Under Construction

Posted on July 12, 2011 by Alan

I need to repurpose this blog (again) in part because I’ve started to do some more writing for other websites, and since more people will read them there than here, I have less of an incentive to publish things on this blog.

I started keeping a regular blog during my sophomore year of high school. Obviously a lot has changed since then. I’ve already password-protected my high school posts and stopped using it to write absolutely everything on my mind. I also don’t have the kind of time I used to. I guess I never had that much time, but in high school I found a way to do reasonably well without sacrificing the things I enjoyed. Accomplishing that in college has proven more difficult – not only because I spend more time on academics, but also because I feel more compelled to spend my extra energy on activities at my college rather than on the internet. Typing at a computer is what I do when I write papers. If I have free time, I might as well spend it doing something a little more active.

I may switch this to a Tumblr and keep things more short-form and save the longer stuff for actual publications. I really have no idea, though. I’ll keep you posted. Not that I know who “you” is at this point.

I’ve been in Hong Kong for almost a month now. It feels…different. Which is vague and probably rather obvious, but I’ll elaborate on that later. Or, if you know me, you can just ask me about it and I’ll tell you. A lot has changed over the  years, but one thing that hasn’t is my ability to talk about myself for way too long.

Speaking of publications (and narcissism), I recently wrote an article for Denizen Magazine, an online publication for third culture kids. Read it here.

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The February Slump

Posted on March 3, 2011 by Alan

I can never figure out the way time works anymore. For example, it’s been eighteen days since I’ve written a post. Does it feel like lots of time has passed because I’ve gotten lots of stuff done? Or does it feel like February 13 was yesterday because each day has been so repetitive? I’ve given up trying to solve that one.

I’m pretty sure you need more than two data points to form an actual theory, but I’m going to go ahead and call “The February Slump” a real thing at Reed College. For lack of a scientific description (since I barely passed chemistry here, after all), I’ll just say that The February Slump refers to the fact that, during the month of February, life at Reed College starts to suck just a little bit more. And I’m not projecting, since the month is over and I have 28 days of evidence to back me up. Here’s what I mean:

- For freshmen, the college honeymoon period has long gone. Hell, I felt the same way last year. Maybe it’s the weather that got to you (unless it was Thursday’s snow, which was awesome as far as Portland snowfalls go). Maybe that Hum paper stressed you out a little too much. Or maybe you went home and realized that life in this quirky little academic pressure cooker makes you just a little crazy, and it felt good to be around people who weren’t spouting Greek/literary references at every possible opportunity or complaining about the shit tons of reading they have to do for tomorrow (which, ironically, will appear in the post a little bit later). Regardless of the details, you’d be hard-pressed to convince me that the Reed spell hasn’t shattered into a million pieces by this point.

- Juniors have to start thinking about their quals, and seniors need to get their rears in gear for that whole “thesis” thing I’ve been hearing so much about.

- Most of January is still spent enjoying winter break, so that’s fine. Spring break is in the middle of March, and by the time we get to April we’re close enough to the finish line to start counting down the days till Renn Fayre. What’s so special about February? What did we have to look forward to this month? And if you say “Valentine’s Day”, I’ll throw a box of chocolates at your face…and then sheepishly ask for it back, because throwing food is a sad waste. Anyway.

On a side note, one of the most obnoxious things about Valentine’s Day isn’t the trite romantic gestures or the sappiness – it’s that little group of self-styled “independent” single people who parade around with their noses in the air going “I don’t need some stupid, corporate, sexist holiday to make me happy! Valentine’s Day is dumb!” Really? Does the happiness of others bother you that much? Maybe all of the cliches annoy me just a little bit, but that probably has more to do with my dislike of cliches in general rather than with some personal vendetta against all things romantic. Plus, I like it when people are happy. And if I were in a relationship, I’d probably end up doing something disgustingly sweet as well. And good luck convincing me that you wouldn’t, either.

Right. There was a point to all of this. Long story short, the only thing special about February is that it ends earlier.

- Everything seems to ratchet up a notch. Case in point: my schedule. Yeah, here’s the part where I put on my Reed hat and complain about my homework load/academic schedule. I should probably preface this by saying that, despite my alarming levels of frazzled-ness as of late, I can’t think of another school I’d rather be going to.

After countless modifications (both before and after the semester started), my schedule

Let’s compare my first semester schedule with my current one:

First Semester:

CHIN 210 – Second Year Chinese (MWF, 2:10-3:00; TuTh, 12:00-12:50)

POL 240 – Introduction to International Politics (MWF, 11:00-11:50)

ECON 201 – Introduction to Economic Analysis (TuTh, 10:30-11:50)

ENG 205 – Introduction to Fiction: The 19th Century Novel (MWF, 3:10-4:00)

Second Semester:

CHIN 210 – Second Year Chinese (MWF, 2:10-3:00; TuTh, 12:00-12:50)

LITC 346 – Post-Mao Fiction and Film (TuTh, 10:30-11:50)

POL 358 – Strategy, War, and Politics (TuTh, 2:40-4:00)

HIST 362 – Revolutionary America (MW, 3:10-4:30)

If you do some intense textual analysis, you’ll notice that the word “introduction” is notably absent from my second semester schedule, and that all of the course numbers are now in the 300s. In other words, there are no freshmen in my classes (except maybe Chinese language class). In other words, things are now way harder.

You’ll also notice that three of my classes are twice-a-week, 80 minute periods. On paper, this means that I only have 50 minutes of class on Fridays. This also means that my Monday-Thursdays are considerably more stressful, especially when you add my extra-curriculars. Witness the scheduling imbalances in my weekly to-dos:

Summary: My Fridays are chill, but Monday-Thursday is more intense as a result.

In other words, I’ve been having a much more difficult time staying positive and upbeat over the last 30 days or so. I was much better at it last semester, but shaking this general sense of futility has been a little tougher recently. And staying up late to study is much tougher when your days are that much more draining.

There’s some kind of silver lining to all of this, though. When I felt this way last year, a huge red flag in my head went up that said “This isn’t right! You should transfer! Waah!”. Then, by around May, I was as happy as I had ever been and decided that I would never leave this college until I graduated, no matter how low the lows felt. A year ago, I didn’t know that things would get better. Now I do.

This college can be a lonely place sometimes, especially when the dark and depressing weather isn’t doing you any favors. But I really do have so much to be thankful for here, despite everything I’ve been complaining about. Part of my recent slump has to do with the fact that I’m finding it increasingly difficult to do things I really care about (e.g. spending time with people), because when I have the energy I don’t have the time, and when I have the time I don’t have the energy.

But things will get better; I just needed to get everything else out there. Maybe it’ll help expedite the process somehow. It’s nothing serious, nothing huge. I’m just glad February is over.

