Succumbing to the I-Want Syndrome (IWS)
[Monday, May 7]
My wallet, and I, are reeling somewhat from a series of impulse purchases over the last week--or more specifically, the last weekend, beginning on Saturday when I went into a secondhand goods store near my church. That store turned out to have rather more interesting things than its exterior suggested--at first I had thought it sold only old TVs and electric guitars that nobody could tune any more. Apparently they have stacks and stacks of bokken--Japanese training swords, very blunt but very heavy--going for less than 10 each; boxes piled high with records (I'm not sure if they were pirated, though); and, which caught my attention most, a few hundred books in shelves along the wall. I was decidedly happy to see those.
The books, naturally, were mostly romance novels with half-undressed chests sprawled all over the cover. I avoided those, but I did find an early Patricia C Wrede (I've read some of her other work, and it's pretty good); a David/Leigh Eddings (which REALLY got my attention, because the two of them are great writers of fantasy); and Frankenstein (the novel), which I took too. Total, RM19. So far I've finished the Wrede book (it's a little disappointing, but then again it's probably from her non-pro days) and am halfway through the Eddingses' book, which is still good--I like characters with pronounced tastes for sarcasm. I haven't started on Frankenstein yet, though.
And then, there's that book I bought from If Pooh (God in the Dock, by CS Lewis) which I haven't got even halfway through yet. It's the most expensive of the books I've bought, being first-hand and costing RM30. It's really good, too...
And then I bought another book before watching Spider-Man 3 last Saturday: Miss Manners On Weddings. I think the old man behind the counter was a little surprised at the choice, since I still don't look anything like old enough to be imminently married. Quite possibly he made a mental note to keep his daugher/s away from me or something (if he has any). Actually I bought it because such books are pretty hard to find--hardcover, and for only RM14!--and because I thought it'd be interesting reading. (It is. I highly recommend it for all couples planning marriage.) It's THE guidebook on how to have a perfectly polite wedding (as opposed to a perfect wedding), with instructions on the best way to behave for all parties concerned.
(Incidentally, the bride has the most instructions to follow. I wonder why.)
So that makes a total of about RM70 worth of books... in slightly less than one week. It's a mercy I didn't get to the Times Warehouse Sale or the Gorilla's house would be overrun with my books.
...oh. Yeah. I watched another movie this week, to get the awful aftertaste of Sunshine outta my head... so I watched Spider-Man 3. Again I sat beside D-Kun, again despite his half-hearted protests. I think if this goes on much longer, we're going to become addicted to giving running commentary on the film, to the despair of whoever sits beside me. (D-Kun seems to like the aisle seats.) And we drove the Gorilla to distraction, I believe, what with discussing the camera angles and plot twists and mocking the emo-ness of the ending (while Mrs. Gorilla was beside the Gorilla and, as she says, screaming and weeping alternately).
Perhaps we shouldn't have laughed quite so loudly when the new Goblin died--but he did it so similarly to the first Goblin! Like father, like son, I guess--but at least the kid died a "nice guy". In any case the pumpkin bombs were still cool, even if it did look like he was using napalm now instead of whatever the old Goblin used. I guess napalm is supposed to work better against sand.
I won't bother giving the plot, since the movie's still running and all that--but, of course, I'll just drop off a few random bits.
-- Black Spider-Man was cool, but Venom was cooler since he could do more stuff with his "webbing". How come Black Spider-Man couldn't do all that?
-- How come only Venom got the nice teeth?
-- How did Sandman keep holding on to that locket while being turned into mud, or while flying (since he flies by turning into what appears to be loose sand and blowing away)?
-- And how come that locket didn't get dematerialised along with Sandman in the particle thingy?
-- When did Harry get the time to upgrade the bombs and suit?
-- Who gets the mansion, money, etc after Harry died?
-- MJ forgave Peter a bit fast, considering she never knew about the symbiote (which might have provided exteuating circumstances).
-- And I wonder why that physicist lecturer knew so much about symbiote behaviour. Might he be moonlighting?
-- Sandman shouldn't be able to make any noise in sand form, since he has no vocal chords... he oughtn't to be able to see or hear either, by that token.
-- If Sandman can switch between human and sand form, can he turn into other people/animals/objects? He can change colour too--sand painting!
-- It was too emo at the end, with everybody blabbing about dead or dying relatives. (Actually it was just Sandman and Spider-Man, but still...)
-- I don't see why, if Goblin can remote control all the movements of the glider, he can't make those blades on the front retractable.
-- Venom didn't get enough screen time! And he wasn't even named! Newbie fans are forever going to refer to him as "the black guy with the teeth".
