Girls

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Friends.

That was my view of the opposite sex when I was little.

Delicate friends.

They were friends who generally didn’t like to play football — and when they did, they cried every time we ‘played rough.’ The tomboys were the exception — those scary girls you never tried to get into fights with because they would throw the first punch.

I think I interacted a lot more with girls than with guys in the early days. I played a variation of ten-ten:

You may go-ooooo
You may go anywhere you like…
Can’t you see someone like you…
…One — Wolombo
Two — Together…

I jumped rope better than they did — I still can jump through a loop, make the rope go by twice while I’m still in the air, and jump backwards!

With the transition from primary to secondary school, like others, I became more aware of the changes taking place on both sides. It became something of an accomplishment to borrow a pencil from a girl. Your mate carrying on a normal (abnormal to us) conversation with a girl was deemed to be running PG (Private Gist). Should a girl say a simple ‘hello’ to you, your day was made :-D.

During that period, they were in a sense, sacred beings.

This continued for a while — that is, until I noticed other guys were getting along better with them than I was. A fraction of these guys got along much, much better — they were paired with members of the opposite sex.

I had been left behind…

In senior secondary school, I had no idea what came over me. Whatever it was, I’ll call it temporary madness.

The first thing I did was declare myself to be a misogynist. I think that was the first time a lot of my classmates heard that word. Even then, my vocabulary was huge — I got away with callipygian as an example of a five-syllable word in an English class once — but in this case, I didn’t really understand the full meaning of the word.

I avoided anything female like the plague. Very few of them dared to talk to me, and those who did got some biting remark in reply. The rest of the time, I behaved as if they weren’t even there. I think a lot of it came from some conclusion I made after watching my elder brother that if I dwelt too much on girls, I wouldn’t do well in school. Unsurprisingly, I was at the bottom of the class during that period and I only went back to the top after getting friendly with them.

Again, I have no idea how I got cured. I made up somehow, said my his and blended in. As a prefect, rumor had it that I hated girls, but it had more to do with the fact that I found it — and still find it — difficult to treat both sexes unequally. Punishment meted out to erring males was equal to that given to females, and given the physical difference, it was more like giving men’s work to ladies. I digress.

I’m in the university now, and my attitude towards girls as romantic interests is rather apathetic. I’ve had my share of crushes, but if I were to compare with most guys my age, its quite minimal.

I just might be heading towards my childhood where I can only see them as friends, or maybe I’ve been working and studying so hard, there hasn’t really been time to get to know them better.

* I clarified some parts of my post. Insertions are in underline.

Mr. Nice Guy

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No, this isn’t about the Jackie Chan film. It’s about me — and no, I’m not implying I’m the nicest guy around.

The seeds were sown in the Fall of last year when my friend Samuel asked me to do him a favor. His cousin was apparently coming over from Ghana and would be staying in the dorms. Would I kindly take him under my wing, show him the ropes, yada-yada?

Sure.

I’d gotten [yet another] a new roommate. I never quarreled with my past roommates — OK, I came close to doing so once but we settled the issue amicably — so I assumed naturally that everything would go smoothly from then on. Was I wrong!

For one, I discovered my new ‘friend’ (we’ll call him N) was into music, perhaps a little too enthusiastically. My eardrums nearly literally got blown off every time he decided to listen to something. I let him use my computer back then because he hadn’t gotten his, making it ironic that I was assailed by my own speakers. My PC’s soundcard is quite loud, so you can imagine how it all felt to someone who listened mostly to Yanni, Vivaldi and Mozart. The situation worsened when he got a new PC. His speakers had some very wicked sub-woofers.

I regularly perform culinary feats in the dorms using my rice cooker and microwave. At first, I offered him samples whenever I cooked — I later stopped doing so, although he felt comfortable enough to go in my the fridge and partake of my stew without asking me.

My only response was a rather weak, “I love to cook. The ingredients for two pots of stew are just over $10. I don’t mind if you buy them when next you shop for groceries. I can help you cook them.” My words seemed to be for one-time use, as after the initial time he bought groceries, I’ve been doing the buying.

My next point of action was to sometimes cook what he didn’t like — even though I wasn’t too happy to eat that stuff either. Sort of a lose-lose situation, although in the end I would have to cook something I loved. This game of hide-and-seek continued for a long time while the resentment brewed inside of me.

It wasn’t just food. The air fresheners I buy get taken out of my drawers and used freely. And they don’t even get returned to their original locations.

Apparently, our relationship had ‘progressed’ to the point where one could say, “N’s things are his. Azuka’s things are also N’s.” When I thought about it, I figured I was just being possessive. I even wrote up a post about realizing for the first time how possessive I am. Looking back, I’m glad I didn’t publish it, although doing so would have meant less time since my last post.

