Echo

Older and Wiser
(…or more so, older)

Yesterday I turned 27. Here is a list of things I’ve learned in the last year:

1. Do not set a toaster oven for 12 minutes when making toast.
2. Be careful of mixed company when making jokes about KY, cucumbers and My Little Pony.
3. Two women in a relationship = high drama within a 25 mile radius.
4. Europeans hate us.
5. I have the capacity to keep mayonnaise in my fridge for over 8 months after it expires.
6. My turtle was a girl.
7. You never know who might come back into your life.
8. You never know who might suddenly leave.
9. People are more onto you than you would like to believe.
10. Never complain about your job on the internet when it can be traced back to you.
11. Stalking is an artform if you do it with class.
12. Your past has less power over you than you think.
13. You’re probably doing things that are results of old unconscious wounds as I write this.
14. Sometimes God speaks through the kindness of strangers.
15. Sometimes you just have to let yourself take the leap off the cliff and trust people.
16. The friends you make in life ARE your family.
17. There are a lot of really fucking funny people out there in this world.
18. It doesn’t matter if some people don’t “get” you; there are enough who do.
19. You can always find something that will make you smile.
20. Soul food will make you fatter but happier.
21. Sometimes you can have people in your life you don’t even like, yet you don’t realize it’s okay not to have them in your life anymore.
22. Not everyone in your life wants you to do well.
23. Cherish the people who do.
24. My favorite poker hand is a hand that has all red cards.
25. You’re never too old to make crank calls.

Today is my favorite day of the year!!

I cry shenanigans. This crap they’ve got swimming in their heads is DSM categorical.

6.4.05

He was calm by the time I found him, standing in front of the door to our building as though I hadn’t spent the last hour frantically searching the city for him. He was calm by this time and just wanted to show me the little blue toy car he had bought. We started walking across the street together but I could feel the eyes of the neighbors hot on the back of my neck, their smugness, eagerly anticipating the public discipline I was expected to dole out as restitution for his tantrum. I wasn’t going to give them the satisfaction, those fuckers who believe in a social system where strangers have the right to berate other people’s children for perceived insolence.

Still, I was angry, fueled by the prolonged panic of not being able to find him, of losing him permanently, my only ally. He was talking to me timidly, eyes cast down; I could see that he hoped I wouldn’t bring up his earlier tantrum, what happens when he gets cornered in his brain and wires short-circuit. But I couldn’t control myself. I told him that someday he would go to prison, that someday he would meet a cop who would be happy to shoot a six-foot 220 lb. Asian kid who was acting irrationally, dangerously, screaming and waving his fists at passing strangers. He tried to have a civil conversation, sidestepping the bait but I persisted, relentlessly painting a standoff that escalates into violent inevitability, until it scares him the way it scares me and he explodes. He’s screaming at me, that he’s never going to go to prison because he won’t let them. I can see the scene unfolding in my mind, some trigger happy patrolman looking for stress relief, pulling the plug on a cornered animal exuding potential violence who won’t stop screaming in the middle of the street. It seems too possible of a reality to shake out of my head. I tell him I’m his only friend and he had better listen to me, that there are consequences and he has to learn to control himself. (Or else? I can’t stop thinking about it. Him laying in a black pool of blood that won’t stop spreading…because they don’t understand, they don’t understand that God speaks through him. And I know I’ve just been cruel). He tells me he hates them, he hates me. So I punch him. And leave.

When I get home I get his mom on the phone. I tell her she has to come home now, there’s been trouble. I make my voice cold so she knows that I blame her, that I want it to tear up her insides too, that I blame her for not being there. She hangs up; I look out the window. I see he has reached the street corner, stepping tentatively, looking at both possibilities of directions to cross. 36 more seconds before one light turns red and another turns green. Reckless scooters zip by, dangerously close. He contemplates, uncertain, frightened. I am not there for him.

I hold my breath until he’s made it safely across the street. Inside, I keep telling myself, robots don’t cry.

Who are these people? And are we really bonded to them? Is love only a chemical reaction? Are we all strangers, each dangerous to another in some way? can anyone really understand my loneliness? Maybe there’s something to be said about how exquisite the pain is. I, personally, wouldn’t give it up for the world.

