I recall being told as a child that I had no patience. "mei yo nai shin" was something I heard pretty often. I wonder from time to time if that's changed since then. I've put in some effort (maybe not enough) to try and improve that standing, and while I would like to believe that I've managed to become at least a bit more patient, I can't help but wonder if I could be doing better. I probably could. I probably should. But there's a time to be patient and a time to put your foot down and say you're not going to deal with this shit. Or maybe that's just the sentiment of people who couldn't bring themselves to develop patience trying to justify their way of life. Or maybe it really is true and is something that should be followed, because damned if you're going to let someone walk all over you.
But really all it is is a difference in perspective. Choose the reality you want to see and just run with it. You can choose to see tomorrow as another day where you need to trudge yourself to school to deal with more stress and the un-ending pressure of having to perform well so you don't disappoint the ones around you (but it's hard so very hard and try as you might it seems your best is never good enough but nobody ever supports you they just look at you in that way that lets you know exactly what it is they're really thinking), or you can choose to see tomorrow as another day to try and be a better person for yourself, for the people you care about, for the world, for whatever it is that drives you to keep going on in life (though whether the cause is for better or worse is another issue entirely). Or you can see tomorrow as just another day. Or you can see it as a bright place filled with wonder and hope. Or you can see it as drawing one day closer to dying. Or you can see it as one more day of living. Call yourself a realist or a cynic or a pessimist or an optimist or a pragmatist or whatever other name makes you a bit happier and helps you get through your day.
It's all just perspective.
Tomorrow could be drawing one day closer until deadline. Or it could be one day closer until I leave. Or one day closer until I find just exactly what it is that I'm made of and how far I can push my mind and body and spirit and all that jazz...and if I can take it one, two, or three more steps beyond. Or I could see it as the day before my last class. Or the day before I head out for a 10-day long trip to Kyushyu, Nagasaki, Fukuoka, Shikoku, or any of the other places that are on the agenda for the coming week and a half. Or it could be just as another gray and rainy day that reflects upon an already tired soul. Or it could be another gray and rainy day but lifts the spirits as the rain cleanses away all the mental dirt that's collected.
But it's easy to take on a dark perspective, so very easy. And it seems to me that the people who do will justify their positions and call themselves realists and point fingers and say those who choose the lighter perspective are dreamers who don't have their feet grounded in reality. But there's having one's feet in the ground and having one's feet buried and unable to move, and it'd be the act of a fool to be so quick to latch onto one mode of thought simply because it's so easy. You can say the people who look to the light are lying to themselves just as easily as you can say the people who cling to the dark are lying to themselves. But really none of it matters because it's all perspective, and any other stance is grounded in just as much perspective. And try as you might to whittle away the perspective and unearth what it is that's really there, everything that you think has already been tainted by perspective, and each change only unearths a new perspective, until you can't help but wonder if there really is something real and true. And maybe it'll be a jewel. Or maybe it'll be a lump of clay (but that's a jewel in its own right if only you recognize it).
For some inexplicable reason, I'm inclined to think the discovery, assuming it were possible, would be anticlimactic. Like what people in military service describe breaking someone's neck in real life to be like. Sometimes you can't even tell if you've done it properly, there's no crunching sound or obvious change in resistance in the neck since you're turning the head so quickly. I suppose the person's body suddenly going limp might be a sign, but for that brief moment before that happens I imagine they wonder if they've done it right and will get to live on or if they've screwed up and are about to get a bullet in the gullet.
Two days until I head to Kyushyu.
Four weeks until I find out what it is I'm made of, or at least get a better idea.
This month is shaping up to be an interesting time. I hope I learn some good lessons out of it, even if they're lessons that I've learned before but have forgotten since. Especially if they're forgotten lessons.
But first, a moment to rest. Good night moon. Good night stars.
Good night dream.
Time's had a chance to pass, and I'm coming to a conclusion to thoughts.