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“Many, Many Things”

Posted on October 9, 2010 by Alan

There’s this one part in “The West Wing” where Josh and Toby are trying to court the votes of several congressmen for a bill that has already been won.  Not surprisingly, Toby thinks it’s a total waste of time.  He also doesn’t conceal his displeasure very well.  Noticing Toby’s discontent, one congressman asks him “Are we keeping you two from something more important?”

Toby responds by saying “Many, many things”.

Once I take that quote out of context and apply it to my life, that’s pretty much been the theme for the last month or so, especially now that we’re “in the swing of things”, so to speak.  Maybe the level of insanity hasn’t reached full tilt, but we’re getting there.  If I’m not mistaken, most of the seniors have already submitted their thesis proposals, and the freshmen will have finished their second Hum papers by tonight.  And the Portland rain has returned (i.e. a seemingly persistent and unavoidable light drizzle.  Good times).  In other words, welcome back to Reed College.

So yeah – many things, both on my mind and in my every day life, and kind of all over the place as well.  Here they are:

- I’m doing a lot more this year.  That was one of my goals at the beginning of the year and I’m starting to see it come to fruition.  It’s kind of cool, but I’m also not making my life any easier.  I have more homework than I did last year.  Then again, so does everybody else, so that fact isn’t worth giving any more than a passing mention.

Here’s the laundry list of “stuff I’m doing besides homework” (I would say “obligations”, but I’m doing all of these things voluntarily):  two a cappella groups, voice lessons, Oh For Christ’s Sake (Christian group), Sort Of Leading A Kind Of Vague Student Group For Third Culture Kids, and a continuation of my summer job with ICM.  ICM is the non-profit organization I worked for over the summer; ask me if you want to know more about it, because I feel like that would take up an entire post on its own.

I hope I don’t sound like I’m complaining, because I’m not.  I’m much more busy this year, and I’m still trying to work out a good balance between studying, health (physical+emotional+mental+spiritual), extracurriculars, and spending time with people.  But at the end of my freshman year, I realized that I can’t spend my time at Reed focusing solely on academics.  I wouldn’t be here if academics didn’t matter to me, but it’s not enough to make me happy here.

I’m trying to stay positive, which is much easier said than done at a place like Reed.  But I’m comforted by the fact that my level of busyness is mostly of my own choosing, and that I’m spending time doing things I care about.  My parents aren’t spending $50,000 a semester for me to complain for four (or more) years.

- I saw “The Social Network” last week, and I really enjoyed it.  I might be a little biased because I love pretty much anything written by Aaron Sorkin, but I think it’s definitely something people should see, especially if you’re around my age.  But more on that some other time, probably during Fall Break.

- Speaking of Fall Break, I’m going to Chicago!  I have friends at Northwestern and UChicago, so that should be fun, even if I’m sort of dropping in on them when they’re in the middle of school.  But besides the fact that I like seeing my friends, I just really wanted to get off-campus and away from the Northwest.  This seems counterintuitive, but I think that I appreciate Reed (and Portland) much more if I take some time to get away from it every so often.

- I need to kick it into high gear for this week before I can take a break.  I also need to manage my time better, i.e. not leaning too heavily on my ability to get assignments done in one night.  It’s not exactly productive.  Plus, I don’t think I can write a six-page response to a Marxist literary critic’s views on Balzac in one night.  I’m a good last-minute worker, but there comes a point when I’m just unnecessarily making my life more stressful.

- I can’t get any work done in the library.  I get too stressed out just by being in that building.  Reed is already an insane academic pressure cooker; the library feels like the pressure cooker of the pressure cooker, if that makes any sense.  Plus, I’m always paranoid that I’ll trip over something and cause everybody to stare daggers at me for making noise.

That’s all for now.  I have a carefully laid plan for the following week in an effort to minimize stress and maximize productivity.

Besides my regular level of homework, my academic obligations for the next six days are as follows:  I have an Economics problem set due on Thursday, a six-page English paper due Friday, and a Chinese midterm on Friday.  So, here’s the gameplan:

1)  Finish my Economics problem set by the end of the day.

2)  Spend Monday through Thursday writing my English paper.  We didn’t read very much literary criticism in high school, so I’m giving myself more time to write this paper than I normally would.

3)  Spend all of Thursday studying for my Chinese midterm.  I feel relatively confident that I can manage that, provided my English paper is finished by then.

Needless to say, spending too much time on the internet today might destroy my aforementioned plans.  I need to get this done sequentially, so I’ll stop here.  I don’t expect that I’ll be writing anything else until Fall Break (one week!) at which point I’ll try to write more frequently.  Ah, the good old days.  Except not really; I’m kind of liking where I am right now.

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Diving (Headfirst) Back Into The Bubble

Posted on September 14, 2010 by Alan

or: “A Whirlwind of Busyness and Insanity/The First Two Weeks of My Sophomore Year and Wait What I’ve Only Been Here Two Weeks It Feels Like Much Longer Than That.”  But I think the first one is a little more concise.

I’ve had very little time for myself lately and that worries me a little, mostly because I feel like a good portion of my mental health rests upon how often and how extensively I can engage in some kind of self-reflection.  Too much of it can be harmful as well (see: Alan circa 2003-2008), but when I look at my schedule, I honestly don’t think “having too much free time to overthink things” is going to be my primary issue of concern.

With that in mind, it’s clear that I need to make time for myself.  Consider this my first attempt of the year.  I have a feeling that this post will be incredibly disjointed if I were to simply write about every single thing that’s been going on my life, so I’m going to take the liberty of separating them into little blurbs for your convenience.  You’re welcome.

It Sure Doesn’t Feel Like a Fortnight

I’m pretty sure I’ve never used the word “fortnight” in everyday conversation.  In this case, I can attribute its usage to the fact that I’ve been reading 19th century British novels in English class, which has inspired me to make an attempt at sounding more British – and, by extension, sounding smarter.  Okay, maybe not.  But more on my English class in a minute.

It almost blows my mind that the freshmen have only been here for two weeks, because I don’t even know if I can describe my life at Reed in terms of time anymore.  (And hell, I’m only a sophomore).  It’s really easy to lose track of time (which may explain why Reedies are always late), especially when the work piles up – and before you know it, you have 1,400 kids manically striving toward Reed’s sacred value of learning for its own sake.  It’s easy to lose track of time when your life consists mostly of books.

Speaking of books…

Academics, Fall ’10 Edition:  Hey, what’s your Major (Major Major Major)?

or: NO MORE SCIENCE CLASSES!

In case I haven’t yet expressed this to you (which, if you know me, is unlikely), I am finished with science classes for the rest of my college career!  And by “science classes”, I mean Chemistry!  Okay, I’m fairly certain that the 2-3 professors in charge of the class (and their grading assistants) think I’m a complete idiot, but I’ll settle for that if it means my Group C requirement is finished.

