Just my thoughts. Nothing more.
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January 6, 2006, 5:30 pm
Another experiment... I was kind of toying with "trying to make more LJ/journal postings" as a New Year's resolution. I don't think I'll actually make it a formal resolution -- I actually never have -- but it might be a fun general goal. I've been posting a fair amount to other people's LJs, but have only ever made two entries on my own LJ. There are tons of entries on my website journal, however.
Yesterday, I met with a really cool woman who lived in Taiwan for about 13 years. She has a very positive outlook on life, and has been pretty successful. She's also really, really busy, is doing Good, and seems to know pretty well what she wants to do with her life. I definitely hope to keep in touch with her in the future. We talked about maybe hiring a Mandarin tutor together -- it seems like our respective abilities in Mandarin are pretty equivalent -- which would be a lot of fun.
I think I'm fairly busy (though today I have exactly 0 interpreting hours) and I think interpreting is Good work -- helping people get medical treatment most definitely does serve to decrease suffering in the world. But I'm not at all sure what I want to do with my life. I've gone into the question at length before, and I won't delve into the possibilities again here.
But I think I've had a bit of a revelation. (Maybe.) Most of the options for me would require a pretty significant investment in money and time (specifically, school), with pretty much no guarantee of returns later. One option that I like a lot, though, and which requires almost no investment in money (at least not for quite a while) is writing. Developing Spheres, specifically. It's one of my passions, and I think it's quite a good "product", or would be with a fair amount of further development.
So for the past few days, I've been spending more time working directly on Spheres. Last night, I started re-working the star map. You can see an earlier version, but that's lacking in many ways (poor font choice, incomplete information, etc.).
Of course, Spheres is far from a sure thing. The RPG market is already pretty glutted with self-published PDF-type things, and there isn't that big a market for hard SF stuff in the first place. But I think that a big part of making the future happen has to be making solid decisions now. Clearly, hemming and hawing is a big problem for me, and the only way to fix that is to punch through it. "Better to make a bad decision than no decision at all" or whatever the cliche is. The only thing to fear is the decision itself. And other such statements that one tells oneself when trying to deal with the future.
September 24, 2005, 2:30 am
Another beautiful night. I recently bought a pair of binoculars (eBay is my friend) and went up to the roof... But I'm getting ahead of myself.
A month or so ago, my roommate had the idea of going out to the Minnesota Astronomical Society's Onan Observatory to watch the Perseids meteor shower. We decided a bit late -- it was a bit cloudy and I had to work the next morning -- but finally we decided to go.
I am supremely glad we did. The observatory was totally cool, there were some very nice astronomy geeks there, and I got some really good viewing in. I think I saw a couple dozen meteors, as well as learning a few constellations I hadn't known before. I saw the Milky Way, big and beautiful and deep and expansive. Maybe the coolest thing of all was using my roommate's binoculars to look at the Pleiades. It's hard to say which was more breath-taking, the Pleiades or the Milky Way. Both are just so incredibly beautiful.
I realized just how much I had missed seeing the stars. In Taiwan, you're lucky if you see any stars, ever. I always felt pangs of sadness hearing little kids say at night, "Look, Mommy! A star!" "No, baby, that's an airplane." Kids in Taiwan grow up never having seen the stars, or having to go way out of their way to see any. The Twin Cities have a lot of light pollution, but I can regularly see a few dozen stars by naked eye. Out in the country, all the glory of the sky is on display.
Seeing the Milky Way and all the other stunning sights of the night sky reminds me of (warning: cliche alert) how small my problems are, how vast the universe is and how much beauty there really is in it. It makes me feel at home again on Planet Earth, somehow.
Ever since that night at Onan, I've been thinking of buying myself a pair of binoculars. (Well, I've been thinking of buying myself a nice telescope for years, but binoculars are, like, practical and attainable.) I shopped around on eBay for a bit and found a nice pair (7x50, Bushnell, full coated, "insta-focus" -- I think my dad might have a pair of the same model) for $17.05. They just came in the mail today. Even though they're used, they work great.
So just now, I was up on the roof, looking at the stars. Being in the middle of the city, I couldn't see the Milky Way. But I got great views of the Moon, and Jupiter (?). At one point, the security guard came up and I let him use my binoculars for a bit. As he was looking, a really bright, low meteor streaked across the sky. I could almost make out the orange-y color and the smoke trail, slightly grey against the black. Wow! That has to be the coolest meteor I've ever seen.
Before and after the security guard was there, I trained my binocs on a fuzzy patch near Jupiter... yep, the Pleiades. Clear as could be (given the circumstances). I could count all the major stars ("Alcyone!"). It was so... peaceful. Beautiful. Calming. Tranquil. Exquisite.
I'll definitely be going up to the roof more often.
July 26, 2005, 1:00 am
Every once in a while, I have things to report that aren't depressed or depressing.
The weather is beautiful right now. The temperature is crisp, just chill enough to remind you that you're alive, and the breeze keeps it all fresh and keeps the leaves whispering and shushing.
I'm doing better financially. I might even be able to start paying back some student loans soon. I got Cedega installed, so I can play Windoze games under Linux. (Uh oh -- I got Civ III working, and with the beautiful Rhye's Terrain mod, I may not need another 'puter game for a long time. I may not have any time for anything for a long time.)
I also seem to be meeting more cool people, and possibly reforging relationships with friends I thought I'd lost. Friendships are on the horizon. Full speed ahead?
July 5, 2005, 5:00 pm
This past weekend was Convergence. I went, naturally, and had a good time overall. But I'm still left feeling lonely and friendless.
I seem to be really bad at the whole "making friends" thing. I have no friends in the Twin Cities who I consider close, good friends. (A close, good friend is defined as one who I feel comfortable talking about my innermost feelings with, who I can trust with my secrets, and who I feel comfortable crying with.) This is very depressing, because it makes me feel horribly alone. And that's a vicious circle, because if I feel depressed and alone, I start crying, and get confronted even more with the fact that there's no one whose shoulder I can cry on, and so on.
How many people do have that kind of friend? Very few, it is true. But: a) It still hurts, and b) A lot of those people have husbands, wives, lovers or other long-term soulmates. I have none. In fact, I'd really prefer a true soulmate (read: a close, good friend who I can live with forever, who I can love, who I make love to) over having several good friends, but that seems pretty unlikely, given my situation. I'm not opposed to it, and I don't close myself off from opportunites, but I don't see any opportunities for love coming from anything but close friendships, and so looking for close friendships is doing both things at one time.
And, as I said, it still hurts. I know there are people whose lives are terrible compared to mine, but unfortunately that really doesn't make me feel any better. It would almost be kind of sick if it did.
And I know there are people out there who are probably even lonelier than me. I know one person who also has pretty much no close, deep friends; he seems to get by with pretty much no external emotional support. I wish things were better for him. I've tried developing a deep friendship with him, as this would be good for both of us, but I don't think we're really that suited to each other.
I actually do have friends who are quite good, good in all the ways I mentioned, and at one time or another, I've lived near almost all of them. The problem is that I now live near none of them, and at best we can communicate by e-mail or phone. Neither of these is a good solution. The Internet is horribly impersonal, and creates so much noise in the signal that it's surprising sometimes that anyone manages to hold a conversation on the Net without getting pissed off, totally confused or both.
I've also tried fostering new friendships on the Net, and have made a few. But they really don't subsitute for face-to-face. There are so many nice people out there, people who I could be great friends with, if only they lived within 50 miles of me.
So, in the absence of good friends, I try to at least have good conversations. (Notice: I am already at two steps of remove from my ideal goal.) But good conversations in real life are like Birds of Paradise; finding one is incredibly rare, and it's a thing of beauty when you do find it, but you can't keep it. Good conversations on the Net are even rarer. Snark, noise, politics, the difficulty of saying nice things, lack of emotional context and so many other factors contribute... A respectful, interesting, deep conversation on the Net, without having to expend years at it, is rarer than even the most precious Bird of Paradise.
So, next best: Cons. I go to Cons to hopefully meet new people, cool people who could become friends, and have some good conversations. I'm also into gaming a lot, but that's not the topic at hand. Convergence this year resulted in a few good conversations, and, as always, some annoyingly tentative little inklings of friendships-to-be.
I don't really know what Convergence is about. It seems to be mostly about the parties. Parties are, to me, almost always places of pure alienation. Come in, see a bunch of people either already talking to each other or watching a video. Neither of these can spark conversation, and neither allows for the kind of interchange that's required for people to become friends.
Add to that the generally poor conversation abilities of fans -- self-indulgent blathering without really listening to what the other person is saying, starting and stopping conversations gracelessly, interrupting and stepping on each other's words -- and you have a recipe for alienation. Plus, I'm a generally shy person, and I try not to be domineering in conversations, and I keep hoping that when I talk about someone else's for a few minutes, they'll reciprocate and act like they care about my life for a few minutes. I try to start conversations about topics of interest to me, but I'm terrible at it. I either go too deep, too soon (making people feel awkward) or hover around things (gaming, my knowledge of Chinese things, hard SF, gender issues, whatever) because I'm afraid of alienating the other person. I also try to be precise when I talk, but people get frustrated with my long-windedness; then, when I finally use generalizations, people point out that I'm not being precise enough. I'm just generally frustrated with language, and with my ability to use it, and that makes it harder for me to make friends.
Another annoying factor is the specificity of my interests. I'm into China, but not so much Japan; I'm into hard SF, not the general science-lite stuff; I'm into gaming, but not D&D; etc. And I wonder, as I have before, if I shouldn't try to broaden my interests. Well, in fact, I feel pretty comfortable discussing the characters of Star Wars, regardless of the silly science used in the movies; and I can hold my own in a discussion about Japan, or shoujo manga, or whatever. But I really don't want to have to play D&D, which I consider stereotyped and unrealistic, in order to get my RPG fix, it is true. And I'm not even into RPGs based on Chinese myth that much. Am I too perfectionist? How much do I need to change myself in order to find friends? Are all those John Hughes 80's films, that said you're cool enough just as you are, right or not? How hard should it be to find people with similar interests?
I've even made business cards that list my diverse and weird interests, but so far they haven't had much effect. I'll have to see if any of the folks I gave them to at Convergence actually contact me through them.
All of this is why I'm particularly interested in panels at cons. They give a structured way to broach a topic and discuss it deeply without awkwardness; they provide a socially-sanctioned place to talk about things that wouldn't normally come up in conversation. I've volunteered to be head of programming (mostly panels) for Minicon next year. Hopefully this will lead to some interesting exchanges, and help me meet people I wouldn't otherwise have met.
Part of all this is, of course, that I've only been back in the US for a year. Deep friendships take time to develop, and really can't be rushed. Well, it's easy to understand that intellectually, but it doesn't make me feel any less lonely.
As an experiment, I'm going to post this to my Livejournal.
