NO WORRIES.

++ From a friend of a friend's away message:
"Eventually, all the pieces fall into place...until then, laugh at the confusion, live for the moment, and know that everything happens for a reason."
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no better advice or statement could be made at the moment. there is some unforseen plan (from my eyes) and i'm ok with that. i know i can't control everything and i'm ok with that.
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my mom has a way with being chinese. it seems like more and more whenever her and i have talks, she always manages to throw in an ancient chinese proverb. naturally she doesn't tell it to me in chinese (like it probably should be or would be the most true) because well then i wouldn't be able to understand it. she translates it into english (which sometimes it loses its full meaning, but the general gist of it comes through.) the most recent proverbs she has told me in the past 6 months are these:
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there are two men in a village. both of them have had ailments which have bothered them for the longest time. they both have the exact same medical condition, a cut on their thumb which no matter what they do, always opens up overnight and bleeds. the first guy goes to his doctor and says, "doctor, i have a cut on my thumb and no matter what i do, it will never heal. i've tried everything." the doctor says, "don't worry, i will supply you with a life-time worth of bandages and if you come to my office i will treat your wound and bandage your thumb everyday until you die and your problem will be solved." the guy says, "thanks, doctor." and he does this for the rest of his life. the second guy at the same time goes to his doctor and says, "doctor, i have a cut on my thumb and no matter what i do, it will never heal. i've tried everything." the doctor says, "don't worry, i will cut your thumb off right now. it will hurt while i'm doing this, but it will heal properly, you will never have to worry about your cut again and you will never have to come back to my office." the guy says, "ok doctor. do it." the doctor severes the guys thumb and he is in pain for the next couple of months, but as foretold his cut heals properly and he never has to revisit the doctor for his ailment.

the moral of the proverb is sometimes it is better for quick sharp pain which will heal than to have a cut which will bleed for the rest of your life.
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the second proverb: there are two men in a village. one of them lives one the west side of town next to a well and the local spring, however his home faces the wall which surrounds the village to keep out intruders and attackers. the other man lives on the east side of town where the grass is always green, he has servants to do all of his hosuework and prepare him meals. his house sits on the top of a hill overlooking the rest of the village. he is well-stocked and lives very well, however he is so far secluded from the rest of the village that others must yell and chime bells when they want to approach his domain. both men are happy with where they live until a fire breaks out in the city center and quickly spreads in all directions burning everything in its path. the fire reaches both homes at the same time and both men scramble to save their possessions. the first man walks three steps out of his front door and dips his bucket into the well and local spring and douses the flames which are burning his house. the second man runs through the gate surrounding his house and down the hill through the town center and over the spring. he fills up a bucket and runs back through the town center up the hill, through the gate and manages to throw half a bucket on the fire which is starting to engulf his home. his home burns to the ground.

the moral of the proverb is sometimes it is better to live humbly and closer to the water than it is to live well and on the far side of town, for when fire breaks you will be closest to water and the first to put down the flames.
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i understand these on a very basic philosophical sense, but i'm unsure i am able to read very far into their meanings at this point in my life. it seems like sometimes we are so close to the fire and i spend so much time putting out the fire, that i don't even know what is on fire. there is some larger plan in which everything i do falls into and i haven't the smallest clue to what that is. in the whole realm of things, today is but a small bump in the sidewalk which borders an alley which feeds into a street which runs to the boulevard emptying into the highway going across the country to a destination i can't see, beacuse it is so high up in the clouds, that once i finally drive into my gas tank has run empty and i can no longer continue the journey to the final destination, nor do i know what the final destination is, nor can i see ahead of me. the only clear path of vision is behind me, back down through the hole in the clouds down the highway, through the boulevard, down the street into the alley next to the sidewalk where the bump in which i now stand in is completely and utterly clear why it is. i will never reach my final destination and i will never see past the clouds, but thats ok, because i trust and i know my cloud and my mountain is but a bump on this earth, which is but a planet in the galaxy, which is but one galaxy in the vastness of space.
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and i'm ok with that. ++

# 14 ..

++ 14. I also don't wear deodorant.
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ok, well i do sometimes. usually only when i'm getting all dolled up though. (which isn't often or often enough i guess. although i could now, now that i have more time and actually have some money. its a bittersweet thing..) actually i have only bought two sticks of deodorant ever. and thats only because i lost the first one. actually now that i think of it i use it when i play sports sometimes. but not every time. what a boring post. really though, can you actually have a good story about deodorant? ++