I went to the Fatima vs. Schwarz Stein concert tonight. I hadn't heard any of Fatima's songs before, but some of the ones they played today had this neat mix between rock and funky jazz that I really liked. I'll probably take a further look into it later, kind of reminds me of the music from Hellsing. On a sidenote, I wonder from time to time why it is that there's such a huge schism in the goth world here where you have the occasional really attractive girl who knows how to apply makeup really well and dresses nicely, and at the same time you have some really hideous girls (oftentimes unreasonably large) who feel the need to wear an inappropriately scant amount of clothing. Then there were the school girls. And the old people. And the girls there with their parents. But the best part about the goth world is the approximately 1:5 guy:girl ratio. Or maybe it was just the bands tonight...hooray for cross dressing guys who wear makeup much better than about 90% of the girls I know. Too bad Schwarz Stein's breaking up, they make such awesome music.
Things are slowing down and congealing into a solid state wherein the molecules will come to form a crystal lattice which they won't be particularly inclined to break out of since it takes so much energy to overcome the initial energy hump and so will stay in their rigid locations. How courteous you are, so very polite! So hit the reset button and start over from the beginning because there are no save points, no continues, no extra lives.
Hallucinate and dream and elucidate the madness until there's nothing left but this calm.
I was talking to my roommate last night about why it is that he hates on people who conform to pop culture so much, and through the half hour discourse or so it became obvious that while his justification for it was reasonable enough, but there was a big discrepancy between what he thought and what he did. Upon further inspection, it seemed to result from some flaws in his argument that didn't become clearer until further poking and prodding. As I was asking him questions to get him to clarify what it was that he meant, I couldn't help but feel like I was cheating, and really sort of mentally bullying him because it's so much easier to poke at the holes and flaws of an argument than it is to construct a good argument.
It seems the solution, then, is to construct a system where it is flawless by design, rather than trying to mold a somewhat punctured argument into a useful tool by patching it here and there (because even if you somehow manage to patch up all the holes, at the end you'll have such a patchworked mess with exceptions and by-laws and subclauses and fine print that it's hardly functional anymore). Of course, if you subscribe to systems theory, then you'll probably retort and say that even if it does indeed work then it will work poorly at best. You might even add further that reality has this curious tendency to not quite meet up with what should be, and there's always a discrepancy between theoretical performance and actual performance. But we've all seen this and have grown used to it, and little by little give up the ideals as realistic goals because we know it can't be (but it's nice to have ideals so you have something to aim for).
Alternatively, you could take up Heinlein's stance and say that the problem with our modern ethics is founded on a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is that humanity is, which leads to an incorrect set of morals. And so it's not until we become properly aware of what exactly it is to be human that we can construct for ourselves a correct set of morals. So we'll just ignore the problem of deciding what it is it means to be human (to reproduce, to be a logical rational being, to be a creature of senses, an alien experiment gone haywire, a servant of God, a servant of Satan, a meat puppet dancing to invisible strings, or so on so forth ad nauseum) for a moment and go on living our lives the way we've grown accustomed to because it's familiar, it's known to us, and really despite all our complaints, deep down we rather like it...or at least don't dislike it so much that we're willing to change. Because change is effort. Effort is, well, effort. And to hell with that!
But you shouldn't wish for something that's in your power to obtain. That's just being wishy washy, whiny, and generally rather irritating. And then this is the part where everyone runs in and points fingers saying I'm only saying that because of a fundamental misunderstanding of what it is to be human and so my set of morals are wrong wrong wrong!...and that's okay, it doesn't seem to me that anyone's really got a perfect answer yet. You can always bring up degenerate cases or extremes or all sorts of other messy things that twist systems into all kinds of knots they can't get out of. And so it seems that until you limit your system and say that it operates within specifications so long as you keep within it's operating boundaries you'll always run into people who will poke holes at what it is you say and do (because really, it's a pretty easy thing to do compared to constructing the system).
And it's easy to be negative and fall into despair over what happens in life. It's almost as if it's a natural reaction. But you just lead yourself to a downward spiral then, and it's much more useful to try to keep a positive light on things. The pragmatists and self proclaimed realists come in and tell you that you're just lying to yourself and refuse to see things for what they really are when really you can almost always say the same thing about them as well, because we're all just taking our own perspective of what is.
