brilliant

Walking down the street I see a child holding a balloon on a string watching it dance to the wind. My face instantly lifts. I feel thankful for working with children because I remember how easy it is to enjoy life since everything is pretty much amazing as in: incredible, awe inspiring, strange, note worthy. For a number of reasons, fatigue, information overload, preservation of sanity, ignorance, lack of observation, and so on and so forth we become grumpy teenagers and plunge deep into misery (well some of us do, and many more just into apathy) and then we somewhat recover as adults only to discover we’ve lost that pure joy of life we had as children. Perhaps there is even no awareness of this loss. We think it’s normal to walk about living in our minds (well, I live in my mind) worrying about being late for work, rent, what she meant when she said this at work and whatever else people worry about. Life basically. That’s it. We worry about life which is not something most children worry about since they just get on with it. Sometimes they pick a balloon and play with it and they can play for hours. Sometimes they throw a tandrum because their mum used their special soap (real story, told to me yesterday). But whatever it is, they experience the moment fully, most of the time and make us a little bit better though I’m not sure what happens for them to become the unhappy adult counterparts they will in most probability become. In any case, thanks four year old for helping me out of a mindless moment to witness the marvel of a balloon flowing with the wind and your intrinsic enjoyment of that.

on occassion, I tell people they’re wrong

I had one of those moments today where the voice that runs the commentary in my head bypassed security. I’ve been formally trained in philosophy for six years and it’s always been natural for me to hear and detect inconsistencies or to want to qualify everything endlessly because there is at least the metaphysical possibility that the universe is built such a way that it would allow for a statement to be true and other such anal things. I’ve learned to suppress this and just shut up and nowadays I’m proud of myself for answering “I’m good” to “How are you?” even though that’s just wrong. This has been a big step for me. I still get into trouble because when pushed I will absolutely refuse to say I’m in a position to know x, y, z, because usually I’m not but most people fail to see the underlying motivation behind my refusals and take me to be saying something I’m not. I think people do that a lot because they skip on all the qualifications I add to give myself loopholes so that I don’t actually have to commit to much. Where the fuck was I? Ah yes. Well, today I didn’t automatically censor myself and ended up giving a speal on how this guy made a category mistake. I actually used that term. To be fair he started it by making a seemingly smart remark in response to a valid, sarcastic offhand remark in response to this recording of a guy chanting (and here I ask you to remember that I work at a language school in China): I am a chair, I am a bed, I am a sofa… So guy one says: Decide what you are! Are you a chair, a sofa, or a bed? You can’t be all of those things… To which guy two responds by: Well, I am a father, a son… which is when I interrupt, well, the inner voice interrupts to say: Well, that’s a category mistake. And then I start lecturing about what descriptions of yourself give a list of properties you can simultaneously have and still be you and descriptions of who you essentially are exclude you being some other way. For example, if you’re a chair perhaps you can’t also be a bed. That kind of thing. As I’m rambling I realise I’m lecturing (which guy one didn’t mind at all, having a “what she said” look) but I feel embarrassed at this and say something like “I should shut up now, the philosopher in me got out” and go off to make photocopies of a handout about making an animal out of shapes and describing said animal. The main problem is that I don’t really like guy 2 and he very often says stupid things or smart things that are really not necessary to say and I don’t want to be hostile. Because I am and I have a way of showing such things sometimes without fully realise I’m doing it. I think he likes being right but doesn’t like being wrong and he was sulking all day after this. (I think he was, maybe I’m being paranoid but who cares.) But if the voice got outed more I’d be a very obnoxious person all the time since the commentary is pretty much on all the time and often targets fallacious statements.

philosophy in China

For today’s debate society I thought I’d try philosophy since in the past the subjects were boring and people weren’t interested. I thought Ethics would do the trick since thought experiments about killing and letting die always get people going (at least they do so for philosophy students). So I go for the classic: you’re driving a train and you have to choose between going left/right to kill one/five people VS. you’re driving a train and five people will die unless you push that fattie right in front of the train and save them. Everyone spoke and we actually had a debate. But people thought questions like that were very weird and that no one really ever bothers with such things. Hmm… Maybe next time I can raise questions about the existence of the external world and do some sceptical arguments and keep narrowing down until we get to debating the existence of everyday medium sized objects like chairs and tables and then perhaps the existence or not of things like holes and gaps between objects… Wouldn’t it be great if we got talking about that?

