Too many thoughts, fleeting, ephemeral, lost in time, like all those memories, like tears in the rain. This weekend was a blur. Not one of those racecar fast, head turning blurs, but a Monet painting water lilies blur. Lackadaisical and languorous, I spent the weekend catching up on sleep, talking to old friends, trading beans, spending money like tomorrow would never come, and in general, missing the weekend time that I commonly spend with Carol. Elsewhere, much is the same. My house still suffers from neglect, though less so than the flora and fauna outside. I myself remain a contradiction of being too busy and having too much time such that I don't know what to do with myself. And as always, I use too many words to describe nothing at all. Such is the nature of thoughts ... there were important ones sometime in the weekend, though I'm not quite sure what they were.
One thing I have been thinking about is the California recall election. I caught the debate/roast on NPR on Tuesday. Though it provided me quite a bit of entertainment, it also started me thinking about politics. I consider myself neither a democrat or a republican. I was, as ever, on the fence about which way to vote on the recall. Personally, I don't think Gray Davis has done a very good job. But then perhaps that's like saying that Bill Gates hasn't done a good job because Microsoft's stock value is down from it's high three years ago. The real question is, can anyone do a better job? Sure, there are questions about whether or not this recall is anything more than a republican power play to win the office outside a standard election. And of course, there are people saying that it costs to much. For me, those things are too late. Though (as far as my sources can tell me) the recall initiative wasn't actually started by wealthy and powerful republicans, they certainly knew a good opportunity when they saw one. And though I often take issue with the laws of our great nation, I figure, I accept some pretty questionable ones, this one is just another drop in the bucket. As for the other defense, the money for the recall is already spent, no use crying about that now.
So we are left with the real question. Can anyone do a better job? It is true that career politicians are often and are often perceived as two-faced and ineffectual. Many people running for governor (or Govenator) have campaigned on this point. The real problem is that people don't want to admit that the world is a pretty tricky place to live in. They want to believe that if they were in power they could simplify everything. The truth is, government is a very complicated thing. That’s not true, one might argue, there’s at least one major candidate that is true to his word. I speak of Tom McClintock. While I haven’t followed California politics long enough to verify that claim, it certainly seemed to me that he was the most likely to keep his campaign promises. Should we then vote for the politician who is most likely to be true to his word? If you believe as he believes, then I’d have to say yes. However, being so far to the right, I doubt that a majority of Californians hold the same beliefs he does. In the end, that is the problem, differences in opinion. The politicians become a reflection of our own, capricious and fickle social conscience. Democracy is government by the majority. It is only workable by the constant achievement of consensus. It is about compromise. But we don’t want our leaders to compromise. At least not on the eve of election. We want them to make promises to us. Promises we know deep down they can not adhere to. Because they are a reflection of us. And we have yet to progress past standing in the mirror and lying to ourselves.
The US District Court in Oklahoma City blocked the National "do not call" list, citing that it was in violation of free speech laws and discriminate against an industry that provided millions of jobs. Here's my thoughts on that. What the fuck!?! Since when do industries have free speech rights? If they did, wouldn't forcing the tobacco industry to tell the truth be in violation of their free speech rights? And since when can't the federal government discriminate against and industry that provides millions of jobs? Let me list a couple, how about the porn and drug industries? What about sweatshops and farms that use illegal immigrants? The courts aren't defending those. I don't suppose the Direct Marketing Association has a lot of money. I don't suppose that they gave money to certain lawmakers who might have some pull with the courts. I wouldn't suppose these things if they weren't so blantantly obvious. What are they going to protect next? Spam?
I eat when I procrastinate. I need to stop procrastinating at work. It's starting to make me feel icky. I also write in this blog when I procrastinate. So maybe it's not such a bad thing. Yesterday, while I was eating and reading blogs (and generally procrastinating my ridiculous assignment at work) I came across a wonderful entry by one of my fellow LiveJournalers (It's the September 20th entry). Charity, generousity, altruism. I've been at somewhat of a loss for these things as of late I think. Too caught up in my own needs, desires, problems, issues, I've lost sight of something. As a former proponent of the Ayn Rand school of thought, Objectivism, I often hide behind the defense that giving hand outs to homeless people is a disservice. (If you haven't heard the arguement you really should read the books.) But I've long since realized that that too is an extreme and that my own heart guides me somewhere towards the middle. Honestly, sometimes I just don't know how much I should give. If that little bit would be worth it. Or if I gave a lot, would it be wasted? And how fair is it that I've passed so many people in need in my life, looking the other way, to now turn around and reverse myself? But it really isn't about being fair. Equality is a real bitch. It turns a blind eye to a lot of good things, love, beauty, choice, all that is precious, all that is unique.
