The French-Asian Connection

Hello again! Long time, yes?

I've been suffering from a bitter ennui, not unlike those suffered by young male antagonists/foils who have not-very-attractive-but-devastatingly-smart-governesses who are remarkably similar to the intended readers of such novels. Confused yet? So am I! Victorian novels a la Bronte and Austen are the Dickens! And Dickens is the Dickens too!

To the heart of this post: so I meet this moi qua* girl at a random event and we eventually agree to exchange emails because she's interested in applying to pharmacy school. Before anyone gets their hopes up (mines included) that this is going to be some sordid, embarrassing tale in which I perform an auto-foot-in-mouth procedure, I must say that I only go for the girls who have the keen sense to not go for me. That is, I want what I can't have, and don't want what I could have. However arrogant that may sound, it is the truth, and it probably applies to a whole lot of folks.

Anyway, as a test suitability or a test of curiosity (or a lapse in judgment), this girl sends me an email in Vietnamese. I take my time reading the Viet without the diacritical marks, which I suppose is how Viet people email each other since it would suck to stop every other letter to insert a symbol. And as I near the end, I see some intelligible words! English, alas! Who other than an English-speaking person would ever call English intelligible?**

[paraphrased] "Please let me know if you can't read it. I'll send it again in English."

Oh how you underestimate the virile, semi-intelligent man. I would have learned Swahili by how if there were fine Swahili chicks to ogle outside my door.

--

end what g thinks is humor, and start what g thinks is educational and insightful

--

So in Vietnamese, it is vitally important that one address another person with the proper title. It is a sign of respect and gives context to the situation. Using the equivalents for 'you' and 'I' is highly disrespectful, and if there's a familial relationship, it denotes ignorance since you didn't know how he/she is related.

Not very important for our American tourists, but probably important for someone who wants to marry into this crazy culture.

To be safe, most MQ who are learning to use the concept of 'you' and 'I' simply use the English 'you' and 'I' instead of the Vietnamese equivalents. For example, ten cua you la nguoi doc chu, ten cua mi la g.***

But to be safe (and cute), some girls use the term title em, and address the guys as anh. Which can mean simply that she is younger, but also implies that you may have a chance to be more than that (because she could have used some other title instead)!

Do I overthink things? Most deftly and definitely. But the punch-line of this super long and boring setup is nigh, the reason for the 'French-Asian' part of the title.

Instead of using anh throughout the email, she shortens it to a simple A. near the end. It reminds me of the single French M. as the abbreviation for monsieur. So in addition to the French baguettes, those colonists also gave the Viet people the idea for abbreviating titles. Or perhaps it's the modern American influence: Anh makes 141 characters, A. makes 140!

I know, the punch-line, set-up, and everything in between were terrible!

--

*MQ, moi qua, Viet for 'just came over'

**Say 'car' and then say 'cat.' Why is the 'ca' in both words not sound the same? There you go.

***Your name is readers, my name is g.

Convalescence Week 2

To the recovering,

The first time I heard the word 'convalescent' that I cared to look up the meaning** was in 2pac's I Ain't Mad At Cha.

'Til God return me to my essence

Cause even as an adolescent, I refuse to be a convalescent'

It's a killer rhyme, but even in context, I still doesn't make sense to me. So even as a kid, he'd rather die than to be holed up in a hospital recuperating?

--

I have a peculiar tendency to turn ever so mildly into a seething psychotic when my sleep gets out of whack. But I am Asian (and DSM-IV-TR is as real to us as Snooki's* tan), and we hold and bottle our problems only to vent them in a self-destructive cataclysm of drinking and gambling-- at least that is what the Viet do.

But I've grown increasingly unaccustomed to alcohol, as the two bottles of premium single malt that have remained half-empty for a nearly a year can attest. And I've never been much of a gambler, since I think it's really silly to play something for the long-term that probability states I will lose in the long-term. So it builds and it swells until it can no longer be ignored.

