Epiphany

. . .A while ago, at the recommendation of a friend, I sauntered over to 1and1.com and got myself a domain. But what did I do with it? Absolutely nothing. Some time later, I decided to choose some fruity default template just so *something* would be there, but I still had no idea what I would do with it.
. . .In the past, I would splash whatever I felt onto my site (www.geocities.com/Tabris_113 being a good example). But when I came to design the table of contents, I was forced to ask myself which headings I wished to keep and which I wished to discard. Were there any other headings I would like to add? What was the purpose of my site? Personal recreation, I suppose. Art without limits, I suppose one could say. Except that my personality in itself is severely limited, so maybe my art will never really be thought-provoking. Of course, that brings the second question of whether what I produce can really be called "art", but that's something I definitely don't want to get into here.
. . .I wanted to make a site for myself, but moreover, I thought I would want a site that my friends would enjoy and want to frequent. So I'd make it a blog? A sketchbook diary? Should I start a webcomic? Various thoughts and possibilities floated around in my head.
. . .As a certain frightfully intelligent friend of mine once pointed out, people who've known me for a short amount of time will know me as an artistic individual, whether it be in the visual arts, music or language. And some people who've known me a bit better or longer will also tend to remark that I also have some skill (I dare not say "talent" in a place like UW) in the logical/analytical academics such as math and chemistry.
. . .I love talking with this friend if only because of her keen perception and sharp wit. But what she said really made me think. (Well, not that I didn't know these two facts about myself before, but it just made me rethink something in a new way.) At the core, I'm an analytical person. Friends of mine will find that I often pay attention to unnecessary things, or that I over-think certain situations or episodes of the past/present. At the same time, I have this love for art. I like drawing, I enjoy using colour and I really love making something that'll make ppl go "wow!" Of course, when those people are only your friends, ya gotta wonder if your art is really all that, or if they're just being nice.
. . .Art being something that I've done all my life, it's a wonder why I first went into math for post-secondary education. Oh well. But in any case, while I'm not yet ready to unveil my lil corner on the web, I have decided that this personal site will be for my artistic scribbles, whether in literary or visual form. Of course, there's still the small complications of acquiring a scanner...
. . .So that's my little self-realization for my internet usage. I'm going to make an artsy-fartsy website stuffed with my conceptions. Yay! But html seems to be growing out-of-fashion... Which means I'll soon have to learn how to use flash. Hrmm... Maybe when I'm doing my Masters. ^_^
*edit* (8:05am)
. . .And if anyone is wondering why this post is up so late/early, it's cuz I took a looooong afternoon nap, and ended up waking up at 9:15pm... Later to make and eat dinner at around 1:00am. So I didn't sleep until around 4:00am. I should be normalized again now... semi-big day today. Hey, Garnett Crow is good... haven't listened to them in a while... :3

Fuscation

. . .Konja's first meeting last night. The general meeting went by alright, and the dinner was fun afterwards as well. Unfortunately, some of the exchange students had a cold, one of whom passed it on to me... :'( Apparently, it's spreading all across campus, so I guess it is now my duty to go back to Toronto and spread the joy.
. . .And I figure I probably should have gotten more sleep, but a certain "quiet" someone, as always, managed to wake me with his or her morning routine. So I'm up at 7:30, with a slightly runny nose and a VERY sore throat. Made some oatmeal. Drank a fair amount of water... added some honey. Still not feeling happy; not releasing enough endorphins. I guess I'll have to try sth else...
. . .In other news, I spent a good hour just leisurely reading this Webster's Unabridged 1960's Dictionary. That gave me a lot of kicks. I love learning vocab. Pronunciation of some of them were a little difficult... (Sabaism with an accent on the first?! sounds unnatural...) But Mmm, I'd love to own that dictionary.

Chaos

. . .Wow, it's been a while since I've updated. In short, I'm still broke, but still managing to stay alive. Tomorrow, the plan is to pick up OSAP (ie. money for tuition, etc), find German prof to sign me into his class, tweak and print my resume, apply to the local BBT shop for a parttime job and then pray that konja's first general meeting goes well. Now, if I could only stick to that plan...

Insanity

. . .In short, this first week has been INSANE. But I'll blog more about it when I get back to Waterloo, for I'm on my sister's computer right now, and I've lotsa stuff to take care of around here... Clubs Day was hectic, and the exchange students are a handful... the ones I deal with anyways.
. . .Just back in Toronto cuz I forgot to bring back a few certain essentials... (conditioner, hair-dryer, etc.)

