Halloween

Haha... so I thought my parents were going to be giving out candy to trick or treaters like they used to, but that is not the case. I got home from work a few minutes ago and although all the cars were there, the house was completely dark. Turns out my parents were holed up in their bedroom watching tv with the lights off like a couple of refugees.

Even funnier, when I went into the kitchen to grab something to eat, my mom came down and whispered "Turn the light off! Or just open the microwave and use the light from that."
"Okay Mom... but you don't have to whisper, it's not like the kids can hear us too."

Rainy Day

Hello, rainy day,
you make asphalt smell so weird.
Is that a mushroom?

also

Pitter on my panes,
at least useful for one thing:
sentra, white again.

I typically enjoy the occasional rain, especially when I'm back at home. It's been a good four years since I've been around for the changing of the seasons here in Cupertino... there isn't really a concept of seasons in San Diego. So everytime I see the streets littered with fallen leaves, frost on the grass and a gloomy rainy day I get flash-kicked with a sense of nostalgia.

One of my most vivid childhood memories is of walking home from Regnart in the rain. It was one of those days where you could look up and see the rain coming down more horizontally than vertically, leading to overflowing drains and street gutters. My black nikes were soaked to the brim and made that disgusting wet rubber squeak with every step I took, and I'm pretty sure I was bright enough to forget my umbrella and wear my green shorts that day. I had the most unpleasant feeling in the world of wet socks to deal with since recess... and despite all of that I distinctly remember enjoying it. Maybe not Shawshank Redemption-esque, when Andy bursts out of the shit pipes, but it was just a hallmark of simpler times. Carefree.

Over the summer, Jon and I talked about this general topic a number of times. We would be sitting in the library studying and right outside the window would always be kids running around doing cartwheels. It usually went something like this:
"Dude, they are so carefree and they don't even know it."
"Yeah, I'm so jealous..."
"Let's go steal their scooters, we'll flank them."

It's just hard to determine at exactly what point I started taking life so seriously. Lucky for me, I've never been a stresser anyway. On the same token, sometimes I wonder what it would be like to go live in the midwest, eschew all conventional responsibility and farm grain for a living.

I think the underlying tone is somewhere in this story, one of my favorites.

The investment banker was at the pier of a small coastal village when a small boat with a fisher docked.

Inside the small boat were several large fish. The banker complimented the fisher on the quality of his fish and asked how long it took to catch them.

The fisher replied, “Only a little while.” The banker asked, “Why didn’t you stay out longer and catch more fish?” The fisher said, “With this I have more than enough to support my family’s needs.” The banker then asked, “But what do you do with the rest of your time?” The fisher said, “I sleep late, play with my children, nap with my wife, and stroll into the village each evening where I sip wine and play guitar with my friends. I have a full life.”

The banker scoffed, “I have a degree in business and could help you. You should spend more time fishing and with the proceeds buy a bigger boat. With the proceeds from the bigger boat you could buy several more boats and hire people to do the fishing for you. Instead of selling your catch to a middleman you would sell directly to the processor; eventually you could own your own cannery. You would control the product, processing, and distribution. You could leave this small coastal fishing village and move to a big city to run an ever-expanding enterprise.”

The fisher asked, “But, how long would all this take?” The banker replied, “Fifteen to twenty years.” “But what then?” asked the fisher. The banker laughed and said, “That’s the best part. When the time was right you would sell your company stock to the public and become very rich, you would make millions.”

“Millions?… Then what?”

The banker said, “Then you would retire! Move to a small coastal fishing village where you would sleep late, fish a little, play with your kids, nap with your wife, and stroll to the village in the evenings where you could sip wine and play your guitar with your friends. Think what a full life you would have!”

Oh yeah, and I hope it rains tomorrow night so my parents don't have to deal with trick or treaters. That, or they should put out an empty bowl with a sign that says "Take one only! Happy Halloween!"

Discipline

I used to think that just because I was in good shape, I was a pretty disciplined guy. I went to the gym, I ate decently, went easy on the vices and all that good stuff.

A few years later, I realize... not so much. It's really a matter of degrees, and I was lucky enough that the lowest degree of discipline met the requisite minimum for my goals. The sad truth of it is that my body is probably just genetically predisposed to respond well to resistance training and etc, the same way some of you can grow full Amish beards and porn 'staches.

My goals and motivations changed over the years, from wanting to run 10ks, bench as much as possible to looking good naked, but I never once really felt super committed and driven towards them. I'm not saying that I didn't work at them, or that things were effortless for me; I was just lucky. In a way this was kind of a startling realization for me, because I had tied my concept of discipline, drive and commitment in with those achievements for a long time. Do I know how to truly buckle down and conquer something when I'm presented with challenges? Do I actually have it in me to achieve that which isn't in my immediate reach?

