There’s this thing where a British (or comparable) person is complaining about the weather.

“Bruv, it’s minus two bleedin’ degrees, ‘innit?” they’d say.

At this point, the Canadian would jump in.

“That’s nothing, dude. It’s minus thirty degrees here, eh?”.

Let me sort this out. As someone who’s recently been to both countries, I can say with absolutely certainty (in the social-scientific sense) that -3 degrees in London is just as cold as -30 degrees in Ottawa.

There’s some psychological factor in play — and since every ‘maladise’ in Psychology has a name, let me lay stake to this one and call it the Trinhian Cold-Factor (notice the odd placement of the ‘h’), or the TC-Factor. The TC-Factor says that the dominant contributor to one’s actual feelings of numbness primarily derives from one’s expectation of potential numbness.

So for example, when I’m in Canada during the winter, I’m expecting to have to deal with -20 degrees weather. Thus, anything lower is felt as cold. Anything higher is warm.

Immediately, I jump on a plane to Britain. I arrive expecting 10 degree weather, and instead I’m confronted with -3 degree weather. Hence I am now cold. It doesn’t actually matter what the temperature is.

This of course, like all Psychological studies, has been backed up with real, honest-to-God statistics and unbiased sampling (i.e. me).

Thus, it has nothing to do with Canadians being tougher than the rest of the world. We need to stop acting like we’re tougher. We’re not.

What we are, however, is a morosely pessimistic country.

Because the worst we expect, the better we feel.

That’s why so many people are unwilling to move to Canada, see? It’s not they they can’t handle it physically. It’s that they simply cannot imagine being in a circumstance for which they have to wake up each and every day, and then look forward to that fantastic feeling of stepping outside in the morning, only to have their snot suddenly and seemingly inexplicably crystallize in their nose.

Twenty-Four Hours Earlier…

From: Phil
To: The Host
Date: Dec. 30th, 2008
Subject: Invitations for Pre-New-Year’s dinner

Did you forget to invite some people?

[List of Names]

- p

From: The Host
To: Phil
Date: Dec. 30th, 2008
Subject: Re: Invitations for Pre-New-Year’s dinner

I don’t know how to reply to this email without sounding weird… but I’ve invited those who we usually hang out with. I probably haven’t spoken to [those people] in years…

[Signed, The Host]

From: Phil
To: The Host
Date: Dec. 30th, 2008
Subject: Re: Re: Invitations for Pre-New-Year’s dinner

Sorry. I guess I’m a bit out of the loop. As far as I’m concerned, we’re all still back in high school.

- p

Twelve Hours Earlier…

Place: Pre-New-Year’s-Eve dinner. Post-party cleanup

Date: Dec. 30th , 2008

“Well, who is she engaged to?,” I asked none too gently, gritting my teeth as I scrubbed furiously at a piece of baked lasagana on glass, “Who is this guy, anyways?”

“Why is it such a big deal for you that she’s getting married?”

“Because she’s one of us,” I said, clearly emphasizing the “us” part to remind everybody there was indeed a them (that we never spoke about).

He clearly didn’t get my point. “So?”

Someone next to me chimed in. “Because, it means things are changing.”

Midnight

Place: AC 888, 20,000 feet over the Atlantic.

Date: Dec. 31th , 2008

Time: Midnight

There was a gentle ‘ding’ from above and all the headrest-movie-screens blacked out simultaneously, plunging the cabin into darkness.

Then the intercom crackled to life.

“Welcome to 2009,” said the captain.

Quiz time.

At this moment, there was:

a) The sound of champagne bottles uncorking

b) The sound of sparklers crackling, couples kissing, and passengers cheering

c) The sound of gentle snoring and babies crying

d) The sound of silence

If you’re wondering what it’s like to be flying over the Atlantic when the New Year strikes, the answer is d) the sound of silence.

Oh. And maybe the gentle tappity-tap of a glowing Macbook as this author tries to write out his final thoughts of 2008.

But I’m getting to that.

