Say hello and forget

Hey.
Oh, hi.
What's your name?
Ryan. I'm from San Jose. You?
I'm _____ and I'm from ______.
Oh, that's cool. So what are you majoring in?
I don't really know yet. Something sciency, probably. You?
Yeah, I don't really know either.
So when did you get here?
Yesterday night. You?
This morning.
You committed here yet?
No, I'm still deciding.
Same.
Hey, well nice meeting you.

Take this conversation and multiply it by 30, and that equals the vast, vapid majority of my social experience at Visitas. 

Am I a loser? Perhaps. Am I a horrible conversationalist? Probably.

Then again, I've learned to not expect much out of mingling conversation. We're all a bunch of fakes because no one is comfortable showing the inside to random strangers - because we're all too aware of our ugliness.

Walls are as much to keep others out, as to keep us in.

So no, I didn't loathe having the same formulaic conversation every day. Because I would rather not see the prick and asshole inside everyone until much later.

As I'm sure is the case for them.

Sal Khan Khan Can Do It All

Pardon the pun, but watch the last 30 seconds, and you will know why this man is my idol.



This guy is hands down the clearest and most hilarious math instructor I have ever had.
And to think this guy has delivered 141,362,837 lessons, for free?

Man.

I have yet to listen to the pleas of any Wikipedia Founder/Writer/Editor/Marketing Specialist/Janitor to donate to Wikipedia, but Sal Khan has sure got my vote.


That's right, all 5 dollars of it.

...maybe more in the future.

Rage

Of all the random evolution stories from my Pokemon days, the only one that's stuck with me is that of Gyarados.

Here you go from the most useless Pokemon (it's a goddamn red fish flopping on the ground) in the game, and then BAM! at level 20, you've got this blue serpent of awesomeness.

So why is Gyarados so angry? I mean, for a Pokemon who just went through 20 levels of living hell, you would think that Gyarados would be pretty happy with the results.


--------------------------------------------------
In a sense, we're all like Gyarados over there. We constantly craft our decisions and sacrifice our immediate wants in order to build up to some goal or achievement, but once we get there, things aren't as amazing as we had imagined. We knew it all along, but being the wishful thinkers we are, we still wanted to make sure that the pot of gold doesn't actually exist. And it never will.

So we get frustrated. And we get tired. And we start raging.

And then we start turning blue, growing whiskers and crazy spikes on our heads, and spewing out awesome yellow hyper beams.

Head out of the shell

From watching the experiences of people before me, I know enough to not burrow my head into my shell like a turtle. If there's an impending problem, it's usually better to willingly stare it in the face when it's still far away, then be forced to deal with it later, when it's too late.

The question is: can you prepare for a future that no one knows for certain? Because for all we know, we could have been staring at a ship that wasn't ever going to make it to shore.

At least when your head is stuck in your shell, you take every experience at a time. You're in one place at one time, and you know nothing else - there's nothing else you can see.

Funny. Isn't that precisely what people always tell us to do? To always live life in the present, and enjoy it?

So maybe the turtle had it right after all - stick your head in your shell, live in the now, and brace yourself for disaster.

Because regardless of whether you were planning for it or not, it's going to come anyway.

Death.

Choices

Most Improved

I happened to meet the parents of one of my close middle school friends the other day. I was in a good mood, so I waved, and they cautiously said hi.

"Oh, I guess you don't remember me anymore. I'm Ryan, I was friends with Michael."

And just like anybody who hasn't seen me since 8th grade, the first comment I got was about the voice. Fine.

Then they started launching into this commentary of how I've become more good-looking and how I look intelligent now.

Well, thanks. Glad to know that you thought I was a hideous, pimply blob with the intelligence of a cantaloupe back then.



You can take a compliment about how you've changed either one of three ways.
1) Fuck you.
2) At least I've improved, unlike you.
3) Be a normal, polite person and graciously accept the compliment.

You can guess which option I took.

That's right - the first one.