strange dreams

i've been having a lot of strange dreams lately with the common theme being running away or escaping.

in one i was in some futuristic outlaw motorcycle gang where i needed to escape both the police and the gang i double crossed by getting off an island. i woke up as i was approaching a rising drawbridge at full speed in an attempt to jump over it.

in another, i was again in a futuristic outlaw motorcycle gang where i needed to escape some island, but this time by jumping off the end of a pier onto the departing ferry. i seem to remember that all the passengers on this ferry were women standing outside on the deck waiting to see if i made it or drowned.

in the most recent one, i was out on an errand to a grocery store on halloween night. i had forgotten what day it was and was wondering why the grocery store was so empty and dark. it just so happened that the store was turned into a haunted house for the night with all kinds of scary surprises. i woke up just as i was running away from two people with scary masks on.

too many sunday afternoon b-movies you say? maybe, although i'm not in the habit of watching much tv these days. i have had one or two mixed in that have had nothing to do with running away or escaping. i had one this morning where i was eating dinner and all of a sudden the setting i was in turned either into a karaoke bar or a musical. well, i did happen to catch a few minutes of moulin rouge the other day...

will power

at this very moment, i'm having a contest of will power with my brother. i hear the doorbell ringing rapidly. it must be my mom out front. it must be that my brother locked the front door on the way in. i hear him in his room playing guitar and i know he can hear the doorbell too. if i stay quiet, i can pretend i'm asleep and he'll naturally have to stop what he's doing and open the door.

...

score one point for me.

---

it is crazy hot outside which means there's no point in going out unless i intend to drive my car somewhere. if you wait until the evening to go out walking, you get mauled by mosquitoes. i've spent the last few days hiding from all of this in my room and when i haven't been napping or reading or otherwise neglecting some matter of importance, i've been digging up my old pictures and making digital copies of them so that i'll be able to see them when i'm in taiwan. i don't have a scanner so i've resorted to using my digital camera to take pictures of the prints with some interesting results.

the original pictures were taken with a cheap disposable film camera and printed on the cheapest photo paper. there are few pictures where anything is in focus and where any colors look remotely natural. taking a picture of the prints didn't do much to help the focus or tint, but the pictures came out with a nice flat quality reminding me of old posters or 1950s ads. it was a tedious process, but at least i have some copies of my old photos.

i got a call from one of my recruiters this week about a job in the bay area for which i'm not even remotely qualified for. i gave it a try though just to so i could say with a clear conscience that i haven't been dodging responsible work on purpose and got a rejection letter within two days. all in all, i've been contacted for three jobs in 2009 which have come to naught. i haven't been looking myself, but i figure if the professional job hunters can't find any job leads for me, then it's a safe conclusion that jobs are just hard to come by this year.

while packing, i've also dug out a bunch of textbooks that have been sitting in boxes since i've been moving so much this year. i was even able to sell one within a week on amazon. my first income since february! hopefully i can sell a few more before i leave.

can't sleep

i'm having some trouble sleeping these days. at first i thought it was because the heat these days makes me feel like staying home and napping all day, but today i had a very nice swim and still i'm having a hard time sleeping. the remaining explanation is that i have a lot of new things on my mind.

having finally told everyone about my plan to leave has set in motion a whole bunch of other activity that i was hoping against all reasonable hope that i wouldn't have to handle as well, but there it is. so in the next few months, not only am i preparing to leave the country, but i'm also helping my family to sell our house. fortunately i don't have to handle this all by myself, but for the time being it still weighs on me.

the decision to sell the house has been a poignant reminder of how fleeting everything is. given that, it's also been a reminder of how important it is to be self sufficient. in all my life, i'm the only one who'll be there from start to finish. everyone and everything else comes and goes and there's nothing else but to accept that.

all that aside, last week seems to have been a pretty productive week at handling these things. this week is a little less urgent and with more momentum. hopefully i can put my mind at ease and start to sleep well again.

gecko

wow, is may really almost over? i'm not quite sure where it all went but i know i spent a whole bunch of money, with a substantial amount of it going towards boring semi-practical things like insurance. insurance companies must spend a good deal of money to hire a marketing team that makes you feel happy and responsible for buying insurance against all manner of calamities because i have to admit that at the moment of purchase, i did feel responsible, if not happy. at this moment though, i begrudge living in a country where a trip to the hospital can bankrupt you.

i've begun to pack in earnest and to consider how i'm going to store my things until i come back. it looks like i'll be giving what little furniture i have away again, keeping only my books and music. i'm also parting with my old drumset. i haven't played it in some time but i have such good memories of dragging it around to shows and practices that i can't help but wonder how i ever found myself in a position to have to sell them and buy things like insurance instead.

