A blog written by a guy trying to get his mind around the existence of all the stupid, senseless, dim-witted, annoying, ridiculous, laughable and mindless things that people do every, single, day.
In the year of 2008, having lived in Hong Kong for more than eighteen years, I, Michael Rivera, felt the need to reach out to the wider global community, to have my voice heard, through the World Wide Web. At the time, I pondered how I could possibly write in a way that would achieve the world's attention, and what else is more universal, more relatable, than the beautiful emotion of hate?
Feel free to e-mail me if you have anything you want to share, suggest, criticize, inquire or comment on!
Right now, I'm in a really, really bad mood. There is very little that would not irritate me at this very moment...
I remember there was one time my mother said I inherited my bad temper from my father - I would just burst into a big explosion of upset whenever I didn't get what I wanted.
The very idea that I inherit my irascibility from my dad is something I strongly do not believe in. I understand eye color, and hair color, and general fitness, and the size of my nose being inherited. To resemble your parents in terms of these particular phenotypes is fact, and fact that means something because when others see you with them, they recognize you are part of the same family. But with personality traits and non-physical characteristics that make me who I am, I refuse to believe anything these scientists are saying...
...about how they have found a 'gay gene' or a 'criminal gene' - that's just plain nonsense. I've read quite a bit into this area of research, and yeah, it sure is interesting to read about how the people that we are is partially environmental and partially genetic. It's just wonderful that these researchers have spent all this money to find out that the same part of the brain that controls testosterone levels in the body, also has an effect on the lengths of your fingers, and that both of these factors correlate to homosexual behavior - but hey, it's just a simple correlation, it's not like the results a hundred percent positive, so what does it matter anyway if there's always going to be a minority that don't fit the rule? Why don't you explain that minority to us instead of shoving our faces in the majority that fit your hypothesis?
You want to know why?
Because it doesn't mean anything! Who cares if there are biological indicators of the people we will turn out to be?! What, am I supposed to go chasing after men just because the length of my fingers say so? Am I supposed to drop out of university and mug people on the streets just because I share similar genetic makeup with felons locked up in jail?
No!!!
Because we live life in a dynamic environment, with obstacles that we are meant to face and that demand choices from us, chocies to be made with logical reasoning and a degree of risk assessment. There is no 'nature' versus nurture. Personality is purely a result of environment and personal choices. You can't inherit good business skills. You cannot inherit arrogance. You cannot inherit a good work ethic. You cannot inherit a criminal record. Your life is in your hands, and you have the freedom and the ultimate power to choose who you want to be. The only thing you can get from your parents is good looks, and that's just if you're lucky. And if you're unlucky, there's always plastic surgery, which you can afford if you work hard, and train yourself to have a good work ethic.
Eleven days ago, my mother flew from Hong Kong to come visit me here in the UK for her Chinese New Year holiday off work. We spent half the time in Canterbury, where my university is located, and the rest of the time in Edinburgh, the Scottish Highlands and Londontown. Before the 10th of February, I hadn't seen her for more than 4.5 months, and to be honest, I had sort of forgotten what she looked like in person. Right now, her physical appearance is fresh in my mind as I only saw her off at Heathrow airport last night, but it'll be another four-and-a-half months before I see her again, and I know I will gradually begin to forget her semblance again until the day I embark on that 16-hour journey finally.
Of course we have all this technology that allows us to talk to each other and see each other with the click of a button or two. But it's just not the same, if you get what I'm saying. This experience of moving away from my home in Hong Kong, to a place where I have to pretty much make it on my own in all aspects of my life, scares the living crap out of me all the time, but it has really shown me what fears, discomforts, and individual strength can be brought about inside me by something as simple as geographical distance.
I do have two or three close friends staying here in the UK, who I've known for a long, long time. The more I thought about it on the train back to university from London, the more I realized that I actually forget people's faces and voices very easily with prolonged absence. There are actually many people in my life that I have forgotten the faces of, and the mere voices of. Sure, I know where they go to university now, and sure I hear things about what they're doing. Sure, I talk to them every now and then, and sure we play games online together, and we look at each other's photos, and it's pretty much like spending time together in the flesh...
...but it's not. There really is a difference, one I cannot find the words to explain adequately. It means something to be in one another's physical presence. It means something to hear the sound of their voices, and their distinctive laughs. And it means something to see each other's expressions, to feed off each other's gestural and facial reactions, to see each other's 'thinking face', or 'eating face', or 'waiting-to-cross-the-street face', to walk side-by-side, and to hug and kiss, and hold hands, or interlock elbows, as you're walking.
