The Domain of Steven

The French intern at my summer job learned English through British schools, and while he could passably converse with the rest of the Brits in the office, he found our American accents to be a rather big hindrance to comprehension. This amused me to no end.

I miss England sometimes. The company, too.

Perhaps it was the attention I received, not only as an American-accented Chinese (actually a minority for once) but also as an intern from abroad (of which I was the first). People were curious about me, about where I came from. They wanted to know whether everything they’d heard about New York City was true, and though I barely know the other side of my block, I had plenty of things to tell them about it. God, I had conversation topics. And each conversation, delightful in itself, was made all the better by hot British accents.

I was talking with Chris about my time there, since he is interested in studying abroad, and conveyed this sense of celebrity status. I would be singled out for being Asian, and pegged for an American once I opened my mouth. They’d ask almost immediately, “are you American?”

To the disappointment of some, I did not come back with a British accent, but Chris noticed that I was imitating a British accent when I quoted them. I hadn’t done it on purpose, I was simply relaying what was ingrained in my mind. The “are” was pronounced more like a gentle “ah,” and American used a “meh” in place of the “mare” sound.

When we imitate the British we make ourselves sound haughty, but when the British imitate us they make themselves sound like redneck retards. No joke. I also found this endlessly amusing. In fact, endlessly amusing would be a recurring theme while there, provoked by places like Poundland (as in currency, not weight) and conflicting concepts like suspenders. Everything there was different, and yet familiar enough to keep me insulated from the worst of culture shock.

Best of all? Net profit. Also, apparently I am the British definition of Filipino, as evidenced by their consistency in guessing my nationality.

Apologies in advance for obscurity.

There used to be a time when people would crowd into my room to watch Ninja Warrior and The Colbert Report. It was a time when Papa Johns was frequent and delightful, when we had to schedule hangouts on the weekends to accomodate my work schedule, when it was predicted and feared that seawater and the searing sun would cause my skin to have fits. A time of firsts: sleepovers, karaoke, banter, bunnies.

Those were not the most notable features of the time, though. It is more distinctly remembered as a time when memory foam was thoroughly appreciated, when strong tones were not, when steam was constantly recirculated in a futile attempt to make sense of it. It was when the borders of your mom expanded to gleeful smiles and rolled eyes, when you were young was fussed over and grown to be loved, and when Catan was played cooperatively. When talks would be long, frequent, and grandiose.

But that time is best remembered through the moments that caused me to lose more of them. Can I really say that I’ve gotten better if I often replay them in my mind? That I’m no longer affected by something I look back on with such nostalgia?

I moved off the reservation solely because of the hope that maybe I could relive some of those times. But it’s never that easy to forget. You never need to tell someone what you think of them, and so you don’t. It is always their intent to hurt you. They are always trying, but they’re not the ones who end up hurt.

Some people miss the good ol’ Calvin and Hobbes days. I just miss Hobbes.

Spring break isn’t anything remarkable to blog about this year. I didn’t decide to to go some island with wonderful weather or abroad to some place with lax alcohol or drug use laws. Despite this, this spring break needs to be one of the most remarkable. The past few weeks have seen me at my most unproductive and most unmotivated, behavior that would only lead me back down a well-beaten and much-hated path, and I need to elicit change in order to keep me on a more desirable one.

Becoming a morning person would be exactly the change I need. Or at least, stop being a night person. It just isn’t working out. Many nights recently have illustrated that very point. I love the worker’s high that I get from being productive, from coding and seeing things work, from poring over and finally understanding concepts. I used to associate these moments of heightened concentration with late nights illuminated by my monitor and my desk lamp, but recent experiences have proven contrary. They’ve left me at the wee hours of the morning with little to show but a pile of fatigue on my eyes.

But I randomly decided to rest my eyes a couple weeks ago, and as with almost all instances of me resting my eyes during the school year, I didn’t wake up for some time. This particular nap was particularly lengthy, and some would even call it sleeping. Yes, I think there’s an unfamiliar but more fitting term for it, sleeping early. I slept at 8 and woke up at 4.

Now even for a normal person, waking up at 4 is like what the fuck are you doing you crazy bastard. I surprisingly didn’t feel that way at all. I felt…energized. Refreshed. Better than I had ever felt even with 10 or 12 hours of sleep. I worked and coded in perfect contentment. It was a sight to see, and it is a sight I want to see again.