-- Why the heck did they have to have Spider-Man land in front of a flying flag? An overdose of patriotism?
-- And why doesn't it ever rain in that town?
...and now it's obvious why I'm not a very good person to sit beside at movies, especially sad ones. Apparently D-Kun and I were laughing our way through some of the most tear-jerking scenes, and ended up rather at odds with the weeping coming from God's Pencil and Mrs. Gorilla. (And as a result I have been labelled merciless. Ah me...)
...we also found out that night that I have less body hair than most guys my age--as you already know, I've never needed to shave in my life--and now it turns out I have less body hair than most girls my age. Amidst the Gorilla chuckling about "featherless birds"--and don't you even think about the implications of that phrase--the girls in the group proceeded to get mildly jealous for some reason. Apparently the lack of body hair is a prized asset amongst the females of the species. I'm starting to wonder if I might be somewhat lacking in some vital mineral or other. Not needing to shave is all well--it saves me money and time--but when one turns out to be naturally less hairy than a female, it makes one shudder from the possible implications.
I've been looking for a nice hat ever since watching V for Vendetta. Actually I've wanted one for ages before that, but before that I wasn't sure what kind of hat I wanted. Now I think I know...
I'm looking for a nice wide-brimmed stovepipe hat, but I've never seen any of those anywhere in the place. I'm told that certain specialty shops do sell these, but the phrase specialty shop is almost synonymous with "expensive beyond my budget", and anyway, Herr Robson wants to know, where would I wear it to?
Well, I'd be satisfied with a nice fedora too, but a stovepipe hat would really be nice. Or one of those top hats magicians always seem to wear, except those are probably rather fragile and cannot be sat on. Besides, a nice wide brim would really help keep the sun outta my eyes. But as it is, I can only dream, because I don't know anywhere to find either one. I've been asking the natives, but apparently they don't know what good hats would be around here, so they're not much help so far...
The new guy is getting less and less formal in his dress. The first day he was here, I believe he was in a long-sleeved shirt, slacks, polished black shoes, etc... and I was wearing my usual crumpled T-shirt and cargoes and stained sneakers. (They're stained because I've never, ever, washed them. I don't have any spare shoes to wear while they'd be drying.) And over lunch, he began asking about the dress code... well, I guess I managed to get him to relax somewhat. Now he's in short-sleeved shirts, jeans, and polished black shoes. Oh well, it's progress.
The paragraph above is not off-topic, don't worry--but then off-topic-ness is common around here, you'd think you'd be used to it by now. The only reason I noticed his wardrobe change is that now his chest hair is visible... and after those comments the other night, you bet I'm a bit more, er, observant of such things now. It doesn't help that I'm probably the most hairless person in the office, barring the females, and even that isn't certain. Talk about a hot topic--now I'm worrying that this hairlessness might turn out to be symptom of some other disease or dietary lack or hormonal imbalance or something--though that last would really be unfair since I'm technically supposed to be over puberty by now.
It also turns out that I'm the most computer-literate person in the office, although that really shouldn't be a surprise since everybody else is older than myself. (Ahem.) Plus they don't look like they ever entered geekdom in their lives, unlike myself. As a result, I get to be the one called on when people want some weird thing done to some MS Word document or Excel spreadsheet or whatever. It's not a bad thing in itself, since it usually doesn't take me long to get whatever it is done; but when it comes in great volume, it does interrupt my own work a bit--I still do have to enter financial data, you know. Still--at least two of the other workers have home computers, by their own admission, and use them often. One would expect them to know that one can only type within a text box, or how to use the Print Preview button... but at least it keeps me walking around between computers. A little bit of exercise, I guess, other than my fidgeting. I read somewhere that fidgeters can burn up to 300 calories a day--that's enough power to boil 3 liters of ice.
[Thursday]
The past few days have passed in a blur of waking early, sleeping late, and reading in between... I didn't even know it was Thursday until one of my coworkers reminded me I'd be going back tomorrow. I've been going through the books I bought last weekend and have just started on the Reader's Digests... those things are really useful--I never knew how to pronounce IKEA 'til last night. (It's "ee-kay-ah".)
I spent this morning running around some mall where the government registrar of companies has a branch. Don't ask me why they chose to put a government office in the middle of a mall, or why they decided to have it spread out over 5 or 6 floors--all I know is I had to wake up much too early this morning to accompany my aunt there to register some client's company. It's also why I'm wearing the black shirt I bought last year right now--it's still comfy even though I've never touched it for months. I guess that comes with the wrinkle-proof package.