The Quartic-Year Cycle

When you’re a student, you live your life according to the the four-year calendar: Grades 1-4, Grades 5-8, Grades 9-12, and the four undergraduate years of college.

Of course, each of these quartic-year groups are further separated into academic years; each year is separated into academic terms and exams; each term is separated into academic weeks; and each academic week is dictated by the individual requirements of each separate class: weekly or bi-weekly assignments, tests, group projects, honours projects, and so on and so forth.

There is an orderly air to everything.

This doesn’t mean life is easy.

High school (to a high school student) is no easier than college (to a college student). People often make the mistake of looking back and whining about how good and easy life was, but this is simply a bias of perspective. It was never easy.

It just seems that way, now. After all, you’re older and wizened.

Teenage angst and acne, for example, seems so insignificant compared to the problems of a single working parent, trying frantically to get through college — but then again, try explaining that one to the average high school student.

That’s what I mean by a bias of perspective.

The End of an Era

For my friends, however, 2008 marks the end of this quartic-year cycle.

2004 was the year of university applications, high school prom, and eventually, high school graduation. Four years later, many members of this class are either finished with their last vestige of education, or are are the verge of finishing.

Life, for these people, will no longer be measured in groups of four years or in academic terms, separated by excruciating and sleepless exam periods. Life is just as regular — they still wake up and head to work every morning; they will all have deadlines to deal with and forms to fill; they will all have bosses and supervisors.

In short, life doesn’t really become any less busy. Just different. More flexible and requiring full independence.

But most of all, there are changes in social structure.

Friendship — within the school system — is easy. You and your fellow comrades are bound in circumstance, whether that means being locker neighbours, sitting besides each other in class, or as residences in the same building. But at the end of each quartic-year cycle, these friendships fragment.

Our group of friends is like the swanky, restricted club in town. We’ve dropped all the not-so-regular customers and now, the only way you get in is by being someone’s plus-one. Or perhaps by being really good friends with the host.

And this scares me.

2008: A year of professional development

I never got a last quartic-year cycle.

‘04-’06 was duo-year (undergrad), ‘06-’07 was a mono-year (masters), and ‘07-’10 will be the final, triple-year piece of the puzzle. Except two of those don’t count, right? Because by the end of undergrad, I was supposed to be finished.

But it never felt finished.

So where am I, now? Did I fast-forward through the last cycle? Or am I actually behind, stuck in this weird purgatory-like place, inhabited by people who never finished high school or never finished college?

Maybe I’m just different.

Professionally, I feel so far ahead. I’m at the point where I’m comfortable with what I know, but more importantly, I’m comfortable with what I don’t know. High school students, by the way, think they know everything, and that’s where the crucial difference lies.

There’s an unusual calmness I feel now. It’s hard to express, but there’s this one scene in Sofia Coppola’s Lost in Translation which delivers a truthful pang to my heart every time I see it. In that scene, the lovely Charlotte (Johanssen) is lying next to the wizened Bob (Murray). She asks him, “Does it get easier?”

“No,” he says at first. Then, “Yes, it gets easier. The more you know who you are and what you want, the less you let things upset you.”

Professionally, I know who I am, and generally what I want. I know what I can do, and I don’t let things I can’t do upset me.

2008 has been a year of such professional growth and maturity.

And so in that respect, I feel ahead.

So far ahead, yet so far behind

But if I’m ahead of the curve professionally, I’m behind the curve socially.

I stopped making friends after high school. After all, how could I? I started university in 2004. By 2006, I was in my last year, while the class I’d begun with was in their second. In 2007, I’d leave the country to pursue school elsewhere.

Ah, of course, I’d make ‘friends’. People I say hi and goodbye to when I pass them on the street or in the department. Perhaps people I chat with when I find the time to attend some party. But the real friends? The real friends you get to know, then learn to love, and invite to dinner parties and buy birthday and Christmas presents for? I stopped making those ages ago.

So for me, my group of friends is still largely the same group as it was at the end of high school. Then judging by the opening e-mail of this post, if anything, the number of new friends I’ve gained since then has plunged into the negatives.

