Jesse says...

• When you realize that you really are in over your head, keep only the things that are crucial.
• Chefs are artists and consider themselves as such. For as much as I like food, I should have realized that long ago.
• Don’t put too many hopes into the asides that people make. And, on that note, don’t assume anything. Ever.
• I either need to learn to enjoy the bar atmosphere, or start getting more sleep. Only one of these gives me a better chance of becoming more outgoing.
• Ice can be a very, very bad thing. Especially when you have a baby in your arms, and it’s black and near-invisible. (I didn’t fall — but had I, it would have been very not pleasant.)
• The jury is still out on whether it’s safe for me to have crushes on everyone.
• I want someone to have a crush on me for a change. (Amen, Big Poppa E!)
• The Internet never ceases to amaze me.
• The world would be an exponentially better place if more people figured out a way to barter services with one another. Money means that we can live our lives being anti-social. Bartering brings us together and forces us to forge relationships with people we might not otherwise have met.
• Chinese is a really damn fun language. Or maybe I just like the process of learning and the socializing part of it. Or all of the above.
• Trust your instincts. Regardless of what the “safety-net” in your mind says.

I hung out with Katie last weekend. Katie is Jim’s girlfriend, and, for those who know, Jim was my best friend all through middle school, the one who introduced me to D&D and who I spent my formative years with, listening to Nine Inch Nails and drawing comic books.

Katie is a really cool girl, and I’m in the process of building a site for her business. Well, we were working on her site, and chatting about places in the world we wanted to visit, and got on the topic of China. She apparently lived in Hong Kong for aroun 13 months, and would love to go back. Her biggest qualm with the city though, was that they spoke Cantonese and she was most interested in learning Mandarin. Mandarin! She had followed it through enough that she had even met someone local who was interested in tutoring her in Mandarin. Well, needless to say, I jumped on this opportunity — and now she and are going to be study buddies and learn some Chinese together.

Yay!

So, I chalk this one up to synchronicity and riding those underlying patterns in the world. It’s not plum pudding, but this goes a bit beyond coincidence, I think.