Posts in category "Random"

The premature exit

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose.

I bare­ly stayed for two hours. It was­n’t the game (though it did prove to be as frus­trat­ing­ly ran­dom as I remem­ber it) or the peo­ple (who were quite nice and refresh­ing­ly intel­li­gent). When I told Jess, she said, “But it’s so ear­ly.” I just shrugged my shoul­ders. As an intro­vert, she under­stood.

Onegin: premature exit

 

Sometimes I won­der if I come off as an extreme­ly anti-social per­son. I tend to be the first one to leave par­ties, and some­times so ear­ly that the host will ask me if every­thing is alright. When it comes to being around peo­ple, I’m def­i­nite­ly a high-main­te­nance per­son. I’m much hap­pi­er in one-on-one sit­u­a­tions, and even more often I pre­fer being alone.

As much as I’ve grown and changed, I’ve always need­ed the world in small dos­es.

29 8/12: The Son

There’s no rev­e­la­tion more star­tling than the fact that your dad is cool­er than you.

This is espe­cial­ly true of my own father, who isn’t just cool for an old guy, he’s cool peri­od. As a teenag­er, I remem­ber him wear­ing a leather bomber jack­et, and learn­ing to ride a pur­ple Kawasaki Ninja sport bike which he even­tu­al­ly trad­ed in for a sil­ver Porsche.

When I was even younger, my friends would tell me he looked like a secret agent. One time he came to help me move out of res­i­dence, and his jeans had wider cuffs than mine (and back then I loved wear­ing wide-leg khakis). I can’t remem­ber a time when he did­n’t wear some­thing by Lacoste, Polo, or Tommy, and even though he may dress far younger than his age, he can still pull it off.

Now he’s a man mov­ing clos­er to his 60s, dri­ving a Mercedes and a BMW, with what seems to have a coterie of women whose com­mon inter­est is him. He watch­es pop­u­lar movies, prac­tices singing, and dances on a reg­u­lar basis. Even my grand­ma once told me that peo­ple like him because he’s the fun one to be around.

Self portrait at 29 8/12

 

This is all very dif­fer­ent from me; a shy, intro­vert­ed, awk­ward per­son whose idea of a good time gen­er­al­ly involves being in front of a com­put­er.

Still, with all these dif­fer­ences, I know I’m his son. Just a chip off the old block, with the same work ethics, the same per­fec­tion­ist ten­den­cies, the same neu­rot­ic ten­den­cies.

We get grumpy when we’re hun­gry. We hate feel­ing sweaty and some­times have to show­er twice in a day. We make the same sil­ly jokes when we’re around new peo­ple. We dec­o­rat­ed our hous­es exclu­sive­ly with mod­ern, min­i­mal­ist fur­ni­ture before we knew what each oth­er’s hous­es looked like. And as I grow old­er, I’ve also start­ed devel­op­ing the same night owl habits, care­free atti­tude, insom­nia, and diges­tion prob­lems.

I turn 30 in four months, and I’m becom­ing my father’s son.

The Turning 30 Series

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See you in France

Got a tick­et booked for France in the Fall. Instead of stay­ing in Paris, I’m going to be liv­ing with Frédéric and Misun in the town of Chartres. That way I’ll save mon­ey on acco­mo­da­tions, since the train goes to Paris every hour, only takes an hour, and is much cheap­er than a night for a hotel there.

With three weeks booked, I know I’ll be able to go at my own pace in the city, with plen­ty of time to spend with Frédéric, Misun, and the boys too.

books on France

These three Frommer’s books came in one pack. I was hap­py to find one that focused on Paris alone.

My French com­pre­hen­sion has rust­ed to the point of being non-exis­tent, so the dic­tio­nary and phrase book seemed like a good idea too. It’s filled with hilar­i­ous pho­net­ic pro­nun­ci­a­tions, like “ehs-kuh tueh praw~ lah peel-uel” for “Est-ce que tu prends la pil­lule?” or “Are you on birth con­trol?” in the Getting Intimate sec­tion. I would­n’t be sur­prised if Paris was the only city to have this sec­tion, which includes trans­la­tions for “Harder!”, “Faster!”, “Deeper!”, and “May I come inside?” (although I sus­pect the last one isn’t exact­ly the mean­ing I’m think­ing).

Paris Moleskine

I also bought this Paris Moleskine, embossed with the city’s name on the spine. It’s over­priced for a note­book, but worth it for the con­ve­nience. Contains con­densed ver­sions of all the most use­ful infor­ma­tion, includ­ing num­bers for trans­porta­tion com­pa­nies (includ­ing air bal­loon!) and city maps.

More sta­tion­ary porn beneath the cut