And after the sound and the fury, there came a darkness upon the land. And in the cool, drizzling breeze of the night, the parched earth was flooded then rejuvenated with life-giving waters. And when the ground was quenched of its drought, it was ready to approach the light of day with renewed vigor.

Very poor imagery aside, I must have slept for about 60% of last week, which is absolutely amazing for the mind but terrifically terrible for the lower back, especially on a faux memory foam mattress topper. I did some golf and fishing. I tried reading a little bit, but my attention waned in favor of serial watching of anime. But most importantly, I did not do what I didn't want to do or have to do.

I am an invisible man not because people refuse to see me, but because I refuse[d] to see myself. More on this and other thoughts/ideas later.

--

I was taught as a child that I must do what is necessary***. That 'necessary' was to redeem some archaic notion of family honor. It's a story taken straight out of a cheesy Chinese Kung Fu flick complete with bad voice dubs. Though I have (for the most part) shed the burden of hundreds of years of tradition, that mantra still remained: to do what is necessary.

Except what was necessary did not include my own well-being. It should always include one's own well being, or there should be a damn good reason it doesn't.

But there is no use in armchair psychology-ing yourself all the time. We should all all take it easy, be the optimist hole mole, and get tatted up with 'THUG ANGEL' on a whim. Because it is 'pretty cool'!

by Austin Havican, from UH's Daily Cougar. Sadly, holemoles.com doesn't exist anymore.

(I would be concerned about the scattered thoughts, but it makes perfect sense [to me] how this bit about hole moles connects to 2Pac, which connects to the rest of the stuff because of the convalescing thing. And besides, I can't exactly end on such a dreary note!)

--

*I cannot stomach Jersey Shore, and I am bemused that so many of my FB friends keep up with that show.

**When I read novels, I skip most unknown words since the context usually gives the meaning.

***"It is no use saying, 'We are doing our best.' You have got to succeed in doing what is necessary." - Winston Churchill

A New Dawn... in 4 hours

To insomniacs,

All bleeding stops eventually: the blood manages to clot, the docs figure out the source, or you bleed out. In any case, all bleeding will stop and it's just a question of when. You just hope that you don't have to die before that happens.

The figurative bleeding has subsided. I don't know if it has stopped, but I feel better. But I just can't seem to sleep for more than 4 hours without an OTC sleep aid, and those make me feel like I haven't slept when I do wake up.

Life after an epiphany should not be so eventful. When I jumped ship to Dallas, I thought I had finally escaped from a nightmare. But I have found that my salvation eventually morphed into my new captor. What irony: to blow a wall in your jail cell to find fleeting freedom only to realize that you're still in a greater prison!

But the new dawn approaches in less than four hours. And I think I will be better. I have spent so many years becoming wrong. Now is the time to get right, whatever right is.

'Dig me up from under what is covering

The better part of me.'

A Sometimes Love But Mostly Hate Relationship

To the disenchanted and never-enchanted,

Not sure if I ever posted this (perhaps in my previous blog): No matter how much you love your job, you'll always love your paycheck just a little more.

I said this to a gentleman when I got my first paycheck as a pharmacist a little less than 2 years ago. It was a relatively massive payday for a formerly Ramen-eating college student without much money to his name. I had just moved to the Dallas area, signed a 1-year apartment lease on the fly without looking at any other places, and survived my first week as a night pharmacist.

I had a stupid, toothy grin on my face, and the cash office manager made a note to tell the technicians when I left. 'So [g], I heard you were pretty happy this morning...,' my coworker teased with a devilish smirk.

Those were happier times. And though it was a difficult at first, it's turning out to be the best job I've had thus far. And I was so ready to commit to it, to being a night pharmacist, to living in Dallas, to a white picket fence, 2.5 kids, being a big disappointment* to my parents, everything.

But I guess it just wasn't meant to be.

--

Less than two years later, I'm still a night pharmacist, but things are different. It's unlikely I'll settle in a college town, let alone commit to a company whose business model relies heavily on Eli Whitney's interchangeable parts.

And this being my 3rd workplace thus far, I've grown dissatisfied, remembering all the good times and none of the bad of my previous two.

