Heading off into the horizon of my life without a map or compass. A curse, a blessing? Who knows? We'll see. Bring it on.
Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Nescience, none too selective
Tibet.
God god people are retarded. And now Facebook has made it even retardeder. Yes, "retardeder".
Some people like to rant how our generation is lazy and uncaring because we haven't had to fight for things like our parents did. An entire generation banded together to protest the Vietnam War, the Berlin Wall, to fight for the civil rights movement. And have we done? Little, if not nothing.
Well, I disagree.
That link above? It proves we're doing something.
But instead of joining our voices into a battle cry for genuine truth and justice, we are perverting the proud heritage our parents have built by making it into a popularity contest.
How many of those people actually know what the situation in Tibet is like?
Never mind the sensationalized pictures that the mass media likes to bombard our TVs, newspapers, and computer screens with.
How many people truly grasp the argument behind the call for independence?
How many people know the history of the land?
How many people know the Dalai Lama as someone other than that "speaker in the park"?
How many people realize the implications if independence was actually granted, and the gravity of their effects?
If a sampling of the event's wall is any indication, the outlook is dire.
It sickens me to realize that not only do we have to fight against those who seek to deny justice and fairness in the world, but also those who blindly wield their rhetoric in the name of something they don't actually understand.
So I went to AIESEC US's national LTM this past weekend. The following is my account of the crazy shit that happened outside of the actual meetings.
I got to the airport and it was a breeze to the terminal. I patiently started reading Life of Pi (yes, finally, and Shanky I still have your copy of it), and eventually the plane started boarding. My side of the aisle was just me until the very last moment, when the final person to board the plane was the window seat of my side (I was in the aisle).
Now, I don't know how else to describe this guy except to say that he was an older, fatter version of Mr. Bean. He had the same facial expressions, the same mannerisms, the same accent, everything.
He got to our seats, put his bag into the overhead bin, and then smiled at me and said "Excuse me." I let him in, and no more than a couple minutes later, I had to let him out so he could to get his bag. He sat back down, and then two minutes later, he had to get something again. This repeated 8 more times, and then eventually I said "You know, you have enough room underneath your seat to just put your bag there. Plus, I don't think there's anyone in the seat in between us, you could put it there too." He looked at me blankly, then after a couple seconds he brightened up and said "Ahhhhh."
Once we had taken off and were high enough to use our electronics, we both got out our iPods. 10 minutes later, I noticed that I was hearing something that wasn't coming from my earbuds. This really bothered me, because I always play my music really loud. I hit pause, and realized what I was hearing was coming from the window seat. I took off my earbuds, and it occurred to me that I was hearing Mr. Bean's iPod blasting Die Fledermaus. I'll let that marinate for a minute. Over the low blasting hum of the airplane, and through the loud house music coming through my own earbuds, I could hear HIS music. Meanwhile, he was slouched against the window, snoring softly. I looked around, and no one else seemed to mind that his music was loud enough to be heard within a 5 seat radius.
The view from my seat. Taken for posterity.
So we landed in NYC at 11PM and I scurried for the M60 bus stop. I'm standing alone there, and over the course of maybe 15 minutes, a flock of little Asian girls shows up, followed by an old married couple and disgruntled airport worker. And immediately afterward, Blue Steel showed up. Picture Ben Stiller, but blond, 6'5", and actually a model. Er... so basically, a typical male model with Derek Zoolander's trademark pout. He maintained this expression until his bus came by.
The Q72 came up around the corner, and almost immediately Blue Steel dropped the pout and took on a look of sheer bliss. But it was not to be. As the bus got closer, it was becoming rapidly apparent that it wasn't going to stop. Slowly, the grin became a grimace of murderous intent. When the bus zoomed by us, Blue Steel dropped his bags and chased after the bus, screaming at the top of his lungs "WHAT THE FUCK?!"
This was enough to spook the flock of Asian girls into scurrying 50 feet to the taxi hub, but the old married couple merely snorted and went back to cataloging the contents of their bags. Blue Steel was trudging back, saying "Are you kidding me?" out loud to no one in particular. I just smirked and went back to my book (at around this point, Pi had successfully constructed his raft).
"Are you kidding me?"
Blue Steel furiously pawed through his blackberry, looking for god-knows-what. The pout had returned. The old married couple got on the Q33.
"Are you kidding me?"
The M60 finally came by, and I got on and produced two crisp $1 bills for the driver. "Coins only," she said, without even looking at me. Now it was my turn to say "Are you kidding me?!" So I shambled back into the terminal and found the change machine. When I came back, Blue Steel was squawking into his phone about the bus injustice.
"Are you kidding me?"
The bus had left me, and by now it was past midnight, which meant that the next M60 wouldn't come by for maybe an hour. Blue Steel came up to me and said "You know, the next M60 probably won't come for another hour or so." We got to talking about how retarded the New York airports were: JFK's clusterfuck qualities, La Guardia's insanity, and Newark's distance. A Q__ bus pulled up, and the Asian flock scurried over to get onto it, while Blue Steel meandered over to the taxis to talk to the cabbies.
"Are you kidding me?", as he headed over.
He came back a few minutes later. By now, half an hour had passed since the M60 ditched me for lack of quarters. "You want to split a cab?", he asked me. I replied, "Aren't you going into Queens?" He said, "Yeah, but you could take a train into Manhattan from there. I'm willing to cover 3/4 of the cab fare."
Are you kidding me?
Blue Steel seemed like a nice enough guy, but I had been to New York enough to know that taking the metro into Manhattan from Queens could take hours. So I fed him a bullshit response about how I didn't know Manhattan at all and was meeting friends at a specific subway station. He relented, and we said our goodbyes. "Safe travels," he said, and flashed Blue Steel as he ducked into the cab. The cab sped away, and I was left alone on the platform.
