serve up a burrito, extra delicious please

sometimes i really don’t understand american guys and spitting. well that sounds ambiguous cause it sounds like i do not understand american guys, and i do not understand spitting, but actually what i mean is i do not understand why american guys like to spit so much. now this is just plain ridiculous cause i should have just started with the latest sentence and clauses 2 and 3 will be completely redundant. 

but i shall not do that because it reminds me of what i do when i write in greeting cards. for me, i always had a perfectionist streak when it comes to greeting cards. i do not really know how it came about, or whether it is the same for everyone. when i write a greeting card, it has to be perfect in form - so it does not really matter what i say is just nonsense – it just has to look perfect. even using correction tape would totally spoil the greeting card, and do not even get me talking about smudged inks. (this phrase is such an oxymoron) well the link here is that if i mis-spell something, i will try my best to continue with the mistake and make it look like it is not a mistake! so even though it is completely nonsensical, it will still look perfect. 

i wonder why though – isn’t the message supposed to be the most important part of the greeting card?

but then again it is not really applicable in this case, cause there is a backspace key on the keyboard, and all i have to do is to backspace and the blog entry will still turn out looking perfect even though the content is rubbish. which i kind of think it is because i am actually cringing at what i am writing now. sigh. 

come to think of it, i wonder if the invention of correction fluid changed the world. no wait, should it be erasers? before writing systems came about, everything was a done deal the moment it came out. actions or speech cannot be reversed once performed. i am guessing at the beginnings of the writing system, correction was probably not a known concept either. i would not rule out cancelling, but the thing is cancelling is still very much different from a “backspace” concept. even though cancelling effectively reverses what you wrote, but the mark remains there and well, most of the times you can still read it. (i know, correction fluid leaves a mark too but it is different because you write OVER the mark) did the invention of erasers/correction fluid change the way people think? did it awaken in them the concept of reversing acts performed?

like divorce? 

and now, how about the backspace key? it effectively leaves no mark, whatsoever. once, someone i know told me about how when she is really angry with a person who wrote her a email, she will vent out all her frustrations in a reply email, but she will not send it out. when she calms down, she will then rewrite a properly worded reply that gives no hint of the earlier anger email. it feels to me that the backspace key may have changed the way we operate, doing things and removing them without any remnant of the action.

…

that was a long digression. anyway i was talking about american guys and spitting. i just feel that it is so unsightly, but they do it as if it is a natural thing. they actually do it in front of strangers while walking from point A to point B. well yeah, i know singaporeans spit too, but you do not usually do it while like you are walking in a group of 20 people towards a certain place. to me, it feels almost like picking your nose while walking from point A to point B. we all know for a fact that people pick their nose, whether in the bathroom or in their own privacy, cause Health Education in primary school taught me that. you just know that it is not exactly the best behavior to do it on the streets. 

perhaps they see it as something as natural as swinging your arms while walking. 

now i wonder why it is unsightly to pick your nose in public.

green stop

haha ah cheh i just realized that the charm i bought for you is SUPER 灵!

striped white on white

been mulling over this for a few days, still do not quite know how best to present the situation, but hopefully i would get some inspiration once i start writing about it. but then now i am like, so how the heck am i supposed to start? and joy is playing some 情歌王 song that is distracting me cause it is like a medley of all the famous chinese love songs and i cannot help singing the short famous lines haha. 

anyway back to the situation that i have been trying to come up with a solution. so i guess teddy bears are nice so i shall use teddy bears. pretend that there are two teddy bears who like somehow are able to talk and pass each other stuff. so well since i am the one writing about the teddy bears, the teddy bears have to be in america. and americans always pass notes in class, you see it in television all the time.

so teddy bear 1 decided to pass a note to teddy bear 2. and teddy bear 2 passes a note back to teddy bear 1. and teddy bear 1 replies and therefore teddy bear 2 has to reply too. and pretend this is a class that never ever ends so i guess they can continue passing notes to each other till the end of time. 

with just a bit of imagination, we can probably see that this mechanism works kind of like having a real life conversation. the real question is, how does a real life conversation end? excluding the cases whereby you had to leave or you are rushing off to another class, how do you stop a real life conversation? i remember reading in linguistics class that there is a gradual but obvious deceleration in the conversation, and it just kind of gets to the point that the conversation ends. soemwhat like a car i think. but if we go back to the teddy bear’s case, how would this work? would you decelerate the speed that you reply to the notes?

i guess one could always lie in a real-life conversation, “oh i have something to do, see you around!”. but in the teddy bear situation i guess that’s not exactly very possible. hm. well i’m assuming neither of the teddy bears would do something like “hey i don’t want to talk anymore, bye”, they are both nice teddy bears. 

to throw a hammer into the situation (i have completely no idea how i came up with this metaphor but whatever), what if teddy bear 2 “knows” that teddy bear 1 does not want to pass notes anymore, what would be the appropriate action for teddy bear 2 to take?

i think they should all pretend they are teddy bears all over again and thus are no longer able to pass notes.

ice bristles

the stupidest thing i have done in my entire life?

taking a cold shower in the middle of winter.

taking a cold shower in the middle of winter 2 days in a row.

knot reef

sometimes i feel arrogant. not in the “oh you are so lousy” way, but in the psychoanalyzing kind of way. well, in the first place, i think even harboring the possibility that people around you do not have a mind is already quite an arrogant thing to do. of course i understand the reasons for the skepticism behind it, but i cannot help but feel that one is thinking too highly of oneself to postulate that you are such an extraordinary being. hm. but i guess it is right, there is no reason to believe something that you have no complete evidence for. 

anyway back to the psychoanalyzing thing, i often cannot help but think that when a person says something, it is because the person knows i expect him/her to say it. for example, i have a friend who really likes the days to be cold, rainy and gloomy. well i like it too, but only if i am hiding in my room sipping a cup of hot chocolate. if i am outside, the weather just tends to make me feel sad. lots of people tend to agree with this, dark and gloomy days make people feel sad (even though from the autistic perspective it makes complete no sense, as pointed out by the curious incident of the dog in the night time. having your emotions affected by the weather is as logical as him having his emotions affected the number of red cars he sees in a day.) in fact, there is this disorder called Seasonal Affective Disorder (SAD) that describes the sadness people feel when winter comes. (i love the acronym.)

so, often when i say “the weather makes me feel sad”, my friend will immediately reply “i like it” without fail. my immediate thought after that is said is “you’re saying it cause i expect you to”. that makes me feel especially guilty. it is almost as if i just cannot understand that point of view, and just impose an alternative explanation to the reply. maybe cold weather is really good.

same applies to actions and behavior. i just cannot stop thinking up reasons for these, and the reasons are not always good.

perhaps it is the way i try to understand the world,

unfortunately not in the best way, i feel.

trick gate

zi lin has gone fishing is disappointed.

sigh.