Gone Fishin'

For the past week and a half, I've been vacationing with my family in Hong Kong. In all actuality, I had a very good time. I'm not sure what I was expecting as I got onto the plane for that first part of the 16 hour flight, but part of me thought that my family was going to hate each other by the end of it. It's been about 7 years since my entire family has all lived under the same roof for an extended period of time. Since college, my brother and I have both lived in dorms and apartments on our own. I wasn't sure that we all knew how to interact as a unit anymore without getting on each other nerves. Luckily, there were only a few minor spats.

Hong Kong is actually a city that I could imagine myself living in and truly enjoying. Who wouldn't love a modern city that is also filled with loads of history, culture, and nature? Maybe someday Aksys will expand to Asia, and I'll get a chance to live there. Although, my dad assured me that I probably wouldn't be able to afford to live as nicely as I do in Chicago.

The highlight of my trip was a visit to a fortune teller at the temple. For those of you not familar with this, they have this huge fortune telling enterprise all over Hong Kong. Whether it's shaking sticks at the temple or having your palm read on Temple Street, the city is crawling with people who are able to see the future. One might wonder why they're telling fortunes on the side of the street and not investing in the stock market. But I digress.

At temples all over the city, you can get a container of wood sticks. Each stick is labeled with a different number. What you do is shake the container until one stick falls out and hits the ground. Then, you take the stick over to the fortune teller and he/she finds the corresponding slip of paper for the stick. He/she then asks for your age and uses your birth year and your sex to determine your fortune. You can ask about health, wealth, love, and just about anything that you want to.

My mother asked about both my wealth and my love life. (Keep in mind, my mother constantly reminds me how she was married by the time that she was my age.) Anyway, the fortune teller told me that this past year was bad for my wealth. She said that work was ok, but that I didn't get a promotion. She also said that I needed to be wary of the "little people" at work who were trying to undermine me. She promised, however, that this coming year was going to be much better. She said that I was going to get a promotion and things were going to look up. I guess that part of her was right. I didn't get a promotion last year, but it was definitely better than ok. I got to travel the world courtesy of my work. I learned a lot more than I ever would have had I been sitting in the office everyday. As for the promotion this coming year, she hit that one on the head. It's my third year at the company, and every gets a promotion after three years. So unless I quit before August, she may get a gold star for that one. The "little people," on the other hand, are a different story. I'm not sure who they are, but I'll definitely have my eye on them.

When it comes to my love life, I think that she was way off the mark on that one. She equated my love life to fishing. She said that I had dropped the net into the water and had caught quite a number of "fish". Now all I had to do was be patient and to slowly lift the net up and choose which fish I wanted. Uh...the last time I checked, there were no "fish". If anyone knows about my fish and where they've gone, please let me know? Jody seems to have lost her fish.

Goodbye To You

Things started out so well two years ago. From the moment I saw you, I was in love. It was almost as if we were made for each other. Everyone saw us together and commented on how well we looked together. We just seemed to "fit".

Don't get me wrong. We definitely had our rough moments in the beginning. There were times where you let me down when I depended on you. There were other times that I looked to you to cheer me up, but you didn't follow through. But we managed to work through them.

Through you, I discovered a whole new group of people. I made new friends and rediscovered myself again. You brought joy back to my life after a very rough period. Before long, we were inseparable. I never went anywhere without you, and there were many nights where you just stayed in with me.

But as time went on, something happened. Our love seemed to fade. You were distant and occuppied. There was "static" between us. Other times, you would just drop me in mid-sentence and leave me hanging. I didn't think that anything had changed. In fact, I had moved closer to you and your home base. But something inside of you had changed. You were no longer the same. It was as if you had aged significantly faster than me. All of a sudden, our goals and outlooks weren't the same. I just wanted comfort and dependability. Maybe you thought that I had my eye on some of the other younger and flashier ones, but I didn't. I always loved you with all my heart.

Soon, you grew more and more distant. As you separated yourself from me, I grew frustrated. All I wanted was an explanation. I just wanted to know what had happened. Why had things changed? I hadn't changed. But I never got a reason. You just faded from my life.

Well, as of today, my heart no longer belongs to you. I've given it to someone else. And he is flashier and younger than you are. He can also do so many more things than you ever could. So far, he's held true to his word and has come through on all his promises. Maybe this is the one.

Goodbye to you.

Meet my new love: Sony Ericsson T637 (a.k.a Ernie Ericsson).