210 - 'No comment' and 'I don't know what to say'

To the people that respond to uninteresting or tricky dialogue with 'no comment', let me teach you an alternative move you could make.

Now, this may come as a shock to you, so heed my warning...

When I have no comment, I do not comment.

I know it seems CRAZY, but trust me, it achieves the same effect.

In fact, sometimes, it can be even more effectual.

Again, please try to keep yourselves together when I tell you what I'm about to tell you.

But the same goes for 'I don't know what to say'.

When I don't know what to say, I do not say anything.

It's okay to keep silent. You don't have to say anything. Nobody's going to judge you. In fact, most of the time, people never expect you to say anything.

Okay, okay, I know it feels like your world has been turned upside down, but trust me, everything is going to be okay. Please stop crying hysterically. You can do this. You can keep your mouth shut. You are actually allowed to say nothing.

Okay, I'll tell you what... I'm going to leave you alone for a while, 'cause I've obviously caused you some major distress.

I'll see you later, okay?

198 - Boastful winners

Contrary to sore losers, which I blogged about a couple of days ago, on the other hand, there are also those that boast a lot about winning. They like to shove their victory in your face, whether it be a vainglorious checkmate on a chess board, a full house full of hot air in a poker game, or a highfalutin hotel bought and set in place on Boardwalk (if you're American) or Mayfair (if you're British) when you're playing Monopoly.

There is also the kind of bragging that comes with showing your support for a particular sports team. I actually personally don't mind this - although feel free to disagree. I've just been exposed to many displays of gasconade when people come into lectures, classrooms or the workplace gloating over Manchester United's defeat of Liverpool, India's triumph over Australia in cricket, and Jenson Button's domination of the Formula One World Drivers' Championship. Although I don't participate in the shouting and cheering myself, I get it - I would cheer for television shows, or books, if they ran around a pitch passing a ball to each other in front of millions of people.

But when it comes down to personal bragging rights - people tend not to have any in my eyes. To show off with or without substantiation is annoying nonetheless. Nobody cares that much if you win - a good game is a good game, and that's that. I tend to see it as an act of ego-boosting. A truly confident person doesn't need to advertise his skill. A truly impressive demonstration of achievement waits for others to do the congratulations.

Although this was true in the case of Kayne West's shout-out to Beyoncé a couple of months back, sometimes, some people, like Taylor Swift, deserve a minute of glory time. I've heard of having insecurities - but Kayne West... God knows what's wrong with him.

A pat on the back is nice, but a continual 24/7 patting of one's back is bravado that's clearly going overboard. Tell me, dear loyal readers, do you hate it too?

188 - When people feel like they can't talk to me

I know it when a person trusts me or doesn't trust me. I can sense it in the way they talk, their body gestures, and the tidbits of their lives they decide to share with me. Honestly, I'll talk to anyone, about anything they want to, but what I cannot stand is a bit too much smalltalk and not enough meaning to the time spent together.

It's easy for me to listen to people, and to say something relevant in return, to learn from others as well as teach something to my correspondent. I don't like it when people don't seem to have this social skill, when people are afraid of opening up themselves, and don't feel I would want to listen.

Truth is, we all like comfortable and honest conversation, and all work together to contribute to society. We're of the same species, in need of food and drink, air, attention and affection. We are all co-dependent, in the same boat, which is why I don't know why there are some people that just don't get the benefit of sharing. And when they don't share, it makes me feel like I'm doing something wrong.

If you never share your thoughts, how am I supposed to know how to respect you or make you feel comfortable with me around? How am I supposed to know what you want? How are we supposed to know what you like to do, what you like to talk about, or where your lines are defined so that we don't cross them? How are we supposed to coexist if you don't start talking to me?

177 - People who videotape lectures

The life of a university student is quite interesting. We are finally adults, responsible for our own money, time, property, physiological well-being, and general lifestyle, emotionally mature, with a supposedly more developed mental health, while also carrying the rights to marry, to vote, to work, to join the army, to drive, to travel abroad without parental consent, to drink, to smoke, to have sex, to gamble, and the list goes on. We choose how we want to live our lives, and in university, that largely includes the way we want to learn.