April 9, 2005, 1:25 am
Well, here I am. On Lake Street. Opposite the K-Mart. I can see it out my window, actually. Along with an excellent view of downtown Minneapolis. There are boxes everywhere, suitcases where there aren't boxes, and bookshelves where the suitcases aren't. But I've got more bookshelf space than I've ever had, and I think I might just get all my books put on shelves. Well, all the ones I got in Taiwan, anyway. It's a good feeling.
It also feels good because I am in something like my own room. I'm renting, but I feel like it's really mine to make, um, my own. I've got all kinds of plans -- "icicle lights" as my main light source, which would be totally cool; a rainbow flag hanging in the window; lots of art hanging on all the wallspace that isn't taken up with bookshelves. I've already bought a nice purple (light lilac, really) bedspread set, and a nice little standing fan, and a little Ikea desk and a huge Ikea bookshelf. There are many miles to go -- many boxes to either put away or give away, a dresser to slot in somewhere, some old shelves to take down, a couple doors to remove to put the dresser in, and most importantly, ethernet to set up -- but I'm getting there.
April 1, 2005, 6:45 pm
It's been far too long without an update for me. It seems wrong to keep updating this journal when there isn't really anything new with my life, and the past few months have been pretty much the same as each other. I'm still getting a dribble of medical interpreting hours, and still applying for jobs, and still not getting any of them.
So why bother with an update now? Well, a few things actually have been happening lately. First, I recently went to Minicon. It was great. I haven't yet gone to Diversicon, which I think may be even more my style of convention, but so far, Minicon is my favorite of the local cons. It's not as vapid as MarsCon (don't get me started about my bad experience at MarsCon), it's not a tiny as Consume, it's not as huge as Convergence. (It's not a game con, so I won't compare it with Con of the North, which was also great.) Minicon's Just Right. I had a lot of great conversations, played almost enough Eat Poop, You Cat (aka Moneyduck in its Twin Cities incarnation), had some very good food, met a lot of really nice and cool people, talked to people I hadn't seen since last Minicon, and was on (or went to) a ton of panels:
So, all told, I was on seven panels. A big change from last year, when I was on none. It was a lot of fun, and I think my panelist skills improved a fair amount during the Con. I have to admit, it was also a big ego boost to be on the panels. People asked me questions afterward, as if I was actually some kind of expert (hah!), and people asked me to do things with/for them later on the strength of what I had to say. Pretty cool! Also, Sharon K. has asked me to be programming head for next year. She'd like to spend time on other things. I think she's also like to give someone else the trouble of working Harlan Ellison into panels. :)
All in all, it was a great Con.
Minicon isn't the only thing that's new with me, however. My aunt and uncle had set April 1st as the date I needed to be moved out of their house by, and I'm pretty close to that goal. I'm moving in with my friend Dave R., and I have about half my stuff schlepped already. It'll be very different living on Lake Street instead of tucked away in Kenwood or whatever this neighborhood is called. But it should be fun. Dave and I get along pretty well, and as I've said to several people, our levels of slobbishness are roughly equivalent.
I've had some big ups and downs in the interpreting business lately. I won't go into all the gory details, but basically, I got screwed out of seeing a baby be born (a baby whose mom and dad I've become friends with over the past half-year) due to bureaucratic soullessness and shitheaded, mercenary fellow interpreters. Wouldn't it be nice to find a line of work where being a good person and working hard was actually rewarded? But I got vindication today, when the couple specifically asked me to do interpreting for them at a follow-up visit. Not rewarded, but at least a little put at ease.
November 10, 2004, 12:15 am
So, they did it yet again. The American (USian, but there is no really good term for it) populace elected a George Bush to be President. I've been re-reading my earlier entry, when he was elected the first time, and it's kind of scary how accurate I was. Bush promised to be a "uniter, not a divider", and he has instead been one of the most divisive, hateful and manipulative presidents the US has ever had. His administration has:
It is not a good record. There seem to be signs that Bush may be retreating from his extremist views (Ashcroft just resigned today), but we will see. He now believes he has a "mandate", and look what he did when he didn't have one!
It's very interesting to look at the distribution of "red" (Republican) and "blue" (Democrat) votes. Except for a few bastions of shitheadedness like Cincinnati, almost all the cities of the US went for Kerry. It seems clear that there is a huge divide here. As my aunt noted, people went for Bush in places where they've generally never seen a black person, a GLBT person or a Jewish person. Voting for Bush seems to mean being ignorant and fearful of the world's diversity.
It also seems to mean being ignorant of the world's violent realities. Terrorism isn't new in the industrialized world-- ask anyone living in the UK, or Spain. But many Americans became shell-shocked on September 11th, 2001. The world was brought to their doorstep, in a very vivid and violent way. Some Americans responded with thought and resolve to make things better, but many reeled back and closed their minds, even more than they had been before. "America, right or wrong! And we're always right! Our way is the only way! Reality is no consideration!" People shut themselves up in their holes and allowed the Bush administration to lead them on blind faith. "Faith-based", that's what they call it. They admit that they are out of touch with reality. They admit their blindness and malignorance.
Many people are saying that we shouldn't paint rightists as ignorant or backward, because this will lead to further losses in the future. But it's very hard not to conclude that the people who allowed themselves to be lied to, manipulated and twisted into fear are lacking in something. The patient, objective, tolerant part of me wants to say that George Bush was really preaching from a moral standpoint, albeit a twisted one. But I really can't say that. Bush's "morals" mean giving tacit acceptance of hatred (of GLBT people, Arab people, poor people, black people -- anyone who isn't part of the administration, really), and he and his administration really did lie. All the time. People bought it, just like people buying useless, wasteful, untruthful products on late-night TV. When people buy that crap, should I numbly accept their stupidity because there are so many of them? If it doesn't affect my life, sure. But in the case of the Bush presidency, it all affects my life in scary ways.
Being a GLBT person, I am in a particularly strong state of fear. Eleven states just voted that people like me shouldn't be able to get married. It's really hard to say "Well, let them have their way" or "They're not stupid, just misinformed". I know that I need to work to educate people, and I do. But it's very hard to see the light at the end of this tunnel. Some people call for fighting back; others resolve to leave the US to the rightists. Let it slide into Gilead. What's the right thing to do? Especially for a GLBT person like me, demonized by the rightists, the malignorant and the powerful.
Working to get people to understand and accept GLBT life is difficult. It often feels pointless, or rewardless. We make small gains, but then eleven states -- fully a fifth of the union -- decide to make our relationships second-class in one day. When do you keep fighting, and when do you pack your bags? When does the underdog become the boiled frog? When is it noble, and when is it stupid? Especially for me, largely interested in helping East Asian transgender people, it may be time to abandon the great American experiment. Anyone know what the chances are of finding work as a Chinese-English interpreter in Vancouver?
Another thing I keep thinking of, though, is the movie The Last Supper. It's one of my favorites -- funny, well-acted (Courtney B. Vance! Yeah!) and dead-on. It raises the question: should liberals and right-minded people adopt the methods of the rightists? Should we fight this war -- and that is how they want to see it -- on their dirty terms, or on ours? Should we stoop to their level? The film seems to say that we have to, because in the end, the stakes are simply too high, and they will stop at nothing. Is this really true? Do we need to fight dirty and win at all costs, like they're trying to do, or do we try to behave in a civilized manner? I'm not talking about resorting to violence, like in the movie (though the rightists do this, too); I mean using sound bites, talking points, spin, lies and the malignorance of people to meet our ends. What's the right way to fight the "right"? Nobly? Dirtily? On different turf? Or not at all?
Huff. Huff. Calm down. Breathe. I should also note what else is going on in my life, besides fear and strategizing. I'm still getting more interpreting hours, but it's still not enough to live on. My aunt and uncle have really started to lose patience with me, and have given me a deadline: March 1. Will I be able to get enough hours before then to live on my own? Will I find the resolve and self-esteem to get those hours? Will I end up teaching, interpreting, doing web design, flipping burgers or what? Stay tuned for further updates.
September 2, 2004, 1:30 am
Has there been news lately? You bet there has. I've started picking up more interpreting/translating hours, which is a very good thing. If I could actually get about 20 hours a week, I could afford to live on my own. Maybe even just 15 or so. Right now I have somewhere around 5-10, so with a bit more work, I can probably get what I need.
I actually enjoy the work quite a bit. Most of it is medical interpreting, which means helping Chinese people communicate with doctors and nurses. Helping them get medical treatment that they need, in other words. Doing something that useful, that meaningful, feels very good.
But it's also very stressful. I frequently don't know or forget words I should know, and the pay isn't very good, and the hours are very unsteady. So I'm still looking for a real job.
I have recently had two real possibilities in the way of jobs. One was teaching ESL at a community college. I found out today, though, that due to a communication glitch on their part, someone who was supposed to have contacted me never got my contact info and was therefore unable to contact me. I don't know if I would've gotten the job anyway, but the possibility seemed very real. Instead, I got screwed over. It was an innocent mistake on their part, but I really want a job, and not getting this one has been a big blow.
There's another job waiting, though. It's with a very cool non-profit organization here in the Twin Cities. I'd be doing mostly desktop publishing with them, which is something I think I'm pretty good at. I think I came across as too nervous in the interview, though. I was very optimistic about this job and the ESL one, but my optimism has already proven to be false in the case of the ESL job, so will it be false in this case, too?
But then, maybe I'm being negative. I can be very negative sometimes. Pessimistic, in other words. It's hard to know where realism stops and where pessimism starts, though. It's hard to suspend disbelief, and it's hard not to play out possible scenarios in my head -- and few of the possibilities are even positive. Not that I think everything will turn out bad, but there are only so many ways things can go right.
But I do need to be more positive. I really do think I can get this DTP job. I have the talents, and I would love the job, and I would work really hard at it. I hope I find out soon, though -- the stress is killing me.
June 11, 2004, 3:00 am
So, here I am, still unemployed. It's getting pretty worrisome. Like I whined about earlier, I'm really not sure what I should do. I've found a few hours here and there of teaching and Chinese interpreting, but not enough to move out of my aunt and uncle's place. I've given out dozens of business cards advertising my language and web design services around town, but nothing so far. (I only started doing that this week -- I'll need to be patient on the matter.) I've applied for lots of different things, of course, though I worry that I'm not working hard enough to find jobs.
I also keep having crises of principle. Should I do something I find morally wrong, such as marketing or whatever, to get set up on my own? I could do volunteering on the side. But I really don't want to have to lie to people in my work. Previous job experiences taught me that the desire to profit very often overrides the desire to do good; a lot of companies try to do good things, but when it comes down to a choice between principle and profit, profit will win. Not every company is like this, of course, but how can I know in advance? Few companies give a very good sense of their true nature from the outside. And I don't want to waste more of my life working for someone who isn't really out to do good things.
But I also need a job.
I guess I feel like I'm waiting to see what happens with a couple jobs I currently have applications in for. They're both in New York, and both with very cool non-profits. If I get one of those jobs, it will mean moving to New York and starting a new, monetarily impoverished but spiritually fulfilled life; if not, it may very well be time to get a management job or whatever else I can find. I would love to move to New York and do something good with my life, but the opportunity isn't automatic.
