Travel

I haven't gone traveling since January 2007.

OK, I did travel between Taiwan and the US in 2008 and three weeks ago.  Yet, that is called transportation.  Not travel.

Finally, I will be going traveling for the first time this Saturday.

Seoul first and Shanghai second.

Why Seoul and Shanghai?

Also.... free accommodation available and the cheapest most economic way to fly...  8-O lol

The only problem... give me a road and I could keep on walking till the cows come home provided there are restrooms available.... 

Yet, I can not carry weight.... It slows down my speed and causes problem to my back and, then, the whole body.

For instance, before I left NYC, I had to move some stuffs and it killed my body so bad that... 5:00 AM, curb side, outside of JFK... People in the airport had to pick me up with a wheelchair..... and, from there on, they carried me all the way back to Taiwan...

Well, I WAS really in pain and it really was sort of miserable then... especially having to deal with excruciating pains on a 25 hour trip....  Sounds pretty funny now since, 3 weeks later now, I am back to walk relatively fine and mostly pain-free again.... 8-O lol

Since I intend not to waste too much time recovering... I have to travel.... REALLY light to prevent any potential damages... while... since not making any money.... budget traveling.... 8-O lol oops...

In addition, although I now can "walk"---- 80 Manhattan blocks or more kind of distance--- I still have problems and mucho problems with stairs.  Unfortunately, based on the pictures I have seen for many of the tourist attractions, there are stairs and stairs.... slopes and slopes....  Well, it is not until I became disabled did I come to realize that... this world really is not designed for people with disability.... 8-O lol sigh

At the same time, if I can find ways to walk in NYC and in Taipei, I should be able to walk in Seoul, Incheon, Suwan or Shanghai.... After all, walking is walking, right?  8-O lol

Regardless, it would be really interesting to see what it would be like to travel on a budget, disabled.

And... this would be the first time I go traveling with my strange kind of disability....

Ain't like it is the kind of "first time" experience I would like to have... Yet, well... even if my body could heal till I could carry some ordinary weight and do stairs like a robot, for the time being, I want to travel and I will learn to travel my way again.

What is even better... my brother in law will be on his business trip while I am in Shanghai... I will have a two-bedroom apartment all to myself for a week... could finally through a house party... though not gonna have too many people to party with in Shanghai... 8-O lol

鬼太郎

樱桃小丸子 Chibi Maruko

小丸子今天不回家
http://www.56.com/u35/v_Mjg5ODkxNjA.html

小丸子 plays yoyo

Under the Taiwan Sun

At least two days in a role, it hit over 100 degree here in Taipei...

According to the forecast, it would already start to "feel like" in the 100s as early as 9:00 AM tomorrow morning.... ouch....

http://www.weather.com/weather/hourbyhour/TWXX0021

In addition, radiation is bad....


http://tw.weather.yahoo.com/uvindex.html#01

As a result of the combination of heat and radiation, yours truly would 撐洋傘抗UV even when walking in the shade as early as 8 o'clock something in the morning.... 8-O lol

Regardless, when in Taipei and taking my walk, I now either take it to the underground shopping mall (東區地下街) or the Sogo department store right across the street....

An avid participant of the national sports called... 美白 frenzy...  8-O lol

If you ask me, the Taiwanese sun seems to be much scarier than that in NYC though... um... should be the same one.... 8-X
 

Suffering

To end today's posting spree, I will share with you something I have been trying really hard to learn... 

So far as I am concerned, a lot of suffering in life are unnecessary.  I suspect that it might be the young Werter's sorrow kind of stuff that might have sustained my propensity to maintain or establish the suffering kind of state I might entrap myself in once ever so often.

Can't quite give you a solid example now but it must be evident somewhere in my year's of blah blah blah.... 8-O lol oops...

The key  point...

It is no good to suffer because it does not make me happy and I don't like it anyway.

As a result, I reflect upon this question every once in a while...

Aches and pains and physiologically based things... I have no control over them.

Other things do make me feel... Oh... how I suffer!  Ya, sometimes gotta cut myself some slacks as welll

Yet, have I made myself suffer unnecessarily and excessively?

If yes, my newly developed and developing self-training style would be applied... back to conditioning... 

I would beat myself up so bad with my mouth till I dare not do it again.... till something happens or I find myself slip back... then... conditioning again... 8-O lol 

God Never Blinks

Came across this book called God Never Blinks by Regina Brett when I stopped by Barnes and Noble today during my daily walk.

Following are some of the lessons I find most interesting and could help me to recenter myself:

Very applicable for people with paranoia and delusions like me...

