Ebola

 

Right now the most rampant news story is the Ebola virus: the infections in West Africa, the cases in the U.S. where a patient dies. Every 2 years or so there seems to be one of these outbreak stories: West Nile, SARS, avian flu, Swine flu, etc., etc., etc. All in all it seems like the various governments across the world and Center for Disease Control have kept diseases well in check, limiting it to a few cases and very seldom in America. It hasn’t even come close to the sensationalized mass panic and quarantine, government conspiracy level that most infection movies get to (Outbreak, Contagion, etc.) But it is really interesting and fantastical to think about: a world where everyone’s set off from each other, where a disease can become airborne and infect others with a fatal malady just by breathing on them, completely overtaking earth and wiping out the entire human population in a matter of days before scientists can figure out a cure to stop the virus. Seems pretty fantastical, and of all the doomsday scenarios out there like a comet destroying earth, nuclear warfare, and the Zombie Apocalypse, a disease outbreak seems like the least likely.

Omoi o yoseru. In Japanese this is a very elegant expression for desire or admiring a person, or always having them on one’s mind. I imagine it’s what falling in love is like. During fantasy baseball season, baseball is always on my mind; I’m forced to consume large quantities of information about injuries, pitching matchups, and other baseball-related information, but now that it’s over, I find myself thinking about particular people. I’ve always been like this for some reason: once I get attached or interested in something, I dwell on it for awhile. And once I really, really, like a girl, I can’t stop thinking about her.

Time: I’ve always been very weird about making it to things on time. I am late more than I like to be, but I don’t think it’s a matter of losing track of the time, which I think is a problem for some people who are late, like, “All of a sudden I realized what time it was and I was late!” My problem is that I’m too cognizant of the time. I budget a certain amount of time for a certain activity (like making it somewhere) and I don’t want to expend more time than that to do the activity. I don’t like to get to places early because I’ll be wasting time waiting around, etc., so I (however illogically) try to get to places EXACTLY ON TIME, like making it just at first pitch. A bunch of critical flaws here: 1.) I don’t adjust for length of travel time, the longer the travel time, the more likely you’ll get stuck somewhere and increase the amount of time, 2.) some people consider being 5-10 minutes early “being on time,” so really by showing up exactly on time you’re late, 3.) I don’t learn/ punish myself enough for being late for things, like a “THAT WILL NEVER HAPPEN AGAIN” incentive, clearly because I continue to budget my time only in terms of when I HAVE to be somewhere. 4.) The basic, rudimentary concept that being early is always better! There is literally no downside to being early (well, except my irrational fear of wasting a couple minutes in the gap between getting there and the start time). Just bring a book, Bobby, check your Iphone, talk to people who are already there, DO SOMETHING! BE EARLY!

I guess it’s just one of those hard-to-fix quirks of mine that some people might have, like needing the room to be a certain temperature, or needing to be in the left lane despite not traveling the fastest, etc., this is my Achilles’ heel.

 

Fantasize on,

 

Robert Yan