Swirling Clouds

Hi Readers,

Through another friend, I met a boy today. We ate, we talked, and we walked. He's really cute, and his eyes are mesmerizing. I wish we could've continued walking and talking...damn the EWB meeting that I had. I don't know the next time I'll see him, or if there'll be a next time. I haven't felt like this in awhile.

I can't focus on my work. What's wrong with me?? Half of me is giddy and hopeful, while the other half is cautioning me against failure. Both halves know that I have a test on Monday and need to study, but they're both putting it on the back burner while they're battling it out.

Stop the scorched earth policy! I need my mind!

Am I setting myself up for failure?

Focus! Must derive the S parameters of a 2-port network. Pick up pencil. Yes, the pencil. Right there in front of you. Next to the cellphone. Ooo I have a text.

"oh silly David...Trix are for kids".

From a fellow EWBer. I love EWB. I love everyone in this organization.

SB, if you are reading this. I love you so much. You're the best friend anyone could ever ask for. You're probably the biggest reason I don't want to leave this place. I can't imagine not having you around. I can't imagine leaving this place. Has it only been 4 years? This place is a living entity...my water, my food, my shelter. I lost myself here, and I rediscovered myself here. I discovered the world, an infinite cache of knowledge.

There are sirens outside. Typical Halloween night sounds.

A ceasefire has been declared.

-FCDH

Glide Away

Hi Readers,

To those of you that don't already know it, I've taken up longboarding. My friend lent me his old longboard, so I've been practicing with it for the past month or so. The entire experience, from the first time I stepped on a longboard till now, has been quite amusing. Let me walk you through it.

I remember the first time I tried it. I had obtained the board on Friday night after rock climbing at the ARC. I woke up late on the following Saturday morning...like around 3pm late, and I immediately thought about trying it out. I took the board to the back entrance of Siebel center, where there was a slight incline. I stepped on the board, and gently nudged it forward...and about 3 seconds later I jumped off and the board flew away and crashed into...something. What exhilaration! Over the span of the next hour, I gradually moved from going downhill, to learning how to use my feet to propel myself, to going uphill. Granted I was still very unstable at this time, but hey I could stay on a longboard! Another goal accomplished =).

Within a week I was longboarding from home to the EWB office. There was a gentle slope downwards on the way, so I didn't have to propel much. Granted curbs and pedestrians freaked me out, but I managed it alright. The only time I've fallen has been at 2am with my backpack. Scraped my hands a little but it's fine. As time progressed, I've gotten more comfortable. Soon I'm boarding from the office to home...then from the office to other offices, to meetings, restaurants, or even walking with friends. Looking back now, it's hard to believe that a month ago I was still freaking out when the board tilted.

Boarding offers you a new angle on life. From a perch about 4 inches off the ground, you glide smoothly and majestically (or with cacophony and bumps over sidewalk cracks) as scenes and people fly past you. Moving from point A to B is no longer a mindless task ; now it's an exercise of dodging pedestrians, accelerating heartrates whenever there are bumps (which there always are), and planning out your trajectory from 15 feet away.

And you must always have an emergency plan in mind. What happens if that car doesn't stop at the crosswalk, of if that Korean girl gets the deer-in-headlight body freeze, or if the delta impulse from the extra-high sidewalk crack on the board-man momentum sum is enough to reverse the sign of the momentum on the board but not on the man.

Longboarding offers more than a danger of skinned elbows and bruised egos. It offers uncertainty and unpredictability, which is in short supply in our lives... and the tantalizing taste of failure, when you are only accountable to yourself and no other. We all need a taste of failure in our lives, so we can realize our vulnerability in the vast world. Nothing is guaranteed, and planned routes can fall apart at a single wide-eyed glance from a person frozen on your trajectory.

So swerve around, step beyond, and glide away.

-FCDH

Purging an Evil Addiction

Hi Readers,

I finally realized why I was so down in the dumps for the past few weeks... and I finally broke off my tenacious addiction to Civilization 4 today by uninstalling it from my computer. It's been dragging me back into the abyss of lost time ever since I installed it 3 weeks ago. I've been spending excessive time (12+ hours on Saturday) with it, and it just can't continue anymore. I would play Civ4 so much that I couldn't focus on schoolwork enough, and then I'd be depressed that I wasn't doing as well as last semester, even though I'm taking less hours and have less commitment right now. It made me feel pathetic and lost, which made me spend even more time on them. A flashback to high school.