1. What other people think of you is none of your business. (There goes the reiteration of my can't-mind-my-own-business disorder) 
2. Don't take yourself so seriously. No one else does. (Actually, nobody else really gives a rat's ass. 8-O lol oops...)
3. Frame every so-called disaster with these words: "In five years, will this matter?" (This would be helpful if you can't snap yourself out of the looping thoughts and, in a perfect situation, the above two should be sufficient.  If the looping thoughts still don't run dry after a long while and keep on building on, check the meds. 8-O)

What I have tried my best to apply...

1. Always choose life. (and... health, happiness and love)
2. When in doubt, just take the next small step.
3. Make peace with your past so it won't screw up the present.
4. Life is too short for long pity parties. Get busy living, or get busy dying.
5. Burn the candles, use the nice sheets, wear the fancy lingerie. Don't save it for a special occasion. Today is special.
6. Overprepare, then go with the flow.
7. Get outside every day. Miracles are waiting everywhere.
8. Don't audit life. Show up and make the most of it now.
9. No matter how you feel, get up, dress up and show up.
10. Pay off your credit cards every month.
11. Don't compare your life to others'. You have no idea what their journey is all about.
12. Get rid of anything that isn't useful, beautiful or joyful.

Some other quotes...

1. Everything can change in the blink of an eye. But don't worry; God never blinks.
2. You can get through anything if you stay put in today.
3. Be eccentric now. Don't wait for old age to wear purple.
4. Time heals almost everything. Give time time.
5. Believe in miracles.
6. Growing old beats the alternative - dying young.
7. If we all threw our problems in a pile and saw everyone else's, we'd grab ours back.
8. All that truly matters in the end is that you loved.

Virtual generation atypical antipsychotic medication

Today, I read that time magazine has listed Farmville, a game I have been playing on facebook, as one of the 50 worst invention.

Interestingly, last night, I was pondering to myself about this thing I would call... "Virtual generation atypical antipsychotic medication"... or facebook games such as Farmville.

Cafe World

Or other online games alike.... that are...absolutely brainless, not all that exciting and involves this mechanism called click till you die... 8-O lol

I don't know what other people get from playing these games...

One thing I do know is that...

The what would otherwise be considered as boring tasks: cooking them dishes in Cafe World, growing crops in Farmville, collecting bonus/rewards through news feeds, sending and receiving gifts to facebook friends etc... definitely helps to slow and calm me down....

And, I thought, over a month now on 25 mg Seroquel only, my head somehow kept on getting clearer and clearer... In addition, after an entire year of struggling, now I finally could really read.  I now also feel more like I am in this world... (though... no doubt, I am still psychotic and my body could do things as abnormal as could be, which I have become accustomed to after these past two years...)

Maybe... part of it is the contribution of the "virtual generation atypical antipsychotic medication"? 8-O

How does it work?  I am not even gonna further entertain it since it defeats the purpose of having total concentration in brainlessness. 8-O lol

Does it really work?  How is it even my business anyway since my business is to find ways to live and..... especially when different things work for different people and the effects might even vary within the same person?

Lamont Hall at LDEO

The Lamont Hall at LDEO (A campus of Columbia University that reminds me of UBC) is apparently a library now where I am accessing the Internet from....

A deer and I were just staring at each other until the guy ran away not too far from the picture...

Scary

If there is one person I am most afraid of on this planet to me at this point...  guess who?

Yet, it would be me myself.  8-O lol

So, I let myself be a drama queen and whine and whined and whined... reminiscene about the times past while the time is, no doubt, always passing by.

It was either Saturday night and Sunday morning... when that drama queen part of me intents to come out and become, I guess, the daily queen... 8-O

OMG... The pending departure in less than a month if ain't no nothing happens... above and beyond all the other blah blah blah....

Sad... hurt... depressed... and so on, so forth...

Finally, I really was not about to entertain it any more...

So to myself I said... something like...

"If you can't enjoy the remaining time in New York and consider it a chance to live your life in New York, you don't deserve to stay and I am gonna go and book the cheapest flight tomorrow to shuffle your sorry behind right off this continent since you can be sorry anywhere.  Stop it already." 8-O 8-X lol

It is not like I won't allow myself to feel bad etc.  That would be counter productive.

It is more like... it doesn't make sense for me to make myself feel more miserable or worst off than the appropriate quota... If I were to over do it, I am simply entrapping myself in unnecessary misery and I won't even get any sympathy, empathy, and whatever-athy--- except for apathy--- from myself for such stupidity. 8

More importantly, have I done everything I could do and have I been responsible for myself?  I think so....