I wonder what a world where the optimists are the majority and look at the pessimists and say "You're fools for not seeing things for what they really are" would be like.
Looking back on me four years ago, I was a pretty stupid kid. I expect that, looking back four years from now, I will see the current me as a pretty stupid kid. And I suppose that's how it'll go, every so often looking back and thinking "Wow, I was a pretty stupid kid." Except I'm not (as much of) a kid anymore. I can't write it off being stupid to being a kid, saying "it's okay kids are supposed to do stupid things."
But everything looks silly in 20/20 hindsight.
So just let it go, man. Just let it go. It's like a reminder of what that bum said to me a year or so ago: "Just keep getting your game on. Speak no ill, and just game on." Keep dancing, keep moving to the rhythm of life, just gotta keep on dancing. When a friend of mine first told me to read Dance Dance Dance, saying that it changed his life, I didn't really understand what he meant. After reading it, I still didn't really understand what he meant. But having been given time to let it sink in, it really clicks now. And really, it seems like having read that book is changing my life too.
I find that I've been telling myself lately not to close my heart. That no matter what else I may do, don't close the heart. Don't shut out the rest of the world. Don't turn inwards and forget about all that is outside. There's a time for introspection and reflection, but that doesn't mean tuning out everything and everyone who matters to you, and to whom you matter to.
Watching the clock tick. Each moment slipping by. I should be trying to grasp on to every moment that I can, and I find that when I'm doing my work, coding in parameters for the combinatoric logic in my chip designs and writing testbenches to make sure the synthesized versions are working properly my fingers fly to try and make the most of every moment, trying to get work done as quickly as possible.
So why is it that as soon as I'm not working I just don't care?
It's amazing how approximately 20% of my life accounts for 95% of my problems. I wonder what it says about the quality of the good in that 20% to make it worth the trouble of that 95% of my problems (and they're usually the problems that hit me hardest, but that's how it goes).
But enough. I've two weeks to do approximately thirty weeks' worth of work. Time to actually apply myself instead of simply drifting to and fro.
On a sidenote, I've been thinking maybe I should take up 80 hour work weeks or something one day. It seems that's mostly what I've been doing for the past year or two now, up and at em at 8am and home around midnight. I could even drop it to 60 hours/week and then I'd be able to go home at 8pm instead and have some me-time (it's a lot easier to do than you might think, those four hours make a world of difference). I'd make a mad amount of extra money from overtime if the company was willing to pay me for my time, and since I tend to do the same sort of thing I do at work when I go home I might as well be paid for it. I go to lab, I write code and work with hardware...I go home and write some other code. Work is play.
All things considered, I've really got no right to complain about anything in my life. My parents support just about everything I do (or at least, let me do things on my own). My two knucklehead brothers are doing well, hopefully will be getting some good news in a month or two. School's a relatively calm thing, I'll have to rework a few things here or there and hopefully weasel something to work my way. I enjoy my research and what I study and what I work with. Money's not an issue. I can eat well, drink well, and have time to run around outside if it suits my fancy. A couple of people I know well who also know me well and I can trust.
All things considered...I've really nothing to complain about.
From time to time it seems to me that some things don't really need to be explicated, that not everything has to be spelled out in plain and simple, black and white terms. There are some people you talk to, and there's enough of a pre-existing foundation that hammering out every single detail isn't necessary, because you've already shared the moments and the experiences and the laughter and tears and highs and lows and all that comes between that when you say yellow they say jello and when you begin to quote a line they finish it for you. You share a context where all the necessary background information is filled in. You say "cute girl" I say "your tutee that's moving to the other side of the country in a month," I say "homofag" you say "damn is he still alive? I thought he'd get himself killed by now."
It's a nice feeling, knowing that you don't have to fill in all the tiny little details and cracks because they know what it is that you mean, what it is you're really trying to say but don't want to put so plainly. The kind of person who really understands (at least part of) you. It's a familiarity, a knowing that you're not alone in the world no matter how much of a solitary unit you are.
