Just realized it’s… Friday the Thirteenth.
Woke up and spent like an hour looking for my Fujifilm Instax Evo — I thought it’d be super cute to have a physical picture of the two of us together. It wasn’t an hour, I just really hate looking for shit so it felt like an hour. But I found it! That camera is super cool, it’s essentially a 2000’s digital camera with a photo printer bolted on — so it takes (pleasingly low quality, grainy) digital images that you can later print.
I was thinking about what to wear, and my conclusion was that I don’t get to dress up enough, so I’ll put on a relatively nicer outfit. I have a dentist appointment for now, but not gonna lie, I’m pretty giddy for the date.
I bought Vivi some skittles before our date, since she mentioned she was robbed of skittles in Econ class the day prior and I thought it’d be cute to. I also preordered the new iPhone! That shit costs $1521 which is absolutely beyond obscene but I literally don’t care, I have nothing else to spend the money on.
Holy shit it was a 4.5 hour long date. And by far the best one I’ve ever had (n=~6?) — she’s literally better than I could have ever dreamed (which is saying a lot, as someone who’s crushing).
It was a bit of a mess for her to get there. I wanted to call her an Uber, but she said no, she’d take transit. Then the bus left slightly early. Then the second bus just didn’t exist. So I called her an Uber, but she’d never been on one, so it was a bit more stressful than I had intended — she asked the same question as mom which was “How do I pay???“. But no harm done, she got here in one piece. A quick summary of the events: we were at the Keg and I ordered a tuna tartare and we both ordered happy hour burgers and she told me AFTERWARD she had a seafood allergy, gg. But she just took an antihistamine and was gucci, so it was fine. She’d never had tuna tartare before! I love that shit so much. But sadly the Keg’s rendition was extremely mid. Sometime through, she asked me what I was up to afterward, and I said that I was craving ice cream — so we walked to Village Ice Cream, where we sat for the last few hours after dinner. I’d paid for dinner, and she was apparently an ex wrestler and absolutely BODIED me and grabbed my phone and paid for ice cream. I was so incredibly surprised but also turned on impressed — she’s genuinely strong 😭
Something that’d always stood out to me about her was that she was constantly happy — she would be laughing with her friends, or super smiley. She was always happy. Everyone else who was a regular at badminton (or really anywhere) I’ve seen have an off day, where they were irked by something or just generally looked bothered. I’d had a lot of those days when I was at Blowfish and came to badminton. She literally never did.
I commented about that to her, and she said that a few years ago, she would have denied that and said in an edgy way that it “wasn’t the real me”. But she agreed — she really didn’t experience extended negative emotion. A few journals ago, I commented about how I was jealous about people who were “satisfied”, because they seemed to be happier with less effort (but also less accomplished as a tradeoff). I thought this might be the case with Vivi, but boy was I wrong. She seems like a genuinely smart, rational, logical person. She’s able to explain her train of thought to me, and teach me about topics (suggesting a fairly deep). So how does she stay so consistently happy? She actively chooses a simple life and avoids drama at all costs. She only worries about herself. Never overthinks, never worries. It sounds so easy to say. I’ve been complaining to mom a lot about how my life is so complex now. Taxes, banking, visa, having to juggle relations between many parties, work, etc. What Vivi said all sounded like such a breath of fresh air. What was amusing was that she was really confused why people overthought… ever. I considered for a few minutes before I had any semblance of an explanation — I thought that overthinking about outcomes helped me establish a worst case scenario which, more often than not, I could accept. This is often how I psyop myself into doing things I’m scared of; emailing my accountant/doing taxes, asking her out, etc. But there’s also plenty of less +ev times to overthink (social situations, worrying about things I can’t control anyways, etc.) that are obviously -ev but still hard to avoid out of the comfort of overthinking.
It’s so brave of her to choose to be happy in this manner. A lot of what she said to me made me realize my own privilege. It’s a list too long for me to even remember — her extreme helicopter parents put a camera in her room, don’t let her go out late, don’t let her travel alone, etc. She has a 1hr/d commute. She works two part time jobs while doing well at school. Her brother is more or less a complete failure. She’s faced an unbelievable amount of sexist/racist remarks from people of power (teachers, bosses, etc.) She went to a rough school, and lives in a very notably unsafe community. She truly well deserves whatever success befalls her in the future. I think she’s going to do great things if she has the will to.
