Monthly Archive: November 2003

To whom do I owe the first apology?

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Sun. November 30, 2003

Man, this sucks. It’s not a good way to end the month. Today, I sank into a nasty low causing me to just want to sleep the whole day away. I couldn’t do that though, of course, because there was just so much that needed to be done. In fact, I’ve just pitched in a load of laundry, and my room desperately needs to be tidied up.

Sadness has been a recurring theme in my entries–especially in this past month. And everytime I write about it, I inevitably come out feeling better with a renewed strength.

Why the bout of self-loathing? I honestly don’t know. It’s just an overall cloud of shittiness that’s hovering my head (and me without my umbrella). I don’t know. In church today there were several moments I was close to letting go. Luckily everyone’s facing forward. When I got home and took a look in the mirror, I noticed my eyes were red.

I’m really all right, I guess. I think I need these moments to perform a check on my current strengths that I’m trying to develop. What do I mean? Well, without sadness and questioning why I’m where I am, I really won’t know or come to appreciate the heights I’ve reached. I’ve come a damn long way from the depressive lows I’ve experienced since early on this past year. Sadness has become anger. Anger is a powerful tool. Perhaps today anger was leaning a bit too far into the hatred category. Hatred is not as good as anger. It’s prone to being clouded by distorted views of the situation, you know. I guess I realized that and tried to pull back and perhaps overcompensated.

Wow…that makes so much sense…it’s scary.

I’m truly angry. I’m mad at pretenses made in order to placate me. I’m mad at people “throwing me a bone”. I’m mad at people who will take friendships for granted and will assume my loyalty is unflinching.

Loyalty is one of my strengths. It’s also one of my curses. I’ve had trouble walking that fine line between being loyal and forgetting myself. In the end, I usually err on self-sacrifice. Now that I look at it, people have been taking advantage of it.

I have no idea how all of these revelations are going to manifest themselves in my actions over the next few months. It’s a start though. Frankly, this change is scaring me. It’s taking me out of perceived comfort zones and thrusting me into the terror of the unknown. Then again, what kind of “comfort zones” were they? Maybe it wasn’t a “true” comfort after all.

Ooh…that’s a tough question, eh?

If that’s truly the case, then it’s not just being thrust into the unknown, it’s also taking charge of who I am, and not letting other people decide for me. It’s such a painful process though, isn’t it?

To whom do I owe the first apology?
No one’s been crueller than I’ve been to me
-Alanis Morissette

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Funky chicken

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Sun. November 23, 2003

It’s not much fodder for a journal entry, but this is what I feel like writing about now.

I’ve had two odd encounters with poultry products in this past week. On Friday I went out to Mr. Sub for a sandwich. It was 3pm, and I hadn’t eaten lunch at that point. I decided to get a grilled chicken 6″ sub because I felt like eating something sort of healthy. When the lady pulled out the piece of meat from the counter, I was ever so slightly shocked. The piece of chicken was fully cooked, but it was also sort of pale. Pale, except for the fake grill marks crossing the off-white surface. I’ve seen such these grilled chicken pieces before at other sub locations (either Mr. Sub or Subway) and they didn’t bother me one bit. This time though something just wasn’t right.

Maybe the barometric pressure was dropping and it was affecting my body. It was sort of foggy that day. Maybe it’s the fact that I hadn’t eaten anything all day up to that point. That definitely could cause my mind to do strange things.

I ate the thing anyway, and in the end it left a strange aftertaste in my mouth.

On Saturday, I was in Waterloo meeting for the first time with the rest of FOC 2004, except for one member who’s in Calgary at the moment. FOC 2003 brought us to East Side Mario’s for lunch and a good chat. It’s been a while since I had been in there, but all the same I wasn’t expecting any major changes. I ordered my standard favourite from the place: Hell’s Kitchen Chicken. As I remembered it, it was a chicken breast smothered with a spicy tomato sauce all on angel hair pasta–spicy enough to make my nose sweat. That’s good stuff. When my order arrived though, I was a bit shocked to find that it was no longer served on a bed of pasta. All that it came with was a bunch of potatoes. What kind of deal is that? I wasn’t all too happy. As if it was an omen, shortly after leaving the restaurant I think I ended up having a “reaction” to the chicken.