Things came to a head last week when I called him aside to complain about his sound. He shot back at me that I frequently watched anime in the night while he was asleep. The annoying thing is, it was true. I stopped using my headphones in the night simply because I wanted to get back at him for playing loud music in the day, and he had felt free to increase the volume of his music during the day because I watched anime at night. We managed to straighten things out and have worked out the sound problem.

As is my wont when Samuel visits me, I began to lay out my complaints about N yesterday when he came for help with a C# assignment on encryption. This time, I think he got tired of listening to my whining as he told me in no uncertain terms that I was too concerned about offending people — the world didn’t work that way. I may be fiery when I write — sometimes brash — but in the end my personality’s more on the passive side.

I think I’ve been running away from a direct confrontation on so many issues and I’ve decided to face them head on. Thank you Samuel…

The Oni in me has awakened. I’m going to do the things that make me happy from now on. Nice guys get the short end of the stick.

I hope I don’t overdo it… 😉

Other Half

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When she looked up from the book she was reading, her mouth opened wide in a soundless scream as she jumped to her feet. It seemed like just a moment had passed since she last checked on him, but her son was sitting in the street, completely oblivious to the large truck bearing down on him.

She sat rooted where she was, partly because of the shock, but also because she knew instinctively that she was unlikely to make it in time. All she could do now was pray.

The driver of the truck had not noticed the toddler. Soon, what used to be a human being would be crushed under his tires.

The boy tottered to his feet at the last moment and halted the truck. He simply reached out and stopped it as he would a toy. His deformed right hand seemed to grow, extending and shattering the windshield of the truck.

She watched in horror as he pulled screaming the driver out of cab and slammed him repeatedly on the blacktop until he stopped moving. That done, he turned away and began to walk towards his mother.

“Don’t come,” she said in a tone that was little more than a whisper.

He was grinning, the missing teeth in his mouth giving him a look that was both innocent and fiendish.

“You’re not my son,” she said aloud, not only to convince herself, but also to reason with the creature making its way towards her. She was sure he could at least understand her.

“Mama,” said her son. He appeared to be struggling, his face alternating between a grin and a look of pain.

She took a step back. He could kill her — he had needed no reason in the case of the driver.

“H-Help…” he said in one of the moments of pain.

“Who are you?” she asked, taking another step back.

“Dark Half,” her son said. His right hand twitched…

Destiny

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I stood at the junction, trying to decide which way to go. Normally, it wouldn’t have taken more than a second for me to make that decision but that day was different.

I had just witnessed three senior students having an argument about the existence of ‘destiny.’ I wasn’t supposed to be listening, and such philosophical topics usually wouldn’t interest me, but for some reason it got me thinking.

What was the meaning of my existence?

Was every action I’d ever made or were the ones I was going to make in future predetermined?

If everything in my life was already mapped out, then did that mean every choice I’d ever made was part of my script? Was I… in some sort of play?

I think that was when I began to question deeply the existence of many things — God, the Devil, ‘chance’ and many other subjects, some more esoteric, others less.

What is destiny?

I’m still not sure today, and I no longer believe in the classic definition of destiny. About 90% of me has come to believe that that which we call destiny is created with our hands. The other 10% holds on to the more fatalistic view of predetermination.

There’s nothing to do, except hope that if the latter is correct, Whoever-it-was gave me a good role in the script.

Eyes and Glasses

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I started leaving my seat to walk towards the board when I was four. As I grew older, I had to walk further and further. By the time I was eight, I was going all the way to the board.

I can’t remember the times before that — what my sight was like before I became short-sighted. I like to imagine the world looked the way it does as I see it whenever I put on my glasses today — bright and colorful.

“You mean you can’t see that?” people with 20/20 vision ask me sometimes. Then they point to someone standing just a little distance away and ask the stupid question, “Can you see the guy standing over there?”

Of course I can — I’m not blind!

The world through my eyes is different. I squint to make out text not too far away — sometimes I have to close my right eye as my left is slightly better. Because I find it difficult to make out faces from afar, I recognize people by their other features — gait, complexion, figure, voice…even dressing. I make guesses when ordering at Wendy’s or McDonald’s because I can’t read the displays.

It’s not altogether a life of woe. Looking out of the window when driving past accidents, it is indeed a blessing not to be able to make out all the gore. Not joining the peculiar group of guys who peeked up girls’ skirts because I wouldn’t have seen a thing anyway — not unless I brought my face to within 30cm or less of the focus (and perhaps received a couple of slaps for my effort).

My glasses kept getting broken — I got them when I was quite young, and thought I looked ‘cool’ wearing them while playing football. More often than not I was without them while they got fixed, or replaced, and have pretty much gotten used to living without them.

Here’s to the bright, wonderful world I see with my glasses on — and to the many ‘evils’ I’m spared from seeing without them.

I’m still in and out. Work, school, more work. We’ll see what we can do about all that.