on a happier note, i've already begun making some plans to see some sites in taiwan while i'm there. high up on the list is to check out the east coast and learn to surf. i've also learned that taiwan has some excellent places to go paragliding. i have no clue how much that hobby will cost but it'd be something i'd love to try.

round round get around

yesterday was an awesome day. i got a call around 10am to meet a bunch of friends by 11am to head to the beach. i'm always late, so i said i couldn't make 11 but i could make 11:30 which of course turned into 11:50. no problem because this set of friends is always late too. i packed up some clothes, my camera, and my beloved kite and frisbee and headed out the door.

apparently everyone else in houston was invited to the beach too because there was a lot of traffic headed to galveston. finally we made it and went to east beach. i had never been to east beach before because as it turns out you have to pay $8 to park there, which is something my parents would never have done if there was a free beach nearby. however, the two main reasons you pay $8 are:

1. so you can bring alcohol to the beach.
2. so you can go to a less crowded beach.

so i got to see east beach for the first time yesterday, and it was pretty nice as far as galveston beaches go. nice sand, not too many rocks or shells, decent looking water. we swam a ridiculous way out into the surf. the only people farther out than us were two guys on inflatable boats with fishing rods.

besides swimming, we had a lot of fun on the beach. bobby flew the kite out to the end of the string after i had told him i had done it before. we played frisbee with kyle's dog elsie who would run down any throws we didn't manage to catch. i ate a lot of junk food snacks and enjoyed a mixed drink of sailor jerry rum with sierra mist which tasted like cream soda.

afterwards, we had dinner on the seawall with a great view of the sun setting on the gulf. but, everything has it's price. i was the only one who escaped without sunburn, but i am kinda limping around on a bruised knee after being dominated in a chicken fight with nancy. to my credit, kyle cheated because he grabbed my arm and yanked me into the water while luis did his best to support me by holding on to my legs as i fell in, which is no doubt how i sustained my injury.

a little alcohol, a good beach, great friends, and battle scars. you get what you pay for.

scratch city

summer in the swampy bayou city is beginning to show its ugly face again. earlier last week two days of good rain rendered many parts of the city impassable with some roads under water for two or three days. i went out to my backyard this afternoon and was immediately set upon by an army of mosquitoes, each one leaving a bump the size of my thumbnail. it's really starting to warm up outside to the point that i wake up, have a little lunch, and siesta all afternoon until the sun goes down which leaves me wide awake at 4am. heat, humidity, and mosquitoes. i wish i was in san francisco right now.

i'm wavering between putting most or all of my things in storage, or selling everything to raise some extra cash for my trip. on one hand, it seems too hard to part with all the little things i've accumulated through the years, most especially my music and book collection. on the other hand, do i really need to keep all this stuff? am i going to carry it around for the rest of my life?

i sold a whole bunch of cd's once before and even though what i sold i wouldn't listen to that often now, i still regret it. the cash i made selling them has long since been spent but from time to time, i'll hear a song and say to myself, "i wish i still had that cd somewhere." so...crap. it seems i'm going to put my things in storage after all.

can you hear me now?

it has been a good long while since i wrote something here. if march was a month for lazily swimming, reading in starbucks, and hiding out from people in general, then april has been a month of reconnecting with the outside world.

today is a momentous day because i received my acceptance letter to study mandarin in taipei this fall. this year being what it's been so far, and with the new news of swine flu just across the border in mexico, i can't think of a better set of circumstances to just try my fortune elsewhere.

in the last few weeks, i've made some new friends, i've started playing music again, and i've done a little volunteering work at the museum. also, i've learned how to turn off the gas to the appliances so that i could fog my house without blowing it up. the fact that i applied a poisonous highly flammable product to my house and left it unattended for several hours speaks to the serious nature of the flea problem i've been having at home. fortunately, the problem seems to be subsiding.

i'm continuing to read a lot of chinese philosophy and now i'm slowly approaching kant's critique of pure reason. i'm being a little frugal and downloaded a free digital copy of it from project gutenberg. my immedate complaint is that there's no table of contents. yes, the book has had all formatting removed, so there are no page numbers to jump to, but a table of contents just listing the chapter names woud be nice. also, as soon as i looked at it, i spent about half an hour thinking of ways to text process the thing into a more readable format. in the end, i'll probably purchase a paper copy.

where has the month gone? i'm not quite sure. it's been fun but i hope may will be a better balance for me.