checkup

i've spent most of the last week watching tv shows. not on tv, which spared me the mind numbing commercial breaks, but on hulu and on dvd. this is pretty much what i was doing in colorado while waiting to move out. at this moment, i'm having the same sort of questions i was having then:

am i getting stupid and numb or am i just relaxing a bit in preparation for something else?
am i forgetting something important?

it's not my usual habit to be so passively entertained so i suppose to make up for it, i'm diverting my active energy to self inspection. what have i accomplished since january? what do i want to do in taiwan? what do i want to do after taiwan? in the process of self inspection, i second guess myself from time to time, but not nearly as often as i might have done in the past. in a sense, that's some kind of accomplishment.

one thing i've accomplished during my time off from work has been becoming a decent swimmer. when i first started my regular workout, i could barely make it from one end of a pool to the other. this week i intend to swim a straight mile. that will be a pretty good milestone for me.

my main goal in taiwan is to learn how to speak and read mandarin. i'd like to be proficient to the point where i can live my daily life without having to speak or read a word of english. i would also like to learn how to write. being able to creatively and concisely express yourself in writing is the highest art of language. this one is a long-term goal. i'm not even sure what i will do with such a skill. it's just something i want to do.

and after taiwan? this one i have no clue about. i'm still reassessing my ideas about family and career and whatever is supposed to be a socially acceptable milestone along the path into middle age. i'm not convinced that anybody really figures this out, but i don't want to arrive in middle age without having tried to chart a course there. i'm out of books. i'm out of tv shows. i guess i can entertain myself with this problem for a while.

pizza and ice cream

i woke up this morning and watched the first rain we've had in a very long time. it was really a nice and soothing way to start the day. the whole day has been pretty peaceful overall. the beer at lunch was a nice addition too.

this evening i had dinner with some friends from high school that i haven't seen in years. we all talked for a long time, catching up and telling a few stories about what we've been up to. actually, tonight i did more listening than story telling which was just fine because there was no shortage of stories from everyone else. what was interesting to me was how we all had sort of the same stories. not the same outcomes, not the same characters, but basically the same root struggles. the same quest for self discovery. the same conflicts with parents. the same realization of our own limitations. it's not that i never share these sort of stories with the friends i see often these days, but somehow catching up with friends i haven't seen for a while and finding out how similar our experiences have been has been really liberating.

i feel incredibly human today.

almost there

july is finally here. this is sort of the home stretch of my adventure in being unemployed, but the prelude to my adventure overseas. honestly, i've been more concerned about being able to survive here without income than i have been about starting in taiwan. it seems every month there's a new tax i have to contend with, but that's a different matter. i'm pretty well packed up. what i have left in my room is just the essentials. it can be packed up in a day or two.

i have a vague idea of what i have to do when i get to taiwan. fortunately i have some friends who have generously offered to help me out when i arrive. i'm looking at taiwan as a new start. i was reading the other day and i found this great quote from bertrand russell: "in all affairs, it's a healthy thing now and then to hang a question mark on the things you have long taken for granted."

since i've been out of work, i've really had to rethink the way i spend. i've been trying, although not usually successfully, to stick to a budget and it's finally hit home that little extras here and there every month really add up. since i've been out of work, my monthly spending has dropped significantly, but honestly my standard of living hasn't gone down much. i found out i was torturing my wallet with the death of a thousand cuts. it's a lesson i won't forget.

i'm also looking forward to going back to school. i never thought i would say that, having had six years of engineering, but i'm pretty excited about the chinese program. it looks challenging and intense. it turns out that when i do want to do something, that's kind of the way i like it. i guess the thing to keep in mind is not to burn myself out. self-restraint has always been something i've had to work on.

how to waste your time and effort

i played my first mmorpg last friday and i have to admit i was hooked. i've been playing every day, wasting an embarrassing number of hours, until this morning when i found that i couldn't log into the server. since i couldn't play, i took some time to browse through the player forums. after half an hour of reading, it's very easy for me to say that i will never waste time on another game like this again.

i had avoided games like world of warcraft precisely because they're an incredible waste of time. i tried this one just because it was advertised as free. i found out it's free to start, but if you want to get anywhere, you have to shell out some real money. after reading through the forums, i also found out that the game has no point. it never ends. you never achieve anything. it ends when you are fed up with wasting your life on it.

i also found out that there are people in the world who have more passion for game play experience than i have passion for just about anything. not to say that i'm not a passionate person, but i was amazed at how serious people were taking this game. anyway, i can safely say that i've tried it and although it was fun at the start, it's probably better that i didn't waste any more time on it.

now let's see if i can start sleeping like a normal human being again.

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.