I'm numbing myself silly these days with YouTube, DVDs, iTunes, South Park, movie reviews and blogs to avoid facing myself and my past and studying Mandarin.

If I spent more time in meditative and reflective mode, action might more likely be forthcoming. I know that since whenever I do encounter my own truths in meditative and reflective mode, my course of action is not only obvious, but inviting. It's the proverbial right thing to do.

I definitely think I have become one of those people who have more worth in dying than in staying alive. And it's not a bad thing. Unless you make it into a self-pity party, that is. With only one person at the party.

Time in meditative mode recently is spent separating the different types of mind we have. Central to Tibetan Buddhist philosophy is the idea that the upper, conscious layers of mind, what we perceive as reality, is superficial and constructed, and distinct from subtler, subconscious layers of mind, which constitute the actual ground of our being and what actually is reality, maybe even a divine reality, but at least beyond what we think of as reality, which is constantly changing and whatever we try to grasp onto eventually disappears.

Even the concept of the human species will one day be gone. To me that's a simple, pure fact and to think otherwise is arrogance at the most unabashed and deluded level.

The Tibetan Book of the Dead has a wonderful section on how elusive the subtle mind is by pointing out all the different names various sects have given to it – clear light, ground of being, nature of reality, true unadulterated reality, etc., but they are all inadequate.

Tibetan Buddhism, according to Sogyal Rinpoche, whose "Tibetan Book of Living and Dying" I'm currently re-reading, has separate terms for the outer mind and inner mind. Sem refers to the conscious mind, and rigpa refers to the universal ground of reality mind. All Buddhists of all sects, no matter what they call it – they all have their own set of words to try to impart it – strive to understand or encounter and recognize rigpa. To do so is enlightenment.

Just that description was very helpful to me to focus on the aggregate of my senses combining to form my thoughts and perception of reality.

Visual information is given to our mind in a cone in front of us, and I read somewhere our field of vision is about 60 degrees in all directions (I personally think my peripheral vision is better than that – it helps me from getting hit by buses while riding). Vision establishes what physical reality looks like. Whatever light bounces off of. And there's so much information our brains automatically distinguish between what is important information and what is not.

Aural information comes from 360 degrees around us, and isn't necessarily limited by physical structures such as walls. We can hear a source of sound behind us or out on the street. Various sounds may be superseded by louder sounds or may be dampened by physical structures.

Olfactory information is limited by distance and the strength of the odor given off. It has to suffuse the air around us. And interestingly, smells are strongly associated with memory and pleasure/displeasure. Whenever we notice a smell, there is at least a slight judgment of pleasure or displeasure, rarely is it neutral.

Taste information requires direct contact with the sense organ. Even an inch away from our mouth and we don't have the actual information to contribute to our perception of reality. And aside from special taste stimulation, i.e. food, we are constantly tasting . . . spit.

Likewise, tactile information also requires direct contact, and is in a way most profound because it provides a sense of our being. A physical manifestation of our otherwise elusive identity. Mentally we can concentrate on all parts of the skin sense organ – from our elbows to the soles of our feet to our balls or the tips of our boobs – and feel we are here.

And all this aggregate information combines to form a basis for our thoughts or our mind. And yet there still is the inner mind.

I think of the inner mind as like the unseen latticework for everything – our minds, perception, reality. It's the water that surrounds the fish if the fish were unaware of what water is. I don't know if a fish is unaware of water, I'm not a fish, it's just an analogy, geez.

It can be analogized by dark matter and dark energy, which current theory suggests comprise the vast majority of the universe, but we can't detect it nor do we have any direct evidence of its existence. I'm actually wary of the state of cosmology these days, mind you.

The things scientists are claiming as knowledge, I don't know, I think in 500 years, it will all be overturned – including possibly dark matter and dark energy. They make observations which make 100% of what they know and then make a conclusion and create a theory to support it, but that 100% of what they know ignores the unknown percentage of what they don't know, what they haven't or can't observe, which theoretically could dilute that "knowledge" to less than 1%. Yo'm sayin'?