I miss home so much. And the familiarity of people's faces and the geography of Hong Kong is probably what gets to me the most.
Well... except the food perhaps.
Yeah...
Food definitely trumps the faces... and everything else.
I cannot count the number of times in my life I have ever gotten angry at someone else or a particular situation. Recently, I have come to realize, though, that people get angry an awful, awful lot, too often, and it has made me reflect upon my own character, and has made me strive to be more tolerable of other people's opinions and needs. It's hard to explain why we get angry so intensely and so often, but most of the time, those who experience anger say that the rage they feel inside is aroused by "what has happened to them", something that happens immediately before the anger experience that provokes the individual to lash out. Anger serves as a means of expressing hurt feelings to the people around us, to the source of the disturbance if applicable, and often carries the subtle and underlying intention of protecting oneself from further damage, and forgoing even more of one's psychological well-being. In our society today, we are too often afraid to admit we are hurt by external (or even internal) disturbances in our lives, so we use angry gestures and behavior to tell the world that we are in emotional pain, and we deserve other people's attention.
In most cases, we stop focusing on what others have "done to us" after we begin to see how our displeased behavior is affecting other people. Anger is a release, it's a way of stating the hurt we feel inside, and it's uncomfortable to be around, it's unsettling, uncontrolled and simply relentless. However, releasing bottled up emotions can be a critical step in achieving harmony with other people and one's own conscience. Anger aids in making the hurt person more self-aware of his own needs and wants, and spurs him on to take action to fight for what he wants, rather than letting the hurtful experience continue or come back.
Getting mad over superficial, petty things, I'm sure, is something that everybody gets irritated by. It's childish, and there's no need for blowing things out of proportion. If your problems were handled more calmly and less emotionally, then maybe other people could assist you more efficiently, and life could move on a lot quicker.
But the more I think about it, the more I feel that all anger is unnecessary - whether it is socially acceptable to be angry or not - even if a country were to bomb one's own nation, even if a serial killer were to choose a member of my family as their next victim, even if someone were to walk up to me while I'm having a drink at a bar and punch me in the face.
Because anger does nobody any good. Sure, people are jerks, and life is unfair, but let's just cut the big reactions and just get to the open discussion and forgiveness already. Anger distracts you, from the multitudinous things you have to do everyday, and from the actual problem at hand. Anger causes you to be irrational and do things you don't mean to. Getting mad doesn't help anyone. There are better ways to carry yourself.
So dial down the temper and let's just learn to calm down, 'cause I'm so tired of the shouting, stomping and the slamming of doors. Take a chill pill. Make peace, not war. Just relax.
The life of a university student is quite interesting. We are finally adults, responsible for our own money, time, property, physiological well-being, and general lifestyle, emotionally mature, with a supposedly more developed mental health, while also carrying the rights to marry, to vote, to work, to join the army, to drive, to travel abroad without parental consent, to drink, to smoke, to have sex, to gamble, and the list goes on. We choose how we want to live our lives, and in university, that largely includes the way we want to learn.
No longer must we conform to the timetable of high school, be obliged to attend classes, consult teachers about class content, have lunch at a reasonable hour, sleep at a reasonable hour, do our homework on time, or spend hours and hours studying for our tests. We are free of all obligations, our duties are for us to define. We can skip all of our lectures and seminars, we can forget about studying, get wasted every night, sleep in every morning, eat junk food everyday, revise for our examinations at the very last minute, and give less than a rat's tail about our assignments. The only drawback about that game plan is the fact that we would fail at the end of the year, and that's quite a lot of money to send down the drain.
One key thing that you may find different, is the fact that you don't need to take notes down anymore - it's not required of us anymore - as adults, we decide if it's necessary for our tertiary education. We can just sit there, cross-armed the whole time and put the gift of memory to good use by listening intently, taking it all in and deeply engraving it in our heads, or we could leave an audio recorder on the lecturing stand for aural replay on a later date.
But if you really wanted to capture the entire essence of the talk, if you really wanted to experience the lecture like it was exactly once again, you could get a video camera, and tape the whole damn thing.
I thought I've seen some stupid things in my lifetime. This girl put a video camera on the lecturing stand, to tape the professor giving the talk, and the reason for this was that there was nowhere else to put the camera. With the soft, cotton-filled, round-edged seats in the theater, the chairs were useless when it came to balancing anything on top of one of them. She could have just held the thing in her hand the whole time instead, but she probably figured she needed both hands to take down notes. The one thing she didn't figure beforehand was the fact that the lecturer didn't exactly stay at the stand, or in any one particular place.
