#tls49

[dustyboxes-blog]

In my first year as a pre-schooler, I didn't exactly know how recitations work. Whenever the teacher asked a question that I knew the answer to, I would "announce" my answer to to the whole class. Even though my answers were always correct, the teacher had a different idea in mind on how the discussion should go about, so she was very unhappy with me.

Stubborn as I am, I repeated the mistake enough times--although I'm not sure how many--that I was sent to the corner for a timeout.

I didn't return to My Corner until TLS49, where I would voluntarily retreat whenever I felt utter discomfort and disgust.

[dustyboxes-blog]

This is my favorite memory of Jeff.

We were in the layout room one boring afternoon and he was leaving articles to Gia. He was Menagerie Editor then and I was Circulations Manager. After finishing the file transfer, he gathered his things and said, "I'm going to my f*cking class."

After a beat of pause, he added, "No, it's not a class about f*cking, unfortunately."

[dustyboxes-blog]

One layout session in EGI 2008, Angel invited Gia, Gerry and me to take an interesting but lengthy personality exam. I don't remember the title of the test, but it renders four personality results from different categories. I think it's a popular test among the people in the industrial psychology field. Arik was also there, but I think he was already done with the exam.

While we were taking the test, Justin and Jenner entered the layout room.

After finishing the exam and reading the evaluation description, I learned that the result I got for one of the categories contradicts the ideal personality of an engineer. I got sad about it for a while and grabbed a bag of Marty's to drown my sorrows. I guess I was at that point in my life when I did not have enough real problems yet and personality test results bothered me so much.

Jenner, Arik and Angel tried to console me, and within three minutes I was about to get over it. I saw Justin extending his hand towards my direction. I emotionally prepared myself with whatever comfort words he had to add. Unfortunately, he just reached for the bag of Marty's.