Sogyal Rinpoche gave a description of rigpa that I liked, saying it is too close to us to detect. Like our faces are too close to us for our eyes to see. It's the ground of all reality, it is all around us, recognizing it equates to attaining enlightenment, so much so that enlightened ones have recognized that we are all already enlightened, but because of the dominance of sem, our perceptual mind that we insist is reality, we miss it.

"What it is and where it stops nobody knows/You gave me a life I never chose/I wanna leave but the world won't let me go/Wanna leave but the world won't let me go":

"Got us a battle, leave it up to meeeeeeeeeeeeee!"

I quote this because it's significant to me beyond what Emily Haines may have been actually expressing. I don't know what she was expressing.

But when I say "the world won't let me go", it's not that the world is imploring me to stay, but that my attachment to the world is so strong, I can't let go. The world itself doesn't give a rat's ass whether I go or not.

I'm fully aware that I'm in a certain window of opportunity. A window of opportunity that I've been putting off for the last five months. The excuses have run out. I'm most aware of it when I wake up. Today? Today? Why not today?

But it's not today. And I have my reasons. But I'm hoping for the day when I don't have my reason. Actually, this "window of opportunity" is now always open, but perhaps because of what might fairly be described as "superstition", there are even more particular windows of opportunity that occur in 2-month increments. I'm in one now.

I just want the longest stretch of time between the fact and anyone noticing. The superstition is at least 49 days as optimal. I have my reasons.

I've been in a strange state of mind lately. I'd like to go into it more if I could get more of a grasp on it. Reality separating from realization.

I have no tag for "friends"

Delphine was a good friend.

Sadie was a close friend.

The person who just visited is not a friend, but an acquaintance from back home.

Blah, blah, blah. I was legally trained, so everything has to be defined and categorized. These aren't meant to be judgments on the people, just a defining of who they are in relation to me in an overly anal manner that no one else does.

Intended to define how far away I keep people beyond "arm's length".

Actually, my defining of friends was largely inspired by a song by Stephen Sondheim, "Old Friends", from his musical "Merrily We Roll Along", which although is now a fan favorite, it was a commercial disaster, running on Broadway for only 2 weeks. 

Part of the brilliance of the musical, although perhaps also a contributing point towards its failure by confusing the audience, is that it moves backwards in time. And by moving backwards in time, that's how the musical arrives at its happy ending, because the musical starts with the friendship of the three principal characters in tatters. But moving backwards in time, we get warm and fuzzies with the youthful characters looking forward to their lives and all the potential they had having just graduated.

And earlier in the musical is the song "Old Friends", which juxtaposes "old friends" with "good friends" (Good friends point out your lies/Whereas old friends live and let live/Good friends like and advise/Whereas old friends love and forgive), whereas later in the musical when they are younger, there's a song with a reprise of "Old Friends" (preprise?), but they exclusively refer to each other as "good friends" that they're "still good friends/nothing can kill good friends".

So old friends are the best that there is. They've been in your life so long that they tend to become old habit. And everything else keeps changing, but old friends get continued next week. They're the ones you don't have to explain yourself to and who you forgive more easily than family.

Madoka is an old friend. I still haven't replied to her email, but she friended me on Facebook and I accepted, but we haven't made any contact there, either. But once we start making contact, all should be more or less fine. If we don't, it's still fine.

Nobuko is an old friend. Unlike with Madoka, we've had a big falling out, but then got reconnected after a few years and since then we haven't been in constant contact, but we're always there if the other calls, I shouldn't wonder.

Old friends take each other as they are. There aren't expectations anymore.

Sadie is not an old friend. She was a close friend. We're currently not talking because we still have expectations and get pissed off when they aren't met. We've had at least one breakage before because of that.

She once used this blog as ammunition against me and I chased her away from this blog, and I still use that as ammunition against her. That was years ago.

But she graduated from being a good friend and became a close friend because we really enjoyed each other's company, made each other laugh, helped each other out, casually called each other, called each other to come out and play, felt comfortable discussing all sorts of things – just about nothing was taboo.

We psychoanalyzed each other and still enjoyed each other's company.

And I miss her when we're not talking or even when we are talking. The problem with close friends is that you want more. I wanted more from her. I think she wanted more from me. And neither of us was giving it. It still gets complicated with close friends, not so much with old friends. You still love your close friends, though.