I don't understand why video games are so addictive for me. I know they were made to be that way, but I thought I had developed self control and restraint over my 3 years of multitasking. But my extremely fast slide shocked me to my very core. Back in high school, I spent a lot of time on video games. Entire weekends were devoted to computer games, basically from Friday night all the way till Sunday night. I did MMORPGs with my homestay brother so much that I would create new characters to level up when I got bored with the old one...resulting in an inventory of 8 characters. I played so many games: RO, MapleStory, Gate to Heaven, Civ4, Age of Empires / Mythology, Rise of Nations, Runescape (lol), and so many others that I've lost track of them all.

Looking back, video games were singularly the most destructive influence during my teenage years. The amount of potential that I wasted was so enormous that I'm only making up for it now in college. I always say that we shouldn't regret anything in life, but that's not true - I regret all the time I wasted on video games. All the sports / music / activities / learning I could have been doing in those 5 years all went down the drain. I realized this early in my college experience, which is why I swore off them and haven't seriously touched any in the past 3 years. In return, I've been blessed by an extremely eventful and productive undergraduate career that continues to amaze me every single day. I cherish the lifestyle I live now, and I will not give it up without a fight.

So,

I promise never to install another video game on my computer, and

I promise never to revert back to the old me, who wasted 5 years of his life in the virtual world.

I've never broken my promises, and I don't intend to start now. I'm just glad I realized this addiction before it destroyed my life again. As for the free time I've picked up, I'm going to spend it on a project to develop a website for Campus Surplus on behalf of the SSC. As for weekends, I'm going to start training for the marathon that I just signed up for in the spring. I'm going to reach for my goals instead of languishing in the murky bog of my past.

To hell with wasted time...life's better than that.

-FCDH

A Slow Motion Crash

Much has happened recently in my life, but I haven't been able to get motivation to do much. Despite dropping CS 225, I bombed both the GRE and my first ECE 464 midterm. The piles of dishes at home are obscene. Laundry is waiting to be done. Still need to write my paper. Still have to process those reimbursements.

I can't get the will to do any of it. I'm lost, and the only thing I know is that I'm falling. Here goes a long discourse that is disgusting in the amount of self-wallowing-in-pity there is. Let it serve as a warning to some, and advice to others.

I spent my freshman, sophomore, and junior years vaulting myself high into the air, towards the stars. It started off as a desire to experience as much as possible, in order for myself to live a fulfilling life. I was a nobody with no direction to my life - it was the perfect time to start. There was only one direction to go, and that was up. Curiosity and ambition quickly made me take on more and more, and I always told myself that I was sincere in everything I tried and did. Along the way, I looked at people who held their noses high and looked down on others, and I scoffed at the lack of substance in their supposed "accomplishments". I warned myself against becoming one of these people.

Somewhere along the line, things morphed insidiously inside of me. I guess I wanted to stand out from the pack. I wanted my name to be known, for it to be spoken with respect, and for myself to be able to look back and say proudly, "look at all that I accomplished." I wanted myself to be different from the nobody that I've been my whole life.

Well, I got it. I was distinguished with ceremonies and banquets. I was showered with awards and praise. And somewhere in the middle, I lost my soul. I became a puppet to what society deemed "admirable". I set high hoops for myself, and took it as a given that I would jump through them. The seemingly logical argument gradually formed in my mind - if I could build myself up from a nobody to get to where I am today, then anyone else should be able to do it. I became arrogantly proud and self-confident, and looked down on everybody from the perch that I had constructed for myself. I held disdain at those who had the potential to do great things, but who wasted it. I gradually became the person I wanted to avoid becoming, except I didn't even realize it.

Well, I gave up a lot of responsibilities this semester. Why I did it, I don't know. I guess I was just tired of the effort and stress that it takes to maintain it. And I found myself re-transforming into a nobody again. But even worse, a nobody that people still look up to and respect. I feel like a hypocrite when people praise me for what I've done, when people see my past accomplishments but don't realize how pathetic I am now. There's still a high bar of expectation there, except I can't jump over it anymore, not even for myself. Worse than that, my arrogance has remained, except now it lacks substance.