Oh yeah, and that Global Rich List ... that's kinda wacked too. Maybe I'll talk about it sometime.
Long silences: Did anyone miss me?
Dang, two cups of coffee and I’m still not awake. Where are those caffeinated mints? Oh there they are … mmm … caffine.
Vignettes from my long weekend:
Questing Chinatown for Lao Po Bing - What are they? Don’t ask me, it took Becca and I 35 minutes to find them and then we didn’t even really figure out what they were.Cock-a-poo: A hybrid of a Cocker Spaniel and a Poodle. I find this amusing for many reasons. You can discover your own
My desk is being indecisive today. At first it wants to be clean. And then it begs to have papers randomly strewn across it. I wish it would make up its mind. Luckily my house isn't as fickle. It just wants to be messy. Really, it does.
Sometimes I can't figure out whether I'm intelligent, trying to be intelligent, or just trying to sound intelligent. I was asked to handle some billing for another project thru my project. (Basically, I had to get around certain approvals from our Board in order to save time and perhaps embarassment.) My immediate reaction was to tell the consultant to make the billing look like it was actually for my job and not the original job (audits can be nasty). Right now I'm trying to decide if that was a) good thinking, b)paranoia, and c) me trying to say something more than, "Um yeah, go ahead."
I'm blanking. Today the power on my floor went out for a little less than half and hour. That was my excitement for the day. Oh sure, I received a random phone call for and undescribed project with which I had no attachment to, which triggered a flurry of activity associated with solving a minor mystery (which wasn't nearly as fun as getting a phone call from an accountant in Germany speaking in radio alphabet). And then there was the phone conversation with a special assistant to the Mayor of Oakland (which sounds cooler than it actually is.) But somehow a sub 30 min power outage makes the headine of this day's entry. The sudden sound of silence, sans the constant sussurration of forced air. The hum of computers audible in their absence. The redefinition of color in the shadow of dead flourecent lights. It doesn't last though. You gotta catch these things while you can.
Oh yeah, before I forget. I had a great weekend.
Yesterday I was in a meeting with some political "players" in the City of Oakland. Contrary to popular belief (mostly due to rumors spread by yours truly) I actually do work for a living (albeit only occasionally). Anyway, they are trying to orchestrate a deal that would blah blah blah .... But I digress, mostly because I really don't want to talk about work. Why'd I start? Well actually I wanted to say that traffic really sucked today, making me late for my 8:30 meeting with the Mayor's people yada yada yada ... I'm beginning to think that this entry's like a chicken trying to fly. If you don't know what I'm talking about, go watch Chicken Run.
Two years later. Two years ago. Yesterday. Yesterday was the mid-autumn festival. Did you all eat your mooncakes? My family's never really been big about celebrating chinese holidays. But this holiday was all but forgotten in the ominous shadow of another anniversary. What have we learned in this time? What have we done? Two years later and an insanely sizable portion of America thinks that Iraq has something to do with terrorism (How the heck did that happen? Did I miss something?) Two years later and people keep forgetting that we're still searching in Afganistan. Two years later and we're still searching for someone to blame, all the while causing more tragedies to occur, causing more violence, causing more blame. Two years from now, who's to say who'll be blaming us?
I've taken you from personal politics to global politics and if any of it seemed cohesive to you, I suggest you stop reading this blog, because obviously I've warped your mind somehow and I'm sorry.
No deep thoughts today, my body's too tired and too sore from yesterday's trip to the climbing gym. Because I had the day off yesterday (It was Admission Day. You know, the day back in 1850 that California was Admitted into the Union?) I was at the gym pretty early, 6:00pm, to do some weights and perhaps some bouldering before Rich, Lily, and YuChing got there. Due to circumstances beyound their control, they arrived at at 7:20 and 8:00 respectively. That was a little more lengthy warm up than I had originally expected. Needless to say, my entire body is a little grumpy from the excess exercise -- not to mention that I was DDRing on and off all day yesterday. Okay, talking about my day is starting to bore me, so I'm going to give a couple of random shoutouts.
Rich gets jacked more than anybody I know. I think it's some karmic way of him taking one for the team. Everyone should buy Rich a drink when they see him. Why? Because he's probably taken your bad luck somewhere along the line. Thanks Rich, we all owe you one!
Jerome's been helping me out by installing Postnuke on the main page. It's still under construction so there's not much there, but I think all the back breaking labor is done. Thanks Jerome, I owe you one! Oh and thanks to Phil for introducing me to the software. Hopefully we'll be off and running in a couple (of weeks or months, depending on how much faith you have in us).
