I Believe I can Fly

I used to think that I could not go on
And life was nothing but an awful song
But now I know the meaning of true love
I’m leaning on the everlasting arms

 

If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there’s nothing to it

 

I believe I can fly
I believe I can touch the sky
I think about it every night and day
Spread my wings and fly away
I believe I can soar
I see me running through that open door
I believe I can fly….

 

See I was on the verge of breaking down
Sometimes silence can seem so loud
There are miracles in life I must achieve
But first I know it starts inside of me

 

If I can see it, then I can do it
If I just believe it, there’s nothing to it

 

I believe I can fly…

 

If I just spread my wings
I can fly….

 

=================================

 

While I really love to travel and visit new places and see different things and learn about various cultures and eat strange foods, what I most enjoy on every trip that I take is being in the sky. Flying. Love the takeoffs and landings. Love turbulence. Love looking out the window at the world below. (Even though on most flights I take with Bruce, I let him have the window seat…)

 

When I was a teenager I wanted to be a flight attendant with Singapore Airlines. To many, it was a glamour or fun thing, but I just wanted to be in the sky. Alas, I’m not tall or thin or pretty enough. Why not aspire to be a pilot, you ask? Well, in Singapore, you need to have perfect eyesight just to take flying classes. But now, here in the states, you just need to have "corrected" vision of 20/20, i.e. you can wear soft contact lenses. So there’s hope for me after all.

 

Many people might not know this, but one of my main motivations of considering lasik is so that I can learn to fly. Not so much about convenience (I’m used to my glasses anyway since I’ve been wearing them for so long). And not really about looking better either (I’ll need plastic surgery for that… plus I’m not after the flight attendant job anymore… plus even if I was, the airlines here are not as particular about looks.)

 

My dreams are lofty and crazy and unrealistic, but I shall dream anyway. I’d like to be a commercial airline pilot. Flying across the Pacific to Asia, or across the Atlantic to Europe. "Welcome aboard, this is your captain speaking! We’ll be cruising at 35 thousand feet. We have clear skies so I don’t foresee much turbulance (darn), but for your entertainment, I’ll do some barrel rolls and verticle loops. So please sit back, fasten your seat belts, and enjoy your flight!!"

 

Wonder if I’m too old to enlist? Maybe I can be a fighter pilot… or a test pilot for experimental aircrafts. Hmmm…. anyway, to make dreams come true, I still need a concrete plan. So I’m gonna work hard and save money and go for lasik next year and start reading up on getting my private pilot’s license including VFR/IFR/CFI… practice on MS Flight Simulator, take lessons… to get more hours maybe I can fly for charity, or teach…. gosh, I’m getting excited and impatient at the same time. But I need to pace myself… sometimes when I try to do too much too soon, things fall apart and I end up not achieving anything.

 

I believe I can fly.
Let my dream take flight…….

My my my …

• My Nickname

I’ve had it since 1994, when the chat program of choice was IRC, browser of choice was Mosaic, and email client of choice was either Pine or Elm. (Btw, PINE is a recursive acronym for "Pine Is Not Elm".) Hmm, I’m still using Pine occasionally when I ssh into the campus server. Sure, there’s web access available, but text-based is so much speedier, plus old habits die hard. Anyone remembers Archie and Gopher? That was before we had Yahoo and Google. When I created my first web pages, I made sure they’ll look ok with Lynx – a text browser. Wonder if anyone does that nowadays? Oh and I made my first online purchase in 95, long before Ecommerce became a buzzword (or even a word?).

 

But I digress… I started using "cybette" as an IRC nick back then, and it stuck. Twelve years later (a few days ago while driving home), it suddenly struck me that I have my whole family in my name! Check this out:

Carol (self), Y.S. (dad), BETTy (mom), and Evana (sis).

 

And instead of pictures and videos (over my 9.6k modem, are you kidding me?), we used to email each other cool ASCII art. When you page-down and see the screen refresh line-by-line on your VGA monitor (at least it was in color), you wait in eager anticipation to see what is being "drawn"…. ahh, fond memories. I think I have those emails backed up somewhere…

• Myspace

No I did not get another blog or space or whatever. But I did come across this interesting article: Identity Production in a Networked Culture: Why Youth Heart MySpace. It’s an interesting read, and talks about how young people use Myspace.com as a place to establish identity, hang out, and socialize. It’s becoming such a phenomenon that it generates more hits per day than Google!

 

I’ve never got into the whole "social network" thing (Friendster comes to mind). Don’t laugh, but I mostly do "research" when I’m online. Read up on digital cameras and photography, latest cell phone technologies, product research and comparison shopping, check my accounts and pay bills, search upcoming concerts and events, try to get more investment knowledge, plan my next trip to exotic locations…. in fact, I think I’m very anti-social when I’m online.

