i guess this is one of the problems i am working on, a deep personality thing, the general syndrome embodied by the air quality problem. the deep thing being that i lose equilibrium too easily. things like sleep deprivation, being mildly sick, playing poorly at bridge, the weather being too hot, air quality, and sad music all have substantial medium-term effects on my moods. i once again resolved a week ago to turn over a new leaf, and it actually seems to be going pretty well. i think i can be a happy person; i think i can nip the moods in the bud. and indeed even though i've been horribly sleep-deprived since i got here, i've been happy and functional.
the third contributing factor to the surreality is of course the bridge players, who are quite an interesting lot of characters. it turns out that like most groups of people i've been associated with, most of them are nerdy, some of them play the cool-kid persona to irritating extremes, a few of them are really awesome, and many are ... unique. fortunately the uniquenesses of people here are mostly appreciable; there is always plenty of comic relief. i've definitely had several spells already of uncontrollable laughter; basically always at someone, although not making fun of them so much as laughing at the sheer insanity of the situation (i.e. someone inadvertently says the perfect stupid things.) it is definitely a trip to remember, even though it will hardly be all positive. and that's important in life.
that said, i'm looking forward to going home (he says on day three of seventeen), where life is more or less perfect. i guess i haven't written here for a while, which is for three reasons: one, i talk to dezi basically every day, so my pseudo-profound thoughts go there. two, i'm writing the bridgeiscool.com blog, so some of the blog reserves i have go there. and three, life is so good that there is nothing to complain about / be angstful or emo about, which comprises a lot of my blog in general.
it's most definitely not because life is boring, though. it's been a summer of frenetic traveling, and there are a couple of weeks to come.