What the hell is going on with chicken nowadays?? I love the meat, but I shouldn’t have to deal with so many bad experiences with chicken in such a short period of time.

Heh, I can almost imagine the activists among you thinking, “oh, but at least you have a problem with eating chicken. There are millions of people starving each day wishing they had your problem.” Fair enough. I won’t even argue against that point. Still, it’s not like the story I’m telling has to do with me throwing away food. I ate it all, despite anything mentioned.

Me? Pass up eating? Heh.

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Soothing me

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Tue. November 18, 2003

I’m currently spinning Shania Twain’s “Up!” in my player right now. It’s been a while since I’ve listened to the CD, and I’ve almost forgotten how…mellow it gets me.

I’m attempting everything to get me into an eased state of mind. This has included getting back into reading. I just finished “The DaVinci Code” which was a very good read. It’s certainly controversial and definitely not for everyone…but I figure that whether or not you believe in the theories presented in the book it’s still capable of expanding your way of thinking.

Oh? You don’t know what the theory is? Well, it has to do with the “Holy Grail” and the idea that it might not be a “cup” at all. I’ll leave it at that so as not to offend anyone.

At the moment I’m in the middle of Michael Moore’s “Stupid White Men”. This book is also an eye-opener, although I question where he gets some of his information. Whatever. It’s a bit entertaining to see things from his point of view. If I like the book enough by the end of it, I might go ahead and get the follow up, “Dude, Where’s My Country?” for shits and giggles.

After this book, next in line is the book “The Good, The Bad & the Difference”. It’s a book all about ethics and how people handle different situations. When I saw it in the bookstore I picked it up and leafed through a few pages. I don’t know, I thought it was interesting. I really do hope I’ll manage to read it.

My bookshelf is full of books that are half read. Now that I’m finished Final Fantasy X, I figured that I might as well go back and tackle them one by one. I desperately need to keep a positive attitude and an occupied mind in order to prevent me from sinking into “the other realm”, you know?

It’s bad enough that I’m now dreading work, but I don’t need any more ill-thoughts at home. Yes, I dread work. I’m sure millions of people feel the same, but I’ve never hit this level of apathy on the job before.

– Actually, now that I think about it, I might have been more apathetic when I was working for the school board…but that’s another story.

The job description isn’t all that bad. However, truthfully I’m not learning all that much actually related to my field of study–which really sucks. I mean, I see so many documents relating to how chip technologies work, but when my only job is to ensure documentation is alright (formatting and grammar) you begin to just pass things over looking for errors without actually attempting to absorb the stuff.

It’s a bit of a harsh assessment of the job. I mean, I’m not saying there aren’t its good moments too. However, at this moment, I’m not feeling any excitement for it at all. Simple as that.

It’s now mid-November. I still have a month and a half to go in my contract. I know I’ll make it through (of course, I will). Hopefully some of the positivity I hope to generate at home will permeate through to this part of my life.

God knows, I need some positivity.

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Turning sadness into anger

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Fri. November 14, 2003

Over past few weeks I’ve been attempting to keep myself occupied by various things: reading, my new PS2, watching PGSM, Survivor, and Joe Schmo. All in all, it’s kept me somewhat sane. I mean, during this period I hit some new levels of happiness that I hadn’t touched in what seems to be years.

All of a sudden though, yesterday I felt this blanket of sadness suddenly taking over me. It’s taken me a while to try and figure out why the heck I suddenly felt this way. Now I think I know. Here I am, carrying this large amount of peacefulness, and I’ve been unable to share it with certain people in my life.

A lot of my friends have been happy about new healthy attitude I’ve taken. It’s great, man. But…people whom I thought were in my inner-posse, they’re just not there. In fact, they’ve been absent for far too long. That alone kind of tarnishes the shiny happy feelings I have.

Maybe nothing has changed at all and I’m just being paranoid and hypersensitive. That’s very much possible. If you, the reader, have been reading my logs for a long time, you’ll know that I’ve got some strong insecurities. This is all feeding into them. Then again, it’s also possible that suddenly people are wanting to distance themselves from me.

People wanting to distance themselves from me? Really? If that’s true, then at least have the decency to say so. I don’t want to be deceived. I’d rather be hurt all at once than to have an extremely long death to a friendship. The thought of that hurts most of all.