At that very moment, an M60 pulled up. It had been just over an hour since the last bus, approximately 90 minutes since I first stepped out of the terminal. I staggered forward with my fistful of quarters, only to hear the man in the driver's seat say to me, "The machine is broken. Ride is free."
...
ARE YOU FUCKING KIDDING ME?!
The trip into and through Manhattan was pretty monotonous. The hostel was really kitschy and nice. I slept fitfully until the next morning and went to LTM.
Lunch was at a fabulous Turkish?/Lebanese?/Persian? place. The service was slow, but the food was worth it. No pictures to document this, sadly, but Northwestern has a new place in my heart from the conversations that took place. It turns out Richard finally got in touch with the LC there! Yay! Also, there was a girl there (whose name currently is escaping me) that's going to be in Shanghai at the same time as Katie and I. Now that's a network for you.
In the evening, we headed to Layaly for Ma'andi's final hurrah. Take note, kids, this place was amazing.
I'll let those speak for themselves.
Got back to the hostel at about 1AM. One of my roommates was busy washing his socks in the bathroom (yuck), and the entire room smelled like wet feet. I went to bed despite the olfactory assault.
When I got up the next morning, it only took me a few minutes to get washed and packed and down in the lobby to check out. When I got there, I saw one of my roommates arguing with the poor woman at the front desk. He swerved around, looked me dead in the eye, and screeched, "YOU STOLE MY WATCH!" Imagine my incredulity.
At this point it was already 9:45, and I had to walk 10 blocks to LTM. But this crazy motherfucker made me stay (by preventing the woman from being able to check me out) while he called the police over to arrest me and search my bag. Luckily, the po-pos thought he was as crazy as I did, and let me go whilst taking him down the hall to calm him down. My only regret is that I didn't snap a picture of the guy doing his wild "WHERE'S MY SHIT" histrionics.
I got to LTM at 11:30, an hour and a half late, but whatever. By the end of the day, we were exhausted. Costa gave us a ride, and this is what followed:
I got on my delayed flight and nearly finished Life of Pi (I got to the carnivorous island and couldn't deal with it anymore). Arrived in town at around midnight.
1. LTM this weekend. Inaugural week as the Fundraising LIGER for AIESEC US. NYC in all its glory. Will wonders ever cease? Let's hope so.
2. I FINALLY PICKED UP MAIL FOR OUR OFFICE! I walked by the mailbox and almost didn't check inside, but I figured I should, and LO AND BEHOLD, a piece of mail! FOR THE FIRST TIME IN A YEAR AND A HALF!
So I've been failing to blog ever since starting this entry over a week ago. And now that it is 6AM on a Sunday morning and I STILL haven't fallen asleep, I'm going to pound this one out. It's going to be an interesting Sunday/Monday. But anyway, regarding my lack of blogging output:
Symptoms? Starting to blog about something and then either losing interest or having my vocabulary evaporate into a cloud of illiterate idiocy.
Diagnosis? Possible ADD or a (more likely) case of too-much-crap-going-on-at-once-itis.
Prescription? Bullet points.
So here goes.
1. Stress. How it affects us differently, and how we have learned to deal with it differently. Specifically, how I'm starting to worry that I don't worry about certain things.
2. Housing. Shenanigans all around. Finally found someone to sublease my place, but now the scramble begins to secure housing for May. Additional woes of transportation and the lack of car.
3. Travel. China with Katie basically confirmed. To do: plan itinerary, buy plane tickets, suck up to relatives and polish off that Mandarin. And I don't mean cleaning oranges.
4. Employment. Shit. I haven't done jack, and if I don't find some (gainful employment), I will be woefully idle for the month of May.
5. Food. Trying to learn how to cook Korean. Examples, tteokbokki: Delicious. Trust.
6. Love. Or rather, lack thereof. Interpretation of my (apparent) dismissal of all things romantic has garnered interestingly mixed responses (read: shits all over the map). Not sure how to interpret these interpretations. Why don't people talk to me instead of about me anymore?
7. Diversions. Relaxing into old (bad) habits and failing to turn helpful academic activities into normalized routines. But I still have the rest of the year to work on this particular resolution.
8. Whimsy. This one goes out my girl Maddie who is our self-proclaimed bus driver to the burning place. Well, Maddie dear, I have found your vehicle: Stolen from Ms. Sewell.
Every time I screech to a halt, let the dust settle, and survey my surroundings, I find that everything has changed and nothing has changed.
All of a sudden, I find myself in the midst of a veritable hurricane of emotional turmoil. I sit in the eye unaffected by the tumult that surrounds me, but I'm still asked to guide the motions that I observe. No less than six individuals have approached me, and once again, I am supposed to be the relationship guru.
Some of the scenarios have not changed since my nadir into this field.
"I don't want to see this person, though I already promised to have a lunch date with them. How do I get out of it?" "How do I not freak out and turn into a blubbering idiot the next time I see ___?" "What's the right way to tell someone that they don't give good head?" (I shit you not.)
And then some things show us how old we're getting, but more importantly, how much less we're taking each other for granted.
"__ and I really get along. But our politics and values are like oil and water. It isn't a problem yet, but I'm worried it will be, and I think she's the one. What do I do?" "We really like each other. But we made plans before we met each other, and we want to remain true to them. Do we stay together for this brief time, or do we give in to the inevitable and just become friends?" "How do I reconcile my dreams with my love?"
And then I look at myself, and once again I have to say "Why do I feel like I'm still standing still?"