In fact, the lecturer moved almost everywhere except the lecturing stand. When the professor was standing on the right, the girl student was happy, and she sat there - not listening to the professor - but always eying her precious visual project to make sure she was capturing the video (i.e., being distracted). When the lecturer walked over to the left-hand side of the lecture hall, the girl would get up from her seat, and turn the camera towards him. And then the professor would turn, and walk back in the opposite direction to the right-hand side.
This went on for about ten minutes, and the girl had gotten up seven times. She finally figured - she would have to stop getting up and sitting down - so she found a plastic chair and sat right next to the lecturing stand. This only gave her easier access to her camera, and she would tweak the angle at which her camera was pointed repeatedly at around one tweak per minute. She wasn't even listening to the man. The guy was telling us very interesting things, about the Azande people of Central Africa who believe in witchcraft, who purify their newborns by holding them over smoke, and whose criminal justice system involves determining a suspect's innocence in a crime by observing if a poisoned chicken dies or survives after ingesting a toxic substance.
And this girl wasn't listening to any of this. She kept adjusting her lens, tending to her sacred angle that had to be pointed at the professor at all times. She was distracting two hundred or more other students, and let's face it...
Why waste one hour or more in the future by watching it on tape?
You can just pay attention the one time, the first time, and that's the only hour of your lifetime that that lecture would take out of your time. If you videotaped all of your lectures, you would effectively be taking the same course twice, spending twice the time listening to the same content twice, not forgetting the fact that you would have to spend additional hours more dealing with the technology and the hardware.
Why bother?
This is a classic case of people trying too hard, but achieving less.
There's a lot of emotion brewing inside of me as I enter this final week in Hong Kong. There are many things of which I still haven't done, but had originally planned to do, and a lot of people who I will not see before I fly off to England, but wish I could. I can honestly say, though, that I have tried my best to fit in the most important people and the most important things-to-do into my schedule. I don't know how I'm ever going to stop missing this place after I leave, how I will miss the thousands of streets on which I've walked a thousand times, the unique wonderful taste of the food here I love so much, and the beaches, the carparks, the piers, the malls, the parks, the schools, the bowling alleys, the bookstores, the supermarkets and the countless other locations of which I know like the back of my hand, and altogether, integrate, interweave and incorporate with one another in this giant lattice to constitute this familiar city I describe as my place of birth, my living environment, my home.
When other people hear about why I will miss this place so much, they attempt to reassure me by patting me on the back, brushing my shoulder, and telling me that I can always come back home during my holidays, and that I can keep in touch with people online at any time, but what they fail to realize is that those aren't really valid points.
Truth be told, I never want to come back, and I don't want to talk to anyone online.
About 95% of my life consists of my mother, my father and my best friend. I have dinner with my mom, drinks with my dad, and talk on the phone about everything else with my best buddy. I cannot just fly back whenever I want to, and I cannot just make a call to Hong Kong whenever I want to. There are huge costs for such homebound travel, I don't have the money for me to come back anytime.
Additionally, we each have our respective lives to lead. I've tried communicating with all three of them online, and it's just not the way our relationships work. We are all people who move on quickly (for our own reasons) if the circumstances for communication are inconvenient. I believe our correspondence will gradually be reduced to a minimum, and we all will find a way to accept the geographical and emotional separation between us, and the consequences of said distance.
With all my heart, I don't want to ever come back at this point. Ultimately, I believe I've spent too much of my life in one place, and it would be a waste of my life, and a wastage of this Earth, to spend another day here after I finish my course. I know that may sound bizarre, but that's genuinely what I feel.
People ask me, "why do you say you'll miss it then if you hate it so much?"
Have these people not been paying attention?
I don't hate Hong Kong. When did I say that?
And of course, I'll miss it, why wouldn't I miss it?
It's as simple as this: I am very excited and so glad to leave, but I will miss my childhood home nonetheless. I want to go and explore the whole wide world, starting with England, but it's just going to be emotionally difficult to move on, because Hong Kong has been my entire life. Is that so difficult to comprehend, or are my thoughts really that convoluted?
So, let me ask you this. Have you ever received anything like this:
Good Day,
My name is Sir Jack Parkinson, I work with the UK Lottery. I am soliciting your assistance for a swift transfer of 4,528,000 GBP, should you be willing to assist me in this project, you will be giving me just 40% of your winnings. Just as a brief, due to my position in the company I can make it happen that you would be a winner of the above stated amount.