People with good intentions become fixated on conquering your loneliness, a smothering kind of good will masking a power play where they secret hope to become your sole lifeline. But they don’t understand the devastation that ensues when this lifelong companion is taken away. They don’t know that what you really needed was a tether to a safe place when you’ve been set adrift. Can anyone really understand why I cry at night? What wakes me up at 2am feeling the presence of other, heavier spirits around me? What crowds into my head as I walk amongst people and see their individual secret tragedies?

And trust. What is that. How can we expect any kind of trust when we aren’t strong enough to reveal the truth when it matters?

If you’re a Warriors fan, you’ll know why this picture is awesome.

Lost in Translation

I watched Troy last night and I have to ask, who decided that when doing a period piece set wherever, all of the actors must speak with an English accent? Almost everyone in the movie chose to use an English accent to authenticate the movie, even despite the fact that they were supposed to be Greeks. And then along comes Eric Bana playing Hector of Troy who says, “Well if we get to choose our own accent, I’m going to speak with my native Australian affectations.” So he spends the movie sounding like an Australian while everyone else was English. If I were in the movie, I would bring an Indian accent. Just to really mix it up.

On the subject of languages, Colin RSVP’d to my evite for my birthday party, then RSVP’d again after translating his original RSVP comments from English to Spanish to English to German to English. The results:

(Original)

Martin may be out of town, but that just means more spanking left for your tight buns. The tightest, juiciest buns in Taiwan I would reckon. I think junkster91 said it best: “man up” Shih, and get ready to beg for mercy. Or beg for more…

(After a game of Multi-Lingual Telephone)

Martin is outside city, but this means more whips for her firm rolls. The tight, more substantially of Taiwan,as if it would count. I think junkster91 of this is better:”it serves over” as Shih, prepared for grace, to ask in the situation. Or requires more… Prepare thine tight rolls!

I burst blood vessels in my head from laughing.

So I thought I would translate one of my posts a la CornishColin. I took an excerpt of my foot massage post. You can read the original below. The translation from English to Spanish to English:

Obtained blocked outside this house. Directed under the street towards a massage of the foot. According to reflexology Chinese, a vigorous one (read: ) the painful massage of the foot improves other corporal functions. For $6 more, a massage of the shoulder was offered. It rubbed my shoulders like 3 times before spending the 20 minutesnext in my end, internal thighs and… Reggie called and asked him how many massages of the shoulder implyareas near Donde-$$$-$$$-MALO-HOMBRE-TOCAR-USTED the areas. He laughed. Perhaps in Taiwan, the shoulders of a person are in an extremely diverse area ofbody.

Massage of the foot: $30.
Massage of the shoulder: $6.
Obtaining bothered by a toothless middle-aged Chinese man:

We went to this Russian bakery for drinks after the supper. They have this unit of the refridgerator that becomes a “barof the ice,”with the ice that covers the shelves, floor and sweeps, finish with snowman miniature of the ice. There were hundreds of vodkas to choose of. We chose two of Russia, including that it was test 160. I will never ingest any thing that is test 160 unless it istrying officially to kill to me. My stomach still burned one more average-hour ahead, and combined with the fact that there is smoking total within bars inTaiwan, I had to call it late early due to desire to put my headin a dressing table.It went to house, Called Reggie. It had called my time in the morning, then drunk marked him again in 1am. He was strange because in its end, it had received a call of me takes at night and thenfollowing day. How many drunk dials want you always receive in 10amWednesday, I asked to him. Esperanzadamente, not that many, unless somebody is trying to promulgate again scenes wereto leave Fertile valleys.

And then worse, a smaller excerpt of my words going back to English to Dutch to English:

Massage of the foot: $30.Massage of the shoulder: $6.To obtain impeded by tandenloze Chinese people on middleage: We went to this Russian bakery for spirits after the supper. They have this entity of refridgerator which a bar becomesof the ice, floor and range, finite with snowman miniature of the ice. There were hundreds choose vodka of. We chose two of Russia, including that was tests 160. I never no matter which thing take that tests 160 is unless itisofficially trying to me kill. My flatulence burned still one more gemiddeld-uur ahead, I had it been appropriate let early clamours wish my put headin dressing itself list.

Wait, wait, WAIT! “Flatulence!” I don’t remember talking about that!

And then suddenly, thinking about flatulence naturally led me to thoughts of…Bon Jovi. What would happen if I took revered songs by Bon Jovi and put them through the language ringer?

Let’s see.

