Talking with David

It is another ordinary day, starting with talking with David in the "Coffeeholic" House on nothing but killing time, and ending with watching a sad and boring TV series, of which the title is -- Ko-Jang, as a crowned prince, resumes his country.

Talking with David has been a routine in my life in the late 9 years. However, sometimes, it can turn very sour and intolerable, when he boasts himself as a knowledgeable "scholar," or implies that I, unlike he, live in a narrow world failing to appreciate the varieties of the world. At most times, I hate to hear those rhetorics because it sounds he is superior to me in the field of knowledge. However, I would forgive him upon remembering his wife's words -- "He suffers a kind of disease called "knowledge deficiency phobia." Many persons like him, including my wife, hate to be thought of as "unknowledgeable." And they work hard buying books, watching knowledgeable TV programs like Discovery, National Geography to keep themselves look learned and like "askjeeves." When you talk with this kind of persons, you would notice that they don't listen to you much, though you are talking seriously to them, and they are just paraphrasing what they will say right after you pause your talk. In behavioral science, it is called "pseudo listening." David is exactly the person of this type. I don't know why we actually have such a long friendship, which has lasted for over eight years. In my guessing, it's probably because we both are still longing for friendship and a talking partner in this lonely southern city of Taiwan, when you are enveloped by local dialect-speaking reisdents -- we speak Mandarin.