The closest I've ever been to getting on top of my parents' home as a child was hanging up Christmas tree lights, and even then I barely touched the bottom part of it. As an adult, I've never been interested in roofs of buildings, at least the outside of it. Being on the penthouse or top floor of a building can be pretty sweet: At the top floor of the Sears Tower, or the new Wilshire Grand Center, for example. But the roof of my apartment building? Never really had a reason to, and the charming salespeople taking you on tours through the building don't take you up there neither; really nothing to see and risks of injury, etc. unless you have to.
Turns out, because of an air conditioning issue I encountered this week (the hottest week of the year, terrible timing) I had to go up to the roof of our 4-story condo building, and it was.... eye-opening. Turns out there are a lot of wires, cables, awkward-looking structures, vents, etc., but most prominently, there are.... outdoor air conditioning units up there! Probably not every building has the same system, but HVAC systems need to go somewhere, and looks like they chose to install them on top of all the units. It's like a maze through all the units to find the one that corresponds to your own unit, and I wouldn't have known except they were labeled. The balancing factor to all the mechanical morass is the open sky that you're exposed to, plus views all around the city, unlike all the obstructed views and openings only on one side of the building that we get when inside our own little units. Going up to the roof is very much like a well-dwelling frog coming out to see the whole Earth. Definitely some Aladdin "A Whole New World" vibes as well. I went up there with the air conditioning technician that I hired, and apparently he works on roofs all the time fixing stuff, so he must be used to the views. But for a common peasant like me working at home staring out the window trying to see all the interesting lives other people are leading, it was quite the experience. Sometimes the best places to go are right under your nose! Or right above your head, in this case.
Ever go into a language test feeling thoroughly unprepared? I'm sure most high school/ college students can empathize with going into a test without having studied (I didn't do that too often, but everyone gets surprised by a pop quiz once in a while or just flat our forgot it was test day) but a language test isn't something you can just "BS" through or hope you get lucky on multiple choice or "it'll come to you." Language tests have a distinct characterstic of totally embarassing you, to the point of having a scarring experience. A lot of "you either know it or you don't" stuff where a word is just a word. Language testing is also something where you can't just study the night before in a "cram session" or even for a week.......languages take years of consistent study to develop the amount of vocab, grammar, and usage to fully understand the language, forget about trying to pass a translation test (Oh yea, I have to translate the language too). In many ways it's like studying for Jeopardy: you can't just study in a short amount of Jeopardy, it's the accumulation of all the things that you've put in your brains over years and years as well as tons of repetition of key information. I guess it has the same thrill for me too, when I do piece of it together: As I'm reading over a sentence in a new language I'm studying and trying to understand what it's saying, I fell myself pulling bits of information from corner of my brain that I've been developing into a muscle geared specifically for this heavy lifting event, and then on the very tough "key word" of the sentence I have to almost search in the deeper crevasses of my brain to find that one time I saw one flashcard/ one mention of the word that said that and try to remember it. It's actually a pretty intense experience, frustrating if I don't get it, but oh so satisfying if I do, like I've mastered a skill or gained new ground in a new frontier. Jeopardy's the same way: I peruse the clue, look for something I recognize, and when I understand what it is I'm supposed to be looking for/answering, I look deep into my brain to find the buried treasure. I know the long long hours put in is the engine that fueled the ability to know that answer, but that quick gratification of pulling out the answer when needed is what motivates me to keep going, keep studying and keep improving. I'm pumped up now! But still very unprepared for this language test tomorrow!
No comments:
Post a Comment