No longer must we conform to the timetable of high school, be obliged to attend classes, consult teachers about class content, have lunch at a reasonable hour, sleep at a reasonable hour, do our homework on time, or spend hours and hours studying for our tests. We are free of all obligations, our duties are for us to define. We can skip all of our lectures and seminars, we can forget about studying, get wasted every night, sleep in every morning, eat junk food everyday, revise for our examinations at the very last minute, and give less than a rat's tail about our assignments. The only drawback about that game plan is the fact that we would fail at the end of the year, and that's quite a lot of money to send down the drain.

One key thing that you may find different, is the fact that you don't need to take notes down anymore - it's not required of us anymore - as adults, we decide if it's necessary for our tertiary education. We can just sit there, cross-armed the whole time and put the gift of memory to good use by listening intently, taking it all in and deeply engraving it in our heads, or we could leave an audio recorder on the lecturing stand for aural replay on a later date.

But if you really wanted to capture the entire essence of the talk, if you really wanted to experience the lecture like it was exactly once again, you could get a video camera, and tape the whole damn thing.

I thought I've seen some stupid things in my lifetime. This girl put a video camera on the lecturing stand, to tape the professor giving the talk, and the reason for this was that there was nowhere else to put the camera. With the soft, cotton-filled, round-edged seats in the theater, the chairs were useless when it came to balancing anything on top of one of them. She could have just held the thing in her hand the whole time instead, but she probably figured she needed both hands to take down notes. The one thing she didn't figure beforehand was the fact that the lecturer didn't exactly stay at the stand, or in any one particular place.

In fact, the lecturer moved almost everywhere except the lecturing stand. When the professor was standing on the right, the girl student was happy, and she sat there - not listening to the professor - but always eying her precious visual project to make sure she was capturing the video (i.e., being distracted). When the lecturer walked over to the left-hand side of the lecture hall, the girl would get up from her seat, and turn the camera towards him. And then the professor would turn, and walk back in the opposite direction to the right-hand side.

This went on for about ten minutes, and the girl had gotten up seven times. She finally figured - she would have to stop getting up and sitting down - so she found a plastic chair and sat right next to the lecturing stand. This only gave her easier access to her camera, and she would tweak the angle at which her camera was pointed repeatedly at around one tweak per minute. She wasn't even listening to the man. The guy was telling us very interesting things, about the Azande people of Central Africa who believe in witchcraft, who purify their newborns by holding them over smoke, and whose criminal justice system involves determining a suspect's innocence in a crime by observing if a poisoned chicken dies or survives after ingesting a toxic substance.

And this girl wasn't listening to any of this. She kept adjusting her lens, tending to her sacred angle that had to be pointed at the professor at all times. She was distracting two hundred or more other students, and let's face it...

Why waste one hour or more in the future by watching it on tape?

You can just pay attention the one time, the first time, and that's the only hour of your lifetime that that lecture would take out of your time. If you videotaped all of your lectures, you would effectively be taking the same course twice, spending twice the time listening to the same content twice, not forgetting the fact that you would have to spend additional hours more dealing with the technology and the hardware.

Why bother?

This is a classic case of people trying too hard, but achieving less.

150 - Talking about exams

Like the husband who talks incessantly about his boss and his work and his colleagues at the dinner table in front of his wife and kids, students who chatter non-stop about an examination after the examination is over can be so annoying. Pondering whether or not you got this question right, or that question wrong, or drew this diagram incorrectly, or calculated this distance to the right degree of accuracy, continually for two weeks straight, induces such a headache. All these words being exchanged about how this exam was easy, but that one had a lot of tricky questions, and about how you managed to draw this graph, and how you did this question, scratched it out, and decided to do another one...... why?

Why do you want to talk about it? Why relive the pain, or the boredom, or the feeling of stupidity if you didn't do so well, or, if you did well, the so-called 'challenge' the examiners think will stump you? Why does it matter anymore? What's done is done, no? So why talk about it? Seriously?