Delphine was a good friend. She didn't become a close friend because there were still points of contention in our conversations that we couldn't get through. Many of the criteria of a good friend are the same as close friends, but lacking the intimacy of when you connect well with someone else and just get them.

Lisa and Chris, band members in San Francisco, I think are old friends. Just from the band experience, they skip over the good friend/close friend stages, because we regularly spent so much time together, worked together, strove together, and through it all I got to know them really well.

Then after the band broke up, I didn't think much of them. I didn't think much of the band. It was only after reconnecting years later I realized that I appreciated what I had gotten to know about them so well, that they are very caring human beings.

I realize now I would really love it if I were back in the Bay Area hanging out with them. I don't know if they hang out with each other much, but I would be trying to get us all together whenever possible. Maybe. I would be a much better friend to them now, and they never turned their backs on me or judged me when I wasn't such a good friend; I was very standoffish. Stealth old friends.

Anita was a friend I met early in my time in San Francisco, but despite the amount of time we knew each other, she only got as far as close friend.

We met in a theater group and eventually determined that I knew her brother from college. I remember she was wearing an Oberlin shirt one day and I said, surprised, "Hey, where did you get that shirt?!" "My brother went to Oberlin". Then after retrieving her last name from my memory banks, I said, ". . . You're Neal's sister?!" (Indian last names tended to stand out back then). That was a great starting moment for us.

November 3, 1996 - Anita with her Oberlin "People Becoming Fish" t-shirt. Negative unflipped so the words are discernable.

Anita was great, I loved hanging out with her. She was a pot-smoking, howl-at-the-moon, rogue attorney who was doing everything she could to not practice law. She had a killer CD collection that I would have totally raided doggy-style had the iPod been invented back then.

She was the one who got me my job at the law firm when her best friend Ritu moved to the Bay Area. I don't think our friendship lasted much longer after Ritu melted down and killed herself. We never got our old rhythm back. Sometimes people change their ways. And sometimes stories end that way.

But Most friends fade or they don't make the grade/New ones are quickly made/And in a pinch, sure, they'll do, or Some of them worth something, too. I've had friends in Taiwan. Hyun Ae was just a friend. Pierre's a friend. They are moments. They don't span time. Then there are acquaintances. Co-workers. Ex-coworkers. Internet friends (you never know when they're gonna disappear). Language exchanges. Family . . .

Hey, old friend, how do we stay "old friends"

Who is to say, old friends, how an old friendship survives?

One day chums having a laugh a minute

One day comes and they're a part of your lives

Someone I know from a ways back was just in Taipei for a couple days in her January travels of Asia. I took her around to a few places to get a taste of Taipei. Unfortunately, it's been cold and wet and on both days she didn't contact me until we could only meet in the fading remnants of what barely could be called daylight.

We're not friends. We're both from New Jersey. We met in San Francisco through mutual connections online, but the only times we met were one-offs. We never hung out like friends do. We never casually called each other and asked how we're doing. She wasn't like Delphine who I randomly met waiting for a show to begin at Bottom of the Hill and became what I'd call good friends.

Then I left San Francisco and returned to New Jersey. Then she left San Francisco and settled in New York. And we still had one-off meet ups and still never hung out. This time was more of the same.

And we never really connected. The reason we never hung out is because there was never a connection. Just polite acquaintance conversation and I don't mean to be harsh and don't think I am when I say that after a few hours, we were bored of each other. Not that I didn't try, but she just seemed bored of me, and that naturally bored me. But she got bored with me first.

I have almost no contact with personal relations these days, and when I do have one, this is what I get. It's part of what I call the "big joke" that is my life. Also part of the big joke is that I moved to Asia and the only person that objectively may be categorized as a "friend" is a white guy with yellow fever; only into Asian chicks. I wouldn't associate with him at all in the U.S. 

The big joke is God telling me to die already. My life isn't worth living, and as long as I continue to insist on living it, He'll play with me like a ball of yarn. Touché Big Guy.

I, of course, am this God.

I saw Mr. and Mrs. Smith (2005) on TV tonight. It's a mainstream Hollywood film several years old, so it's not worth saying too much about it. I enjoyed it enough. It was cute. It was a cute assassin action movie. It's a subtle comedy. Not a bust-out-laughing comedy, but when you do bust out laughing, it's at the oddest and quirkiest things.

