231 - Forgetting familiar faces

Eleven days ago, my mother flew from Hong Kong to come visit me here in the UK for her Chinese New Year holiday off work. We spent half the time in Canterbury, where my university is located, and the rest of the time in Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands and Londontown. Before the 10th of February, I hadn't seen her for more than 4.5 months, and to be honest, I had sort of forgotten what she looked like in person. Right now, her physical appearance is fresh in my mind as I only saw her off at Heathrow airport last night, but it'll be another four-and-a-half months before I see her again, and I know I will gradually begin to forget her semblance again until the day I embark on that 16-hour journey finally.

Of course we have all this technology that allows us to talk to each other and see each other with the click of a button or two. But it's just not the same, if you get what I'm saying. This experience of moving away from my home in Hong Kong, to a place where I have to pretty much make it on my own in all aspects of my life, scares the living crap out of me all the time, but it has really shown me what fears, discomforts, and individual strength can be brought about inside me by something as simple as geographical distance.

I do have two or three close friends staying here in the UK, who I've known for a long, long time. The more I thought about it on the train back to university from London, the more I realized that I actually forget people's faces and voices very easily with prolonged absence. There are actually many people in my life that I have forgotten the faces of, and the mere voices of. Sure, I know where they go to university now, and sure I hear things about what they're doing. Sure, I talk to them every now and then, and sure we play games online together, and we look at each other's photos, and it's pretty much like spending time together in the flesh...

...but it's not. There really is a difference, one I cannot find the words to explain adequately. It means something to be in one another's physical presence. It means something to hear the sound of their voices, and their distinctive laughs. And it means something to see each other's expressions, to feed off each other's gestural and facial reactions, to see each other's 'thinking face', or 'eating face', or 'waiting-to-cross-the-street face', to walk side-by-side, and to hug and kiss, and hold hands, or interlock elbows, as you're walking.

I miss home so much. And the familiarity of people's faces and the geography of Hong Kong is probably what gets to me the most.

Well... except the food perhaps.

Yeah...

Food definitely trumps the faces... and everything else.

201 - Being forced to write

I watch a television series called Californication. For those of you who don't already know what it's about, the episodes revolve around the personal and professional troubles of a published author. In the show's pilot, the writer is being pressured by his agent to get his next piece of work ready for publishing soon, but the writer finds himself struggling to write a new book. So he makes an attempt. Anything he can put on a piece of paper, he writes it down. Then he throws it away because the idea sucks. He tries again, and then dumps it in the trash once more. He has no choice but to push himself, and trying to push your way through writer's block is what really grinds my gears today.

Writing, whether it be a book, an essay, a blog, a newspaper article, or even a text message, requires many different things - it starts with having an initial idea, and then having the vast pool of words from which you can select the ones that perfectly convey that thought. It needs a quick mind, prolific with ideas, to help you develop your craft, and an easily accessible, diverse group of trustworthy people you can rely on, to give you reliable feedback in case it's needed. Then, a critical eye is good to have after you've finished, to help you go through your work objectively and edit. Maybe this paragraph needs an image to go with it. Maybe I should use the rule of three. Perhaps these words should be italicized, this word should be boldfaced, and this sentence should end with a question mark to make it self-referentially humorous?

All in all, writing sure as Hell takes a lot of hard work. Especially if you want to write humorously, with distinctive flair and unique style, without making any mistakes in spelling, punctuating or grammaticizing. All of this hard work also needs time, time that could've been spent on homework, school work, office work, house work, working out, going out, catching up with an old friend, seeing a movie with the family, learning a new recipe, checking out a new restaurant, or going grocery-shopping at the supermarket. 

Writing takes a lot more than just creative power. It requires inner and superficial knowledge, some honesty, plus experience, experience from which you can draw if you are aiming to write from the heart. Writing also requires a certain level of strategy and socio-cultural awareness, to entertain, captivate and attract readers, and also to avoid angering and/or insulting them too. It requires pride and belief in what you're writing, you need to be courageous and unafraid of being openly or discreetly condemned. It's a demanding hobby/profession.

But at its roots, it is about creative power. Some people can just do it at any point of any day. Some people cannot. Most people.

I am still in school, and I am very familiar with the feeling of having to write about a certain topic before a certain date. Police officers don't know how to bulk up their reports. Businesspeople are finding themselves with blank Powerpoint presentations. Chefs can't put their finger on the perfect ingredient. Teachers regurgitate the same student evaluation thirty times. And bloggers don't know what to say.

