January 26th: Day10

January 26th, 8AM: I'm excited today. I had made arrangements with Peter Griffin (one of my best friends) to play Starcraft with him this morning and I was looking forward to it immensely. First, Starcraft is one of my favorite games, and to top that off playing against Peter is usually challenging and quite enjoyable. So I woke up excited and logged onto gmail where I was expecting to meet him before our game. No Peter. Then I see an email from him saying he can't play today because he had other things to do during that time period. Now, I'm warning you I'm about to get up on my soapbox. Alright, I can understand that things come up and people are busy. But it REALLY bugs me when people do this. Is it really that hard to remember that you're making plans to do something for the same time you have another thing you do every week? I know this is Peter I'm talking about so I shouldn't be surprised because it happens all the time, but every time I convince myself that this time will be different and I allow myself to get my hopes up. Sadly, every time I get my hopes up I'm once again reminded that if you put your faith in other people you will often get let down. Ok, that wasn't quite as much of a soapbox speech as I thought it would be, but seriously, it's not that hard to keep track of such things. I dislike getting so annoyed when people do that though, because I know that I should expect it and that it will probably happen, but I think the optimist prevents me from accepting the cold, hard truth of reality. I guess being a perpetual optimist isn't always such a great thing.

So, after my disappointment in the morning I did some random stuff on my computer, including watching more Star Trek episodes because let's face it, they just never get old. Unfortunately, I was still sick today and spent much of the time working on my computer in bed. It wasn't a bad sick, but I had a cough and a runny nose, so not pleasant per say.

That's when something interesting occurred, I was chatting with Grady online and he mentioned something about the story. Now, for the past several weeks had heard bits and pieces about some story that Henry, Grady, Robert, Ed, and Prateek were working on, and I'll be honest, I felt left out because I had not been invited to participate. Someone had sent me the link about a week ago and i had only read a few pages of it before something else came up so I hadn't gotten very far. Grady commented to me that a lot more had been added and mentioned something completely different than where I had left off so i decided it was time to catch up on it and see where the story had gone. So I began re-reading the first 4 or so pages I had gotten through the first time I read it, and I kept reading, and kept reading, and kept reading. I haven't been so engrossed in a story since reading Ender's Game and Freakanomics! The story had an interesting premise, it was very well written, and it was about all of us, what could be better? So, I was completely absorbed with it, one of those times when you're mad at your eyes because you want to know what happens and your eyes can't read the words fast enough to satisfy your curiosity. And then it stopped. Just like that, in the middle of the story it abruptly ended. I think the nature of this story needs a bit of explanation.

It is something called a collaborative story, where you have several people who write the story and each works on it when they have a chance and add a chapter when they have time. This means that several people are working on it and it just stops wherever the last person to write something left off. The title is: The Ultimate Proof that Collaboration Makes Kittens Cry, and then in a subtitle: (A Cooperative Story Between USC Students That Grows as Inexorably as Unclipped Toenails (ie. title pending). I think that explains a lot. So, this is the inherent problem with collaborative stories, that until you're finished with it you want to know what happens next (because no one really knows and the next person to write a segment can abruptly change the direction you thought it would take). Right now I was ticked off; I wanted to know what happened next! So, being a collaborative story I decided to put my own feeble writing skills to work. Now, I try to be modest (with exceptions), and I will say that I enjoy writing and I would like to think I have some talent (so long as it isn't a stupid essay for an English class). So, I spent the next 6 hours writing another two segments and giving the story a bit more direction and explanation. At the end, I was quite proud of my work and will consider sharing the story once it's done if everyone else agrees.

So after writing for several hours I was just finishing off a section when Wai Zin called asking where I was. So, being the honest person I am, I told her I was in my dorm room. Apparently she had difficulty with the laundry machines in her building and came over to my dorm to do her laundry. So I went down to meet her and Chorng Shin (CS). We sat around and talked for a while while her laundry was going in the washer until CS had to leave to go finish something. After that Wai Zin and I sat around and talked for the next hour of so. It was quite enjoyable and I learned a lot about differences in culture between Singapore and the US. I've mentioned this before, but one of the highlights of my trip has been the ability to talk with people from so many other countries and perspectives and see what's different or to see new ways of thinking of things that I had always assumed were done in a single way. I pretty much love anything that makes me think or consider new possibilities or new ways of doing things, and conversations like that one are among my favorite things to do and one of the reasons I have such a diverse group of friends. Anyways, we talked until late and eventually CS came back and joined us again. After that I went to sleep and ended an unproductive day, but I needed it to recuperate.