No, it's not a great film. You don't watch a movie like this for its plot or whether everything makes sense or not. It's to watch two of Hollywood's A-list actors work their mojo. And Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie had terrific chemistry. I'm not saying anything good about how the relationship is portrayed, because that would be insisting on something making sense. It was just enjoyable watching them play off each other, and on a subtler level, playing off knowing what we, the audience, are supposed to know.

I generally look down on Hollywood films, which usually means I look down on Hollywood actors, but with maybe the exception of Keanu Reeves, the vast majority of them are either really good actors who put a lot of attention and effort in their craft, or are just very magnetic and charismatic like "personality" actors of old.

I give it a high fresh 8 out of 10 tomatoes for what it is: a light, tasty treat of Hollywood confectionery.

I also recently watched classics All Quiet on the Western Front (1930) and Citizen Kane (1941). Both are incredible, amazing films that each get honorary 10 out of 10 fresh tomatoes, but only for a more cultured and sophisticated audience, one with a sense of history, both actual and film.

The title All Quiet on the Western Front has entered the English lexicon as something profound and poetic, calm between storms perhaps, but in the film there was nothing quiet about the Western Front. That title is a rendering from the original German title, which was a much more prosaic and mundane, "No News on the Western Front", which I think referred to the lack of information German soldiers in the trenches received about what was actually going on during World War I. The bulletins they received cynically told them nothing.

I think the film still remains one of the all-time great antiwar war films, the likes of which hadn't been seen since 1930 until Das Boot in the 1980s. I thought there would be aspects of the film that would be dated, and there were especially early on (there weren't, they were accurate depictions of what it was like in European cities leading up to WWI -future ed.), but overall, the impact of the film withstands the test of time.

The term "post traumatic stress disorder" was coined fairly recently in modern times, I think in the 70s or 80s, but this film, from the novel, documents it in German WWI soldiers in 1930! By the end of the film, I stopped thinking there were dated elements in the film because the emotional depths it probes are as sophisticated as anything that came afterwards.

Citizen Kane is considered a masterpiece in cinematography. In the TV series Northern Exposure, aspiring filmmaker Ed Chigliak refers to Citizen Kane as the film where Orson Welles taught filmmakers how to make films. And certainly the brilliance in the film is in how the camera and lights are used to say something substantial about the characters.

About wealth and greatness, Orson Welles himself called the "Rosebud" red herring a "tawdry" trick. Still, I think the values the film explores is relevant to modern times or to any humanity. The film was released in 1941, which makes me think the creation of the story was influenced by the 1929 stock crash and what in our lives is really of value. We chase wealth, we chase fame, but what are we missing in that relentless pursuit?

The impact of finding what "Rosebud" was when the film was first released was certainly greater and more profound back then. I knew what Rosebud was through cultural references long before I saw this film, so that part of the mystery was gone, but I still appreciated what the film was doing and why it is considered one of the greatest films of all time

I catch myself in moments when I remember to return to my breath. Anywhere, it could be at home or out walking or reading or studying in the library or an eatery. Something about being "alive", "existing", hits me and I breathe in and out and I savor each breath like it's a sip of the finest wine or Scotch ever. Like a dying person might.

I was asthmatic as a kid, and I remember reflecting on asthma: If you can't take breathing for granted, what can you?

Like a dying person might, I breathe in and out and savor the preciousness of just being able to breathe in and out. But this appreciation is only in contrast of a background of some existential pressure, a facing of one's mortality.

Am I facing my mortality? I pretend that I do, but am I? Am I going to go through with this? And if I don't, then what? I don't advise my line of inquiry to anyone. As human beings, we have to live our lives. To live our lives is to ignore our mortality. You can't live your life whilst pondering over your imminent mortality.

I'm not living a life, my life, any life, therefore I'm free to indulge in contemplating my mortality.

I'm constantly asking why people do what they do. I guess at and make up their answers, but they're incomprehensible to me.

Even the recent spate of blogs I've found written by writers – the only blogs I've found worth my attention – are imbued with existential angst, and as they go about their lives in appreciation and gratitude of the happiness they've found which is what they're blogging about, there still is an undercurrent of angst.

