Author: Nic Olson

What do you wish to get from traveling?

Dang, no one has asked me an actual question before. I say actual question because I recently (just now) decided that a question is something you want an answer to. But I guess I didn’t decide this, the English language did. Something you WANT a question to, not something you ask to be nice or break the silence. Dang.

Seong Bin Lee is a friend from high school. He is a Korean genius that somehow ended up at the pinnacle of education, WCC. His dad is an educated man with a lovely wife and will-be successful kids, Bin and older sister Seong Un. He asked me this over supper, seated on our asses eating jellyfish and octopus parts. I answered quickly with an answer about learning and other nonsense, but was sure to tell him of my imminent enrolment to a prestigious University so I can really APPLY myself. That may have been a lie.

I change my mind more than I change my underwear, and I can tell you, I change my mind about once a week. Right now my mind is made up to fly to India with the new Indian couple in front of me. They smell like the best parts of the country, and look like they are on a first date so it could be a honeymoon. What a perfect country.

Oh yeah, When I figure out answer to his question I’ll be sure to get back to you via blog and/or inspirational book.

I mean, Korea isn’t the worst place I’ve ever been….

For a country to be any good, in my mind, it has got to qualify in three incredibly important categories: food, girls, and the intangibles. Korea gets an A in each category.

Kimchi is the only thing I remember how to pronounce, but everything has been great and if all goes well I’ll be eating dog by the end of the week. Apparently dog offers some serious manhood power, if you know what I mean. If not, google the word penis and Mr. Jung.

The girls are all beautiful and dress fancy, so we’ve got that in common.

The intangibles might get a B+. In your world the public transit is equal for the masses, without any strict societal guidlines. But here, young lazy white guys give up their seats for elderly Koreans. I’m really quite cool with this. Old people in Korea are more important than kimchi in a Korean meal, or black toques at a hardcore show or coffee for a white person. In Canada if an old lady came on the bus I’d likely give her my seat (unless she was part of a visible minority or blind). But I could start a revolution here. I could be the white male Rosa Parks.
The smells are nice. Just another hemisphere’s general smell. Different than Canada’s official scents of hockey gloves and Tim Horton’s Toilet Bowl Cleaner.
The soul swallowing commercialism is evident as ever, just as much as anywhere else. With more circles framed by lines.
When the SARS epidemic hit, Korea must have ordered a serious shipment of SARS masks, which is what they will forever be known as until I die. People wear them walking down the street. My Korean friend says that they wear them because it is cold outside, a balmy 10 degrees. My Canadian friends say that they wear them if they are sick… Who to believe, a Korean Canadian living in Korea, or Canadian Canadians living in Korea. I think you know.

I could live here. It’s like Vancouver with cabbage and Koreans. And it has a Soul.
Of all the crappy tourist blogs in the world I bet that line has been used 1billion times too many.

Edit: Craig and Leah are alright.

Driving home from what was once my job, (retail was the best thing that I have ever done with my life, nothing will be quite as rewarding) I always noticed one lady/girl/female (I don’t know what I’d call her.). She was always standing on the side of the road, where I believe there is a bus stop, but I’ve never actually proven that. She stood there, and as I drove by her, she would move her legs in a very European way. A way that shouted ‘Somewhere in Europe!’, but I could never hear her legs shout exactly where in Europe. Possibly the Ukraine. She did remind me of perogies when I first saw her.
I drove by her numerous times, and each time, her legs dipped in the same way, with one toe tapping while bent behind the other. The front foot slightly sliding in the snow, knees bent, hands in her pockets. Just like Europe. Somewhere.

Then I walked by her just outside of the bar across the street. She was headed to her dancing post, I was leaving the fabled burger time. She caught me off guard. I always figured she worked at the Walmart or at some weird old lady clothing store in the mall. But she was coming from a direction opposite the mall. She probably sold cute pet clothes at the weird cat lady store in the strip mall across from the mall. Wherever she worked, she had ample opportunity for dancing, and her work schedule didn’t interfere.

To do something, you have to be something. To dance, you have to be a dancer. To write, you have to be a writer. To engineer, you have to be an engineer (that word is both a verb and a noun). To read, you have to be a reader. You can’t just be a well rounded individual, who does everything free from the title. Or you can’t be a very focused individual without a title. You are what you do. If you cook, you’re a cook (another instance). If you compute, you are a computer. You can’t be nothing. You have to be a dancer. That is my calling. Just call me a dancer.

Since they have been popping up more and more lately, I decided that this will in fact be a monthly occurrence. The words of music have been hitting me harder and harder with each listen. Maybe it was because I listened to the same 20GB of music eight hours a day for seven months, I had no choice but to get more out of them. Or maybe it’s because I’m growing up.
Here’s the chorus, if you are too lazy to read the entire song, at least read this.

“Life appears weightless,
For everyone but me.
This world grows heavier everyday.
Deterioration,
Growing old before my time
Nobody cares, never mind”

Now that’s punk rock.

Good Riddance – Symptoms of a Leveling Spirit – Yesterday’s Headlines

Running short on imagination
Still we waste it all on words
Spoken without the benefit of our minds

The candle burns, the edges framed
Our best intentions waste away
And everybody loves the things we’ve done and on, and on, and on

Life appears weightless
For everyone but me
This world grows heavier everyday
Deterioration
Growin’ old before my time
Nobody cares, never mind

We all prey on a vain condition and the hoplessness of it all
These days there’s nothing we can trust
The dreams we made, we’ve seen them fade
Trampled by our sad parade
Yet we’re so pleased with what we’ve done, and on, and on, and I’m done

The mind breaks down when it dies
Our machine’s doubled in size
To orchestrate the grand collapse
I see us all trapped in its path
There was a time we were unbound
As if we’d never hit the ground
But just like rain we can’t keep from fallin’

This week has been up there with the most bizarre weeks of my entire life. It literally makes me wonder if the world is ending, or if my days are significantly numbered. I have a decent feeling, in my gut, of my imminent death. My impending doom, if you will. I don’t need to explain why, I just have that feeling. It could be part of the reason of why I am so nervous to leave the country. If my death is not near, then something big will happen soon. You know when you are watching your favourite weekly show, and you know something huge is going to blow your face off before the next commercial break? I’m getting that now. And usually on TV, that means death.