In happier news, a friend of mine from graduate school came to visit me a couple weekends ago. We saw the sights of Minneapolis -- the sculpture garden at the Walker, the Smell of Malaria Mall of America, the lakes -- lots of fun stuff. We also watched Laputa, City in the Sky, which she liked a lot. She's become a connosieur of Miyazaki films since she started watching them with a young friend, and because she and I both like to think and talk deeply about things, I was able to have one of the best Miyazaki-related conversations of my life with her.
We also went to a Chabad (aka Lubavitch) temple. It was quite interesting -- I had heard a lot of stereotypes about Chabad life, but never experienced it first-hand. I didn't get much of a sense of how they lived, and I still don't know much about their general policies, but what I saw was very nice. Cute kids playing during the service, interesting and insightful debate about religious issues afterwards, friendly and respectful people. I think they are too conservative on some issues (GLBT rights being the biggest one) for my tastes, but they were a nice group of people overall.
This friend of mine is very wise, and in many ways I look to her as a spiritual friend -- the kind who can help you figure out not just what works, but what is Good. We talked about my job situation (and hers), and that was very helpful -- I don't think I've been able to really get everything off my chest with someone lately. Seeing her was, overall, a very refreshing, reassuring, nice experience.
April 14, 2004, 1:15 am
Last weekend, I went to Minicon. It was a lot of fun. I met a lot of cool people, finally figured out who many other people were (I had known them from e-mail lists before but finally had faces to put to names), played some great games, had some great conversations and generally basked in the beauty that is Fandom. It was really pretty much everything I wanted it to be -- a place where I could meet people whose brains were on the same wavelength as me, people who would get my Schroedinger's cat jokes, people who could accept gaming, transgender interests and geekitude with no problem at all.
Apparently, it was significantly smaller than last year's con was, and of course it was smaller than the Big Minicons of the past, but for me, someone who's been starved for fannish company lo these many years, it was heavenly.
It was a bit more culture shock, of course. Famous people, cool people, incredibly strange people, geeks of all varieties and sorts, all of which made me a bit disoriented. But it was definitely in a pleasant way -- disorientation because I was afloat in a sea of cool people is a good feeling.
Now I need to come back down into the real world...
March 24, 2004, 10:00 am
So, here I am, back in the US. I have reverse culture shock in so many ways it isn't even funny. For example, I still can't get over the sheer number of white people here. It feels like I'm on a movie set or something. It's not helped by the fact that Minneapolis is overwhelmingly white.
Also, the weather is amazing. The air is crisp and clean, and the temperature is actually cold enough to be cold. I've started taking walks around Lake Harriet, mainly as exercise, but also just because of the beauty of it.
Another part of my culture shock is that I'm living with my aunt and uncle. They're pretty well-off (a house two blocks from Lake Harriet, two+ very nice cars, etc.), so it's in some ways a much more luxurious existence than I've had recently. I constantly feel like I'm imposing on them, though. I need to find a part-time job, but there's a bus strike, so any job I found would either need to be close enough that I could walk, well-paying enough that I could afford a car or infrequent enough that my relatives could take me. Of course, I also need to find a Job, preferably one that... well, see below. It's all pretty frustrating.
But, on the other hand, it really is nice to be back. The weather is great, it's nice to see people voluntarily obey the traffic laws, it's good to be in a place with so many SF/gamer geeks. All the reasons I wanted to come back. Now, if I could just find a job...
February 17, 2004, 1:30 am
I had a late dinner with a friend of mine tonight. She's a former student and now co-worker (she got a job teaching kids in the branch where I work). I realized that, given time, she and I really could, maybe, have become good friends. When I say good friends, I mean friends who can call each other when they feel like crying. Friends who can be really honest to each other; friends who don't have to play mental games with each other. She's quite bit younger than I am, but she's pretty mature for her age, and I'm certainly quite immature in a lot of ways, so we might have become better friends. If I'd realized that I could trust her with my deep feelings. If she'd been a bit more forward, too. She and I talked about some pretty deep things, and I realized she knew a lot more about me than I had thought.
The same thing -- realizing there was a real potential there for friendship -- has happened with two other people. One is another co-worker, and one is a former co-worker. The former is a really sweet, quite intelligent, very open and accepting person; the second has had a somewhat tawdry past, and is striving to be a good person (usually succeeding) and understands my struggles, at least from afar. Both showed that they really, maybe, do care about me. Or could. Or something.
Have I been turning away friends all this time? I know I messed up with Angela pretty badly -- I never managed to get up for our Sunday brunches on time. I didn't give her enough of my time. We're still friends, luckily.
Who is to blame? Hmm, but does it matter? Good question. Blame is unimportant; fixing things is.
Where does my inability come from? I've never really had a good sense of what other people think of me; that's one reason I'm so big on honesty, because I become incredibly paranoid in the absence of it. Without the ability to know what someone else thinks of me, I don't know how much to tell them. That's always been one of my big problems. I'm into such weird things -- East Asian studies, but not what most Americans see as 'Oriental Culture'; into science fiction, but not Star Trek; RPG's, but not D&D; GLBT matters, but primarily the most obscure part of such. There really aren't many people who are into the same things as I am. Certainly not in the same ways. And I really don't want to be friends with people who think that Chinese culture consists of kung pao chicken and Taekwondo. I don't want to discuss SF with people who think the best moments in SF are when T'pol gets semi-naked. Just like with cheap internet sex, I could've been laid dozens of times by now if I'd just... well, let it happen. Not cared. But I do. Yet again, my unwillingness to sacrifice my principles/debase myself/come down off my high horse/whatever causes problems.
It's so hard to talk about my life with people who don't understand my interests... There are always things I'm embarrassed to tell my friends. I don't dare tell my SF friends about the TG stuff, and I don't dare tell my TG friends that I own a FA-MAS BB gun. Is that appropriate? I've tried being very honest with people I thought I could trust to know me and been burned in the past. I've had lots of friends with whom I couldn't be me. I want to avoid those problems, but do I have high standards or just self-destructive tendencies? Do I have too much self-worth or not enough?
Even more ironic and depressing is that Taiwan/life/my inner psyche/whatever is showing me these possibilities just before I leave. Taunting. Tonight, for the first time ever, a cab driver asked me "How long have you studied Chinese?" instead of "How long have you lived in Taiwan?" The second question makes the unspoken assumption that the only way for foreigners to study Chinese is in Taiwan; studying outside Taiwan is either impossible or useless, I'm not sure where the assumption lays. Asking how long I've studied shows forethought and non-insular thinking. Then, he asked the usual question about whether I like Taiwan; I told him no, and that I am leaving, and why, and he agreed with my reasons. It was an amazing rarity: a Taiwanese cab driver who doesn't just blithely assume that Taiwanese people are universally friendly and that there's nothing wrong with Taiwan. And, of course, I met him only a couple weeks before I'm going to leave the island.
Then, there's the fact that I had dinner with four TS women on Saturday, and they all have significant others. I'm the only one who doesn't. And a couple of them seem really cool: one's into graphic design, the other's into computer games and editing. They could've been friends, but too late now. Incredibly depressing."This is what you could've had, you lazy, stuck-up bitch." But it's too late now. I've got my ticket, I'm wrapping up my life here, I've got a team of elephants trying to turn that massive leaf over.
Keep telling self: must be positive in the US. Must try to lose weight. Must actively seek out cool people. Must try to keep living quarters clean enough to invite guests over. Must keep multiple types of drinks in the fridge, even ones I don't like, so guests will have a choice. Must make myself available to friends.
January 4, 2004, 1:00 am
Okay, you're never going to believe this. I have actual big news to report. I'm leaving Taiwan.
If you've read this page or the rest of my website, you've probably noticed that Taiwan drives me crazy. The pollution, the traffic, the disapproving stares, the racism, the constant oppression of young people's minds... There are many reasons for me to get out of here. It would be logical to ask why I didn't decide to leave sooner.
It's a good question. I don't have a good answer. Probably a general fear of what change would hold. What can I do back in the States? I want to find a good job, something moral, but yet something that uses my skills and interests me. That's a tough combination. And as I've said before, if I'm just doing something stupid like flipping burgers or filing files, I might as well stay in Taiwan.
Another of my many problems is, I'm not even sure what my ideal job would be. I've thought of a lot of things:
- Web design. I'm not super-hot or anything, but my web design skills aren't too terrible.
- Translation. Although translating into Mandarin would probably be out of the question (most companies want people to translate only into their native languages), maybe I could translate out of Chinese.
- Cultural consulting. I've got a master's degree about Chinese culture, and I've got experience working in Taiwanese companies, so I should be qualified to do this.
- Teaching Chinese. I've applied for some adjunct positions in the US, and I think I could probably do this, given my language instruction skills and Chinese skills. But I've also been thinking of going back to school for this.
- Teaching something else. Maybe I could teach in my specialty, or ESL or something.
- Writing. I'd like to get a job writing gaming materials, but that's probably just a dream. Maybe writing ESL/EFL curricula -- I've done that in the past, and pretty successfully. Or maybe editing.
- Transgender rights advocacy of some sort. I'd like to get into politics, or health, or other things. But I don't really know where to start here.
There are so many possibilities. I guess I just need to choose one and go with it, right? Although, as my dad reminded me, choosing something now doesn't mean that I'll have to do it forever. So I may go back to the US and find something kind of temporary and then figure out real career choices better later.
I feel a lot of pressure to figure things out. Young people, people five or ten years younger than me, come and leave Taiwan within a couple years. I've been here for seven years! I have a job that's kind of 'real' now, and that uses some of my skills, but not anything I could consider as a career.
So I'm going back to the US. Trying to start again. At 33 years of age. It's scary, but I'm quite sure I'll be happy to be out of Taiwan. There are so many things I won't miss about this country. Although, come to think of it, there are a few things I will miss:
- Tea in Maokong
- Douhua with peanuts and ice
- The hustle and bustle of Ximending
- 24-hour bookstores (though not Chengpin's service)
- Cheap spaghetti and garlic bread at South Park Pasta
- Sesame tangyuan
- Cheap Thai food
- Relaxed schedule
- Meandering down obscure alleyways and finding hidden treasures: a little shrine, a strange store or some particularly bad English
- Being able to walk safely at night
- Cheap Mainland books
- Cheap teppanyaki
- Cheap and plentiful Wang Fei CD's
- Students' realizations: realizations about English, about the world, about themselves
- Enthusiastic students
- Cheap medical care
- Tianlong bookstore
- Cute little kids
- Manga and anime
- Mandarin practice
I wish that any of those things, even in combination, were enough to keep me here. But my lack of friends, and lack of respect, drive me from Taiwan. I hope things get better.
October 5, 2003, 5:00 am
Okay, I'm not even going to comment on how long this entry has been in waiting. But what have I been doing?