At the start of the date I asked her if she was an existential person (still not sure what possessed me to ask that as an opening question). She said definitely not — she didn’t like thinking too much, and really couldn’t understand overthinkers. But by the end, we were talking about how in her philosophy class, they explored different senses of self — and how we thought that ultimately, one’s self is composed of one’s experiences. “I know I enjoy badminton because I enjoyed it the last N times.”, and a lot of other discussion on philosophy that I’m forgetting now. She has an impressively deep understanding of the world and the mechanisms behind behaviour. She even shared similar opinions on """incentive design""" — how 3b1b made a hell of a lot more sense than a lecture, and the world’s single best lecturer should just spend a year of their life making a “definitive” recording of their lectures to share worldwide. It’s wild how pianists do this, yet it isn’t a thing in education. She also believed that given a choice of being smart or dumb, she’d choose to be dumb — sure, your absolute accomplishments wouldn’t compare to a smart person, but since the utility of accomplishments is relative rather than absolute, it probably led to a more satisfying life not knowing how high the “cap” on one’s life was. This led to a discussion about the hedonistic treadmill and the difficulty of lasting life satisfaction from accomplishments. We talked about the utility of money, and when it seems to level off — and what was worth reaching for (and what wasn’t). It almost felt like she’d read a lot of thoughts my blog/journal before we met, which sounds absolutely absurd, but I was so enthralled.
She seems passionate about CS, rather than just in it for the money — she designed sites when she was young. I said that she should re-pursue UIUX; it’s changed so incredibly much since then, and if design is her passion, then it’s a no brainer imo. Design is extremely valuable and good taste is in such short supply in this world. Design would also bring a nice yin to my yang, although that’s hardly a priority. Overall, it was nice to hear that she genuinely liked coding, and is in it for the right reasons. I find it insane that anyone would do a 40+ year career for the money.
She mentioned how often she got hit on offhandedly and I was genuinely astounded — this morning at a bus stop, a car stopped in traffic to hit on her. When she was volunteering at her High School badminton team as a coach, she was hit on by another 30 year old coach. And yet I was always surprised by how gracefully she handled it. I was mildly irked by how others have almost tried to use it as a brag in the past — that it should raise their “status” to be desired by many men, but she genuinely despises it. We talked for a while about how she wanted to be a guy instead (and the tradeoffs), and how gender roles play out in tech with maternity leave.
One of my mildly-flirty lines I’m most proud of was when she asked me why I have so many The Keg gift cards, and I replied, but also said “so yeah, we’ll come here again together” (fk it seems cringe in hindsight, but I was unironically proud at the time. but she giggled and nudged me so I don’t really care).
But when I was walking back home, I was questioning myself — did I show enough interest? I wasn’t physical at all, contrary to every internet piece of advice. Even if we brushed arms a ton, I didn’t really feel comfortable with trying to hold her hand (let alone kiss, I don’t get how people kiss on the first date).
I was pretty nervous about how it went on her side, until she sent this…
For someone who claims she can’t understand overthinking, she’s an absolutely amazing communicator — there’s been a few times when I’ve caught myself overthinking, just for her to shoot over a text that completely nullified it. I don’t think that’s ever happened to me, it’s like she’s a mind reader.
I think she says that it’s cool that I’m accomplished — but I don’t think she actually weighs it as a positive about me. She doesn’t know half of what makes me OP career wise, nor did she ever ask about it. Her impression of me was that I’m a very practical person, but I also don’t think she’s into it that much. She said I was the first person she met that had a mentality like that. I’ve long said that I want someone to love me but find me remarkably ordinary — not some zoo animal that’s entertaining and interesting, but loves me for “me”; in much the same way my old friends do.
I think there was some part of me that didn’t even know a person like Vivi could even exist. She is such an outlier to my worldview in so many ways — she’s in CS but also super pretty and social. Smart and has a solid understanding of the world, but also consciously aspires to live a simple life. Takes every day one step at a time, yet has deep thoughts on philosophy, life, meaning. Super pretty and cognizant of it, but also somewhat straight edge/non promiscuous/non attention-seeking/private. Hungry and hardworking. Generous. Vivi breaks every stereotype in my mind, and then some. Not to mention she’s 18?! And this mature?!?!? I think there’s some part of the experience of working with much older people that makes one mature much faster. I thought she was at least my age when we first met.
Trying very hard not to fall hard. But I’m falling really freakin hard I’m not gonna lie. I’m kind of sad I’m leaving Calgary next Saturday now. It’s insane how fast life changes.
Mom asked me “bro tbh, wtf does she see in you!?!?” which honestly I kinda agree with and I’m also curious, but it’s super insecure sounding to ask, so I won’t. Maybe Nolan gave a positive referral? I don’t know (was under the impression they’re not super close)… But I’m thankful. Hugely, hugely so.
I’m unironically kind of concerned that connection like this only happens once in a lifetime. If so, I really hope I don’t fumble it. That’d destroy me. But I definitely appreciate that the two-sidedness of this is probably really, really rare, let alone the level of connection so quickly. Will try to make the best of it.