I'm Such a Follower

Four jobs you've had in your life: Martial arts instructor, ride operator at Disneyland, the guy who restocks the shelves at night at Office Max, and bank teller.

Four movies you could watch over and over: Gladiator, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, The Incredibles, and The Matrix

Four places you've lived: Hong Kong, LA, SF Bay Area... and those are the only places I've really lived, so for the fourth one, I'll put Tokyo, since I've spent a total of well over a year there.

Four TV shows you love to watch: Assuming they have to actually be on TV *right now*, my options are pretty limited, as I only have 2 channels that come in clearly o_O Sooooo, that means Lost, Boston Legal, Desperate Housewives, and Grey's Anatomy.

Four places you've been on vacation: Jamaica, Tokyo, Philippines, and Charleston, South Carolina :)

Four websites you visit daily: Something Positive, Questionable Content, Fark, and... Penny Arcade, maybe?

Four of your favorite foods: Pasta (any kind, but the Rigatoni alla Norcina at Steps of Rome in SF is quite possibly my favorite), ice cream, Korean BBQ, and sushi.

Four places you'd rather be: Tokyo, at my mom's, Bali, or London.

Four albums you can't live without: Joshua Tree by U2, Ten by Pearl Jam, self-titled Sugar Soul, Best of by Yamazaki Masayoshi.



Oh, and I'm going to Japan for about a month starting tomorrow :) Wish me luck!

Memories

Meme time!

Most of my childhood summers were spent with relatives in Japan. It was always interesting as my cousin was a year younger than me, so it was always like we had an extra brother for 2 months out of the year. My grandparents and aunt and uncle would take us to all sorts of cool places, and we spent much of our time building plastic Gundam models, playing Famicom games, reading manga, and biking to the nearby parks and recreation centers.

But the highlight of every trip? The Obon Festival. It's a festival that takes place in japan in August, and it is celebrated with an outdoor bazaar of sorts, lined with games, food carts, and general mayhem. In the center, there was always a large tower with a man in a loin cloth banging away on a large taiko drum. Around the base of the tower, people dressed in yukatas (sort of like casual kimonos) would do traditional folk dances in a circle around it.

My aunt would give us each a small amount of money to spend that evening. My cousin and I would sit there and plot how we would maximize the fun-value of our money, examine all the booths, and make sure we had enough money to go to the "kingyo sukui" (translated: "goldfish saving") booth at the end of the evening. I'll get back to that later.

My brother, on the other hand, would almost always blow his entire purse on a single item (BB gun, massive amounts of food, or whatever). And, of course, he'd usually come around to see if he could bum money off of me or my cousin, but we usually stood strong.

We'd head to the toy carts where you they had a bundle of ropes all mixed up, then run through a mesh, and on the other end, each rope is attached to a dangling toy. You would pay money and then pull a rope... whatever toy raised was the one you got. It was always a thrill, trying to figure out what rope connected to what, or simply not knowing what you'd get...

Or there were the bizarre rice cracker booths. You could pay money to eat a plain rice cracker (really good ones, though), or you could pay to spin THE WHEEL OF DOOM!!! Essentially, it was a bonus thing you could do to have a random condiment added to your cracker... and some of them were fairly bizarre. They had chocolate, spices, etc. Fun.

And, of course, the kingyo sukui. You are given a little magnifying glass-shaped scooper with thin paper where the glass should be. You have to use that to scoop as many goldfish out of a giant tub as you can. Of course, the scooper being made of paper makes it fairly difficult... but if you're good, you can get quite a few. In addition to goldfish, there were also tadpoles. Most kids kept the goldfish, but I always traded mine for tadpoles. Simply because I knew I'd only be in Japan for so long, and by the time it was time to leave, they would grow legs and jump out of the little bowl we would keep them in in the backyard...

Simply a great time on a hot summer night with friends and family... I miss those festivals.

