Monday, November 15, 2010

Lost

I don't know what to do.

I'm as lost as you.

Everyone says I have all the answers but this time I don't.

I don't know what to say, how to feel, or what the rules are.

I just want to fix it.

I just want you to know that I trust you. With everything I have.

Please be careful.

Please take care.

It's never been broken, but I can feel it starting to crack.

If that's what needs to happen for you to feel good, then I gladly take that burden upon myself, I'll gladly wait, and I'll gladly waste away in silence.

Know that, to me, you mean more than me.

My inaction is not a sign up apathy, in fact it's the opposite, it's me showing you I care.

I hope you get. If not to day, then some day.

Just remember that I'm just as lost as you.

But I trust you.

I trust you.

I trust you.

I trust you.

Thursday, April 15, 2010

Wednesday, April 14, 2010

Ga-man

The Japanese have a word.
Ga-man
"...a code of silent suffering and ability to stand pain."
It's a prized virtue in Japanese culture, and arguable shared with many Asian cultures.
Asians brought this value with them to America
From the Manilamen of St. Malo
To the first Cantonese immigrants chasing gold and laying track
To the sugar cane workers of Hawaii
The refugees of countless American wars
Through racism, prejudice, segregation,
Internment camps
The repeal of Filipino veteran's rights
The murder of Vincent Chin
We stayed quiet.

More accurately, our parents did.
They felt obliged to take these obstacles in stride because they felt they owed this country at least their silence.
It was still better than the old country.
But we know better.
We have had the world equality beat into our psyches from grade school.
And yet we watched our parents suffer countless injustices.
It's time to reclaim this generation's rights.
As Helen Zia proclaimed, "It's time to stop being so fucking polite!"
Let's rally.
Throw our firsts up.
Stop bowing, stop covering our mouths when we laugh
There's nothing funny going on here.

Tuesday, April 13, 2010

Incomplete

Was hanging out with a friend a few weeks ago and he was talking about his ex and naturally there was a lot of hating going on. Had to reflect on it. Never finished, I was interrupted and never got back to it.

It's interesting that those so seemingly enamored of each other can so quickly come to spite each other so completely.
What is it about lost love that makes it so easy for us to hate?
I can't say that I know this feeling personally, for I've yet to lose love,
But I've seen friends torn apart.
I've seen tears,
Heard screams, cries, rants.
I've seen the pain and hate in their eyes.
But why?
They were strolling on the shore hand in hand yesterday
Today they struggle to keep hands to selves, for different reasons.
They couldn't stand each other's absence.
Now they can't stand the sight of the other.

Monday, April 12, 2010

Ping Pong

Again written in GHIST discussion while not paying attention. This is totally for shits and giggles.

Obscure in the West.
Well known in the East.
Asian male sexuality?
No.
Ping Pong.
A sport in which balls are not merely struck
But spun.
Up.
Down.
Sideways.
And every combination in between.
A game?
A hobby?
Perhaps
But at the highest levels: a true sport.
Chess at the speed of light
Tactical, aggressive, thoughtful, instinctive
Everyone has an ego about it
But as MTV told me
"You think you know..."
But you're wrong!
Physics barely holds water in this game
Magnus himself would doubt his own calculations
Serve. Push. Loop. Block. Smash. Fish. Smash. Lob. Smash.
Miles from the table.
Behind barriers.
The impossible made possible.
It's not your grandad's basement pong.
This is Table Tennis.

I'm proud of it...

I've been up for over 18 hours reading A Rumor of War by Philip Caputo. I've just finished my opening paragraph for a paper due in seven hours. I think it's pretty tight.I might post the rest later upon request.

America’s “police action” in Vietnam has been, to date, the longest armed conflict in U.S. history. Caputo initially began writing A Rumor of War as an autobiography, but his personal project soon evolved into a memoir in which he chronicled not only the events of the war but, more significantly, the way the war changed him and his brothers in arms. Though significantly less deadly than previous American wars, Vietnam was a reaction chamber in which climate, combat, and untold numbers of atrocities served as the catalysts that transformed the hearts and minds of an entire generation. For those young men unlucky enough to be thrown into the steaming jungles and rolling hills of Vietnam, the ideals of war as a glorious endeavor so valued by their father’s generations were shattered by the grim realities of guerilla warfare.