Yet it's required of all of us to pull something out of our ass at some point. I have this to talk about now, but what am I going to do next time? Just pass on writing for a few more days?

Tell me, do you hate it too?

191 - Games that take over my life

I have recently discovered the Wikipedia Game. If you've never played, you basically are given the titles of two different Wikipedia articles, and your challenge is to get from, say, "Vaseline," to, let's say, "Barack Obama", in the fewest number of clicks you can. You can create an account to keep a record of your wins, and when you're one of the best players, you get your username displayed on the left-hand side. You will all be glad to know that I'm not one of the Top Five players (yet). But I did just spend about an hour playing it.

The thing is, if a game is a game I come to like, then I'm hooked for hours on end. When I first discovered and learned how to play Pinball, Solitaire, Minesweeper, Freecell, Hearts, and Spider Solitaire, I could not stop. Whether it was Snake on my phone, or Pokémon on my GameBoy, or the thousands of pointless games on Miniclip, Mousebreaker and AddictingGames, there have been many, many, many hours, days at a time, that have been just completely wasted on the severe pointlessness of games.

If you haven't been on Sporcle before, I recommend it. It's stimulating and fun on an intellectual level, and doesn't require you do much other than type. However, I warn you - you might get addicted. Just look at my Sporcle stats, you can see how much time I spend on these quizzes that serve no other purpose than to show off about and have false pride in.

Why do games have to be so damn addicting? 
I mean, they're consuming my life!

Do you hate it too?

160 - When people don't take advantage of the opportunities to do stuff when they're on vacation

I went to Bintan, Indonesia with my class for a week on our graduation trip. The Nirwana Gardens Resort was so nice. To be honest, it was a lot of fun, and there wasn't a whole lot to hate. There was one point on the trip where I was reading my biological-anthropological book, by the pool, near the beach, tanning in the sun, with a citrusy alcoholic beverage by my side, next to a plate of spaghetti, and half a dozen sticks of chicken satay. Life could not get any better, all my needs were satisfied.

I know my classmates may be reading this, waiting to see what Michael hates now, what Michael just didn't feel right about, like the many times he didn't think see any good in something or someone.

So I will give it to them.

Half of us tried to go out as much as possible. We went kayaking, swimming in the pool and at the beach, played beach volleyball, ate local food (e.g., pineapple fried rice, calamari, seafood, nasi goreng), saw the sunset, drank, sang karaoke, played poker and blackjack, did some archery, and rifle-shooting, and dancing at the resort's club. Right now, my skin is peeling like crazy from going out in the sun so much, but the finished product should turn out to be awesomely tan in a couple of days.

I was so surprised by the fact that the other half of us stayed inside the resort villas as much as they did. They even brought their laptops, and their Playstation 3, and all the technology they would fill their time up with back here in Hong Kong. At night, they would watch movies, and in the early daytime, they would sleep. They did go to the pool, but only for the poolside bar, and they did go to the beach, but only for a few hours altogether.

I don't get it. Why not just do that in Hong Kong, on an island in Hong Kong? What a waste of money it is to go to some foreign place only to sleep in and stay indoors. Why is everyone just going to sleep when they feel tired? Sure, everyone is tired, but now that we're back, you have the rest of the summer to sleep and rest, don't you? Wasn't this supposed to be a graduation trip, filled with late-night chats, and late-night dips in the ocean, and late-night card-playing, and drinking, and bonding?

Sigh, but to each their own, I suppose. Some people like to take advantage of the locally available facilities, while others would rather use the time to relax. There are people that actually like to travel the world, and 'test out' different hotels' services, to compare their customary quality. I could never be one of those people... I must try out the food, learn a bit of the language, explore the place...

What do you guys think?
And did you miss me? (I promise noooooow I'll be a more active blogger.)

157 - People who never meet their deadlines

I'm not the only one who's bound for University College London in the UK. I have a classmate who also plans on heading to that institution for university. He's an interesting fellow, someone who I feel privileged to know. He's very conversational and straight-forward, and tells a lot of fascinating stories. He doesn't really know how to complement people, though, and he's not the kind of person you would typically look to for consolation. But that doesn't bother me, 'cause I appreciate his cynicism, however, the thing that does annoy me about him is the way he leaves everything 'til the last minute.

No, let me make a correction: he leaves everything 'til after the last minute, after every deadline.

