UltraCrepidate

No matter how much I refine my proficiency in english, no matter how much I try to understand and integrate myself in the english culture, the language that speaks to my emotional self is still the one that I was born with. The following exchange speak to me truer than anything that can be done in english. It is as if english is only a facade that can be changed anytime whereas the letters in chinese are set ins tone and twist me in ways that I can’t fathom.

媽
七年來, 我一個人在外奔波,的確長把家人放到最後. 也有å??醒é?Žæˆ‘å°?你們的態度也許有點冷淡, 但餓著肚å­?煩悶人生下一步該五往那走時, 也沒有多花心æ€?去想.
今年, 終於有個åƒ?樣的工作. 舞é?“也告一段è?½äº†. 人生步ä¼?跟著也慢下來了, 給了我時間去å??çœ?. 我發覺, 在盲目的è¡?刺下我ç–?忽了很多é‡?è¦?的人跟事. å†?此抱歉.
我會多花心血在這方�的事上.

In all the roads that I’ve travelled and in the people that I find amazing, I’ve found a common core that encompasses all of them which will promote the best outcome in all. That is to let go. After letting go, I’ve been able to explore and experiment freely, encountering events that I can never have encounter before.

It’s a long a painful process that involved long nights of lying in my bed and reflecting on the encounters of the day. To see myself from the other person’s shoe and notice the chemistry as time passes by. I replayed humiliating events in my head over and over again until they are funny and stood face to face with the reason I was embarrassed.

With this, I don’t have to prove myself anymore. When a person asks me a question, I can honestly say I don’t know and couldn’t care less if they think I am stupid. I can remain quiet during an uncomfortable silence and not have the urge to blurt out something. I accept the fact that I can’t be best pals with everyone. I can watch a stock I bought plummet to the ground without breaking a sweat because when I made the choice, the money is considered already lost.

I now understands the final path in the eight fold path, however, I doubt the understanding since I cannot comprehend the first truth in the four noble truths. Why are we here to suffer?

The purpose of words is to convey ideas. When the ideas are grasped, the words are forgotten. Where can I find a man who has forgotten words? He is the one I would like to talk to. -Chuang Tzu

The teacher is afraid that I am bored at the lesson, but I assured him that I am learning a lot from it.
Again, Bruce Lee’s mantra describes what I am experiencing deeply: “I know no moves”. It doesn’t take me much to learn any new movements. My muscle memory is skillful enough to absorb without the arbitration of my mind. Leaving the hard part to be pondered over and over; how to forget the moves and focus on the core being of movements.

The way to teach and the way to move has been polished and re-polished over centuries of experiments. Certain steps are sequenced certain ways because it is found to be the free flowing provoke the least argument between couples. Styling is conceived to aid the weight placement of such movement, nothing is done for nothing. Although the teachers are young, the movement and the dance itself is archaic, it’s just a simple shifting of perception.

Why are certain things done in a certain way? What’s the core of that understanding? What’s a dancer without dance moves? I am left to ponder these questions whenever the teacher shows me something new. Be the teacher a class instructor, the girl that just learnt to dance or the show off that wants to prove she/he is better. They all have something to teach me. Or put it another way, I can finally learn from everything. All I had to do was drop my ego. Once that’s done, I drew away from making my self look good while focusing more on how to make the movement flow with one-ss, ensuring all the while that the lady is receiving maximum pleasure.

“haunted…….

I visited over and over again …… to feel the orchestral coloring speaking such volumes of unutterable moments. a point of breathing, a pair of otherworldly arms to hold me in a dance where I loose myself in the breeze that blows through my hair with the touch of caressing fingers ….

… a place to find you.” ~ Someone from the past

A seductress of words, I was shown a way that I never knew existed and took it for a norm. It is not until I’ve flipped through the mountain of blogs that I understand how unique her style is. It took me a few years, but I finally know enough to be able to enjoy her writings. I only wished that I could’ve known what I know now back then.

On a funnier note, I also found this while rearranging data.

I glimpsed at the clock, it’s 10:30 PM. The restaurant? Le Bistro Gourmet. A great mystery of why most middle-aged businessmen have a beer gut has been solved for me. You don’t have to look far for the answer, just go to a business dinner with your friendly local sales engineer.