In any case, the mall only matters to me because I found hats there--unfortunately they were cowboy hats, not at all my style. It was an embroidery shop, of all things--I wonder what kind of embroidery would fit on a cowboy hat. Actually, I'm wondering rather whether cowboy hats and fedoras are the same thing by different names... I would say they do look remarkably alike, as far as I can say. Still, if I buy a hat, I'm going to get it from someplace where the hat isn't hanging off some mannequin in blue jeans and holding a tobacco tin.
The Brats have been remarkably mild this week--the office people are wondering why, and personally I attribute it to the new guy's new-ness not having worn off yet. It may also be due to them not having come in here much this week, what with added tuition classes and all sorts of other reasons... still, I'm grateful for the respite. It's nice to not have to deal with screaming and fountains of tears every other minute or so. And when the chaos comes back--I'm not optimistic that these favourable conditions will persist--I'll at least be rested and ready to deal with it as mercilessly as my aunt will permit.
(Unfortunately, she's a staunch nonbeliever in the efficacy of corporal punishment except when she's in a temper, while I believe in administering the punishment before I lose my temper and
the administration of said punishment runs away with me.)
Yesterday was another case when I learned that the more basic a concept, the more difficult it is to define. Ideas like "light", "electricity", and "love" have been resisting definitions for ages. I submit another one for discussion--"now". Everybody seems to think of it differently... which is why I've decided that I have to work on the precision of my speech. "Now" is a word people are likely to hear all the time-- "Do your homework now!", "I'm coming now", and so on.
Personally, I always stick by the definition where "now" means "the time when the word 'now' is uttered". It makes things much simpler for me, so I can say safely that, for example, I'm not working now. For the Brats, "now" in the context of homework means "sometime next century", while in the context of TV, it means "whenever I want". My uncle seems to think of "now" as "when I remember", as in when he said "I'm coming now" at 4.30pm yesterday and actually turned up at the office at 7.30pm. It's annoying that dictionaries are all over the place, selling at quite affordable prices, and people still keep on coming up with their own, less accurate, versions of what they think it should mean when said by them.
It rather reminds me of the Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass... the one who said that "stop" meant it was getting very late and tea-time was nearly over and he was thirsty anyway and so they had better wrap up the conversation and keep it for another day, or something to that effect.
[Friday]
I just remembered it's Mother's Day soon... well, I shouldn't be able to forget it in the first place anyway with the Empress bugging me to write my mom a poem or something with a garden theme. So far I've got nothing but disjointed little phrases and puns floating around... stuff like "Peas be with you" or "Thanks for all the thyme" or "We're all nuts!"--all of which doesn't sound particularly poetic, does it?
In any case I decided I'd better record one of my rare outbreaks of wisdom from last Friday's discussion... every now and then I say something that inexplicably makes sense. I don't know where the words come from--the words, not the sound. The sound comes from me, you see (just in case somebody as literal as I reads this). We were discussing comparison, I remember, as far as work is concerned, specifically work done in God's name. People do tend rather to get married to their jobs, you know, and for some reason those people react to discussions of their work as if one were criticising their spouse, which actually might not be too far from the truth in some cases.
Well. I guess the urge to compare anything is natural. One sees it in little mites all the time. It does work, on occasion, I suppose--if done properly. You see, the idea of comparison implies the existence of a perfection or benchmark. Saying one's handwriting isn't good enough means that one's handwriting hasn't reached the level of "good" yet, for example. And in most cases, like in handwriting, the benchmark is set by the person for whom the task is done--teachers will probably want a higher standard of handwriting than one's parents, whether or not the task can be completed (i.e. the handwriting can be perfected); in other cases, the standard is simply there, and nobody can change that--for example, there is no such thing as an absolutely black tulip despite the centuries of effort by cultivators.
In reference to work, therefore, it all boils down to whom one is working for--in my case it would be whom I'm studying for. If one is working for oneself, then logically one should set one's own benchmarks--say, a CGPA of 3.4. Of course, the moment one starts comparing oneself to another, the benchmarks are changed--usually to "slightly better than the other person". And you see that the problem now is that one's benchmark becomes extremely fluid--one doesn't know the other person's benchmark, for one thing, and circumstances may make attaining it (if it were known) impossible.
And then when you put a whole bunch of people like that together--all of them thinking of perfection as "just a little better than X", one gets a very interesting society where everybody is striving to be "better", but without any idea of "good".
The rotten part is when that sort of thing happens in the context of church. It's not logical, really--it's already stated specifically that we oughtn't to compare ourselves to any others, that we all have our own duties and we ought to just stick to carrying them out without worrying about what might come after--but it happens anyway. One hears all the time about people who worry that their church is too small, or their efforts at evangelism (but I'll think about that some other time) are too fruitless, or that they don't think their skills are quite up to scratch...
