awake till the break of dawn

thursday night, i was up till 5am chatting with stephen about the things that money can do in china, about materialistic girls, the pursuit of money and status, our relationships,  clubbing, sleeping around and toastbar.
conversations like that energize me.

caught up with julian today too, and we ended up talking for 3 hours about the importance of self-awareness, peer pressure in a materialistic environment, the subjectivity of success, our desire for purposeful lives, how he's changed because of his youth mentor, how a person can give up fame and fortune for family, the single baggage we carry that can break our arrogance when it's brought to the surface, parents letting go of control to make room for children to learn from their own mistakes, the way a painting can trigger an exploration of the artist's thoughts, that lazy people gotta be a lot smarter than hard workers in order to get something done, opening up a franchise and being your own boss, paying attention to detail when you plan your own cafe including the number of lights, the different types of chairs etc, being able to put yourself in a dad's shoes when he tells you about his relationship with his son, valuing a person not through what he wears or owns, but by his character, the importance of recalibrating yourself and frequently setting your path on the right direction again, how superficial 'conversations' can be rather enervating, the way we always seem to be striving so hard to meet other people's expectations of us, the way we dont really know what we want, we dont know how to spend, how risk is like a running river and we gotta put one leg in, how a boy can score well in a prestigious course and be seen as successful yet still be miserable and lost because he doesn't know why he's doing what he's doing, the way churches can be condemning when it should be a place of refuge and grace.

again, conversations like that make my day. and he's only 18. he reminded me a bit of my little brother.

on  a much less serious note, i was down here at toastbar wanting to get some writing and reading done, but han cheng kept asking me questions, and telling me random facts. i eventually gave up on reading and writing. haha.


he told me this random fact about how  much energy it required to break apart an atom. heaps and heaps of energy is involved. and if you were to break apart all the atoms that made up a person, that would be enough energy to destroy the world over and over again.

han cheng: you know how i know that it involves a lot of energy? you can see the energy from the explosion. just ONE ATOM. *serious face. stares at my tummy* Elisa, you're getting more dangerous everyday. STOP EATING. you're gonna destroy the world.

gee thanks. hahahahaha. i thought that was pretty epic.



he asked me this:
if you could take something from the present time and travel back in time to ten years before, what would you take?
(i misunderstood his question for 'if you could take something from 10 years ago and travel to the present, what would you bring to the present time?)
me: uh... erm.. old toys?
*han cheng stares at me, looks away and goes: people lik eyou shouldn't be given a a a lamp. shouldn't be given a genie lamp. you'll just abuse your chances.

i also had a blonde moment:

hancheng: what's the fastest moving continent in the world?
me: huhhhhh continents can move???
hancheng: australia. it moves 1m towards the southpole every year.
me: whuuut?? no way.. 1m??
hancheng: ya!
me: that means.. that means that from the time i was born to the time i die, you mean australia would have moved ONE KILOMETER?????

i really couldn't believe i said that. i dont know how i arrived at that conclusion.

another blonde moment:
han cheng explains that many new species of fish were discovered after the tsunami. and he was trying to describe them..
han cheng: they have eyes.. and mouth..
me: really?
han cheng: ya..
me: oh ya, obviously -_-'




I GUESS THAT SORTA CANCELS OUT whatever deep conversation i have with people. LOLZERS...