I took the Bon Jovi song that most sounded like flatulence (You Give Love a Bad Name), and translated it from English to German back to English, then to Japanese back to English. Here are the results:

(Original)

An angel’s smile is what you sell
You promise me heaven, then put me through hell
Chains of love got a hold on me
When passion’s a prison, you can’t break free
You’re a loaded gun
There’s nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

Paint your smile on your lips
Blood red nails on your fingertips
A school boy’s dream, you act so shy
Your very first kiss was your first kiss goodbye
You’re a loaded gun
There’s nowhere to run
No one can save me
The damage is done

(Translated)

It is shot by the center
And acre of responsibility
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A
I bear my role, do your play
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A
Those give the ton love of name of the bathroom of A

Paint your smile of your lip
Speak the nail of the blood of the point of your finger
Dream of the pupil of A,
those operate so bashfulness
Kiss of the kiss your roofridge of all roofridge way if
Those of acre stacked the load in the rifle
That does the flexible ton of emergency of operation anywhere
Who can my pure curtain
The damage happened

Again, an occurence of things which happen in the bathroom. Seems that whenever other languages have trouble translating us, it assumes its something potty.

Retard.

I use the word more often than one would expect considering my personal sensitivities. Each time I say the word, it’s a game of chicken with a piece of verbal expression, a stigma–I dare it to have any emotional pull on the strings that tie to my rage and pain. Because it doesn’t mean anything. REtard–a mispronounciation. Retarded–underdeveloped. Somehow, the process was halted by external forces. But at least it was on its way.

The Mandarin phrase for the word “retard” translated to English is “Wastedly fed.” The two words are “wasted/pointless” and “eat.” The phrase is quite morbidly poetic–if your child is retarded, why bother diverting resources to feed and nurture it when it will only grow up to be a non-factor in human civilization? What’s the point of feeding an idiot child who will never contribute to the collective, the phrase asks. A retard is a bad investment. With a normal kid, you’re playing the lottery. You take shares of your resources that are necessary for your survival and you divert it towards your children, hoping that when they become fully matured and able-bodied, these investments will bring returns in the form of income for the family or caretakers for the parents. If your kid becomes a wealth business man, that’s a great investment. If your kid goes towards a life of crime and you spend his adult life paying his legal fees, that’s a terrible investment. And then there’s the retarded kid, where you know right off the bat your returns will always be in the red. So why feed a monster that only bleeds your resources and brings no quantifiable returns?

When I really started to think about what this phrase, this label meant today, it made me think about families who were really poor, about families who are struggling to survive. Did they have a kid who was mentally disabled and refuse to feed him because the logical survivalistic decision was to feed the able-bodied kids who could develop and work the fields and bring back something to help the family? Did they kill them right away once they realized what kind of kid they had because it was pointless to nurture something that was already flawed from the start?

I realized today, that Asians have quite a way with language. With two Chinese characters, they could sum up a person in such a tight, cruel little box, that it’s almost too logical not to make complete sense, and yet it doesn’t. Whenever I walk into stores, the first thing I think is if they look at my brother and think, “bai tzi.” In Asia, we don’t walk around with our shame pinned to our chests. We leave our shame at home, in a dark backroom somewhere, or shipped off to a distant relative we’ve never met. And we don’t get to decide what is deemed shameful and obscene. Others will do so for you. You most certainly do not walk into a retail store in a busy commercial area, trying to pass off damaged goods as a human being. And if these people who see him and recognize him as being categorized by the only label the language provides for this “type,” if they sat down and analyzed their spite for this lesser man’s existence, would they discover that they can see why the source of this label is a fairly logical argument, that it’s pointless to nurture a human being who just feeds off resources without giving any positive contributions? Do they realize that with one label, they’ve deemed my brother not just worthless and a non-human, but a parasite?

I hate that phrase with everything in me. I hear, say, read the word “retard” in English and it doesn’t mean anything to me. Friends ask, “Do you get offended when I say the word retarded?” No. Because the more it gets used for random things, for anecdotal nonsensical actions, for satirical slander, for a throwaway moniker, the more that word loses its power. It no longer shreds at my love for my baby brother by nailing him to his flaws because it is an impotent piece of slang, and I can laugh at it the way I can laugh at a bully caught with his pants down.

But there is only one way to describe people like my brother in Chinese; we do not mince words or ideas with political correctness. No, Asians are far too efficient. They can cut him down with the only label available within their language, innocently enough, but with a malice that is so deeply embedded into the character of the words, that people don’t even realize how awful of an idea it is to pin on any human being. They don’t realize that the label, in one fell judgment, asks disdainfully, “Why is this person still allowed to live?” Our empire was built upon sacrificing our humanity in favor of efficiency, oh Chinese brothers and sisters. Let us not forget that aspect.