(I fall into the last two categories myself, so don't you go off on the doctor-heal-thyself lecture, 'kay?)
But in the context of church duties--that term is actually rather misleading, since Christians are supposed to be full-time workers no matter what their vocation--the work one does is supposed to be for God. Which then means that God is the One who's supposed to set our benchmarks for us, not our own selves (no matter how highly we rate our own judgment). Which then makes it totally senseless to go off and wish one had the voice of Billy Graham, the mind of Einstein, the soul of Mother Teresa, and the strength of Heracles, all so that one "could serve better". God being as interfering as He is (I mean no disrespect--it's a good thing), probably already knows exactly what we're capable of and what we ought to be able to do (and how and when and where and to whom), so it's pointless trying to pretend that our standards are higher than those of He Who is Perfection.
I said it's senseless, not that it's easy to do. Comparing is natural--I do it myself all the time. But simply because something is natural does not make it good--or even neutral, for that matter.
The people who insist that we all should go completely back to nature (no GM food, for example, or nuclear energy, or animal experimentation) also insist on wearing clothes and swatting mosquitoes. I think, personally, comparison is not going to be useful unless there is a clearly stated benchmark, agreed on by all parties concerned; that the comparison is limited to one specific, quantifiable aspect; and that the comparison concerns something that may be altered.
That's just idealism, of course. But it would make a lot of those "why-aren't-you-as-addicted-to-exercise-as-your-brother" speeches that I get disappear.
The Brats pray in the car every day that I see them. It's a rote prayer that they've read so often that they can memorise it, and it looks like it was written by their church. I'm not too sure of its efficacy myself--of course, prayer is directed to God, and it's His prerogative to answer favourably or not to. But it's not the words of the prayer that annoy me, even if I do find it rather too far along the bless-me-now line. (Still, they're children, so...) What I dislike is the way the prayer is recited--as if it were a performance instead of, well, a prayer.
They're talking to God here! I don't know if they even understand the idea of doing so. In fact I don't think they understand the words they recite. But the fact is that if they talked to anybody else in the way they pray, the person they talked to would look blankly at them, give them a ten-cent coin, and ring up the nearest asylum to enquire about escapees. The youngest Brat is the main perpetuator of this double crime--firstly against God, Whom he disrespects (albeit probably unknowingly), and secondly against the language that he daily distorts into a mangled, misshapen amagalmation of meaningless mumbo-jumbo. He seems to think that as long as he says the words, no matter how he says them, that it's a perfectly good prayer--and so it would be, if he were talking to an equally insane person.
Unfortunately for him, God is sane.
It's extremely offensive to me, you understand. My whole life I've been trying to improve the general standard of English where I can, and here I am with some Brat who mangles Chinese daily--but since it's a prayer, I can't jump on him and tear him apart without being accused of sacrilege. I should probably record it some time, then wait 'til his funeral and play it on a continuous loop after explaining that this was an integral part of his daily life at 5 years old. I might then ask the guests to decipher the words and award a couple hundred to whomever managed to get it--it'd be perfectly safe for me, because nobody would understand it.
I suppose the whole point of this little bit of ranting is that I wish the Brats would learn to respect people better. They seem to (in a phrase I read last night) "be balancing their family tree on their nose", imagining that whatever they might be, they're better than anybody else.
And they sure talk like it too. I very much dislike it. But they're young; there's no need for me to step in yet, since the time is not far off when one or all of them will come to realise that manners are important, either the nice way or the rude way.
Personally, I'm betting on the hard way--that they run up against some other person who has an even more colourful vocabulary and get reduced to tears or insanity. And I'm hoping to be there when it happens so I can say "I told you so"--in a perfectly bland tone, of course.
[Later]
I've got a headache that I attribute to staring at numbers for the past 6 hours... not in a row, of course, I've had lunch... but still, black and white does get heavy on the eyes after awhile.
(Which reminds me that I have to get my spectacles repaired sometime--during the last captain's-ball practice, somebody hit them rather too hard. The right lens is scratched, although still usable; and one of the screws has vanished somehow. Fortunately I have two screws on each side so I can still use it as normal.)
It's not helped by the fact that the file's creator was apparently a very careless person whose carelessness has left us with a terrible mess; and now we have several versions of the same file, all completely different in their content, and all on different computers so we've got no hope of ever reconciling the things. I've been asking around about the file's original creator, but so far have had no success in locating a target to hunt down and shoot.