True it’s a company paid expensive meal, but what I didn’t expect is the stress and heartburn that resulted from the formality. Dress professionally, but not too flashy. make small talk, but let the sales people do their job when they get into it. Provide whatever support, be it a simple nod or a long string of explanation that ensures whatever success might rest in the future.

Whoever invented mixing food with business deserve a pat on the back and then a lead in the head. I mean, how do I steer away from getting fat if I have to do this every day? I am barely keeping it down without doing this on a daily basis. In another life, I’d jump at a chance for free meals, let along gourmet food that’d make me cringe just by looking at the menu. Currently, I just want to drink tea and eat cookies everyday.

Go home, sleep, wake up and you are at work again. It’s harsh to be in sales because you abuse a lot of the fantasies that you used to think are fantasies; travel the world, stay at expensive hotels, sample gourmet food, watch awesome live stage shows. Mix any of these with business then do it for 365 times a year, you’ll start dreaming of a simple farm life before long.

It has definitely changed my outlook on life. Before, I used to take whatever a person says and dream/think/fantasize/debate about the content. Now, before anything kicks in, there’s a layer of “What will the person achieve by saying this?� to filter out the crap. I started seeing that others do this and there are some who are very experienced at this. Some appreciate your understanding; some will brush you off as a new bird on the block.

 

Fred’s going to laugh at this for sure.

There was a late joiner who missed the first class today and she’s around 40 with bleached white hair that are slightly gelled. I thought I’d give an extra helping hand to get her up to speed with the course.

So the smooth leader that I thought I was decided to point out where she made a mistake and have to do a tripple step and go through the motion a few times and even tried to give a few more pointer while the teacher asked us to switch partners.

Right after the switch, she ran out of the studio. I was baffled. Did I, in my eagerness to help, scared her off and shamed her to nothingness? I even took extra percaution to not sound condenscending. Man, everyone must think that I am an asshole or something. Well, maybe I do sound like one, the world I came from is fucked up and weird. I mean, you get teachers telling students to get a boob job and nose job while telling you directly a particular movement looks strange/robotic/weird/sad/fat etc. Oh yeah and they tell you you are fat sometimes.

So maybe my tolerance is higher than normal people in the field of insults and I need to readjust that. In my 8 years of dancing, the worst I’ve got is being refused a dance. This will now take its place on the pedestal as No.1 from now on.

With a slower pace of learning and difficult followers to lead, I had ample time to listen to the music and dance from the feeling of the music. There’s a continuation and roundness to the swing dance that I didn’t know before. My competition routines had all been about showing off the technique and body line. The swing that I knew was the equivalent of a 1Km sprint. The swing that I am learning now is focused on the fun between two people.

It was very cute when a candian born 75% chinese 25% japanese girl bowed to me before we danced. Another amazing cultural (Or is it genetic) programming that we cannot escape. Like the Taiwanese’s avoidance of eye contacts which is considered to be not confidence or hiding something. I wondered if I have managed to do away with this yet, need someone to video tape me for that. Well, at least we all were light hearted young dancers and were able to laugh at such things together. This is what dancing should be about.

My room is a mess. Financial papers piling up on my desk. Bills unpaid.

This is what happens when you book yourself full for a few weeks.

According to this excel spreadsheet I used: Investment Plan.xls

I will become a millionaire in 23 years if I put $20000 in investment and grow my wealth by 7% every year. (Although my current investment performance is better than that, I’ll use 7% as a safe estimate). This is provided that I am able to get a group of people in an investment club to start a corporation together. In order to avoid having personal income tax applied to the hard earned money a corporation with practically no income applied to tax is needed. The best strategy is to go in long term investment that has high dividend rates and hold on to it so you can declare 0 income for some years. There’s so much reading to do, so many laws and tax laws, not to mention testing people’s interest. There’s so much ideas rushing through my mind on other opportunities now that I’ve found my place in life. Not the purpose of life, mind you, but what I can do. I want to take advantage of my lack of shame and desire for a challenge to explore different worlds of our society. I want to show people what it’s like to experience something else. Nothing like hearing people saying they want to do it again right after the event to make an organizer happy. They didn’t say, it’s good or they enjoyed it for politeness, they want to do it again! That is the best reward in my opinion.
With all the spendings calculated and deducted, it’d still leave me $6990 per year of spending money on any kind of crazy shit I want to do. If I combine that with what I pay for housing, I might be able to pay for a house’s Mortgage… it’s cutting it close though because I’d have no furniture for 23 years.