Food Diary

Day 1 (sunday)
. . .Lots of water, two pieces of buttered toast for breakfast, more half-filtered water (my water filter isn't working so great) and 5 pieces of caramel "hei tang" (black candy?).
Day 2 (Monday)
. . .More half-filtered water, 4 pieces of buttered toast (thereby depleting my loaf of bread), and 398mL of Heinz alpha-ghetti.
Being on a public computer sucks. I don't get internet at home 'til Wendesday afternoon (cable guy said 5-8pm). Meanwhile, my sister dearest just sent me some money, so if I spend wisely (i.e. not eating out) then I should be able to stretch it to last me a week and a half or so. So until Wednesday, I guess none of you'll be hearing from me (Unless you phone... or bump into me on campus) =D

Illusionist

. . .I just had the strangest dream. I dreamt that I was in some sort of cult meeting; they claimed to be christians but some of their philosophy was so wrong... (the trading of spiritual gifts!? and other such blasphemy). Realizing that I was now in trouble I tried running away... I managed to sneak out, but I forgot my bag in that room (it was being held in a meeting room in a highschool. Sorta like a cross between MC and Earl Haig). On the way out I passed by David McKinnon, my number theory prof, and for some reason I wasn't wearing contacts or glasses. I asked if he could get my bag for me to which he willingly obliged. (maybe my glasses were in my bag...?)
. . .But as his explanation, he said sth. in German, which tipped off the leader cult guy that I had run away. (for some reason I was able to know this in my dream... maybe I had several gifts or sth.) So away I run (with glasses and a bag) out of the building, down a very steep hill and only some paved walkway with students. As I run, a man in a dark jacket and black clothes seems to streak down from the sky in an aura of purple, landing onto the path and walking normally. Suddenly one of my 'gifts' of 'insight' told me that those kinds of ppl (ppl who could fly) were called illusionists because in the 1600's medical science of the Elizabethan court remarked that these flying men seemed almost asleep. So, once knowing this, I tried to induce myself into a half-sleep state of conciousness so that I might be able to fly away. In my attempts I was able to slightly hover, and I was also able to skew my vision so that I could see lines of energy (the trails which ppl with 'gifts' have walked recently), but I don't think I managed to properly fly away. And then, I woke up.
. . .One of the thoughts I had was whether my dream was accurate; was Queen Elizabeth in the 1600's? I think not; she was closer to the end of the 1700's, no? Or am I thinking of Victoria? But anyways, that was my dream. (There's no way pyrokinesis is a christian spiritual gift, right?) :S

The Exhibition

. . .So on Thursday afternoon, a certain actor friend and I saw the movie Collateral. It was pretty good. I don't want to ruin anything (and I'm watching a movie right now as I type this) so that's all I'll say on the subject.
. . .Anyways, afterwards, he was supposed to have plans with sby and I also, but my plans dbl booked himself (and a certain other someone had precidence over me... gr..) and actor friend's friend disappeared... so we decided to go to the CNE.
. . .That was pretty fun.. got there pretty late, but it was all good. Got to see some horses, ate some food, got harrassed by ppl in booths. Though I didn't even notice, so this is my actor friend telling me afterwards. Apparently, the guy was trying to get my attention and stuff, ending with "HELLO?!?! ARE YOU ALIVE?!" or sth like that. We laughed and stuff... The sun went down... and we saw the beginning of Sby Cochrane(sp?) walk a tightrope with a sparkly white costume. It was getting pretty windy, so I could only imagine how it must have been for him and his balance stick... thingy.
. . .We ended up bumping into another person from DMCI, which was pretty cool. And so the three of us subwayed back home. yay!

