Anger, excitement and updates

I hate #yolo. Seriously. Every time I read it or hear it, I immediately set down the path towards uncontrollable rage. It is the very antithesis to my life philosophy (if you can call my insane ramblings that). Yolo, to me, is a call to arms of the stupid misinformed overcommercialised youth of today's Western world. It is a cry for imbeciles to perform acts of idiocy that may or may not get themselves killed. It basks in the idea that we should because we can, that living once is justification for any and all manner of action. It's a shallow philosophy that encourages impressionable kids to ignore the consequences, and teaches them to be satisfied with "well, why not?" as a reason why.

Three weeks until my family and I fly to the US for a two week trip around LA, DC and NY. This'll be my first time going to the US, so I'm suitably excited about it all. Got all my touristy things lined and ready to go; Disneyland in Anaheim, Hollywood in LA, Capitol Hill in DC, Statue of Liberty (amongst others) in NY. Had a nightmare a few days ago that I'd gotten to the airport and forgotten to bring my camera...woke up in a cold sweat. DEFINITELY going to bring my camera. Didn't take it to Vietnam at the start of this year and regretted it immensely.

Mum's been on work assignment in the US now for just on two months, which means my sister and I have been living at home alone for two months. It's gone well; we cook, we clean, pay the bills, and get our school stuff done. My weekly schedule pretty much revolves around uni and getting her to wherever she needs to be. Netball training on Tuesdays, tutor on Fridays, netball games on Saturdays, Chinese school on Sundays. I've enjoyed it, especially the cooking. Haven't burnt anything yet, and we've eaten, if not good, at least well-balanced and nutritious.

Exams coming soon: 2nd year Genetics on the 14th, then 3rd year Genetics and 3rd year Politics on the 25th and the 28th (I can't remember which one goes on which day).

I've killed my fourth laptop in nine years. The Lenovo ThinkPad I got from Dad a year and a half ago had a Chinese copy of Windows, so I tried to install English. Now, there's some security thing that won't let me log in, and safe mode causes BSODs. Fun. Reduced to using my sister's eight-year-old Toshiba that runs about as fast as glaciers melt. Good news though, I'll be purchasing a new laptop when I get to America.One more month, that's all I need to survive...

Exam time means StalkerSpace songs/parodies. Pressure's on. Hopefully I've got something decent lined up...we'll see come next week.

Youthful envy

This year is the final year of my Bachelor of Science/Bachelor of Arts degree. Final year...it changes your perspective a lot, how you view the future, how you view the present, how you view the past. It wasn't really something I knew or heard about until I finally got here myself, but I could put that down to not actually knowing all that many people who've been in their final year. Why is this final year so different to, say, the final year of high school? Because, with any luck, this is the cusp of the greatest change in my life since I first started formal schooling back in 1996. If all goes well, then this year marks the transition from 13 years of full-time schooling to full-time employment. The completion of the first third of my life. The leap into the great unknown.

The future
When you're young, you're so certain of everything. Every child says to themselves that they'll grow up, get a job, get married, have a family. When you're older, the only thing that you're certain of anymore is that you'll get older. Getting a job? You hear about how the market is so competitive, how there are so many graduates going for the same few positions. You see your friends who have graduated studying further because they can't find meaningful employment. And you question your own capability to be different, to be one of the lucky few who gains employment in the field that they want. Getting married? You see the breakups and recriminations, the hope and the despair, and you wonder if you'll ever get that far. Having a family? You don't even know if you can look after yourself out there, let alone having other people depend on you to make all the decisions, to nurture them as they follow in your footsteps. Nothing is certain anymore, only that time, unrelentingly, flows onwards, that the amount of time you have left to do anything is always diminishing.

The past
So many regrets, so many wasted opportunities, so many mistakes. I should have gotten more involved in this, I should have put more effort into that, I should not have done what I did then, this is what I should have done instead. Oh God I was such a fool, an idiot, a wastrel, a sloth, a procrastinator, too caught up in the moment to plan for the future.