Not to mention, ok, not to discount your predicament, but... there are plenty of people who are worst off.

I must have gotten myself really scared and da drama queen stopped.

Then, when melancholy comes to visit, I still welcome it and entertain it since it is entitled to its place.  When I think I get it entertain well enough, with due respect, I say...

"Come again if you want but right now I've got to say bye bye."

Intuitively, this would be the most logical solution... 8-O lol

Whether I am really doing what I think I am trying to do is another issue...

Progression

Some interesting progression in my cognitive processing in recent times... and as the dosage gradually went down in recent months...

First, I finally was able to convince myself that... How is it anybody else's business what the heck is in my mind?

A bit later, I finally was able to think... "How is it anybody else's business what the heck I write in my private blog since it is but a private journal for myself?

In even more recent time, finally, "How is it anybody else's business what the heck it is that comes out of my mouth if I am not talking to them?"

So, I was asked this question...

"What make you think so?"

"Oh... because I am psychotic.  It is the most fundamental of the condition."  8-O 8-X lol

Then, in even more recent days, something this friend of mine once had me told kept on popping to my mind...

It was before I was labeled as psychotic.... over a decade ago now...

One day, I was sitting at the bar.  A few seats away sat this other regular.  We had been hanging out at the same bar for quite a while then...

Each every move and look of his told me that he knew something....

Finally, I collected enough "courage" and asked him this question....

"Have you ever heard anyone talking about me recently?"

My poor friend apparently was interrupted from his own train of thoughts and gave me that embarrassing look...

"I am so sorry!  I have been having so much trouble at home that I have not been paying anybody else any mind."

Since normal people can't quite tell me how they think and since this seems to be an example of how normal people act and think...

So I think to myself.... maybe the next task to learn about how to be normal is... "I am having so much problem keeping up with what is in my own "house" that I can't be paying nobody else's no mind." lol oops...

Believe it or not though... personally, I prefer to believe such progression as an improvement somehow... Of course... only time could tell.... remember... emerging vs forcing...  except for.. not quite easy a task...  especially when you are using an "invalid" instrument as an evaluation measure... such this whatever-it-is head of mine...  8-O  8-X lol sigh

Letting go

My learning to let go is like playing Mafia War...

When I was under level 400 or 500, I tried really hard to level up and always ponder what it would be like to be at a higher level.

After a certain level, I stop pondering since...

Come on... what is the point since, don't bust your head too hard over it since, as long as you keep on playing, today's level up would always be tomorrow's lower level.  8-O

Some days you even forget to level up because I was busy cooking or training my dog.... or checking out beauty products.  8-O lol

My Mafia War view at level 653... not too high... not really low... sort of somewhere in the middle...

Wonder whether it is the maxima/minima or again local maxima/minima?

脫竅

1 month or two after my June 19th, 2007 accident, mama cooked me an egg and let me cracked the egg open and eat it... 8-O lol

What it symbolizes is the idea of 脫竅 or 脫殼... essentially... get rid of the bad... bad... bad...



or




Unfortunately, the egg my mama cooked that day was still raw and not yet done.... 8-O lol

It was around this hour 3 years ago when the chair collapsed... and my whole life shattered with it...

I lost everything.... essentially my health and who I thought myself was or was to be.

While everyone else is busy building their career, wealth, smart, etc, I was busy trying to find ways to piecemeal my body and mind together.

OK, I know it is exaggeration, but, I suspect that sometimes it is only healthy to allow myself to be a drama queen once for a while for the sake of it.  It is because... come on... when can I be "authorized" to mourn about my lost functionalities in my knees, shoulders, neck, back and head... especially when now the worker's com case has closed and I have sold my body for money (shoulders and knees only since nobody wants to pay for my back 8-O lol sigh)?  (And, yes, FYI... you don't get compensated for your pains and suffering.  You also don't get compensated for your back in scenarios like mine.  You only get compensated for permanent damages in your shoulders and knees.  It is simply the law. Please noted that here... I am focusing on what I lost.)

So I decided to cook myself an egg this afternoon.... I cracked it open and ate it.  So I took a second to investigate the boiled egg... This time, it is ready... (and I hope so since the egg is already in my stomach and I don't really want to eat this thousand year old egg raw... 8-O lol)



What is the purpose?

Guess, it is a ritual.

A ritual I participate in to help myself let go of the past.

I know that the arrival of June 19th, 2010 will not gonna bring forth a miracle... (I know I am certified crazy... but you think I am stupid?! 8-O lol)

I know I still can not run and I can only walk as fast as my body allow me to... etc.