So hard to choose. Two distinc lifestyle of having too much spending money and having none.

Funny how my swing teacher is able to teach me more details about connection than any of my dancesport teachers. Connection at hip level, leading into different positions. Some of my questions I’ve raised in the past was answered during my swing lesson. Or, rather, clicked into place. Such as why my lead is different from that of my teacher’s. I have faint memories of these being mentioned in the past, but it wasn’t emphasised enough as the root cause of some of the connection issues. Dancesport teachers and students are too focused on building the connection between a particular couple along with styling that they don’t have as much experience in fixing the connection.

There are also a few fundamental problems that I have to rewire, which was taught during my stay with Arthur Murray. I still can’t believe how much influence my first teacher had on the way I dance and lead. I have to spend extra time to unlearn what I learnt and relearn it. Quite a difficult challenge. It’s almost the same thing as forgetting my mother tongue and replacing it with English.

Again, I noticed one universal principle that applies to woman and dancing. “DO NOT CHASE HER” and “MOVE YOURSELF AND SHE’LL FOLLOW” or rather “GO SOMEWHERE INSTEAD OF SHIFTING WEIGHT AT THE CURRENT POSITION EVEN IF IT’S ONLY 1CM”

I DID ALL THE NEGOTIATION IN FRENCH!!!
I have a knack for organising big events and make them successful… well for a student budget anyway. I think this comes from the fact that I always had to plan for 2 people’s schedule in my last 6 years of life. It’s easy for me to visualize and see everyone’s schedule and click them in to optimize the best time, best price for the best turnout.

I organized a paintball event this time and alot of surprises and stress along the way. It’s a totally different ball game because I am catering to a specific people with specific interest while trying to introduce outsiders into the clique. I can finally relax now to enjoy it since there’s nothing more I can do and all loss has been accounted for. I’ll just have to take it as the price for my hindsight. I’ll write more when I get back, but so far here are some stats.

Ratio of people who showed up to those who expressed interest throughout the sign up processe.

50%

Ratio of people who showed up to people who initially expressed interest in coming.

57%

Ratio of people who showed up to people who promised, confirmed and swore to show up (Last minute change of mind, the most devastating ones)
70%

___________________________________

I watched silently as my comrades gets gunned down at the tree near me. He was out-gunned and out-teched and I had 10 bullets left. My only edge is my hidden location and the knowledge that thare are two of them trying to approach from that general direction. I wondered for a moment if I’d try to help him more if these are real bullets, but discarded that notion. Right now, I have some crazy commando person with his own gear and one of my noob friend creeping up against my team.

The mask is a blurr from the rapidly cooling surrounding. The rain muffled the sounds of their approach and I cannot see any detail but basic movement. In the previous games, I was doing what they were doing. Pushing forward while trying to figure out where the enemies are hiding and died in vain, this time, the role is reversed. Quickly, I registered the positions of two bodies, took aim and shot blindly. Thank god for playing video games with huge amounts of lag. Five shot each and a few seconds later I heard the satisfying cries of “I am hit I am hit!”

Back from the game. I didn’t realize how tired I am until I tried to step out of my car. The adrenaline had some time to subside and I became aware of all my bodily needs. Food, water, warmth but especially the cries of my muscles. Paintball isn’t as painful as what everyone tried to make you believe. It’s the equivalence of having your foot accidently stepped on, gone before you realize it even happened. If you can take that, then there’s no problem.

The ratio of women to men is the same as in engineering. 1 to 6 I believe. Thogh these ones are very fit and have mostly naturally looking beauty. Or it could be just the fact that they are in commando outfit and can kick men’s ass as well as the next commando standing there.

All in all, it was fun and being out teched isn’t fun. I learnt alot from organizing this. A few things that’d make this better is to doublecheck everything that we expect them and that they promised before paying. To meet up first and then go together since the troupe cannot start without everyone being there first. The average ammo spent was 100 per hour. So for a 4 hour session, I’d say 400 if you look before you shoot. People tend to want to conserve ammo if they didn’t buy in advance before the game starts.