Maybe it's fun to compare what we each did, sharing is caring, lalala... After all, going to school is a communal gig. Maybe we just want to have a better idea of how well we fared amongst our class. Maybe we highly value education, and ask everyone about what they put down as their answer so as to confirm or enhance your current amount of knowledge.

Oooooor, maybe you think education is actually a pile of horse poo, and find it funny how badly you did. I personally don't see the humor/sense in that.

Oooooor, maybe you're so confident that you did well, that you just want to show off your wonderful grasp on the information we need to know every minute before and after the exam.

Oooooor, maybe you knew you did badly, and just want to confirm... which makes you sort of sad.

It goes to show how I don't really believe in people's goodness. In conclusion, anyone who talks after exams are either cocky, arrogant showboats, or disappointing good-for-nothings who may or may not be using self-deprecating humor as a defense mechanism. Boo.

-------------------------------------------------------

My exams are over! I personally try not to bring them up in conversation... but they do, some how, every time.

That means I'm done with high school. For the next two weeks, I celebrate my 18th birthday... I also celebrate graduation. And I also celebrate the coming of summer. More than ninety days of fun until university begins... It's going to be wild.

On September 1st, I should be living and studying in London already. I look forward to writing entries everyday 'til then. Hope you've all been doing well since I've been gone. I'll be blogging more than ever now that I have so much free time. Hehe.

136 - People who only answer one question when you ask multiple questions

This happens too often.

Michael: "Hey, when are we meeting up next week? What time and where?"
Person: "Ummm... the McDonald's in Times Square."
(fifteen seconds of silence later...)
Michael: "Which day and what time?"
Person: "4 o'clock"
(five seconds more...)
Michael: "Uh, huh... and the date?"
Person: "Oh, sorry. ...Um... Thursday."
Michael: "Thank you..."

When I ask multiple questions consecutively, it means I need multiple answers consecutively. Jeez.

87 - Vulgar mispronunciations

Remember how I wrote a post about mispronunciation a little over a month ago? Well, today, the subject came to my mind again, only this time, it was vulgar. What sparked it was a pun made by my friend, while we were watching the presidential inauguration together on the phone. He said he was so excited that he got a "Presidential Erection', a play on the word 'election', of course. I laughed, it was funny to me.

I mentioned in that other post that there aren't many people that speak properly all the time. I know I don't. Some mispronunciations are awful because they're not only embarrassing slip-ups, but they can be vulgar and offensive. Imagine if Obama said 'erection' instead of 'election' during his campaign. Yikes.

All we can do is try to be careful, especially on formal occasions. But we need to take extra care with these words in particular, because these slips of the tongue contain swear words, can be offensive and/or simply don't make sense at all!

Sentence: Mispronunciation

I can't get enough of the city life in Hong Kong: I can't get enough of the shitty life in Hong Kong.
Please sit down: Please sh*t down.
Our little girl has six dolls: Our little girl has sex dolls.
We got him six toys for Christmas: We got him sex toys for Christmas.
That's a really old folk song: That's a really old f*ck song.
Could you give me a clean fork, please: Could you give me a clean f*ck, please?
Foxhounds : F*ck sounds.
Benedict: Bend a dick.
The student used his cork to seal the test-tube: The student used his cock to seal the test-tube.
Do you have an available slot, say, at 5pm tomorrow: Do you have an available slut, say, at 5pm tomorrow?
I cannot live without her: I cannot live without whore.
You can't: You cunt!
I ordered the third sandwich on the menu: I ordered the turd sandwich on the menu.
Everyone loves a good father: Everyone loves a good farter.
Brush your teeth: Brush your teat.
The professors showed us their theses: The professors showed us their feces.
There's a lot of rust inside the car: There's a lot of lust inside the car.
The entire audience clapped: The entire audience crapped.
There are lumps in my mashed potatoes: There are rumps in my mashed potatoes.
The American people elected Obama: The American people erected Obama.
The elections come and go so ever-so-quickly: The erections come and go ever-so-quickly.
The whole wall is made of bricks: The whole wall is made of pricks.