So I've been thinking about what I want to do with my life, because this doesn't feel like it. This no longer feels right. This relationship has stagnated and the end seems inevitable. But what will come when daylight finally breaks? Why am I so terrified of waking?

Is the known darkness preferred over the unknown light? Or will the light simply illuminate the cliff's edge where my un-derail-able train is heading?

But a check is a check, even if it's direct deposit. And although those electronic numbers don't hit my online savings account until tomorrow, I got to view the paystub online, and it reminded me of that first morning when I had that several thousand dollar check in my hand.

Too bad every payday can't be like the first time.

My solution for happier employees: Pay everyone his/her earnings right after their shift in cash. Better hope there's not a 'gentlemans' club near by.

--

*I've become less of a disappointment to my parents, but it's only because they've warmed to the idea that I've refused to become a medical doctor :)

Blown Fuse & Healthcare Reform

To Current Events Buffs,

Do you seriously watch CNN/CSPAN? I understand why people leave news networks on the in the background but that stuff is strangle-yourself boring/depressing. Unless it has a chance of affecting me somewhat indirectly, I don't really care. My political view is that if it gets so bad in the U.S., I'll move to Canada or some other English-speaking country.

Though healthcare reform does affect me a little, considering I'm a drug dealer, I could care less about the whole debate and the death panels, etc. It's not like I can really change much (please don't get P Diddy to text me with, 'Vote or Die!'). Like one vote matters anyway. Incidentally, I did register to vote when I renewed my driver license but that's in the off-chance that I meet some girl who'd find my non-voting an issue.

So let's make light on the whole healthcare issue by relating it to a practical problem: The AC in my car went out last August. In the Texas heat. 120 miles southwest of Houston, which meant that it was even hotter. And it wasn't fixed until 2 weeks ago, when my mom finally visited my uncle to get it check out.

The problem? A blown fuse, probably costing less than $10, for which I spent the better part of 8 months sweating away whilst driving 2hrs to and from Victoria (TX). And suffering on drives around Houston, sometimes in dress clothes. I'd have to hold the steering wheel in such a way that the fan blowing warm air would reach my axillary cavities* so as to not have pit stains by the time I got to where I needed to be.

Why didn't I just visit a body shop just to see what was wrong? Well, that's pretty good 20/20 hindsight you have there! I should have done that very thing when the AC went out, but you see, my uncle is a Toyota mechanic and being the younger sibling, he's obligated to do pro bono work for his older siblings, namely my parents. Thus, my parents always take it to him to check it out. That is when they have the time.

The great thing about my beater of a car is that the only thing I pay for is gas. It's in my parents' name and they pay the insurance. It's been paid off. And until recently, I've done zero maintenance on it. It's like borrowing your neighbors' tools: you can abuse it and run it to the ground without a second thought.

But when it's broken, you have to wait for them to get it fixed. So August passed, and so did September. And the weather was cool some weeks, so Mama put off getting the car checked out. Then it was winter during which some freak 85-degree days ruined some shirts. Then I stopped working, so there was really no point in getting it fixed since I was no longer driving to Victoria anyway.

But then I started working again in April, at another place 2 hrs away from Houston. Twice I had to drive in the hellish heat. No more! After much pleading, threats**, and guilt trips, she finally took that damn car to my uncle's shop.

A. Blown. Friggin. Fuse...

Mama made it sound like something expensive and magical. She popped the hood and the fuse box to show me what had been wrong, and the 'expensive' $10 replacement fuse. I should've simmered over in the boiling blood of all those stupid 100-degree drives, but it was my fault too. If I had gotten it checked out (and possibly invested in the beater), I wouldn't have suffered.

--

So it is with the new healthcare reform, supposedly. In the U.S. you can get the best healthcare in the world so long as you have the greenbacks or greenback equivalents to pay for it. With the new socialized medicine, you might have to wait to see a specialist or spends months on a waiting list for a 'life-saving' procedure. Again, I don't care either way. When I get sick, I'll put more thought into it. After all, that's the American way of thinking.

