Last Tuesday
My Chinese New Year closed with a visit from a bunch of my parent's friends and their kids. I had so much fun today, but it also made me feel something, something that I really wanna and have to capture right now, because if I don't do this soon enough, it's gonna slip through my hand and be gone in a whirlwind.
Every single Chinese New Year I pretty much know who I'm gonna see and who's gonna come and visit us, therefore I knew I was gonna visit a childhood friend of mine and his parents last Tuesday. Since Mom and my friend's mom is extremely close, so every year we are also invited to their family dinner, which we would also see all my friend's relatives.
Every year during the dinner, when the adults were doing whatever they were doing, the kids would gather around and play. I admit I'm a nerd and a bit of an introvert, but I can also fit in well with other people if I want to, because unlike most of my nerdy friends, I still attempt to know a bit about what's going on in the outside world. Therefore, even though we only saw each other maybe a few times a year and we are from different backgrounds, we still got along well. However, when I tried to use my superpower again, it didn't work this time.
People say there are two kinds of friends: ones you talk about the game with, ones you share your life with. Well mostly I don't even consider people I talk about the game with as my friends. Whatever, the point is, I'm pretty sure my friend and his sister are the latter, we go way back and we care about each other. Therefore, I still had so much fun catching with him and his little sister and we spent the entire afternoon playing video games. However, the dynamic changed when we went to their grandma's place to have the family dinner and meet their cousins. I ended up sitting around the corner with Jason and listened to their conversation with the cousins. I found it really hard to say anything to be a part of it and in fact, I don't know if I actually wanted to be.
After some greetings and catching up, the conversation quickly steered to the cousins' lives in higher education. Jason and I should be able to fit in. But the thing is, we rarely talk about our college lives to other people because we know it's nothing special and how many people actually don't care. And even when we did, we mostly talked about the stuff we learned instead of what we did in karaoke with college friends or what dating games we played. And when the conversation finally started to get more 'academic', we still couldn't participate. According to Jason's point of view, what they said was downright pathetic, and it was not how studying works. Compared to the struggle we're going through, writing a paper and conducting some survey were a piece of cake. We didn't have the guts to correct them. My case was more terrible. Since I study in Computer Science, and engineering happened to be what a lot of Hong Kong people don't care or even look down upon. So even I'm a CUHKer, nobody cared about what I do. Therefore we both just kept my mouth shut. I was still optimistic, it was a minor setback, I would just wait for the next round. When they were finally tired of discussing how 'awesome' an orientation camp was and how much fun they had by joining different clubs or societies, they moved on to traveling.
Score! There should've been so much to talk about, especially I just spent three months in the US last year and Jason is planning to go to London this summer. Turned out the conversation revolved around going to Japan, to check out food and buy shiny shoes and bags. I was not judging that, I mean, that's basically what my family did when we went to South Korea. In fact, when I was in the Google Tech Camp and when I was in Seattle, my family did the exact same thing two more times with the people I was trying to talk to. I just couldn't accept that discussion would last twenty minutes. If I were to travel with friends instead of going on some family trip, I would want to explore something more cultural instead of making it a shopping trip. I love shopping too! And I admit I did a lot of shopping in the US. Let's see...I bought a deck of UNO cards (The Big Bang Theory Edition!) and some other card games that are Game of Thrones or D&D themed, but I also checked out the old book stores, in one of which I even scored an old Childhood's End book and a slightly used book about Perl with a few bucks. I went to a lot of malls and outlets (for Mom and Jason), but I also went to the libraries and art exhibits (I also wrote a review full of gibberish, which will come in the next post). I went to beaches and rowed boats, but I also volunteered in a homeless shelter. And thanks to Indy, I got to check out the headquarters of Google and Facebook to ride the bike and score free ice cream, but I also met new people and learned new stuff. These are the things I should've said. I downgraded myself and talked about how big the burgers were and how cheap the soft drinks were there to participate and keep them interested. Well, at least I finally got to say something.
