duo

There are two kinds of men that I admire. One of them is a man who’s single and knows how to handle a rejection. The other is a man who’s involved and knows how to initiate a rejection.

TYPE I

I really have no clue why people would trash their ex, or simply the person who they went after but didn’t succeed. Because wouldn’t trashing them involve trashing yourself? I mean, after all, you were the one who went after that other person. So if that person really isn’t good enough for you, why would you fall for it anyway. How stupid does that make you, huh?

Over the years, I’ve heard certain things from the guys who I rejected said to others about me. Oh yea, people gossip about things like that, which is how I get to hear the things that I’m not supposed to. Some of which are understandable, but others were just plain stupid. There was this one comment that almost made me laugh. It was in Chinese, pretty much a pun intended joke commenting on I don’t eat so I’m skinny as a twig. I get that they were trying to make fun of me and trying to be offensive, but it’s not even achieving its original purpose. Because I’m not skinny and I do eat… if anything, Jim thinks I’m pretty chubby for an Asian girl.

I don’t like meeting strangers knowing that they might know some guy who I rejected before. Because I’m paranoid that these strangers might have heard something about me that I’m not aware of. But that’s my problem to deal with. I realize that if they get to know me better then they’d know the real me, and if they don’t then they’re just strangers and I shouldn’t care how a stranger thinks about me. But it still bugs me. I’d be lying if I said I never care how strangers think of me. And I think everyone cares to a certain degree. But I just feel there’s no need trash talk the person who you once felt attracted to. I’m going to quote Russel Peters, but in a totally different context intended, “Be a man! Do the right thing!” say it with a Chinese accent.

TYPE II

The other kind is rather what I think all boyfriends should do. It’s probably harder for long distance relationships and the ones with lots of temptations. And I’m probably too naive to say this, but I do feel when two people are involved in a relationship, they should be faithful to each other. I think it is natural to feel being physically attracted to others, but underneath it all, it shouldn’t be worth it to risk your current relationship.

I hear stories about my friends’ boyfriends where they’d say things like, “I didn’t like her, she liked me; I didn’t kiss her, she kissed me; I didn’t take off her clothes, she took them off, I didn’t sleep with her, she slept with me…” They just don’t have the guts to admit that they did something wrong. They’d say sorry and doesn’t even know what they did wrong. They’d beg for forgiveness and the next time use the same excuses again. The excuse that they think never goes old is: I didn’t do anything! What they don’t realize is that’s what they’re doing wrong. They should have done something, they should have said NO! They should have been able to tell when the time is to draw the line.

It’s funny how my mom’s boyfriend has the same issue. This is what happens when you have a single mother who’s been involved in a relationship for 8 years and still hasn’t gotten married yet - you need to have a talk with the boyfriend. And that’s exactly what I did. Out of everything we’ve talked about, one of which is how he flirts with other women and it always pisses my mom off. It shocked me how a 40-something-year-old man doesn’t know when to say stop.

So there they are. Men who I admire, hopefully I’ll get to see more of them.

As I begin chatting to my childhood friend LinNan on MSN, bits and pieces of the past start to form vivid pictures in my head. The more I talk to her, the more I felt being left out of her world, the world I used to be in, that big yard with those three green buildings, the people living there. I could say that everything was out of my control to begin with. But ultimately, it was me who caused myself to miss out. I miss my grandparents, but I never call them unless there’s an emergency. I miss my dad, but I rarely write emails nowadays. I miss my friends, but I see them online and never talk to them. The thing is, I feel like if I don’t live in that world anymore, there’s no way to fit in just through a phone call, an email, or a brief chat on MSN.

However, I still like to think that we’re somehow connected, closely connected, can’t live without each other connected. If any one of them were taken away from me, I’d still feel equally as sad as if someone who’s currently living in my world being taken away. There is no difference underneath it all. Is there? I couldn’t help but to wonder, do they feel the same? What does it take for a relationship that’s been long held at great distance to remain the same proximity?

I was talking to Adrian yesterday about a long distance relationship that I sort of held responsible for. I introduced the guy to the girl. During that summer, they fell for each other. But guy left Beijing to NY and thus the long distance love affair began. I think ever since the girl told me over webcam that they got engaged, I started to wait for their relationship to fall apart. I’m not saying I wish anything bad to happen to them. I really don’t. She’s one of the closest female friends I have. Yet I couldn’t help but to doubt their relationship. They spend on average 2 months physically together every year and 10months apart but with a phone call on a daily basis. But here they are, four years later they’re still going at it. Is it strong trust in each other that lasted this relationship all these years or is it enormous ignorance? Or perhaps, it’s just because of what they guy said, “they clicked”? I really don’t know.

Perhaps their relationship is like what I described about mine. Even though they don’t live with each other, they still feel somehow connected with each other. Is it fair to define that the shortest distance is the reverse of what Rabindranath Tagore defined as the furthest distance in the world in his poem? I think there’s a debate about whether Tagore wrote it or was it just by 张小涵.. either way the original is not in English so I’ll have to use my judgement to translate the Chinese version I can find into English: The farthest distance does not lie within life or death, cannot be defined in terms of physical locations, it happens when I am standing right in front of you yet you don’t know I love you. It sounds a lot more romantic in Chinese somehow: 世上最遥远的距离，不是生与死的距离，不是天各一方，而是我就站在你面前，你却不知道我爱你.. if I were to state this mathematically, it would be something like this:

Let d = farthest distance, ld = life or death, pl = physical locations, y = the you don’t know factor, then (NOT(ld) AND NOT(pl) AND y) IMP d. I used the brackets for clarity, NOT and AND will be evaluated before IMP even without them. 

After a whole page of scribble, figuring out what the negate of the whole thing is by applying laws of logic, I realized that I simply can’t define NOT(d).. because NOT(d) is not the negate of the whole thing. I need to introduce something else to the equation. So I’m back to square one again.. it turns out I can’t define what the shortest distance is from what the farest distance may be.

As I stare at the coffee blankly, I feel that I should revisit my previous thought before trying to figure out what the shortest distance is. Why does it matter what the shortest distance is? Now it hit me, what I really want to know is when we have pl, is it possible to have NOT(d)? In logic terms: (NOT(d) IMP pl) EQUIV true? To look at the truth table for this, we see that despite what NOT(d) is, if pl is true, the result is true. Thus it is possible, at least by the laws of logic.

QED

Again, I’m not sure why guys complain, because I’m not a guy. But for girls, they don’t complain because they want you to solve their problems. All they want to do is talk.. I’m serious about this.. sometimes they don’t even care about any special form of reply. There’s no need to analyze what they’re talking about. They don’t want you to do anything and they’re not telling you their problems because they think there’s something you can do about it. There are a zillion things you can reply them with, something as trivial as “oh, go eat some candies” would do just fine. What they don’t want to hear is “don’t complain to me, because there’s nothing I can do about it.” You think they don’t know that?

And seriously, there’s no such thing as a girl who doesn’t complain about anything. Even if she’s independent enough, she’ll still complain to you because naturally she just wants someone to listen to her while she’s coping with her problems. There’s really no need to get pissed/upset/emo about the fact that you can’t do anything to help her out. Have a little faith in her and believe that things will be better for her sooner or later.