Posts tagged with "Chinese culture"

Spoiled Food, Chinese Accents, Etc.

I for­got to plug in my freez­er after dis­con­nect­ing it to free up a spot on the pow­er sock­et on Saturday, so basi­cal­ly all my food has gone bad. I still have some break­fast and lunch food in the refrig­er­a­tor, but that’s about it. I won’t be able to do much gro­cery shop­ping this week due to all the shit I have to get done, and the most con­ve­nient store for me to get to is closed until the fall, so I’m pret­ty much fucked, food-wise, for a few days.

I can’t stand what peo­ple believe are Chinese accents. Every time I hear one from a North American source, the accent can’t be fur­ther from real­ism. Every time a Chinese per­son is on the Simpson’s, or a Crank Yankers prank call from a Chinese guy, or even the fuck­ing Chinese peo­ple speak in C&C: Generals, I get pissed off. Why don’t they just get an actu­al Chinese per­son to do the accent? The accents are not even close to what a nasty Chinese per­son sounds like. It’s like they have to tone down the accent so that peo­ple can rec­og­nize it (let alone under­stand what the per­son is say­ing), and so that it can be accept­ed by the gen­er­al pub­lic.

Speaking of C&C: Generals, I was able to get my hands on a copy of it today, a few days before it’s due out in Canada. It looks amaz­ing, but pos­si­bly a lit­tle too clut­tered for actu­al game­play pur­pos­es. I’m not sure if I’ll buy it yet. I’ll prob­a­bly wait and see if my friends are inter­est­ed in pur­chas­ing it for online play, and if I get addict­ed enough to war­rant sup­port of EA Games, although I’m sure they have enough mon­ey as a pub­lish­er of main­stream games already.

I got a com­pli­ment on my black nail pol­ish today. I was pleased, I guess, but I sup­pose that it’s rare that one would make a bad com­ment on some­thing like that; I think that most peo­ple, if not find­ing it atrac­tive, would sim­ply remain silent.

Somehow I got an 80% on my cryp­tog­ra­phy assign­ment. I imag­ine that the class aver­age was around there. The ques­tions were so dif­fi­cult that the TA had to be extreme­ly gen­er­ous with the marks. Pat end­ed up get­ting 88%, which I feel is unfair, since he spent so much more time on his assign­ment than I did. It seems to be such a plight of uni­ver­si­ty, that pro­fes­sors don’t real­ize that stu­dents’ capa­bil­i­ties are much low­er than theirs.

I Lost My Job And My Grandma Died

Well, things just can’t get any bet­ter.

Yesterday I found out that my con­tract, which expires in December, will most like­ly not be renewed. This could mean that I will be out of a job when I grad­u­ate, since my posi­tion will be filled by a full-time employ­ee. If things get busier at the office, then I might be asked to come back again. Until then, I might not know. The avail­abil­i­ty of a full-time posi­tion will not be known until next years bud­get­ing comes around, which is usu­al­ly around March.

This after­noon, I also found out that my grand­moth­er passed away. I did­n’t find out any of the details, which is one of the few times that I’m glad of my igno­rance. It sad­dens me that I did­n’t get to see her one last time, to show her that I cared about her, the next oppor­tu­ni­ty being with­in a months time. Yet she did­n’t last the wait, and my chance, twice pass­ing, has been missed. My par­ents will be attend­ing the cer­e­monies by fly­ing to Hong Kong on Tuesday. I haven’t cried yet, and I prob­a­bly won’t.

And appar­ent­ly, accord­ing to some Chinese tra­di­tion, the death of a loved one means that one can­not vis­it any oth­er fam­i­ly mem­bers with­in 49 days of the death. Which means that I won’t be able to go to Hong Kong for Christmas vaca­tion, some­thing which I’ve been look­ing for­ward to with unspeak­able plea­sure. The tra­di­tion is not some­thing that I would gen­er­al­ly hon­our, giv­en the cir­cum­stances, but since it is impor­tant to my oth­er grand­moth­er, I eas­i­ly, sto­ical­ly abide by the rules of the funer­al cer­e­mo­ny.

I will miss the Christmas lights and spir­it, the cool­er, more tol­er­a­ble weath­er. I will miss my chance to pur­chase a much need­ed leather jack­et, to buy presents for my friends, to do some much need­ed relax­ation.

But what can I do? Feel sor­ry for myself? I believe that this is the worst string of news I’ve ever had. There just does­n’t seem to be any act I can accom­plish to make this pain go away, except for talk­ing about it. So many things have fall­en apart with­in the last 24 hours, so many things being changed. There just does­n’t seem to be much to live for right now, since I gen­er­al­ly tend to sim­ply live day-to-day.

A part of me wish­es that some­one tru­ly cared. A part of me wish­es that I felt much, much worse. A part of me wish­es that some­one could under­stand what is going through my mind. Most of me wish­es that some­one would help make the pain go away.