 

However, way back when I was still a "youth", I was addicted to IRC for a while. I’d spend 4-5 hours a day chatting, and it caused a lot of grief for my parents. Mind you, this was during the Internet dark ages when access was charged by the hour (if you had any). Not many people spent most of their free time in front of the computer like nowadays. So it was really perplexing to my parents why I "loved my modem" so much. They couldn’t ground me (I was already home!) so they’d try to hide the modem. But I’d get up in the middle of the night and take it out of the hiding place and log on. Finally they broke it (I think… can’t remember the details) and I promptly "upgraded" to a 14.4k unit (woo hooo… much faster!).

 

Anyways… I guess I can understand the cultural shift that leads to the emergence of Myspace and other similar sites, even if I do not actively participate in them. (I just wished I had handled the bit with my parents better.) After reading the article, I can only lament, I’m not young anymore… :P

• My Work

Am I a workaholic? I don’t think so… but work is a constant preoccupation for me, even in my dreams (groan). I’d be checking work emails in the middle of the night, although I try not to reply them until I get to work in the morning. But perhaps this is not as strange as I thought. Some would even say it’s normal: Working Day and Night. Am I turning into a work addict? Help!

 

Brokeback Mountain

It won 3 oscars (I think out of 8 nominations) last night. Bruce and I watched it the night before in an almost empty theater (late show). I think the acting was incredible, although they didn’t win any of the acting awards. The subject matter is somewhat sensitive and non-trivial, yet they were able to bring forth the message of love so simply and powerfully without making you think it’s a movie about homosexuality. Even if you walked into the theater with the preconceived notion that it’s a "gay cowboy movie", like I did. Sure, I’ve heard all the rave reviews about how it’s NOT just a movie about gay cowboys, but by hearing about the subject matter, I admit that I had formed some kind of expectation beforehand. Guys kissing and making out with guys? Wouldn’t that be weird and uncomfortable? But… here’s where this movie excels. There are movies where people say it’s best to watch with an open mind. You don’t have to for this, because it will change your mind in the process and you’ll actually come down Brokeback Mountain with an open heart.

 

It’s not all pretty and fluffy and pure, of course, there are intimate scenes between the main characters Jack and Ennis. I would imagine many people being uncomfortable with them, but for me, it was more of an initial shock. That’s because the first sex scene, which was pretty heavy and raw, came quite early in the movie. After that, the kissing wasn’t such a big deal anymore, and in fact, some of the kisses were so beautiful and heart-wrenching. I guess they got sex out of the way early on so that they can focus on love, and it worked. Because, really, it’s not about sex. It’s not even so much about sexual orientation, although it’s an important theme in the movie. It’s really about two people, two souls, in love with each other, while trying to fight the prejudice and oppression from society. You can replace the theme with race, class, age, religion, whatever…. and it will still be about love, and the pain and agony when you can’t love openly because of what others think.

 

Perhaps society is becoming more tolerant nowadays. But there’s still much more progress needed…. why just "tolerant"? Why not truly "accepting"? Two people in love is such a beautiful thing… it’s sad when they can’t celebrate it like "regular" people. Bruce and I are no Jack and Ennis, but when we first got together, I felt a lot of pressure too. He’s white, I’m Chinese, and we have a nice 20-year age gap between us. When we go out, some people would stare, perhaps mostly out of curiosity, but there were those who gave us dirty looks. Like they were disgusted. I had to deal with my own family opposing the relationship as well. We’re lucky, our story has a happy ending. But not so in Brokeback. It was so sad, it was beyond tears for me. I didn’t shed a single tear, but my heart is still aching…

 

"Sometimes in my darkest thoughts, I wish I’d never learned
What it is to be in love and have that love returned"

 

On a lighter note, unrelated to Brokeback but rather to my previous post, here’s my horoscope from 2 days ago (3/4/06):

 

"Demands upon you now can pull you into work-related politics or community issues. Still, it’s difficult for you to separate your personal feelings from circumstances that aren’t really about you, however close they are to you. Just be clear about who you are and let the external events unfold on their own."

 

Still need sleep though….

Office Politics

Uugh, I hate politics of any kind… and worst is office politics right in my own group at work, which I have to face everyday. I won’t go into the details (in case I unknowingly violate some company policy and get into legal trouble)… but, forgive me for being too idealistic, why can’t everyone get along? Or rather, why can’t everyone at least *TRY* to get along? I believe if people just try, just put in a little bit of effort, things can be much better. I have so much respect for everyone in my group, each of them has his or her specific strengths which I hope to learn from. However, when you get a bunch of capable people with different views together, things get ugly. But they don’t have to. I’m not saying there’ll never be conflicts, because there will. But resolving them shouldn’t require us to go into battle, or to a lesser extent nasty fights and under-the-belt blows, if we’re mature enough to handle conflicts as adults. Oh, who am I to talk… I’m just as guilty, even if it’s on the other extreme: I try to avoid conflict as much as possible. I don’t do well with confrontations. It’s a weakness of mine and I have to tackle it on a daily basis. And I do try.

 

If only those who thrive on confrontations would back off a little, try to meet us in the middle…

 

Why can’t everyone just get along?