And my favorite three. They are my favorite because I've actually heard these being said:

I have to perform a piece on stage: I have to perform a piss on stage.

The beaches are really nice and hot in Thailand: The b*tches are really nice and hot in Thailand.

Feel free to take a sheet: Feel free to take a sh*t!

42 - Drug talks

I'm sitting at a computer in the Hong Kong Central Library. These stations subtly remind me of why I never want to end up with an office job. There are strange people on either side of you, and in the row behind you and every now and then, you might also share an awkward look with the stranger who dwells behind the wall in front of you. Also, these chairs are unbelievably uncomfortable and every time I look behind me, it's either some old person staring at me or some kid staring at me or some old person holding a kid's hand, both staring at me.

At least it's quiet. And with a cubicle job, you can also personalize your work area by decorating your desk and your walls. That's always fun.

But let's get to today's topic. I was (barely) late for class this Monday morning and instead of apologizing to our teacher for being late, I found myself saying sorry to a young-looking Asian woman standing at the front of the classroom. I hastily opted to sit in the seat closest to the door, wondering what this could possibly be and oh, yeah, it was a drug talk. Whoopee.

We were given an hour-long presentation that supposedly raised our awareness of the dangers of consuming numerous stimulants, narcotics, hallucinogens and tranquilizers. I suppose the focus was to repulse us from the very idea of ever taking drugs and drowning our futures in a purple sea of addiction and short-lived euphoria. The lady spoke with a substantial Australian accent as she asked us several questions to find out what we already knew about drugs. Some of us knew nothing, some of us knew very little but none of us knew a lot. We've all been given the same old story before, though. Here's my understanding on the topic after being given four or five of these talks in the past few years:

Always say, "NO!" to drugs, even when it doesn't make any sense to respond with it. Don't succumb to peer pressure. Your friends are evil when they have drugs. Don't ruin your life. Drugs can do that. Don't find happiness in drugs. Drugs make you sad. Addiction is uncontrollable from the moment you take your first pill, sniff, injection or taste. Getting high will only increase the height from which you fall. Most teenagers don't even take drugs and that's because we give tons of these presentations. When you do take drugs, think of your family, even if it's weird. When you take drugs, think of your future, even though the LSD makes it seem like you have a pair of breasts right now. When you take drugs, think of your real friends that don't take drugs. It's nice to spare a moment of thought for those that couldn't join in with all the fun.

Seriously, don't take drugs. They're harmful to your nasal cavity, as well as your teeth, your gums, your throat and your esophagus, in addition to your tongue, your lungs, your mung bean-shaped kidneys, your hair, your head, your hands, your heart, your arteries, your veins, your capillaries, your red cells, your white cells, your B-cells, your T-cells, your sea shells on the seashore, and also, your liver, your pancreas, your stomach, your gall bladder, your spinal cord, your optical cord, your brain, your nerves, your CNS, and PNS, and ANS, and SNS, and SPD, and PSD, and your lymph nodes, your bones, and your genitals, your skin, your nails, your muscles, your joints, YOUR WHOLE BODY, OH, MY GOD! DON'T F***ING TAKE DRUGS, MAN!

You know what the funny thing is? If I'm being completely honest here, I still want to try taking drugs at some point in my life. Just once. Just a little.

I don't know about my classmates, but these talks have always appeared to be quite ineffective, to say the least. The worst part of the presentation we were given today was this fifteen-minute video. I had taken down notes in preparation for today's post but I've lost quite a lot of the frustration I was feeling as I was watching the video.

From what I can recall (and read from my scribbly notes) the video had a lot of sleazy animations, laughable-in-the-bad-way jokes and for no darn reason at all: child actors. A 'wise' teenager would ask some kid a serious question such as, "True or false: Consuming ecstasy will lead you into a deep state of depression." and the child actor would respond with, "Truuuuuuue." with an innocent voice. Why this was necessary to make the point is beyond me.

