* Why you speaking this way for?

Why is it when we (well at least the majority of us) speak to ethnic, mostly older, people, we don't say sentences correctly. As soon as we hear them talk in a funny accent with grammatically incorrect sentences, we start to talk back to them in broken english as well. We leave out adjectives, verbs and generally any conjoining words, as though making the sentences as short as possible will make it easier for the ethnic person to understand what we're saying.

Old Chinese Man: "Herroo. Is you know where twan stasun?"
Me: "Sorry?"
OCM: "How you say da...uhm... d-d-d-da twaan stasunnn?"
Me: "Train station?"
OCM: "Yis yis, this one"
Me: "Ok. You see there, take the left. Keep going. You see the lights. Go the right"
OCM: "Erm...ehh? Why you der speaka this way for?"
Me: "...me no speak english."

Maybe the only reason ethnic people speak the way they do is because everyone else continually speaks retarded english to them because we think that's the only way they'll understand. They're probably thinking that the way they talk is fine because that's the way everyone else is speaking to them. Maybe if we all just speak normally to them, using verbs, adjectives and, heaven forbid, words with more than 2 syllables, maybe that'll turn them into fluently speaking Englishmen.

Old Chinese Man: "Herroo. Is you know where twan stasun?"
Me: "Sorry?"
OCM: "I said, can you please direct me to the nearest train station? Your deafness is horridly idiotic, if I must say so myself"
Me: "...Why you der speaka this way for?"

Perspective

What do you see when you look at the above picture? You're probably just thinking "what the hell? It's just some blob on the page." Or maybe I'm just too lazy to draw something to accompany this post. Just keep guessing. I'll tell you the answer at the end.

It's very awkward/weird when I see someone from an obscured angle, at say a train station, that I think I might know from an encounter about once or twice before. I can only see the back of their head with maybe a glimpse of the side of their face. I'm not certain enough whether or not it's them and decide some further investigations must be taken before I decide to say hi. So to get a better look, I do that walking-past-while-peering-at-the-corner-of-your-eye-while-pretending-to-look-at-something-else maneuver. I think I'm being clever with this sly move, but I most probably just look like this

So I'm walking around like a creep, with this person, that I may or may not know, blurred in my peripheral vision, and I still have no idea if I know them or not. I walk a bit further to get a better perspective on the person. I get a head on view and I'm far enough to get a good look without raising suspicion or alerting any nearby officers. But now, my memory becomes hazy and I can't remember what they really look like. So I criss-cross the face I'm seeing at the train station with the hazy memory in my mind thinking to myself "Err...yeah it kinda looks like them, but not really..but kinda.." And I try to figure it out by continuing to stare at the person that I have pretty much been stalking for the past 10 minutes. Of course by this time, she sees me and stares blankly back. I come to the conclusion that I do know this girl and walk over to say hi. "Hey there Ja..." But as I get too close, I realise too late that it's the wrong person. She now feels threatened by my previous creepy ogling and BAM! third time I get stabbed that week.

"Well that was a boring story Trung, now tell me what the hell that picture is suppose to be!" Wow...the people I imagine reading this blog are really aggressive...

Well anyway, if you're wondering what you're suppose to see, it depends on your perspective. But it is just a blob. Nothing special about it. A tiny insignificant smear on the page, yet that's all we see, completely ignoring the other 95% of the picture which is made up of pure clean white. No matter what perspective you look at it, it's still an imperfection. We try so hard to get that 100% white, but our efforts at cleaning it off either smudges it around more, or causes another blob to appear when we're too occupied erasing the previous one. Sometimes they're small and out of sight, while other times they're overgrown and persistent. Sometimes we're able to tuck them away into the corner, while other times they're smack in the middle of everything. No matter what we do, they will always be there. But maybe, that's ok? I don't believe anyone is strong enough to stare at their own pages without seeing their stains, and it's too cliche to say and almost against human nature to "accept what we can't change". I don't know what I'm supposed to do with mine. But whether we're nearing acceptance, hiding it from view, or continually struggling to clean up the mess that's centering our minds, I think it's very important that we don't lose sight of the other 95% that's filling up our page.

* Why Chilli?

Why do people enjoy eating chilli? I mean, I know people have different tastes when it comes to different foods, but I don't understand people who enjoy chilli. It's like a burning sensation that unrelentingly hooks onto your tongue without letting go. The persistent pain is comparable to getting hit in the nuts. There's an initial shock followed by a constant pain that seems to never let up. I don't like to be kicked in the nuts while I'm eating, thus, I don't like chilli.

Don't Discriminate, Appreciate

I'm starting to distinguish the difference between appreciating someone's ability and talents as opposed to admiring it. So that's what this post is gonna be all about. And before I carry on, I have to mention that the title of this post was taken from my friend David when he did his speech for history back in year 9. Not only was it funny, but it also rhymed. So there you go, my jokes are original, but I do reference my material when I quote, unlike all you other bloggering thieving bastards!!

Around the middle of last year, my taste in music dramatically changed when it started moving towards more acoustic songs. This lead to my admiration for guitar players. Especially, Sungha Jung. If you youtube him, you'll find out that he's a 12 year old guitar playing korean kid who happens to be a musical genius prodigee i.e. a friggin' alien with a bowl haircut! I had always admired this kid's skills, but it wasn't until I picked up a guitar of my own that I actually appreciated the way he was able to play the damn thing. Back at my internship, my guitar mentor Rod explained the intricacies of starting to play the instrument: "Playing the guitar ain't easy, man. If it was, every dumb cunt out there would be playing one."  Elegantly put.

I think the difference of admiration and appreciation could be said for anything that people do in life. When you know nothing about doing something i.e. playing the guitar, you're stuck in a situation where there are only 2 levels of effort that you can perceive: Knowing nothing, and playing the guitar. You're in the "know nothing" category, while anyone else who can play is bunched together on the other side of "playing the guitar". It's not until you cross that line from knowing nothing, to attempting to play that you realise that there are many, many more layers inside of that "playing the guitar" level. Suddenly you realise that's there's varying stages of effort and talent that's to be reached, and goddamn are they hard to reach. It's not until you try yourself that you can appreciate just how gifted some people are.

That's why I also appreciate the way some people draw. Can you believe how unbelievable that is? They're able to grab an image from their imagination and able to transcend that image from the unrestricted realms of their brain into reality and imprint it onto paper. That is just amazing. I'm still trying to make my drawings seem half as beautiful as what my imagination is intending. It's like my mind gives me an image of a gorgeous burning phoenix, but all I can draw is a retarded mangled duck

When you know nothing about doing something i.e. playing the guitar, you can't really appreciate what the pro's do in anyway. Sure, you know what they're doing is very talented, but there's no way to determine the amount of effort that's put into what they do. There's even a part in your brain that goes "I'm sure I could do that if I gave it a go." Hell, I'm like that with people who play Bass. I can appreciate people who can play the guitar really well, but that same level of understanding doesn't translate to Bass. I'm very sure it's difficult to play, but all I see is a guitar with only 4 strings. The same with cooking. I can cook eggs and toast, but that's about as far as I've gone with creating a culinary masterpiece. I watch masterchef, and there's the part of me that goes - "Doesn't look too hard...he's just throwing a bit of chicken on a grill..."

Of course, playing the Bass or cooking isn't easy, or else every dumb cunt out there would be doing it. But saying that, just because something isn't easy doesn't mean you should shy away from at least trying. Even if it doesn't work out for you, at least you can finally appreciate, instead of admiring from afar, the many people who do make it work, because there's nothing more gratifying for someone than being appreciated for the effort they put into what they do.