My wallet, and I, are reeling somewhat from a series of impulse purchases over the last week--or more specifically, the last weekend, beginning on Saturday when I went into a secondhand goods store near my church. That store turned out to have rather more interesting things than its exterior suggested--at first I had thought it sold only old TVs and electric guitars that nobody could tune any more. Apparently they have stacks and stacks of bokken--Japanese training swords, very blunt but very heavy--going for less than 10 each; boxes piled high with records (I'm not sure if they were pirated, though); and, which caught my attention most, a few hundred books in shelves along the wall. I was decidedly happy to see those.
The books, naturally, were mostly romance novels with half-undressed chests sprawled all over the cover. I avoided those, but I did find an early Patricia C Wrede (I've read some of her other work, and it's pretty good); a David/Leigh Eddings (which REALLY got my attention, because the two of them are great writers of fantasy); and Frankenstein (the novel), which I took too. Total, RM19. So far I've finished the Wrede book (it's a little disappointing, but then again it's probably from her non-pro days) and am halfway through the Eddingses' book, which is still good--I like characters with pronounced tastes for sarcasm. I haven't started on Frankenstein yet, though.
And then, there's that book I bought from If Pooh (God in the Dock, by CS Lewis) which I haven't got even halfway through yet. It's the most expensive of the books I've bought, being first-hand and costing RM30. It's really good, too...
And then I bought another book before watching Spider-Man 3 last Saturday: Miss Manners On Weddings. I think the old man behind the counter was a little surprised at the choice, since I still don't look anything like old enough to be imminently married. Quite possibly he made a mental note to keep his daugher/s away from me or something (if he has any). Actually I bought it because such books are pretty hard to find--hardcover, and for only RM14!--and because I thought it'd be interesting reading. (It is. I highly recommend it for all couples planning marriage.) It's THE guidebook on how to have a perfectly polite wedding (as opposed to a perfect wedding), with instructions on the best way to behave for all parties concerned.
(Incidentally, the bride has the most instructions to follow. I wonder why.)
So that makes a total of about RM70 worth of books... in slightly less than one week. It's a mercy I didn't get to the Times Warehouse Sale or the Gorilla's house would be overrun with my books.
...oh. Yeah. I watched another movie this week, to get the awful aftertaste of Sunshine outta my head... so I watched Spider-Man 3. Again I sat beside D-Kun, again despite his half-hearted protests. I think if this goes on much longer, we're going to become addicted to giving running commentary on the film, to the despair of whoever sits beside me. (D-Kun seems to like the aisle seats.) And we drove the Gorilla to distraction, I believe, what with discussing the camera angles and plot twists and mocking the emo-ness of the ending (while Mrs. Gorilla was beside the Gorilla and, as she says, screaming and weeping alternately).
Perhaps we shouldn't have laughed quite so loudly when the new Goblin died--but he did it so similarly to the first Goblin! Like father, like son, I guess--but at least the kid died a "nice guy". In any case the pumpkin bombs were still cool, even if it did look like he was using napalm now instead of whatever the old Goblin used. I guess napalm is supposed to work better against sand.
I won't bother giving the plot, since the movie's still running and all that--but, of course, I'll just drop off a few random bits.
-- Black Spider-Man was cool, but Venom was cooler since he could do more stuff with his "webbing". How come Black Spider-Man couldn't do all that?
-- How come only Venom got the nice teeth?
-- How did Sandman keep holding on to that locket while being turned into mud, or while flying (since he flies by turning into what appears to be loose sand and blowing away)?
-- And how come that locket didn't get dematerialised along with Sandman in the particle thingy?
-- When did Harry get the time to upgrade the bombs and suit?
-- Who gets the mansion, money, etc after Harry died?
-- MJ forgave Peter a bit fast, considering she never knew about the symbiote (which might have provided exteuating circumstances).
-- And I wonder why that physicist lecturer knew so much about symbiote behaviour. Might he be moonlighting?
-- Sandman shouldn't be able to make any noise in sand form, since he has no vocal chords... he oughtn't to be able to see or hear either, by that token.
-- If Sandman can switch between human and sand form, can he turn into other people/animals/objects? He can change colour too--sand painting!
-- It was too emo at the end, with everybody blabbing about dead or dying relatives. (Actually it was just Sandman and Spider-Man, but still...)
-- I don't see why, if Goblin can remote control all the movements of the glider, he can't make those blades on the front retractable.
-- Venom didn't get enough screen time! And he wasn't even named! Newbie fans are forever going to refer to him as "the black guy with the teeth".