It will mean I will have to abandon all those late night friends, forsake all those late night conversations. They were what perhaps cemented me in my role as a night owl. I enjoyed the company, the support, the mutual understanding of our situations and the comraderie forged because of our similarities. Does this mean that I’m trading friends for sleep? If so, here’s to the nights we felt alive, and here’s to goodbye, because if all works well, tomorrow is not going to come too soon. It’s finally going to come right when I want it to.

Here’s to a semester where I wasn’t ashamed to tell people how I was doing in school, where I didn’t habitually cut classes, where I was proud of my work and myself, where I lost friends and met new ones, where I entered more contests than I’ve ever entered, where I won more contests than I’ve ever won, where I realized the path I should be heading along, where I discovered even more about myself, and where I finally picked myself up off the ground.

Here’s to success. Here’s to motivation. Here’s to foolishly fighting the fight and forgetting to fascinate. Here’s to falteringly forgiving the forgotten. Here’s to obfuscation.

Here’s to the one semester I would not have done any other way.

It’s still hard to imagine my parents as people who once had lives like the one I’m leading right now. To me, their lives had always started with…well, me.

It’s when tidbits about their past are fed to me that I start to get curious about what their lives were like before they settled down. My father offhandedly mentioned that he actually entered Polytechnic University as a chemical engineer major, only to discover that he didn’t like chemistry. It was then that he turned to silversmithing, and finally deciding on mechanical engineering.

My father, the man who loved his job so much that he set up a drafting table and work environment in his basement, actually thought he wanted to do something else? I can’t imagine him as a chemical engineer, and I didn’t even know silversmithing was a major!

My parents actually bought a house in Brooklyn, on 70th street and 20th avenue. They had intended to move out from our 1-bedroom apartment in Queens, away from all the relatives that lived above us or within a few minutes drive of us, away from the routes and venues and nuances that I know so intimately. I wouldn’t have gone to Montessori, Renaissance, and maybe not even Mega Academy. I would have lived a mere three blocks from my friend Sally, who currently lives two hours away by train.

But for whatever reason, they didn’t move out. My dad drove there during the fall to sweep the leaves in front of the property and in the winter to shovel the snow. Eventually my parents realized that they weren’t going to move there, that taking care of it was too much of a hassle, and that they weren’t strict enough as landlords to make money off of it. They sold the house at a loss just to be rid of it.

When I hear about my parents’ pasts, when I learn about how they stumbled, when I realize that they might be perfect parents but were not always perfect people…through learning about their failures I find the courage to face my own. Not everything fell into place the way they wanted, but I can’t imagine them falling any other way.

Strangely, the closest I came to crying over her was when she was being cursed out. As with all instances of tearing, I was split between wanting to embrace it and suppress it.

It all came about from a thought that had been stubbornly persistent: if I could go back one year, would the knowledge of one outcome change my behavior? Would I work harder towards keeping us together, or would I be resigned and bitter? Would I do nothing and simply appreciate our time more? If so, what would happen when the last day passes uneventfully? Would I assume that the same events happened and call her a liar?

No, I never assume the worst of people; instead, I fear it. Every action would be laced with hesitation and restraint, every hug less heartfelt, every kiss reminding me of the things she did and might still do. The changes in my behavior would be the same reasons why I couldn’t take her back.

Change is what everything boils down to. What would I change? What has changed? Could I change? Could she?

I have always honestly believed that people can be anything they want to be. That they could change themselves to be whoever they wanted to be. I do not, however, believe that you can change someone else; it has to be purely of your own volition and desire. At the end of the day, you are the only person there who can tell you to keep trying.

So no, I don’t think I would try to change what happened, because I did nothing wrong. I did not give the relationship my all, but I gave the relationship everything I was willing to give. I did not always put her over everyone else because I needed to have a life apart from her, and the presence of that life was kept a particular rift from closing. What happened was not something we had any control over; it was simply a result of how we were.

Given the chance to relive that year, I would do everything the same way I did it, up to the day where it was done, and would once again be done. Would I be able to say all this while in the comfort of her arms? No, but that’s exactly why I wasn’t.

You don’t have to worry about overstepping your bounds when you’ve got diarrhea of the mouth.