The car story parallel explained: Free uncle fixing car = socialized medicine. Paying some random auto-mechanic who could price gouge me and find 'other problems' = non-socialized medicine.

But I would've gotten AC much quicker the second way.

Moral of the story: Get a free estimate somewhere, then get the free uncle hookup.

Thanks beater, for burning me up with your [lack of AC].

--

*armpits

**'Just watch! I'm going to buy a $40k car just to show you!' One of my mom's worse fears is that we waste money.

De-Gentrification of Golf

to weekend hackers,

Don't play golf on weekends, silly people! You can get a noon tee-time during the week for $20 tax included with a cart. That is if you can off work/school during the week to enjoy this new trend in sport/leisurely activity.


(playing here sometime this week)

If you had told me 10 years ago that I'd actually sorta/kinda like golf when I got older, I would've made a pity-filled half-smile/frown I reserved for people I thought were mentally/physically challenged (there were 3 slashes in that last sentence, which is/are a bit much).

But here I am today, hacking away at a stationary white ball like millions of people across the world, doing my figurative part to pay back for years of oppression by the chang** men. And now that I can actually hit the thing with some consistency, it is actually pretty fun. It is honestly a really stupid game made by rich people in developed countries who have no worry about food, clothing or shelter, but when you have no frustration in your life, you have to make some or else you die or cheat on your wife. So wives, be thankful that your husbands' mistress is the fairway wood and not another kind of wood.

But besides thinking every once in awhile that the white golf ball is the head of some colonist a hundred years ago who came and raped Vietnam, it's a plus to see the irritated faces of the my chang when my friends and I invade their little side of paradise. Fourteenth Amendment! You lost the Civil War and the Vietnam War--them's the spoils of victory/defeat.

If it's convenient, we'll replace the divot and perhaps a ball-mark if it's nicely in our path. But we're here to play a cheap, fun round of golf, not pay homage to hundreds of years of upper-class snobbery. We're here to de-gentrify golf, just as rich folks are tearing down projects to build $3 million houses next to run-down shacks on MacGregor near Univ of Houston. Because more than a few people in the 15% tax bracket knew that Rory McIlroy choked horribly at that Master's.

But I guess in a way, the de-gentrification of golf and the gentrification of urban slums are moves toward a more homogeneously heterogeneous middle, a death by entropy. It is not combative or controversial, it is simply natural and eventual.

That is until the robots take over, either those that we create now or those that come back from the future to make us their slaves. And I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords. But we'll assimilate robot parts and be like cyborgs or something, so it will be cool until the aliens come, and then they'll eventually mate with us after all that probing is done so we'll be one species. Punctuated equilibrium to dynamic equilibrium, rinse & repeat ad infinitum.

Yes, I just moved from golf to a broad generalization and trivialization of gentrification to a shout-out to Terminator/Watson, IBM's new supercomputer, and then stuff about aliens and equilibrium.
--

*I don't know the number, just throwing this out there
**white

Two Overlooked Reasons for Needing a Girl

to the single,

Guys really just want one thing from women, and that--as we all know--is the thoughtful conversational skills that they offer that other dudes simply cannot supply unless horrendously drunk. Oh, and that other thing too.

But besides those two things, there are two very overlooked reasons for needing female companionship, and those are as a supplier of nail polish remover and conservative country fodder.
--

In Texas, we have our vehicle registration sticker on the driver side windshield, generally above the inspection sticker. In the past, it used to be a couple of laminated, heavy stickers put directly on the license plates.*


(not my stickers, not that I'd have any stalkers, but you never know)

And because they're stickers, they come with an innate problem. They're sticky. And they leave that awful sticky residue after you remove them, which is a serious problem for people with mild OCD. Global warming almost compares to this problem since there is still some doubt about its verity (those people likely also doubt evolution), whereas you can clearly see the mildly sticky contamination on your windshield not unlike spots on Monica Lewinsky's wardrobe circa 1996: not blaringly obvious, but they're there if you look.

