April 24, 2016

There was an elderly Korean lady and former backpacker in the room advising against us to go on the hike. “You will lose everything” she repeated. It would just be like that one time we found ourselves in the snowy peaks and were forced to cross the frozen river on stilts in order to (unsuccessfully) get away from ice creature that was following us.

Someone came into the room to announce to the old woman of her return from her trip to Japan. She brought photos in her hand and quickly walked to the other side of the room to show them to the old lady. I didn’t say anything and pretended to not exist.

–

Someone had mentioned that lasers were less effective in glass and my mom asked me why this was so. I told her that it was due to the small imperfections and impurities in the glass that would absorb to deflect the light in unintended directions. I continued to stumble through my Mandarin when explaining a similar thing happened when the pollution was particularly bad. We were outside and the air was so dense that if you quickly swiped your hand through it, crystals would form from the particles that collided together. My mother expressed her annoyance when I flicked a bunch of sugar crystals from the atmosphere onto her face.