My Mortal Frenemy And Nerding Out

[zavodilaterrarium]

I ranted about it a while ago, but once again the evil known as microscopes entered the scene.

I love them so much, but they do not like me, especially the ones that inexplicably have no option to adjust the distance between the eyepieces. I swear I tried all reasonable distance/focus setups, but then again, I was always rushing trying to just get setup that worked enough to do the prac, so it's possible I missed the milimeter-perfect measurements... At least we're mostly using microscopes to take pictures, so I don't need to use the eyepieces at all in many pracs.

I got to have a nerdy conversation with a classmate for once though! It feels very awkward trying to bring up a lot of my interests with random people (partly because a lot of it is gay), so I was surprised and very happy when my lab partner said they saw my HSR laptop background and played it too! They mentioned feeling like people here aren't that into Asian media, which makes up a decent amount of my main interests. Though I am not one, them being hijabi made me more comfortable as well*. I'm not sure why, but I associate hijabi (who are not in Asia) with nerds lmao. Anyway, we talked about art, HSR, ORV, Arcane (I don't watch it, but I've heard a lot), and maybe some other stuff.

Honguito made me watch the first episode of Steel Ball Run without having watched anything else from Jojo's Bizarre Adventure, and I felt a little like my brain had been scrambled with a bomb; confused, almost curious, but in need of a trusted adult (aka I don't think I'd watch it independently).

Ugh, I've got a headache along a path from around my left eye over my head to the back of my neck. I assume it's posture/neck muscle related, but who knows.

*I assume they are Muslim. Unfortunately, I am a bit uncomfortable around Christians in the same way that I have more trouble relating to and trusting non-queer, non-PoC people (not impossible, just more awkward, especially if I'm not immediately told we have something in common), and there are a lot of Christians in Australia. All my close IRLs are (afaik) either non-religious or follow a different religion, though their religions almost never come up anyway. It's rare enough of a topic where I live that I genuinely don't remember any non-friend schoolmates bringing it up in front of an audience until literally Year 12, and I was quite literally shocked to hear a uni classmate mention going to church LMAO

Speaking of Christianity, a year or a few ago, I was in the same friend-sphere as a Christian, and I found myself scrounging up all the "God would not judge you for that because He loves all" that I could to comfort them as they were experiencing religious guilt and I was NOT about to say anything that might come across as me converting them to atheism or something — knowing me, it probably would. I was honestly expecting for it to come off as offensive due to my open lack of religious affiliation and skepticism of "simultaneously compassionate and powerful and omniscient gods", but they said it helped. I understand if those reading this find the idea distasteful, I'm not sure I'd do it again. Not that I'd be able to do it with any religion other than Christianity due to lack of knowledge anyway.

It sort of felt like I accidentally tried to convert myself, but it more so reminded me that sometimes I need to take a really different approach to express my empathy (though that's often very hard). I tend to default to "let me explain something similar I experienced, which is intended to demonstrate that I genuinely understand what you're talking about" or "[non-specific expression of agreement/mirrored despair/etc]" which obviously won't work if I can't relate whatsoever but want to say something substantial without outright analysing the situation.