02/21/2011: all twos and ones

• Monday and Tuesday is my weekend these days.  Here I am up early on my Saturday morning, trying to get some blogging in before Jenny and Tony arise.  They sleep now in each other's arm.  I am jealous in a way -- I console myself because I am happy to have Tony fall asleep in my arms in the evening. 
• Jenny tells me that we have an appointment to go to a photo studio on Tuesday (AKIC Sunday) and pose for some family portraits.  Suddenly, I think I will have to get a haircut -- I have been putting off doing this for months because involves an out-of-the-way trip to the only barber in this town I can trust.  But now my hair is so fun to whip and tossle about, even though it is proportioned all wrong, and I have a gaping bald spot.
• I was able to watch "The Social Network" on DVD Sunday night (AKIC Friday).  I thought it was a fine film, but I could't help but think it would not the stand the test of time.  Films based on current technology all seem to date themselves very quickly. 
• The film brought back bad memories from my time as an undergraduate in the eighties.  In high school, I remembering having this desire to get into politics (I wanted to be a legislative page) but it was thwarted by a lack of money and "a social network".  I then decided that the thing to do was to study computers -- it was the right thing at that time.  However, I failed at it when I got to university -- either I wasn't smart enough and/or was foolish in my whole approach to the university experience.  I remember wandering around university corridors not knowing what to do with myself.  The real "Andis" was somehow being thwarted by circumstances I thought I had no control over. By the time, I realized I did have control, I had put myself in such a deep hole.  I worked myself out of this hole thankfully but it wasn't glamorous, and it was lonely.  It is the responsibility that I now have to Tony and Jenny that I see as my way of redeeming myself.  Still, I will always be cursed to watch movies about university life like "the Social Network" and slap myself like the man in the "V8" commercial.  But I also know now that I must fight the temptation to fall into despair.
• I take it that the makers of the Social Network mustn't like the Internet. For you have a movie about the most important and remarkable developments of our age and it is so unheroic in its depictions.  I recall the Civilisation series done by Sir Kenneth Clark where he described the heroism involved in the making of the railway and bridge networks in England around the time of the industrial revolution.  One of the engineers Clark mentioned in the series was "in love with the impossible."  What moves the pioneers of the Internet?  If you believe the Social Network, a desire to transcend one's nerdiness.
• I have heard that Fridays, a.k.a. TGIF, in downtown Wuxi has closed down.  I never went there much myself because I couldn't afford it and Jenny did care so much for it.  As well, I wasn't so far removed from North America as ti be bored by the whole upscale burger and fry joint atmosphere -- there were tons of those kinds of restaurants in B.C. I remember.  Still, TGIF Wuxi always seemed crowded when I walked past it.  So I was surprised to hear the news about its closure.  I wonder now if maybe some Starbucks in Wuxi will be closing.  There is one downtown next to a KFC that is always deserted.  Some Saturdays, I have gone past to see no customers while the nearby KFC is packed.
• Now, Tony calls me.  He is saying "get up!"  What he should say is "I am getting up!".  What it means for me I will have to publish this entry now.  I pray there are not too many typos, errors in logic, and grammarical mistakes.