Well, of course, there's been the summer. A slower-than-normal summer. SARS, the rising level of Taiwanese people's English, perhaps just shifting needs -- whatever the causes, there weren't very many classes to go around this summer. I had a great summer though, overall, because I had a great class. Some really enthusiastic, sweet, kind, intelligent and considerate young people were in my class. I had two strict Buddhists who were really cool humanitarians; a worldly-wise 15-year old; and a super-sweet woman named Bear who started the summer with terrible grammar but, by the end of the summer, had started self-monitoring. I definitely cannot complain about my summer students.
I've had some terrible other students, though. I had a night class nightmare a while ago... idiots and dolts and passive, apathetic young jerks. And I've had a number of other frustrations -- my administrative work is not very satisfying, because I'm coming up against the management ceiling. I'm seeing how little criticism the powers-that-be are willing to take. And of course, teaching English is not the career I always dreamed of.
Another problem is that I continue to feel like I don't really have any close friends. If I was going to cry, who could I talk to in Taiwan? Nobody, really. There are lots of people I can talk shallowly to, but really, there's no one here I would feel comfortable sharing my deepest feelings with. (Why do I feel comfortable writing them up on the Net then? Well, whos' to say these are my deepest feelings?) And don't even get me started about my dismal chances of ever finding a boyfriend...
For all these reasons, I've been all angsty lately. This has naturally become a vicious cycle: I become sad with my life, don't feel like doing anything, things go bad, I see that they do, and feel even sadder.
That's a very weird thing about being depressed -- I can see these downward spirals but still feel like crap.
All of which is why I need to do things like I did tonight. An ex-coworker suggested going to Maokong, a place in the mountains to the southeast of Taibei. He had a car for the weekend, and suggested driving me and him and a couple other people out there. I went, and it was great. The place itself was okay -- Taiwan is still Taiwan, wherever you go in it. Cracked concrete, garbage strewn randomly across the roads and roadsides, stray dogs you don't know whether to fear or pity.
But it was still great. We went there for tea -- Maokong is basically just a lot of tea houses dotting the hillsides -- and the tea was pretty good. The company was good, too. We also had a really good view of Taibei. The new Taibei 101 building was amazingly tall-looking, and the lights of the city glinted and hovered. Taibei is actually quite beautiful from a distance (but then, isn't any city?). The air was the best part. It was cold, fresh and windy. None of which I really get to experience in Taibei, which is basically a swamp in a basin, so it's always humid, still and hot. Up in Maokong, it felt like Minneapolis in the fall or spring. It was great. There was a stand of bamboo right next to where we were sitting, blowing in the wind -- a light, pleasant green static. It made the breezes sound even more beautiful. Of course, most Taiwanese people at the place felt it was quite cold, but for me, it was just right.
I had to take care to impress on myself the beauty of the night, so I could remember it later. It's easy to forget the little bits of beauty I get to experience in the face of so much nastiness. Taibei is really a pretty nasty place to live, and my life isn't very fun. But there are occasional sparks of beauty in the darkness. I have to remember them or lose it all, I think.
In other things, I've been trying to get into Linux lately, too. I've gotten Mandrake 9.1 running on my old computer, and haven't used Win98 in about a month. I still haven't gotten several things tweaked right -- embedded Quicktime, decent Chinese input, font browsing/listing -- but it's working pretty well as is, even if I don't get those things working right. Why did I decide to start running Linux? Well, like so many people, it was partially fashion. But it's also because I wanted to be able to access Chinese BBSes from home without giving Bill Gates any more money (my Win98 was in English and couldn't do Chinese input). And I was getting sick of rebooting four times a night. Linux is not as rock-solid as many people would have you believe -- I've had to re-boot it about three times since I started running it, about three weeks ago -- but that's still far more stable than Win98 was. (Win2000, which is running on my other computer, has been very stable, but I don't like pirated software, and don't want to give Bill Gates any more money, so Linux was the logical choice for my other computer.) So anyway, a big part of my recent spare time has been spent getting Linux to run right -- "fighting with Linux," as I've come to think of it. I'm writing this on KWrite, as a matter of fact.
February 17, 2003, 2:00 am
You know, I have a problem. I am very socially awkward, I think. I don't really know how to have a good time. I'm too intellectual, maybe. Maybe i'm just trying to have a good time with the wrong people.
I went to a KTV tonight. One of Taiwan's contributions to world culture, KTV's are karaoke in small rooms. You sit in a room with a bunch of friends and sing songs, karaoke-style. The advantage over standard, large-room karaoke is that it's only you and your friends (or whoever you're with -- maybe family or co-workers). you can cry at the sad songs or act like a fool or get quite drunk. You can even neck if you're so inclined. KTV's were/are also popular places to take drugs. There aren't very many places in Taiwan that approximate the privacy of KTV's, you see.
The problem with KTV's is, they're like discos without all the dancing. Rather boring, in other words. Singing is the name of the game here. Singing, singing, singing. If you don't like singing, KTV's are not your place.
I like singing. I love singing along to Cocteaus, Lush, Crystal Waters, even some David Sylvian. Problem is, no KTV in Taiwan has any Cocteaus songs. Closest they get is Wang Fei. Next problem: I don't sing very well. Not public-performance quality.
I'm the same way about dancing. I could possibly dance alone, at home, but I'm some combination of way too self-conscious and way too terrible to do it in public. Singing and dancing are not fun for me, not in a public setting.
I'm really kind of a stick in the mud. I don't like singing. I don't like dancing. I don't like drinking, not much anyway. What's the appeal? Having an excuse to act goofy? Why can't we just act goofy anyway? Why do we have to have a can of alcohol in hand to allow this? Also, why are some kinds of goofiness okay -- telling sexist jokes, pretending to be a rap star, etc. -- but others -- recalling Tom Lehrer or Monty Python, or trying to think through the implications of a society where tapioca pudding was the main form of currency -- aren't? Standard goofiness doesn't really appeal to me, either. I think I'm unable to appreciate it due to my tendency to analyze everything. Someone tells a sexist joke, I say, "Oh, I see, you have some issues with women," rather than laughing. The best I can do is laugh ironically.
So what the hell do I enjoy? Well, as you may have noticed from this site, I don't really enjoy things, I'm interested in things. What I really like to do is converse. Talk. Play with ideas. Explore possibilities. Think through details. Try to understand implications. Share knowledge.
The problem here is, I care about ideas. I believe that ideas express important truths, and that words carry weight. Words affect reality. I'm still not sure whether or not this means that freedom of speech should be curtailed -- in principle, I think it's a very good idea. Nonetheless, I have a very hard time discussing (for example) the death penalty with someone who believes it's generally a good idea. If I'm discussing this, I keep thinking, "So, you like to kill people?" and that's a bad way to start a friendship.
So, the scorecard so far: I'm not good at light conversation, but I also have too much invested in heavy conversation to have very much "fun" with it.
That is why I have such a strong desire to find people who think like I do and agree with me about things. So that I can play in the intellectual playground with them and not worry that they'll destroy my sandcastle. Which makes finding a boyfriend that much harder -- someone I can truly love would have to be all that and more.
Add in other things -- I'm in Taiwan, I'm a slow reader, I'm not good at meeting people -- and you see why I spend so much time on the Internet.
February 11, 2003, 11:50 am
You know, I think there are only about three or four people left who understand how to use it's vs. its.
February 9, 2003, 9:35 am
Why do people always talk about the media being "liberal" or "conservative?" To me it's clear that the media are neither. The media are mainly sensationalist. They will spout conservative idiocy when it sells papers; they will pander to the left when it sells ad time. The media are, for the most part, businesses; they will do whatever keeps them in business. Appealing to the baser human instincts seems like a good way to do this. It has certainly worked so far.
On a related topic... I wonder if it will ever come to pass that the US will have to stop assuming that people are free, autonomous agents. The Bill of Rights, it seems to me, was very much based on this assumption. Freedom of speech and freedom of the press, for example, assume that people will be able to separate signal from noise, and that they will be able to make informed, rational decisions. In the modern world, though, we have advertising and marketing formulated with the help of psychology; Prozac and Cipram; and the Twinkie defense. The courts are increasingly (it seems to me) acknowledging/deciding that people aren't really free agents. If people aren't really able to act autonomously and rationally, then maybe pornography really does make people go out and commit rape. Maybe presidential speeches really do make people support the President, whether the people have all the facts or not. Oh, yeah, that's already happening.
February 8, 2003, 7:35 am
Another long night of web surfing. Chinese New Year is almost up; the weeklong vacation is almost done. I've been trying to celebrate it in the traditional Taiwanese way: sitting around the house, sleeping a lot and being generally bored. (I've avoided the other part of the equation, watching as much Jacky Wu TV shows as the Taiwanese networks can dream up. That would cause me severe brain cramps.)
So tonight I've been reading some people's blogs. Web logs; journals kinda like this one, you know? I've thought I would like to have a blog since my friend Claire started hers. Blogs are so cool. People write about the intimate details of their lives, and communicate with other, like-minded folks about issues they care about.
Or do they? It seems like a lot of blogs are just endless personality tests and complaints about what they ate that day. Interspersed with links to Salon, Boing Boing or Slashdot. The first part (the tests and complaining) is annoying; the second part is interesting, but I'm not sure if it's useful.
I get the feeling -- and it's just a feeling -- that a lot of bloggers were already people who lived in their heads. Now they're becoming even moreso. This is dangerous, because bloggers are the people I care about (they tend to be thoughtful, compassionate sorts). I think that many bloggers are increasingly communicating with each other and not with the world as a whole. In other words, the Republicans are in power because the bloggers stayed home on election day.
I've also noticed a lot of people saying that the US economy is bad and will likely get worse in the two years before the next election. Yes, this is true. But what if it doesn't? I'm very worried that, come election day 2004, a lot of bloggers will not vote (seeing the election as a foregone conclusion), and will complain that "No one could have foreseen Bushie's re-election" the next day.
But this is naturally a strange observation/complaint to make, because:
- It's not based on much in the way of facts, and
- I'm making it in a journal that is very much like a blog.
January 19, 2003, 11:40 pm
Wow, so, obviously, I haven't been using this journal very much. If you'd like to see my latest thoughts on things, it's usually best to check my what's new page, since that's always up-to-date and I usually sprinkle observations about things on pages that I update.
However, I do want to say something here. It's amazing how anime (and to a much lesser extent manga) have taken over the US fandom market. It's getting increasingly rare to find women who are into RPG's, but there are tons and tons of women out there who are into cosplay (Japanese, derived from "costume play," meaning dressing up as your favorite anime/manga characters). It's really kind of scary, actually. I'm probably just being a reactionary old bag, but I've seen lots of cosplayers in Taiwan, and it worries me that this is taking over in the US. Manga and anime are great, in general. There are tons of cool titles, and god knows I love 'em. I have my own page devoted to anime and manga. However, I still think critically about them, and I get the feeling that a lot of cosplayers don't.