The university wants us to apply for accommodation before the thirty-first of May, and he hasn't done so yet. At the point when I heard this, I was already quite annoyed because I thought I didn't have to think about university applications ever again, as I had managed all the paperwork a while ago now, but apparently not - I have to help this guy out.

He says he didn't receive the application forms from the university. He realized two weeks ago that it's the only university he applied to that hadn't mailed him any information yet.

But it's only at this point that he thought to himself, that maybe he should have sent them an e-mail, asking why. And now he plans to write an e-mail of inquiry, one day after the deadline for the accommodation application.

Seriously, then what? Wait another three weeks for the form to get sent here?

The deadline was the thirty-first of May. You have no guaranteed place to live in anymore.

He's been like this since I first met him, he's been late with his geography coursework, his mathematics coursework, his English essays, and his physics lab reports.

Everybody waits until the last minute before they have to do their work, of course.

But get your shit together before the deadline arrives, because if you really wanted to go to London, like I do, that's what you have to do.

155 - Rust on the guitar strings

I have one electric guitar and one classical guitar, and they both have rusty strings. It's my fault for neglecting them, placing them in their respective cases, and putting them in the dark corner of my room for the past two years. I remember I loved playing music on those things, but schoolwork, exams and time spent with classmates consumed me, and got in the way of me actually making some music in my spare time.

My best friend was talking to me the other night on the phone, and he was playing the guitar while doing so. It prompted me to take out mine, and I played and played and played 'til the sun came up, 'cause now I have the time and luxury to do so.

And it feels great, to make music. And to record myself on my computer again, to work on my voice, and to try and play better.

It just irks me that these strings are rusty and making my fingers orange. I have to go buy the strings, and change the strings, and that's such a hassle. Damn me, for not taking care of them continually in the past two years. If I had cleaned them and played them regularly, none of this would have happened.

My poor guitars...

123 - The absence of peace and quiet in the morning

Midnight, a motorcyclist is arriving home late, broom broom-ing on the ground floor.

01:12, the man and the woman next door are arguing about who's responsible for buying the milk. Grandpa went to piss.

03:34, do I hear birds chirping?

04:33, why does the printer have to make such a cacophonous noise when it prints?

04:37, jeez, it makes such a horrible noise even when it scans stuff too.

04:49, grandpa's going to pee again, the heavy breathing, the trickling of his urine into the bowl, the sigh of relief, I hear it all and it's giving me a headache.

04:59, yup, it's those dumb birds, the same old birds singing at the break of dawn every single morning. I wish I had a shotgun.

06:35, great, grandpa's up, watching the morning news, I loathe the theme music of the news, the Morse code beeping, the beeping, the high-pitched, repeated beeping, ugh...

07:14, the bathroom door closing, the sound of my clothes dropping on to the floor.

07:15, water going through pipes, water splashing on to me, dropping on to the shower floor, gurgling down the drain, so much noise...

07:38, Front door closing, front gate clicking, the sound of my footsteps, the elevator doors, sssshhhh...

07:45, Oh, my God, the commotion inside an early rush-hour train is frickin' unbelievable. People chit-chatting, the uproar of the train moving along the tracks through a tunnel.

07:48, baby screaming and crying, mother trying to overpower her in volume.

08:01, students all waiting to catch the bus, talking amongst themselves like they didn't just see each other yesterday. I think I'll take a cab.

08:03, horns are beeping, buses farting whenever they stop, people running, screaming "wait!" at bus drivers who can't hear them, the occasional high-heels pass by, cab arrives.

08:06, taxi driver asking which route I want to take. I tell him the route. Then I tell him to leave me alone so I can close my eyes and rest.

08:08, the meter beeped, price of ride has risen.

08:10, beeped again,

08:11, and again,
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.
.
.
.
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08:27, arrived at school, the coins in my wallet are making sounds, I press them down against the soft fabric of my wallet to eradicate the sound. The taxi driver, however, is happy to jingle-jangle his coins here and there, ugh.

08:28, I hate entering school. Apart from all the loud thud thuds of the juniors running, and the female staff's high high-heels galloping through the corridors, there's all the "Hey, good morning!", "How was your parents' anniversary dinner last night?", "Did you do your Mandarin essay?". Grumble...

08:30, the worst noise in the world: the school bell ringing.

It's the morning, for Pete's sake, it's when I am trying to gather myself to live for the rest of the day, and if I can't do that, I basically become crabby for the rest of the day. Why can't my mornings just be QUIET?