This semester I’m taking Second Year Chinese, Intro to International Politics, Intro to Economics, and The 19th Century Novel. The primary intent of this semester is to figure out what the hell I want to major in.  Even though I know that, generally speaking, the subject of one’s undergraduate major actually matters less than what most people think, it does matter a little more at Reed because I’m required to write a senior thesis, regardless of what my major is.

By the end of my freshman year, my list of potential majors was as follows: History, Political Science, Economics, English, Religion, History-Literature, International and Comparative Policy Studies

The last two are interdisciplinary majors, both of which I’m still considering.  But I’m also happy to report that I kinda sorta maybe have a better idea of what I’m interested in studying.

I initially wrote another 900 words pertaining to academics and my intended major and all those wonderful things.  Then I realized that the subject probably deserves its own post, so I think I’ll shelve all my internal speculation for the moment and re-write a more topical post later.

Needless to say, my classes have all been going well.  I forgot that it has been three years since I took an economics class, so I’ve been caught off-guard by how little I actually remember.  Chinese has been fun.  I will be fluent in this language.  Eventually.  International politics has been going pretty well, although I’m finding myself a little less interested in the assigned readings than I thought I would be (granted, my anticipated level of interest was extraordinarily high).  And lastly, I forgot how much I love studying literature.  My English class has been great so far, despite some very difficult reading.  That said, Waverley was very rewarding.  My thoughts on that book probably deserve their own post as well.

Anyway, moving on!

Holding On To Good Things That Keep Me Sane

Because of the way Reed works, I would say that “good things” and “things that keep me sane” pretty much go hand in hand.

As my college career has progressed, I’ve come to value certain hobbies and habits that have been present in my life long before Reed ever was.  I feel like it’s a good way of keeping myself grounded, of reminding myself that all the new and wonderful experiences of college, however transformative, are in no way all-encompassing.

One of these habits is blogging.  Although this particular blog is relatively new, I first started blogging when I was 15.  I can’t comprehend the degree to which my life has changed from the ages of 15-19, but the thought that I’ve been writing about it this whole time gives me comfort, and my hope is that I’ll be able to keep doing that.

Another is basketball.  Before I was ever genuinely interested in politics, history, writing, speech, and even God (because let’s face it, a 5-year old isn’t going to spend time mulling over the particulars of theology), I played basketball.  Once upon a time, that was my life.  And although there were some unsavory aspects of my early teenage years that I have no intention of revisiting, playing basketball makes me feel like a little kid again anyway.  It’s nice to know that even though I’m growing up, I can take pleasure in simply putting a ball through a hoop.

And then there’s music.  Lately, that has manifested itself in new ways (guitar, a cappella), but music has always been a part of my life.  These days I play the guitar more often than I do the viola, but I’m trying to do more of the latter.

Lots of things will continue to change as the year progresses, but my hope is that the things I have loved doing will remain constant.

Off The Grid And In The Bubble

I know the year is only two weeks old, but I think I’ve already been doing a pretty terrible job at keeping in touch with people from high school.  It’s easy to assume that relationships with people you don’t constantly see are set in stone, even though they’re not.  Forming solid relationships at Reed is really important to me, but I don’t want my past connections to fall by the wayside.  I miss all of you, and I promise that I’ll do a better job at keeping in touch!  No, seriously.

Stuff I Did Over The Last Two Weeks (besides homework)

I’ve been trying to get off-campus more often.  It’s weird, but I think I appreciate Reed a lot more if I take the time to get away from it every now and then.

I’ve done a pretty decent job of it so far.  As it stands, my list of places-in-Portland-I’ve-been-to-not-named-Reed include:  Saturday Market, Hawthorne, Sellwood, Powell’s, Fubonn, Wong’s King (Dim Sum!).  At least, those are the ones I can remember.  I don’t ordinarily go to Sellwood, but one of my friends’ bands was playing at this really nice coffee shop called The Living Room by Adsideo.  If you’re ever in Sellwood and find yourself near 13th and Spokane, take some time to check it out.  It’s really nice.

I have also tried to cook more often.  And by “cook more often”, I really mean “avoiding Commons food”.  It actually does save money (but not time).

But more on that (and other things) later.  It’s almost 1, and I’m completely burned out at this point.  There are so many more things I’m thinking about, but time hasn’t afforded me the luxury of writing all of them down in one night, so I guess I’ll have to shelve a few things.  I will say this, though – if you pray, then please pray that I can maintain a good sense of patience and perspective.

I’ll cut myself off right there before I jump into another topic altogether.  Good night, Portland.  That sunshine is really nice; tell it not to hurry off too soon.

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And Everything Nice

Posted on August 20, 2010 by Alan

or: “Cool Places/Books/Movies/Video Games I ate at/read/watched/played this summer”.  I think that title might be a little too long, though.

Speaking of “long”, this post will be incredibly lengthy, because it will contain all the cool stuff I experienced this summer that wasn’t related to my summer jobs or catching up with friends.  So brace yourself.  I’ll go with bars, restaurants, books, movies, and video games, in that order:

Trafalgar

5/F, 54-62 Lockhart Road

The Broadway, Wan Chai

One of many earth-shattering revelations (but not really) I had over the summer is that going out to Wan Chai has become less and less appealing.  It’s awkward enough that I find myself trying to not-so-subtly avoid eye contact with hookers every time I walk down Lockhart Road.  (The fact that they’re mostly Filipino further increases my level of discomfort, for whatever reason).

I went to Rock School a couple of weeks ago to meet up with an old friend and his brother, who was going out for the first time.  After about twenty minutes I realized that I was probably the oldest person in the bar.  It didn’t take very long to figure out that the bar was almost entirely occupied by 14-16 year old ESF kids.  Nothing like a night out with underage British expat kids to make you realize how sketchy Wan Chai can be.

Ah, but there is hope!  Trafalgar is a British pub on Lockhart Road, opposite Carnegie’s.  Basically, if “How I Met Your Mother” was a British show, it would take place in Trafalgar.  They also have a balcony and pool table in addition to a nice selection of British beers (not that I know shit about beers, which I’ll get to in a minute).  Oh, and the food!  I had soup and roast duck with mashed potatoes and prawns.  Pretty impressive for bar food, right?  I’m starting to gravitate toward bars where I can sit down and talk with people in an environment that isn’t too loud, crowded, or dark (I’m looking at you, Beirut/Alhambra/Carnegie’s), and Trafalgar fits the bill perfectly.

East End Brewery

Sunning Plaza, 10 Hysan Avenue

Causeway Bay

This is what I know about beer: Milwaukee’s Best and Keystone Light taste terrible.  PBR is marginally better, but I can’t bring myself to drink it and will never understand why it’s so popular among Reedies, especially considering the plethora of microbrewery options in Oregon.

Oh yeah, and Belgian beer is good, too.

