Ordinary

Rationale

the clouds and AWB happened to line up perfectly during this panorama

I happened upon this post by Haacked while catching up on some of my readings, and was quickly spurred to write this post. I had taken a spattering of philosophy during my undergrad, and if I targeted it better, I probably could have eked out a minor in it but I didn’t care.¹ I took philosophy both to force me to ponder topics I usually wouldn’t think through to a resolution,² help me map out what makes me me, and my place/plight in relation to the rest of the universe. I’ll probably expound upon my favourite course in a future post,³ which was about the philosophies of life, and the inevitable circular dependency that arises when one questions life/the meaning of life, itself. Instead, let me contemplate where I’ve been and where I’m going, quite literally.

Offline

Haack’s article espoused the virtues of doing things as an end to themselves, but I also interpreted it as a form of zen that I, myself, routinely try to engage in. I recall gaming for two to six (or more) hours a day as an impressionable kid/teenager/young adult, and I currently work 40 hours a week in front of one or more screens…

my recently upgraded battlestation @QSFT!

I recently had a revelation that if I were to return and still plonk myself in front of a screen, I’d basically be spending 10+ hours a day in front of a screen. This is pretty much voluntarily hooking up to a budget Experience Machine, which was posited by Robert Nozick to help refute living out a hedonistic lifestyle.

my reaction when I rationalized this thought recently was likely like Retsuko’s

Luckily enough, I’ve kind of have always been off-the-grid. I say that I desire the offline life but I didn’t even own a cell phone (or any kind of mobile personal computing device) until my first year of uni, and I still have yet to get mobile data of any sort. I’m also too lazy/”poor” [read cheap] to setup/buy a VPN so I never use public wifi so I’m basically offline most of the time, but I digress.⁴ I like being literally incapable of being interrupted except by SMS/calls in actual emergencies from people who I’ve let share my proximity. If a company wants me on-call outside of work hours they’d better be sponsoring me an unlimited data plan + an iPhone X. Despite my preference for Android, I would opt for a literal mobile OS switch just to very concisely deliminate where my work ends and where actual life begins. Plus [no pun intended], iPhones are slightly more secure by default via their sandboxing model, hence less of my time wasted routinely configuring security and keeping a Droid end computing device up-to-date.

Country

But yeah, I feel like Country music is the only genre of music I cannot listen to [great transition Steve…]. I don’t mind gangsta rap, or classics, dubstep, even death metal but something about Country just rubs me the wrong way. Sure I listen to Post Malone, and he can be classified as country but that’s because of his unique lineage & blend of his musical genres. But straight-up Country is anathema to me. It might be because my only experiences of the truly off-the-grid offline life,⁵ in part due to my more privileged middle-classed upbringing, was when I visited my family’s hometown in Quanzhou, Fujian Province, in China and this still usually occurs with a layover in Xiamen which is across from Taiwan (USA! USA!). Still having family in Yong’an, a countryside, also means we may occasionally visit the capital city, Fuzhou, along the way. Otherwise, I’ve never really been in/stuck to a small town or farm-like setting, despite how appealing working on a farm is to me and some of my friends. I haven’t experienced the midwest or any southern hospitality yet. Maybe a road trip across the states via the Interstates would do this for me. I can just imagine sleeping out of a hammock or even just my backseat in Walmart parking lots, and if there are any cheap hostels or AirBnB’s along the way, then all the better. I even recall two of my friends wanted us all to road trip across Canada but our schedules have never lined up enough to do so. Alas, such is our modern, adult, life. I definitely expect experiencing any of these things would greatly alter and shape me, for the better, as a person. When exactly that’ll take place is still in consideration.

City

Anyhoo, at the moment, I’m a city slicker trapped in the suburbs. I love being deep in the hustle and bustle of a busy city. Sure city life is stress-inducing,⁶ but I think the pros outnumber the cons and conmen.⁷ Much like how the anime Durarara!!⁸ is all about the daily ins-and-outs of city life in Ikebukuro, I find myself frequently letting my mind wander to ponder about the experiences and connections I’ll make once I return to the big city life.⁹ Call it wanderlust, call it reverse homesickness. Maybe I’m looking for that anonymous, spontaneous, human connection that a previous self of mine would have actively avoided.

My previous experiences of big cities would definitely be New York City, Toronto, and Auckland. My family and I had lived in big cities like Atlanta GA (I even recall visiting the Olympics on my father’s shoulders when it was hosted there), and Santa Clara CA, where I, unfortunately, had a racist white Kindergarten teacher (her legacy still haunts me when my Mom recalls how much fabricated “trouble” I got into back at Scott Lane Elementary). I chalk up these experiences as invalid because I was way too young to retain many tangible/relevant memories of it, and instead only recall a few of the highs & lows. Sure, one might argue that Ottawa is plenty big enough but I would disagree; I prefer boroughs over zones.

For the nitpickers: I technically hail from the City of Nepean, since that’s where Bayshore technically is, and hence why the above art about zones doesn’t include it.

