Not being paid enough

I find it amusing that Gucci, Tiffany's, Hermès, Louis Vuitton, Morton's and an apparently pretty good restaurant can be found in the building that my office is located in.

Then there's Bloomingdale's across the street, part of a massive shopping complex.

To top things off, a well-regarded French restaurant is within walking distance of my apartment.

List

Parents do get on one's nerves sometimes. Certainly I look forward to seeing them after some months of separation, but there is a tendency for me to be viewed as a small child rather than an adult. Ok, I speak here of my father. My mom is ok, I guess, and not as overbearing as my dad.

I am a little confused by this characteristic of my relationship with my father. It seems reasonable to expect that his relationship with his parents would provide a model for his relationship with him, but that does not seem to be the case. My father has a position of strength in his relationship with his parents. He is quite independent from them, and pretty much holds his own counsel. Arguments rarely occur, since he always wins, or at least he always does what he wants to. He was given relative autonomy by his parents, and struck out on his own, forging a career and life path that might be approved of, but definitely not laid out by his parents.

In sharp contrast, he feels the need to tell me exactly what to do in every situation. I do not exaggerate. Just today, he has told me three times to sort out my clothes for dry-cleaning. I tell him a particular coat was cleaned just before I left Chicago, he refuses to believe me. Then he gets annoyed when I refuse to place that coat in the pile to be cleaned. See, I'm actually saving him the cost of cleaning a coat unnecessarily.

Another great example is packing. When I was packing to leave Chicago, a certain quantity had been put together before my parents arrived. Then they showed up, and proceeded to remove everything and repack it. Then he informed me that there was no way that I could have packed everything myself. I must say that I most certainly could have, and would have done so on a schedule that was convenient to myself, and not him. When my coats, worth a pretty penny, were being crushed into a piece of luggage that I saw no need to fill to bursting, I protested, pointing out that packing a cashmere coat into a bag so tightly that a full-grown man has to step on the bag into to close it might not be such a good idea. He proceeded to declare that the bag could still fit more stuff, and did so. I wonder if my coats will still fit when I get them back under my control. In the same period of time, four days before I was to leave Chicago, all my clothes were packed into various bags, without my supervision. The result was a shower delayed by an hour while I hunted through bags and boxes to piece together an outfit. Is it too much to ask that I be allowed to know where my socks are to be found?

Here's the thing. It is not as if my choices or behaviour is particularly offensive, but that they are not exactly the same as his. I am a very different person to him. If nothing else, I have a more broadly defined purpose to my life. I do not wish to lead a good life, for I have no idea what that means. He has a conception of what a good person should do. That includes a whole set of behaviours that I see no need to outline here. I find many of these to be irrelevant to myself. I am messy because I barely notice the mess. Since I do not even notice, why expend energy to fold clothes? Whatever can be placed on hangers is. Things like t-shirts worn to bed, I see no point at all in avoiding wrinkles on them. Honestly, I am not bothered by the dry air in Chicago. It just doesn't bother me. In fact, I find that humidifiers create an overly humid and stifling environment.

Ok, this is devolving into a list of grievances. I'll stop now.

I do not know

Ok, I guess I should toss out one of those graduation posts. Everybody seems to be getting sentimental about leaving college, and I can see why. After all, it is unlikely that most of us will ever return to Chicago, or see the people here again. It is quite unlike Singapore or wherever you are originally from, where after graduation it is fairly certain that you will return to the scene of the crime and see your co-conspirators again, to drag a metaphor out too long.

There are people whom I would be surprised to run into again. People whom I sort of know, but not too well, yet rather like. It's always odd to run into them on campus. You smile and say hello. A conversation is struck up, often lasting for a good deal of time. You find them interesting, engaging, occasionally fascinating, but at the end of the conversation, which has dragged on far too long, causing you to miss a number of buses, you say something banal like 'I have to go.' and hurry off on your way, never even exchanging numbers or email or instant messaging identities. And minutes after the conversation has ended, you no longer even think about these people. I suppose such acquaintances are similar in their roles in my life as certain professors. They provide tremendously interesting moments in my everyday routine, but I would not consider them my friends.

This is in contrast to some people I would consider my friends. There are those friends with whom you do carry on great conversations, intellectual or otherwise. Then there are those whom you are comfortable enough with to not feel the need to fill every moment with speech. A companionable silence is severely underrated amongst the young. It is considered to be a sign that there is nothing left to talk about. I feel that this is a severe misconception. When I claim to enjoy the company of another person, I mean by this that the presence of this person puts me in a better mood. I enjoy being around this person. Whether this person has anything interesting to say at the moment is irrelevant. If I enjoy nothing more than the conversations I have with this person, then it is inaccurate to say that I enjoy her company. Rather, I find the conversation enjoyable.

