6 months is the standard amount of time to let wedding guests know the date of the wedding so they can plan ahead........and "save the dates" need to be sent out. (another wedding complaint I have, btw....it seems a little far in advance, and presumptious of the RECIPIENT to demand to know about a wedding so far in advance as not to book vacations, etc). In my mind I always picture a mega-diva in her apartment poring over her schedule of hair and manicure appointments to try to squeeze in something as trivial as a friend's wedding. I also object sometimes to the casual way in which attending a wedding is bandied about, as if it's just nothing, almost an annoyance like going to the dentist (which, coincidentally, is recommended by dentists to happen every 6 months = PYRAMID SCHEME).
Actual conversation I had one time:
Me: "Oh so you got invited to a bunch of weddings this summer, huh?" (Jealous because I hadn't been invited to any that year yet)
Friend: " Yea we have like 7 weddings to go to this summer. It's such a pain to have so many friends. I'm almost at the point of wanting to offend all these friends to get out of the wedding."
Me: "Oh really?"
Friend: "Yea weddings are so expensive to go to! Going to different places and having to pay for hotel rooms."
Looking back, I actually agree with some of "Friend"'s concerns in that weddings all around for everyone involved are expensive, but imagine the bridge and groom who had to PAY for their wedding (or their families did) putting on an expensive wedding only to have people reluctantly go to it. Why even do it in the first place then if no one's happy about it? Sigh.
Anyway, enough wedding-bashing, 6 months is also the amount of time I've spent in Chicago on a work assignment, and although I wouldn't say it was a life-changing experience (I spent a LOT of that 6 months in an office at the same seat looking at the same computer screen getting up occasionally to use the same bathroom), it definitely is a 6 months I won't forget. My philosophy is that sometimes human beings just need to experience new things, inject new stimuli into the mind, deal with different people, and there's nothing like that than moving to a new city to work with a new company. Chicago rewarded me with new train routes around the LOOP, plenty of fat pigeons siphoning food from the ground, great street architecture around town that rivaled my memories of having lots of bull sculptures in the 90's, an excellent river and lake that make it one of the most aesthetic downtowns in the country IMO, one of the best lake shore drives in the world to walk down with the one you love, vibrant baseball town during a run to the World Series in the Chicago Cubs, italian beef and deep dish pizza, and so much more.
One of my all-time favorite SEASONS of TV was Heroes on NBC, and one of the best episodes was a flashback of characters from 6 months before the events of the show, aptly called "6 months ago." I think that was an acknowledgment that big life changes happen usually 6 months at a time (sometimes they happen all at once, too, so obviously there are exceptions), but one's frame of mind can change in 6 months, can affect one's planning of the future, understanding of one's place in the world. I think human beings are constantly changing and on the go, but once in a while you can look back and reflect on what path we've walked down and put a marker or bookmark to save the place where we last reflected or changed our lives. That bookmark for me is 6 months. And this most recent one has a picture of Chicago on it.
Fantasize on,
Robert Yan
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