I see so many people who are into the same tired titles -- Urusei Yatsura, Nadesico, Tenchi Muyo, Oh My Goddess, etc. And I see a lot of people identifying with specific characters from those series. Defining themselves in terms of those characters. Well, many of these characters are one-dimensional, distinguished from others only by a single thing, like their purple hair or their extreme love of salmon sashimi or whatever. In fact, many of the characters seem like they were designed not by authors but by marketing people. Maybe most important, the characters are inevitably incredibly, inhumanly cute. So, when people identify with those characters, or even define themselves in terms of those characters, they are not increasing their distinctiveness and character qualities, they are in fact decreasing them.
People do this naturally. It's very human to want to belong to a group, and to want to identify with symbols that others also identify with. However, I feel like, on some level, it's wrong for people in fandom to do this. I think fandom should be about breaking moulds, not conforming to them.
Of course, fandom has always had a strong current of sameness within a small group. There have always been people who define themselves very narrowly within a small sub-current of fandom. So what's the problem?
Maybe what bothers me most is the strong under-current of Confucianism in cosplay. Cosplay seems to give me a message of, "Don't try to think, don't try to create your own narratives, don't under any circumstances try to be a unique person, just comply with the old narratives." I see a lot of people in Taiwan who read manga (relatively few people here watch anime, I think), and who read them uncritically. Without thinking. I've often had people say, for example, "Oh, you like Nausicaa? I love that manga!" But then, when I try to engage them in conversation about the story, they're blank slates. They have no idea. They never let the message sink in, much less think about it. I'm worried that cosplay and other manifestations of anime/manga in the West may increase this kind of pod-people thinking. I'm especially worried because I think I've already seen it happening.
As always, I'm probably being paranoid. This sort of thing has probably always been going on. There are certainly plenty Star Wars or Star Trek geeks out there who totally love the starship battles but never think about the actual messages of the series.
But then, there might in fact be something different going on. Anime is becoming much more available in the US. Maybe more importantly, women (and girls) are being mind-washed. It is just possible that marketers have found a handle by which to manipulate all us geeks, a way to subvert the strong individualist/subversive currents in the nerd/geek population. SF fandom may go the way of punk rock -- totally subsumed within the amoeba of pop, without its original anti-authoritarian/anti-mass market messages.
So, am I just being paranoid?
September 17, 2001, 6:30 pm
Okay, another ridiculously long time between journal entries. I feel like all I usually do on this page is complain and moan, so more of the same just feels weird at best, horribly redundant at worst. However, the past few weeks have just been too weird now to let go without an entry.
First of all, I have applied for a job back in the US. I have yet to hear from them about their decision, but either way, my life will be very different in the next few weeks. That is, the next few weeks will be a personal turning point, or fork in the road at least. One way goes to Berkeley; the other way, I don't know.
Then, there has been strangeness at my present work. I can't note much of it here, but there have definitely been some strange vibes going on there.
Then, my best friend in Taiwan left, two weeks ago as of yesterday. Her leaving makes me feel very alone here in Taiwan, and amplifies whatever other feelings I have about tenfold. I cried on the way back from the airport. Life in Taiwan without her will be very, very difficult. I currently don't have any friends in Taiwan who I can do any of the things I did with her - going to obscure little places for dinner, or taking midnight rides out into the mountains, laughing about the sillinesses of Taiwanese life, discussing the interface between Chinese and English, or (most importantly) crying. Her leaving makes me want to leave this place much, much more strongly.
The period in between her leaving and now has been full of poor sleep and strange events. The World Trace Center (and Pentagon) attack happened on the same night that my class discussed past continuous -- "What were you doing when...?" -- and also on the same night that one of my students came to me to talk (and cry) about breaking up with her boyfriend. The world has been a very, very strange place since that happened. The number of calls I've heard for violence in the wake of the WTC attack has made me feel very scared for the future of the US. I now feel almost like I wouldn't dare go back to the US unless I could go to some place like Berkeley. I am very strongly worried that the US will shift into full cold-war paranoia-mode following this attack, with all the losses of civil rights that that entails. My desire for a better place (I think that's a fairly accurate wayto describe it) has led to me looking at a lot of gaming and SF convention websites lately. It would be nice to be someplace where the people are all cool and understand me and all my own strangenesses.
Yesterday, I went to a conference on sex and gender. It was very interesting overall, and I got a free dinner out of it, and a chance to meet some quite itneresting people. But it was a little surreal, going to another city (one that I've never been to before) and a campus equally alien, and meeting all those unusual people. It kind of satisfied my recent desire for going to an SF convention, though.
Then, today has been an equally strange day. Typhoon Nali (sp? I've only seen it in Chinese) has been the worst in recent memory, killing 23 people so far and causing flooding in vast areas of Taibei. Needless to say, I didn't go to work today. The death toll will continue to mount, probably, and I still don't even know if we'll have school tomorrow.
The world just keeps getting more and surreal. It really does feel like it's actually mounting up, really.
February 11, 2001, 11:00 pm
Okay, here's another thing that amazes me. How can there be people who actually aren't interested in anything? I seem to be meeting a lot of people lately who, when I ask them what they're interested in, can't really give me any kind of answer. Biology? No. Linguistics? No. Investment? Nope. Barbie dolls? Not that neither.
What the heck do these people think about? When they aren't working or whatever, what the heck do they actually do? How can people watch TV purely for entertainment, all the time? I can understand wanting to veg out once in a while, but doing that constantly is astounding to me. How can people really be thinking about nothing when they're spacing out? They must surely be thinking about small, unimportant things to small to mention, right? It isn't really possible to think of nothing, is it? Unless you're a master of Zen, that is.
January 21, 2001, 2:00 am
Well, they did it. George Bush is now president of the US, again. The talking heads are talking about the meaning of his inauguration speech. What did it mean, anyway?
My first instinct is, nothing. Come on, it's just a speech, and at a rather unimportant point in his administration at that (it's just the beginning -- yes, it can set the tone for the rest of the administration, but surely a speech given on the brink of war, or just before a huge policy push, is more revealing).
But then, it did have some revealing points. He made several points which could have been a Democrat's; caring about our children, not blaming people for their poverty, etc. He was obviously trying to sound like this mythical creature called the "compassionate conservative." This can mean two things, as I see it.
One, he really is going to be compassionate. This is distinctly more possible than I would have thought. He does not have much leeway to go about abusing the Democrats or their ideals, and he may actually be trying for conciliation or actually be going through with the compassion he promised in order to do what little he can while working with the opposition.
However, that possibility does not seem likely to me at all. After all, he's tried to appoint very un-compassionate people to be his cabinet chiefs, Ashcroft being the best example. If he's really trying to be compassionate, and if he really wants to work with the opposition, why is he trying to promote such right-wing people to major posts? Of course, he has to make some sort of offering to the right wing, or they'll call him a traitor to their cause. But this, in itself, is very revealing.
This leads me to the second possibility for the inauguration speech. It was not, as it seemed, a plan to unveil a new era of compassion across the US. It was, instead, an attempt to derail and corrupt the opposition. How would he do this? Simply -- he makes a speech (which, you remember, is watched with a great deal of scrutiny and given a great deal of importance) which makes people think that he's going to be compassionate and conciliatory, and they therefore are blinded against his actual motives and actions. Further, the opposition is then divided into two camps: those who believe him, and those who don't. Those who don't are branded as paranoid by the people who believe him, and he's instantly cut his opposition down by half. People then begin putting their heads in the sand, pointing back to his inauguration speech every time he tries to outlaw abortion, or take away women's rights, or reduce funding for education, or whatever else. "But he's going to be compassionate -- he said it right there in his inauguration speech!"
Really, a brilliantly cynical stroke. Time will tell which one of the two possibilities his speech really was.
Oh, by the way, happy Year of the Snake.
January 10, 2001, 4:00 am
Ah, now that's more like it. A regular, old-fashioned four-in-the-morning entry.
But even so, I don't feel very creative. I'm working on a Bryce movie right now, but that's not really me -- it's just my computer rendering away. So I'm fiddling (while my CPU burns?).
Again, I'm up to the tips of my brain cells in 3D stuff. I'm getting very excited about getting Inspire, which looks like it will be my next 3D package. I'm also getting frustrated with the limitations of Bryce. Or maybe that's just an excuse for not being creative? But I have been fairly creative lately. I've actually been doing some pencil sketches again, but mostly as studies for when I can do extruding, bevelling, spline patches and all those other nifty Inspire things.
I feel generally okay. Taibei is in the middle of its so-called 'winter', which means that I'm still wearing T-shirts when my students are wearing five layers plus parkas. But I hyperbolize... Taibei is kind of nice in the winter. The cold wind makes the pollution less noticeable, and it makes the annoying people stay home. Cold wind lets you know you're alive (can you tell I'd like a convertible?). Of course, so do the occasional earthquakes, which we just had.
I guess like I should make some note about the new millenium. Of course, 2001 is the beginning of the new Christian (Gregorian) millenium. But what should I care? Some monk decided that Jesus was born 2000 years ago. Much more important things have happened, right? The final sermon of Sakyamuni, the passing out of the world of Laozi, the invention of burritos. And of course, most of humanity celebrated the beginning of the new millenium last year.
But then, that's largely just rebelliousness on my part. Most of the world, Christian or otherwise, now recognizes this year as 2001. Which is silly, but that's what British and American dominance of the world gets you.
Actually, one thing I do care about is 2001, the movie. Kubrick's, as in. Everybody is doing comparisons about how we're now so much closer to Kubrick's vision and whatnot, but also saying how far we have to go. Which adds yet more irony to Kubrick's original message.
I used to think that 2001: A Space Odyssey was a gosh-wow appraisal of the greatness of humanity's voyage into the future. but, after I became a TA and was forced to watch it carefully, I realized how negative his vision is:
- Although the weapons have changed (bones to nukes), the conversations around the watering-hole are just as dangerous.
- Men still fling their dicks around, they just wear clothing now.
- Machines and computers have made it easier for human contact to slip away, not easier for it to grow.
- We not only slaughter 'dumb' animals, we kill intelligent ones.
- Technology has only served to show the contrasts in the human condition -- damned if we use it, damned if we don't -- rather than help anything fundamental.
If you're going to look at Kubrick's vision, don't just look at the gloss. Look at the core too.
To be honest, I'm glad we don't live in this world yet! Of course, we seem to be moving steadily towards it. Think about that -- how have the past 2001 years (or 2 million years, whichever) helped our situation? Has technology changed anything really basic about the human condition?
And the answer is: I don't know.
Wow, I should really stop writing this early in the morning, shouldn't I?
December 25, 2000, 6:00 pm
This is just a quick note. I've been burying myself in 3D stuff lately -- making Quicktime movies (in Bryce), reading 3D mailing lists and researching what my next 3D program will be. I think my parents, grandma and possibly other relatives are going to help me pay for a new 3D app as a combined Chanukkah/birthday present. I'm hoping to find a used copy of Lightwave 5.6 on the Net, but barring that, I will be upgrading to Inspire 3D + LD_Tools.
