Wesley Chan

It doesn’t matter if it’s Christmas Eve. If the toilet clogs, the toilet clogs. (Even more embarrassing if it is your own doing).

When you’re flying back home for the holiday season, chances are you’ll bump into someone you know while waiting at the gate. Yesterday, it was an old high school friend I haven’t seen in over four years. He was two years above me (a huge difference back then) and would give me all sorts of juicy gossip about the school that only an upperclassman could give. I’m not sure what I offered in return — maybe a chance for him to play the mentor or sensei or something — much like how teachers and coaches find meaning in their careers.

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“I’ve lost contact with almost everyone [back in high school],” I told him.

“Me, too! Except for a few.”

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For a brief moment I romanticized the idea of hanging around the airport more often. Grocery store lines, bus stations, convention centers, and so on.

Then I realized I’d rather carry on with life.

Some sentences are more bitter than others, and a sentence like “nice guys finish last” is one of them. How tempting it is to believe that when people don’t treat you the way you wish to be treated. Holding a belief like that may protect you against a few jerks, but at the cost of fulfilling, meaningful relationships you could otherwise build.

This Veteran’s Day I was chatting with an old friend. She was telling me about how she saw one professor treating her grad and PhD students like crap in the lab, and how that was frustrating to witness, because those students were good students, and they didn’t deserve such treatment. “You don’t have to be mean to be respected,” she said.

Maybe the professor thinks this is the best way to prove that she deserves authority. That’s fine if you’re in charge of a research lab and would like things done in a particular way, and to do so with (and out of) fear and manipulation is certainly a quick way to go about it. But fear is not the same as respect, and the moment a better opportunity presents itself for the people you work with, that control you so deeply held will slip away as they all get the hell away from you.

My friend was talking about the professor, but the comment stuck with me. I was just starting to get frustrated with what I perceived as people taking advantage of me — something that bothers me more and more as I get older. They don’t respect me, I thought. I need to teach them a lesson.

I stopped myself then and there, but it’s easy to see how a perception like that can quickly spiral out of control.

I don’t want to fall into the trap of entitlement and feel that everybody is obligated to treat me with respect and kindness — the world doesn’t owe me anything — but at the same time, I don’t want to be a doormat. How do I walk that balance?

The conversation moved on from there, but it’s still in the back of my mind.

~~~~

“Did you call her out on this? [the professor?]”
“Wesley, I need a recommendation letter from her!”

What a complicated world. I would have done the same.

A misunderstanding had occurred, and (luckily) I was in the right. The other guy felt bad about it and apologized profusely. No, no, it’s alright. It happens, I tell him. I wanted to mean it when I said that, but in all honesty I still felt quite bitter. He tries to apologize more but I cut him off, wish him a good time, and then walk away.

And then came this smug feeling inside of me.

That is lekker slecht, loosely described.

It’s that smugness & satisfaction you feel when somebody has been a wiener to you, and they not only realize and acknowledge it, but also feel bad about it. And so, in an odd way, you feel good about the whole thing.

Or at least slightly better.

“Sunday Supper” happens once a quarter in the international house at UCSD. It’s an evening of good food and good music, where students who don’t normally dress fancy have to (and probably want to) dress up fancy. I even swapped my usual shirt and shorts for a tie and slacks.

People look fantastic this night. And since they look fantastic, they feel fantastic — so of course they’d like to look fantastic a bit longer. I certainly did. It’s been several hours since the event ended, and I’m still in a button-up and tie, writing this.

——-

Enter the corn on the cob.

Here I was, sitting at a table with seven other people, and more than half of them are using a fork and knife to eat their corn on the cob. Guys and girls, both.

I always thought corn on the cob was one of those foods that you eat with your bare hands, like you do pizza slices by your palm and french fries with your fingers (unless it’s drenched in sauce, where something like a fork would be acceptable).

True, everybody was all dressed up in button-down shirts, ties, and in their Sunday best, and nobody wanted to mess that up too early. But we’re still students! I thought we were supposed to rebel and stuff. I wanted to see the British girl next to me go H.A.M. on the corn on the cob, so when we talked a few minutes later we couldn’t help but accidentally spit corn bits on each other’s faces.

This isn’t a fetish. It’s more like an appreciation of how spraying our words instead of saying it is another way of showing that we’re all human, and that we can’t always be refined and proper.

Maybe another time.