Filed under: Musings
Every week, something speaks to me and points me to one consistent message throughout the week.
For example, last week, the message that unexplicable forces point me toward is:
“Do not overestimate your power to establish causal links; please give CHANCE a big role.”
This week, the message is:
“Do not underestimate the power of a good picture: a nice picture says it all.”
These two phrases have much implications on everything I do: in how I deal with life personally, how I do research, and what research I do.
Filed under: Lifestyle
After my ballet session, the instructor came to ask whether this was my first time. I said I had lessons for a year or so when I was 5 or 6. She said,
“It shows! You still got it in you!”
Enough said.
P.S. One of the songs that the live pianist played during one of the excercise is Scott Joplin’s tune which I also used to constantly play on my piano.
Filed under: Random
On the wall of one of the bathroom stalls in the old social science building marked the following conversations:
“Ron and Jesse had sex in this stall. *heart*”
Another handwriting directly below the above sentence ==
“I know, I was watching.”
Another handwriting directly below the above sentence —
“Are the bathroom cam working?”
Filed under: Music
What a classic! If you go karoke with me, I’ll for sure sing this song.
Filed under: Music
Another female musician that I am keep a close eyes on (her “eye to the telescope” album is extremely good. The more you listen, the more delicious the whole album is. The songs hang together very well. My favorite ALBUM for a female vocalist so far this year)
Every Friday, I talk to an “advisor” whose advices I am growing to appreciate by each week.
Today, she explains to me why “manners” in talking, or what I interchange with “being fake”, is an important thing to do, and why it overwhelms whatever altruistic benefits you assign to just being blunt (most people will be 0 or negative benefits; but for some reasons for me is positive; but I am learning it’s negative).
Analogy: in a wolf pack, wolves survive by having manners to other wolves.
This post continues a series of post which will document the beginning loss of naivete of yours truly.
Masterpiece theatre broadcasted Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the D’uberbille last couple weeks. And towards the end, the friends of the heroine wrote a cryptic letter to the good guy’s family, saying “Beware of an enemy disguised as a friend.”
This warning in fact should be applicable in real life. As I observe and think, not just believe, I suppose that there are indeed a couple possibilities of such people. We all have ambitions and when they conflict, people do whatever they can to advance themselves in the real world. Might as well. Fair enough. We are all selfish homo erectus constrained by the scarcity of resources.
Yet the stupid thing that I do all the time is to make the same mistakes of trusting people and saying things that should have been said to only people I trust.
Once I begin to doubt people’s words, I also begin to doubt their motives. Yet I have faith that I can still be a happy person despite becoming an untrusting person because I will only trust a selected few people. That should have been what I should be doing all along…now I hope it’s not too late.
How does one get used to saying things that one does not believe in such that one makes others feel pleasant and comfortable? How does one withhold one’s tongue for saying things thats one feels is correct and fears that the other person does not know yet could potentially affect the other person? After this winter break with family and conversations with various friends, I now realize that practicising this task is an absolute priority in getting my character in shape. Doing this task well could help advancement in life, in general. If I don’t do this, family members and some will convince me that I am stubborn, which is another trait I am trying to correct.
According to the “How to communicate” book I read over the weekend, one has to do 6 steps of enhanced listening to really get to the emotional layer behind people’s words; one has to ask oneself: What is the aim of his words? Why is he telling me this? What is he trying to tell me?
Here’s my selfish fantasy:
Oh why can’t people just be homogeneously more insensitive. It is because there is such a mix of sensitive and insensitive people that makes life so difficult for either type of people. When insensitive people naturally act insensitive because they simply could not emphasize with why the other sensitive person would take offense, the sensitive person would get offended but wouldn’t tell the insensitive person this because his/her sensitive instincts instruct him/her that doing so would make the the insensitive person take offense,! And the sensitive person would avoid the insensitive person, and then the insensitive person feels bad and actually still continues to be clueless because the sensitive person does tell him/her what he/she did wrong. Here both sensitive and insensitive people got hurt. Life becomes complicated.
Insensitive person told the truth which hurts the sensitive person. The sensitive person gets hurt but would not tell the insensitive person what went wrong, thus not incurring face-to-face damage but incurring long term damage in the insensitive person’s life.