I can understand the thought and desire for things to be made clear, to say what you really want to say instead of going around beating around the bush, and to generally explicate things instead of shrouding them in fanciful words and dressing them up in vagueries. And while it seems that there exist a good number of things which should be explicated (because when it's something that matters to us, really matters to us, we always want it spelled out VERY clearly, oftentimes repeated just so we can be doubly sure we didn't mishear something), it seems to me that there are a good number of things which don't need to be made explicit; rather, they become more meaningful in being vague and allowing for interpretation. It's not always about trying to find the meaning in what someone else is saying. Sometimes it's finding your own meaning, and what other people do and say need be nothing more than prompts for your mind to begin thinking.
I grab my umbrella and head out towards the train station, leaving a few minutes early so I don't keep her waiting. It'd be a terrible thing, showing up late on today of all days. So I hustle about in the wind and rain, trying to make it to the station without getting too wet stopping to think halfway there that maybe I should have worn something nicer...but it's too late to go back and change now.
I sit on the train and read a bit more on package and library declaration statements in VHDL because for some reason reading during the day seems like a waste of time but while it's on the train going somewhere where I have nothing better to do it seems like I'm being productive. It also focuses my mind on something other than the nervousness.
I hop off the train and think to flash a quick look at the clock. 5:42pm. I've still got 18 minutes before I'm late, but I'm meeting her at Hotel New Hankyu, and I've never been there before nor do I have much of a clue where it is, other than knowing that I'm at Hankyu station so it's (hopefully) close. After running around following some hanging signs I find the place and as I'm walking by peering into the cafes in the lobby I realize that this is a much, much more upscale place than I had imagined. 5:48pm. I make use of the facilities and go to the reception desk where we said we'd meet. I've still nothing to do for another ten minutes and paying attention to the butterflies in my stomach and the nagging suspicions in the back of my head coupled with a mild sleepiness in my eyes won't make for good uses of my time so I read some more and collect my thoughts.
5:55pm. I look around, but nothing jumps out at me yet. More reading.
6:00pm. She's late. But that's no reason to get upset so I just let the nervousness creep up a notch and keep reading. I don't recall having been in such a split mindstate for a while. Half of me's perfectly calm, analyzing code and recording syntax in the mind. The other half's pacing madly back and forth thinking what should I say what should I do I hope I make a good impression what if I mess up what if my performance isn't satisfactory?
Midsentence I'm interrupted by her voice. "Randy?" she says. I look up, smile, and we exchange pleasantries before settling down at a table for some coffee and tea. She pulls out a small bag from her purse and says "It's Valentine's Day, so I bought you a little something," as she hands me a little box, wrapped with pink ribbon. I smile and say "thank you, you shouldn't have," as a waiter comes to take our order. She compliments my Japanese and says it sounds very natural while I whisper my thanks and try to smile without oversmiling. She asks me if I'm hungry, and if I'd like something to eat, but seeing how I just ordered a cup of tea for 650 yen (the most expensive cup of tea I've ever had), I decide to fake it and say no, I'm fine, thank you. I have mine straight, no sugar. She takes hers with a touch of milk, muddling the translucent brown to a duller shade, and a hint of sugar.
We sit and chat. She tells me about her life. I listen as best I can and fight off the lull of not getting in enough sleep the previous night while I sip my tea and try to put the cup down without making too much of an uncouth noise against the dainty dish it naturally sits atop of. I ask her some questions, and offer a bit of my life history. She returns the favor with her own set of questions, and we get to know each other a bit better. We talk about the person we met through for a bit, and before I know it it's been an hour. She asks me if I have time, and I say I don't have anything important. She tells me she'd like to invite me and that person, as well as another assistant of hers, to lunch some time, or maybe dinner, and I say that'd be a fine idea, assuring her I'd be more than happy to.