It’s hard for me to under­stand what I should be think­ing or feel­ing right now. Everything just seems so numb. I guess things have just come so sud­den­ly, and caught me by sur­prise.

I’m real­ly at a loss for words.

The Rules

Aaron told me that he did­n’t think I was spoiled today. I was a bit sur­prised, since even I think I’m spoiled to an extent. I real­ize that I take many of the priv­i­leges I have for grant­ed, but I’m always thank­ful of the finan­cial free­dom that I’ve been giv­en. We seem to be able to talk for hours on end, and it’s worth get­ting in trou­ble at work for it.

One thing that we dis­cussed was the rules about accept­able dat­ing habits. The rules that he fol­lows are dif­fi­cult for me to under­stand. One seem­ing­ly uni­ver­sal rule is that you can nev­er date a friend’s sis­ter. It’s hard for me to under­stand some­thing like this, because I’ve nev­er had sib­lings of any kind. I think that the prob­lem would lie in whether a break-up would hap­pen; where would one’s loy­al­ty lie, since you’re so close to both peo­ple? I believe that if both par­ties are mature enough, they will be able to remain friends after some­thing like that should hap­pen. I real­ize that it may not always work out that way, but I believe that the deci­sion of the risk would be up to the friend and the sis­ter.

He also told me that he would nev­er date any of his friends’ ex-girl­friends, and that it was an unspo­ken rule among his friends as well. I guess the rule seems very rigid to me, as I’m sure there should be excep­tions, such as who was at fault, and why they broke up.

There just seem to be so many rules that peo­ple fol­low, good or bad. I know some girls who won’t date guys short­er than them. I can’t even begin to com­pre­hend this; it just seems so amaz­ing­ly shal­low, or per­haps I’m just over­sen­si­tive about my lack of height. I also know Chinese girls who won’t date Chinese guys. The only expla­na­tion I can find for this is that a girl may not like the Chinese cul­ture, so they asso­ciate Chinese guys with this. Yet how can every Chinese guy be com­plete­ly set in the Chinese cul­ture? The expla­na­tion just does­n’t seem to work.

One of my Caucasian ex’s said that she would nev­er date a white guy, because they always seem so shal­low. I was offend­ed because I would­n’t be dat­ing her, had I sim­ply inhab­it­ed pale skin. She real­ized that she was wrong to sim­ply asso­ciate white guys with being shal­low, based on her past expe­ri­ences.

It’s still some­thing that’s hard for me to grasp. Perhaps Chinese girls don’t find the “look” of Chinese guys to be attrac­tive, which is some­thing I could under­stand more. I still believe that one can be attract­ed to any­one though, as long as one keeps an open mind.

An inter­est­ing point that I once dis­cussed with Aaron was whether Caucasian girls found Asian guys attrac­tive the way Caucasian guys find Asian girls attrac­tive. We came to the con­clu­sion that, no, they do not. It lies in the fact that the mon­goloid race has a gen­er­al­ly slim­mer build, some­thing which guys find attrac­tive in girls, but some­thing which girls sure as hell don’t find attrac­tive in guys.

It’s a good thing that I’ve giv­en up for now.

I Write This After Dinner

These titles are get­ting rather vague, which can be a good thing I sup­pose. They sort of remind me of the way Tool names their tracks (Sober, Parabola, H., Stinkfist), which is sort of an equiv­o­cal, gen­er­al state­ment on what their sub­ject mat­ter cov­ers. After all, Stinkfist is great song on fist­ing and soci­etal stan­dards. I’m still unsure as to what my favorite song of all time would be, but that one is def­i­nite­ly with­in the top 5.

I had a great night, feast­ing on Prime chick­en thighs sim­mered in a cream of mush­room sauce on a bed of rice. I tried out a new cider, called Blackthorn, which I find is very sim­i­lar to Strongbow, with a dri­er taste. I’m still fin­ish­ing my Hong Kong milk tea as I write this, made with con­densed milk, of course. Best served very, very strong. I could­n’t find any of the Rickshaw brand, so I went to a med­i­cine store in the mid­dle of Chinatown and bought half a kilo­gram there from a sweet old Chinese woman. It was the first time in my life that I had to use my knowl­edge of the Chinese lan­guage, as I guessed she did­n’t have a prac­ti­cal knowl­edge of English.

I found anoth­er Dears song called No Return, which just sounds so great. It tru­ly fol­lows the form of their “orches­tral pop noir roman­tique” style, where­as some of their songs don’t. Blood Roses by Tori Amos is pret­ty good too, as I enjoy the sound of a harp­si­chord (though my ver­sion of Aria from Goldberg Variations is piano), if it did­n’t have what I feel is too dis­so­nant a vocal part near the end.