-- Why the heck did they have to have Spider-Man land in front of a flying flag? An overdose of patriotism?
-- And why doesn't it ever rain in that town?
...and now it's obvious why I'm not a very good person to sit beside at movies, especially sad ones. Apparently D-Kun and I were laughing our way through some of the most tear-jerking scenes, and ended up rather at odds with the weeping coming from God's Pencil and Mrs. Gorilla. (And as a result I have been labelled merciless. Ah me...)
...we also found out that night that I have less body hair than most guys my age--as you already know, I've never needed to shave in my life--and now it turns out I have less body hair than most girls my age. Amidst the Gorilla chuckling about "featherless birds"--and don't you even think about the implications of that phrase--the girls in the group proceeded to get mildly jealous for some reason. Apparently the lack of body hair is a prized asset amongst the females of the species. I'm starting to wonder if I might be somewhat lacking in some vital mineral or other. Not needing to shave is all well--it saves me money and time--but when one turns out to be naturally less hairy than a female, it makes one shudder from the possible implications.
I've been looking for a nice hat ever since watching V for Vendetta. Actually I've wanted one for ages before that, but before that I wasn't sure what kind of hat I wanted. Now I think I know...
I'm looking for a nice wide-brimmed stovepipe hat, but I've never seen any of those anywhere in the place. I'm told that certain specialty shops do sell these, but the phrase specialty shop is almost synonymous with "expensive beyond my budget", and anyway, Herr Robson wants to know, where would I wear it to?
Well, I'd be satisfied with a nice fedora too, but a stovepipe hat would really be nice. Or one of those top hats magicians always seem to wear, except those are probably rather fragile and cannot be sat on. Besides, a nice wide brim would really help keep the sun outta my eyes. But as it is, I can only dream, because I don't know anywhere to find either one. I've been asking the natives, but apparently they don't know what good hats would be around here, so they're not much help so far...
The new guy is getting less and less formal in his dress. The first day he was here, I believe he was in a long-sleeved shirt, slacks, polished black shoes, etc... and I was wearing my usual crumpled T-shirt and cargoes and stained sneakers. (They're stained because I've never, ever, washed them. I don't have any spare shoes to wear while they'd be drying.) And over lunch, he began asking about the dress code... well, I guess I managed to get him to relax somewhat. Now he's in short-sleeved shirts, jeans, and polished black shoes. Oh well, it's progress.
The paragraph above is not off-topic, don't worry--but then off-topic-ness is common around here, you'd think you'd be used to it by now. The only reason I noticed his wardrobe change is that now his chest hair is visible... and after those comments the other night, you bet I'm a bit more, er, observant of such things now. It doesn't help that I'm probably the most hairless person in the office, barring the females, and even that isn't certain. Talk about a hot topic--now I'm worrying that this hairlessness might turn out to be symptom of some other disease or dietary lack or hormonal imbalance or something--though that last would really be unfair since I'm technically supposed to be over puberty by now.
It also turns out that I'm the most computer-literate person in the office, although that really shouldn't be a surprise since everybody else is older than myself. (Ahem.) Plus they don't look like they ever entered geekdom in their lives, unlike myself. As a result, I get to be the one called on when people want some weird thing done to some MS Word document or Excel spreadsheet or whatever. It's not a bad thing in itself, since it usually doesn't take me long to get whatever it is done; but when it comes in great volume, it does interrupt my own work a bit--I still do have to enter financial data, you know. Still--at least two of the other workers have home computers, by their own admission, and use them often. One would expect them to know that one can only type within a text box, or how to use the Print Preview button... but at least it keeps me walking around between computers. A little bit of exercise, I guess, other than my fidgeting. I read somewhere that fidgeters can burn up to 300 calories a day--that's enough power to boil 3 liters of ice.
[Thursday]
The past few days have passed in a blur of waking early, sleeping late, and reading in between... I didn't even know it was Thursday until one of my coworkers reminded me I'd be going back tomorrow. I've been going through the books I bought last weekend and have just started on the Reader's Digests... those things are really useful--I never knew how to pronounce IKEA 'til last night. (It's "ee-kay-ah".)
I spent this morning running around some mall where the government registrar of companies has a branch. Don't ask me why they chose to put a government office in the middle of a mall, or why they decided to have it spread out over 5 or 6 floors--all I know is I had to wake up much too early this morning to accompany my aunt there to register some client's company. It's also why I'm wearing the black shirt I bought last year right now--it's still comfy even though I've never touched it for months. I guess that comes with the wrinkle-proof package.