98 - Skipping school

Hello, world. It's Monday night, and it's about to hit midnight. I didn't sleep last night and I only managed to catch around fifteen minutes of snooze in the past twenty-four hours. I don't plan on sleeping tonight either.

Yesterday, I had this essay to write, and tonight, I have three more. I would skip school to just get some rest and have more time to work on these, but I've been skipping too often now, for my own standards.

I think I have skipped school around twenty times so far since this school year began in September 2008, maybe been late a couple of times? To those studious, responsible teens out there, good for you on making it to school everyday, it's a bloody achievement and I could never do that. (I'm not being sarcastic.) I wake up in the middle of the afternoon on a school day and the first thought that comes to my mind is, "damn it, Michael, you lazy piece of shit." I loathe myself, and I hate myself for not going to school. There are several others in my class that also decide to pass when they're not feeling too eager about getting educated. I don't like their attitude to school, I don't think they should be wasting their parents' money. They often consider school to be a lameass obstacle in life that you have to get through before you reach the good stuff, the better stuff, the dream. I say, if the goals you have are not attainable through school and education, then piss off and go chase the dream. What on Earth are you still coming in to school for four days out of five for?

My aspirations can only be reached if I study, so as one of my New Year resolutions last month, I decided that I would try to stop skipping school so often. It's working a lot better than the past few years, but there's still room for improvement.

On the other hand, knowing the wide range of readers this blog attracts, there are bound to be a bunch of you that say that I should not stress so much over homework and friends at school. To be honest, I understand wholeheartedly. I hate people who think school is everything, who think that their role in life in this moment in time is and only is a student's role. Nothing else in life matters much, such as money, material goods, love and sex, leisure time and/or a social life altogether. These 'nerds' need to grow up and live a little.

I just felt that I needed to iterate that because I don't want to be seen as one of them.

But really, as I said, skipping school is just something that creates a pang in my backside. If you care about school, stop skipping it. If you don't care about school, quit. Stop wasting our teachers' time which could be better spent on present students, stop making us wonder and worry about why you're absent, and get a job, because if you ain't studying right now, by law and social standards, you should be working. Do something productive, stop wasting your life.

34 - People who are disorganized

I was struggling to come up with ideas today, which is a good thing as it indicates that nothing today really struck me as annoying. As I was lying here on my bed, with my pillows alongside me and physics notes and textbooks spread out all over my bed (we have a physics examination tomorrow), I wondered why my mind had gone blank. The reason is (of course) that I lack the organizational skills. All of my posts for the past thirty-three days have been conjured up on the day they were published and because of this, I am setting myself up for days like these where I can't think of anything.

What would be wiser is if I planned ahead for my posts, but this, to me, is something that's easier said than done. I don't ever prepare for many things such as exams or for emergency situations and quite frankly, I suck at managing my own time and money. I borrow money off others when my allowance runs out at the end of the week, I always end up doing last-minute revision for my exams and I stay up late at night, for many nights, doing homework that's due the next day. It's annoying for others and it annoys me too. I have a ton of things I should be doing aside from blogging here, but procrastination and failure to prioritize has led me astray from the straight path of righteousness into the dark wood of self-deprecation.



Anyway... I am organized in some ways. I've planned a few parties and outings and they always were successful and everything went according to plan. I have considerable OCD when it comes to lists that just have to be alphabetized or numbered in chronological order or in order of preference/priority. I'm a teenager and I tidy my room at least once every fortnight, all sheets of paper in my room are filed in appropriate folders and everything on my computer is categorized and there are no stray documents. The skills that I have in these sorts of areas make me loathe the ones that lack it.

I hate it when people can't remember what homework there is or when it's due. For most of my time at school, I've been able to remember what I have to do once the teacher tells us to. I respect those that take that approach of memorizing it in their imaginary calendars and I like the people who jot it down in their diaries if they know they'll forget. But for those with chronic memory loss, they don't seem to care very much. Sometimes, it takes them forever for one of my friends to find a sheet in the lost archives within their bag. They lose things or homework slips their mind and the teachers have to tolerate it and give them additional time or resources.

Being disorganized is not a good habit to develop or to have. Organization is not only vital for students to have in order to get good results, but it's also important for parents and teacher that are held responsible for children that don't know any better and for anybody in any line of work so as to get paid at the end of each month. It's also important for oneself, because everyone needs to manage their own life in order for their lives to be sustained and for them to improve. Otherwise, the world will just eat you up.

(Sorry. Couldn't think of anything else to end it with, but that is the gist of what I'm essentially trying to say.)