I don't have anything more to give. I'm so tired of constantly striving to achieve more. So tired. But withdrawal is setting in. I don't want to give up being the same person who I was the past 3 years. I feel like there's still potential there.

But do I even like that person? If not, who am I supposed to become otherwise?

How did things go so wrong? I feel like crap. My life is such a lie.

-FCDH

Saying No to Alcohol

Hi Readers,

You may or may not know that I received surprising results from my health checkup in Taiwan this summer. I knew that something was probably wrong when my doctor kept saying "huh?" when he was looking at the sonograph of my belly region.

Basically, I have a tumor in my liver. To be more specific, there are 3 tumors.

These developed over the span of a year, as they were not there when I had my health checkup a year ago. Quite scary! Although he informed me that it's rare for tumors in the liver to turn malign, he did give me one piece of advice:

Stop Drinking.

I think I'll take his advice. But as I've found out already, it's easier said than done. I feel like it's going to hinder my ability to be social, or to go out with friends. Last night already, I broke the rule and had 2 beers (which I consider to be a very low number). Granted, I don't think that'll do any harm, but it was almost an impulse to drink. I'm not sure why, but a mere 2 years after getting drunk for the first time, the alcohol culture has already become so ingrained in myself that it's going to be very hard to stop.

But I must, for my health. So from this point on, I begin the quest to discover the key to saying no to alcohol!

-FCDH

To My Family

My blog is rife with criticisms of my family, so I'd like to take the time to acknowledge my gratefulness to my family, lest people start believing that my family has influenced me negatively. A few instances here and there cannot diminish the fact that my family loves me, and only wants what is best for me.

The Taiwan that I grew up in was a very strict society, where children my age were basically lumped together by their academic performance. It was a complete meritocracy, which has its advantages and disadvantages. Everybody was pressured to do well in school, and I was naturally not exempt from this. Everything was about success - either do it right, or don't do it at all. This motto was drilled into me since childhood, and I was only able to begin shedding it off during my first year of university.

I love my family for the discipline that they have brought me. In a time where individualistic desires and "stick-it-to-the-Man" thoughts have pervaded the thoughts of the new generation, discipline especially comes in handy. I love them for teaching me the ways of treating others as you want to be treated, because it has helped me immensely in building my network of friends and acquaintances.

Most of all, I love them for doing what they believe is right for me, even though it is always risky on their part. They punished me physically because it is the easiest way to instill discipline in a child, while taking the risk that I could grow up to hate them forever. They pushed me into my university and my major even though I wanted to do something else, because of the bright future that an ECE degree from Illinois has, even though it would put them $100,000 more into debt compared to a Canadian university. They fought with me over the issue of my sexuality, because it is a hard world out there for gay people, and they wanted me to avoid the hardships that will face me in the future.

Mom, Dad, and Jess, I appreciate everything you've done for me. My biggest wish for all of you now, is for you to stop worrying about me. You've made me into the person I am today, so that I can use the skills that you gave me to face the world on my own. It's time for you to live and enjoy your own lives, rather than helping me live mine.

It's the time to abandon rigidity and planning, for a little bit more spontaneity and discovery. Life is more enjoyable that way.

Love,

FCDH

Climbed Mt. Fuji!

Hi Readers!

I climbed Mt. Fuji last weekend with some friends and it was an absolutely horrendous experience...raining and windy and cold. Literally there were moments I thought that we were going to die on the mountain without feeling warmth again. We climbed through the whole night (7pm-4am) in the miserable condition. Rested at one of the midway huts (8.5) for an hour to warm up. I bought gloves and instant noodles on the mountain to try and warm myself up...didn't work too well but probably helped me survive. I think I walked the entire way up with my head down, trying to keep the blowing rain out my face. Near the top my backpack began to freeze as it was below freezing. We got to the top, there was no sunrise - just a bunch of clouds and fog obstructing everything in view. But then as we proceeded down, voila! The clouds disappeared and the gorgeous landscape came into view.

Everything we suffered on the way up was forgotten. Cameras were taken out. Millions of transistors were recharged or discharged with new digitized picture data.

It was a great and memorable day. I'll never forget the experience. I'll be back here another time.

PS: Some pictures below!

-FCDH

Our starting group, 14 people.

One view from the top.

Another view from the top.