Anyway, that's all just an explanation for why I've been so hermit-like lately.
December 3, 2000, 6:15 am
I'm here listening to GenderTalk, and it reminds me that I haven't made an entry since last Tuesday. Last Tuesday was an important day, because it was the Transgender Day of Remembrance, a day to remember all the transgender people who've been killed for their identities. I remembered to wear black, although I didn't black out my website.
What can I say? I have felt so drained, so many times, because of this violence. And not only direct physical violence, but emotional violence. How many transgender people have been killed, raped, thrown out of their homes, beaten up, fired, forced into terrible jobs, insulted or whatever else? It's so, so sad. And so, so draining.
But, as I must remind myself, this kind of shit means one thing: You Gotta Work, as RuPaul would put it. I cannot allow myself to wallow in grief, right? I need to use the sadness and the anger as a motivator, not as an excuse. Or at least that's what my antidepressants tell me.
What have I done, then? How do I work? I guess mainly by trying to inject some information into Taiwanese culture, and trying to inject knowledge about Taiwanese transgender people into the world at large. I seem to have no real activist means of doing anything here, because of the anti-struggle attitude of Taiwan. But if I can get a few of my students, my coworkers and my casual acquaintances to understand a little bit more about transgender people, then maybe, maybe, there will end up being a little less violence in the world.
November 17, 2000, 3:15 am
No shit, a full month without an entry. There's so little that new to actually note, though.
I was just reading the pages of a cool person on the web, writing about her entire life. And thinking about how her site is really about her, not just an advertisement for a boyfriend like this site is. It kind of makes me feel meaningless -- I'm sitting here, thinking about how nice it is to have my new air conditioner, wondering what it would be like to go south to the mountains of Taiwan.
I strongly believe that there is no innate meaning in life, only what people impose on it. I do believe that other people suffer, and that it's an important part of life to eradicate that suffering. But I also wonder when my shoes are going to get here, how lazy I can get away with being at work, just how long the battery in my cell phone lasts, when I'm going to be able to cuddle with a nice considerate man in front of a fireplace in Minnesota winter.
I'm almost finished with Queen of Angels now, and it makes me think of the different parts of a personality. Is there a deep me and a fashion me, a careful me and a clutzy me? How do I put them together every day? Why am I so uncreative now, and why was I so creative a few weeks ago?
I think I need a vacation -- I'm really deeply tired. I'm not hating life, though, which is strange -- this is prime territory for me to be angry, frustrated and depressed.
I think my friend L. is helping me -- she's angry at Taiwan, which shows me that maybe this terrible situation can be changed. But I think it's really just flattening of effect. Is that okay if it's only temporary?
I want to lie on my bed, under the soft blue buglight, being stroked by cold air, gentle music in my ears. In the mountains, with stars above and no mosquitoes.
I think, though, that there's one thing going on here in all of this: a very strong, deep, abiding worry that George W. Bush will win the White House and thus a great deal of power over my life and the lives of women and men like me.
I am seriously worried about this. If the United States becomes a bastion of right-wing "morals," I may just have to move to Sweden or something. If the federal courts are ever able to defeat the kindnesses and justices of Minnesota's and other places' laws, I will be well and truly fucked, as will many other women like me.
I think that's it -- I'm emotionally drained because of uncertainty in my future. Of course, as usual, I have no idea what career I should pursue or where, and no idea if I'll ever have a romantic partner. But now, even the more basic things are under a long, drawn-out assault by the confusion in Florida. I thought seriously (well, as seriously as ever) about just forgetting about it all when it appeared that Bush had won.
I realize that he'll be hard-put to really install truly terrible supreme court justices if he does win. The Congress will not be an easy intrument for him to wield. But it is simply too much power for such a demonic person to have.
And what does that say about Americans? That they'd care more about punishing an ex-President for his poor sexual judgement than for protecting the rights of gays, lesbians, women, black people and all the other groups who are continuously fucked over by the American system?
Obviously, it says that Americans are themselves part of the system which does so. What does this lead one to think?
Fuck, I'm so worried. I'm frazzled. God damn it, if that fucker gets in, what can I do? I can't deal with seeing transsexuals abused and gay people killed. Black people poisoned and women taught to hate themselves. And this sword has been hanging there for a week now. Can't we just cut it down and let it either slay or not?
I want to take a vacation from this fucking place.
August 26, 2000, 6:15 pm
I was just watching Lethal Weapon 4 on HBO. It naturally made me think about the status of non-WASP, non-vanilla male people in Western culture.
Jet Li played a villain, and naturally one of Chinese descent. He was very, very stereotypical -- he wore a traditional Chinese robe, had a queue, did gongfu, etc. etc. And of course he was very evil -- killing people for the slightest offense, no remorse for doing so, gruesome ways of killing people, very cunning, etc. etc. Basically, the way every villain in Western movies is depicted. But, of course, he was Chinese. The message which came from the movie was very much the traditional Western fear of China: the Yellow Peril, the sneaky Chinese, the mysterious East, all that. And Jet Li's character was part of that, another link in the chain of negative imagery.
Now, this isn't exactly 1955, and they couldn't get away with purely negative depictions of Chinese people. So there are a lot of bit parts in the movie which seem to either be making up for the negative Li character, or simply just giving the producers something to point to as a good example when someone points out the racism of the movie. Plausible deniability, that's the way you make a racist message these days. Never make it clearly racist, always leave yourself an out. Always leave some way you can deny the racism which is so explicit otherwise in your message. "No, this movie isn't racist -- why look, we have lots of positive Chinese people in the movie." Of course, they all die, but yes, they were positive.
I think it's really sad. The West, or at least the USA, seems determined to make China the next Big Enemy. It's ridiculous, and it's really unfortunate. Why can't people invest, like, a few hours into understanding each other? Why do we always have to have straw enemies?
And of course, it goes the other way. Taiwanese people are so ignorant of real American, or indeed otherwise Western, culture. So many of my students think platform shoes were invented in Japan, it's sad. And they think the US is a land of violence, sexual depravity and money. It's really, really sad.
And, furthermore, this is a large part of the problem people have with transgenderism. People need to have enemies, it seems, and they therefore need to ignore certain things: other people's needs, other people's cultures, other people's kindness, other people's existence. If someone just doesn't know, that's one thing; but if they purposefully stay ignorant, and specifically ignore facts or truths which would cause their little simple worlds to collapse, that is what I consider evil. To specifically ignore or blind oneself to the needs and truths of others, that is what evil is.
August 8, 2000, 1:15 am
I guess I don't really know why I feel like doing an entry. Now, of all times -- when I'm up to various body parts in classes and teaching. I guess mainly to tell anyone who's listening why I haven't written to them, which is simply because I've been so astoundingly busy.
I keep checking out all these ultra-cute Japanese pages where the hosts always have lots of really beautiful pictures of themselves with professional makeup and everything, and I think I may actually go to one of those studios to get that kind of thing done myself after the summer. How much is it? Like, NT$4000 or something? A bit much, sure, but I spend that much on books or whatever in any given month anyway.
I guess I'm generally feeling lonely -- for a man, that is -- but like I'm making progress. I actually don't feel as depressed as I might, given having seen my friends results upon coming back from Thailand. She looks so beautiful. Of course there are complications and complexities, but I do still feel immensely jealous of her.
God, do I actually feel the resolve to start losing weight in me?
May 30, 2000, 3:30 pm
Okay, finally an entry since coming back to Taiwan. (Sorry about the delay, Robyn.)
My trip to the US was, well, really very nice. I spent about a week in Iowa City and a couple days in LA, but everything else was in Minneapolis. I visited my friends, stayed with my family, bopped around and ate a lot of Taco Bell food (I use the term loosely).
I guess I should do this in chronological order. So...
About a month ago, I went to the US. The plane trip over was very surreal. I kept thinking "Wow, I'm actually going to the United States." I hadn't been there in four years, so going back was a definitely unusual experience. Like living inside a memory, or having a hallucination that's utterly real.
I took a Cathay Pacific flight from Hong Kong. They were out of Economy class seats, so they bumped me up to "Let them eat cake" class (AKA Business Class). It was quite luxurious. There were fold-out video screens in the seat arms, and we could watch whatever we wanted the whole time. I caught the last hour or so of Galaxy Quest, which was quite funny, though not as good as the reviews would seem to indicate. The guy I was sitting next to was obviously much more used to business class than I was, and he showed me how to get the screen folded down in kind but slightly patronizing fashion.
Oh, also, due to logistical problems, I had to wear makeup the whole trip, which made it a little uncomfortable, but very interesting. I'd never been through customs like that. I actually asked the customs people at CKS (Chiang Kai-shek Airport, the main international airport for Taiwan) if they had any kind of official policy for people like me, and they said that there wasn't, but as long as they could see that a person is who the passport shows, that's good enough. It was a pretty good beginning for the trip.
Arriving in LA was fine. I was really worried about the whole immigration thing, but the guy there obviously had experience with folks like me and it went just fine. Actually, my biggest fear was that all the loan companies I owe money to would be waiting for me at the airport and promptly lock me up. Unreasonable, I know.
I was going to LA in order to visit my friend Rose who is living there. She was supposed to pick me up at the airport, but wasn't anyway close to being on time. She only came about two hours after I'd arrived. I was seriously worried that she wouldn't come at all, but finally she did. actually, she came as I was trying to call her, and the phone was eating my money but the ton. I couldn't figure out how much to put in for a call to a different area code in the LA area, and the phone didn't have any information about it. Calling her was really adding stress to stress, and it meant that when she actually arrived, I wasn't in the best mood. It wasn't a propitious beginning.
I'm going to end this here for now. Actually, I'm going to make a separate page for my visit to the US, because it was such a lot of stuff. Soon, soon...
February 22, 2000, 8:45 am
Almost a week ago, I tried to do a new entry to this journal, but I didn't finish it.
I guess I just feel like this journal is always saying the same things: I dislike Taibei (occasionally hate it), I dislike the lack of morality which I see in the world, I dislike a lot of things. I haven't been able to think of anything actually new to say here, so I haven't.
But I guess I can at least enumerate some new things which I don't like. One big one of late has been the gaming community (if I can actually call it such). I was listening to a SF/gaming-related radio show from the Bay Area (through the internet, naturally), and one of the topics they discussed was gay and lesbian stuff in SF. The main host actually said that he thought gay and lesbian stuff has no place in SF. If this is true, then what the fuck is the point of SF? If SF isn't about trying to open our minds to new ways of seeing the world, then what is it about? I guess it's about big-budget special effects and dramatic action sequences.
I increasingly feel like I need to abandon all the 'communities' which I've tried to get myself into over the years. Academe seems a dead end, queer issues folks are usually more busy castigating each other over their differing definitions rather than trying to find unity, SF people are perhaps now less tolerant than they once were? Where can I turn?