Oh well. I very much doubt that the people involved are reading this–but I suppose that’s OK. I’ve been making great strides in the “I’m greater than I give myself credit for” department. My sadness hasn’t dragged me down to another deep hole. I’m still feeling relatively sane.

I refuse to be taken for granted anymore.

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What the FOC???

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Wed. November 12, 2003

Quote:


Well, without going into many details yet, there’s a LARGE amount of potential good things coming this month. None of it has yet materialized, but…it looks like everything is in place.

Holy crap. Well, one of the “potential” good things has come to be. In fact, since I got the news last night I’ve been riding this wave of “holy shit”-ness. As of yesterday, I have been selected to be part of the Federation Orientation Committee 2004 for Engineering at the University of Waterloo.

What?

Yes, that’s Eng FOC 2004.

So what does that mean? Basically, me and three others will be organizing, planning, and overseeing all the events of orientation week (a.k.a. frosh week). This will be an ongoing thing, right through till the big event in September…and months beyond as we then will have to pass the reins over to the next crew.

This is huge…HUGE task ahead of me. Part of me is screaming, “Yo, man! How the heck are you going to handle this???” Another part of me is thinking, “This is going to worth it! Show them what you’re made of!” Heh. I’m not totally sure what to expect, but I’m ready to tackle it head on.

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Lest we forget…

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Tue. November 11, 2003

Today is Rememberance Day in Canada. As a child of immigrants, I don’t have any relatives that were part of the allied forces in any of the big wars (at least, I don’t think so). Even so, if it weren’t for the sacrifices made by those soldiers long ago, who knows whether I’d be here today? It’s all a big chain of related events. Anyway, I’m feeling appreciative, and thankful.

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Choice

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Tue. November 11, 2003

Last night was the second opportunity for me to vote in just the past month or two. It was the municipal election, and I was voting for a ward councillor and the mayor of Toronto. Eventually, the candidate I had voted for mayor didn’t win, but just the fact that I went out and had my choice counted made me feel better. I find it odd that there’s a lot of apathy among youth when it comes to voting. It’s one of the few times when a person actually has a chance to affect how things are run. You’d think that this type of power is appealing. Heh. Then again, I suppose I’m guilty of it myself. I had a chance to vote long ago in the last federal election. My name was on the voter’s list and everything. However, I decided not to go out. I was at University at the time–meaning I was away from home. There was just no urge to go out and vote…especially for an MP in an area I was not too familiar with. I guess now I get a really cheap thrill out of marking a name and being counted.

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Are you sure you can eat all that?

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Fri. November 7, 2003

That’s what the waitress said to Yuki and I as we sat at the table staring at all the food we had ordered. We were at an all you can eat sushi place and had proceeded to order a large amount of food. In fact, we ordered two tables full. The waitress could only give us an incredulous look asking us whether we were capable of downing it all. Yuki quickly insisted that we were alright. You know, on that check sheet where you mark what you want, it didn’t seem like that much food, but when it all came, holy shit, you know?

We did manage to down just about all of it, save for two pieces of sushi pizza. At that point though, neither of us wanted to stuff that fried piece of rice with salmon on top into our mouths. In fact, much to my dismay, I was kind of gagging as I tried to glom down the last piece of hand roll that we had.

That’s how I spent the night before my birthday. On Yuki’s insistence we went out to celebrate–just the two of us. We wanted to go for sushi, followed by some relaxation at a bubble tea place that she recommended a long time ago.

Just for the record, Yuki is a good friend of mine. Ahem. Don’t try reading too much into it, folks (or so I’ve been told =p).

After sushi, I felt that I had to take a bit of a break in the van before I went ahead and drove to the next location. That’s when she brought out the gifts. I mean…I was speechless. She gave me a health orb thingy, as well as a game that came from one of those brainy hobby shops. It was right up my alley. They were perfect for me. Oh, but that wasn’t all. When we had arrived at the bubble tea place, she brought out a cake. It was a nice chocolate truffle cake. I was…dumbfounded. Never once in my life has someone done so much for me on my birthday–just purely out of generosity, expecting nothing in return. Just thinking about it makes me all warm and tingly, you know?

Hey, Yuki. If you’re reading this, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart. I know I’ve already said it many times, but it really meant a lot to me.

That’s been the highlight of my week. I’m glad I had the opportunity to spend it with someone who cares about me.

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