Does anyone know of any architecture firms hiring in North America? Preferred cities:San Fran, L.A. county, Boston, Montreal, Toronto.

Even though its vacation time right now, I still feel like I need to be in search for the next part of my life. The question still remains: what do I want? Where should I be? And somewhere inside, the answers are there and its whether or not I choose to realize the true divine control in my life that it is not in my hands.

The fear of 'wasting' time in doing nothing can be a scary thought; still, I believe that in those times, I will find something to occupy my time, its more of a question of whether or not my parents deem to think so. For example, blogging. Yes, this entry started out on a serious note and it probably still is. While you think I jest that blogging to my parents can appear to be a waste of time, I believe it is probably a good time investment in that I am readily imposing on you, the reader, my thoughts and because we are all voyeurs to a degree, you want to know whats going on in my life and live vicariously through my random drivel. Of course, you may say, no, I don't care to really know what's going on in your life nor do I feel a particular attachment to you as an individual, still, you have made it this far in this paragraph and that somehow, the formulation of words that I form into sentences somehow have hopefully, captivated your attention. Like I said, blogging is a mere expression of thought into an accessible format because, (don't know what word describes the giving end of the voyeur) somehow as people, we still want to people to notice us in a weird twistesd way.

This leads me to another digression about how as an Asian kid (now well into quarterlife crisis), that I am a product of a mish-mash of cultures, possessing my affinity to chicken feet, and also learning that expression of self is not a bad thing. I wonder why in Chinese culture especially (Note: I do not want to label all asian cultures to be similar and there are very similar, yet very different things. Chinese people and Japanese people, for example, come from the same background but culturally to a degree, quite different on the sub-levels.) that there is a tendency of being inexpressive as people. I believe that emotional expression is seen as a sign of vulnerability and hence, a sign of weakness. It is ok, in the male-driven culture of the chinese, that the woman shows more emotion and affection. Still, this is passed on from generation to generation where children are negatively reinforced throughout their lives and hence, emotionally repressed because its BAD to cry and show your emotions when u are sad or angry. "Why are you crying? STOP crying!" for fear of inconveniencing others. And this idea that being vulnerable leads to this whole thing about face. It is more important to save face than to express your opinion. I state this only from mere observation because to express oneself can open one up to what is on one's mind. This is a definite taboo in chinese circles especially concerning deep feelings of affection (both on a friendship type love- phileo, and the intimate kind of love between a couple-eros) Because of this saving face thing, the culture has become a somewhat emotionless culture but i think slowly, North American ways are melting this away, allowing younger asians to express and not be afraid of this whole face thing.
Because of this whole saving face, we have a tendency of also being overtly courteous to the point where as friends, reciprocity must exist in a very tabulated way. You do something for me, I will do it for you in the near future and one more time so that the other person, your friend will owe you. Perhaps I speak of it in such a manner that it appears that we are selfish jerks but perhaps it is somewhat true. On that note, because of this face thing, Asians tend to put oneself down especially the kids, and compare them to other children saying their kids are no good in front of the other person even if the kid may have straight A's. Hence, we are led to the inferior asian child who strives to be the best academically (usually because we can't play sports other than badminton or ping-pong or racket affiliated sports) and become the best violinist or pianist. "LOOK your son is soo good at piano. He's 3 and He's already playing at a gr.8 level! WOW! my son? oh he's no good, he came first so many times but he's 19 but its all luck because there were only two people in the competition" How does one resolve this? Who knows. but recognizing these issues is a start. Why are there no artists ? Perhaps those are the rare jewels that exist amongst asian circles who realize they don't need to raise their children like that. Many of the artsy fartsy asians portrayed however on TV and in the media for some reason turn out to be more effeminate. Can someone explain that to me? Where are the macho artist types? Who says art isn't for the MAN!

Let me just wrap this somewhat long-winded entry with this: I probably had a lot of issues as a child so please, if you think i'm outrageously over-analytical and critical, you could be right, and I'm probably a lil' jaded by my childhood experiences. Nevertheless, my childhood was still pretty happy. So I turned out relatively normal. I think.
then again, what's normal? Who defined Normal?