In any case, the mall only matters to me because I found hats there--unfortunately they were cowboy hats, not at all my style. It was an embroidery shop, of all things--I wonder what kind of embroidery would fit on a cowboy hat. Actually, I'm wondering rather whether cowboy hats and fedoras are the same thing by different names... I would say they do look remarkably alike, as far as I can say. Still, if I buy a hat, I'm going to get it from someplace where the hat isn't hanging off some mannequin in blue jeans and holding a tobacco tin.
The Brats have been remarkably mild this week--the office people are wondering why, and personally I attribute it to the new guy's new-ness not having worn off yet. It may also be due to them not having come in here much this week, what with added tuition classes and all sorts of other reasons... still, I'm grateful for the respite. It's nice to not have to deal with screaming and fountains of tears every other minute or so. And when the chaos comes back--I'm not optimistic that these favourable conditions will persist--I'll at least be rested and ready to deal with it as mercilessly as my aunt will permit.
(Unfortunately, she's a staunch nonbeliever in the efficacy of corporal punishment except when she's in a temper, while I believe in administering the punishment before I lose my temper and
the administration of said punishment runs away with me.)
Yesterday was another case when I learned that the more basic a concept, the more difficult it is to define. Ideas like "light", "electricity", and "love" have been resisting definitions for ages. I submit another one for discussion--"now". Everybody seems to think of it differently... which is why I've decided that I have to work on the precision of my speech. "Now" is a word people are likely to hear all the time-- "Do your homework now!", "I'm coming now", and so on.
Personally, I always stick by the definition where "now" means "the time when the word 'now' is uttered". It makes things much simpler for me, so I can say safely that, for example, I'm not working now. For the Brats, "now" in the context of homework means "sometime next century", while in the context of TV, it means "whenever I want". My uncle seems to think of "now" as "when I remember", as in when he said "I'm coming now" at 4.30pm yesterday and actually turned up at the office at 7.30pm. It's annoying that dictionaries are all over the place, selling at quite affordable prices, and people still keep on coming up with their own, less accurate, versions of what they think it should mean when said by them.
It rather reminds me of the Humpty-Dumpty in Through the Looking-Glass... the one who said that "stop" meant it was getting very late and tea-time was nearly over and he was thirsty anyway and so they had better wrap up the conversation and keep it for another day, or something to that effect.
[Friday]
I just remembered it's Mother's Day soon... well, I shouldn't be able to forget it in the first place anyway with the Empress bugging me to write my mom a poem or something with a garden theme. So far I've got nothing but disjointed little phrases and puns floating around... stuff like "Peas be with you" or "Thanks for all the thyme" or "We're all nuts!"--all of which doesn't sound particularly poetic, does it?
In any case I decided I'd better record one of my rare outbreaks of wisdom from last Friday's discussion... every now and then I say something that inexplicably makes sense. I don't know where the words come from--the words, not the sound. The sound comes from me, you see (just in case somebody as literal as I reads this). We were discussing comparison, I remember, as far as work is concerned, specifically work done in God's name. People do tend rather to get married to their jobs, you know, and for some reason those people react to discussions of their work as if one were criticising their spouse, which actually might not be too far from the truth in some cases.
Well. I guess the urge to compare anything is natural. One sees it in little mites all the time. It does work, on occasion, I suppose--if done properly. You see, the idea of comparison implies the existence of a perfection or benchmark. Saying one's handwriting isn't good enough means that one's handwriting hasn't reached the level of "good" yet, for example. And in most cases, like in handwriting, the benchmark is set by the person for whom the task is done--teachers will probably want a higher standard of handwriting than one's parents, whether or not the task can be completed (i.e. the handwriting can be perfected); in other cases, the standard is simply there, and nobody can change that--for example, there is no such thing as an absolutely black tulip despite the centuries of effort by cultivators.
In reference to work, therefore, it all boils down to whom one is working for--in my case it would be whom I'm studying for. If one is working for oneself, then logically one should set one's own benchmarks--say, a CGPA of 3.4. Of course, the moment one starts comparing oneself to another, the benchmarks are changed--usually to "slightly better than the other person". And you see that the problem now is that one's benchmark becomes extremely fluid--one doesn't know the other person's benchmark, for one thing, and circumstances may make attaining it (if it were known) impossible.
And then when you put a whole bunch of people like that together--all of them thinking of perfection as "just a little better than X", one gets a very interesting society where everybody is striving to be "better", but without any idea of "good".
The rotten part is when that sort of thing happens in the context of church. It's not logical, really--it's already stated specifically that we oughtn't to compare ourselves to any others, that we all have our own duties and we ought to just stick to carrying them out without worrying about what might come after--but it happens anyway. One hears all the time about people who worry that their church is too small, or their efforts at evangelism (but I'll think about that some other time) are too fruitless, or that they don't think their skills are quite up to scratch...