East End Brewery’s got you covered if you like Belgian beer.  I don’t enough about beer to say “Gee, having tasted beers the world over, I vastly prefer Belgian beer”, but all I can say is that the Belgian beers I’ve had here are great, and I haven’t found any other place in Hong Kong with such a varied selection.  The food’s decent as well – but more importantly, you get an unlimited supply of peanuts and you can throw the shells on the ground!  What more could you possibly ask for, right?

It should also be mentioned that after coming here with Patrick and Nick and having a few beers (and consuming thousands of peanuts), we went to i-One and played computer games for three hours.  Good times.

The Brunch Club

G/F, 70 Peel Street

Central

I was only able to go here once with Corey, Yvonne, and Katherine back in June, but we all really enjoyed it.  The Flying Pan will always have a special place in my heart.  For me, it’s still #1 in the category of “24-hour places to sober up after a night of moderate to heavy drinking”.  But if you actually want to get brunch somewhere, The Brunch Club is a great place.  I think it’s also cheaper than The Flying Pan.

It’s a bit of a walk and can be especially oppressive in the summertime, but I think it was well worth it.  Be prepared to wait outside for a while if you show up past 12 on a weekend, though.

I can’t quite describe what I ate, but I remember paying less than HK$70 for it.  Yeah, I’m sorry if these summaries aren’t particularly descriptive.  I’m not a restaurant reviewer – I just like reminiscing about all the great restaurants in Hong Kong before I go back to the land of bland college food.

208 Duecento Otto

208 Hollywood Road

Sheung Wan

Imagine a ridiculously classy Italian restaurant in Manhattan.  Imagine the kind of place where you’d take your rich business colleagues, or perhaps a place where you’d want to hatch plans for world domination (there’s probably a fair bit of overlap between the two).  Then move it to Hong Kong and make sure all the waiters are Filipino.

Welcome, quite literally, to 208 Duecento Otto.  The head chef worked at a similarly trendy Italian restaurant in Manhattan and decided to start one of his own in Hong Kong.  I ate here with my parents in late July, and we almost unanimously concluded that this was the best Italian restaurant we had ever patronized.  Beware, though – it is very expensive.

If you do go here, order the chicken.  I don’t even remember what I had because the chicken my mother ordered continues to haunt my dreams.  Apparently they keep the chicken in a vacuum-sealed bag for two days.  I didn’t even know people did that!

Cafe Zambra

G/F, 239 Jaffe Road

Wan Chai

It’s easy to get really snotty about coffee when you live in Portland (in the same way that living in Hong Kong makes you really snotty about drinking).  Hong Kong’s coffee culture isn’t nearly as dominant as Portland’s, but it’s there.  It also seems to be emerging somewhat, and places like Zambra illustrate how and why.

My second summer job (my internship at ICM, which I’ll talk about later) was located roughly one block from Zambra, so I probably got coffee from here every day.  There’s free Wi-Fi (which, regrettably, isn’t as commonplace in Hong Kong as it should be) and a nice upstairs dining area.  The coffee is great and their lunch special is nice, too – they usually go for about HK$60-65 and include some fish or meat pie, a salad, and soup/coffee/tea.  Throw in an extra $10 and you can get a latte with your lunch, a special offer I may have taken advantage of a little too often.  They also serve decent breakfasts in the $40-50 range.  If I’m in Wan Chai over winter break, I’ll be sure to stop by Zambra again.

Oh yeah, and the walls are all made of glass, which makes for a very nice people-watching spot.

Life Cafe

10 Shelley Street

Central

Hey, want to see what it’s like inside stuffwhitepeoplelike.com?  Then come to Life Cafe in Central!

Okay, fine.  I went here with a good friend of mine and the food was actually pretty good.  It also felt like I had stepped through a portal to, well, Portland.  I’m fairly certain all the dishes are 100% vegan (or at least vegetarian), and the owner went on and on about the importance of growing organic and local products.  I don’t have a problem with any of those things, but I just find it hilarious/irritating when people start to pontificate about that sort of stuff.  I also wanted to ask him if he remembered which city he was in, but I restrained myself.

But seriously, the food here is good.  Just don’t take me there and expect my mean and overly sarcastic/mocking side not to shine through.  I’m working on it, I promise.

The English Patient

by Michael Ondaatje

If you followed my old blog/my Tumblr, you may have noticed a stretch of two to three weeks during which I only posted quotes from this book.  That’s because it’s awesome and you should read it, especially if you’re familiar with Herodotus (even if you hated reading The Histories in Hum 110).

Winner of the Booker Prize, The English Patient centers around World War II in Italy and Northern Africa.  That’s all I will give away, even if it hardly does the story justice.

All I can say is that Ondaatje is an absolutely dazzling writer.  He was a poet before he was a novelist, and it shows.  I’m going to steal TIME magazine’s description of this book and call it “a spellbinding web of dreams”, because I’ve yet to find a more apt description.

It’s not uncommon for people to say “This book was so good that I couldn’t put it down”.  I’ve grown a little weary of this description because I’ve read books that I couldn’t put down…but after I put them down, I ended up feeling a little underwhelmed.  These books include Ken Follett’s The Pillars of the Earth and pretty much anything by Dan Brown.  Those books are like crack cocaine: they’re extremely addictive and you can’t put them down, but there’s ultimately little fulfillment or knowledge to be found.  Not that there’s necessarily anything wrong with those sorts of books (the comparison ends there because taking crack cocaine is an awful, awful idea).  I don’t mean to sound pretentious or anything.

The point is this: I don’t consider myself a qualified judge of “good writing”.  All I know is that I sat on a crowded street corner in Hong Kong in the middle of the night in order to finish this book when I should have just hopped in a cab and gone home because I had just arrived from Manila.  Being “hooked” by a book merely requires your eyes to read the text in front of you.  Submerging yourself requires your full attention.  It demands that you take in every word, because every word counts and makes a difference.  This book took me a long time to finish because I couldn’t read it if there was anything else that could even remotely qualify as a distraction (which included being inside a moving vehicle).  If you’re going to take The English Patient to the beach, don’t expect to pay attention to the beach, because Ondaatje will find a way to envelop you if you put in the energy to read this book.

The English Patient was able to accomplish this because it deeply probes the internal realm of humanity, identity and emotion, gorgeously wrapping them in history and poetry.  To write something like this not only takes unparalleled skill and artistry, it requires a one-in-a-million intuition.

Also, my new favorite thing in the world is whenever an author describes light like water – examples include “pools of candlelight” and “cauldrons of light”.  Awesome stuff.

Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

by Jonathan Safran Foer

I really enjoyed Everything Is Illuminated, even if I found Safran Foer’s writing style to be a little gimmicky at times.  But if his intent is to provide a reading experience with a greater sense of immersion, then I think he does a great job in Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close.  I haven’t seen a main character quite like Oskar Schell.  I also think that writing from the perspective of a child can be problematic.  But Jonathan Safran Foer pulls it off beautifully.  It helps that Oskar is a vegan, atheist, Francophile boy genius who never fails to say something charming or inappropriate.

