Xmas.

It's 12:40am on Christmas morning and I just opened my only Christmas present, which my parents sent about a month ago. I worked until 7:30 tonight and I have to get up to go to work at 6:00am.

To say that it's hard to be here right now would be a massive and almost stupidly obvious understatement.

Tonight on the train home, I looked so angry and put out such a terrible vibe that no one touched me on the train. You have to understand...private space does not occur on the trains. It just doesn't. People push and jostle and ignore the most basic normal conventions of the usual space bubble. Crowding is incredibly normal. Yet, my level of "do-not-fuck-with-me" vibe was so huge that no one encroached on my space in the slightest in an incredibly crowded train. I realized that I must look fearfully terrible when I looked across the train and saw people crammed into one another at every other door...except mine.

So, I got home. I drank a couple of chu-hi's on the way. They are basically vodka drinks in a can. I found my roommates in a state at least as sorry as mine. They wanted to watch "A Christmas Story," which I had downloaded a couple of days ago. We did.

I attempted to cheer them up, and, in the process, reminded myself of what I am doing here and why such a small thing as a shitty Christmas will not ever...ever...stop me. I told them the story of my ex-girlfriend's father, who died slowly of ALS, and how every day that I could get out of bed and walk was a very good day, indeed. I reminded them that we didn't come here because we thought it would be easy...we came here because we had shit to do. I reminded them, and myself, of the menial jobs that we might be doing in our home countries, and that here we are very well compensated for skills that would be worth little to nothing in our home countries. I told them that they were a couple of the baddest motherfuckers that they knew, and I cheered them up, and I didn't even delve into my darkest, most horrible periods of my life to do it. A bad day here is not so bad.

It seemed to cheer them up. It cheered me up, too. I am doing all right in the world.