I’m known for fighting vehemently for causes and for becoming enraged by injustices far and wide just because there’s no sense or balance within injustice. But today, I realized how rageful I am with one phrase, and I realized how often it is that I walk into a place and I brace myself for the rage I feel when I watch a salesperson size up my brother and wonder if that word has flickered into that person’s consciousness. It is not the salesperson that I am angry towards, for whatever judgments he or she may or may not make; it is anger at the sheer fact that two Chinese characters, two short syllables, can strip away all the goodness and holiness that exists in my brother and frame him as a quantifiable production negative, and that it is implied that others can judge whether or not he’s worthy to be allowed to live.

If people were actually conscious about what they were saying, this phrase should not be in the vocabulary anymore.

Taiwan Update

Got locked out of this house. Headed down the street for a foot massage. According to Chinese reflexology, a vigorous (read: painful) foot massage improves other bodily functions. For $6 more, was offered a shoulder massage. Took it because my neck/shoulders have been tight since running 7 miles on the treadmill at the gym. He rubbed my shoulders like 3 times before spending the next 20 minutes on my butt, inner thighs and…climbing on top of me and reaching around to my stomach? Called Reggie and asked him how many shoulder massages involve areas close to where-did-the-bad-man-touch-you areas. He laughed. Maybe in Taiwan, a person’s shoulders are in a vastly different area of the body.

Foot massage: $30.
Shoulder massage: $6.
Getting molested by a toothless middle-aged Chinese man: priceless.

It was Bohr’s birthday yesterday so my former boss took us out for his birthday. We went to this Russian bakery for drinks after dinner. They have this refridgerator unit that’s been converted into an “ice bar,” with ice covering the shelves, floor and bar, complete with miniature ice snowman. There were hundreds of vodkas to choose from. We picked two from Russia, including one that was 160 proof. I will never ingest anything that is 160 proof unless I am officially trying to kill myself. My stomach was still burning a half hour later, and combined with the fact that there is mass smoking inside bars in Taiwan, I had to call it an evening early due to wanting to put my head in a toilet.

Went home, called Reggie. I had called in the morning my time, then drunk dialed him again at 1am. It was weird because on his end, he had received a call from me late at night and then the next day. So it was still the same day for me but another day from him. How many drunk dials will you ever receive at 10am on a Wednesday, I asked him. Hopefully, not that many, unless someone is trying to re-enact scenes out of Leaving Las Vegas.

My ex-boss has lost a lot of weight. I haven’t seen him in years. He’s married now and expecting a daughter at the end of this month. He’s still a very attractive guy, in a very low-key, quiet manner, and girls fall hard for him as witnessed by the fact that all the girls in the office went nuts when he and his girlfriend broke up while I was working with him. I’m not talking about a handful. I’m talking about over 30 girls, complete competitive madness as though an attainable celebrity were now available. I was watching him last night and I think I figured out what it is. He’s very soft-spoken, easy-going, nice, subtly charismatic, etc. But he always looks sad; there’s just this inherent sadness to his energy, that just demands the instinctive nurturing side of a woman to want to be gentle with him. Yet he’s dynamic in his career and very successful. It brings out the part of a woman who wants to save a man, the part that thinks that with unconditional love, you can open up a person and fulfill them, and once that happens, he’ll take care of her in return. It’s somewhat risky reasoning, but it is what it is and it’s the basis of many relationships. But some people just carry around inexplicable sadness and I suspect that with people such as this guy, no one will ever be privy to what it is that makes him so sad, in certain deep, private chambers inside of him, no matter how unconditional the love. I suspect this type of sadness is so deepseated that it’s been with him for quite a long time, and he wouldn’t feel whole without it, so as a result, those around him either overlook this aspect or if they notice, they have to accept that there will always be a private part of him that they will never get to see. Some people’s loneliness comes from the inside out, and nothing from the outside can warm that part of them. It makes them who they are.