But this book isn’t just “charming or inappropriate”.  It takes place right after 9/11 and is deeply touching and even disturbing at times.  This is where Safran Foer really shines.  If The English Patient absorbed me with its surpassing depth, then Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close touched me in its unsettling variety.  I say “unsettling” in a good way.  There were definitely moments where I thought to myself “I’m not supposed to feel this way while I’m reading a book.  It’s like you’re breaking the fourth wall”.  I’m pretty sure anyone who has read EL&IC knows what I mean.

I hope Jonathan Safran Foer continues to push the envelope.  Writers like him keep things interesting.

Inception

I suspect that the question immediately following “How was your summer?” will be “Have you seen Inception?”  The answer is yes.

And yes, it was great.  I don’t have much else to say about it apart from the typical “ZOMG MINDFUCK”.  So instead, I will leave you with this:

Toy Story 3

I might be a little obsessed with Toy Story 3.  I don’t ever cry during movies, but I recall shedding a tear toward the end of Pixar’s latest masterpiece.

It’s not shocking news that Pixar’s latest movie is great.  I also wouldn’t compare this movie to Up or Wall-E.  Toy Story 3 doesn’t break new ground in the same way.  But because it contains a significant portion of my childhood (I am roughly the same age as Andy), watching this carried more emotional weight for me.  I can’t get over how brilliant the people at Pixar are.  You always delude yourself into thinking you’re one step ahead of them, that there’s no way they can pull your heartstrings again because you’re just so smart.  Then you almost shed a tear.  Or maybe that’s just me.

Mass Effect 2

And yes, we will end here, with video games.  I played Mass Effect to death, beating it at least four times.  Mass Effect 2 is an improvement in every single way, and every developer that makes sequels (so, all of them) should sit up and take notice.  The only drawback is that it might be a little too self-referential for people who aren’t veterans of the original Mass Effect.  But for me, the degree to which your decisions in Mass Effect carried over into the sequel was incredibly satisfying.

Oh, and for those of you who played it too – my favorite crew members, in descending order, are as follows:  Thane, Garrus, Legion, Mordin, Tali, Samara, Grunt, Miranda, Jacob, Jack, Morinth.  Jack is obnoxious and Morinth is creepy.

So there you have it.  Despite the fact that this post was reaaaallllly long, there will be more to come in the near future, since I start school in a week and will have no free time once that happens.

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California, Here We Come

Posted on August 13, 2010 by Alan

I’ve now expanded my “write once a week” rule to “write once every ten days rule” so now I feel less guilty about being so negligent.  This doesn’t exactly count as a post either, because there are a few things I’ve been meaning to write about.  This post is just an update.

My flight leaves in half an hour for San Francisco.  I’ll be staying with family for the next two weeks before I head back to Reed.  I will have my US phone once I get there, so I’ll be reachable in about twelve hours.

When you take the time difference into account, the wisest course of action would be for me to stay up for the entire flight in an effort to combat the inevitable bout of jetlag.  Luckily for me, I have an aisle seat and will be drinking lots of coffee.  I plan to get lots of reading and movie-watching done.  We’ll see how it goes.

I’ll write more about my summer when I get back to California.  I can’t believe it’s over already and that I start another year at Reed in…what, two weeks?  Where did the time go?  I guess that’s the story of my life.  But if you’re wondering, I had a great summer.  It was fun and productive and all those nice things.  Unfortunately I’ll have to leave it at that, because I have a plane to catch.

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It’s Personal

Posted on August 3, 2010 by Alan

Consider this my long overdue and obligatory “Welcome to my brand spanking new blog!  Now here’s what I’m planning on writing about” post.  The first one was a little too brief for my taste, and there’s much more I want to say besides the requisite “Hello, internet!” write-up.  I will also explain the untimely (and intentional) demise of my previous blog.

I used to have a blog entitled “life in digital motion”.  I still have no idea what that was supposed to mean, because it wasn’t supposed to mean anything.  I had been writing on it for the last three and a half years and it had become an important part of my life. Blogging in itself isn’t particularly meaningful, but when you do something often enough and feel a certain sense of loss when you don’t, you know it’s at least a little important.  I wouldn’t apply that rule universally…although I guess that doesn’t make it much of a rule, does it?

At first, nobody read my blog.  Then a few people read it.  Then a little more than a few people read it.  Then my friends decided to screw up my blog stats by Googling my name and attaching inappropriate terms to it, but that’s another story that I told in a previous post and I’m already starting to digress.

Anyway, several issues became apparent as my blog continued to exist over the course of my freshman year of college and throughout the summer.

1)  I stopped writing regularly. This was already an issue in high school, but the fact that I actually had to work hard in college made it even more problematic.  It wasn’t that I didn’t write, it’s that I never did it on a consistent basis. Eventually, I began to fall into a certain pattern:

- Write a post,

- Forget/get too lazy to write anything for the next month or so,

- Find some random burst of inspiration and write two to three blog posts in a row.

2)  I started to only write about my feelings, and only when I felt like writing about my feelings. When I first started blogging I would write about anything and everything that came to mind.  I remember writing a long, heartfelt post about how sad I was that my youth group was dissolving.  I ranted about how much I hated taking classes I didn’t care for, or how our orchestra got disqualified from a competition during my sophomore year of high school, or what I really thought about neoconservative approaches to American foreign policy.

While I’d like to think that I’m a much better writer now than I was at age fifteen, I was a much more proficient blogger back then because my subject matter wasn’t limited to my latest overly verbose musing/self-reflection.  Eventually, my blog had lost both its consistency and its variety.

Blogging was no longer a habit or a hobby for me.  It had morphed into some weird Web 2.0 version of catharsis.  This bothered me because I don’t want my level of consistency to directly reflect how often I feel the need to vent or think about a random semi-deep subject.  I want to be able to write when I feel like it, not just when I feel like I absolutely need to.

I’m fine with writing about myself.  But I do much more with my time than think too much.

2a) I grew uncomfortable with the idea that three and a half years of my life were immediately accessible to anyone who thought it was worth the trouble to read.

This didn’t bother me very much in high school because I knew most of the people I saw on a daily basis.  I didn’t care that my thoughts, feelings, and memories were so easily viewable because I had met roughly 95% of the people who read them.  Generally speaking, most of the people who read my blog had the benefit of context.  I’m not a very good descriptive/creative writer, so a reader’s initial familiarity with whatever I’m writing about makes a huge difference because there’s only so much I can explain in words.  If I were to write about something that happened over interim, it would help if you knew what interim was and what it was like.  Yes, everyone’s life is unique, but to some extent the events in my life (and, by extension, the things I wrote about on my old blog) were similar to those of the people who I knew were reading my blog.

