Parents
There is too much of an age gap between my parents and myself. Our thinking is almost completely alien to each other, and yet I come from their genes, their roots.
Sometimes I feel so weighed down by the need to take care of them, and it is a dilemma of wants: on one hand they really want to enjoy themselves on this tour, and so my mum excitedly suggests "why don't we do this option? Or join another option?" which is sweet, and I keep telling my mum, "You decide". But then my father starts asking ME about "where do you want to go? What do you want to do? Do you think we should join them and do blah blah, or do yadda yadda?" when in reality I just want to run away with the Missus to the young hip cool (and cheap) areas of Hackescher Markt and Prenzlauer Berg (which I have heard lots about, but have not seen) to drink and hang out with cool hipsters, while window shopping at fabulous stuff all around.
Of course, my thinking this way doesn't stop me from feeling guilty about feeling this way. And sometimes I get overly defensive and lash out at my parents, especially when I am tired. That is wrong of me, for sure, and they probably feel like they have invested a lot of time and energy in an ingrate for a child.
I feel like a complete arse right now.
Getting a little annoyed
I'm currently travelling with my parents, and am simultaneously rediscovering how sweet and frustrating it can be to be with them sometimes.
Argh.
And it doesn't help that while I miss the Missus terribly, I haven't gotten a decent email reply from her since the end of World War II: I know she was happy and well, but in spite of my recent emails to her telling her some good news, I got zero replies.
Is she alright? Will she reply? I'm going a little nuts thinking about that almost all the time.
I want her to know I am thinking of her, almost too much. I want her to know that I am thinking of being with her wherever we are, and I am thinking about how wonderful it would be to live with her in Europe without a worry, while we jet-set across the world many times while living off our income from our gigantic financial assets.
I miss her so much, it has gotten through my skin into the marrow of my bones.
Travelling with my parents reminds me of the time I went with her to Italia, or to the other country (can't remember the exact name) where we travelled extensively alone. Now, with my parents, it's getting quite tiring sometimes to be always the one buying things and doing almost everything for them: and then sometimes my father just imposes a veto and we end up doing something (inconsequential but) stupid, like eating pretty bland "Thai" food cooked at the nearest train station, when there was pretty good Turkish food right around the corner (for half the price!).
But I have no choice, and am trying to keep my temper in check. They are really sweet, my parents, though my dad can be quite a hard one to handle at times....
I miss her.
T'afia was Fantastic
I went to
T'afia with my parents post graduation, and had the tasting menu: it was by far
THE MOST AMAZING meal I have ever had in my life.
I never knew that simple green beans, freshly cooked, could taste the way it did. Nor did I know that roughly ground peppercorns, studded in a lime sorbet and eaten with ripe organic nectarine slices, could have such a refreshing and startlingly delicious flavour.
We also had beef tenderloin that was amazing, so tender that it literally melted in the mouth.
Monica Pope has shown me the light!
Reflections at 3am
I went out with friends tonight, after the Senior dinner at the Masters house, and on the way back, as my friend was dropping off this (really drunk) girl, right before she gets off the car she was hugging everyone and kissing them on the cheek, and RIGHT before she got off, after she pecked me on the cheek as well, she said something like "I hated you when you wrote that email" from a long time back, and disappeared off to look for a guy.
It was really unsettling.
Especially since earlier in the evening, we had been given back our roommate questionnaire, that we had filled in before we had arrived at Rice in our first year, and I had read my responses, and just laughed at how idealistic and Buddha-wannabe I was. It was an arrogance that is unbelievable, and it's really not too different from the "I am holier than thou" attitude of a lot of evangelicals.
I was reminded about how arrogant I was, and what a complete idiot I was back then.
I was so unsettled by what she said that while I was walking around with my laundry and washing myself, what she said kept resonating in my head. I didn't know what to make of it, so I felt the only way was to write to her directly, and not apologize (an apology just seems too... cliched and insincere) but just, explain, I guess. Here's the email below:
---
Hi A.,
Haha, I don't even know why I'm writing you right now. I do kind of know why, but not exactly.