If only life were simplier, so we can take each other’s words as they are — no extra interpretation. Just take it as it is. No need to read behind words, decode the emotions behind the words. What you are saying is exactly what you are telling me.
A result of my personal endeavor to try to think like a sensitive person is that I am beginning to stop believing in what people say. When people say, “that’s nice” — they are just saying it to make you feel better. It is disgusting and sad.
Which leads to another personal struggle for this new year — to smooth out the ups and downs of life. When people say something that makes you happy — you don’t need to feel so happy. Vice versa, when people say something that makes you sad — you don’t need to feel so sad. Emotionally, practice feeling calm and immune to BOTH ups and downs of life (not only down). Afterall, you really don’t need to take people’s words so seriously.
Filed under: Lifestyle
An hour or so before, I was cursing while waiting for the bus in front of the library in a freezing -4F: why the hell should we play broomball (a game of running in an ice rink with a broom trying to hit a small ball into the goal) during the coldest day of the week (at 8pm)? Everywhere you look, things are freezing. The floor has a thin white tinge to it; car windows are fogged up; glasses are fogged up.
An hour later (now 9pm), still shaken from being active outside until -4F for an hour, I am still recovering from the excitement of the game. Before the game started, we encountered a crisis of not having enough girls (you need 4 girls and 4 boys to play), due to the cold weather and other reasons. After the game, the people who reluctantly had agreed to come had signed up to be on the team to play permanently. That was how exciting the game had been!
The game lasted about 30-40 minutes. Basically, our team dominated the whole game. I supposed that at the beginning, people were kind of cautious (running on ice). But as the game progressed, people were dropping left and right (I am one of those people of course). In fact, I’ve discovered that a rather cool strategy is to throw myself in front of other people (and while laying down, utilize my “invisible hands”). Also, I saw many people using feet and hand to push people away. I myself was pushed in several instances (that’s why at last I resort to my “roadkill” and “invisible hands” strategy).
Next time: more cushioning in the butt area. Ski pants. Shoes that do not slide. Less clothes.
Filed under: Lifestyle
I KNOW for a fact that I am not homesick, due to my constantly being on the chopping block at home this winter. Yet subconsciously, I could be homesick. How else can I explain the daily dreams of parents ever since I came back to Chicago? I came back on Tuesday night, and since then my body has felt this strange exhaustion, and whenever I woke up from a night of sleep, I would feel this total relaxation of my body. I felt like a jellyfish. It is probably these nights of total relaxation, to be finally be in my own apartment and bed, that I could go into deep sleep, consequently having these dreams.
Anyways, yesterday night (or today morning), I had this wondrous dream that my parents had moved into a new house in US. (In Arizona specifically, probably since I watched a HDTV program on buying houses in Arizona for old people before I went to sleep). This house is BIG. I mean, it’s HUGE. I have a very vivid image of how the house look like. The dark wooden floors. Rooms after rooms! I saw myself exploring every room. Every bathroom. Going down the stairs. Although my parents and I and the dogs are in the same house, I could here my dad reomotely, and physically were indeed far apart. I remember jumping down stairs, which are all upholstered! There are many pianos in the house, strangely. There was a 2-level keyboard. There are dark grand piano. There is definitely a sense of mystique in the house. But mostly, it was the many rooms. I went in and out, making discoveries after discoveries. I even discovered a basement, stocked with the most modern home theatre equipments….somehow, when I was young I also had a recurring dream of a big house, but not with such details.
In the same night, I had this bad dream: a middle-age pimply face and ugly and fat white man and a old woman (which he claims is his mother) came knocking on my parents’ door and claimed that he is my husband. I wasn’t present then so my parents took them in. When I came home, and they told me this, I realized I had suffered such a degree of memory loss that I could not deny the truth of the situation. I realized that at the interim period I had suffered from a black out. So anything could have happened.
So this white, ugly, pimply, fat, middle age man continues to claim a spot in my household. He even went to sea with us. He directed my sail-kayak and saw it succeed in taking advantage of the wind at sea. He claimed all the credit.
Then I came out from my blackout. I realized that it was all a scam. (don’t know how!) So I confronted the dude, and I distinctly remember myself screaming (really loudly!) — ” YOU LIER, I’ll CUT YOUR THROAT!”. Meanwhile, I made real my threats by waving a gigantic steak knife right in front of his eyes. He and his mother fled. That’s the end of that dream.
