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but I digress
As I write this, my altitude is 10,000 feet above sea level and climbing enroute for the central time-zoned city of Chicago. I love going to Chicago whenever I can. Not only did I once live there when I was younger (can't rememeber much about it, but there are fragmented memories) But my cousin Nathaniel resides there. The duration of my stay this time is only from December 3rd- December 6th, so you can obviously deduct that I'm not going for a social visit. No, I'm really going to take this bigass exam that's pretty crucial for my life: a Japanese language proficiency exam.
Anyone who knows me should know that this exam is going to be a piece of cake, but I'm still nervous. I took a practice test about a month ago, and scored a 100% on Grammar and listening, but my reading was behind at a whopping 64%. I spent three hours last night memorizing Kanji out the wahzoo... so hopefully it was enough to bring it above 70% . I've got a lot riding on my successful passing of this exam. Should I pass, I get a tuition exchange with some school in British Colombia (I believe it's UBC, but don't quote me on that) meaning that I teach Japanese to a bunch of people, and I get a free ride through college. Pretty cool, huh? So yeah, I'm nervous. The fact that I made a 100% on two thirds of the test automatically means that I'm going to pass, but I don't know if my scores in all three areas need to be passing in order for me to be acceptable for the tuition exchange program, you know? I just keep telling myself that I have nothing to be afraid of, and I'll do fine, but... I'm too psyched. If I fail, I can't take this exam again until next year. At this point in my life, I think I'd rather be in Canada than Japan anyway.
Anywho, back to Chicago and Nathaniel. I think I've been 4 times in the last year to Chicago. It's awesome. First off, Central time pwns Eastern time. Everything on TV comes on an hour earlier, so you don't have to stay up til all hours of the night watching adult swim or Comedy Central. (although in retrospect I realize that I don't watch TV at all anymore) Another thing that Chicago has on Hickory is a better night life. As far as cities go, Hickory has everything: malls, restaurants, bowling alleys, clubs, book stores, every major chain ever, but to top it all off, a shitty night life. everything closes at 9-11. Asheville is better than Hickory in terms of night life, and has a much wider variety of things to do, but Chicago just puts them both to rest.
Now we come to the best part of the trip: Nathaniel. From the time I was born to roughly when I was 15, Nathaniel was my role model and everything that I wanted to be. He's witty, clever, kind hearted, talented, creative, has a killer sense of humor, and always has some way of entertaining himself and others. When we were younger, he was an accomplished saxophonist and received a lot of praise from everyone in the family. When I reached seventh grade, I took up saxophone for no other reason but to be like him. I became proficient at it, but my heart just wasn't in it. The best part of all this was Nathaniel always acknowledged me as not just his cousin, but as one of his friends. Whenever I would visit him, he would quite often be called by his friends to go play "ultimate frisbee" and he absolutely insisted that I come. In fact, he forced me to. I have no idea who his friends are, nor had I ever met them so I was extremely nervous and shy but the principle of it was that I have a cousin who would never ditch me or leave me flat to go do something else. That matters a helluva a lot to me.
I think I owe a lot of how I am to Nathaniel, but he and I aren't all THAT similar. I stopped trying to emulate him when I was 16 when I realized that being my own person was much easier. For instance, he's good at math and I absolutely loathe it. I'll avoid math wherever possible, and yagi will normally be the one I call first due to proximity, but Nathaniel is a certifable, fucking math genius. I've lately become a mean and hardcore pinochle player, but it took me years to develope the mind to count and calculate cards the way I do. Nathaniel picked up on it almost instantly, and I still think he's better than me. So yeah, in terms of occupation, he's going into some high tech engineering stuff, and I'm going into linguistics. On the other hand, he won't hesitate to ask me a question regarding Japanese, which he seems to have genuine interest in. We're both pretty computer savvy, but in different areas. I'm all about the web and graphic design, whereas he could actually build his own computer. He's straight, I'm gay. I'm not sure whether or not he knows. I was informed by my mom that everyone on both sides of the family knew, but recently some relatives were stunned. I guess if he's reading this, he knows now. I don't particularly feel the urge to walk up to him and be "Hey, Than. I'm gay" but should an opportunity present itself where I discover that he doesn't know, I'll be sure to break him in.