Were my parents actually quite wise that their marriage is not based on love? They've effectively reduced their suffering by not being in love. Whereas all these people getting married for love are kinda fooling themselves, or living on borrowed time or rather just living for the pleasure and desire of a moment, and not considering the big picture that in the end we all lose each other.

No, that's cynicism and sarcasm saying my parents were wise. And there's nothing wrong about people getting married for love. The wisest of whom remain realistic and aware that this kind of happiness is fleeting, and they find a balance between enjoying and appreciating their happiness and being aware that it's temporary, and sickness, aging and death always patiently awaits.

No, my parents are incomplete, deluded people. They are not even individuals. Their relationship is symbiotic and I can't even imagine either of them being able to survive without the other. As they grow old, I'm sure this has crossed their minds, I just have no idea what they thought.

And I'm still thoroughly convinced my death will be ultimately good for them, albeit that not being a reason for dying.

It's been rainy, dreary and cold in Taipei and it could go on for quite a while. I'm not quite sure what drags me out of bed each day, but so far I have continued to drag myself out of bed when it would be so easy to just lie in the warmth and comfort of my bed all day.

Peeing! I need to pee at some point, and that usually does it and I put in my 45 minutes of sitting, then make coffee and, voilà,  I'm up and out of bed.

I think I just created the most tension between the 'rents and me than there has been in a laaawng time. It wasn't intentional, but there was probably a subconscious motive.

They've eased off the constant calls since that fortune teller's dire predictions about me. After they called on Christmas and I lied to them saying I was at work, I surprisingly hadn't heard from them at all. 

I didn't respond to an e-mail from my sister-in-law last month, and regarding her sister's wedding this coming weekend, to which I was sent an invitation, but ... I'm not going to go into it. Suffice it to say, I'm not going. All contact with that second tier of family is dead.

Tonight I let it escalate when the 'rents started rehashing and going into stuff they know nothing about and have no business inquiring into, and I dug into them with a series of "What makes you think I would..." questions, and they backed off really fast.

Mind you, our relationship in the past was really bad. It only got better when I unilaterally called a truce, and they didn't question it. They didn't ask what happened, they just went along with it. Nothing was resolved, nothing was discussed. There was no understanding, no resolution.

Any hint of a return to our previous relationship scares the FUCK out them. I guess they know how cold and nasty I can be. They don't know how much more cold and nasty I can be now if I wanted to. They coerced me to go to law school. I have skillz now. I WILL use my powers for evil if they provoke me.

They backed off, and then I backed off. They got off the line as fast as they could, and I ended with my characteristic, "Thanks for calling". I meant it to be sincere, but given the circumstances, I imagine it might have come off as sarcastic. I think I've heard the last of them until my next attempt.

Further mind you, that a return to our previous relationship scares the fuck out of them is a point I should and do appreciate. Many many parents are too proud and too mindless to realize that something has improved when it has. They just keep on digging into an issue maintaining their stance and perspective and opinion and pride, even if it means sacrificing their relationship with their own progeny.

My parents don't know what they're doing, but they're somewhere viscerally aware of what they don't want and know how to avoid it; to back off. To me that means they "care" enough to back off. And even if it's self-serving, it is a letting go, an opening up – good things.

Parent-child relationships where at least one party doesn't or can't put things into perspective are always a sad thing.

Maybe it's the confounded legal training I had, which by the way is one of the worst things that ever happened to me, but I need to argue things in my head to some rational conclusion. Twice this week I ran through arguments in my head to support one side of an issue, but then realizing the opposite stance was right.

The first was "when does a decade start and end?". I had been a firm believer that a decade starts on the one year and therefore ends at the 10 spot. My logic was that when I start counting things, I start on one. When I count off music, I start on 1. So years should start on one, i.e. 2001, and end on 10, 2010, and 2011 is that start of a new decade.

But then I looked at my rock music collection which I have categorized by decade for simplicity, and, for example, "80s rock" covers releases from 1980 to 1989, not 1981 to 1990. That was logical and compelling enough for me. So now I have accepted that the aught decade indeed ended at 2009, not 2010, and we are already one year through the 10s.