By contrast, I probably haven’t met 90% of the students at Reed.  I’m still in the process of meeting people and making friends.  I don’t know how many Reedies checked my old blog regularly, but it began to bother me that people who knew nothing about my life and my memories could potentially learn three years’ worth of it without talking to me first.  There’s nothing like getting to know someone in person, but it’s much more convenient to do it without having to engage in verbal communication.  That’s why I hate Facebook so much.  That’s also why I’m so addicted to it.

In short, I shut down my old blog because I felt like I had outgrown it.  I shut it down because I was no longer using it in the way I wanted, and I could no longer stomach the thought of having my memories and feelings on display like that.  I also didn’t have the heart to delete them, so I put a password lock on it instead of actually deleting the website.

What, then, is the point of this blog?  And how is it any different from the now-defunct “life in digital motion”?

First there’s the advantage of additional functionality, since I finally went with WordPress 3.0 and got my own domain name.  The features of the free version of WordPress were cool for a while but they also felt rather limiting.

Secondly, I now have a blog name that makes sense.  Go check the first post for the full explanation because I’m too lazy to write it again.

My goal with this kinda-sorta-new blog is simple: I want to write about whatever I’m thinking in a clear and organized way and on a relatively consistent basis.  For now, I’ll give myself a week in between posts.  Contrary to what my previous blog seemed to indicate, I’m interested in a lot more than just spilling my guts on the internet.  I like lots of things, so stick around and you’ll read about them at some point.

This blog is a way for my high school friends to learn about what my life at college is like.  It’s also a way for my college friends to learn about how the last 19 years of my life have shaped me.

As for my old posts, I like them where they are:  hidden, not deleted, and only accessible by me.  I’m more than happy to talk about them (and you’ll certainly see them referenced here), but they’re mine first and everyone else’s second.  I hope you don’t mind.  And if you do, well, that’s just too bad.

And regarding the issue of so-called “stalkers” (i.e. people who know me/have met me/share mutual friends but have learned more from reading my blog than through actual conversation…I sincerely hope I don’t have actual stalkers.  You know, the ones without quotation marks who probably belong in prison), I hope you know that I intend for this blog to serve as an invitation rather than as a substitute.  Seriously, I don’t bite.  Maybe verbal conversation has never come naturally for me, but that doesn’t mean I don’t like it.  Try me sometime.  It takes a lot for me not to like someone.

Okay, that’s enough for now.  I have work tomorrow, which I will write about soon. No, really, I’m serious.  In the meantime, here’s a short “about me” to kick off this sorta-new-blog:

Hi, I’m Alan.  I’m a sophomore at Reed College majoring in something.  I’ll let you know when I figure that out.  I was born to Filipino parents in New York, where I lived for five years before moving to Hong Kong.  I grew up there and attended Hong Kong International School for thirteen years.  I’ve also spent virtually every summer of my life in either San Francisco or Sacramento.

Ask me about the people I know and the places I’ve visited.  I don’t deserve either of them, but they’re in my life anyway – and for that, I am very thankful.

I really like coffee, and music, and sour candy, and basketball, and lots of other nice things.  I will also look for any excuse to make breakfast.

Want to know more?  Check this blog every now and then.  Better yet, try sending me a message or talking to me sometime.

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Scenes from a Summer Job

Posted on July 25, 2010 by Alan

One thing I began to notice about my old blog is that I rarely took the time to write about what I’ve actually been doing with my life.  Of course, the long-term answer to that question is “nothing, because I’m going to be a Humanities/Social Sciences major at a liberal arts college in the Pacific Northwest.  Also, please save some space for me in your basement after I graduate.”

But until the day I need to actually depend on some form of sustainable income, I’m perfectly fine with finding temporary employment and feeling good about myself.

For the last six weeks I worked at good old HKIS (whether or not the words “good old” are used sincerely is open to interpretation, especially if you know that roughly 65% of everything I say is sarcastic) as a Teaching Assistant for their summer program.  It was divided into two three-week sessions.  I spent the first session helping with an SAT Prep class.

Hold on a minute, I’ll let the crickets chirp for a few more seconds.

And hey, we’re back!  Right.  So, this SAT Prep class.  Every so often I read about some guy who got fired because he complained about his job on the internet.  Fortunately for me, I’ve already received my paycheck.  In any case, it’s not like I’m throwing anyone under the bus.  You’d be hard pressed to convince even the most diligent of students that an SAT Prep class would be anything but soul-crushingly boring (spoiler alert: it was, in fact, soul-crushingly boring).

Thankfully, the teacher I worked for was a cool guy.  But my job basically consisted of photocopying, grading the occasional SAT essay, making Starbucks runs, and reading.  I didn’t necessarily feel bitter about it – after all, I wasn’t the only one who was bored out of my skull.  Part of being a TA is just sitting in class and watching the teacher do his/her job, and I’m certain that the monotony of Session 1 had nothing to do with my job description and everything to do with the subject matter.  There’s really nothing interesting about SAT Prep, not from a learning standpoint, not from a teaching standpoint, and most certainly not from a TA’s standpoint.  It was pretty chill and not at all stressful or tiring, but after a while I got tired of being paid to do nothing.

Of course, Session 1 seems like a distant memory at this point.  But then again, so do the entire months of May and June.

I spent Session 2 (the last three weeks) helping out with classes that actually matched my interests.  I also worked longer hours, which meant more money, which means I’ll be able to afford a relatively luxurious cardboard box someday.  SCORE!

I worked until noon during Session 1 because SAT Prep only ran in the mornings (1:00 pm, if you included lunch duty).  For the last three weeks, I worked from 8:30 am to 3:45 pm.  I spent mornings in Repulse Bay at the Lower Primary (Kindergarten – Grade 3) campus, where I helped out with a reading and writing class for kids aged 7-10 (I’m approximating – there’s a good chance I’m off by a year or two), and afternoons at the Middle School with a Public Speaking class for kids aged 12-15.

Generally speaking, my job as a TA was to do whatever the teacher told me to do.  In the mornings, this included anything from setting up computers to reading out loud to checking grammar to editing stories to telling kids not to use those words because that’s not very nice and recess isn’t until 10:20 so stop fidgeting.

I kept correcting kids for their liberal usage of run-on sentences.  That last sentence of the previous paragraph would have been a pretty good example.  Of course, if you’re a  little kid and you use a run-on sentence, it’s bad grammar.  But if you’re a college student like myself, you can attribute it to the fact that you just finished a book by Jonathan Safran Foer.

Anyway.

If ever I were to spend any part of my life teaching (which is a possibility), it wouldn’t involve little kids.  It’s not that I don’t like them, it’s that they wear me out too easily, because a) I worry often and b) I take them too seriously.  It’s easy to forget how simple-minded little children are.  When a 7-year old boy talks about how he wants to blow someone’s head off with a bazooka, he doesn’t actually want to blow someone’s head off with a bazooka.  But because I watch the news too often, my first instinct is to take him seriously.  Then I  scold him for talking about weapons in class, after which I realize that I just wasted ten seconds of my life telling someone off for saying something they didn’t truly understand.