One the other hand, I guess the video was quite informative and captivating overall. The kaledioscopic colors succeeded in transfixing me and my fellow classmates and the over-the-top animations truly did mesmerize us for the whole duration the video was playing. It was almost like some sort of spell that had been cast over all of us. I caught a glance at them at one point and some of them looked like they were on the verge of being hypnotized. I was quite scared for their health. Man, don't play with vivid colors and crazy animations.

Anyway, the point that I have somewhat failed to elaborate on in too much detail is that drug talks and presentations are quite an ineffective drug prevention strategy. I believe that in order for one to truly fear the effects of drugs, one must first attain some personal experience and first-hand knowledge of what drugs can actually do to one's body and mind.

Sure, they're dangerous and they cause unpredictable effects. Sure, they're expensive, addictive and illegal. And sure, they can put you in a coma or worse yet, kill you. But, hey, treat the presenations a lot more seriously if you want to be taken seriously. Don't use child actors, cheesy jokes and unnecessary animations in your videos. Don't give us a wordsearch for us to find all the slang nicknames for drugs. And most importantly, don't think that talking about the ethics and the dangers of drug usage will convince us not to commit such acts. Us teenagers thrive on rebelling against society's moral standards and the highest part of getting high is the fact that we're snorting in the face of danger.

38 - Mispronunciation

Just to clear out all of my own major slips of the tongue, let me just mention that I have pronounced the names, Peter, as Pet-ter, and Steven, as Steh-ven. Sometimes, my brain just doesn't calibrate the letters and process the order of those letters. The part of my mind that helps with pronunciation just blanks out. I remember there was a time I went to the movies with some friends. I was confused by a sign they had hanging on the wall and I turned to my friend with a very dumbfounded look on my face and asked, "What does no smocking mean?"

I felt very stupid when I made those mistakes and I believe I felt rightly so. I've always admired those that could read very well. Their trick is simply to read carefully and to stop briefly when they come to a longer or trickier word. There are some others that I've met who don't seem to have much talent in speaking correctly. I don't get awfully angry at these people. I just inhale deeply and sigh, sort of like my own method of therapy. People shouldn't open their mouth unless they know how to speak properly. It's annoying to listen to someone's thoughts when the words they're using aren't really words at all. Mispronunciations often occur when one is reading quickly so everybody should practice taking their time to read.

Here are some of the most annoying/amusing/common mispronunciations that I can recall:

Word: Mispronunciation (Comment)

actor: ak-tore (It's spelt that way but it's meant to be 'akter'.)
ask: ass/aks (You're an ass if you mispronounce such an easy word. Let's give the axe to ass and aks.)
clothes: close (Plain sloth.)
dog-eat-dog world: doggy dog world (Tragic mistake.)
environment: enviroment (There's an 'n', isn't there?)
espresso: expresso (I heard this at Starbucks the other day. My, my...)
et cetera: excetera (I have the impression this one is thanks to the King of Siam in The King and I.)
every: eh-ve-ree (It's a two-syllable word.)
February: Feb-ury (There's an 'r' after 'b' and an 'a' after 'u'. Pronounce them.)
government: guver-ment (Similar to enviroment. Even news reporters get these wrong.)
harass: her-ass (Scots never get this one right.)
helicopter: hel-ri-cop-ter (Asians do this. It's not good.)
hungry: Hungary (Hungry is the sensation of wanting to eat. Hungary is the Eastern European nation.)
idea: i-dear (Oh, dear. Do you see an 'r' at the end? I don't.)
José: Jozay (Spanish words require an 'h' sound as opposed to a 'j' sound. That's probably one of the worst misunderstandings you can have for other cultures.)
karate: ka-ra-tay/ka-ra-tee (The word is spelt exactly how it's meant to be said in Japanese. 'ka-ra-teh')
Ku Klux Klan: Klu Klux Klan (Sure. If there's a 'l' in 'Klux' and 'Klan', why not change it to 'Klu'?)
library: li-bry (Refer to 'February'.)
mayonnaise: may-naise (I love mayonnaise.)
nuclear: noo-coo-lah (George Bush says it this way and it sounds sort of dorky.)
parliament: parlament (There is an 'i'.)
probably: probly/prolly (This is horrible, especially when spelt in that haphazard way on paper.)
pronounce: pro-noun-ciate (I hate this one. It makes no sense at all.)
pronunciation: pro-noun-ciation (Ditto.)
snuck: sneaked ('Snuck' isn't a word, people.)
succumb: suck-cum (One should not succumb to laziness if one wants to avoid this awful, awful mispronunciation.)
supposedly: supposably (This is just stupid.)
the/this: duh/diss (Diss is more common dan you dink it is.)
toward: tor-ward (There's no 'r'.)
valve: volve (I don't understand how this happens. It's sort of like a bad attempt at sounding British.)
W: dubba-you (I dub you bad at pronunciation if you fail to say 'double-U'.)