reasonable

My boobs are kind of huge. Well, some people call them “big”, others “huge” and as a Chinese colleague who saw me naked in the showers (common) after bellydancing dance said: Wow, your friends are rich. Anyway, I’ve come to terms with their size and don’t really notice it anymore and also understand that they suit my body better than how a smaller pair would. So, whatever. However, my bra size does change and this is inconvenient because bras for big boobs are expensive and when you have boobs my size you have to wear the right size. And by the way, way too many women don’t wear the right size and I can spot them a mile off and it makes a huge difference to wear a proper bra and I don’t get it why some people will spend a fortune on clothes and ruin the whole presentation by forgetting about the foundations. Rambling on, when I passed through London this summer, I discovered that my bra sized changed and I now have an awkward size that’s not widely stocked. I manage to get two bras, one of which is very summery and not good to wear under winter clothes, mostly, or during/close to my period when my boobs somewhat grow. So I’ve been wearing one bra much more than any other because that’s the best fit. Internet shopping it is. I browse bras, choose shitloads and the only one bikini in my size (for when summer comes, to avoid paying the delivery charge twice). Then begins the elimination process. The bikini is way too expensive and I remove it thinking that it will either come on sale or something else will come up that will be cheaper even if I have to pay more to have it delivered to China. Then, one by one, I dismiss the pretty bras, sexy bras, and whatnot and stick with the sensible, useful ones. Then, I ask myself if I really, truly, really, have to incur this cost and I go fetch my old bras that are a back size too big, get a pair of scissors, and remove some fabric to make the back size smaller. I did an OK job, I don’t need to buy new bras, and I were, well, very reasonable. Then again, I spent a small fortune today (relatively speaking) buying mature cheddar cheese, tobasco sauce, digestives knock–offs, ground coffee, which are all luxury items in China. So something had to give.

the best part of learning Chinese

On a completely irrelevant note as is everything in this corner of my universe, learning Chinese is cool. Aspects of it are incredibly difficult to a Westerner, but others so much easier than having to learn French or Spanish, for example. The language is logical and it’s easy to extrapolate and go about guessing what a word you haven’t been explicitly taught will be and how to phrase things and construct sentences. The grammar is for the most part straightforward. And the language is very poetic. Every pictogram has a story, and words are laced with metaphor. There’s also a lot of meaning reinforcement through repetition, for example you might say “beautiful” by saying: “beautiful beautiful”, putting two synonyms together. But I haven’t got to the best part yet. This is the only language I’ve written in where my handwriting is considered beautiful! I’d never have thought it possible. But there you have it.

November eve; winter

Winter is coming. It’s about 3 degrees celcius at night and will drop below freezing tomorrow night. About 7 degrees during the day. I’m wearing my coat tomorrow because I can’t pretend it’s still warm enough to get by on a jacket. I’m also wearing my maxi wooly coat dress, the one I inherited from my mum that in London I would wear when it got really really cold and then usually I wouldn’t need a coat to wear with. But I was freezing today and until I adjust, I’ll be bundled up. Nearly a year in sub–tropical climate (China is huge huge huge) has made me less tolerant of the cold. But I’m excited. (Must buy gloves! I’ve got the coldest hands ever.) And I finally see the point of thermal underwear and will get me some.

old daemons

How can I tell if I’m on my way to getting depressed again rather than just be having a bad couple of weeks? I have to acknowledge and accept that I have a history of this illness, that it’s not always a bad thing, that it may happen again in my life. I’ve been doing some research (i.e. googling) and for my age group depression is atypical. Those who have had a depressive episode (and I’ve had two major ones) are likely to have it a few times in their lives. I’m scared, far away from home, and alone. I’m hoping I’m over reacting but every day for the last couple of weeks I’ve been hoping that the next day will be better. Perhaps I’m tired. I am tired. And over-socialised. But reluctant and unable to withdraw. And I’ve had a menstrual period double feature which hasn’t helped with my state of mind. I’ll sit on this for another week, but I will be proactive this time. I cannot let myself go back. But the way of being when depressed is starting to feel more and more familiar. This is perhaps the memory of old daemons. But my heart feels heavy and I’m floating, not living.