5/31 1:58pm

Somewhere back on the west coast in the U.S. it’s probably still Memorial Day but I have no idea anymore. I’ve been getting up around 6am running the 6 blocks down to get my family breakfast, then going back to sleep until a more godly hour. I also take lots of naps. I rationalize this by watching my 7-month pregnant aunt take 3-4 naps a day, and say that since I limit myself to two per day, it’s not quite as shameful. I think I’m one of those people who take vacations that allow for laziness and lounging, rather than those who take vacations with manic itineraries.

I watched the final minute of the Suns/Spurs game. I’m sure there will be much said about the blown call at the end when Amare’s block of Tim Duncan’s dunk should have been a goaltending call. I don’ t care though. It was pretty.

As for a half-assed trip recap, we left Friday evening and arrived late Saturday morning here. There are 8 of us sharing my grandmother’s 3-bedroom condo–my cousin Bohr and his mom, my aunt Jodie and her husband, my mom, brother and I, and of course, my grandmother. At least there are 2 bathrooms and plenty of mirrors for all the women to get ready in the morning. We hit up a street market for a late dinner. The thing about Taiwan is that there are what feels like hundreds of street vendors in any given alley, all selling some form of fried food most likely containing processed fish product. But it’s all fairly cheap, ranging from 50 cents U.S. to $2, so you can pretty much try 4-5 different things all for under the cost of an entree at a cheap diner. And you never have to tip.

The meat is so fresh that they pretty much slaughter the animal sometimes right in their little space, something that luckily, I have yet to witness. I did see a whole pig floating in the water when we went to visit this seaside market area (kind of like 3rd Street Promenade in Los Angeles); it must have fallen off one of the boat ferries. I couldn’t stop staring because it was kind of sad to see this slaughtered pig floating in the water surrounded by random trash. Like it died for nothing. My mom requested that I not take a picture of it (as she had earlier in the day with the La Muff sign), because she doesn’t like me portraying Asians in a bad way.

The second night we were here, my mom’s oldest brother (aka my rich uncle) had this family reunion banquet. It wasn’t so much a family reunion, as all the family members who happened to be here this week, and 25 of his friends. He had rented out the events room of a nice restaurant and had a man with a Casio running a karaoke machine. Whoever invented the dinner format of having karaoke going on as people try to eat should be shot. Whoever thinks that a respectable job description is “Man who runs a karaoke machine while backing up the music with one-fingered notes on a Casio keyboard” is someone who still lives in his parents’ garage. It was mildly awful. The head of D-Link was there. I wanted to ask him for a job. The night ended with Bohr’s mom up alone on the stage with the microphone saying, “Bohr! Do you want to come up here and sing You Are My Sunshine?….Bohr?…..Julia? You Are My Sunshine?…” I don’t think the human language has an emphatic enough way of saying no in answer to questions like those.

Yesterday was the first day of the Computex show, which was why most of my family is out here. So they all left in the day and it was just me, my pregnant aunt, my brother and my grandmother left to nap away the day. I took Michael to the 12-story department store that’s designed after the department stores in Japan. I lost my brother at one point and had to enact a floor to floor search. After searching each floor from top to bottom, I decided to take the elevator up to the top floor, which was where I had last seen him. The funny thing about the elevator was that there’s a very graceful young woman in white gloves who ushers people into the elevator, and another inside who pushes the buttons. The funny thing was that whenever someone’s floor came up, she would say in Chinese, “Forgive me, but this is the [3rd] floor.” I’ve noticed that about the different service jobs. Rather than just announcing something, they always pre-empt it with, “Forgive me” or “I am deeply sorry,” etc. Like, “I am deeply sorry, but here is your order of fried meat product.” Maybe it’s the way they say excuse me, just twisted by a severe translation. Regardless, it makes us sound like pushovers.

I have just bought a bunch of grapes that I thought cost the equivalent of $1.50US, but actually cost $7US. Damn my limited Chinese vocabulary. For 7 bucks, these things had better get me drunk or something.

I’m in Taiwan right now. No, it doesn’t have to do with the dead hooker in my trunk. I ditched her in my neighbor’s backyard weeks ago. I’m here for quality family time. I plan to spend my trip going to the gym for hours at a time, while binging on street-vendor food that would make a health-safety inspector commit suicide in frustration.

Yesterday we passed a cafe named, La Muff.

I took a picture of the sign for this blog. My mom said, You had better not post that on your website and portray Asians in a bad way. I said, I’m not the one who called my restaurant, La Muff.

more cowbell.

More Human Idiocy

One Of the Funniest Things I’ve Ever Seen

“Next time…we’ll bring a bigger crane…”