I would be fine if I died right now. Almost monthly I think about my death, and probably because of that, I’m comfortable with it. I feel that I’ve done enough/seen enough/met enough/ate enough in my life that I’ll be comfortable with it. I think about my funeral, if I’d have one. I think about who’d be there, what they’d say, what food there’d be, how hard people would cry and for how long. I think about how I hoped that my funeral wouldn’t be a bummer, but a party. I think about how it could be full of friends, like one epic hangout that I never could have had in real time, because of ‘prior engagements’ and other useless life crap. I just think about it a lot.

Maybe I feel like I will die because things are too good. My head is in a place it hasn’t been before, whether it shows or not. I am available to more ideas than ever before, but at the same time I am as stubborn as usual. It seems that I have things figured out more now than before, but at the same time can’t sort through my thoughts.

I hope I die (Don’t worry, this isn’t a suicide note. That would have a few more F-words.), or I hope something changes extremely. Not that I’m not content (7 out of 10, even), but for the past little while, I feel like I’m on the verge of something big. Something that will mean something. And if it’s not death, it will be equally as huge.

I am going to India in a week, and I’ve never been more excited in my life.

That’s right, it’s back.
Here is a pretty rough version of my favourite 50 songs of my life. Depending on who you are, you likely have heard of none of the bands. Don’t worry about it. Actually, nevermind. Worry about it, and look each of them up on iTunes and buy their music.

It goes in order from least favourite to most favourite, so #50, the highlighted one, is the best one, in my eyes. My favourites from 1 to 10 are pretty concrete, not much room for moving around. Then from 11 to 40, they get pretty rough, there could be one in the high thirties that could easily be in the low teens, but that’s just how it works. Then from 41 to 50, it is pretty concrete again. It was hard, it was life changing, it was beautiful. I recommend you do this yourself, with your own music, and then listen to your playlist while sitting alone in your room. Unbelievable.

I have a few rules for the activity, which I broke numerous times:
1. Only one song per album. I was originally going to do one song per band, but that is just silly.
2. Michael Jackson should never seriously be put in your top 50.
3. The Beatles should not ever be #1.
4. Be honest.
5. Yours will not be anywhere near as good as mine. But you’d likely say the same thing.

I’d like to tell you about my best friends. I have spent hours with them; sharing meals, laughing at pop culture, solving mysteries, playing pranks at the office, making out, watching football games, getting in fights on the beach. You know, regular stuff. But they’re not regular people, they are incredibly special. You can turn them on easily, they don’t talk back, they won’t ditch you for a girl, and they are always there for you. Always.

I hate to make a list of all my best friends, but here it is, in no particular order…

Seth Cohen
Summer Roberts
John Locke
Sun Kwan
Tim Riggins
Leila Garrity
Jim Halpert
Earl Hickey

These people have changed my life. If you don’t know who even one of them is, google them, I am only friends with people who are googleable.
Without fail, they are there. Sometimes they leave for periods at a time and we are apart for months. But they are always available to advise for 22 to 45 minutes.
Their friendship is so good it is usually addicting and gives headaches.
It is much easier to be friends with these people, you don’t leave your house, you don’t spend money, you don’t talk. Very rewarding.
Real people are lots of work. Real people are seriously flawed. Real people are real. But TV is a mindtrap for real people, making them not real anymore. But only for short amounts of time. And there is nothing wrong with that. I guess.

I’m in love with Tim Riggins. And Sun Kwan. And every girl on TV.
Except Oprah, the women from the View, and women on CSI. They are all seriously flawed fictional characters. Because if they are real people, the whole world is going to hell.

Skepticism. It’s not a lack of trust as much as it is a presence of knowledge. Being skeptical is a learned trait of mine that is a close cousin of stubbornness. Being a skeptic allows possible freedoms, but becoming skeptical can then restrict these same liberties, by stubborness, which then can force you to live by them. Skepticism is great, if you have the strength to not be bound to/by what you are doubtful of. Skepticism is a bad word, but it shouldn’t be. 

My head was down, my eyes were not staring into my opposition. Two versus one, the only thing offering comfort was a glass of ice, and a plate of hashbrowns. Being grilled, question after question, my mind aching from all of the intense thought and contemplation. I guess, a seven out of ten on the content scale might be accurate. It is an official scale that psychologists use because it is very accurate and psychologists are very useful. Please rate yourselves and loved ones accordingly. 

I was recently reading the blog/book ‘Stuff White People Like‘ at work. The holiday season rush is down, and besides people exchanging clothes that shouldn’t have been given to them in the first place (buying someone clothes is the worst idea ever.), the store has been slow. So we read stupid books. This book isn’t great. It reminds me of me. Some douche that wrote a blog that he thought was pretty good, then decided to turn his experiments into a bestselling and hilariously (but really not that funny) useless book. Except, in his case, thousands of others thought his blog was good, not just a few friends. Anyways, it is dudes like this that make me want to become rich by doing nothing. Not so much rich, as much as successful, and not so much successful as a published author, and not so much a published author as someone who has accomplished something, aka, rich.