Usually tape will take care of most stickiness, the stronger the better. Double-sided is the best; duct tape usually makes it worse. Adhere to the sticky spot and quickly tear it off like a Band-Aid. The stickiness should come off eventually. It's best if the sticker was recently removed, but if the residue is old, you're really SOL.

That is unless you have acetone. But if you don't have access to a variety of flammable organic solvents (a la trailer in the country which has a nasty tendency to blow up), the next best thing is nail polish remover. Which if you don't have a female presence in your life, you'd have to buy it at the store which would be awkward since why would a guy need nail polish remover. 'Dude, I swear it's for that residue left on the windshield after you remove those stickers, and not for the black nail polish I use when I'm feeling noir-ish'.

No problem since I'm at home, and Mama's medicine cabinet is stock full of random stuff, including a bottle of nail polish remover probably older than me. Which was a deep violet color, which I wondered was intentional or a product of degradation. But it's not as if solvents expire (and those drugs that have an '09 expiration date are probably still good, but I can't legally recommend you take it, so use your common sense there).

The sticker came off easy enough, and the tape trick took off most of the fresh gunk left behind. But last year, Dad wasn't as OCD about removing the residue, so that was still left on there. After the tape failed, I soaked some napkins with the sweet smelling solvent. *Wipe...

*sigh, [Fine Needle Aspiration..**]

It just pushed the muck around, and it now had brown specks since I used a brown napkin (those ones you get at fast food restaurants).

I've made a huge mistake.

After calming down a bit, I realized some of the glue was now on the napkin. So after another intensive 5 minutes, the rest of it came off the glass. And I stickered the new vehicle registration in place very analytically with the next 5 minutes.

I still can't diagnose myself with OCD since I only spent 35min doing something a sane person would do in 5. Only 30 more minutes of craziness to reach the 1hr daily cutoff.
--

The great thing about road trips to and from my workplace are that I get to see the local fauna and flora, the fauna mostly being the cattle which would end up as steaks across Texas. And the flora from March to May is the state flower, the Texas bluebonnet.


(It resembles those hooded old-fashioned headwear worn by women in the past and they're blue, hence bluebonnet)

And if you permit me this loss of a man-card, bluebonnets are simply magnificent! Maybe it was all the brainwashing in 6th grade Texas Social Studies when they taught us about all the state symbols, like the state bird and tree which I think are the roadrunner and magnolia, respectively***. But the only thing I remembered from all that nonsense (anything that doesn't exist in and of itself and requires documented history is too much information for me. With science, all that was discovered and will be discovered is already present [or omni-present], whereas history could be altered if someone were to wipe out history books and alter human memories) is the bluebonnet, because I think they were the coolest thing when I was growing up.

But they're weeds, and you would hate for them to be in your yard, and you'd mow the heck out of them and litter pesticides that will run off into the Houston Ship Channel. But when they're in the median between two unnatural concrete/asphalt monstrosities criss-crossing this great state of Texas, they're damn beautiful.

And you (and by you, I mean me) just want to stop by the side of the 70mph interstate like some idiot to take a Zyrtec and roll around in those damn weeds, except you're a single guy, and that'd be really weird. And you're in a conservative part of Texas, and they don't take kindly to men who'd make real that awful perversion (in their minds) of Brokeback Montain.

But if you had a girl, that'd be totally cool. You'd just have to nudge and manipulate her, and then say stuff like, 'Really, you want to stop by the side of the road to take a picture for your Facebook profile? Seriously?' when you're absolutely giddy beyond words.

I'm only half joking. But there were quite a few couples last year when I was driving to and from Dallas who stopped in a field of bluebonnets to take pictures. I did want to stop, but it was like Frost's Stopping by Woods on a Snowy Evening: no reason to stop and many miles to go, both literally and figuratively.
--

*I remember because my dad used a chisel to remove it, which I thought was the coolest thing in the world. I was 9.
**F'n A
***wrong and wrong, supposedly it's the mockingbird and pecan according to Google