Because the students came from both expat and local families (as is the case with HKIS during the school year), we had kids with varying levels of proficiency as far as their English reading and writing were concerned.  Many of the ESL kids (especially the Cantonese kids) struggled with the use of tenses, which is understandable.  My heart goes out to those Lower Primary teachers at HKIS.  Teaching little kids is trying enough.  Now try teaching kids who don’t speak English at home.

One of the kids in our class happened to be autistic.  I’ve seen much more severe cases, but it was immediately evident to any casual observer that there was something different about him.  He couldn’t sit still.  He always asked about Bus 4, and where it was going, and when it was coming to pick him up.   He asked the same questions every single day.  I had initially assumed that he had a strong case of ADHD rather than any sort of autism, but that’s probably because I don’t know anything but neurodevelopmental disorders.  I know that I don’t know anything about neurodevelopmental disorders because I had to check Wikipedia to make sure that “neurodevelopmental disorders” was an actual term.

I’m going to try my best to refrain from using the autistic boy’s actual name.  It just feels strange, somehow.  It’s almost like if a friend got really drunk and I wrote about it using his/her real name.  I know that he’s probably not going to read this (and getting drunk is certainly not the same thing as being autistic), but I don’t feel comfortable using his name.  At the same time, referring to him as “the autistic boy” sounds rather dehumanizing, because he functions pretty well most of the time.  He just…has his moments.  One of them happened during recess:

We saw him get into a minor scuffle with another kid.  After breaking it up, we discovered that he had grabbed a snack from the hand of another boy and thrown it to the ground.  After the usual “that’s not very nice” variety of gentle scolding, we asked him to apologize.  He complied, and then proceeded to make an attempt at holding the other boy’s arm (in a friendly way).  The other boy shook him off and ran away.

Afterwards, we asked him why he grabbed and threw the snack.

He looked down at his shoes and spoke in a small voice, as if he somehow knew that he didn’t have complete control over himself, that there was something different about him, that although he could see and hear and touch and feel he couldn’t process those things like most people could.  Or maybe he had no idea.  I don’t really know how these things work.  I just know that what he said next broke my heart.

“I was giving it to him.”

That’s all I have to say about that.

The downside to working in the afternoon was that I had to endure three weeks of eating food from my school cafeteria.  The fact that I played Munchkin with Alex, Jeremy and Patrick every day at lunch made this much more bearable, because Munchkin is fun.  Still, after having eaten cafeteria food for three weeks, I now feel perfectly justified for having brought lunch to school every day for the thirteen years I attended HKIS.

I was in forensics (read: speech, NOT crime scene investigation) during high school, and I miss it dearly.  The greatest feeling I experienced during my senior year was standing in front of a podium at ISKL and saying what I believed was true.  Adrenaline can kill you if your body produces too much of it.  Most of the time it just makes you incredibly nervous.  But if you channel it, if you control it, if you don’t let it consume your thoughts and senses, it can become your greatest advantage.  Apart from being a good life skill, public speaking is one of the greatest natural highs I’ve ever experienced.

So yes, I did have fun in my afternoon class.  It wasn’t my job to speak, but I enjoyed helping people and actually feeling somewhat qualified to do it.  There was a quite a large gap in terms of confidence and experience.  We had the students deliver prepared speeches, impromptu speeches, debate rebuttals, and all the other things you’d expect from a public speaking class.

The most interesting part of the session was when we had the students deliver a 1 minute stand-up comedy routine, which was promptly shortened to 30 seconds once the teacher and I decided a minute was too much to ask.  We had some talented and confident speakers in our class.  But once you threw in the words “stand-up comedy”, their nerves really showed.  As an observer this was highly fascinating to watch, because I normally associate public speaking with debate, political oratory, and the like.  Besides, public speaking in itself is already terrifying.  Why should stand-up comedy be any different, right?

Stand-up comedy induces sheer terror among even the most seasoned debaters because, unlike debate, it is deeply personal.  If you screw up a debate, it just means that you screwed up a debate.  But if you tell a joke or a story and people don’t laugh, it means you’re not being funny.  And because a person’s sense of humor is so integral to their personality, the thought of putting that on display for everyone to judge scared the shit out of the students.  Not that I blame them.

All of the above ended yesterday.  I’ve finished my first summer job.  I’m also trying to ignore the fact that it’s almost 1:00 am and I have an internship starting tomorrow morning.  I’m excited for it to start, it’s just that this summer hasn’t exactly been restful.  And why is it that I can only write these posts after 11:00 pm?  This whole “blogging” thing has lost me many, many hours of sleep over the years.  Alas.  Well, if you made it this far, congratulations.  For my part, I will try to get some sleep so I can get up early to make coffee before work.  Man, that just sounds so grown-up, doesn’t it?

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Meet My Dormies

Posted on July 18, 2010 by Alan

I have very exciting news!  I’ve finally come up with a way to describe roughly 75% of my friends at Reed without compromising their privacy!   I don’t even need to mention any of them by name.  All I have to do is tell you a little story:

My old blog was capable of tracking the search engine terms people used to reach my site.  (I can do it on this blog too, but I haven’t downloaded the requisite plugins yet).  I casually mentioned this to one of my friends at some point during the year, and she commented on how funny it would be if she Googled my name and added something embarrassing like “naked pics” with the intention of finding my blog and scaring the shit out of me when those words popped up under my “Blog Stats” menu.

This was a running joke for about three months, but nothing ever became of it.  Then, one spring evening – the night of April 14, 2010, to be exact – somebody decided to turn this into a little game.

The thing about Googling my old blog is that it contains posts from as early as March of 2007.  This means that any words from nearly three years’ worth of writing can be put together in a search engine term to reach said blog.

Initially, only one or two people were playing this new game.  Then two became four, and four became six – and before I could say “Hey, don’t we have a shit ton of reading to do for tomorrow”, there were nine people sitting in the same room attempting to Google my name + as many obscene terms as possible.

But the shenangians didn’t stop there.  Someone (and by “someone”, I mean “my now ex-roommate”) decided that once he found words that yielded the proper results, it would be a good idea to do the following:

1) Click through to my blog while holding down the Command key.

2) Hit “Back”.

REPEAT AS MANY TIMES AS POSSIBLE

This caught on as well, which is how I ended up with this nice little graph:

My old blog is over three years old and has received 12,156 hits since I first created it in March of 2007.  On April 15, 2010, my blog received 1,114 hits.

Oh, and here’s the best part!  This is the list of “most searched terms” from my old blog:

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is what happens when you have both a blog and friends who live on the third floor of Sullivan Hall.  But even though their sanity is questionable (like, very much so), I love them and miss them dearly and can’t wait to see them in six weeks.  They are also, however, batshit crazy.

