Beeboi

Safety Harbor, FL, Jan 11, 2009. I am sitting in the luxurious hotel, ready for the two-week training. I am setting the rules here: work-out everyday, and no TV. I will see whether I can stick with it.

After being on eHarmony for 4 months, sometimes it is very tempting to blog about the girls I met through the match website (so-called "my dates" series). I resist the urge here, but I want to say something general. Online dating is usually a mixed blessing, but for me it is a god-send. I think I have a tremendous ability to keep the girls I meet in real life as just friends. And once it is established, I am not going to break it. But online-dating puts me on the edge and prevents me from being lame, and I enjoyed it quite a bit. So far, I haven't had any bad dates. Twice I thought that I found the one that I would be comfortable to be with: one did not work out, and the other still pending. Regardless of the outcome, though, it has enriched my otherwise boring life greatly.

So now to Beeboi, another entry for my friends series. I think I have blogged about him before, but since this is a new blog, everything starts anew. Besides, I forget his previously assigned name.

Beeboi is a good friend because he sent me a Christmas gift. He actually put some thought into it. Two years ago when we were summer roommate, he noticed that I had a crappy backpack. He still remembers it until today and got me a nice one from Amazon. I was deeply touched by this. Beeboi was a math genius without high social skills, so I understand that doing so is not the most natural way of thinking for him. And I am glad he did.

We met two summers ago when I just moved to Boston. I shared the same apartment for two months. After that, he often came back to Boston, because he liked to attend some salsa clubs in the city. (see my commendatory on his salsa hobby in my previous entry) When he visited, he would usually stay with me, crashing on the couch. He was rather absent-minded. Sometime he would miss the last train so he had to walk all the way home. He once waked me up around 2am. He even missed an international flight due to bad planning. He would forget wallet when buying stuff, so I would pay for it. He would never remember again, because he mind is occupied by more important thoughts, like some math problems.

His home is in Florida, so I takes this chance to visit him. He has not changed much. He is now studying in a prestigious math program in UK, and now is at home for the winter break. It is not a surprise to me when he told me that he miscalculated the time difference so he would miss the first day of class after the winter break. Somehow, his math skills does not translate into everyday life. Typical Beeboi.

His parents came from China. Both are very successful scholars and nice people. Both are very extrovert, so it is quite a surprise that Beeboi is a total introvert. Maybe both parents have been very dominating at home, so he turned off the talking gene.

At his home there is a wall full of awards: cross-country running, academic awards, trivia competition, etc. He finished his high school ranked No. 2, and was one of the few who got out of the Florida and saw the world. He would be consistently late for exams (lost track of time), and still nailed the exams. His mind is full of trivia, and he has a habit of looking things up on wikipedia just so he could collect the littlest bits of details. He liked to solve puzzles too.

Somehow, I feel that I am one of the few people in the world who actually understand his working of his mind. His parents are definitely clueless of his amazing mind and awkward social skills that gave him a hard time in high school and the summer internship in Boston. I understand him mainly because my mind worked that way too, and it took me a while to figure out how to read people and how to talk to people. For me, it is a learned skill and a public performance most of the time, but at least I had it. I hope Beeboi can acquire these skills one day, because so many genius have been wasted by this conformity-driven society.

However, being with Beeboi is liberating, as if I was a little kid again and did not need to pretend to be a thoughtful adult. Yesterday we went to the beach, and had a great battle with the wave. We stood in the middle of the ocean, waiting for the largest wave, and throwing the whole body against the wave, again and again. We threw arms against water, we swam in dog-style, and at least I drank in some nasty water, but it was really fun. Somehow, his presence brought out the most innocent part of me.

Beeboi's favorite:
Favorite movie: Harry Potter (?)
Favorite TV: Battlestar Galactica, or Man vs. Beast
Favorite joke: Anything with sci-fi stuff. You can make stuff up by piling up sci-fi non-sense. "Look, it is electron magmatic-field that is attacking the spectrum of human beings." "My hand is stuck, it must be the counter-atomic galaxy anti-wave shakedown." See, it does not need to make sense, but it is funny.
Favorite topic: Interaction between math and economics. If you can add some stats, like instrumental variables or structural equations, the better. Good thing that I am well versed there.
Favorite award: Consistent Latecomer for Exams. Serious, his highschool gave everyone an award, and this was him.
Dream job: Being a professor.