0155C: How We Were Raised

I'm safely home after the first work day after the long weekend prior due to the Holy Week holidays. Despite the usual lethargy that comes with trying to get back onto the graveyard shift after enjoying more daytime activities over the weekend, I managed to get through the day well enough, plus I completed a lot of other tasks after work. That included picking up my Indiegogo reward T-Shirt for the Star Trek bridge restoration project, picking up my Twitter contest book prize from Fully Booked at Gateway and also getting my banking stuff done.

So yeah, quite the busy day indeed.

I've been going through the old Transformers: Beast Wars series in an effort to finally watch every single episode in sequence. I've seen most of them at one point in time or another, but naturally there have been gaps since I was relying on my ability to catch normal television broadcasts. I mean come on, I even watched this cartoon with Tagalog dubbing out of sheer desperation to finish the entire series. So it's proving to be an interesting exercise.

And for one reason or another, thinking about Beast Wars had me thinking about my childhood and how we grew up and how that connects to how I behave today - how Freudian, I know. It's hard to explain precisely why this is what was running in my mind, but you know how random the brain can be at times. One thing leads to another and I can start reflecting on the games that we played over the weekend then I jump to cartoons like this one and then I'm back in the old house where I grew up. Life's weird that way.

My family could best be described as middle class - a sweeping term that can feel like a bit of a cop-out. If anything, I know we weren't on the lower end of the middle class spectrum and I'll concede that we were a little higher than the average - but I still don't think we were pushing the limits either. This translated into me getting use to certain hobbies that were more indoor in nature and not necessarily as "rugged" or "traditional" - it all depends on how you define these terms for yourself.

We didn't have a province to go home to during the holidays, so most summers were spent happily in the city. I developed a love for reading early enough and spent many afternoons lost in one book or another. As a family we'd go out to watch movies or hang out at the mall. Good grades at the end of the school year quarter meant a chance to pick a toy and any weekend out meant the chance to pick a book. You can see the habits that my parents were trying to cultivate here.

So when I think about my life now and how travel doesn't exactly excite me and how I so much prefer to stay home and watch TV shows with Tobie or even play board games. These are the kinds of activities that I grew up with, in one form or another. And thus going out on the town or hiking or camping and all that stuff just don't appeal to me. So I know I got extra lucky with Tobie since our interests had a lot of intersections and so him being into tabletop RPGs wasn't a bad thing - it was a new facet of my own leanings and interests for me to explore together with his help.

We probably could have afforded to travel more,  but it was smarter not to. And I didn't feel like I was missing out on the kind of summer experiences that my friends would talk about in terms of seeing other countries or going to far-flung provinces. I could talk about the books that I finished, maybe a  comic book I really loved and perhaps the occasional trip out to places like Baguio or Tagaytay. And their rarity helped make them even more special.

So it's not being snooty or elitist when I don't want to go to certain bars or don't find it enjoyable to rough it in the wild. This is where my passions lie and so don't mess with it and I won't bother with your interests. That's just how it goes if we're going to be truly fair about things. There's more than enough room in this world for an infinite combination of possibilities. It certainly keeps things interesting.