Flashback - 1

Today I return to an orderly life with a purpose and a goal, even when my schedules are overly prolific – my mind will not stray. Today ends my years of chaotic living and marks my return to life with a single focus and purpose – permanently. The road to the Ivy League and perspective-changing creation begins today, and hopefully I will never turn back.

A fortuitous decision came across my life today as I picked up Dan Ariely’s “The Predictably Irrational” for a friend, and began to read. I remembered events of the past that I want never forgotten.

Over the last 2, 3, 4, I can’t even remember how many years, I’ve tried to accumulate experiences that no other human being has ever had. I attempted this ridiculous goal by making choices so obviously irrational that anyone with a tint of sensibility would avoid them.

One lonely Saturday Night, the Saturday before exam week – everyone was home studying, but I was working long hours I have never worked before. The cause of this flagrant situation was my relatively new job at McDonalds - the newfangled worker never learns how to book off at work until it’s too late. I was stuck at work, and I just happened to also have caught one of the worst colds I ever had. By the end of my 8 hour shift, any noseblowing would result in a hint of blood on the rough and jagged surface of a McDonalds tissue (which wasn’t designed for noseblowing in the first place) and my lips were so dry that the top lip turned completely purple. Sluggishly, I changed from my worn out McDonalds uniform, which smelled of animal odour, into an orange, hooded sweater, which also smelled like animal odour. My sense of smell was befuddled at the time due to my cold, but I knew that I was shrouded in McOdour.

It was 11:30 at night, and I had to bus home. The problem with bussing wasn’t the process itself; it was the inevitable combination of a freezing, Canadian night and my 15 minute-walk home from the bus station. As I got off the VIVA blue – one ride tickets still being $2.75 at that time, I realized that I was caught in a snowstorm, and not just any snowstorm, a Canadian snowstorm. There was no other options – I had to get myself home, and I had no way of contacting my parents, so I did the only thing I could do – give myself a dose of inspiration. I took out my cheap $30 RMB headphone and $20 CND mp3, blasted some Tupac at max volume, and began my journey of a thousand steps - home. The journey began with the hardest part, which was a steep, uphill bridge. As I stepped onto the sidewalk and into almost 3 feet of snow, my feet realized that they were only covered in running shoes, and that the sidewalk wasn’t clear of snow. I stepped onto the side of the road instead, and had to watch every step I made. The reason was that although the streets were free of snow – they were covered with ice. There was even a road sign that said: “bridge freezes at –4 °C” for cars. The roaring wind was constantly jabbing at my runny, bloody nose, my violent, dried lips, as I had nothing to cover my face. So there I was, slowly making my way up an icy bridge, feet wet with snow, armed with only a sweater and headphones blasting Tupac in the most brutal snowstorm of the winter.

At the top of the bridge, my mp3 suddenly ran out of battery juice, and I was left in the whooshing wind. I began to try and make sense of all this – and unsurprisingly had no conclusion for myself. Why was I doing this to myself? Was it a mix of my unyielding loyalty to my general goal of “trying everything you can have in life” and my in-the-moment extremism? As if I was in any other situation that didn’t make sense, I began to ask myself questions.

“Has anyone else ever experienced this mixture of lonely, powerful, brazen feelings?”

“No.”

“Is there any purpose to these feelings?”

Then, I remembered why it all began.


To be continued.

Entry Into The Blogosphere

A little revelation came to me today when I was reading:

We know so little.

When I was reading a certain excerpt from "The Double" regarding the topic of boring, I remembered something Martin Fox once said:

"Only boring people get bored."

When those words came out of him mouth my first reaction was OMG that's so clever I'm so going to quote that! When I was reading though, I realized that a "bore" was someone who was dull and boring, and there really was nothing to the statement beside the fact that we discovered some knowledge of linguistics. It's really shocking the vast amount of knowledge out there that we, as individuals, do not have, Wikipedia is already shocking enough (and at the same time awesome). It makes me wonder the importance of information sharing and also makes me dream about futuristic technologies.

I also met Zimu in a Chinese haircutter's randomly today and he just reminded me on one of those really young, independent Chinese kids because he was dropped off there by his dad and was there himself. On a popular Chinese show 非常6+1 there was a Chinese toddler who was 3 years old and shops for all his vegetables for his mother, and he became an expert on how to pick out fresh vegetables (better than my mom could do) at the age of 3! Isn't the world just wonderful?

And Zimu's Chinese is awesome.