Friday, August 31, 2007

A new blog is born

Okey, my best friend just put up his blog. I am betting 25 dollars that he will not post more than 50 entries before the end of this year. So hey, if you want to win the money, keep it up! (By the way, no lazy-ass entries. Have to be at least three lines each.)

I was in NYC again, this time for a project. I was spending 300 dollars a night in hotel and 40 dollars a dinner each day. Hey, not my money, who cares. Last night I worked until 1pm, and then slept 5 hours to get up for a conference. Strangely, I seem to enjoy it. Not necessarily for the hard work, but for the good ratio of effort and reward, reward not in a monetary sense, but in terms of feeling like a big shot.

I need to travel to Netherlands for this project in the coming weeks. My visa application was rejected because "your current photo does not match the photo on the passport. You have to get a new passport. Blah, blah." F^&, I guess my photo does not match his ass either. I want to see how his ass is going to get a new passport. Anyway, I went to Chinese consulate for a new passport, with a feeling that I do look much older than 7 years ago.

Nothing more to say. Just want to re-emphasize: Working for consulting or investment banking does make you feel like a big shot pretty fast. I am feeling that it is corrupting my perfect soul now. It probably take a couple more months before I will be arrogant enough to ask all my friends to make appointments with my beautiful secretary in order to have conference calls with me. Okey, you know I am kidding, right?

Saturday, August 25, 2007

Delinquency. My bad. My friend Bertil.

So let me pick it up here. I've been busy, but that is no excusing not writing this blog. Besides, I have noticed that you, my readers, are still reading, so I guess I need to keep writing.

Life has been boring for me so far. Which is probably a good thing. I go to work, I dress up, I take subway, I travel to another city, I work with my teammates, I come back home, I watch some tv, I go to bed. It almost feel that life like a ticking clock, where every minute moves in exactly the same distance, no surprises.

I am a ISTJ (any Myer-Biggs fans out there). This means that I will struggle a little bit in my new job. Indeed, my first week was not easy, not for the work I was doing, but mostly for four days of exposure to the team. As an introvert, I felt exhausted after four days of team work. Of course, I know I am a long-distance runner, so it probably only takes a bit time for me to adopt.

I was in New York a couple of weeks ago. I stayed with my friend Bertil in a rectory school. Bertil is a friend I get to know from my co-op life, but this time I really got a chance to know him. I am going to take this chance to profile him.

Bertil is a cool kid. Back in college, he directed a bunch of absurd plays that not too many people appreciate. But he insisted that he knew the best of arts. He was one of the best foosball players in the dorm, and took great proud of constantly beating me. Once he started a "streak" board, in an attempt to humiliate my sub-par plays. Sometimes when I walked in the hallway, he would jump out from his room suddenly and knock me into the wall. Then I would wrestle him. He is about the same height as I am, so I could take him. He has an almost unnatural ability to un-selectively appreciate everybody, so we became friends.

After graduation, he took a job in a rectory school, almost teaching everything. At that time, I thought he was just a washed-up elite school graduate who sought meanings of life in doing good deeds. However, this visit changed my mind.

The night I arrived, we head out to a bar. On the subway train, we went through the girls in our co-op, playing a pseudo-hot-or-not game. It turns out that Bertil and I had very different tastes.... Stop digressing! Anyway, we got there, and he called up his girlfriend, a girl he slept with a couple of times but now was avoiding. We met at a loud bar. After a while, we took the subway back. That girl was one of the most self-centric person, but she was totally into Bertil. On the train, she began to subtly touch Bertil, but Bertil did not seem to react. Of course, they slept together that night, but then Bertil tried to avoid her calls the very next day. And that makes sense to me.

So we did not get a chance to chat the first night, but then we had quite long conversation the next two nights. I was surprised to see how mature Bertil is (I thought he was like a playboy, with a natural likability that even he himself did not fully realize). He talked about why he did not like that girl. He talked about the politics in the rectory school. He actually had a very sophisticated way of judging people, just like the way I am. In the middle of the night, we got into the church in front of school, and he began to play electric-simulating organ, with a long dedicated to an old woman, whom he claimed he was in love.

Besides these, we watched a skateboarding contest, watched a absurd play (which he liked a lot), and visited SoHo and time square. I got a chance to met with his cousin, who was totally as cool as Bertil. We got drunk that night, so we played "squeezing the other person into the wall" on the street, just like we did back in the co-op dorm. With fun time like that, I never managed to get up early to run in central park as I had planned. But what the heck, I had a good time.

So here is the thing. While I can be cool and fun once a while (possibly after a drink), Bertil is always cool and fun. Some times during my stay with Bertil, I got a feeling that I did not deserve a friend like Bertil. In heart, I want to be like Bertil. As an ISTJ, I want to be like Bertil, an ENTJ.