Category: life

I think that humanity’s propensity for assigning special significance to particular dates or intervals of time is a little silly. After all, they are just numbers, human-made measurements. For example, New Year’s just means we’ve been on a small planet that have just happened to have made yet another trip around some star.

Of course, as we grow older, and our primal needs (food, shelter, safety) are satisfied, it is natural for us to start thinking on a more philosophical bent. I don’t think it is the long lifespan and accompanying mandatory bouts of boredom has anything to do with it; I doubt a homeless person thinks more beyond where his next place to sleep is. It’s easy to be philosophical when your belly is full and your hands are warm.

So what is the point in life? I am not sure. My goal is to be well-liked. Not necessarily famous, just known to be a good person, – helpful, kind, has a sense of humour, the guru, the confidante. In other words, the Fifth Business (ala Robertson Davies). A person with integrity, intelligence and good manners.

I love Silverlotus with all my heart and she loves me too, and it also makes me very happy. I am a resolute believer that things always “work out” simply because, statistically, things have always panned out in the end. (She, btw, believes the point in life is to amass all possible knowledge in this world.)

Perhaps it’s a repressed child trauma thing – an innate desire for people to like me, to not ignore me. Even now, I find concepts such as betrayal and deception unsettling. It doesn’t mean I have an issue getting ahead of the pack; just as long as it was a fair fight.

I wasn’t entirely sure what to do too, as a child. I locked on to computers when I was eight, and decided whatever I did, it should involve them. I don’t think I would ever be a Bill Gates in this way though – I just don’t have that streak of ruthlessness.

I think that with the heightened level of education and information flow, people will be getting their mid-life crises sooner. We are getting rich faster, meeting more people (virtually or physically) and learning about how they and their cultures live. So I believe we get the “grass is greener on the other side” ennui at an earlier age.

(At least some of us. Most people are too busy paying down their car, finding the trendiest bar and checking cellphone voicemail to think beyond the next paycheck or business trip. We would call these people “shallow” I suppose, but they have willed themselves not to think about the tomorrow and thereafter and concentrate on closing that big customer deal or whatever.)

So I dunno. But perhaps what you’re feeling is guilt for running your life how you want it, companies or friends or signficant others or family be damned, and it makes you feel you have to make it up to the world in some way. Personally, I do not feel this way, but being the Fifth Business invariably means being accomodating and compromising. The downside is, it doesn’t do much for the ego.

Kudos to Andrew Ironside – he was a geek voted to be valedictorian by the “popular” classmates as a stupid joke, but he had the last laugh.

Which is probably far more than what I would have done in his place. It’s just as well, since this situation would have never happened in my high school. Sadly, I cannot say it’s because my school was not full of petty, snickering teenagers who congregated in cliques; it was because valedictorian hopefuls had to consciously run as candidates.

I did get placed in my graduating yearbook as “Most Likely to Reach Puberty” by a part-time yearbook staffmember who used to bully a shorter, smaller me in Grade 9. Such creativity and hilarity! Frankly, if you read that sentence carefully, you would agree that he should have spent less time picking on people and more time polishing up on his English semantics.

They say high school are the best years of your life. That’s a total crock. It was only when I entered university that I met people who miraculously didn’t harass you because you thought or looked different from them.

Fortunately, as Andrew so helpfully pointed out, we generally never see any of our high schoolmates ever again.

I don’t believe in luck. “I’m down on my luck”, people would say, as if the forces of the universe had conspired against them and they are helpless in the face of their own destinies. I believe there is the element of chance, however I just don’t believe it controls your life. I believe that with proper planning and time management, the damage from random events can be minimized. For example, to avoid missing an important appointment, get up earlier. To avoid debt, save your money for a rainy day. Life will kick you in the shins sometimes, but if you have a backup plan, there is always a way out.

Dr. Sexy, Yeunk and Bomberman came down to London last night to celebrate my birthday. They took me out for some baby back ribs at the Great West Steakhouse, some pool at Palasad, and had a bit of Bailey’s Cheesecake at Symposium. And I got a weird windup toy and The Animatrix as presents. I really appreciate the gesture. Thank you guys!

I got this email the other day:

From: [email protected]

Greetings from San Francisco!

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see, touch and feel technology that makes life better, easier and more
fun, and it’s only at Metreon-A Sony Entertainment Center, the place to
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Drove with Furmac down to Hamilton to celebrate – Norm and Dr. Sexy are finally graduated from their master’s degrees, and are now free to pay back all their student loans.

Went to the West End, went through ten pitchers of beer, wings, a dozen jelly shooters and over fifty B-52s. We sang bawdy songs, such as the classic “Orgy Song” and chart-topper “I Used to Work in Chicago”.

We ended up crashing in Norm’s hotel room at the Visitor’s Inn, and then waking up for some sausage and eggs at the Maple Leaf Pancake House. I can smell the memories. It was the first time I set foot on campus since I graduated.

Feeling a bit bored, I went down to the London Central Library’s “Star Trek Celebration of Tribbles” today. It was a bit awkward and comforting to see so many fellow geeks in public again. We got to see the Tribble trinity: The original 1967 “The Trouble with Tribbles” episode, the surprisingly good “More Troubles, More Tribbles” from the 1973 Star Trek animated series, and the incredibly well executed “Trials and Tribble-ations” from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine in homage of Trek’s 30th anniversary. It was interesting to see these three episodes in one sitting – all had a similar theme, all took place in the same universe, all had well-executed storylines (something Voyager never had and Enterprise still struggles with), and yet it was interesting how the limited budget of the original series and the drab static cartoon backgrounds of the Animated Series contrasted with the dynamic camera shooting and glowing special effects of DS9.