We chat a bit more, and then it's time. She asks me if I would be willing to see her again on Friday, and I tell her I'll be sure to keep my schedule open for her. "6:00pm again, on Friday then," she says, and I smile and nod my agreement. She looks at me, and says "Are you sure 3000 is enough for you?" and I tell her it is, that it's perfectly fine with me (even though it's plainly obvious she's more than willing to pay more). She opens her purse and says that she doesn't have enough small bills, so she gives me 6000 and says to take it as payment for two times, or maybe just tonight because she's taken up so much of my time. I tuck the money in my wallet as we get up and she grabs the check before I can. We walk to the register and she thanks me for my time, tells me she's looking forward to seeing me on Friday, and tells me I can go now. I offer to pay for my drink, but she insists that it's okay, it's on her, so I give my thanks and go on my way.
And thus it was that I came to spend my Valentine's Day having food and drink paid for (though there was no food, I'm sure if there was it would have been covered) and being paid for my time. Truly, the whoring life is good.
I know this girl named Daisy. Not know know in that way we'd like to know people we care about, but know in that if I saw her walking around on campus I'd be able to put a name to the face know. You know, the trivial kind that really doesn't mean anything, and shows that you don't really know anything about them, other than that they exist.
In this particular case, though, it seems I know not only that she exists, but that she bitches. A lot (though seeing how I tend to bitch about people who bitch a lot I'm just a big hypocrite. Deal with it.).
Now it's not that I go out of my way to find out when she's bitching about something. I did that before, though, because the things she bitches about and the way she goes about it are so ridiculous that it's really, really funny. Or when she goes on a bit about things she says with her boyfriend (I can't help but wonder if he's real, or if he's imaginary...how sad) it makes me think of that lovely line from Family Guy about gracing the earth with "the pitter patter of children uglier than sin." What seems rather strange, to me, is that her existence just...comes up. In the strangest of places, too!
Take for example the MCB (Molecular Cell Biology) mailing list. Every now and then I see her send out some random mail about what an easy class to take is or who the easy professor is and so on so forth (weak). I kind of have beef with people who are always looking for the easy way out, but that's just me (challenge of the self, that's the good stuff). I'd been on the list for about a year, because people tend to do a good deal of buying/selling of stuff there, so I like to keep a few of my fingers wading through the material that goes through there just in case something that catches my interest comes along (think of it as ebay auctions that come to you). Every now and then some controversial topic comes up, and people start flaming each other, and now and again she hops in and throws in her opinions in a rather poorly written way that I imagine makes all people who have stances remotely close to hers bury their faces in their hands and go "oh god what did we do to deserve this?"
Then the other day there's this email a guy from one of the labs I volunteer at back at Berkeley sends out that mentions a blog where our lab gets mentioned (yay). It's the Berkeley blog or some such, some sort of community thing I think. Anyways I took a look because it's neat to see the things you work with and care about come up in other people's lives (and I hoped we were making a positive difference). So what do I see there but this girl Daisy bitching about the new mail system that was installed at Berkeley (it's not really all that bad, in my opinion). It seems a few other people agree with her, but the way she puts it just feels really...juvenile. Or maybe it's because she just has to have that silly word "princess" in all her user names that drives me up the wall (if you know her, you understand the irony and sacrilegous use of said word). I suppose there are quesitons about whether or not it really is her, but if you've ever sampled her writing, then I'm sure you'd be able to pick it out rather readily too. Trust me. It's very, very distinct.
That's enough bitching for today, time to return to regularly scheduled self-education!
Megaman 2 background music is the shit. Anyone who doesn't think so is clearly dysfunctional. That is all.
We'll call this game Life. In this game, I say something, and then you say something. Then I say something else, and you say something else too. Then we repeat, ad infinitum. Like so:
Me: Doors close.
You: You can open them again.
Me: I'll bolt them shut.
You: I'll break them down.
Or like so:
Me: Possibilities end.
You: And others begin.
Me: The new don't always replace the old, not completely.
You: They're different, but just as good.
The rules are simple. There's no real purpose to the game other than playing it for the sake of the game. There's no meaning until you decide to give it meaning.