Sweet grapes

I’ve read a lot of articles on happiness, but this is something I haven’t seen elsewhere before that I’ve found to be true: you can be happy with a lot less if you have something to look forward to. That’s mostly how I get through taking tough classes or doing tedious work. No matter how bogged down I get, having something bright in the future really keeps me motivated. In some ways, that explains a few things about me – why I can put up with working on things that make me miserable as long as it doesn’t stretch on indefinitely, for example.

I started thinking about this after realizing that I had nothing to look forward to in the near future. The next two weeks look like a flat line from here: no major ups or downs. It’s interesting that I was probably happier slaving over the last OS assignment a week ago than right now, when I feel a lot less stressed.

My dad has a saying that people are either sour-grapes-first (先吃酸葡萄) or sweet-grapes-first (先吃甜葡萄), meaning that some people would rather take the good things first, and others would take the bad first. I’m usually a sour-grapes-first person, but this time it looks like I ate the sweet grapes first.

I’m sure I’ll drum up something to look forward to though. It usually comes in the form of dessert. *grin*

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Random thought: I read a book when I was little about a kid that could switch to different dimensions, but he would come back as a mirror image of himself. The molecules in him were all flipped, so he would taste everything backwards until he flipped back (it’s bad science, I know, but it was a kid’s book). Most things were absolutely horrible, but apparently ketchup was heavenly! So what I want to know is: what does ketchup taste like backwards?