The Forces of the Universe Conspire Against Me

My mind is *numb*. It sits in a sac filled of gelatin - and not the tasty, almond-flavored type - cushioned from the impact of everything happening around me. I can't help but think that there is someone pulling the sadistic strings to make me as tired and worn out as possible, or perhaps that the proverbial saying is true: when it rains, it fucking pours.

I won't reiterate the details about my Japanese grandfather; I handled that with my last entry. Little did I know that was simply the tip of the iceberg. Well, most of the events that have happened since then are fairly insignificant in comparison - except one - but when compounded, it makes it feel like getting through a day is not unlike dredging through a muddy marsh, knee deep in, well, mud.

I still hadn't quite figured out how to cope with the possibility of losing another grandfather yesterday afternoon. I was fairly zen-like in my approach, as I feel that I have had a good opporutnity to show him the man that I have become and that I have, perhaps, made him proud. I knew that he had lived a full life, seen and done things many men wouldn't dare speak of, and here at the end, he is surrounded by a loving family. What more can a man ask for?

Yet, as these thoughts turned over in the back of my mind, I received a phone call on my cell phone, in the middle of the work day, no less, from my father. I timidly answered the phone, as I wasn't sure what the unexpected call portended. His voice was shaky - unsure, even - as he began to speak, "I will be going to the hospital in a few minutes for the second time this month." His tears clouded his words, "And I just wanted to say goodbye. I don't think I'm going to make it. I'm tired, and I'm scared..."

I was at a loss for words myself. How do I respond? My father is known for his melodramatic flair. I knew that he had, indeed, been in the hospital recently for pneumonia. Despite his young age of 62, he is aged. He is haggard. And to be honest, he did that to himself with years of steroid abuse, smoking, and excessive drinking. But it doesn't lessen the impact of hearing words like those. I finally gathered myself and asked, "What hospital? Are you going to be alright?"

"I love you," was all that he said in response as he hung up the phone. I tried calling back, but no answer.

I was in a daze for the rest of the day, going through the mechanical motions of working without putting much thought behind anything. It just happened to be that I had to attend focus tests that evening, so was stuck in the office until 11:00 pm. My fiance and I had come to the office together in her car (we work in the same office). We had agreed that she would take the bus home and I would drive home whenever I finished... The one thing I hadn't anticipated was that she assumed I brought the spare key - I assumed she would leave me hers.

So, at around 11:15, I began to wander the streets for a taxi (the buses and trains home had all stopped) and finally found one, and took the $60 cab ride home. Tired and confused, I walked into my apartment, sat down on the couch and tried to distract myself. Nothing worked. My fiance was studying for her finals, so I couldn't dump everything onto her... I figured the best thing would be to go to sleep. So, at about 1:15 in the morning, I crashed...

...only to be awoken at 5:08 by the blaring fire alarm. At first, I thought that perhaps something stupid had set it off. I tried to turn it off, but to no avail. I opened the front door to see everyone else in the building doing the same thing and I quickly surmised that it wasn't just my fire alarm: someone had pulled the alarm. I spent the next 5 minutes gathering the cats - and trust me, they don't like being shoved into duffle bags - ran downstairs to the garage, then threw them in the kitty carrier. After sitting around for another 5 minutes, the ambulance showed up and informed us that it was a false alarm, and that someone had a seizure. Their partner or whatever, in a panic, thought that the best way to get medical help would be to pull the fire alarm. Great.

So, we all shuffled back into our apartments and waited for the fire department to show up to turn off the main switch. And waited. And waited. My already numb brain was simply beginning to melt by this point. And finally, 45 minutes after the alarms had first been set off, the blaring noise stops.

And so, here I am - tired, worn, numb - trying to figure out how I can cram 3 weeks worth of work in by Friday, while attempting to shove everything into the back of my mind to let more primitive parts of my brain deal with the raw emotion.

And really, all I need is some goddamn sleep.