This is why I balked when I heard a friend from high school had just been engaged. It was inconceivable! To me, marriage is as foreign as it is to a Grade 9 student. It’s like arriving in homeroom, only to find everyone you know has gone off to work at their jobs, or to tend to their babies and wives and husbands and goddamn garden patches.

No, not everybody is getting married and having babies. But things are changing. New friendships are being forged and old ones are being left behind.

I mean, Jesus Christ, why do I feel like I’m being left behind?

2009 and Beyond

Where to from here?

In one of my previous posts, one of the readers made a jibe about one of my previous prophecies. One that was printed in the city newspaper.

“He expects his time at Oxford to be more relaxed than the last three years have been,” it says in the newspaper.

“Dude, that crystal ball of yours was so off the money,” came the jibe.

It has and it hasn’t. Professionally, I’ve continued to grow. I’m more mature and calmer about my fate in the world. In that respect, it is more relaxed. Phil-the-mathematician is alive and kicking and well as ever. He’s teaching, he’s researching, he’s writing, and he’s publishing. He’s also sleeping, by the way.

But Phil-the-everything-else? Phil-the-friend, Phil-the-boyfriend, Phil-the-joker, Phil-the-athlete, Phil the living, breathing, socially adept human being?

I just don’t know anymore.

“Just write something — anything!”, said a friend a few days ago.

“I’m trying,” I said.

Here’s the thing.

I’m pretty sure — sometime during the course of 2008 — I forgot how to be anything but a mathematician.

Phil the mathematician, you see, has been doing just hunky-dory.

Phil the writer, Phil the blogger, Phil the walking, breathing, socially-adept human being — on the other hand — is missing.

Gone? For ever and ever?

Maybe.

Meh.

Lots of flash and little substance is how I’d describe it.

Casino Royale was about Bond returning to his roots (or perhaps, growing some new roots entirely). It was gritty, it was rough, it was far from the suave and unrealistic Bonds of the last decade.

Quantum of Solace tries to emulate this, but it oversteps. Now, Bond has degraded into a sort of stoic, Terminator-ish role. The Director wants us to see that Bond is a flawed character; his personal losses ever twisting his personality — but the script never gives Daniel Craig a chance to act. The movie starts with a car chase (yawn), and never quite stops running. There’s no time to breath, let alone identify with the characters.

The new Bond girl, Camille, is a bore I’m afraid. Try not to roll your eyes when she mentions her poor, tramautized childhood. Oh, do I need to tell you that she’s cool-headed and hardy, can handle a gun, and initially dislikes Bond, but has a soft, vulnerable side? Or can you figure all that out on your own?

And the cinematography. My god. Whoever was doing the cinematography needs to chill. If you watch the action scenes closely, you’ll notice that, in addition to the blitzing MTV-like cuts and edits, they decided to include more artsy (think art-house) shots — you know, close ups of pistol grips, slo-mo pans of mundane fruit, that sort of feel. It’s like they got some French drama cinematographer to edit the already over-edited MTV shows.

Everything was just so, I dunno, overdone.

When it comes to some movies, more is sometimes better. Bigger is sometimes better. Think of Michael Bay: Here, it’s always bigger explosions, bigger robots, bigger boobies. I’m sure he knows it. It’s formulaic, but it works and occasionally, we get a solid popcorn flick.

Other times, it’s better to go with the subtle approach. Gentle dialogue. Likeable characters. Story driven rather than action driven.

So you see, Bond needs to decide what he wants to be.

Don’t get me wrong. Quantum of Solace isn’t bad. In fact, most critics seem to like it enough.

I found it to be mildly entertaining. A not-so-enthusiastic one-thumb-up, if you will.

Part of it, I think, is that the older I get, the less impressed I am with action movies. It usually takes something truly epic and extraordinary (on the scale of Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings) to impress me.

Yes, I see it too.

Then again, maybe this is just the dip before the climb?

Will Phil re-organize his priorities? Will he muster whatever little creativity he has left and return to form in the months to come?

Haha. Probably not.

But it makes a pretty graph.