change

before i begin...

blogging is such a strange thing. i try to write these things as though i were having a conversation with myself. i try not to think that anyone else is reading this for fear of getting the writing equivalent of stage fright while at the same time trying to write in a way that someone reading might derive some entertainment from all of this.

i was surprised to find out that a couple friends of mine have been reading this without me having to twist their arm. who knows how many others? in any case, this has been an interesting project for me that i hope will continue to grow and be as enjoyable for anyone passing by as it has been for me to do it.

...

it seems as though i've been meeting with all of my friends before i leave since the summer started. this last weekend though has started to feel more final. maybe the last time i had a feeling like this was at the end of high school and i suppose there are several parallels between now and then. there's the idea of a big move to a new place away from all of the friends you've been used to being around. there's the idea of having finished a phase in life and getting ready to start on a new one. there's the idea of everyone else you know seeming as though they are about to do the same thing and that when next you meet, everyone will have changed so much.

this weekend started with a going away lunch with my friend and old colleague. when i met him, i was 22 and he had hired me onto my first professional job out of college. i worked for him for the next four years. he was a great mentor and example to me in both my professional and personal life. one of the last topics we talked about at lunch was what he was planning for after retirement. he told me a piece of advice that his father-in-law had told him. his father-in-law said something like:

"plan for the next thirty years. i retired twenty years ago and i had no idea i would live this long. don't let the years pass by just because you've stopped working."

although we're at different stages in life, it seems we're both at a point where we're facing the next big unknown.

after lunch, i met up with my other friends and set out to beaumont for the weekend. i've been hanging out with this group of friends all summer and we all seem to be surprised at how close we've become to each other in a very short time. seeing as how we usually get together as a group, it's been a little difficult trying to talk to everyone one on one. it took all summer, but i've finally managed to talk to everyone in private at least once. i have a lot of good memories with them. i started the year thinking i would be unemployed and waiting to leave for taiwan. i had no idea that i would meet such good friends before i even left.

i find that each of them is also facing some sort of major change in the near future. one is planning on going overseas to study. one is planning on settling down. two of them are more than superficially unhappy with their work. i think we all feel pretty fortunate that in the midst of all of this, we were able to get together this year.

the thing i've learned about friends is that although you're not always around them, the good ones seem to keep reappearing. i have the feeling we'll all be seeing each other again.

water

to combat the heat these days, i'm drinking beer and eating ice cream. my room is emptied to the point where one last trip to the storage place should be it. i'm pretty bored at the moment, just waiting for the day to come when i leave.

on a note related to the last post, i had a dream the other day where i was walking down a major street in ankle deep water. i walked this way for a block or so and turned the corner to find myself looking at giant hole in the road. immediately i was in water up to my waist and was being swept along by the current of water rushing into this giant hole. panicked, i struggled against the water and made it to an elevated spot beside the road where others were watching as pedestrians and traffic with worse luck than me were swept toward oblivion.

looking beyond this abyss, i saw a bayou filled to the top also emptying into this hole. i was set on getting to the other side of this bayou and was about to cross on top of a broken pipe when tejano music started playing on a loudspeaker i hadn't noticed and all these valves on the pipe i was going to walk on opened up. the valves were sending compressed air out which somehow pushed the water back so that it was trickling into the abyss instead of raging towards it. everyone who was caught in the current was able to easily escape and nobody actually fell into the hole. and then i woke up.

if the internet is any kind of reliable source, muddy water and an abyss suggest some danger. in the i-ching, the chapter "the abyss" talks about water in a dangerous ravine and how water escapes danger by moving quickly and finding the easiest exit. what i like best though is that it says water is unafraid to fall a thousand feet because nothing can make it lose its essential nature.

packing tips

not only am i preparing for my trip, i am also moving out of my house. in order to figure out what i need to put into storage, i started packing my suitcase yesterday. whatever doesn't fit into it will go into storage over the next couple of weeks.

i decided to check out some tips online for how best to pack a suitcase. i found an interesting video on youtube on how to pack a suitcase "butler style". one great tip i learned was to stuff your socks into your shoes. all this time, i had been using tissue paper to keep my shoes' shape. what a waste! i also learned an interesting tip on how to minimize wrinkles. pack pants and shirts at the bottom with the legs and sleeves sticking out. pack smaller things on top and then alternate folding the sleeves and legs in. this keeps the clothes from being creased onto themselves and seems to take less room.

i'm going to live out of my suitcase until i leave and this will give me an idea if i've left out anything important. my room is going to start looking pretty empty next week.

first signs of anxiety

so after having committed to this big adventure back in march, i've been relatively at ease about the whole thing with most of my worries being focused on managing to survive until august without a job and having enough money to finance my studies. here i am in pretty good shape but it seems some little bit of anxiety is setting in.

i had a dream this morning where i was at a post office trying to collect my mail. the clerk was speaking to me in chinese asking me to pay some money to get my mail. i didn't understand the amount so i pulled out bills at random, looking at the clerk's reaction to figure out if i had given enough. i was trying to understand this foreign language, trying to figure out how to ask "how much does it cost?" on the spot, trying to figure out what each bill was worth (i don't remember what the currency looks like), and then trying to convert the amount in my head to usd to see if i was getting ripped off, all while feeling the eyes of the impatient people in line boring into the back of my head.

of course, there are several problems with this dream. it probably doesn't cost any money to collect mail. the clerks probably speak a little english. people waiting in line are probably very patient. i never had any trouble when handling business while i was in china and at that time i didn't understand a single word in chinese. still, i was sort of unsettled when i woke up this morning.

i spent the morning plotting out my calendar for the next half year. it turns out my visitor visa will expire midway through my first quarter at school. i've marked out visa extension deadlines, registration dates, scholarship application deadlines, health insurance deadlines.... lots of deadlines on into march of next year.

and then there's the matter of handling all my business at home before i leave. well, i'll save that topic for another day. in any case, i'll try to keep reminding myself that this is supposed to be fun.

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.