I will be the pattern of all patience; I will say nothing.

Chinese is a complex language. Isn’t it amazing that for all the Chinese dialects we all pretty much use one script.

The script isn’t anything to scoff at either. It’s pictorial, so even if I can’t really pronounce it, or verbalise it, I know what it means. There is a system. And it is a complex system. And even if you and I don’t speak the same dialect, our system is the same, and we have common ground.

Despite all this, though – our language is highly contextual. Words look different but sound the same, but most times we figure it’s one thing and not another from context.

Here’s my favourite example:

飞机(airplane) sounds exactly the same as 飞鸡(fly chicken). However you would probably not fly across the pacific on a chicken. And even then, I don’t think flying chicken is even proper Chinese. If you wanted to say the chicken is flying, you’d probably have to say “Is flying chicken”.

In English, however, words are more specific. You don’t get words that sound the same meaning different things. Maybe because the language is phonetic.

Does that make native speakers of both languages different? Probably. Does it make Chinese native speakers vague in English? I don’t know. Modes of transportation are certainly clearer in English.

One day I need to count how many times I’ve actually done this on my blog. Funny how consistent you can get when you don’t think about it.

Happy Thinking Day as well, to those that still care about it

Once we start working, our weekends are far too short. Two days pretty much only gives you a day to get all your Cost-of-Living miscellany (getting the groceries, getting gas, cleaning the house, going to the library) done and a day for real rest. Sometimes, some of the chores spill over to the second day, and in a bid to save time, you start organizing your weekend to optimize for planned activities, the weather, special occasions, and rest maximisation.

After this blog, and for the next hour or so, I’ll have to stop surfing, set the laundry going, start ripping the audiobooks I borrowed, and get onto knitting that scarf that’s taking me almost a year to finish. As a treat I get to watch NFL Football while I knit. That’s a lot more work done in an hour and a half than I get done in 3 hours at work.

Perhaps productivity rate and time resources available have an inverse proportion. We go through life making the assumption that the more time we have, the more work gets done. I say, while that is true, productivity is reduced to a dimished rate after the 2nd hour, and therefore you expend exponentially more effort to get the task completed.

Therefore, if we reduce the work week to, let’s say, less than half the available days in the week – we’d then have to apply our super weekend multi-taskin mad skillz to the work day instead. With 4 day weekends, people have more time to shop (great for the economy) and rest (happy workers), it’s a win-win!

Yes. I’m at my most creative and eloquent when I’m trying to weasel out of starting the laundry.

The Blue Angels

Have been back earning an honest day’s work now for about 10 weeks now. I don’t know how I feel about it, I’m mostly tired. I try to recall how I had seemingly boundless energy before – it’s mostly because I never put in a whole days’ work

The culture at the Big Why doesn’t change. Most of the people you meet here are truly some of the most laid back, easy to get along with people. Most everyone is supportive and they try to be helpful. It’s a comfortable work environment.

But something’s a little different this time. I think this time around, I’m nice.

I don’t know what it is that’s making me go all soft on people. It could be a combination of factors. The list includes:

• Coming back after an extended break – perspective
• Getting older – again, perspective
• Getting wiser – more perspective!! And in a way, introspective
• Being a contractor – I don’t carry around a whole lot of baggage with me
• Being new in the environment – as someone starting from scratch you tend to embrace humility more firmly
• Being happy – I don’t know about this. I’m enjoying the work, but I’m not bowled over happy to be up at 6.45am most days

Whatever it is, perhaps the point is to just enjoy it while it lasts.

That, I think, comes from perspective.

Today I caught a friend online, and he asked me if I’m happier these days. I think he asked that because months ago he asked if I was happy and I said no. And I guess perhaps he’s taking it like alchoholism, after you fall into unhappiness and decide to do something about it, you take it a day at a time.

I used to think happiness was a definite state: you either are or you’re not. If you’re laughing all the time, smiling with not a care in the world, that’s it. When you don’t have to go to work for a few days and are lying on a beach somewhere doing absolutely nothing, that’s it. If you get what you want when you want it, that’s it.

But is it?

Is happiness doing what makes me happy all the time? Is happiness contingent on someone else? Is it something bestowed upon? I’ve no clue. How did I go around chasing something so badly defined? Is it even something you can go after like a turkey for dinner?

Am I happy though? Perhaps. If happiness is a scale, I would suppose I am happier than I was a year ago. The presence of a possible long term goal, however vaguely defined, is quite motivating. The only thing that’s clear to me for now is that perhaps looking at happiness as an absolute term is unrealistic. Life, on the whole, is pretty imperfect, unbalanced in a sense. Therefore to expect absolutes in a concept such as happiness was a legacy from childhood when the world was more white and black.

So am I happy? I am happier. But it’s not like some kind of body fat measurement where you can say, if you past a certain percentage, you’re obese. Am I happy on the whole? That’s more a frame of mind issue, and I think I am inherently positive enough to be happy on the whole. I am somewhat content. There is lots to be glad for, taking everything around me into account, so there is little reason to be unhappy. Unfortunately the lack of unhappiness is not the definition, really, of happiness. So I guess I am somewhat happy.

Too bad it takes a ton of internal monologue and a lame soliloquy to answer it. IM conversations are over in a flash. Perhaps I can answer the question better next time.

This year instead of whining about KF not getting me a present, I got myself one, and put it on his tab.

Lest other wives attribute this fabulous idea to me, I’d just like to point out I got KF involved in the process – had him do the comparisons after I came up with an initial list, and let him make the final decision (all the while maintaining executive power to veto anything I wasn’t happy with).

And so, last night I ordered my netbook. Nothing crazy – it is going to be a netbook, not a Macbook (which I still maintain is the most hideous product Apple has come up with, ever). The difference in those two consonants and lone vowel works out to about $1k, so the choice was pretty easy for me. And even though Mr C so generously ok-ed the Macbook, I just couldn’t get past the black border and keyboard against the aluminium rest-of-it. That’s so 70s, even the stuff in the 70s would blush at it.

Anyway. My MSi Wind U100 something-something should be here next week. I should be all set for my trip home. Yay!

In other news, if your brother starts telling you to think about having kids, does that mean the family thinks you’re getting old?

In any case. I’m going to the corner to sulk. Later.