Green autumn bides no spring

green grapes with green tea

a year ago yesterday -

tasting sour-sweet.

fuyu samushi

frozen taste on frozen tongue -

will haru come?

Night-time conversational musings, Part I

I was talking to a friend the other day about what it means to be introverted/extroverted. We were speculating the nature of this strange trait. Is it an attitude, a characteristic, a preference?

Today, I realised that one way to look at introversion/extroversion is as a mode of fulfillment.

There are two ways in which a human can be fulfilled. One is through relationships with others, the other is through self-fulfillment. In a venn diagram, the overlapping intersection would be, I suppose, odd things like relations to entities like God, music and other abstractions.

Being fulfilled through relationships with others involves surrendering to the feelings you get when you are in the company of others. When you're devoted to loving someone else, whether it's in the form of friendship, filial duty or the (urgh, dreaded) romance, the pleasure of their company, and the atmosphere that surrounds you frees you from a sense of emptiness. To a certain extent, when you're caught up in relating to other people, you don't really have time to be caught up in your own problems, or feel dissatisfied with yourself. Even when employed in a negative way, hatred of someone can be so all-consuming that you can lose sight of your own problems. I speculate that extroverts would tend to find this way of finding fulfillment more natural and possibly more satisfying.

On the other hand, being fulfilled through setting your own goals involves being single-minded and focused. Although you may not be able to spend as much time enjoying the company of others, you certainly don't waste as much time (ever notice how spending time with others tends to make you waste so much time, pretty often doing nothing much other than waiting around?). For me, one of the consolations of a more self-directed lifestyle is that it is, to a certain extent, less of a risky venture in terms of end pay-off. I can always say to myself, 'Well, even if I haven't had much time with friends this time round, at least I've accomplished such and such.'

A rose by any other name

The other day my small group was talking about sexy names to name your child, and the few of them that happened to know my Christian name began to jibe me about it.

That got me thinking that although my name is, by consensus, decidedly a bad name for a person, it does make for great pick-up lines.

Like, 'Hi, I'm _____, and I'm yours, eternally.'

Or, 'Being with you makes me, me. I'm _____.'

Et cetera.

However, I realise that these lines would most likely be met with hearty guffaws and questions like, 'So, what's your name, really?'

I thought perhaps my Chinese name would hold more hope for me, so I went to find out what it actually meant. And you know what? I found out that my parents were not satisfied in making my life unbearable in English. They had to do it in Chinese too.

I found out that I'm a tonka bean (it's like vanilla, only with rather an edge). My name, literally translated, means New Tonka Bean. New Tonka Bean King.

I can go open a candy store - with my feel-good English name, and my vanilla-sweet Chinese name, I'm sure it'd be a hit. Although knowing Asian family values, I'd probably be disowned.

恭喜什么发财？

Why do Chinese New Year and Valentine's Day have to fall on the same day? It's like some cosmic schadenfreude specially planned to remind me of the cavities in my life.