Oh, the picture on the left is of Silverlotus’s tribble she purchased at the gift shop at the Las Vegas Hilton. It comes with warnings affixed to it stating “Live Specimen – Do Not Feed”.

An interesting factoid: the library mentioned that “The Trouble with Tribbles” contained the only mention of Canada in the Trek universe; Spock points out that the wheat/rye hybrid grain known as quadrotriticale was derived from triticale, which was invented in “20th century Canada”. (Which is true btw, it was first made a viable crop by the University of Manitoba in 1959.)

I did some digging, and with some relief I can say my Star Trek does include more Canada – just not a lot more. The best Canadian reference goes to DS9, of course, where Eddington, Starfleet officer turned Maquis rebel leader, mentions he has a family heirloom in the form of “an old Earth coin…with a bird on the front”. “My lucky looney,” he continues. “Been in the family for over two hundred years.”

$7.95 – cost of “jumbo shrimp cocktail” (actually six shrimps) purchased in the Aladdin’s Desert Passage that is the most likely reason why I threw up eight times within a day, including once at the taxi stand of the Imperial Palace.

TV – Without Internet (a cafe down the Strip advertised access at $12/hr.), I suffered a bit of information withdrawal, and turned to TV to get some sense of what was happening in the outside world. Unfortunately, there were only 13 channels, and two of them were hotel advertising with creepy clowns and a Keno channel, respectively. The only news available was CNN Headline News. However, there was USA Network, and I had the pleasure of watching two classic gangster masterpieces, Casino and Scarface. They advertised both movies as “uncut”, which in USA Network-speak means removing every swear word and cutting half an hour’s worth in scenes to make room for more Progressive Insurance commercials. Watching Scarface was especially amusing since it was such a large inspiration for the Grand Theft Auto series of games. In fact, GTA3 had the Scarface soundtrack in it, and the main druglord’s mansion in Vice City is heavily inspired by Tony’s own estate.

50 cents – The total amount of money won at the casino. It was from the Slots-of-Fun two free pulls (coupon available at small southeast entrance of Circus Circus)

Tips – De Niro’s character in Casino called Las Vegas “kickback city”, and he wasn’t kidding. If you give someone $15 for a $11 charge, they’ll keep it. If you give someone $20 for a $11 charge, they’ll keep it. As interested in tips they are, the more rude and sullen they are. Taxi drivers were very friendly though.

Prudes – For all of Las Vegas’s reputation for lasciviousness, they’re actually pretty prudish. Prostitution is illegal. A club cannot show fully nude women and possess an alcoholic licence at the same time (you will never pay so much for fruit punch). There is actually a curfew for people ages 21 and younger.

The Bosses – There appears to be a lot of excess staff around. Some people, it seems as if their sole jobs are to stand in front of doors. There was this one guy who’s only job was to supervise the shuttle at Circus Circus. He was attached to an oxygen tank. :O I guess the unions are pretty strong!

Food – Las Vegas’s reputation for cheap food is a bit exaggerated. Sure, the Westward Ho serves 5 cent coffee and 99 cent lemon lime margaritas (with almost no tequila), but most food deals are offered at weird times and quite frankly suck. The only real deal can be had at the various McDonald’s on the Strip. Expect to pay at least $10 US at a buffet for any decent food. Even then, most of what’s on the table will be fried or covered in cream, or both. I was relieved to get back home and eat food I couldn’t see my own reflection in.

View – Have you noticed how all the promotional photos of the Strip are all taken at night? At night, you can’t see the construction, peeling paint, and litter.

“I don’t know if you’ve ever seen the Las Vegas strip, heaped itself like a buffet with faux cultures and obscene proclamations of wealth and grandeur. I’m just saying it’s not hard to tell who has the winning strategy around here.”

– Tycho Brae, Penny Arcade

Enough said.

Spent the last week in Las Vegas at the Circus Circus. The first interesting thing that struck me is that the Vegas we all know and fear is really just a four mile stretch of the Las Vegas Boulevard, nicknamed the Strip. It isn’t even in the city of Las Vegas – to save on taxes, those rambling supercasinos technically reside in Clark County, just west of the city limits.

Las Vegas is like a microcosmic parody of North America with its ubiquituous asphalt and manmade sanctuaries, lots of money changing hands, and big everything – big buildings, big people, and big stakes. I looked around the casinos – invariably they have low, blackened ceilings, and hundreds of people at hundreds of slot machines making terrific amounts of noise – and I see people with droopy eyelids and grim faces, sullen casino staff, cheap vinyl and cheap trinkets, and an endless array of blinking lights and electronic sounds at such a high magnitude that I could still hear the slots in my sleep.

Everyone sells. We had pizza delivery flyers crammed into our door. Taxis have three billboards on the roof and one attached to the trunk. Inside, there are two more mini-ads flanking a flatscreen playing commercials plus racks of coupon books. Everywhere you walk along the Strip, people are standing around, either trying to push a flyer for an “escort service” or a timeshare (this pitch unwaveringly begins with a “Are you free tonight?”).

Are these people really having fun, just interacting with a slot machine for hours on end? Do slots really just encourage sociopathy? It was kinda depressing.