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Periods are for Jerks, Smileys are for Flirts

Posted on July 12, 2010 by Alan

The title sort of rhymes.  I think.

I’ve heard it said on numerous occasions that 93 percent of human communication is nonverbal.  I don’t know if that number is actually correct  or not (after all, accurately quantifying something as complex as human communication seems downright impossible, if you ask me) or if its accuracy even matters, but it’s fair to say that a great deal of communication is expressed through things like body language and tone.

But that statistic, accurate or not, only applies to spoken/face-to-face conversation.  And these days, we communicate with each other in ways that eliminate conventional use of body language and tone.  This throws a monkey wrench into the generally accepted protocol that usually applies to face-to-face conversation.  In fact, the popular emergence of these alternative forms of communication means that there are completely new standards for what qualifies as “polite”, “rude”, “sketchy”, “flirty”, etc.  Because many of these new methods (read: texting, instant messaging, and possibly Facebook) are practically instantaneous and have the potential to closely resemble actual conversations, the conventional decorum for emails and letters don’t apply here either.

This PARADIGM SHIFT (Yes!  I finally worked that phrase into a blog post, even if I’m not 100% sure that I used it correctly) applies to the following methods of communication:

- Texting

- Instant Messaging (MSN, AIM, Google Chat, etc)

- Facebook wall posts and photo/status comments

For many people my age, these three methods comprise a huge percentage of our daily interactions with people.  I suppose, to an extent, Twitter could fit in there too.  These new standards, however, don’t apply to emails or any other form of communication that resembles letter-writing  more than speaking.  What texting, instant messaging, and wall posts/status+photo comments all have in common is that they are all intended to or have evolved into a method of communication that resembles face-to-face conversation.  I can wait 24 hours to respond to an email, but if I take more than twenty minutes to respond on Google Chat without saying “brb” I’ve already been labeled as busy or unresponsive.

All right, that’s enough of me sounding all serious and scientific.  Now for the fun part – explaning the new decorum.  I suspect this will be a little tougher to understand or relate to if you haven’t grown up with near-instantaneous communication (i.e. most people over the age of thirty), but I could be wrong.  I’m also writing purely based on intuition and a conversation (read: face-to-face) I had with a friend the other day in which we both agreed on certain standards.  I’ve also been using IM clients since the age of eleven, so I’d like to think that I (and most people my age) have a pretty good sense of how these things work.

Rule #1: Periods are for mean people. Let me give you two hypothetical conversations between two people via text message.  Try to visualize receiving these text messages and then reading them on your phone.

Conversation I

Person A: hey what are you doing later?  are you going to LKF tonight?

Person B: no i’m not sorry, maybe some other time though

Conversation II

Person A: hey what are you doing later?  are you going to LKF tonight?

Person B: No, I’m not.  Sorry, maybe some other time.

(For my non-Hong Kong readers – “LKF” refers to Lan Kwai Fong, a popular nightlife/clubbing area)

You’d be hard-pressed to convince me that the second response – featuring correct usage of capitalization and full stops – didn’t sound at least slightly colder and bitchier than the first response.  A response like “No, I’m not.” almost seems to indicate that Person B is offended rather than simply answering a question.  Does this seem like a stretch?  Still don’t believe me?  Try this – a hypothetical instant messaging conversation (screw it, for now on I’m calling it Google Chat).

Me: hey

Friend: Hi.

Me: how are you?

Friend: I’m doing well.

I would have a hard time believing that my “friend” in this situation was anything but disinterested in talking to me.  Am I just a little too sensitive?  Maybe.  Am I reading into this a little too much?  It’s always possible.  But I trust my intuition, and there’s something about the use of periods in instantaneous communication that makes the tone seem a little less casual and a little more cold and detached.

Rule #2:  Be careful with your smileys.

Smiles are one of my favorite things in the world, and they can’t be replicated in typed conversation.  But that doesn’t stop us from trying.  There’s :) =) =( ;( ;) =P to name a few.  I don’t need to go over each of them individually.  What I can tell you is that when facial expressions are standardized like this, there’s a lot more room for interpretation.  It’s just not the same thing as reading someone’s real facial expression.

It’s especially strange when people use smileys of expressions that aren’t actually used in everyday life, unless you know someone who regularly sticks out his/her tongue to the side every time something mildly amusing happens.

Rule #2a: Unless you want to hook up with the person you’re texting/messaging, NEVER use winky smileys.  Ever.

Do you know anyone who smiles and winks at the same time?  Because I don’t.  It’s even more suggestive than a Facebook poke.  If there isn’t one already, I’m tempted to create a Facebook group entitled “Enough with the winky smileys, let’s just have sex”.  Here’s what I mean:

Text Message #1: hey, wanna hang out tonight?  i work late, but i can meet you at around 10…if you’re up for it we can meet up for drinks or something

Text Message #2: hey, wanna hang out tonight?  i work late, but i can meet you at around 10…if you’re up for it we can meet up for drinks or something ;)

If you can’t see how much Text Message #2 screams “and after that, we can go back to my place and have sex”, I have nothing to say to you.  Actually, I’ve  sent variants of Text Message #1 many, many times without intending to sound like I was propositioning the recipient.  I don’t know if I sounded like I was anyway, but I can tell you that if I really wanted to sound like an idiot with no subtlety I would have included a winky smiley at the end.  Seriously, people.

Rule #3:  Know your laughters.

Ah, this is an art!  I really love it when people laugh, too – but alas, this is yet another form of communication that doesn’t make a very smooth transition to the virtual realm.

People generally use “ha” to express laughter.  There are two variables at work here that influence how the other person interprets your online laughter: the number of “ha”s, and caps or no caps.  Let’s start with the first variable.  I’ll just keep increasing the number of “ha”s used and try to show/explain the difference.  This should be pretty intuitive to most of you:

ha = sarcastic, snarky

haha = slightly amused chuckle

hahaha = actually laughed for a brief moment – maybe you actually said something funny.

hahahaha = funny!  I’m assuming you showed them a good YouTube video or something.

I don’t feel qualified to comment on anything greater than four “ha”s, but I think you get the point.

The “caps or no caps” variable is pretty straight forward – like the use of ALL CAPS in general, a capitalized HAHA suggests more enthusiasm/laughter.

I’m sure there are more “rules” out there that I haven’t touched on.  Hell, I don’t even know if my last 1,200 words have any validity or accuracy to them, because lots of this is almost entirely instinctive.  But whether or not these specific rules are universal, the fact that we communicate with each other in so many different ways means that our usual methods of interpretation get all jumbled up and made pretty much irrelevant.  Perhaps “rules” isn’t the right word to use, but it’s fair to say that the removal of body language, tone, facial expressions, and eye contact changes communication in a way that I’m only beginning to understand.

If you have any other observations about this topic, let me know!  And while I’ve sounded rather serious for most of this post, try not to take these little rules too seriously.  I just had fun writing this.

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