I am late for school

Sometimes priorities in life would be: Guilty Naps>Breakfast>Wrapping self with blanket and lounging>Education.

 Edit: At school. Just want to add that in my Comparative Cultural Studies lesson my professor put on a 3 hour long movie and walked out. Can't believe I am skipping snuggling for that.

Everyone asks a lot of how, they don’t ask why - Paulo Coelho

Just feel like sharing this article by Paulo Coelho.

Everyone asks a lot of how, they don’t ask why

Reposted from Paulo Coelho's blog.

College culture

There is this cultural custom in my college: When it is promotion period for student societies, the candidate committees will raise banners and shout slogans all over campus. They are literally omnipresent. Students dressed in funky clothes and accessories will parade around and yell in your ears, and when two student societies meet they will compete to see which one yells louder. The process lasts for two weeks until each and every one of these committee members lose their voice and exhaust themselves.

As a spectator, I dislike it. Every time I want to buy a muffin from the cafeteria there is bound to be a hoard of colorful people yelling unrecognizable slogans. I know Astronomy Club is fun, but I am quite sure star-gazing is not like being on steroids. Why the over-excitement? If I am interested in an activity, I will join in; if not, I do not see how screaming and spitting in my face would pique my interest.

Whenever someone ask 'Why do you want to join the student society committees?' It is always the same answer: To experience college life.  Some people enjoy the feeling of achieving something in a team, and the good ole' sharing of sweat and tears; I am all for it. However is this parading and shouting really 'college life'? Or rather, is that really the college life you want? I asked some of these energetic members and turned out they are just doing this because the ex-committees tell them to. Some hopeful new committee do not see the meaning of such activities but since it is a tradition they are doing it.

Of course there will be college activity enthusiasts who enjoy every bit of this. Honestly, if that is what you truly like, it is within your rights just fine (Although it pisses me off, but hey pissing people off is part of the beauty of democracy and liberty). But how many actually enjoy doing the yelling parade? I did not conduct an in depth research but I do know quite a few who find it exhausting and unrewarding. 

And then there is this another tradition called Consultation. The candidate committees of all the societies will be confronted by ex-committees. Candidates would be challenged in every aspects: from their yearly planning to how well they remember the school policies. While the original purpose of this consultation meant well, it often turn into some ugly showdown and personal insults. Questions like 'Why is your year plan full of crap?' or 'Recite all of last year's slogans of the English Society' would pop up and this painful grill last for a ridiculous period of 18 hours.

I understand the importance of traditions. But, like showbiz, if the audience and the performers both loathe this show then why bother running it? Shouldn't an ideal college life be doing what you like? I am not condemning the concept of college life immersion, but I do urge my fellow freshmen to think again when some seniors tell you to go perform some shenanigan tasks. If you are doing it just because they tell you 'it is part of college life', think: is it part of your college life, or theirs? I know that in my case, I only take crap like that when I am paid.

Synonym to [Are you awake?]

Word of the day:

[Hippopotomonstrosesquipedalian] (adj) 

Of or pertaining to extremely long words. 

Josefa Heifetz Byrne, Mrs. Byrne's Dictionary of Unusual, Obscure and Preposterous Words. Granada Publishing, 1979

I kinda want to teach a kid this word just so when he grows up he would realize he spent so much effort on remembering a junk word.

Grazing the surface of my daily life

Received a graded writing assignment from my Chinese Rhetoric professor. She said I missed it this time and in the comment box she wrote 'You grazed the surface of your mind'. I got a 6/10.

Finished reading Me Talk Pretty One Day by David Sedaris. Very amusing read. Gonna continue The Savage Detectives by Roberto Bolaño. So far it strikes me as an amazing account of entropy and chaos in the guise of reality.

P.S. Speaking of chaos, I was sitting next to two school kids on the train today. They were demonstrating stripper pole dancing moves on the grip pole. This is a peculiar city.

Survivalist guide to eating

I m not much of a foodie.

Food is, in my point of view, a means to an end. I believe we eat just to survive and live on. When I go to a restaurant, I scan the menu for 3 minutes: I locate things that I do not eat and then pick one from the remaining candidates. As long as a meal fills me up, I would gladly call it a good one.

Of course I like good food. I like it in the 'Do I want some caviar on your treat? Sure!' way, but not the 'I will spend my entire salary for this month on a salad of exotic Tahiti carrots' way. If high school biology had taught me anything at all, it would be 1. [Men are like video games. If you know how to work the joystick, you gain control] and 2. [A piece of $80 sirloin steak from a steak house and a slab of luncheon meat from a Styrofoam box, once down the throat, are both goners ready to be processed into waste].