“You’ll never get a Canadian girlfriend like this” She said

It was a shock first as I don’t understand why that is so. Then I realized: “Do I want a Canadian girlfriend then if that’s what they expect of me?”

Sadly, no. Looking back, I agree. I mingle better with people who doesn’t have this particular character, nor do they expect this particular type of behavior from me. The ones that intrigued me cared more about other things.

Have you ever stared at a piece of bread at night, wandered if tomorrow’s dinner will be better and realized just as soon that the answer is no? Surprising that that life was only a year ago. The night was raining when I decided to quit everything and took a chance to risk it for something better. I remember what I felt like that night… Scared. Relief. Sure of the road ahead. Now, I am confident, well fed, stressed and lost my way. I have grown muscles too, and finally realized that part of the reason why I was skinny was because I didn’t eat enough.
I am glad we exchanged our ideas. Otherwise, I’d never have realized this part about myself.

I think one of the flaws and qualities of asian culture is the belief to keep quiet when you do some goods to the world. Never boast about your accomplishments, brag about the help you gave and stay humble.

What a bunch of bullcrap that’ll do in the north american society. I say keep on doing the good you do, but broadcast it to everything in sight that you did good. This place is about advertising. If people don’t hear or see it, it never happens, don’t worry, no one will bother to look deep into the details for it.

Combine that with the rules :”Good deeds sounbs better, when the bragger isn’t you.” and you got a jackpot. The trick is to find the right person to spread it for you.

The world is drenched in pissard rain. Each cloud competing against each other on a pissing contest; the world is god\’s diaper.

Inside, I hid in the cover of my hand to relax my facial muscles while straining to hear desperately from the intermittent voice of other engineers across the continent. This conference call is taking too much of my time. Like ones you\’d see on TV: interminable, fast paced exchanges, except no one is wearing a suit and tie.

I am involved because someone can\’t bother to take the time to read the manual and try it out. They\’d mentioned that they are not afraid of wasting money, which is probablly the reason why I am there to begin with. Super enthusiastic assurances mixed with technical jargons, a little bit of left out information here and there, a couple of maybes and lots of \”no problems\”. Truth is, the deciding factor is just time and money all this is just pep talk to ease everyone into accepting a simple fact. Someone want something, are you willing?

I\’ve become aware of boardroom type scenes in tv/movies now. Everwondering if I can sit that straight, stay for that long without moving, stay so neutral while listening to someone talking without my own participation being anything important. Will I ever reach that type of boardroom and play that type of small insignificant role?

I’ve come a long way from knowing nothing about sushi to having it taste better than what I expected of myself. People I know worked in the sushi restaurant contributed to further my knowledge on how to make them, books and alot of trial and error. The problem I am experiencing with making something, be it programms, computers, food, is always the fact that I can see the flaw as its creator and always wanted to perfect it. The sushi that I made this time, is finally satisfactory enough that I am confident to serve it to other people next time. Who knows, I’ll probablly host a sushi party.
With $45 spent on ingredients, I overestimated the amount this time and ended up with 3 days straight of sushi meals. I think it’ll satisfy my year’s craving. Here is everything I know about making sushi.

I want to be less in control of myself.

My first match with the stock market led me into a frenzied research into balancing tax/gain/dividend/comission. 30 hours of research, a change of stock broker and 6 months later, I’ve earned my first $90 (3%) off Coca Cola with my very first investment. Coke was chosen because of its stability, so I don’t have to understand the company’s income statement, operations or the product they sell. All I have to do is look at the waveform and perdict the next wave.

My next investment is that of Nintendo and it was made out of an impulse. A gamer’s hunch. Since I’ve been in contact with games all my life, I have a 6th sense on what’s going to hit and what’s not. However, Nintendo is the only company that hasn’t diversified their path to several twisted ones that a hit with one product doesn’t necessarilly bring the stock price up. Nintendo is the perfect candidate and with the release date of Wii coming soon, I knew it’d go up, although it was already very high when I looked at it. I bought it against the judgement of my reasoning. The original plan is to stick it out till release date, but its stock has reached an all time high in its company history already. I am torn between reason and greed… Still, even now, I’d enjoy a $500 gain out of a 1500 initial investment… a 33% increase with only 5 hours of research this time. Things are looking good.

Now, I just need to experience a loss, so I can familiar myself on how to decide when to abandon something.