I was at a faculty meeting at the university yesterday and one of my colleagues asked me if I knew I had been voted "Most Unique Teacher" by the undergraduates in our department . . . I hadn't even known there was a vote. She told me that I received the most votes and that she was second place but wasn't sure what "unique" means.
Well . . . I'm not sure either. Sure, it could mean "uniquely weird" or "uniquely ugly" or "uniquely causes nightmares on an intensely regular basis" . . . but . . . I will choose to believe it's the positive sort of unique such as "uniquely amazingly handsome" or some such thing.
Of course, unique could also simply mean bizzarroworldteacher . . . I am that hypnotist guy who wears Indian tunics and Hawaiian shirts and my lectures tend to be peppered with standup comedy mannerisms so that certainly qualifies for unique.
My colleague suggested that if I wanted to I could pretend that I'm uniquely handsome like a young Marlon Brando . . . not sure why anyone would go there for that but, sure, I'll take it.
I do get a LOT of compliments on just how handsome I am (well, the compliments are usually in Chinese here and the folks who give them do seem to often confuse the expression for "handsome" with the phrase for "beautiful" – odd that native speakers would do that, but it's fairly common in my experience as I have often (I mean a LOT) been walking here or there with my daughter and out of nowhere some stranger will shout out toward us "ni hao piao-liang!" and many times they've shouted it from across a busy street. The weird thing is that this only happens when I'm with Kaye and never when I'm by myself. Odd thing that. 🙂 (note to readers: insert tongue firmly into cheek while reading this as that's how it was written . . . it really does happen a LOT and I do joke to Kaye that it's interesting how so many people think I'm so amazingly "piao-liang" and it's odd that they only say it when I'm with her . . . but, I am not quite so delusional as to not see the real truth of what's going on . . . on more than a few occasions Lorraine and I have been chatting with random women (taxi driver, shop laobanyang, and the like) and have been asked how many children we have only to be practically scolded for only having the one daughter . . . as one woman put it, "you have an obligation to have more children as your daughter is so beautiful you should create more beautiful people like her" . . . one woman was very insistent on this point to that it seemed a matter of urgency to her).
Well . . . in any case . . . the students are correct . . . I am indeed unique . . . now, whether that's a good thing or not . . . that's all in the perspective. Certainly, I am me and have all the baggage, good or bad, that entails.
All the best,
Brian
(If you are reading this blog post via a stream, go to https://briandavidphillips.net/ to access the full post with any videos or photos included.)
http://www.briandavidphillips.net/store
See http://www.BrianDavidPhillips.com for details
Brian David Phillips, PhD, CH [brian@briandavidphillips.com]
Hypnotist, Hypnotherapist, Intuitionist, Trance Wizard
President, Society of Experiential Trance
Associate Professor, NCCU, Taipei, Taiwan