After the awesome dinner, we went back to my friend's home to play more video games. Jason already gave up and went home (video games are not really his thing). I felt like that was the only way that we could bond. Even I thought I spent a lot of time on video games, I'd say the people I was with were the true gamers. However, the truth is, it seemed like mastering video games doesn't matter how much time you spent on, as it turned out I was the best gamer inside the room. I still had some fun though, but I was starting to think how soon this tiny bit of fun would go away too. I felt like I couldn't fit in with those people who I had been seeing for about twenty years anymore. What happened? I wasn't too interested to find out so I just left those feelings behind until yesterday when some other friends of my parents came visit us.
Like most of my friends, I always have hard time talking to girls. In fact, they already thought they are gonna die alone. However, I still have some hope. If you are like me and live in HK too, just meet some girls and wait for them to ask you out. I bet it is because there are more girls than guys here. Dammit, I digressed. The point is, I don't feel comfortable talking to girls. Keep that in mind.
Uncle John and Aunt Emily had two really cute kids. They all went to my home yesterday to 'get down' with my parents along with dozen of other friends. The catch was, the two cute kids were girls. Shit. Since I hadn't seen them for a whole year, I didn't think I could talk to them anymore, I thought I would just avoid them for as long as possible. I finally went home in the evening, just to be dragged by Uncle John and Dad to the basketball court to shoot some hoops. So I finally went home at seven, and Uncle John's kids, Queenie and Jenny, were already sitting on the couch and waiting for us. Well, I didn't really know what happened, but we ended up playing Monopoly and some other card games together for the whole night and we had tons of fun. They even helped me set up a Snapchat account. This brought me back to last Tuesday.
I think I finally got it figured out, and I'm more and more admired of the friends my parents have. Last Tuesday was a small change of a bigger change. We are drifting apart bit by bit, small changes by small changes, year by year. Queenie and Jenny were still very young, I was still able to connect with them thnaks to my extremely young mental age. The people I was with last Tuesday? We are in different universities, studying different things and hanging out with different people. Pretty soon we're going to go to different places and do different jobs. Our perspectives on lives would be completely different. All these changes might have already taken place years ago, I finally noticed that last Tuesday. I wanted everything to be exactly the same, but I knew it was too much to ask. I also knew things will definitely be a whole lot different next Chinese New Year. I had to capture this very moment here and hold on to it, so when we were to become strangers one day, I could still remember we used to be close.
Kev
Every single Chinese New Year I pretty much know who I'm gonna see and who's gonna come and visit us, therefore I knew I was gonna visit a childhood friend of mine and his parents last Tuesday. Since Mom and my friend's mom is extremely close, so every year we are also invited to their family dinner, which we would also see all my friend's relatives.
Every year during the dinner, when the adults were doing whatever they were doing, the kids would gather around and play. I admit I'm a nerd and a bit of an introvert, but I can also fit in well with other people if I want to, because unlike most of my nerdy friends, I still attempt to know a bit about what's going on in the outside world. Therefore, even though we only saw each other maybe a few times a year and we are from different backgrounds, we still got along well. However, when I tried to use my superpower again, it didn't work this time.
People say there are two kinds of friends: ones you talk about the game with, ones you share your life with. Well mostly I don't even consider people I talk about the game with as my friends. Whatever, the point is, I'm pretty sure my friend and his sister are the latter, we go way back and we care about each other. Therefore, I still had so much fun catching with him and his little sister and we spent the entire afternoon playing video games. However, the dynamic changed when we went to their grandma's place to have the family dinner and meet their cousins. I ended up sitting around the corner with Jason and listened to their conversation with the cousins. I found it really hard to say anything to be a part of it and in fact, I don't know if I actually wanted to be.
After some greetings and catching up, the conversation quickly steered to the cousins' lives in higher education. Jason and I should be able to fit in. But the thing is, we rarely talk about our college lives to other people because we know it's nothing special and how many people actually don't care. And even when we did, we mostly talked about the stuff we learned instead of what we did in karaoke with college friends or what dating games we played. And when the conversation finally started to get more 'academic', we still couldn't participate. According to Jason's point of view, what they said was downright pathetic, and it was not how studying works. Compared to the struggle we're going through, writing a paper and conducting some survey were a piece of cake. We didn't have the guts to correct them. My case was more terrible. Since I study in Computer Science, and engineering happened to be what a lot of Hong Kong people don't care or even look down upon. So even I'm a CUHKer, nobody cared about what I do. Therefore we both just kept my mouth shut. I was still optimistic, it was a minor setback, I would just wait for the next round. When they were finally tired of discussing how 'awesome' an orientation camp was and how much fun they had by joining different clubs or societies, they moved on to traveling.