(I fall into the last two categories myself, so don't you go off on the doctor-heal-thyself lecture, 'kay?)
But in the context of church duties--that term is actually rather misleading, since Christians are supposed to be full-time workers no matter what their vocation--the work one does is supposed to be for God. Which then means that God is the One who's supposed to set our benchmarks for us, not our own selves (no matter how highly we rate our own judgment). Which then makes it totally senseless to go off and wish one had the voice of Billy Graham, the mind of Einstein, the soul of Mother Teresa, and the strength of Heracles, all so that one "could serve better". God being as interfering as He is (I mean no disrespect--it's a good thing), probably already knows exactly what we're capable of and what we ought to be able to do (and how and when and where and to whom), so it's pointless trying to pretend that our standards are higher than those of He Who is Perfection.
I said it's senseless, not that it's easy to do. Comparing is natural--I do it myself all the time. But simply because something is natural does not make it good--or even neutral, for that matter.
The people who insist that we all should go completely back to nature (no GM food, for example, or nuclear energy, or animal experimentation) also insist on wearing clothes and swatting mosquitoes. I think, personally, comparison is not going to be useful unless there is a clearly stated benchmark, agreed on by all parties concerned; that the comparison is limited to one specific, quantifiable aspect; and that the comparison concerns something that may be altered.
That's just idealism, of course. But it would make a lot of those "why-aren't-you-as-addicted-to-exercise-as-your-brother" speeches that I get disappear.
The Brats pray in the car every day that I see them. It's a rote prayer that they've read so often that they can memorise it, and it looks like it was written by their church. I'm not too sure of its efficacy myself--of course, prayer is directed to God, and it's His prerogative to answer favourably or not to. But it's not the words of the prayer that annoy me, even if I do find it rather too far along the bless-me-now line. (Still, they're children, so...) What I dislike is the way the prayer is recited--as if it were a performance instead of, well, a prayer.
They're talking to God here! I don't know if they even understand the idea of doing so. In fact I don't think they understand the words they recite. But the fact is that if they talked to anybody else in the way they pray, the person they talked to would look blankly at them, give them a ten-cent coin, and ring up the nearest asylum to enquire about escapees. The youngest Brat is the main perpetuator of this double crime--firstly against God, Whom he disrespects (albeit probably unknowingly), and secondly against the language that he daily distorts into a mangled, misshapen amagalmation of meaningless mumbo-jumbo. He seems to think that as long as he says the words, no matter how he says them, that it's a perfectly good prayer--and so it would be, if he were talking to an equally insane person.
Unfortunately for him, God is sane.
It's extremely offensive to me, you understand. My whole life I've been trying to improve the general standard of English where I can, and here I am with some Brat who mangles Chinese daily--but since it's a prayer, I can't jump on him and tear him apart without being accused of sacrilege. I should probably record it some time, then wait 'til his funeral and play it on a continuous loop after explaining that this was an integral part of his daily life at 5 years old. I might then ask the guests to decipher the words and award a couple hundred to whomever managed to get it--it'd be perfectly safe for me, because nobody would understand it.
I suppose the whole point of this little bit of ranting is that I wish the Brats would learn to respect people better. They seem to (in a phrase I read last night) "be balancing their family tree on their nose", imagining that whatever they might be, they're better than anybody else.
And they sure talk like it too. I very much dislike it. But they're young; there's no need for me to step in yet, since the time is not far off when one or all of them will come to realise that manners are important, either the nice way or the rude way.
Personally, I'm betting on the hard way--that they run up against some other person who has an even more colourful vocabulary and get reduced to tears or insanity. And I'm hoping to be there when it happens so I can say "I told you so"--in a perfectly bland tone, of course.
[Later]
I've got a headache that I attribute to staring at numbers for the past 6 hours... not in a row, of course, I've had lunch... but still, black and white does get heavy on the eyes after awhile.
(Which reminds me that I have to get my spectacles repaired sometime--during the last captain's-ball practice, somebody hit them rather too hard. The right lens is scratched, although still usable; and one of the screws has vanished somehow. Fortunately I have two screws on each side so I can still use it as normal.)
It's not helped by the fact that the file's creator was apparently a very careless person whose carelessness has left us with a terrible mess; and now we have several versions of the same file, all completely different in their content, and all on different computers so we've got no hope of ever reconciling the things. I've been asking around about the file's original creator, but so far have had no success in locating a target to hunt down and shoot.
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