Ottawa, at least to me, is comprised of just the cardinal directions. To the West is Kanata/Bayshore where I work/live respectively. To the East is downtown, where I did both my Highschooling and Gradeschooling. To the South is CarletonU/Barrhaven and to the North is basically the water bodies/Gatineau, where I bike and have worked, for TekSavvy. I’m definitely overly exaggerating and glossing over lots of interesting areas, like Hurdman, Westboro, the Glebe, but bear with me. I also may not have delved deep enough into the underground scenes to understand all the intricacies and find things of interest…

I also personally get quite aggravated at the amount of dangerous and distracted drivers I encounter daily on my commute. I try to be assertive and attentive but I find myself always yielding to aggressive and mentally deficient drivers. There’s also the hilarious problem of everyone always on their phones at red lights, and the proposed solution of using one’s own phone to snap a pic to show the cops, but that begets the question what if you also get snapped while doing your snap. I am also annoyed at the sheer amount of traffic that has been continually on the uptick ever since we put down roots here. Trying to get anywhere across Ottawa during rush hour is pathetic (albeit not as bad as places such as Los Angeles, a big turn-off for a West Coast life). The linear highway design is quite poorly thought out, unlike the much better planned circular highways of cities like Atlanta and Auckland. Ottawa is probably 75% percent of the way to having expanded their O-Train into a Light Rail system but it’s obviously going to be a failure. The size of the train is not going to even make a scratch and will either be packed to the brim like trains in Japan or empty because the fees will be exorbitant, much like the current OC Transpo bus fare is. Sure, all this may just be a remnant of the old, smaller, Ottawa but I can still gripe about this, right?¹⁰ Naturalistic fallacy, amirite?

Instead, in the very long-term, I hope to put down roots in Chicago. I am extremely interested in the fascinating architecture (you’ll see me with my head up in most cities), and I adore functional, efficient, modern metro systems. What with spawning the two Chicago schools of skyscrapers and possessing a very rustic and robust metro, I can’t even complain.¹¹ I’m also drawn in by the arts & culture; just listen to Kanye West’s song off of his Graduation album, titled Homecoming:

Kanye West’s love song about Chi-town.

Many people have chided and tutted me about the perceived danger of “Chiraq” but I definitely do not condone that term, especially out of respect for our veterans. I feel it is misconstrued and narrow-minded. All of the United States is slightly dangerous, sure, but I strongly believe in the rights and protections offered by the Second Amendment; the right to bear arms. A quick summary argument for this is how safe I feel in Toronto vs, say, NYC. In Toronto, if some poseur-wannabe pulls out a gun, they’re gonna rampage until stopped by some form of heroics. In NYC, if some foo draws a bead I can guarantee a good response from the NYPD and probably a bunch of other good samaritan citizens with their own CCW (Concealed Carry Weapon). As they say, don’t bring a knife to a gunfight + safety in numbers, and as the scouts say: Allzeit bereit! AKA Be Prepared in both Mind & Body. Now let me play Devil’s Advocate to that highly controversial stance/topic I have just broached: Steve, why do you hang out in such sketchy areas? My response: Why not?

I rest my case.

Native

So, in the end, I felt I’d close with a topic Digibro vlogged on: Do you consider yourself a local of the place that you live? as in do you feel like a connected native of your locality? It’s a quick thirteen-minute video that can just be listened to as a podcast and I won’t regurgitate its contents and instead just write a quick response of my own. This question is definitely harder in Canada where we pride ourselves on our cultural tapestry versus the cultural melting pot that is most places in the United States (I’m leaving out other countries because these are my two nationalities, k?). Despite having lived in Ottawa for much of my life, from about 2001 until now in 2018 [and counting!], with gaps where I left for schooling/co-op’s, I always didn’t feel like a native.¹² I knew the Bayshore/Nepean area, downtown, Chinatown, Little Italy, and Kanata Research Park like the back of my hand, but anywhere else I felt like & had no connections. Some examples would be Walkley, where I did my Graduated Licensing System’s DriveTest, Vanier, probably Ottawa’s shadiest area, and Rockcliffe, probably Ottawa richest area. Unless I had a prolonging reason to be there, e.g. friends there (but I’ve kept my social circle small), it would be pretty hard to become fluent in those areas.

Nowadays, having exited my early 20’s slum¹³ I have actually decided to connect with/explore my current hometown more. I recall not being able to sell anything about Ottawa to a previous co-op colleague of mine from Toronto. I think if she ended up asking me about highlights of Ottawa now, it’d be a completely different tour de force. I already had a chance to sell the strong points of downtown and suburban Ottawa to a colleague’s friend from the UK. Besides knowing way more interesting joints/locations downtown, I have also mapped out way more campuses and hangout areas throughout Ottawa, and even Gatineau. You don’t have to spend money to have a good time and to be honest, I find myself skimping wherever and whenever I can. Being frugal is fun and there are tons of places just a short amateur parkour hop away from the everyday hum-drum.

Macklemore on Seattle (which is too rainy for my liking)

My current, favourite, happy place is the Ottawa River. It’s pretty long and usually infested with tons of E. coli to the point that many of the beaches are waving red flags. Despite this I find myself biking to the many beaches/waterfronts along the river, every chance I get. Swimming, reading, walking, followed by biking seems to soothe my stressed soul these days (makes me sound like a budget Triathlete). Yesterday afternoon was the source of the stunning (if I may so myself) titular picture of this piece.

Addendum

I feel I’m very lucky and privileged to have been born here in the West. I definitely would be an entirely different person had I been born in the East. The United States’ constitution guarantees one protection in their [pursuit of happiness][happyness], and I wish the same to everyone (but don’t necessarily become a hedonist!).

In closing, I feel my life is what I make of it: this is existentialism. Maybe I’ll subscribe to a different philosophy of life as I get older, or maybe not. To return to Phil’s piece, maybe I don’t need to travel anywhere, note something, or do something, to achieve a peace of mind, a sense of belonging, and happiness. I still remember one prevalent ideology from Season one of Durarara!!, which noted how ordinary isn’t even too bad. But that’s not enough to satiate current me. I try to keep balance in everything, but I definitely indulge when I can. As of lately, all of these former friends and acquaintances have started to spring out of the woodwork and I’m being pulled back into it and I love it

Farewell & play me out, Jon Bellion: <!-- L I F E -->

fin-esse