What's on my mind is actually the very last thing you said to me tonight as you left the car, when you reminded me about that inappropriate email I had sent you four years back, when I was a pompous self-righteous idiot (albeit well-meaning, but still a git nonetheless) and I ... can't remember exactly what I wrote in that email except that it was highly inappropriate.
Did I say you were not comfortable with your skin or something like that... ? (Well, I hope I didn't recommend any cosmetic products in the process since I don't do endorsements. Bad joke. )
In any case, what you said, coupled with the roommate form that we had filled out before we arrived at Rice, just jerked back all these memories of the past.
It is kind of surreal, how looking back at myself in time, I feel like I'm not looking at myself, but looking at another person called keninabu, a 21 year old guy who finished the military and thought the world of himself. A guy who meant well (like a lot of idiots in this world, including the Commander in Chief) and who thought he was capable of no wrong, and any mistakes would be easily brushed off with the fact that he meant well and no harm.
That he was like a trainee surgeon walking around with a machete offering to remove patients' cataracts with lobotomies, was beside the point: he meant well and that was his talisman against mistakes, against error. He really wanted to help.
Looking back now, I can't help thinking, "Man, I was such a dick". And on top of that, I was an evangelical dick who didn't even realize my fly was open while I lectured others on propriety.
I was a fucking idiot. The scary thing is, I'm going to look back at myself now in 10 years and say the same thing (based on my past experience).
It took the major incident with the psychobitch ex for me to realize that I really am capable of being a total asshole, and of doing real harm to others. That I'm no saint, I'm just an idiot trying to get by in a world that's sometimes confusing and bewildering.
That's part of growing up, I guess. The realization that there are deeper fineties and subtleties, and that there is such a thing as a blunt way of doing something and a skillful way to dealing with things. And the realization that the undercurrents run deeper than I sometimes realize, and I really am a selfish dick, who pretends to be Gandhi on the surface when deep beneath that layer lies Hugh Hefner wanting to par-tay.
What am I trying to say here? I guess I am trying to say that I understand, when you say that you hated me for that email, and for the other things about me that were behind that email.
I think that's what I really wanted to say. That I really understand when you said that. That I can empathize with you, because I have had to live with that person you hated all this time. That I'm sorry that was the case, but can only hope things have changed, because I have changed and you have changed and the world around us has changed.
I can only hope that I've changed for the better, and hope that I've become more humble and more tolerant of humanity for all its flaws, faults and bad skin, and that I'm not as arrogant, presumptuous or too goddamned earnest (the latter might be a genetic defect, like the enzymatic dysfunction).
And, I'm kind of glad you're honest about what you said, because... not many people are.
:)
In vino veritas. That's why I stayed away from the Long Island teas.
cheers,
k.
---
What I didn't say (and which is still keeping me up right now even after sending the email) is the worry that I'm essentially repeating the same mistakes again. I'm pretty certain I'm going to look back in five years, read this blog and think to myself, "good grief, I was such an idiot!"
It reminds me of how the Tibetans practicie humility by focusing on one's own imperfections and others' perfections: it's a good exercise.
And my friend's comment came as a timely reminder of precisely that.
Hectic as hell, getting ready to return home!
Unbelievable. The semester has come to an end, my college career has come to an end, and it feels so weird.
And stressful. And hectic as hell.
Now that the exams have ended, I've to start organizing, tying up loose ends and getting the resources for the next step. I cleared out my drawers in the lab, which was a little nostalgic; I also got my boxes today and will start packing them tomorrow, after I finish my laundry. I actually will have to throw out some of my clothes: it's too much to pack, and a lot of them have seen better days. I'll be giving away a number of my books as well, for much the same reason.
I said goodbye to a number of good friends, whom I might never see again, which is a little sad: actually it opens up a little crack at the bottom of my soul like a storm drain.
K., this Chinese American girl whom I met on my very first day here at Rice four years ago, a sweet girl with nary a bad word for anyone, with this gigantic smile on her face even on her worst days (and as an architecture student, she had lots of those...). She leaves tomorrow morning, and we exchanged some words while she lent me her laundry detergent for my use. She might come to Singapore.
S., this Indian guy from Bombay whom my gf had also met, and whom I worked with on a number of projects and in two clubs. We had dinner, and chatted about random things as usual. Might come to Singapore from Mumbai in the future.