The present
So what can I do now to rectify the mistakes of the past? How can I go about achieving the goals of my future? What can I do this year, this month, this week, this day, this hour, to go about getting somewhere, anywhere? And how can I communicate this depth of feeling to those younger than I, those who are entering university for the first time and making the same mistakes of unpreparedness that I made?

I think the root for why I am so unwelcoming of first years, of jaffys as they're so colourfully known, is because of this. Because I am so envious of the certainty of their youth, because of the firmness of their rejection of what I try to tell them, having the luxury of being able to write it off as the dellusioned ramblings of a bitter old man. A man, heh. Barely three or four years older than most of these newbies. I am jealous that I, for better or for worse, can no longer be one of them.

Our Dead

A short poem I wrote for one of my gaming things. o/ Pacifica

Our dead lie where they cannot be seen,
As if the steps they took had never been.
The mark they made is viewed not by eyes,
The mark they made is where our heart lies.
The bravest of the brave, the truest of the true,
They gave their lives for me and you.
And as they fell, memories past they did relive,
But still uttered, "if I had one more life to give".
Face down they fell, and they fell head first,
Still in death, at the enemy they cursed.
We who still live, we all do know,
That though they're lost like summer snow,
Our comrades of those battles past,
Will be with us when we breathe our last.

Post 1/13

Well, I haven't updated this blog in...something like three or four months. But hey, I still get the email notifications of spammers posting comments on posts, so it's not like I've forgotten about it. What's new? Hmm. Well, it's 2013. Hopefully, my final year of university (assuming I don't fail anything). Let's take a look back at the past few months.

I couldn't think of anything worth writing about, so I'm just going to talk about Christmas. Went with family and a few other families out to Lakes Entrance for four days. Crabfishing, fishing, played some beach cricket. It was fun, haven't done anything like that in a while.

Oh, also, I got my P's. Green ones, since I turned 21 before I got them. Dad bought a car and since he isn't here for most of the year, I get to drive it. It's a Volkswagen Tiguan Pacific, pretty sweet, but I can't drive the damn thing yet because it's turbo so I need to apply for an exemption from VicRoads. Sent it in already but it'll take three weeks to get a response.

And in three week's time (or, well, two weeks now, since I sent it last Friday), I'll be somewhere in Vietnam. Flying up on the 14th with mum and sis for two weeks, first time heading over there so it should be an experience. Tossing up whether I should take my camera or not, apparently petty thievery is a common occurance, especially targeted against tourists, but I'd probably regret not taking it once I get over there.

Oh, my harddrive died a while ago, and along with it was two and a half years worth of photos. Something like 20,000 photos from various events and countries. Would have cost over two thousand dollars to retrieve the data though, and that's simply money I don't have. Most of the decent photos are uploaded to Facebook anyway, so it's not like I'm missing anything especially. All my music and all my past classwork/homework/assignments/projects crap from three years of uni is on there too, which is actually more of a loss than the  photos. Also movies and games, but those are pretty expendable.

Steam sales, probably spent like $60-70 in about a two week period, picking up some pretty good deals. AOE3 complete, Dawn of War pack courtesy of Hungy, got the THQ Humble Bundle, picked up Red Orchestra 2, and Shogun 2: Fall of the Samurai. All in all, I've probably spent well over $200 on my entire Steam collection, which...isn't that much, considering I've spent about 1400 hours on various Steam games. That's literally a solid two months straight of gaming over the past three years. Holy crap, that means I've spent like 6% of the past three years gaming. Minimum, considering the games I play which aren't on Steam. Probably more like 10%. That's pretty damn impressive. And sad, very sad.

So what's the plan for this year? Study hard, get decent marks, graduate. Need to start looking for graduate programs and internships and jobs. Got a few sites bookmarked but they don't open till February/March, so I've got a little bit of time yet. If I'm allowed by the university to take a lower sequence of Chinese (long story), I'll be doing a Diploma of Languages on top of my Bachelor of Arts/Bachelor of Science, which means five units a semester instead of the usual four. That being said, I've got a second-year Genetics unit first semester and a first-year Biology unit second semester, and a lower level sequence of Chinese would be fairly straightforward, so the year wouldn't be that bad despite the fact that I would be overloading. On the other hand, if I can't take the lower level sequence then I won't do the Diploma, which means three units a semester. On top of the one first-year and one second-year sequence, and that would be an incredibly breezy year.

