| 10 may 2001 thanks to online journallers lan for e-mailing me and clara for mentioning me in her entry. see? it's good to contact me, because you get mentioned in my journal! ha ha. no, but really... i like knowing who my readers are and what they think. lan asked me some questions about my tourette's (TS), and the funny thing is, i don't mind answering her questions with great detail. it's something new to me, because for the longest time, i hated talking about it. people would notice me tic and ask me what's wrong, and i'd just say, "oh, i slept on it funny, so i need to crack it sometimes." and i'd shrug it off and change the subject. even with karine, who is the girlfriend who dealt most with my struggles with TS, i would avoid the subject a lot of times, even when it was obvious to her that my TS was seriously bugging me. yes. i call it "my TS." because it's my own personal affliction. it's both my biggest curse and my biggest blessing, and i use the possessive pronoun because it goes a long way in defining who i am and how i behave. i certainly wouldn't have gotten as far as i have in school and in the workplace had i not had the mental bonuses that TS provides me, and i certainly wouldn't have gone through such hell and anguish over this disorder that plagued me daily. yeah. "plagued." it's under control now. thank goodness. in a way. i miss my mental edginess. i miss my hyperactive brain. i miss my ability to ultra-focus on things, especially like my work, where i now find myself really unmotivated and unable to find any impetus on getting things done. clara mentioned the personal nature of my writings, and definitely in a wonderment phase... i'm pondering whether i get close to crossing the line and tackle subjects that shouldn't be put in something so glaringly public as an online journal. i don't know. i've sort of accepted the fact that what i say is for everyone, from strangers to close friends, to read. and this kind of celebrity (though i am far from a celebrity) exposure is just something that i decided to take on when i started this whole thing. i don't mind being the scrutiny of the public eye. i'd rather have that than go unnoticed in life. ----- oh shit! lan's URL is diaryland, not dairyland! that makes so much sense now. for the longest time, i saw all these "dairyland" domain names, and i thought, the what hell do all these journals have to do with dairy products? is it sponsored by some milk company or something? ----- i've found a new way to sit on the curb while i smoke. before, i just squatted, like i was taking a dump, but i rested my butt on the curb. but now, i sit on the curb, and i find that when i cross my legs, it feels much more comfortable. the whole smoking thing started for me in 1995 when i was in japan. there were three smokers among us, two korean guys, sung and peter, and one indian guy, sopan. we would go to bars (yeah, the hub!) and get out 300-yen happy hours beers and stuff, and they would whip out their cigarettes. peter, this buff guy who had a penchant for sleeveless muscle t-shirts, had it in his head to get others hooked on smoking. so he attacked me. ha ha. i had lost my anti-smoking crusade stance, so i accepted the cancer sticks a few times. and i just started being a social smoker. it stayed that way for the rest of our stay in kyoto. then, one day when i had moved to tokyo (although in reality, i was 40 minutes away in saitama-ken), i was waiting for my train to take me into downtown. i was at kasumigaseki-eki (eki means station). i was kind of late, so i missed the first train. so i had like a 15-minute wait for the next train. i sat there, and of course, with my hyperactive brain and all (ha), i got bored. so i decided to walk to the kiosk and buy my first pack of cigarettes and lighter. i don't remember the color of the lighter, but i will always remember the fact that i bought dunhill reds. or was it marlboro reds? shit. either way, they were reds, which were potent. i don't smoke reds any more. they make me so lightheaded that i stagger around for bit. thus began "the habit." smoking is an evil thing. it's terrible for you. i would never encourage anyone to do it, and therein lies the hypocrisy, because i'm still doing it. although i never smoke much, and i still don't consider myself a heavy smoker. yeah, there are those like my friend diana who say that "one is already too many," but i'm nowhere close to being a pack a day or anything. there are strict rules and patterns to when i smoke. when i'm bored. after meals. when i have to walk somewhere. when i'm drinking. in the past, i used to smoke whenever i drove somewhere (but now i don't because it stinks up the car). and when my TS used to be really bad, smoking was the one thing i could do while conscious that would calm me down for a while. i used to say that smoking was proof that i was alive. because i could see my breath, in the form of this dirty-white cloud of puff-stuff. smoking is all about breathing, and thus provides an irrefutable sign that you are a living aerobic entity. i don't find such poetry in this nasty habit any more. the most evil thing i did was the fact that i used smoking as a means to meet karine. we had been e-mailing for some time, and she mentioned how she tried cigarettes before, but could never get a drag correctly. so the first time we ever met in person was at the front of stanford's meyer library. at midnight. yes. i taught her how to smoke. i had three packs of cigarettes... cloves, dunhills, marlboros, i think. nastiness aside, it was a really neat way to meet someone. i remember that night really fondly; i was wearing my vintage black and white striped adidas cap. there was something kind of intimate and sexy about this teacher/student role that we were playing. and i remember paying a lot of attention to her lips, the source of the white cloud. but as time passed, and i witnessed karine's habit grow even stronger than mine, i really regretted it. smoking is not something that should be passed on to someone else. sigh. i still plan on quitting. or at least getting back down to my two smokes a day: one in the morning before work, and one after leaving work. i don't mind having cigarettes forming bookends to my work day. |