My space

No, not that jungle where pixelated denizen frolic through the jungle
of html codes. It is about people, and the places they tend to spend
most of their time in.

I have observed this pattern about the spaces I occupy as time goes by.
In a typical weekday, I would be in my bedroom, my desk in the office,
the canteen(s), the hawker center(s), and the library. During the
weekends, there would be other libraries, the dance studio, and some shops -
mainly game related, and some eateries. Let's call these "spaces where
a person tends to spend more time at" as "nodes". Essentially, we
commute from nodes to nodes in our daily lifes.

It was the same even when I was in Japan. Initially, I started
with 4 nodes - my "apartment", my classroom, the 牛丼 (Beef-bowl) eatery,
and the convenience store. Learning from my classmates who had been
there longer than I did, 3-4 more eateries were added. After I moved to a
new abode, the supermarket node got added. Then there is the park
nearby my school, activity room in Waseda university, plus 3-4 Izakayas. For
weekends, there were 2 English language cafes. All in all, there were
about 15+ nodes.

Hence I have been wondering if this phenomenon applies to most people,
and what are the factors that contribute the equilibrium number of
nodes per individual. Granted that the number of different spaces that an
individual tend to gravitate towards would be different (mine is about
12+ now), I believe that the average person would not have more than 30.
Among the hawker centres, for example, I tend to gravitate towards only
one or two stalls. I will, however, start searching for another node if
the quality of a current node is no longer able to meet my expectation
(like hawkers who scowl all the time.)

Then there are a group of people that keeps on looking for new spaces.
That would be one of the defining characteristic of an "expert". Even
then, I could still argue that that person is just orbiting a supernode
. Example: a person who knows all the bakeries in Singapore - "the
supernode", and knows where to find the best bakery - "the nodes" for a
particular type of bread. This person may be clueless about prawn noodles
(another supernode).

Personal conclusion: I tend to have fewer nodes, and I am presently
content with just these few selections. However, I think it will be good
for me to increase my nodes. Whenever my parents are here, I would be
quite clueless on where to take them to eat (because they like to say "up
to you", but will start to hem and haw when I say "Ok, Burger King
then"). I guess I just need to know more people of the "expert" breed, with
supernodes that I can tap into :P.