She always told me that she wanted to make me confident in myself. She wanted to make me believe that I was as smart, sweet, witty and cute as she thought I was. I had always thought that somewhere out there, there would be someone who did find my jokes funny, and my quirks cute, my attempts at romance charming. And somewhere out there, there’s someone who really does have the same balloon fetish you do, or thinks that the huge tumor on your forehead is actually pretty damn sexy. In each of my relationships, I had been propelled by sheer excitement. Someone actually liked someone as strange as me? Someone honestly wanted to spend time with me, and just me?

It was possibly the ultimate compliment. It made me feel secure about myself, made me feel that I could be myself and still experience that mystical feeling called love. That there would finally be someone I could pour all my effort into and have them reciprocate in full, that someone would notice all the little things, make me feel all the things I’ve wanted to feel and maybe a little more. And as doubtful as I had been all my life…she actually succeeded.

I noticed my freshman year of college that I approached people with confidence, raised up and cushioned by the fact that I had someone to run back to if a social encounter ever failed. It made me more confident and outspoken around everyone, and I really do have to thank her for that. It made me unafraid of sharing my hobbies, my jokes, my self…and I had a better idea of who that self was. She reinforced that in me, that my real self was so close to the one she loved, such that I embraced it and let it fly. She helped me define me, even while she herself was so unsure.

But the dip in the Styx wasn’t perfect, and the qualities that perhaps made her cling to me so readily and lovingly were the ones that have left deficiencies in me. Would I ever be able to find a girl that didn’t make her interest so obvious? Would I ever be able to ask one out, or make one see me as a lover and not a friend? Would I ever be able to keep one?

Which is why I have posts like this. Thoughts, dreams, nights, days like this. Just optimistic enough to hope, too rational and risk-averse to substantiate. It rarely affects my attitude towards people…but that doesn’t keep it from affecting me. But I’m still here. I’m still hoping. And perhaps one day I’ll start trying and things will start happening. Because now I know what I want to reclaim, match, and exceed. I have her to thank for making me sure like never before of my reasons for defying reason.

Always…and never. Now all that’s left is just to keep holding my head up high and try to find a decent engine.

Rising Stuyvesant sophmores used to be required to take Drafting 1, and were then required to take either Drafting 2/Honors Drafting or Introduction to Computer Science.

For once in my life, I went past the call of duty by not only taking Honors Drafting, but Intro to Compsci at the same time. To top it off, I took an optional compsci course at the same time, and followed both drafting and compsci course paths to full completion in later years. AP Compsci, both of the senior-level compsci courses, Technical Drawing, and Architecture were what padded out my remaining years at Stuy. Choosing to do the extra work and stick it out with both course paths turned out to be one of the smartest things I’ve ever done, because despite my major being computer science, I was totally prepared for both of my internships, especially my current one at JDP Mechanical.

Transitioning from CADKEY to AutoCAD was easier than I expected. I was already familiar with how CAD drawings are handled and manipulated, so all it took was a little experimentation and direction to find out which command I needed to enter to do what I wanted. CAD work is actually quite fun, and while I’m very efficient, I’m still amazed at how fast my dad can mold his drawings to what he sees in his mind.

Unfortunately, drafting is only half the battle, and the lower-paying half at that. The reason my father gets paid the big bucks (big = only slightly more) is because he is able to solve problems. The primary problem is that New York City is brimming with people, Manhattan in particular, and every cubic foot of space is precious. Given the choice between making the machine room comfortably big and squeezing out a couple extra hundred thousand dollars isn’t really a choice at all. Landlords will always choose to make the extra money and hope that their AC and heating units will fit in the little niche carved out in the basement. And therefore, landlords will always need companies like the one my father works for. He coordinates with all the other contractors, trying to make sure that his water pipes can fit alongside the gnarled masses of the electrician’s cables and the plumber’s sewage lines, while making sure he isn’t getting in the way of the gigantic ducts strewn across the ceiling.

My father is paid well because it is difficult to compensate for human error while minimizing costs and working on a deadline. It’s a difficult job that requires an intimate knowledge of the industry and its conventions. From a purely practical standpoint, it’s the best career for me to jump into. It is such a niche field that experienced, dedicated workers are far and few, which means companies are more willing to train and cultivate workers. I already have a great foundation of CAD knowledge, and I found that my mind easily warped to decipher schematics and reconstruct them in my mind. To top it off, I have one of the best draftsmen in the industry as a personal mentor.