I am still psychotic while symptoms manageable at a "really" low dose.

Yet, it is a benchmark for me.

Also, most importantly, I am still kicking...

And, the shell-cracking of a cooked egg and the act of eating it is not going to shrink me a whole size so that I can look like them skinny toothpicks on the street.

To be honest, my recent venture into exfoliation from head to toe might do a more real kind of job to help me get rid of my dead skin... and that is part of the ritual as well...  8-O lol

However, so far as I am concerned...

All else I might and might not accomplish with blah blah blah blah blah...

One thing I am sure is... and I just realized is... that...

That egg you saw me eating and was actually cooked well... neither too raw or too old...

That egg was the first egg I boiled in my entire life so far and I did not realize until today that I have never boiled an egg by myself in my entire life... unless... oh... my bad memory... Did I forget?   8-O lol 8-X

Developmental outcome

Years back, this friend of mine had me told... something like...

"You are too much influenced by your mental health condition."

At a much younger and more understanding age, I responded with something along the line... Human development.

Speaking of the power of environmental impact on human development... nature + nurture...

2-3 years later, I have developed low tolerance for BS or what I consider as BS (well, if everyone is entitled to their opinion, I am entitled to be opinionated as well and in exercising my right to judge things as bull or not, I guess).

If it were today, I would have shut him up even before he could voice that opinion with...

"Cut the bull.  I am not gonna entertain that."

Although this might have something to do with the dosage of 25 mg which is essential in keeping me in touch with reality and a sense of self.... 8-X lol

Such is one of the developmental outcome for having lived through the last 3 years.... not like it is any better or any worse... just the way it is.  8-O lol sigh

2 days to June 19th

3 years is neither a long time nor a short time.

It is some time and the duration of time for some significant benchmark in my life.

It took me 3 years to get my junior and senior high school diploma.

I went to Taiwan university for 3 years.  Afterwards, I spent 3, in retrospective, interesting time in Vancouver, BC.

The most haunted 3 years in my life so far... would be the last 3 years minus 2...

I have not looked back for the longest time since, I guess, I always knew that, when the time comes, I will look back.  Before that, let me keep going while trying my best to smell the roses along the way.

Sort of like how the song went... "人說這人生　海海海海路好行　不通回頭望　望著會茫"... You might get too dizzy when looking back...

Today is the day for me to look back after paying St. John the Divine a visit earlier in the afternoon.

Somewhere in the afternoon of June 19th, 2007, I was in a meeting, eating a piece of raisin bran cookie.  The chair collapsed into one piece right underneath me.

The breaking point that set off a journey-- continuing-- into total physical disability and eventually mental disability with pains, struggles and sufferings as the collateral damages.

After I got home that night, my mama was really upset...

"Thank God it was me who took the fall.  Not anyone else at the meeting."

Gotta be Percocet talking... or my sheer ignorance about what is yet to unfold...

In retrospective, if the fall would have taken the same amount of toll on anyone else, I should have let someone else from outside of the college to take the fall so that they can get both worker's compensation and sue someone's behind... which I am not going to name, for negligence.  8-O lol sigh


The before denial state: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/06/life-and-its-unfolding-on-extraordinary.html
Painful expressions: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2008/01/painful-expression.html
At the very beginning: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/07/last-miles-to-house.html
2 Month Anniversary: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/08/when-to-yield.html

3 months and 1 day: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/09/3-months-and-day.html

Pain: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/11/pain.html

"Sit down. Go back to sleep. You. Me. And, Her.": http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2007/12/you-me-and-her.html

Heading towards cuckoo's nest: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2008/02/assumptions.html

Last posting before Down with Meds is taken down: http://ratologybk.blogspot.com/2008/02/blog-post.html

The Beginning of Ratology Reloaded blog right before I got myself shipped back into the Cuckoo's nest: http://ratologyreloaded.blogspot.com/2008/02/new-world.html

The rest... up to now... such as whatever in this blog... simply the process of recovery... and the associated inconveniences.

In the meanwhile, let me start giving a toast to da really bad hangover...

I am crazy-- Je suis fou- Barthes in Lover's Discourse

A quote in "I am crazy"-- Lover's Discourse by Roland Barthes

"insane in my own eyes (I know my delirium), simply unreasonable in the eyes of someone else, to whom I quite sanely describe my madness: conscious of this madness, sustaining a discourse upon it..."