# 13 ..

++ 13. I go commando.
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thats right. balls to the wall. airing it out. no underwear. no briefs. no boxers (well only sometimes). hey, what can i say. its cooler that way. as in less hot. thats one less piece of clothing i have to wash. its not that big of a deal really. its been 9 years and i haven't looked back. ok, actually i just bought my first pack of boxers for the first time in 9 years a couple of weeks ago. it was odd.
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is it really that much less hot? debatable. i think it is. when do i wear boxers? who cares? sometimes when i play sports and i feel like it. sometimes when i go to work and the boxers i have are clean. don't i have to worry about 'clipping' anything? well, yeah. you just have to be careful though. you take an extra second zipping up .. just to make sure. although by now i'm so used to it, i don't really think about it. the other option is to just get button up flys. takes a little longer to button up or button down, but its well worth not having to worry about pinching. do i have to worry about my ass crack dirtying up the backside of my pants? you just wipe good. (you should wipe good anyway.) how do i deel with the leakies? shake it like a polaroid picture. ..twice for safe keeping. you put clothes on as soon as you get out of the pool. you make sure you're dry before you put clothes on. pretty simple and uneventful actually. you wear them. i don't. simple. ++

# 12 ..

++ 12. I have lived here in the united states ever since then.
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i think out of all the places i've lived in i enjoyed denver the most. i'm not quite sure why. maybe it was because it was the first time i had really really gone off and lived without any kind of guidance. when i left home to go to college, there is still that RA sort of thing on the floor and quality control for getting into the dorms. but when i went to denver, it was just me and brian and adam and drew and no one to tell us what to do or who to see or not to do or not to see. or maybe because it was my first time really being out west for any extended period of time. and in the mountains of all places! or maybe it was i really connected with denver. (doesn't everybody connect with colorado somehow though?) it could have been the hiking and camping in the mountains in the summer and then going back to the exact same places in the winter and snowboarding down them. or it could have been that it was the first time i had ever climbed outside. or the first time i had ever been on a multi-pitch route. or the first time i had ever been on a snowboard. doesn't matter. it was fun. i'd go back any day.
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san francisco had its moments. of course the two times i lived there i lived in two completely different places. cole valley the first time (just right up the street from the haight) and in the mission (the OTR of cincinnati, except all spanish people). the first time i lived in cole valley i had to drive down through the castro (the gay district) everyday to get to work. the second time i had to drive over to the warehouse district over on the east side (over by pacbell park). i think what i enjoyed most about san francisco was the inevitable morning fog which would be replaced by sunshine in the afternoon. the distinct neighborhoods in a unified city were something you don't see everywhere, especially in suburbia ohio (which isn't necessarily a bad thing. just a different thing.) there is a completely different side of san francisco you get as a tourist than as somebody who works there or does installations and deliveries there. oh and the streets. oh the streets. you learn unless you live on those insanely steep streets that you avoid the insanely steep streets. or rather you learn alternate ways around them. not that they aren't fun to drive, because they are. but they do damage beyond what you would ever think to your clutch and to your gas mileage.
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portland is a city which is deceptive. it is one of the largest cities in the pacific northwest (after seattle) and yet it feels about as big as dayton, ohio. it may be because it has so much room to spread out, that it does. or it could be that its not right on the water (which i really didn't know until i go there and looked at a map.) it actually sits about an hour inland on a river. oh oh! i get it now. port. land. its a port. its surrounded by land. portland. (holy wow i'm smart.) there is a code in portland that none of the buildings built now are allowed to block views of mount hood (which is visible from downtown even though its 2 hours east.) so i think the building height code is something like 30 floors which puts it at just around 450' or so above ground level i think. mount hood is ridulous. its a little kid's drawing of a mountain. its basically a triangle. and its soo cool. portland has free public transportation downtown and it operates on an honor system outside of downtown and oddly enough most people if not all people oblige to the honor system (except when they fall asleep drunk and accidentally take the train all the way to the end of the line 15 miles outside of downtown, but thats another post.) portland is basically a family town if you ask me. it seems that everyone is either married and has kids or at the very least married.
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seattle is a place shrouded in myth and rumors to us people who are from the midweset (and by the midwest i mean our made up midwest of ohio, which isn't really in the midwest, but is for all practical purposes.) seattle is a place so far away that we (ohioians) think it rains there all the time. we think seattle never has sunshine. its always cold. and all the people are either gay or lesbians or ugly. .. most of this is true. well all except for the raining all the time thing. to forever dispell rumors about seattle (to the 10 people who read this. i'm not gonna lie. i don't pretend that a bunch of people read this or care.), seattle does not rain all the time. it is surrounded by water everywhere you go. it seems that every street you turn down, it ends at water. however in the summer when the high pressure system of california moves north, it pushes all the rain clouds north and its actually sunny (and hot .. 80+ degrees). it does however seem to mist a lot. which is different from rain. most buildings in seattle don't have a/c. why? it basically pretty much never gets warm enough to warrant the use of a/c. when it does ge that warm, people just open their windows and use that old and proven cross-ventilation cooling system. there is a definate critical regionalism thing going on in seattle. seattle's architecture carries that very techtonic feel, where structure is defined, shown, and almost celebrated. it is a very working class city with lots of ports and shipping plays a very big influence on the city's structure and skyline. and with that comes a very straightforward and honest architecture. oh and mount rainier. how could i forget about mount rainier. it is visible from seattle even though its 3 hours southeast from downtown. its absolutely huge! all those photos you see of the skyline of seattle where it looks like mount rainier is either photoshopped in or cut and pasted.. yeah those are real. its ridiculous how big the mountain is. disturbing almost.
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cincinnati has grown on me over the past six years. its not that i ever disliked it. it just didn't have all the flair of the other cities. or maybe it was because its too close to home. but now it has turned into my home and really like it here. its not as big as columbus, but it seems like it is. downtown is completely different from the east side which is completely different from the westside which is completely different from the scene around campus. downtown is still really dead (especially after the riots and since it sits right next to OTR, which is one of the poorest districts in cinci.) downtown has gottne better in recent years or at least it seems. the eastside is comprised mostly of big fat old homes perched on small hills or tucked away in groves of trees. for lack of a better stereotype it is the rich part of cinci. the westside is a step back in time as well, but not for the architecture, more for its old ways of thinking and mentality. for lack of a better stereotype, the westside is the working class of cinci. they are hardnosed. they work mostly blue-collar jobs. they have a character about them which is completely different from the eastside. and then the campus parts of cinci. well its like most other campus sections of cities, except its a little more urban, but not a true urban campus. basically i'm saying its a fake campus. ..architecturally.
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and finally last but by far not the least, fairborn, my hometown. i grew up there and spent my childhood there and the endless summers where i had nothing to do there. it was great. its still great. my parents still live in fairborn. and for the record i have never lived in beavercreek, although i was only a few streets off. some of my most vivid memories are in fairborn. playing soccer, endless games of soccer and practices. going on bike rides. summer midday holy hot runs. kickball. you name it. it most likely happenned. fairborn is a town made mostly of government employees. i would venture to say that if wright patterson air force base had not been more or less in town, the city of fairborn would not be a city, but still a town or a village or a settlement or still the wild west. fairborn is actually the conjoining of the towns of fairfield and osborne with a railroad more or less splitting it right down the middle. it is the all-american suburb except that main street and downtown fairborn has gone through a relapse and because of the transient nature of wright patt, downtown is not as vivid and busy as it should be. it doesn't contain as many cute little shops as it should. it is a sity of single family small detached houses with vasts amount of neighborhoods all sporting the same house, varied slightly, but more or less the same house for rows and rows on end. it is my hometown and i am proud of it despite its shortcomings.
what can i say. ..its home. ++