The other issue was that I take offense at how Chinese language insists on pronouncing Japanese names how they're written Chinese. You can't talk about famous Japanese people like Namie Amuro or Hayao Miyazaki with a Mandarin speaking person unless you first establish you are talking about the same person. Mandarin speakers pronounce the names one way, and everyone else pronounces them respecting the Japanese pronunciation.

But when Namie Amuro comes to Taiwan to give a concert, all the fans are shouting "Namie", not whatever the name is in Chinese, or else how would she know they are calling her name? Wise these fans.

I also argued that if I were famous, I would take offense if my name were rendered differently, unrecognizably in some other language. But then I realized, what if my given name was "Henry"? Would I take offense if the French pronounced it "Henri" their way, or the Spanish referred to me as "Enrique"? Probably not. And that's exactly what the Chinese are doing.

It doesn't matter that with many Western European names, the equivalents are close enough to guess at the name, while the Mandarin pronunciation of characters is so totally different from Japanese pronunciations that it registers as gibberish. The principle is that they're reading it the way that simply makes sense to them. To render Japanese names to be phonetically more accurate would probably be worse.

It doesn't solve the problem. Unless you can establish who you're talking about, such as by describing him as the most famous Japanese anime film director, you can't talk to a Mandarin speaker about Hayao Miyazaki if you don't know they pronounce his name something like "gong qi jun" with the proper tones. (Of course if a Westerner wants to talk about him to a Japanese person, the Japanese person will have to make the realization that we flip the first and last names, but it's easy for them to realize we mean Miyazaki Hayao).

So I can't take offense at that anymore. Mandarin speaking people are totally justified in pronouncing Japanese names in Mandarin, and I just have to suck up any feeling of misappropriation of identity and admit I'm in Rome, so do as the Romans do.

And, of course, the West isn't blameless, either. If you go to a Chinese person and want to talk about Confucius, they'll be like, "Who the hell is 'Confucius'?". Same with other historical figures like Mencius and Koxinga. When I was studying Chinese history (required for my major), I didn't like using those names because even I could tell those weren't proper Chinese names, but likely colonialist, imperialist bastardizations.

2010: It was an utter unnecessary year to live from most aspects.

The only aspect it was nominally fruitful was in my personal practice and minor revelations into my own mind. But that development just naturally progressively occurs every year of practice.

It's not a reason to have lived this past year, it doesn't justify it. But having lived it, it was what it was. It's a reason not to regret having lived the year, but had I not lived it, I wouldn't regret that, either. Same applies now.

This meme for 2010 confirms that it was a pretty pathetic year. Not that I'm complaining. I made it that way, after all, but it is a reflection of how pathetic my life has gotten:

1. What did you do in 2010 that you’d never done before?
"Never done before" implying something new, bold or ground-breaking, then nothing.

2. Did you keep your New Year’s Resolutions, and will you make more for next year?
New Year's resolutions are the dumbest thing ever. So no.

3. Did anyone close to you give birth?
Brother and sister-in-law had a third child, but I'm prohibited by family privacy guidelines from revealing any information about it. I've probably said too much already. And saying they are "close" to me is a conceit. I've barely heard anything from them or about the new baby all year. I haven't made an effort either, so I'm not blaming them.

4. Did anyone close to you die?
No. But my laptop is probably getting near. It's approaching 6 years old with a new hard drive that my brother installed in Summer 2009 that has extended its life this long.

5. What countries did you visit?
Countries I was in during 2010 include: U.S., Taiwan, China and Tibet. I did fly all the way around the world on my trip to the U.S. Going there, I flew to Singapore, then Frankfurt, and then to New York. Coming back I flew from New York to San Francisco, then Incheon, S. Korea, and back to Taipei.

6. What would you like to have in 2011 that you lacked in 2010?
Closure (meaning success in what I want to do).

7. What dates from 2010 will remain etched upon your memory, and why?
None.

8. What was your biggest achievement of the year?
Making mix CDs for every year I've been alive. It's hardly an achievement, but it was interesting because it was a little like making an audio diary of my life. Otherwise it's fair to say there were no achievements this year.

9. What was your biggest failure?
August. Still alive. And maybe stopping going to drum practice rooms after deciding there was no more point to it.