But the best worker and father I’ve known also gave me one of the best pieces of advice I’ve ever heard: “Do something you love, because if you like it, you won’t mind putting in the hours to become great at it.” It summarizes very well the key to his success, but it also summarizes why I’m so hesitant to take up what would otherwise be a great opportunity. I know I could be good at it, but I don’t know if I would be willing to put in the effort to become great. I remember happily spending hours coding up my first programming project, making a freakish monstrosity easily two or three times the size of everyone else’s projects. At least a third had been handwritten during my free time between classes and on the train, without ever wondering or worrying about the amount of time I was putting into the project. Programming was fun, and still is. Debugging is frustrating but ultimately rewarding. Difficulties are exciting challenges, not hinderances.

That’s the attitude my dad wants me to have, because while he would love for me to follow in his footsteps, he wants me to be happy most of all. My job is going to be somewhere I spend 8+ hours a day, so given the chance, I ought to spend all that time doing something I love. I want to keep being able to say that I love my life and have never regretted the choices I’ve made.

So I’m going to go for it. I’m not going to settle; I’m going to keep dreaming and desiring, so that one day I’ll be able to do. If I fail, it is not going to be for lack of dedication. But if I succeed, it will be.

Every character in World of Warcraft is allowed to learn two tradeskills, things like blacksmithing or alchemy, though in WoW they’re called professions. Professions are like college educations; they put you deep into debt in order to complete, and they’re near-worthless until you finally do. Once you’ve learned all that you can, you want to put that knowledge to good use, namely to work off those training expenses. Some people tersely advertise “300 engi/alch,” “port to darn/if/sw 1g,” or “arc transmute 5g.” I chose to advertise a little more flamboyantly.

“Like vibrating mechanical objects, but can’t tell the difference between a Mechanical Squirrel and a Sniper Scope? Want to get back at that mage with an exploding sheep? Let Iskar the Incredible Inventor with his 300 Engineering handle all your engineering needs!”

“Have slippery fingers and keep dropping your vials? Whether it’s Swiftness potions or Rocket Fuel, let Iskar the Incredible Imbiber with his 300 Alchemy handle all your substance-related needs!”

“Parents never talk to you about the birds and the bees? I can reenact the story with your Thorium Bar and Arcanite Crystal for just 5g! Come see the Miracle of Life…arcanite bar style!”

“Tired of Aragon the paladin and Gimlii the warrior begging for money? Change it up and have Llegolaz the hunter beg instead! Take a portal to Darnassus for just 99s! Friends ride free!”

“Tired of the contaminated canals of Lagwind and the soot-filled air of Lagforge? Take a trip to the clean, cool, tree-hugging wonderland that is Darnassus for just 99s! Friends ride free!”

I programmed all of these messages into individual “macros” that so I could advertise a particular service to all three major cities with the click of a button. The biggest rewards would be when people would LOL in the trade channel after my advertisement spam. The racier ones often provoke a LMAO or a WTF. Sometimes people would send me a private message saying that they didn’t need a transmute, but if they did, they’d buy one from me. Whatever the reaction, I enjoyed eliciting them and making money in the process, and it’s something that I’ve missed since I stopped playing WoW. I miss the people in my guild, their quirks, their voices, their talents, their generosity and companionship. I miss completely annihilating players that think I’m an easy target. I miss manipulating the economy, perfecting methods of killing a dozen monsters at a time when other people have to slog through them individually. I miss being good at something. The feeling of success is what I look for in a good game, and I stuck with WoW because it provided it so well.

The game has since changed drastically, and made itself dead to me in the process. I was in love with what it had been, not what it now is. I’m sure that I’ve changed in the interim just as the people who I played it with have changed. Even if they don’t remember me as fondly as I remember them, the least I can hope for is for my guildmaster’s words to ring true: “Iskar, no one will forget your macros.”

I didn’t get any work done when I was sick this past weekend. I had told myself that I’d rather be healthy and unproductive than ill and unproductive, but tonight is a night of healthiness and unproductivity, and I found myself wishing that I was sick so that people wouldn’t blame me for being unproductive. That maybe if I had some terminal illness, people wouldn’t expect anything of me. I don’t want to do any of this. Sometimes I feel like watching TV, or playing games, but honestly I don’t know what I want to do. At times like these I want to do nothing. Just play whatever game I’m hooked on, try new ones, make feigned attempts at exercising, sit around and wallow in my memories, sleep.