Crumbled Dignity

. . .It has been said that "poverty is no vice", to which I must whole-heartedly agree, being less-than-rich myself. And yet, can there be a dignity to being a pauper?
. . .What does it mean to offend? To hurt somebody's feelings, I'd imagine. But then what does it mean to hurt? Certain insults are culturally acquired, such as verbal attacks on one's gender, culture, age, height, weight, etc.
. . .I may as well tell my crazy Waterloo adventure first before going on about my lil' social rant that nobody really has a care for or possesses the ability to identify with (you insensitive lumoxes! o':)
. . .So yah, I stayed up the entire night, caught the first TTC train (at 5:42am) down to Dundas Stn. to catch the 6:30am greyhound to Waterloo. It was a relatively peaceful ride, except for the fact that my cap was too high and the sun was too low, it being early morn. So while those fiery javelins of Amaterasu pierced my eyelids, I managed to get some sleep... somehow.
. . .Got into Waterloo at around 9:00am, at which point I went to my room and started packing stuff. Finished sorting everything into boxes by around 11:30am, feelin' mighty proud of myself and decided to take a short rest, noting that I had the elevator booked in my new apartment from 2-3pm. I woke up at 3:00pm, clutching my alarm clock in my left hand. (I'm sure it went off at 1:00pm, and I somehow turned it off subconciously.)
. . .Ah, schreiss! was my first thought. Then figuring that I didn't have the money to spare for a taxi, I thought I'd carry it a box at a time. (How bad could it be, right? I mean, it's only a 10 minute walk normally, so with the box...20 minutes?) The first trip took me FORTY minutes, and that was just travel time (without disloading time). At the time, I figured I'd carry the heavy stuff first, that way it'd get easier towards the end when I was tired to carry the lighter stuff. But as everybody knows my body, like my complexion is very weak and fragile. These two VERY nice ppl took pity on me and seeing me struggle with the box (towards the end I was just dragging it with a towel, which I had originally used to wrap around the handles to protect my weak hands from developing callouses.) gave me the shopping cart they were originally using to carry their backpacks. So now I had a shopping cart! (From like, Loblaws or sth.) I finished making my first trip, and the next two trips happened almost without incident. Except that I was now a sweaty asian in a cap carting around his books and clothes in a shopping cart. Nothing conspicuous about that...
. . .K, so that was my fun story about Waterloo (that happened on Wednesday). Back to my rant about society's ails. So as some of dear readers may be aware, I'm easily offended. And not in the nit-picky sort of way either. It's just freak incident that I take more after my mother in terms of personal principles and values. Polite Society, as we'd like to call it. And my sister seems to have taken more after our father, a ... ... ... personable and open individual who knows how to laugh even in the face of disaster.
. . .Two incidents are being described here. The first was a most shocking one to which I thought could never happen in real life. A certain hence-forth-dubbed-"Beach" female openly voiced her disapproval and disgust at the way I was consuming a watermelon. Now, I shan't detail how exactly I was eating it out of some embarassment, and partly because it's not the focus of my rant (but really... I was in my apartment; not in public). What was extraordinary was not that she possessed some sort of etiquette that I didn't expect (which, in fact is quite the opposite), but that she would openly offend and maim my feelings IN MY OWN HOME without a second care in the world, seemingly more concerned for the virginity of her thoughts than to the general mood of the atmosphere. Sufficed to say, the air turned deathly cold. Well, after an initial few moments of immense pain and shock, my blood ran cool with indignation and anger. And after that subsided, I started thinking about whether my actions have ever evoked such feelings of hurt, shock, hatred and anger in anybody else as I experienced that evening.
. . .A beautiful mind, a beautiful soul depends not upon one's physical beauty, clothes or riches, but rather on the personality and being of a person. Why I had a distaste for ppl wasn't because I thought them below me, but because they weren't beautiful on the inside. Brash, coarse individuals who cannot consider the other individual and just speak their minds. Is that "sweet" in any sense of the word? I think not. Yes, the idea of Bienséance is very antiquated, but that doesn't mean it's any less relevant in today's world.
. . .The second incident involves a ... ... ... sth friend of mine. I can't say close friend, though certainly somewhat of a good friend. He's dear, after a fashion, though horribly blunt without a sense of tact or verbal retinence. Of course, there's the fact of differing cultures to consider. But he can't even see that I'm in a different culture. He just knows that I'm not in his culture and therefore I'm 'uncultured' (a remark that to this day I'm particularly sore about).
. . .So anyways, what's the point of this rant? Basically, that ppl are cruel, cold animals and that it's sad, nay, a SIN that today's society has allowed the intellectual mind to be forgiven for its social transgressions. So what if you have a shard of physical beauty and a spark of intelligence? Your tongue is so vile that it's a wonder that society has allowed you to continue as you are. And it's obvious, Beach, that it doesn't matter what I do or say because you've already locked a certain preconception of who I am, which while I no longer am that whom you saw all those years ago, it doesn't matter because you're just filled with judgement instead of perception.
. . .Why can't we all just be nice to each other? Oh, I don't understand it at all...