Score! There should've been so much to talk about, especially I just spent three months in the US last year and Jason is planning to go to London this summer. Turned out the conversation revolved around going to Japan, to check out food and buy shiny shoes and bags. I was not judging that, I mean, that's basically what my family did when we went to South Korea. In fact, when I was in the Google Tech Camp and when I was in Seattle, my family did the exact same thing two more times with the people I was trying to talk to. I just couldn't accept that discussion would last twenty minutes. If I were to travel with friends instead of going on some family trip, I would want to explore something more cultural instead of making it a shopping trip. I love shopping too! And I admit I did a lot of shopping in the US. Let's see...I bought a deck of UNO cards (The Big Bang Theory Edition!) and some other card games that are Game of Thrones or D&D themed, but I also checked out the old book stores, in one of which I even scored an old Childhood's End book and a slightly used book about Perl with a few bucks. I went to a lot of malls and outlets (for Mom and Jason), but I also went to the libraries and art exhibits (I also wrote a review full of gibberish, which will come in the next post). I went to beaches and rowed boats, but I also volunteered in a homeless shelter. And thanks to Indy, I got to check out the headquarters of Google and Facebook to ride the bike and score free ice cream, but I also met new people and learned new stuff. These are the things I should've said. I downgraded myself and talked about how big the burgers were and how cheap the soft drinks were there to participate and keep them interested. Well, at least I finally got to say something.
After the awesome dinner, we went back to my friend's home to play more video games. Jason already gave up and went home (video games are not really his thing). I felt like that was the only way that we could bond. Even I thought I spent a lot of time on video games, I'd say the people I was with were the true gamers. However, the truth is, it seemed like mastering video games doesn't matter how much time you spent on, as it turned out I was the best gamer inside the room. I still had some fun though, but I was starting to think how soon this tiny bit of fun would go away too. I felt like I couldn't fit in with those people who I had been seeing for about twenty years anymore. What happened? I wasn't too interested to find out so I just left those feelings behind until yesterday when some other friends of my parents came visit us.
Like most of my friends, I always have hard time talking to girls. In fact, they already thought they are gonna die alone. However, I still have some hope. If you are like me and live in HK too, just meet some girls and wait for them to ask you out. I bet it is because there are more girls than guys here. Dammit, I digressed. The point is, I don't feel comfortable talking to girls. Keep that in mind.
Uncle John and Aunt Emily had two really cute kids. They all went to my home yesterday to 'get down' with my parents along with dozen of other friends. The catch was, the two cute kids were girls. Shit. Since I hadn't seen them for a whole year, I didn't think I could talk to them anymore, I thought I would just avoid them for as long as possible. I finally went home in the evening, just to be dragged by Uncle John and Dad to the basketball court to shoot some hoops. So I finally went home at seven, and Uncle John's kids, Queenie and Jenny, were already sitting on the couch and waiting for us. Well, I didn't really know what happened, but we ended up playing Monopoly and some other card games together for the whole night and we had tons of fun. They even helped me set up a Snapchat account. This brought me back to last Tuesday.
I think I finally got it figured out, and I'm more and more admired of the friends my parents have. Last Tuesday was a small change of a bigger change. We are drifting apart bit by bit, small changes by small changes, year by year. Queenie and Jenny were still very young, I was still able to connect with them thnaks to my extremely young mental age. The people I was with last Tuesday? We are in different universities, studying different things and hanging out with different people. Pretty soon we're going to go to different places and do different jobs. Our perspectives on lives would be completely different. All these changes might have already taken place years ago, I finally noticed that last Tuesday. I wanted everything to be exactly the same, but I knew it was too much to ask. I also knew things will definitely be a whole lot different next Chinese New Year. I had to capture this very moment here and hold on to it, so when we were to become strangers one day, I could still remember we used to be close.
Kev
Last Tuesday
Reviewed by Kevin Lai
on
2:27:00 AM
Rating:
Reviewed by Kevin Lai
on
2:27:00 AM
Rating:
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