outwards or inwards

this is a question that I've asked myself the most frequently during these past two years.

I tend to see communicating with others as a phenomenon that brings you out of a shell you've created for yourself. It's important to have both attributes, a balance of extroversion and introversion. When I tutor math I feel this shell coming back. The fear of math problems came back slowly, but now that I'm going more often I fear this is going to be an endless cycle. Is it too selfish of me to ask for more chemistry students when there are clearly so many people that need help with math? And is it okay to not remember how to do a problem? 

lost in a sea of people

how do you find someone you've seen but never talk to? how do you know they're good for you?
what if you know they're within close proximity to you but you're afraid of being seen as a stalker?
how do you float in this tidal wave of loneliness?

Dream

I had a dream where I was at Subway getting a sub with lots of cheese and meat and vegetable toppings. The top bun wouldn't fit on top of the sub so I took it separately and went to do an engineering project with it. Duncan and Emily were at school already doing the project. We had to use various objects to cover telephone lines, so I brought the bread to a random telephone pole. Another friend was already there and she had put on various things like sponges and stuffed toys on the telephone lines. She was touching the lines and not getting shocked but I knew it was dangerous and angrily yelled at her. She threw down a pink cell phone and told me to call Duncan to bring more bread from the sub. I called him and he arrived quickly. I worried about the sub not being covered. We all put the bread on the telephone line.

sleeping late these days

I can't seem to sleep until like 2 or 3 am these past couple of days. Tonight I made instant noodles by 1:30 am, and devoured them vigorously until 2:30 am. I predict digestion will make its way through the night leaving me sleepless until 3 am. But I'm not that worried, because everything is all right with school and life and everything.

🍰🎂🍰
On the 29th I went to my own karaoke party and sang a lot of chinese pop songs. Then we all went to get hotpot at celebrity hotpot. Then we made our way to Rush Lane and had a couple of drinks. 

On the evening of the 30th I went to the UTPT tutoring orientation and was freaked out. U of T has such high expectations for the tutors' behaviours, making me want to quit and take things the easy high school way, where they don't care as much. But I decided to go for it, and maybe even get to tutor some people in biochemistry or organic chemistry...or personalized medicine (smirk). I was surprised that Andy Dicks the organic chem prof was the head of the group, and it was great to hear that he loves teaching.

Afterwards I met up with Andrew to eat cheese-coated ribs. We hung out for a bit at his messy apartment and he showed me a really bad cantonese music video called sugar baby by ffx. There were lyrics like "I'm ready be your wife" sang in really high terriblly autotuned voices. He talked about how easy life would be if he was gay because sex and relationships would just be easier and he didn't have to deal with emotional drama associated with girls. He was being serious. Unfortunately dicks gross him out, so he is trapped in this tortuous cycle of binary existence. Refreshing as it was I think he's just afraid of commitment and having to deal with people.

After THAT ordeal I went to meet up with Anne, Jonathan, and Anthony at the open mic at Amsterdam Bicycle Club. She ended up bringing Kallum (this weird 19 year old guy) to the thing. I filmed a portion of their set and put it on their instagram story. They wished me a happy birthday onstage and people clapped. :)


Today Nov 1st I went to CALC to tutor and Laura watched me and interacted with me and the students as I was teaching them math. It went really well, and after the tutoring session Joy and I went to see Laura and talked about the students not learning their basic english or math causing a lot of difficulties in the classes. I suggested that she talk to Natasha about the schedules for the tutors and tutees. She said she would draft a reference letter and I could come into CALC another day to talk about it with her. SHE IS SO ON TOP OF THINGS I LOVE IT

Then I took the subway to spadina with Joy while talking about nursing and tutoring. At the physics lab I successfully solved a question that I learned the night before and it felt great. I wish all the questions were this easy for me to understand and solve quickly ha. A lab administrator came by to ask our group to volunteer one person to go to a focus group in a couple of weeks to help improve physics labs, which I said I would go to. He encouraged me to speak with him about education in his office later. When I got home I e-mailed Dr. Sage about the OISE reference and he got back to me in an hour I swear......everything seems all set to go for OISE, but I feel like I can only focus on one application at a time to avoid bothering my references too much.

It was a really productive day.