Unfortunately, giving a shoutout to your SO isn't cool and it's often nauseating so I'll be brief and say: Carol, you rock. Taxes and numbers suck. As do managers who can't manage. Nuff said.
She's back! :)
Okay, I know there are people out there who have a strong aversion to PDA so I'll switch to some more deep thinking. I started a thead several entries ago about competition and the American way of life. Lately, I've been reading a lot about cars (mostly because I want a new car. A new car you say, didn't you just buy a house? well, yea but...) and thinking about cars and driving aroung a lot I've been noticing that alot of people in the Bay Area have nice cars. BMWs, Benz', Porsches, Jags, you name it, if you drive enough, you'll see it. The thing is, aren't we in a recession? A number of my friends are unemployeed or have been at least once in the last three years. I suppose my group of friends isn't a very good statsitical sample, but it's the only measure that I have. That aside, I'm sure there are main reasons why it might seem like there are a lot of nice cars on the road out there. I started thinking back to when I was talking to Steve a lot about cars. He always seemed to stress that I could afford it. He also reinforced that voice inside my head that seems to say, other people have nice stuff, why shouldn't you?
The thing I started wonder about was this: why does anything inside my head seem to think that I should have what other people have? Why do I compare my success (as poorly measured by the type of car I drive) to others? What does it matter? It matters alot. This is America after all. It's all about being better than the other guy. As an Asian American I got this in spoonfuls as a child. It didn't matter if it was graded on a curve, an A is still the only acceptable grade. If you ever wondered why a certain segment of the asian population ended up typecasting themselves by creating the term "rice rocket", look no farther than how they were raised. They had to be better than their peers. They had to stand out. This was there way of life from the beginning.
The other thing I stared thinking about was, how could I afford a car that was more than half my annual salary? How are all these other people affording their cars? I guess in my myopia, I always believed that all those fast and fancy cars were fully paid for. They're not. After all, America is a nation of financing. America is a nation of debt. If I have to go into debt to be better than my neighbor, well that's the American way. So next time you see a really expensive car driving down the street, do think that the person driving it is rich, think that they must have a very large monthly car payment. Oh, and cut those rice racers some slack, it's better than doing drugs.
Carol's coming back tomorrow. :-D It's only been a week. God, I'm such a wuss. Alright, I have a feeling this entry's all mush. So I'll stop before I make everyone nauseous.
"maybe it just means that we should remember that we forgot them or something. Anyway it's about old friends."
Yesterday, as I was blog surfing my daily sites, I came across a message from a dear friend. He had taken down his site, which had been a staple of mine for a while now. It was akin to walking over to his home, finding a sign hanging on his doorknob saying that he had decided to move to Nepal and that he'd be back sometime, maybe. And yet, saddened as I was, I could not help but feel some sort of happiness for him because in that same way, it seemed like he was no longer running to stand still, and that he had moved on to pursue better things. Like that moment in Good Will Hunting when Chuckie walks up to the house and finds that Will has finally left. As great as he was here, I'm sure he's bound for even greater things. I just hope he'll find a way to share them with us.
...continuing a thread of thought that lay discarded on the editing room floor: So what if you weren't the protagonist of your own story? What if the choices you made were the choices that someone else had to live with? Imagine this, everyday you wake up and you have to make a score of important decisions for somebody else, the same somebody every single day. Furthermore, a third person is making the decisions in your life. And so on. And everyone has to live with these choices that somebody else has made for them. Would you choose to turn that person's life into a soap opera? Or might you have them live on the straight and narrow? If the person making the decisions in your life did something you didn't like ... would you be tempted to pass on that slight on to the person whose fate lay in your hand? How would you choose if it didn't matter to you? Or is it even possibile not to care, when you're the one making the choices?
"Advice is a form of nostalgia. Dispensing it is a way of fishing the past from the disposal, wiping it off, painting over the ugly parts and recycling it for more than it's worth." -Mary Schmidt
Inside jokes overheard this weekend: "We can even cross streams."My mind fails to hold every precious moment of the past weekend. Backing up that driveway once again. Stepping out of the car and smelling the familiar air of childhood again, one last time. Walking down the hill that seemed so big, visiting the club house, finding there nothing to do and trudging back up the hill -- the repetition of pointless taks that in younger years almost annoyed, now treasured beyond words. Fighting sleep well into the night, through encroaching silences, salty snacks and sugary sweets, just because we don't see each other that often. Waking to the light and heat of a high altitude sunrise, the restless rustlings of a curious baby, the staggered entrances of the various players of this play of life. One last lunch together before a parting of ways at the fork in the road. An emptier cabin. Sitting in the loft like children; talking like our parents. Early to bed and early to rise. My last childhood summer ends, ten or more years after my childhood, and that's something that I'll always remember.