Monthly Archives: June 2009

The Tao Character

Tao character 5

Thumbnail: Tao character 1
Thumbnail: Tao character 2
Thumbnail: Tao character 3
Thumbnail: Tao character 4
Thumbnail: Tao character 6
Thumbnail: Tao character 7
Thumbnail: Tao character 8

A few spot­tings of the “Tao” char­ac­ter while I was in Hong Kong. The word is some­what ubiq­ui­tous, since it can mean “road”, “path”, or “way”, and so marks road signs every­where. This is the same char­ac­ter that I got tat­tooed on my right wrist.

It’s inter­est­ing to see how dif­fer­ent Chinese char­ac­ters can look, whether they’re engraved, paint­ed, writ­ten, or stamped.

Surrounding Myself With Great People

It’s hard for me to hang out with peo­ple with same bad habits as I have (or have had).

Habits like:

  • over­re­act­ing
  • wor­ry­ing
  • ana­lyz­ing or think­ing too much
  • being judg­men­tal
  • get­ting emo­tion­al­ly involved in arguments/discussions
  • putting val­ue in mate­r­i­al things
  • being impa­tient
  • get­ting too com­pet­i­tive

I always try to improve and refuse to accept these things in myself, so it’s hard for me to accept them in oth­ers. I’m also afraid that spend­ing too much time with them would make me com­pla­cent, as I’d start to believe that these things are accept­able because oth­er peo­ple are okay with it.

That’s why I sur­round myself with peo­ple who are bet­ter than me.

Saying Goodbye to Frederic and Misun

Akio punches

Thumbnail: Dad
Thumbnail: Akio in the garbage
Thumbnail: Boys in trouble
Thumbnail: Akio in the garbage
Thumbnail: Miric on lap

They’re in France now, and I feel like a part of me is miss­ing. I know they aren’t gone for­ev­er, but they’re so far away that I can’t just dri­ve over to their house on a whim to talk any­more. They were peo­ple who real­ly under­stood me, who intro­duced me to so much of the world, who inspired me, who gave me con­fi­dence.

Before get­ting on the bus to Montreal, Frédéric told me that we’ll go on lots of adven­tures togeth­er. I hope it’s soon­er rather than lat­er.

Amnesiac Epiphanies

It seems like every week­end I make plans, because I think “I haven’t seen this per­son in a while and I don’t know when I’ll have a chance to hang out with them again.” But it does­n’t seem to stop, because there’s always anoth­er per­son to see, anoth­er thing to do, and by the time I’ve caught up with the last friend, it’s been months since I saw the first friend again.

This is the first week­end that I’ve had free. I just played Black and White 2 for five hours, and it feels good, con­sid­er­ing that I haven’t real­ly played a game in a while, let alone be able to lose myself in one. It’s like I don’t get a chance to relax for more than 45 min­utes at a time before I’m off doing some­thing else.

A lot of my old­er co-work­ers tell me they don’t even have time to relax on the week­ends. It’s one of those things that comes with hav­ing kids, hav­ing a house, hav­ing a full-time job. Is this what being an adult is about? Not that I mind; for a while now, I’ve want­ed to be this busy so I could for­get about things, to move on.

And then, I real­ized that I have.