this was creeping up for a long long time. it started with being in her room: "you make me feel so happy"—i thought, "what?" i felt disconnected.

yet, none of these words are accompanied by the felt sense of truth. when something is right, the words land differently. with the weight of truth behind it.

i am utterly confused. i do not know what the truth is. how horrible it is to not feel truth.

i'm a little frustrated. was it my own personal shortcoming that things happened this way? why did i let myself be with someone whom i felt lukewarm towards?

what was it between us? when i think back it's hard to think. perhaps the reason is simple: we tried to go as fast as possible, and i didn't listen to my no.

I DIDN'T LISTEN TO MY NO. was that all there was to it?

i am so weak! and i feel a massive knot. what am i confused about? this was exactly what i wanted.

this was precisely what i wanted.

i thought about other girls. i thought that i wouldn't be devastated if i left her. i thought about telling her that we should break up. but when i talked to her, all of these thoughts i buried from my head. i chose not to see it.

i put it outside of my awareness.

just broke up. i feel confused. i feel a massive knot in me. this is what i wanted, but i wasn't clean enough to do it myself.

i couldn't own up to the fact that i didn't like her that much.

confirmed

thinking about all the people in history who have fought for life and death. doctors. workers. carrying the sick in your arms. crossing borders. fighting for food. wartime.

this is something i've never done in my life. i've never had to truly fight, where only one thing matters, not even in love

no, not just knowledge, but the guts to be able to look the problem into the eye, the courage to believe that he can complete the task at hand, to think that he is completely unprepared and yet bear the responsibility and act.

that is the thrill. he does not know if he will succeed.

this book, "A Country Doctor's Notebook", is thrilling because the young, freshly-graduated doctor is operating at the bleeding edge of his competency. sent to the countryside to serve, in a strange place, with no seniors or textbooks to consult, each case like an abrupt examination of knowledge

no amount of theory can sufficiently prepare you for bloods and guts, life-and-death.

being dropped down into the battleground of reality (with dark red gushing out, her breath slowing) when all you've ever seen is years worth of theory (as all the facts fly through your head, frantically trying to search for the one thing that might, god forbid, save her)

bulgakov depicts the sheer horror of slicing open a young girl's neck to save her life when all you've ever saw are diagrams in medical textbooks.

oh wow... total korean supermodel! mm... feeling inspired by the bg thick pastel strokes.... well done midjourney

we love to see it!!

your vibrance
you know it hurts
to look at the sun?

okay im way too pessimistic about this. touch some grass! get in contact with the young ones and your peers. life is good. and i want to get married!!

learning to be a raccoon. dig and dig and dig and i shall find great treasures.

a strong case for getting off social media: my friend has spilled water on his laptop and he's never been more sociable and friendly and approachable :D

i want to collaborate with cafes and turn them into little book displays (curation is the most beautiful thing) which would help me with publicity and get my little shop known. cafe-goers like books.... right???

actually maybe not. its all about instagrammability isn't it....

i am optimistic that there are others! even if its 1 in 200 people that would be interested, thats 3500 people!! fun

anyway... im thinking about this because im getting ready to launch my online second hand bookstore (i'm still thinking about the name) and cultivate a circle of nerds who love ideas and love reading and love cafes. it will be a chic pretentious place of intellectual bullshits

wouldn't it be more fun to dissociate with your exercise in taste of fragrance and food and so on?

well, there is no capacity to: living a life set out by others robs you of your ability to discover yourself bc who you are will be punished. deep despair!

i can't help but feel that 90%+ of everyone in hong kong is so depressed and dejected.... the only thing that anyone does on the MTR is to play video games and watch the latest dramas (even office workers and kids and aunties)...

connaiseurs in self-medicating with the finest dissociative portals

i never want to violate someone's sense of autonomy and ability to hold themselves to their own will. this is an egregious invasion into one's soul, the respect for the humanity they have inside them. their right to choose.

and yet it is done everyday, everywhere.

i was never very good at it: i never really wanted to educate the kids about what their task was, i wanted to get to know THEM and what they liked to do in their free time. but the parents expect something different: to make the child become someone different (spell, write, do 42x17, and so on)

i think so many of us are traumatised little boys and girls... the relentless societal pressure to morph each unique soul into test-taking machines, to recite answers in a soulless manner, to repress our creativity and intelligence—i was part of this machine when i tutored.

in a hypercapitalist society where your efforts shows no promise of granting you safety (to keep your body warm, keep the bugs out, to belong), it's only natural for your organism's conclusion of what to do to be "expending energy + exploring in this environment to be a fruitless endeavour"

reflecting on the overwhelming sense of doom, cynicism, and agenticlessness of hong kong's youth (i would love to be displaced of this belief):