Naturally, every body would like to play a lottery if they are assured of winning. I am assuring you today to be a winner, please do not take for granted this once in a life time opportunity as we both stand to collectively gain from this at the success of the transaction. Should you be willing to assist me in this transaction please do respond to my secure e-mail: [email protected].uk
Regards, Sir Jack Parkinson
What the Hell was 'Sir' Jack Parkinson even knighted for? Offering 60% of lottery winnings to strangers out of the goodness of his heart?
You know, I've probably won the lottery over a thousand times since I got my first e-mail address. I would be the richest man on Earth if all that junk mail was for real. I would have multiple mansions all over the world, I'd drive the big branded cars, I'd fly from place to place in a jet, I'd eat outrageously pricey caviar and drink expensive wine everyday, I'd start my own book publishing company, and my own school, and I would get the newest and the best clothes, the best computer models, the newest games, the VIP passes at concerts, the best medical care, the most impenetrable security to protect me, my family, and my property - to sum it all up, the most wonderful life.
But no, I don't really win the lottery that many times, not even once.
Oh, brother, another one of those things. Take a look:
The Secret is crazy. I don't buy it. I will never believe in something like this. The darn music, the people's faces and words and the background are probably designed to entrance us by more pseudoscientists. ...Listening to enough of this crap will surely be life-changing, as it'll drive you mad. What a load of bull.
Midnight, a motorcyclist is arriving home late, broom broom-ing on the ground floor.
01:12, the man and the woman next door are arguing about who's responsible for buying the milk. Grandpa went to piss.
03:34, do I hear birds chirping?
04:33, why does the printer have to make such a cacophonous noise when it prints?
04:37, jeez, it makes such a horrible noise even when it scans stuff too.
04:49, grandpa's going to pee again, the heavy breathing, the trickling of his urine into the bowl, the sigh of relief, I hear it all and it's giving me a headache.
04:59, yup, it's those dumb birds, the same old birds singing at the break of dawn every single morning. I wish I had a shotgun.
06:35, great, grandpa's up, watching the morning news, I loathe the theme music of the news, the Morse code beeping, the beeping, the high-pitched, repeated beeping, ugh...
07:14, the bathroom door closing, the sound of my clothes dropping on to the floor.
07:15, water going through pipes, water splashing on to me, dropping on to the shower floor, gurgling down the drain, so much noise...
07:38, Front door closing, front gate clicking, the sound of my footsteps, the elevator doors, sssshhhh...
07:45, Oh, my God, the commotion inside an early rush-hour train is frickin' unbelievable. People chit-chatting, the uproar of the train moving along the tracks through a tunnel.
07:48, baby screaming and crying, mother trying to overpower her in volume.
08:01, students all waiting to catch the bus, talking amongst themselves like they didn't just see each other yesterday. I think I'll take a cab.
08:03, horns are beeping, buses farting whenever they stop, people running, screaming "wait!" at bus drivers who can't hear them, the occasional high-heels pass by, cab arrives.
08:06, taxi driver asking which route I want to take. I tell him the route. Then I tell him to leave me alone so I can close my eyes and rest.
08:08, the meter beeped, price of ride has risen.
08:10, beeped again,
08:11, and again, . . . . . . 08:27, arrived at school, the coins in my wallet are making sounds, I press them down against the soft fabric of my wallet to eradicate the sound. The taxi driver, however, is happy to jingle-jangle his coins here and there, ugh.
08:28, I hate entering school. Apart from all the loud thud thuds of the juniors running, and the female staff's high high-heels galloping through the corridors, there's all the "Hey, good morning!", "How was your parents' anniversary dinner last night?", "Did you do your Mandarin essay?". Grumble...
08:30, the worst noise in the world: the school bell ringing.
It's the morning, for Pete's sake, it's when I am trying to gather myself to live for the rest of the day, and if I can't do that, I basically become crabby for the rest of the day. Why can't my mornings just be QUIET?
There is someone in my class that I used to be fairly good friends with. Not good per se, but we talked. Our school is located on a high hill, and I remember how we used to walk down together every day after school. We were able to communicate, we were able to share some laughs, talk about different aspects of our lives and enjoy each other's company or conversation. I remember how we talked about girls, I remember telling them about some of my personal secrets, I remember how we grew to respect each other and trust each other. I remember we were friends.
It's funny how friendships fade without you even knowing it.
