Home For The Holidays

All the presents for my friends here have been given out, and the work year is completed. Just a couple of hours of piss-farting around work tomorrow and I'll be on my way to my one month break back at home. It will be great, except maybe the downer may be that I might run into my brother who will be home for the holidays too. I don't know if he is thinking of the same time as me, or if he is doing Chinese New Year instead. In any case, I am pretty paranoid about it, and I am really toying with the idea of cutting my holidays shorter just so to avoid him, but is it worth going through all the trouble to do that? That is, re-organizing my flight and my work schedule and all that.

Yes, I will never be able to get over my brothers, both of them. I have never really hated anyone, except the two of them. I bloody detest them, loathe them to the core. I have never wished anbody dead either, as in like truly wish, but for them, I s'pose I won't mind too much if they were to disappear from this world tomorrow. In fact, for the sake of the overall well-being of my parents and the society too, for that matter, they should jolly well be gone. I resent the fact that I can never truly shake them off. I have never been surer of any relationships before, but for the one between me and them, I know for sure that I am not willing to improve anything at all. I know it's not really the most appropriate time of the year to be cursing anyone, I should be all forgiving and jolly, but like seriously, can they just bloody die?

Other than this disturbing piece of news, I don't think I have any deep feelings with regards to my going home this time or rounding up this year. I reckon I have done that enough throughout the year already. I don't even miss anyone really badly anymore. It seems like my feelings for people gets diluted each time I go away. It may as well be this away, so that I can enter the new year with no remnants of issues from the previous year. Nobody has to do any thinking or missing on either side, just the way I like it to be, just as long the other side is thinking the same way too. I hope they won't be like my mum, who still harbours the crazy idea that I might want to reconcile with my brothers.

As for friends back home, I just hope they can sort things out with their lives and between one another as well. I hope they understand the importance of having old friends who have known you forever and to acutally treasure that luxury. Heck it with the 'fun quotient' and just be grateful that we are friends. Enough of the silly misunderstandings and the petty feuds already. If I can do that, I don't see why they can't, because after all, I was never the wisest and most sensible one in the group.

I should get some sleep now. I hope I don't dream of my brothers though.

Chicago

So here I am at LAX again, and just like the last trip, I killed off my lay-over time by doing a trip to Santa Monica, except this time, I was actually doing more of Christmas shopping rather than clothes for myself.

The past few days in Chicago have been great, albeit the weather being a tad extreme. Well, at least I got my winter wonderland. It was snowing (mercilessly) everyday I was there, and that makes walking on the streets really difficult, as the once white snow turned into yucky grey slush pretty quickly under the feet of thousands of city shoppers. It is a beautiful city, just like many people told me it is. I particularly like the part where the Chicago River runs through the city, and it is also the first time I see a great lake (Lake Michigan) frozen over. I must ‘fess up I didn’t do anything deep this time round, but just shopping, chilling and eating, although I did make it to Union Station. It is the place where Anthony Edwards bid Sherry Stringfield farewell in ER some nine years ago. I still remember the scene as clearly as the first time I saw it. It clearly left an impression, so it was only natural that I want to be there.

The work over in Argonne was completed, of course, but certainly not with a bang. The results were not very exciting, and the tension between my two co-workers were compounding as the days went by. It had ended up at a point where the two refused to talk to each other, but through me instead. I felt like a child caught in between his bickering parents. In the first place, I was not suppose to be handling the work single-handedly, I was just the machine guy who happened to tag along. All this while, I couldn’t really say I see why I was chosen to go on this trip. But in any case, I chose not to analyse it too much but to be grateful for the opportunity and to want to learn something out of it. Turned out that I did learn plenty, thanks to the two who refused to co-operate with each other. It was easy to see why they hated each other’s guts, because in the first place, I am no fan of either of them too, but that’s another story altogether. I was thrown into a situation where I had to do the work myself however unsure I might have felt at that moment. So it was a blessing in disguise, sort of, for me. But it was nonetheless very stressful. I am just damn glad it’s all over, for now. As far as the year is concerned, work is not complete yet. There is still plenty to take care of when I get back on Friday and all the way till Christmas.

It took me eleven years (of watching ER) to actually be in Chicago, it is certainly long overdue. What about my once crazy dream of going to Montana? After all, wasn’t that the place that got me interested in the United States? So interested (and obsessed) that I actually egged my (then) best friend to flee the army to go to. That dream is not fulfilled yet, but many things have changed since.

It's All White Out!

So it is indeed hard work here at the Advanced Photon Laboratory. Had a 15-hours day yesterday and another 10 today. Maybe I might even head back after dinner later if weather permits. It has been crazily cold, temperatures averaging -15 C. It’s snowing really heavily at the moment. It’s pretty amazing, everything is covered in white, though there is hardly any Christmas mood here at the synchrotron. It is, after all, a high security place for nothing but serious research and it is all sterile and character-less. So yes, till I finish all the work here and get my time off in Downtown Chicago, I s’pose I won’t be feeling too cheery. In fact, I get the feeling I am being banished to some work reform camp in Siberia, like seriously. It's huge, it's isolated and there are even wild deers running around! Still, managed to sneak in some playtime in between work to muck around in the snow and to take some cheesy, touristy shots. I have a couple of hours to chill right now so I thought I might as well write an entry. It doesn’t make any sense at all but at least I can look back and get reminded of how tired and frazzled and cold I am right now. Am watching the news as I am typing this. It seems like the snowfall these few days is atypically heavy and it’s wreaking havoc on the expressways jamming up traffic and all. And the latest news is that a plane at Chicago Airport just skidded off the runway because of the heavy snow! There's chaos everywhere! It feels like Houston all over again, except it's super cold instead of super warm. Why do I always have to run into such extreme weather? It's almost amazing (and eerie too, actually) to think that the US cities I visit are making news. Just my luck I guess!

My Hair!

Just finished watching two straight episodes of ER. After watching the show for 11 years, I am finally going to Chicago tomorrow. It's certainly living up to its name at the moment, very cold and very windy. It's gonna be pretty fine, this trip. A mix of work and play. I am just feeling dreadful about the very long flight. I will get there, somehow.