Resigning myself to a fate would be so much easier than taking control of it. It’s especially hard when I don’t much care where that fate leads me. College will let me go anywhere, but I don’t want to go anywhere. I want to get a mindless job somewhere and live in a small apartment and spend my free time being lazy and doing useless things. Last summer’s routine was wake up, work, load up World of Warcraft, raid, PvP, sleep, and it was great. I want a boring life like that because it isn’t at all boring. It’s filled with small pleasures. It’s contentment. It’s happiness. It’s having nothing expected of you, nothing asked of you, no goals to meet and no achievements to fulfill.

I have no ambition. My soul was placed in the wrong body. My wonderful family and girlfriend were meant for someone who wanted to go places, to make a name for himself. He was supposed to make his family proud of him. I should have been born into the family that lived in the middle of nowhere and had no prospects, so that nothing would be wasted.

If I had that life, would I ever want more? I don’t know. I certainly didn’t know I would ever want to be dying and in pain. But as I’m lying here in a pile of failures that would take true ambition to climb out of, I’m wondering if I would even have the ambition to do everything differently if I started over. This semester was supposed to be the one where those habits stopped. I always start out so strong, so resolved! But there are more sentences I could use the word “always” in, and none of them speak highly of me.

I need stronger guidance. I need someone’s ambition to ride along, to direct my focus and make use of it. I need someone to recognize what I can do and use me. After that…all I can hope is that they bring me to the top with them.

If I had a lifetime to train as a fighter, I would specialize in counters. I would wait until my opponent attacked, then analyze and redirect it to throw him off balance, following up with an attack at the newly created opening.

When I play chess, I always prefer to be black because I do not like taking the initiative when the sides are equal. Even when playing white, I would use the extra move to build up a fortified position. As my opponent would mount an offense, I would deftly repel the attack and then take advantage of the weakness caused by overextending. (Skip to the next paragraph if you’re not a chess geek.) I’m sure you’ve seen a bishop dive towards the side of the board close to the opponent’s pawns in their starting positions in order to snatch up a piece. And I’m sure you’ve seen the bishop get chased back by the pawns, leading to the bishop getting stuck in some obscure nook while the pawn player’s bishop, knight, rook, and possibly queen now have room to breathe. I’m the pawn player. They’ve looked to gain a small advantage or equalize the playing field, and I’ve manipulated the situation to deny it and open up more possibilities for me.

When I play Magic: The Gathering, I actually do not choose to go second. This is because I do not have to actively create new opportunities with all my pieces like in chess; rather, a new opportunity presented to me automatically each turn as I draw cards, and going first ensures that I can strike at an exposed opponent as early as possible. The board starts as a clean slate, unlike chess where everything is already defended. Indeed, my Magic playing style is no different than that of chess or fighting: I am what is aptly called a control player. I enjoy playing cards that break down the foundation my opponent tries to set up, or that nullify his efforts and leave his resources exhausted. By locking my opponent down, I can set up for a decisive blow. I also have a somewhat comparable propensity for cards in aggro decks, since constant overwhelming force keeps the opponent off-balance sometimes more efficiently than a control player could hope for.

I should have expected that in mediums with so many different approaches, I would learn more about myself by examining the strategies I used. I approach social situations the same reserve I bring to duels in Magic and chess. I want to predict the best thing to say or do, but that requires me to deeply understand the people I’m dealing with. I strive to be empathic to the point where I’m easily overloaded. I can read a single person, and am comfortable with a group of sociable friends, but group dynamics with an unknown person tend to be too much for me. In those situations I simply blank out: I’m fully aware of what is going on, and will respond to questions directed towards me, but I can’t manage to think of anything to say. Even when conscious of my absence in the conversation, my mind works impossibly slower at generating anything beyond interjections.

I prefer to read and respond. I may start up conversation with you, perhaps lead a discussion, but make no mistake, I’m still of the same disposition, I’ve just analyzed the situation and determined that provoking a reaction was the best move. I mentally jot down potential conversation starters as the talk progresses, ready to whip out the most interesting one when the energy wanes. With groups, talks tend to move around too much for me to complete so many mental calculations. I can always jumpstart a conversation, but I can’t think of ways to insert my own thoughts between keeping contingency plans and reading the everyone’s attitudes.