I don't know what happened to my friendship with him. I don't think he cares about me anymore. He looks at me each day in passing, and I glance at him in class. He seems to be doing well. He seems to be happy. But we have nothing to do with each other. We don't know how each other's lives are really going, we don't know what we each had for lunch, or what our life philosophies are, or how our families are doing, or which girl we like in that way, or what we have planned for the future.
Many times, I get inspiration for this blog from my classmates. And for each time, I wonder if the people that inspire me actually read my posts, if they actually notice that this blog refers to them.
It's funny how what I've said here can actually apply to two people. I used to call them the two 'leaders' of the class. They were the people that seemed to stand out, the people I looked to for help in my early days of being in this school. They're both incredibly smart, and applied to top universities in the world. They achieve well, have no bad relationships with people, obedient towards their parents.
They're both very different, but I respect them very much 'til this day. It makes me feel like I'm not good enough to be their friend.
And I hate how friendships disappear in the blink of an eye.
Hello, world. It's Monday night, and it's about to hit midnight. I didn't sleep last night and I only managed to catch around fifteen minutes of snooze in the past twenty-four hours. I don't plan on sleeping tonight either.
Yesterday, I had this essay to write, and tonight, I have three more. I would skip school to just get some rest and have more time to work on these, but I've been skipping too often now, for my own standards.
I think I have skipped school around twenty times so far since this school year began in September 2008, maybe been late a couple of times? To those studious, responsible teens out there, good for you on making it to school everyday, it's a bloody achievement and I could never do that. (I'm not being sarcastic.) I wake up in the middle of the afternoon on a school day and the first thought that comes to my mind is, "damn it, Michael, you lazy piece of shit." I loathe myself, and I hate myself for not going to school. There are several others in my class that also decide to pass when they're not feeling too eager about getting educated. I don't like their attitude to school, I don't think they should be wasting their parents' money. They often consider school to be a lameass obstacle in life that you have to get through before you reach the good stuff, the better stuff, the dream. I say, if the goals you have are not attainable through school and education, then piss off and go chase the dream. What on Earth are you still coming in to school for four days out of five for?
My aspirations can only be reached if I study, so as one of my New Year resolutions last month, I decided that I would try to stop skipping school so often. It's working a lot better than the past few years, but there's still room for improvement.
On the other hand, knowing the wide range of readers this blog attracts, there are bound to be a bunch of you that say that I should not stress so much over homework and friends at school. To be honest, I understand wholeheartedly. I hate people who think school is everything, who think that their role in life in this moment in time is and only is a student's role. Nothing else in life matters much, such as money, material goods, love and sex, leisure time and/or a social life altogether. These 'nerds' need to grow up and live a little.
I just felt that I needed to iterate that because I don't want to be seen as one of them.
But really, as I said, skipping school is just something that creates a pang in my backside. If you care about school, stop skipping it. If you don't care about school, quit. Stop wasting our teachers' time which could be better spent on present students, stop making us wonder and worry about why you're absent, and get a job, because if you ain't studying right now, by law and social standards, you should be working. Do something productive, stop wasting your life.
Have I seriously had this blog for ninety days already? Because it feels like so much longer...
It must be the way that time flies when you're having fun, the way you reflect on months that've gone by without you even realizing it, as you're caught up in the everyday errands you must complete, with the school you must attend, the work you must do, the holidays you must celebrate, the meals you must have and the people you must spend time with for your entire life. We are born with nothing.
Let me illustrate this for you: when we are born, we are born with no sight and limited senses of touch, taste and smell. All we perceive are sounds, loud, loud sounds, and we cannot express how scared we are as we are exposed to the world and the world is exposed to us. We cannot run away in fear, we are incapable of speech or mobility. We cannot hold our pee, help our hunger, handle anything for ourselves at all. We are unable to hold up a briefcase full of paperwork, a schoolbag full of books or even a small toy truck, let alone our own heads, let alone support our own bodies on our own two feet. When we're born, we can't even roll over, or breathe upside down without killing ourselves. We even require help to simply burp, and all we can do, all we know how to do, is cry.
From the moment we are born, we cry all the time. We're told that there's nothing wrong with crying by our mothers, that there's everything wrong with crying by our fathers. We cry on wedding days and at funerals, at baptisms, births and birthdays, anniversaries, holidays, on good days, on bad days, in the spring, summer, fall and winter, in the rain and sun and wind, in war, in public, in hospitals, on planes, boats and trains, on beaches, when we're by ourselves in our own rooms, or when we're together with friends, family or a group of strangers. Whether we're young or old, gay or straight, rich or poor, happy or unhappy, male or female, intelligent or ignorant, alone or otherwise, we all cry at some point or another, whether we're frequent criers or not.