To prevent unnecessary bickering, I usually decline these friends' invitation for dinner dates politely, especially when they have not decided on the restaurant yet.

But here I am, on a dinner date with a couple of these men of fine tastes…and from the fact that I can write up a blog entry while they order their food, you can see how nitpicky they are.

(Written in a posh restaurant last night, while unnecessarily starving)

Mapping your brain

It was a cozy dinner party at my friend's apartment. The food was great and we were all in a good mood for intellectual exchange. After a few drinks the guests started to contribute words of pseudo-wisdom like 'The word nice came from an old latin word for stupid' and 'There was a naked woman directing traffic in Central today'. Were we not in boxers and college sweatshirts, we could almost mimic a group of avant-garde artists if observed from afar.

Among the guests was an Italian guy, who was doing his doctorate in bio-engineering in a college near mine. I never had any talent in Science at school but I have all the respect for scientists, as they are doing what I would never be able to or want to do. Someone has to calibrate that something or find out if that ancient ancestor of gerbils has wings. So by default, scientists are all good in my book.  

'So, what do you study?', asked the Scientist, with a cigarette in his hand.
'I am in Translation right now. I used to study Theatre Arts'
'Ah. So tell me, is the meaning of a piece of artwork determined by the perception of the audience or the intent of the artist?'
'I would say intent of the artist, but it's just me'

To me, art is a very personal thing. It is a means to express yourself, but not necessarily to anyone. Say, an artist drew a portrait of his deceased wife in memory of her. I strongly believe: even if no one ever sees the portrait after the artist's death, the meaning (remembrance of the artist's wife) is still there.

'No, it should be the audience's perception', said the Scientist, sternly.
'OK, fine. Everyone is entitled to their own opinions'
No, you don't understand. I am a doctor of bioengineering, I can map minds.'

Well then surely you can map out how much I want to kick you in the quad.

I will not argue with the power of science. It allows us to map genetic sequences, clone a sheep and french-kiss someone on Skype. However this should not grant one such an amount of arrogance, so much as to believe 'if I am a scientist, I don't need to make valid statement in arguments. I just need to state the fact that I am a scientist'.

'Uh huh'

He spent the remainder of the night yelling 'demineralized water can kill us' while body-blocking us from the bottles of water we bought; I spent mine hiding behind a nacho chips mountain I built, trying to focus on the sound of my own munching.

Yo no hablo Francés

When it came to picking a foreign language class in college, I picked Español. My reason was pretty simple: Spanish is a hot language. Needless to say Spanish guys are muy caliente too. (And good lord just think what that tongue can do)

Most of my classmates took French and they asked why I did not choose the same. They said it sounds elegant, and I got no objection to that. Thing is, my first encounter with the French people was not particularly pleasant.

On a road trip to Amsterdam from London, I braved the unknown French territory of groovy cafés and slow people, knowing just the phrase 'Do you speak English?' in French. Being Chinese, I thought I was used to all kinds of rudeness and I firmly believed nothing could stop my shameless traveler ego from having a good time…until I felt the urge to pee and tried to ask people where the bathroom is.

'Bonjour. Parlez vous anglais?'
'Oui'
'Great. May I ask...'

And then he walked away, smirking. As he made his grand exit I stood there; puzzled, lost, and ready to wet my pants.

 Watching him walk away in anger (and a sense of urgency), I decided to pee in the park.

Overpositivity

I think sometimes people are over-positive.

Not that I am against positive thoughts. I am all for it. We all need hope and motivation. I might be a pessimist but hey I like happy things too, like daisies, sunshine and hot hunky dudes in speedos. What I am talking about here is the sickening, pampering kind of positivity.

When you get balls-deep into some serious depression and you get emo on your Facebook status, some people would always be like 'Don't be sad, stay positive!'; and after a messy break up, when you feel like a walking corpse and don't want to do anything, these people always try to drag you out of your room to play squash or go do yoga, 'You should go out more!' 'You should move on!'

I think these sunshine-evangelists are missing the point here. If I can choose to be positive, I won't be sad right now; and if I can move on, I won't be sulking in my goddamn stinky room. Negative emotions are like bumps on the head - you can't just push it in.

When my friends are sad, I just buy them beer, roll them some green, and sit there to listen to their crap. Healing is a process, not a flip-switch. When a person decides he has dwelt long enough in his dark place, he will get out of it. As a friend what you can do is to give him the hand as he ascends to the surface from the underground on his own pace. Negative people, in general, dislike cheerful shoving from the back. 