Is this a difficult concept to grasp? I find surfing Wikipedia or reading an encyclopedia to be interesting. I am acquiring knowledge on a broad and shallow level, expanding the horizons, if not the depth, of my mind. I do not like the encyclopedia. I enjoy the contents of the books. If similar or superior content were to be found in another book, I would be quite glad to abandon the current version for an upgrade. That is the entire concept of Wikipedia, after all.

When I say that I like a person, it is not the content that I am fond of. Content can, after all, be exhausted. At some point, you will have learnt all that you care to learn from any given individual. Beyond that, there has to be something more to bind you in the relationship. Note that when I say relationship, I speak not merely of romantic relationships, but also platonic friendship relationships. Relations of blood are binding by social constraints, so I ignore them here.

So what is it that binds people, or more specifically me, in a relationship? As noted above, the content of conversations could not be it. A prime personal example would be one where the content of conversations is practically nil. With this person, we simply keep asking each other the same one word question, often appended with the name of the addressee, and the rest of the conversation is merely a series of riffs off the whatever comes to mind. I would not claim these to be deep or particularly interesting conversations, but I do enjoy them, for no reason other than that I enjoy the company of this person.

I do not have an answer for this question. Why do I like some people? I do not wish to be them. In fact, in many cases, they are quite the opposite of what I would like to be. Maybe some time in the future I will be able to figure this out, but not now. So I can only shrug and offer a banal 'Je ne sais pas.'

C'est tout

I guess that's it for Chicago. It's been fun while it lasted.

Chatter

There are times when nostalgia does seep into my consciousness, evoking a tension in my temples that might be construed as emotional distress. At these times, I try to just grin and toss off a casual remark. Then I bring my will to the fore, and it reasserts itself.

I have changed. I don't think it's in doubt. I have broadened my spectrum of enjoyment of food somewhat. I have become more demanding and critical, both of others and myself. Arrogance has mellowed somewhat into a a calmer self-assurance of superiority. I am more cautious, less willing to take a step further than I can sustain. I am more judgmental and disdainful of those who fall short of my estimation, which is almost everybody. I expect a great deal from others, but am less angry when they fail to deliver. I have adopted a less angry, more detached attitude to life. I pretend less. No longer do I fake approval when it means so little to me.

The people I have met have changed me. I wonder if I have changed them. But the bulk of the metamorphoses have resulted from a gradual loss of interest in many things, and a growing need for mental stimulation.

Oddly, the reverse has occurred in some arenas. I no longer feel the need to fill every moment of every interaction with mindless chatter and mildly amusing stories. Instead, with some people, silences are not uncomfortable, but part of what I desire from them. I can sit and enjoy a sunny afternoon on the lake without a word, or browse a bookstore quietly, or point out something amusing and smile without needing to make snide comments.

I have wasted something like $600 of free food and drink today. All because I went to Trotter's a week too late. Ah well, c'est la vie.

I find the word written on my paper fan to be of immense use. Very inspirational. I have a stone tablet with the same word on it. I shall hang it in a prominent place.

I will miss the lot of them. I think I will, anyway. Yes, even you. I hope.

Chatter chatter chatter. If you read this a lot, then you need another hobby, but I shall produce something more coherent when I feel more coherent. Currently, I want to lazily free-associate. Of course, the less coherent you are, the more narrow free-association tends to be. Which appears to be the case here.

I shall gladly walk away from some people. Others, I may even weep over.

Slouching

Finished possibly the last final of my life a few days ago, and am currently slouching towards graduation. I could ruminate on academic life, lost friends or other such nostalgic nonsense, but I won't. Don't feel like it. Maybe some other time. Instead, I'm going to geek out over a great old game I recently played through again. I refer here to Star Control II, or the open-source version, the Ur-Quan Masters.