We all cry for many different reasons. What I sometimes do whenever I get extremely mad at someone, especially someone I care deeply about, is imagine them crying. It makes them human, the image makes me empathize. The pain, the struggle strikes me with a lot of impact and it calms me down to know that these people that are pissing me off have another side that I can sympathize with.
Whenever I actually do see someone crying, I want to help them. When it comes to people that I don't know so well, I'm not one to charge at the opportunity to dry the tears, but I will take some action. I don't want to overstep my boundaries as crying is personal, so I will just put in my effort and if they want more, I'll give more.
A few years ago, I saw an old woman on the train. She wasn't that old, she was wearing a pink T-shirt, had a sports bag, relatively 'hip' glasses and a stylish hairdo. I was sitting across from her and I listened to her talk to her son on the phone. The son, most probably a full-grown man already, according to his mother, never went home for dinner to drink his mother's soup or inquire about her back pain. The old lady was telling him how disrespectful and cruel her son was treating her after all those years in which she raised him to become a man. I was welling up from the opposite side and I shook the tears out from the corners of my eyes. The old lady's son hung up on her and I watched her bow her head and cry to herself.
It took me a while to realize I was staring at her. I looked around and everyone in their school uniforms and business suits were staring at her, too.
And I despised them all, I despised myself. What was I looking at?
When the time came for me to get off the train, I walked over to the old lady and gave her a pack of tissues, with one taken out and placed on top of the pack of tissues for her convenience, so that she could wipe her tears away. She sniffed and thanked me. She was a cute old woman... Everyone else was staring at us during this ordeal, but I didn't care.
Since I realized I was staring at her that day, I've hardly ever stared at someone else in public again.
My friend, Sarah, and I are at the Hong Kong Central Library and as she's currently leafing through books on the Cold War, I'm taking this opportunity to write today's post while she works.
Sarah seems a little paranoid and thinks I might be writing about her. She's asked me whether or not I'm writing about her cold sores or her boots or perhaps the way she searches for books. To be honest, I do take issue with the strolling around the library searching for the book because that's what the Dewey decimal system and the library catalogs are for. I mean, right now, I could just as easily write about her swinging her arms as she walks, the way she tiptoes to reach books on higher shelves or perhaps the way she crouches or squats to reach books on low ones. Personally, I do those things too, but much more quickly... when nobody is around... because I'm weird like that.
But anyway. Nah. I won't write about her, but she does serve as inspiration for today's idea.
One thing I've always admired about her is the fact that she always has an opinion on everything, i.e., she's never at a loss for words. Like me, she gets how it is to have a versatile taste in different areas of life and you can always count on her to speak up about something or be open-minded enough to listen to you.
There are many people I know that lack this quality. They're narrow-minded and too comfortable with being just comfortable all the freakin' time. They're happy to be another sheep in the herd and find the black sheep (me) very unsettling. A guy like me can obviously communicate with them, and can understand their points of view, but when it's the other way around, I can't tell them anything because they either wouldn't know what to say or wouldn't want to say anything. They don't care that they're ignorant, and they don't hate the fact that they are small in this world. They don't want to know or have more because what they know and have now is decent enough and they'll turn their backs on any opportunities they might have to learn something new.
I have grown from being the baby born in Hong Kong to the teenager that just loves to expose himself to more and more. I want to travel the world in the future, be a forensic anthropologist, a doctor, a Hollywood writer... I give every television show and movie a chance just for the chance to learn something new. I'll try any food, I'll read any book, magazine, comic or blog. I blog because it's a great way to meet people. I don't dislike any of my subjects at school, say it's boring or "stupid", just because it's new, just because it's difficult.
I don't give up and I like learning at school, and in life, and I think that close-minded people are missing quite a lot by being content with their experiences and knowledge that they have already. People who lack flexibility in their breadth of view and rigidly adhere to their own life need to give the wider world a shot.
This doesn't just apply to my friends and me and my little life in Hong Kong.
On a far greater scale, close-mindedness, lack of tolerance, and unwillingness to take in other ideas is the major instigation of war and political upheaval nowadays. I'm no expert, but take the Cold War as an example: communists and capitalists, both unreceptive to each other's different approach to dealing with the economy, cause a death toll that's still being counted now (does anyone have an estimation?).
Library closing, have to end here. Close-mindedness, do you hate it too?
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