A Sort of Cameo

Took the MRT downtown today and saw some kids from middle school. Nine of them were there, and six of them I hadn't seen since we had our first reunion back in 10th grade. They were all at Gusto, some sort of restaurant specializing in hot dogs, run by (what I presume) was someone with a Simpsons fetish--there were life-size stickers of Lisa on the walls, and Simpsons DVDs playing on the television.

I'd forgotten to do my homework (i.e. study my middle school yearbook) before I went, and consequently when Beth asked me if I knew the names of the six people I hadn't seen in years, I didn't. It wasn't completely my fault; they were all girls, and looked as though they'd all spent a lot of time on their hair since we last spoke. (Meanwhile, all my hair did was recede, which they noted.) Which is to say, different, in the most general of terms. But I figured it out, eventually.

[Chinese names don't translate too well into English blogging.] One of them, who was one of my best friends back in the day, and is now interning at a hospital, said that he wanted to apply to JHU's Public Health graduate program after working for a couple of years--it would be funny if I ended up staying in Baltimore, and running into him there a few years down the line. That guy and another kid from his school apparently walked (as in on foot) across all three of the cross-country highways in Taiwan, took two and a half months, camped out by breaking into elementary schools and sleeping in the classrooms. One of them is studying finance in Vancouver. One of them talked about circumnavigating the island with her boyfriend on bikes. One of them was doing astronomy research at the Academia Sinica. Another guy who was one of my good friends said he was going to serve his time in the military after he graduated, then try to draw comics for a living.

Seems they're all living fulfilling, happy lives (as far as I can tell)--which, to be honest, wasn't the impression I got when I talked to them in high school, and immediately after. Everyone's finally figuring out what they want to do with their lives, getting the most out of it--starting to feel like I can relate to them once again, after spending most of high school and college in separate states of mind. (I remember asking a couple of people what they did with their senior years in Taiwanese high schools, and "read novels" "played video games" "studied" was pretty much all I got.) I know I'm in the same generation as them, but--damn, kids grow up fast. And now I don't think I'd mind spending time around them, so much--I hadn't really called the last couple of times I was back--me and my presumptions--but I might start calling again.

They kept yelling at me to get MSN Messenger, so I did. Typing in Chinese is weird. Especially when I'm trying to talk in English on AIM at the same time.

Guess I ought to get a move on, eh? Things have really changed. I mean, I knew that, but damn. I've fucked up things (I was reading through some of the very first Invisible Bullets entries today, and damn if I didn't say some horrible and inconsiderate things about/indirectly directed towards people who certainly didn't deserve it), but maybe nobody cares anymore. There's worlds out there and lives I could be living. Not that what I've spent the last two seasons doing is worthless--far from, and I should know--but I should attempt the extraordinary once in a while, or at least believe in the possibility thereof. Maybe Chicago counted. I'm still too good at being a square, though. The science stuff is what gives me confidence these days. There's both good and bad to that...

I was sorting through my old books, adding stuff to my Librarything catalog today, and I found Jostein Gaarder's Maya, which I realized I had never actually finished reading. Sophie's World put the word "existential" in my vocabulary, for whatever that was worth. I'm kind of excited to start again on reading it, and possibly actually finish it this time.