My room is still intact, and there is still a lot left to be packed. The major packing will commence tomorrow, and on Wednesday I'll send my stuff back to Singapore by surface post. I've no time at all to prepare for the GMAT or my business school application, as I had envisioned before, but will have to spend almost all my time and energy doing such stuff.
Getting ready to go home!!
Saint Arnold Brewery
Yesterday I went for lunch with A., and after lunch we visited the
Saint Arnold brewery here in Houston.
The brewery is really just a small sized warehouse, filled with a number of tanks and fermentation vats, and is located in the industrial warehouse district of north Houston, around Katy. When we arrived, there were tons of people: there must have been at least a 100 people lining up to enter the brewery. Outside there was a homebrewing picnic or something, with a lot of people lounging around with kegs of mash (mashed malted barley mixed with hot water) and homebrewed beer.
We walked into the brewery, and received a glass and four wooden nickels. We then kind of lounged around until the chief brewer and owner of Saint Arnold,
Brock Wagner, climbed onto a pretty high platform to heckle, yell and educate us on the fineties of beer making.
Of interest was what he said about hops: if you add the hops early on in the beer making process, when you are boiling the mash, you get a bitterness that balances out the sweetness of the malt. If you add the hops later on in the beer making process, you get more of the fragrant characteristics of the hops, depending on what type of hops are used.
After talking, he opened up the beer area, where the beer was served, and it was a HUGE line. The area is kind of like an indoor biergarten, which was very conducive for meeting people and just chatting. A lot of people were there with their families, and they wisely brought their own picnics with them, and ate while pairing their food with their beer: A. and I kind of kicked ourselves for not thinking about that earlier!
We later got four small beers, after waiting in line forever: I got their Texas Wheat, Summer Pils, Amber ale and their Brown ale. It's the first time I was having their Brown ale, and it is GOOD: chocolatey, brown, hoppy but balanced, it is awesome stuff. I also loved their Amber ale, which is by far one of the best beers I've had to date, for certain. It's very hoppy, but balanced such that the finish is crisp.
We ended up befriending these guys who were father and son, the dad was an environmental consultant, and we had a great time chatting about all kinds of stuff, like
Colbert ripping into President Bush at the Whitehouse Correspondent's Association Dinner, or about environmental policy (or lack thereof) in the USA, and other things un-beer related like that.
Good times. Nothing like making friends when slightly tipsy, and drinking really fine beer while doing that!
Finals
I am doing my final Finals, and I can't study.
Mentally I'm tired and distracted as hell. I think it doesn't help that I'm sitting in front of the damned comp, so I'm going to go study in the library after talking to the Missus in a bit.
I don't know; ever since I busted my knee, I've been sleeping a lot like a pig.
And the damned knee oscillates between getting better and getting worse: the day before yesterday it was improving, yesterday it worsened and now it's better again. It might be that my body's trying to repair the knee, hence, the fatigue.
It's definitely also the case that my mind is now like a hyperactive ADD monkey that leaps at the coolest thing in sight, forgetting what it was previously doing. I definitely need to meditate and focus, and be engaged.
Podcasts on my new iPod
My sister gave me a brand new iPod, which has allowed me to listen to
podcasts on the go, which is awesome: I got to listen to the BBC news while walking to the doctor (who, incidentally, told me that my leg was pretty ok and "it will heal by itself". Like I was worried it would drop off like a gecko's tail and grow back?...), and on the way back I heard the hilarious
Mr Brown, who is probably the best satirist we have in Singapore right now. Arguably such satire is much more effective political opposition than the Singaporean opposition, who are actually doing well given their circumstance but are still politicians all the same.
I'm so happy the iPod is FINALLY here!
:D
Sorry, MY iPod. No, wait, OUR iPod.
:DDD
On a relatively unhappy note, I tried converting to using Firefox as my primary default browser, but the damned thing really sucks ass (I wasn't able to upload this blog entry for the longest time), so I'm back to the old browser... good old Omni.
iT's here!!
Goddamit, the iPod is here and lying behind locked doors at my college office.
WTF!
Now I'm probably too excited to sleep...