10. Did you suffer illness or injury?
Shin splints stopped my running season in May or June. Hardly a major injury. I'm a wimp about any repetitive stress injuries since I've had so many related to running or playing bass or drums before, so I baby myself whenever there's even a hint of the familiar pain.

11. What was the best thing someone bought you?
N/A. A meal, maybe.

12. Whose behavior merited celebration?
N/A.

13. Whose behavior made you appalled and depressed?
U.S. voters shifting Congressional power to Republicans.

14. Where did most of your money go?
Rent, food, alcohol. In that order.

15. What did you get really, really, really excited about?
N/A.

16. What song will always remind you of 2010?
My music memory doesn't really work that way. If I like music, it's timeless.

17. Compared to this time last year, are you:
- Fatter or thinner? Same.

- Happier or sadder? Same.

- Richer or poorer? Same. Well, since I quit my job in January, logically I'm poorer, but I don't feel poorer.

18. What do you wish you’d done more of? Gotten outside during daylight hours. Photography. I think I shot a record low amount of rolls of films, and I don't think I shot more than one roll of Lomo Fisheye.

19. What do you wish you’d done less of? Sitting in front of a computer.

20. How did you spend Christmas? Just another day.

21. Did you fall in love in 2010? No.

22. How many one night stands? None.

23. What was your favorite TV program? Food shows on TLC, documentaries on National Geographic and Discovery channels.

24. Do you hate anyone now that you didn’t hate this time last year? No.

25. What was the best book you read?
Tibetan Book of Living and Dying by Sogyal Rinpoche. I read through most of it in Borders when I was still in New Jersey, but I finally bought it here and am giving it a proper read-through.

26. What was your greatest musical discovery?
K-pop. It's inexplicable and deserves its own post. But for credibility's sake, Taco gave me The Killers and Stereophonics who I found were great, and Yiti gave me a lot that was great, but in particular, Arcade Fire and Wilco.

27. What did you want and get?
New Tokyo Jihen CD. New Tokyo Jihen DVD of the show supporting the new CD. New Namie Amuro DVD. Midori sent me Tokyo Jihen's "Dynamite Out" DVD and Princess Princess's "Last Live" DVD from Japan. There's a pattern here, yo.

28. What did you want and not get?
A box of Velveeta macaroni and cheese. And Versus's first album in 10 years. I've been waiting for a trip back to the U.S. to buy it there, but that hasn't happened.

29. What was your favorite film of this year?
Since I comment on most films I see, it looks like 2010's best viewing has to go to Beautiful Crazy.

30. What did you do on your birthday, and how old were you?
Just another day. Pretty damn old.

31. What one thing would have made your year immeasurably more satisfying?
Succeeding in the August attempt.

32. How would you describe your personal fashion concept in 2010?
Irrelevant. I stopped combing my hair.

33. What kept you sane?
Nothing. Just being sane. And morning sitting. Or "after waking up" sitting, rather.

34. Which celebrity/public figure did you fancy the most?
Fancy? What does that mean? Appreciate? Admire? Want to do? Anyway, probably none. Although there are plenty who I wouldn't kick out of bed in the morning.

35. What political issue stirred you the most?
Finding clear evidence that the cultural genocide in Tibet being committed by China is real.

36. Who do you miss?
Sadie and Madoka, I guess. I unfriended Sadie on Facebook. Why? I'm a sucky friend, maybe? And my friendship with Madoka will likely never be what it was before.

37. Who was the best new person you met?
Yiti. If she's the best, that is so fucking sad. She has good taste in music, but is a pro-China yoga freak. She's like a yoga cult member.

38. What was the best thing you ate?
There was a dinner of Tibetan food in Tibet (that's notable because for most part we ate Chinese multi-course, banquet-style meals) that was memorable. Otherwise, my culinary experience in Taiwan is so skewed by the pickings here that I'm likely to say a chicken sandwich from Burger King. Chicken enchiladas at a Mexican place in Danshui also always hit the spot. If it weren't so far away, I'd go more often.

39. Tell us a valuable life lesson you learned in 2010?
Without meditating or reflecting on death as part of the life cycle on a regular basis and in a positive way, it's very possible that we are wasting valuable time appreciating how precious our lives and those of everyone around us are.

40. Quote a song lyric that sums up your year: See Dec. 27 post.