April 16, 2006 Archives

(Edited pic: the previous was a bit crappy, I realize.)

Went with parents to Fu Kam Hua for a late lunch, which reminded me how generally much better Chinese food can be (b/c we were also discussing how both of them, plus brother, would be spending time in HK/Asia this summer...). Still, I tried some new way of serving congee ("three eggs", ie preserved, fresh, steamed), and stuffed my face with better-than-Montreal-average xiao long bao (still not worth going out of your way for).

And the real purpose of this trip was to pass by Marché Hawai, a real Asian supermarket (not the small crowded sorts found in Chinatown), and the largest I know in Greater Montreal. My parents heard about it a few months ago, and wanted to bring me there ever since, knowing that I would be delighted upon seeing the rows of frozen products, the refrigerated counter of weird meats only Asian people eat, and the walls of noodle products. It must be a reference for Asian food (at least for people with cars...). On our way out, we even bumped into my own grandmother, who was shopping with friends/relatives!

A Radio-Canada story on Marché Hawai indicates that they've been open since 2001 or 2002 already. The most remarkable thing wasn't that you could find everything in one single place, but that you could (also) find things you couldn't find anywhere else in Montreal (like, I think, frozen yellow-skin chicken). The store also feels much less ghetto than other Asian stores I've been to (Ying, in C-d-N; Kim Phat, South Shore flavour). The alleys are wide, and the counters, well-kept - there is even a stand in the middle of the vegetables & fruits where people unpack Chinese veggies from boxes and pack them back in bags in front of you! Not as large as T&T (now, why are they in Calgary, Edmonton, but *not* in Montreal), and didn't seem to have a fresh pastries, or Cantonese deli counter.

I am a supermarket tourist, so here's the Flickr set of today's trip.

My dad strongly insisted that I pass the spray on the cars, and help with a bit of the construction work at home. What do I want to say... Car-washing is an interesting activity. It's basically taking care of something very very expensive completely surrendering itself to you. Hum. And you wash: throw some soap water with a slow spray, on the windshield, the sides, the top, the behind; and rinse.

Also manipulated a mechanical screwdriver for the first time. Emm, the satisfaction of piercing through a resilient chunk of wood serving to hold planks together and reduce the cracking noise of floor surfaces.

So many unobvious psychoanalytical inferences.

Anyways, we're also changing the carpet for all of the second floor, except in my room and my brother's. But I might do it too, if I decide to repaint my room, and don't move out this summer. I wanted sunshine yellow, but b/c of the lighting, it always came out as lemon yellow. I definitely need something warm, to get me through these winters.

I spent the day semi-sleeping, but not quite. Woke at (actually, I don't think it counts as "woke up") at around 10-11PM, but went back for a late afternoon nap. The night before, I stayed up until 5, 6 or 7 again. In fact, I lost track of the time I slept at - I just know I didn't get much sleep, from the caffeine superdose I took the night before (caffeine has that effect b/c I seldom drink coffee, or at least didn't drink that much, until I started "working" - speaking of which, the job hunt is on hold, 'cause of the house).

It felt terrifying. For about three good weeks, I have felt absolutely neutral, and even silently optimistic, if those meant the same thing. One's state of mind is like inflation, or the economy - it's always evolving upwards, but you don't feel truly satisfied unless the rate at which it evolves also increases - that didn't make sense wrt inflation, but oh well.

I start to understand that life is best lived when you make choices - no matter how anodine they might be. Choices, or perhaps according to some philosophical mode of the past, fulfilling your destiny. I had a lot of free time during cegep, and because it was such a small place (and b/c I wasn't inhibited by classmates, the environment - surely not b/c I was particularly cultivated), I liked to pick up private discussions usually not for schoolwork with some of the profs, usually the social sciences ones. It's an obscure memory of my past - and they were mostly philosophy or political science profs (both who were specialized in China stuff, and also lectured at local universities-not-McGill). It was a funny period, b/c I don't think it brought me anything that lasted (I didn't have the background), and I stopped doing it as soon as I hit a semester in university. It was prolly a different Ced, who was even more naive, even more "arrogant" (real-life friends cannot describe me as particularly arrogant, but I'm sure it's existent - but not quite, if I can admit to it? ...).

One of the ideas that circulated in these informal discussion was that of choice. What if choice is just an illusion created by the circuitry of our brains? How can I actually know that my "choices" are not defined by a series of binary switches? There's the idea that neurons take input from various sources and that there is a probabilistic game being run to decide of the output. But who knows. We're (the living things of this Earth) all part of the system, and it seems to me that unless we stand outside of this system (ha-ha, outside of this Universe - here comes the existential paradox), we won't be able to examine the mechanism of choice. Animals don't choose - nematodes don't choose, when it swims towards the nutrients; they merely react to stimuli, etc, etc. The philosophy prof (who I was conversing with after class) was nice enough to listen to my insanities (we went as far as suggesting, what if some sort of transcending -alien?- being created us) and suggested a few paths to explore.

Years after, "we don't know" is really an acceptable answer. Thank you, Greek philosophers (although I'm sure alternate societies could think of that w/o your help). My view of the world is now mixed with elements of biochemistry and computer science, of which I retain, respectively, the topics of genomes and proteomes, and that of the theory of information. I guess that it could also relate to the string theory, in physics. Yeah, alright.