I’ve noted many times, most poignantly when handing in late papers, that I should lower the standards I set for myself. If I did not expect myself to be able to handle my opponent’s attack, how would my chess playing be affected? Would I not be as addicted to denial cards in Magic? Would I be more outspoken in conversations?

Cristen’s continued presence in my life answers my question for me. Yes, if I changed my attitude, my behavior would change, possibly for the better. But at the same time, I can be wonderful just the way I am.

Can a couple have a glaring problem go unnoticed until a better lover comes along?

If it was grounds for breaking up, why was it not noticed before?

If it was noticed but ignored for lack of a better lover available, was the deserter justified in making the abandoned believe nothing was wrong and that their future was assured, even while unhappy?

Are reunions really about enjoying each other’s company and bragging about accomplishments? I get the feeling that underneath it all, everyone is secretly interested in not just seeing whether or not their friends have changed, but finding out whether they’ve changed themselves.

I had cried that night.

I was sure that if I kept my mind off of it, I could have not cried, but I wanted to. In breaking up with Cristen, out of spite and frustration and bitterness, I chose to give up. Whether it was because she couldn’t see my point, or because I was trying to remove the tetraskelion, I was exhausted, and just wanted to let it all go. To speed up the recovery time by releasing all my emotions in a successive bursts, leaving me shaken but not stirred. To curl up, only to want to stand up and stretch afterwards.

I had had the romantic notion of crying in the shower, the closest thing I could come to rain, removing the need to open my eyes or wipe away tears or even be seen or heard. I hadn’t intended to tell my mother about it when I went into the bedroom to get fresh clothes, but after a long pause and a concerned look from her, it just came out.

Saying it to her was even harder than saying it to Cristen, because it was no longer an attack, but a loss that I hadn’t fully thought through. But before I speak, I think. And so I thought, and I cried and I ran. I wish that there was someone there in that moment that I could have run into and grasped for dear life, like Cristen once did for me. A person, even uncaring or unattached, would have provided so much more comfort than the tile wall. The warmth helped.

To her credit, my mother let me talk it out with her afterwards, but I didn’t have any more steam to vent. I was just…gone. I had cut my ties, paid my dues, and was willing to try to move on.

But random luck and unintentional conversations succeeded for the second time at bringing us together. I’ve forgotten how the talk ebbed and flowed, but I do know that the small flicker of hope that I couldn’t quell was fed and had begun to flourish. It wasn’t tempered with regret, but instead the ecstasy of comprehension, the contentment of appreciation.

I’m glad that you realized that you wanted to be with me, Cristen, because I want to be with you too.

Happy and sad,
Tired and awake,
I’m not sure how much more
of this cycle I can take.

I procrastinate. I sleep at 1 or 2 AM on a daily basis, waking up at 6:25 AM. I do very little homework, if at all, due in no small part to my tendency to get sidetracked as well as starting my homework as late as 11 PM despite coming home several hours earlier. I regularly feel remorse for my actions, though inaction would be the more appropriate term, and then five minutes later go back to procrastinating.

And yet I keep doing it because once the ten seconds of remorse runs its course, I’m perfectly content. Maybe even happy. There are plenty of things I love to do in the world, plenty of things that I have already done, and plenty of things that I have yet to do. I could step away right now and I’d be satisfied with the things I’ve done. Content with the memories made.

That contentment is perhaps what’s keeping me from being more efficient. Most of the time I like how my life is going. Sure, I’m sleepy during particular classes, and will eventually get yelled at by a teacher for handing in a project late, but I’ll do fine. I’ve done fine, I will do fine, and I’ll be content with however “fine” is defined, so why change that?

I had thought that with my shifting from Xanga to Blogger to Deadjournal to Freewebs to Movable Type to Wordpress that maybe I wasn’t a traditional. I do like new techy things: new gadgets, new programs, new discoveries. Yet the more I think about it, while there may be instances where I like to shift around, I really prefer to settle into grooves. Be it in an online world or in school, I’ve had the most fun when it was something I could rely on.

I just hope that when the dust has cleared after I’ve left college, that something will be a someone.