witty tango chat

I have totally accepted Jason's wise suggestion and embraced this idea and written it on my wall.
This acceptance is very rare, and Jason is very honored that I happily live with it.

Of course, he did not mean to be wise. He was simply chatting with me and comforting my frustration in many aspects of my current situation: being compared with relatives' friends' children who make tons of money with an BA degree, being reminded that I will be kick out of the States if I don't get a real job soon, being dependent on a good friend who may be annoyed by me after two weeks of taking care of me, and you know, lots of things I can complain about work and lots of things out of control.
I want to quit. Quit everything. I want to have a loooooong vacation.
Suddenly, a stroke of idea came to him out of the sky and was converted into words and was delivered by Jason.
He said "Since you are looking for a horse on a donkey, then you should have the relaxed attitude of riding a donkey while looking for a horse."

I felt like some great master just gave me a bat of good hit right on my head.
(Exactly, here is another literal translation of a Chinese idiom.)
I was like "oh, Jason, this is the first time I feel it's wonderful to have your friendship." He said thankyou.

Of course our conversation was in Chinese. And the idioms make much more sense in Chinese. But I want to share this with all of you who can't read Chinese. As Yoshi pointed out, even though he learned traditional Chinese characters in school, he could not read the whole article with them and especially the characters he learned were more meaningful in Japanese than in Chinese.
I am typing out all the train of thoughts running in and out of my head for the reason of making this blog entry long. Yoshi also pointed out that the length of my posts indicates my intelligence.
I was like "oh, is that so? I always know I am intelligent."
This called tango chat. One more phrase that I coined.

Sometimes tango chat on the dance floor can go very well like most conversations between Jason and me on gmail, skype, or MSN. (Well... probably less often than "sometimes". Most of the time, I wish most dancers just danced and interpreted the music in a way that I also would interpret. Chatting can be distracting or disappointing.)
This reminds me of the old college days when I chatted with people on BBS all night. Nothing serious but simply playing with words and random ideas to impress the other person.
However, as me getting older and as the number of friends getting bigger, this fun is getting much less frequent and relaxing.

The difficulty of finding a person who understands my humor and who is not easily offended is actually not as difficult as the difficulty of finding myself relaxed.
Jason said I am hitting the so-far biggest crisis of my life.
Probably because I am in the crisis, I find his comments wiser than usual. Usually it was me who analyzed his trouble.

I called Toby and Cathleen. I found their office numbers on their department website.
I was going to call Toby first and only. He was impossible to reach. So I called Cathleen to hunt Toby down. Lucky for me that she was in office. We talked for a while, and she gave me their home number and cell phone numbers. So I found Toby! We talked for a longer while.
I realized how much I had missed them, and how much I miss research life in a university.
It is relaxing.
Of course, I am lucky to have Toby and Cathleen as my academia parents to begin with. They set a model for me. A research career can be a good and rewarding career. Rewarding in many ways.
If I stay in academia, university will do me much more good than anywhere else.
If I don't go to a university, I probably will not stay in academia.

Relaxation is the key.
When I dance well is when I am relaxed and enjoying every movement.
Being able to tango chat with peers, supervisors, dance partners, and friends is essential. Somehow, this essential element does not exist in situation where I need it. Not everyone is like Toby or Cathleen.

A donkey does not listen. In both Chines and English, a donkey does not stand for a positive image. It is either stupid or stubborn. It does not run fast. It is ok but not ideal. I can't tango with a donkey. A donkey does not know how to tango chat.
Let's find me a horse or two.
A qualified "horse" has to be
a) a guy who has good connection with me on and off the dance floor, so that he and I can tango and tango chat and on and on and on...., or
b) a job where I can work with people who have good connection with me on and off the professional setting, so that they and I can tango chat and find witty ideas out of the chat.

It's not too ideal to be possible. People have done it. I am looking for my horses.