# 11 ..

++ 11. I have never been to Europe, but I was born in Taiwan, but I only lived there for 6 months, but it was the first 6 months of my life.
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And so i don't remember it. i have been back to taiwan once since then to visit relatives. it was in 2002. i met relatives i haven't ever met before and it was absolutely great. downtown taipei taiwan is something similar to going to times square during rush hour in the evening when all the lights are on and everywhere, spinning around until you are aboslutely dizzy, then dropping a pin in the midst of all the foot traffic and taxi traffic, closing your eyes for 30 seconds, then trying to find the pin. absolutely insane. of course the bigger you are, the more control you have. so pedestrians have no chance. you avoid everything else. next come the scooters with the 20 and 30 something year olds on them, wearing a cloth or cotton mask over their mouths to keep out the ever-present car fumes. they zip in and out of traffic deftly and narrowly avoiding each other and being hit by 4 wheeled vehicles. sometimes with a passenger on the back. some with helmets. some without. next come the cars driven by mostly middle to older taiwanese who have made it in the financial world (well even some who haven't. but the its just like the US. BMW's. junkers. they're all there.) next come the taxi cabs. oh the taxi cabs. not as many as NYC, but a whole lot more crazy. they are probably by far the worst drivers in the country. they drive fast. they turn fast. they jerk back and forth. apparantly they have a foul mouth. they all smoke. and they all chew betel nuts. which stain your teeth red and contains nicotine in it. actually, taxicab drivers almost rule the road over larger trucks and buses. the one thing i did notice is they do not have any semi-trucks. lots of greyhound buses though. oh, you can take a bus from the top of the island to the bottom of the island in a day. actually in less than a day. taiwan is so small it can fit inside rhode island. the countryside once you get out side of the major cities are very rural. oh and temples everywhere. i didn't quite figure out the whole temple and religious thing, because to me the temples (which i guess are different from shrines) all more or less look the same. at least the buddhist and daoist temples. but in the countryside (well pretty much everywhere outside of the major cities where its banned to burn things) they burn this fake money at temples. i guess at the buddhist temples you pray to three things, the gods, your anscestors, and the heavens. (although i think i just got that wrong. anybody know?) oh yeah and confuscianism is different from buddhism. without getting into a spiritual dialogue, confuscianism is not a religion, its a way of life. buddhism and shintoism and daoism are religions. there is a lot about taiwan. i'll save it though for particulars. ++