The Scorched Butt Strategy

The story's beginning goes all the way back to a month ago, when this Italian chatted me up online. He is good looking and his body is nice but he is incredibly, hopelessly, outrageously stupid. I am shallow and I like simple pleasure, but I certainly do not hope to wake up to a guy asking me how to use a toaster, no matter how good the sex was.

'So what kind of clothes you like?' he asked.

'I am a very casual dresser'

'Bad taste'

'Well then what brand of clothes do you like?'

'I dunno, expensive ones. Classy ones'

...said the guy who showed me a picture of him in a neon green shirt.

Except my damned fashion style that he never saw, all he talked about was sex: what I did with my ex, how he was gonna wreck my behind, how my face was gonna be covered with…And that was it. It seemed as if his life only consisted of getting dressed and getting undressed.

And then he told me he got a crush on me.

Despite my hobo-like virtual style, somehow he developed a crush on me. He said a lot of pretty words (to the best of his ability, with his very limited vocabulary, like 'u got fine ass' and 'u r hawt') and he even spent half an hour telling me he loved me. As if he knew me at all. He concluded by saying I was special, so I told him you are too. And then I went into repulsion mode.

If your job involves dealing with people on a daily basis, you can somehow develop a kind of hunch like that of a bunny. When trouble comes your left ear will wiggle and you just know you gotta get the fuck out of wherever you are. This piece of meat has become stale and potentially more trouble than fun. I immediately declared I need to shut this person out of my life.

So I told him I got an extreme case of eczema on my ass and sent him the grossest picture I could find on Google. Extremis malis extrema remedia. Worked on Napoleon, worked on him.

Personal Space

In the massive city of Hong Kong, the definition of personal space blurs. On a crowded train, who gets the pole space and who gets the corner next to the door? With 7 million people floating around and not enough acres to spare, personal space becomes a rare resource.

In my Associate degree studies I did a course about global/local cultures and I studied about personl/public space. In the traditional Chinese society, my teacher said, public/personal space is a very vague concept. The allocation of space is just an unspoken agreement among villagers, and when violation occurs there is not really a law against it. There was no local court, but instead, there was a village head office. Farmers and chicken herders argued who get to sell their goods at a street corner and their reasoning would be 'I go there a lot to sell my stuff' or 'I go there first'.

I would not dare to say Hong Kong is a classier Chinese city compared to its inland counterparts, but I feel confident to state that we Hong Kong-ers in general have a better grip of personal space. Everyone is polite enough to hide their face in books and iPads and most of the time when the weirdest of events happen we tend to pretend we don't see it. The ability to ignore seems like a genetic trait in all metropolitan city-dwellers.

However everyone has a different definition of courtesy. Like right now a guy is blatantly staring at my computer screen. That is the primary purpose of this article. Thank you for reading.

Dance it up

I am extremely apathetic towards dancing.

Being a gay person, I am expected to like clubbing and dancing. It is almost blasphemy when I tell people I don't really know much about Paul Van Dyk. Fact is, I have never learned how to appreciate Trance or House, nor can I tell the difference between the two. Call me jaded but bouncing and shaking to a repetitive 8-beat is not called dancing. Ballet/Modern Dance is dancing.

Unluckily, in a sleepless city like Hong Kong, dancing seems to be the ultimate and only source of pleasure for the folks. Every dinner would lead to the magic words: 'Let's go to Lan Kwai Fong'. So I go there, sneak out after 10 minutes and run to the closest pub for a good pint. If the dancing crowd ever notice my absence and call I will just say 'oh hey yeah just sneaked out for a quick cig I will join you later', knowing that after 5 minutes they would forget and re-enter the grand pool of human flesh and body odor.

For me, I find pleasure in real interaction. Some nice conversation over a few good pints in a bar, things that actually help me know more about the people I am hanging out with. Whereas to my understanding, when people go dancing, they enter the pit, split up and wiggle their body to a repetitive beat. And if the mating ritual does not happen, they crawl through a massive stinking crowd to find their long-lost friends so they can share a cab home. Of course, for the sake of trying to be politically correct, I have to clarify it is just me.

But hey, I have recently found an Irish-Chinese buddy who loathes the activity just as much. When he says clubbing he means getting a table and drinking all the booze. He is pretty-looking too so I look less of a loser/buzzkill and more like a connoisseur of fine beer in company of a hot Irish.