert­ed. It’s usu­al­ly only with them that I can test the bound­aries of social con­duct, because I know that they under­stand me, accept me, and are will­ing to back me all the way. Sometimes, I end up say­ing some pret­ty embar­rass­ing things off-the-cuff, things made more embar­rass­ing by the fact that even my friends aren’t laugh­ing. But to find the bound­ary, one has to cross it at some point. And it’s such a fuck­ing pow­er trip to know that I’m test­ing myself as well, test­ing how far I’m will­ing to go, some­thing that I can only do with the right peo­ple.

Without my friends, I recede into my shell. I require them at par­ties, events, social func­tions just so I can inter­act with peo­ple nor­mal­ly. When I do find myself in absence of their pres­ence, I force myself to be social. I con­sid­er how I would behave if I was with them, and pro­ceed with cau­tion. It’s slow­ly get­ting eas­i­er for me when I’m by myself. Perhaps I’m gain­ing my own self-con­fi­dence when I’m not around them.

Something I that can only gain when I’m with them.

The Stepping Through The Shadow Series

With A Lot On The Mind

I haven’t been sleep­ing well late­ly. At night I wear an anti-brux­ism splint (made of ther­mal active mate­r­i­al to elim­i­nate met­al clasp­ing), and this pre­vents the occlusal sur­faces of my teeth from wear­ing down. Unfortunately, this does­n’t pre­vent the actu­al act of grind­ing, and some­times I still wake up with lock-jaw.

Ever since the begin­ning of the year, things have been along mov­ing quick­ly, both good and bad. On top of that, most of it has been hap­pen­ing all at once, leav­ing my emo­tions in a rather unset­tled state.

Everything feels like it’s some duo­tone greyscale.

It’s not that any­thing is wrong, but there’s been a lot on my mind, espe­cial­ly with the upcom­ing move. I have to get the walls trimmed and washed before paint­ing them. I have to get the locks changed and dim­mer switch­es installed. I have to find the per­fect desk and reclin­er for my room. I have to make sure that the phone and cable is installed. I have to adjust to a new set of month­ly (some­times bi-week­ly) pay­ments for insur­ance, hydro, heat, con­do man­age­ment, mort­gage, and prop­er­ty tax. I have to relax and take one thing at a time.

Hopefully, things will be set­tled by mid-April.

The Keys To The House

Thumbnail: Keys to my house

The trans­fer of keys is the very last step in buy­ing a house. Aside from all the steps involved in actu­al­ly pur­chas­ing one, to get a set of keys means the com­ple­tion of many things. A con­sol­i­da­tion of one’s funds (deposit­ed in trust, post­ed on file, ver­i­fied by accoun­tants). The pay­ment of all par­ties involved (lawyer for legal fees, gov­ern­ment for land trans­fer tax, insur­ance com­pa­ny for title insur­ance, as well as the sell­er for the full amount of the house). A record in the munic­i­pal min­istry of the trans­fer own­er­ship (once the lawyers of both par­ties involved have paid for an exe­cu­tion clear­ance cer­tifi­cate).

The keys sig­ni­fy that the deal has been closed, and noth­ing has gone wrong between the time of pur­chase and the day of trans­fer. Usually, I wor­ry about things going wrong, even when there’s only a mar­gin­al chance, and I have a com­plete under­stand­ing of this fact. When some­one shakes my hand after an inter­view to con­grat­u­late me on get­ting the job, I’ll wor­ry for days, right up until I get my name on the con­tract. This was no excep­tion. Anything could go wrong — sell­er chang­ing his mind, hid­den law­suits or liens, or even a fail­ing of the final inspec­tion — from the day I made the bid to the last min­utes of the clos­ing date.

Yesterday, I walked into my lawyers office. I car­ried with me a cer­ti­fied cheque that was most­ly my down­pay­ment, but also includ­ed his fees and tax­es (I’m for­tu­nate enough to not have go into my line of cred­it to pay for the lat­ter two). I signed sev­er­al doc­u­ments, received my sta­tus cer­tifi­cate and con­do papers, as well as oth­er let­ters of con­fir­ma­tion.

Today I picked up my keys, and now I own a house.