"Je suis fou"-- Les' Fragments d'un discours amoureux'de Roland Barthes

"insensé à mes propres yeux (je connais mon délire), simplement déraisonnable aux yeux d’autrui, à qui je raconte très sagement ma folie : conscient de cette folie, tenant discours sur elle." (Je suis fou)

Keep going

Found some quotes cited in the book "Now is the Time" at Barnes and Noble today.

“If you are going through hell, keep going.” Winston Churchill

And, in my scenario, if ever I were in hell, I somehow must have helped out building my own hell and I simply have to try my best to walk myself out of it.

Could this be why I walk so much? 8-O

Other quotes used in this book:

1. "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life."  Steve Jobs
2. "To love someone deeply gives you strength; being loved by someone deeply give you courage." Lao Tse (8-O)
3. "All the knowledge I possess everyone else can acquire but my heart is exclusively my own." Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
4. "Our greatest glory is not in never failing but in rising every time we fall." Confucius (8-O)
5. "Courage is the mastry of fear, not the absence of fear."  Mark Twain.
6. "I felt sorry for myself because I had no shoes, until I met a man who had no feet."  Jewish proverb.
7. "It is better to be making the news than taking it; to be an actor rather than a critic."  Winston Churchill
8. "To conquer oneself is a greater task than conquering others."  Buddha
9. "Better to lose the anchor than to lose the whole ship."
10. "Let the dead past bury its dead."  Henry Wadsworth Longfallow
11. "It is a good divine that follows his own instructions." Shakespeare
12. "Everything can be taken from a man but one thing; the last of the human freedoms - to choose one's attitude in any given set of circumstances, to choose one's own way." Victor Frankl
13. "Be moderate in order to taste the joys of life in abundance."  Epicurus
14. "It's a thousand times better to have common sense without education than to have education without common sense."  Robert Ingersoll
15. "Experiences is what you get when you didn't get what you wanted."  Randy Pausch
16. "The worst thing in the world is to try to sleep and not to."  F. Scott Fitzgerald

黃霑 - 滄海一聲笑 {電影( 笑傲江湖)片中曲}

This, maybe, is more like... music from Hong Kong... not quite sure

跟往事干杯/姜育恒

Don't know how people came up with words so fine....

乾杯　朋友就讓那一切成流水
把那往事　把那往事當作一場宿醉
明日的酒杯　莫再要裝著昨天的傷悲
請與我舉起杯　跟往事乾杯
舉起杯　跟往事　乾杯

A toast to the past and treat the not so easy past you would like to let go as a really bad hangover.... 8-O Nothing really to be proud of but that I know... bad hangovers... 8-O lol 8-X

So... 以茶代酒... I raise my cup of chamomile and lavender tea for a toast to a past I am forgoing.... especially the discard-able part of the past 3 years... the pains, suffering and struggles, which I am, maybe, finally, acknowledging... not to mention the cold air, esophagus spasm, the running a train station in my head and all other mental and physical conditions.

I am done suffering.... so suffering... go away.. go away... bad bad bad... go away... 8-O

My life from now on has to be simply joyful and happy since I think I am very much done with my quota.  8-O lol

God bless me, my house, all my family and all my lotteries. 8-O lol



跟往事乾杯
作詞：陳桂珠　作曲：長剛　編曲：陳志遠

經過了許多事　你是不是覺得累
這樣的心情　我曾有過幾回
也許是被人傷了心　也許是無人可瞭解
現在的你　我想一定很疲憊

人生際遇就像酒　有的苦有的烈
這樣的滋味　你我早晚要體會
也許那傷口還流著血　也許那眼角還有淚
現在的你　讓我陪你喝一杯

乾杯　朋友就讓那一切成流水
把那往事　把那往事當作一場宿醉
明日的酒杯　莫再要裝著昨天的傷悲
請與我舉起杯　跟往事乾杯
舉起杯　跟往事　乾杯

再回首/姜育恒

Interesting...

Growing up with this song but never really hear the lyrics until today... 8-O

曾經在幽幽暗暗反反复复中追問
才知道平平淡淡從從容容是最真
再回首恍然如夢
再回首我心依舊
只有那無盡的長路伴著我

Appropriating "real"

Gradually, I am regaining my ability to read...

Some passages I came across in Barnes and Noble to share with you...

I try my best to appropriate "real"... since the biggest challenge these days... to be grounded (or not to lose ground) and to feel life is real.



At the same time, I forgive myself for making errors.... because... I am only human.



This is not THE WAY.  The holly Grail kind of way other people might arrive at just like that.  And, if anyone else know what the is, please advise.

This is only my way.