Of course, I've always got friends, but my friends are few (and will become fewer in the near future as my lover goes to the US for about a half-year), so then the question is, how do I find more? By going into those communities, right? But if the 'communities' themselves are places wherein I cannot get acceptance, and where I find such repellent views, then where do I turn?
Obviously, this web site is part of that. But where else? As always, I guess I'm crippled by my high standards for others. Is that fair? Or are they really such high standards? All I ask is a bit of compassion.
12/14/99, 1:30 am
I really don't like Taibei. This city sucks. Taiwan is just a pile of uncaring and apathy, really, and Taipei seems to be the capital of it, with a huge dose of hypocrisy and idiocy to top it all off.
I say this because I just got back from a vacation to the south of Taiwan (Kending, to be precise). The vacation was short, only a couple days, and I'm not sure if I feel rested or not after it. I guess it must've been positive overall, but it was also a little harrying, and arriving back in Taibei has been a bit depressing.
The vacation was a gift from my lover (who I'm still going to keep anonymous here -- sorry about that). We went to a very nice hotel in Kending, leaving on Saturday morning and staying until this morning (erm, Monday morning, that is). We did a lot of different stuff -- we went to a hot spring, we went to some famous places near Kending, we had a lot of food, we went to the beach (although far too briefly), we watched the stars. However, we didn't have nearly enough time to do what we wanted to. The stars were very beautiful, though, and when we were having fun, it was a very nice trip.
It's just that we didn't have such a great time all the time. My lover was a bit under the weather and moody pretty often, and because my lover's Taiwanese, communication (not language, but just what we do and don't tell each other) can occasionally be a little difficult. Actually, Saturday night (i think it was) I cried because my lover went off in what I felt was a huff after we had a little bit of a spat, but then when my lover got back, it was revealed that we had just had a misunderstanding. I guess I don't know where we really stand right now. It was okay overall, and I think we're okay, but just a little prickly is all. I'm trying to let things kind of settle.
I guess a lot of vacations are like that, huh?
And then add to all that that Kending was a slight little bit better than Taibei. It was warmer, it had actual trees growing in real soil, there was the ocean (quite beautiful -- I'll be putting up some photos of it soon), there was pure air blowing, and a little bit of forgetting all the shit that waits for me in my Taibei life. Then, coming back here, it all hit me: people driving like idiots, terrible air, low-quality unplanned urban drek as far as the eye can see, no trees, no soil, no nothin' except crap and idiocy. Plus it's cold and drizzling here, and it was beautiful and breezy down there. Again, for the umpteenth time, I say "feh."
11/09/99, 11:00 pm
Again, another unseemly long period of time since I've written here. I've been very busy, as usual. I have my new love (a beautiful, good and excellent person, truly), and I also recently gave in and bought a word processor to write up my Spheres rules and, hopefully, to eventually do some translation work. (If you're looking for someone to translate documents from English to Mandarin, or vice versa, please ask me.)
The wapro I ended up buying was, well, inevitable I suppose: MicroSelfish Word. However, just after I bought it (a couple of weeks ago), judge Jackson has come along and hopefully brought about the beginning of the end for Big Bill's unfair domination of the marketplace. It will be nice when we don't have to buy utter crap without a choice. I know that the other manufacturers aren't much better, but come on, Windows 98 is a far worse virus than anything anyone else has dreamed of. I swear my computer now turns itself on when I'm not at home! Not to mention crashing all the time, unhelpful helps, supposed shortcuts that actually just mean doing what the Redmond Youth Corps think is good for you, etc. I honestly hope they break MS up into little tiny pieces and something else comes along. (I realize Linux is the Next Big Thing, but for now, it's too complicated and relatively useless in terms of applications for a dolt like me to use.)
But that's about it. I'm going back to my writing now. You may eventually see the fruits of my labors on my pages.... I'll let you know when that happens.
10/25/99, 12:00 midnight
Continued earthquakes, continued confusion. The earthquakes haven't hurt me, I'm fine, actually. And in love, I think. (Though not with the earthquakes.)
I'm again not going to go into it too much, though. Suffice to say it's a beautiful thing, but I'm extremely unsure what it all means and where it's going. But, as a friend of mine has advised me, that's perhaps not so important as long as it isn't hurting anyone (and it isn't, at least at present).
Well, rest assured, I'm fairly okay... Oh, and if I haven't written to or contacted you yet, please accept my apologies. I'm going to, honestly, it'll just take my usual long while.
10/09/99, 2:45 am
It's such a strange life... I sometimes feel like I should write my whole life story here, somewhere. I've got a lot to tell: being TS; teaching English; going to a strange college with strange people, including myself; living in Taiwan; studying Chinese; different jobs; the nice people I've met; studying in Beijing; grad-school politics, both in and out of the school itself; the issues I've thought about; getting a pencil lead stuck in my knee on a camping trip. A lot of anecdotes, mostly. Maybe it's not worth it.
Or maybe I should write a fictional story about a transgendered woman... I just finished Stuck Rubber Baby, a graphic novel by Howard Cruse, about being a gay man growing up in the South in the 1960's. I always feel shitty for others when I feel shitty, and shitty for others when I feel good. Do I have a right to feel good? Transgender, gay, black, East Timorese, living in a low-quality concrete building in central Taiwan -- people get killed all the fucking time. I don't. What should I feel?
Is this massively selfish of me? Again, the phrase "mega-egoism" comes to mind. Philip K. Dick wrote an essay about paranoia, in which he said that paranoia and messianism were closely related, because in both, the afflicted thinks they're the center of the universe. Is that me? Do I feel angry because when someone kills a TG person, they are putting me in danger? Isn't that massively selfish? And I don't feel as angry when someone kills a Philipino woman trying to make money for her family by working in Taiwan, or an African mother who dies of AIDS. And don't tell me it's just human nature to feel that way -- that isn't good enough. Again, an irresolveable problem.
This is especially heightened because I'm, well, I don't know what. I think I can call it being "in a relationship." But it's so complicated, and this is so strange... And, to respect the other person's privacy, I'm not going to write about it on the Net. Sorry -- if you're one of the many people who cruises past here daily without leaving a trace, I'm sure you won't care about that. If you're one of the people I should write to, I'll be telling you about it privately soon.
How can reality itself be surreal? I mean, shouldn't reality be immune from that? But then, we never do get to see reality itself -- it's always our own perceptions of it. Living without contradictions is even harder than living without oxygen, or food.
Oh, and also -- ever notice how my spewage here sounds like teenage angst? Sad, isn't it?
9/30/99, 1:00 am
Okay, another fairly quick entry. First off, though there have been aftershocks here, I'm quite okay. I'm not sure what kind of shape my apartment building is in -- those cracks in the landings of the stairwell aren't going away -- but they haven't gotten any bigger, at least. If you'd like to help, please donate money or medical supplies to the victims, not me.After the earthquake, partially because of the generally dark mood the whole thing put me in, I decided to try doing without antidepressants for a couple days. It didn't work. I almost immediately had pretty large mood swings -- from extremely angry/frustrated to depressed -- and I've since started again. It's a bit scary, thinking that I may need those things for life or something, but I guess I should remember what my psychiatrist said: "It's not like you're depending solely on the drugs or anything, they're just one kind of support you have, in addition to yourself, your friends, your family, etc." Or something like that.
The electricity has been going off at semi-scheduled intervals here. I think Taipower is nervous about putting their nuclear power plants back on-line so soon after the earthquake, and since those plants provide so much of Taiwan's power, the overall total available has dipped significantly. Of course, Taipower is using this as an excuse to plead immediate permission to go ahead with a fourth nuclear plant, even though (among other things) the site they've chosen has been shown to be earthquake-prone! Aargh.
I've had an interesting idea, though, of late. It's about what the heck exactly I want to do with my life. I've been trying to think of a job that I could actually do that would be marginally fun but also use some of my weirdly disparate skills and interests. Well, while I was doing some electrolysis on Monday, an idea came to me. I could start a TS advocacy service in Taiwan. This would give me a fair amount of meaning in my life -- changing the terrible situation for transgender people in Taiwan is something I dearly want to do. The service, I thought, could be supplemented by a shop, for which I could hire transgender people, thus giving them a job other than hostessing which, trust me, is a job no-one should have to put up with. Now what kind of store could openly employ transgender people and even be proud of it (and hopefully give the people working there some pride in themselves as well as legitimate income)? Well, I'm not sure, this is all very much pie in the sky as of yet, but I was thinking of cosmetics. I could just see the Taiwanese news media eating the gimmick up, and then hordes of curious people going by. If only some of them actually bought anything, the place would be a success. And of course I would want the whole thing to be non-profit. And of course employees would probably want to cycle through as fast as possible -- it's not very healthy to be the subject of others' intense curiosity like that for a long time. I'm going to run the idea past a few friends here and see what they think. I'm sure there's a hundred flaws I haven't thought of, and it probably will never get off the ground. But maybe, just maybe...
9/22/99, 10:45 am
This is gonna be quick. Just to let everyone know -- the earthquake was bad here, very scary, but I'm still alive. There will continue to be aftershocks (there was one a few minutes ago), but apparently, the worst is over. I'm still not sure if there's work or not today, but it doesn't really matter, since I don't have any classes today anyway (yesterday's classes were thoroughly cancelled). I spent the night at a friend's house last night, mostly for the company, but also because there are small cracks in the landings of my building. I don't know if they're anything to worry about, though.I feel a little in shock. I'm scared, but also very sad about all the people who have been killed. Definite proof that there isn't a God, or at least not one who cares.
But people do care. You do, right?
8/26/99, 2:00 am
So the summer is finally over. Well, almost -- I still have a very large number of hours this coming week (25 or so), but that's far less than the previous several weeks' average of about 40-45 hours (and remember, those are just hours actually spent in the classroom -- total hours spent preparing, etc. were probably about a third again as high). I'm fairly rich, or soon will be (my next paycheck should be about US$1500 equivalent -- certainly the biggest paycheck I've ever had).
I'm also quite tired, understandably. I could actually use a vacation, but I'll have to settle for buying stuff. That's actually okay, I guess -- a lot of things I've been needing will have been paid for nearly in full by this summer's tortuous schedule. I'm going to pay for the remainder of my electrolysis, I think, as well as pay back some debts, and also probably buy that bike I've been talking about for so long, and get a printer and some kind of word processor (Word, I fear, as Taiwan is a wasteland populated by Microsofties). And some other things... Just bought a few new ablums, by obscure Cocteaus-like groups, which are all proving quite pleasant. And I pigged out on computer games a while ago -- I've been playing Pax Imperia: Eminent Domain (basically a souped-up Master of Orion) a lot.
