Monday, October 06, 2003
Dinner last night with Galwang and Panna was highly amusing. It was almost like becoming a counselor again... those two could have been my children, and the dynamic between them is something like that between adolescent siblings of similar age. Plus a little bit of flirting.
I felt bad that we didn't wait for Lee to show up, and slightly worse that the other two didn't see why. But I guess in this atmosphere everybody becomes wrapped up in their own work, and develop a kind of blindness for everything but their immediate goals and concerns. A homework set here, a paper there. So listening to G and P talk during dinner was like listening to two people with tunnel vision, except that their tunnels didn't point at even remotely the same thing. First time having dinner with friends in weeks, and I felt sort of lonely.
Not that loneliness is a bad thing, of course.
Galwang seems as frustrated as ever, but doing well in most other aspects. I'm starting to notice more the little idiosyncrasies that he might have picked up from me, and that's starting to become downright scary. Panna seems happy with her new nebulous sort of status with David. I'm glad for her.
On an unrelated note, while I was walking to dinner I was approached by two Mormon ladies, who asked me for my name and wanted to know whether I would join their church. I told them that I was catholic (a lie, shame on me), and that the two of them had talked to me a month before (not a lie). The shorter of the two cheerfully shook my hand and said "oh well, maybe third time will be a charm."
I felt bad that we didn't wait for Lee to show up, and slightly worse that the other two didn't see why. But I guess in this atmosphere everybody becomes wrapped up in their own work, and develop a kind of blindness for everything but their immediate goals and concerns. A homework set here, a paper there. So listening to G and P talk during dinner was like listening to two people with tunnel vision, except that their tunnels didn't point at even remotely the same thing. First time having dinner with friends in weeks, and I felt sort of lonely.
Not that loneliness is a bad thing, of course.
Galwang seems as frustrated as ever, but doing well in most other aspects. I'm starting to notice more the little idiosyncrasies that he might have picked up from me, and that's starting to become downright scary. Panna seems happy with her new nebulous sort of status with David. I'm glad for her.
On an unrelated note, while I was walking to dinner I was approached by two Mormon ladies, who asked me for my name and wanted to know whether I would join their church. I told them that I was catholic (a lie, shame on me), and that the two of them had talked to me a month before (not a lie). The shorter of the two cheerfully shook my hand and said "oh well, maybe third time will be a charm."
