when i was in nursery, i remember using my left hand to write and draw but then my teacher “corrected” me and told me to use my right hand, and so i learned to write and draw as a righty but with all other activities like sports, i’m still a lefty by heart. i’ve read somewhere that right handed people live longer and that there’s a lot of prejudice against lefties. and so to be a well balanced person, i decided to be ambidextrous.

for the past couple of weeks i’ve been teaching my left hand to draw by enrolling in an art class. and last summer, i’ve trained my right hand to play tennis. so far, my quest for being truly ambidextrous is well underway. i guess this means i will live on the average and be equally prejudiced =).

i’ve always thought i was more of an artsy person than a techie, i liked writing, music, and drawing when i was growing up, i thought i would be a published poet or novelist, or a song writer, or a concert pianist or a charcoal painter but education drove away the creativity in me, and then i fell in love with numbers and incomplete gamma functions. i dreamt of one day making my own theorem or creating solutions for unsolvable math problems. but of course dreams bargained for reality, and sooner rather than later, i found myself working with computers.

on my sophomore year in university i got interested in slr photography and web design. i created personal homepages for friends and websites for school and small businesses. i thought my future would be in graphic design or animation, but then i got sidetracked again and woke up doing back-end server side stuff for a telecoms company. it was a good experience, it brought food on the table, but 10 years later i feel i missed out on some stuff i used to like. i guess i could have equally divided my time between work and hobbies but i just lost track of everything, where did all the years go? now i think i want a field that deals with or manages people, maybe a psychologist or a guidance counselor or a professor? this is how i know i’m getting older.. i’m getting weirder every day..

focusing on doing one thing at a time is a challenge for me, my mind always wanders and somehow i find something else to do when i’m supposed to be finishing another, so i end up with a couple of half baked, half started projects. now that i have time in my hands, i’m tying some loose ends and pursuing some paths that i’ve decided not to take back when i didn’t really know any better. the sky is limitless, it stretches on to forever, so many possibilities yet to unfold, so many futures to choose from.

right now, i’m reading 2 samuel 18, reflecting on the passage and praying for revelation so i can share something in cg next week when i’m not feeling sick anymore, i’m also reviewing road sense for drivers so i can go on a road trip – from west to east, i’m also setting up eclipse and spring on mac just for fun, editing some photos and videos, composing a musical score in garageband, writing a short story, drawing composition on my sketchbook, designing my personal website, migrating my geocities pages before they close down, and wondering why i’m not getting any email or sms response from someone. that’s how distracted and disorganized my brain is right now. to top it all off i just received instructions to finish a programming assignment in two hours.. a day after the deadline has passed.. obviously i need to check my email more often, such is my life without a mobile phone – totally disconnected from the world.. well almost..

ok i guess i have to load my ide, this is a sign to stop blogging..

today i stayed home alone with my thoughts from sun up to sun down, it can be fatal i know, but i survived, somehow. i started the day thinking i would do my laundry, work out, join the trip to lighthouse park, throw the trash, do groceries, clean my room, play with rapidweaver, decode the google phone.. but of course i ended up doing none of those. the day is just too short to do anything, i don’t know if everything is on fast forward here or i’m just really slow. i can see how easy it is to let the world spin by while i stay in place and not move forward in this life. at times like these, i can hear my friend’s voice saying “you have no concept of time”. i woke up before 6am and 14 hours later i’m still in bed, counting the skytrains passing by.

last night we had a nice walk along english bay and had dinner at a jazz place that burned a hole in my pocket. it was fun to catch up with people from the past and to recall the good old days. my former cubemate asked me why i changed my mind about staying here. she reminded me of what i said before about finding another place to explore once my work here is done, but something happened somehow, and now here i am, trying to make some semblance of structure so i can survive this concept of permanent residence. when i close my eyes and ask God for a picture of what life would be like for me, all i see is black.

is it just me or did summer just pass by like a breeze? i blinked and it was still spring, i blinked again and it’s summer already, i’m afraid another quick shut eye would bring fall in advance. i don’t want the sunny days to be over yet, and yet it’s inevitable, the rain and the gray clouds will come soon, bringing with it the wonderful colors of autumn.
for the past two months, i’ve been at yvr at least 6 times, just whisking people and their baggages to and from the place. being in airports doesn’t evoke the same feelings in me anymore, it doesn’t affect me anymore. this must mean i’m getting better.

have you ever wanted something so much that it physically hurts when you don’t get it? i used to say no, i mean really, what is there in life that’s so precious to hold on to that it would break your heart if you don’t get it? everything here is temporary anyway, what’s the point of holding on? i can be anywhere anytime with anybody doing anything, but do i want to be just that?
as much as i am a traveler, the past year made me appreciate a lot of things missing in my career as a wanderer – growing roots, having residence, family, community. in this ever changing world, it’s a comfort to have something constant to hold on to, and just as everything is being pulled away from me, leaving me back to empty, i realized how much i wanted the stuff i never had. it was torture.

it took me a while to bounce back and finally let go and let God do His work, I have done my best. If I am meant to live here then I will stay, if I should be in this job, then I will keep it. If there is somewhere or something better for me, then so be it. He knows my heart and what I want but He also knows what’s best for me, He makes all things beautiful in His own time. I am tired of fighting time…

it’s that time of the year for meteor showers in the northern hemisphere, the perseids should be visible between 12am to 3am, now if only it’s not foggy and you’re looking away from the moon, then it would really be a sight to behold, otherwise you might miss it, but unlike aurigids that takes decades to reappear, there’s still a chance to catch a glimpse of perseids next summer since it happens every year anyway.

some things in life are like perseids, constant, on the dot, dependable, consistent. they are always there, they always show, year after year at the exact same time and place, with no fail. other stuff are like aurigids, they are rare, they dont have a pattern, they come and go and you never really know when they’ll come back again if they do come back again. so which one of the two would you value more?

i asked that same question before to this person i know from university, i was visiting the city and was leaving the next day so I asked if we could meet to catch up, she had a scheduled dinner with her roommates at that time and i gave her the leonid – augrid analogy when i asked if she could make some room for me since i might not be coming back anymore, she wisely stated her point – if i get turned down, i will be hurt now and then i will be gone and that’s that, if she turns down the people she is constantly with, then she has to live with it for a long time. and so she has to value the ones that are constant, not the ones that come just once and might not come again.

i used to value ephemeral things more – those that visit us for a moment and never really stay but leave lasting impressions – like shooting stars and cherry blossoms and passing friends. i used to say i must make time for these objects, these events, these people, because they might not be here again and i will have lost something rare if i miss them. but in time i have come to realize that i have neglected those that are constant in my life – like the sky above me, and the ground i walk on, and God’s infinite love. it’s time to pay homage to them and acknowledge them. often we take for granted those that are always there, but that won’t be the case anymore.. i’m a work in progress, and i’m doing my best everyday to be the best person that God intends me to be. He knows what’s best for me.

incidentally, totally unrelated to heavenly bodies, today is international left handers day. people are inventing so many things to celebrate about =) i’m not really left handed, i’m more ambidextrous, probably the only thing i can’t do with my left hand is write cursive, sports and my mouse belong to my left, and from yesterday’s art class i just discovered that i can also draw with my left hand, this is great, i have a spare working hand =) maybe i can use both at the same time, write with my right and draw with my left haha, almost like the wisdom of crocodiles. let’s see ^^