Attention White People:

White privilege exists!
Racism exists!
Having a black president has changed nothing!
Telling a minority "Obama did it, why can't you?" is the most ignorant thing one can say.
Hmm...I don't know...where to begin?
Maybe because employers see me and already have no on the tip of their toungues.
Store owners follow me from rack to rack and shelf to shelf while white customers roam freely.
White women lock their cars when I walk past and clutch their purses in elevators.
Maybe because I will forever be a "boy" to cops to matter my age.
Because my English is always be "surprisingly good."

Being "color-blind" is bullshit!
I'm brown and proud of it.
For you to ignore that is just as racist as belittling it.

On the opposite end:
If i tell you I'm Filipino, don't tell me about your love affair with Asia groomed over many a pan-regional tour/vacation,
How much you "LOOOOOOOOOOOOOVE Thai curries."
Or how the Pho is just not the same here.
Don't ask me to "Say something in your language!"
I was born here, so how about this:
FUCK YOU!

Monday, April 5, 2010

Bland

Written while not paying to attention to my GHIST professor in discussion. His name? Literally, no fucking joke: Dr. Bland.

Lacking flavor
When referring to speech, lacking intonation or emotion.
But his man
This professor
This doctor of American history
is beyond the mere definition of the word.
He is indescribable
Bland would have been a compliment
His lectures weren't just droning, they were slow!
S - L - O- W type slow
he spoke and you already knew what he was going to say a quarter of the way through
His drawl, delightfully southern but unbearable smug
Clean & Educated sounding
But it's the tone at the end of every phrase that begged for a pencil tracheotomy
Smug is the word that comes to mind.
That "Everything I say is gold" tone
And the facial to boot.

That's it.

Saturday, February 13, 2010

Old Facebook note

Copied and Pasted Rules:
Once you’ve been tagged, you are supposed to write a note with 16 random things, facts, habits, or goals about you. At the end, choose 16 people to be tagged. You have to tag the person who tagged you. If I tagged you, it’s because I want to know more about you.

1.) In kindergarten, some white kid asked me if I was from China. I didn't get mad or cry, instead I asked him if he was from England and that was the end of it.

2.) I'm 20 with a girlfriend and I still act like girls have cooties around women I don't know.

3.) My accent and dialect have a tendency to fluctuate over the course of a conversation relative to the subject I'm discussing and my company at the time. I like breaking out in random bouts of African American Vernacular English when I'm talking about my childhood friends. When meeting people I've never met and will never meet again, I often put on a Manchester accent and tell them I'm half-Indian and half-Manc.

4.) Apparently my English is "very good" and I'm "very well spoken."

5.) People in my family are often confused as latinos.

6.) I smell my hands whenever I touch something, make that anything. It's an odd habit, I don't know how it started. I never really was self-conscious about it until my girlfriend told me at 20 years old. Now I get really embarrassed whenever I do it in public, even if no one says anything about it.

7.) I HATE writing. Despite that, I'm told I'm pretty good at it. Don't ask me how that came to be. I've no fooking clue, mate.

8.) I've been on academic probation in college for two semesters (going into my third now)

9.) I spend more cash on table tennis equipment in 6 months than I do on tennis equipment in two years. Don't judge me, it's a really fucking expensive sport.

10.) I've never partaken in any illicit drug use but for some reason everybody thinks I have and still do.

11.) I think my poetry is really just oddly spaced prose.

12.) I've performed Filipino folk dances ever since the age of 6.

13.) I've played PC games for more hours in my life than working out, tennis, table tennis, eating, shitting, bathing, studying, attending class, probably fucking breathing combined.

14.) I have the boxes and manuals for all the PC games I've ever purchased saved in a plastic box in my room.

15.) I've never sold back a college text book. Sometimes I read my old books for fun when I take a shit or when I'm trying to fall asleep.

16.) I sleep talk. I'm not talking mumbling or screaming, I mean I can have a full conversation with someone when I'm asleep. My dad used to talk to me when I was a kid and still does it now sometimes. This is the reason I'm deftly afraid of lying and rarely do.