I need to start looking for jobs. Preferably retail, preferably flexible hours. Looking at EB Games, Coles, Safeway, Big W, that kind of stuff. I'm terrible at customer interaction though so I'd prefer something like those guys that work after the store is closed to get the shelves all ready. EB would be easy though, since I'd know what I'm selling pretty damn well. Actually, I'm not too bad at telling people where stuff is, I might be able to do alright. Coles never has any openings though (took two years for Box Hill to have anything), and Safeway/Big W I've never recieved anything after signing up at their website. Eh.

I'm pretty healthy, I guess. Somewhat. Maybe. Not really. I need to do more start exercising.

My laptop is an absolute piece of shit. On a hot day, it'll overheat if I'm just running Firefox and Skype. Need a new laptop/computer. Probably a computer, it'll handle the punishment mistreatment strain better.

Went clubbing for the first time in Melbourne. Shanghai was better. And Hungy lost my sunglasses :(

My sleeping pattern is all screwed up.

Welcome to 2013, y'all.

Racists on the train

On Thursday 26th of September 2012, at approximately 8:45pm, I was with a few friends (all Asian, all born and raised in Australia) at Ferntree Gully railway station waiting for the city-bound train. We were doing what friends do when we're bored, just swapping stories and jokes, nothing lewd, trying to pass the time. Sitting within earshot of us, however, were three skimpily dressed Caucasian teenage females, who threw a few disparaging remarks at us from afar about not being able to understand us, sarcastic imitation laughter whenever we laughed, and so on. A short while later one of the girls approached us and, in deliberately polite but no nonsense terms, told us to shut up. She followed up with a request for cigarettes, then complimented one of my friends on the glasses he was wearing. She then stated, rather matter-of-factly, that she would "roll him" for those glasses, that she would push him in front of a train, and then she retuned to her two waiting friends. We resumed our carefree banter but with a slight edge that hadn't been there previously. A few minutes later the train arrived and two of our group departed for their car, leaving three of us to board the train.

When the train stopped a few stations later, one of the girls ran from the carriage ahead of us along the platform to the carriage behind ours, while her two friends followed by passing through the inter-carriage gangplank. These two sterling individuals drew level with where my two friends and I were seated just as one of my friends tried to pass me the paperback novel he had been carrying. One girl grabbed onto the book from his outstretched hand and tried to continue walking, but I had a firm grip on it and wrested it from her, and the two continued on their way down the aisle. But before they left the carriage one of them threw back the following phrase:

"Fucking Asians."

Mercifully, this was the last time we saw them on our journey (or at least before I got off at my stop). But one of my friends did raise an interesting point before I left; how do you respond to a racist like that?

There are three approaches that I could come up with, each as unsuitable as the next. The first, responding intelligently with reference to their increased likelihood of obesity, disease and early death would be unintelligible to them; in simple terms, they are too stupid to insult. Resorting to their level of intelligence, the second option, is overly antagonistic, with retorts such as "fuck off white trash" more likely to lead to a physical confrontation than a peaceful resolution. The third, to simply ignore their ridicule, simply emboldens their racism and encourages them to further their attacks in the absence of a response. Silence solves nothing, especially since without a proportional and measured response there can be no deterrence of future racism.

The only viable solution I could think of, as I sat on my lonely bus ride home, would be to deliberately and aggressively reinforce their racist notions in order to belittle them. This, I thought, could be done by pretending not to understand English, and responding only in an Asian language (for the brave of heart, phrases such as "Ohh me ching chong chinaman" would serve a similar purpose. As Sun Tzu said, "the opportunity of defeating the enemy is provided by the enemy himself"). Their lack of comprehension would serve only to confuse them and give rise to a sense of dumbfound stupidity, reinforced by the laughter of my fellow comrades. Worst case scenario, escalated violence is a possibility but with them as the clear aggressor. The best case would result in them simply walking away, either smugly justified in their racism or feeling confused and unintelligent.

Thoughts and opinions?