I was at the hospital geting my hand checked out today (martial arts injury, not something you gutter-minded people are imagining), and was talking to the doctor's assistant. He was a middle-aged Chinese guy from Hong Kong, and we were talking about martial arts and whatnot while he was walking me to the X-ray room. Along the way, he commented that I was big for a Chinese person, and that I was a good looking, handsome Chinese boy.
And like many other times in my life, I had a Keanu Reeves moment and said "...thanks?"
There seems to be something about me that makes old Asian people want to tell me I look good. This happened a few years back when I was getting my hair cut at this Korean place, when the lady who was cutting my hair was going to hook me up with her daughter until she heard I was 20, which made me a bit too young.
I'm not sure what it is that causes this sort of response from middle-aged Asian people (and only middle-aged Asian people). I'd like to believe what they say, but after years of schoolyard ridicule and conditioning I've developed a neurosis to discount any compliment on how I look and only focus on the negative. I have a big enough ego as it is (that's tragically unfulfilled), so letting these things get to my head can only lead to more trouble.
Now if only beautiful women between the ages of 14 and 35 would tell me I look good and they want to jump my bones...!
One day, I'm going to have to accept that I have a geeky, dorky, or geeky dorky sense of humor. Case in point:
"Take a lesson from revision control systems: You can check out as many times as you like, just don't commit until you're absolutely sure." (telling a friend of mine he should casually date several women at once and not prematurely commit himself to one)
I've discovered the duty free room in my building, which lives on the 15th floor of the gigantic black phallus in downtown Seattle (Columbia Center tower...it's the biggest, blackest building here at some 75 stories or so).
What is the duty free room?
It's a room where the company dumps boxes of books, CDs, DVDs, and other random stuff. For example, there was a box full of "World's Best Goals" (or some such) DVDs, two boxes full of random trash romance novels (or so I assume as I judge books by their covers), and CDs by HIM (Him? him? HiM?)
Now I have yet another way to kill time during the day while I pretend to work.
I hope you all die by having your intestines torn out of your stomach and wrapped around your neck untl your veins bulge, your eyes bleed red, and you take your last gasping breath.
This has been another senseless act of rage, brought to you by television, rock music, and violent video games.
Today, I purchased The Complete Asshole's Guide to Handling Chicks. It's due to arrive on the 18th, and I'm looking to indulge in my chauvanistic pig tendencies. I will roll around in mud, and maybe even run around in circles chasing my squiggly little piggly tail.
Oh yes, life will be good.
And while I was at it, I purchased the first season of Drawn Together, whose obscene and vulgar humor makes the oddities and awkward situations I create seem almost...normal.
As a random aside, I've been at Amazon for about 4 months now. What have I learned during this time? How to decipher Amazon URLs. Amazon has the most ridiculously, painfully long URLs that pass in all sorts of information to the underlying software. What I found to be rather silly was when a coworker, who was reviewing some code I wrote, rejeted it because he thought the name in the URL I used was too long. Too long!? It's a drop in the bucket compard to the mess that is Amazon URLs. I'd say he's a total nutjob if he didn't turn out to be a pretty cool guy (after tearing me a new one during the code review session).
But what the hell; he's a nutjob, and I'm an asshole. The end.