One of my clients is tiny, probably 5 foot 1 and 110 lbs, and the amount to which I push her is borderline excessive. But I do it because she's got the discipline to keep with the workout and not give up so she's seeing great results accordingly. Yes, there are contextual social roles at play here, and yes people that get trainers are probably self-selected to have more discipline... But coming to a session and really bringing it to a session are two entirely different things.

Anyway, I tend to use the analogy of video games when I think about traits like that. Everyone has a certain amount of "trait points" that they can assign to themselves, and they can either max out some certain traits or spread them around in alarming mediocrity. So for me, this has no doubt come at the cost of my sense of direction (zero points), allergy resistance (zero points) and resistance to awkwardness (one point).

Portrait

http://www.futurama-madhouse.com.ar/misc/FuturamaCast.png

Deterioration

I didn't touch on it earlier, but another reason that I created this blog is because of my law school personal statement. As I was editing and revising it, I was getting increasingly annoyed with the sentences I was constructing. They seemed wordy, awkward and repetitive in structure. I used to consider myself a good writer, or at least a level above what I was producing in my PS. I think I had to write a grand total of 4 papers my last 2 years at UCSD, so let's say I'm out of practice.

I also blame it on the fact that the last time I did any kind of consistent reading for pleasure was, get this, in elementary school and jr high. Hell, I read Lord of the Rings in elementary school, so I guess I peaked about 14 years ago.

Point being, here we are. Reason #x: an exercise in writing.

Modesty

Last month on the Caltrain, I looked around to find a seat where I wouldn't have to sit next to anyone. It was surprisingly packed for a Friday night, so I settled for sitting next to an older gentlemen... let's face it, even we feel a little more at ease sitting next to someone like that than a younger folk that looks more like us. He made an idle comment about the surroundings, and that kicked off an hour-long conversation.

He was on the Caltrain going back home to Millbrae from viewing the Leonardo Da Vinci exhibit that was on loan from Italy that his wife refused to accompany him to. The way he expressed his fascination with the inventions kind of reminded me of my Dad, just a little too curious for their own good but ultimately that's what got them to where they are. Now to the moral: I asked him what exactly he did, and he just replied that he was a doctor. Having seen a bunch of people study and take the MCATs recently, I asked him about them and the whole admissions process, to which he jokingly replied "Well.. I think I passed." I asked him where he practiced and went to school, and he said "Oh, in the area," and when I finally asked which school, he just curtly said "Stanford." Oookay then. But that was the twig that held the dam, as details came spilling forth after that: he went to UCLA on a full scholarship, shared ideas with a Nobel Prize winner in chemistry and had actually retired the day before as a successful clinical trials researcher.

Still, his show of modesty and the fact that he didn't feel like he needed to come outright and impress me made me admire him that much more. I'm sure he probably felt no need to show up a random 22 year old kid on the Caltrain and just wanted to go home to his semi-retirement, but I still think that behavior like that hints at deeper traits.

Let's put this is terms that are more applicable and relevant to us. You meet someone at a party, and within the first five minutes of talking to them, you discover that he lives to ski, only does triple diamond courses, and, for the hell of it, was in the Olympic trials. How would you react? "Oh, that's so cool!" but what's with the need for all the self-affirmation? Thanks for blowing your wad prematurely all over me. They already know it's cool, so what's that stank of? Maybe... a sense of identity that is tied up only in skiing, insecurity, a braggart and low confidence. Conversely, you meet someone at a party and they only bring up skiing when you mention it first. They say they're alright at it, and don't go into anymore detail. Then a mutual friend comes up and tells you that he was in the Olympic trials... Now who are you going to be more impressed by?

Anyway, I admire modesty and wish I had more of it.

Tickets

Big WTF LMAONADE ROFLCOPER LOL@ME and whatever else there is to express my latest traffic ticket. Fine, this is the second time I've gotten this exact ticket in this exact spot, so maybe the onus is on me to have learned a lesson, but as Gob would say... CMON!

Violation of: CVC 22500(F) Parked on Sidewalk.

Did I mention this sidewalk was right in front of my house? My first gripe with this is that 7 Springs is supposedly private property, so cops should not be allowed to patrol the area or ticket violations they may see (kind of like when cops find evidence illegally, it is disallowed in trial). Second, there is a grass/cement island in my court that cars always park next to with their left wheels to the curb and I didn't see any tickets on those winshields. Third, being that it's the end of the month and the ticket was written just before midnight, it seems pretty obvious to me that this fool had a quota to meet. I realize it's Cupertino and the heart of suburbia, but isn't there something more productive our tax dollars can pay for? And fourth... WTF? In front of my own house!

Sadly, this might only tie for my dumbest ticket ever... with getting pulled over for not wearing a seatbelt. Thank god it was before this whole "Click it or ticket" campaign or I would have gotten royally fined.

Tidbits:
-Getting fingerprinted is inkless nowadays.
-Welcome back, NBA season! I missed you.