I've been seeing one of my students a lot lately. Her name, well, I suppose I shouldn't divulge, but I can say that she fits into the category of Good Friends of mine -- meaning that I've told her about my TS status. She's a very interesting person, full of seeming contradictions (she graduated in History from National Taiwan University but is also a very big Hello Kitty fan, for example), but also very throughtful and very hard-working. She's also beautiful, though that's obviously not too important in friendship. She's also about my age and married with a two-year-old daughter. More and more people my age are becoming parents as i get older. Go figure, einstein. Yeah, I know. But anyway... She has big man problems -- the sexism of Taiwanese men raring its ugly head again, and making women's lives hard, very hard. Western men may be assholes, but at least they understand that if they're assholes, they should expect to be treated as such, and may occasionally even have to take the consequences for their actions. Taiwanese men, though, seemingly are still somewhere in the dark ages, and honestly seem to think that they should be able to be out and about, doing God-knows-what, until extremely late at night, while their wives have to be home at so-and-so time to take care of the housework and just to keep tabs on them. What the fuck?
I've also been thinking more about what exactly I'm going to do in the future, though it's still far from clear. I'd love to become a game designer (either computerial or RPG), though I think the kind of games I like doing would almost certainly never be big sellers. But then that wouldn't use my Chinese abilities. Why do I have to have such a weird grab-bag of skills, and none of them particularly marketable or good?
I need to go write e-mail. I'm about two months behind.
7/18/99, 12:45 pm
I should note this quickly. Soon after I wrote my last entry (below), I called my folks to see if they were responsible for my e-mail address reaching those I'd rather it didn't. Well, surprisingly, my mom answered the phone instead of my dad (he works at home, so he usually answers the phone there when he's home and working). I was a little nervous at first -- she and I have never had a particularly good relationship. But I decided to try talking to her, just to test the waters.
And, wow, the waters are sweet. She seemed very happy with herself, something which has long seemingly been out of her reach. She's come to a lot more self-acceptance, it seems. How much of that has to do with me, I don't know. But anyway, she seemed to be doing quite well.
After we'd talked for a little while, I ventured to ask her how she feels now about my being TS. She was surprisingly positive. At one point, she even corrected herself to use the correct third-person pronoun for me. I'm smiling right now just thinking about it! A small thing, but a very significant one. And she seems to accept the whole thing much more now; she said she's told some friends about it, and has just basically stated it as a fact, not something to be accepted or judged, but just a fact of life. Which is probably the best way to deal with such things, at least for her.
And she and I shared our feelings about a lot of other things. She's been teaching math, and has discovered that she has a natural talent for coming up with new ways to explain things, in response to which I told her about my own experiences teaching English. She's also trying to lose weight, and we talked about that for a bit (I am, too). And we talked about my future prospects for a job, and my brother and sister's similar problems... All in all, it was a really good conversation. Possibly the first one I've ever had with my mom! Cool.
7/18/99, 1:20 am
Another short entry this shall be...
I am truly, truly going to be busy as hell starting on Monday -- I'll be teaching something like 45 hours this coming week, which means I'll actually be at work about 55-60 hours, and this schedule is going to continue for about five weeks. Gak! But, I must keep telling myself, I'll be making lots of money -- maybe enough to pay off electrolysis completely (before I'm even done doing it!). And get a printer, and a DVD player, and a bike, and a swimsuit, and some new clothes, and some more computer programs, and some decent anti-virus software, and and and... Ooops, I'm letting my materialism show.
A weird thing happened today. I got a letter (or rather an e-mail) from my high school class president. There's going to be a 10-year reunion this fall. I honestly don't know how I feel about it. I'm severely conflicted. It would be nice to meet those people again, and see how well they're doing... But then, high school gave me some of the shittiest experiences I've had in this life -- peer ridicule, complete uncertainty how to act in romantic affairs, a wobbly sense of myself, numerous crises, etc. No wonder I spent my senior year and most of my junior year taking college classes -- the crap at my high school was piled to the roof! And then there's the old clichéd problem for me -- what does a TS say or do at their high school reunion? Tell everyone who I was? Go for stealth? What? And then of course there's the simple fact that I've done nothing with my life since then...
Of course, the chances that I'll actually attend are about nil (why would I spend that kind of money just to go back and see a bunch of people I've been trying to forget for ten years?). But even then, what should I tell them in the way of updates? And then, there's the most disturbing thing -- the fact that they found my e-mail address. How'd they do that? And what should my reaction be?
It all just makes me think about how wasted my life has been, and what I want to do in my future. And how much I hated high school. I loved taking Chinese, and taking college classes. But everything else was basically hell -- trying to figure out what to do at a party, trying to figure out what I wanted to wear every day, trying to avoid pandering to the "in" people, trying to figure out who I was. Why would i want to commemorate all that?
Actually, it just reminds me of something -- probably the most famous member of my high school class, if I'm not mistaken, is a man who became famous by torturing and killing a little girl. Some class to remember. Feh.
This makes me seem really negative in general. But actually, things are going pretty well right now. I guess this reunion thing has made me not so much depressed as indignant. Is that good?
Anyway, who was the bastard who told them how to find me?
7/07/99, 1:20 am
This is going to be a relatively short entry because I'm very tired. My earlier concern about not getting enough classes has proven to be a figment of my paranoia; I've got 18 hours a week as of this week, and I'll soon have even more. This means that the summer truly is starting for me, which also means I'm going to get really busy very soon. Updates may be even fewer and farer betweener soon.
Otherwise, not much is new with me. I saw a friend who has a young child tonight. I guiltily liked playing with her child more than talking to her, as always happens when I see the two of them -- my friend is rather, well, circular in her logic and it always feels like, when we talk about her problems, we're talking about the same problems over and over, from every aspect but nonetheless still the same problems. And I'm very worried about her daughter, because my friend and her husband (W and W) seem very likely to be on the road to divorce at this point; neither is really compromising in the right ways to ensure the continuation of the friendship, and they don't even seem to have the necessary common frame of reference. All of which means that my friend's daughter, the child in the relationship, is getting torn and tossed. I know she's developing complexes at a terrible rate. But what can I do? I'm friends with both W and W, and I have no desire to provoke anything. I think it might be best for their daughter if they just got it resolved one way or the other, and soon. So she can just get on with being a kid, and developing more normal complexes.
Hmph.
7/04/99, 4:35 am
The biggest thing I've been doing of late is moving my pages back and forth. If you're reading this, it's probably on GeoShitties. I really don't like them much at all, but they are unfortunately about the best that there is unless I start paying for my web space. I plan to do just that at some point, but that'll probably take researching web hosting in Taiwan, because I don't have (and probably never will have) a credit card, so anything international is pretty much out of the question.
I talked with my friend Claire on IRC last, um, Wednesday I think it was. It was quite fun. I had forgotten how funny she is live. She's also quite funny when she writes letters, but her humor is pretty spontaneous and is better uncorked. I also talked to her friend Melissa. The two of them seem to be doing pretty well living together. I'm not sure that we talked about anything terribly substantive, but we had a good time. And, hey, it's IRC -- you're not supposed to talk about substantive stuff. It was definitely a deja vu (sp) experience -- I haven't really talked on IRC much at all for years, but when I was using it a lot (pre-Beijing, that must've been), I usually talked to Claire and Melissa.
Linda, my former electrologist, seems again to be out of my life. It goes back to a couple weeks ago. She and I had been hanging out about once a week for a few weeks. We agreed to meet on a given Sunday afternoon to go for coffee or something. But the previous night, I forget what I was doing (though I can guess that it must've been net-related), but I was really tired. Well before the appointed time, I tried to call her and let her know I was too tired to do anything, but there was no answer. I continued trying to call her, right up to the time we were supposed to meet. Then I put on some clothes, sans shower and went to meet her. At the appointed meeting-place, I told her I was too tired to do anything. She asked why I hadn't called, and I told her I had. She said I had been calling the wrong place -- she was staying at her parents' place -- and got pretty indignant about it. I tried to explain -- I didn't and don't have her number at her parents' place, and she hadn't told me she was going to be anyway. She was obviously very pissed off -- "disappointed," she said -- but wouldn't talk about it. I let it go. I went home and slept.
I was hoping she'd call me to talk about it, but she didn't. I tried to call her, but again no answer. I continued trying to call her.
I finally got through to her, about a week after the debacle and about two weeks ago as I write this. She was very cold, and not terribly reasonable. I tried to talk to her about it, but she took a very "Chinese attitude," if such can be said to exist -- simply refusing to communicate or even deal with the problem. A strangely masculine aspect of Chinese/Taiwanese society, I think. Anyway, talking to her did no good. So I left off, with her saying she'd call me when she "had time." She hasn't called yet. I guess she just doesn't want to be friends.
It's very sad, but, well, whatever. She was pretty neurotic anyway. Maybe it's better that I'm not friends with her?
Little has been up with me lately. I've been reading the newsgroups, bad though that is (there seems to be such a huge concentration of the Net's stupidity on those pages). I've also been spending ridiculous amounts of time trying to get Crosswinds to upload some image files, but to no avail. And that's why, really, you're reading this here instead of over there. I've been doing very little of late.
Taibei has a new English newspaper -- the Taipei Times. And it's good! A newspaper that's actually done with some quality, not just an on-going college student-grade piece of crap like the other two papers here. The Times actually cares enough to write in Chinese characters for all Chinese names (thus more-or-less eliminating the problem of Taiwan's horribly inept romanization), and their English seems to be impeccable. They even appear to check their ads for decent-quality English. I hope they do well. They deserve to.
Classes have been pretty slim lately. I may have a "lean period" if I don't get more soon. But I'm-a-hopin'...
Oh, I just realized, it's the Fourth of July. Yippee.
6/15/99, 4:45 am
As usual, a long time between entries. And I seriously doubt I'll ever have enough time to get that dream I mentioned earlier down.
Well, the big news of late is that Claire Connelly has reappeared in my life. I keep thinking about the US politicians who argued about who "lost" China in the pre-WWII era. But anyway... I found a mention on the Net of someone I knew had been Claire's therapist for awhile, and contacted the person with various ways to get in touch with me (as I knew she couldn't give me any way to contact Claire, being a therapist). Well, a few days later, I had a letter from Claire in my inbox.
I keep saying this to her, but the most important thing about her reappearance is just that she's okay. For a long time, I had taken her disappearance to mean that she was either extremely angry at me or actually dead, as I knew she was a very depressed person who was in a very depressing situation. But now that she's back 'among the living,' it means that the world seems like a slightly more tolerable place to live now to me.
She's not doing great -- she's moved out of one bad situation into another for the past few years, it seems, although the situation has improved slightly over time. It just hasn't improved enough. She's got a pretty good living situation, but her job situation is a constant problem. She's very qualified in things she doesn't like to do, and unable to find jobs in things she'd like to do. But she seems much calmer and at ease than when she and I were last communicating. It's really pretty great to see how she is now -- not only alive but doing relatively well, all considered. She and I have had some huge disagreements in the past, but I still consider her a very wise, thoughtful and, well, authoritative person (to me, at least), and I value her friendship very highly. I've recently felt a lot better in general, just knowing that she's around.
I haven't, however, been sleeping very well.