It starts out fairly standard. You're a starship captain from a space colony, returning to find Earth under enslavement, along with every other race in nearby space. The game is essentially about forging alliances, manipulating politics and occasionally shooting the crap out of the slave masters. Most of the game is well constructed, with a fantastic melee segment. The ships each have wildly differing abilities and weaknesses, making for fascinating gameplay. For example, the slave masters, a race known as the Ur-Quan Kzer-Za, have a ship with a powerful medium-range blasting attack, plus the ability to send out little commandos who will attach themselves to the enemy ship and start shooting it to bits. In contrast, probably the single most effective ship against them is a speedy little craft with a pathetic forward shot and the ability to fire a very weak missile backwards. The latter craft is relatively quick, so you just swoop in and out, releasing a few missiles as you flee for your life. After a few rounds of this, a halfway skilled pilot will have worn the Ur-Quan ship down to nothing. Charmingly enough, the pilots of the latter ship are a race of complete cowards who crumble at the slightest threat. In fact, that's how you persuade them to join you. Eventually, they choose to permanently enclose themselves in a shield that prevents any traffic with the rest of space.

Which brings me to the most interesting part of the game, for me at least. The history and psychology of each race are well thought out, and it's difficult not to feel sympathy for your enemies, while occasionally being shocked at how immoral your character can be. Let's begin with the Ur-Quan. Some twenty thousand years ago, the Ur-Quan were a race of solitary hunters who had just begun to explore their solar system. Another race of aliens, the Taalo, came across them, and after some initial conflict, the Ur-Quan were able to control their natural hostility and became part of an alliance of alien races. In fact, the Ur-Quan were great explorers, charting and investigating thousands of unknown worlds. On one planet, they came across the Dynarri, a race of super-intelligent toad-like creatures who could mentally control others. The Dynarri promptly took control of the Ur-Quan, then the rest of the known alien races. The Taalo were immune to the mental compulsions, as opposed to the Ur-Quan, who were particularly susceptible. So the Dynarri compelled the Ur-Quan to exterminate the Taalo, who succumbed without a fight.

For the next two thousand years, the Ur-Quan were slaves to the Dynarri. The Ur-Quan were bioengineered into two races, the green scientists and administrators, and the black warriors and workers. Eventually, one green Ur-Quan discovered by accident that extreme pain would force the Dynarri to disconnect from his mind. So he waited until he was near a communications transmitter, then injected himself with an acidic poison. In the moments before his death, the excruciating pain freed his mind from the Dynarri, and he broadcast his discovery to the known galaxy. Ur-Quan began to inflict extreme pain upon themselves, and in the few precious moments of freedom, lashed out and killed as many Dynarri as they could find.

Eventually, the rebels developed a device, called the Excruciator, that would keep them in constant pain, just short of killing them outright. With every member of the race using this device, a war was fought over many years. When the rebels won, they decided that death would be too kind to the Dynarri, so they bioengineered them into non-sentient translators.

The problem then for the Ur-Quan was how to avoid ever being enslaved again. There was a disagreement here, and two factions formed. The green Ur-Quan, naming themselves for Kzer-Za, the Ur-Quan who had first discovered how to break free from the Dynarri, wanted to enslave every other race in the universe. By controlling all other sentient life, threats would be eliminated. The black Ur-Quan, led by an officer named Kohr-Ar, felt that complete extermination of all sentient life was a preferable solution. The disagreement grew, and a civil war was fought. The Kzer-Za won, but conceded that it was possible that they were wrong. So they told the Kohr-Ar to head in on direction of the galaxy, carrying out their doctrine of extermination, and the Kzer-Za would head in the other direction, enslaving all sentient races they met. When the two met again, another doctrinal conflict would be fought to decide who was right.

The game takes place when this second doctrinal conflict is ongoing. So aside from sympathising with the history of the Ur-Quan, you realise that the slave masters were fighting their brethren for the survival of all life in the galaxy. So the problem is whether you should continue to strive against them when they are advocating slavery over genocide.

In fact, slavery isn't really a terrible thing. The Ur-Quan Kzer-Za apparently do take care of the slave races. A choice is offered to be confined to the homeworld permanently, or to become warrior-slaves. The former option isn't actually such a terrible thing, since most people never make it into space anyway. So enslavement means nothing to most of these slaves. In fact, one alien race had lost their homeworld, and had spent decades looking for a suitable new one to no avail. It was the Ur-Quan who found one for them when they chose to be confined. The latter option seemed to allow relative autonomy. Slaves were not even used in the doctrinal war. In one case, the Ur-Quan prevented a race of battle thralls, as they are called, from devastating themselves via nuclear warfare. Further, all warfare between slaves is prohibited, resulting in a general peace.

Well, that's the central bit of history for the game. Go play it. It's free now. The developers released the source code into the public, so now there's an open-source version available on the internet.