Are there any that you can think of?

10 - Dominating conversations

So obviously, yesterday's post was a bit of a joke. Some people around me do consider me to be a bit too talkative, but I don't think so. For those that didn't catch on yet, I was delibirately writing a short entry yesterday in protest to these wild accusations. I guess now I'll talk about yesterday's and today's at the same time, as they are somewhat similar.

I find people who talk too much, and people who dominate conversations, both annoying, but of course, only when I'm not the one doing the talking, or the dominating. They're different, but the people who talk too much and the people who overpower others in conversations, both have a set of commonalities: a compulsive uncontrollable need to talk, a fair amount of creativity, some irritability brought about by silence, a dash of pride, and most of all, no awareness whatsoever. I'm glad to say that I have recently tried to cut back on talking more than others.

Just to clarify the difference between the two. When you're around a person that 'talks too much', you participate in the conversation too. It's just that their points are really, really long. You experience a surplus in the amount you'd like to know about them, and it's often what we call 'verbal diarrhea' (...mmm). On the other hand, when you're around a person that 'dominates the conversation', you are incapable of joining in the conversation, because their statements are either very loud, or very bold and almost always interruptive. It's like large, unusual, and abrupt diarrhea.

At rare times though, people will actually listen to a conversational dominator like me, but at other times, they're either:
(1) nodding their head at me every two seconds,
(2) laughing for no reason,
(3) asking me "then what happened?" when I've already finished my story,
(4) falling asleep and if I'm lucky, they'll drool, or
(5) they're staring at me with a blank face, which always makes me incredibly uncomfortable, because I think they're picturing me naked (which I really hope is not true) (and there's that creativity I talked about earlier) (...and pride). As you may observe by this list, conversational dominators can get annoyed at all the incessant nodders, the erratic laughers and the possible perverts too! But we probably deserve it for pressing our own lives on to others so much.

I remember a time where I was on the other end of the conversation spectrum, the end where I get talked over and subdued, that is. Since I couldn't possibly make this guy shut up, I took the liberty to observe him and his 'listeners'. The 'listeners' really do drool. And he really is completely unaware that nobody is listening. He was talking about... cars... or stars... I wasn't really sure. I remember it was boring. I also remember several of us trying to speak up, but he would just go on and on. He just wouldn't listen to any of us. It's like diarrhea all over the place.

Anyway, as I mentioned earlier, I'm trying to cut back on talking so much. I don't like seeming insensitive and self-involved. It is strange though. Recently, my friends have been calling me up, starting conversations with me online, finding me at school to talk more often. When you shut up, do people finally notice you've been a lil' quiet? In fact, I used to talk so much that I've had people ask me to fill in the silences when topics are lacking. Guess what?

I hate that too, and that's another story.

So do you hate people that dominate conversations? Is it even possible to convince them not to dominate conversations (refer to blog number 5)? Do you consider 'verbal diarrhea' to be a very vulgar phrase? And how are all of you readers out there? Just thought I might ask you all these questions. I wouldn't want to come across as if I'm talking too much, eh?

9 - Talking/writing/typing too much

I talk a lot around others, I write more than I should for school and I type very long blog posts and go off on tangents.

Do you hate it too?

(Hah!)